Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 4).djvu/15

 "indescribably delightful." From the windows of his study he could see Soracte, "rising isolated and beautiful from the level of the immense plain the battlefield where the chief engagement in the world's history took place." So he writes in a letter to Paul Botten-Hansen, and immediately afterwards proceeds: "I shall soon be setting to work in good earnest. I am still wrestling with my subject, but I know that I shall get the upper hand of the brute before long, and then everything will go smoothly." But was the play here referred to Peer Gynt? Perhaps not. From a letter to his publisher, Hegel, written three months later, we learn that at that time he was still turning over several themes in his mind, and that one of them dealt with the period of Christian IV. of Denmark. It is in a letter to Hegel, dated from Rome, January 5, 1867, that we find the first unmistakable reference to Peer Gynt: "Now I must tell you that my new work is well under way, and will, if nothing untoward happens, be finished early in the summer. It is to be a long dramatic poem, having as its chief figure one of the Norwegian peasantry's half-mythical, fantastic heroes of recent times. It will bear no resemblance to Brand, contain no direct polemics and so forth. I have long had the subject in my thoughts; now the entire plan is worked out and written down, and the first act begun. The thing grows as I work at it, and I am certain that you will be satisfied with it."

Two months later (March 8) the poem has "advanced to the middle of the second act." On August 8, he sends to Hegel, from Villa Pisani, Casamicciola, Ischia, the complete manuscript of the first three acts, and writes: "I am curious to hear how you like the poem. I am very hopeful myself. It may interest