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It has been said of me on different occasions that I am a pessimist. And so I am insofar as I do not believe in the everlastingness of human ideals. But I am also an optimist insofar as I firmly believe in the capacity for the propagation and development of ideals.
Manders: Is there not a voice in your mother's heart which forbids you to destroy your son's ideals?
Mrs. Alving: Yes, but what about the truth?
Manders: Yes, but what about the ideals?
Mrs. Alving: Oh, ideals, ideals! If only I weren't such a coward!
Manders: Don't despise our ideals, Mr. Alving. Retribution surely will follow. Take Oswald in particular. He hasn't many ideas, I'm afraid. But this much I have discovered, that his father is to him an ideal.
Mrs. Alving: You are right there.
Manders: You have established a happy illusion in your son, Mrs. Alving—and you should certainly not regard that as being of little value.
Mrs. Alving: Hm. I wonder. (Ibsen, 1879, in Meyer, 1986a, p. 61)
From this vantage point in history, it is clear that Ibsen was a creative master. His unofficial but widely proclaimed title as the “Father of Modern Drama” marks him as a forefather in one of social history's most significant periods, the period of Modernism, whose canons in this postmodern era are being widely challenged.