John Gabriel Borkman - Henrik Ibsen

The subject of John Gabriel Borkman (1896) makes it seem like a companion piece to Ibsen's earlier dramas The Pillars of Society or Enemy of the People, dealing with the subject of corruption, or at least an act of guilt in the past on the part of an individual that is to have a profound effect on the wider community, but viewed here in aftermath. As one of Ibsen’s latter plays, the subtext of John Gabriel Borkman however is that of an act of corruption by an artist, who has forsaken the truth and love for more material gains, a theme that is borne out by Ibsen’s next and final drama, When We Dead Awaken (1899), where the subject is made more explicit.

In the case of John Gabriel Borkman, the figure at the centre of the intrigue is a disgraced bank manager who has served five years in prison for financial irregularities that brought about the collapse of the bank and the savings of many people in the community. Borkman has served a further three years locked in the upstairs apartment of the house leased to the disgraced family by his sister-on-law Ella Rentheim. Borkman’s failings however go deeper than the mere failing as a banker – in the past he renounced his love for Ella in order to become a successful and powerful businessman. Now, both his wife and her twin sister are seeking restitution for the losses they have suffered and hope to achieve it through his son, Erhart. Erhart however is unwilling to join in this “Dance Macabre” that has erupted around him and is about to take off and find happiness for himself.

The hints that there is a rather more autobiographical context to the drama are found to some extent in the suffering of most of the characters associated with Borkman. Nearly all of them however have to share responsibility for their own failings – a complication that makes the role they play rather richer and more complex – but the purity of the artistic endeavour that has been lost or corrupted can be seen in Borkman’s former assistant Fodal, an aspiring writer who doesn’t have self-belief, or who has rather sacrificed his art for the people around him, perhaps foolishly. Borkman doesn’t lack in confidence, aware that the keys to the kingdom were once in his grasp, but that his ability to retain them has long since passed and he is now “dead” to the world. The question that arises is whether the dead can awaken and redemption be achieved, a subject that Ibsen also approaches in his last drama, and to which the answer here would seem to be an equally bleak and dispiriting one.