cultural resources in henrik ibsen's early environment - Ibsen.net

his lively and spirited way he behaved with extravagance. In the foreword to his jubilee-
edition of the drama Catiline he expressed himself about this as follows:
Yet I could not refrain from expressing myself, on more elevated
occasions, along the same passionate lines as in my poetry; from which,
however, I derived only dubious benefit, both from those who were and
those who were not my friends: the former acclaimed my talent for being
unintentionally funny, while others found it utterly remarkable that a young
man in my subordinate position should actively discuss matters which not
even they themselves ventured to have views about. For the sake of truth I
must add that my behaviour on a number of occasions did not justify any
great hopes that society had in me someone in whom the solid middle-class
virtues might confidently be expected to flourish, just as I also, through my
epigrams and caricatures, quarrelled with many who had deserved better of
me and whose friendship I in fact prized. The long and short of it was that,
while big things were happening in the tumultuous world outside, I found
myself at loggerheads with the small community in which I lived, cramped
as I was by private circumstances and by conditions in general." (from The
Oxford Ibsen, ed. James Walter McFarlane, et al, London: Oxford UP: vol
I., Early Plays, 110-111.)
GRIMSTAD PHARMACY
in the years 1844-47.
In small towns where there is only one pharmacy, one can be treated in any old
way, at all events that is how it was in those years, and under the owner at the time, the
pharmacist Reimann, a less-than-good economic situation was understandable, since the
pharmacy lay in an undistinguished part of the town, where one lived cheaply. . . . (It)
was installed in a humble little outlying building, at that time with small windowpanes in
both the two lower floors.
When I walked past there one day with an acquaintance, he asked me if I had seen
the pharmacist's assistant who had arrived there some time ago, since as he put it, there
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