Henrik Ibsen

I could not, however, on more formal occasions keep from expressing myself in the impassioned spirit of my poetic effusions [...] During my sojourn at home last summer and particularly since my return here there loomed up before me more clearly and more sharply than ever before the kaleidoscopic scenes of my literary life. And yet what is the goal of all your struggle? / The surfeiting of sensual desires. I was at the time in Grimstad, under the necessity of earning with my hands the wherewithal of life and the means for instruction preparatory to my taking the entrance examinations to the university. Inasmuch as I now, in contrast to those times, doubt that my winged appeals would in any material degree have helped the cause of the Magyars or the Scandinavians, I consider it fortunate that they remained within the more private sphere of the manuscript. My friend had the piece returned from the management with a particularly polite but equally peremptory rejection.