At the twilight of his life, Ibsen permanently returns to his homeland, after a 25-year stay in Italy and Germany. He had already passed 60, and the last works he would write on his native soil have a strong character of self-portrait and reflection. Solness, above all.

Like his "master," Ibsen was a "builder" — of theater, of course. He too had started by building towers and bell towers (his poetic dramas, especially Peer Gynt and Brand), but then turned to building "houses for people" (his realistic social dramas).

Like Solness, Ibsen feared the "invasion of youth" and being displaced by younger fellow artists... and, at the same time, sought in youth — in female youth — allies and rejuvenators, the "joy of life" that was fading and the uplift he had been deprived of.

In this relationship with youth — an angel of salvation (that becomes an angel of destruction) — the symbolic personification in this work is the very young Hilda Wangel.