Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 5).djvu/14

x Peer Gynt; and we know that he had a third subject in mind at the time. We hear no more of Julian until October 28, 1870, when, in his autobiographic letter to Peter Hansen, he writes from Dresden: " Here I live in a tediously well-ordered community. What will become of me when at last I actually reach home! I must seek salvation in remoteness of subject, and think of attacking Kejser Julian."

This was, in fact, to be his next work; but two years and a half were still to pass before he finally "got the upper hand of the brute." On January 18, 1871, he writes to Hegel: "Your supposition that Julian is so far advanced that it may go to the printers next month arises from a misunderstanding. The first part is finished; I am working at the second part; but the third part is not even begun. This third part will, however, go comparatively quickly, and I confidently hope to place the whole in your hands by the month of June." This is the first mention we have of the division into three parts, which he ultimately abandoned. If Hegel looked for the manuscript in June, he looked in vain. On July 12 Ibsen wrote to him: "Now for the reason of my long silence: I am hard at work on Kejser Julian. This book will be my chief work, and it is engrossing all my thoughts and all my time. That positive view of the world which the critics have so long been demanding of me, they will find here." Then he asks Hegel to procure for him three articles on Julian by Pastor Listov, which had appeared in the Danish paper, Fædrelandet, and inquires whether there is in Danish any other statement of the facts of Julian's career. "I have Neander's German works on the subject; also D. Strauss's; but the latter's book contains nothing