Ellida

Abstract: The Lady from the Sea, written in 1888, is a compelling portrayal of fin-de-siecle marital existence and structured like a therapy, featuring Ellida Wangel as a ‘patient’, haunted by reminiscences concerning a mysterious sailor and tormented by desire for a different mode of existence, closer to the sea. Although the therapeutic design is clearly present, another possible reading shifts the focus from front-stage to backdrop and from the therapeutic talking sessions to the ambiance: not the decor (the Norwegian coastal-provincial scenery, the panoramic landscape), but rather that which lies beyond it: the invisible, un-representable, unseeable sea. What is the ‘sea’ in Ibsen’s play? And what exactly is this fatal attraction to which Ellida has fallen victim? To address these questions, Ibsen’s play will be subjected to three subsequent readings. The first one focusses on the play as therapy, directed at strengthening Ellida’s ego in confrontation with the Id (‘Es’). Subsequently, the play will be read from a Heideggerian perspective. The reading direction will be reversed, from the (successful?) therapeutic outcome to the chronic discontent pervading the drama from the very start, and from modern human existence to primordial nature. The focus will be on what Heidegger thematises as the Call of Conscience in Being and Time, and in his later writings as the Call of primordial Nature. Finally, a Lacanian reading allows me to bridge the Freudian and the Heideggerian approaches, presenting Ellida as an ‘amphibian’ (divided) subject, who not only produces an intriguing parable concerning our amphibian origins (as an explanation of pervasive human discontent), but eventually comes face to face with the ultimate object-cause of her desire: the Stranger’s uncanny, mesmerizing eyes: an encounter at the edges of the symbolic order, challenging her to come to terms with the unsettling Real.

Abstract: Abstract:The German fiction writer and surrealist artist Ellida Schargo von Alten epitomizes the strong postwar woman, advocating for herself while balancing traditional family and caregiving roles with participation in modernity as an artist and entrepreneur. As a New Woman, independent seamstress, and contributor to the artistic community in Worpswede between 1934 and 1962 and resident of Posteholz between 1962 and 1996, von Alten not only thrived in her own creative and entrepreneurial pursuits but also helped relaunch the postwar career of her second partner, the surrealist painter Richard Oelze. Von Alten's experience as a writer, fashion designer, and pastel artist allowed her to excel within the confluence of domestic responsibility, entrepreneurship, and creativity. This essay explores the artists' automatist studio practices and distinguishes von Alten's methods and abstract motifs from Oelze's to reassess art-historical assertions that artistic influence is gendered along strictly patriarchal lines.

Abstract: Ibsen has created Ellida Wangel in The Lady from the Sea as a “mermaid” stranded on land, feeling trapped in her marriage with Dr Wangel and suffocated by her restrictive gender roles as wife and step-mother. The play focuses on Ellida the dying mermaid’s process of individuation as she struggles to seek happiness, freedom and self-fulfilment in life. Through Ellida’s entangled relationship with the Stranger and her husband, Ibsen has created a living “mermaid”, who enables him to explore gender relations, individual freedom and choice, as well as the liberation of the self. However, when The Lady from the Sea was transposed from Norway to China and adapted for the traditional Chinese theatre, the Chinese Yue theatre in this case, Ellida had undergone drastic changes in order to suit the traditional Yue theatregoers’ expectations and taste, as well as to fit the socio-cultural norm of traditional Yue opera. Instead of examining those technical alterations such as rearrangement of scenes (Ye, 2011, 20), the use of symbols (Wu, 2011, 80), the setting (Wu, 2011, 78), or theatrical performance and devices (Qing Yun, 2010, 32) adopted in the Chinese operatic adaptation of The Lady from the Sea , this article focuses on the cultural re-presentation of Ellida and the re-constitution of her character, the purpose of which is to make her plausible as a Chinese woman on the traditional Yue stage. A close study of the cultural transformation of Ellida and her re-orientation on the traditional Yue stage adaptation will enable the reader to better understand the Chinese cultural emphasis on didacticism, Confucian morality and propriety in traditional drama and theatre, as well as the difficulties involved in transporting Ibsen’s mermaid to the Chinese traditional Yue stage.