MY BOOK is poetry! And if it isn't, it will become poetry. The concept of Poetry will change in our homeland, Norway, to comply with this book. There is nothing solid in the world of concepts - after all, the Scandinavians of our century are not Greeks.

Isn’t Peer Gynt a complete character, finished, individualized?! I know he is. And the mother, is she not as well?!

But the injustice that has been done to me delights me. It hides divine providence and a mission within it. I feel my powers increasing, along with my anger. If they want war, they will have it! Since I am not a poet, what do I have to lose? I will succeed as a photographer. I will capture my contemporaries one by one, just as I did with the language reformers. I won’t leave even an embryo in its mother’s womb.

(Excerpt from a letter by Ibsen to B. Bjørnson)