The League of Youth
"If there is to be war, so be it! If I am not a poet, I have nothing to lose. I shall try being a photographer. I shall deal with the present time up there, person by person".
This is what Ibsen wrote in a letter to Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, sent from Rome on December 9th 1867. He was furiously angry with the Danish literary critic Clemens Petersen's unfavourable review of Peer Gynt, the essence of which was that the work was not poetry. His intention to have a try at being a photographer was not meant seriously, but all the same the statement is an indication that something new was stirring in Ibsen's writing and that this was realistic contemporary drama. With The League of Youth Ibsen was following Bjørnson's advice to write a satirical comedy. It was in this genre, Bjørnson thought, that Ibsen's "real talent" lay
In the spring of 1868 Ibsen left Rome and settled in Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian alps, and it was here that he laid the plans for The League of Youth; he started actually working it out in Dresden – the family moved there at the beginning of October the same year.
The first draft was begun on October 21st. At this point the title was "The League of Youth or Our Lord & Co.", but Frederik Hegel, his publisher, persuaded him to drop the sub-title; he feared allegations of blasphemy. Ibsen wrote three drafts of the play (the first one is not extant) before he was satisfied. The final draft was finished on February 28th 1869, after which he spent nine weeks writing the fair copy.
First edition
The League of Youth was published on September 30th 1869 in Copenhagen by Gyldendalske Boghandel (Frederik Hegel), in a first edition of 2 000 copies. A re-print of 1 500 copies was already in the bookshops in November the same year.
First performance
The first performance of The League of Youth was on October 18th 1869 at Christiania Theater. The production caused an unprecedented uproar. It was taken to be strongly slanted against the liberal side in Norwegian politics. The supporters of the latter, led by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Ole Richter and Johan Sverdrup, were outraged. Hissing and other demonstrations were organized. On the second night things became so bad, with half the audience booing and hissing and the other half applauding loudly, that the director had to go on stage and appeal for silence so that the performance might continue; and in the press there were violent differences of opinion.
Ibsen was in Egypt at this point and did not hear of the tumults until about a month later, when on the quay at Port Said he received a letter from Suzannah. The poem "At Port Said" describes the feelings her description aroused in him.
By Jens-Morten Hanssen / ibsen.net