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

what changes had taken place in the afterward more and more silent and closed man,
outside of what one can conclude from reading his works.
In any case for me, who knew him in his youth, I noticed a striking contrast when
I saw him again as an old man. There was then no question of his earlier liveliness and
communicativeness. By then he had become to a great extent reserved and closed.
THE FIRST IN PRINT
To proceed in chronological order 7 I shall first relate an episode which took place
a few weeks after we had become acquainted, and which makes a literary-historical
contribution to the biography of Ibsen. Since I permit myself to play a part, I observe that
this is only an instrument to better illustrate the situation, from a modern viewpoint it
gives a rather comic impression as far as I am concerned.
Like so many young men I occupied myself with writing small poems. One day I
had made such a one that I was proud of, and I took it with me one evening, when I
visited Ibsen. I confided to him that I wrote verse. "You don't say, do you! Let me hear
some," was Ibsen's answer. I then read aloud my "Sunset" - one of these melancholy
sentimental things, in which the young blood knows a heartsick longing to express its
feelings amidst a description of nature. After Ibsen had heard my reading, he remarked:
"I also write verse," and now it became my turn to say: "Oh, so you do, too," and at my
7 Due became acquainted with Ibsen in 1847, after the pharmacy moved to its new location, but the poem
discussed here, “I Høsten,” which he claims he learned of soon after they met, was not published until two
years later, in September of 1849. We have no poems from Ibsen’s hand from as early as the time when he
must have met Due.
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