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The Tragical in Daily Life

is the one of Ibsen's dramas wherein this dialogue of the 'second degree' attains the deepest tragedy, I endeavoured, unskilfully enough, to fix its secrets. For indeed they are kindred handmarks traced on the same wall by the same sightless being, groping for the same light. 'What is it,' I asked, 'what is it that, in the "Master Builder," the poet has added to life, thereby making it appear so strange, so profound and so disquieting beneath its trivial surface?' The discovery is not easy, and the old master hides from us more than one secret. It would even seem as though what he has wished to say were but little by the side of what he has been compelled to say. He has freed certain powers of the soul that have never yet been free, and it may well be that these have held him in thrall. 'Look you, Hilda,' exclaims Solness, 'look you! There is sorcery in you, too, as there is in me. It is this sorcery that imposes action

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