MUNICH, February 26th, 1888
My dear Professor:
I THANK you most heartily for your two letters, which I now answer.
Brausewetter’s translation I have feared for a long time as I heard a rumor that such a one was in preparation; but I hoped to the very last that the time for its appearance could not be so near. Both he and Mr. Reclam have kept entirely silent to me.
A double pleasure it is to me under the circumstances to learn that the Berlin edition will be hastened as much as possible. I also feel greatly obliged to Mr. Fischer for this, and hope that his competitor will not cause him a very great loss, if he can immediately announce his own legally authorized edition as soon forthcoming.
Of my latest photograph, which I regard as the best one, but which is no longer on sale, I have now the promise of a few copies for to-morrow and I shall then take pleasure in sending you one without delay.
I ask you to use my letters in any way that you may find most serviceable for the matter in hand, and above all I am heartily thankful for the helpful introduction which your hinted promise has given me the pleasure to anticipate.
“Emperor and Galilean” is not the first work I have written in Germany, but, indeed, the first I have written under the influence of German intellectual life. In the fall of 1868, when I arrived from Italy and took up my residence in Dresden, I brought with me the plot of “The League of Youth,” and wrote that play the following winter. During my four years’ stay in Rome I had made multifarious historical studies and collected many notes for “Emperor and Galilean,” but had not devised any clear plan for its working out, and hence still less written any of the play. My view of life at that time was still the national Scandinavian, and so I could not make progress with the foreign subject. Then I experienced the great time in Germany, — the year of the war and the development afterward. To me all this had in many ways a transforming power. My view of the history of the world and of human life had been until then a national view. Now it broadened to a racial view, and I could write “Emperor and Galilean.” It was finished in the spring of 1873.
What you tell me of that sentiment still so favourable to me in Berlin pleases me greatly, and not the less so that perhaps I may now have an opportunity of getting one or more of my plays performed at the Schauspielhaus. My next work, when such a one is ready, will be offered there with great pleasure.
Cordial thanks for all your sacrificing friendship, and the same to all the others who so faithfully and indefatigably care for my affairs. How far would I have reached, I wonder, if I had been under the necessity of depending upon myself? Be sure that I in thankfulness deeply acknowledge this.
Yours truly and obligedly,
HENRIK IBSEN