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

Naturally we urged him to continue, and in a series of unforgettable evenings he
read aloud for criticism what between each time he had written. The well-disposed
criticism committee found little to remark upon, however. We two, his first "loyal and
trusting," as Ibsen called us, found only pleasure and enjoyment at gradually hearing his
work make progress. None of us knew how to take into consideration the technical faults
in the drama's construction, while the various parts, partly strong and violent, where
Catiline appears, partly gentle and lyrical, where his good genius, his wife Aurelia, speaks
peace and the cause of a peaceful, happy home, made a strong impression on us, and that
still strikes me when I later read, for example, these lines, which the poet puts into
Aurelia's mouth:
Do you forget the little country place
where I was born, and where we later, gay
and happy in our calm of utter bliss,
have spent so many a carefree summer day?
Where else, I wonder, was the grass so green?
Where else such coolness in the forest's shade?
The little house peeps forth between the trees
and beckons with its cosy air of peace.
That's where we'll flee, and dedicate our lives
to peaceful country ways, to quiet pleasures.
There you shall have a loving wife to cheer you,
whose tender kisses shall dispel your sorrows.
And when with blossoms gathered from the fields
you seek your sovereign lady in her bower,
I shall at once proclaim you Prince of Flowers,
and wind the laurel wreath around your brow!
(The Oxford Ibsen, Vol. I: Early Plays, p. 55.)
In the aformentioned preface to the jubilee edition of Catiline one has Ibsen's
own statement of how when the drama was finished, I had the honor of copying it, and
that it was sent with Schulrud, when he travelled to Christiania to complete his studies.
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