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parts. It was all one book in some way, not through the thoughts, or the story, but something in the author. People who talked about the book probably understood the strange thoughts and the puzzling hinting story that began and came to an end and left everything as it was before. The author did not seem to suggest that you should be sorry. He seemed to know that at the end everything was as before, with the mountains all round.⁠ ⁠… The electric lights flashed out all over the A.B.C. at once.⁠ ⁠… Miriam remained bent low over her book. Only you had been in Norway, in a cottage up amongst the mountains and out in the open. She read a scene at random and another and began again and read the first scene through and then the last. It was all the same . You might as well begin at the end.⁠ ⁠… In Norway , up among the misty mountains, in farms and cottages looking down on fjords with glorious scenery about them all the time are people, sitting in the winter by fires and worrying about right and wrong. They wonder but more gravely and clearly than we do. Torrents thunder in their ears and they can see mountains all the time even when they are indoors. “Ibsen’s Brand” is about all those worrying things, in magnificent scenery. You are in Norway while you read. That is why people read books by geniuses and look faraway when they talk about them. They know they have been somewhere you cannot go without reading the book.⁠ ⁠… Brand . You are in the strangeness of Norway⁠—and then there are people saying things that might be said anywhere. But with something going in and out of the words all the time. Ibsen’s genius. You can’t understand it or see where it is. Each sentence looks so ordinary, making you wonder what it is all about. But taking you somewhere, to stay, forgetting everything, until it is finished. An hour ago Ibsen was just a name people said in a particular way, a difficult wonderful mystery, and improper . Why do people say he is improper? He is exactly like everyone else, thinking and worrying about the same things. But putting them down in a background that is more real than people or thoughts. The life in the background is in the people. He does not know this. Why did he write it? A book by a genius is alive.