Ibsen and Hauptman 5. 



Certainly Ibsen was too thoroughly acquainted with the histor- 

 ical material of the period to have departed from it unconsciously. 

 He must have done so with deliberate purpose. It is possible 

 that he did it to make Julian appear more unequivocally as the 

 instrument of the Zeitgeist. Brandes and Reich both incline to 

 put forth the idea that Julian is so represented. 



According to this theory Julian was indeed a chosen instru- 

 ment to fulfil a particular and definite mission — the regeneration 

 of Christianity. He might do this either positively or negatively, 

 but the mission itself he could not escape. " Es stand Julian frei, 

 der eifrigste Yorkampfer oder der gliihendste Hasser des neuen 

 Glaubens zu werden. . . Julian erfullt gegen seine Absicht die 

 ihm zugedachte Rolle als Erneuer des Christentums " (Reich). 

 Ibsen's "conception of Julian is that by this persecution of his 

 Christian subjects he became the real creator of the Christianity 

 of his age, that is to say, its awakener from the dead " (Brandes). 



Certainly the drama offers some support for this view. Look- 

 ing back upon preceding events in the light of the final catas- 

 trophe, we can see that the whole current of Julian's life set 

 toward one definite goal and that he was carried along in this 

 current with or without his own volition. The many visions, 

 signs and like phenomena upon which he placed so much depen- 

 dence are capable of a double interpretation. It is clear, too, 

 that whichever way he interpreted them, he was fated in the end 

 to fulfil the destiny allotted to him by the Zeitgeist. 



Agathon's vision and his message that Julian was divinely 

 chosen to wrestle with the lions, influenced Julian to take the 

 first decisive step — the step which set in motion the action of 

 the whole drama. Agathon's interpretation of this vision would 

 have made Julian the champion of Christianity ; had he followed 

 its warning and never again set foot in the capital city, the activity 

 and purpose of his life, though not its final effect, must have been 

 wholly altered. Julian's own interpretation, on the other hand, 

 culminated in his becoming the bitterest antagonist of Christianity. 



The revelations of the spirits called up by Maximos in the 

 " symposium " are all darkly equivocal. But, looking back at them 



247 



