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

While we all looked up to Ibsen as the one with superior intellectual gifts, he
himself had nobody that he looked up to. This is indeed a lack during the period of
human development, especially in that period of life in which Ibsen then was. To be sure,
he had read remarkably much, amazingly much considering the literarily inaccessible
circumstances in which he lived, but even the highly-gifted still cannot without the
necessary conditions acquire everything wholly by reading. The experienced life-
regarding critical view is missing, and in such a strongly active temperament as Ibsen's
much is devoured without being healthily digested intellectually.
Among the authors he had studied by preference was Voltaire. He partly defended
the former's deism, partly pantheism, and partly the study of primitive miners. He denied
any personal relationship to God. In this he encountered strong opposition in a couple of
us, and we tried zealously to convert his lack of religious faith, but in vain. During such a
discussion one of our mutual acquaintances once attempted to recommend to him the
reading of Bishop Wallin's sermons, a devotional book much-favored at that time, and in
which he himself every morning took pleasure. "I can never get my fill of reading it," he
said. Here Ibsen remarked, in his quick-witted way, that there could not possibly be any
food value in what one could not get enough of. Thereby he had the laughter on his side,
and the religious influence in the end had to be given up as futile.
As we know, the influence from home and the first years of childhood has the
greatest significance for the later religious and moral development. One has, as far as is
known, little or no knowledge about Ibsen's circumstances before his arrival in Grimstad,
but there in any case he had no opportunity for any educating or awakening influence
from a good and healthy family life. If the fellowship with his peers is excepted, and then
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