When We Dead Awaken - Henrik Ibsen
When We Dead Awaken (1899), Ibsen’s final play and “Dramatic Epilogue”, is one of a series of reflective works on the nature of the artist, his work and the price that must be paid for it. Professor Rubek is a sculptor who, disillusioned by the reception to his masterpiece - The Resurrection Day - which he believes no-one has truly understood, has abandoned his art for meaningless commercial work. His disillusionment with his work and its reception has however come at some cost to his humanity and at the expense of the people around him. At a mountain spa, the professor’s aloofness consequently causes a certain bitterness, restlessness and detachment to creep into his marriage to Maia. The distance between them is measured in two other figures who “haunt” the spa. One is a woman, Irene, an old acquaintance who inspired Rubek’s masterpiece. She believes that her soul has been destroyed since her time with the professor - she blames the professor for sucking the life out of her for his