Rome, March 8th, 1882
Dear Bjornson:
I HAVE been thinking for a long time that I should write to you and ask you to accept my thanks because you so frankly and honestly stood up to my defence at a time when I was attacked on so many sides. It was really no more than I might have expected of your great courageous chieftain mind. But after all, there was no compelling reason for you to step forward and express yourself as you did, and because you did not hesitate, nevertheless, to throw yourself into the struggle, of that, you may rest assured, I shall never cease to be mindful.
I am also aware that during your stay in America you have written of me in kind and complimentary terms. For this also I thank you, and let me at the same time tell you that you were hardly out of my thoughts all the time you were away. I was unusually nervous just at that time, and an American trip has always seemed to me to be an uncomfortably daring deed. Then, too, I heard that you were ill over there, and I read about storms on the ocean just when you were expected to return. It then became so vividly impressed on my mind of what infinite importance you are to me — as to all the rest of us. I felt should anything happen to you, should a great calamity befall our countries, then all the joy of production would depart from me.
Next summer it will be twenty-five years since “Synnove” appeared. I travelled up through Valders and read it on the way. I hope this memorable year will be celebrated as it deserves to be.
If circumstances arrange themselves as I wish, I too would like to go home for the celebration.
One matter I ought to mention to you. Through Dagbladet, or in some other way, you have probably become acquainted with the contents of the letter which I wrote Auditor Berner about a year ago. I had then no opportunity to confer with you; but I do not think I could well imagine that you would have any essential objection to either the contents of the letter or the application itself. To me it seems a burning injustice that we should so long remain without any legal protection for our literary property. I have now written to Berner again and given him a survey of what I think I, for one, have lost. This amounts, considering only the two royal theatres of Stockholm and Copenhagen, to about twenty-five thousand kroner. “A Doll’s House,” which was paid according to the regulation, yielded me in Copenhagen nine thousand kroner. Each one of your plays that were performed there would surely have yielded you at least as much had we had the convention. Count over what this all amounts to. And then Germany!
To be able to work with full and undivided power in the service of the mental emancipation one must be placed in a position economically somewhat independent. The stagnation party plainly counteracts the spread of our books, and there are theatres which refuse to perform our plays. It will be best for the people themselves if in our future production we are not compelled to pay any regard to this.
I therefore hope that you will not disapprove of the step I have taken. I have simply asked for justice, nothing further.
Give your wife our best regards, and you yourself accept repeated thanks from,
Yours truly and obligedly,
HENRIK IBSEN