title: Complex Pleasure: Forms of Feeling in German Literature
author:  Stanley Corngold 
description: "Elegance and intelligence meet on virtually every page of this intriguing book. I was persuaded by the perspicacity and inventiveness of the individual chapters and even more by the cumulative effect of the readings [of Lessing, Kant, Hlderlin, Nietzsche, Musil, Kafka, Trakl, and Benjamin]." (Ian Balfour <i>York University.</i>)<br /><br />"Written with enticing rhetoric and in an often-delightful polemical mode, <i>Complex Pleasure</i> vacillates between the temptation of a straight definition, whose premises are continuously undermined, and the pressure of literary texts, which emerges behind every theoretical demonstration. Thus, the book develops in the tension of the two languages, and keeps reflecting on itself, as it reflects the aesthetic experience." (<i>Literary Research / Recherche Litteraire</i>)
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  ![cover](resources/_cover_.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  # Love's Comedy
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Henrik Ibsen
  
  
  This page formatted 2007 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com
  
  * [INTRODUCTION*](love_split_2.html#1_0_2)
  
  
  * [LOVE'S COMEDY](love_split_3.html#1_0_3)
  
  
  * [ACT FIRST](love_split_4.html#1_0_4)
  
  
  * [ACT SECOND](love_split_5.html#1_0_5)
  
  
  * [ACT THIRD.](love_split_6.html#1_0_6)
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
      
  
  E-text prepared by Douglas Levy
  
  
  
  
  
  The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen, Volume I
  
  
  LOVE'S COMEDY
  
  
  Translation by C. H. Herford
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### INTRODUCTION*
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  _Koerlighedens Komedie_ was published at Christiania in 1862.
  
  
  The polite world—so far as such a thing existed at the time in the
  
  
  Northern capital—received it with an outburst of indignation now
  
  
  entirely easy to understand. It has indeed faults enough. The
  
  
  character-drawing is often crude, the action, though full of effective
  
  
  by-play, extremely slight, and the sensational climax has little
  
  
  relation 