In Scandinavia, where that veil did not exist,
for those who had eyes to see, and who were not blinded by prejudice, it
was plain that a very great writer had arisen in Norway at last.
Bjoernson had seemed to slip ahead of Ibsen; his _Sigurd Slembe_ (1862)
was a riper work than the elder friend had produced; but _Mary Stuart in
Scotland_ (1864) had marked a step backward, and now Ibsen had once more
shot far ahead of his rival. When we have admitted some want of
clearness in the symbolism which runs through _Brand_, and some shifting
of the point of view in the two last acts, an incoherency and a
turbidity which are natural in the treatment of so colossal a theme,
there is very little but praise to be given to a poem which is as
manifold in its emotion and as melodious in its versification as it is
surprising in its unchallenged originality. In the literatures of
Scandinavia it has not merely been unsurpassed, but in its own peculiar
province it has not been approached. It bears some remote likeness to
_Faust_, but with that exception there is perhaps nothing in the
literature of the world which can be likened to _Brand_, except, of
course, _Peer Gynt_.
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