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

garland around the covering of the past, comfortingly it will promise a
Spring!
I was very impatient until evening came, when it would become quiet in the
pharmacy, and I could bring Ibsen the paper. Warmly sympathetic, with a look of triumph
on my friend's behalf I showed him his "first in print". Ibsen first grew completely pale
with emotion, but soon a happy blush flowed up in his face, and I am convinced that later
on he scarcely felt so happy to see his
work printed as at this moment - "the first time".
In a poem "When I saw my first in print" ("Byggeplaner," i.e., "Building Plans")
he has immortalized this sentiment. The first verse goes like this:
I remember so plainly, as if it were happening today, the first time I
saw a poem of mine printed in the newspaper; I sat in my room and
smoked my pipe with puffing drags in blissful self-satisfaction.
Somewhat later Ibsen also wrote a poem on the occasion of Oehlenschläger's
death, entitled "Skald in Valhalla" (“Skjalden i Valhal”). It was an enthusiastic tribute to
the departed poet, who is welcomed by the valkyries and offered mead from a drinking
horn. I sent that as well to Christiania-posten, where it was immediately given a place in
its columns. After this experience my interest in this new friend naturally increased
substantially. But we preserved as a deep secret in our comradeship, that Ibsen wrote
poetry of that kind.
IBSEN IN A CIRCLE OF FRIENDS
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