THE COLLECTED POEMS OF HENRIK IBSEN Translated by John ...

Munich, 2 nd June 1875
281
The poem was occasioned by the Uppsala rally (above). The place names refer to the
endeavours, by Garibaldi and others to achieve independence and unification for their
countries.
TO MISS EMMA KLINGENFELD
(with a copy of ‘Lady Inger of Østråt’)
The play I composed in the Nordic tongue
came back from the south like an echo rung.
It echoed but spoke with a tone less strong
yet its echo was still my Norwegian song.
No echo that snow-clad heights achieve
but a woodland echo one summer’s eve.
How just, that the poet’s interpreter spoke
a tongue that blazed trails amid foreign folk.
Take then, as thanks, a second play
of a time less violent, less far away.
It opens up visions, a night in the fall,
without a sun to sound morning’s call.
It figures women of strength and fire,
takes place in grim darkness, its ending dire.
Allow it, young lady, to waft you — roam
in your mind to the North again, leaving home.
Let it lead you this way where the dark clouds drape
the fjord up at Trondhjem like funeral crape.
Let Elina’s shade reappear at night,
and her mother’s too. But forget the sight.
And turn again, back to the Isar’s stream —
as though you awoke from a dolorous dream.
In 1876, while in Munich, Ibsen decided to put in hand a German edition of his plays. He
enlisted the help of Emma to translate ‘The Vikings a Helgeland’ and ‘Lady Inger of Østråt’,
the first plays to come out in the series. Isar, the river on which Munich stands.