Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 5).djvu/13

Rh interest. As a dramatist, then—whatever the historian may say—Ibsen chose his protagonist with unerring instinct. Julian was the last, and not the least, of the heroes of antiquity.

Ibsen had been in Rome only two or three months when he wrote to Björnson (September 16, 1864): "I am busied with a long poem, and have in preparation a tragedy, Julianus Apostata, a piece of work which I set about with intense gusto, and in which I believe I shall succeed. I hope to have both finished next spring, or, at any rate, in the course of the summer." As regards Julianus Apostata, this hope was very far astray, for nine years elapsed before the play was finished. Not till May 4, 1866, is the project again mentioned, when Ibsen writes to his friend, Michael Birkeland, that, though the Danish poet, Hauch, has in the meantime produced a play on the same theme, he does not intend to abandon it. On May 21, 1866, he writes to his publisher, Hegel, that, now that Brand is out of hand, he is still undecided what subject to tackle next. "I feel more and more disposed," he says, "to set to work in earnest at Kejser Julian, which I have had in mind for two years." He feels sure that Hauch's conception of the subject must be entirely different from his; and he does not intend to read Hauch's play. On July 22, 1866, he writes from Frascati to Paul Botten-Hansen that he is "wrestling with a subject and knows that he will soon get the upper hand of the brute." His German editors take this to refer to Emperor and Galilean, and "they are probably right; but it is not quite certain. The work he actually produced was