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

and which he in this way cast off, as it were, to our mutual enjoyment. Ibsen needed a
response and on these occasions mine was not lacking.
However, we were not always in agreement and sometimes I protested against
what seemed to me to be his fallacious opinions. As usual between young men we
discussed everything between heaven and earth. Accordingly not least marriage. Among
one of Ibsen's extravagant jokes I remember that he in a way zealously maintained, that he
and his eventual wife must each live on their own floor, only see each other at mealtimes
and say De (the formal term of address) to each other. This was at that time his ideal of
marriage.
On their honeymoon I met Ibsen and his wife on a steamship, but the earlier
ordinance between married people seemed to have been abondoned by then, and in any
case for many years there was no opportunity to practice the theory of the two floors.
As therefore, I shall now try to describe Ibsen as at that time I knew him, it will of
course be difficult to find the correct balance of discretion, since as we know, between
young men a great deal of unbridled talk goes on, and that goes especially among such
lively natures as Ibsen's in these years, full of the warm blood of youth, and that needs to
be clarified so that life with Ibsen is in full measure clarified.
It is necessary therefore to bring to the reader's explicit attention, that I describe
Ibsen accordingly as he was at that time, about 20 years old, before the struggle of life
and those great circumstances where he later voyaged had exercised their influence on his
mind-set and development.
Our ways parted. Soon Dovre lay between us, later the greater part of Europe.
Only seldom and with spaces between did we meet later, and I have little knowledge of
395