My own mother--with the necessary exaggeration--served as the model for
Ase." _Peer Gynt_ was finished before Ibsen left Sorrento at the end of
the autumn, and the MS. was immediately posted to Copenhagen. None of
the delays which had interfered with the appearance of _Brand_ now
afflicted the temper of the poet, and _Peer Gynt_ was published in
November, 1867.
In spite of the plain speaking of Ibsen himself, who declared that _Peer
Gynt_ was diametrically opposed in spirit to _Brand_, and that it made
no direct attack upon social questions, the critics of the later poem
have too often persisted in darkening it with their educational
pedantries. Ibsen did well to be angry with his commentators. "They have
discovered," he said, "much more satire in _Peer Gynt_ than was intended
by me. Why can they not read the book as a poem? For as such I wrote
it." It has been, however, the misfortune of Ibsen that he has
particularly attracted the attention of those who prefer to see anything
in a poem except its poetry, and who treat all tulips and roses as if
they were cabbages for the pot of didactic morality.
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