for it is hard to believe that at any stage in the incubation of
_Hedda Gabler_ he can have conceived it as even beginning in gaiety.
A week later, however, he appears to have made up his mind that the
time had not come for the poetic utilisation of his recent experiences.
He writes on October 15: "Here I sit as usual at my writing-table.
Now I would fain work, but am unable to. My fancy, indeed, is very
active. But it always wanders awayours. I cannot repress my summer
memories--nor do I wish to. I live through my experience again and
again and yet again. To transmute it all into a poem, I find, in the
meantime, impossible." Clearly, then, he felt that his imagination
ought to have been engaged on some theme having no relation to his
summer experiences--the theme, no doubt, of _Hedda Gabler_. In his
next letter, dated October 29, he writes: "Do not be troubled because
I cannot, in the meantime, create (_dichten_). In reality I am for
ever creating, or, at any rate, dreaming of something which, when in
the fulness of time it ripens, will reveal itself as a creation
(_Dichtung_)." On November 19 he says: "I am very busily occupied
with preparations for my new poem. I sit almost the whole day at my
writing-table. Go out only in the evening for a little while." The
five following letters contain no allusion to the play; but on
September 18, 1890, he wrote: "My wife and son are at present at
Riva, on the Lake of Garda, and will probably remain there until the
middle of October, or even longer. Thus I am quite alone here, and
cannot get away. The new play on which I am at present engaged will
probably not be ready until November, though I sit at my writing-
table daily, and almost the whole day long."

Here ends the history of _Hedda Gabler_, so far as the poet's letters
carry us. Its hard clear outlines, and perhaps somewhat bleak
atmosphere, seem to have resulted from a sort of reaction against