Is the inspiration for 'Bygmester Solness', this quote from the Danish Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, whom Ibsen acknowledged reading?
“Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.”
Early in life, Solness was a man with ideals and dreams aplenty. As a master builder, he built churches and, later, 'houses for people to live in'. In his old age Solness is trapped in the detritus of these 'dreams of youth'. So the play begins.
But Ibsen provides a surprising way out - a happy ending! And his solution is as subtle as the irony in the Kierkegaard quotation.
