Catiline (1850)

Brief description

It was with Catiline that Ibsen made his debut as a dramatist. It was written in the course of the first three months of 1849, and the first notes for it must have been made towards the end of 1848. Ibsen was only twenty years old then (his twenty-first birthday was on 20 March 1849), and he was assistant to the chemist Lars Nielsen in Grimstad. Ibsen had moved to Grimstad in 1844, and he lived there until 1850.

He wrote the play at night. In the preface to the second edition of the play (1875), Ibsen writes:

From my good, decent employer, who was totally absorbed in his business, I had to steal some free time in which to study, and from these stolen hours I again stole some moments in which to write. So there was not much more than the night to resort to. I think this is the unconscious cause of almost all the action of the play taking place at night.
[read the preface in original handwriting]

Ibsen combined his work as chemist's apprentice and later assistant with studying for examen artium, the examination qualifying for university entrance. In this connection he had private coaching in Latin, and among other works he went through Sallust's Catiline and Cicero's Catiline speeches.

«I devoured these works,» Ibsen writes in the preface to the second edition,

and some months later my drama was finished. As will be seen from my book, I did not then share the old Roman writers' opinion of Catiline's character and actions, and I am still inclined to think that there must have been something great or important about a man with whom Cicero, the indefatigable spokesman of the majority, did not find it expedient to grapple, before matters had taken such a turn that an attack was no longer dangerous. It should also be remembered that there have been few historical figures whose posthumous reputation has been more exclusively in the power of his opponents than Catiline.

Ibsen read Catiline to his two closest friends in Grimstad, Christopher Due and Ole Carelius Schulerud, who were highly enthusiastic. Ibsen's manuscript was a rough draft and probably the first and only version at that time. Due made a copy of this manuscript, and Schulerud took it to Christiania to deliver it to Christiania Theater and then for publication as a book. The response was negative, however.
In the preface to the second edition (1875) Ibsen writes:

My friend had the play returned by the board of the theatre, and rejected particularly politely but equally firmly. He then took the manuscript from bookseller to bookseller, but they all replied in the same way as the board of the theatre. The best offer was to charge so and so much for printing the play without paying a fee.

However, Schulerud did not give in until he had got his friend's work published. With the aid of a sum of money he had inherited, he had Catiline published on commission by the bookseller P. F. Steensballe in Christiania. The play was published under the pseudonym Brynjolf Bjarme on 12 April 1850 in an edition of 250 copies.

The book was reviewed in four places (see below), and the reviews were relatively favourable, but sales were slow. Only 40 copies were sold the first year. Ibsen describes its unkind fate himself in the preface to the second edition:

Not very many copies of the small edition were sold; my friend had a number of copies in his care, and I remember that one evening, when the state of our communal housekeeping showed that insurmountable difficulties were piling up for us, [Ibsen and Schulerud shared lodgings in Christiania from April 1850 until October 1851, first an attic room in Vika, then one floor of a house in Møllergaten], we turned this pile of printed matter into waste paper and happily sold it to a hawker. For the next few days we lacked none of the prime necessities of life.

It is not known exactly how many copies of this edition were involved. Part of the edition was still with Steensballe, and the rest with booksellers all over the country. In 1875, when the second edition was published by Gyldendal, 55 copies of the first edition were still left. On 20 March 1875 a second, re-worked edition of Catiline was published by Gyldendalske Boghandel (F. Hegel) in Copenhagen, with a total of 3000 copies.

This re-issue was at Ibsen's own suggestion; he wished it to mark his 25th anniversary as an author. He put the idea forward in a letter to Frederik Hegel, sent from Dresden on 23 November 1874 [read the letter in HISe]. Hegel's response was positive.

The changes Ibsen made in the Catiline manuscript were mainly of a stylistic nature. In the preface to this edition he writes:

I therefore decided to re-work this youthful piece of writing of mine in the way in which I think I might have been able to do it even then, if I had had the time, and the circumstances had been more favourable. On the other hand I have not touched the ideas, images or development of the plot. The book is still the original, except that it now appears in a completed form.

Catiline is very rarely performed, and over thirty years passed between the publication of the first edition and the first performance. When this took place – on 3 December 1881 at Nya Teatern in Stockholm – it was not the text of the first edition, but that of the second that was used. Ludvig Oscar Josephson directed the production.

The audience showed great interest in the production, but the reviewers were mainly negative.

(From ibsen.net)

Read Catiline (in Norwegian)

In the online version of the official Ibsen edition (HISe) you can read Catiline in various formats. This content is currently only available in Norwegian. Follow the links below to read the play:

Introduction to Catiline (in Norwegian)

The online version of the official Ibsen edition (HISe) offers extensive information about Catiline in Norwegian. Follow the links below to read about various aspects connected to the play.

The modified version of Catiline (1875)

In 1869, Ibsen attended a Scandinavian conference on proof-reading. He subsequently re-wrote all his previous dramas in accordance with the proof-reading norm recommended at the conference. He also made some changes to the content.

Read the modified version (in Norwegian)

In the online version of the official Ibsen edition (HISe) you can read Catiline (1875) in various formats. This content is currently only available in Norwegian. Follow the links below to read the play:

Introduction to Catiline (in Norwegian)

Reviews

Here you can find reviews in full text and an overview of registered reviews in various languages.

Translations

Theatre productions

Published July 10, 2023 1:27 PM - Last modified June 25, 2024 11:53 AM