Meanwhile Welhaven himself, in successive publications, calmly analyzed
the writings of his antagonist, and proved them to be "in complete
rebellion against sound thought and the laws of beauty." The feud raged
from 1834 to 1838, and left Norway divided into two rival camps of
taste.
Although the "Twilight Feud" had passed away before Ibsen ceased to be a
boy, the effect of it was too widely spread not to affect him. In point
of fact, we see by the earliest of his lyric poems that while he was at
Grimstad he had fully made up his mind. His early songs and
complimentary pieces are all in the Danish taste, and if they show any
native influence at all, it is that of Welhaven. The extreme
superficiality of Wergeland would naturally be hateful to so arduous a
craftsman as Ibsen, and it is a fact that so far as his writings reveal
his mind to us, the all-popular poet of his youth appears to be
absolutely unknown to him. What this signifies may be realized if we say
that it is as though a great English or French poet of the second half
of the nineteenth century should seem to have never heard of Tennyson or
Victor Hugo.
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