"Akin to Peer Gynt" -- Remolding Peer in Adaptation

Abstract

Ibsen’s Peer Gynt holds a unique position in Norwegian culture as a ‘national epic’ that simultaneously satirizes the idea of coherent national and individual identities. This article analyzes the dramatic text’s recent adaptation into a graphic novel, published in Norway in 2014. We argue that this adaptation indicates which aspects of the play seem relevant to modern Norwegian readers. Through close, comparative readings of two key scenes in Ibsen’s text and in the adaptation, we show how the many metaliterary aspects of the former are creatively and irreverently treated in the latter. Moreover, we argue that one of the most striking aspects of Peer Gynt, the graphic novel, is its depiction of postmodern, performative identities, and the ‘liquidity’ of modern Western individuals.

Issues of identity never lose their importance. On the contrary, social theorists such as Zygmunt Bauman point out that identity is one of the key issues in our age of “liquid” modernity (Bauman 2000, 31–33). Throughout history, authors have inquired into the processes by which groups and individuals claim uniqueness from others. At the same time, literary works often critically portray identities as constructs, palimpsests built on quotations, retellings and borrowings from multiple sources. Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt [1867][1] is renowned for dealing with social and personal identity issues in a particularly complex manner. This satirical dramatic poem continues to appeal to Norwegian self-understanding (cf. Rees 2014). In other words, and to paraphrase a character from Act Five in the play, Norwegian audiences have for more than 150 years felt “akin to Peer Gynt” (cf. Ibsen 1892, 229). With its subtle mockery of national romanticist identity construction on the one hand, and its probing into an individual’s authenticity on the other, one might reasonably ask which aspects of Peer Gynt are most salient today. Based on a comparative analysis of Ibsen’s text and its recent adaptation into a graphic novel Ibsen/Moen/Mairowitz (2014), we argue that part of the reason why Peer Gynt appeals to postmodern audiences is because it addresses the topical issues of authenticity and performative identities latent in Ibsen’s depiction of an individual’s life experience.

Our analysis builds on Linda Hutcheon’s account of adaptations in her book A Theory of Adaptation (2013). In Hutcheon’s view, adaptations are by no means inferior to the so-called originals (2013, 4). Adaptations are independent artworks, as well as interpretations of source texts. Moreover, as interpretations they are motivated by the need of the adaptors to spell out important aspects of the source (Hutcheon 2013, 20). As they select, reject or highlight certain features of a text, we argue that adaptations function almost like barometers, revealing what a text means for a particular audience in a particular place and time. In our case, the graphic novel might be regarded as a particular performance of Ibsen’s dramatic text that in some sense ‘measures’ what Ibsen’s Peer Gynt means in 21st century Norway.

Our ‘barometer’ is the result of a collaboration between the Norwegian illustrator Geir Moen and the American scriptwriter David Zane Mairowitz. However, the graphic novel Peer Gynt also mentions Henrik Ibsen as its first author. Hence, Ibsen’s text is alluded to as the authoritative source text – paradoxically so, as the dramatic poem itself dismantles the idea of authority. Ibsen’s drama presents a suggestive gallery of fairy tale characters and plots that represent a flexible toolbox of literary devices. Ibsen comments on, deliberately misquotes, amplifies and alters elements from various texts, often avoiding a loyal or authentic rendition. Thus, the layers of citations in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt have a satirical and metaliterary effect. Given the fact that Ibsen overtly transfers his culture’s orally circulating stories into the medium of verse drama, we find it fruitful to look at the two versions of Peer Gynt as stages in the long adaptation process of retelling stories familiar to the Norwegian audience at different times. Therefore, we also wish to inquire into the way the two versions of Peer Gynt’s story reflect on their own textuality, and the complicated issues of the authority of the author.

Hutcheon importantly underlines that while adaptations are products, they are also deliberate processes, representing the “creative and interpretive act of appropriation/salvaging” done by individual adaptors (2013, 8). The elements firstly Ibsen, and subsequently Moen and Mairowitz choose to highlight, contract, alter, comment on, amplify, or omit altogether indicate what these different authors see as crucial topics. While Ibsen’s Peer comes across as a man who loses his identity to stories and thus falls for his own devices, in the 2014 graphic novel Peer is rather portrayed as a performer of life-stories, a man who seems to live up to the “liquidity” of modern human existence, as described by Bauman (2000).

On the one hand, Ibsen’s rich use of intertextuality is a comment on the idea of romantic folklorists generating a coherent national identity based on folk tales. On the other hand, Ibsen’s engagement with these texts is deliberate, direct and open, an evocation of what Hutcheon calls “The Audience’s ‘Palimpsestuous’ Intertextuality” (2013, 21). By this, Hutcheon means that the audience knows several ‘performances’ of one and the same text. With respect to the graphic novel, one might reasonably expect it not only to refer to Ibsen’s ‘pure text’, but also to performances, movies, and discussions surrounding the work. In Ibsen’s source text, we argue that the two scenes of Peer’s ‘homecoming’ in Acts One and Five are laden with such intertextual references. The first scene, where Peer tells the story of the buck ride, is where he first asserts an identity based on a borrowed story. In the first part of our paper, we will concentrate on this scene in the two texts. Our second close reading deals with the auction at Hæggstad. Here, one expects to encounter the protagonist at two crucial stages of his identity development. However, the multitude of quoted and misquoted stories, fused and appropriated by the protagonist, makes these acts not the starting and the finishing point of Peer’s personal maturation, but an indication of the instable and performative nature of his identity. Using approaches from social theory as well as adaptation studies, we argue that the graphic novel adaptation highlights a postmodern, or “liquid”, Peer already latent in Ibsen’s text.