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

I have above mentioned Ibsen's talent for illustration and in that connection want
to mention one of his many pencil drawings, which has a special interest, considering
what happened to him later in life. He detested honorary decorations. One day he
showed me two drawings, of which the first depicted a plump gentleman, presumably
after a first-class dinner, sitting sleeping in an easy chair, while over his head floats a
cloud, from which protrudes a hand, holding a medal with a star. The next drawing
depicts the newly-minted knight, who has just awakened and is surprised to see the star
on his breast. He puts his hand to his head and bursts out: "What? - an order? Why?
How?" He soon finds the answer, however: "I have been sleeping!" How little Henrik
Ibsen suspected then, that his own breast one day would be decorated with orders,
distinctions which to be sure he came to far from sleeping.
Before I conclude this section about Ibsen's personal characteristics, I want to state
that in the years we found ourselves frequently together, he gave few expressions of
strongly pulsating feelings. It was as if his whole spiritual life moved exclusively, or at
any rate essentially, in the direction of imagination and thought.
But there was in any case to a high degree something so captivating about him, as
he really was then, that I gradually accustomed myself to the abovementioned lack, all the
more, as at certain times I received the impression that the reason for this lay in an
aversion deep in his nature to revealing his feelings. He had an especially remarkable
ability to disguise his many wants, so that in any case they did not appear to depress him.
His close friends accordingly found no occasion to complain about him, so much less so,
since most of them scarcely understood the situation as it really was. I, who for some
time was his only intimate, felt great sympathy with him and had difficulty understanding
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