Witnessed on the living stage, it takes the citadel of the soul by storm. When it is read, the critical judgment becomes cooler.
Carefully examined, Brand is found to present a disconcerting mixture of realism and mysticism. Two men seem at work in the writing of it, and their effects are sometimes contradictory. It has constantly been asked, and it was asked at once, “Is Brand the expression of Ibsen’s own nature?” Yes, and no. He threw much of himself into his hero, and yet he was careful to remain outside. Ibsen, as we have already pointed out, was ready in later life to discuss his own writings, and what he said about them is often dangerously mystifying. He told Georg Brandes that the religious vocation of Brand was not essential. “I could have applied the whole syllogism just as well to a sculptor, or a politician, as to a priest.” (He was to deal with each of these alternations later on, but with what a difference!) “I could quite as well,” he persisted, “have worked out the impulse which drove me to write, by taking Galileo, for instance, as my hero—assuming, of course, that Galileo should stand firm and never concede the fixity of the earth—or you yourself in your struggle with the Danish reactionaries.” This is not to the point, since in fact neither Georg Brandes nor Galileo, as hero of a mystical drama,
