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Updated: June 26, 2025
Shortly before I had, after a deal of trouble, got my poem of "The Dying Child" printed in a paper; none of the many publishers of journals, who otherwise accept of the most lamentable trash, had the courage to print a poem by a schoolboy. My best known poem they printed at that time, accompanied by an excuse for it. Heiberg saw it, and gave it in his paper an honorable place.
He had returned home from Italy after a residence of several years abroad, just at the time when Heiberg's vaudevilles were intoxicating the inhabitants of Copenhagen, and when my "Journey on Foot" was making me a little known. He commenced a controversy with Heiberg, and somewhat scoffed at me.
"We will throw it in the boat," said I, and took it down from the staff; the others now followed me, and came up just as Thorwaldsen reached land. We met with Oehlenschl ger and Heiberg in another boat, and they came over to us as the enthusiasm began on shore.
At that time I cherished a sincere admiration, with only slight reservations, for Heiberg, Hertz, Hostrup and many others as comic playwriters, and was not far short of attributing to their works an importance equal to those of Holberg. And yet I was unable to avoid giving offence.
All our most eminent dramatic writers have been whistled down, as Oehlenschl ger, Heiberg, Oversko, and others; to say nothing of foreign classics, as Moli re. In the mean time the theatre is the most profitable sphere of labor for the Danish writer, whose public does not extend far beyond the frontiers.
Of the kisses which Wilhelm had given him, of course, they did not speak; but Otto thought of them, thought of them quite differently to what he had done before, and the ways of Cupid are strange! We will now see how affairs stand after advancing fourteen days. "Huzza for Copenhagen and for Paris! may they both flourish!" The Danes in Paris by HEIBERG.
Clemens Petersen, who, since the decease of Heiberg, had been looked upon as the doyen of Danish critics had pronounced against the poetry of Peer Gynt, and Ibsen, in one of his worst moods, in a bearish letter, had thrown the blame of this judgment upon Björnson. All through these last months in Rome we find Ibsen in the worst of humors.
And here also it is remarkable, that the men who recommended me have each one made prominent some very different qualification which gave me a claim: for instance, Oehlenschl ger, my lyrical power, and the earnestness that was in me; Ingemann, my skill in depicting popular life; Heiberg declared that, since the days of Wessel, no Danish poet had possessed so much humor as myself; Oersted remarked, every one, they who were against me as well as those who were for me, agreed on one subject, and this was that I was a true poet.
I wrote to Heiberg, expressed myself candidly, and, as I thought, cordially, and entreated him to give me explicitly the reasons for his rejection of the piece and for his ill-will towards me. He immediately paid me a visit, which I, not being at home when he called, returned on the following day, and I was received in the most friendly manner.
Whether this was repeated, or whether a complaint against the favorite of the public is a crime, enough: from this hour Heiberg became my opponent, he whose intellectual rank I so highly estimated, he with whom I would so willingly have allied myself, and he who so often I will venture to say it I had approached with the whole sincerity of my nature.
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