If Ibsen ever read these rhymes of circumstance, it must
have been to treat them with contempt.
Twenty years after the Union, however, and in Ibsen's early childhood,
an event occurred which was unique in the history of Norwegian
literature, and the consequences of which were far-reaching. As is often
the case in countries where the art of verse is as yet little exercised,
there grew up about 1830 a warm and general, but uncritical, delight in
poetry. This instinct was presently satisfied by the effusion of a vast
quantity of metrical writing, most of it very bad, and was exasperated
by a violent personal feud which for a while interested all educated
persons in Norway to a far greater degree than any other intellectual
or, for the time being, even political question. From 1834 to 1838 the
interests of all cultivated people centred around what was called the
"Twilight Feud" (_Daemringsfejden_), and no record of Ibsen's
intellectual development can be complete without a reference to this
celebrated controversy, the results of which long outlived the
popularity of its skits and pamphlets.
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