My countrymen, who filled for me deep bowls Of wholesome bitter medicine, such as gave The poet, on the margin of his grave, Fresh force to fight where broken twilight rolls,-- My countrymen, who sped me o'er the wave, An exile, with my griefs for pilgrim-soles, My fears for burdens, doubts for staff, to roam,-- From the wide world I send you greeting home.
I send you thanks for gifts that help and harden, Thanks for each hour of purifying pain; Each plant that springs in my poetic garden Is rooted where your harshness poured its rain; Each shoot in which it blooms and burgeons forth It owes to that gray weather from the North; The sun relaxes, but the fog secures! My country, thanks! My life's best gifts were yours.
In spite of these sardonic acknowledgments. Ibsen's fame in Norway, though still disputed, was now secure. In Denmark and Sweden it was almost unchallenged, and he was a name, at least, in Germany. In England, since 1872, he had not been without a prophet. But in Italy, Russia, France--three countries upon the intelligence of which he was presently to make a wide and durable impression--he was still quite unknown.
Meanwhile, in glancing over the general literature of Europe, we see his figure, at the threshold of his fiftieth year, taking greater and greater prominence. He had become, in the sudden exinction of the illustrious old men of Denmark, the first living writer of the North. He was to Norway what Valera was to Spain, Carducci to Italy, Swinburne or Rossetti to England, and Leconte de Lisle to France. These were mainly lyrical poets, but it must not be forgotten that Ibsen, down at least till 1871, was prominently illustrious as a writer in metrical form. If, in the second portion of his career, he resolutely deprived himself of all indulgence in the ornament of verse, it was a voluntary act of austerity. It was Charles V at Yuste, wilfully exchanging the crown of jewels for the coarse brown cowl of St. Jerome. And now, after a year or two of prayer and fasting, Ibsen began a new intellectual career. CHAPTER VI
While Ibsen was sitting at Munich, in this climacteric stage of his career, dreaming of wonderful things and doing nothing, there came to him, in the early months of 1875, two new plays by his chief rival. These were _The Editor_ and _A Bankruptcy_, in which Björnson suddenly swooped from his sagas and his romances down into the middle of sordid modern life. This was his first attempt at that "photography by comedy" which he had urged on Ibsen in 1868. It is not, I think, recorded what was Ibsen's comment on these two plays, and particularly on _A Bankruptcy_, but it is written broadly over the surface of his own next work. It is obvious that he perceived that Björnson had carried a very spirited raid into his own particular province, and he was determined to drive this audacious enemy back by means of greater audacities.