ROME, December 4th, 1865
Mr. Clemens Petersen:
NEXT Christmas there will appear a dramatic poem (Brand) by me which I most urgently ask you to interest yourself in as far as your conscience in any way will permit. The meanness and hopelessness in my home country have compelled me to look into myself and into the condition of affairs; out of this the sentiment and the content of the poem have developed. You once wrote of me that the versified form with the symbolic meaning behind it was my most natural mode of expression. I have often thought about it. I believe the same myself, and in concurrence therewith the poem has shaped itself. But I have not been able to avoid striking with hard hands. I ask you, if you can, not to examine this feature under any magnifying glass. Your review will be a decisive factor in my countrymen’s reception of the poem and of those truths which I have not been able to withhold; but of course I should like as long as possible to avoid any martyrdom.
The journalistic scribblers that are criticising in Norway will not understand it. I therefore urgently ask that as soon and as strongly as possible you will support me in all those points where you find that the matter or I myself deserve it. Should you have anything to communicate to me that does not find a place in your public review — which I await with assurance and eagerness — I would thank you most heartily for a few lines; I have an insufferably oppressive feeling of standing alone.
Yours truly, HENRIK IBSEN