Peer Gynt - A Dramatic Poem #272136

Peer Gynt was written in I 867, when Ibsen was nearly forty. It followed his other great dramatic poem, Brand, by rather less than two years for Brand, though not published till 1866, was written in 1865. The contrast offered by the audacious high spirits of Peer Gynt to the austere gloom of Brand was a reflection of a welcome change in their author's worldly circumstances. Ibsen's growing independence of thought and his increasing frankness in insisting upon it (as he had done in his play Love's Comedy) had aroused a tempest of criticism in his own country, and in 1864 he had cast off the embarrassing trammels of national and family ties and had gone into voluntary exile in Italy. This had been rendered possible by a small grant of money that had been awarded him by the Norwegian Government and substantially supplemented by the kindness of one or two friends. Brand was the first outcome of his detachment from real poverty. It to a great extent rehabilitated his repute at home, and put some money in his pocket; and this success further resulted in the Norwegian Government's allotting him a liter ary pension' of some ninety pounds a year. This sum, together with what he expected to make by his pen, opened out a prospect of a life of literary activity unhampered by continual anxiety as to his daily bread.