Henrik Ibsen | Page 6

realize his menial position. He was certainly intelligent, and
Grimstad would have overlooked the pills and ointments if his manners
had been engaging, but he was rude, truculent and contradictory. The
youthful female sex is not in the habit of sharing the prejudices of its
elders in this respect, and many a juvenile Orson has, in such
conditions, enjoyed substantial successes. But young Ibsen was not a
favorite even with the girls, whom he alarmed and disconcerted. One of
the young ladies of Grimstad in after years attempted to describe the
effect which the poet made upon them. They had none of them liked
him, she said, "because"--she hesitated for the word--"because he was
so spectral." This gives us just the flash we want; it reveals to us for a
moment the distempered youth, almost incorporeal, displayed
wandering about at twilight and in lonely places, held in common
esteem to be malevolent, and expressing by gestures rather than by
words sentiments of a nature far from complimentary or agreeable.
Thus life at Grimstad seems to have proceeded until Ibsen reached his
twenty-first year. In this quiet backwater of a seaport village the
passage of time was deliberate, and the development of hard-worked
apothecaries was slow. Ibsen's nature was not in any sense precocious,
and even if he had not languished in so lost a corner of society, it is
unlikely that he would have started prematurely in life or literature. The
actual waking up, when it came at last, seems to have been almost an
accident. There had been some composing of verses, now happily lost,
and some more significant distribution of "epigrams" and "caricatures"
to the vexation of various worthy persons. The earliest trace of talent
seems to been in this direction, in the form of lampoons or "characters,"
as people called them in the seventeenth century, sarcastic descriptions
of types in which certain individuals could be recognized. No doubt if
these could be recovered, we should find them rough and artless, but
containing germs of the future keenness of portraiture. They were keen

enough, it seems, to rouse great resentment in Grimstad.
There is evidence to show that the lad had docility enough, at all events,
to look about for some aid in the composition of Norwegian prose. We
should know nothing of it but for a passage in Ibsen's later polemic
with Paul Jansenius Stub of Bergen. In 1848 Stub was an invalid
schoolmaster, who, it appears, eked out his income by giving
instruction, by correspondence, in style. How Ibsen heard of him does
not seem to be known, but when, in 1851, Ibsen entered, with needless
acrimony, into a controversy with his previous teacher about the theatre,
Stub complained of his ingratitude, since he had "taught the boy to
write." Stub's intervention in the matter, doubtless, was limited to the
correction of a few exercises.
Ibsen's own theory was that his intellect and character were awakened
by the stir of revolution throughout Europe. The first political event
which really interested him was the proclamation of the French
Republic, which almost coincided with his twentieth birthday. He was
born again, a child of '48. There were risings in Vienna, in Milan, in
Rome. Venice was proclaimed a republic, the Pope fled to Gaeta, the
streets of Berlin ran with the blood of the populace. The Magyars rose
against Jellalic and his Croat troops; the Czechs demanded their
autonomy; in response to the revolutionary feeling in Germany,
Schleswig-Holstein was up in arms.
Each of these events, and others like them, and all occurring in the
rapid months of that momentous year, smote like hammers on the door
of Ibsen's brain, till it quivered with enthusiasm and excitement. The
old brooding languor was at an end, and with surprising clearness and
firmness he saw his pathway cut out before him as a poet and as a man.
The old clouds vanished, and though the social difficulties which
hemmed in his career were as gross as ever, he himself no longer
doubted what was to be his aim in life. The cry of revolution came to
him, of revolution faint indeed and broken, the voice of a minority
appealing frantically and for a moment against the overwhelming
forces of a respectable majority, but it came to him just at the moment
when his young spirit was prepared to receive it with faith and joy. The

effect on Ibsen's character was sudden and it was final:
Then he stood up, and trod to dust Fear and desire, mistrust and trust,
And dreams of bitter sleep and sweet, And bound for sandals on his
feet Knowledge and patience of what must And what things maybe, in
the heat And cold of years that rot and rust And alter; and his spirit's
meat Was freedom,