Henrik Ibsen by Edmund Gosse

With the appearance of _An Enemy of the People_, which was published in November, 1882, Ibsen entered upon a new stage in his career. He had completely broken with the Conservative party in Norway, without having gratified or won the confidence of the Liberals. He was now in personal relations of friendliness with Bjoernson, whose generous approval of his work as a dramatist sustained his spirits, but his own individualism had been intensified by the hostile reception of _Ghosts_. His life was now divided between Rome in the winter and Gossensass in the summer, and in the Italian city, as in the Tyrolese village, he wandered solitary, taciturn, absorbed in his own thoughts. His meditations led him more and more into a lonely state. He floated, as on a prophet's carpet, between the political heavens and earth, capriciously refusing to ascend or to alight.

He had come to a sceptical stage in his mental evolution, a stage in which he was to remain for a considerable time, gradually modifying it in a conservative direction. One wonders what the simple-minded and stalwart Bjoernson thought of being quietly told (March 28, 1884) that the lower classes are nowhere liberal-minded or self-sacrificing, and that "in the views expressed by our [Norwegian] peasants there is not an atom more of real Liberalism than is to be found among the ultramontane peasantry of the Tyrol. " In politics Ibsen had now become a pagan; "I do not believe," he said, "in the emancipatory power of political measures, nor have I much confidence in the altruism and good will of those in power. " This sense of the uselessness of effort is strongly marked in the course of the next work on which he was engaged, the very brilliant, but saturnine and sardonic tragi-comedy of _The Wild Duck_.