On Suspense

I've been sort of preparing a lecture on Ibsen's Hedda Gabler for our Year 5's. I say 'sort of' as it's been all thinking so far with nothing that you might call concrete. But that's the way I work - a lot of mulling over a topic, kicking it around, getting the taste and then, if luck holds, the thing itself comes together of its own accord. I decided on the topic very quickly though. It's going to be about the nature of the dramatic suspense created by Ibsen, within the play. He's always struck me as a playwright who devises particularly taut structures. The plays fairly hum along at times given that essential tension in every line. In fact, for a so-called naturalistic writer he's always teetering on the edge of melodrama it seems to me. That means it's difficult to make his stuff work for a modern audience.

In contrast, and I think it's an interesting one, Homer's version of suspense in The Odyssey is much simpler, deeply primitive in fact, but terribly satisfying. Reading Fagles's translation has made me realise just how much the epic is dominated by those suitors in Ithaca and the awful, glorious revenge our hero will wreak on them. I'm up to Book Twenty-one, with Odysseus about to pick up his bow, and very much aware of how slowly the poet has built up to this point, strangely savouring every insult the suitors throw out, and how satisfying it's going to be when the blood starts to really flow, Iliad-style.

But the truth is, for a wimp like me who had nightmares reading Fagles's version of the fall of Troy a couple of years ago, the blood-letting isn't going to be all that much fun. I prefer The Odyssey to The Iliad simply because it is grounded, for the most part, in something other than blood lust. I suppose I enjoy the suspense, but not the actual pay-off. Mind you, I'm in good company - Joyce just ignored the gory bits when he updated the epic in the most inglorious of all novels.