Henrik Ibsen

What are his best works? Im considering reading Brand.

his best work is 'al;sdfjrooi /

I dont get the joke. Because he wrote in a language you dont speak?

I don't know anything about him, but I read Peer Gynt earlier this year and thought it was very funny and the ending warmed my heart.

Peer Gynt is his most acclaimed and famous work here in Norway, but it is in verse, so I would imagine a lot of its value is lost in translation.
I haven't read Brand yet, although I intend to, but keep in mind it is in verse as well.
Every work he wrote after Peer Gynt is in prose, so I would go for some of those if I didn't speak Norwegian. Some of the post-Peer Gynt highlights include Et dukkehjem (A Doll's House), En folkefiende (An Enemy of the People), Vildanden (The Wild Duck) and Hedda Gabler.

The kingdom of the dead.

Oh wait

That's Pontopiddan.

Read Henrik Pontopiddans - Kingdom of the dead.

I really enjoyed the wild duck.

Norwegians seem to love Peer Gynt the most (there will be a staging in my city this season by a Norwegian director, I'm p hyped). But the rest of the world loves Dollhouse the most, because it is the prototypical "citizen drama" (don't know if that's the exact English term...) and a message that can easily be seen as feminist. Start with that one, but many of his works seem to be worth reading and are very popular.

>Norwegians seem to love Peer Gynt the most
Becuase it's one if his few works in which he doesn't go full social justice warrior.

>social justice warrior
>in 19th century
I thought that we are supposed to view art in its historical context rather than accepting the death of artist and imposing our subjective and contemporary ideas upon art.

>hurr durr muh historical relativism
Water was still water even to the Romans you know.

And SJWs were SJWs to people 150 years ago? If you say so.

>if a phenomenon doesn't have a label it doesn't exist
So... electricity did not exist until the 19th century?

Hedda Gabler

It's about a willful, cunning woman who destroys people for really no other apparent reason than she's bored.

I also love the Master Builder, about a brilliant architect who meets a young women and they become mutually obsessed with each other, him with her passion for life and for his work.

Think about all the now-specific associations and connotations of the phrase "social justice warrior," including the slight sneer on the mouths of some who use it, or the flippant way others say it and mean it.

I'd argue it's a poor use of language to try and use it to describe whatever Ibsen was or what his works mean even now. Given that many of his works would have been SHOCKING, distasteful, or even seditious, it does him a disservice to describe him as a SJW.

>150 years ago there were radical leftists in north Europe who saw misogyny everywhere, fought against perceived discrimination against black people and homosexuals and made up a ton of non-existent genders
A noggin jogs across the sky
You don't even have to read Nora as a simple feminist play. There's far too much complexity in the text. Look at the ending, for a start. How acceptable and moral is it to abandon your children like that? And where is actually this real life that Nora is looking for? Do you really think that you can find it by simply running away from the previous life? And you just accepted the simple feminist reading as the objective fact.

>understanding human creations, social constructs and observer-dependent phenomena the same way science understands the physical world

normally I can't decide whether i hate stem-faggotry/scientism or relativism more, but rarely have I seen someone as retarded as you in either camp

Like mentioned Peer Gynt doesn't really translate that well, and out of all his plays it's the one you should go see in a theatre. It's fragmented, stylised, moves around in time/space the one that's most dependent on scenography.

Personally I like his later more realist stuff the most. If you're anything like the sterotypical user I think you'll find the female characters in Hedda Gabler, A Dolls House and The Wild Duck pretty fucking fascinating. An Enemy of the People and especially Ghosts are are among my favourites as well.

But just start with whichever one you like, they're all funny and entertaining and should be easy to get through in a day or two.

The Wild Duck is sublime

>There's far too much complexity in the text.
As there is in the real life of feminists/SJWs/your neighbour. The fact that it is an elaborate and naturalistic work does not take away the fact that its skeleton is very obviously "feminist". You're missing the forest for the trees.
You're splitting hairs. SJW is a pretty broad term. Replace it with "left-wing radical socially" if you want.

> SJW is a pretty broad term
Ot slang, if "term" triggers you.

good choice reading brand. signet published two volumes of plays that have all that you'd really want. i prefer volume 1 because doll house and hedda gabler are the best.