Add files from ibiblio as of 2025-03-03 20:52:19HEADmain

8 files changed, 5 insertions, 17424 deletions

diff --git a/44025-0.txt b/44025-0.txt
index abf28fc..5f88a2f 100644
--- a/44025-0.txt
+++ b/44025-0.txt
@@ -1,40 +1,4 @@
-The Project Gutenberg eBook, August Strindberg, the Spirit of Revolt, by
-L. (Lizzy) Lind-af-Hageby
-
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-
-
-
-Title: August Strindberg, the Spirit of Revolt
-       Studies and Impressions
-
-
-Author: L. (Lizzy) Lind-af-Hageby
-
-
-
-Release Date: October 24, 2013  [eBook #44025]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-
-***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUGUST STRINDBERG, THE SPIRIT OF
-REVOLT***
-
-
-E-text prepared by Marc D'Hooghe (http://www.freeliterature.org) from page
-images generously made available by the Google Books Library Project
-(http://books.google.com)
-
-
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44025 ***
 
 Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
       file which includes the original illustrations.
@@ -7965,363 +7929,4 @@ He is now the sole representative of Strindberg's literary executors.
     Tasso, 255, 273
     Tchekhov, Anton, 204; _The Seagull_ by, 208
 
-
-
-***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUGUST STRINDBERG, THE SPIRIT OF
-REVOLT***
-
-
-******* This file should be named 44025-0.txt or 44025-0.zip *******
-
-
-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
-http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/4/4/0/2/44025
-
-
-
-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
-will be renamed.
-
-Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
-one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
-(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
-permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
-set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
-copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
-protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
-Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
-charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
-do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
-rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
-such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
-research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
-practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
-subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
-redistribution.
-
-
-
-*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
-
-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
-
-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
-  www.gutenberg.org/license.
-
-
-Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works
-
-1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
-(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
-all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
-If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
-terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
-entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
-
-1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
-paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
-and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
-
-1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
-or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
-collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
-individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
-located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
-copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
-works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
-are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
-Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
-freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
-this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
-the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
-keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
-
-1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
-what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
-a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
-the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
-before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
-creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
-Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
-the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
-States.
-
-1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
-
-1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
-access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
-whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
-phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
-copied or distributed:
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
-from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
-posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
-and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
-or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
-with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
-work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
-through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
-Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
-1.E.9.
-
-1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
-terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
-to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
-permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
-
-1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
-
-1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm License.
-
-1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
-word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
-distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
-"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
-posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
-you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
-copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
-request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
-form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
-
-1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
-that
-
-- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
-     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
-     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
-     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
-     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
-     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
-     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
-     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
-     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
-     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
-     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
-     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
-
-- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
-     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
-     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-     License.  You must require such a user to return or
-     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
-     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
-     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
-     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
-     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
-     of receipt of the work.
-
-- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
-     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
-forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
-both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
-Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
-Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
-
-1.F.
-
-1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
-public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
-collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
-"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
-corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
-property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
-computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
-your equipment.
-
-1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
-fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
-DAMAGE.
-
-1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
-written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
-your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
-the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
-refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
-providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
-receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
-is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
-opportunities to fix the problem.
-
-1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
-WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
-WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
-
-1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
-If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
-law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
-interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
-the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
-provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
-
-1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
-with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
-promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
-harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
-that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
-or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
-work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
-Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
-
-
-Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
-including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
-because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
-people in all walks of life.
-
-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
-assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
-remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
-To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
-and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
-and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
-Foundation
-
-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
-Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
-number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
-permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
-
-The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
-Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
-throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
-North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
-contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
-Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
-
-For additional contact information:
-     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
-     Chief Executive and Director
-     gbnewby@pglaf.org
-
-Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
-array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
-status with the IRS.
-
-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
-States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
-with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
-SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
-particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
-approach us with offers to donate.
-
-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
-outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
-
-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
-methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
-To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-
-Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.
-
-Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
-concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
-with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
-Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
-editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
-unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
-keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
-
-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
-
-     www.gutenberg.org
-
-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44025 ***
diff --git a/44025-0.zip b/44025-0.zip
deleted file mode 100644
index 84588d7..0000000
--- a/44025-0.zip
+++ /dev/null
diff --git a/44025-8.txt b/44025-8.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 9a20e34..0000000
--- a/44025-8.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,8327 +0,0 @@
-The Project Gutenberg eBook, August Strindberg, the Spirit of Revolt, by
-L. (Lizzy) Lind-af-Hageby
-
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-
-
-
-Title: August Strindberg, the Spirit of Revolt
-       Studies and Impressions
-
-
-Author: L. (Lizzy) Lind-af-Hageby
-
-
-
-Release Date: October 24, 2013  [eBook #44025]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-
-***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUGUST STRINDBERG, THE SPIRIT OF
-REVOLT***
-
-
-E-text prepared by Marc D'Hooghe (http://www.freeliterature.org) from page
-images generously made available by the Google Books Library Project
-(http://books.google.com)
-
-
-
-Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
-      file which includes the original illustrations.
-      See 44025-h.htm or 44025-h.zip:
-      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44025/44025-h/44025-h.htm)
-      or
-      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44025/44025-h.zip)
-
-
-      Images of the original pages are available through
-      the Google Books Library Project. See
-      http://www.google.com/books?id=j8ZMAAAAMAAJ
-
-
-
-
-
-AUGUST STRINDBERG
-
-THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT
-
-Studies and Impressions
-
-by
-
-L. LIND-AF-HAGEBY
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-New York
-D. Appleton and Company
-MCMXIII
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-        INTRODUCTION. THE RIDDLE
-    I.  THE STRUGGLE WITH ENVIRONMENT
-   II.  THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF-EXPRESSION
-  III.  "FERMENTATION TIME"
-   IV.  THE DRAMA OF THE HERETIC
-    V.  MARRIED AND BLASPHEMOUS.
-   VI.  THE ARTIST.
-  VII.  SELF-TORMENTOR AND VISIONARY.
- VIII.  The Theatre of Life
-
-STRINDBERG'S CHIEF WRITINGS
-
-INDEX
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Bust by Carl Eldh.]
-
-
-
-
-LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-  August Strindberg. From a Bust by Carl Eldh.... Frontispiece
-  Strindberg's Parents
-  August Strindberg (1862 and 1870)
-  August Strindberg. From Statue by Carl Eldh
-  August Strindberg (1884)
-  August Strindberg (1884 and 1897)
-  August Strindberg. From Bust by Max Levi, 1893
-  August Strindberg. From Bust by Agnes Kjellberg Frumerie, 1896
-  August Strindberg. From Portrait in Oil by Chr. Krogh, 1893
-  August Strindberg. From Portrait in Oil by Richard Bergh, 1906
-  August Strindberg (1904 and 1906)
-  August Strindberg (1906 and 1907)
-  August Strindberg (1902). In His Home in Stockholm (1908)
-  August Strindberg. From Bust by K.I. Eldh. Bought by the Swedish
-     State. In the National Museum, Stockholm
-  August Strindberg. From Portrait by Carl Larsson, 1899. In the
-     National Museum, Stockholm
-  Strindberg in His Library in the Blue Tower. His Last Home
-  Strindberg in His Study (1911)
-  The Strindberg-Theatre in Stockholm
-  Harriet Bosse. Strindberg's third Wife as Biskra in Samum, 1902.
-  Anne-Marie Bosse-Strindberg. Strindberg's only child by his third
-     marriage
-  Strindberg's Funeral (May 19th, 1913)
-  Trades-Unions and Undergraduates in Procession
-
-
-
-
-AUGUST STRINDBERG
-
-THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT
-
-
-INTRODUCTION
-
-THE RIDDLE
-
-
-There have been few dispassionate attempts to discern August
-Strindberg's place in contemporary literature. His writings and his
-personality defied ordinary criticism.
-
-He took upon himself the rôle of destroyer, he mocked men's religion
-and men's morality, he ridiculed propriety and poured bitter scorn on
-the social order. There was something cometic in the swiftness and
-intensity with which he appeared, disturbing the well-ordered orbits of
-traditions and conventions. The erratic course of his voyage through
-humanity caused alarm. No sooner had people congratulated themselves
-that his terrific lust for destruction had passed by their favourite
-systems and their cherished ideals, than his ruthless force was upon
-them, exposing ugliness and scattering treasures.
-
-He passed on, making enemies, breaking idols, desecrating temples. He
-sowed reality and he reaped hatred.
-
-His titanic spirit worked through a brain charged with explosive
-mentality. He poured out dramas, novels, stories, with a versatility
-and an accumulating energy which in themselves were offensive to the
-mediocre and to those who sought to place him within literary shackles.
-He discoursed on history, science and statecraft with the calm
-assurance of omniscience.
-
-He wrote books which were decidedly and unblushingly "immoral." He
-compelled attention by blasphemous outbursts which filled the religious
-with righteous indignation and sighs for the _auto-da-fé_. He dissected
-the human heart, laid bare its meanness, its uncleanliness; made men
-and women turn on each other with sudden understanding and loathing,
-and walked away smiling at the evil he had wrought. He turned on
-himself with savage hatred, and in books, bearing the mark of the
-flagellant and reflecting the agony of a soul in torment, he pointed to
-his sins and his stripes.
-
-"He is very evil," said some; "let us put him in prison."
-
-"He is mad," said others; "let us have him declared a lunatic."
-
-"He is most improper," said the majority; "let us ignore him
-altogether."
-
-When public opinion was quite sure that Strindberg was evil, mad, and
-improper, when he stood convicted out of his own mouth of anti-social
-and satanic designs, he stayed the verdict by his own magic. He
-wrote more and more, and there came from his pen artistic creations
-endowed with virtues which could not have risen in a mind submerged in
-vice; pictures of scenery which bespoke a delicate and spiritualised
-nature-worship. His mind held a garden of flowers as well as a pile of
-putrescence.
-
-On May 14th, 1912, the stillness of death descended on the battlefield
-which was Strindberg's life. The literary historian who justly passes
-the suspended verdict must hold peculiar and special qualifications.
-For the winds of literary taste and fashion cannot touch the giant of
-expression. Condemnation by temporary systems of morality and creed
-did not alter his course in life and will not disturb him in death.
-He was--himself; and he worked ceaselessly at the task of finding
-more of himself. Strindberg the atheist, Strindberg the scientist,
-Strindberg the spiritualist, Strindberg the mystic, Strindberg the
-sensualist, and Strindberg the ascetic, took equally important parts in
-his theatre of life. The critic met him day by day in different attire
-and pose, incarnations of the elusive self which was stage-manager of
-this extraordinary performance. A soul in conflict with itself, good
-and evil, fair and foul; sparkling with life and tense with passion
-to create, he could not give us peace or contentment. Like Jacob, he
-wrestled with God, though not for a night only, but throughout life,
-and he fought with the desperation of one who knows that upon the issue
-of the struggle depends, not his own blessing, but the liberation of
-countless prisoners.
-
-An epitome of humanity, a fragment of the world's eternal and real
-drama of birth and death, he cannot be fully understood save by those
-who share his cosmic consciousness.
-
-He studied chemistry, astronomy, botany, physics, geology, entomology,
-medicine, philology and political economy with a voracity which made
-him ridiculous in the eyes of the specialists who are satisfied with a
-few well-established formulæ. For him there were no barriers between
-specialised departments of human knowledge--all sciences were thrown
-into the melting-pot, in which he was preparing the new brew which
-would slake the thirst of parched souls. A solipsist who assimilated,
-rejected and transmuted the patiently accumulated theories of morals
-as the supreme duty of existence, he scorned the slaves of ethical
-communism.
-
-The iconoclasm of Ibsen was fired by the realisation of the duties
-of the wise prophet amongst his foolish people. The hypocrisies
-and foibles of the little souls were the objects of the thundering
-chastisement of his trumpet. The white heat of Nietzsche's forge for
-the making of Superman was engendered by contempt for the feeble and
-sickly. The misanthropy which breathed poison out of Strindberg's
-writings, which showed souls and things in hideous nakedness, and
-painted sores and disease with horrible realism, was the darkness which
-he held high so as to call forth the cry for tight.
-
-The collected works of Strindberg, which will shortly be published in a
-new edition, consist of some 115 plays, novels, collections of stories,
-essays and poems. Amongst these some seem absolutely antithetical.
-It is the constant changeability, the self-contradictions, which made
-Strindberg so incomprehensible to his contemporaries. The measure of
-his life-force was so liberal that he could afford to continue where
-others stop. He shed his skins like the snake and altered his colour
-like the chameleon, because he was the personification of perpetual
-movement and change. Thus he was endowed with ever-recurring youth;
-the decay of the old was immediately followed by birth of the new.
-The diary, in which, during the last fourteen years, he recorded
-his visions and supernatural experiences, will not be given to the
-world for many years to come. Though it depicts the last phase of his
-spiritual evolution, the postponement of publication is no doubt wise.
-Meanwhile, those who have poured curses on Strindberg's blatant atheism
-have been perplexed by his last words.
-
-When death was drawing near, he took the Bible--which always lay on the
-table by his bed--held it up and said in a clear voice:
-
-"Everything personal is now obliterated. I have settled with life. My
-account has been rendered. This alone is right."
-
-He expressed a last wish that the Bible and a little crucifix which
-he used to wear should be placed on his breast after death, and that
-he should be buried early in the morning, and not amongst the rich. He
-desired to be laid to rest alone on the top of a hill under the firs.
-
-This love of the early morning was part of his craving for more light.
-For many years he used to take a solitary morning walk. At seven
-o'clock he emerged from his "blue tower" in Stockholm and walked
-briskly through the streets and squares of his native town. At nine he
-was back at his writing-table--of late years a recluse for the rest of
-the day, absorbed in his work.
-
-"Ever since my youth," he writes in _Inferno_, "I devote my morning
-walk to meditations which are preparations for my daily work. Nobody
-may then accompany me, not even my wife. In the morning my mind enjoys
-a balance and an expansion which approach ecstasy; I do not walk, I
-fly; I do not feel that I have a body; all sadness evaporates and I
-am entirely soul. This is for me the hour of inner concentration, of
-prayer, my divine service."
-
-I have often seen Strindberg in the streets of Stockholm. He walked
-with his high forehead painfully contracted, the eyes searching and
-concentrated, and an expression of haughty bitterness upon his face.
-A solitary, suggesting to the passer-by Rodin's _Penseur_ in motion
-and the futile wanderings of Ahasuerus; he seemed wrapped in his own
-misery, held aloof by suffering and contempt.
-
-One day I met him with a companion. He was holding a little girl by
-the hand and talking to her. The child looked up in his face and
-Strindberg's expression was changed. Love for the child, respect for
-the questions and joys of childhood shone out of the face of the hater.
-He was not obsessed by the ugliness of things or the cruelty of human
-deception. His face was aglow with the early enthusiasm which, though
-slain a thousand times, rises again at the bidding of the Self that
-knows the answer to the riddle.
-
-In the early morning of Sunday, May 19th, August Strindberg's body was
-laid to rest. It was a glorious spring day with sunshine and blue sky.
-Some sixty thousand people were astir to do homage to the memory of one
-whom they knew to have been intrinsically true and tragically great.
-Royalty, Riksdag, universities, capital and labour, statesmen, writers
-and artists assembled to say a united farewell to the man of mystery
-who, by his intense sincerity and the exuberance of genius, had at last
-melted hatred, and ascended the steps from shame to glory.
-
-In a message after Strindberg's death, Maxim Gorki likened him to
-Danko, the hero of the old Danube legend, who, in order to help
-humanity out of the darkness of problems, tore his heart out of his
-breast, lit it and holding it high, led the way. The masses who mock
-and praise so easily, who crucify and raise idols with the same haste,
-seldom recognise their real friends. Strindberg patiently burnt his
-heart for the illumination of the people, and on the day when his body
-was laid low in the soil the flame of his self-immolation was seen pure
-and inextinguishable.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-THE STRUGGLE WITH ENVIRONMENT
-
-
-Strindberg's childhood and youth, as described by himself in his
-autobiographical novel _The Bondswoman's Son_, present psychological
-features of exceptional interest. The circumstances of his early
-home-life and their effect upon the unfolding forces of his genius
-cannot be ignored by anyone who attempts to explain the varied strata
-of his artistic production.
-
-His insistent and torturous need for exact self-analysis, coupled with
-an equally compelling need to tell the truth, made all his writings
-strongly subjective. His autobiography--"the story of a soul's
-evolution"--is an intimate revelation of his power to dissect his past
-selves, to record minute incidents and to extract reflexes from the
-bundle of emotions and thoughts which go to make up character. Nothing
-is lost, nothing is too insignificant for careful examination in the
-microscope under which he places every cell of himself. The confessions
-of Rousseau and Tolstoy have not the nakedness of Strindberg's truth
-about himself. Though he never loses sympathy with himself, he scorns
-excuses and exposes his sins and his follies with ruthless exactitude.
-There is a strange combination of the coolly analysing psychologist
-and the passionate flagellant in the descriptions which range from the
-struggles of childhood, through the Inferno-period of 1896, to the calm
-of _Alone_, and the final visions of light.
-
-The autobiographical novel in four volumes which was published under
-the titles _The Bondswoman's Son, Fermentation Time, In the Red Room_
-and _The Author_, was written at the age of thirty-seven, and, though
-the impressions of childhood are recorded with deep insight into
-the child's mind, we cannot forget that they were written down and
-interpreted by the man who had behind him years of tumultuous and
-bitter struggle for self-expression, and before whom the banquet of
-life seemed reduced to dead-sea fruit. In the preface to the fifth
-edition of _The Bondswoman's Son_, he tells us that when writing the
-volume he believed he stood before death, "for I was tired, saw no
-longer any object in life, considered myself superfluous, thrown away."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Johan August Strindberg was born in Stockholm on January 22nd, 1849.
-His father, whom in disparagement of his parentage he often calls
-"the grocer," was a merchant and shipping agent who had married a
-servant-girl, the mother of his three children. The father was a man
-of education and natural refinement who passed through many economical
-vicissitudes, culminating in bankruptcy at the time of August's birth.
-August was born a short time after the union between the parents had
-been legalised by the ceremony of marriage, and he was not welcome.
-His father bore his troubles with manly fortitude and resignation
-and cherished the ideals of the upper classes, whilst the mother
-was essentially of the people and remained so. He claimed a distant
-ancestral connection with the nobility of Sweden, his family having
-descended from the son of a peasant who was born in 1710 at Strinne
-in Angermanland, and who married a girl of noble birth. The discord
-resulting from the difference between his father and mother gave August
-his first impression of that class struggle which I throughout life
-held him in the bondage of a haunting problem, and which stimulated the
-development of his mordantly critical faculties.
-
-Poverty, with its attendant cares and anxieties, reigned in the house
-by Klara churchyard, where, from a flat on the third floor, August
-began to survey life's difficulties. He tells us that he recollects
-fear and hunger as his first sensations. He was afraid of darkness, of
-being beaten, of offending people, of falling down, of knocking against
-things, of being in the way, of the fists of his brothers, of father's
-and mother's chastisements.
-
-It was not easy to avoid being in people's way, for the parents with
-seven children and two servants lived in three rooms. The furniture
-consisted mostly of cradles and beds; children slept on ironing boards
-and chairs. Baptisms and funerals alternated. The mother developed
-phthisis after the birth of her twelfth child.
-
-She was contented with her life, he tells us, for she had risen in the
-social scale and improved her own and her family's position. The father
-was less satisfied with his fate, for he had descended and sacrificed
-himself. He was tired, sad, severe and serious, but not hard.
-
-Strindberg's recollections of his early impressions of the relations
-between his father and mother show the inception of the views on women
-and marriage which earned for him the title of woman-hater, and which
-found their most provocative expression in _The Father_ and _The
-Confession of a Fool_.
-
-"This is the father's thankless position in the family," he writes; "to
-be everybody's breadwinner, everybody's enemy." He concluded that his
-mother did not overwork herself, though his account of the daily life
-in the family does not support that view.
-
-As a little boy August was as weak as other little boys. He adored
-his mother. He was shy, acutely sensitive, morbidly self-conscious,
-keenly resentful of injustice. He was not his mother's favourite, he
-was nobody's favourite, and this embittered him. The mother soon became
-an object of analysis; he was torn between love for her and contempt
-for her faults, which he discovered through making comparisons between
-her and his father. He says that a yearning for the mother followed
-him through life. The future misogynist was fostered by the child's
-passionate and unrequited love for the mother. When in later life
-Strindberg's attacks upon women were criticised, he defended himself by
-declaring that he chid woman because he loved her so well.
-
-Disgust with the daily drudgery and routine of the household was
-aroused at an early age. He speaks of the family as an institution for
-providing food and clean clothes, where there is an eternal round of
-shopping, cooking, cleaning and washing.
-
-"Glorious moral institution," he cries; "holy family, inviolable,
-divine institution for the education of citizens in truth and virtue!
-Thou pretended home of virtues, where innocent children are tortured to
-speak their first lie, where will-power is crushed by despotism, where
-self-reliance is killed by narrow egoism. Family, thou art the home of
-all social vices, the charitable institution for all lazy women. The
-forge for the chains of the breadwinner, and the hell of the children!"
-
-This passage follows the description of an unjust punishment which
-was meted out to August. He was accused of having drunk some wine out
-of his aunt's bottle, and upon blushing in response to his father's
-question was beaten as the culprit. Fear of the physical pain made
-him confess the deed which he had never committed, and, upon telling
-his old nurse that he had suffered innocently, he was again seized and
-now beaten as a liar as well as a thief. After that day he lived in
-constant anxiety. The world was a cruel and unfriendly place; there
-were enemies everywhere.
-
-"Who drank that wine?" he repeatedly asked himself. The search for a
-satisfactory reply to that question and to Similar questions was not
-abandoned, though it was futile. The hostility to social injustice and
-enforced criminality to which, later on, he gave literary utterance,
-had a remote though ineffaceable connection with the abducted contents
-of the wine bottle.
-
-His ideas about God were vague, and chiefly formulated through saying
-daily the Swedish child's prayer: "God who loveth children." The
-windows of the house over-looked the old churchyard of Klara. When
-there was a fire in the night the church bells were tolled in a manner
-which struck horror in the heart of the child. The whole household
-was awake. "There is a fire," ran the whisper. He cried and tried in
-vain to go to sleep again. Then his mother came, tucked him up and
-said: "Don't be afraid; God will protect those who are unhappy." The
-following morning the servants read in the paper that there had been a
-fire, and that two people had been burnt to death.
-
-"That was God's will," said his mother. Sacha incidents did not pass him
-by. The apparent inconsistency between the expectation of faith and the
-tragic reality troubled him and caused his first religious doubts.
-
-The old church with its graves became the symbol of gloom, and of the
-joyless fate from which there is no escape. During the cholera epidemic
-of 1854 the child of five watched the paraphernalia and ceremonies of
-death from the bedroom window. In the churchyard below, gravediggers
-were at work, stretchers were carried past, dark knots of people were
-seen to assemble round black boxes. The church bells tolled incessantly.
-
-One day his uncle took him and his brothers inside the church. In spite
-of the beautiful walls in white and gold, the sound of the music which
-was like that of a hundred pianos, and kneeling white angels, his
-attention was riveted on two figures. Amidst the praying congregation
-two prisoners in chains were doing penance. They were guarded by
-soldiers and dad in long, grey cloaks with hoods over their heads.
-
-He was told that these men were thieves. A feeling of oppression by
-something horrible, by an incomprehensibly cruel and relentless force,
-overcame August, and he was glad to be taken away.
-
-The initiation into the existence of pain and suffering which awaits
-every child held peculiar terrors for him. Acutely sensitive, his
-nerves of sympathy responded quickly to the feelings of others. One
-day he was taken to the workhouse infirmary to visit his wet-nurse who
-was slowly dying. The old women with their diseases, pale, lame and
-sorrowing, the long row of beds, the colourless monotony of the ward
-and its unpleasant odours fixed themselves in his consciousness. When
-he left he was haunted by a strange sense of unpaid and unpayable debt.
-For this was the woman who had fed him, whose blood had nourished his.
-Through poverty she had been forced to give him that which rightfully
-belonged to her own child. August felt vaguely that he was enjoying
-stolen life, and he was ashamed of his relief at being taken away from
-the sights of the sick-room.
-
-When August was seven the family moved to a larger house. The worst
-days of penury were now over, and, though strict economy had to be
-practised and every luxury eschewed, there was more freedom from
-anxiety for the daily bread. His mind had hitherto been fed by daily
-portions of Kindergarten fare. He was now sent to Klara school for
-boys, where his sense of the general injustice of things was rapidly
-developed through the vigour with which the headmaster wielded his cane.
-
-He was awakened at six during the dark winter mornings, and as his home
-was now far from Klara he had to trudge a long way through deep snow,
-and arrived at his destination in wet boots and knickerbockers. When
-late he was paralysed with fright in anticipation of the headmaster's
-morning exercise on those who were unpunctual. He heard the screams of
-boys who were already in the dutches of the tyrant.
-
-One morning he was saved by the kindly charwoman, who pleaded for him
-and pointed out that he had a long way to walk. It is a pity that the
-charwoman who saved Strindberg from a thrashing has not been given a
-niche in his gallery of women.
-
-August did not shine in this school, though his knowledge was in
-advance of his years, and he had, therefore, been admitted before the
-required age. He was the youngest at school and at home, a position
-which he vainly resented. This was a school for the children of the
-upper middle class. August wore knickerbockers of leather, and strong
-coarse boots, which smelt of blubber and blacking. The boys in velvet
-blouses avoided him. He observed that the badly dressed boys were more
-severely beaten than the well-dressed ones, and that nice-looking boys
-escaped altogether.
-
-Strindberg records his early experiences at school with characteristic
-vehemence:
-
-"... It was regarded as a preparation for hell and not for life; the
-teachers seemed to exist in order to torment, not to punish. All life
-weighed like an oppressive nightmare, in which it was of no avail to
-have known one's lessons when one left home. Life was a place for
-punishing crimes committed before one was born, and therefore the child
-walked about with a permanently bad conscience."
-
-At the age of nine he fell in love for the first time. A roseate
-shimmer descended over the cane and the Latin grammar through the
-presence in the class-room of the headmaster's little daughter. She was
-placed at the back of the room, and the boys were forbidden to look at
-her. "She was probably ugly," he tells us with his usual realism where
-love affairs are concerned, "but she was nicely dressed." During the
-French lessons her soft voice rang out above the grating sound of the
-boys' answers, and even the hard visage of the teacher melted when he
-spoke to her.
-
-August never had the courage to speak to her. His love expressed itself
-in gentle melancholy and vague wishes. He felt the victim of a secret
-within his own breast and suffered from it. The affair ended with a
-frustrated suicidal intention, but the lover did not attain to peace.
-His love affairs from the first to the last were tinged with tragedy,
-and were the vehicles of his restless and futile search for harmony.
-
-The house in the north of Stockholm, to which the family had moved,
-had a large garden and adjoining fields. The father loved the country,
-and farming operations on a small scale were part of the daily duties.
-The boys were made to work in the garden, and were thus provided with
-healthy exercise. A magnificent old oak and bowers of lilac and
-jessamine made the old-fashioned garden beautiful. August's bitter
-experience of canes, teachers and unattainable feminine charm did not
-corrode his inborn love of nature, which remained a source of mental
-and physical rejuvenation when others ran dry.
-
-The deep blackness of the freshly tilled soil, the apple trees in
-their blossoming glory, the tulips in their gorgeous garb called forth
-aspirations in his mind which responded to no human voice. The boy
-walking in the garden was filled with a solemnity which neither school
-nor church could inspire.
-
-A summer holiday spent at Drottningholm, amidst the smiling islands and
-wooded shores of the Lake of Malär, had accentuated his disgust with
-the ugly things which abound in towns.
-
-Stockholm's Skärgård, the archipelago which guards the fair capital of
-Sweden, and which is the pride of every true child of Stockholm, became
-his favourite scenery in later years.
-
-There is something primæval and suggestive of the creation of the world
-in these thousands of rocks and islands which rise in ever-varying
-form and colour from the blue depths of the Baltic. The keen salt
-breezes which sweep round the bare and uninhabitable rocks whisper of
-a no-man's land, where the soul is tossed by elements neither friendly
-nor hostile, but restful. Through the white stems of the birches,
-the deep red of the cottages and the evergreen storm-bent fir trees,
-the islands on which the poor fisherfolk live and labour, salute the
-passing mariner by a trichromatic call to the simple life.
-
-Upon this world the youthful Strindberg gazed one day. He had walked
-through a deep forest, and crept through whortleberries and juniper to
-the top of a steep rock. The picture of islands and fjords which lay
-spread before his eyes caused him to "shiver with, delight."
-
-That picture, he writes, impressed him as if he had recovered a land
-seen in beautiful dreams, or in a former life.
-
-He hid from his comrades; he could not follow them.
-
-"This was his scenery, the true milieu of his nature, idylls, poor
-rugged rocks, covered with pine forest, thrown out on wide stormy
-fjords with the immense sea as a distant background. He remained true
-to this love ... and neither the Alps of Switzerland, the olive-dad
-hills of the Mediterranean, nor the cliffs of Normandy could oust this
-rival."
-
-Love of nature did not curb August's high spirits in childhood. At the
-age of ten he played wild games, climbed trees, slid down mountains on
-pieces of wood, robbed birds' nests and shot their innocent owners. He
-rode bareback, could swim, sail a boat and handle a gun.
-
-During a summer holiday August and his brothers were sent as boarders
-to the house of a sexton. It was the father's wish that his sons
-should share in the work on the farm as well as prepare for the
-winter's schooling. In the sexton's kitchen August saw the wafers
-prepared and stamped for Holy Communion. He mischievously ate them and
-reflected that there was not much in the Sacrament. He broke covenant
-with his host by rushing into the church, turning the hour-glass on
-the pulpit, and delivering a sermon. He ran through the church on
-the backs of the pews and threw over the reading-desk, on which the
-hymn-book lay. The disjointed pieces of the desk frightened him and
-reminded him of possible consequences. Yielding to the first impulse of
-self-preservation he knelt and said the Lord's Prayer.
-
-[Illustration: Strindberg's mother, Ulrika Eleonora Norling]
-
-[Illustration: Strindberg's father Oskar Strindberg]
-
-A thought came to him. He rose, examined the reading-desk, saw that
-the damage was not irreparable, took off his boot and mended the desk
-with a few well-directed blows. He then calmly walked out of the church
-feeling that the power within himself was, after all, more reliable
-than the God whose help he had invoked. The mysterious interrelation
-between whole-hearted prayer and the dormant powers within ourselves is
-seldom understood. The child's logic humorously reflected the spiritual
-instability of average humanity.
-
-His self-reliance was, however, fitful. Sometimes he wept bitterly,
-battling with an uncontrollable duality within his own mind, a divided
-will which made him unreasonable and capricious. He developed sudden
-antipathies, endured fits of shyness and self-abasement, during which
-he had to run away from other children and hide himself. At such times
-he would deliberately keep away when good things were distributed, and
-on being forgotten, revel in his martyrdom.
-
-August's rebellion against learning lessons developed _pari passu_
-with his powers of independent thought. He did not make progress at
-Klara school, and his father transferred him to another, where he mixed
-with children of people in humble circumstances. Here he felt more at
-home; no one looked down on him; his boots and his knickerbockers did
-not give offence. His pity was aroused by the poverty of some of his
-school-fellows. They were expected to be clean, attentive and polite,
-but how could they? They came from homes where no one could afford
-to be clean, where families were crowded in small rooms which served
-as work-shops as well as nurseries, where the decencies of life were
-unattainable luxuries. The contrast between the two schools afforded
-August material for continued meditation on class problems.
-
-Latin and Greek were the principal subjects taught. August wanted
-to learn in his own way and to translate in his own way. Both in
-classics and in history he refused to submit to the discipline of the
-schoolmaster. Having formulated his own method of learning and the
-proper form of examining pupils he defied the teacher's order. He was
-dumb when he should speak, and spoke when he should be silent. When the
-exasperated Latin master declared August to be an idiot, the father
-unexpectedly took his son's part and moved him to a private school.
-This school had introduced rational methods of teaching; flogging was
-prohibited, the boys were treated as individuals, and August felt
-that he could expand without fear of immediate repression. During the
-years that followed, the family attained a position of comparative
-affluence and comfort. August lost the dread of being trampled upon or
-suppressed from above, and mixed freely with titled youths who were
-accorded no privileges by the headmaster who lacked all reverence for
-the distinction of birth.
-
-August was wont to parade his knowledge before his mother. At first she
-took great pride in her son's gifts and the time when he should wear
-the white cap of honour, coveted by every Swedish student, was often
-spoken of. But the mother's leanings towards a narrow pietism caused
-her to discern the vanity of learning in her son's mind. She warned
-him against the wickedness of such pride, and contrasted the humility
-of Christ and His contempt of worldly wisdom with the self-conceit of
-mere book-learning. The son listened, and concluded that the mother's
-resentment of culture was the result of her own ignorance. One evening
-the sons were called to the mother's death-bed. August was then
-thirteen. Overwhelmed with grief and shivering with the horror of
-Death, he sat hour after hour by the bed crying, and thinking over all
-the evil he had done.
-
-This was the inevitable end. How could he live without a mother? The
-future seemed wrapped in impenetrable darkness and misery. Then oh,
-horror!--a shameful thought crossed his mind. Some time before his
-mother had shown him a little ring, and said that it would belong to
-him after her death. And now, at the solemn and awful moment, the
-promise of the ring rose in his unwilling memory. He saw it on his
-finger--one bright spot in this sorrowful hour, something to look
-forward to.
-
-But only for a moment--such low covetousness, such a shameful thought
-by the side of a dying mother must come straight from the devil. The
-pangs of remorse and shame were so persistent that the incident fixed
-itself in his memory, and years afterwards the recollection made him
-blush.
-
-The allurements of thoughts which we ought not to think, and which
-range from sudden inconvenient flashes of recognition of the comical
-in the midst of the serious business of life, to the haunting ideas
-which are the débris of mental combustion, could not be understood by
-the boy. Nor did he know that he was destined to live through the gamut
-of cerebral phenomena, an exponent of extravagant thought and lawless
-ideation.
-
-When the stillness of death fell upon the room the unworthy thought
-was far away and August screamed like a drowning child. The father was
-softened and spoke kind words to the two boys. Strindberg tells us
-with his usual candour that his sorrow lasted scarcely three months.
-"Sorrow," he writes, "has the happy quality of consuming itself. It
-dies of starvation. As it is essentially an interruption of habits it
-can be replaced by new ones." After six months his father married the
-housekeeper.
-
-August was now learning five languages, besides his own. Botany,
-zoology and the physical sciences aroused his keen interest. He had
-collections of insects and minerals, and a herbarium to which he
-devoted much time. He developed an insatiable appetite for knowledge,
-but he claimed freedom to find his intellectual food without extraneous
-interference or restrictions. He not only wanted to know everything,
-but he wanted to be able to do everything, to be endowed with all
-human talents.
-
-His brother had been praised for his drawings; August wanted to draw.
-During the Christmas holidays he copied all his brother's drawings,
-but on finding that he could do it without difficulty his interest
-waned and he gave it up. All his brothers and sisters could play some
-instrument. The house resounded with exercises on the piano, the violin
-and the 'cello. August wanted to play, but without practising scales.
-He taught himself to play the piano and learnt to read and copy music.
-He played badly, but it gave him pleasure. He learnt the names of
-composers and the number of opus of everything that was played in the
-house, so that he should have superior knowledge.
-
-He was jealous of the accomplishments of others, but the jealousy was
-created by unsatisfied ambition, and the consciousness of illimitable
-capabilities. Every subject interested him, until he had mastered
-it. When he knew the plants, minerals, insects and birds in his
-neighbourhood, he turned to other fields of natural science. Physics
-and chemistry attracted him. He did not want to repeat the classical
-experiments in the text-books; he wanted to make new discoveries. The
-lack of money and apparatus restrained him. Ingenuity was necessary.
-During the summer holidays he tried to make an electric machine out of
-an old spinning-wheel and a window pane. An umbrella was broken and
-made to yield a whalebone, out of which, with the help of a violin
-string, he made a drill-borer. The square pane had been made circular
-through patient knocking with a key-bit. This labour had taken days.
-When the time came for boring a hole in the middle and his piece of
-quartz made no impression he lost patience, and attempted to force
-a hole. The pane was smashed and August's enthusiasm converted into
-hopeless fatigue.
-
-Recovered, he decided to construct a _perpetuum mobile_. His father
-had told him that a prize was awaiting the inventor of the impossible.
-After formulating his theory, which included a waterfall driving a
-pump, he collected his material. A number of useful articles were
-sacrificed for the purpose: the coffee boiler provided a tube; the
-soda-water machine, reservoirs; the strong-box, plates; the chest of
-drawers, wood; the bird-cage, wire, etc. At the crucial moment the
-ubiquitous housekeeper interrupted him by asking if he would accompany
-his brothers and sisters to the mother's grave. Irritation broke the
-inventive spell, and in the anger of failure he dashed the artful
-apparatus to pieces on the floor.
-
-Reproaches and ridicule did not deter him. He arranged experimental
-explosions and manufactured a Leyden jar. For this purpose he flayed
-a dead black cat which he found in the street. He anticipated
-"Jönköping's Säkerhetständstickor" by making safety matches which he
-declares were as good as the later, much-advertised patent.
-
-His wilfulness and lack of mental discipline were necessarily
-distasteful to his surroundings. When he wanted to unlock a drawer and
-the key could not be found he seized a poker and broke open the lock
-with such force that the screws and the plate were tom out.
-
-"Why did you break the lock?" he was asked.
-
-"Because I wanted to get into the chest of drawers," was the laconic
-reply.
-
-The father not unnaturally decided to do what lay in his power to curb
-the troublesome spirit of independence in his son. August disliked
-his stepmother and resented her usurpation of his mother's place.
-He was now _gymnasist_[1] and treated with respect in the school.
-The lessons took the form of lectures, and the teachers showed due
-regard for individual rights and tastes. At home everything was done
-to humiliate him. He attributed what he regarded as a systematic
-persecution to the mean and revengeful spirit of the stepmother. He
-was made to wear old clothes which did not fit him; his gymnasist-cap,
-which should have been the pride of his heart, was home-made and an
-object of ridicule; he was compelled to work in the stable between
-school hours, and commanded to take the groom's place during the
-holidays. His weekly allowance for the school lunch was 3 1/2 d., a sum
-which he found sufficient for tobacco but not for sandwiches. He had
-a healthy appetite and was always hungry. The parsimoniousness of the
-home régime subjected him to humiliating experiences at school. Once he
-accidentally broke the eye-glasses of a friend. In vain he exhausted
-all his inventive resources in attempts to mend them. They had to be
-mended by an expert at the cost of 7d. On the following Monday August
-brought his friend 3 1/2 d., and after another week discharged his
-debt of honour by shamefacedly paying another 3 1/2 d. His miserable
-poverty could no longer be kept a secret, and he hated the cause of his
-oppression.
-
-At the age of fifteen he fell in love with a woman of thirty. The
-love was platonic, an attraction of souls--a contact of minds seeking
-spiritual enlightenment along the same path. She was a woman of the
-world, engaged to another who lived abroad, animated by religious
-emotionalism and half-conscious eroticism. They attended the same
-circle for French conversation and added the spice of Gallic expression
-to their correspondence, which treated of Jesus, the struggle against
-sin, life, death, God in nature, love, friendship and doubt. August
-became her conscience, and she was his spiritual mother. Strindberg
-publishes some of his French compositions from this period in his
-autobiography. All speculations were eventually smashed against the
-bedrock of Jesus. The parental authorities objected strongly to
-August's friendship, and especially to the atmosphere of French secrecy
-in which it was enveloped.
-
-August became absorbed in the struggle for salvation. A puritanism
-which despised the cold formalism of the Lutheran State Church and
-claimed the free companionship of Jesus was fashionable in Sweden at
-this time. The joyful certainty of being among the sheep infected those
-susceptible to sudden "revivals" within all classes of society. What
-could be of greater importance than being amongst the elected of God,
-comforted by the knowledge of righteousness, borne aloft by complete
-detachment from the world, the flesh and the devil? August laid
-passionate siege to Heaven and clamoured for immediate inclusion among
-the children of God.
-
-His motives were complicated. One was fright and a desire to be on
-the safe side. For he had read books which predicted a terrible fate
-in store for youthful sinners upon attaining the age of twenty-five.
-He knew he was a sinner, and, if his body were condemned to painful
-afflictions and death, his soul would, at least, be saved. Another was
-spiritual jealousy. His stepmother professed great religious devotion.
-She and his eldest brother seemed to outshine him in religious fervour.
-That could not be tolerated. August imposed severe restrictions upon
-himself. All worldly pleasures were to be shunned. One Saturday
-evening the family planned an excursion for the following Sunday.
-August asked his father's permission to stay at home for conscientious
-reasons. He spent Sunday morning in one of the "free" churches, where
-the elect gloried in their exclusive and dearly bought salvation.
-In the afternoon he studied Thomas à Kempis and Krummacher. The
-stepmother had broken the Sabbath. She was inconsistent and a prey to
-the temptations of the devil; she could no longer compete with him in
-religious virtue. That was balm to the soul, but the peace of Jesus,
-which he had been told would descend like a clap of thunder and be
-followed by absolute certainty, would not come. He walked alone to Haga
-Park, praying all the time that Jesus would seek him out. In the park
-he saw happy families absorbed in picnics and carriages filled with gay
-men and women. All these were destined to eternal damnation. His reason
-protested, but his faith assented. He returned home unharmonious and
-unsatisfied. When late in the evening his brothers and sisters related
-the incidents of their happy day, his envy was mixed with pangs of
-remorse.
-
-The puritanical phase culminated during the confirmation, which had
-been postponed by the father, who, knowing the waywardness of the
-child, feared the unrestraint of the youth. A number of circumstances
-contributed to the reaction which followed upon his first Holy
-Communion. He had whipped his reason into submission to an elated
-sentiment which in due course exhausted itself. The Sacramental bread
-was robbed of its mystery by the fatal familiarity with which he had
-treated it in the sexton's kitchen.
-
-But the disintegration of the puritan was accomplished through the
-influence of new friends. One of these decided to cure the hungry
-dreamer in Strindberg by a good meal. One day on the way to the Greek
-lesson, Fritz, "the friend with the eye-glasses," suggested that they
-should play truant and lunch at a restaurant. Scruples overcome, August
-enjoyed his first meal in a restaurant and his first glass of brandy.
-The luxuries of beefsteak and beer in quantitative perfection, and the
-audacity with which his friend treated the waiter, made a profound
-impression on him. The friend paid for the feast, and August came out a
-changed man.
-
-"This was not an empty pleasure, as the pale man had asserted," he
-writes. "No, it was a solid pleasure to feel red blood run through
-half-empty arteries which were to nourish the nerves for the struggle
-of life. It was a pleasure to feel spent strength return and the lax
-sinews of a half-crushed will stretched again. Hope was awakened, the
-mist became a rosy cloud, and the friend let him see glimpses of the
-future as it was formed by friendship and youth."
-
-The friend advised him to earn money by giving private lessons. This
-would secure freedom from parental tyranny. He encouraged independence
-and self-confidence in August, who, acting upon his advice, obtained
-a post as private tutor. By exercising economy in the expenditure of
-brains at the gymnasium and limiting his studies to those absolutely
-necessary for the final examen, he succeeded in his dual work of
-learner and teacher. The sense of sin departed; he was able to take
-part in the festivities of his school-fellows. The platonic friendship
-with the woman of thirty evaporated with the advent of a less ethereal
-admiration for the beauty of waitresses _et hoc genus omne_. He went to
-dances and sought jollity in the "punsch-evenings" of the students. A
-craving for alcohol had been aroused; under its influence the demons
-of gloom and insoluble problems departed.
-
-The change in his attitude to life was hastened by an influence
-which now made itself felt for the first time. Literature as a great
-tradition and interpretation of human problems became known to him.
-The belletristic and the puritanical conceptions of life presented
-themselves in their profoundest antithesis. Natural selection did the
-rest. His range of reading was wide and varied, as were the demands of
-his many-sided self. He devoured Shakespeare, admired Dickens, found
-Walter Scott tedious, Alexandre Dumas puerile, and Eugène Sue's Le
-Juif Errant grandiose. He detested poetry; it was affected and untrue.
-People did not talk in that manner and seldom thought of such beautiful
-things. The realisation of God in Nature replaced the desire to seek
-God in the churches, and August gradually discovered that he was a
-freethinker. The alarm and public prayers of the elect, which he had
-deserted, did not alter his course.
-
-During the summer holidays he acted as tutor to an aristocratic family
-in the country. Fritz had warned him against saying everything he
-thought and doing everything he wanted, or disputing vehemently with
-his superiors. But the difficulty of submitting to the conventions of
-the social order could not be overcome.
-
-August's plans for the future were vacillating and embarrassing to
-the father. For a short time he cherished the idea of becoming a
-non-commissioned officer in a cavalry regiment, at another time the
-plan of spending his days as a country curate, joined in happy wedlock
-to a pretty waitress (a brand snatched from the fire), had captivated
-him. But the University conquered. At the University a man could be
-poor and badly dressed and yet be counted a gentleman; it was the only
-place where one could sing, get drunk and have fights with the police
-without losing social standing. There was a secret satisfaction in the
-thought.
-
-One day during the tutorage in the country the vicar, who was
-overworked, invited August to preach a "proof-sermon." The practice
-of permitting serious-minded students and undergraduates to try
-their priestly powers was not uncommon. The idea was glorious and
-irresistible. The baron, the baroness, the squires and the ladies
-would all have to listen reverently to August as the mouthpiece of
-the Lord. But he remembered that he was a freethinker. The orthodox
-conception of Jesus was no longer his. It was hypocrisy to accept the
-offer. And yet, he believed in God, he had thoughts to give, opinions
-he wanted to voice. He confessed to the vicar, who reassured him. If he
-believed in God, there was no real difficulty--the good Bishop Wallin
-had never mentioned Jesus in his sermons. August should only not talk
-too much about his aberrations.
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg 1862--(Reproduced by kind
-permission of Messrs. Albert Bonnier, Stockholm)]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg 1870]
-
-The week during which the sermon was prepared, was rich in compensation
-for years of ignominy. Something within him responded with avidity to
-the call of the messenger, the prophet.
-
-The church was filled with people when August mounted the pulpit in
-clerical garb and with a beating heart. He prayed to the only true
-God to help him when now he wanted to strike a blow for truth. He
-spoke of conversion through free will and opened the gates of heaven
-to all--publicans and sinners, rulers and harlots--and denounced his
-old friends who were sunk in cruel and hypocritical self-conceit. He
-was deeply moved by his own eloquence. The vicar and the congregation
-forgave the irregularities, and the day ended in mutual satisfaction.
-
-The experience confirmed August's contempt of orthodox religion.
-He became the ringleader of a section in the highest class in the
-_Gymnasium_ which, in spite of threats and reprimands, refused to
-attend morning prayers. Once when the father begged him to go to church
-he replied:
-
-"Preach--I can do that myself."
-
-In May, 1867, August passed his _student-examen_. The white cap was on
-his head, and the gates of the University were open to him.
-
-
-[1] Gymnasia are preparatory schools for Universities.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF-EXPRESSION
-
-
-A university, said Newman, is a place where "mind comes first and
-is the foundation of the academical polity." Strindberg's contact
-with the University of Upsala brought his own creative mind into
-constant conflict with the custodians of regulations which govern
-the traditional pursuit of knowledge. Between 1867 and 1872 he spent
-periods at Upsala, during which he made vain attempts to achieve
-success as a dutiful learner, submissive to the discipline of
-professorial authority. The difficulty was not that he would not or
-could not study. He studied too much; his mind absorbed with intuitive
-and lightning quickness knowledge from men and books. But he refused
-to take opinions on trust; he individualised everything that was
-assimilated by his receptive and turbulent mind, and scorned academical
-routine.
-
-In the autumn of 1867 August Strindberg went to Upsala to equip himself
-with the powers and graces which accompany a "university education." He
-possessed the sum of 80 kronor (1 krona = 1s. 2d.), laboriously earned
-by private lessons; his father had contributed a few cigars to his
-son's outfit and advised him to shift for himself. Margaret, the old
-kind-hearted servant, had forced a loan of 15 kronor upon him. Thus he
-was again victimised by a woman's heart.
-
-The room which he shared with a friend, was rented for 30 kronor for
-the whole term. It contained two beds, two tables, two chairs, and a
-cupboard. His dinner was brought by the charwoman for 1 kr. 50 öre per
-week. Breakfast and supper consisted of a glass of milk and a bun.
-By practising the strictest economy he managed to live, but he soon
-discovered that he could not afford to buy the necessary books, nor
-the regulation dress-coat, without which no Swedish under-graduate
-could solicit the kind attention of the professors. He did not attract
-attention as a promising student. His attendance at lectures served
-chiefly as a stimulus to his critical faculties. He found the methods
-of teaching literature and philosophy tedious and ineffective, the
-professors ignorant and plebeian. He borrowed books and selected
-his own reading. He taught himself to play the cornet in one of the
-University orchestras, thus attempting to soothe the discord of his
-soul.
-
-He grew tired of his friend Fritz. "They had worn out their friendship
-by living together," he writes in _Fermentation Time_. "They knew each
-other by heart, knew each other's secrets and weaknesses, knew what
-answer the other would give in argument." He accepted the end of their
-friendship as the inevitable result of the exploitation of personality
-which he resented in friendship and in love. Personal attractions and
-ties were masked warfare in Strindberg's life; he gave and he took,
-and generally ended by despising. Throughout life his caustic efforts
-to reach the centre of things did not tend to strengthen bonds which
-depend on a certain amount of pleasant illusion and benign deception.
-
-His love of nature brought no disillusionment. "It was his dream to
-live in the country," he writes of his Upsala time. "He had an inborn
-dislike of town, though born in a capital. He had culture-hostility in
-the blood, could never get rid of the sense of being a product of
-Nature which did not want to be torn from the organic union with earth.
-He was a wild plant, the roots of which in vain sought a little soil
-between the stones of the pavement; he was an animal longing for the
-forest."
-
-The delight in the beauty and fragrance of flowers, the preference for
-the simplicity of rural life which he so often expressed show a mood
-unaffected by discontent and pessimism. Some sprite of nature-joy dwelt
-within him and remained happy in spite of unhappiness. After uttering
-curses on the sins of humanity he would be found singing pæans to the
-harmony of the plant-world.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-At the end of the first term he had spent his eighty kronor and
-returned to Stockholm in search of remunerative work. After several
-unsuccessful attempts to obtain a post in the country, he found a
-situation as teacher at the Stockholm Board-School at a yearly salary
-of £50, which to him seemed opulence. He now lived at home, and
-contributed to the household expenses.
-
-The schoolmaster of eighteen was again brought face to face with the
-problems of poverty. The injustice, under which he had smarted as a
-child, was still alive. He was now in the detestable position of the
-pedagogical tyrant, but his pity had not diminished. He was expected
-to chastise the lazy children, but his heart refused to accept the
-prevalent faith in flogging. The children--ugly, stunted, pale,
-starved, sickly--appealed to his pity.
-
-"Suffering," he writes, "has stamped on the faces of the lower classes
-that expression of hopelessness and torment which neither religious
-resignation nor the hope of heaven can obliterate, and from which the
-upper classes flee as from an evil conscience."
-
-He studied the penalty of industrialism, and observed that the children
-of the manual labourer looked more sickly and less intelligent than
-those of the upper class:
-
-"The trade-diseases of the urban working-man seemed to be transmitted;
-here one saw in miniature the lungs and the blood of the gas-worker,
-ruined through sulphurous fumes; the shoulders and flattened feet of
-the smith; the brain of the painter, atrophied through the fumes of
-varnish and poisonous paints; the scrofulous eruption of the sweep;
-the contracted chest of the bookbinder; here one heard the echo of the
-cough of the metal-worker and the asphalt manufacturer; smelt the
-poisons of the wall-paper maker; noticed the watchmaker's myopia in new
-editions. In truth, this was not a race which possessed the future,
-or upon which the future could reckon, and it cannot reproduce itself
-for any length of time, for the ranks of the artisans are constantly
-recruited from the country."
-
-His sympathy with the working classes was no passing sentiment; it was
-the lasting keynote of his plea for social justice which is clearly
-heard through the cacophony of some of his later outbursts against the
-social order.
-
-Rebellious, contempt of current morals and respectability rose as
-a mighty force in the mind of this extraordinary schoolmaster. His
-morning duties at the board-school and his afternoon work as private
-tutor to the daughters of a well-to-do and refined family compelled
-him to outward decorum. But he did not live virtuously. His sense-life
-was awake, and he recognised no necessity for restraint. The strivings
-after ascetic peace which filled his adolescence had been laid
-aside; with the breaking of his faith in the watchful solicitude of
-Jesus, natural impulses had been set free. His autobiography records
-his early struggles, and his later "fall" with the same detached
-imperturbability. He lacks the sense of shame which avoids certain
-topics. He observes no reticences. The pages in many of his books are
-studded with coarse language and unsavoury references to physical
-life. The sexual cynicism which pervades the story of his life is only
-relieved by his perfect sincerity.
-
-He describes the pleasures of inebriation with similar frankness. At
-the age of nineteen he was already familiar with Bacchic revels. His
-brain was inflamed with ideas, congested with unformulated thought. The
-narcosis of alcohol attracted him.
-
-"Sometimes melancholy, at other times gay," he writes, "he sometimes
-felt an irresistible craving to extinguish the burning fire of thought
-and to stop the turmoil of the brain. Shy, he sometimes felt impelled
-to come forward, to make an impression, to find an audience, to
-appear in public. When he had drunk a great deal, he wished to recite
-great and solemn things, but in the middle of the piece, when ecstasy
-was at its height, he heard his own voice, became shy, frightened,
-thought himself ridiculous, stopped suddenly, changed his tone, took
-up the comical, and finished with a grimace. He had pathos, but only
-for a while; then self-criticism came, and he laughed at his forced
-emotions." Strindberg finds another explanation of his craving for
-alcohol in the lack of nourishing diet at Upsala and the dulness of
-his home in Stockholm. "Strong liquors gave him strength," he says,
-"and he slept well after them." He adds: "Like the rest of the race,
-he was born of drunkards, generation after generation from pagan times
-immemorial, when ale and mead were used, and the desire had inevitably
-become a necessity."
-
-He was not a success as a board-school teacher. There were bargains
-with his conscience during scripture lessons, and the prevailing system
-of teaching seemed a cruel parody. He shrank from the sights and sounds
-and smells of the herd of poor children. Ambition and intellectual
-hunger called him to seek experience elsewhere.
-
-His restlessness was increased through reading Byron's _Manfred_ and
-Schiller's _Die Räuber_. He tried to translate the former into Swedish,
-but discovered to his chagrin that he could not write blank verse. Karl
-Moor in _Die Räuber_ laid hold of his imagination with the claims of a
-kindred spirit. Here was his own heterodoxy and revolt against laws,
-society, customs, religion made manifest in a living, literary figure
-by a great writer. Schiller's maturer repudiation of his fierce bandit
-did not trouble him. Manfred fleeing from himself to the Alps appealed
-to him as a feat of rebellion complementary to Karl Moor's adventures.
-
-At the age of nineteen the rôle of the schoolmaster was exchanged for
-that of the student of medicine. His duties at the board-school had
-become intolerable, when, one evening, a Mend, an old doctor, knocked
-at his door and suggested that he should desert the school and enlist
-in the service of Aesculapius. His fatherly friend brushed aside
-objections on the ground of poverty by suggesting that Strindberg
-should live in his house and, in return, act as tutor to his boys.
-In spite of the dreary prospect of eight years of medical studies
-the kindly offer was accepted; for the profession of medicine seemed
-the portal to enviable knowledge. Not the dry, stereotyped dogmas of
-the Church and the University curriculum, but real wisdom penetrating
-life's mysteries. "To become a sage who understood life's riddles--that
-was his dream for the moment." He disliked the idea of a career in the
-service of the State or of being a mere figure, a wheel or a screw, in
-the social machinery. The physician seemed to him to be free.
-
-His preparatory studies were carried out at the Technological
-Institute. Here the vigorous fantasy of the future alchemist received
-the first stimulus through chemical experiments which fascinated him by
-revealing the secrets of matter. Here he also studied zoology, anatomy,
-botany and physics.
-
-But other powers were at work undermining the solidifying influence
-of application to science. In the doctor's house he met writers and
-artists. Conversation generally turned on plays, pictures, books,
-authors and actors. There was a fine library, offering the world's
-literary treasures. There was a collection of pictures and there were
-valuable engravings. The intellectual atmosphere was international, and
-afforded a pleasant change from the vulgar patriotism which had been
-sacred to the pedagogues of the board-school.
-
-The Dramatic Theatre was near at hand. Here a new and gaily attractive
-world was opened to him. Standing in the gallery he listened to the
-badinage of French comedy and saw the types of the Second Empire in
-aristocratic setting. Thus he spent several evenings every week. The
-life of the actor seemed strangely interesting, for he was allowed to
-express himself, to speak unwelcome truths without losing popularity.
-The theatrical profession seemed outside and above the petty rules
-of society--a privileged class. It offered special and glorious
-opportunities for artistic self-expression.
-
-Meanwhile the experiences of his medical education had become
-distasteful. The old physician brought his pupil to see patients,
-rich and poor, providing him with diverse "clinical material." He was
-asked to assist at early morning operations and to hold the patients.
-Whilst Strindberg held the patient's head, the doctor "removed glands
-with a fork." The assistant's thoughts were soaring high above the
-surgery, in the regions of Goethe's Faust and Wieland's novels; they
-were with George Sand, Chateaubriand and Lessing. During cauterisation
-the smell of human flesh rose in his nostrils and spoilt his appetite
-for breakfast. He describes his state of mind in the following words:
-"Imagination had been set in motion and memory would not work; reality
-with its bums and blood clots was ugly; æstheticism had seized the
-youth, and life seemed dull and repulsive."
-
-A futile attempt to pass a preliminary medical examination at Upsala
-precipitated his decision not to enter a profession which was
-exclusively occupied with the aches of the body. In spite of the
-disappointment of his medical benefactor, he announced his intention of
-becoming an actor.
-
-He now lived for some months in an ideal stage-world. After making
-arrangements for obtaining practical instruction in the autumn, he
-devoted the summer to private studies of the art which appeared to
-be his true and only vocation in life. Schiller's lecture, "On the
-Theatre as an Institution for Moral Education," saturated his mind with
-a lofty and idealistic conception of the ethical and æsthetic mission
-of the stage. Was not this the greatest of all human arts? Was it not
-a calling worthy of the finest talent and the most devoted labour? He
-buried his past restlessness in faithful search for knowledge of the
-actor's gifts and graces. Goethe taught him how to stand, sit down,
-carry himself, how to enter and leave a room gracefully. He studied the
-pose of antique sculpture and practised to walk with uplifted head
-and expanded chest, whilst the arms were trained to swing easily and
-the hand to be lightly closed with the fingers forming a beautifully
-shaped curve. He tried to conquer his shyness and his fear of crossing
-open places, and paraded his new artful self in the most frequented
-_promenade_ in Stockholm.
-
-The doctor's house was made the scene of his dramatic exercises. Here
-he prepared the performance of _Die Räuber_ and appeared himself as
-Karl Moor. When his vocal practices disturbed the peace of the house,
-he repaired to Ladugårdsgärdet, the vast fields and hills, on the
-east side of Stockholm, which for many years past have been used for
-military manoeuvres. They now also serve as a starting-point for aerial
-flights. But no mechanical wings of flight could equal those, on which
-Strindberg's imagination soared towards the realisation of his mission
-as an artist and a social reformer.
-
-Here, he tells us, he stormed against heaven and earth. The city, the
-church spires of which were visible, represented Society, whilst he
-belonged to Nature. "He shook his fist at the palace, the churches,
-the barracks, and snarled at the troops which during the manoeuvres
-sometimes came too near him. There was something fanatical in his
-work, and he spared no pains to make his reluctant muscles obedient."
-
-The keen resentment of injustice and the irrepressible sympathy
-with the poor and the down-trodden, which the later misanthropy of
-the man could never quell, showed forth in an episode of this time,
-connected with the unveiling of a statue of Charles XII. Though the
-statue had been erected through public donations, the arrangements for
-the unveiling were such as to exclude the people from a view of the
-proceedings. The people threatened to pull down the stands for paying
-spectators which obscured the view, and the troops were called out to
-restore order. August was seated at a gay dinner-party at the doctor's
-house in honour of some Italian operatic stars, when the sounds of the
-battle reached the ears of the company.
-
-"What is that?" asked the prima donna.
-
-"It is the noise of the mob," said a professor.
-
-August could not sit still. The clinking of glasses, the tight
-dinner-talk, the jests and laughter jarred on him. Who were these who
-spoke of the people as "mob"? Something stirred within his breast with
-the call of blood and the passion of identical feeling. He left the
-table and went out into the streets.
-
-"'The mob'!" he writes, "the word rang in his ears, whilst he walked
-down the street. The mob! they were his mother's former school-fellows,
-they were his school-fellows and later his pupils, they were the dark
-background which made the light pictures effective in the place he had
-just left. He felt like a deserter, as if he had done wrong in working
-his way up."
-
-He reached the place where the statue had been raised, and mixed
-with the excited crowds. The clatter of hoofs and the sight of the
-approaching Life Guards filled him with a mad desire to resist all this
-mass of men, horses and sabres. Together they were oppression incarnate.
-
-August placed himself in the middle of the street, right in front of
-the approaching cavalry. Through his mind flashed the call to revolt,
-the born rebel's impulsive desire for self-immolation.
-
-A hand seized him and pulled him out of danger. He was led home, and
-after promising not to return to the scene of struggle the inevitable
-reaction set in with exhaustion and high temperature in the evening.
-
-On the day of the unveiling he was present among the undergraduates.
-At the end of the ceremony there was a skirmish between the police
-and the people. Stones were thrown and order was restored by means of
-sabre-cuts. A man standing near Strindberg was attacked by a police
-inspector. August rushed at the inspector, seized him by the collar and
-shook him.
-
-"Let the man go!" he cried.
-
-"Who are you?" asked the astounded inspector.
-
-"I am Satan," answered the demoniacal liberator, "and I shall take you,
-if you don't let the fellow go."
-
-In trying to seize August the inspector released his hold of the man.
-At the same moment a stone knocked oft the three-cornered hat of
-authority from the inspector's head, and August wrenched himself free.
-The police drove the crowd before them at the point of the bayonet.
-August followed with other enthusiasts, determined to release the
-prisoners. The attempt was, of course, futile; the bayonets were the
-strongest.
-
-Strindberg describes how two gentlemen, one middle-aged, the other
-young, both highly respectable, with conservative views, were seized
-with his own passionate longing to defend the people against the
-police. Speechless, they instinctively grasped each other's hands, and
-with white, set faces ran to the rescue. When the excitement was over,
-and the wave of sympathy had spent itself, they awoke in their normal
-selves and were shocked at their own conduct. August himself could
-jest over his wild outburst, when half an hour later he was seated in
-a restaurant with a chop in front of him and friends around to listen
-to an objective account of the whole incident. The middle-aged merchant
-of impeccable propriety failed to recognise August, when, by chance,
-they met again. The composite consciousness created by the contagion of
-strong emotion had ceased to exist.
-
-When his dramatic recitals to the winds which sweep over
-Ladugårdsgärdet had been followed by the prosaic training at the school
-of the Dramatic Theatre, the conflict between dream and reality was
-followed by the usual tragic results. His wish to make his début in
-an important part was rudely brushed aside. After some humiliating
-experiences, he was given a small part in Björnson's Mary Stuart. He
-appeared as a "nobleman," and all his dramatic energy was, perforce,
-encompassed in the following sentence: "The Peers have sent an
-emissary with a challenge to the Earl of Bothwell."
-
-It was bitterly insignificant, but it was the portal to greater
-achievement.
-
-The disillusionment of his first glimpse behind the scenes was manfully
-rebutted. The boards and the paint which, when seen from the gallery,
-had held so much charm, were now, when scrutinised from the other side,
-dusty and ugly. The actors who were permitted to play great parts were,
-after all, just like ordinary mortals. They yawned loudly between their
-turns, and gave expression to commonplace sentiments as a relief from
-the sublimities uttered on the stage.
-
-After some months, during which Strindberg was only a super, he was
-heartily tired of the whole thing. The mechanism, living and dead, of
-dramatic production disgusted him. He felt repressed and misjudged.
-But at the same time he was ashamed of quitting the profession which
-he had chosen with such high expectations. He demanded his right to
-be tried and judged. He was given an important part and a special
-rehearsal, at which he appeared without stage costume and without the
-requisite enthusiasm. The elder actors resented the arrangement, and
-Strindberg shouted his sentences in a manner which made it clear that
-he was in need of further instruction. He was advised to resume his
-pupilage. But this he would not do. The humiliation was unbearable.
-He cried with rage and decided to commit suicide. An opium pill which
-he had treasured with a view to the possibility of having to summon a
-catastrophic end to life's difficulties was utilised for the purpose,
-but failed altogether of a calamitous effect. A friend, who knew the
-better way, re-awakened Strindberg's interest in earthly existence
-through a merry drinking bout.
-
-On the following day, he tells us, he felt bruised, wounded, tom,
-with quivering nerves and with the fever of shame and drunkenness in
-his veins. He lay on his sofa reading Topelius' _Tales of a Surgeon_
-and musing over his own troubles. His brain worked at high pressure,
-sorting memories, adding and eliminating, calling out personalities. He
-heard his characters speak. It was as if he saw them on a stage. After
-a few hours he had visualised a comedy in two acts, and in four days
-the play was written.
-
-"It was a work," he writes in _Fermentation Time_, "at once painful
-and pleasurable, if it even could be called work, for it came of
-itself, without his will or effort."
-
-"And when the piece was ready," he tells us, "he drew a deep sigh, as
-if years of pain were over, as if an abscess had been lanced. He was so
-happy that something sang within him, and he decided to send his piece
-to the theatre. This was the salvation."
-
-Macaulay thought that books are written either to relieve the fulness
-of the mind or the emptiness of the pocket. He ignored the intimate
-correlation between the two motives. The full mind is only too often
-made inarticulate by the empty pocket, whilst, on the other hand, the
-empty pocket sometimes accelerates processes of the mind which, but for
-that stimulus, would never reach fulness. Strindberg was throughout
-life the slave of a full mind and an empty pocket.
-
-His first effort in drama had now to be submitted to competent
-criticism. He prepared the garret which he rented from the doctor
-for the festive reception of two wise friends. A clean napkin on the
-table, two candles and a bottle of "punsch" were the outer signs of
-the solemnity with which he welcomed his critics. The play was read to
-the end in sympathetic silence. The friends then saluted August as an
-author.
-
-When alone he fell on his knees and thanked God who had delivered him
-out of his difficulties and who had given him the gift of literary
-expression. Perhaps no subsequent literary crises of gestation ever
-equalled the first in intensity of expectation; I he felt that he had
-at last found his vocation, the part he was called upon to play in life.
-
-The material for his first play had been his own family troubles;
-his religious doubts now found expression in a play in three acts.
-He had also discovered that he could write rhymed verse, presumably
-as the result of a visitation of the Holy Ghost. A feverish power of
-production followed: in two months he wrote two comedies, a tragic
-verse drama and some poems.
-
-The first comedy had been submitted to the manager of the Royal
-Theatre. Meanwhile the anonymous author continued to walk the boards,
-now buoyed by a secret joy. His turn would come; the thought of the day
-when he would be recognised made him bold. In his peasant costume he
-felt a prince in disguise.
-
-But the comedy was not accepted. The tragedy which he also sent in met
-with the same fate, though he received a kindly hint that it would be
-worth his while to perfect himself in the art of dramatic construction,
-and that time and experience would be more profitably expended on a
-literary career than on further attempts to succeed as an actor. He
-was advised to return to Upsala. A tragedy with the title _Jesus of
-Nazareth_ was sketched out. It was intended to crush Christianity
-completely and for all time. It was only partly written, when, happily,
-it was abandoned, the youthful author having succumbed to the magnitude
-of his subject.
-
-His last appearance on the stage was ignominious, yet symbolic of his
-future as a writer of drama. No part whatever had been found for him.
-He offered to act as prompter and was accepted. Thus ended the career
-upon which he had entered with such glorious zest.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-"FERMENTATION TIME"
-
-
-Goaded by misfortune, the recalcitrant scholar returned to Upsala
-determined to distinguish himself by obtaining his degree or by writing
-a successful play which would compensate for past failures. His return
-was made possible by the possession of a few hundred kronor, left to
-him under his mother's will.
-
-With five kindred souls he founded a poetical guild to which the
-name _Rune_--"Song"--was given. The meetings of the brethren were
-occasions for improvisation and tippling, for hair-splitting arguments
-and epicurean excesses. They philosophised over life and literature,
-expressed the joy of existence in music, and alcoholic melancholy in
-sad tales of suffering.
-
-August wrote and read poetry which breathed idealism, nature-worship
-and patriotism. He sang to the guitar, sometimes sentimental
-folk-songs, sometimes compositions of a less worthy kind.
-
-The dialectics of the company stimulated August's powers of expression,
-though they interfered with his studies.
-
-A friend advised him to write a one-act play in verse. This, he said,
-would have a greater chance of being acted than a tragedy in five
-acts, which August thought more fitting. The one-act play was written
-in a fortnight. It was called _In Rome_ and dealt with Thorvaldsen's
-first stay in that city. The idea had long been present in his mind.
-It burst into dramatic shape with unmistakable force, and the friends,
-recognising that it had a living spirit, prophesied that it would be
-accepted. The birth of the play was duly celebrated with carousals, in
-which the author was acclaimed with generous admiration.
-
-The psychology of drunkenness was one of the subjects for incisive
-discussion and historical analysis at the meetings of the _Rune_. The
-members certainly did not lack practical experience of its mental
-perplexities, but, however vinous their youthful judgment of the
-problems of life generally, they appraised the possibilities of August
-Strindberg's art with singular accuracy.
-
-Strindberg's slender resources did not save him from the pinch of
-poverty. He had tasted luxury in the doctor's house. His room in
-Upsala was squalid; the rain came through the ceiling, fire-wood was
-scarce, and occasional frugal suppers of bread and water were forcible
-reminders of life's realities. He managed, nevertheless, to study
-æsthetics and living languages with a new ardour. His range of reading
-was widened, and his critical faculties were in a continuous process of
-development.
-
-Ibsen and Björnson dominated the intellectual horizon. August had
-been deeply stirred by _Brand_, when reading it a year earlier, and
-had felt the soul-struggles of Ibsen's deliverer to be identical with
-his own, but he now reacted against the Norwegian invasion of the
-Swedish mind. The gloom of the mountains and fjords of Norway, the
-poverty and enforced abstinences of its people were reflected in the
-minds of its writers, and had no rightful place amongst the smiling
-lakes and flower-strewn sward of Sweden. Ibsen's women now roused the
-instinctive sex-antagonism in Strindberg; he hated Nora, and the whole
-brood of matriarchal ideas, of which he thought Ibsen a dangerous
-modern exponent. Strindberg's later writings against women are
-indirect replies to Ibsen; and his objections to woman's struggle for
-emancipation were expressed with a controversial vehemence which robbed
-them of literary effect.
-
-In the autumn of 1870 _In Rome_ was performed at the Royal Theatre at
-Stockholm. The author was twenty-one years old. He watched the play,
-standing in his old place in the gallery. The inebriation of success
-was now followed by acute pangs of self-criticism. He felt as if he had
-been under an electric battery, his legs trembled, and he wept with
-nervousness. A friend seized his hand to calm him.
-
-"Every stupidity," he writes, "which had slipped into the verse shook
-him and jarred upon his ears. He saw nothing but imperfections in his
-work. His ears burnt with shame, and he ran out before the curtain
-fell."
-
-The attacks upon the clergy now seemed stupid and unjust, the
-glorification of poverty and pride, mistaken; the description of his
-relationship to his father, cynical.
-
-He had found his own play stupid; he was overcome with shame, and death
-by drowning in the rapid waters of Norrström seemed the only atonement.
-
-The incident is characteristic of the man. The thoughts which a few
-months before had been conjured up by the imaginative contemplation
-of Thorvaldsen before the statue of Jason, of the struggle between
-filial duty and artistic consciousness, were now outside their author,
-dismissed, objects of pity. He had grown, whilst the imperfect words
-lay dead on the paper.
-
-The evening ended in the company of friends. His searchings after
-perfection and his intellectual remorse were assuaged by food and drink
-and by the gratification of the lower impulses, to which he yielded
-without the sense of shame or sin.
-
-On the following day he read a favourable notice of the play, in which
-the language was described as beautiful, and the anonymous author was
-said to be a well-known critic who was familiar with the artistic world
-in Rome.
-
-Thus he made his first acquaintance with the sweets of dramatic
-criticism. In Rome has nothing of the fierce personality which, in his
-later plays, outraged the critics of Sweden. There are strokes of fine
-picturing, and there is charm of phrase, but the piece is meagre in
-conception and puerile in expression.
-
-He returned to Upsala and was now, by his father's intervention,
-lodged in the house of the widow of a clergyman. It was hoped that a
-well-regulated home-life, with sufficiency of food and a minimum of
-comfort, would provide his spirits with wholesome restraint. But the
-reverse happened. There were a number of undergraduates staying in the
-house; the table was laden with good things; card-playing and heavy
-drinking occupied the evenings. August was frequently drunk, his brain
-was saturated with the clashing opinions of the young men, who loudly
-wooed their _Weltanschauung_; he was dissatisfied, persecuted by doubts
-and unreasonable remorse. He was in love--for the eighth time--and the
-object of his love was, as usual, unattainable.
-
-In Rome had met with severe, though not altogether unjust criticism in
-another paper. His earlier play, The Freethinker, had been printed and
-published anonymously through the kind offices of a friend. It fell
-into the hands of a hostile journalist who ridiculed it. Strindberg now
-underwent the painful experience of mental dissection at the hands of a
-ruthless critic. However willingly we may condemn ourselves and indulge
-in the bitter-sweet contemplation of the follies of yesterday's ego,
-the rude touch of another's flail arouses every fibre of self-defence.
-
-Though he had promised his father to turn his face against the
-temptations of authorship and to give single-minded attention
-to studies, the creative impulse could not be quelled. He wrote
-_Blotsven_, a tragedy in five acts, which reiterated the religious
-rebellion of _The Freethinker_, depicting the struggle between the
-spirit of the Viking and proselytising Christianity. The old Icelandish
-tales which he now read in the original, and the influence of
-Oehlenschläger, had helped to mould the form.
-
-At this time he became absorbed in the mentality of the Danish writer
-Sören Kierkegaard. His book _Enten-Eller_--Either Or--which treats
-of the struggle between the flesh and the spirit, and which preaches
-the life-fearing asceticism of the helpless sensualist, stirred
-Strindberg's doubts and self-reproaches. An elder friend by the
-runic name of "Is," whose real name was Josef Linck, managed, by the
-simulation of much learning, culminating in intellectual nihilism, to
-persuade August that his stand-point was untenable. The friend talked
-philosophy, æsthetics, world-history, dished up Kant, Schopenhauer,
-Thackeray and George Sand, and dyed August's soul with impotent
-scepticism.
-
-The result was that Strindberg burnt the MSS. of his _Blotsven_. The
-friend had shown that he was not a poet, and the tears which he shed
-over the ashes were embittered by the knowledge that he had deceived
-his father.
-
-He hurriedly decided to pass his examination in Latin compositions.
-He had not made the requisite preparation, called on the Professor in
-a state of after-dinner exaltation, demonstrated his independence of
-spirit, and was promptly turned out.
-
-The suicide of a student brought the supernatural to the door of the
-already over-visited mind. Strindberg had met the unhappy man some days
-before and avoided his company. On visiting the place of the tragedy,
-he was completely unnerved by the sight of blood and the gruesome
-associations. He felt half guilty of murder, could not sleep and was
-haunted by the dead man. The Runic brethren watched over him, but his
-friend "Rejd" nevertheless found him with a bottle of prussic acid
-and sinister intentions. The friend shrewdly suggested a preparatory
-sacrificial rite of four "toddies" before the fatal poison was
-drained. The desired effect was soon apparent. August had to be carried
-home, but as the gate of the house was closed his friends threw him
-over the fence. He remained in a snow-drift until he had recovered
-sufficiently to find his room. But his ghost-ridden soul did not find
-peace until he quitted Upsala a few days later.
-
-He confessed his sins to his father and obtained permission to remain
-at home, and to prepare for his degree in a less disturbing atmosphere.
-He now "felt protected as if he had landed after a night's stormy
-voyage," and slept calmly in his old truckle-bed. _Blotsven_ rose from
-the ashes. He re-wrote it in a fortnight. It was now condensed into one
-act under the title _The Outlaw_, and was sent to the theatre.
-
-Being thus relieved of the supreme duties to his dramatic _daimon_, he
-again descended to Latin compositions and passed his examen in spite of
-continued defiance of the Professor's rules of procedure. The æsthetic
-thesis, which he submitted shortly afterwards, was promptly returned
-to him by the Professor, with the remark that its contents were more
-suitable for the fair readers of an illustrated weekly than for an
-academical discourse. This was indeed injustice. August had poured out
-his most mature views on realism versus idealism, utilising the Danish
-dramatist Oehlenschläger as a buffer between his new and his old self.
-The essay is re-printed in full in the autobiography, and is well worth
-reading. The style is rich in imagery and analogy, the conclusions
-audacious, though a gentle world-weariness pervades every argument.
-Strindberg's later style as an incisive essayist is discernible in
-spite of the periphrastic treatment of dramatic problems from Sophocles
-to Shakespeare. The desire to show erudition is apparent on every
-page, and the author confesses that the wish to show the Professor
-his profound knowledge of Danish literature was one of his motives in
-choosing the subject. The Professor's unsympathetic attitude towards
-his review of Danish literature was, therefore, mortifying.
-
-His quiet life at home had begun well. The earlier struggle against
-poverty had been superseded by well-ordered home-life. August's
-sisters were now grown up; he was impressed and felt sanctified by
-their unostentatious discharge of daily duties which contrasted so
-sharply with his own wild and worthless past. The stem father had been
-mellowed by time, and August spent many evenings with him in friendly
-talk on great subjects.
-
-But rebellion soon drove the son away. August resented some trifling
-interference with his liberty, borrowed a few hundred kronor, and
-settled for the summer in a fisher-man's cottage on one of the Baltic
-islands outside Stockholm. With three of the Runic brethren he now
-threw himself into a healthy outdoor life, bathing, sailing, fencing.
-The body was to be taught natural goodness, and the counsels of Satan
-were to be unheeded. He studied philology, avoided alcohol, and dwelt
-with Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe. Natural asceticism and the mental
-discipline of classifying root-words would curb his vigorous fantasy
-and help him to acquit himself with honour at Upsala. He could expect
-no further help from the father.
-
-At the beginning of the autumn term he arrived in Upsala hungry and
-with one krona in his pocket. He felt justified in borrowing from
-friends, for he was confident of the future. With the small sums which
-he succeeded in drawing on the bank of friendship he rented a miserable
-room, which contained little but a bed without sheets or pillowcases.
-He lay on it in his underclothing, reading by the light of a candle
-stuck in a bottle. Kind friends were responsible for an irregular
-supply of food, but no spartan resolutions could temper the cold
-weather. He succeeded in borrowing a little wood and carried it home
-under cover of darkness. A physicist taught him to extract the full
-calorific value from the charcoal. There was a stovepipe in the room
-which was hot every Thursday when the landlady did her washing. Then
-he stood reading with his hands on his back, leaning against the pipe,
-with the chest of drawers doing service as a reading-desk.
-
-His Viking play had meanwhile been accepted. The first performance was
-received coldly. The critics were ungracious; he was accused of having
-borrowed the form from Ibsen, though the cold restraint and rugged
-simplicity of the language were directly inspired by the Icelandish
-Sagas.
-
-Sick at heart, Strindberg resumed his battle with poverty and
-dejection. The darkness of uncertainty was again upon him, when, with
-the suddenness which is usually reserved for good boys in fairy tales,
-Fortuna held out her hand. He received a letter announcing that the
-King was interested in his play and wished to see him. He could not
-believe his eyes, and suspected that the letter was a joke. On being
-re-assured of the genuineness of the message, he went to Stockholm
-and was received by Charles XV. The King smiled as the young author
-made his stumbling way to the royal presence through the lines of
-courtiers, and greeted him with geniality. Charles XV, himself a poet,
-expressed the pleasure which he had derived from the Viking play, and
-his personal interest in the revival of the old northern tales. After
-inquiries regarding Strindberg's financial prospects, the King ordered
-a yearly stipend of eight hundred kronor to be paid to him from the
-privy purse.
-
-August left the palace, moved and grateful, with the first quarterly
-instalment of the monarch's bounty in his pocket.
-
-The short play which had won royal favour is the first work in which
-Strindberg's mastery over his dramatic art was foreshadowed. The
-terse phrasing fitly embodies the spirit of Norseman valour. It grips
-the reader with the force of a _drapa_, sung in faithful celebration
-of life's attempts and hard-won victories. Gunlöd, the daughter of
-Thorfinn, the old heathen Viking, has been secretly baptised and loves
-the Christian Viking, Gunnar. The human conflict between sorrow and
-resignation, faith and doubt, is drawn with a passionate wish to do
-justice to everyone. Strindberg possessed that power of visualising
-and speaking through the characters of a play with equally apportioned
-interest, which is essential to the true dramatist. His own words on
-his relationship to the Viking play, show that he was fully aware of
-this faculty of artistic self-multiplication and of its penalties:
-
-"Johan[1] had incarnated himself in five persons in the play. In the
-earl, who fights against time; in the bard, who surveys and penetrates;
-in the mother, who rebels and takes revenge, but who is deprived of
-her avenging power through her sympathy; in the girl, who breaks with
-her father because of her faith; in the lover, who is burdened with
-an unhappy love. He understood the motives of all the characters
-and pleaded every-one's cause. But a play which is written for the
-mediocre, who have ready-made opinions about everything, must at least
-be partial to a couple of its characters in order to win the ordinary
-audience which is always passionate and partial. Johan could not do
-this, for he did not believe in absolute right or wrong, for the simple
-reason that all these conceptions are relative. One can be right in
-regard to the future and wrong in respect to the present; one is wrong
-this year, but considered right next year; the father may think that
-the son is right, whilst the mother thinks him wrong; the daughter
-has the right to love whomsoever she loves, but the father thinks her
-wrong in loving a heathen. This was doubt. Why do men hate and despise
-the doubter? Because doubt is evolution, and Society hates evolution
-because it disturbs the peace, but doubt is true humanity and will
-end in equity of judgment. The stupid only are certain, the ignorant
-only believe that they have found truth. But peace is happiness, and
-pietists therefore seek it in the peace of stupidity. It is said that
-doubt consumes the power of action, but is it then better to act
-without considering and weighing the consequences of the act? The
-animal and the savage act blindly, obeying lusts and impulses, thereby
-being like men of action."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Life at Upsala was strangely changed. The royal patronage endowed
-August with a distinction, the pleasure of which was evident. The
-sense of freedom from the pressure of poverty, of having achieved some
-measure of success, expanded his chest and straightened his back.
-His friends did not recognise him. They were accustomed to see in
-August the poor half-starved, erratic youth who needed their help.
-In unconsciously looking down, we add to our self-respect. August
-no longer needed the pity which had given pleasure to givers and
-recipient, and the result was disharmony. The _Rune_ was weakened
-through indifference and internal strife, and died naturally, a victim
-of competition.
-
-August's good fortune was not of long duration. He, die rebel, the
-destroyer of common idols and conventions, had not hesitated to receive
-the King's gift. For he had never believed that the ills of the world
-would be set right by the abolition of monarchy, and in the King's
-gift he saw not the grace of the ruler, but recognition accorded to
-him by a personal friend and admirer. But he soon began to chafe under
-the obligations and restrictions which his new position entailed. At
-the end of the term he manfully struggled through his examination in
-philology, astronomy and sociology. During the next term his mental
-restlessness became acute. The brain was filled with creative energy,
-and the path of learning was blocked. Doubt and apathy chilled his
-efforts to do the work which was expected of him. Sometimes he lay
-all day on a sofa, longing to be free and in the midst of life. He
-felt imprisoned by the royal stipend and sought succour in reading
-the history of philosophy. But the different systems seemed to him to
-possess the same degree of validity, and his head was replete with his
-own thoughts.
-
-One evening he evoked the anger of one of the professors by attacking
-Dante. He declared the composition of the _Commedia_ to be an imitation
-of Albericus' vision, and Dante's greatness to be over-rated. Dante
-was ignorant of Greek, therefore uncultured; he was no philosopher,
-as he suppressed thought by revelation; he was a foolish monk who
-sent unbaptised children to hell. He lacked all self-criticism when
-he classed ingratitude to friends and treason to one's country among
-the worst of crimes, whilst he himself sent his friend and teacher,
-Brunetto Latini, to the nether world and supported the German Emperor
-Henry VII against his native town, Florence. He showed bad taste, for
-amongst the six greatest poets of the world, he placed Homer, Horace,
-Lucanus, Ovid, Virgil and--himself.
-
-The result of these observations was that Strindberg was dismissed as
-insolent and crazy.
-
-A period of increased mental distress and uncertainty followed upon the
-explosion. The town was grey and dirty, and the chill of winter lay
-over the land. There was no stability in his soul--he felt as if it had
-been dissolved, and hovered as a sensitive smoke around him. A forcible
-new impression pulled him together. One day he found his friend, the
-naturalist, painting as a recreation. This was something that would
-condense and support an evaporating ego. To paint green landscape
-in the midst of dull winter, and to hang it on one's wall--that was
-something worth doing!
-
-"Is it difficult to paint?" he asked.
-
-"No, it is easier than drawing. Try it," was the reply.
-
-August borrowed an easel, brushes and paint, locked his door and gave
-himself up to colour-worship. When he saw the blue colour give the
-effect of a clear sky he was enraptured, and when he conjured up green
-bushes and a lawn on the canvas, "he was inexpressibly happy--as if he
-had eaten hashish."
-
-One day, when he had locked himself in, he heard a conversation between
-his friends outside the door. They talked as if they were discussing
-someone who was ill.
-
-"Now he is painting too!" said one of the friends in a tone of deep
-depression.
-
-August reflected and came to the conclusion that he was going mad.
-Fearing compulsory incarceration, he wrote to the manager of a private
-asylum in which the patients were allowed their liberty and to till the
-soil. He expressed his willingness to submit to the curative principles
-of the institution. The reply was kind and reassuring. The manager had
-made inquiries about the would-be patient and found that there was no
-need for extreme steps.
-
-Three months, passed and the second instalment of the royal stipend was
-not paid. A letter of humble inquiry brought the reply that His Majesty
-had never meant to give permanent support to Strindberg, and that it
-was only a question of temporary help. A further sum was enclosed, as
-His Majesty had graciously decided to help his protégé once more.
-
-The first sense of relief was followed by some anxiety as to the
-consequences. The King's promise was no mistake. The real explanation
-of the "disgrace" was not easy to find. Some thought the King had
-forgotten; others that his proverbial generosity had exceeded his
-means. Ten years later Strindberg heard that he had been wrongfully
-accused of writing defamatory verses about the King.
-
-He decided to leave Upsala and to seek work in Stockholm as a
-journalist. At a valedictory gathering of the old friends he thanked
-them for their contributions to his self, "for a personality is
-not developed out of itself; out of each soul with which it comes
-in contact it sucks a drop, like the bee collecting its honey from
-millions of flowers, transforming it and passing it on as its own."
-
-
-[1] In his autobiography he uses his first Christian name: Johan, and
-speaks of himself in the third person.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-THE DRAMA OF THE HERETIC
-
-
-We may agree with Höffding that "every important individuality is
-a point of view for the human race, from which men catch sight of
-possibilities and aspects of existence which would otherwise have
-escaped them." But we must also acknowledge that the strongest
-individuality is i malleable in the hands of experience, and that
-contact with humanity wrenches away the mind from cherished points of
-view.
-
-Though Strindberg was born with defiance of the Decalogue upon his lips,
-though he lived in perpetual revolt against restraint and intellectual
-formalism, though he sought above all to think and not to copy,
-he could not escape that constant pressure of others which is the
-essential of collective existence.
-
-The University, with its rigid forms of instruction, its standards of
-learning, had been the cage on the bars of which he had exercised his
-muscles of independence. He had craved for freedom; his chronic disgust
-at the established order had made him fail through paralysis of will,
-where he might have excelled through natural superiority. And yet he
-felt strangely _en rapport_ with the tradition of the University, when
-in the spring of 1872 he embarked upon journalism in Stockholm. He went
-into humble lodgings on borrowed money, and obtained an ill-paid post
-on a Radical evening paper.
-
-The journalists with whom he now mingled lacked the culture which the
-University imposes even on its most rebellious alumni. They talked in
-ready-made phrases and wrote on subjects over which they had no mental
-mastery. They could harm or help fellow-creatures by the exercise of a
-power for which they were totally unfitted. Loose-witted and garrulous,
-they missed central questions and mistook the gossip of the news-hunter
-for judicial wisdom.
-
-The journalistic profession of that time did not command general
-respect, and the _littérateurs_ of the Radical press were often
-treated as a species of social brigands. They were nameless and their
-activities subterraneous, but they wrote "_We_" and held the mole's
-power of being able to upset the tilled fields of man.
-
-Strindberg plunged into art-criticism, and exposed Count George von
-Rosen's famous picture "Erik XIV and Karin Månsdotter," in the National
-Museum of Stockholm, to the fire of his discontent. The ashes of his
-own drama on "Erik XIV," which he had burnt, lay over his judgment,
-and the feeling of identity with the oppressed classes, now revived
-through associations, made him resent Rosen's conception of Göran
-Persson, the favourite and evil genius of the mad king. Rosen had
-painted the sly and intriguing counsellor with a fidelity which was
-opposed to Strindberg's view of Persson, as an enemy of the nobility
-and a friend of the people. Rosen's standpoint was therefore condemned
-in Strindberg's articles, which appeared after some editorial trimming
-of their literary ornamentation.
-
-A brief but eventful attachment to a ladies' illustrated paper,
-to which he contributed short stories and biography, increased
-Strindberg's knowledge of the exigences of journalism and the
-possibilities for feminine exploitation of the impecunious male.
-
-He chose his friends amongst the artists. They were shabbily dressed,
-cultivated vile manners, were gloriously illiterate, but they had
-originality of feeling and thought. Without book-knowledge they had
-the knack of seizing the essence of life and of settling problems with
-intuitive accuracy. Strindberg still found solace of mind in painting.
-It was like singing. The brush and the colours gave shape to his vague
-imaginings. The post-romanticism of Corot pervaded his circle of
-friends. The idea that one should paint one's own soul, not stocks and
-stones, captivated him.
-
-The only value of the impression lay in its fusion with individuality.
-One should therefore paint from memory, with fantasy.
-
-He always painted the sea with its shore in the foreground, and
-angry-looking firs, some naked cliffs further out, a white light-house
-and sea-marks. The sky was usually clouded, but at the horizon the
-clouds broke, and light was let through. He painted sunrise and
-moonshine, but never clear daylight.
-
-His friends wore long hair, slouch-hats, brightly coloured neckties,
-and lived like the birds. They dreamt of canvas so large and subjects
-so great that no studio could contain them. A sculptor had made
-arrangements with a Norwegian to hew the legendary giant out of the
-Dovre mountain, a painter was going to reproduce the sea--nothing but
-the sea--with a horizon so vast that the globular shape of the earth
-should be made visible.
-
-With two friends of the new life Strindberg talked out his melancholy
-questionings, and sketched the future of regenerated humanity. One
-was a painter of thirty who had been an agricultural labourer, and
-who, after some years' training, had found art an inadequate vehicle
-for thought, and who now "lived on nothing" but the stimulus of his
-eclectic philosophy.
-
-The friend's name was "Måns," and he had a remarkable faculty for
-discovering faulty premises in the fabric of August's _dichtung_. The
-other friend possessed the steadiness of the well-established social
-unit, and contributed a dispassionate and polite scepticism to the
-review of ideas.
-
-They introduced Strindberg to Buckle's theories. There he found support
-for his rebellion against the scholasticism of Upsala, and learnt that
-his disease of doubt was in reality the basis of health. Doubt and
-discontent were the pre-requisites of knowledge and progress--the sole
-paths towards true happiness.
-
-He felt irritated with all that was old and antiquated. Newspapers
-worked for the hour only, with no thought for the future. He could not
-read them without spasms of impatience.
-
-The third volume of the autobiography describes his mental tension
-in the following passages: "His philosophic friend comforted him and
-calmed him by La Bruyère's saying: 'Do not distress yourself over the
-stupidity and wickedness of human beings; you may just as well distress
-yourself over the falling stone; both are subservient to the same laws;
-to be stupid and to fall.'
-
-"'Yes, it is all very well to say that. But to be a bird and compelled
-to live in a mine! Air, light, I cannot breathe; not see!' he burst
-out. 'I am dying of suffocation!'
-
-"'Write,' said his friend.
-
-"'Yes, but what?'"
-
-Out of the mists of doubt, the volatility of convictions, there rose
-creatures clad in flesh and blood, the warring selves of his multiple
-personality. The thin silhouettes of history became instinct with life;
-and Strindberg's first great drama, _The Heretic_, afterwards named
-_Master Olof_, was conceived.
-
-He wrote it during two summer months of quiet life on his island in
-the Baltic. It was necessary to act, for his newspaper had died and
-food was scarce. His kind friends, the fishermen, gave him credit,
-and he could concentrate on his task without the haunting anxiety for
-to-morrow's meals.
-
-_Master Olof_ deals with the Swedish Protestant Reformation. In the
-personality of Olaus Petri, the Swedish Luther, he had found all
-the elements needed for an historical drama of the soul's battle
-and final defeat by the world. Olof, the priest with a message, the
-fanatic who is willing to live and die for the cause of religious and
-social reform, surrenders to compromise. As Archbishop Olaus Petri
-he stands forth as the heretic who had purchased peace at the price
-of spirituality. The tragedy of enthusiasm, wrecked by the practical
-issues of life, is the theme of _Master Olof_, and it has seldom found
-a more intense dramatic expression.
-
-Olaus, with the tongue of fire over his head, called to make war on
-the superstitions and avarice of the Roman Catholic Church, defies the
-bishops. He is saved from the consequences of their wrath by the King,
-who knows the value of the energy which impels the heresy. In Gustavus
-Vasa, the prudent King who makes Olof his secretary, Strindberg saw
-the opportunist, the man of worldly wisdom who neutralises great ideas
-by skimming their froth and rejecting their substance. Olof follows
-his light and becomes a conspirator against the King. But the King is
-stronger than he: caught, punished and pardoned, Olof at last becomes a
-dutiful servant of the State, and of the conservative powers which keep
-Society immune against the onslaughts of enthusiasts.
-
-In Gerdt the printer, who urged the young Olof to become a Daniel and
-to speak the truth before kings, Strindberg saw the revolutionary who
-is the consistent enemy of compromise. In Olof's mother, who dies in
-the Catholic faith cursing her heretic son, he hears the eternal cry
-of the Old stabbed by the New; of the stagnant content that dwells in
-Woman when it is hurt by the passionate discontent that dwells in Man.
-
-The relativity of truth and its perpetual evolution, the inevitable
-clashing of faiths and convictions, invest the struggle between mother
-and son with tragic reality. She has refused to call his wife anything
-but a harlot; for is she not living with a priest? She has in vain
-exerted parental authority to turn her son from the path of perdition.
-To her, Olof is the apostle of Antichrist, the child in the meshes
-of Satan, whom passionately she strives to save. "Ask me not," cries
-Olof to the mother before delivering his heretical sermon. "A mother's
-prayer can tempt angels in heaven to apostasy."
-
-Two rascally priests pray by her deathbed, their thoughts intent on
-the bag of gold which tempts their cupidity. She dies comforted by
-their presence and shrinking from her son's defilement. But death
-smooths sharp differences, and when her eyes are closed Olof lights
-the holy candles, places a palm-branch in her hand, and prays for her
-forgiveness.
-
-The figure of Strindberg's Olaus Petri, burning with religious
-fervour, proclaiming the true creed of Christ to the people who reply
-by throwing stones, a reformer who does not perish by his faith but
-lives by acceptance of common sense, is a contribution to the world's
-deathless _dramatis personæ_. He is very remote from Shakespeare's
-Wolsey, and the psychological climax is reversed, but there is
-an ecclesiastical magnificence in the two characters which forces
-comparisons.
-
-There is an impressive simplicity in the language, and the author
-achieves the highest effects in portraiture with few rhetorical
-devices. The conflict of personalities makes the drama rich in
-contrasts, but they are softened by an atmosphere of fatalistic
-resignation before the irreconcilability of ideas. The characters are
-all right with the limited measure of rightness which is contained in
-each soul. They are all wrong with the wrongness which is inseparable
-from human form. In _Master Olof_ Strindberg spoke as Goethe had spoken
-in _Goetz von Berlichingen_.
-
-_Master Olof_ was written during one of those periods of simple life
-and isolation which Strindberg sought with the craving of the repentant
-monk.
-
-Debauch and drunkenness were eschewed, milk took the place of liquids
-of fermentation. Angling, swimming, fencing and mental gymnastics in
-the company of three sympathetic friends kept body and mind vigorous.
-
-One of the friends paid his bill and our dramatist returned to town
-filled with hope and with the sense of relief of one who has at last
-said what he thinks. The play was sent to the manager of the Royal
-Theatre, and its author returned to the palette.
-
-Whilst waiting for the verdict Strindberg sought to "idiotise" himself,
-and to stifle thought by diligent painting during some weeks. One
-evening at a gathering of press-men, the late editor of the dead
-evening paper told him that the play had been rejected. He felt
-suddenly ill and had to leave the company.
-
-The next day he heard the reason for the refusal. Gustavus Vasa and
-Olaus Petri were distorted and degraded. He knew that he had stripped
-them of their historical and patriotic aureole, and he had deliberately
-restored their human contours. But such restoration was not welcome,
-and he was warned that the public did not want it. A thorough revision
-of the play was recommended.
-
-The bitterness of failure now worked havoc in his soul. He plunged
-into the study of social problems. He found human folly supreme
-in principles of government and in the judgment of majorities and
-minorities. The curse of nescience was upon all flesh.
-
-"His thoughts struggled like fish in the net and ended in entangling
-themselves," he writes of this mood. He tried to dismiss such
-thoughts. But it was impossible. They returned "like a quiet, great
-sorrow, bringing despair because the world went its way--idiotically,
-majestically, inevitably--to the devil." A new rôle, that of sceptic,
-materialist, atheist, seemed to be his own part in the drama of mind.
-He strove to free himself from prejudices, social, religious, moral
-and practical, and ceased to read newspapers. For newspapers praised
-stupidity, mistook acts of egotism for love of humanity, and insulted
-intelligence.
-
-"He had but one opinion: that everything was wrong; but one conviction:
-that nothing could be done to make things better at present; but one
-hope: that some day the time for interference would come, and that
-things would then improve."
-
-There is something infinitely pathetic in Strindberg's life-long
-conflict with social injustice and fatuity. He was like a man digging
-deep for the straggling roots of a large tree. Sometimes he found
-one, but he could never put his foot on all at the same time. Social
-evolution, with its infinite variety of hidden forces, which burst into
-foliage on the tree of good and evil, yielded but few secrets to his
-spade. He besieged the soil in his hand with passionate questions and
-showered curses upon the matter under his muck-rake, but the elusive
-spirit which makes flowers out of dirt and green life out of black
-decay escaped him. The scepticism and impetus to transvalue all values
-which the rejection of _Master Olof_ had accelerated were further
-developed by the company which Strindberg now found congenial. A
-coterie of artists, writers and dilettantish philosophers assembled in
-the evenings in the Red Room of "Berns Restaurant." The tone was free,
-the clamour for truth loud, and contemptuous of the treasures of the
-past. The company was heterogeneous and disputatious, but held together
-by an aggressive scepticism which was beautifully sincere. The axiom
-that the spring of human action is egoism, was the basis of argument,
-and hypocrisy was hunted down with relentless severity.
-
-The old was to be destroyed and the new created.
-
-"That is ancient," were words of reproach. As new human beings they
-must think new thoughts, and new thoughts required new language.
-
-Anecdotes and old jokes were cut short. Phrases and borrowed
-expressions were rejected. One was allowed to be coarse and to call
-things by their proper names, but not to be vulgar, not to quote from
-the latest comic opera or to use witticisms which had appeared in the
-last number of the comic paper.
-
-Everything was focussed to strictly personal and independent judgment.
-Strindberg led the way in destructive criticism. Like Spencer before
-the old masters, he found the artistic perfection of the past centuries
-over-rated and superseded. The historical Jesus had been exposed to
-speculative criticism by scholars, and every tyro in the Red Room had
-the courage to follow.
-
-But Strindberg defied the art-consciousness of the world by attacking
-Shakespeare. He knew all his plays, had read them in English, and was
-familiar with the commentators. He inveighed against the loose and
-disconnected composition in _Hamlet_, the commonplace characterisation,
-the weakness of the anti-climax. His sling wanted a Goliath. The blind
-worship of that which is old and famous roused him to battle. Friends
-who came from Upsala thought alike and talked alike. They had become
-parrots who repeated the same views on Raphael and Schiller, automata
-from which conventional imitation had plucked every idiosyncrasy.
-
-The happy camaraderie of the Bohemian circle and the race for
-intellectual independence did not assuage the pangs of physical hunger.
-After some dinnerless days Strindberg decided to make another attempt
-to join the profession of his heart. He travelled to Gothenburg on
-borrowed money, presented himself to the manager of the theatre, and
-offered his services as actor. His demand for a rehearsal of the play
-and part which he selected was granted, but he could not command the
-necessary emotional energy. He was offered an engagement at a small
-salary, but the condition of waiting for two months before appearing
-did not commend itself to his impetuous spirit, and he returned
-dejected to Stockholm. He felt that the charge of changeability which
-was brought against him was not altogether unjust, and though he was
-ashamed of his many changes, he could not act otherwise.
-
-The persistence with which Strindberg attempted a theatrical career
-is strange in view of the lack of self-confidence, with which he was
-afflicted when face to face with an audience. At viva voce examinations
-he was attacked by sudden aphasia, though he knew the answers to the
-questions. He found difficulty in public speaking, and his linguistic
-gifts did not help him to speak foreign languages with ease.
-
-In the beginning of 1873 Strindberg found employment as editor of
-a new paper published in the interests of the insurance system.
-A less appropriate sphere of activity could scarcely have been
-devised, but he managed to transform the dry bones of premium and
-compensation into delectable morsels of brain-food. He penetrated
-the mysteries of commerce and statistics, studied the relationship
-between birth-rate and pauperism, and examined Socialism as a solution
-of economic riddles. But his inability to accommodate himself to
-existing conditions brought the enterprise to a speedy end. It was
-never financially sound, and when Strindberg chastised the methods
-of shipping insurance companies subscriptions began to fall off. A
-burlesque in which he ridiculed the methods of insolvent companies,
-and which was privately acted before indignant victims did not add to
-his popularity as editor. He exposed shams and humbug regardless of
-consequences. The crash came during the summer, when Strindberg was
-seeking peace of mind on his island. A loan had gaily been contracted
-in the Riksbank to meet the costs of publication.
-
-The day of repayment found Strindberg and his friends of the "Red Room"
-absolutely incapable of paying the debt. The presence of the printer's
-bill and the absence of the guarantees offered by the various insurance
-companies brought him to despair. The catastrophe had been precipitated
-by the carelessness of his coadjutors; Strindberg had honestly done his
-part to fulfil the obligations of the loan.
-
-Strindberg fell seriously ill with fever. In delirious dreams he was
-haunted by futile remorse, by angry creditors and subscribers. In his
-brain-storms he battled with the evil one, who was permitted to bring
-deception and suffering to innocent humanity whilst God looked on
-complacently. His illness was followed by ague, which troubled him for
-many years.
-
-A plan to find Nirvana in the waves ended in the return of the will to
-live and a liaison with the housekeeper in the cottage.
-
-The friends who shared the cottage with him had left, and Strindberg
-fell passionately in love. She had been kind to him during his
-illness, and he felt drawn towards her by invisible cords which, under
-the circumstances, spelt tragedy. For after a short time she was
-unfaithful to him, and he fell a prey to tormenting jealousy.
-
-No human experience passed him by lightly; he was a sensitive subject,
-who received impressions with painful vividness, and responded with the
-volcanic intensity of surcharged emotion.
-
-The description which he gives in _In the Red Room_ of the psychosis of
-his jealousy is of much interest:
-
-     "But as he walked on the shore, through glades and into the
-     forest, design and colour began to mingle as if he had seen it all
-     through tears. The mental shock, remorse, repentance, shame, began
-     to dissolve him, and consciousness was loosened in its fixtures.
-     Old thoughts about a task unfulfilled, about humanity suffering
-     under mistakes and delusions, arose. Suffering enlarged his ego,
-     the impression that he was fighting an evil power stimulated his
-     resistance into wild defiance; the desire to battle with fate
-     awoke, and from a heap of stakes he thoughtlessly picked up a long
-     pointed stick. In his hand it became a spear and a club.
-
-     "He burst into the forest, breaking branches as if he had been
-     fighting its dark giants. He kicked the fungi under his feet as if
-     he were battering in so many empty gnomes' skulls. He yelled as if
-     he were driving wolves and foxes, and opp! opp! opp! echoed the
-     cry through the pine forest.
-
-     "At last he came to a rock which rose as an almost perpendicular
-     wall in front of him. He struck it with his spear as if he wished
-     to hew it down, and stormed up its side. Bushes crackled under
-     his hand, and rustled down the mountain, tom up by the roots;
-     stones rolled down; he put his foot on young junipers and whipped
-     them till they lay broken like down-trodden grass. Thus he forced
-     himself up and stood on the top.
-
-     "The rocks lay below, and beyond them the sea in an enormous
-     circular view. He breathed as if now at last he had sufficient
-     space. But on the mountain there stood a broken fir which was
-     taller than he. He climbed it, spear in hand, and seated himself
-     astride on the top which formed a saddle. Then he took off his
-     belt, made a noose and hung it round a branch, came down from the
-     tree and picked up a large stone which he placed in the sling.
-
-     "Now there was only the sky above him. But beneath him spread the
-     pine forest, head by head, like an army storming his citadel.
-     Beyond it the fjord raged and advanced towards him like cavalry of
-     white cuirassiers; and beyond it lay the naked rocks like a fleet
-     of monitors.
-
-     "'Come,' he cried, and brandished his spear, 'come a hundred, come
-     a thousand,' he called. And spurring his high wooden horse he
-     shook his weapon.
-
-     "The September wind blew from the fjord, and the sun set. The pine
-     forest below became a murmuring crowd. And now he wanted to speak
-     to them. But they murmured incomprehensible words and answered
-     only 'Wood,' when he spoke to them.
-
-     "'Jesus or Barabbas?' he roared. 'Jesus or Barabbas?'
-
-     "'Barabbas, of course,' he answered himself, when he listened for
-     an answer.
-
-     "Darkness fell, and he felt frightened, dismounted from his
-     saddle, and went home.
-
-     "Was he mad? No! He was only a poet who had sung in the forest
-     instead of at the writing-table. But he hoped that he was mad;
-     he wished darkness to extinguish his light, for he saw no hope
-     which could illuminate the darkness.
-
-     "His consciousness, which saw through the nothingness of life,
-     wanted to see no more. It preferred to live in illusions, like the
-     sick man who wants to believe that he will get well and therefore
-     hopes it!"
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Statue by Carl Eldh.--(Reproduced by
-kind permission of the Sculptor.)]
-
-Was he mad? The school of psychologists which sees in every
-manifestation of the _genus irritabile_ evidence in favour of a verdict
-of insanity will conclude that he was. There is urgent need for a
-psychological restatement of the supernormalities of genius. The wild
-outbursts of the world's intuitionalists, the devouring fire of their
-creative passion, must ever remain unintelligible to soul-paupers
-and to those whose cerebral activities are strictly dependent upon
-the presence of print. But genius may expect better understanding
-from those who give careful thought to the processes of mind, and who
-should have penetrated beyond the definitions of "sane" or "mad." Those
-who live and die in ignorance of the blessings of Horace's golden
-mediocrity probably find the compensation which Dryden voiced:
-
-     "There is a pleasure, sure, in being mad,
-     Which none but madmen know."
-
-The consciousness of greatness and power which accompanies the
-unshackling of genius is mistaken for megalomania and contrasted
-with the accompanying inability to achieve worldly success along
-well-trodden roads. The result is contempt and ridicule.
-
-Strindberg descended from his peak of glory, and for the seventh time
-the prodigal son returned to his father's house. He was not welcome. He
-had proved himself a good-for-nothing, and the family now treated him
-with open contempt.
-
-Life at home became intolerable and he again fled to the sea. He
-lived for some time at Sandhamn, amongst pilots and coastguard-men.
-Acquaintance with the sea-faring life was a tonic to the mind and an
-incentive to interest in the practical side of life.
-
-"You are twenty-four," said one of these friends to him, "and you are
-nothing yet. You are surely going to be something, like other people,
-even if you want to be an author, for one can't live on that."
-
-Wise and timely words. Following his friend's advice, Strindberg
-aspired to a clerk-ship in the local telegraph office, and diligently
-practised the art of the telegraph operator. After a month he was
-allowed to send off the weather telegrams. The office routine was
-somewhat painful, but life amongst honest and hard-working seamen
-showed him new sides of human character, and the steady sense of duty
-which keeps the mind placid and happy amidst whirlpools and storms.
-
-Two shipwrecks off the coast supplied material for picturesque and
-vivid description, which he made use of in letters to _Dagens Nyheter_,
-one of the daily papers of Stockholm. The letters brought him a good
-offer of work on the staff of the paper, which he thankfully accepted.
-
-At first everything went smoothly. The editorial office was like an
-observatory, from which one could study the world and watch history
-in the making. By inapt comparison between the old University and the
-potentialities of the new Press, his contempt for the former grew.
-
-The pressman is invested with authority. By the aid of modern
-inventions and the efficient organisation of the news-service, he is
-enabled to survey events on the world's stage, and to seize its acting
-personalities whilst they are still warm with speech. He becomes the
-central nervous system of pulsating humanity; he is expected to
-interpret its sensory impressions and to enrich the body-social by
-concepts and opinions. Strindberg saw the power of the Press, and in
-the anticipatory joy of being able to express himself freely, he buried
-his old disgust at the wickedness of journalism.
-
-But the peace was short-lived. He was soon taught that one must not
-aim at too wide a view-point or express oneself too freely. The ideal
-and the real newspaper are two very different things. The idea that
-a newspaper must offer its comment and its opinions to the buying
-and subscribing public in strict conformity with party colour and
-convention was not one to which he could give loyal allegiance.
-He reported the debates in the _Riksdag_ in such a disrespectful
-manner that a less critical man had to take his place. He reviewed a
-Christian journal by declaring that the publisher had incurred a heavy
-responsibility by spreading such errors, with the result that his
-editor had to appease the indignant publisher.
-
-He gave vent to highly original views on art, and when allowed to act
-as dramatic critic of the performances at the Royal Theatre, took the
-opportunity of paying off old scores. There were many complaints
-against him, and he was even threatened with a thrashing by a
-theatrical company which was smarting under his attacks. It was evident
-that his services were not appreciated, and Strindberg relieved the
-newspaper of his embarrassing presence.
-
-Starvation followed, and under the lash of that whip a few months of
-distasteful work on another paper. This time, he tells us, was a period
-of bitter want, illness and humiliation. He dared' not go home; his
-friends regarded him with pity and suspicion. The circle of the Red
-Room was dissolved. Depression and dislike of human society overtook
-him. There were days when he preferred to go without food to meeting
-people in the restaurant. On other days he followed the same course
-through want of money. Sometimes he spent the whole day lying on a
-sofa, his thoughts spun in a circle which held the hope that death or
-lunacy would set him free, but, when hunger came in the evening, he was
-driven out to seek help.
-
-At this time of utter misery there occurred one of those sudden changes
-of circumstance which are interwoven in the sombre warp and woof of
-Strindberg's destiny like a thread of scarlet. Following a friend's
-advice he had applied for the post of assistant librarian in the Royal
-Library of Stockholm. His application was successful, and in 1874 he
-again placed his foot on the step-ladder of social respectability,
-redeemed by the titles of _Royal_ Secretary and "extraordinarie
-amanuens."
-
-He threw himself into the depths of human thought, contained in
-the books of which he was now master, with the eagerness of one
-who is so thirsty that he wants to drink the sea. New passion, new
-disillusionment. The great problems of life, those that last through
-centuries and chaff the impotence of the human mind, remained problems.
-Like a cow chewing the cud, the philosophers of mankind laboured with
-the same unanswerable questions. Away then from the intellectual fields
-where the mind is poisoned and left in irremediable misery! His new
-work demanded a useful and acceptable contribution to the resources of
-the library.
-
-He undertook to catalogue Chinese Manuscripts, and devoted a year
-to the study of the Chinese language. When the catalogue was ready,
-he handed it with a certain pride of victory to the authorities of
-the library, for he was now the sinologue of the institution. The
-ancient culture of the yellow empire attracted him with its atmosphere
-of somnolent mysticism. It was an opiate to his restlessness. In the
-Chinese literature he searched for information about Sweden and Swedes,
-and in the Swedish literature he looked for references to China and its
-inhabitants.
-
-The result was a "Memoir," which was read at the Académie des
-Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Correspondence with sinologues all
-over the world followed, together with membership of learned societies
-and a medal from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. "Thus,"
-Strindberg tells us, "he succeeded in contracting a healthy idiotism
-which seriously threatened to extinguish all intelligence." He advanced
-so far on his new path that he even coveted a Russian order.
-
-He was at last somebody and something in the eyes of the world.
-
-Friends recognised him, and saluted him like one who, having been sick
-and foolish, had tired of his folly, and returned to normal life.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-MARRIED AND BLASPHEMOUS
-
-
-Strindberg's relations to women and his three unhappy marriages
-were the fountain of soul-racking experience from which he emerged,
-possibly not wiser, but certainly more powerful as an interpreter
-of himself and of humanity. The women he loved were injured by him,
-inasmuch as he made their real and imagined failings the subject of
-brutal biographical romance. The fact that the blame fell upon him,
-not upon the victims of his conjugal experimentation, would scarcely
-compensate for the painful publicity with which he punished the women
-and unburdened himself.
-
-Worthy people have agitated themselves over the question whether
-Strindberg was a real evil-liver or not. He was certainly an evil-liver
-in the sense of conventional morality. In giving free play to the
-impulses of his ever-expanding personality, he played the colossal
-egotist and sinned against the laws of God and man. If by evil-liver
-we understand a craven sensualist or a man beset with Don Juanesque
-frivolities, he was not one.
-
-There was nothing of the light-hearted immoralist of the comic
-stage, or the poetic profligacy of Robert Bums, about Strindberg;
-he acted throughout the heavy tragedian in the inexorable drama of
-sex-antagonism.
-
-The exemplary husband and the faithful lover are not, as a rule, found
-among the torchbearers of literature, though few elect to outrage
-literary decency by minute public dissections of their past loves. _The
-Confessions of a Fool_, which Strindberg himself called "a terrible
-book," is a nauseating record of his first marriage, in which love
-and lust, hatred and disgust, adoration and contempt, exultation and
-misery, are set forth in their psychological relation to a sexual love,
-the disappointment of which lashed the artist in Strindberg into fury
-against woman. The ghost of Strindberg's first wife never left his
-side. In the _Confession_ she is portrayed as a beautiful siren with
-golden hair, adorably small feet and a false heart--a fiend in female
-form, with the soul of a prostitute and the worst vices of a loathsome
-debauchée. She reappears in his dramas _The Father, Comrades, The
-Link_; in his stories and essays; in different characters, drawn with
-a pen dipped in gall, retouched and seen in different perspective, but
-always the cause of man's degradation or downfall.
-
-Strindberg's first marriage was preceded by a divorce, for his wife
-Siri von Essen, daughter of Captain Carl Reinhold von Essen, was at
-the time when Strindberg made her acquaintance the wife of Baron
-Wrangel, Captain of the Life Guards. The reader of the fourth volume
-of Strindberg's autobiography, entitled _The Author_, and of _The
-Confession of a Fool_, receives very different impressions of the
-author's first experience of matrimony. In the former, which deals
-with the period 1877-87, there is scant reference to the matrimonial
-tragedy which is the sole and sordid theme of _The Confession_, which
-relates to the same period. _The Author_ was published in 1887, _The
-Confession_ was written in 1888, a German version published in 1893,
-and the original French edition in 1894. The reason for the omissions
-in _The Author_ may mercifully be found in the desire to shield living
-persons in Sweden from the fate of being the central figures in a
-_chronique scandaleuse_. _The Confession_ has never been published in
-book-form in Sweden, or in the Swedish language.[1] A pirated Swedish
-translation appeared in instalments in a disreputable paper in spite
-of the author's protest. Throughout his literary warfare Strindberg
-has shown scant regard for personal feeling, and when he withheld _The
-Confession_ from Swedish readers he probably was conscious of the dire
-results which would follow upon the publication of his "worst" book.
-The law-suit following upon the publication of _Married_, in 1884,
-must have been a warning example. In a letter written from Paris,
-in 1884, Björnstjerne Björnson relates his impressions of a visit
-from Strindberg, and refers to the latter's inability to deal with
-principles and opinions apart from personality.
-
-"He has been a pietist," he writes, "and so he is still, in spite of
-many experiences--not religiously, but morally. A cause is for him only
-persons, bring them out, whip them."[2]
-
-In _The Confession_ Strindberg's wife is certainly brought out and
-whipped. But the whipping was preceded by idolatrous adoration.
-
-"He would and he must have a woman to worship," he writes of some
-innocent _schwärmerei_ which was a prelude to the fugue of marriage.
-"To worship was his weakness, since the idea of God had been obscured.
-He was too weak to believe in himself, and his sense of reverence,
-which was given no nourishment as he had lost reverence for everything,
-found this expression. He had no friends, and he must, therefore, at
-any price worship, revere, love."
-
-Of the troubled termination of another love episode, which was not so
-innocent but which served to arouse his yearnings for pure affection,
-he writes with true Strindbergian absence of erotic humour:
-
-"If he had now been inclined to be a woman-hater he would, of course,
-not have looked at a woman again, and condemned the whole sex, but he
-was a woman-worshipper, and, therefore, he immediately found another."
-
-The woman-worshipper in Strindberg was generally silenced by his
-inseparable twin--the woman-hater. The woman-worshipper fell in love
-with the pretty baroness, suffered the torture of the damned in being
-denied her presence, was enslaved by her "roguish curls, golden as a
-cornfield on which the sun is shining,"[3] her willowy figure, her
-movements full, of softness and grace, her elegance in dress, her
-aristocratic apparition. The woman-hater looked on the "fall" with a
-sneer, participated with joy-mingled disgust in the intrigue which led
-to divorce proceedings, hurried marriage, and the premature birth and
-death of a child, cursed the bondage of ten years of married "hell,"
-and finally related the intimacies of the conjugal struggle in the
-public confessional in sibilant tones of revenge.
-
-The friendship between the "Royal secretary" and the Baroness began
-under the happiest circumstances and without any fore-shadowing of
-coming evil. Strindberg was a welcome guest in the family, a trusted
-friend of husband and wife, a respectful admirer of the girlish
-mother who, seen by the side of her little girl of three, seemed
-Madonna-like in her chaste aloofness. The Baroness dreamt of going
-on the stage, of devoting herself to art, to a mission, and of thus
-gaining individual independence. The theatre became a bridge of union
-between her and Strindberg. The Baron was a sympathetic listener, a
-pleasant companion, a gallant soldier, who, though warmly interested in
-Strindberg's personality and career, could not always suppress a slight
-condescension in his manner towards him.
-
-The aristocracy of birth and the aristocracy of brain presented
-themselves to Strindberg in a juxtaposition which threw the superiority
-of the former into pleasant relief. That class-consciousness, which was
-peculiarly sensitive in him, invested his friendship with the Baron
-with a special interest. When visiting him at the guard-house he was
-not altogether free from a sense of awe and admiration engendered by
-the atmosphere of military power and aristocratic rule. "A son of the
-people," he writes, "a descendant of the middle classes, cannot but be
-impressed by the insignia of the highest power of the land."
-
-Before the bowl of _punsch_ he enjoyed a sense of social superiority
-over the lieutenants, an identity with the ruling forces which
-was rudely shattered when the conversation turned on the riot of
-1868, during which the Guards had charged into the mob, of which
-Strindberg had been a red-hearted constituent. When the Captain spoke
-contemptuously of the mob, "the hatred of race, the hatred of caste,
-tradition, rose between them like an insurmountable barrier." "As I saw
-him sitting there," writes Strindberg, "the sword between his knees--a
-sword of honour, the hilt of which was ornamented with the name and
-crown of the Royal giver--I felt strongly that our friendship was but
-an artificial one, the work of a woman, who constituted the only link
-between us."
-
-The birth of Strindberg's illicit passion for the Baroness was followed
-by alternate spells of adoration and loathing. The picture which he
-draws of the struggle is highly characteristic.
-
-He makes his attic into a temple of worship, with azaleas, geraniums
-and roses, and prepares an altar for the adoration of his Madonna with
-the child. He places her portrait in a semicircle of flower-pots,
-with the lamplight full on it, and passes the evenings with blinds
-drawn down in the Holy of Holies. But the strain becomes unbearable.
-Another evening he is found in the midst of dissolute friends, a
-partaker in an orgy of youthful blasphemy and desecration of love.
-Amidst bacchanalian invocation of the satanic, he delivers himself
-of a rhapsody of insults against the adored woman, dissects her in
-anatomical terms and coarse allusions, and ends the day by sacrificing
-his woman-worship on the polluted altar of Aphrodite Pandemos.
-He wants to flee from temptation, and decides to quit Stockholm
-for Paris. Embarked upon a cargo steamer bound for Havre, after a
-touching farewell from his two friends, duty's journey is found to be
-unendurable. He is tormented with loneliness, overcome by the thought
-of the dreary voyage and the cruel separation from the beloved. A
-wild desire to escape from the moving prison, to swim to the shore,
-seizes him. An opportunity for less dramatic flight offers itself; the
-pilot cutter is about to leave the steamer for the shore. Strindberg
-impetuously begs the captain to put him ashore, and the latter,
-suspecting the sanity of the traveller, allows him and his luggage to
-depart in the cutter. Once ashore and in the quiet seaside place where,
-the spring before, he had spent happy hours with her the situation
-becomes awkward. He is ashamed of his weakness; how is his conduct to
-be explained? After engaging a room at the hotel he wanders into the
-forest and runs amuck among the fir trees and the tender associations
-of the past, the tears raining down his cheeks, his heart in a turmoil
-of conflicting emotions. He concludes that he must either die or go out
-of his mind, and chooses a wilfully contracted pneumonia as the most
-suitable road to extinction. He undresses by the shore, throws himself
-into the cold water and swims out into the open sea. After a struggle
-with the waves, he returns exhausted. Beckoning Fate to do her worst,
-he then climbs an aider tree in a state of perfect nudity. The icy
-October gale responds, and, when he descends shivering, he is satisfied
-with the first part of the expiatory act. Back at the hotel he sends
-a telegram to the Baron, informing his friends of his illness, goes
-to bed, and drains a cup of poison in the form of an overdose of the
-sleeping-draught supplied by the local chemist. The next morning brings
-the Baron and the anxious Baroness, and a return of rude health which
-neither gale nor poison could shake.
-
-He returns to Stockholm, and the old life is resumed. Frequent calls
-on the Baroness, weak struggles to resist, are followed by mutual
-declarations of love. She visits his attic and the temple of pure
-adoration is made profane. Her tender conscience finds excuses in her
-husband's infidelities, her ardent lover is in the ecstasy of conquest.
-The husband is told everything. The scandal, the family quarrels, the
-intermixture of the criticism and condemnation of others which follow
-expel the sinners from their paradise.
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--1884.]
-
-Proceedings to dissolve the marriage are commenced, and the Baroness
-spends a few weeks in Copenhagen so as to comply with the legal
-necessity of having "deserted" her husband. On her return to Stockholm
-she is determined to realise her ideal of going on the stage. She
-succeeds in obtaining an engagement under the patronage of two famous
-actors and eventually makes a successful début. The requisite publicity
-is provided not only by lovers of art, but also by scandal-mongers. The
-process of disillusionment has begun. The iconoclast is already master
-of the idolater, and Strindberg sees the disjointed skeleton where a
-few months ago he saw the beautiful form of a goddess. "Everything
-was permitted to us now, but temptation had diminished," he writes in
-illustration of that lurking element of the _macabre_ which caused
-sudden satiety and shattered his love through the dissociation of
-his sexual personality. He does not stand by, a passive onlooker of
-the dissolution; he assists by bitter invective and gross abuse. The
-ex-Baroness on the stage is no longer to him the virginal mother with
-whom he had fallen in love; she is an actress "with insolent gestures,
-bad manners, boastful, overbearing." The sight of the stockings,
-destined to envelop the feet which a short time ago were heavenly, is
-now revolting. He notices that her room is untidy, her dress slovenly,
-that she wears old slippers, and that her gestures are reminiscent of
-the street. He discovers that he has no desire for her company, that
-she inspires him with disgust.
-
-Such were the first stages of Strindberg's union with the woman, who
-has been analysed, divided, multiplied and endowed with every variety
-of feminine crime in his writings. Eager to fly from "the repulsive
-heap of offal," to which he likens the whole tragedy of the divorce,
-he went to Paris in the company of a friend who enjoyed the sudden
-affluence of a legacy. This time he safely reached his destination, and
-experienced no uncontrollable impulse to abandon the journey. In Paris
-he received a letter from the Baroness, in which she told him that she
-was about to become a mother and begged him to save her from dishonour.
-
-His love received a fresh stimulus; the shade of the Madonna resumed
-temporary physical form. Strindberg returned to Stockholm, willing to
-retrieve the past and mould the future by holy matrimony. The wedding
-took place in December, 1877. Shortly afterwards a little girl was
-prematurely born--a weakly infant who died two days later, thereby
-saving the parents the anxiety of keeping its existence secret.
-
-The unfoldment of the story of Strindberg's first marriage, the
-tragi-comedy of its rhythm of love and hatred, shows not only
-incompatibility of temper and a profound spiritual alienation, but
-his unfitness to bear with equanimity prolonged period of domestic
-enslavement. The superficial reader of the unpleasant details of _The
-Confession_ will close the book with Géronte's question on his lips:
-"Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?" The sexual psychology
-of the book, its profound, though brutal exposure of its author's
-emotional intemperance, can only be studied in conjunction with the
-whole of his autobiographical writings. A mood, a phase, a temper,
-appertaining to the woman-hater, are seething in _The Confession_, and
-produce pearls of literary power as well as comicalities, and bêtises
-which are reminiscent of a third-rate French novel.
-
-_The Author_ reveals the idealist in quest of true love, a man who can
-feel the purity and joy of generative creation, the natural pathos and
-sacredness of family life.
-
-Of the psychic rearrangement which preceded the birth of the second
-child, Strindberg writes:
-
-"He received the first certainty with fear. How could he receive and
-bring up a child, and how would the ideal marriage of his dreams now be
-realised? But he accustomed himself to the thought, and the unborn one
-soon became a personal acquaintance, a beloved guest who was expected,
-and for whose future he wanted to fight. The wife who hitherto had been
-a comrade was endowed with another value as mother, and the ugly side
-of their relationship, which already had been noticeable, disappeared.
-A great, high mutual interest ennobled the relationship, made it
-more intimate and roused dormant forces to activity. This time of
-waiting was more beautiful than the period of the engagement and the
-honeymoon, and the arrival of the child the most beautiful in his life."
-
-Those who see in Strindberg's attitude towards marriage and women
-nothing but the ravings of a sacrilegious and obscene mind deliberately
-shut their eyes to aspirations, such as the above, which, however
-fleeting, were as much a part of the man's attitude as the profanities
-which even his warmest panegyrists cannot defend.
-
-Strindberg continues: "When he held the new-born daughter in his arms
-he felt that the soul only achieves immortality through transformation
-in a younger body, and that a childless life is a carnivore which only
-eats others without being eaten. But he also experienced a strange
-feeling of having flowered and gone to seed. He was child again in his
-child, but he himself felt that he had grown old. He was deposed and
-there was already a successor in the house."
-
-The feeling of being deposed did not prevent subsequent acts of
-unimpaired autocracy, but the record of the first rush of feelings of
-paternal solidarity is of interest in view of the anarchic hostility to
-the family which Strindberg's writings so often express.
-
-The troubled course of love had not interfered with the rising wave
-of literary productivity. Before marriage he had continued to write
-short stories descriptive of coast life, and in addition to his labours
-as assistant librarian he had obtained fairly remunerative work as an
-art-critic. He had experienced so much disappointment as a dramatist
-that he decided to employ another literary form.
-
-In 1877 a collection of short stories appeared, entitled _From
-Fjärdingen and Svartbäcken_, which described the undergraduates' life
-at Upsala and caused annoyance by its disclosure of the swamps and
-pitfalls in the academical training-ground. These twelve sketches,
-written with directness of phrase and a vividness of description which
-show keen powers of observation, were met with charges of exaggeration.
-The superannuated student who spins out a worthless existence in
-gasconade and song, supplementing the weakness of his mind by a few
-high-sounding philosophical catch-words; the popular poet who wins
-applause and friends by impromptu doggerel, stupid and coarse; the
-refined and sensitive youth who is hated because he is a devotee of
-outer and inner cleanliness and decorum; the wild spendthrift who
-smashes windows and extinguishes street-lamps as a pastime worthy
-of his caste--these and others are drawn against a background of
-traditional cant, humbug and soul-destroying lies. Several of the
-stories have autobiographical patches. There is withal a good-humoured
-satire, not free from youthful pathos, permeated by sympathy and a
-personal note of an experience acutely felt. The book is interesting as
-the first specimen of Strindberg's realistic style as a prosaist. The
-reviews of the book expressed divergent opinions; Strindberg read them
-with the composure of one who knows how such views are manufactured.
-
-Rebuffed by the refusal of theatrical managers to accept _Master Olof_,
-he had re-written it in verse. The new edition was published in 1877,
-and the reception brought its author bitter disappointment, and fuller
-experience of the indifference which kills. The critics were silent.
-They ignored the masterpiece of his youth, and presented a deaf ear to
-the poetry of the heretic. One paper declared the play to be humbug.
-His old colleagues of the press-table saw no reason for acclamation.
-
-The satire which had shone with a mellow light in the sketches of
-Upsala life was fanned into hot flame through contact with the world
-of Philistines. Determined to speak his mind untrammelled by accepted
-standards of literary form, whether poetic or prosaic, historical
-or modern, he now wrote a novel which he called _The Red Room_. The
-book was published in 1879, and produced an outburst of anger and
-admiration. Voltaire's words, "Rien n'est si désagréable que d'être
-pendu obscurément," had been chosen by Strindberg as a motto for
-the book and in protest against the treatment he had received. The
-force and style of _The Red Room_ effectively protected its author
-from continued obscurity. Strindberg's name was made by this book;
-henceforth it was the war-cry of opposing factions. As a novel the
-book fails through lack of cohesive development of character-study
-and events. As a series of sketches of the follies and vanities which
-permeate the social hierarchy it compels attention by its direct,
-speaking style, and the singular freshness and spontaneity of its
-satire. The central figure of the book is Arvid Falk--Strindberg the
-idealist--a journalist whose contact with the world results in a series
-of disillusionments. Everything that is dishonest, cruel, banal,
-hypocritical and vile in the social system is exposed to view in the
-pages of _The Red Room_, which still, after thirty years, retain their
-freshness and the warmth of the burning moral indignation which caused
-them to be written.
-
-He had found in the depth of the human heart the seven deadly sins,
-and he traced their poison in every human relationship, under the
-cloak of respectability, in the qualities which lead to worldly
-success and honour. Oblique finance, dishonest company-promoting,
-show philanthropy, unctuous religiosity, servile journalism, create
-characters which are drawn in bold and dark outline with strongly
-concentrated colours, but without the exaggeration of which he
-was accused. The characters are so typical of human weakness and
-wickedness, the psychological analysis of motives and acts so accurate,
-that the indictment of the book remains true in spite of changes
-in social form and personal types. The pompous publisher who grows
-fat on the brains of young authors, whilst he intimidates them by
-depreciation; the editor who finds favour with his party and his
-employers by suppressing every unwelcome truth and spreading every
-useful party lie; the moneylender who builds up a banking business
-through exploitation of the financial ruin of others, are contrasted
-with the unsuccessful and the unworldly.
-
-Amongst the artists and intellectual _dilettanti_ who assembled in the
-Red Room of Berns Restaurant in the evening, and whose hard struggle
-for bread in the day formed such a sharp contrast to the comfort of the
-time-servers, Strindberg found the Dionysian madness, without which the
-sanity of the rest of the world would have been unbearable. There is
-still life in the making, goodness inviolable, a brotherhood that woos
-the joy and beauty of life, contemptuous of the badges and labels of
-Society! But the majority who writhed under his satirical portraiture
-did not find compensation in his exceptions. For the lightning
-of his satire had not only played upon the time-worn objects of
-ridicule--those from which they dissociated themselves with a smile of
-tolerant amusement--it had illuminated and rent the pillars of Society
-to which they clung with superstitious respect. Had he not shown how
-literary and dramatic reputations were made and unmade by the personal
-ill-will or good-humour of self-constituted critics? Had he not handled
-the activities of the ancient art-critic, who bestowed automatic
-praise on all his old friends, and chilly silence on all new painters
-with merciless severity? Did not his unseemly badinage with the
-civil service, and with the well-established routine in governmental
-departments, stamp him as an enemy of Society? Some method of silencing
-him had to be found.
-
-The manner in which the book was written was provocative by its
-idiomatic phrasing and the naturalness of its scenes--every sentence
-was charged with revolt against the ultra-academical style which had
-been the accepted standard of good writing. This was a realism in
-fiction which was dangerous alike to morals and literary comportment,
-introduced by a man who proved himself to be master of a new art in
-words. The anxiety was abated, when some outraged critic hit upon the
-idea that Strindberg was but an imitator of Zola. This was not true;
-the author of _The Red Room_ had not read any of Zola's writings, but
-he had read Dickens--thoroughly--and admired the gentle humour with
-which the great English novelist unmasked social injustices and their
-complacent representatives. He had felt a desire to be able to clothe
-his indictment of Society in similar form. There is little similarity
-between the writings of Dickens and those of Strindberg; the latter
-lacked altogether the child-like and detached interest with which
-Dickens watched and chronicled the doings of the amazing people around
-him.
-
-In Dickens's books there is a distinct line of cleavage between the
-good and the bad characters. _The Red Room_ contains well-marked
-specimens of both, but most of Strindberg's writings depict the hybrids
-of good and evil, the psychological complexity in the human struggle
-for knowledge. As a novelist Strindberg shows some affinity with
-George Gissing. Strindberg's descriptions of the squalid tragedy of
-poverty--honest, hopeless, heaven-forsaken poverty--have the same power
-of spoiling the enjoyment of a good dinner as those of Gissing. In _New
-Grub Street_ Gissing lets Biffen say, "Show the numberless repulsive
-features of common decent life." The repulsive features of human life
-generally met with protesting resonance in Strindberg's poignant
-sensibility; he described them and the result is "unpleasant."
-
-The publication of The Red Room was followed by an intense literary
-activity on the part of its restless author. He had found his tongue,
-and he had found an audience.
-
-The versatility of mind and production which was the despair of his
-critics became apparent. In 1880 _The Secret of the Guild_, a comedy
-in four acts, was published. The theme of the play is the unsuccessful
-attempt to complete a church by a guild of masons in Upsala in 1402.
-For fifty years the work has proceeded, but envy, dishonesty and pride
-of trade have stood in the way of its completion. The old alderman is
-deposed and his son becomes master of the work. Jacques, the son, is
-a man of action, ambitious and unscrupulous, who urges on the work
-without the cautiousness of old age. The roof is laid, the tower is
-built, but the secret of success has eluded Jacques. The tower falls
-as a result of ignorance of the spiritual secret which would have
-preserved it. "The church was built in sin and therefore it lies
-in ruins," says the old alderman. The play faithfully reflects the
-Middle-Age atmosphere, and harmonises with Strindberg's earlier plays
-in its vivid presentation of the struggle between two generations.
-
-Its infusion of faith and Christian symbology had the effect of
-modifying the storm of execration, with which pious respectability
-strove to break the author of _The Red Room_.
-
-The performance of _Master Olof_ at the Swedish Theatre in 1880 was
-a great success, and it was no longer possible to ignore Strindberg
-as a dramatist. Revised five times in deference to criticism and
-technique, the play had at last conquered opposition by the richness
-of its historical imagination, the splendour of its form and the fiery
-youthfulness of its treatment of the oldest of spiritual problems. The
-tardy acknowledgment was balm even to Strindberg's sceptical soul, and
-the two plays which he now wrote breathed "faith, hope, and charity,"
-as if the gloomy truths of _The Red Room_ had been forgotten.
-
-_The Journey of Lucky Peter_[4] satirises humanity and Society in its
-narrative of what befell Peter who wanted to see the world and taste
-its luxuries, but like all good fairy-tales the drama ends happily,
-and Peter regains peace of heart, and finds his dual-soul. And the
-satire is tempered with a humour, so sympathetic, an understanding
-of the doers and victims of evil, so delicate, that the reader of
-this fairy-play puts down the book with a sigh of satisfaction that,
-after all, the worst experiences in this world prove themselves to be
-but necessary milestones of the pilgrim's progress. Lucky Peter who
-discovers the nothingness of the rich man's pleasures, of the king's
-power, the bitterness of fame, the changeability of human institutions!
-We envy him his rapid liberation from the chains of flesh, the severe
-tuition under his fairy-teacher. The charm of the play is irresistible;
-it has the mysterious eventfulness of _Peter Pan_ and _The Blue Bird_,
-but none of the fatuities which often distort plays for children of all
-ages. Even when he entered fairyland Strindberg could not leave his
-intelligence behind.
-
-In _Sir Bengt's Wife_, the other play of this period, he gives us
-an historical drama of marriage, in which love rises triumphant and
-purified through life's difficulties and misunderstandings. Sir Bengt
-has fallen in love with the nun who is doing penance for the sinful
-response of her unruly woman's heart. He delivers her from the tyranny
-of the abbess, and the wedding festivities promise a life-long feast
-for the bold knight and his fair lady. But the fates are jealous of
-so much happiness, such blending of strength and beauty, and disaster
-overtakes them in the person of the king's bailiff who demands the
-payment of a heavy fine in consequence of the knight's negligence in
-not having provided the king with a mounted soldier. Sir Bengt is
-unable to pay, and loses his knighthood. The unscrupulous bailiff, who
-has designs upon Lady Margit, helps Sir Bengt to accept the services
-of a moneylender by which complete ruin is averted. Sir Bengt conceals
-his trouble from his bride, and seeks to redeem his position by hard
-and honest work. A child is born, but the harmony between husband and
-wife is disturbed through misunderstandings. To Lady Margit the change
-in her husband is distressing: he works like a peasant, and has become
-oblivious of the arts and graces of knightly conduct.
-
-One day when, by ignorance and womanish love of the beautiful, she
-has thwarted his plan for the restitution of his property he lifts
-his hand to strike her. Protected by the Reformation, which has now
-been accomplished, she asks the king to dissolve her marriage with a
-brutal and unworthy man. The wicked bailiff is watching the disruption
-of the home with satisfaction, and succeeds in gaining Lady Margit's
-affection. Fortunately she discovers the villainy of his plan, and
-tastes the reprobation of "the world" in time. The _dénouement_ of the
-play is reached by a reconciliation between husband and wife, following
-upon the mutual discovery of sterling merit and the inviolability of
-marriage, parenthood and home. The simplicity of the love-drama, the
-inherent goodness of the characters, including the Father Confessor
-who, to fit the general harmony, kills the phantoms of his lower nature
-is scarcely Strindbergian. One dominant note rings clear and undefiled
-through the three plays of this period: the sense of the sacredness
-of paternity. The pathos and tragedy of fatherhood are interwoven in
-many of Strindberg's plays, but generally entangled in a multitude of
-disturbing emotions.
-
-_Sir Bengt's Wife_ was published in 1882, _The Journey of Lucky Peter_
-in 1883. During the years 1880-82 a work entitled _Old Stockholm_[5]
-appeared, with Strindberg and Claes Lundin as joint authors. It is
-a popular and comprehensive account of past customs, institutions
-and pleasures of the citizens of the capital of Sweden, profusely
-illustrated. Strindberg had collected the material at the Royal
-Library, and planned to write the whole work. His health broke down
-through overwork, and he found it necessary to engage a collaborator.
-He managed, however, to write entertainingly on guilds and orders,
-legends and superstitions, street music and amusements, celebration of
-Christmas and Easter, slang, fauna and flora of the city of his birth.
-_The Red Room_ had already shown Strindberg's keen observation of the
-character and peculiarities of Stockholm life; the _genius loci_ had
-in him a faithful, though not always flattering, _raconteur_. In _Old
-Stockholm_ the comprehensiveness of his knowledge of the history of the
-Swedish capital became apparent.
-
-The solidity of his antiquarian and historical research brought him
-an offer to write a popular history of Swedish culture which he
-accepted, on condition that the independence of his historical sense
-should not be suppressed. Having prepared his material he was lost in
-philosophical speculation over the absence of an intelligent connection
-between cause and effect. "Was not history a capricious muddle, a walk
-in a circle? Had not civilisations risen and perished, social systems
-appeared and disappeared, religions changed and men remained unwise and
-unhappy?" He succeeded in contracting his point of view, and wrote his
-history with the intention of counteracting the prevalent method of
-viewing historical events through the medium of privileged personages.
-Others had overrated the personal factor. Strindberg admits that he
-under-rated it. _The Swedish People_ met with angry criticism and
-resentment of the sceptical manner in which time-worn and honoured
-tenets were treated.
-
-The reception of _The Swedish People_ aroused the powers of satire
-which had been lulled to sleep during a temporary spell of optimism.
-The warm and sunny atmosphere, in which the warrior had rested, gave
-place to storm and thunder, and Strindberg gathered his force for a
-fresh attack on Society. This time he disdained the form of the novel
-which, though thin and undeveloped, had yet made it possible for some
-of the parties arraigned to dismiss _The Red Room_ as a piece of clever
-but fantastic fiction.
-
-_The New Kingdom_, which appeared in 1882, is a series of satirical
-descriptions of the ideals and conduct of the inhabitants of the
-"new kingdom" which was supposed to have been created by the Swedish
-constitution of 1865. The book is an attack upon everything that
-average humanity holds dear; the scorching satire plays like lightning
-upon royalty, militarism, history, aristocracy, bureaucracy, the press,
-the theatre, and, with special annihilative pleasure, on the Swedish
-Academy. It was impossible to deny that Strindberg had descended from
-generalisations to portraiture, that well-known and highly-respected
-personages had been pilloried and caricatured. Affronted Society
-declared the book to be simply a lampoon on spotless individuals.
-Though the personal attacks were doubtless in bad form, and, though
-there are passages in the book which strain ridicule to the point of
-the grotesque and the vulgar, the brilliant wit, the profusion of
-ideas, and, above all, the incomparably good temper place The New
-Kingdom in the forefront of contemporary satirical writings. The genre
-of Grenville Murray's Les Hommes du Second Empire had suggested the
-form. An affinity with Max Nordau is noticeable in certain chapters,
-and especially in that on "The Official Lie"; but Strindberg's
-exposure of conventional hypocrisy and social humbug is achieved by a
-tempestuous outburst, compared with which Nordau's strictures seem a
-discursive and spiritless sermon.
-
-The year which saw the storm of _The New Kingdom_ also witnessed more
-moderate winds in the first instalment of _Swedish Destinies and
-Adventures_, a collection of stories in historical setting which showed
-Strindberg as an interpreter of the genial and peaceful aspects of
-life, as a humorous onlooker whose memory is stored with pictures of
-the kaleidoscopic reign of joy and sorrow, sin and virtue. Now and then
-the fresh narrative is oppressed by a distant rumble of the preacher
-who finds it difficult to suppress his views on women, political
-economy and over-rated civilisation.
-
-_Swedish Destinies and Adventures_ had reconciled the critics to
-Strindberg's existence. There was talent--undoubtedly; there was a mine
-of creative imagination; there was a calm current of lyrical content
-which the wild torrents of satire and abuse had not swallowed. Perhaps
-he might yet be redeemed, tamed to run a less dangerous and offensive
-literary course?
-
-The praise won by the historical stories was cut short by the
-appearance in 1883 of _Poems in Verse and Prose_. The novelist, the
-historian, the dramatist in Strindberg had stood aside to let the
-poet speak. And the poet spoke in words which were a challenge to the
-phrase-mongers and the purists, in hot and rugged verse which acted
-like an over-dose of pepper on the jaded literary palate. There were
-lapses of metre, there were faults of rhythm, but the energy of thought
-sustained the poet on a height from which the custodians of formal
-rhyme could not dislodge him. If De Quincey's differentiation between
-the literature of power and the literature of knowledge be applied to
-Strindberg's first volume of poems there can be little doubt as to the
-category to which they belong.
-
-The most typical poems of the series are "Loke's Blasphemies," in
-which he lets Loke, the enemy of the deities of Northern mythology,
-sing his own song of defiance and contempt for the "Gods of time";
-and "Different Weapons," a finely cut satire on the way his literary
-executioners had avoided open duel and resorted to secret poison. The
-poet introduced his work by a militant preface, in which he declared
-that he was a challenger who was forced to employ the weapons chosen
-by his opponents. He stated that the poetic form imposes unnecessary
-fetters on thought, and is, therefore, destined to fall into disuse.
-"Stronger spirits have formerly broken them, but dared not throw them
-away. The mediocrities of our time dare not place such bad verse on the
-Christmas market as that written by our great poets. In this respect,
-i.e. the writing of bad verse, I dare compare myself with the greatest
-without danger of contradiction." He intimated that the metrical
-blemishes were deliberate sacrifices of form to thought, and left his
-detractors to believe or disbelieve in his theoretical perfection as a
-poet.
-
-Tired after so many battles, so many literary peregrinations,
-Strindberg had left Sweden before the publication of his poems. He
-settled in Paris with his family, and, with the industry of mind which
-in him was identical with life, proceeded to study the intellectual and
-artistic resources of the "gay" city. The result was the conviction
-that a large town should not be likened to the heart of a body, but to
-an abscess which corrupts the blood and poisons the system.
-
-The most important event during Strindberg's stay in Paris was probably
-his contact with Björnson. A friendship sprang up between the two
-Scandinavian rebels which was rich in sympathy and exchange of ideas.
-In _The Author_ Strindberg gives us his impressions of Björnson, and
-Björnson has written an interesting description of Strindberg.[6]
-Strindberg found Björnson a complex of personalities, consisting of
-the preacher, the peasant, the theatrical manager and the good child.
-Björnson found Strindberg young throughout, at home everywhere, free
-everywhere, an incurable idealist in whose eye something sinister
-battled with something roguish.
-
-By the side of the massive Norwegian Strindberg experienced an unusual
-sense of security which developed into filial love.
-
-Björnson's democratic drama _The King_ had been attacked as
-_lèse-majesté_ and a political scandal. They had many experiences
-in common, were relatives in thought. Björnson in exile appealed
-to whatever vestige of hero-worship was left in Strindberg's soul.
-Suffering from nervous depletion, and in a generally weakened state
-of health, he adopted a deferential attitude towards Björnson which,
-being foreign to his temperament, was logically bound to be followed
-by emancipation. Early in their intercourse Strindberg had made the
-characteristic discovery that he was endowed with greater knowledge and
-a more incisive understanding than Björnson. Björnson begged Strindberg
-to be less personal in his satire, apparently unconscious of the
-extremely personal nature of his own attacks upon the common enemy.
-The tie of friendship was gradually loosened, until Björnson's rôle of
-"conscience" and father confessor came to an abrupt end in 1884.
-
-Strindberg was content to dwell for a time amongst the _literati_ of
-different nationalities who had assembled in Paris. Free from the
-stings of the bourgeois wasps upon whose nest he had trampled, he
-enjoyed the fresh air and the keen winds in the great republic of mind.
-Like other men he knew the exhilaration which follows upon the _jeu
-d'esprit_ in the highways of thought, the intellectual union which
-rejuvenates and fatigues by its fertility. But unlike most men he
-soon tired of even the best company, and the craving for solitude and
-independence became imperative.
-
-Paris was deserted for Lausanne. In a little châlet by the shore of
-the lake he recovered physical strength and mental poise. The sight of
-the Alps acted as a tonic to his nervous system, and solitary morning
-walks on the shore brought him the stillness of mind out of which new
-faith is moulded. The way to Rousseau was straight and easy; the peace
-of Nature, the sinlessness, the simplicity of the peasant's life,
-as compared with the vitiated conditions of town labour, impressed
-themselves on his thought. The diseases of mind and body, caused by the
-unnatural oppression of civilisation, were amenable to treatment, more
-practical than satire, and more human than the loathing with which he
-had decried the false gods and the vulgar tyrants. The remedies were to
-be found in a combined "return to Nature," and reorganisation of the
-conditions of labour. Socialism, internationalism, the theories of a
-broad and humanitarian outlook upon industrial processes of development
-which tend towards a more equal distribution of wealth and power, now
-fed Strindberg's hunger after social righteousness. He attempted to
-throw off national limitations; to feel and act as a European with
-pan-national sympathies and interests.
-
-The peace movement presented itself to him as one of the greatest
-thoughts of the time. In his youth he had felt at one with the
-proletariat, trampled down by the hoofs of militarism. In his satirical
-writings the peacocks of the social fowl-yard--the proud bearers of
-epaulets and tinsel--had received a full share of his attention. In
-Switzerland he came into contact with the organised peace movement,
-and the result was the novel _Remorse_, a powerful analysis of the
-mental torture endured by a German officer who in obeying orders has
-caused three innocent Frenchmen to be shot. The inhumanity of war and
-the reality of human brotherhood are here presented in a manner which
-makes the story a stirring, yet delicately artistic appeal against the
-horrors of the battlefield. Whilst he thus placed himself in the ranks
-of the world's peace-makers the struggle with the sex-problem, from
-which he never wholly escaped, developed into a battle, the noise of
-which was destined to reverberate through his whole life. During the
-summer of 1884--whilst exposed to the unromantic surroundings of a
-Swiss mountain _pensionnat_--he wrote twelve stories of married life,
-to which he gave the innocuous title _Married_. They were published
-in Stockholm in September by Herr Bonnier, and had the effect of a
-bomb thrown amidst sleepy and contented people--contented to be rid
-of the enemy. The book was eagerly read by everyone, by the high
-priests of morality as well as by libertines; it sent shudders of
-indignation through the respectability which covers vice and sin with
-silence, and called forth shouts of delight from the champions of
-"free" morals. It was denounced as indecent, and as a grave danger to
-the youth of Sweden by representatives of religion and education. The
-Queen of Sweden read the book and came to the conclusion that it was
-injurious to morality and offensive to religion. She was undoubtedly
-sincere in her condemnation, whilst the majority who joined the hue
-and cry against Strindberg were but tainted reflections of the purity
-upon which they prided themselves. This time the author of _The Red
-Room_ and _The New Kingdom_ had placed himself within reach of the
-law. Within a fortnight of the publication of _Married_ the book was
-impounded, and proceedings were instituted against the publisher.
-
-But it was not the indecency which was the subject of legal
-proceedings. It was the sacrilegious handling of Holy Communion in
-the first story, entitled "The Reward of Virtue," which afforded the
-opportunity for legal repression. True to the irreverent impulse which
-owed its origin to the ecclesiastical preparations in the sexton's
-kitchen, Strindberg had vented his feelings of opposition to the tenets
-of Christianity in a tasteless sentence. It recorded the commercial
-value of the wafers and the wine and ridiculed the "insolent fraud"
-which enabled the priest to foist these articles of commerce on the
-congregation, as the flesh and blood of the "Agitator" who was executed
-more than 1800 years ago.
-
-The story, which to a great extent was autobiographical, dealt with
-the alleged evils of chastity in a youth and consequent declination of
-mental faculties. The problems of puberty, which Wedekind subsequently
-dramatised with tragic force in _Frühlings Erwachen_, were amongst the
-painful experiences which Strindberg dwelt upon in his autobiography.
-In _Married_ the conflict between Nature and virtue is falsely
-presented. The auxiliary influences of moral and physical culture are
-ignored.
-
-Some stories treat of love and marriage, of the transformation of
-raptures and idylls into painful struggles for the maintenance of
-the family, of helpless young men captured in the economic trap of
-matrimony, of the monotony of daily domestic drudgery which makes
-fretful wives and impatient husbands out of ardent Romeos and dreamy
-Juliets. There are squabbles and reconciliations, there are scenes
-and _intérieurs_ in the comedy of marriage, to which the stories bear
-witness with little regard for the usual restraint of description. The
-characters are life-like types of Swedish middle-class society. They
-have been drawn with a realism which shows them as the pathetic puppets
-of marital fate, or as the unreflecting fools of sexual idealism. There
-is the deft touch of Maupassant in the rendering of love's irony, there
-is the inevitableness of Balzac and--in the "indecencies"--not a little
-of Boccaccio's mirth of imagination.
-
-Withal there is an absence of the cynicism which is a general
-characteristic of Strindberg's writings on sexual love; we get a
-surfeit of realism, but we also get pages of playful and almost tender
-sympathy with love's happiness and sweet illusion. The story of a young
-couple's improvident marriage, of their enjoyment of the home with its
-brand-new things--from the sky-blue quilts to the well-cut glasses--of
-the careless happiness which is young and foolish, and forgets all
-about work and duty and the wolves without until the birth of the child
-and bankruptcy disturb the dream, is an imperishable gem of human
-description. And the story of the crotchety and greedy old bachelor
-of irreproachable private life and well-timed permissible vices, who
-finally marries and becomes an ideal husband and a doting father, is
-proof of the author's recognition of family-life as a bridge between
-egotism and altruism.
-
-The youth who falls in love with the blossoming girl of fourteen, and
-is compelled to postpone marriage until he joins his fate to the faded
-and sickly woman of twenty-four, with a worm-eaten nose (who ever saw
-anyone with a worm-eaten nose? Strindberg's strength of expression is
-embarrassing), spends married life in vain languishing for the perished
-beauty of fourteen. Finally--and when too late--he discovers that the
-lost angel has all the time been by his side, though disguised in
-ungainliness of form and feature. The story is a miniature of man's
-earthly conduct. The child is always the apotheosis of sexual union,
-the redeemer of the petty nature of husband and wife. The woman who
-shouts "I am not your servant" to the exasperated husband does so
-because she is not sanctified by motherliness. Though the primitive
-fidelity with which Strindberg sketches his matrimonial types, jars
-on our sensibilities through ineptitudes of diction and occasional
-vulgarisms, though we feel irritated with his boneless and martyrised
-husbands, _Married_ is at once a work of art, and a plea for the
-super-marriage which is yet to come.
-
-When the news of the action against the publisher of _Married_ reached
-Strindberg in Switzerland, he hesitated as to the right course to
-pursue. He considered the charge of blasphemy to be merely a peg on
-which his enemies had hung their long-suppressed lust for revenge.
-The efforts to suppress the book as a pornographic publication had
-proved futile and absurd, and had served to show well-intentioned
-people that realism is not necessarily rank immorality. He resented
-the attack on freedom of religious thought. On discovering that the
-Swedish law punishes denial of the pure Lutheran doctrine with two
-years' hard labour, he reflected that, if the law were enforced Jews,
-Roman Catholics, Unitarians, Methodists and Baptists would all be
-incarcerated in Långholmen--the prison in which certain newspapers in
-Stockholm had already joyfully deposited their image of Strindberg.
-To plead guilty to the charge of blasphemy was to admit the existence
-of a legitimate censorship on thought and religious conviction which
-he denied. But the publisher was in danger of being punished, and
-Strindberg could not stand by whilst a scapegoat suffered the penalty
-of his transgressions. A letter of protest against the proceedings had
-been ignored. Another letter to the authorities, in which Strindberg
-formally admitted his authorship, was followed by the request that he
-should appear personally before the Court. A consultation in Geneva
-with Herr Bonnier, junior, followed, and as there seemed little doubt
-that the publisher would be found guilty, if the author shirked his
-responsibility for any motive whatever, Strindberg left for Stockholm.
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Photo by G. Florman, Stockholm--1884.]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Photo by Lina Jonn, Lund--1897.]
-
-He received warnings on the way, gloomy prophecies that the prisoner's
-cell was the ultimate destination of his journey. On arriving in
-Stockholm on October 2nd, he was met at the station by an inquisitive
-and admiring crowd. There were cries for a speech as he stepped out of
-the train amid cheers. Did this mean that there were friends as well
-as enemies awaiting him? He was not, after all, a _vox clamantis in
-deserto_. There were supporters and sympathisers ready for his message.
-Standing on the platform, amid the bustle and noise of the station, he
-addressed the people on the meaning and object of his realism. Within
-a few minutes he experienced the vicissitudes of the "leader" of a
-movement: acclaimed by some and insulted by others, he reached his
-hotel opposite the station amidst the excitement which is meat unto the
-agitator and dross to the thinker.
-
-In the evening there was a special performance of _The Journey of Lucky
-Peter_ which the author was invited to attend. At the theatre he was
-the centre of interest, the object of inquisitive glances. The public
-cheered him again--was it possible that he too had a following, a
-circle of responsive souls willing to stand by him in the struggle for
-new thought? But no, the sceptic within him did not believe in this
-adulation. "No, I am no good as a 'great' man," he reflected. "I can
-never learn to believe in cheers. They cheer to-day and boo to-morrow!'"
-
-During the weeks that followed he had ample opportunity for
-philosophical studies of the cheering-booing propensity of human
-nature. The violent attacks in the Conservative press had all the
-psychological elements of the booing which is an essential stimulus to
-continued self-satisfaction and placid Phariseeism; the cheering which
-echoed from another quarter was not always attuned to the highest
-aspirations of the hero of the moment.
-
-The trial of the case was painful to Strindberg. He had none of the
-qualities which make men revel in loud publicity. Despite the character
-of his writings, and the war which he had waged with his pen, he had
-all the personal reserve of the sensitive and the recluse. On November
-17th the jury found a verdict of "Not guilty" for the author and
-publisher of _Married_. His friends cheered, working men in the street
-cheered and triumphantly escorted Strindberg to his hotel. The victory
-over the enemies of "free speech" was celebrated in the evening by a
-banquet, and on the following day Strindberg left Stockholm for Geneva,
-where he joined his wife.
-
-In Sweden the controversy ran high. _Married_ was once more on sale.
-It was stated that no less than 3500 copies of the book had been sold
-during the short interval between the day of publication and the
-confiscation.
-
-The advertisement provided by the prosecution now ensured the widest
-publicity for the book. Pedagogues and moralists saw not only a grave
-danger to the youth of Sweden in the circulation of the book, but the
-cause of actual and deplorable corruption amongst the boys in public
-schools. A pamphlet entitled _Strindberg-Literature and Immorality
-amongst Schoolboys_, by John Personne, a master in one of the Stockholm
-public schools, is a curious document in proof of the animosity against
-Strindberg which at this time possessed many excellent people. Herr
-Personne claimed to have personal knowledge of the evil wrought by
-Strindberg's theories, and his pages bristle with indignation. He
-flouts the idea that Strindberg is a man of courage, and accuses him
-of supplying indecencies at a good price. He inveighs against the
-"satanical tricks" by which this "literary ragamuffin" makes vice
-appear identical with joy, thereby luring boys to destruction. One
-need not be a pedant in matters of moral perception to sympathise with
-Herr Personne's motive, despite the acerbity which characterises his
-ebullitions. Whatever may be said for realism in the description of
-sexual struggles from the artistic and scientific points of view, it
-has yet to be proved that youth benefits by free access to the wares
-offered by the _l'art pour l'art_ vendors of life's intimacies.
-
-The feminists joined the schoolmasters in bitter denunciation of
-Strindberg, though, as yet, there was none of the radical opposition
-to every phase of woman's emancipation which developed with deepening
-experience of conjugal misery. The first volume of _Married_ was,
-it is true, written as a protest against the "sickly" deification
-of the liberty of woman underlying the _Nora-Cult_. In opposing
-Ibsen, whom Strindberg calls "the famous Norwegian blue-stocking,"
-he had carried out what to him was a sacred duty. But the preface to
-_Married_ contained views on the rights of women which, but for the
-general commotion, would have preserved the writer from the charge of
-uncompromising enmity towards the souls of women. After analysing the
-cause of unhappy marriages in some epigrammatic pages, he slaughters
-the "romantic monstrosity" which is Ibsen's Nora, and presents his
-scheme for the future regeneration of woman under the title _Woman's
-Rights_.
-
-The first of these is the right to have the same educational advantages
-as man. There is to be wholesale educational reform from which class
-and sex differences are to be eliminated; "unnecessary" learning is
-to be abolished and the substitute is to be found in a universal
-citizen's examination--a degree of social competency requiring the
-arts of reading, writing, arithmetic and elementary knowledge of the
-laws of one's country, with appreciation of the duties and rights of
-citizenship. To this curriculum one living foreign language will be
-added, but there will not be time for much more, for "the future will
-require every citizen to earn his living by manual labour in accordance
-with the law of nature." The regeneration of woman and the reform of
-marriage are thus--according to August Strindberg of 1884--inseparably
-bound up with socialistic hopes of equality.
-
-In co-education he sees the remedy for the insipid gallantry and
-sex mystification which are responsible for so many pangs of
-disillusionment after marriage. He wishes the theoretical equality
-of the sexes to be enforced in the relations between brothers and
-sisters. A girl should not expect a boy to give up his seat to her,
-and a brother should not count upon his sisters for the restoration of
-missing buttons and other creature comforts. And, last but not least,
-he proclaims _Votes for Women_ as the prerogative of the enlightened
-woman of the future! We may, therefore, claim indulgence for the
-woman-hater's life-long growl of discontent against the feminine sex,
-for, underlying all his dislike of the present, there was a radiant
-vision of the future. There are propositions in this preface which
-should satisfy even the most consistent advocates of votes for women.
-"Woman shall be eligible for election to every occupation," writes
-Strindberg; in marriage she is to retain her own name and not, as now,
-be a feminine appendix ignominiously tacked on to the man; she is to
-be master of her own body, and of the choice of motherhood. Of the
-spiritual functions of motherhood he writes:
-
-"Is anyone wiser or more fit to rule than an old mother who, through
-motherhood and the household, has learnt to reign and to administer?"
-Through the influence of the mother, he continues, "customs and laws
-will be softened, for no one has learnt forgivingness as a mother,
-no one knows as she does how patient, how indulgent one must be with
-erring human children."
-
-Whilst the waves of the Strindberg storm were beating against the
-breakwater of Swedish society, the author of paradoxes was working out
-his own matrimonial fate in Geneva and Paris. His dreams of a better
-future took form in _Real Utopias_, published in 1885, a collection
-of stories in which the socialistic and utilitarian solution of
-heart-rending problems is presented in a novelistic form which shows
-Strindberg at his best. The style is instinct with a tender pity for
-human suffering; there is a keen sense of character, and a wealth of
-exuberant descriptive warmth which are in sharp contrast with the
-meagre and stunted sociology to which they have been made subservient.
-They show the addition of a new string to his lyre, a tone of southern
-richness which accentuates the superiority of the artist in Strindberg
-to the social philosopher.
-
-At the age of thirty-seven he gathers the riches of his
-experiences--external and internal--sits down to draw up an account
-with life and writes his _Autobiography_: The first three volumes deal
-with the period 1849-79, and were published during 1886. During the
-same year the second part of _Married_ appeared--in many respects
-the antithesis of the first. After a prolonged plunge into the depths
-of subjectivity, Strindberg rose endowed with a new creative force.
-He had spoken that which was within him, and through the process of
-self-renewal which followed he attained his highest powers as artist.
-
-
-[1] The first Swedish edition will shortly appear amongst the collected
-works of Strindberg which are being issued by Messrs. Albert Bonnier.
-
-[2] _En bok om Strindberg_, af Holger Drachmann, Knut Hamsun, Justin
-Huntly McCarthy, Björnstjerne Björnson, Jonas Lie, Georg Brandes, etc.
-(Karlstad, 1894).
-
-[3] _The Confession of a Fool_. English translation by Ellie
-Schleussner.
-
-[4] The name of this play has been wrongly translated into English.
-It is generally written of as _The Journal of Lucky Peter_, a mistake
-which even appears in the Encyclopædia Britannica.
-
-[5] A third and unaltered edition of this book, which is now regarded
-as one of the classical works on the subject, was issued during 1912
-(H. Gebers Förlag, Stockholm).
-
-[6] _En Bok om Strindberg_ (Karlstad, 1894).
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-THE ARTIST
-
-
-Whilst fighting the battle of realism in fiction Strindberg had
-prepared the dramatic form which was to be his contribution to the
-"new" theatre, on which the curtain was about to rise. The demand for
-a new dramatic art had become imperative. Tired of the admonitions and
-stale declamations of the old rhetorical play, the public had asked
-for a representation of life. Dumas père had responded by writing the
-drama of personality, Dumas _fils_ by establishing the play of moral
-problems. Ibsen had built the psychological play on the foundation
-of Dumas and had endowed the Norwegian language with a new sonority.
-Scribe had supplied fine technique and neat carpentry for the new
-French stage, but Paris, the petulant playgoer, sighed for other things.
-
-Zola raised the cry of naturalism. The artificial plots of Dumas,
-Augier and Sardou were to be superseded by dramatic flashes of
-reality. "I yearn for life, with its shiver, its breath and its
-strength; I long for life as it is," cried the author of _Thérèse
-Raquin_, and Strindberg responded. In September, 1887, _The Father_
-was published, the first of the series of naturalistic plays through
-which Strindberg's European reputation as a modern dramatist and a
-woman-hater was established. The institution in the same year of the
-Théâtre Libre, by M. André Antoine, provided a stage which was wholly
-adapted to the revolt against old-fashioned theatricality.
-
-M. Antoine was an employee at the gas-works who had a passionate
-faith in realistic drama. With a group of sympathetic _dilettanti_ he
-began evening performances in a large room in Place Pigalle without
-the stage mechanism of the commercial theatre. Success attended the
-enthusiastic players, and the performances at the Théâtre Libre became
-the rendezvous of the intellectual and artistic world which gravitates
-to Paris. The soul of the enterprise, M. Antoine, was manager,
-actor, scene-painter, and mechanic. The theatre was semi-private.
-Special invitation cards to elect audiences protected the actors
-from the attention of gallery-opinion. The actors and authors of the
-new plays were the hosts in this home of dramatic revolution, where
-every original playwright was welcome. Strindberg's _The Father, Lady
-Julie_ and _Creditors_ were amongst the first plays produced, and he,
-therefore, had the satisfaction of being played in Paris before any
-appearance on the French stage of the "famous Norwegian blue-stocking."
-Tolstoy's _Powers of Darkness_, Zola's _Thérèse Raquin_, Emile Fabre's
-_L'Argent_, an adaptation of the brothers de Goncourt's Soeur Philomène
-and Villiers' "_L'Evasion_," belonged to the early repertoire.
-_Ghosts_ was the first of Ibsen's plays to appear; it was followed by
-_Rosmersholm_. The Théâtre Libre lasted eight years. It had time to
-create a "modernity" in taste and dramatic expression which produced
-similar free theatres in Berlin and London, and a vogue of naturalism
-which included every variety of "life," and which, occasionally, gave
-undue preference to lubricity and morbidity.
-
-The Swedish edition of _The Father_ was followed by a French edition,
-containing a sympathetic prefatory letter by Zola. The three acts of
-this tragedy present a drawn-out duel between man and woman for the
-possession of the soul of the child. The father, a cavalry captain, is
-intellectual, serious, studious, lovable. His wife is stupid, selfish
-and diabolically resourceful in the choice of weapons for the final
-defeat of the ill-used man. He is mentally poisoned by the suggestion
-that he is not the father of the child. Laura, the wife, has herself
-administered the poison in order to shatter the man's peace of mind,
-and break the foundation of his love for the child. Her hatred knows no
-bounds. She not only seeks to drive him mad, but contrives by skilful
-intrigue to procure evidence of his insanity. She informs the doctor
-that her husband suffers from extraordinary delusions regarding the
-uncertainty of paternity, and that he talks of little else. When the
-doctor meets the Captain the question which is eating his mind shows
-itself as an obsessing idea. Everybody and everything conspires to make
-the man appear a raving lunatic. Finally, even the old nurse who has
-been a true and good woman is induced to betray him. He believes in
-her kindness of heart, and allows her to approach him. She slips the
-strait-jacket over him, thereby adding the last link to the chain of
-feminine treachery and cruelty which has enslaved him. Subjugated,
-robbed of his faith and his mind, the man dies--the victim of woman.
-
-In the preface Zola expressed his interest in the boldness of the
-idea. "Your Laura," he wrote, "is woman as she is in her conceit and
-in her mystical unconsciousness of her qualities and faults." _The
-Father_ was one of the few dramatic works which had the power of moving
-him deeply. But he found a certain want of reality in the characters
-and the construction of the play. The nameless captain and his cruel
-entourage were thought-forms, lacking the solid dimensions which Zola
-identified with reality. In a critical appreciation of Strindberg,
-published in 1894, Georg Brandes praised _The Father_ as a tragedy of
-concentrated energy, magnificent in its composition and powerful in
-its effect. "There is something eternal in The Father," he writes, "an
-unforgettable psychology of woman, showing typically feminine weakness
-and vice." Brandes thinks the symbolism of the final scene, in which
-the man of intellect is ruined by woman, inherently true. He adds: "The
-strength of the indignation and the hatred which have produced the
-drama are impressive. This tragedy is a cry of anguish which clings
-to one's memory, which grips and terrifies through the depth of the
-passionate suffering that uttered the cry."
-
-Laura may be regarded as the most complete type of Strindberg's
-Inferno-women. She has not even the _beauté du diable_ which creates
-an illusion of goodness in some of his types. She is the man-eater,
-the destroyer of all that is noble, consistent, progressive in man.
-Strindberg sees a cannibalistic tendency in woman which makes marriage
-a feast of horror, and this is a theme to which he often returns. In
-_The Father_ the distraught man says to his child: "You see, I am a
-cannibal, and I will eat you. Your mother wanted to eat me, but she
-could not. I am Saturn who ate his children, because it had been
-prophesied that they would eat him. To eat or to be eaten? That is the
-question. If I do not eat you, you will eat me, and you have already
-showed me your teeth." ...
-
-The callous egotism with which Laura kills her husband is shown by the
-following words, with which she assaults him: "Now you have fulfilled
-your function as an unfortunately necessary father and bread-winner,
-you are not needed any longer, and you must go. You must go, since you
-have realised that my intellect is as strong as my will, and since you
-will not stay to acknowledge it."
-
-It is perhaps not unnatural that the Captain should throw a lighted
-lamp at Laura after listening to this speech. But the speech itself is
-certainly unnatural, and would be more in keeping with the sentiments
-of a female spider--if that callous insect could formulate her
-generative philosophy--than those of a woman. As a self-expository wife
-Laura severely taxes our credulity.
-
-_Lady Julie_[1] is a different type. She is the pretty, neurotic,
-sensual, useless woman, blue-blooded and empty-minded, destined to
-total extinction in the process of natural selection. Her tragedy is
-unfolded in a play of one act, which is the quintessence of Strindberg
-as a "naturalistic" dramatist. The scene is laid in the Count's
-kitchen. The Count's daughter, Lady Julie, is alone in the house
-with Jean, the valet, and Christine, the cook. It is St. John's Eve;
-the farm hands belonging to the estate are assembled for the annual
-midsummer dance. They do not dance in the kitchen, but there is
-midsummer madness in the air. Christine is betrothed to Jean who treats
-the products of her culinary art with epicurean disdain. He knows his
-value as a man and a servant. Jean is an excellent valet, well-made,
-well-behaved, who knows when to show self-confidence and when to
-cringe. Lady Julie has graced the servants' dance with her presence.
-She has favoured Jean with such marked attention that the people have
-begun to gossip. Alone with him in the kitchen she encourages him to
-make love to her. The valet is uneasy; the man is eager to make himself
-master of the Count's daughter, but the servant shrinks from the
-sacrilege. But Lady Julie taunts him with his unmanliness, tempts him
-with her beauty, and the effervescence of her highly-strung nerves. A
-strange love-scene follows.
-
-The sound of approaching country-folk forces Jean and Lady Julie to
-hide from their prying eyes. They do not wish to be found alone in the
-kitchen. Jean's room is near at hand and becomes their refuge, whilst
-the peasants make the kitchen the scene of their midsummer merry-making.
-
-When the kitchen is deserted, Lady Julie and Jean reappear. There is
-an autumnal chill in the air. For Lady Julie is no longer Lady Julie.
-The valet is master. They are both conscious of the monstrous breach of
-social etiquette which has been committed. And the grey dawn will not
-only bring the shame of day, but the home-coming of the Count.
-
-Jean is chivalrous. He proposes immediate flight to Switzerland or the
-Italian lakes. There, he thinks, they can start an hotel--a first-class
-hotel for first-class guests. He waxes enthusiastic over the joys
-of the hotel-owner. She will be mistress of the house, queen of the
-accounts, before whom the guests will humbly lay their gold.
-
-She cannot rise to his enthusiasm. She wants the comfort of love:
-
-     _Julie_. That is all very fine. But, Jean, you must give me
-     courage. Say that you love me. Come and take me in your arms.
-
-     _Jean_ (_hesitating_). I would like to, but I dare not. Not here
-     in this house. I love you without doubt. Can you doubt it?
-
-     _Julie_ (_shyly, with true womanly feeling_). You! Say "thou" to
-     me. Between us there are no longer any barriers. Say "thou."
-
-     _Jean_ (_troubled_). I cannot. There are still barriers between us
-     so long as we remain in this house. There is the past, there is
-     the Count. I have never met anyone who compelled such respect from
-     me. I have only to see his gloves lying on a chair to feel quite
-     small. I have only to hear his bell, and I start like a shying
-     horse. And when I now look at his boots, standing there so stiff
-     and stately, it is as if something made my back bend. (_He kicks
-     the boots_.) Superstition, prejudice which have been driven into
-     us from childhood, but which may be as easily forgotten again. If
-     you will only come into another country, into a republic, people
-     will cringe before my porter's livery. People shall cringe, but
-     I shall not cringe. I was not born to cringe, for there is stuff
-     in me; there is character in me; and if once I grip the lowest
-     branch, you shall watch me climb. To-day I am a lackey, but next
-     year I am a proprietor; in ten years I shall be independent, and
-     then I go to Roumania and get myself an order. I can--mark well I
-     say I _can_--a count.
-
-     _Julie_. Fine, fine!
-
-     _Jean_. Ah, in Roumania a man can buy a count's title, and then
-     you will be a countess--my countess.
-
-     _Julie_. What do I care for what I have cast aside! Say that you
-     love me, or else--ah, what am I else?
-
-     _Jean_. I will say it a thousand times--later on. But not here.
-     And, above all, no sentimentality, or all is lost. We must keep
-     cool like sensible people. (_He takes out a cigar, cuts the end,
-     and lights it_.) Sit down there, and I will sit here, and then we
-     can chat as if nothing had happened.
-
-     _Julie_ (_in despair_). Oh, my God! Have you no feelings?
-
-     _Jean_. I! Why, there is no one more sensitive than I, but I can
-     command my feelings.
-
-     _Julie_. A short time ago you would have kissed my shoe, and
-     now----
-
-     Jean (_coldly_). Yes, before. But now we have something else to
-     think about.
-
-They cannot flee without money. Jean suggests that she can steal the
-necessary sum in her father's room. He taunts her with her weakness
-until she robs her father. They prepare to leave the house. The girl
-wants to bring her greenfinch. Infuriated by her sentimentality,
-Jean snatches the bird from her and kills it. The man's brutality
-and meanness are suddenly revealed to her; her brain reels under the
-humiliation which she has brought upon herself. She hurls curses at
-the head of the impudent domestic. The morning has come, and Christine
-enters the kitchen on her way to church. The girl appeals to her,
-seeks her sympathy, but Christine's feelings of propriety are too
-shocked to allow of any pity for the fallen girl. She leaves them. The
-Count returns. They hear him in his room, know that he will discover
-the theft. His daughter is half demented with fear, remorse, shame; she
-is incapable of deciding what to do. Jean's servant conscience has been
-awakened by the arrival of his master. The Count is there to command,
-Jean to obey. And when Lady Julie wants him to tell her what to do he
-hands her a razor--with the complacency with which he might hand his
-mistress the riding-whip. She leaves the kitchen and kills herself.
-
-Such are the outlines of this painful play, the most "successful" of
-Strindberg's naturalistic dramas. Again we have a struggle between
-man and woman, but this time the opposites of class and blood are
-added to those of sex. The healthy egotism, the common instincts of
-self-preservation in the valet endow him with a physical stability
-against which Lady Julie's emotions break like foam against a rock. She
-goes, he remains. Like _The Admirable Crichton_, Jean knows that there
-must be masters and servants in this world of inequality, and, though
-his passions for once mastered his conviction, he is soundly submissive
-to social law and order. In Lady Julie, Strindberg has sketched the
-useless, unnatural, pleasure-loving, hysterical woman of the leisured
-classes whom he detests.
-
-In the preface to the play he analyses this type of woman. "Lady Julie
-is a modern character," he writes, "not as if the half-woman, the
-man-hater, had not existed in all times, but because she has now been
-discovered, has appeared on the scene, and created a disturbance." In
-such women he sees a danger to the race, for, as a rule, they attract
-degenerate men, and transmit their own misery to another generation.
-They sell themselves for "power, decorations, distinctions, diplomas,"
-and produce beings of undecided sex to whom life is useless. For such
-psycho-pathological creatures Strindberg sees no hope beyond that of
-elimination through contact with reality (Jean was "reality" to Lady
-Julie), or a fatal outburst of long-suppressed sexual instincts. "The
-type is tragic," he concludes, "offering the spectacle of a desperate
-struggle against nature; tragic as a romantic inheritance which is now
-being destroyed by the naturalism which only seeks happiness; and only
-strong and good species are compatible with happiness."
-
-Justin McCarthy translated _Lady Julie_ into English, and expressed
-his admiration for the unalloyed realism of the piece in an article in
-_The Fortnightly Review_. The mental intensity with which Strindberg
-visualised the character of Lady Julie is strangely impressive.
-There is no extravagant or jejune theorising; it is drama vehemently
-conceived and true to its creator. But the horror which moved Justin
-McCarthy when reading the play, and which most readers experience, is
-a product of Strindberg's peculiar misogyny which, for the purposes
-of the play, he coupled with the ordinary standard of convention and
-morality. Lady Julie's disgrace is unpardonable from the point of view
-of society. She dies in deference to its verdict. We cannot imagine a
-drama by Strindberg, in which tragedy is woven out of the misconduct
-of a Lord Julius instead of a Lady Julie. A young "blood," neurotic,
-suffering from ennui, and seeking temporary distraction in the company
-of Jeanne, the valet's daughter, would not have inspired a naturalistic
-drama of sex and caste. There is a wealth of material which can be
-used to _épater le bourgeois_ in the idea of a well-bred woman's
-precipitous "return to nature." The commonplace spectacle of a similar
-descent on the part of a well-bred man affords none.
-
-In _Comrades_ we meet the type of woman who surpasses _Lady Julie_ in
-anti-social attributes. Laura is something of a female tigress, the
-mother whose claws are ready to tear all but the cub; Lady Julie, with
-her hysteria I and her caprices is still the womanly woman. But Bertha
-who is united to her "comrade" Axel in a marriage of equality is worse
-than they. She is plain, mannish, ambitious; a mental parasite who
-suppresses her womanhood and simulates her husband's talents. The rival
-of man, the unsexed, simian-brained shrew, Strindberg's _bête noire_.
-
-_Comrades_ is a four-act comedy of marriage. Axel Alberg and his wife
-are Swedish painters in Paris. They have each painted a picture which
-has been submitted to the Salon. In Act I we find Axel at work in the
-studio. He is a good fellow, honest, painstaking, generous. Friends
-call and discover his embarrassing position as a married comrade. There
-is the doctor, mature in experience and philosophical in outlook,
-who when Axel asks him if he does not believe in woman answers: "No,
-I don't. But I love her." There is the sensible, matter-of-fact
-Lieutenant Starck, who will stand no nonsense from women, and whose
-happy, normal wife knows that woman's real happiness is found in
-subjection unto her husband. They are shocked to hear of Bertha's
-tastes and habits. Bertha comes home. She has kept her nude male model
-waiting, and her poor husband has had to pay five francs in consequence
-of her unpunctuality. This is a small part of the sacrifices he has
-made for her artistic career. In the scenes that follow we see Bertha
-insisting on keeping the household accounts, though her head cannot
-grapple with the simplest problems of addition and subtraction. She has
-made false entries, and deliberately deceives Axel as to the manner in
-which the funds of the comradeship are expended. She coquettes with
-Willmer, a young writer, and receives presents from him. Intent upon
-securing the acceptance of her picture, she makes nefarious use of
-Axel's love for her.
-
-     _Bertha_. Will you be very kind to me? Very?
-
-     _Axel_. I always want to be kind to you, my dear.
-
-     _Bertha_. Do you? Look here, you know Roubey, don't you?
-
-     _Axel_. Yes, I met him in Vienna, and we became good friends.
-
-     _Bertha_. You know that he is a member of the jury?
-
-     _Axel_. Well, what about that?
-
-     _Bertha_. Yes, now you will be angry. I know it.
-
-     _Axel_. If you know it, don't make me angry.
-
-     _Bertha_ (_caresses him_). You won't sacrifice anything for your
-     wife--nothing.
-
-     _Axel_. Go and beg? No, that I won't do.
-
-     _Bertha_. Not for yourself, for your picture will probably be
-     accepted all the same, but for your wife?
-
-     _Axel_. Don't ask me.
-
-     _Bertha_. I should really never ask anything of you.
-
-     _Axel_. Yes, things which I can do without sacrificing....
-
-     _Bertha_. Your manly pride.
-
-     _Axel_. Let us leave it at that.
-
-     _Bertha_. But I should sacrifice my womanly pride, if I could help
-     you.
-
-     _Axel_. You have no pride.
-
-     _Bertha_. Axel!
-
-     _Axel_. There, there, forgive me.
-
-     _Bertha_. I am sure you are jealous of me. I am sure you would not
-     like my picture to be accepted.
-
-     _Axel_. Nothing would delight me more, I assure you, Bertha.
-
-     _Bertha_. Would it also delight you if I were accepted and you
-     were refused?
-
-     _Axel_. I must feel (_laying his hand on his heart_). I am sure
-     it would be an unpleasant feeling--sure. Both because I paint
-     better than you, and because....
-
-     _Bertha_. Say it straight out,--because I am a woman.
-
-     _Axel_. Yes, also for that reason. It is strange, but I have a
-     feeling as if you women were intruders, forcing your way in and
-     demanding the spoils of the battle which we men have fought whilst
-     you sat by the fireside. Forgive me, Bertha, for saying this, but
-     such thoughts come to me.
-
-     _Bertha_. You are just like all other men, exactly.
-
-     _Axel_. Like all other men. I hope so.
-
-     _Bertha_. And lately you have assumed such superiority; you used
-     not to be like that.
-
-     _Axel_. I suppose that is because I am superior. Do something
-     which we men have not already done.
-
-     _Bertha_. What! What are you saying? Are you not ashamed?
-
-Bertha changes her tone, and plays the humble comrade who is sorely
-in need of a little encouragement. Axel rejects her arguments, but
-eventually goes to Monsieur Roubey. During Axel's absence a letter
-arrives containing the information that his picture has been refused.
-Bertha guesses its contents and revels in the luxury of pity and
-_schadenfreude_. Axel returns, after finding Madame Roubey at home,
-(a meeting cleverly foreseen by Bertha) with the news that Bertha's
-picture has already been accepted. He congratulates Bertha on her
-success. He is confident that his picture will also be accepted. She
-hands him the letter. The _scène de rupture_ is inevitable.
-
-     _Axel_ (_lays his hand on his heart and sits down_). What ...
-     (_controls himself_). This is a blow which I did not expect. This
-     is most unpleasant.
-
-     _Bertha_. Well, perhaps I can help you now.
-
-     _Axel_. You look as if you enjoyed my defeat, Bertha. Oh, I feel a
-     great hatred of you stirring within me!
-
-     _Bertha_. I look happy, perhaps, because I have had a success, but
-     when one is tied to a man who cannot rejoice in one's happiness it
-     is difficult to feel sorry when he is unhappy.
-
-     _Axel_. I don't know what has happened, but it seems to me that
-     we have become enemies now. The struggle for a position has come
-     between us, and we can no longer be friends.
-
-     _Bertha_. Does not your sense of justice tell you that the one who
-     was most competent won the battle?
-
-     _Axel_. You were not the most competent.
-
-     _Bertha_. But the jury thought so.
-
-     _Axel_. The jury? But you know very well that you cannot paint as
-     well as I do.
-
-     _Bertha_. Are you sure of that?
-
-The dialogue that follows is a crescendo of the sex-against-sex
-quarrel. "A comrade," concludes Axel, "is a more or less loyal
-competitor, but we are enemies." Bertha, selfish, mean, inebriated
-by her triumph, goes out to celebrate her victory in the company of
-friends. Axel stays at home to nurse his sorrow. The curtain descends
-upon the dejected husband begging his wife not to come home drunk.
-
-Act II shows us Bertha usurping Axel's place as teacher. She finds
-fault with his technique, and snatches the brush out of his hand to
-show him how to paint. Her puny mind reels with the desire to humiliate
-him. Malicious tongues have whispered that he has painted her picture,
-that he has good-humouredly let her reap the honour of his toil. Bertha
-is casting about for a means of crushing Axel for ever. To-morrow
-they will give an evening-party. Her friend Abel--another of the
-emancipated, heartless, false, perverse, masculine women of artistic
-Bohemia--makes a welcome suggestion. Why not arrange to have Axel's
-rejected picture sent home at the very hour when their friends are
-assembled in the studio? The idea fascinates Bertha, but she dare not
-be responsible. "I should like it to be done, but I don't want to be
-concerned in it," she says. "I want to stand guiltless and to be able
-to swear that I am innocent." And Abel undertakes to manage the matter.
-
-The sex-war reaches its climax in Act III. Axel has tom himself
-free from the meshes of his decaying love. Now he knows Bertha as
-she really is. He has discovered her dishonest book-keeping, her
-money transactions with Willmer, her insidious efforts to emasculate
-his soul--he realises the full horror of her short hair, and of
-their union. He has broken his marriage-vows, and throws down the
-wedding-ring. He is free. But Bertha's malignity clings to him:
-
-     _Bertha_. And this, all this noble revenge, simply because you
-     were inferior to me.
-
-     _Axel_. I was your superior when I painted your picture.
-
-     _Bertha_. When you painted my picture! Say that again and I will
-     strike you.
-
-     _Axel_. You who despise brute force are always the first to appeal
-     to it. Strike me if you like.
-
-     _Bertha_ (_advancing towards him_). You think I have not the
-     strength.
-
-     _Axel_ (_seizing both her wrists and holding them_). No, not that.
-     Are you convinced now that I am also physically the stronger? Bow
-     down, or I will break you!
-
-     _Bertha_. Dare you strike me?
-
-     _Axel_. Why not? I only know of one reason why I should not.
-
-     _Bertha_. And that is----?
-
-     _Axel_. That you are irresponsible.
-
-     _Bertha_ (_struggling to free herself_). Ah, let me go!
-
-     _Axel_. Not until you have begged my pardon. Down on your knees.
-     (_He forces her down with one hand_.) Now look up to me from
-     below. That is your place, the place you yourself have chosen.
-
-     _Bertha_ (_gives in_). Axel, Axel, I don't know you e any longer.
-     Can this be you who swore to love me, you who begged to be allowed
-     to support me?
-
-     _Axel_. Yes, I was strong then and believed I had strength to do
-     it. But you clipped the hair of my strength while my tired head
-     lay in your lap. During sleep you stole my best blood, and yet
-     enough remains to subdue you. Stand up, and let us have done with
-     speeches. There is business to be talked over. (_Bertha gets up,
-     then sits down on the sofa, weeping_.)
-
-     _Axel_. Why are you crying?
-
-     _Bertha_. I don't know. Perhaps because I am weak.
-
-     _Axel_. You see! I was your strength. When I took back what was my
-     own you had nothing left. You were like a rubber ball which I blew
-     out; when I threw you down you collapsed.
-
-     _Bertha_ (_without looking up_). I don't know if it is as you
-     say, but since we quarrelled my strength has left me. Axel,
-     believe me, I have never felt for you what I now feel.
-
-     _Axel_. Really! What do you feel?
-
-     _Bertha_. I can't say. I don't know if it is love, but....
-
-     _Axel_. What do you mean by love? Is it not a secret longing to
-     eat me alive once more? You begin to love me. Why not formerly,
-     when I was good to you? Goodness is stupidity. Let us be wicked.
-     What do you think?
-
-     _Bertha_. Yes, I would rather have you a little wicked than weak.
-     (_Gets up_.) Axel, forgive me, but don't desert me. Love me, oh,
-     love me!
-
-But Axel is not caught again. He consents to allow the party to take
-place, as if they were still good comrades, but he is determined to
-obtain a divorce. In Act IV we again meet the happy pair, Starck,
-Willmer, Abel, Dr. Östermark, the _raisonneur_ of the play, and his
-divorced wife, Mrs. Hall, a dubious middle-aged woman whom Bertha
-imagines to be a victim of man's brutality and a living argument in
-favour of the woman's movement. She and Abel have arranged, not only to
-punish Axel by confronting him with his unsuccessful picture, but to
-disconcert Dr. Östermark by confronting him with the wife and daughters
-whom he has not seen for eighteen years. But Bertha's calculations
-are faulty, as usual. The picture is carried into the studio by order
-of the _concierge_ who has protested against its unexpected appearance
-at the door. Axel is annoyed. She wants everybody to see the picture,
-to look at it closely. They do, and it turns out to be Bertha's picture.
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Portrait in Oil by Chr. Krogh, 1893]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Portrait in Oil by Richard Bergh, 1906.]
-
-The last scenes of the play show us a shame-faced Bertha recovering
-from the fainting-fit which followed upon the sight of the picture. She
-knows that Axel has nobly changed the numbers in order to give her a
-better chance. She knows that circumstances have combined to unmask her
-completely. He is the stronger, and she offers him her love. Relentless
-in his masculine strength, Axel shakes her off, turns her out into the
-street. "You once asked me to forget that you are a woman," he cries,
-"well, I have forgotten it." She reminds him of a man's duty to his
-wife. Axel hands her some bank-notes. Bertha departs consoled and Axel
-goes to meet his mistress. "I want comrades at the _café_, but at home
-I want my wife," he cries, before the final exit of Bertha.
-
-_Comrades_ has been confounded with the typical _comédie rosse_. But
-here, as in _Lady Julie_, the collision of character is presented
-with the intensity which is possible only when a dramatist treats
-of a question which to him is vital. One inadequately described as
-a "tragedy," the other as a "comedy," there is in both plays the
-pessimistic despair of the absolutely sincere anti-feminist. It raises
-them high above the facile farce of passion, satiety and change.
-Bertha is to Strindberg the New Woman--a creature to be shunned and
-exterminated. Nietzsche thought that the "beautiful and dangerous cat,"
-which is woman, should never be visited without a whip. Strindberg
-would not only bring the whip, but poison to the defeminised monster
-who wishes to be the rival of man.
-
-In _Comrades_ the dramatist presents his characters with that ironical
-smile which is the condiment of life's bitter draughts. There is a
-general consciousness of _blague_ pervading the studio. The doctor who
-finds the wife, on whom he once lavished a romantic love, a drunken
-slattern, her daughters in a second union in the service of vice, helps
-the reeling woman out of the house and expresses his feelings thus:
-"Oh, Dolce Napoli! Joy of life, where art thou? Went away as she did.
-Such was the bride of my youth!... Oh, Dolce Napoli! I wonder if the
-cholera-sick fishing harbour is so sweet, after all! Blague probably.
-Blague, blague! Brides, love, Naples, _joie de vivre_, ancient, modern,
-liberal, conservative, ideal, real, natural--blague. Blague all the
-way."
-
-_Creditors_ is a one-act play in which we meet the erotic woman, the
-alluring, treacherous, unmoral creature of instinct and passion, who
-battens on men's souls--in short, the vampire. After the _blague_ of
-_Comrades_ the anguish of _Creditors_. There are two men and one woman
-in the piece. Tekla has been married to Adolf, a painter, for seven
-years. Adolf adores her--their love has been a ceaseless giving on
-his part. He has merged his personality in hers, he has laid his art
-as a sacrifice on the altar of his devotion. He has thought of her,
-painted her, modelled her, given her the treasures of his mind, filled
-her soul until his own is empty, and now he is weak whilst she is
-strong. They are staying at the seaside place, to which they come every
-summer. Tekla has been away for a week when the curtain rises on Adolf
-engaged in modelling the figure of his wife. He is a nervous wreck,
-semi-epileptic, with crutches by his side. He is talking confidentially
-to Gustaf, whose acquaintance he has made during Tekla's absence. He
-does not know that Gustaf is the husband from whom Tekla was separated
-before he married her, does not know that Gustaf is the _creditor_ to
-whom they are both in debt. Gustaf induces Adolf to tell the story of
-his married life, of his sacrifices, his self-effacement, his reckless
-giving. He subtly leads Adolf to realise Tekla's voracious egotism,
-her falseness, her voluptuousness, plays upon his jealousy, rouses
-his suspicions, wrecks his peace of mind. Adolf is fascinated against
-his will by the force and coolly analysing mind of Gustaf. He cannot
-understand why there is something in Gustaf's manner of speaking, and
-in his eye which reminds him of Tekla. Gustaf replies that Tekla and he
-may be distant relatives, as are all human beings.
-
-They discuss Tekla's first husband. Adolf has never seen him, but
-knows that he is an idiot, for Tekla has written a book in which the
-ridiculous man is described. Gustaf shows Adolf that he is treated
-as the second idiot by Tekla. He asks why Tekla sent away her child.
-Adolf hesitates to tell his friend, then confesses that at the age of
-three the child showed a likeness to the first husband which Tekla
-found unendurable. Gustaf asks Adolf if he has never felt jealous of
-the first husband. "Would it not nauseate you to meet him when out for
-a walk, when his eyes on your Tekla would say to you: We instead of
-I--We?" Adolf admits that the thought has haunted him. Gustaf draws a
-picture of the torment caused by the indelible memory of the third.
-"But they know that _one_ sees them in the darkness--and then they are
-frightened and in their fright the figure of the absent one begins
-to haunt them, to assume dimensions, to change until he becomes a
-nightmare disturbing their sleep of love, a creditor who knocks at the
-door, and they see his black hand between theirs, they hear his grating
-voice in the silence of the night which should only be disturbed by
-their beating pulses. He does not prevent their union, but he disturbs
-their happiness. And when they feel his invisible power of disturbing
-their happiness, when at last they flee--but flee in vain from the
-memory which persecutes them--from the debt they have left behind, and
-the judgment which frightens them, they lack the strength to bear their
-transgression and find a scapegoat which must be slaughtered...."
-
-Tortured by the suggestion that Tekla has now been unfaithful to
-him, which every sentence spoken by Gustaf drives more deeply into
-the inflamed brain, Adolf consents to test Tekla's fidelity by means
-devised by Gustaf. When she comes home Adolf is to study her manner,
-and lead her to reveal her real self, whilst Gustaf listens in another
-room. When the husband has reached the limit of his power of deduction
-he is to go out, and leave to Gustaf the rôle of inquisitor. Adolf is
-to be a secret witness of the second examination. He can hear all in
-the adjoining room.
-
-Tekla comes home. She is playful, loving, treats him as her naughty
-child--just as Gustaf said she would, if guilty. She has enjoyed
-herself, and Adolf's solemn tones of reproach and impending disaster
-cause a revulsion of feeling, in which she shows herself as the
-heartless coquette, the _mangeuse d'hommes_, to whom conjugal monotony
-is insupportably dull. Adolf goads her vanity by saying that she has
-reached the age, when admirers are no longer troublesome. She wishes to
-assure him of the contrary, warns him, threatens that in future he will
-have to play the ridiculous part of the jealous and deceived husband
-who, lacking evidence, can only injure himself.
-
-Adolf tells her that her plumes are borrowed, that he has endowed her
-with sense, electrified her once empty brain, made her famous by his
-pictures and his deification. She concludes that he means to tell her
-that he has written her books. The rhythm of the quarrel rises until
-Adolf in the throes of an approaching fit, cries: "Be quiet. Leave me.
-You destroy my brain with your clumsy pincers--you thrust your claws in
-my thoughts and tear them to pieces."
-
-At the sight of Adolf's condition Tekla grows tender. He recovers,
-and she makes him beg her forgiveness. After summoning his remaining
-strength he leaves her. Gustaf enters the room. There is a touching
-scene of recognition, embarrassment and assurances of mutual respect.
-The virile mind of Gustaf soothes Tekla's overwrought nerves.
-She allows him to understand that her present husband is feeble,
-backboneless, and unreasonably jealous.
-
-They revive memories. Gustaf observes that she still wears the
-ear-rings which he gave her. The magnetism of old associations, old
-regrets, draws them together. Gustaf puts his arm round her waist;
-she resists and confesses herself afraid of his presence. She does not
-wish to do any real wrong to Adolf, for she knows that he loves her.
-But Gustaf knows more than she does. He shows her the tom pieces of her
-photograph, thrown on the floor by Adolf some time before. He makes
-her see clearly that Adolf treats her with contempt. He begs her to
-liberate herself from Adolf's sick fancies, and to come back to the man
-of will. Some scruples, a short struggle, and she promises to meet him
-in the evening when Adolf will be away.
-
-The sound of something falling comes from the adjoining room. Gustaf
-assures her that it is nothing--probably a dog that has been locked
-up. But Tekla is smitten with sudden understanding. She sees through
-Gustaf's plot, knows that her husband has heard everything. The
-horrible revenge of the man she betrayed revolts her, yet impresses
-her by its diabolical consistency. Gustaf is about to leave her,
-declaring that the debt has been paid, when the door is opened, and
-Adolf appears, deadly pale, a cut across the cheek, his eyes vacant,
-and foaming at the mouth. He falls. Tekla throws herself over the body,
-from which life is fast ebbing. "Adolf, my beloved child, say that you
-are alive, forgive, forgive; Oh, God! he does not hear, he is dead. Oh,
-God in Heaven!" And the curtain falls as Gustaf exclaims: "Really, she
-loves him too! Poor thing!"
-
-_Creditors_ has added an important psychological factor to Strindberg's
-usual duel of sex. Here we have, not only the sinful nature of woman,
-the instinctive selfishness, the absence of moral sense, but the
-operation of a mysterious law of unity, which assists in the downfall
-of the woman and the victory of the stronger man. Tekla, once mother
-of Gustaf's child, is held to him by cords of a sympathy which may be
-called physiological, and which constitutes nature's irrefrangible
-banns of marriage.
-
-The thesis has since been fully developed in Paul Hervieu's _Le
-Dédale_. Here the dissonance of divorce and re-marriage resounds
-through a highly artistic presentment of the conflict between religion,
-morality, affection and "nature." Marianne de Pogis has left Max, her
-husband, because of his infidelities. She re-marries and finds in
-Le Breuil, her second husband, the virtues which her former husband
-lacked. Her child by the first marriage falls ill, and she meets her
-first husband by its bedside. She remains in his house to nurse the
-child, and succumbs to the old love which has never died. The end is
-tragic. She cannot go back to Le Breuil. Hervieu cuts short the agony
-of three souls by the death of the two men. Le Breuil kills Max and
-himself; together they go over the rock into the foaming waters where
-human passion is extinguished. Strindberg also summons death as the
-only solution of Adolf's martyrdom, but, with characteristic sense of
-the hideous interminableness of life's complexities, leaves Tekla and
-Gustaf to loathe the tie which they cannot break. Gustaf is the strong
-man who, knowing woman, despises her and masters her. Adolf is the
-woman-worshipper, the slave who has sold his masculine birthright for
-worthless favours. He is killed by disillusionment.
-
-The production of _The Father, Lady Julie,_ and _Creditors_ at the
-Théâtre Libre was followed by their performance at the Théâtre de
-l'OEuvre in Paris, another experimental theatre which was founded in
-1893 by M. Lugné-Poë. _Lady Julie_ was part of the early repertory
-of the Freie Bühne, an advanced playhouse which had been established
-in Berlin in 1889 to meet the demand for realism on the stage. _The
-Father_ and _Creditors_ were performed in Copenhagen in 1889, and the
-latter play was soon presented at the Residenz Theater in Berlin. The
-Independent Theatre in London, founded by Mr. J.T. Grein in 1891,
-introduced Ibsenism to England, and suffered the penalty of the
-pioneer. Strindbergism might have wrecked the undertaking before the
-work was accomplished. Mr. Grein's services to the British playgoer
-have not yet been fully appreciated. He broke one or two windows in
-the suffocating theatre of banalities and bon-bon amours. Thanks to
-his courage we can now enjoy an increased amount of oxygen. But the
-West-End stage still thrives on airlessness. The popular long-run
-play, in which the charming actress appears as mannequin for the
-best costumier, whilst social inanities are paraded as absorbing
-problems--with a happy ending--contracts the lungs of all who in the
-drama seek a mirror and a criticism of life. To find modern dramatic
-art they must perforce go to the sporadic centres of unconventional
-and non-commercial performances, or to the semi-private stages of
-societies which fight the prevalent stagnation by bold experimental
-presentation of new dramatic ideas. Strindberg's plays are practically
-unknown in England. The Adelphi Players produced _The Father_ in July,
-1911, and _Lady Julie_ in April, 1912. The Stage Society, which is the
-descendant of Mr. Grein's Independent Theatre, has played _Creditors_.
-The Stronger, an atmospheric sketch with two characters, of whom the
-one maintains silence, whilst the other uses her tongue, was acted
-by Madame Lydia Yavorskaia and Lady Tree in 1909. Of the remainder
-of the fifty-one plays by which he has encompassed many "schools" of
-playwriting, evolved new dramatic forms, and tested different methods
-of expression the British public knows little or nothing.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Naturalism has passed away. The shallow materialism, the false
-simplicity of presentation, with which it sought to kill romantic
-methods of dramaturgy, proved fatal. They were found to be as unreal
-as the old-fashioned conventions of the stage. But there were other
-qualities in the movement which have not died, but profoundly
-influenced the character-drawing and scenic development of the modern
-drama. Hauptmann, Hervieu, Wedekind, Schnitzler, Gorky, Tchekhov
-have transmuted and individualised the permanent elements of the
-early realism. As an exponent of naturalism Strindberg's personality
-towered high above the first noisy purveyors of what M. Jullien named
-"slices of life"--some distressingly indigestible. It is true that
-the fabric of his drama was woven out of the ever-recurring theme of
-sexual antagonism. He described it with the undertone of personal
-suffering--the suffering of experience and of pity--with which Tolstoy
-made his peasants articulate in _Powers of Darkness_, or Henry Becque
-the ill-used women in _Les Corbeaux_.
-
-But Strindberg's plays are highly "unpleasant," says some defender of
-the morality of the stage. True, but they are honestly unpleasant. They
-differ from the popular play of amorous escapades and half-uttered
-indecencies, as the mountain torrent differs from the garden fountain.
-They are written by the impelling force of an idea, whilst the
-conventional immorality play exists in the interests of frivolous
-entertainment. However much we may disagree with the _leitmotif_ in
-Strindberg's naturalistic plays, and realise the limitations of his
-theses, we cannot ignore them. And do they not, after all, treat of
-"love," the obsessing object of dramatic interest from the plaintive
-demi-monde of Dumas _fils_ to the man-hunting Ann of Bernard
-Shaw? From Sudermann and Pinero to Schnitzler and Capus, through
-sentimentalism, conventionalism, and cynicism, the theme persists in
-absorbing dramatic imagination. Compared with Schnitzler, the prince
-of amorists, Strindberg's _milieu_ is sombre with fateful retribution.
-Like Strindberg, Schnitzler dramatises the illusion and disillusionment
-of love; his lovers and mistresses are also on the road to knowledge.
-The ten couples who pass over the stage in _Reigen_ might be sparks
-from Strindberg's anvil. But on closer inspection we find that there
-has been no fire. Schnitzler's world is the play-room of the passions,
-Strindberg's their inferno.
-
-In _Lady Julie_ and _Creditors_, both one-act plays and each with only
-three speaking parts, he created a new dramatic form. He now assailed
-the old theatre with the same vigour with which he had attacked old
-social institutions. In the preface to _Lady Julie_ he contemptuously
-writes:
-
-"The theatre has long appeared to me, as art in general, to be a
-_Biblia Pauperum_, a bible in pictures for those who cannot read
-writing or print, and the playwright as a lay preacher who disseminates
-the thoughts of the period in popular form, so popular that the middle
-classes, which chiefly fill the theatres, can understand what it is all
-about without much mental exertion. The theatre has therefore always
-been a board-school for young people, the half-educated, and women who
-still possess the primitive capacity for deceiving themselves, and
-allowing themselves to be deceived, i.e. to accept illusion, receive
-suggestion from the author."
-
-The influence of Edmond de Goncourt, who called the theatre an
-exhibition of spouting marionettes and a place for the exercise of
-educated dogs, can be traced in this passage. Rudimentary, incomplete
-processes of thought, dependent on imagination, are, concluded
-Strindberg, necessary to theatrical enjoyment. With the development of
-reflection, investigation, and the higher mental attributes, decay of
-pleasure in theatrical performances would follow as the shell drops
-from the ripe fruit. In the theatrical crisis which raged in Europe at
-this time (1888), and in the moribund state of drama in England and
-Germany he saw evidence of an approaching extinction of the theatre.
-
-It would, however, be a mistake to invest these views with a greater
-seriousness than they contained. As Henry Becque pointed out in
-his "Souvenirs," _la fin du théâtre_ has repeatedly been proclaimed
-by dissatisfied critics, without causing the slightest impediment
-in the ceaseless flow of dramatic production. In the preface to _Le
-Fils Naturel_, Dumas had compared the moralising functions of the
-stage to those of the Church. Strindberg replied, twenty years later,
-by predicting the downfall of both as vehicles of human progress.
-Hot-headed attacks on the theatre precede the evolution of new dramatic
-forms; they are the outcome of the modernity which is ever at war
-with methods which have become classic. "To save the theatre, the
-theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of
-the plague," is the sweeping verdict of Eleonora Duse,[2] but there
-is no disparagement in the reflection that the melancholy prophecies
-are often uttered by dramatists who are misunderstood and rejected. In
-Anton Tchekhov's _The Seagull_, published in 1900, the familiar protest
-is heard: "To me the theatre of to-day," says the poet Constantine,
-through whom the author speaks, "is no more than an antiquated
-prejudice, a dull routine." He protests against the trivialities, the
-commonplace morality, the repeated dishing up of the same story in
-a thousand varieties. He wants to flee, as Maupassant fled from the
-Eiffel Tower. Each malcontent finds solution in his own new method of
-drama. Rousseau's letter to d'Alembert contains the genuine criticism
-of the theatre, with which no born dramatist can sympathise. From the
-effect of fostering artificial emotions, of indulging in sham joys
-and sorrows, there is no escape through improvement of dramatic form.
-Whether for good or ill it remains with us. But there is happily little
-danger of the rationality, in which Strindberg saw the doom of the
-theatre.
-
-The choice of naturalistic subjects was to be a contributing factor in
-the process of rationalism. Of the painful impression created by _Lady
-Julie_ Strindberg writes:
-
-"When I chose this subject from life, just as it was told to me
-some years ago when it stirred me deeply, I found it suitable for a
-tragedy, for it still makes a painful impression to see a happily
-placed individual go to the wall, and still more to see a family die
-out. But the time may come when we shall be sufficiently evolved and
-enlightened to contemplate with indifference the coarse, cynical, and
-heartless drama which life offers, when we have laid aside the inferior
-and unreliable registration-machines which we call feelings, and which
-will be superfluous and injurious when our organs of judgment are fully
-developed....
-
-"The fact that my tragedy makes a sad impression on many is the
-fault of the many. When we become strong, as were the first French
-revolutionaries, it will make an exclusively pleasant and cheerful
-impression to see the royal parks cleared of rotting, superannuated
-trees which have too long stood in the way of others with equal right
-to vegetate their full life-time; it will make a good impression in the
-same sense as does the sight of the death of an incurable.
-
-"The reproach was levelled against my tragedy, _The Father_, that it
-was so sad, as though one wanted merry tragedies. People clamour for
-the joy of life, and theatrical managers order farces, as though the
-joy of life consisted in being foolish, and in describing people as if
-they were each and all afflicted with St. Vitus's Dance or idiocy. I
-find the joy of life in the powerful, cruel struggle of life, and my
-enjoyment in discovering something, in learning something. Therefore
-I have chosen an unusual, though instructive, case, in other words, an
-exception, but a great exception which confirms the rule, and which
-is sure to offend the lovers of the banal. The simple brain will
-further be shocked by the fact that my motives behind the action are
-not simple, and that there is not one view alone to be taken of it. An
-event in life--and this is a comparatively new discovery--is generally
-produced by a whole series of more or less deep-seated motives, but
-the spectator chooses for the most part the one which is easiest for
-him to grasp, or the one most advantageous to the reputation of his
-judgment. Take a case of suicide as an example. 'Bad business,' says
-the bourgeois. 'Unhappy love!' say the women. 'Sickness!' says the
-disease-ridden man. 'Shattered hopes!' the bankrupt. But it is possible
-that the motives lay in all of these causes, or in none, and that the
-dead man hid the real one by putting forward another which has thrown a
-more favourable light on his memory."
-
-In an essay entitled _On Modern Drama and the Modern Theatre_, written
-in March, 1889, and published in the first volume of a collection of
-plays and essays under the title _Things Printed and Unprinted_,
-Strindberg proclaims the regenerating powers of the Naturalistic
-Theatre in the following words:
-
-"Let us have a theatre, where we can be horrified by the horrible,
-where we can laugh at what is laughable, play with playthings; where we
-can see everything without being shocked, if that which has hitherto
-been concealed behind theological and æsthetical hangings is revealed.
-Though old, conventional laws may have to be broken, let us have a
-free theatre, where everything is admitted except the talentless, the
-hypocritical and the stupid."
-
-He distinguishes between true and false naturalism, and deprecates
-the commonplace dulness of the subject chosen by Henry Becque in _Les
-Corbeaux_. To Strindberg the choice of such subjects depends on a
-soullessness or a lack of temperament, which must bore the spectator
-instead of stimulate him. He calls such a dramatic method simple
-photography which "includes everything, even the speck of dust upon the
-lens of the camera. This is realism," he writes; "a method, latterly
-exalted to an art, a little art which cannot see the wood for the
-trees. This is the false Naturalism which believed that art consisted
-merely in sketching a piece of nature in a natural manner, but it is
-not the true naturalism which seeks out those points in life, where the
-great conflicts occur, which loves to see that which cannot be seen
-every day, rejoices in the battle of elemental powers, whether they be
-called love or hatred, revolt or sociability; which cares not, whether
-a subject be beautiful or ugly, if only it is great."
-
-"I do not know the modes," cried Socrates, "but leave me one which
-will imitate the tones and accents of a brave man, enduring danger or
-distress, fighting with constancy against fortune." The Naturalism
-of which Strindberg was a prophet might have chosen these words as
-a motto. Socrates continued: "And also one fitted for the work of
-peace, for prayer heard by the gods, for the successful persuasion or
-exhortation of men, and generally for the sober enjoyment of ease and
-prosperity." With this side of man's natural life young Naturalism had
-no sympathy. That came with years of discretion.
-
-The transformation of the diffuse drama in many acts into the concise
-and dynamic one-act play with few characters, and the simplification of
-stage technique, were the salient points in Strindberg's proclamation
-of Theatre Reform. He held that there is generally but one scene,
-towards which the playwright mounts on devious paths, and that author
-and audience alike are made to endure painful side-shows for the sake
-of one thing worth seeing. A man's dramatic talent may outlast his
-one-act play, but it is taxed to depletion in the construction of five
-acts, just as the imaginative patience of the audience is exhausted by
-the long intervals.
-
-The Greek art of the one-act play had been revived in the eighteenth
-century in the _Proverbes Dramatiques_ of Carmontelle, developed by
-Musset and Feuillet, and had finally found a modern interpretation in
-the style of the _Quart d'Heure_ of which _Entre Frères_ by Guiche and
-Lavedan is a typical example. When writing _Lady Julie_, Strindberg
-had in mind the monographic novels of the brothers de Goncourt. The
-dialogue in Lady Julie is interrupted twice. There is singing and
-a folk-dance. Such diversions do not leave the spectator time to
-escape from the suggestion of the playwright, or to lose the precious
-illusion. The performance of Lady Julie lasts an hour and a half,
-and Strindberg saw no reason why the public should not be educated
-to endure one act which lasts the whole evening. There may be mental
-diversions, such as are provided by monologue, pantomime and ballet;
-but people can listen for hours to sermons and speeches, and may
-consequently learn true dramatic concentration.
-
-The scenery should be simple. "With the aid of a table and two chairs
-the strongest conflicts which life offers could be presented," he
-writes of the genre of the proverbe, "and by that form of art it
-became possible to popularise the discoveries of modern psychology."
-The decorations should only be suggestive of place and time.
-An impressionistic representation of a corner of a room and its
-furniture--not the whole room--is all that is needed. Grotesque
-scene-painting should be abolished together with the stagey villain who
-can create no illusion of wickedness. Footlights were an abomination
-to Strindberg. M. Ludovic Céller[3] tells us of their humble and
-smoky origin in the tallow candles which, for economical reasons,
-were placed on the floor to illuminate the darkness of stage and
-auditorium. Whatever their origin, they have a power of distorting
-facial expression against which Strindberg vehemently protested. His
-protest has been echoed by numerous reformers of the theatre. But the
-footlights remain to disfigure noses and blacken eyes in accordance
-with time-honoured custom. With proper side-lighting and less paint
-on the faces of the actors Strindberg saw possibilities for the mimic
-art, which are hidden under shadows and heavy layers of powder and
-rouge. The visible orchestra was another obstacle to scenic progress;
-in the shrinking of stage and auditorium to a size compatible with
-artistic presentation, he saw another means of improvement. In the
-small, simplified theatre, with well-regulated light effects and actors
-with natural intonation and gestures, Strindberg found a chance for the
-continuance of the theatre. Many of his ideas have been realised in the
-Künstler Theater of Munich.
-
-In the preface to _Lady Julie_ he deals with the all-important subject
-of characterisation. "As modern characters," he writes, "living in a
-period of transition more hurried and hysterical than its immediate
-predecessor, I have drawn my characters vacillating, broken, mixtures
-of old and new.... My souls (characters) are conglomerations of
-past and present stages of culture, scraps of books and newspapers,
-fragments of men and women, tom shreds of Sunday attire that are now
-rags, such as go to make up a soul. And I have thrown in some history
-of origins in letting the weaker steal and repeat the words of the
-stronger, in letting the souls borrow ideas, or so-called suggestions
-from one another."
-
-He ridicules the ordinary idea of a strong character. The person
-"who has acquired a fixed temperament or accommodated himself to a
-certain rôle in life, who in a word has ceased to grow, was supposed
-to have character; whilst one who developed, the skilful navigator on
-the stream of life who does not sail with close-tied sheets, but who
-knows when to fall off before the wind and when to luff again, was
-deemed deficient in character.... This bourgeois conception of the
-fixity of the soul was transferred to the stage, where all that is
-bourgeois has ever reigned supreme. Such a character became synonymous
-with a gentleman, fixed and ready-made, one who invariably appeared
-drunk, jocular, melancholy.... I do not, therefore, believe in simple
-theatrical characters. And the summary judgments which authors pass on
-human beings, such as: this one is stupid; that one is brutal; he is
-jealous; he is mean, etc., should be refuted by naturalists who know
-the rich complexity of the soul, and who realise that 'vice has an
-obverse which shows a considerable likeness to virtue.'"
-
-The secret of Strindberg's great influence on the theatre of twenty
-years ago lay in this very conception of character. His men and women
-are _alive_, moving, changing, growing, shrinking in ceaseless response
-to the pressure of existence. He is the dramatist of the _perpetuum
-mobile_ in the modern heart, the interpreter of inexhaustible
-discontent in himself and others. His personality vibrates in the
-dialogue, and lifts the idea of the play to the surface in every
-consecutive scene, but the artist in him is stronger than the
-idealogue. The curtain and the settled problem do not drop together.
-Strindberg has answered a question or two, tentatively, in his own
-manner, but others crowd in upon him and his audience. The absence
-of finality is felt through the tragic endings, through the strong
-blend of moods, emotions and desires of his exceptional characters,
-through the unreasonableness of his prejudices. In spite of pessimism
-and cynicism a hope of change is communicated to the spectator, which
-penetrates depression and stimulates the curiosity to live.
-
-Amongst the one-act plays which were written between 1887 and 1897,
-_Samum_, _Pariah, The Stronger, Playing with Fire_ and _The Link_
-present the typical characters of psychic intensity and neuropathic
-activity. _Samum_ is the story of the revenge of an Arabian girl and
-her lover upon a hapless Frenchman, lieutenant in a Zouave regiment.
-She kills him, not with a dagger, for that might involve the punishment
-of her tribe, but with words. With the help of "Samum," the hot,
-suffocating wind of the desert which blows phantoms into the white
-man's brain, she thrusts suggestion after suggestion into his mind. She
-makes the sick man believe that he has been bitten by a mad dog; she
-offers him sand instead of water in the drinking bowl, and rejoices
-when he dreads the drink; she invokes hideous pictures of the defeat of
-his regiment, the faithlessness of his wife, the death of his child,
-before his fevered imagination. She finally makes him stare in a mirror
-at the ghastly image of a skull, and tells him that this is his face,
-that he is dead. And when the Frenchman, murdered by horror, sinks back
-dead, Youssef, her lover, proud of race and proud of the woman's black
-magic, hails her as the worthy mother of his child.
-
-_Pariah_ is a dialogue which bears the mark of the master-craftsman
-in the dramatic presentation of psychological events. It is a contest
-of minds founded on a tale by Ola Hansson. Two middle-aged men, one
-an archæologist, the other a somewhat mysterious man of unknown
-occupation, who has returned to Sweden from America, have met in the
-country. The archæologist is engaged in recovering antique ornaments
-from the bowels of the earth. In the room where the two men face each
-other there stands a box, containing bracelets and trinkets of gold
-which he has found. Herr X., the archæologist, talks of his poverty,
-of how easily he might appropriate to his own use some of the gold
-he has found. Debts could be paid, and his wife's anxiety allayed
-by one single bracelet. So simple and yet impossible to do. Herr Y.
-listens to the reasons which prevent Herr X. from becoming a thief
-though there can be no fear of detection. Incapable of stealing
-himself, Herr X. expresses his pity for others who fall under similar
-temptation. He suspects that the man by his side is in need of such
-pity--his conduct has already betrayed the convict. By a series of
-psychologically timed questions Herr X. unmasks Herr Y., who, taken
-by surprise, confesses that he has served a term of imprisonment for
-fraud. The wild anger which for a moment surged through the brain of
-the criminal has given way to servile admiration of the superior mind.
-He kisses the archæologist's hand. All is known, and yet there is no
-condescension on the part of the stronger man. Herr Y. tells the story
-of how he came to write a false signature; he wishes to persuade Herr
-X. of his spiritual innocence, show him that he was the victim of an
-uncontrollable impulse which never defiled his real self. Herr X. has
-fallen into an introspective mood. Hesitating, half afraid of what he
-is doing, he confides to Herr Y. that he has killed a man--a worthless,
-drunken old servant, and without intention to inflict deadly injury,
-it is true, but such is the fact: he is a murderer. In reply to Herr
-Y.'s eager questions why he escaped without punishment, Herr X. gives
-the reasons, why he believed it to be a greater wrong to give himself
-up to justice than to conceal the deed--there were his parents, his
-career, his fitness for life. Herr Y. has the scoundrel's alert sense
-of opportunity. He begins by pointing out his moral superiority over
-Herr X., and ends by trying to extort money. Let Herr X. only put his
-hand in the box, and transfer some of its contents to Herr Y., and
-nothing more will be said of the crime. Let him refuse to do this, and
-the whole story will be told at the nearest police-station. The end of
-this incisive piece of psychology shows us Herr Y., driven to flight by
-the cold-blooded logic of Herr X., who demonstrates that the would-be
-accuser is a forger who is "wanted," and whose dread of the police
-authorities is a guarantee of his discretion in the matter.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_The Stronger_ is a contest of temperaments carried out by one voice
-only. Two women--the wife and the mistress of one man--have met in
-a café. Mademoiselle Y. sits silent, whilst Madame X. talks. But
-her silence conveys more than speech. It drives Madame X. to reveal
-the humiliation she has suffered, it drives her through jealous and
-angry recriminations to a triumphant and vindictive assertion of her
-superior position as the legal wife and mother. As an ironical and
-adroit study of two types of the soul feminine, and by the skilful
-handling of the monologue the piece is one of the best of its genre.
-
-_Playing with Fire_ is a triangular comedy of marriage, in which
-conjugal fidelity is saved at the eleventh hour through sudden and
-truly Strindbergian disillusionment which makes the friend of husband
-and wife depart like a rocket from the house of temptation, whilst the
-peace of an orderly lunch descends upon the family. _The First Warning_
-is a conjugal squabble, and one of the weakest dramatic episodes
-conceived by Strindberg. The character of the jealous and enslaved
-husband, who has made six vain attempts to flee from the devastating
-charm of his wife, is a diluted réchauffé of an incident related in
-_The Confession of a Fool_, including the significant moment when
-the wife is subjugated by the shock of losing her first front tooth,
-and the attendant discovery of the vanity of all things of beauty.
-The dialogue is unreal, and Strindberg's sketch of the young girl so
-unnatural that we may be grateful that the type has not been more
-frequently chosen for "naturalistic" treatment.
-
-_The Link_, a tragedy published in 1897, is a masterly divorce-court
-scene. Here Strindberg draws the shame and agony of the broken
-marriage-tie with bitter realism, and yet with a delicate touch of that
-all-human compassion before which the flowers of satire wither. The
-Baron and the Baroness have decided to separate, and proceedings for a
-deed of separation have been entered by the husband. There is a link
-between them which cannot be broken--the child whom they both love; and
-for his sake they are determined not to expose their differences before
-the hungry eyes of scandal-mongers. The husband is willing to let the
-mother have the custody of the child. But the questions of the judge
-pierce the veneer of amiability. Who is the cause of dissension? What
-has brought them before the Court? The answers bring accusations and
-recriminations, a parade of quarrels and dissensions, angry revelations
-of infidelity, disgust, espionage, lies, hatred, and, when the Court
-exercises its legal power of depriving both parents of the custody
-of the child, the torture of vain regret and empty lives. There is
-consummate art in the picture of the emotional revolution, through
-which husband and wife are forced into self-damning revelations. The
-minor characters of the jurymen and court officials are drawn with a
-calm observation and quiet humour which form an effective background
-to its central tragic figures. Incidentally, the inadequacy of the law
-to secure justice for the wronged is shown, and the lawyer in the play
-has some affinity with the legal luminaries in M. Brieux's _La Robe
-Rouge_. But Strindberg's judge is a righteous man who chafes under the
-limitations and responsibilities of his profession.
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--1904 (Photo by Andersson, Stockholm.)]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--1906 (Photo by Haminqvist, Stockholm)]
-
-Those, whose knowledge of Strindberg's writings is limited to his
-naturalistic plays, have judged his powers as a literary artist from
-an entirely inadequate point of view. When Justin McCarthy spoke of
-the real Strindberg, as revealed in _The Father, Lady Julie_ and
-_Comrades_, he ignored, not only the volumes of essays, stories and
-novels which preceded the plays mentioned, but those which were
-published at the same time. Strindberg has been described as a man who
-had no interest to spare for social problems, or politics, or the great
-movements of his time--as a dramatist whose knife was forever delving
-in the pathological tissue of passions, and whose eyes saw nothing
-but the broad and sombre outlines of inevitable tragedy. Those who
-know _The People of Hemsö_ (1887), a novel of the fishermen's life
-in the Stockholm Archipelago, fresh as the salt breeze of the sea,
-bright with sunshine, and the jollity of a man with steady nerves,
-who is thoroughly at home in a boat and in a hut, are familiar with
-another side of Strindberg. Or the volume of short stories entitled
-_Fisher Folk_ (1888), with its sketches of life on the island, broadly
-humorous, impressive in its unaffected narrative of the struggles and
-ambitions of the hardy toilers among the rocks. The stories bring us
-in the midst of the island folk: we know their practical, wind-dried
-minds where superstition lurks in a corner; we see their sparse
-bodies--sometimes fed on herring-heads and potatoes. We attend the
-dance which the poor, hunch-backed tailor gives to the young people as
-an offering on the altar of joy, and lament with him the devastation
-wrought by terpsichorean orgies in his garden. We accompany Westman,
-the ungodly pilot who has harpooned a seal from his little boat,
-and is dragged out to sea by the cruel monster in spite of pitiful
-recitals of the Lord's Prayer, and offers of a pure silver chandelier
-to the local church. We are made to participate in the people's life.
-In both books there is a wealth of descriptive power, and there is
-something fundamentally healthy in the figures of the common people
-whom he draws, a natural pathos in their vulgarity, and even in their
-criminality.
-
-There are some who see exclusively _das Dämonische_ in Strindberg,
-and who picture him as perpetually skirting precipices of moral
-and intellectual negation, or as a Lucifer who never emerges from
-consuming tongues of fire. They have nothing to say of such books as
-his _Sketches of Flowers and Animals_ (1888). Here we meet him, a
-mild and patient gardener, sowing his salad and spinach, revelling in
-the reward which his cool cucumbers offer after having been carefully
-tended by loving hands. Here he initiates us into his cult of the
-flower, his adoration of colour and form in the plant world; he
-anticipates Maeterlinck in his sensitive studies of the intelligence
-of flowers and the mysteries of seeds. His _Fables_ are stories of
-birds, insects and bushes, betraying an intimate knowledge of nature,
-and sparkling with a good-humoured satire. In these books there are
-strokes of brilliant imagination, there is a womanly tenderness for
-the lives of plant-children. In one of his stories[4] he tells us of
-a tall fir that can feel and suffer, and his description of the spirit
-within the tree which sobs under the wood-cutter's axe, and which some
-day we shall recognise, reminds us of Fiona Macleod's _Cathal of the
-Woods_. Strindberg's love of Nature had many qualities in common with
-Thoreau--there is the same pleasure in cultivating the cabbage-patch,
-the same ecstatic contemplation of green life. Thoreau could find his
-way in the wood during the night by the touch of his feet. Strindberg,
-treading his way through the forest in the dark hours, knows whether he
-walks on soil, clubmoss or maidenhair, "through the nerves, of his large
-toe."[5]
-
-There is also a practical, homely side of Strindberg, which is
-generally ignored, qualities appertaining to the small farmer with a
-keen eye to profitable cultivation of the land. Without these qualities
-he could not have written _Among French Peasants_ (1889), which is
-a series of articles on the life and conditions in agricultural
-France. They are the product of the mind of a true son of the
-soil, equipped with a journalist's power of rapid generalisation.
-Strindberg travelled through France, notebook in hand, stayed amongst
-the peasants, measured hay and corn, attended weddings and fairs,
-annotating the prices of meat and butter, studied the ravages of
-the phylloxera and geological formations. The book is crammed with
-facts and comparative statistics of town and country, wheat and wine,
-village education, libraries, labourers' wages, cheese-making, the best
-fertilisers, and other matters of import to rural economy.
-
-He shirked no trouble, avoided no obstacles to equip himself as a
-writer on gigantic subjects. His encyclopædic grasp of a many-sided
-subject is shown in this book, and in his numerous essays on
-sociological questions. It carries with it a certain superficiality,
-and readiness to theorise from insufficient data which may necessitate
-a graceful retraction of opinions, once loudly proclaimed. But there is
-ample compensation in the freshness and vigour of a mind which bears
-crop after crop without exhausting itself. Such a quickly grown crop,
-verdant and luxurious in ideas, is the essay, written in 1884, _On the
-General Discontent, its Causes and Remedies_, in which he inveighs
-against the evils of a false Culture, and within the space of a hundred
-pages lets Society pass in review before his critical pen in the types
-of the king, the bureaucrat, the physician, the teacher, the merchant,
-the sailor, the artisan, the manufacturer, the labourer, the servant,
-the scientist, the author, the journalist, and the artist, and finally
-prescribes the pills of self-help, self-government and limitation of
-useless luxuries, artfully mixed. There is much of Rousseau, Tolstoy,
-Spencer, Mill and de Quesnay in the social philosophy, with which he
-wished to build on the ruins, wrought by _The Red Room_ and _The New
-Kingdom_. The ideal peasant--in Tolstoyan garb--was then Strindberg's
-hope for humanity.
-
-When he wrote _At the Edge of the Sea_, in 1890, the horrors of
-unchecked democracy had been revealed to him. It is the story of a
-highly intelligent, refined and super-sensitive man who is forced
-to live amongst coarse and ignorant people, and who is gradually
-driven to insanity and suicide. This book is the apex of Strindberg's
-novelistic art. The scene is again laid on one of the islands outside
-Stockholm, the life of the fisherfolk is once more described. But the
-tone and the colour are changed. There is the same brilliancy in the
-description of scenery, and the psychological imagination is more
-lavish than ever, but the mists of Nietzscheanism lie heavily over the
-book. The distinction between "slave-morality" and "master-morality" is
-emphasised with truly Dionysian pessimism.
-
-The same influence coloured the preface to _Lady Julie_, and the novel
-_Tschandala_, published in 1889, and led Mr. Edmund Gosse into the
-error of describing Strindberg as "the most remarkable creative talent
-started by the philosophy of Nietzsche." Strindberg was certainly
-not "started" by Nietzsche who was entirely unknown to him until the
-autumn of 1888, when George Brandes brought the two writers together.
-A correspondence between Nietzsche and Strindberg began in 1889, and
-continued until Nietzsche's illness. Nietzsche read Strindberg's novels
-with interest, and Strindberg duly acknowledged the influence which
-Nietzsche exercised upon him, but protested against the mistaken view
-expressed by Mr. Gosse and others, in the following words: "Those
-who have followed my career as a writer at its different stages of
-development know sufficiently well how early I adopted the so-called
-Nietzschean standpoint with regard to conventional morals, and the
-emancipation of women to give me my due, and Nietzsche his with clear
-consciences."
-
-The statement that Strindberg was a Nietzschean _pur et simple_ is as
-absurd as the statement that he was a Darwinist or a Methodist. He
-passed through the fatalism of Hartmann, the pessimism of Schopenhauer,
-the naturalism of Zola, the realism of Turgenev and Dostoevsky. On one
-occasion he speaks of Balzac as his master, on another he calls himself
-a Voltairean. These influences are but lights on the way. He passes on,
-and speaks to us with a new tongue. When charged with inconsistency
-he might well have answered with Walt Whitman: "I am large--I contain
-multitudes."
-
-
-[1] _Fröken Julie_, the Swedish name of this play, has been translated
-into English as "Miss Juliet" and "Miss Julia." The meaning of the
-Swedish title and the idea of the play are more faithfully rendered by
-the title _Lady Julie_. In the choice of a title for his feminine type
-of aristocratic degeneracy, Strindberg was probably influenced by Anna
-Maria Lenngren's _Fröken Juliana_, a well-known satirical poem on a
-similar subject which belongs to classical Swedish literature. Up to
-the middle of the nineteenth century the title "Fröken" was exclusively
-used-when addressing the unmarried daughters of the hereditary nobility
-of Sweden. An unmarried daughter of a Swedish count is a countess,
-though she is addressed as "Fröken." Upon marriage with a commoner she
-may use or drop her title.
-
-[2] _Studies in Seven Arts_, by Arthur Symons.
-
-[3] _"Les décors, les costumes et la mise-en-scène au XVII siècle."_
-
-[4] Confused Sensations.
-
-[5] The Confession of a Fool.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-SELF-TORMENTOR AND VISIONARY
-
-
-He restlessness of Genius is a sore trial to Mediocrity. Mediocrity
-in the Critic's chair, whose business it is to pass judgment upon the
-artist and his work, to affix a label to his back, and to place him
-on a particular shelf where the public can find him. The literary
-artist is expected to have a point of view which he has reached through
-certain early influences, to express himself in a certain form, and,
-when mature, to be measurable and easily recognisable in size and
-colour. If his personality and his writings make the critic's work easy
-he will be blessed by his contemporaries, or possibly condemned. But
-he will always be understood, and in the understanding there is solid
-comfort. You may sneer at the gods of society, you may shake your fist
-at law and authority, you may ridicule humanity, but you must, like Mr.
-George Bernard Shaw, always say the same thing. Voltaire is always
-expected to contemplate the world with a truly Voltairean smile of
-irony, Rousseau to cling innocently to Nature, Swift to see humanity
-only from the satirist's vantage-point.
-
-The man of genius who, conscious of the limitations of a single point
-of view, seeks another, who strides across the hilltops of past thought
-in rapid search of a higher one, who hugs philosophies and drops them,
-holds faiths and deserts them, is a phenomenon before which the critic
-feels uneasy. He calls in the doctor, and together they prepare the
-last label of madness--red, like a warning against poison--and hurl
-it at the extraordinary man when he happens to pass at a convenient
-distance. Believing that there is nothing further to be said, they
-return to their respective vocations.
-
-From the points of view of Mediocrity and Eugenics Strindberg presented
-the typical signs of degeneration, irrespectively of the traits and
-characteristics which are inadequately defined as the insanity of
-genius. He was a truth-seeker, and, consequently, a fault-finder. He
-knew peace and comfort like other men, and brief hours of sunshine,
-but spiritual discontent compelled him to be a nomad, a wanderer in
-many lands. Hence the critic's failure to classify him as a romanticist
-or realist, a socialist or individualist, a pessimist or humorist,
-a maniac or mystic, or to map out his life into periods and squares
-of thought. There was something of the eternal recurrence in him, an
-alchemical consciousness of all in all. He leaves beliefs, parts with
-influences, conquers new lands through violent crises of awakening
-which well-nigh wreck the body, and returns to the first camp, richer
-and yet the same. Through soul-sickness and hallucinations, through
-delirium and phrenopathic punishments he is led to the super-sanity
-of genius. He becomes the visionary of things hidden, the medium of
-spirits, the sinner on the road to Damascus, the prophet of divine
-justice.
-
-Mistakes and bitter experiences prepared the way for the religious
-crisis of 1894. In 1887 he left Switzerland and France for Bavaria,
-where he wrote _The Father_ and The _People of Hemsö_. He lived in
-Denmark from the autumn of 1887 to the summer of 1889. The prosecution
-of _Married_ had inspired cautiousness in the hearts of Swedish
-publishers, and Strindberg had only with difficulty found a publisher
-for _The Father_ and _Lady Julie_. The plays were promptly attacked
-by Swedish critics, amongst them Professor Warburg, author of a
-history of literature, who thought their naturalism an unmistakable
-form of decadence. When Strindberg returned to his country in 1889
-the hostility aroused by _Married_, and augmented by lively tales of
-the author's views on morality took an unexpectedly practical form.
-When yachting along the west coast for the purpose of collecting
-material for a great work on _The Scenery of Sweden_, he was actually
-refused permission to land in one of the fishing villages.[1] During
-the two years which he now spent in Sweden he became embittered by
-the enmity of his critics. He isolated himself on one of his beloved
-islands outside Stockholm, wrote and painted. In the autumn of 1892 an
-exhibition of his pictures was held in Stockholm. It was impressions
-of the sea which his brush had chosen--ice, mist, storm--and painted,
-not only with a tender feeling for island scenery, but disclosing
-considerable technical merit and accuracy of hand. The principal
-cause of suffering lay in Strindberg's eroticism, his interminable
-suspiciousness against his wife which made his divorce in 1892 a
-merciful end to a marriage of torment. There is much in the repulsive
-pages of _The Confession of a Fool_ which betrays its author's lack of
-mental balance; the incessant puling over the woman's wickedness, and
-the attendant self-appreciation are not apt to command the reader's
-sympathy. The same may be said of the second volume of _Married_,
-published in 1886. There are a carelessness of style, and a bluntness
-of accusation against womankind which make the book inartistic. The
-_ad captandum_ controversialist has overruled judgment; there is a
-tone of personal irritation in the stories which Strindberg tells
-us were written "in self-defence" against the attacks, made upon
-him by feminists. Like John Knox, when he wrote _The First Blast of
-the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regimen of Women_, Strindberg was
-actuated by a kind of religious fervour. Like John Knox he detested
-"this monstriferous empire of women," whilst his admiration for
-the dangerous sex repeatedly cast him in chains of bondage. Like
-Schopenhauer he mocked all womankind "long of hair and short of
-sense," and threw misogyny to the winds before the first pair of
-charming eyes or dainty feet.
-
-In the autumn of 1892 we find Strindberg in Germany. The curse of
-marriage is no longer upon his head. He lives at Friedrichshagen, near
-Berlin, with his friends, the Swedish writer Ola Hansson, and his
-wife Laura Marholm who has written an interesting psychological study
-of Strindberg. Strindberg has passed through one of those "deaths,"
-in which he found temporary Nirvana when the battle of thoughts had
-been too sanguinary. He has forsaken literature, thrown away the pen
-as a worthless tool of a tormented imagination which can scratch but
-not solve the riddle of the Sphinx. He has been re-born--a scientist.
-The exact sciences--chemistry, physics, astronomy--hold out hopes of
-complete replies to questions which the playwright can dress in human
-shape but not analyse.
-
-Strindberg's friend, Gustaf Uddgren,[2] has described a visit to him
-at this time. His study was bare and uninviting. On the floor there
-lay stacks of scientific books piled up against the wall. They had
-been bought with the first money he had earned in Germany, and none had
-been wasted on the luxury of a bookcase. The room contained a large,
-old easel, not unlike a brown skeleton; a writing-table from which the
-usual heaps of manuscript and notes were conspicuously absent; and, for
-the comfort of the body, a few easy chairs and a sofa, arranged so as
-to give the impression of a drawing-room. Strindberg did not wish to
-discuss literary subjects. He was glad to have left off writing, and
-looked forward with eager joy to scientific research. Uddgren tried in
-vain to induce him to talk about Walt Whitman. Strindberg preferred to
-discuss Red Indians with his guest who knew something of the wild west.
-
-After a few months at Friedrichshagen Strindberg moved to Berlin.
-He was in need of change and expansion. In the evenings he was now
-found in a little Wein Stube in Unter den Linden which is called "Zum
-Schwarzen Ferkel." It had already won fame as the favourite resort of
-Heine and E.T.A. Hoffmann. Here he was the centre of a literary and
-scientific coterie. Guitar in hand, amidst sympathetic friends, he
-became Dionysos, the singer of glad tidings, of wine-born joy. He
-improvised songs, and the nights were made short with wit and sparkling
-discussions. The Polish writer, Stanislav Przybyszewski, became much
-attached to Strindberg who found in him whirling depths of imaginative
-thought which attracted him, and made him seek his society on the
-principle of _similia similibus curantur_. Amongst other friends of the
-coterie were Holger Drachmann, Gunnar Heiberg, Adolf Paul, and Edvard
-Munch. "Zum Schwarzen Ferkel" is impregnated with the Strindbergian
-spirit. The landlord proudly shows the visitor the portraits which
-Strindberg gave him, and the picture by Strindberg, entitled _Die
-Welle_, which hangs on the wall.
-
-The plunge into the "exact" physical sciences, from which he had
-expected so much, proved disappointing. The boundaries of experimental
-research were soon reached by his penetrative imagination. He had a
-passion for facts, but he could not, like the typical man of science,
-content himself with systematised classification of things observable.
-His speculative writings are studded with allusions to scientific
-theories, and show an extensive knowledge of the history of chemistry
-and botany, of the facts of astronomy, geology, and zoology. He
-garnered the fruits of nineteenth-century science with the pleasure of
-the true dilettante, and having tasted them, declared them insipid.
-The imaginative processes of his mind continued where those of others
-stop; he passed from the visible to the occult, from rigid induction
-to extravagant fancy. Beyond the uttermost limits of science he came
-to see another world, in which chemistry became alchemy, astronomy
-astrology, physics the servant of magic, and the form of man the
-tool of mighty forces. He became a student of magnetism, hypnotism,
-telepathy, spiritism, of the secret knowledge which has persisted
-throughout the ages as the pearl within the oyster.
-
-Whilst literary Berlin was acclaiming Strindberg as the naturalistic
-playwright, his mind was centred on the hyperchemical speculations
-which later on found expression in his _Antibarbarus I or the
-Psychology of Sulphur or All is in All_, and in _Sylva Sylvarum_.
-Whilst wings of imagination were lifting him to new planes of thought,
-there was a sudden jerk on the chain which bound him to earth. He
-fell in love. The ideal woman had again appeared, now in the person
-of Fräulein Frida Uhl, a young Austrian girl, daughter of Hofrath
-Friedrich Uhl, in Vienna. They became engaged, and art-loving Berlin
-was one day surprised to see Strindberg escorting his fiancee to
-the National Gallery. He was attired in the fashionable apparel of
-the Berlin dandy. A check suit of a large pattern, a short yellow
-overcoat, a garish tie, a grotesque walking-stick, and an immaculate
-silk hat which, according to the account given by Gustaf Uddgren,
-retained its place with difficulty on the leonine mane, gave him an
-appearance of unwonted worldliness. They were married in April, 1893,
-and spent the honeymoon at Gravesend. An injunction had meanwhile been
-granted against the German edition of _The Confession of a Fool_, and
-Strindberg returned to Berlin in order to appear before the Court in
-the action which followed. The prosecution failed. Strindberg and his
-wife spent the winter at her father's country place at Armstädten, on
-the Danube, where he returned to his esoteric studies, and wrote his
-_Antibarbarus_. In August, 1894, Strindberg went to Paris. His wife
-had accompanied him, and left their child in Austria. The tie was now
-irksome to him; _les hautes études_ and not woman had again become the
-mistress of his soul. In November he sent his wife back to her parents.
-
-"It was with a feeling of wild joy," he writes, "that I returned from
-Gare du Nord, where I had left my dear little wife who was going to
-our child who had fallen ill in a distant country. The sacrifice of
-my heart was thus made complete." Their last words, "When do we meet
-again?--Soon," were deceptive; an intuition truly told him that they
-had parted for ever. He had placed human affection on the altar of
-truth-seeking, thus practising the motto with which _Inferno_ opens:
-
-     Courbe la tête, fier Sicambre!
-     Adore ce que tu as brûlé,
-     Brûle ce que tu as adoré!
-
-At the Café de la Régence he sat down at the table where he used to sit
-with his wife, "the beautiful wardress of my prison who spied on my
-soul day and night, guessed my secret thoughts, watched the course of
-my ideas, jealously observed my spirit's striving towards the unknown."
-He felt free, a sense of mental expansion, of liberated power, a call
-to reach the arcanum of human knowledge.
-
-In Paris he was now the playwright of the day. The success of _Lady
-Julie_ and _Creditors_ was followed by a brilliant performance of _The
-Father_ at Théâtre de l'OEuvre in December. All Paris talked of his
-originality and of his misogyny which provided a piquant sensation,
-and a subject for interesting gossip in literary and dramatic circles.
-He was interviewed and photographed--he was the _cher maître_ of the
-theatrical manager who expected from him a sensible appreciation of
-his possibilities for further triumphs on the stage. In Berlin he
-was the literary lion of the moment. His plays and novels lay in the
-booksellers' windows in attractive German dress, his portrait was
-exhibited, his personality was discussed. He was saluted as a leader of
-a new movement. But he turned his back on all this. Another self was
-shed; a voice within whispered the old burning "Beyond this"--drove him
-across the borderland of sanity, and into the chaos of unhuman desires.
-
-He left the café, and returned to his rooms in Quartier Latin. From
-their hiding-place in his trunk he took six crucibles made of fine
-porcelain, bought with money which he "had stolen from himself," made
-up a fierce fire in the stove, and pulled down the blinds for the
-night's experiment. His theory regarding the composition of sulphur
-which had met with such merciless ridicule was now to be put to the
-final test. A packet of pure sulphur and a pair of tongs completed
-the equipment of the laboratory. The sulphur burnt with infernal
-flames, and towards the morning he was able to demonstrate that it
-contained carbon. He believed that he had solved the great problem,
-overthrown orthodox chemistry, and gained scientific immortality. He
-had not noticed that the intense heat had burnt his hands, and caused
-the skin to fall off in flakes, but the pain of undressing in the
-morning made him conscious of the injury. The joy in the pursuit of the
-problems which haunted him was, however, greater than the pain, and
-the experiments were continued night after night. He had proved the
-existence of carbon in sulphur, now he had to show that it contained
-hydrogen and oxygen. The burns on his hands became filled with
-fragments of coke, they were bleeding, and caused him great pain, but
-he persisted in the work. He avoided his friends, and sought absolute
-loneliness. Meanwhile he wrote love-letters to his wife, relating
-to her the wonderful discoveries which he had made. She replied by
-warnings against such futile and foolish occupations, in which she
-saw nothing but waste of money. Irritated by her want of sympathy,
-Strindberg sent her a letter of farewell to wife and child, in which he
-led her to understand that a love affair had absorbed all his thoughts.
-She replied by instituting proceedings for divorce.
-
-The charge which he had made against himself was not true, and he was
-soon the prey of remorse. His injured pride had led him to write a
-letter which he describes as shameful and unpardonable, and in the
-loneliness which followed he saw himself as a suicide and assassinator.
-On Christmas Eve the vision of his deserted wife and child by the
-Christmas tree caused him to flee from the company which he had sought,
-and visit café after café, where he failed to find comfort in the usual
-glass of absinthe. During the night the feeling of being persecuted
-by an unknown power, bent on preventing his great task, overcame him.
-He slept badly, and was repeatedly awakened by a cold current of air
-sweeping across his face. Poverty, his persistent enemy, did hot
-leave him in peace. He lacked the necessary means to pay for rent
-and regular meals. His hands were black and swollen through neglect,
-and symptoms of blood-poisoning in the arms set in. The news of his
-helplessness and misery spread amongst his countrymen in Paris. He
-was sought out by a persistent countrywoman who raised a sum of money
-amongst the Swedes in Paris, and Strindberg was brought to the Hospital
-of Saint Louis, his cup of humiliation filled to overflowing.
-
-At the hospital he felt imprisoned amongst ghosts, punished by having
-to live in the midst of people with the faces of the dead and dying,
-the wrecks of humanity who offended his sense of beauty by appearing
-without a nose or an eye, with a split lip or a mortifying cheek.
-Amongst these derelicts Strindberg watched the gentle ministrations
-of the old soeur de charité. She was kind to him, allowed him little
-privileges, called him her boy, and he responded by calling her "my
-mother." "How blissful," he writes, "to say this word mother which
-had not passed my lips for thirty years. The old woman who belongs to
-the Order of Saint Augustine, and who wears the costume of the dead
-because she has never taken part in life, is gentle as self-sacrifice,
-and teaches us to smile at our pains, as if they were pleasures, for
-she knows how beneficial suffering can be. Not a reproachful word, no
-expostulations or sermons." "This nun has played a part in my life,"
-he adds, and, when writing down his _Inferno_ experiences three years
-later, he sends her thoughts of gratitude for having shown him the path
-of the cross.
-
-During the months which he spent in the hospital his chemical
-speculations continued to absorb his interest. He submitted his
-insufficiently burnt sulphur to an independent analysis which confirmed
-his demonstration that it contained carbon. The chemist at the hospital
-encouraged his researches, and Strindberg laid the results before the
-public in an article which appeared in _Le Temps_, and brought him
-requests for further articles on his theories. He left the hospital
-in February, and spent two months in chemical work during which he
-became a student at the Sorbonne, and used the analytical laboratory.
-At the conclusion of his experiments he was satisfied that sulphur is a
-ternary combination consisting of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen.
-
-A superstitious faith in signs and warnings had meanwhile developed.
-A mysterious meaning in the names of the streets and places which
-he passed made itself known to him--rue Beaurepaire, rue Dieu, Porte
-Saint-Martin--a gorgeous signboard above a dyeing business, displaying
-his own initials on a white silver cloud surmounted by a rainbow,
-became a good omen of the future. The chemist Orfila revealed himself
-as a kind patron saint to whom he was strangely led, first by finding
-his chemical treatise in a bookseller's shop, then by discovering his
-grave in the course of a morning walk in the Montparnasse cemetery, and
-finally by being attracted to Hotel Orfila--the monasterial guest-house
-from which women were excluded.
-
-In his daily experiences he discerned the guidance and punishment of
-an unseen hand which, for a high and inscrutable purpose, was leading
-him out of his past folly. Sometimes the Unknown One delivered him into
-the hands of demons; at other times he received the grace which saved
-him from temptations and evil. The idea of persecution permitted for
-the sake of the chastisement needed by his spirit became paramount.
-The simultaneous playing of three pianos in the rooms adjoining his,
-the unexpected presentation of the hotel bill, an inexplicable noise
-in the room, during which the plaster of the ceiling fell on his head,
-roused his suspicions. He moved to Hotel Orfila which looked like a
-monastery. It harboured Roman Catholic students, and an atmosphere of
-mysticism.
-
-Annoyances, revelations, and delusions of persecution now crowded in
-upon him. Strange dreams foretold the future, commonplace objects
-assumed fantastic shape. One day, when looking at the embryo of a
-sprouting walnut under the microscope, he saw two little white hands
-folded as if in prayer. Immovable, perfect in form, they were there,
-the hands of a child or a woman, raised beseechingly towards him.
-Shortly before the incident he had sinned grievously against his child.
-Seized by an uncontrollable longing to be reunited to his wife, in
-spite of the divorce proceedings, he had wished--with a concentrated
-and occultly sharpened desire--that the child might fall ill, and
-thus become a link of reunion. There were other mysteries. The coal in
-his stove burned itself into grotesque shapes, works of some kind of
-elemental sculptor, which were so realistic that the sparrows, feeding
-on crumbs by his window, were frightened by the sight of them. His
-pillow-case, crumpled by the after-dinner nap, showed him one day a
-head in marble modelled on the lines of Michel-Angelo; another day a
-mighty Zeus rested on his bed; one night, after a festive evening with
-friends, he was received by the devil himself in correct middle-age
-attire, thus competing with Blake who one day, whilst ascending the
-stairs of his house, saw Satan glaring at him through a window.
-
-From sulphur he turned to iodine as a subject of original
-experimentation, and then, oblivious of Aristotle's injunctions, to
-the goldmaker's art. He did not possess "the most precious stone of
-the philosophers," by which base metals are changed into gold, and
-he had to be unorthodox--even when practising the alchemistic art.
-He therefore rejected the alchemical faith that gold alone is free
-from sulphur, and commenced experiments with solutions of sulphate of
-iron in support of the theory that gold contains iron and sulphur. He
-succeeded in making gold--his special gold of art--but it vanished
-when put to the ordinary chemical test. Signs and guidance from unseen
-Powers encouraged him to persist in spite of failure. Whilst out for
-a walk his eyes were riveted by the letters F and S intertwined. At
-first he thought of his wife's initials, and of her faithful love, but
-such a commonplace interpretation was quickly dismissed. The letters
-meant _Fer_ and _Soufre_--the secret of the generation of gold was thus
-laid bare before his eyes. Another time two pieces of paper lying at
-the foot of a monument attracted his attention. One bore the imprint
-207, the other 28. What could this be but a reminder of the atomic
-weights of lead (207) and silicum (28)? Subsequent experiments in
-which he extracted gold from lead and silicum confirmed the wisdom of
-the exegesis made. But the spirit of gold is fickle. One day, after
-repeated failures, when standing naked to the waist as a smith before
-the fiercely burning furnace, he looked into the crucible, and saw a
-skull with a pair of glittering eyes. The eyes looked into his soul
-with a supernatural irony, and the goldmaker was struck by paralysing
-doubt, by fear of the consequences of his folly.
-
-One day he was forcibly reminded that the fruits of his labour should
-be consecrated to Wisdom, not Mammon. He had written an article in _Le
-Temps_, and drawn public interest to his theory that iodine could be
-made from benzine. An enterprising agent called on him, and showed
-him that his idea contained possibilities for a highly successful
-commercial undertaking, and that a patent might be worth millions of
-francs. Strindberg repudiated the suggestion, though the agent offered
-him 100,000 francs if he would go with him to Berlin, and subordinate
-his experiments to industrial usages. Unpaid bills and the usual want
-of money caused him to give more serious thought to the offer made.
-After some time he was willing to meet the agent and a chemist, for the
-purpose of making a conclusive experiment, and to turn his art into
-much-needed cash. He collected his retorts and reagents, and arrived at
-the agent's office on the day appointed. It happened to be Whit-Sunday,
-and the office, which looked out on a dark and grimy street, was so
-dirty that the result was one of those mental revolutions to which
-hyper-æsthetic senses are subject. "Memories of childhood were
-awakened," he writes. "Whitsuntide, the feast of joy, when the little
-church was decorated with foliage, tulips, and lilies, when it was
-opened for the children's first Communion, the girls clad in white
-like angels ... the organ ... the tolling of the bells...."
-
-A feeling of shame overcame him, he returned home determined not to
-turn science into a business. He cleared his room of the chemical
-apparatus, swept and dusted it, and made it beautiful with flowers. A
-bath and clean clothes added to the feeling of purification, and during
-a walk in the Montparnasse cemetery gentle thoughts of peace filled his
-mind. _O crux ave spes unica_--these words from the graves carried a
-message of the future. Not love, not gain, not honour for him, but the
-cross, the only path to wisdom!
-
-This unfitness for practical life, this sudden change of personality,
-through which the poet or the child within are confronted with
-unbearable conditions, brings a smile to the lips of the man who is
-thoroughly "fit." The man of the world does not only keep religion and
-business in water-tight compartments, he keeps dreams for the night,
-and poetical recollections for important occasions, such as weddings
-and funerals. He is not troubled by unexpected visitants from his
-subconscious self which cause inconsistencies and poetic delirium. He
-may well deplore the unpracticality of men like Renan who dreamily
-allow themselves to be exploited by "sharper" brains, whilst they
-spend years in contemplation of their own complexity. "I am a tissue
-of contradictions," wrote Renan, "... one of my halves is constantly
-occupied in demolishing the other, like the fabulous animal of Ctesias
-who ate his paws without knowing it."[3]
-
-Instead of selling his process of manufacturing iodine, Strindberg
-returned to the hyperchemical task which he had set himself: to
-eliminate the barriers between matter, and that which is called spirit.
-An object worthy indeed of concentrated effort, worthy even in the
-face of the inevitable failure of seeking to grasp that which to human
-intelligence is unknowable!
-
-Meanwhile he went "mad." Mad as Tasso and Cellini, Poe and Blake. We
-cannot dispute the madness, but we may hold that the madness of genius
-is more valuable to humanity than the sanity of mediocrity.
-
-In Strindberg we can clearly distinguish between cerebral derangements
-causing auditory hallucinations as well as delusions of persecution,
-and the super-conscious activity which produced the state of
-_clairpsychism_, which is generally classed with insanity. Dr. W.
-Hirsch has studied Strindberg's disease from the ordinary alienist's
-point of view, and concluded that he suffered from _paranoia simplex
-chronica_--a diagnosis which is empty of meaning when applied to
-such a mind. Dr. S. Rahmer[4] made Strindberg the subject of a more
-comprehensive psychopathic study, and defined his case as one of
-_melancholia daemomaniaca_. The inadequacy of such diagnoses will be
-apparent to every serious student of _Inferno_ and _Legends_--the
-books which are mostly extracts from the diary in which he recorded
-his madness--and of plays like _To Damascus, Advent, Easier, The Dream
-Play_, and _The Great Highway_, which give evidence of his lucidity,
-and of the mysticism which he distilled from mental torture.
-
-There is nothing original in the fact that a man describes his own
-madness in prose or verse. Such descriptions may even be regarded as a
-distinct genre of literary activity, perverse and detestable to those
-who, like Mr. Balfour, want only the "cheerful" note in literature, but
-of infinite interest to those who place a truthful account of the
-human soul above one which is pleasing. Nathaniel Lee's poems, Lenan's
-_Traumgewalten_, Hoffmann's _Kreisler_ possess a psychological interest
-which no clamour for literary cradle-songs can remove. Strindberg's
-self-revelations have a touch of that exultation which, through a
-dominant curiosity, survives the most complete cheerlessness, horror,
-and pain--that joy of which Charles Lamb wrote to Coleridge: "Dream
-not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy
-till you have gone mad," and which made him look back upon his lunacy
-"with a gloomy kind of envy."
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--1906]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--1907. Photo's: A. Malmström, Stockholm.]
-
-Comparisons between Rousseau's _Confessions, Dialogues_, and
-_Rêveries_, and Strindberg's _Inferno_ readily suggest themselves.
-Both writers reveal, by their minute analysis of sick thoughts, the
-consciousness of a lunacy which is a necessary experience on the
-road to spiritual health, and, therefore, shameless. There is much
-similarity in the stories of persistent attacks by invisible enemies,
-of plots, and persecutions, in the egocentric deductions from natural
-phenomena and the events of the world. But there is also a great
-difference. Rousseau manages to keep a watchful eye on the preservation
-of friendly relations with the world throughout his aberrations, whilst
-Strindberg recklessly defies its judgment.
-
-Strindberg's persecutional mania developed rapidly during the spring
-and summer of 1896. Every object, every incident was charged with a
-sinister meaning. He became obsessed with the idea that his former
-friend, Przybyszewski, whom he writes of as Popoffsky, intended to
-murder him. The reason for this suspicion lay in Strindberg's former
-intimacy with the woman who afterwards became Przybyszewski's wife. One
-day his ear caught the strains of Schumann's _Aufschwung_, played by an
-unseen musician in an adjoining house. He became strangely agitated.
-The pianist who played _Aufschwung_ in such a manner could only be
-Przybyszewski, and the music must be a prelude to the revenge which he
-was about to inflict on Strindberg. With the horror of his impending
-fate mingled remorse and self-accusation. "My friend, the Russian,"
-he writes, "my disciple who called me father because he had learnt
-everything from me, my _famulus_ who looked upon me as master, and
-kissed my hands because his life began where mine ended. It is he who
-has come from Vienna to Paris in order to kill me...." The reflection
-that he had not borne the Pole's efforts to injure him meekly, but
-retaliated, at first invested the thought of death with a sacrificial
-grandeur. But when _Aufschwung_ was played every day between four
-and five fear of death increased. He felt a fierce hatred of the man
-who thus hunted him down. He sought confirmation of his suspicions
-by questioning the coterie of artists which met at Mme. Charlotte's
-_crêmerie_ in rue de la Grande Chaumière. The answers seemed to him
-evasive, and Strindberg withdrew from the circle of friends, convinced
-that there was a widespread plot against him. The Norwegian artist,
-Edvard Munch, was at this time painting Strindberg's portrait, and was
-alternately trusted by him, and suspected as an accomplice in the crime
-contemplated.
-
-His inflammable fancy saw warnings of danger everywhere. A large dane,
-lying outside Munch's house, was a sign that he must not enter it, and
-he returned, thanking the powers which had protected him. Another time
-he turned away from the house after seeing a child sitting outside the
-door with a card in its hand which happened to be a ten of spades. In
-the Luxembourg Gardens two dry twigs, broken by the storm, lay in such
-a manner as to form the Greek letters P and Y--the first and the last
-letters of the dreaded name. He implored, the help of Providence, and
-recited the Psalms of David against his enemies.
-
-The terror of being delivered into the hands of his persecutors was
-temporarily dispelled by a sense of divine protection, of nearness
-to the Lord. On March 29th Balzac's _Seraphita_ had fallen into his
-hands, by chance apparently, but really, he thought, through heavenly
-guidance. The day was the anniversary of Swedenborg's death, and
-the coincidence became a token of a spiritual bond between him and
-the great Swedish seer which outlasted his disease, and remained a
-source of illumination until his death sixteen years later. Orfila
-and Swedenborg now spoke to him in his hours of hope; he conversed
-with them as Blake conversed with Dante, Virgil, and Moses. The Old
-Testament shed strength upon him. He found comfort in the Book of Job,
-for Satan had obtained leave to tempt him, as Job was tempted. There
-were moments when he felt drawn away from life by a heavenly nostalgia,
-sustained by a realisation of spiritual worth which, at other times,
-increased his sense of guilt by adding the sin of pride to the many
-others for which he atoned. Of such moments he writes: "I despise
-the earth, this impure and unworthy world, humanity and the works of
-humanity. I see in myself the righteous man to whom the Almighty has
-sent trials, and whom the purgatory of earthly life shall make worthy
-of approaching deliverance."
-
-His customary chair at the Brasserie des Lilas was engaged one evening,
-when he came to seek oblivion in the glass of green absinthe. On
-another occasion the glass was mysteriously upset, and on a third a
-chimney above him caught fire, and sent two large pieces of soot into
-his glass. In these and similar incidents he recognised a guiding hand,
-tribulations arranged for the purpose of breaking him of a dangerous
-habit. One is reminded of Rousseau's belief that unfavourable winds had
-been prepared, as a special trial, for his journey.
-
-Short intervals of spiritual calm did not allay Strindberg's fear of
-Przybyszewski. Though substantially unfounded, and, though he was in
-possession of incontrovertible evidence that the Pole was not in Paris,
-the fear increased until he was mastered by terror. Hotel Orfila was no
-longer a retreat of peace. Women were admitted--a circumstance which
-in itself was calculated to disturb his nerves--and with them followed
-a host of troubles. A mysterious stranger had taken the room adjoining
-his, and seemed to imitate all Strindberg's movements. Strindberg sat
-writing at his table, so apparently did the stranger. When Strindberg
-rose and pushed back his chair, the stranger did likewise. When
-Strindberg went to bed, the stranger also went to bed. The unseen
-enemy was there dose to him, watching every movement, waiting for an
-opportunity to slay him by infernally subtle means. Outside the hotel
-there were signs of danger. One day he felt Quai Voltaire and Place
-des Tuileries shake under his feet. Another day a sudden feeling of
-lameness proved to him that he was being poisoned, and that the Pole
-had contrived to send gas through the wall. He thought of giving
-information to the police, but the possibility that he might be
-imprisoned as a lunatic restrained him. He could no longer work or
-sleep. There were whispering voices around him; the shadow of a woman
-on the wall outside his window suggested the fearful revenge of his
-feminist protagonists. One night he felt an electric current passing
-through his body. The stranger and his accomplices were evidently
-doing their murderous work in a thoroughly scientific manner. With the
-thought, "They are killing me. I will not be killed," he rose from the
-bed, found the proprietor, and obtained another room for the night.
-This happened to be under the one tenanted by the terrible stranger,
-and Strindberg's suspicions were confirmed by hearing a heavy object
-being dropped into a bag, and securely locked up. Evidently an electric
-machine, he thought. On the following day he packed up his belongings,
-and hurriedly left Hotel Orfila.
-
-His suspicions fell on friends and foes alike. One day, after a
-sitting, Munch received a post card from Strindberg which put an end to
-further visits:
-
-"When last you came to see me you looked like a murderer, or the
-accomplice of a murderer. I only want to inform you that the
-Pettenkofer gas-oven in the room next to mine is unusable, and
-therefore unsuitable for the purpose. Sg."[5]
-
-Side by side with the mania of which the message to Munch is typical,
-Strindberg retained a sanity during this time which Uddgren had
-occasion to observe. He went to see Strindberg at Hotel Orfila, and saw
-the traces of the torture through which he had passed in his haggard,
-ashen face. Uddgren had heard that Strindberg's insanity was on the
-point of breaking out, but in the course of a long talk with him he
-could find no signs of brain-softening. The mania, the eccentricities,
-the flashing imagination, the instinct for self-martyrisation were
-there intensified, but not the incoherency which he had observed
-in other literary friends who were victims of insanity. It is also
-remarkable that throughout Strindberg's period of lunacy his writings
-were accepted and printed.
-
-After the flight from Hotel Orfila he hid himself in an hotel in rue
-de la Clef. All went well for some time. Feeling that he was at a safe
-distance from his persecutors, he abandoned his incognito, and sent
-his address to Hotel Orfila. There was an immediate recurrence of the
-attacks. An old man, with "grey and wicked eyes like a bear," carried
-empty cases, pieces of tin, and other mysterious objects into the room
-adjoining his. In the room overhead a noise of hammering and dragging
-began which suggested the installation of an infernal machine. The
-noisy preparations were followed by the sound of a revolving wheel,
-suggestive of preparations for his execution. "I am sentenced to
-death," he thought; but by whom? By the pietists, catholics, jesuits,
-theosophists? Was he condemned as a sorcerer or as a black magician? Or
-was it by the police? Was he suspected of being an anarchist? In the
-manners of the landlady and the servant he read suspicion and contempt.
-The struggle seemed hopeless. Preparing to die at the hands of his
-enemies, he arranged his papers, wrote necessary letters, and said a
-solemn farewell to Nature as represented by the Jardin des Plantes.
-"Farewell," he cried, "stones, plants, flowers, trees, butterflies,
-birds, snakes, all created by God's good hand." Resigned and at peace
-with Fate he re-entered his hotel, but his anguish returned at the
-sight of the change which had been made in the room adjoining his.
-On the mantelpiece lay sheets of metal isolated from each other by
-pieces of wood, and on the top of each pile a book or a photographic
-album had been placed, so as to give an innocent look to what could be
-nothing but accumulators, infernal machines. Two workmen on the roof of
-a neighbouring house were handling some objects, and pointing to his
-window--the chain of evidence was complete.
-
-At night he made the last toilet of the condemned, took a bath, shaved,
-and attired himself in a manner worthy of a solemn parting from the
-body and its miseries. Waiting for the end, he reflected that he could
-harbour no fear of hell in another world--he had passed through a
-thousand hells in this life. Anguish endowed him with a burning desire
-to quit the vanities and deceptive pleasures of the world. "Born
-with a heavenly nostalgia," he writes, "as a child I cried over the
-uncleanliness of existence; amongst relatives and in society I felt a
-stranger, far away from the land of my home. Ever since my childhood I
-have sought my God, and found the devil. I carried the cross of Christ
-in my youth, and I have denied a God who is content to rule over slaves
-who love those who whip them."
-
-After a few hours' sleep he was awakened by the sensation of being
-lifted out of bed by a pump, sucking his heart. He had scarcely put his
-feet on the floor before he felt an electric douche fall upon his neck,
-and press him to the ground. He rose, snatched his clothes, and rushed
-out into the garden. A light cough from the room, wherein dwelt his
-enemy, was answered by a cough from the other room. The conspirators
-were clearly signalling to each other. To return to the room of horror
-was out of question. He dragged an arm-chair into the garden, and
-finally went to sleep under the star-lit sky, soothed by the presence
-of the flowers. On the following morning he fled to friends in Dieppe,
-cursing his unknown enemies. His friends were horrified at his
-appearance, and when his kind hostess led him to a looking-glass he saw
-in his own face, not only the traces of suffering and neglect, but an
-expression which filled him with shame and detestation of himself. "If
-I had then read Swedenborg," he writes, "the imprint left by the evil
-spirit would have explained to me my mental state and the events of the
-last weeks." Despite the efforts of his sympathetic friends to convince
-him that the house was free from dangers of any kind, the night brought
-new terrors. Sitting at a table, and waiting for the sinister moment
-when the clock should strike two, Strindberg was determined bravely
-to face the worst. Uncovering his chest, he challenged the unknown
-persecutors to strike him. The response was the sensation of an
-electric current directed against his heart, gradually increasing in
-strength until he could resist it no longer. As if struck by a clap of
-thunder, he felt his body filled by a fluid which was suffocating him,
-and drawing out his heart.
-
-He rushed downstairs where another bed had been made up for him in
-case of need. He lay down, and tried to collect his thoughts. Could
-this be electricity? No, for he had used the compass as indicator,
-and the result had been negative. Whilst pondering on the mysterious
-force, another discharge of "electricity" struck him with the strength
-of a cyclone, and lifted him out of bed. He tried in vain to escape.
-His own graphic description of what followed shows the agony through
-which he passed. "I hide behind walls, I lie down by the thresholds,
-and in front of the stoves. Everywhere, everywhere the furies seek me
-out. My soul's anguish overpowers me. The panic terror of everything
-and nothing gets hold of me, and I flee from room to room, and end
-my flight on the balcony, where I remain crouching." At dawn he went
-into his friend's studio, where he lay down on a rug. Even here he was
-disturbed, but now by rats, and, fearing that he might be a victim
-of delirium, he fled to the hall, where the door-mat became his
-resting-place. He hurriedly left Dieppe for the south of Sweden, and
-sought refuge in the house of his friend, Dr. Eliasson, in Ystad.
-
-Strindberg had rightly surmised that his friends in Dieppe were
-convinced of his insanity. His conduct during the first days of his
-stay in Ystad caused his medical friend to treat him with the firmness
-and authority necessary towards one who is mentally irresponsible.
-The result was that Strindberg suspected that the doctor intended
-to imprison him in a lunatic asylum, and to appropriate his secret
-of gold-making. The month which he spent at the doctor's house was
-devoted to a cold-water cure which did not assuage his misery. The
-shape and material of the bed in which he had to sleep suggested
-electrical devices of evil, the nightly assault by the vampire which
-sucked his heart was repeated, and brought him out of bed in terror
-of death; he heard voices, saw signs, feared he was being poisoned by
-hemlock, hashish, digitalis, or daturine. One night he heard the doctor
-handle a very heavy object and wind up a spring, and through the wall
-which separated them he felt the approach of the electric current.
-It reached his heart. Seizing his clothes he fled through the window
-into the street, and to the house of another physician who succeeded
-in calming him, and--so he believed--in intimidating his treacherous
-friend, and thus saved Strindberg's life.
-
-These delusions of horror were suspended by a letter from his wife
-which breathed love and pity, and in which she invited him to come
-to Austria and see his little daughter. The thought of the child, of
-holding her in his arms, of begging her to forgive him, of making
-her happy by a father's tenderness, brought about a spiritual
-metamorphosis. He left Sweden, and arrived at his mother-in-law's
-country house on the Danube in September, 1896. During the months which
-he spent there he did not meet his wife-a separation which he bore with
-equanimity, in consequence of "an indefinable lack of harmony in our
-temperaments"--but he saw the child daily.
-
-"Every man, if he is sincere, may tread again for himself the road to
-Damascus-a journey which must vary for each individual soul," wrote
-Victor Hugo. Here, in the presence of the child, Strindberg was brought
-face to face with his own sinfulness. He had set out to persecute, but
-the light from heaven had prostrated him and struck him with blindness.
-Before the scales could fall from his eyes his penance must be made
-complete. He had left an infant of six weeks. The little girl of two
-and a half years, who now met him, scrutinised his soul with eyes
-full of serious inquiry, and then allowed her father to clasp her to
-his breast. "This is Dr. Faust's resurrection to earthly life, but
-sweeter and purer," he writes. "I cannot cease carrying the little
-one in my arms, and feeling her little heart beat against mine. To
-love a child is for a man to become woman; it is to lay aside the
-manly, to experience the sexless love of the dwellers in heaven, as
-Swedenborg called it." But an incident soon occurred which disturbed
-his peace. At supper he gently touched the child's hand in order to
-help her. She cried out, and, drawing back her hand with a look full
-of horror, said, "He hurts me." Another evening he was humiliated by
-the mysterious conduct of the child. Pointing at an invisible person
-behind Strindberg's chair, she began to cry with fear, and said, "The
-sweep is standing there." Her grandmother who believed in clairvoyance
-in children made the sign of the cross over the child's head, and-a
-painful silence fell upon the company.
-
-Whilst he accepted these trials as punitive messages and warnings,
-his scarified soul became receptive to Roman Catholic influences. His
-wife's mother and aunt were Catholics; his child had been brought up in
-that faith. He had seen human souls sanctified by a catholic mysticism
-which bore humility and fortitude. The symbols, the certainty, the rich
-imagery of the Catholic Church had appealed to him, when the poverty of
-philosophical speculation had made him despair of human intelligence.
-He had bought a rosary in Paris because it was beautiful, and because
-"the evil ones were afraid of the cross." One day an image of the
-Madonna, carried through the streets of Paris on a cart following a
-hearse, had strangely attracted him. Like Tasso's vision of the Virgin
-in the midst of his feverish torment by noises and tinkling bells,
-Strindberg's gaze on the image of all-merciful motherhood brought
-comfort. At first attracted to Catholic prayers, and to the ideal of
-the monastic life by the instinct which makes the man in pain seek an
-anodyne, he was gradually led to a deeper understanding of esoteric
-Christianity. Swedenborg continued to reveal the mysteries of symbols
-and correspondences to him; in the scenery around the Austrian village
-he found, not only an exact replica of a Swedenborgian hell, but the
-original of a landscape which had precipitated itself in the zinc bath
-used in his gold-making experiments in Paris.
-
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--1902]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--1908--In his home in Stockholm.
-Photo by A. Blomberg, Stockholm]
-
-
-Strindberg's early blasphemies and atheism were the fruits of an
-inverted religiosity which left him no peace. His devotional mood
-could find no bridge of union with his scientific mood. The search
-for knowledge and the search for God led to different goals. Whilst
-his brain struggled for breadth, his heart cried for the narrow depth
-of dogma and creed. His researches into occultism and the philosophy
-of religions, his acquaintance with theosophy did not reconcile his
-religion with his science. The sense of sin, of having sought unlawful
-knowledge haunted him in his studies of black magic and Satanism, and
-in the exercise of the occult powers of which he was conscious. Though
-Strindberg had not read Huysmans' _Là-Bas_ and _En Route_ when he wrote
-_Inferno_, there is a strong resemblance between the books and the
-religious evolution of the authors.
-
-Strindberg accepted the doctrine of reincarnation as a Christian
-tenet, and the corollary of a Karmic law which compels us to suffer
-for sins committed before birth, but he resisted what he believed to
-be the central teaching of theosophy, i.e. the necessity for killing
-personality. A theosophical friend sent him Madame Blavatsky's _Secret
-Doctrine_ which Strindberg criticised severely, though he knew that
-his outspokenness would deprive him of a friend and a benefactor. He
-declined to join a "sect" which denied a personal God, the only one
-who could satisfy his religious needs. He declared Madame Blavatsky's
-masterpiece to be "detestable through the conscious and unconscious
-deceptions, through the stories of the existence of Mahatmas,"
-interesting through the quotations from little-known authors,
-condemnable, above all, as the work of "a gynander who has desired
-to outdo man, and who pretends to have overthrown science, religion,
-philosophy, and to have placed a priestess of Isis on the altar of the
-crucified One."
-
-In spite of this denunciation, Strindberg had absorbed many
-theosophical ideas, and his later writings are not altogether free from
-the influence of the despised "gynander" and the theories of occult
-science which she expounded.
-
-During the time spent in Austria Strindberg slowly recovered his
-mental balance, whilst his visionary powers and spiritual clairvoyance
-were in process of development. He stayed with his wife's mother and
-aunt, two pious and gentle old women, who treated his soul-sickness
-with Christian forbearance and healing sympathy. He was still subject
-to "astral" attacks, to "electric" discharges, to nightmares and
-ghostly visitations. Unacquainted with the higher aspects of
-psychical research and modern theories of psychological phenomena,
-he was as yet unable to bring about order in the unruly house of his
-mind. Whether we use spiritualistic language and call him a medium,
-or that of psychology and label the messages which reached him
-"teleological automatism," there can be no doubt that the keynote of
-his soul's gloom and glory was a hyper-sensitiveness which made him
-a lightning-conductor for the psychic currents of his time. We may
-turn away with disdain from the pitiful picture of Strindberg at his
-writing table, warding off the imaginary attacks of elementals, incubi,
-lamiæ, by thrusts in the air with a dalmatian dagger, and we may smile
-at the childish superstition with which he accepted the oracular
-guidance of the cock on the top of Notre Dame, or the direction chosen
-by a ladybird visiting his manuscript. But that there were within him
-cryptopsychic gifts of telepathy, clair-audience, and divination, a
-somnambulistic consciousness of a reality other than that which is
-cognisable to the senses, no student of psychic forces can doubt.
-
-In December, 1896, Strindberg returned to Sweden. Swedenborg's _Arcana
-Coelestia_, which he now read, dissipated his fears of persecution by
-showing him that all the horrors through which he had passed, were
-recognised by Swedenborg as incidental to the purgation of soul which
-is the highest object of life. Strindberg found that, before receiving
-his momentous revelations, Swedenborg had passed through nightly
-tortures resembling his own. By informing him of the real nature of
-the horrors Swedenborg liberated him from the electricians, the black
-magicians, the destroyers, the jealous gold-makers, and the fear of
-madness. "He has shown me the only path to salvation: to seek out
-the demons in their dens within myself, and to kill them ... through
-repentance."
-
-_Inferno_ was composed in Lund, the little University town in the south
-of Sweden, between May 3rd and June 25th, 1897. _Legends_, which is
-but a rifacimento of the struggle to slay the "demons in their dens,"
-was begun in Lund, and finished in Paris in October, 1897. In March,
-1898, Strindberg went back to Lund, free from haunting obsessions of
-evil, master of his madness, enriched by religious experiences which
-produced an exuberant rise of new ideas. He had crossed the Rubicon.
-Henceforth he shared in that direct vision which makes paralysing doubt
-impossible, and which is the prerogative of God's fools all over the
-world. To the end of life his mind retained intellectual disquiet;
-there remained in him a strain of the wild man, an over-balance of
-curiosity which set up eternal enmity between him and convention. The
-Swedish critic, Oscar Levertin, succinctly summed up Strindberg in the
-Italian proverb: _All soul, all gall, all fire_. But after 1898 there
-is a calm light which the unruly flames cannot hide. His spiritual
-wrestlings continue through the zenith of his literary production, but
-they leave him stronger.
-
-A comparison between his views on the "nature of man" in 1884 and in
-1910 is interesting. In an essay on _The Joy of Life_, written in
-1884, he greatly offended the Swedish Mrs. Grundy by the following
-passage: "After long centuries of the voluntary or involuntary lie, of
-artificialising custom and speech, a general craving for brutality is
-sometimes awakened, a delirious desire to throw off one's clothes and
-walk about naked, to reveal the indecent, to approach the repulsive,
-to be a happy and joyous animal." In an article on _Religion_, written
-in 1910, and published in _Speeches to the Swedish Nation_, he wrote:
-"I apply my biblical Christianity to my own personal and inner use,
-so as to curb my somewhat riotous nature, rendered riotous by the
-veterinary philosophy and animal doctrine (Darwinism) in which I was
-brought up. The fact that I practise, as far as I can, the Christian
-doctrines should not, I maintain, give people reason to complain. For
-it is only through religion, or the hope for something better, and the
-realisation of the inner meaning of life as a time of probation, a
-school, possibly a house of correction, that we can bear life's burden
-with sufficient resignation. In the understanding of the relative
-insignificance of external conditions of life, compared with the
-possession of hope and faith, one finds that moral courage to renounce
-everything--which the ungodly lack--to suffer everything for the sake
-of a mission, to speak out when others remain silent."
-
-In the same "speech" he says: "Since 1896 I call myself a Christian
-(see _Inferno_). I am not a Catholic, and have never been one,
-but during seven years' life in Catholic countries and in intimate
-relationship with Catholics I discovered that there was no difference
-between Catholicism and Protestantism, or merely an outward one, and
-that the schism which took place once was purely political, or was only
-concerned with theological points which in reality have nothing to do
-with religion. This was the cause of my tolerance towards Catholics
-which found a special expression in my _Gustavus Adolphus_, and gave
-rise to the fable about my being a Catholic. I am entered on the parish
-register as a Protestant, and shall remain one, but I am probably not
-orthodox, nor am I a pietist, but rather a Swedenborgian."
-
-At the time when _Inferno_ was written Strindberg was, however,
-more completely under the spell of Rome than he acknowledges in his
-later writings. He contemplated retreat in a Belgian monastery, and
-in _Inferno_ he tells us that, when he read Sar Peladan's _Comment
-on devient Mage_, "Catholicism held its solemn and triumphant entry
-into my life." He found many points of contact between Swedenborg's
-mystical philosophy and that of the Catholic Church. The profound
-influence on modern thought exercised by Swedenborg, and which is
-clearly discernible in the writings of Goethe, Emerson, Balzac,
-Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, Ruskin, Coventry Patmore, and Carlyle, is
-evidence of the spiritual catholicity of the great Swedish mystic.
-Superficial criticism is apt to dismiss Swedenborg as a deluded
-ghost-seer, whose psychical derangements are responsible for a
-farrago of communications on heaven and hell, prodigiously wearisome
-in details and lacking the saving grace of humour. Such criticism is
-made by those who know nothing of the intellectual versatility, and
-the scientific achievements of Swedenborg. His writings on anatomy,
-physiology, geology, and metallurgy alone would have entitled him to a
-distinguished place among the pioneers of science. Swedenborg studied
-mechanics, engineering, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and music,
-and took a keen interest in handicrafts.
-
-There is a striking resemblance between Swedenborg and Strindberg in
-this versatility of mood and thought. It is emphasised by many minor
-traits of character and taste, such as the great love for children and
-flowers which both evinced. Separated by more than a century and a
-half, Strindberg found himself the spiritual descendant of Swedenborg.
-To him he dedicates his first _Blue Book_ (1907) in the following
-words: "To Emanuel Swedenborg, Teacher and Leader, this book is
-dedicated by the Disciple." The _Blue Books_ deal with every thinkable
-subject--religious, philosophical, scientific--in an aphoristic and
-combative manner which is pervaded by a curious mixture of pride and
-humility. Here speaks the High Priest of Knowledge, here quivers the
-helpless embryo of the humanity which is to come. In these motley pages
-the Teacher and the Disciple talk of telepathy, chemistry, astronomy,
-meteorology, spectral analysis, atoms and crystals, the psychology
-of plants, the secrets of birds, the formation of clouds, Darwinism,
-radium, woman, the secrets of chess, the secrets and magic of numbers,
-the Mesopotamian language, hieroglyphics, Hebraic research, symbolism,
-clairvoyance, and a hundred other subjects. In the preface to _The
-Bondswoman's Son_ Strindberg speaks of his Blue Book as the synthesis
-of his life. The Disciple is worthy of the Master; to the Swedenborgian
-and eighteenth-century conception of the natural world and the
-spiritual world Strindberg has added the craving for a synthetic
-interpretation of facts, which was characteristic of the nineteenth
-century, and which found its foremost representatives in Spencer and
-Comte. In his sense of truth, in his work for the correlation of
-knowledge, in his readiness to forsake pleasant beliefs for unpleasant
-facts, Strindberg realised Swedenborg's description of a certain phase
-of angelic life: "To grow old in heaven is to grow young."
-
-The renewal of intellectual youth, with its baffling polymathy and
-selfcontradictions, led Strindberg to question the composition of his
-own soul. In the preface to _The Bondswoman's Son_ he confesses that he
-has sometimes wondered if he has incarnated different personalities.
-Dissociated fields of consciousness may be a psychopathic phenomenon,
-or indicative of an advanced state of psychic evolution. The problem
-has been approached from many points of view. The mystery of
-personality metamorphosis, of primary and secondary individualities,
-contained within the frame of one human body, is now a recognised
-subject of inquiry in the domain of abnormal psychology. Cases of
-multiple personality in which there is an absolute division between
-the "entities," and in which the memories do not intermingle, have
-been carefully studied and classified. The ease with which Strindberg
-apostatised, the mutually destructive theories which he advanced at
-different periods of life, the power with which he could objectify his
-past selves, and repeatedly paint "the face of what was once myself,"
-point to a multiplicity of consciousness which, though not rare in
-genius, was especially active in him. In the preface to _The Author_,
-written in 1909, Strindberg says of himself as the writer of the book
-twenty years earlier: "The personality of the author is just as much a
-stranger to me as to the reader--and just as unsympathetic."
-
-There is undoubtedly a gulf between the personality responsible for the
-preface to _Lady Julie_ with its crude materialism, and the sensitised
-consciousness of the man who pours out his soul in the _Blue Books_
-and in _Alone_. Nietzscheanism was but a cloak, with which Strindberg
-covered the _cor laceratum_, which always suffered acutely through
-the misfortunes of others. The cloak did not fit him. In _Alone_,
-the dulcet autobiographical finale to the agitato of _Inferno_, we
-find him in self-imposed and vicarious suffering for the sins of a
-neighbouring grocer who has failed in business through incompetence and
-dishonesty. "I went through all his agony," he writes; "thought of his
-wife, of the approaching quarter-day, of the rent, of the cheques."
-Strindberg now lived in open enmity with the theories of the survival
-of the fittest and natural selection; his conception of the evolution
-idea led him to repudiate the current belief in the descent of man as a
-glorification of brute-nature, and to cry: "What a shame to have paid
-homage to the Ape-King, the seducer of my youth!"
-
-To the natural capacity for suffering was added that imposed on him
-through the development of his psychic powers. He did not only live
-the lives of others "telepathically"; his sensibility became so
-exteriorised as to receive impressions at a great distance. Thus he
-used to feel, when one of his plays was being performed for the first
-time in some part of Europe, though he had received no information in
-regard to the performance. In 1907 he told Uddgren that, after going to
-bed at ten in the evening, he was sometimes awakened by the sound of
-loud applause which caused him to sit up in bed, wondering if he was
-at a theatre. Such a telepathic ovation was invariably followed by the
-news of some dramatic success. In the first _Blue Book_, "the Disciple"
-relates the following: "In a company I interrupted myself with a smile
-in the middle of an animated conversation. 'What are you smiling at?'
-somebody asked. 'The southern express pulled up at the Central Station
-just now,' was the reply. Another time something similar happened, and
-I said: 'The curtain has now fallen on the last act in Helsingfors, and
-I heard the applause after my first night.' I perceive the talk of the
-people in restaurants after the performance as ringing in the ears. I
-can hear this all the way from Germany when I have a first performance,
-though I have no previous knowledge of being played."
-
-He records the psychic rapport which sexual union establishes between
-him, and the woman he loves. When she is absent, and thinks kindly
-of him, he perceives the fragrance of incense or jessamine; when she
-is travelling he knows if she is on a steamer or in a train. He can
-distinguish the throbbing of the propeller from the thumping of the
-buffers on the railway carriage.
-
-The most remarkable passage in the _Blue Book_ is perhaps the following
-summary of his _clairpsychism_:
-
-"I feel at a distance when somebody touches my fate, when enemies
-threaten my personal existence, but also when people speak kindly of
-me or wish me well; I feel in the street if I meet friend or enemy; I
-have participated in the suffering caused by an operation on a person
-towards whom I feel comparatively indifferent; I have twice gone
-through the death agony of others with attendant physical and mental
-suffering; the last time I passed through three diseases in six hours,
-and rose well when the absent one had been liberated through death.
-This makes life painful, but rich and interesting."
-
-
-[1] _Bøken on Strindberg_ af Gustaf Uddgren.
-
-[2] _En Ny Bok on Strindberg_.
-
-[3] _Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse_.
-
-[4] Grenzfragen der Literatur und Medizin, Munich, 1907.
-
-[5] _En Ny Bok om Strindberg af Gustaf Uddgren_.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-THE THEATRE OF LIFE
-
-
-Strindberg's fiftieth birthday was celebrated quietly in Lund in
-1899. A general feeling of distrust and bewilderment was prevalent
-amongst his countrymen. At the age of fifty he had returned to Sweden,
-apparently healthy in mind and body, in the prime of life, charged with
-a literary vitality which confounded current theories of his insanity.
-He had calmly and unostentatiously resumed his task of writing drama.
-The haunted, feverish expression had left his countenance; he had
-made himself a new visage, upon which were stamped self-mastery and
-tranquillity of mind. And, yet, he had recently published _Inferno_ and
-_Legends_, and laid bare his soul's misery and delirium in throbbing
-pages, over which the reviewers had poured acrid contempt. He had
-written _To Damascus_ in a gust of mediæval repentance, and uncovered
-himself in the transports of asceticism. With a sigh of relief his
-enemies had laid aside their opposition to his indiscretions and
-revelations, his materialism and transcendentalism, his socialism and
-individualism. They felt that there was no need to take a lunatic
-seriously. His friends had waited patiently for the "dancing star"
-which they knew would arise out of the chaos.
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Bust by K.I. Eldh (Bought by the
-Swedish State. In the National Museum, Stockholm)]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Portrait by Carl Larsson, 1899. (In
-the National Museum, Stockholm)]
-
-_The Saga of the Folkungs, Gustavus Vasa_ and _Eric XIV_ appeared in
-1899, and showed that the author of _Master Olof_ had returned to the
-art with which, twenty-seven years earlier, he had given his country
-its greatest historical play. With the precision of the somnambulist
-who takes up the thread of mental events, regardless of the time that
-has passed, Strindberg resumed the story of _Master Olof_ where he had
-left off. In _Gustavus Vasa_ we again meet Olof, the renegade, but he
-is now--as befits his character--a secondary person, duly subservient
-to the Power of the Time, King Gustavus Vasa. With _Gustavus Vasa_ and
-_Eric XIV_ Strindberg attained to mastery of a dramatic art, in which
-he stands unsurpassed. The art of writing _the psychological drama of
-history_ is his, and his alone. No other dramaturge of modern times
-has approached him in clarity of historical vision, or in imaginative
-reconstruction of living characters which are at once true to their
-time and to all times.
-
-No period of Swedish history lends itself better to dramatic treatment
-than that dominated by the first of the Vasas, Gustavus Erikson,
-the chosen king of the people, the incarnation of will, of a wholly
-masculine personality. The king's struggle to quell the rebellious
-spirit of the freemen of Dalecarlia, the vast inland county north of
-Stockholm, to whom he owes his throne and his power, is the subject
-of the play. The wrath of the king pervades the first act with an
-atmospheric suggestion of fateful horror which is the antithesis
-of melodramatic art, and shows Strindberg's power of restraint and
-concentration in the unfoldment of tragedy. The king has marched to
-Dalecarlia in order to punish the stiff-necked peasants who think that
-they can make and unmake kings with impunity. When the curtain rises
-upon the assembled leaders of the peasants the king is not seen, but
-his presence is felt. Master Olof has arrived as the emissary of the
-sovereign; solemn messengers bid the veterans of the soil to remain
-seated until they are called to appear before the king. There is a
-sense of suppressed fear in the room; the quiet, slow-thinking men,
-dad in white sheep-skin coats, suspect something, but cannot grasp the
-unthinkable audacity of the king's plans. One by one they are called
-out, but no one returns. Then a messenger from the king brings in three
-blood-stained sheep-skin coats, and throws them on the table. This is
-the king's warning to those who remain, and who are permitted to live.
-
-In the five acts of this play Strindberg lets us see the human
-qualities of Gustavus Vasa; the dramatist draws a living soul, not
-a marionette; a man, hot-tempered, hard, strong, with a vein of
-irresoluteness running through the granite of his will, a man whose
-strength is blended with the weakness of the child within that
-never grows up. We see in him the inconsistency of all flesh: the
-mighty reformer of the Roman Catholic Church who upholds evangelical
-Lutheranism and yet clings to catholic habits; the brutal tyrant who
-has a way of his own of enforcing obedience by bringing his little
-steel hammer in ominous contact with obstinate heads, and who yet
-remains the kind, fatherly friend of his people. The patriarch who
-has identified himself with his country before the Lord, who has
-stood forth as a prophet of patriotism, and who is forced by growing
-self-knowledge to separate the personal from the impersonal, is at
-last humiliated by the goodness of others. Threatened by rebels who
-march towards Stockholm from the south, outwitted by his treacherous
-allies in Lübeck, the old king trembles at the news that the sturdy men
-of Dalecarlia are on their way to Stockholm. The retribution for his
-harsh deeds of suppression is upon him, and he bows his head before
-the chastisement of God. But the men of Dalecarlia are made of stuff
-which outlasts a few fallen heads. They have come in their thousands to
-help their king and their country to put the common enemy to flight.
-Engelbrecht, their leader--jolly, true and a little tipsy--bursts into
-the king's palace, and proudly offers him the arms and the devotion of
-the men in sheep-skin coats, true representatives of the Swedish spirit.
-
-Eric, the king's dissolute and epileptic son, heir to the throne, is
-in every way a contrast to his father: he is the chronic weakling who
-oscillates between unholy desire and self-disgust, the born pariah
-in the realm of the mind, whether he be clad in purple or in rags.
-Of such, we think, the Kingdom of Heaven is not made. Yet Strindberg
-shows us Eric's glimpse of heaven. In the fourth act Eric and his boon
-companion and evil counsellor, Göran Persson, bent on the pleasures of
-the tavern, meet Karin, the flowergirl. She asks Eric to buy her wreath
-of flowers:
-
-_Prince Eric_ (_looks fixedly at the girl_). Who--is--that?
-
-_Göran Persson_. A flowergirl.
-
-_Prince Eric_. No--it--is--something else--do you see?
-
-_Göran Persson_. What am I supposed to see?
-
-_Prince Eric_. You ought to see what I see, but you can't.
-
-The girl kneels before the prince. He takes the wreath from her hands,
-places it on her head, and asks her to rise. "Rise, my child," he says,
-"you must not kneel before me, but I shall kneel before you. I do not
-want to ask your name, for I know you, though I have never seen you, or
-heard anything about you." He begs her to ask a favour of him. She asks
-him to buy her flowers. Eric takes a ring off his finger, and gives it
-to the girl. She dare not wear it, and returns it. She leaves them, and
-Eric asks Göran if he has not seen the marvellous apparition, heard the
-wonderful voice. Göran has heard nothing but the voice of a common
-lass, a little cheeky.
-
-     _Prince Eric_. Hold your tongue, Göran, I love her.
-
-     _Göran Persson_. She is not the first one.
-
-     _Prince Eric_. Yes, the first one, the only one.
-
-     _Göran Persson_. Well, seduce her then.
-
-     _Prince Eric_ (_draws his sword_). Take care, or by God----
-
-     _Göran Persson_. Is he going to prick me now again?
-
-     _Prince Eric_. I do not know what has happened, but from this
-     moment I detest you; I cannot live in the same town as you; you
-     pollute me with your eyes, your whole being stinks. Therefore I
-     leave you, and never want to see you before my face again. I leave
-     you as if an angel had come to fetch me from the dwellings of the
-     wicked; I detest the past, as I detest you and myself. (_Follows
-     Karin_.)
-
-Though Strindberg shows an understanding of love's miracles--with
-which he is not generally credited--he makes no attempt to endow the
-first meeting between Eric and the peasant girl who became the mother
-of his children, and finally his queen, with a greater transfiguring
-power than it possessed. Here, as in all his historical dramas, he
-writes with the sense of the importance of the infinitely small, with
-the knowledge that "characters" and events arise out of the mind's
-contact with things that seem insignificant to the superficial
-observer. The wooden rigidity which the ordinary historian gives to
-the figures of the past, is the result of the incapacity to visualise
-the daily, the commonplace, in lives lived long ago. Strindberg's
-psychological conception of characters of the past is based on an
-almost microscopical power of seeing details. His own hypersensitive
-emotional memory initiated him into the manner, in which history is
-made by mood and temper, aches and pains--as well as by deliberate
-purpose of will and political programmes. Whether it be true or not
-that the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was due to the toothache of
-Louis XIV, and that history was thus made by the ill-timed activity of
-molar nerves, psychological research into the origin of great events
-on the world's stage would reveal causes which the historian does not
-deign to consider.
-
-_Eric XIV_, the drama of the reign of the mad son of the sane King
-Gustavus, is a masterpiece of life-like presentation. Searching
-comparisons between the arts of Strindberg and Shakespeare are otiose.
-But in the dramatic treatment of lunacy the author of _Eric XIV_ may
-well be compared with the author of _Hamlet_, _Lear_, and _Macbeth_.
-The dramatic verisimilitude of Strindberg's lunatics is made perfect
-through an experiential familiarity with the nethermost adventures
-of the mind, which Shakespeare lacked. In _Eric XIV_ the monomania
-of persecution, the fitful _délires de grandeur_, the half-conscious
-cruelty are drawn with a spontaneous realism which is heightened by
-a terrible psychological accuracy of analysis. Strindberg has drawn
-almost as many mad and half-mad folk as Shakespeare. He can describe
-every form of mental derangement, and has not forgotten the soul
-obsessed by God and, therefore, detached from the world. In _The Saga
-of the Folkungs_ the Voice of the Unseen speaks through an obsessed
-woman who sees the souls of people, and is able to reveal the hidden
-treachery of those who surround King Magnus. "One must be mad," says
-a barber in this play, "to have the courage to reveal all secrets at
-once." In _Easter_, the most mystical of Strindberg's plays, he draws
-an exquisite character of a young girl who is "mad," whose soul is pure
-and lovely, and who sees and hears things that happen far away. To her,
-also, all secrets are open; she can see the stars during the daytime,
-and, though her head is "soft," her spirit dwells in the realms of
-pure beauty. There is a fool in To Damascus; there is the frenzy of
-despair in _The Father_. The novels _Remorse, At the Edge of the Sea_
-and _The Gothic Rooms_ present a gallery of psycho-pathological types.
-
-Strindberg's novelistic treatment of lunacy has a natural profuseness
-of imagination, not unlike that of E.T.A. Hoffmann and Dostoevsky. It
-therefore bears little resemblance to the more artificial composition,
-typified by Paul Hervieu's _L'Inconnu_ or Guy de Maupassant's _Le
-Horla_.
-
-The scenes in _Eric XIV_ are constructed with a finished workmanship,
-and an economy of events which make it one of Strindberg's most
-playable pieces. Consumed by jealous hatred of his brother, Johan,
-Eric keeps him a prisoner; a prey of malignant suspicion against
-everybody, Eric commits atrocious murders and endures frantic remorse.
-At last, Eric's excesses can no longer be endured by the people. He is
-imprisoned, and Johan becomes king. In _Eric XIV_ the psychological
-dissection of character does not hinder the dramatic movement of
-the play; the playwright combines brilliant impressionism with due
-subservience to the laws of the theatre. In _The Saga of the Folkungs_
-he has allowed the psychological treatment to usurp the domain of
-drama. The play deals with a period in Swedish history when two brother
-kings occupied the throne. Here, too, we have sombre tragedy. There
-is no lack of dramatic elements, for the horrors of plague, hanging,
-flagellants and execution are shown upon the stage. But Strindberg
-has psychologised his characters so intensely that the flesh has, as
-it were, fallen away from their souls, and with that the obscurity of
-motives and objects which creates the deception upon which human action
-is built, and which is essential to drama. The effect of the play on
-the spectator is the intense, yet real, terror of a nightmare, from
-which we vainly struggle to awaken. The over-balance of psychological
-analysis mars some of the later historical dramas. It makes some of the
-transcendental plays and the chamber plays mere dramatic dialogues,
-pictures of minds in conflict; it gives us the Shadow Theatre of
-the Soul, and leads Strindberg to bold defiance of the rules of
-dramaturgy--including those laid down by himself.
-
-The cycle of the Vasa plays--_Master Olof_, _Gustavus Vasa_ and _Eric
-XIV_--bears the mark of the consummate craftsman. Their strength is
-the strength of reality, their beauty a perfect proportion of dramatic
-construction. A row of historical plays followed: _Gustavus Adolphus_
-(1900); _Engelbrecht_ (1901); _Charles XII_ (1901); _Gustavus III_
-(1903); _Queen Christina_ (1903); _The Nightingale of Wittenberg_
-(1903); _The Last Knight_ (1908); _The National Director_ (1909); _The
-Earl of Bjälbo_ (1909). Of these, _Gustavus Adolphus_ with its breadth
-of battlefield panorama; _Charles XII_ with its narrow searchlight
-on the declining figure of the lion-hearted, but beaten king; _Queen
-Christina_ with its flamboyant sketch of the clever and capricious
-daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, are eminently playable. _Gustavus
-III_ has pointed dialogue, cameo-like pictures of word-fencing; it
-faithfully paints the decadent time when Sweden was steeped in the
-sterile scepticism of France; it portrays the reaction which led to the
-assassination of the King of Masquerades, but the play is not woven
-with the dramaturgic skill of the former dramas. _The Last Knight_
-is an historical jugglery with ideas in five acts which strains the
-dramatic form beyond its measure of elasticity.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-It would require a separate volume to deal adequately with
-Strindberg's historical writings. It is not only his dramas which bear
-testimony to the originality of his historical conception, but a number
-of treatises, essays, and stories, such as _Studies in the History
-of Culture, The Swedish People, Swedish Destinies and Adventures,
-Historical Miniatures_, and _The Conscious Will in the History of the
-World_. His independent historical researches unearthed documents and
-accumulated evidence with a painstaking thoroughness which should
-have endowed him with a special "authority." But he has been derided
-and abused because of his lack of a truly professorial treatment of
-historical characters. His powers of visualisation and interpretation
-have given offence to historical specialists. He has been accused of
-distorting the calm faces of royal personages, of encumbering his
-pictures of the past with ugly and unnecessary details. He has been
-condemned because there is a twentieth-century atmosphere about his
-characters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But we may
-well ask: Has any historical chronicler or dramatist ever given a
-faithful representation of the past except through the medium of his
-own personality, his own time? There are anachronisms in _Hamlet_;
-so there are in _Eric XIV_. In a wider sense, all historical writings
-are anachronistic. In that sense Strindberg's history is less burdened
-with errors than that of most writers. The offence which Strindberg
-committed--if it be an offence--is that he saw and threw upon the
-canvas the lasting psychological features which persist through the
-vicissitudes of time, through the altered conditions of morality,
-custom, and nationality. He saw the eternally human beneath the masks
-of canonised and apotheosised individuals.
-
-_Gustavus Adolphus_, Strindberg's drama of the fair hero-king of Sweden
-who played an illustrious part in the Thirty Years' War, and who landed
-with twenty thousand men in Pomerania in 1630 as friend and protector
-of oppressed Protestants in Germany, has all the elements of a powerful
-historical play. It has been severely criticised in Sweden and in
-Germany. Strindberg has himself explained that the Swedes objected to
-his portrait of Gustavus Adolphus because he had made him too small,
-and the Germans objected because he had made the conquering hero
-too great. Strindberg did not hesitate to show the blemishes on the
-historical idol of Sweden: the weakness, the impetuousness, the spells
-of fear, the carelessness, the moral elasticity which characterised
-Gustavus Adolphus. Nor did he hesitate to show the horrors and
-self-deception of war, the blackguardly deeds which are glorified
-by militarism, or the petty quarrels between Catholics, Lutherans,
-and Calvinists which prolonged the strife. The king is represented
-as being brought--by the force of events--to see the unworthiness of
-the cause which he espouses, and for which he finally dies. This was
-an unpardonable offence against the sacro-sanctity of tradition, and
-the fact that Strindberg's Gustavus Adolphus lost none of his heroic
-qualities by being stripped of pseudo-angelic ones did not temper the
-wind of the general condemnation. The famous generals of the Swedish
-army, Horn, Banér, Tott, Brahe, Torstensson, Stenbock, have been shorn
-of none of their glory.
-
-In _Charles XII_ Strindberg repeats the offence committed in _Gustavus
-Adolphus_. With irreverent and destructive hands Charles XII broke the
-greatness of Sweden,[1] builded by Gustavus Adolphus, and Strindberg
-mercilessly analyses the foolhardy mind of Charles XII, through which
-his campaigns and his country were foredoomed to disaster.
-
-The attacks made upon Strindberg by those who cling to stereotyped
-methods of historical judgment have but served to show the importance
-of the method which he inaugurated. It will undoubtedly guide the
-historian of the future. The average historian moulds his material to
-the conventional view; he has no place for the shapes of originality
-which, but for his cramped pages, would stand forth lifelike and real.
-Mr. William Archer tells us that the historical dramatist must not
-flagrantly defy or disappoint popular knowledge or prejudice. But
-popular knowledge can take no account of the deeper psychological
-traits which it is the business of the historical dramatist to
-discover. Mr. Archer holds that the dramatist must not run counter to
-"generally accepted tradition." "New truth, in history," he adds, "must
-be established either by new documents, or by a careful and detailed
-reinterpretation of old documents; but the stage is not the place
-either for the production of documents or for historical exegesis."[2]
-Those who thus separate the known past from the revivifying influence
-of imaginative art seek to impose the academic view of history upon the
-artistic conscience. That conscience is never free from impressions
-of the accumulated experience of the past. Every play which depicts
-yesterday's customs, manners, costumes, conflicts of thought and
-morality is "historical," and artistic exegesis alone can make real
-to us that which is absent from school treatises, statistics and
-blue-books.
-
-The series of plays which have been designated as symbolical,
-transcendental, mystical and mad--according to the mental outlook of
-the reader--bring us nearest to the real Strindberg, to the essential
-in his imaginative art which, though illusive and often completely
-submerged, yet stands forth as the structure of his life. To this
-series belong _To Damascus_, I and II (1898), _Advent_ (1899), _The
-Dance of Death_, I and II (1901), _Easter_ (1901), _The Crown Bride_
-(1902), _Swanwhite_ (1902), _The Dream Play_ (1902), _The Great
-Highway_ (1909). In these plays we have the eternal questions of the
-human mind, the joys of illusion, the sorrows of knowledge, the fruits
-of sin and hatred, the rise through pain and suffering, the soul's
-battle with relentless fate, the awful mystery of existence, and the
-ultimate hope of something better to come, cast into the weird and
-haunting shapes of the people of Strindberg's inner world; the souls
-that are at once real and unreal, mad and sane, acting in the solid
-world of matter, and held in shadowy bondage by the mists of dreamland.
-Here we meet them all, the souls that have gone by, that are here
-around us, that are yet to come. They meet us with tears and smiles,
-with lies and truth, with virtue and vice, pathetic and repulsive,
-lovable and loathsome--humanity.
-
-[Illustration: Strindberg in his library in the "Blue Tower," 1911. His
-Last Home in Stockholm]
-
-Strindberg suggests the soul's corruption and the soul's ineffable
-sweetness with the same impassioned power of creation. In _Swanwhite_,
-the charming fairy play in which the influence of Maeterlinck is
-discernible, the budding love between a fairy-like princess and a
-chivalrous prince is described with a delicacy which brings the reader
-into a land of romance and roses, of stainless purity and spring-like
-innocence. In _Advent_ we are brought into the house of wickedness, of
-cruel, designing, ancient wickedness. The old judge and his wife are
-steeped in every variety of human treachery and vileness. They die, and
-we follow them into the darkness of hell, where the seven deadly sins
-have grouped themselves around the throne of the monarch. Through the
-pain of being made to see themselves as they really are, they cry out
-for light. In both pieces the "supernatural" plays the most important
-part; the wicked stepmother in _Swanwhite_ exhales a breath of evil
-before which the rose fades, and the dove falls dead; the ill-treated
-children in _Advent_ are comforted by a mysterious playmate, clad in
-white, who brings light into the dark cellar in which they have been
-imprisoned. The story in _The Crown Bride_ of a peasant girl, who kills
-her child, is told with an exalted simplicity, and given a setting
-of the old fairy-faith of Dalecarlia which peoples the rivers with
-nature-spirits and the forests with _trolls_. Here, as in the other
-fairy plays, things are endowed with souls, and the fierce hatred
-between the two old peasant families is reflected by every object that
-surrounds them. Unknown forces are all the time engaged in a mystic
-underplay which is the real action of the piece.
-
-The law of _karma_--the chain of cause and effect--runs through all
-these plays, and binds together the psychological sequence where the
-dramatic construction fails. In _Easter_ Strindberg has drawn the
-anguish of a little bourgeois family, labouring under the misfortunes
-following upon the father's defalcations. He is in prison, and Elis,
-his son, a schoolmaster, who is meticulously honest, is weighed down
-by shame, and tormented by the fear that the man to whom the father
-is heavily indebted, will exercise his right and seize the furniture.
-The family look upon this man, Lindkvist, as an ogre, and when they
-learn that he has come to live in the same town they are in constant
-fear that he will ruin them. Throughout the three acts of this very
-playable piece Strindberg gives a highly finished and concentrated
-picture of those multiple and long-lived sufferings of the innocent,
-which follow in the wake of transgressions committed by the guilty.
-But he makes Lindkvist an arbiter of fate, a messenger of hope who
-shows that good as well as evil is minutely recorded in the great Book
-of Events. For long ago when Elis' father was a young man, and before
-he placed himself within the meshes of the law, he did Lindkvist a
-kindness. That kindness has never been forgotten; it lay like a seed
-of life in Lindkvist's soul, and, as it grew, it made him a generous
-man. And thus Lindkvist forgives and forgets, and the spirit of Easter
-is resurrected in the hearts of the family. Eleonora, the pure and
-tender-spirited girl who went mad on the day when her father was sent
-to prison, is wrongfully suspected of having stolen a daffodil plant in
-the shop of the adjoining florist. The symbolism of the piece is made
-complete by the strange play of the shadow of paternal crime on the
-guiltless child. In her mad innocence of the world's ways Eleonora has
-taken the flowerpot and left a shilling and her name on the counter,
-but the coin and the name are not seen by the agitated shopkeeper who
-is anxious to brand the suspected culprit. The "theft" is at last
-satisfactorily explained. Eleonora speaks with the wisdom of many lives
-when she says: "I was born old ... I knew everything already when I
-was born, and when I learnt something I only recollected. When I was
-four years old I knew men's ... thoughtlessness and foolishness, and
-therefore people were unkind to me."
-
-The force of suggestion, the primary importance of thought form the
-keynote of several of Strindberg's plays. In _Eric XIV_ he lets Göran
-Persson say to Eric: "King and friend, you so often use the word hate
-that at last you imagine yourself to be the enemy of humanity. Don't
-use it! The word is the first realisation of the creative force, and
-you throw a spell over yourself by this incantation. Say 'love' a
-little oftener, and you will imagine yourself loved." _There are Crimes
-and Crimes_, a play in four acts which has been a great theatrical
-success, is built around the subtle force of evil thought. Maurice, a
-dramatist of the Bohemian world in Paris, who is about to receive the
-laurels of fame deserts his mistress and his child to follow a woman
-bent on pleasure only; in the elation of their passion they wish death
-to Maurice's child and destruction to all obstacles in their way. The
-child dies mysteriously in the morning, and through a combination of
-malign circumstances Maurice is accused of being the murderer. He is
-innocent, but he has sinned in thought, and when, at the end of the
-fourth act, he is mercifully extracted from the vortex, into which he
-has brought himself, the Abbé says to him: "You were not innocent,
-for we are also responsible for our thoughts, words, desires, and you
-murdered in thought when your evil will wished for the death of your
-child."
-
-_There are Crimes and Crimes_ does full justice to Strindberg as an
-accomplished stage craftsman; in _The Dance of Death_ we have, perhaps,
-the most sharply chiselled dramatic form of all his later plays. It is
-a symphony of married hatred and misery in which the orchestration is
-perfect. The dialogue is at once natural and calculated; the silent
-play of the piece even more intensely suggestive than the spoken
-words. We get glimpses of the dramatic art of bygone days: that of
-Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; we are mercilessly ground in the
-mill of a ghastly nineteenth-century problem play. The figure of the
-Captain of the Fortress, the untruthful, scheming old rascal who has
-attained to a diabolical mastery in the art of making others unhappy
-and uncomfortable, is drawn with a supreme irony which makes it unique
-in vital drama. Amongst Strindberg's realistic plays it has another
-distinction: it represents his only stage-creation of a vampire-like
-_husband_. The wife is naturally not far behind him. Death stands
-behind the central figures of the play, the dancing death of Holbein
-and Saint-Saëns. The strains of his tune drown the jarring notes of
-conflict, and bring the voice of hope to the Captain's lips: "Wipe
-out, and pass on!"
-
-The trilogy _To Damascus_, with its autobiographical wanderings on the
-crooked paths of experience, is perhaps the strangest literary play
-ever written. It contains the elements of the old miracle and morality
-plays, the soul's battle with itself and with the Devil, its final
-renouncement of the world and entry into the new Life. "The Stranger"
-meets "The Lady"; together they journey from station to station on
-the road of suffering and disillusionment. They part in hatred, and
-meet again in the vicissitudes of love. They separate finally as
-The Stranger attains to peace, religious peace, in the monastery of
-dead passions on the top of the hill. The stages that He between the
-beginning and the end of the journey are described in scenes which are
-both possible and impossible. The Beggar, The Doctor, The Sister, The
-Mother, The Old Man, The Confessor, The Abbess, The Fool, The Shadows,
-and The Children all take their assigned parts as separate individuals.
-And yet they seem to be one and the same, fragments of a multiple
-personality. All things and all thoughts come back in this play like
-the top spun by a skilful player of diabolo. The Stranger climbs a
-mountain, and arrogantly threatens the Lord of the skies with a cross
-which he has snatched from a Calvary. He falls, and is found in raving
-delirium by the kind Samaritans of the Convent who bring him to their
-hospital. He regains consciousness, and finds himself seated at a table
-in the Refectory in company with the shades of all whom he has injured,
-or with whose fate his own is bound up. The scene is one of the deepest
-religious realism. It has a touch of that crushing and unreasonable
-sense of guilt which often accompanies the return to physical life of
-one who has been to the very gates of death. The curse of Deuteronomy
-is read by The Confessor, and every word brands the memory of The
-Stranger with the seal of The Law. Of this consciousness of guilt The
-Stranger says: "There are moments when I feel as if I carried within me
-all the sin and sorrow and uncleanliness and shame of the world; there
-are moments when I believe that the wicked act, crime itself, is an
-imposed punishment."
-
-The world gives a banquet in honour of The Stranger, who has succeeded
-in making gold. But the banquet is so arranged as to show the envy
-and hatred and treachery which lie behind the festive speeches,
-the fickleness of public approval. In the portrait gallery of the
-monastery The Stranger is shown the real selves of great men who have
-been honoured for their consistency, whilst they have been bundles
-of inconsistencies--Napoleon, Luther, Voltaire, Goethe, Bismarck.
-The yearning for the peace that passeth all understanding is well
-expressed when The Stranger, bruised and tired, weary of searching and
-self-disgust, sees the white monastery on the hill and cries:
-
-"Anything so white I never before beheld on this dirty earth, except in
-my dreams; yes, this is my youth's dream of a house wherein dwell peace
-and purity. I greet thee, white house.... Now, I am at home."
-
-It is as if the heat of imagination, which produced some of
-Strindberg's great books, were too great to permit him to leave a
-subject, when, artistically, it is finished. After _Inferno_ he wrote
-Legends which was but a faint echo. The theme of _To Damascus_ is
-weakly repeated in _The Great Highway_, a drama in verse and prose
-which also deals with the soul's fearful struggle and disillusionment.
-_To Damascus_ contains some shallow thoughts and some banalities of
-expression, but it is a powerful creation, magnificently conceived. In
-_The Great Highway_ the mysticism falls flat, the play does not grip by
-any poetic power; it is an _olla podrida_ of its author's philosophy
-of life which sometimes is not even lukewarm. But it does contain some
-gems of lyrical beauty, and one or two passages in which Strindberg
-reaches his own heights.
-
-The _Dream Play_ is a new conception and a new art. In a memorandum to
-the play Strindberg writes: "In this Dream Play, as in the previous
-one _To Damascus_, the author has sought to imitate the disconnected,
-but apparently logical form of the dream. Anything may happen;
-everything is possible and probable. Time and space do not exist;,
-on an insignificant background of reality imagination spins threads
-and weaves new patterns: a mixture of memories, experiences, free
-fancies, absurdities and improvisations. The characters split, double,
-multiply, evaporate, solidify, diffuse, clarify. But one consciousness
-reigns above them all--that of the dreamer; it knows no secrets, no
-incongruities, no scruples, no law."
-
-The texture of _To Damascus_ is solid compared with that of _The Dream
-Play_. The story of the descent of the Daughter of Indra into matter,
-of human life as typified by The Glazier, The Officer, The Lawyer, The
-Bill-poster and The Poet, is told without any dramatic sequence, such
-as is required by the theatre of to-day. It is a play written for a
-stage not yet built, to be performed by some diaphanous visitants from
-the astral world. Strindberg calls _The Dream Play_ a Buddhistic and
-proto-Christian drama. It is more than that: it is pre-cosmic.
-
-The paradoxical versatility of a man who holds all the keys of
-successful drama in his hands, and yet sacrifices the theatre to the
-transcendentalism of his ideas, is not easily explained. Strindberg
-told Dr. John Landquist, now editor of the posthumous edition of his
-collected works, that he really found it difficult to write modern
-plays, and that he loved pomp and circumstance in drama.[3] That
-love is displayed in the sumptuous repast introduced into the second
-part of _To Damascus_, at once coarsely barbaric and uncomfortably
-ethereal, a strange combination of the Banquet of Life and the Swedish
-_hors-d'oeuvre_ table. And yet, this is the man who wrote the Chamber
-Plays: _Storm, The Burned Lot, The Pelican, The Black Glove_ and _The
-Spook Sonata_ (1907), in which the figures move, physical, yet free
-from the three dimensions, impersonated ideas, brain-spectres who walk
-the boards with unsteady feet. This is the man who wrote the preface
-to _Lady Julie_, who sought the realisation of his theatrical ideal in
-the one-act play with two or three characters, and who later came to
-write _Gustavus Adolphus_ with fifty-four characters, _Midsummer_ with
-thirty-two characters; who created twenty-four characters for _Gustavus
-Vasa_, and twenty for _Eric XIV_ and _The Saga of the Folkungs_
-respectively, and whose dramatic lavishness necessitated a succession
-of five-act dramas. It seems strange that the author of saga plays,
-like _The Journey of Lucky Peter_, and _The Keys of Heaven_, with its
-parodied Sancho Panzaisms, should have composed _The Dance of Death_;
-that the conscience-stricken visions of To Damascus should be followed
-by _The Slippers of Abu Casem_. This ingenious "toy for children"
-Strindberg dedicated to his youngest daughter, the little Anne-Marie,
-on her sixth birthday.
-
-The two great Norwegian dramatists presented an orderly development
-in the choice of dramatic form, which makes the study of their art
-an exercise in the logic of temperament. The natural romanticism of
-Ibsen's early plays passed into the classical art of _Ghosts_. The
-intellectual modernism of the later Ibsen was the ripeness anticipated
-by every shrewd observer of the course of his mind. The art of Ibsen
-is complex, yet simple. Born out of the depths of his love of truth
-and his love of beauty, it arose, well-formed, palpable, a thing for
-all the world to see and hear, an indictment of the gigantic social
-fraud to which all must ultimately listen. It is essentially exoteric.
-So is the art of the rival and minor playwright, Björnson, who has
-given the world its most perfect dramatised sermons. Strindberg's art
-is incalculable, subtle, the caprice of a spirit that cannot exhaust
-itself: esoteric because it is ever rooted in the unconscious. His
-plays may be read and seen by the many, but at present they will be
-understood only by the few.
-
-In versatility of dramatic form Hauptmann stands nearest Strindberg.
-He has almost as many strings to his harp as the Swede--he has written
-naturalistic plays and fairy drama, social plays and mystical drama,
-farce, comedy, romance and realism. Both dramatists are impelled by
-pity for human suffering, but the pity that guides Hauptmann, and
-which is typified by _The Weavers_, is an elemental, earthbound pity,
-concerned with food and poverty, lack of shelter and work. Strindberg's
-pity is transcendentalised; it hovers round the greater mysteries of
-existence itself, seeks to extract the human spirit from the curse of
-illusions. Hence the absence of finality in his writings. No book gives
-the impression of being quite finished; they all transmit the ache for
-a new point of view. Whilst Maeterlinck has evolved a philosophy of
-spiritualised tranquillity, and administers a soothing narcotic for
-the Soul Rampant in the twilight of his charmed castles, Strindberg
-walks on, acutely conscious of the thorns upon which he treads. Whilst
-Björnson, satisfied, proclaims his ideal of physical purity, and throws
-down _A Gauntlet_ at vice, Strindberg is haunted by the ideal of the
-human soul's unattainable purity from dross. Whilst Bernard Shaw cuts
-the world's perplexities with a joke, a flashing paradoxical joke,
-Strindberg raises his bands in threatening condemnation at the God-head
-Himself. In Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's _Elën_, Samuel says to Goetze:
-"Science will not suffice. Sooner or later you will end by coming to
-your knees." Goetze: "Before what?" Samuel: "Before the Darkness."
-Strindberg was brought to his knees by the Darkness, but he rose with
-the dawn that followed.
-
-During the thirteen years that passed between the quiet celebration of
-Strindberg's fiftieth birthday, and the national festivities with which
-the Swedish people acclaimed him on January 22nd, 1912, his countrymen
-were gradually made aware of his greatness. Men of all parties
-fearlessly proclaimed his genius over the open grave, though some would
-never have ventured to do so if they had not felt quite sure that he
-could not prepare any further shocks of surprise.
-
-It is impossible to present a study of the experiences which caused
-the corrosive bitterness in Strindberg's attacks on everything and
-everybody, without reference to the unjust and Pharisaical criticism
-to which he had to submit. On the other hand, there can be no doubt
-that it was difficult to live with Strindberg. The Swedes had to live
-with him, and the household of those who set themselves up to guard the
-propriety and integrity of literary art was day by day threatened by
-his revolutionary ideas, his personal attacks on spotless individuals,
-his coarse-grained descriptions of indescribable things. We must
-therefore extend sympathy to his detractors as well as to him. There
-is, besides, a reversionary power in the mere passage of time which
-calls for special tolerance. The reviewers of the _Athenæum_ and
-_Blackwood's Magazine_, who suggested that Ruskin's _Modern Painters_
-had emanated from Bedlam, are more entitled to our sympathy than the
-object of their criticism.
-
-The Swedes have a peculiar fear of praising that which is their own.
-They labour under a feeling that such praise is egotistical, blustering
-and discourteous to others. In Swedish peasant homes the housewife
-does honour to her guests by loud depreciation of the contents of her
-house and its offerings, no matter how well-appointed the home may
-be. The trait persists in the judgment of cultured people on national
-qualities, art and literature. It is certainly graceful, and makes the
-Swede an excellent companion, a polite and generous appreciator of the
-talents of others. But it is inimical to the toleration of a forceful
-and self-confident personality within one's own family or nation,
-and favourable to the mediocritisation of boisterous originality.
-If Strindberg had been an Italian or a Spaniard he would in all
-probability have been the recipient of the Nobel Prize during his
-life-time, in addition to posthumous honours.
-
-[Illustration: Strindberg in his study, 1911.]
-
-[Illustration: The Strindberg Theatre in Stockholm.]
-
-In the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy (of Literature), the
-late Dr. C.D. af Wirsén, Strindberg had a persistent enemy. Wirsén
-acted as Secretary to the Academy from 1884 to his death in 1912, and
-exercised considerable influence over the selection of recipients
-of the Nobel Prize in literature which is awarded by the Swedish
-Academy. To Wirsén who wrote idyllic and elegiac poetry, and who held
-everything that is old in reverence, Strindberg was incomprehensible.
-By his attacks on Strindberg, and also by his derisive criticism of
-another free-thinking Swedish writer, Ellen Key,[4] Wirsén shows a
-close resemblance to the type of foolish biographer for which Mr.
-A.C. Benson has found an admirable name: the eagle-eating monkey.
-There is a pseudo-aristocracy of mind which receives not truth in its
-house, unless she be arrayed in garments of classical cut, and has
-not journeyed along the highways of humankind. Wirsén looked upon
-Strindberg as a parvenu of intelligence, just as certain academicians
-regarded Spencer as a parvenu of science. Wirsén's diligent criticisms
-of Strindberg range over twenty years,[5] and may in some measure
-explain Strindberg's delusions of persecution. In 1882 Wirsén gave
-qualified praise to _Master Olof_, and took the opportunity of
-reminding his readers that _The Red Room_ was pervaded by "evil but
-empty wit." His virtuous indignation over "the blasphemous effusions"
-and "ridiculous vanity" of Strindberg's autobiography was sustained
-by the discovery that it contained much boastfulness, but no solid
-thought, and he searched in vain for any proof that the unlucky author
-was--what he might have been--a noble, though eccentric personality. He
-received _The Father_ with feelings of pity for he could see nothing
-in it, but the impotence of a diseased imagination and a mixture of
-coarseness and paradoxicality. When Comrades was published Wirsén
-expressed his astonishment that such a play had found a publisher.
-He dismissed _The Stronger_, as giving "no evidence of strength
-in the composition. Anything weaker has seldom been put together."
-He could find no artistic merit in _At the Edge of the Sea_. In
-1897 he condemned _The Link_ and _Playing with Fire_ by declaring
-that both were equally "unpleasant and painful." He naturally found
-Strindberg's verses bad, and shuddered over their invectives of
-hatred and revenge. When _Inferno_ was published he derived comfort
-from announcing that Strindberg's intellect "has now gone to pieces,"
-but recorded mournfully that the pen that wrote _Legends_ was as
-evil as ever. Wirsén did not believe in Strindberg's delusions; he
-claimed to see through them: they were nothing but coquetry with
-the public, sensational advertisement. _To Damascus_ was to him "a
-horrid and depressing work--excessively loathsome." The most unjust
-of all Wirsén's accusations against Strindberg is, perhaps, that of
-dulness. The autopsychological quest for truth in Strindberg's writings
-bored Wirsén, and he thought others must be bored too. Between the
-chastisements Wirsén exhibited a truly Christian forbearance, and
-graced a corner of his literary column by beseeching Strindberg and his
-followers to return to the path of goodness. He assured the sinners
-that their return to sounder ideas and purer production would be met
-with a warm welcome and undisguised joy in spite of the past.
-
-But the prodigal son of Swedish literature did not return to the house
-of the Academy. He had been well castigated for his brilliant satire on
-that somnolent institution in The _New Kingdom_, but he continued to
-mock "the Gods of Time" until the end of his days. In 1910 he took the
-Academy to task for its admiration of Baron Klinkowström, a poetaster,
-whose puerile and pompous verses were free from any menace to the
-existing order of things.
-
-It is true that Wirsén did not represent the whole of literary
-criticism in Sweden. It is also true that Strindberg always had a small
-circle of faithful followers who admired him, believed in him--and
-copied him. But during the many years when Strindberg was absent from
-Sweden a new school of literature was formed which was equally out of
-touch with his early realism and his late mysticism. Oscar Levertin,
-Werner von Heidenstam, Gustaf af Geijerstam and Selma Lagerlöf are
-the most prominent names of modern Swedish literature. Geijerstam's
-Erik Grane is an offshoot of early Strindbergism, and Heidenstam's
-brilliant stories of the soldiers of Charles XII, _Karolinerna_, are
-not without traces of the influence of Strindberg's _Swedish Destinies
-and Adventures_. But Strindberg was always too sceptical to stake his
-fortune on any particular breed of Pegasus. In his last two "terrible"
-novels, _The Gothic Rooms_ (1904) and _Black Flags_ (1907), he again
-delivered himself of violent and personal attacks upon society in
-general and the priests of literature and art in particular, thereby
-widening the gulf that lay between him and them.
-
-The many attacks made upon Strindberg in Sweden had one practical
-effect which caused him bitter disappointment. Theatrical managers
-fought shy of his plays. Fourteen years passed between the successful
-production of _The Father_ in Paris and its performance in Stockholm.
-_Lady Julie_ had to wait eighteen years before she was allowed to
-appear in Stockholm. In 1906 the play had a run of several weeks at
-"Folkteatern," in Stockholm, a playhouse for the working classes,
-where the aristocratic lady's downfall was appreciated in a crude, but
-wholehearted manner.
-
-Whilst the theatrical managers of Sweden were hesitating as to the
-expediency of allowing Strindberg to overshadow the stage, Herr
-Lauthenburg gave popular performances at the "Residenz Theater" in
-Berlin of _Creditors_, _Playing with Fire_ and _Facing Death_. Together
-with Hauptmann and Ibsen, Strindberg now won theatrical triumphs all
-over Germany.
-
-The indifference shown in Sweden towards the performance of
-Strindberg's plays led him to plan a Strindberg-Theatre to be run
-on lines similar to those of the Théâtre Maeterlinck. After many
-difficulties the plan was at last realised in the autumn of 1907, when
-_The Intimate Theatre_ began its stormy career with _The Pelican, The
-Burned Lot, Storm_, and the Hoffmanesque and elliptic _Spook Sonata_.
-These plays were promptly attacked by critics who made little attempt
-to understand them.
-
-The efforts made in certain quarters to silence Strindberg could not
-suppress the rising wave of admiration. When once the public had been
-brought in touch with him, the anathema of the powerful literary
-coterie was useless. In 1901 Herr Albert Ranft had courageously staged
-_Gustavus Vasa_ and _Eric XIV_ at "Svenska Teatern" in Stockholm.
-They became theatrical successes. "Dramatiska Teatern" followed suit
-with _Charles XII_, _Easter_ and _There are Crimes and Crimes_. A
-young Norwegian actress, Harriet Bosse, played the part of Eleonora
-in _Easter_ with so much charm that she fascinated both audience and
-author. She became a favourite actress and--Strindberg's third wife.
-Several of Strindberg's great historical plays were performed before
-the opening of his own Intimate Theatre. Though the change in public
-opinion was making itself felt, Strindberg could not but resent the
-tardy recognition of his works.
-
-He was out of touch with the literary men of his own country. To them
-he appeared as an outlander, and yet he was, withal, so intensely
-Swedish. He sought in vain to denationalise himself. He was not
-Swedish with the passionate, reverential love with which Dostoevsky
-was Russian. Strindberg was Swedish in spite of his efforts to the
-contrary; his country was in his blood and bones. When Herr A.
-Babillotte,[6] a German writer, says of Strindberg: "He is without
-roots ... though a Swede, he is certainly not Swedish," he shows scant
-understanding of one of the mainsprings in Strindberg's character and
-production. The statement is on a par with his contemptuous dismissal
-of Strindberg's historical dramas.[7] These plays drew nourishment
-from his love of his country, and derived actuality from his identity
-with Sweden. His heart hankered after Sweden, and drove him home when
-pride would have kept him away. In one of his first poems, entitled In
-Paris, he sang wittily of his incorrigible heart's longing for Sweden,
-despite the allurements of Montmartre. He felt lonely in Switzerland
-because he had not spoken to a countryman for three months.
-
-The difficulty in tracing Strindberg's literary ancestry in Sweden
-is responsible for attempts to find his roots elsewhere. Thus Laura
-Marholm elaborates a fantastic theory, according to which the mixture
-of genius and nomadic barbarism in Strindberg is to be explained by
-his "Mongolian blood." The union of mystic melancholy and exuberant
-sensuousness in Strindberg caused close, but futile comparisons
-to be made between him and E.J. Stagnelius, a Swedish poet of the
-romantic school who died in 1823. But a greater number of points of
-contact could be established between Strindberg and the "wizard" of
-Swedish literature, K.J.L. Almqvist, who lived in open revolt against
-authority and convention of all kinds, and whose prolific writings
-showed a remarkable versatility of mind. Almqvist was a realist and
-symbolist who loved to throw out paradoxical _bons-mots_ on current
-morals with a generous hand. "Two things are white," he said, "...
-innocence and arsenic." The amoral note of his writings and the general
-bizarrerie of his metaphors may show a certain likeness to Strindberg,
-but it vanishes upon closer comparison. Almqvist was not a dramatist.
-
-Though without direct literary parentage in Sweden, Strindberg is the
-most typical representative of his country's temperament and spiritual
-struggles. His genius is indigenous in spite of its universality. His
-is the race-consciousness which is enriched by contact with other
-races, but which never loses its distinct quality.
-
-He writes an idiomatic Swedish which, in a sense, is not reproducible
-in another language. His sentences, whether in the dialogue of a drama,
-or in the story of a novel, are wrought with a nervous force which
-is untranslatable. His phrases seem to be innervated, warm-blooded
-entities, and support the theory that the sentence preceded the word
-in the evolution of speech. He is often ungrammatical; each sentence
-is a living whole which cannot be divided. Analyse him with syntax and
-dictionary, and you will find "mistakes" and startling neology. The
-meaning will sometimes be obscure. But read him as you would listen
-to a piece of music with your ear to the harmonics, and you will find
-a consummate artist in words. Laura Marholm says that the sound of
-Strindberg is like bell metal in Swedish, whilst it resembles tin in
-German. There is much truth in the statement. Even the vigorous and
-cogent translations into German by Herr Emil Schering cannot retain
-the soul and magic of Strindberg's style. Translated from German into
-English he is unrecognisable. The difficulty of fusing his meaning
-and style in a new form is also apparent in the direct translations
-into English which have been made. Some of his plays have been
-sympathetically done into English by Herr Edwin Björkman. Mr. Björkman
-quotes from an article in _The Drama_, in which the belief is expressed
-that Strindberg's prose will be rendered better in "American" than in
-English. Mr. Björkman's translations are certainly American rather
-than English. The question whether this is an advantage to the style
-and beauty of the translation is a matter of taste which it would be
-invidious to discuss.
-
-Strindberg never strove to build up a style, like Stevenson who "played
-the sedulous ape" to Lamb, Wordsworth and Baudelaire. He knew nothing
-of the terrible torture of style which made Flaubert's literary
-labours a martyrdom. Ideas haunted Strindberg as they haunted Jules
-de Goncourt, but he never experienced the slavery to literary form in
-which the Goncourts lived. He did not live in order to write; he wrote
-in order to live.
-
-In an article of reminiscences by Madame Hélène Welinder,[8] who
-spent the summer of 1884 with Strindberg and his family at Chexbres
-in Switzerland, there is a vivid account of Strindberg's manner of
-writing. He wrote with feverish restlessness, and tried to overcome
-sleeplessness with large doses of bromide. She asked him if rest would
-not be better than bromide. Strindberg put his hand to his forehead as
-if in pain, and replied with a tone of despair: "I cannot rest, however
-much I should like to. I must write for bread in order to maintain
-wife and children, and, even apart from this, I cannot stop. Whether
-I travel by train, or do anything else, my brain works incessantly,
-it grinds and grinds like a mill, and I cannot make it stop. I get no
-peace before I see my thoughts on paper, and then something new begins
-immediately, and there is the same misery. I write and write, and do
-not even read through what I have written."
-
-This rapidity of composition was probably to some extent responsible
-for the frequent repetitions of the same word within a short paragraph,
-the careless tautology of ideas, situations and episodes in his
-books. Many instances of such episode-repetition could be given. Thus
-_Comrades_ and _Charles XII_ contain similar phrases about the woman
-clipping the man's hair of strength, whilst his head rests in her lap.
-_The Dream Play_ has several scenes which are "the doubles" of those
-related in _Fairhaven and Foulstrand_. A certain event connected with
-the tearing up of _The Swiss Family Robinson_ serves the author's
-psychological purposes both in _To Damascus_ and in _The Dream Play_.
-In _The Father_ Laura secretly abstracts the contents of her husband's
-letter-bag, and in _To Damascus_ "The Lady" is guilty of the same
-offence. Both in _Fairhaven and Foulstrand_ and in _To Damascus_ the
-woman promises not to read a certain book by the man which deals with
-his first marriage. She breaks the promise, and the disastrous effect
-is related with emphasis in both books. In _The Dance of Death_ the
-remorseless Captain calmly refers to his attempt to drown his wife by
-pushing her into the water; the incident is more fully worked out in
-_Fairhaven and Foulstrand_, and is the theme of a story in _Fisher
-Folk_. Such repetitions cannot be attributed to poverty of imagination;
-they are the outcome of a too retentive emotional memory and an
-insistent need of expression, immediate expression.
-
-It is curious to note that in spite of the richness and purity of his
-Swedish, in which the living tongue of the people is heard as never
-heretofore, there is not infrequently an admixture of foreign words and
-expressions. That his early verse-play _In Rome_ should contain rhymes
-on "jouissance" and "connaissance," coupled with Swedish words, and
-that some of his early poems were adorned in the same manner is not
-surprising. But when Göran Persson in _Eric XIV_ lightly throws out a
-hybrid drawing-room phrase: "_Tant mieux_ for my enemies!" a jarring
-note is introduced which is difficult to explain in a dialogue,
-otherwise so carefully balanced. The habit of using root-words from
-many languages, to which he gave Swedish shape, grew upon Strindberg
-in later years. In the plays his characters suddenly begin to spout
-Latin and Greek, like the philosophic beggar in _To Damascus_ and the
-sergeant-major in _Gustavus Adolphus_. Such dramatic exercises in the
-classics may have had a good and sufficient reason. The use of words of
-foreign extraction was no doubt fostered by his familiarity with the
-literature of many countries, and by the limitations of each language.
-To this may be added his growing interest in philological research. A
-short time before his death he was keenly at work on the etymology of
-Finnish, Hebrew and Greek.
-
-Uddgren's account of Strindberg's manner of working in 1907 shows that
-the fever had not left him. "When I have finished my work for the day,"
-Strindberg said, "I always note on a piece of paper what I shall begin
-with the next day. The whole long afternoon and evening I collect
-material for next day's work. During my morning walk my thoughts are
-further condensed, and when I return from my wanderings I am charged
-like an electric machine. I put on a dry vest, for after my walk I am
-always very hot, and then I sit down at my writing-table. As soon as I
-have paper and pen ready it bursts out. The words literally tumble over
-me, and the pen works under high pressure in order to get everything
-down on paper. When I have written for a while I have a feeling that I
-am floating in space. Then it is as if a higher will than my own made
-the pen glide over the paper, guide it to write down words which seem
-to me entirely inspired."
-
-The same ecstasy of writing is shown in _Alone_, where he says of his
-life at the writing-table: "I live, and I live the manifold lives
-of all the human beings I describe, happy with those who are happy,
-evil with the evil ones, good with the good; I creep out of my own
-personality, and speak out of the mouths of children, of women, of old
-men; I am king and beggar, I have worldly power, I am the tyrant and
-the most despised of all, the oppressed hater of the tyrant; I hold all
-opinions and profess all religions; I live in all times and have myself
-ceased to be. This is a state which brings indescribable happiness."
-These words remind us of Flaubert who felt "in the space of a minute
-a million thoughts, images and combinations of all kinds, throwing
-themselves into my brain at once as it were the lighted squibs of
-fire-works,"[9] and recall the plastic and yearning girl-soul of Marie
-Bashkirtseff who, when walking in Rome, exclaimed: "I want to be Cæsar,
-Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, Caracalla, the Devil, the Pope," and who
-adds: "I love to weep, I love to be in despair. I love to be grieved
-and sad ... and I love life in spite of everything."
-
-Amiel, remembering a night when he lay stretched full length on the
-sandy shore of the North Sea, cries: "Will they ever return to me,
-those grandiose, immortal, cosmogonic dreams, in which one seems to
-carry the world in one's breast, to touch the stars, to possess the
-infinite?"[10] Amiel dreamt, Strindberg created; Amiel found literary
-exultation in dreamy contemplation of the universe, Strindberg in the
-spiral revolutions of humanity.
-
-But sometimes the joy of literary creation gave way to profound
-self-disgust. "What an occupation," he writes in _The Quarantine
-Master's Tales_,[11] "to sit and flay one's fellow-humans, offer the
-skins for sale, and expect people to buy them. It is like the famished
-hunter who cuts off his dog's tail, eats the meat himself, and gives
-the bones to the dog, the dog's own bones. To go about spying out
-people's secrets, exposing the birthmark of one's best friend, using
-one's wife as a vivisection rabbit, storming like a Croat, cutting
-down, violating, burning and selling. The devil take it all."
-
-[Illustration: Harriet Bosse, Strindberg's third wife as Biskra in
-_Samum_ 1902.]
-
-[Illustration: Anne-Marie Bosse-Strindberg, Strindberg's only child in
-his third marriage. Born 1902.]
-
-Strindberg's style expands to fit his wild excursions into the world
-of ideas and his eccentricities of conception, such as the story of
-when he tried to catch dead "souls" with a bottle containing sugar
-of lead, on the Montparnasse cemetery,[12] or that of the madman's
-microscopical studies of the genesis of humanity in _At the Edge
-of the Sea_. His expressions and metaphors often bear the imprint
-of overwrought feeling, as when he speaks of the "blood-poisoning
-cares of the household," or when the impression produced by a visit
-to parents-in-law is that "of a serpent's hole into which Satan had
-enticed him." When he describes poor people asleep at night in
-a railway carriage, as presenting the appearance of corpses on a
-battlefield and scattered human limbs, we cannot but congratulate
-ourselves on the dulness of our imagination.
-
-Strindberg's "wildness" has been falsely attributed to the influence of
-alcohol. His use of absinthe, and his habit of heaping all sins upon
-himself--including that of drunkenness--account for the fable that
-he was incapable of writing without the aid of alcoholic excesses.
-He cannot even be placed in the long list of literary and artistic
-"drunkards "--including the names of Bums, Byron, Charles Lamb,
-Addison, Musset, Hoffmann, Poe and Baudelaire--to whom alcohol was a
-means of attaining to inspiration. Strindberg did not seek cortical
-excitation. He sought oblivion. In _The Great Highway_, "The Hunter"
-says to "The Wanderer" (Strindberg): "Mr. Incognito, why do you
-drink so much?" _The Wanderer_: "Because I am always lying on the
-operating-table, and have to chloroform myself."
-
-He was not a man who suffered from chronic congestion of the head
-in consequence of indifference to all hygienic laws. Ever since the
-early days when he used to throw himself headlong into the open sea
-from a rock, he was devoted to cold-water ablutions. His morning
-exercise, which sometimes was taken so vehemently as to tire him out
-completely, was part of the routine of daily life. In his home-life he
-was of methodical, orderly habits; he detested alike uncleanliness and
-untidiness--in fact, precisely the opposite of what some people have
-imagined him to be.
-
-The roots of his "wildness" cannot be found in the fumes of alcohol.
-There was a strain of the publicist and the agitator in Strindberg
-which found but an insufficient outlet. His craving for social reform
-was not satisfied by corresponding activity. He suffered from too much
-happening within him, and too little without. His stored-up energy
-caused a series of eruptions. Strindberg was an orator afflicted with
-dumbness. His faults of style are those of the typical orator. The
-splendour and vigour of his phrasing often hide blunders of logic
-and hasty conclusions. If Strindberg had met audiences face to face,
-like Björnson, and been in actual touch with the people, his tongue
-would have lost its sting. Björnson's pulpit manner would have fitted
-Strindberg badly, but it would have protected him against himself.
-
-But Strindberg could not be a public speaker. Though he was essentially
-a "Confessor" on paper of the race of St. Augustine and Chateaubriand,
-he dreaded the personal jostling and exhibition which are inseparable
-from political life. Loneliness was necessary to him. The emanations,
-opinions and habits of others were apt to oppress him, if brought too
-closely within his own circle. In Paris he fled from his friendship
-with Jonas Lie; in _Inferno_ he shows this dread of paying the taxes
-of friendship. He felt the identity of other people pressing on him
-in much the same way as Keats did. In company he did not like to be
-contradicted. Though a genial and generous host, he could turn friends
-out of his house if they proved themselves possessed of too great
-pugnacity of argument. "I have never hated human beings, rather the
-reverse," he says, "but ever since I was born I fear them."
-
-This fear of an alien invasion of the soul, of losing himself in
-another, made him flee again and again from the prison-house of love.
-In all his books the attraction between man and woman is a duel
-between love and hatred. Sexual love is never spiritualised; it drags
-man into the illusions of Maya, it robs him of strength of purpose,
-of intellectual freedom. Hence Strindberg's men are ever struggling
-to get out of the clutches of woman. When the ties are too strong
-to be broken, when passion obscures reason, hatred is born. Anatole
-France calls himself "a philosophical monk." The monk is always by
-Strindberg's side, pointing out the degradation of carnal love, urging
-him to seek liberation at all costs. But he is not yet ready. He wants
-to go, and he wants to stay. And all his couples, autobiographical and
-purely imaginative, bum in the fires of love-hatred. "I love her," he
-writes in Inferno, "and she loves me, and we hate each other with a
-wild hatred, born of love, which is intensified by the great distance."
-In _Fairhaven and Foulstrand_ the lover says: "At bottom we hate
-each other, because we love each other. We are afraid of losing our
-personalities through the assimilating power of love, and therefore we
-must break away sometimes so as to feel that I am not you...."
-
-After some time love always becomes irksome to Strindberg. He longs for
-male companionship. He experiences a sense of relief when he is free
-from the woman, from the consciousness of always being watched. His
-voice resumes its manly tones, his chest expands. This trait subsists
-in his stories; it makes marital happiness impossible.
-
-He can describe the marriage of souls with exquisite delicacy, the
-first hours of newborn tenderness, the maiden's innocence, the youth's
-wonder at the miracle which is taking place within his heart, the
-chaste abandonment of reserve before the unifying power of love. But
-when once love has descended from Heaven to Earth, Strindberg does
-not leave the lovers in peace. From earth's paradise they are driven
-to hell; they must hate each other, torment each other, devour each
-other's substance with the cruelty of vampires. Even the first kiss is
-fraught with untold dangers. In _Midsummer_--a sunny play emphasising
-the worth of man and the dignity of work, remarkably free from
-distressing problems--this pathological trait is introduced. Julius, a
-healthy young gardener, kisses Louise, his sweetheart, on the mouth,
-and the demoniacal depths of human nature are immediately revealed to
-both. Julius begins to understand the meaning of hatred, and gives
-utterance to startling thoughts. Louise no longer recognises his voice.
-"Why did you kiss me?" says Julius, "we ought never to have done
-that." "What happened?" says Louise. "I have just read in a book,"
-answers Julius, "that when two innocent bodies, carbon and nitrogen,
-unite a dreadful poison is formed. The poison has been born on our lips,
-and hatred has been born out of our innocent love."
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Bust by Max Levi, 1893.]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Bust by Agnes Kjellberg-Frumerie, 1896.]
-
-Shakespeare married a shrew. She served as an excellent model for his
-portraits of angry women. Led by a malignant fate Strindberg married
-three women who had interests outside the home. He loved _the ideal_
-of the womanly woman, the mother who lives for home and children. He
-came to detest the intellectual woman; she was to him the man-woman, a
-danger to the race, the enemy of man who steals his qualities because
-she is bent on his destruction.
-
-In _The Confession of a Fool_ his love for his first wife suffers at
-an early stage through the necessary introduction of business into the
-divorce arrangements. "Where is the charm of a woman who is always worn
-out with contention, whose conversation bristles with legal terms?" he
-asks plaintively. In _Fairhaven and Foulstrand_ the second story of the
-Quarantine Master shows the same sad development: "... But this evening
-he found her ugly, carelessly dressed, with ink on her fingers, and
-her conversation was so business-like that she appeared to him in a
-detestable light." "A lady," he says in one of his essays on the art
-of the theatre, "must never be snappish or grumpy, even if her part is
-one of opposition. A lady should always be graceful, even in moments of
-anger."
-
-Already as a youth he found it difficult to talk sense to girls.
-He denied that friendship could exist between the two sexes. The
-presence of emancipated and "free" women was sufficient completely
-to disorganise his work and temper. He told Uddgren that he did not
-feel happy in Switzerland, because he found women enjoying the same
-freedom as men in marriage. "I experienced a sense of peace when I
-came to Bavaria where the men are the rulers in marriage, and the
-women are obedient and faithful. The mere fact of returning to these
-old-fashioned, patriarchal conditions was sufficient to restore my
-literary powers which, during the last time in Switzerland, had been in
-abeyance."
-
-In an essay entitled _Woman-Hatred and Woman-Worship_, published
-in 1897, Strindberg wrote: "As I have the reputation of being a
-woman-hater, and people amuse themselves by calling me one, I am
-forced to ask myself if I really am one. On looking back at my past
-life I discover that, ever since I became man, I have always lived
-in regular relations with women, and that their presence has aroused
-pleasant feelings in me, in so far as they have remained women towards
-me. But when they have behaved as the rivals of man, neglected their
-beauty and lost their charm, I have detested them by dint of a natural
-and sound instinct, for in them I sensed something of man, and an
-element of my own sex which I detest from the bottom of my heart....
-Consequently, as I have been married twice and had five children, it is
-not very likely that I should be a woman-hater."
-
-"The most beautiful thing I know," says The Stranger to The Lady in _To
-Damascus_, "is a woman bent over her needlework or her child." And The
-Lady crochets. The good women in his plays are all fitted for "the most
-beautiful thing": Gunlöd in _The Outlaw_, Margaretha in _The Secret of
-the Guild_, Karin in _Eric XIV_.
-
-The following passage throws light, not only on Strindberg's attitude
-towards women, but on the attitude of women towards him: "To return
-to woman was to me to come back to nature, and in a corner of my soul
-I made myself unconscious, instinctive, a child, and thus renewed my
-power to think, act and fight.... I have always worshipped women, these
-enchanting, criminal minxes whose worst crimes are not registered in
-criminal statistics. But I have had sufficiently bad--or good--taste
-to tell them the troth, and they have revenged themselves by calling
-me woman-hater. Just think, if these priestesses of revenge knew
-how many successes with the fair sex their revenge has brought me!
-Inquisitiveness, the original sin of Eve, drew the little ingénues
-to the monster, and the monster put no obstacles in the way for even
-the most inquisitive to satisfy their curiosity ... many thanks, my
-charming enemies."
-
-It is little wonder that a man so constituted should be appalled at
-the prospect of the New Woman with her independence, her clubs, her
-cigarettes, her politics, her sport. Monsieur Casimir Dudevant, the
-husband of George Sand, who was "just an ordinary man" was at first
-puzzled by his wife's extraordinary qualities, and then came to the
-conclusion that she was "idiotic." Poor Monsieur Dudevant! He was the
-forerunner of a long row of perplexed husbands, injured in their sense
-of the fitness of things. Strindberg merely made himself a spokesman
-for what the majority of masculine men feel in regard to intellectual
-women, even though they may not be capable of expressing it. Since he
-abandoned his early championship of woman's suffrage, he came to utter
-much bad and ill-tempered abuse of woman. Some of the things which he
-said of "lazy, stingy and cowardly woman," of her mental and physical
-inferiority to man, might well be included in Flaubert's _Dossier de la
-Sottise Humaine_. His arguments in favour of the theory that woman is
-an intermediary biological form, whose development has been arrested
-somewhere between man and youth, are interesting but unconvincing. The
-evidence he offers in support of his views on the general incapacity
-of woman--an incapacity which ranges from the handling of musical
-instruments to making coffee--bears the imprint of petulance rather
-than research. Sometimes there is a cross and quarrelsome tone in these
-utterances which reflects personal irritation, something of Alfred de
-Musset's words in _Nuit d'Octobre_:
-
-     Honte à toi, qui la première
-     M'a appris la trahison...!
-
-But, after all, there is not much difference between the reasons
-against woman's political emancipation put forward by Strindberg, and
-those to which Mrs. Humphry Ward clings. And there is a close affinity
-between the psychological and physiological arguments against woman's
-suffrage, advanced in leading articles in _The Times_, and those on
-which Strindberg based his objections to giving women greater freedom.
-The dread of the subjection of man, of a general feminisation of the
-world, and its effects on social life and politics, is the common
-ground of opposition.[13]
-
-Some people have found an appropriate analogy in the fact that
-Strindberg "hated," not only women, but dogs. The hatred of dogs
-pervades his books, and has a note of the same bitter unreasonableness
-as his strictures on women. His first wife had a King Charles, "a
-blear-eyed little monster," which apparently received more loving
-attention than her husband. She even "prayed for dogs, fowls and
-rabbits," whilst, presumably, she did not pray for him. This was
-intolerable, and henceforth the dog became Strindberg's symbol of the
-worthless recipients of the good things of this world, of sneaking
-cupboard-love and uncleanliness. He has surpassed the Bible in
-contemptuous references to the dog.
-
-From this hatred the rest of the animal world was exempt. He cautions
-the angler against inflicting unnecessary suffering on the worm. He
-feeds the birds on his window-sill and the bear in the Zoo. He tells
-a story of a certain island where all the people were abominable
-drunkards, and where the only eyes which could still reflect
-intelligence and the blue sky were those of animals. He is not in
-sympathy with the aimless destruction of life. "Why must one always
-have a gun when one sees an innocent creature in the forest?" he asks,
-and adds: "There are other occasions in life when a gun would be of
-better use." In _The Crown Bride_ the life of an ant is spared, and the
-mystic "White Child" proclaims the love that is greatest of all, "love
-for every living thing, great and small."
-
-Strindberg's life in Stockholm during the last years of his great
-dramatic production flowed in a calm stream, the surface of which
-showed no signs of the storms within. He lived the life of a literary
-hermit, wrapped up in his studies and his art. He took his morning
-walks when the greater part of Stockholm was still asleep, and received
-only a few privileged friends in his home. Solitude had become his best
-friend. In the morning he made his own coffee, and partook of a light
-repast before going out. As a rule he lived frugally, and his little
-home was arranged with the greatest simplicity. "When I get out of bed
-the morning after a sober evening and a restful night, life itself is
-a distinct enjoyment. It is like rising from the dead," he says in
-_Alone_.
-
-Poverty, the faithful companion of his youth, dung to him to the end.
-Even during the last years he was often in monetary difficulties; in
-his attacks upon the powers of the day he had no thought of what the
-morrow would bring to him. He had again and again to pay the penalty
-of speaking unpopular truths. And when money came his way he did not
-love it well enough to make it stay with him. He gave with a lavish,
-careless hand, with a heart ever warm and bleeding for those who had
-less than he. When, on his last birthday, a purse containing 50,000
-kronor had been presented to him, as a token of the people's love and
-admiration, he gave away large sums to the cause of peace, to the poor.
-When, at last, a great publisher bought the rights of all his published
-works in Sweden for some £11,000, the affluence came too late--for him.
-
-In 1901 he married Harriet Bosse who had been the sympathetic
-interpreter on the stage of the women in some of his plays. The
-marriage was amicably dissolved in 1904. During his third marriage he
-wrote _The Dance of Death_ and _Swanwhite_, and published a volume
-of poems, in which his lyrical powers were perfected through greater
-sensitiveness and restraint. Among these poems there is one, strange
-and beautiful, spiritual and earthly, in which he sings of the glory of
-the form of woman--the theme of artists and lovers since the beginning
-of time--but here treated in a new manner. In her he sees the motion of
-stars and planets, the lines of sphere, parabola and ellipse. He sees
-the infinite possibilities of the Cosmic procession, of the creative,
-ever-moving force, the highest and the lowest, in the symbol of the
-eternally feminine.
-
-The "music of the spheres" has been captured in this little poem. It
-is strange how often one is constrained to use musical metaphors in
-describing Strindberg's style. There is always music in his language.
-He was conscious of this himself, for in his last plays he always chose
-music to fit the mood of his dramatic movement. Thus the spiritual
-peace of _Easter_, the change from fear of fate to certainty of God's
-presence, is accompanied by Haydn's _Sieben Worte des Erlösers_, the
-sinful thoughts of Maurice and Henriette in _There are Crimes and
-Crimes_ are followed by the finale of Beethoven's Sonata in D minor.
-_The Dream Play_ is interluded with Bach's Toccata con Fuga; the _Dance
-of Death_ is trodden to the tune of the "Entry of the Boyars."
-
-Over his piano there hung a death-mask of Beethoven. The final movement
-of the "Moonlight Sonata" was to him the highest interpretation of
-humanity's yearning for deliverance. Music brought him peace. It gave
-him strength when words failed--even during the last days when he sat
-at his piano, improvising variations on the Death hymn of the Titanic.
-Strindberg's old friend Tor Aulin, the well-known Swedish composer,
-received a characteristic message from Strindberg's deathbed: "A last
-farewell from Saul to David."
-
-[Illustration: Strindberg's Funeral, May 19th, 1912. Trades-Unions and
-Undergraduates in Procession.]
-
-The little Anne-Marie Bosse-Strindberg, his daughter in the last
-marriage, was very dear to his heart. He had found her gifted with
-something of the second sight which was his own, and his great
-tenderness for children found response in her. Amongst his three
-children by the first marriage his daughter Greta, married to Dr.
-Henry von Philp in Stockholm, understood him best. She was an actress,
-and took the part of Kerstin in _The Crown Bride_ during the national
-festivities in his honour in January, 1912. Happily he did not live
-to mourn over the tragic fate that overtook her. She was killed in
-a terrible railway accident which took place a few weeks after her
-father's death.
-
-The illness which was to end his life had long been battling with his
-wonderful vitality. He caught cold during the Christmas of 1911, when
-he went to pay a visit to his daughter Greta. Pneumonia supervened and
-laid him low for some time. He regained strength and once again put on
-his warrior's armour. Of this illness he gave an account in Berliner
-Tageblatt of February 4th, 1912. After describing an etymological
-challenge which he had sent to three Finnish friends he writes:
-
-"The challenge had hardly been accepted before I fell ill; I first
-noticed it on the morning of Christmas Day, when I was so tired, so
-tired, that I would neither get up, nor drink my coffee. I had no
-pains, but experienced a great calm and an indifference towards the
-outer world, and felt as if I had at last found peace. Usually I get
-up punctually at seven, take a walk, and hurry home, driven by an
-irresistible longing for work. Now this restlessness had left me; I
-felt my life-work was completed. I had said all I wished to say, and my
-unprinted manuscripts were put away in perfect order in boxes."
-
-But the recovery was apparent only. The real trouble was cancer of the
-stomach. An operation was performed, but could not check the advance of
-the disease.
-
-On January 22nd, 1912, the whole Swedish nation celebrated his
-sixty-third birthday. It was nearly too late. The breath of death was
-already upon him as he stood on his balcony, waving his hand to the
-torchlight procession which passed his house, bending his head before
-the deafening cheers which rose from the multitudes, from whose lips
-the cry for August Strindberg rose in tones of jubilant hero-worship.
-As he stood there, raised above the bands and banners of the festive
-acclamation, it may be that the memories of past mistakes, past
-humiliation, and past struggle for goodness, rose within that mighty
-brow, and kept pace with the steps of the marching crowd below. For he
-knew, as few have known, the comedy and the tragedy of life.
-
-That night the theatres of Stockholm vied with each other in performing
-his plays. Laurel-wreathed busts and portraits of Strindberg were
-on view in the foyers and restaurants. The night came with public
-festivities in his honour, music and speeches of approbation.
-
-But the dramatist remained at home in his Blue Tower with a few
-friends. The applause of the public touched his heart, but did not
-deceive him. He knew that the curtain was about to fall on his part in
-the perpetual performance in the Theatre of Life, and that new scenes
-were to follow, to be hissed and applauded until Time puts its last
-figure upon the stage.
-
-
-[1] In 1658 the kingdom of Sweden included the whole of the present
-Sweden and Finland, and in addition Esthonia, Livonia, part of
-Ingermanland, Pomerania, Wismar, Bremen and Verden.
-
-[2] _Play-Making. A Manual of Craftsmanship_, by William Archer.
-
-[3] Idun, May, 1912.
-
-[4] Ellen Key's _Lifsåskådning och Verksamhet som Författarinna_. En
-undersökning af C.D. af Wirsén.
-
-[5] Kritiker, af C.D. af Wirsén.
-
-[6] August Strindberg. _Das Hohe Lied seines Lebens_, von Arthur
-Babillotte.
-
-7:
- "Ich halte Strindberg's historische Dramen für das
-Schwächste was er je geschrieben."
-
-[8] _Ord och Bild_, No. IX, 1912.
-
-[9] Correspondence.
-
-[10] Amiel's Journal.
-
-[11] _Fairhaven and Foulstrand_.
-
-[12] _Fables and Other Stories_.
-
-[13] The reader is referred to the following leading articles:
-_Insurgent Hysteria_ (March 16th, 1912), _The Subjection of Man_ (July
-31st, 1912), and _Militant Suffragism_ (September 24th, 1912).
-
-
-
-
-LIST OF STRINDBERG'S CHIEF WRITINGS
-
-
-A uniform edition of Strindberg's collected works is in course of
-publication by Messrs. Albert Bonnier of Stockholm, who are the owners
-of the copyright of Strindberg's writings. The following list includes
-some unpublished works which will now be issued for the first time by
-Messrs. Bonnier.
-
-In a preface to _The Author_, one of the autobiographical volumes,
-Strindberg gave a chronological list of his most important works,
-and added explanatory remarks. The appended notes embody some of
-Strindberg's views on his own writings:
-
-
-  The Freethinker                     1869
-  Hermione                            1869
-  In Rome                             1870
-  The Outlaw                          1871
-  Master Olof                         1872
-  The Year 'Forty-Eight               1881
-
-"In Rome," "The Outlaw," and "Hermione" are classified by Strindberg as
-"studies."
-
-  From Fjärdingen and Svartbäcken     1877 Stories
-  The Red Room                        1879 Novel
-  From the Sea                        1880}
-  Here and There                      1880} Stories
-  Old Stockholm                       1880}
-
-He and She....
-
-(To be published for the first time in the posthumous edition of
-Strindberg's Collected Works.)
-
-  The Secret of the Guild             1880}
-  Sir Bengt's Wife                    1882} Plays
-  The Journey of Lucky Peter          1883}
-  Studies in the History of Culture   1881
-  The Swedish People               1881-82  History.
-  The New Kingdom                     1882  Satirical sketches
-  Swedish Destinies and Adventures
-   (Two Volumes)                   1883-92  Stories in Historical Setting.
-
-Strindberg defines "The New Kingdom" as a criticism of "The Changeably
-Permanent."
-
-  Poems in Verse and Prose            1883
-  Somnambulistic Nights after
-    Wakeful Days                      1884
-  Miscellanea (Likt och Olikt) Essays: Society under Review.
-  From Italy                          1884
-  Married (Two Volumes)            1884-86 Stories.
-
-Strindberg points out that the first volume of "Married" is a defence
-and glorification of marriage, of home, mother, and child, and that the
-second part is a criticism.
-
-  The Impoundage Journey
-
-An account of the prosecution following upon the publication of
-"Married." It will now be issued in book-form.
-
-  Real Utopias                        1885 Stories.
-
-Described by Strindberg as positive suggestions in the spirit of
-Saint-Simonism. REMORSE--"The Peace Story"--is included in this
-collection.
-
-  The Bondswoman's Son}
-  Fermentation Time.  }
-  In the Red Room     }            1886-87 Autobiography
-  The Author          }
-  The People of Hemsö                 1887}
-  Fisher folk                         1888} Novels
-
-These novels represent the author's emancipation from the bondage of
-"problems"; Strindberg points out that they are simply descriptions of
-country life and scenery.
-
-  Sketches of Flowers and Animals     1888
-  The Father                          1887}
-  Lady Julie                          1888}
-  Comrades                            1888}
-  Creditors                           1890}
-  Pariah                              1890}
-  Samum                               1890}
-  The Stronger                        1890}Plays
-  Facing Death                        1893}
-  The First Warning                   1893}
-  Debit and Credit                    1893}
-  Mother-Love                         1893}
-  Playing with Fire                   1897}
-  The Link                            1897}
-  Among French Peasants               1889
-  Tschandala                          1889}
-  The Island of Bliss                 1890}Stories
-  At the Edge of the Sea              1890 Novel
-
-Strindberg remarks that "At the Edge of the Sea" was influenced by
-Nietzsche, but "the individual succumbs in the struggle for absolute
-individualism."
-
-  Things Printed and Unprinted
-  (Two Volumes)                    1890-97  Essays
-
-  The Associations of France and Sweden
-  up to the Present Time              1891
-  (To be published for the first time in Swedish.)
-
-  Fables                           1890-97
-  The Keys of Heaven                  1892 Play
-
-Strindberg's remark: "Darkness, sorrow, despair, absolute scepticism."
-
-  The Confession of a Fool            1893 Autobiographical Novel.
-
-(A German edition was published in 1893; a French edition in 1894; it
-will now be published in Swedish.)
-
-  Jardin des plantes
-  Antibarbarus                     1892-98 Essays.
-  Types and Prototypes
-  Inferno                             1897}
-  Legends                             1898} Autobiography.
-  To Damascus. I and II               1898}
-               III                    1904} Plays.
-  Advent.                             1899}
-
-"The great crisis at fifty," remarks Strindberg, "revolutions in my
-mental life, wanderings in the desert, devastation, Hells and Heavens
-of Swedenborg. Not influenced by Huysmans' "En Route," still less by
-Peladan, who was then unknown to the author ... but based on personal
-experiences."
-
-  There are Crimes and Crimes         1899}
-  The Saga of the Folkungs            1899}
-  Gustavus Vasa                       1899} Plays.
-  Eric XIV                            1899}
-  Gustavus Adolphus                   1900}
-
-"Light after darkness," writes Strindberg. "New production, with Faith,
-Hope, and Charity regained--and absolute certainty."
-
-  Midsummer                           1901}
-  Easter                              1901}
-          "The school of suffering."      }
-  The Dance of Death. I and II        1901} Plays.
-  Engelbrecht                         1901}
-  Charles XII                         1901}
-  The Crown Bride                     1902
-  Swanwhite                           1902
-  The Dream Play                      1902
-  Christina                           1903
-  Gustavus III                        1903
-  The Nightingale in Wittenberg       1903
-  Fairhaven and Foulstrand            1902  Stories.
-     (Partly autobiographical.)
-  Sagas                               1903
-  Alone                               1903  Mediative Autobiography.
-  The Gothic Rooms                    1904  Novel.
-  Word-Play and Handicraft                  Poems.
-  The Conscious Will in the History
-    of the World                            Historical.
-  A Free Norway[*]
-    (* To be published for the first time.)
-
-  Historical Miniatures               1905} Stories in
-  New Swedish Adventures.             1906} Historical Setting.
-  Black Flags                         1907  Novel.
-
-  A Blue Book. I, II, III             1907-8
-     The Synthetic Philosophy of Strindberg's Life.
-
-  Storm                               1907}
-  The Burned Lot                      1907}
-  The Spook Sonata                    1907} Chamber Plays.
-  The Pelican                         1907}
-  The Black Glove                     1909}
-  The Festival of the Finished
-     Building.                        1907}
-  The Scapegoat                       1907} Stories.
-  The Last Knight                     1908}
-  The Slippers of Abu Casem           1908}
-  The Earl of Bjälbo                  1909} Plays.
-  The National Director               1909}
-  The Great Highway                   1909}
-
-"The Great Highway" is a "farewell to life and a self-declaration."
-
-  Hamlet                            }
-  Julius Cæsar                      }
-  Memorandum to the Members of      }
-     the Intimate Theatre.          }
-  Macbeth and Other Plays by        } 1908-9 Dramaturgy.
-     Shakespeare                    }
-  An Open Letter to the Intimate    }
-     Theatre                        }
-
-  The Origins of our Mother Tongue    1910}
-  Biblical Proper Names               1910} Philology.
-  Roots of World-Languages            1910}
-  Speeches to the Swedish Nation      1910
-  The State of the People             1910
-  Religious Renaissance               1910
-  China and Japan[1]                  1911
-
-Dr. John Landquist, the editor of the posthumous edition of
-Strindberg's collected works, has kindly placed the following note on
-Strindberg's manuscripts at our disposal:
-
-"The MSS., most of which are still in existence, are written with the
-utmost care in Strindberg's clear and energetic hand, and are often
-beautifully ornamented. They reflect the neatness and order with which
-the author surrounded himself, and also the love with which he carried
-out his work. When writing mediæval drama, Strindberg illuminated
-his MSS. like a mediæval handwritten manuscript with artistically
-designed and coloured initial letters, and with miniatures painted by
-himself--the whole harmonising with the period and surroundings in
-which the action takes place. On other pages there is interspersed
-in the writing itself such ornamentation as would correspond to the
-time and atmosphere of the written work. As a rule he used hand-made
-Lessebo-paper, and generally made very few alterations. He hardly ever
-copied out his MSS. In later years he seldom corrected anything when
-once it had been written down. He did not like to read through his own
-works after having completed them."
-
-
-[1] All correspondence relating to the authorisation of translations
-of Strindberg's works and the rights of performing his plays in England
-and America should be addressed to Herr Albert Bonnier, of Stockholm.
-He is now the sole representative of Strindberg's literary executors.
-
-
-
-
-    INDEX
-
-
-    A
-
-    Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 119
-    Addison, 338
-    Adelphi Players, The, 204
-    _Admirable Crichton, The_, 181
-    _Advent_, 304, 305, 306
-    Æschylus, 310
-    Ahasuerus, 16
-    Albericus, 89
-    Alembert, d', 209
-    Almqvist, K.J.L., 328, 329
-    _Alone_, 19, 284, 285, 335, 350
-    Amiel, _Journal_ of, 336
-    _Antibarbarus I, or the Psychology of Sulphur_,
-       _or All is in All_, 241, 242
-    Antoine, Monsieur André, 171
-    Aphrodite Pandemos, 128
-    Archer, Mr. William, _Play-Making. A Manual of Craftsmanship_ by, 303
-    Aristotle, 251
-    _Athenæum_, 320
-    Augier, 170
-    Augustine, St. 340
-    Augustus, 336
-    Aulin, Tor, 352
-    _Author, The_, 19, 122, 133, 134, 152, 284
-    _Autobiography_, 56, 86, 98, 169
-
-
-    B
-
-    Babillotte, Herr Arthur,_ August Strindberg_.
-       _Das Hohe Lied seines Lebens_ by, 327, 328
-    Bach, 352
-    Balfour, A.J. 256
-    Balzac, 159, 232; _Seraphita_ by, 260; 281
-    Bashkirtseff, Marie, 336
-    Baudelaire, 331, 338
-    Becque, Henry, _Les Corbeaux_ by, 205, 212; _Souvenirs_ by, 208
-    Beethoven, _Sonata in D minor_ by, 352;
-       _Moonlight Sonata_ by, 352
-    Benson, Mr. A.C., 321
-    Berliner Tageblatt, 353, 354
-    Bismarck, 313
-    Björkman, Herr Edwin, 330
-    Björnson, Björnstjerne,
-       _Mary Stuart_ by, 67, 75, 123, 152;
-       _The King_ by, 153, 154, 317;
-       _A Gauntlet_ by, 318, 339
-    _Black Flags_, 325
-    _Black Glove, The_, 316
-    _Blackwood's Magazine_, 320
-    Blake, 251, 255, 260
-    Blavatsky, Madame, _The Secret Doctrine_ by, 274, 275
-    _Blotsven_, 79
-    _Blue Bird, The_, 144
-    _Blue Book, A_, 282, 284, 286, 287
-    Boccaccio, 159
-    _Bok om Strindberg, En_, af Holger Drachmann, Knut Hamsun,
-       Justin Huntly McCarthy, Björnstjerne Björnson, Jonas Lie,
-       Georg Brandes, etc., 123, 152
-    _Bondswoman's Son, The_, 18, 19, 282, 283
-    Bonnier, Herr Albert, 123,161, 162
-    _Book of Job, The_, 260
-    Bosse, Harriet, 327, 351
-    Brandes, Georg, 123, 174, 175, 231
-    Brieux, Monsieur, _La Robe Rouge_ by, 225
-    Browning, Mrs., 281
-    Buckle, 97
-    _Burned Lot, The_, 316, 326
-    Burns, Robert, 121, 338
-    Byron, _Manfred_ by, 58, 338
-
-
-    C
-
-    Capus, 206
-    Caracalla, 336
-    Carlyle, 281
-    Carmontelle, _Proverbes Dramatiques_ by, 214
-    Céller, Monsieur Ludovic, _Les décors, les costumes_
-       _et la mise-en-scène au XVII siècle_ by, 215
-    Cellini, Benvenuto, 255
-    _Charles XII_, 299, 302, 303, 326, 332
-    Chateaubriand, 61, 340
-    Chemistry, 244, 245, 248, 251, 252, 253
-    Clairpsychism, 256, 276, 278, 285, 286, 287
-    Coleridge, 257
-    _Collected Works of August Strindberg, The_, 13, 123
-    Comédie rosse, 193
-    _Comrades_, 122, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192,
-       193, 194, 195, 225, 322, 332
-    Comte, 283
-    _Confession of a Fool, The_, 22, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126,
-       127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 223, 228, 237, 242, 343
-    _Confused Sensations_, 228
-    _Conscious Will in the History of the World, The_, 300
-    Corot, 96
-    _Creditors_, 172, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203,
-       204, 206, 244, 326
-    _Crimes and Crimes, There are_, 309, 310, 326, 352
-
-    Criticism, Literary, 77, 78, 84, 139, 148, 150, 233, 234, 235,
-       236, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325
-    _Crown Bride, The_, 304, 306, 349, 353
-
-
-    D
-
-    _Dagens Nyheter_, 115
-    _Damascus, To_, 256, 288, 297, 304, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316,
-       323, 332, 334, 345
-    _Dance of Death, The_, 304, 310, 311, 316, 333, 351, 352
-    Dante, 83;
-       the _Commedia_ by, 89, 260
-    De Quincey, 151
-    Dickens, 47, 140
-    _Different Weapons_, 151
-    Dostoevsky, 232, 297, 327
-    Drachmann, Holger, 123, 240
-    _Drama, The_, 330
-    Drama, Naturalistic, 170, 171
-    "Dramatiska Teatern," 323
-    _Dream Play, The_, 256, 304, 314, 315, 332, 352
-    Dryden, 113
-    Dudevant, Monsieur Casimir, 346
-    Dumas fils, Alexandre, 170, 206;
-       _Le Fils Naturel_ by, 208
-    Dumas père, Alexandre, 47, 170
-    Duse, Eleonora, 208
-
-
-    E
-
-    _Earl of Bjälbo, The_, 299
-    _Easter_, 256, 296, 304, 306, 307,
-    308, 326, 327, 352
-    _Edge of the Sea, At the_, 230, 231, 297, 323, 337
-    Eliasson, Dr., 269
-    Emerson, 281
-    _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 143
-    _Engelbrecht_, 299
-    _Eric XIV_, 289, 295, 296, 297, 298, 301, 308, 309, 316,
-       326, 333
-    Essen, Siri von, 122;
-       divorce of, 130;
-       becomes an actress, 130;
-       marries August Strindberg, 132;
-       divorce of, from Strindberg, 237
-    Euripides, 310
-
-
-    F
-
-    _Fables_, 227, 228, 337
-    Fabre, Emile, _L'Argent_ by, 172
-    _Facing Death_, 326
-    _Fairhaven and Foulstrand_, 332, 333, 336, 337, 341, 343
-    _Father, The_, 22, 122, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 202, 203,
-       204, 210, 225, 235, 244, 297, 322, 325, 332
-    _Fermentation Time_, 19, 53, 69, 86, 87
-    Feuillet, 214
-    _First Warning, The_, 223
-    _Fisher Folk_, 226, 227, 333
-    _Fjärdingen and Svartbäcken, From_, 135, 136
-    Flaubert, 331;
-       _Correspondance_ of, 336;
-       _Dossier de la Sottise Humaine_ by, 347
-    "Folkteatern," 325
-    France, Anatole, 341
-    _Freethinker, The_, 78, 79
-    "Freie Bühne," 202
-    _French Peasants, Among_, 228, 229
-
-
-    G
-
-    Geijerstam, Gustaf af, _Erik Grane_ by, 324
-    _General Discontent, its Causes and Remedies, On the_, 229, 230
-    Geographical Society, The Imperial Russian, 119
-    Gissing, George, _New Grub Street_ by, 141
-    Goethe, _Faust_ by, 61, 62, 83
-       _Goetz von Berlichingen_ by, 102, 281, 313
-    Goncourt, the brothers de, _Soeur Philomène_ by, 172, 214, 331
-    Goncourt, Edmond de, 207
-    Goncourt, Jules de, 331
-    Gorki, Maxim, 17, 204
-    Gosse, Mr. Edmund, 231
-    _Gothic Rooms, The_, 297, 325
-    _Great Highway, The_, 256, 304, 313, 314, 338
-    Grein, Mr. J.T., 203, 204
-    Guiche, _Entre Frères_ by, 214
-    _Gustavus Adolphus_, 280, 299, 301, 302, 316, 334
-    _Gustavus III_, 299
-    _Gustavus Vasa_, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 298, 316, 326
-
-
-    H
-
-    Hamsun, Knut, 123
-    Hansson, Ola, 220, 238
-    Hartmann, 232
-    Hauptmann, 204, 317;
-       _The Weavers_ by, 318; 326
-    Haydn, _Sieben Worte des Erlösers_ by, 352
-    Heiberg, Gunnar, 240
-    Heidenstam, Werner von, 324;
-       _Karolinerna_ by, 325
-    Heine, 239
-    Henry VII, 89
-    Hervieu, Paul, _Le Dédale_ by, 201, 204;
-       _L'Inconnu_ by, 297
-    Hirsch, Dr. W., 256
-    _Historical Miniatures_, 300
-    Hoffmann, E.T.A., 239
-       _Kreisler_ by, 257, 297, 338
-    Holbein, 310
-    Homer, 90
-    Horace, 90, 113
-    Hospital of Saint Louis, 247
-    Hugo, Victor, 271
-    Huysmans, _Là-Bas_ by, 274;
-       _En Route_ by, 274
-    Höffding, 93
-
-
-    I
-
-    Ibsen, 13;
-       _Brand_ by, 75, 166, 170;
-       _Ghosts_ by, 172, 317;
-       _Rosmersholm_ by, 172, 203, 326
-
-    Independent Theatre, The, 203, 204
-    _Inferno_, 15, 19, 243, 248, 256, 257, 274, 277, 279, 280, 285,
-       288, 313, 323, 340, 341
-    Internationalism, 155
-    Intimate Theatre, The, 326, 327
-
-
-    J
-
-    _Journey of Lucky Peter, The_, 143, 144, 146, 316
-    _Joy of Life, The_, 278
-    Julius Cæsar, 336
-    Jullien, Monsieur, 205
-
-
-    K
-
-    Keats, 340
-    Key, Ellen, 321
-    _Keys of Heaven, The_, 316
-    Kierkegaard, Sören, _Enten-Eller_ by, 79
-    Knox, John, _The First Blast of the Trumpet against_
-       _the Monstrous Regiment of Women_ by, 237
-    "Künstler Theater," 216
-
-
-    L
-
-    La Bruyère, 98
-    _Lady Julie_, 172, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184,
-       193, 202, 204, 206, 209, 210, 211, 214, 216, 217, 218, 225,
-       231, 236, 244, 284, 316, 325
-    Lagerlöf, Selma, 324
-    Lamb, Charles, 257, 331, 338
-    Landquist, Dr. John, Article in _Idun_ by, 315
-    _Last Knight, The_, 299
-    Latini, Brunetto, 89
-    Lauthenburg, Herr, 326
-    Lavedan, Entire Frères by, 214
-    Lee, Nathaniel, 257
-    _Legends_, 256, 277, 288, 313, 323
-    Lenan, _Traumgewalten_ by, 257
-    Lenngren, Anna Maria, _Fröken Juliana_ by, 176
-    Lessing, 61
-    Levertin, Oscar, 278, 324
-    Library of Stockholm, The Royal, 118
-    Lie, Jonas, 123, 340
-    _Link, The_, 122, 219, 224, 225, 323
-    _Loke's Blasphemies_, 151
-    Louis XIV, 295
-    Lucanus, 90
-    Lugné-Poë, Monsieur, 202
-    Lundin, Claes, 146
-    Luther, 313
-
-
-    M
-
-    Macaulay, 70
-    McCarthy, Justin Huntly, 123;
-       article in _The Fortnightly Review_ by, 183, 225
-    Macleod, Fiona, _Cathal of the Woods_ by, 228
-    Maeterlinck, 227, 305, 316
-    Marcus Aurelius, 336
-    Marholm, Laura, 238, 328, 330
-    _Married_, 123, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164,
-       165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 235, 236, 237
-    _Master Olof_, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 136, 142, 289, 298, 322
-    Maupassant, Guy de, 159, 209;
-       _Le Horla_ by, 297
-    Michel-Angelo, 251
-    _Midsummer_, 316, 342, 343
-    Mill, John Stuart, 230
-    _Modern Drama and the Modern Theatre, On_, 211, 212
-    Moses, 260
-    Multiple personalities, 283, 284
-    Munch, Edvard, 240, 259, 263
-    Murray, Grenville, _Les Hommes du Second Empire_ by, 149
-    Musset, Alfred de, 214, 338;
-       _Nuit d'Octobre_ by, 347
-
-
-    N
-
-    Napoleon, 313
-    _National Director, The_, 299
-    Naturalism, 170, 204, 205, 212, 213
-    _New Kingdom, The_, 148, 149, 157, 230, 324
-    Newman, 51
-    Nietzsche, 13, 194, 231, 232, 284
-    _Nightingale of Wittenberg, The_, 299
-    Nobel Prize, The, 321
-    Nordau, Max, 149
-
-
-    O
-
-    Oehlenschläger, 79, 82
-    _Old Stockholm_, 146, 147
-    Orfila, 248, 260
-    _Outlaw, The_, 81, 84, 85, 86, 345
-    Ovid, 90
-
-
-    P
-
-    _Pariah_, 219, 220, 221, 222
-    _Paris, In_, 328
-    Patmore, Coventry, 281
-    Paul, Adolf, 240
-    Peace movement, The, 155, 156
-    Peladan, Sar, _Comment on devient Mage_ by, 280
-    _Pelican, The_, 316, 326
-    _People of Hemsö, The_, 226, 227, 235
-    Personne, John, _Strindberg-Literature and Immorality_
-       _amongst Schoolboys_ by, 165
-    _Peter Pan_, 144
-    Philp, Greta Strindberg von, 353
-    Pinero, Sir Arthur, 206
-    _Playing with Fire_, 219, 223, 323, 326
-    Poe, 255, 338
-    _Poems in Verse and Prose_, 150, 151
-    Przybyszewski, Stanislav, 240, 258, 259, 260, 262
-
-
-    Q
-
-    _Quarantine Master's Tales, The_, 336, 337, 343, 344
-    _Queen Christina_, 299
-    Quesnay, de, 230
-
-
-    R
-
-    Rahmer, Dr. S., Article in _Grenzfragen der Literatur_
-       _und Medizin_ by, 256
-    Ranft, Herr Albert, 326
-    Realism, 170, 183, 212
-    _Real Utopias_, 168
-    _Red Room, In the_, 19, 110, 111, 112, 113
-    _Red Room, The_, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147, 148,
-       157, 230, 322
-    Reformation, the Protestant, 99, 291
-    Religion, 279
-    _Remorse_, 156, 297
-    Renan, _Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse_ by, 255
-    "Residenz Theater," 203, 326
-    _Reward of Virtue, The_, 157
-    Rodin, _Le Penseur_ by, 16
-    _Rome, In_, 74, 76, 77, 78, 333
-    Rosen, George von, _Erik XIV and Karin Månsdotter_ by, 95
-    Rousseau, 19, 154, 209, 230, 234;
-       _Confessions_ by, 257;
-       _Dialogues_ by, 257;
-       _Rêveries_ by, 257, 260
-    "Rune," the formation of the, 73
-    Ruskin, 281;
-       _Modern Painters_ by, 320
-
-
-    S
-
-    _Saga of the Folkungs, The_, 289, 296, 297, 298, 316
-    Saint-Saëns, 310
-    _Samum_, 219, 220
-    Sand, George, 61, 346
-    Sardou, 170
-    _Scenery of Sweden, The_, 236
-    Schering, Herr Emil, 330
-    Schiller, _Die Räuber_ by, 58, 63;
-       _On the Theatre as an Institution for Moral Education_ by, 62
-    Schnitzler, 204;
-       _Reigen_ by, 206
-    Schopenhauer, 232, 237, 238
-    Schumann, _Aufschwung_ by, 258, 259
-    "Schwarzen Ferkel, Zum," 239, 240
-    Scott, Sir Walter, 47
-    Scribe, 170
-    _Secret of the Guild, The_, 142, 345
-    Shakespeare, 47, 82, 83, 101;
-       _Hamlet_ by, 106, 295, 301;
-       _Lear_ by, 295;
-       _Macbeth_ by, 295, 296, 343
-    Shaw, George Bernard, 206, 233, 234, 318
-    Sinology, 118
-    _Sir Bengt's Wife_, 144, 145, 146
-    _Sketches of Flowers and Animals_, 227
-    _Slippers of Abu Casem, The_, 316
-    Socialism, 167, 169, 229, 230
-    Socrates, 213
-    Sophocles, 82, 310
-    Sorbonne, La, 248
-    _Speeches to the Swedish Nation_, 279
-    Spencer, 106, 230, 283
-    _Spook Sonata, The_, 316, 326
-    Stage Society, The, 204
-    Stagnelius, E.J., 328
-    Stevenson, R.L., 331
-    Stockholm's Skärgård, 30, 83, 99, 226
-    _Storm_, 315, 326
-    Street riots in Stockholm, 66, 67, 126
-    Strindberg, Anne-Marie Bosse-, 316, 353
-    Strindberg, August,
-       death of, 11;
-       scientific studies of, 12, 37, 60, 83, 238, 239, 240, 241,
-         244,245;
-       diary of, 14;
-       faith in the Bible, 14;
-       love of the early morning, 15;
-       funeral of, 16;
-       birth of, 20;
-       parents of, 20;
-       ancestry of, 20;
-       poverty of, 21, 75, 83, 107, 117, 350;
-       views of, on the family as an institution, 22, 23;
-       misogyny of; 22, 124, 125, 171, 184, 194, 244, 344, 345;
-       attacks upon women, 23, 75, 76, 175, 237, 347;
-       early home of, 24, 29;
-       early religious doubts of, 25, 32, 33;
-       early school-days of, 27, 28;
-       love of nature, 29, 30, 31, 32, 53, 227, 228, 265;
-       independence of, at school 33, 34;
-       death of the mother of, 35, 36, 37;
-       interest of, in music, 38, 53, 352;
-       constructs machines, 39, 40;
-       as "gymnasist," 41;
-       becomes a pietist, 42, 43, 44, 45;
-       as private tutor, 46, 47, 48;
-       influence of literature on, 47;
-       becomes a freethinker, 47;
-       preaches a sermon, 49;
-       passes the "student--examen," 50;
-       enters the University of Upsala, 51;
-       criticism of academical routine, 51, 52, 53;
-       becomes a schoolmaster, 54;
-       studies social conditions, 54, 55, 103, 154, 155, 228, 229, 230;
-       sympathy of, with the people, 56, 64, 65;
-       contempt of current morals, 56, 120;
-       takes up the study of medicine, 59;
-       comes under the influence of art, 60;
-       decides to become an actor, 62;
-       makes his début at the Dramatic Theatre, 67;
-       tries to commit suicide, 69, 80, 129;
-       composes his first play, 69;
-       first attempts to write verse, 71;
-       first plays refused, 71, 72;
-       returns to the University, 73;
-       first performance of a play by, 76;
-       burns the MSS. of Blotsven, 80;
-       passes his Latin examination, 81;
-       presents his æsthetic thesis. 81;
-       performance of a Viking play by, 84;
-       King Charles XV sends for, 85;
-       as a painter, 90, 96, 103, 236, 240;
-       becomes a journalist, 92;
-       as an art critic, 95;
-       lack of self-confidence of, 107;
-       edits an insurance paper, 108;
-       financial crash, 109;
-       obtains a post as telegraph clerk, 114;
-       resumes journalistic work, 115;
-       becomes parliamentary reporter and dramatic critic, 116;
-       is nominated assistant librarian, 118;
-       class-consciousness of, 126, 127;
-       first marriage of, 132;
-       views of, on the sacredness of parenthood, 133, 134;
-       increasing literary activity of, 135;
-       first great dramatic success, 142, 143;
-       on the tragedy of fatherhood, 146, 175;
-       historical point of view of, 147, 148;
-       criticises poetry as a form of literary expression, 151;
-       leaves Sweden, 152;
-       is prosecuted for blasphemy, 157;
-       is cheered by the people in Stockholm, 162, 163, 164;
-       attacks of Conservative press 163;
-       is found "not guilty," 164;
-       is denounced by feminists, 165;
-       advocates rights of women and marriage reform, 167;
-       views of, on spiritual functions of motherhood, 168;
-       begins a series of naturalistic plays, 171;
-       on the educational value of the theatre, 206, 207;
-       views of, on theatre reform, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218;
-       obtains divorce from his first wife, 237;
-       second marriage of, 242;
-       becomes an alchemist, 251;
-       madness of, develops, 255;
-       persecutional mania of, becomes acute, 265;
-       prepares to die, 266;
-       fears detention in an asylum, 269;
-       love of, for his child, 271, 272;
-       is influenced by Roman Catholicism, 272, 280;
-       religious feeling of, 273, 279;
-       attitude of, towards theosophy, 274, 275;
-       recovery of, 275;
-       psychic development of, 276;
-       fiftieth birthday of, 288;
-       resumes the writing of drama, 288;
-       as an historical psychologist, 289, 301;
-       criticism of, as an historian, 301, 302, 303;
-       national celebration of, 319, 353, 354, 355;
-       tautology in the writings of, 332, 333;
-       philological studies of, 334;
-       attitude towards animals of, 348, 349;
-       third marriage of, 351;
-       last illness of, 353, 354;
-    _Stronger, The_, 204, 219, 222, 223, 322
-    _Studies in the History of Culture_, 300
-    Sudermann, 206
-    Sue, Eugène, _Le Juif Errant_ by, 47
-    "Svenska Teatern," 326
-    _Swanwhite_, 304, 305, 306, 351
-    Swedenborg, Emanuel, 260, 267, 272, 273, 277, 280, 281, 282, 283
-    Swedish Academy, The, 321, 324
-    _Swedish Destinies and Adventures_, 150, 300, 325
-    _Swedish People, The_, 148, 300
-    Swift, Dean, 234
-    _Sylva Sylvarum_, 241
-    Symons, Arthur, _Studies in Seven Arts_ by, 208
-
-
-    T
-
-    Tasso, 255, 273
-    Tchekhov, Anton, 204; _The Seagull_ by, 208
-
-
-
-***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUGUST STRINDBERG, THE SPIRIT OF
-REVOLT***
-
-
-******* This file should be named 44025-8.txt or 44025-8.zip *******
-
-
-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
-http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/4/4/0/2/44025
-
-
-
-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
-will be renamed.
-
-Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
-one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
-(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
-permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
-set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
-copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
-protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
-Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
-charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
-do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
-rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
-such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
-research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
-practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
-subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
-redistribution.
-
-
-
-*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
-
-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
-
-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
-  www.gutenberg.org/license.
-
-
-Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works
-
-1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
-(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
-all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
-If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
-terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
-entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
-
-1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
-paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
-and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
-
-1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
-or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
-collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
-individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
-located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
-copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
-works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
-are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
-Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
-freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
-this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
-the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
-keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
-
-1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
-what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
-a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
-the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
-before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
-creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
-Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
-the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
-States.
-
-1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
-
-1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
-access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
-whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
-phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
-copied or distributed:
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
-from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
-posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
-and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
-or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
-with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
-work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
-through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
-Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
-1.E.9.
-
-1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
-terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
-to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
-permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
-
-1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
-
-1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm License.
-
-1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
-word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
-distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
-"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
-posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
-you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
-copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
-request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
-form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
-
-1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
-that
-
-- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
-     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
-     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
-     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
-     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
-     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
-     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
-     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
-     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
-     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
-     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
-     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
-
-- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
-     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
-     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-     License.  You must require such a user to return or
-     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
-     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
-     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
-     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
-     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
-     of receipt of the work.
-
-- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
-     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
-forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
-both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
-Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
-Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
-
-1.F.
-
-1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
-public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
-collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
-"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
-corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
-property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
-computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
-your equipment.
-
-1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
-fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
-DAMAGE.
-
-1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
-written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
-your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
-the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
-refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
-providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
-receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
-is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
-opportunities to fix the problem.
-
-1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
-WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
-WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
-
-1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
-If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
-law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
-interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
-the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
-provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
-
-1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
-with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
-promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
-harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
-that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
-or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
-work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
-Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
-
-
-Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
-including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
-because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
-people in all walks of life.
-
-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
-assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
-remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
-To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
-and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
-and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
-Foundation
-
-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
-Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
-number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
-permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
-
-The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
-Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
-throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
-North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
-contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
-Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
-
-For additional contact information:
-     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
-     Chief Executive and Director
-     gbnewby@pglaf.org
-
-Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
-array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
-status with the IRS.
-
-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
-States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
-with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
-SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
-particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
-approach us with offers to donate.
-
-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
-outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
-
-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
-methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
-To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-
-Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.
-
-Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
-concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
-with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
-Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
-editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
-unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
-keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
-
-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
-
-     www.gutenberg.org
-
-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/44025-8.zip b/44025-8.zip
deleted file mode 100644
index 2e5110d..0000000
--- a/44025-8.zip
+++ /dev/null
diff --git a/44025-h.zip b/44025-h.zip
deleted file mode 100644
index 225bd5c..0000000
--- a/44025-h.zip
+++ /dev/null
diff --git a/44025-h/44025-h.htm b/44025-h/44025-h.htm
index 9ab1cf0..981e6b4 100644
--- a/44025-h/44025-h.htm
+++ b/44025-h/44025-h.htm
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
 <head>
-<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
 <title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of August Strindberg, the Spirit of Revolt, by L. (Lizzy) Lind-af-Hageby</title>
     <style type="text/css">
 
@@ -154,26 +154,10 @@ v:link {color: #800000; text-decoration: none; }
     </style>
 </head>
 <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44025 ***</div>
 <h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, August Strindberg, the Spirit of Revolt, by
 L. (Lizzy) Lind-af-Hageby</h1>
-<p>This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at <a
-href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></p>
-<p>Title: August Strindberg, the Spirit of Revolt</p>
-<p>       Studies and Impressions</p>
-<p>Author: L. (Lizzy) Lind-af-Hageby</p>
-<p>Release Date: October 24, 2013  [eBook #44025]</p>
-<p>Language: English</p>
-<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p>
-<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUGUST STRINDBERG, THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT***</p>
 <p>&nbsp;</p>
-<h4>E-text prepared by Marc D'Hooghe<br />
-    (<a href="http://www.freeliterature.org">http://www.freeliterature.org</a>)<br />
-    from page images generously made available by<br />
-    the Google Books Library Project<br />
-    (<a href="http://books.google.com">http://books.google.com</a>)</h4>
 <p>&nbsp;</p>
 <table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10">
   <tr>
@@ -8495,360 +8479,6 @@ Tchekhov, Anton, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>; <i>The Seagull</i> by, <a href='#P
 
 <p>&nbsp;</p>
 <p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr class="pg" />
-<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUGUST STRINDBERG, THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT***</p>
-<p>******* This file should be named 44025-h.txt or 44025-h.zip *******</p>
-<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
-<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/4/4/0/2/44025">http://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/0/2/44025</a></p>
-<p>
-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
-will be renamed.</p>
-
-<p>
-Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
-one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
-(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
-permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
-set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
-copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
-protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
-Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
-charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
-do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
-rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
-such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
-research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
-practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
-subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
-redistribution.
-</p>
-
-<h2>*** START: FULL LICENSE ***<br />
-
-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE<br />
-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK</h2>
-
-<p>To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
-<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license">www.gutenberg.org/license</a>.</p>
-
-<h3>Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works</h3>
-
-<p>1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
-(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
-all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
-If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
-terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
-entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.</p>
-
-<p>1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
-paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
-and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.  See paragraph 1.E below.</p>
-
-<p>1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
-or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
-collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
-individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
-located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
-copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
-works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
-are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
-Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
-freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
-this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
-the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
-keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.</p>
-
-<p>1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
-what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
-a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
-the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
-before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
-creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
-Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
-the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
-States.</p>
-
-<p>1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:</p>
-
-<p>1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
-access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
-whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
-phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
-copied or distributed:</p>
-
-<p>This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at <a
-href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></p>
-
-<p>1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
-from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
-posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
-and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
-or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
-with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
-work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
-through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
-Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
-1.E.9.</p>
-
-<p>1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
-terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
-to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
-permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.</p>
-
-<p>1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.</p>
-
-<p>1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm License.</p>
-
-<p>1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
-word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
-distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
-"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
-posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
-you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
-copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
-request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
-form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.</p>
-
-<p>1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.</p>
-
-<p>1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
-that</p>
-
-<ul>
-<li>You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
-     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
-     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
-     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
-     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
-     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
-     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
-     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
-     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
-     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
-     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
-     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."</li>
-
-<li>You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
-     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
-     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-     License.  You must require such a user to return or
-     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
-     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
-     Project Gutenberg-tm works.</li>
-
-<li>You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
-     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
-     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
-     of receipt of the work.</li>
-
-<li>You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
-     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.</li>
-</ul>
-
-<p>1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
-forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
-both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
-Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
-Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.</p>
-
-<p>1.F.</p>
-
-<p>1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
-public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
-collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
-"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
-corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
-property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
-computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
-your equipment.</p>
-
-<p>1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
-fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
-DAMAGE.</p>
-
-<p>1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
-written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
-your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
-the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
-refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
-providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
-receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
-is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
-opportunities to fix the problem.</p>
-
-<p>1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
-WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
-WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.</p>
-
-<p>1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
-If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
-law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
-interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
-the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
-provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.</p>
-
-<p>1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
-with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
-promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
-harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
-that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
-or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
-work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
-Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.</p>
-
-<h3>Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm</h3>
-
-<p>Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
-including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
-because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
-people in all walks of life.</p>
-
-<p>Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
-assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
-remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
-To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
-and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and
-the Foundation information page at <a
-href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></p>
-
-<h3>Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
-Foundation</h3>
-
-<p>The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
-Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
-number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
-permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.</p>
-
-<p>The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
-Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
-throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
-North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
-contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
-Foundation's web site and official page at <a
-href="http://www.gutenberg.org/contact">www.gutenberg.org/contact</a></p>
-
-<p>For additional contact information:<br />
-     Dr. Gregory B. Newby<br />
-     Chief Executive and Director<br />
-     gbnewby@pglaf.org</p>
-
-<h3>Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation</h3>
-
-<p>Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
-array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
-status with the IRS.</p>
-
-<p>The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
-States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
-with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
-SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
-particular state visit <a
-href="http://www.gutenberg.org/donate">www.gutenberg.org/donate</a></p>
-
-<p>While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
-approach us with offers to donate.</p>
-
-<p>International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
-outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.</p>
-
-<p>Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
-methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
-To donate, please visit:  <a
-href="http://www.gutenberg.org/donate">www.gutenberg.org/donate</a></p>
-
-<h3>Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.</h3>
-
-<p>Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
-concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
-with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
-Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.</p>
-
-<p>Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
-editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
-unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
-keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.</p>
-
-<p>Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
-<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></p>
-
-<p>This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.</p>
-
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44025 ***</div>
 </body>
 </html>
diff --git a/44025.txt b/44025.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 1a8fa51..0000000
--- a/44025.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,8327 +0,0 @@
-The Project Gutenberg eBook, August Strindberg, the Spirit of Revolt, by
-L. (Lizzy) Lind-af-Hageby
-
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-
-
-
-Title: August Strindberg, the Spirit of Revolt
-       Studies and Impressions
-
-
-Author: L. (Lizzy) Lind-af-Hageby
-
-
-
-Release Date: October 24, 2013  [eBook #44025]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
-
-
-***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUGUST STRINDBERG, THE SPIRIT OF
-REVOLT***
-
-
-E-text prepared by Marc D'Hooghe (http://www.freeliterature.org) from page
-images generously made available by the Google Books Library Project
-(http://books.google.com)
-
-
-
-Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
-      file which includes the original illustrations.
-      See 44025-h.htm or 44025-h.zip:
-      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44025/44025-h/44025-h.htm)
-      or
-      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44025/44025-h.zip)
-
-
-      Images of the original pages are available through
-      the Google Books Library Project. See
-      http://www.google.com/books?id=j8ZMAAAAMAAJ
-
-
-
-
-
-AUGUST STRINDBERG
-
-THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT
-
-Studies and Impressions
-
-by
-
-L. LIND-AF-HAGEBY
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-New York
-D. Appleton and Company
-MCMXIII
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-        INTRODUCTION. THE RIDDLE
-    I.  THE STRUGGLE WITH ENVIRONMENT
-   II.  THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF-EXPRESSION
-  III.  "FERMENTATION TIME"
-   IV.  THE DRAMA OF THE HERETIC
-    V.  MARRIED AND BLASPHEMOUS.
-   VI.  THE ARTIST.
-  VII.  SELF-TORMENTOR AND VISIONARY.
- VIII.  The Theatre of Life
-
-STRINDBERG'S CHIEF WRITINGS
-
-INDEX
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Bust by Carl Eldh.]
-
-
-
-
-LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-  August Strindberg. From a Bust by Carl Eldh.... Frontispiece
-  Strindberg's Parents
-  August Strindberg (1862 and 1870)
-  August Strindberg. From Statue by Carl Eldh
-  August Strindberg (1884)
-  August Strindberg (1884 and 1897)
-  August Strindberg. From Bust by Max Levi, 1893
-  August Strindberg. From Bust by Agnes Kjellberg Frumerie, 1896
-  August Strindberg. From Portrait in Oil by Chr. Krogh, 1893
-  August Strindberg. From Portrait in Oil by Richard Bergh, 1906
-  August Strindberg (1904 and 1906)
-  August Strindberg (1906 and 1907)
-  August Strindberg (1902). In His Home in Stockholm (1908)
-  August Strindberg. From Bust by K.I. Eldh. Bought by the Swedish
-     State. In the National Museum, Stockholm
-  August Strindberg. From Portrait by Carl Larsson, 1899. In the
-     National Museum, Stockholm
-  Strindberg in His Library in the Blue Tower. His Last Home
-  Strindberg in His Study (1911)
-  The Strindberg-Theatre in Stockholm
-  Harriet Bosse. Strindberg's third Wife as Biskra in Samum, 1902.
-  Anne-Marie Bosse-Strindberg. Strindberg's only child by his third
-     marriage
-  Strindberg's Funeral (May 19th, 1913)
-  Trades-Unions and Undergraduates in Procession
-
-
-
-
-AUGUST STRINDBERG
-
-THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT
-
-
-INTRODUCTION
-
-THE RIDDLE
-
-
-There have been few dispassionate attempts to discern August
-Strindberg's place in contemporary literature. His writings and his
-personality defied ordinary criticism.
-
-He took upon himself the role of destroyer, he mocked men's religion
-and men's morality, he ridiculed propriety and poured bitter scorn on
-the social order. There was something cometic in the swiftness and
-intensity with which he appeared, disturbing the well-ordered orbits of
-traditions and conventions. The erratic course of his voyage through
-humanity caused alarm. No sooner had people congratulated themselves
-that his terrific lust for destruction had passed by their favourite
-systems and their cherished ideals, than his ruthless force was upon
-them, exposing ugliness and scattering treasures.
-
-He passed on, making enemies, breaking idols, desecrating temples. He
-sowed reality and he reaped hatred.
-
-His titanic spirit worked through a brain charged with explosive
-mentality. He poured out dramas, novels, stories, with a versatility
-and an accumulating energy which in themselves were offensive to the
-mediocre and to those who sought to place him within literary shackles.
-He discoursed on history, science and statecraft with the calm
-assurance of omniscience.
-
-He wrote books which were decidedly and unblushingly "immoral." He
-compelled attention by blasphemous outbursts which filled the religious
-with righteous indignation and sighs for the _auto-da-fe_. He dissected
-the human heart, laid bare its meanness, its uncleanliness; made men
-and women turn on each other with sudden understanding and loathing,
-and walked away smiling at the evil he had wrought. He turned on
-himself with savage hatred, and in books, bearing the mark of the
-flagellant and reflecting the agony of a soul in torment, he pointed to
-his sins and his stripes.
-
-"He is very evil," said some; "let us put him in prison."
-
-"He is mad," said others; "let us have him declared a lunatic."
-
-"He is most improper," said the majority; "let us ignore him
-altogether."
-
-When public opinion was quite sure that Strindberg was evil, mad, and
-improper, when he stood convicted out of his own mouth of anti-social
-and satanic designs, he stayed the verdict by his own magic. He
-wrote more and more, and there came from his pen artistic creations
-endowed with virtues which could not have risen in a mind submerged in
-vice; pictures of scenery which bespoke a delicate and spiritualised
-nature-worship. His mind held a garden of flowers as well as a pile of
-putrescence.
-
-On May 14th, 1912, the stillness of death descended on the battlefield
-which was Strindberg's life. The literary historian who justly passes
-the suspended verdict must hold peculiar and special qualifications.
-For the winds of literary taste and fashion cannot touch the giant of
-expression. Condemnation by temporary systems of morality and creed
-did not alter his course in life and will not disturb him in death.
-He was--himself; and he worked ceaselessly at the task of finding
-more of himself. Strindberg the atheist, Strindberg the scientist,
-Strindberg the spiritualist, Strindberg the mystic, Strindberg the
-sensualist, and Strindberg the ascetic, took equally important parts in
-his theatre of life. The critic met him day by day in different attire
-and pose, incarnations of the elusive self which was stage-manager of
-this extraordinary performance. A soul in conflict with itself, good
-and evil, fair and foul; sparkling with life and tense with passion
-to create, he could not give us peace or contentment. Like Jacob, he
-wrestled with God, though not for a night only, but throughout life,
-and he fought with the desperation of one who knows that upon the issue
-of the struggle depends, not his own blessing, but the liberation of
-countless prisoners.
-
-An epitome of humanity, a fragment of the world's eternal and real
-drama of birth and death, he cannot be fully understood save by those
-who share his cosmic consciousness.
-
-He studied chemistry, astronomy, botany, physics, geology, entomology,
-medicine, philology and political economy with a voracity which made
-him ridiculous in the eyes of the specialists who are satisfied with a
-few well-established formulae. For him there were no barriers between
-specialised departments of human knowledge--all sciences were thrown
-into the melting-pot, in which he was preparing the new brew which
-would slake the thirst of parched souls. A solipsist who assimilated,
-rejected and transmuted the patiently accumulated theories of morals
-as the supreme duty of existence, he scorned the slaves of ethical
-communism.
-
-The iconoclasm of Ibsen was fired by the realisation of the duties
-of the wise prophet amongst his foolish people. The hypocrisies
-and foibles of the little souls were the objects of the thundering
-chastisement of his trumpet. The white heat of Nietzsche's forge for
-the making of Superman was engendered by contempt for the feeble and
-sickly. The misanthropy which breathed poison out of Strindberg's
-writings, which showed souls and things in hideous nakedness, and
-painted sores and disease with horrible realism, was the darkness which
-he held high so as to call forth the cry for tight.
-
-The collected works of Strindberg, which will shortly be published in a
-new edition, consist of some 115 plays, novels, collections of stories,
-essays and poems. Amongst these some seem absolutely antithetical.
-It is the constant changeability, the self-contradictions, which made
-Strindberg so incomprehensible to his contemporaries. The measure of
-his life-force was so liberal that he could afford to continue where
-others stop. He shed his skins like the snake and altered his colour
-like the chameleon, because he was the personification of perpetual
-movement and change. Thus he was endowed with ever-recurring youth;
-the decay of the old was immediately followed by birth of the new.
-The diary, in which, during the last fourteen years, he recorded
-his visions and supernatural experiences, will not be given to the
-world for many years to come. Though it depicts the last phase of his
-spiritual evolution, the postponement of publication is no doubt wise.
-Meanwhile, those who have poured curses on Strindberg's blatant atheism
-have been perplexed by his last words.
-
-When death was drawing near, he took the Bible--which always lay on the
-table by his bed--held it up and said in a clear voice:
-
-"Everything personal is now obliterated. I have settled with life. My
-account has been rendered. This alone is right."
-
-He expressed a last wish that the Bible and a little crucifix which
-he used to wear should be placed on his breast after death, and that
-he should be buried early in the morning, and not amongst the rich. He
-desired to be laid to rest alone on the top of a hill under the firs.
-
-This love of the early morning was part of his craving for more light.
-For many years he used to take a solitary morning walk. At seven
-o'clock he emerged from his "blue tower" in Stockholm and walked
-briskly through the streets and squares of his native town. At nine he
-was back at his writing-table--of late years a recluse for the rest of
-the day, absorbed in his work.
-
-"Ever since my youth," he writes in _Inferno_, "I devote my morning
-walk to meditations which are preparations for my daily work. Nobody
-may then accompany me, not even my wife. In the morning my mind enjoys
-a balance and an expansion which approach ecstasy; I do not walk, I
-fly; I do not feel that I have a body; all sadness evaporates and I
-am entirely soul. This is for me the hour of inner concentration, of
-prayer, my divine service."
-
-I have often seen Strindberg in the streets of Stockholm. He walked
-with his high forehead painfully contracted, the eyes searching and
-concentrated, and an expression of haughty bitterness upon his face.
-A solitary, suggesting to the passer-by Rodin's _Penseur_ in motion
-and the futile wanderings of Ahasuerus; he seemed wrapped in his own
-misery, held aloof by suffering and contempt.
-
-One day I met him with a companion. He was holding a little girl by
-the hand and talking to her. The child looked up in his face and
-Strindberg's expression was changed. Love for the child, respect for
-the questions and joys of childhood shone out of the face of the hater.
-He was not obsessed by the ugliness of things or the cruelty of human
-deception. His face was aglow with the early enthusiasm which, though
-slain a thousand times, rises again at the bidding of the Self that
-knows the answer to the riddle.
-
-In the early morning of Sunday, May 19th, August Strindberg's body was
-laid to rest. It was a glorious spring day with sunshine and blue sky.
-Some sixty thousand people were astir to do homage to the memory of one
-whom they knew to have been intrinsically true and tragically great.
-Royalty, Riksdag, universities, capital and labour, statesmen, writers
-and artists assembled to say a united farewell to the man of mystery
-who, by his intense sincerity and the exuberance of genius, had at last
-melted hatred, and ascended the steps from shame to glory.
-
-In a message after Strindberg's death, Maxim Gorki likened him to
-Danko, the hero of the old Danube legend, who, in order to help
-humanity out of the darkness of problems, tore his heart out of his
-breast, lit it and holding it high, led the way. The masses who mock
-and praise so easily, who crucify and raise idols with the same haste,
-seldom recognise their real friends. Strindberg patiently burnt his
-heart for the illumination of the people, and on the day when his body
-was laid low in the soil the flame of his self-immolation was seen pure
-and inextinguishable.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-THE STRUGGLE WITH ENVIRONMENT
-
-
-Strindberg's childhood and youth, as described by himself in his
-autobiographical novel _The Bondswoman's Son_, present psychological
-features of exceptional interest. The circumstances of his early
-home-life and their effect upon the unfolding forces of his genius
-cannot be ignored by anyone who attempts to explain the varied strata
-of his artistic production.
-
-His insistent and torturous need for exact self-analysis, coupled with
-an equally compelling need to tell the truth, made all his writings
-strongly subjective. His autobiography--"the story of a soul's
-evolution"--is an intimate revelation of his power to dissect his past
-selves, to record minute incidents and to extract reflexes from the
-bundle of emotions and thoughts which go to make up character. Nothing
-is lost, nothing is too insignificant for careful examination in the
-microscope under which he places every cell of himself. The confessions
-of Rousseau and Tolstoy have not the nakedness of Strindberg's truth
-about himself. Though he never loses sympathy with himself, he scorns
-excuses and exposes his sins and his follies with ruthless exactitude.
-There is a strange combination of the coolly analysing psychologist
-and the passionate flagellant in the descriptions which range from the
-struggles of childhood, through the Inferno-period of 1896, to the calm
-of _Alone_, and the final visions of light.
-
-The autobiographical novel in four volumes which was published under
-the titles _The Bondswoman's Son, Fermentation Time, In the Red Room_
-and _The Author_, was written at the age of thirty-seven, and, though
-the impressions of childhood are recorded with deep insight into
-the child's mind, we cannot forget that they were written down and
-interpreted by the man who had behind him years of tumultuous and
-bitter struggle for self-expression, and before whom the banquet of
-life seemed reduced to dead-sea fruit. In the preface to the fifth
-edition of _The Bondswoman's Son_, he tells us that when writing the
-volume he believed he stood before death, "for I was tired, saw no
-longer any object in life, considered myself superfluous, thrown away."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Johan August Strindberg was born in Stockholm on January 22nd, 1849.
-His father, whom in disparagement of his parentage he often calls
-"the grocer," was a merchant and shipping agent who had married a
-servant-girl, the mother of his three children. The father was a man
-of education and natural refinement who passed through many economical
-vicissitudes, culminating in bankruptcy at the time of August's birth.
-August was born a short time after the union between the parents had
-been legalised by the ceremony of marriage, and he was not welcome.
-His father bore his troubles with manly fortitude and resignation
-and cherished the ideals of the upper classes, whilst the mother
-was essentially of the people and remained so. He claimed a distant
-ancestral connection with the nobility of Sweden, his family having
-descended from the son of a peasant who was born in 1710 at Strinne
-in Angermanland, and who married a girl of noble birth. The discord
-resulting from the difference between his father and mother gave August
-his first impression of that class struggle which I throughout life
-held him in the bondage of a haunting problem, and which stimulated the
-development of his mordantly critical faculties.
-
-Poverty, with its attendant cares and anxieties, reigned in the house
-by Klara churchyard, where, from a flat on the third floor, August
-began to survey life's difficulties. He tells us that he recollects
-fear and hunger as his first sensations. He was afraid of darkness, of
-being beaten, of offending people, of falling down, of knocking against
-things, of being in the way, of the fists of his brothers, of father's
-and mother's chastisements.
-
-It was not easy to avoid being in people's way, for the parents with
-seven children and two servants lived in three rooms. The furniture
-consisted mostly of cradles and beds; children slept on ironing boards
-and chairs. Baptisms and funerals alternated. The mother developed
-phthisis after the birth of her twelfth child.
-
-She was contented with her life, he tells us, for she had risen in the
-social scale and improved her own and her family's position. The father
-was less satisfied with his fate, for he had descended and sacrificed
-himself. He was tired, sad, severe and serious, but not hard.
-
-Strindberg's recollections of his early impressions of the relations
-between his father and mother show the inception of the views on women
-and marriage which earned for him the title of woman-hater, and which
-found their most provocative expression in _The Father_ and _The
-Confession of a Fool_.
-
-"This is the father's thankless position in the family," he writes; "to
-be everybody's breadwinner, everybody's enemy." He concluded that his
-mother did not overwork herself, though his account of the daily life
-in the family does not support that view.
-
-As a little boy August was as weak as other little boys. He adored
-his mother. He was shy, acutely sensitive, morbidly self-conscious,
-keenly resentful of injustice. He was not his mother's favourite, he
-was nobody's favourite, and this embittered him. The mother soon became
-an object of analysis; he was torn between love for her and contempt
-for her faults, which he discovered through making comparisons between
-her and his father. He says that a yearning for the mother followed
-him through life. The future misogynist was fostered by the child's
-passionate and unrequited love for the mother. When in later life
-Strindberg's attacks upon women were criticised, he defended himself by
-declaring that he chid woman because he loved her so well.
-
-Disgust with the daily drudgery and routine of the household was
-aroused at an early age. He speaks of the family as an institution for
-providing food and clean clothes, where there is an eternal round of
-shopping, cooking, cleaning and washing.
-
-"Glorious moral institution," he cries; "holy family, inviolable,
-divine institution for the education of citizens in truth and virtue!
-Thou pretended home of virtues, where innocent children are tortured to
-speak their first lie, where will-power is crushed by despotism, where
-self-reliance is killed by narrow egoism. Family, thou art the home of
-all social vices, the charitable institution for all lazy women. The
-forge for the chains of the breadwinner, and the hell of the children!"
-
-This passage follows the description of an unjust punishment which
-was meted out to August. He was accused of having drunk some wine out
-of his aunt's bottle, and upon blushing in response to his father's
-question was beaten as the culprit. Fear of the physical pain made
-him confess the deed which he had never committed, and, upon telling
-his old nurse that he had suffered innocently, he was again seized and
-now beaten as a liar as well as a thief. After that day he lived in
-constant anxiety. The world was a cruel and unfriendly place; there
-were enemies everywhere.
-
-"Who drank that wine?" he repeatedly asked himself. The search for a
-satisfactory reply to that question and to Similar questions was not
-abandoned, though it was futile. The hostility to social injustice and
-enforced criminality to which, later on, he gave literary utterance,
-had a remote though ineffaceable connection with the abducted contents
-of the wine bottle.
-
-His ideas about God were vague, and chiefly formulated through saying
-daily the Swedish child's prayer: "God who loveth children." The
-windows of the house over-looked the old churchyard of Klara. When
-there was a fire in the night the church bells were tolled in a manner
-which struck horror in the heart of the child. The whole household
-was awake. "There is a fire," ran the whisper. He cried and tried in
-vain to go to sleep again. Then his mother came, tucked him up and
-said: "Don't be afraid; God will protect those who are unhappy." The
-following morning the servants read in the paper that there had been a
-fire, and that two people had been burnt to death.
-
-"That was God's will," said his mother. Sacha incidents did not pass him
-by. The apparent inconsistency between the expectation of faith and the
-tragic reality troubled him and caused his first religious doubts.
-
-The old church with its graves became the symbol of gloom, and of the
-joyless fate from which there is no escape. During the cholera epidemic
-of 1854 the child of five watched the paraphernalia and ceremonies of
-death from the bedroom window. In the churchyard below, gravediggers
-were at work, stretchers were carried past, dark knots of people were
-seen to assemble round black boxes. The church bells tolled incessantly.
-
-One day his uncle took him and his brothers inside the church. In spite
-of the beautiful walls in white and gold, the sound of the music which
-was like that of a hundred pianos, and kneeling white angels, his
-attention was riveted on two figures. Amidst the praying congregation
-two prisoners in chains were doing penance. They were guarded by
-soldiers and dad in long, grey cloaks with hoods over their heads.
-
-He was told that these men were thieves. A feeling of oppression by
-something horrible, by an incomprehensibly cruel and relentless force,
-overcame August, and he was glad to be taken away.
-
-The initiation into the existence of pain and suffering which awaits
-every child held peculiar terrors for him. Acutely sensitive, his
-nerves of sympathy responded quickly to the feelings of others. One
-day he was taken to the workhouse infirmary to visit his wet-nurse who
-was slowly dying. The old women with their diseases, pale, lame and
-sorrowing, the long row of beds, the colourless monotony of the ward
-and its unpleasant odours fixed themselves in his consciousness. When
-he left he was haunted by a strange sense of unpaid and unpayable debt.
-For this was the woman who had fed him, whose blood had nourished his.
-Through poverty she had been forced to give him that which rightfully
-belonged to her own child. August felt vaguely that he was enjoying
-stolen life, and he was ashamed of his relief at being taken away from
-the sights of the sick-room.
-
-When August was seven the family moved to a larger house. The worst
-days of penury were now over, and, though strict economy had to be
-practised and every luxury eschewed, there was more freedom from
-anxiety for the daily bread. His mind had hitherto been fed by daily
-portions of Kindergarten fare. He was now sent to Klara school for
-boys, where his sense of the general injustice of things was rapidly
-developed through the vigour with which the headmaster wielded his cane.
-
-He was awakened at six during the dark winter mornings, and as his home
-was now far from Klara he had to trudge a long way through deep snow,
-and arrived at his destination in wet boots and knickerbockers. When
-late he was paralysed with fright in anticipation of the headmaster's
-morning exercise on those who were unpunctual. He heard the screams of
-boys who were already in the dutches of the tyrant.
-
-One morning he was saved by the kindly charwoman, who pleaded for him
-and pointed out that he had a long way to walk. It is a pity that the
-charwoman who saved Strindberg from a thrashing has not been given a
-niche in his gallery of women.
-
-August did not shine in this school, though his knowledge was in
-advance of his years, and he had, therefore, been admitted before the
-required age. He was the youngest at school and at home, a position
-which he vainly resented. This was a school for the children of the
-upper middle class. August wore knickerbockers of leather, and strong
-coarse boots, which smelt of blubber and blacking. The boys in velvet
-blouses avoided him. He observed that the badly dressed boys were more
-severely beaten than the well-dressed ones, and that nice-looking boys
-escaped altogether.
-
-Strindberg records his early experiences at school with characteristic
-vehemence:
-
-"... It was regarded as a preparation for hell and not for life; the
-teachers seemed to exist in order to torment, not to punish. All life
-weighed like an oppressive nightmare, in which it was of no avail to
-have known one's lessons when one left home. Life was a place for
-punishing crimes committed before one was born, and therefore the child
-walked about with a permanently bad conscience."
-
-At the age of nine he fell in love for the first time. A roseate
-shimmer descended over the cane and the Latin grammar through the
-presence in the class-room of the headmaster's little daughter. She was
-placed at the back of the room, and the boys were forbidden to look at
-her. "She was probably ugly," he tells us with his usual realism where
-love affairs are concerned, "but she was nicely dressed." During the
-French lessons her soft voice rang out above the grating sound of the
-boys' answers, and even the hard visage of the teacher melted when he
-spoke to her.
-
-August never had the courage to speak to her. His love expressed itself
-in gentle melancholy and vague wishes. He felt the victim of a secret
-within his own breast and suffered from it. The affair ended with a
-frustrated suicidal intention, but the lover did not attain to peace.
-His love affairs from the first to the last were tinged with tragedy,
-and were the vehicles of his restless and futile search for harmony.
-
-The house in the north of Stockholm, to which the family had moved,
-had a large garden and adjoining fields. The father loved the country,
-and farming operations on a small scale were part of the daily duties.
-The boys were made to work in the garden, and were thus provided with
-healthy exercise. A magnificent old oak and bowers of lilac and
-jessamine made the old-fashioned garden beautiful. August's bitter
-experience of canes, teachers and unattainable feminine charm did not
-corrode his inborn love of nature, which remained a source of mental
-and physical rejuvenation when others ran dry.
-
-The deep blackness of the freshly tilled soil, the apple trees in
-their blossoming glory, the tulips in their gorgeous garb called forth
-aspirations in his mind which responded to no human voice. The boy
-walking in the garden was filled with a solemnity which neither school
-nor church could inspire.
-
-A summer holiday spent at Drottningholm, amidst the smiling islands and
-wooded shores of the Lake of Malar, had accentuated his disgust with
-the ugly things which abound in towns.
-
-Stockholm's Skargard, the archipelago which guards the fair capital of
-Sweden, and which is the pride of every true child of Stockholm, became
-his favourite scenery in later years.
-
-There is something primaeval and suggestive of the creation of the world
-in these thousands of rocks and islands which rise in ever-varying
-form and colour from the blue depths of the Baltic. The keen salt
-breezes which sweep round the bare and uninhabitable rocks whisper of
-a no-man's land, where the soul is tossed by elements neither friendly
-nor hostile, but restful. Through the white stems of the birches,
-the deep red of the cottages and the evergreen storm-bent fir trees,
-the islands on which the poor fisherfolk live and labour, salute the
-passing mariner by a trichromatic call to the simple life.
-
-Upon this world the youthful Strindberg gazed one day. He had walked
-through a deep forest, and crept through whortleberries and juniper to
-the top of a steep rock. The picture of islands and fjords which lay
-spread before his eyes caused him to "shiver with, delight."
-
-That picture, he writes, impressed him as if he had recovered a land
-seen in beautiful dreams, or in a former life.
-
-He hid from his comrades; he could not follow them.
-
-"This was his scenery, the true milieu of his nature, idylls, poor
-rugged rocks, covered with pine forest, thrown out on wide stormy
-fjords with the immense sea as a distant background. He remained true
-to this love ... and neither the Alps of Switzerland, the olive-dad
-hills of the Mediterranean, nor the cliffs of Normandy could oust this
-rival."
-
-Love of nature did not curb August's high spirits in childhood. At the
-age of ten he played wild games, climbed trees, slid down mountains on
-pieces of wood, robbed birds' nests and shot their innocent owners. He
-rode bareback, could swim, sail a boat and handle a gun.
-
-During a summer holiday August and his brothers were sent as boarders
-to the house of a sexton. It was the father's wish that his sons
-should share in the work on the farm as well as prepare for the
-winter's schooling. In the sexton's kitchen August saw the wafers
-prepared and stamped for Holy Communion. He mischievously ate them and
-reflected that there was not much in the Sacrament. He broke covenant
-with his host by rushing into the church, turning the hour-glass on
-the pulpit, and delivering a sermon. He ran through the church on
-the backs of the pews and threw over the reading-desk, on which the
-hymn-book lay. The disjointed pieces of the desk frightened him and
-reminded him of possible consequences. Yielding to the first impulse of
-self-preservation he knelt and said the Lord's Prayer.
-
-[Illustration: Strindberg's mother, Ulrika Eleonora Norling]
-
-[Illustration: Strindberg's father Oskar Strindberg]
-
-A thought came to him. He rose, examined the reading-desk, saw that
-the damage was not irreparable, took off his boot and mended the desk
-with a few well-directed blows. He then calmly walked out of the church
-feeling that the power within himself was, after all, more reliable
-than the God whose help he had invoked. The mysterious interrelation
-between whole-hearted prayer and the dormant powers within ourselves is
-seldom understood. The child's logic humorously reflected the spiritual
-instability of average humanity.
-
-His self-reliance was, however, fitful. Sometimes he wept bitterly,
-battling with an uncontrollable duality within his own mind, a divided
-will which made him unreasonable and capricious. He developed sudden
-antipathies, endured fits of shyness and self-abasement, during which
-he had to run away from other children and hide himself. At such times
-he would deliberately keep away when good things were distributed, and
-on being forgotten, revel in his martyrdom.
-
-August's rebellion against learning lessons developed _pari passu_
-with his powers of independent thought. He did not make progress at
-Klara school, and his father transferred him to another, where he mixed
-with children of people in humble circumstances. Here he felt more at
-home; no one looked down on him; his boots and his knickerbockers did
-not give offence. His pity was aroused by the poverty of some of his
-school-fellows. They were expected to be clean, attentive and polite,
-but how could they? They came from homes where no one could afford
-to be clean, where families were crowded in small rooms which served
-as work-shops as well as nurseries, where the decencies of life were
-unattainable luxuries. The contrast between the two schools afforded
-August material for continued meditation on class problems.
-
-Latin and Greek were the principal subjects taught. August wanted
-to learn in his own way and to translate in his own way. Both in
-classics and in history he refused to submit to the discipline of the
-schoolmaster. Having formulated his own method of learning and the
-proper form of examining pupils he defied the teacher's order. He was
-dumb when he should speak, and spoke when he should be silent. When the
-exasperated Latin master declared August to be an idiot, the father
-unexpectedly took his son's part and moved him to a private school.
-This school had introduced rational methods of teaching; flogging was
-prohibited, the boys were treated as individuals, and August felt
-that he could expand without fear of immediate repression. During the
-years that followed, the family attained a position of comparative
-affluence and comfort. August lost the dread of being trampled upon or
-suppressed from above, and mixed freely with titled youths who were
-accorded no privileges by the headmaster who lacked all reverence for
-the distinction of birth.
-
-August was wont to parade his knowledge before his mother. At first she
-took great pride in her son's gifts and the time when he should wear
-the white cap of honour, coveted by every Swedish student, was often
-spoken of. But the mother's leanings towards a narrow pietism caused
-her to discern the vanity of learning in her son's mind. She warned
-him against the wickedness of such pride, and contrasted the humility
-of Christ and His contempt of worldly wisdom with the self-conceit of
-mere book-learning. The son listened, and concluded that the mother's
-resentment of culture was the result of her own ignorance. One evening
-the sons were called to the mother's death-bed. August was then
-thirteen. Overwhelmed with grief and shivering with the horror of
-Death, he sat hour after hour by the bed crying, and thinking over all
-the evil he had done.
-
-This was the inevitable end. How could he live without a mother? The
-future seemed wrapped in impenetrable darkness and misery. Then oh,
-horror!--a shameful thought crossed his mind. Some time before his
-mother had shown him a little ring, and said that it would belong to
-him after her death. And now, at the solemn and awful moment, the
-promise of the ring rose in his unwilling memory. He saw it on his
-finger--one bright spot in this sorrowful hour, something to look
-forward to.
-
-But only for a moment--such low covetousness, such a shameful thought
-by the side of a dying mother must come straight from the devil. The
-pangs of remorse and shame were so persistent that the incident fixed
-itself in his memory, and years afterwards the recollection made him
-blush.
-
-The allurements of thoughts which we ought not to think, and which
-range from sudden inconvenient flashes of recognition of the comical
-in the midst of the serious business of life, to the haunting ideas
-which are the debris of mental combustion, could not be understood by
-the boy. Nor did he know that he was destined to live through the gamut
-of cerebral phenomena, an exponent of extravagant thought and lawless
-ideation.
-
-When the stillness of death fell upon the room the unworthy thought
-was far away and August screamed like a drowning child. The father was
-softened and spoke kind words to the two boys. Strindberg tells us
-with his usual candour that his sorrow lasted scarcely three months.
-"Sorrow," he writes, "has the happy quality of consuming itself. It
-dies of starvation. As it is essentially an interruption of habits it
-can be replaced by new ones." After six months his father married the
-housekeeper.
-
-August was now learning five languages, besides his own. Botany,
-zoology and the physical sciences aroused his keen interest. He had
-collections of insects and minerals, and a herbarium to which he
-devoted much time. He developed an insatiable appetite for knowledge,
-but he claimed freedom to find his intellectual food without extraneous
-interference or restrictions. He not only wanted to know everything,
-but he wanted to be able to do everything, to be endowed with all
-human talents.
-
-His brother had been praised for his drawings; August wanted to draw.
-During the Christmas holidays he copied all his brother's drawings,
-but on finding that he could do it without difficulty his interest
-waned and he gave it up. All his brothers and sisters could play some
-instrument. The house resounded with exercises on the piano, the violin
-and the 'cello. August wanted to play, but without practising scales.
-He taught himself to play the piano and learnt to read and copy music.
-He played badly, but it gave him pleasure. He learnt the names of
-composers and the number of opus of everything that was played in the
-house, so that he should have superior knowledge.
-
-He was jealous of the accomplishments of others, but the jealousy was
-created by unsatisfied ambition, and the consciousness of illimitable
-capabilities. Every subject interested him, until he had mastered
-it. When he knew the plants, minerals, insects and birds in his
-neighbourhood, he turned to other fields of natural science. Physics
-and chemistry attracted him. He did not want to repeat the classical
-experiments in the text-books; he wanted to make new discoveries. The
-lack of money and apparatus restrained him. Ingenuity was necessary.
-During the summer holidays he tried to make an electric machine out of
-an old spinning-wheel and a window pane. An umbrella was broken and
-made to yield a whalebone, out of which, with the help of a violin
-string, he made a drill-borer. The square pane had been made circular
-through patient knocking with a key-bit. This labour had taken days.
-When the time came for boring a hole in the middle and his piece of
-quartz made no impression he lost patience, and attempted to force
-a hole. The pane was smashed and August's enthusiasm converted into
-hopeless fatigue.
-
-Recovered, he decided to construct a _perpetuum mobile_. His father
-had told him that a prize was awaiting the inventor of the impossible.
-After formulating his theory, which included a waterfall driving a
-pump, he collected his material. A number of useful articles were
-sacrificed for the purpose: the coffee boiler provided a tube; the
-soda-water machine, reservoirs; the strong-box, plates; the chest of
-drawers, wood; the bird-cage, wire, etc. At the crucial moment the
-ubiquitous housekeeper interrupted him by asking if he would accompany
-his brothers and sisters to the mother's grave. Irritation broke the
-inventive spell, and in the anger of failure he dashed the artful
-apparatus to pieces on the floor.
-
-Reproaches and ridicule did not deter him. He arranged experimental
-explosions and manufactured a Leyden jar. For this purpose he flayed
-a dead black cat which he found in the street. He anticipated
-"Jonkoping's Sakerhetstandstickor" by making safety matches which he
-declares were as good as the later, much-advertised patent.
-
-His wilfulness and lack of mental discipline were necessarily
-distasteful to his surroundings. When he wanted to unlock a drawer and
-the key could not be found he seized a poker and broke open the lock
-with such force that the screws and the plate were tom out.
-
-"Why did you break the lock?" he was asked.
-
-"Because I wanted to get into the chest of drawers," was the laconic
-reply.
-
-The father not unnaturally decided to do what lay in his power to curb
-the troublesome spirit of independence in his son. August disliked
-his stepmother and resented her usurpation of his mother's place.
-He was now _gymnasist_[1] and treated with respect in the school.
-The lessons took the form of lectures, and the teachers showed due
-regard for individual rights and tastes. At home everything was done
-to humiliate him. He attributed what he regarded as a systematic
-persecution to the mean and revengeful spirit of the stepmother. He
-was made to wear old clothes which did not fit him; his gymnasist-cap,
-which should have been the pride of his heart, was home-made and an
-object of ridicule; he was compelled to work in the stable between
-school hours, and commanded to take the groom's place during the
-holidays. His weekly allowance for the school lunch was 3 1/2 d., a sum
-which he found sufficient for tobacco but not for sandwiches. He had
-a healthy appetite and was always hungry. The parsimoniousness of the
-home regime subjected him to humiliating experiences at school. Once he
-accidentally broke the eye-glasses of a friend. In vain he exhausted
-all his inventive resources in attempts to mend them. They had to be
-mended by an expert at the cost of 7d. On the following Monday August
-brought his friend 3 1/2 d., and after another week discharged his
-debt of honour by shamefacedly paying another 3 1/2 d. His miserable
-poverty could no longer be kept a secret, and he hated the cause of his
-oppression.
-
-At the age of fifteen he fell in love with a woman of thirty. The
-love was platonic, an attraction of souls--a contact of minds seeking
-spiritual enlightenment along the same path. She was a woman of the
-world, engaged to another who lived abroad, animated by religious
-emotionalism and half-conscious eroticism. They attended the same
-circle for French conversation and added the spice of Gallic expression
-to their correspondence, which treated of Jesus, the struggle against
-sin, life, death, God in nature, love, friendship and doubt. August
-became her conscience, and she was his spiritual mother. Strindberg
-publishes some of his French compositions from this period in his
-autobiography. All speculations were eventually smashed against the
-bedrock of Jesus. The parental authorities objected strongly to
-August's friendship, and especially to the atmosphere of French secrecy
-in which it was enveloped.
-
-August became absorbed in the struggle for salvation. A puritanism
-which despised the cold formalism of the Lutheran State Church and
-claimed the free companionship of Jesus was fashionable in Sweden at
-this time. The joyful certainty of being among the sheep infected those
-susceptible to sudden "revivals" within all classes of society. What
-could be of greater importance than being amongst the elected of God,
-comforted by the knowledge of righteousness, borne aloft by complete
-detachment from the world, the flesh and the devil? August laid
-passionate siege to Heaven and clamoured for immediate inclusion among
-the children of God.
-
-His motives were complicated. One was fright and a desire to be on
-the safe side. For he had read books which predicted a terrible fate
-in store for youthful sinners upon attaining the age of twenty-five.
-He knew he was a sinner, and, if his body were condemned to painful
-afflictions and death, his soul would, at least, be saved. Another was
-spiritual jealousy. His stepmother professed great religious devotion.
-She and his eldest brother seemed to outshine him in religious fervour.
-That could not be tolerated. August imposed severe restrictions upon
-himself. All worldly pleasures were to be shunned. One Saturday
-evening the family planned an excursion for the following Sunday.
-August asked his father's permission to stay at home for conscientious
-reasons. He spent Sunday morning in one of the "free" churches, where
-the elect gloried in their exclusive and dearly bought salvation.
-In the afternoon he studied Thomas a Kempis and Krummacher. The
-stepmother had broken the Sabbath. She was inconsistent and a prey to
-the temptations of the devil; she could no longer compete with him in
-religious virtue. That was balm to the soul, but the peace of Jesus,
-which he had been told would descend like a clap of thunder and be
-followed by absolute certainty, would not come. He walked alone to Haga
-Park, praying all the time that Jesus would seek him out. In the park
-he saw happy families absorbed in picnics and carriages filled with gay
-men and women. All these were destined to eternal damnation. His reason
-protested, but his faith assented. He returned home unharmonious and
-unsatisfied. When late in the evening his brothers and sisters related
-the incidents of their happy day, his envy was mixed with pangs of
-remorse.
-
-The puritanical phase culminated during the confirmation, which had
-been postponed by the father, who, knowing the waywardness of the
-child, feared the unrestraint of the youth. A number of circumstances
-contributed to the reaction which followed upon his first Holy
-Communion. He had whipped his reason into submission to an elated
-sentiment which in due course exhausted itself. The Sacramental bread
-was robbed of its mystery by the fatal familiarity with which he had
-treated it in the sexton's kitchen.
-
-But the disintegration of the puritan was accomplished through the
-influence of new friends. One of these decided to cure the hungry
-dreamer in Strindberg by a good meal. One day on the way to the Greek
-lesson, Fritz, "the friend with the eye-glasses," suggested that they
-should play truant and lunch at a restaurant. Scruples overcome, August
-enjoyed his first meal in a restaurant and his first glass of brandy.
-The luxuries of beefsteak and beer in quantitative perfection, and the
-audacity with which his friend treated the waiter, made a profound
-impression on him. The friend paid for the feast, and August came out a
-changed man.
-
-"This was not an empty pleasure, as the pale man had asserted," he
-writes. "No, it was a solid pleasure to feel red blood run through
-half-empty arteries which were to nourish the nerves for the struggle
-of life. It was a pleasure to feel spent strength return and the lax
-sinews of a half-crushed will stretched again. Hope was awakened, the
-mist became a rosy cloud, and the friend let him see glimpses of the
-future as it was formed by friendship and youth."
-
-The friend advised him to earn money by giving private lessons. This
-would secure freedom from parental tyranny. He encouraged independence
-and self-confidence in August, who, acting upon his advice, obtained
-a post as private tutor. By exercising economy in the expenditure of
-brains at the gymnasium and limiting his studies to those absolutely
-necessary for the final examen, he succeeded in his dual work of
-learner and teacher. The sense of sin departed; he was able to take
-part in the festivities of his school-fellows. The platonic friendship
-with the woman of thirty evaporated with the advent of a less ethereal
-admiration for the beauty of waitresses _et hoc genus omne_. He went to
-dances and sought jollity in the "punsch-evenings" of the students. A
-craving for alcohol had been aroused; under its influence the demons
-of gloom and insoluble problems departed.
-
-The change in his attitude to life was hastened by an influence
-which now made itself felt for the first time. Literature as a great
-tradition and interpretation of human problems became known to him.
-The belletristic and the puritanical conceptions of life presented
-themselves in their profoundest antithesis. Natural selection did the
-rest. His range of reading was wide and varied, as were the demands of
-his many-sided self. He devoured Shakespeare, admired Dickens, found
-Walter Scott tedious, Alexandre Dumas puerile, and Eugene Sue's Le
-Juif Errant grandiose. He detested poetry; it was affected and untrue.
-People did not talk in that manner and seldom thought of such beautiful
-things. The realisation of God in Nature replaced the desire to seek
-God in the churches, and August gradually discovered that he was a
-freethinker. The alarm and public prayers of the elect, which he had
-deserted, did not alter his course.
-
-During the summer holidays he acted as tutor to an aristocratic family
-in the country. Fritz had warned him against saying everything he
-thought and doing everything he wanted, or disputing vehemently with
-his superiors. But the difficulty of submitting to the conventions of
-the social order could not be overcome.
-
-August's plans for the future were vacillating and embarrassing to
-the father. For a short time he cherished the idea of becoming a
-non-commissioned officer in a cavalry regiment, at another time the
-plan of spending his days as a country curate, joined in happy wedlock
-to a pretty waitress (a brand snatched from the fire), had captivated
-him. But the University conquered. At the University a man could be
-poor and badly dressed and yet be counted a gentleman; it was the only
-place where one could sing, get drunk and have fights with the police
-without losing social standing. There was a secret satisfaction in the
-thought.
-
-One day during the tutorage in the country the vicar, who was
-overworked, invited August to preach a "proof-sermon." The practice
-of permitting serious-minded students and undergraduates to try
-their priestly powers was not uncommon. The idea was glorious and
-irresistible. The baron, the baroness, the squires and the ladies
-would all have to listen reverently to August as the mouthpiece of
-the Lord. But he remembered that he was a freethinker. The orthodox
-conception of Jesus was no longer his. It was hypocrisy to accept the
-offer. And yet, he believed in God, he had thoughts to give, opinions
-he wanted to voice. He confessed to the vicar, who reassured him. If he
-believed in God, there was no real difficulty--the good Bishop Wallin
-had never mentioned Jesus in his sermons. August should only not talk
-too much about his aberrations.
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg 1862--(Reproduced by kind
-permission of Messrs. Albert Bonnier, Stockholm)]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg 1870]
-
-The week during which the sermon was prepared, was rich in compensation
-for years of ignominy. Something within him responded with avidity to
-the call of the messenger, the prophet.
-
-The church was filled with people when August mounted the pulpit in
-clerical garb and with a beating heart. He prayed to the only true
-God to help him when now he wanted to strike a blow for truth. He
-spoke of conversion through free will and opened the gates of heaven
-to all--publicans and sinners, rulers and harlots--and denounced his
-old friends who were sunk in cruel and hypocritical self-conceit. He
-was deeply moved by his own eloquence. The vicar and the congregation
-forgave the irregularities, and the day ended in mutual satisfaction.
-
-The experience confirmed August's contempt of orthodox religion.
-He became the ringleader of a section in the highest class in the
-_Gymnasium_ which, in spite of threats and reprimands, refused to
-attend morning prayers. Once when the father begged him to go to church
-he replied:
-
-"Preach--I can do that myself."
-
-In May, 1867, August passed his _student-examen_. The white cap was on
-his head, and the gates of the University were open to him.
-
-
-[1] Gymnasia are preparatory schools for Universities.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-THE STRUGGLE FOR SELF-EXPRESSION
-
-
-A university, said Newman, is a place where "mind comes first and
-is the foundation of the academical polity." Strindberg's contact
-with the University of Upsala brought his own creative mind into
-constant conflict with the custodians of regulations which govern
-the traditional pursuit of knowledge. Between 1867 and 1872 he spent
-periods at Upsala, during which he made vain attempts to achieve
-success as a dutiful learner, submissive to the discipline of
-professorial authority. The difficulty was not that he would not or
-could not study. He studied too much; his mind absorbed with intuitive
-and lightning quickness knowledge from men and books. But he refused
-to take opinions on trust; he individualised everything that was
-assimilated by his receptive and turbulent mind, and scorned academical
-routine.
-
-In the autumn of 1867 August Strindberg went to Upsala to equip himself
-with the powers and graces which accompany a "university education." He
-possessed the sum of 80 kronor (1 krona = 1s. 2d.), laboriously earned
-by private lessons; his father had contributed a few cigars to his
-son's outfit and advised him to shift for himself. Margaret, the old
-kind-hearted servant, had forced a loan of 15 kronor upon him. Thus he
-was again victimised by a woman's heart.
-
-The room which he shared with a friend, was rented for 30 kronor for
-the whole term. It contained two beds, two tables, two chairs, and a
-cupboard. His dinner was brought by the charwoman for 1 kr. 50 ore per
-week. Breakfast and supper consisted of a glass of milk and a bun.
-By practising the strictest economy he managed to live, but he soon
-discovered that he could not afford to buy the necessary books, nor
-the regulation dress-coat, without which no Swedish under-graduate
-could solicit the kind attention of the professors. He did not attract
-attention as a promising student. His attendance at lectures served
-chiefly as a stimulus to his critical faculties. He found the methods
-of teaching literature and philosophy tedious and ineffective, the
-professors ignorant and plebeian. He borrowed books and selected
-his own reading. He taught himself to play the cornet in one of the
-University orchestras, thus attempting to soothe the discord of his
-soul.
-
-He grew tired of his friend Fritz. "They had worn out their friendship
-by living together," he writes in _Fermentation Time_. "They knew each
-other by heart, knew each other's secrets and weaknesses, knew what
-answer the other would give in argument." He accepted the end of their
-friendship as the inevitable result of the exploitation of personality
-which he resented in friendship and in love. Personal attractions and
-ties were masked warfare in Strindberg's life; he gave and he took,
-and generally ended by despising. Throughout life his caustic efforts
-to reach the centre of things did not tend to strengthen bonds which
-depend on a certain amount of pleasant illusion and benign deception.
-
-His love of nature brought no disillusionment. "It was his dream to
-live in the country," he writes of his Upsala time. "He had an inborn
-dislike of town, though born in a capital. He had culture-hostility in
-the blood, could never get rid of the sense of being a product of
-Nature which did not want to be torn from the organic union with earth.
-He was a wild plant, the roots of which in vain sought a little soil
-between the stones of the pavement; he was an animal longing for the
-forest."
-
-The delight in the beauty and fragrance of flowers, the preference for
-the simplicity of rural life which he so often expressed show a mood
-unaffected by discontent and pessimism. Some sprite of nature-joy dwelt
-within him and remained happy in spite of unhappiness. After uttering
-curses on the sins of humanity he would be found singing paeans to the
-harmony of the plant-world.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-At the end of the first term he had spent his eighty kronor and
-returned to Stockholm in search of remunerative work. After several
-unsuccessful attempts to obtain a post in the country, he found a
-situation as teacher at the Stockholm Board-School at a yearly salary
-of L50, which to him seemed opulence. He now lived at home, and
-contributed to the household expenses.
-
-The schoolmaster of eighteen was again brought face to face with the
-problems of poverty. The injustice, under which he had smarted as a
-child, was still alive. He was now in the detestable position of the
-pedagogical tyrant, but his pity had not diminished. He was expected
-to chastise the lazy children, but his heart refused to accept the
-prevalent faith in flogging. The children--ugly, stunted, pale,
-starved, sickly--appealed to his pity.
-
-"Suffering," he writes, "has stamped on the faces of the lower classes
-that expression of hopelessness and torment which neither religious
-resignation nor the hope of heaven can obliterate, and from which the
-upper classes flee as from an evil conscience."
-
-He studied the penalty of industrialism, and observed that the children
-of the manual labourer looked more sickly and less intelligent than
-those of the upper class:
-
-"The trade-diseases of the urban working-man seemed to be transmitted;
-here one saw in miniature the lungs and the blood of the gas-worker,
-ruined through sulphurous fumes; the shoulders and flattened feet of
-the smith; the brain of the painter, atrophied through the fumes of
-varnish and poisonous paints; the scrofulous eruption of the sweep;
-the contracted chest of the bookbinder; here one heard the echo of the
-cough of the metal-worker and the asphalt manufacturer; smelt the
-poisons of the wall-paper maker; noticed the watchmaker's myopia in new
-editions. In truth, this was not a race which possessed the future,
-or upon which the future could reckon, and it cannot reproduce itself
-for any length of time, for the ranks of the artisans are constantly
-recruited from the country."
-
-His sympathy with the working classes was no passing sentiment; it was
-the lasting keynote of his plea for social justice which is clearly
-heard through the cacophony of some of his later outbursts against the
-social order.
-
-Rebellious, contempt of current morals and respectability rose as
-a mighty force in the mind of this extraordinary schoolmaster. His
-morning duties at the board-school and his afternoon work as private
-tutor to the daughters of a well-to-do and refined family compelled
-him to outward decorum. But he did not live virtuously. His sense-life
-was awake, and he recognised no necessity for restraint. The strivings
-after ascetic peace which filled his adolescence had been laid
-aside; with the breaking of his faith in the watchful solicitude of
-Jesus, natural impulses had been set free. His autobiography records
-his early struggles, and his later "fall" with the same detached
-imperturbability. He lacks the sense of shame which avoids certain
-topics. He observes no reticences. The pages in many of his books are
-studded with coarse language and unsavoury references to physical
-life. The sexual cynicism which pervades the story of his life is only
-relieved by his perfect sincerity.
-
-He describes the pleasures of inebriation with similar frankness. At
-the age of nineteen he was already familiar with Bacchic revels. His
-brain was inflamed with ideas, congested with unformulated thought. The
-narcosis of alcohol attracted him.
-
-"Sometimes melancholy, at other times gay," he writes, "he sometimes
-felt an irresistible craving to extinguish the burning fire of thought
-and to stop the turmoil of the brain. Shy, he sometimes felt impelled
-to come forward, to make an impression, to find an audience, to
-appear in public. When he had drunk a great deal, he wished to recite
-great and solemn things, but in the middle of the piece, when ecstasy
-was at its height, he heard his own voice, became shy, frightened,
-thought himself ridiculous, stopped suddenly, changed his tone, took
-up the comical, and finished with a grimace. He had pathos, but only
-for a while; then self-criticism came, and he laughed at his forced
-emotions." Strindberg finds another explanation of his craving for
-alcohol in the lack of nourishing diet at Upsala and the dulness of
-his home in Stockholm. "Strong liquors gave him strength," he says,
-"and he slept well after them." He adds: "Like the rest of the race,
-he was born of drunkards, generation after generation from pagan times
-immemorial, when ale and mead were used, and the desire had inevitably
-become a necessity."
-
-He was not a success as a board-school teacher. There were bargains
-with his conscience during scripture lessons, and the prevailing system
-of teaching seemed a cruel parody. He shrank from the sights and sounds
-and smells of the herd of poor children. Ambition and intellectual
-hunger called him to seek experience elsewhere.
-
-His restlessness was increased through reading Byron's _Manfred_ and
-Schiller's _Die Raeuber_. He tried to translate the former into Swedish,
-but discovered to his chagrin that he could not write blank verse. Karl
-Moor in _Die Raeuber_ laid hold of his imagination with the claims of a
-kindred spirit. Here was his own heterodoxy and revolt against laws,
-society, customs, religion made manifest in a living, literary figure
-by a great writer. Schiller's maturer repudiation of his fierce bandit
-did not trouble him. Manfred fleeing from himself to the Alps appealed
-to him as a feat of rebellion complementary to Karl Moor's adventures.
-
-At the age of nineteen the role of the schoolmaster was exchanged for
-that of the student of medicine. His duties at the board-school had
-become intolerable, when, one evening, a Mend, an old doctor, knocked
-at his door and suggested that he should desert the school and enlist
-in the service of Aesculapius. His fatherly friend brushed aside
-objections on the ground of poverty by suggesting that Strindberg
-should live in his house and, in return, act as tutor to his boys.
-In spite of the dreary prospect of eight years of medical studies
-the kindly offer was accepted; for the profession of medicine seemed
-the portal to enviable knowledge. Not the dry, stereotyped dogmas of
-the Church and the University curriculum, but real wisdom penetrating
-life's mysteries. "To become a sage who understood life's riddles--that
-was his dream for the moment." He disliked the idea of a career in the
-service of the State or of being a mere figure, a wheel or a screw, in
-the social machinery. The physician seemed to him to be free.
-
-His preparatory studies were carried out at the Technological
-Institute. Here the vigorous fantasy of the future alchemist received
-the first stimulus through chemical experiments which fascinated him by
-revealing the secrets of matter. Here he also studied zoology, anatomy,
-botany and physics.
-
-But other powers were at work undermining the solidifying influence
-of application to science. In the doctor's house he met writers and
-artists. Conversation generally turned on plays, pictures, books,
-authors and actors. There was a fine library, offering the world's
-literary treasures. There was a collection of pictures and there were
-valuable engravings. The intellectual atmosphere was international, and
-afforded a pleasant change from the vulgar patriotism which had been
-sacred to the pedagogues of the board-school.
-
-The Dramatic Theatre was near at hand. Here a new and gaily attractive
-world was opened to him. Standing in the gallery he listened to the
-badinage of French comedy and saw the types of the Second Empire in
-aristocratic setting. Thus he spent several evenings every week. The
-life of the actor seemed strangely interesting, for he was allowed to
-express himself, to speak unwelcome truths without losing popularity.
-The theatrical profession seemed outside and above the petty rules
-of society--a privileged class. It offered special and glorious
-opportunities for artistic self-expression.
-
-Meanwhile the experiences of his medical education had become
-distasteful. The old physician brought his pupil to see patients,
-rich and poor, providing him with diverse "clinical material." He was
-asked to assist at early morning operations and to hold the patients.
-Whilst Strindberg held the patient's head, the doctor "removed glands
-with a fork." The assistant's thoughts were soaring high above the
-surgery, in the regions of Goethe's Faust and Wieland's novels; they
-were with George Sand, Chateaubriand and Lessing. During cauterisation
-the smell of human flesh rose in his nostrils and spoilt his appetite
-for breakfast. He describes his state of mind in the following words:
-"Imagination had been set in motion and memory would not work; reality
-with its bums and blood clots was ugly; aestheticism had seized the
-youth, and life seemed dull and repulsive."
-
-A futile attempt to pass a preliminary medical examination at Upsala
-precipitated his decision not to enter a profession which was
-exclusively occupied with the aches of the body. In spite of the
-disappointment of his medical benefactor, he announced his intention of
-becoming an actor.
-
-He now lived for some months in an ideal stage-world. After making
-arrangements for obtaining practical instruction in the autumn, he
-devoted the summer to private studies of the art which appeared to
-be his true and only vocation in life. Schiller's lecture, "On the
-Theatre as an Institution for Moral Education," saturated his mind with
-a lofty and idealistic conception of the ethical and aesthetic mission
-of the stage. Was not this the greatest of all human arts? Was it not
-a calling worthy of the finest talent and the most devoted labour? He
-buried his past restlessness in faithful search for knowledge of the
-actor's gifts and graces. Goethe taught him how to stand, sit down,
-carry himself, how to enter and leave a room gracefully. He studied the
-pose of antique sculpture and practised to walk with uplifted head
-and expanded chest, whilst the arms were trained to swing easily and
-the hand to be lightly closed with the fingers forming a beautifully
-shaped curve. He tried to conquer his shyness and his fear of crossing
-open places, and paraded his new artful self in the most frequented
-_promenade_ in Stockholm.
-
-The doctor's house was made the scene of his dramatic exercises. Here
-he prepared the performance of _Die Raeuber_ and appeared himself as
-Karl Moor. When his vocal practices disturbed the peace of the house,
-he repaired to Ladugardsgardet, the vast fields and hills, on the
-east side of Stockholm, which for many years past have been used for
-military manoeuvres. They now also serve as a starting-point for aerial
-flights. But no mechanical wings of flight could equal those, on which
-Strindberg's imagination soared towards the realisation of his mission
-as an artist and a social reformer.
-
-Here, he tells us, he stormed against heaven and earth. The city, the
-church spires of which were visible, represented Society, whilst he
-belonged to Nature. "He shook his fist at the palace, the churches,
-the barracks, and snarled at the troops which during the manoeuvres
-sometimes came too near him. There was something fanatical in his
-work, and he spared no pains to make his reluctant muscles obedient."
-
-The keen resentment of injustice and the irrepressible sympathy
-with the poor and the down-trodden, which the later misanthropy of
-the man could never quell, showed forth in an episode of this time,
-connected with the unveiling of a statue of Charles XII. Though the
-statue had been erected through public donations, the arrangements for
-the unveiling were such as to exclude the people from a view of the
-proceedings. The people threatened to pull down the stands for paying
-spectators which obscured the view, and the troops were called out to
-restore order. August was seated at a gay dinner-party at the doctor's
-house in honour of some Italian operatic stars, when the sounds of the
-battle reached the ears of the company.
-
-"What is that?" asked the prima donna.
-
-"It is the noise of the mob," said a professor.
-
-August could not sit still. The clinking of glasses, the tight
-dinner-talk, the jests and laughter jarred on him. Who were these who
-spoke of the people as "mob"? Something stirred within his breast with
-the call of blood and the passion of identical feeling. He left the
-table and went out into the streets.
-
-"'The mob'!" he writes, "the word rang in his ears, whilst he walked
-down the street. The mob! they were his mother's former school-fellows,
-they were his school-fellows and later his pupils, they were the dark
-background which made the light pictures effective in the place he had
-just left. He felt like a deserter, as if he had done wrong in working
-his way up."
-
-He reached the place where the statue had been raised, and mixed
-with the excited crowds. The clatter of hoofs and the sight of the
-approaching Life Guards filled him with a mad desire to resist all this
-mass of men, horses and sabres. Together they were oppression incarnate.
-
-August placed himself in the middle of the street, right in front of
-the approaching cavalry. Through his mind flashed the call to revolt,
-the born rebel's impulsive desire for self-immolation.
-
-A hand seized him and pulled him out of danger. He was led home, and
-after promising not to return to the scene of struggle the inevitable
-reaction set in with exhaustion and high temperature in the evening.
-
-On the day of the unveiling he was present among the undergraduates.
-At the end of the ceremony there was a skirmish between the police
-and the people. Stones were thrown and order was restored by means of
-sabre-cuts. A man standing near Strindberg was attacked by a police
-inspector. August rushed at the inspector, seized him by the collar and
-shook him.
-
-"Let the man go!" he cried.
-
-"Who are you?" asked the astounded inspector.
-
-"I am Satan," answered the demoniacal liberator, "and I shall take you,
-if you don't let the fellow go."
-
-In trying to seize August the inspector released his hold of the man.
-At the same moment a stone knocked oft the three-cornered hat of
-authority from the inspector's head, and August wrenched himself free.
-The police drove the crowd before them at the point of the bayonet.
-August followed with other enthusiasts, determined to release the
-prisoners. The attempt was, of course, futile; the bayonets were the
-strongest.
-
-Strindberg describes how two gentlemen, one middle-aged, the other
-young, both highly respectable, with conservative views, were seized
-with his own passionate longing to defend the people against the
-police. Speechless, they instinctively grasped each other's hands, and
-with white, set faces ran to the rescue. When the excitement was over,
-and the wave of sympathy had spent itself, they awoke in their normal
-selves and were shocked at their own conduct. August himself could
-jest over his wild outburst, when half an hour later he was seated in
-a restaurant with a chop in front of him and friends around to listen
-to an objective account of the whole incident. The middle-aged merchant
-of impeccable propriety failed to recognise August, when, by chance,
-they met again. The composite consciousness created by the contagion of
-strong emotion had ceased to exist.
-
-When his dramatic recitals to the winds which sweep over
-Ladugardsgardet had been followed by the prosaic training at the school
-of the Dramatic Theatre, the conflict between dream and reality was
-followed by the usual tragic results. His wish to make his debut in
-an important part was rudely brushed aside. After some humiliating
-experiences, he was given a small part in Bjornson's Mary Stuart. He
-appeared as a "nobleman," and all his dramatic energy was, perforce,
-encompassed in the following sentence: "The Peers have sent an
-emissary with a challenge to the Earl of Bothwell."
-
-It was bitterly insignificant, but it was the portal to greater
-achievement.
-
-The disillusionment of his first glimpse behind the scenes was manfully
-rebutted. The boards and the paint which, when seen from the gallery,
-had held so much charm, were now, when scrutinised from the other side,
-dusty and ugly. The actors who were permitted to play great parts were,
-after all, just like ordinary mortals. They yawned loudly between their
-turns, and gave expression to commonplace sentiments as a relief from
-the sublimities uttered on the stage.
-
-After some months, during which Strindberg was only a super, he was
-heartily tired of the whole thing. The mechanism, living and dead, of
-dramatic production disgusted him. He felt repressed and misjudged.
-But at the same time he was ashamed of quitting the profession which
-he had chosen with such high expectations. He demanded his right to
-be tried and judged. He was given an important part and a special
-rehearsal, at which he appeared without stage costume and without the
-requisite enthusiasm. The elder actors resented the arrangement, and
-Strindberg shouted his sentences in a manner which made it clear that
-he was in need of further instruction. He was advised to resume his
-pupilage. But this he would not do. The humiliation was unbearable.
-He cried with rage and decided to commit suicide. An opium pill which
-he had treasured with a view to the possibility of having to summon a
-catastrophic end to life's difficulties was utilised for the purpose,
-but failed altogether of a calamitous effect. A friend, who knew the
-better way, re-awakened Strindberg's interest in earthly existence
-through a merry drinking bout.
-
-On the following day, he tells us, he felt bruised, wounded, tom,
-with quivering nerves and with the fever of shame and drunkenness in
-his veins. He lay on his sofa reading Topelius' _Tales of a Surgeon_
-and musing over his own troubles. His brain worked at high pressure,
-sorting memories, adding and eliminating, calling out personalities. He
-heard his characters speak. It was as if he saw them on a stage. After
-a few hours he had visualised a comedy in two acts, and in four days
-the play was written.
-
-"It was a work," he writes in _Fermentation Time_, "at once painful
-and pleasurable, if it even could be called work, for it came of
-itself, without his will or effort."
-
-"And when the piece was ready," he tells us, "he drew a deep sigh, as
-if years of pain were over, as if an abscess had been lanced. He was so
-happy that something sang within him, and he decided to send his piece
-to the theatre. This was the salvation."
-
-Macaulay thought that books are written either to relieve the fulness
-of the mind or the emptiness of the pocket. He ignored the intimate
-correlation between the two motives. The full mind is only too often
-made inarticulate by the empty pocket, whilst, on the other hand, the
-empty pocket sometimes accelerates processes of the mind which, but for
-that stimulus, would never reach fulness. Strindberg was throughout
-life the slave of a full mind and an empty pocket.
-
-His first effort in drama had now to be submitted to competent
-criticism. He prepared the garret which he rented from the doctor
-for the festive reception of two wise friends. A clean napkin on the
-table, two candles and a bottle of "punsch" were the outer signs of
-the solemnity with which he welcomed his critics. The play was read to
-the end in sympathetic silence. The friends then saluted August as an
-author.
-
-When alone he fell on his knees and thanked God who had delivered him
-out of his difficulties and who had given him the gift of literary
-expression. Perhaps no subsequent literary crises of gestation ever
-equalled the first in intensity of expectation; I he felt that he had
-at last found his vocation, the part he was called upon to play in life.
-
-The material for his first play had been his own family troubles;
-his religious doubts now found expression in a play in three acts.
-He had also discovered that he could write rhymed verse, presumably
-as the result of a visitation of the Holy Ghost. A feverish power of
-production followed: in two months he wrote two comedies, a tragic
-verse drama and some poems.
-
-The first comedy had been submitted to the manager of the Royal
-Theatre. Meanwhile the anonymous author continued to walk the boards,
-now buoyed by a secret joy. His turn would come; the thought of the day
-when he would be recognised made him bold. In his peasant costume he
-felt a prince in disguise.
-
-But the comedy was not accepted. The tragedy which he also sent in met
-with the same fate, though he received a kindly hint that it would be
-worth his while to perfect himself in the art of dramatic construction,
-and that time and experience would be more profitably expended on a
-literary career than on further attempts to succeed as an actor. He
-was advised to return to Upsala. A tragedy with the title _Jesus of
-Nazareth_ was sketched out. It was intended to crush Christianity
-completely and for all time. It was only partly written, when, happily,
-it was abandoned, the youthful author having succumbed to the magnitude
-of his subject.
-
-His last appearance on the stage was ignominious, yet symbolic of his
-future as a writer of drama. No part whatever had been found for him.
-He offered to act as prompter and was accepted. Thus ended the career
-upon which he had entered with such glorious zest.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-"FERMENTATION TIME"
-
-
-Goaded by misfortune, the recalcitrant scholar returned to Upsala
-determined to distinguish himself by obtaining his degree or by writing
-a successful play which would compensate for past failures. His return
-was made possible by the possession of a few hundred kronor, left to
-him under his mother's will.
-
-With five kindred souls he founded a poetical guild to which the
-name _Rune_--"Song"--was given. The meetings of the brethren were
-occasions for improvisation and tippling, for hair-splitting arguments
-and epicurean excesses. They philosophised over life and literature,
-expressed the joy of existence in music, and alcoholic melancholy in
-sad tales of suffering.
-
-August wrote and read poetry which breathed idealism, nature-worship
-and patriotism. He sang to the guitar, sometimes sentimental
-folk-songs, sometimes compositions of a less worthy kind.
-
-The dialectics of the company stimulated August's powers of expression,
-though they interfered with his studies.
-
-A friend advised him to write a one-act play in verse. This, he said,
-would have a greater chance of being acted than a tragedy in five
-acts, which August thought more fitting. The one-act play was written
-in a fortnight. It was called _In Rome_ and dealt with Thorvaldsen's
-first stay in that city. The idea had long been present in his mind.
-It burst into dramatic shape with unmistakable force, and the friends,
-recognising that it had a living spirit, prophesied that it would be
-accepted. The birth of the play was duly celebrated with carousals, in
-which the author was acclaimed with generous admiration.
-
-The psychology of drunkenness was one of the subjects for incisive
-discussion and historical analysis at the meetings of the _Rune_. The
-members certainly did not lack practical experience of its mental
-perplexities, but, however vinous their youthful judgment of the
-problems of life generally, they appraised the possibilities of August
-Strindberg's art with singular accuracy.
-
-Strindberg's slender resources did not save him from the pinch of
-poverty. He had tasted luxury in the doctor's house. His room in
-Upsala was squalid; the rain came through the ceiling, fire-wood was
-scarce, and occasional frugal suppers of bread and water were forcible
-reminders of life's realities. He managed, nevertheless, to study
-aesthetics and living languages with a new ardour. His range of reading
-was widened, and his critical faculties were in a continuous process of
-development.
-
-Ibsen and Bjornson dominated the intellectual horizon. August had
-been deeply stirred by _Brand_, when reading it a year earlier, and
-had felt the soul-struggles of Ibsen's deliverer to be identical with
-his own, but he now reacted against the Norwegian invasion of the
-Swedish mind. The gloom of the mountains and fjords of Norway, the
-poverty and enforced abstinences of its people were reflected in the
-minds of its writers, and had no rightful place amongst the smiling
-lakes and flower-strewn sward of Sweden. Ibsen's women now roused the
-instinctive sex-antagonism in Strindberg; he hated Nora, and the whole
-brood of matriarchal ideas, of which he thought Ibsen a dangerous
-modern exponent. Strindberg's later writings against women are
-indirect replies to Ibsen; and his objections to woman's struggle for
-emancipation were expressed with a controversial vehemence which robbed
-them of literary effect.
-
-In the autumn of 1870 _In Rome_ was performed at the Royal Theatre at
-Stockholm. The author was twenty-one years old. He watched the play,
-standing in his old place in the gallery. The inebriation of success
-was now followed by acute pangs of self-criticism. He felt as if he had
-been under an electric battery, his legs trembled, and he wept with
-nervousness. A friend seized his hand to calm him.
-
-"Every stupidity," he writes, "which had slipped into the verse shook
-him and jarred upon his ears. He saw nothing but imperfections in his
-work. His ears burnt with shame, and he ran out before the curtain
-fell."
-
-The attacks upon the clergy now seemed stupid and unjust, the
-glorification of poverty and pride, mistaken; the description of his
-relationship to his father, cynical.
-
-He had found his own play stupid; he was overcome with shame, and death
-by drowning in the rapid waters of Norrstrom seemed the only atonement.
-
-The incident is characteristic of the man. The thoughts which a few
-months before had been conjured up by the imaginative contemplation
-of Thorvaldsen before the statue of Jason, of the struggle between
-filial duty and artistic consciousness, were now outside their author,
-dismissed, objects of pity. He had grown, whilst the imperfect words
-lay dead on the paper.
-
-The evening ended in the company of friends. His searchings after
-perfection and his intellectual remorse were assuaged by food and drink
-and by the gratification of the lower impulses, to which he yielded
-without the sense of shame or sin.
-
-On the following day he read a favourable notice of the play, in which
-the language was described as beautiful, and the anonymous author was
-said to be a well-known critic who was familiar with the artistic world
-in Rome.
-
-Thus he made his first acquaintance with the sweets of dramatic
-criticism. In Rome has nothing of the fierce personality which, in his
-later plays, outraged the critics of Sweden. There are strokes of fine
-picturing, and there is charm of phrase, but the piece is meagre in
-conception and puerile in expression.
-
-He returned to Upsala and was now, by his father's intervention,
-lodged in the house of the widow of a clergyman. It was hoped that a
-well-regulated home-life, with sufficiency of food and a minimum of
-comfort, would provide his spirits with wholesome restraint. But the
-reverse happened. There were a number of undergraduates staying in the
-house; the table was laden with good things; card-playing and heavy
-drinking occupied the evenings. August was frequently drunk, his brain
-was saturated with the clashing opinions of the young men, who loudly
-wooed their _Weltanschauung_; he was dissatisfied, persecuted by doubts
-and unreasonable remorse. He was in love--for the eighth time--and the
-object of his love was, as usual, unattainable.
-
-In Rome had met with severe, though not altogether unjust criticism in
-another paper. His earlier play, The Freethinker, had been printed and
-published anonymously through the kind offices of a friend. It fell
-into the hands of a hostile journalist who ridiculed it. Strindberg now
-underwent the painful experience of mental dissection at the hands of a
-ruthless critic. However willingly we may condemn ourselves and indulge
-in the bitter-sweet contemplation of the follies of yesterday's ego,
-the rude touch of another's flail arouses every fibre of self-defence.
-
-Though he had promised his father to turn his face against the
-temptations of authorship and to give single-minded attention
-to studies, the creative impulse could not be quelled. He wrote
-_Blotsven_, a tragedy in five acts, which reiterated the religious
-rebellion of _The Freethinker_, depicting the struggle between the
-spirit of the Viking and proselytising Christianity. The old Icelandish
-tales which he now read in the original, and the influence of
-Oehlenschlager, had helped to mould the form.
-
-At this time he became absorbed in the mentality of the Danish writer
-Soren Kierkegaard. His book _Enten-Eller_--Either Or--which treats
-of the struggle between the flesh and the spirit, and which preaches
-the life-fearing asceticism of the helpless sensualist, stirred
-Strindberg's doubts and self-reproaches. An elder friend by the
-runic name of "Is," whose real name was Josef Linck, managed, by the
-simulation of much learning, culminating in intellectual nihilism, to
-persuade August that his stand-point was untenable. The friend talked
-philosophy, aesthetics, world-history, dished up Kant, Schopenhauer,
-Thackeray and George Sand, and dyed August's soul with impotent
-scepticism.
-
-The result was that Strindberg burnt the MSS. of his _Blotsven_. The
-friend had shown that he was not a poet, and the tears which he shed
-over the ashes were embittered by the knowledge that he had deceived
-his father.
-
-He hurriedly decided to pass his examination in Latin compositions.
-He had not made the requisite preparation, called on the Professor in
-a state of after-dinner exaltation, demonstrated his independence of
-spirit, and was promptly turned out.
-
-The suicide of a student brought the supernatural to the door of the
-already over-visited mind. Strindberg had met the unhappy man some days
-before and avoided his company. On visiting the place of the tragedy,
-he was completely unnerved by the sight of blood and the gruesome
-associations. He felt half guilty of murder, could not sleep and was
-haunted by the dead man. The Runic brethren watched over him, but his
-friend "Rejd" nevertheless found him with a bottle of prussic acid
-and sinister intentions. The friend shrewdly suggested a preparatory
-sacrificial rite of four "toddies" before the fatal poison was
-drained. The desired effect was soon apparent. August had to be carried
-home, but as the gate of the house was closed his friends threw him
-over the fence. He remained in a snow-drift until he had recovered
-sufficiently to find his room. But his ghost-ridden soul did not find
-peace until he quitted Upsala a few days later.
-
-He confessed his sins to his father and obtained permission to remain
-at home, and to prepare for his degree in a less disturbing atmosphere.
-He now "felt protected as if he had landed after a night's stormy
-voyage," and slept calmly in his old truckle-bed. _Blotsven_ rose from
-the ashes. He re-wrote it in a fortnight. It was now condensed into one
-act under the title _The Outlaw_, and was sent to the theatre.
-
-Being thus relieved of the supreme duties to his dramatic _daimon_, he
-again descended to Latin compositions and passed his examen in spite of
-continued defiance of the Professor's rules of procedure. The aesthetic
-thesis, which he submitted shortly afterwards, was promptly returned
-to him by the Professor, with the remark that its contents were more
-suitable for the fair readers of an illustrated weekly than for an
-academical discourse. This was indeed injustice. August had poured out
-his most mature views on realism versus idealism, utilising the Danish
-dramatist Oehlenschlager as a buffer between his new and his old self.
-The essay is re-printed in full in the autobiography, and is well worth
-reading. The style is rich in imagery and analogy, the conclusions
-audacious, though a gentle world-weariness pervades every argument.
-Strindberg's later style as an incisive essayist is discernible in
-spite of the periphrastic treatment of dramatic problems from Sophocles
-to Shakespeare. The desire to show erudition is apparent on every
-page, and the author confesses that the wish to show the Professor
-his profound knowledge of Danish literature was one of his motives in
-choosing the subject. The Professor's unsympathetic attitude towards
-his review of Danish literature was, therefore, mortifying.
-
-His quiet life at home had begun well. The earlier struggle against
-poverty had been superseded by well-ordered home-life. August's
-sisters were now grown up; he was impressed and felt sanctified by
-their unostentatious discharge of daily duties which contrasted so
-sharply with his own wild and worthless past. The stem father had been
-mellowed by time, and August spent many evenings with him in friendly
-talk on great subjects.
-
-But rebellion soon drove the son away. August resented some trifling
-interference with his liberty, borrowed a few hundred kronor, and
-settled for the summer in a fisher-man's cottage on one of the Baltic
-islands outside Stockholm. With three of the Runic brethren he now
-threw himself into a healthy outdoor life, bathing, sailing, fencing.
-The body was to be taught natural goodness, and the counsels of Satan
-were to be unheeded. He studied philology, avoided alcohol, and dwelt
-with Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe. Natural asceticism and the mental
-discipline of classifying root-words would curb his vigorous fantasy
-and help him to acquit himself with honour at Upsala. He could expect
-no further help from the father.
-
-At the beginning of the autumn term he arrived in Upsala hungry and
-with one krona in his pocket. He felt justified in borrowing from
-friends, for he was confident of the future. With the small sums which
-he succeeded in drawing on the bank of friendship he rented a miserable
-room, which contained little but a bed without sheets or pillowcases.
-He lay on it in his underclothing, reading by the light of a candle
-stuck in a bottle. Kind friends were responsible for an irregular
-supply of food, but no spartan resolutions could temper the cold
-weather. He succeeded in borrowing a little wood and carried it home
-under cover of darkness. A physicist taught him to extract the full
-calorific value from the charcoal. There was a stovepipe in the room
-which was hot every Thursday when the landlady did her washing. Then
-he stood reading with his hands on his back, leaning against the pipe,
-with the chest of drawers doing service as a reading-desk.
-
-His Viking play had meanwhile been accepted. The first performance was
-received coldly. The critics were ungracious; he was accused of having
-borrowed the form from Ibsen, though the cold restraint and rugged
-simplicity of the language were directly inspired by the Icelandish
-Sagas.
-
-Sick at heart, Strindberg resumed his battle with poverty and
-dejection. The darkness of uncertainty was again upon him, when, with
-the suddenness which is usually reserved for good boys in fairy tales,
-Fortuna held out her hand. He received a letter announcing that the
-King was interested in his play and wished to see him. He could not
-believe his eyes, and suspected that the letter was a joke. On being
-re-assured of the genuineness of the message, he went to Stockholm
-and was received by Charles XV. The King smiled as the young author
-made his stumbling way to the royal presence through the lines of
-courtiers, and greeted him with geniality. Charles XV, himself a poet,
-expressed the pleasure which he had derived from the Viking play, and
-his personal interest in the revival of the old northern tales. After
-inquiries regarding Strindberg's financial prospects, the King ordered
-a yearly stipend of eight hundred kronor to be paid to him from the
-privy purse.
-
-August left the palace, moved and grateful, with the first quarterly
-instalment of the monarch's bounty in his pocket.
-
-The short play which had won royal favour is the first work in which
-Strindberg's mastery over his dramatic art was foreshadowed. The
-terse phrasing fitly embodies the spirit of Norseman valour. It grips
-the reader with the force of a _drapa_, sung in faithful celebration
-of life's attempts and hard-won victories. Gunlod, the daughter of
-Thorfinn, the old heathen Viking, has been secretly baptised and loves
-the Christian Viking, Gunnar. The human conflict between sorrow and
-resignation, faith and doubt, is drawn with a passionate wish to do
-justice to everyone. Strindberg possessed that power of visualising
-and speaking through the characters of a play with equally apportioned
-interest, which is essential to the true dramatist. His own words on
-his relationship to the Viking play, show that he was fully aware of
-this faculty of artistic self-multiplication and of its penalties:
-
-"Johan[1] had incarnated himself in five persons in the play. In the
-earl, who fights against time; in the bard, who surveys and penetrates;
-in the mother, who rebels and takes revenge, but who is deprived of
-her avenging power through her sympathy; in the girl, who breaks with
-her father because of her faith; in the lover, who is burdened with
-an unhappy love. He understood the motives of all the characters
-and pleaded every-one's cause. But a play which is written for the
-mediocre, who have ready-made opinions about everything, must at least
-be partial to a couple of its characters in order to win the ordinary
-audience which is always passionate and partial. Johan could not do
-this, for he did not believe in absolute right or wrong, for the simple
-reason that all these conceptions are relative. One can be right in
-regard to the future and wrong in respect to the present; one is wrong
-this year, but considered right next year; the father may think that
-the son is right, whilst the mother thinks him wrong; the daughter
-has the right to love whomsoever she loves, but the father thinks her
-wrong in loving a heathen. This was doubt. Why do men hate and despise
-the doubter? Because doubt is evolution, and Society hates evolution
-because it disturbs the peace, but doubt is true humanity and will
-end in equity of judgment. The stupid only are certain, the ignorant
-only believe that they have found truth. But peace is happiness, and
-pietists therefore seek it in the peace of stupidity. It is said that
-doubt consumes the power of action, but is it then better to act
-without considering and weighing the consequences of the act? The
-animal and the savage act blindly, obeying lusts and impulses, thereby
-being like men of action."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Life at Upsala was strangely changed. The royal patronage endowed
-August with a distinction, the pleasure of which was evident. The
-sense of freedom from the pressure of poverty, of having achieved some
-measure of success, expanded his chest and straightened his back.
-His friends did not recognise him. They were accustomed to see in
-August the poor half-starved, erratic youth who needed their help.
-In unconsciously looking down, we add to our self-respect. August
-no longer needed the pity which had given pleasure to givers and
-recipient, and the result was disharmony. The _Rune_ was weakened
-through indifference and internal strife, and died naturally, a victim
-of competition.
-
-August's good fortune was not of long duration. He, die rebel, the
-destroyer of common idols and conventions, had not hesitated to receive
-the King's gift. For he had never believed that the ills of the world
-would be set right by the abolition of monarchy, and in the King's
-gift he saw not the grace of the ruler, but recognition accorded to
-him by a personal friend and admirer. But he soon began to chafe under
-the obligations and restrictions which his new position entailed. At
-the end of the term he manfully struggled through his examination in
-philology, astronomy and sociology. During the next term his mental
-restlessness became acute. The brain was filled with creative energy,
-and the path of learning was blocked. Doubt and apathy chilled his
-efforts to do the work which was expected of him. Sometimes he lay
-all day on a sofa, longing to be free and in the midst of life. He
-felt imprisoned by the royal stipend and sought succour in reading
-the history of philosophy. But the different systems seemed to him to
-possess the same degree of validity, and his head was replete with his
-own thoughts.
-
-One evening he evoked the anger of one of the professors by attacking
-Dante. He declared the composition of the _Commedia_ to be an imitation
-of Albericus' vision, and Dante's greatness to be over-rated. Dante
-was ignorant of Greek, therefore uncultured; he was no philosopher,
-as he suppressed thought by revelation; he was a foolish monk who
-sent unbaptised children to hell. He lacked all self-criticism when
-he classed ingratitude to friends and treason to one's country among
-the worst of crimes, whilst he himself sent his friend and teacher,
-Brunetto Latini, to the nether world and supported the German Emperor
-Henry VII against his native town, Florence. He showed bad taste, for
-amongst the six greatest poets of the world, he placed Homer, Horace,
-Lucanus, Ovid, Virgil and--himself.
-
-The result of these observations was that Strindberg was dismissed as
-insolent and crazy.
-
-A period of increased mental distress and uncertainty followed upon the
-explosion. The town was grey and dirty, and the chill of winter lay
-over the land. There was no stability in his soul--he felt as if it had
-been dissolved, and hovered as a sensitive smoke around him. A forcible
-new impression pulled him together. One day he found his friend, the
-naturalist, painting as a recreation. This was something that would
-condense and support an evaporating ego. To paint green landscape
-in the midst of dull winter, and to hang it on one's wall--that was
-something worth doing!
-
-"Is it difficult to paint?" he asked.
-
-"No, it is easier than drawing. Try it," was the reply.
-
-August borrowed an easel, brushes and paint, locked his door and gave
-himself up to colour-worship. When he saw the blue colour give the
-effect of a clear sky he was enraptured, and when he conjured up green
-bushes and a lawn on the canvas, "he was inexpressibly happy--as if he
-had eaten hashish."
-
-One day, when he had locked himself in, he heard a conversation between
-his friends outside the door. They talked as if they were discussing
-someone who was ill.
-
-"Now he is painting too!" said one of the friends in a tone of deep
-depression.
-
-August reflected and came to the conclusion that he was going mad.
-Fearing compulsory incarceration, he wrote to the manager of a private
-asylum in which the patients were allowed their liberty and to till the
-soil. He expressed his willingness to submit to the curative principles
-of the institution. The reply was kind and reassuring. The manager had
-made inquiries about the would-be patient and found that there was no
-need for extreme steps.
-
-Three months, passed and the second instalment of the royal stipend was
-not paid. A letter of humble inquiry brought the reply that His Majesty
-had never meant to give permanent support to Strindberg, and that it
-was only a question of temporary help. A further sum was enclosed, as
-His Majesty had graciously decided to help his protege once more.
-
-The first sense of relief was followed by some anxiety as to the
-consequences. The King's promise was no mistake. The real explanation
-of the "disgrace" was not easy to find. Some thought the King had
-forgotten; others that his proverbial generosity had exceeded his
-means. Ten years later Strindberg heard that he had been wrongfully
-accused of writing defamatory verses about the King.
-
-He decided to leave Upsala and to seek work in Stockholm as a
-journalist. At a valedictory gathering of the old friends he thanked
-them for their contributions to his self, "for a personality is
-not developed out of itself; out of each soul with which it comes
-in contact it sucks a drop, like the bee collecting its honey from
-millions of flowers, transforming it and passing it on as its own."
-
-
-[1] In his autobiography he uses his first Christian name: Johan, and
-speaks of himself in the third person.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-THE DRAMA OF THE HERETIC
-
-
-We may agree with Hoeffding that "every important individuality is
-a point of view for the human race, from which men catch sight of
-possibilities and aspects of existence which would otherwise have
-escaped them." But we must also acknowledge that the strongest
-individuality is i malleable in the hands of experience, and that
-contact with humanity wrenches away the mind from cherished points of
-view.
-
-Though Strindberg was born with defiance of the Decalogue upon his lips,
-though he lived in perpetual revolt against restraint and intellectual
-formalism, though he sought above all to think and not to copy,
-he could not escape that constant pressure of others which is the
-essential of collective existence.
-
-The University, with its rigid forms of instruction, its standards of
-learning, had been the cage on the bars of which he had exercised his
-muscles of independence. He had craved for freedom; his chronic disgust
-at the established order had made him fail through paralysis of will,
-where he might have excelled through natural superiority. And yet he
-felt strangely _en rapport_ with the tradition of the University, when
-in the spring of 1872 he embarked upon journalism in Stockholm. He went
-into humble lodgings on borrowed money, and obtained an ill-paid post
-on a Radical evening paper.
-
-The journalists with whom he now mingled lacked the culture which the
-University imposes even on its most rebellious alumni. They talked in
-ready-made phrases and wrote on subjects over which they had no mental
-mastery. They could harm or help fellow-creatures by the exercise of a
-power for which they were totally unfitted. Loose-witted and garrulous,
-they missed central questions and mistook the gossip of the news-hunter
-for judicial wisdom.
-
-The journalistic profession of that time did not command general
-respect, and the _litterateurs_ of the Radical press were often
-treated as a species of social brigands. They were nameless and their
-activities subterraneous, but they wrote "_We_" and held the mole's
-power of being able to upset the tilled fields of man.
-
-Strindberg plunged into art-criticism, and exposed Count George von
-Rosen's famous picture "Erik XIV and Karin Mansdotter," in the National
-Museum of Stockholm, to the fire of his discontent. The ashes of his
-own drama on "Erik XIV," which he had burnt, lay over his judgment,
-and the feeling of identity with the oppressed classes, now revived
-through associations, made him resent Rosen's conception of Goran
-Persson, the favourite and evil genius of the mad king. Rosen had
-painted the sly and intriguing counsellor with a fidelity which was
-opposed to Strindberg's view of Persson, as an enemy of the nobility
-and a friend of the people. Rosen's standpoint was therefore condemned
-in Strindberg's articles, which appeared after some editorial trimming
-of their literary ornamentation.
-
-A brief but eventful attachment to a ladies' illustrated paper,
-to which he contributed short stories and biography, increased
-Strindberg's knowledge of the exigences of journalism and the
-possibilities for feminine exploitation of the impecunious male.
-
-He chose his friends amongst the artists. They were shabbily dressed,
-cultivated vile manners, were gloriously illiterate, but they had
-originality of feeling and thought. Without book-knowledge they had
-the knack of seizing the essence of life and of settling problems with
-intuitive accuracy. Strindberg still found solace of mind in painting.
-It was like singing. The brush and the colours gave shape to his vague
-imaginings. The post-romanticism of Corot pervaded his circle of
-friends. The idea that one should paint one's own soul, not stocks and
-stones, captivated him.
-
-The only value of the impression lay in its fusion with individuality.
-One should therefore paint from memory, with fantasy.
-
-He always painted the sea with its shore in the foreground, and
-angry-looking firs, some naked cliffs further out, a white light-house
-and sea-marks. The sky was usually clouded, but at the horizon the
-clouds broke, and light was let through. He painted sunrise and
-moonshine, but never clear daylight.
-
-His friends wore long hair, slouch-hats, brightly coloured neckties,
-and lived like the birds. They dreamt of canvas so large and subjects
-so great that no studio could contain them. A sculptor had made
-arrangements with a Norwegian to hew the legendary giant out of the
-Dovre mountain, a painter was going to reproduce the sea--nothing but
-the sea--with a horizon so vast that the globular shape of the earth
-should be made visible.
-
-With two friends of the new life Strindberg talked out his melancholy
-questionings, and sketched the future of regenerated humanity. One
-was a painter of thirty who had been an agricultural labourer, and
-who, after some years' training, had found art an inadequate vehicle
-for thought, and who now "lived on nothing" but the stimulus of his
-eclectic philosophy.
-
-The friend's name was "Mans," and he had a remarkable faculty for
-discovering faulty premises in the fabric of August's _dichtung_. The
-other friend possessed the steadiness of the well-established social
-unit, and contributed a dispassionate and polite scepticism to the
-review of ideas.
-
-They introduced Strindberg to Buckle's theories. There he found support
-for his rebellion against the scholasticism of Upsala, and learnt that
-his disease of doubt was in reality the basis of health. Doubt and
-discontent were the pre-requisites of knowledge and progress--the sole
-paths towards true happiness.
-
-He felt irritated with all that was old and antiquated. Newspapers
-worked for the hour only, with no thought for the future. He could not
-read them without spasms of impatience.
-
-The third volume of the autobiography describes his mental tension
-in the following passages: "His philosophic friend comforted him and
-calmed him by La Bruyere's saying: 'Do not distress yourself over the
-stupidity and wickedness of human beings; you may just as well distress
-yourself over the falling stone; both are subservient to the same laws;
-to be stupid and to fall.'
-
-"'Yes, it is all very well to say that. But to be a bird and compelled
-to live in a mine! Air, light, I cannot breathe; not see!' he burst
-out. 'I am dying of suffocation!'
-
-"'Write,' said his friend.
-
-"'Yes, but what?'"
-
-Out of the mists of doubt, the volatility of convictions, there rose
-creatures clad in flesh and blood, the warring selves of his multiple
-personality. The thin silhouettes of history became instinct with life;
-and Strindberg's first great drama, _The Heretic_, afterwards named
-_Master Olof_, was conceived.
-
-He wrote it during two summer months of quiet life on his island in
-the Baltic. It was necessary to act, for his newspaper had died and
-food was scarce. His kind friends, the fishermen, gave him credit,
-and he could concentrate on his task without the haunting anxiety for
-to-morrow's meals.
-
-_Master Olof_ deals with the Swedish Protestant Reformation. In the
-personality of Olaus Petri, the Swedish Luther, he had found all
-the elements needed for an historical drama of the soul's battle
-and final defeat by the world. Olof, the priest with a message, the
-fanatic who is willing to live and die for the cause of religious and
-social reform, surrenders to compromise. As Archbishop Olaus Petri
-he stands forth as the heretic who had purchased peace at the price
-of spirituality. The tragedy of enthusiasm, wrecked by the practical
-issues of life, is the theme of _Master Olof_, and it has seldom found
-a more intense dramatic expression.
-
-Olaus, with the tongue of fire over his head, called to make war on
-the superstitions and avarice of the Roman Catholic Church, defies the
-bishops. He is saved from the consequences of their wrath by the King,
-who knows the value of the energy which impels the heresy. In Gustavus
-Vasa, the prudent King who makes Olof his secretary, Strindberg saw
-the opportunist, the man of worldly wisdom who neutralises great ideas
-by skimming their froth and rejecting their substance. Olof follows
-his light and becomes a conspirator against the King. But the King is
-stronger than he: caught, punished and pardoned, Olof at last becomes a
-dutiful servant of the State, and of the conservative powers which keep
-Society immune against the onslaughts of enthusiasts.
-
-In Gerdt the printer, who urged the young Olof to become a Daniel and
-to speak the truth before kings, Strindberg saw the revolutionary who
-is the consistent enemy of compromise. In Olof's mother, who dies in
-the Catholic faith cursing her heretic son, he hears the eternal cry
-of the Old stabbed by the New; of the stagnant content that dwells in
-Woman when it is hurt by the passionate discontent that dwells in Man.
-
-The relativity of truth and its perpetual evolution, the inevitable
-clashing of faiths and convictions, invest the struggle between mother
-and son with tragic reality. She has refused to call his wife anything
-but a harlot; for is she not living with a priest? She has in vain
-exerted parental authority to turn her son from the path of perdition.
-To her, Olof is the apostle of Antichrist, the child in the meshes
-of Satan, whom passionately she strives to save. "Ask me not," cries
-Olof to the mother before delivering his heretical sermon. "A mother's
-prayer can tempt angels in heaven to apostasy."
-
-Two rascally priests pray by her deathbed, their thoughts intent on
-the bag of gold which tempts their cupidity. She dies comforted by
-their presence and shrinking from her son's defilement. But death
-smooths sharp differences, and when her eyes are closed Olof lights
-the holy candles, places a palm-branch in her hand, and prays for her
-forgiveness.
-
-The figure of Strindberg's Olaus Petri, burning with religious
-fervour, proclaiming the true creed of Christ to the people who reply
-by throwing stones, a reformer who does not perish by his faith but
-lives by acceptance of common sense, is a contribution to the world's
-deathless _dramatis personae_. He is very remote from Shakespeare's
-Wolsey, and the psychological climax is reversed, but there is
-an ecclesiastical magnificence in the two characters which forces
-comparisons.
-
-There is an impressive simplicity in the language, and the author
-achieves the highest effects in portraiture with few rhetorical
-devices. The conflict of personalities makes the drama rich in
-contrasts, but they are softened by an atmosphere of fatalistic
-resignation before the irreconcilability of ideas. The characters are
-all right with the limited measure of rightness which is contained in
-each soul. They are all wrong with the wrongness which is inseparable
-from human form. In _Master Olof_ Strindberg spoke as Goethe had spoken
-in _Goetz von Berlichingen_.
-
-_Master Olof_ was written during one of those periods of simple life
-and isolation which Strindberg sought with the craving of the repentant
-monk.
-
-Debauch and drunkenness were eschewed, milk took the place of liquids
-of fermentation. Angling, swimming, fencing and mental gymnastics in
-the company of three sympathetic friends kept body and mind vigorous.
-
-One of the friends paid his bill and our dramatist returned to town
-filled with hope and with the sense of relief of one who has at last
-said what he thinks. The play was sent to the manager of the Royal
-Theatre, and its author returned to the palette.
-
-Whilst waiting for the verdict Strindberg sought to "idiotise" himself,
-and to stifle thought by diligent painting during some weeks. One
-evening at a gathering of press-men, the late editor of the dead
-evening paper told him that the play had been rejected. He felt
-suddenly ill and had to leave the company.
-
-The next day he heard the reason for the refusal. Gustavus Vasa and
-Olaus Petri were distorted and degraded. He knew that he had stripped
-them of their historical and patriotic aureole, and he had deliberately
-restored their human contours. But such restoration was not welcome,
-and he was warned that the public did not want it. A thorough revision
-of the play was recommended.
-
-The bitterness of failure now worked havoc in his soul. He plunged
-into the study of social problems. He found human folly supreme
-in principles of government and in the judgment of majorities and
-minorities. The curse of nescience was upon all flesh.
-
-"His thoughts struggled like fish in the net and ended in entangling
-themselves," he writes of this mood. He tried to dismiss such
-thoughts. But it was impossible. They returned "like a quiet, great
-sorrow, bringing despair because the world went its way--idiotically,
-majestically, inevitably--to the devil." A new role, that of sceptic,
-materialist, atheist, seemed to be his own part in the drama of mind.
-He strove to free himself from prejudices, social, religious, moral
-and practical, and ceased to read newspapers. For newspapers praised
-stupidity, mistook acts of egotism for love of humanity, and insulted
-intelligence.
-
-"He had but one opinion: that everything was wrong; but one conviction:
-that nothing could be done to make things better at present; but one
-hope: that some day the time for interference would come, and that
-things would then improve."
-
-There is something infinitely pathetic in Strindberg's life-long
-conflict with social injustice and fatuity. He was like a man digging
-deep for the straggling roots of a large tree. Sometimes he found
-one, but he could never put his foot on all at the same time. Social
-evolution, with its infinite variety of hidden forces, which burst into
-foliage on the tree of good and evil, yielded but few secrets to his
-spade. He besieged the soil in his hand with passionate questions and
-showered curses upon the matter under his muck-rake, but the elusive
-spirit which makes flowers out of dirt and green life out of black
-decay escaped him. The scepticism and impetus to transvalue all values
-which the rejection of _Master Olof_ had accelerated were further
-developed by the company which Strindberg now found congenial. A
-coterie of artists, writers and dilettantish philosophers assembled in
-the evenings in the Red Room of "Berns Restaurant." The tone was free,
-the clamour for truth loud, and contemptuous of the treasures of the
-past. The company was heterogeneous and disputatious, but held together
-by an aggressive scepticism which was beautifully sincere. The axiom
-that the spring of human action is egoism, was the basis of argument,
-and hypocrisy was hunted down with relentless severity.
-
-The old was to be destroyed and the new created.
-
-"That is ancient," were words of reproach. As new human beings they
-must think new thoughts, and new thoughts required new language.
-
-Anecdotes and old jokes were cut short. Phrases and borrowed
-expressions were rejected. One was allowed to be coarse and to call
-things by their proper names, but not to be vulgar, not to quote from
-the latest comic opera or to use witticisms which had appeared in the
-last number of the comic paper.
-
-Everything was focussed to strictly personal and independent judgment.
-Strindberg led the way in destructive criticism. Like Spencer before
-the old masters, he found the artistic perfection of the past centuries
-over-rated and superseded. The historical Jesus had been exposed to
-speculative criticism by scholars, and every tyro in the Red Room had
-the courage to follow.
-
-But Strindberg defied the art-consciousness of the world by attacking
-Shakespeare. He knew all his plays, had read them in English, and was
-familiar with the commentators. He inveighed against the loose and
-disconnected composition in _Hamlet_, the commonplace characterisation,
-the weakness of the anti-climax. His sling wanted a Goliath. The blind
-worship of that which is old and famous roused him to battle. Friends
-who came from Upsala thought alike and talked alike. They had become
-parrots who repeated the same views on Raphael and Schiller, automata
-from which conventional imitation had plucked every idiosyncrasy.
-
-The happy camaraderie of the Bohemian circle and the race for
-intellectual independence did not assuage the pangs of physical hunger.
-After some dinnerless days Strindberg decided to make another attempt
-to join the profession of his heart. He travelled to Gothenburg on
-borrowed money, presented himself to the manager of the theatre, and
-offered his services as actor. His demand for a rehearsal of the play
-and part which he selected was granted, but he could not command the
-necessary emotional energy. He was offered an engagement at a small
-salary, but the condition of waiting for two months before appearing
-did not commend itself to his impetuous spirit, and he returned
-dejected to Stockholm. He felt that the charge of changeability which
-was brought against him was not altogether unjust, and though he was
-ashamed of his many changes, he could not act otherwise.
-
-The persistence with which Strindberg attempted a theatrical career
-is strange in view of the lack of self-confidence, with which he was
-afflicted when face to face with an audience. At viva voce examinations
-he was attacked by sudden aphasia, though he knew the answers to the
-questions. He found difficulty in public speaking, and his linguistic
-gifts did not help him to speak foreign languages with ease.
-
-In the beginning of 1873 Strindberg found employment as editor of
-a new paper published in the interests of the insurance system.
-A less appropriate sphere of activity could scarcely have been
-devised, but he managed to transform the dry bones of premium and
-compensation into delectable morsels of brain-food. He penetrated
-the mysteries of commerce and statistics, studied the relationship
-between birth-rate and pauperism, and examined Socialism as a solution
-of economic riddles. But his inability to accommodate himself to
-existing conditions brought the enterprise to a speedy end. It was
-never financially sound, and when Strindberg chastised the methods
-of shipping insurance companies subscriptions began to fall off. A
-burlesque in which he ridiculed the methods of insolvent companies,
-and which was privately acted before indignant victims did not add to
-his popularity as editor. He exposed shams and humbug regardless of
-consequences. The crash came during the summer, when Strindberg was
-seeking peace of mind on his island. A loan had gaily been contracted
-in the Riksbank to meet the costs of publication.
-
-The day of repayment found Strindberg and his friends of the "Red Room"
-absolutely incapable of paying the debt. The presence of the printer's
-bill and the absence of the guarantees offered by the various insurance
-companies brought him to despair. The catastrophe had been precipitated
-by the carelessness of his coadjutors; Strindberg had honestly done his
-part to fulfil the obligations of the loan.
-
-Strindberg fell seriously ill with fever. In delirious dreams he was
-haunted by futile remorse, by angry creditors and subscribers. In his
-brain-storms he battled with the evil one, who was permitted to bring
-deception and suffering to innocent humanity whilst God looked on
-complacently. His illness was followed by ague, which troubled him for
-many years.
-
-A plan to find Nirvana in the waves ended in the return of the will to
-live and a liaison with the housekeeper in the cottage.
-
-The friends who shared the cottage with him had left, and Strindberg
-fell passionately in love. She had been kind to him during his
-illness, and he felt drawn towards her by invisible cords which, under
-the circumstances, spelt tragedy. For after a short time she was
-unfaithful to him, and he fell a prey to tormenting jealousy.
-
-No human experience passed him by lightly; he was a sensitive subject,
-who received impressions with painful vividness, and responded with the
-volcanic intensity of surcharged emotion.
-
-The description which he gives in _In the Red Room_ of the psychosis of
-his jealousy is of much interest:
-
-     "But as he walked on the shore, through glades and into the
-     forest, design and colour began to mingle as if he had seen it all
-     through tears. The mental shock, remorse, repentance, shame, began
-     to dissolve him, and consciousness was loosened in its fixtures.
-     Old thoughts about a task unfulfilled, about humanity suffering
-     under mistakes and delusions, arose. Suffering enlarged his ego,
-     the impression that he was fighting an evil power stimulated his
-     resistance into wild defiance; the desire to battle with fate
-     awoke, and from a heap of stakes he thoughtlessly picked up a long
-     pointed stick. In his hand it became a spear and a club.
-
-     "He burst into the forest, breaking branches as if he had been
-     fighting its dark giants. He kicked the fungi under his feet as if
-     he were battering in so many empty gnomes' skulls. He yelled as if
-     he were driving wolves and foxes, and opp! opp! opp! echoed the
-     cry through the pine forest.
-
-     "At last he came to a rock which rose as an almost perpendicular
-     wall in front of him. He struck it with his spear as if he wished
-     to hew it down, and stormed up its side. Bushes crackled under
-     his hand, and rustled down the mountain, tom up by the roots;
-     stones rolled down; he put his foot on young junipers and whipped
-     them till they lay broken like down-trodden grass. Thus he forced
-     himself up and stood on the top.
-
-     "The rocks lay below, and beyond them the sea in an enormous
-     circular view. He breathed as if now at last he had sufficient
-     space. But on the mountain there stood a broken fir which was
-     taller than he. He climbed it, spear in hand, and seated himself
-     astride on the top which formed a saddle. Then he took off his
-     belt, made a noose and hung it round a branch, came down from the
-     tree and picked up a large stone which he placed in the sling.
-
-     "Now there was only the sky above him. But beneath him spread the
-     pine forest, head by head, like an army storming his citadel.
-     Beyond it the fjord raged and advanced towards him like cavalry of
-     white cuirassiers; and beyond it lay the naked rocks like a fleet
-     of monitors.
-
-     "'Come,' he cried, and brandished his spear, 'come a hundred, come
-     a thousand,' he called. And spurring his high wooden horse he
-     shook his weapon.
-
-     "The September wind blew from the fjord, and the sun set. The pine
-     forest below became a murmuring crowd. And now he wanted to speak
-     to them. But they murmured incomprehensible words and answered
-     only 'Wood,' when he spoke to them.
-
-     "'Jesus or Barabbas?' he roared. 'Jesus or Barabbas?'
-
-     "'Barabbas, of course,' he answered himself, when he listened for
-     an answer.
-
-     "Darkness fell, and he felt frightened, dismounted from his
-     saddle, and went home.
-
-     "Was he mad? No! He was only a poet who had sung in the forest
-     instead of at the writing-table. But he hoped that he was mad;
-     he wished darkness to extinguish his light, for he saw no hope
-     which could illuminate the darkness.
-
-     "His consciousness, which saw through the nothingness of life,
-     wanted to see no more. It preferred to live in illusions, like the
-     sick man who wants to believe that he will get well and therefore
-     hopes it!"
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Statue by Carl Eldh.--(Reproduced by
-kind permission of the Sculptor.)]
-
-Was he mad? The school of psychologists which sees in every
-manifestation of the _genus irritabile_ evidence in favour of a verdict
-of insanity will conclude that he was. There is urgent need for a
-psychological restatement of the supernormalities of genius. The wild
-outbursts of the world's intuitionalists, the devouring fire of their
-creative passion, must ever remain unintelligible to soul-paupers
-and to those whose cerebral activities are strictly dependent upon
-the presence of print. But genius may expect better understanding
-from those who give careful thought to the processes of mind, and who
-should have penetrated beyond the definitions of "sane" or "mad." Those
-who live and die in ignorance of the blessings of Horace's golden
-mediocrity probably find the compensation which Dryden voiced:
-
-     "There is a pleasure, sure, in being mad,
-     Which none but madmen know."
-
-The consciousness of greatness and power which accompanies the
-unshackling of genius is mistaken for megalomania and contrasted
-with the accompanying inability to achieve worldly success along
-well-trodden roads. The result is contempt and ridicule.
-
-Strindberg descended from his peak of glory, and for the seventh time
-the prodigal son returned to his father's house. He was not welcome. He
-had proved himself a good-for-nothing, and the family now treated him
-with open contempt.
-
-Life at home became intolerable and he again fled to the sea. He
-lived for some time at Sandhamn, amongst pilots and coastguard-men.
-Acquaintance with the sea-faring life was a tonic to the mind and an
-incentive to interest in the practical side of life.
-
-"You are twenty-four," said one of these friends to him, "and you are
-nothing yet. You are surely going to be something, like other people,
-even if you want to be an author, for one can't live on that."
-
-Wise and timely words. Following his friend's advice, Strindberg
-aspired to a clerk-ship in the local telegraph office, and diligently
-practised the art of the telegraph operator. After a month he was
-allowed to send off the weather telegrams. The office routine was
-somewhat painful, but life amongst honest and hard-working seamen
-showed him new sides of human character, and the steady sense of duty
-which keeps the mind placid and happy amidst whirlpools and storms.
-
-Two shipwrecks off the coast supplied material for picturesque and
-vivid description, which he made use of in letters to _Dagens Nyheter_,
-one of the daily papers of Stockholm. The letters brought him a good
-offer of work on the staff of the paper, which he thankfully accepted.
-
-At first everything went smoothly. The editorial office was like an
-observatory, from which one could study the world and watch history
-in the making. By inapt comparison between the old University and the
-potentialities of the new Press, his contempt for the former grew.
-
-The pressman is invested with authority. By the aid of modern
-inventions and the efficient organisation of the news-service, he is
-enabled to survey events on the world's stage, and to seize its acting
-personalities whilst they are still warm with speech. He becomes the
-central nervous system of pulsating humanity; he is expected to
-interpret its sensory impressions and to enrich the body-social by
-concepts and opinions. Strindberg saw the power of the Press, and in
-the anticipatory joy of being able to express himself freely, he buried
-his old disgust at the wickedness of journalism.
-
-But the peace was short-lived. He was soon taught that one must not
-aim at too wide a view-point or express oneself too freely. The ideal
-and the real newspaper are two very different things. The idea that
-a newspaper must offer its comment and its opinions to the buying
-and subscribing public in strict conformity with party colour and
-convention was not one to which he could give loyal allegiance.
-He reported the debates in the _Riksdag_ in such a disrespectful
-manner that a less critical man had to take his place. He reviewed a
-Christian journal by declaring that the publisher had incurred a heavy
-responsibility by spreading such errors, with the result that his
-editor had to appease the indignant publisher.
-
-He gave vent to highly original views on art, and when allowed to act
-as dramatic critic of the performances at the Royal Theatre, took the
-opportunity of paying off old scores. There were many complaints
-against him, and he was even threatened with a thrashing by a
-theatrical company which was smarting under his attacks. It was evident
-that his services were not appreciated, and Strindberg relieved the
-newspaper of his embarrassing presence.
-
-Starvation followed, and under the lash of that whip a few months of
-distasteful work on another paper. This time, he tells us, was a period
-of bitter want, illness and humiliation. He dared' not go home; his
-friends regarded him with pity and suspicion. The circle of the Red
-Room was dissolved. Depression and dislike of human society overtook
-him. There were days when he preferred to go without food to meeting
-people in the restaurant. On other days he followed the same course
-through want of money. Sometimes he spent the whole day lying on a
-sofa, his thoughts spun in a circle which held the hope that death or
-lunacy would set him free, but, when hunger came in the evening, he was
-driven out to seek help.
-
-At this time of utter misery there occurred one of those sudden changes
-of circumstance which are interwoven in the sombre warp and woof of
-Strindberg's destiny like a thread of scarlet. Following a friend's
-advice he had applied for the post of assistant librarian in the Royal
-Library of Stockholm. His application was successful, and in 1874 he
-again placed his foot on the step-ladder of social respectability,
-redeemed by the titles of _Royal_ Secretary and "extraordinarie
-amanuens."
-
-He threw himself into the depths of human thought, contained in
-the books of which he was now master, with the eagerness of one
-who is so thirsty that he wants to drink the sea. New passion, new
-disillusionment. The great problems of life, those that last through
-centuries and chaff the impotence of the human mind, remained problems.
-Like a cow chewing the cud, the philosophers of mankind laboured with
-the same unanswerable questions. Away then from the intellectual fields
-where the mind is poisoned and left in irremediable misery! His new
-work demanded a useful and acceptable contribution to the resources of
-the library.
-
-He undertook to catalogue Chinese Manuscripts, and devoted a year
-to the study of the Chinese language. When the catalogue was ready,
-he handed it with a certain pride of victory to the authorities of
-the library, for he was now the sinologue of the institution. The
-ancient culture of the yellow empire attracted him with its atmosphere
-of somnolent mysticism. It was an opiate to his restlessness. In the
-Chinese literature he searched for information about Sweden and Swedes,
-and in the Swedish literature he looked for references to China and its
-inhabitants.
-
-The result was a "Memoir," which was read at the Academie des
-Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Correspondence with sinologues all
-over the world followed, together with membership of learned societies
-and a medal from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. "Thus,"
-Strindberg tells us, "he succeeded in contracting a healthy idiotism
-which seriously threatened to extinguish all intelligence." He advanced
-so far on his new path that he even coveted a Russian order.
-
-He was at last somebody and something in the eyes of the world.
-
-Friends recognised him, and saluted him like one who, having been sick
-and foolish, had tired of his folly, and returned to normal life.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-MARRIED AND BLASPHEMOUS
-
-
-Strindberg's relations to women and his three unhappy marriages
-were the fountain of soul-racking experience from which he emerged,
-possibly not wiser, but certainly more powerful as an interpreter
-of himself and of humanity. The women he loved were injured by him,
-inasmuch as he made their real and imagined failings the subject of
-brutal biographical romance. The fact that the blame fell upon him,
-not upon the victims of his conjugal experimentation, would scarcely
-compensate for the painful publicity with which he punished the women
-and unburdened himself.
-
-Worthy people have agitated themselves over the question whether
-Strindberg was a real evil-liver or not. He was certainly an evil-liver
-in the sense of conventional morality. In giving free play to the
-impulses of his ever-expanding personality, he played the colossal
-egotist and sinned against the laws of God and man. If by evil-liver
-we understand a craven sensualist or a man beset with Don Juanesque
-frivolities, he was not one.
-
-There was nothing of the light-hearted immoralist of the comic
-stage, or the poetic profligacy of Robert Bums, about Strindberg;
-he acted throughout the heavy tragedian in the inexorable drama of
-sex-antagonism.
-
-The exemplary husband and the faithful lover are not, as a rule, found
-among the torchbearers of literature, though few elect to outrage
-literary decency by minute public dissections of their past loves. _The
-Confessions of a Fool_, which Strindberg himself called "a terrible
-book," is a nauseating record of his first marriage, in which love
-and lust, hatred and disgust, adoration and contempt, exultation and
-misery, are set forth in their psychological relation to a sexual love,
-the disappointment of which lashed the artist in Strindberg into fury
-against woman. The ghost of Strindberg's first wife never left his
-side. In the _Confession_ she is portrayed as a beautiful siren with
-golden hair, adorably small feet and a false heart--a fiend in female
-form, with the soul of a prostitute and the worst vices of a loathsome
-debauchee. She reappears in his dramas _The Father, Comrades, The
-Link_; in his stories and essays; in different characters, drawn with
-a pen dipped in gall, retouched and seen in different perspective, but
-always the cause of man's degradation or downfall.
-
-Strindberg's first marriage was preceded by a divorce, for his wife
-Siri von Essen, daughter of Captain Carl Reinhold von Essen, was at
-the time when Strindberg made her acquaintance the wife of Baron
-Wrangel, Captain of the Life Guards. The reader of the fourth volume
-of Strindberg's autobiography, entitled _The Author_, and of _The
-Confession of a Fool_, receives very different impressions of the
-author's first experience of matrimony. In the former, which deals
-with the period 1877-87, there is scant reference to the matrimonial
-tragedy which is the sole and sordid theme of _The Confession_, which
-relates to the same period. _The Author_ was published in 1887, _The
-Confession_ was written in 1888, a German version published in 1893,
-and the original French edition in 1894. The reason for the omissions
-in _The Author_ may mercifully be found in the desire to shield living
-persons in Sweden from the fate of being the central figures in a
-_chronique scandaleuse_. _The Confession_ has never been published in
-book-form in Sweden, or in the Swedish language.[1] A pirated Swedish
-translation appeared in instalments in a disreputable paper in spite
-of the author's protest. Throughout his literary warfare Strindberg
-has shown scant regard for personal feeling, and when he withheld _The
-Confession_ from Swedish readers he probably was conscious of the dire
-results which would follow upon the publication of his "worst" book.
-The law-suit following upon the publication of _Married_, in 1884,
-must have been a warning example. In a letter written from Paris,
-in 1884, Bjornstjerne Bjornson relates his impressions of a visit
-from Strindberg, and refers to the latter's inability to deal with
-principles and opinions apart from personality.
-
-"He has been a pietist," he writes, "and so he is still, in spite of
-many experiences--not religiously, but morally. A cause is for him only
-persons, bring them out, whip them."[2]
-
-In _The Confession_ Strindberg's wife is certainly brought out and
-whipped. But the whipping was preceded by idolatrous adoration.
-
-"He would and he must have a woman to worship," he writes of some
-innocent _schwarmerei_ which was a prelude to the fugue of marriage.
-"To worship was his weakness, since the idea of God had been obscured.
-He was too weak to believe in himself, and his sense of reverence,
-which was given no nourishment as he had lost reverence for everything,
-found this expression. He had no friends, and he must, therefore, at
-any price worship, revere, love."
-
-Of the troubled termination of another love episode, which was not so
-innocent but which served to arouse his yearnings for pure affection,
-he writes with true Strindbergian absence of erotic humour:
-
-"If he had now been inclined to be a woman-hater he would, of course,
-not have looked at a woman again, and condemned the whole sex, but he
-was a woman-worshipper, and, therefore, he immediately found another."
-
-The woman-worshipper in Strindberg was generally silenced by his
-inseparable twin--the woman-hater. The woman-worshipper fell in love
-with the pretty baroness, suffered the torture of the damned in being
-denied her presence, was enslaved by her "roguish curls, golden as a
-cornfield on which the sun is shining,"[3] her willowy figure, her
-movements full, of softness and grace, her elegance in dress, her
-aristocratic apparition. The woman-hater looked on the "fall" with a
-sneer, participated with joy-mingled disgust in the intrigue which led
-to divorce proceedings, hurried marriage, and the premature birth and
-death of a child, cursed the bondage of ten years of married "hell,"
-and finally related the intimacies of the conjugal struggle in the
-public confessional in sibilant tones of revenge.
-
-The friendship between the "Royal secretary" and the Baroness began
-under the happiest circumstances and without any fore-shadowing of
-coming evil. Strindberg was a welcome guest in the family, a trusted
-friend of husband and wife, a respectful admirer of the girlish
-mother who, seen by the side of her little girl of three, seemed
-Madonna-like in her chaste aloofness. The Baroness dreamt of going
-on the stage, of devoting herself to art, to a mission, and of thus
-gaining individual independence. The theatre became a bridge of union
-between her and Strindberg. The Baron was a sympathetic listener, a
-pleasant companion, a gallant soldier, who, though warmly interested in
-Strindberg's personality and career, could not always suppress a slight
-condescension in his manner towards him.
-
-The aristocracy of birth and the aristocracy of brain presented
-themselves to Strindberg in a juxtaposition which threw the superiority
-of the former into pleasant relief. That class-consciousness, which was
-peculiarly sensitive in him, invested his friendship with the Baron
-with a special interest. When visiting him at the guard-house he was
-not altogether free from a sense of awe and admiration engendered by
-the atmosphere of military power and aristocratic rule. "A son of the
-people," he writes, "a descendant of the middle classes, cannot but be
-impressed by the insignia of the highest power of the land."
-
-Before the bowl of _punsch_ he enjoyed a sense of social superiority
-over the lieutenants, an identity with the ruling forces which
-was rudely shattered when the conversation turned on the riot of
-1868, during which the Guards had charged into the mob, of which
-Strindberg had been a red-hearted constituent. When the Captain spoke
-contemptuously of the mob, "the hatred of race, the hatred of caste,
-tradition, rose between them like an insurmountable barrier." "As I saw
-him sitting there," writes Strindberg, "the sword between his knees--a
-sword of honour, the hilt of which was ornamented with the name and
-crown of the Royal giver--I felt strongly that our friendship was but
-an artificial one, the work of a woman, who constituted the only link
-between us."
-
-The birth of Strindberg's illicit passion for the Baroness was followed
-by alternate spells of adoration and loathing. The picture which he
-draws of the struggle is highly characteristic.
-
-He makes his attic into a temple of worship, with azaleas, geraniums
-and roses, and prepares an altar for the adoration of his Madonna with
-the child. He places her portrait in a semicircle of flower-pots,
-with the lamplight full on it, and passes the evenings with blinds
-drawn down in the Holy of Holies. But the strain becomes unbearable.
-Another evening he is found in the midst of dissolute friends, a
-partaker in an orgy of youthful blasphemy and desecration of love.
-Amidst bacchanalian invocation of the satanic, he delivers himself
-of a rhapsody of insults against the adored woman, dissects her in
-anatomical terms and coarse allusions, and ends the day by sacrificing
-his woman-worship on the polluted altar of Aphrodite Pandemos.
-He wants to flee from temptation, and decides to quit Stockholm
-for Paris. Embarked upon a cargo steamer bound for Havre, after a
-touching farewell from his two friends, duty's journey is found to be
-unendurable. He is tormented with loneliness, overcome by the thought
-of the dreary voyage and the cruel separation from the beloved. A
-wild desire to escape from the moving prison, to swim to the shore,
-seizes him. An opportunity for less dramatic flight offers itself; the
-pilot cutter is about to leave the steamer for the shore. Strindberg
-impetuously begs the captain to put him ashore, and the latter,
-suspecting the sanity of the traveller, allows him and his luggage to
-depart in the cutter. Once ashore and in the quiet seaside place where,
-the spring before, he had spent happy hours with her the situation
-becomes awkward. He is ashamed of his weakness; how is his conduct to
-be explained? After engaging a room at the hotel he wanders into the
-forest and runs amuck among the fir trees and the tender associations
-of the past, the tears raining down his cheeks, his heart in a turmoil
-of conflicting emotions. He concludes that he must either die or go out
-of his mind, and chooses a wilfully contracted pneumonia as the most
-suitable road to extinction. He undresses by the shore, throws himself
-into the cold water and swims out into the open sea. After a struggle
-with the waves, he returns exhausted. Beckoning Fate to do her worst,
-he then climbs an aider tree in a state of perfect nudity. The icy
-October gale responds, and, when he descends shivering, he is satisfied
-with the first part of the expiatory act. Back at the hotel he sends
-a telegram to the Baron, informing his friends of his illness, goes
-to bed, and drains a cup of poison in the form of an overdose of the
-sleeping-draught supplied by the local chemist. The next morning brings
-the Baron and the anxious Baroness, and a return of rude health which
-neither gale nor poison could shake.
-
-He returns to Stockholm, and the old life is resumed. Frequent calls
-on the Baroness, weak struggles to resist, are followed by mutual
-declarations of love. She visits his attic and the temple of pure
-adoration is made profane. Her tender conscience finds excuses in her
-husband's infidelities, her ardent lover is in the ecstasy of conquest.
-The husband is told everything. The scandal, the family quarrels, the
-intermixture of the criticism and condemnation of others which follow
-expel the sinners from their paradise.
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--1884.]
-
-Proceedings to dissolve the marriage are commenced, and the Baroness
-spends a few weeks in Copenhagen so as to comply with the legal
-necessity of having "deserted" her husband. On her return to Stockholm
-she is determined to realise her ideal of going on the stage. She
-succeeds in obtaining an engagement under the patronage of two famous
-actors and eventually makes a successful debut. The requisite publicity
-is provided not only by lovers of art, but also by scandal-mongers. The
-process of disillusionment has begun. The iconoclast is already master
-of the idolater, and Strindberg sees the disjointed skeleton where a
-few months ago he saw the beautiful form of a goddess. "Everything
-was permitted to us now, but temptation had diminished," he writes in
-illustration of that lurking element of the _macabre_ which caused
-sudden satiety and shattered his love through the dissociation of
-his sexual personality. He does not stand by, a passive onlooker of
-the dissolution; he assists by bitter invective and gross abuse. The
-ex-Baroness on the stage is no longer to him the virginal mother with
-whom he had fallen in love; she is an actress "with insolent gestures,
-bad manners, boastful, overbearing." The sight of the stockings,
-destined to envelop the feet which a short time ago were heavenly, is
-now revolting. He notices that her room is untidy, her dress slovenly,
-that she wears old slippers, and that her gestures are reminiscent of
-the street. He discovers that he has no desire for her company, that
-she inspires him with disgust.
-
-Such were the first stages of Strindberg's union with the woman, who
-has been analysed, divided, multiplied and endowed with every variety
-of feminine crime in his writings. Eager to fly from "the repulsive
-heap of offal," to which he likens the whole tragedy of the divorce,
-he went to Paris in the company of a friend who enjoyed the sudden
-affluence of a legacy. This time he safely reached his destination, and
-experienced no uncontrollable impulse to abandon the journey. In Paris
-he received a letter from the Baroness, in which she told him that she
-was about to become a mother and begged him to save her from dishonour.
-
-His love received a fresh stimulus; the shade of the Madonna resumed
-temporary physical form. Strindberg returned to Stockholm, willing to
-retrieve the past and mould the future by holy matrimony. The wedding
-took place in December, 1877. Shortly afterwards a little girl was
-prematurely born--a weakly infant who died two days later, thereby
-saving the parents the anxiety of keeping its existence secret.
-
-The unfoldment of the story of Strindberg's first marriage, the
-tragi-comedy of its rhythm of love and hatred, shows not only
-incompatibility of temper and a profound spiritual alienation, but
-his unfitness to bear with equanimity prolonged period of domestic
-enslavement. The superficial reader of the unpleasant details of _The
-Confession_ will close the book with Geronte's question on his lips:
-"Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere?" The sexual psychology
-of the book, its profound, though brutal exposure of its author's
-emotional intemperance, can only be studied in conjunction with the
-whole of his autobiographical writings. A mood, a phase, a temper,
-appertaining to the woman-hater, are seething in _The Confession_, and
-produce pearls of literary power as well as comicalities, and betises
-which are reminiscent of a third-rate French novel.
-
-_The Author_ reveals the idealist in quest of true love, a man who can
-feel the purity and joy of generative creation, the natural pathos and
-sacredness of family life.
-
-Of the psychic rearrangement which preceded the birth of the second
-child, Strindberg writes:
-
-"He received the first certainty with fear. How could he receive and
-bring up a child, and how would the ideal marriage of his dreams now be
-realised? But he accustomed himself to the thought, and the unborn one
-soon became a personal acquaintance, a beloved guest who was expected,
-and for whose future he wanted to fight. The wife who hitherto had been
-a comrade was endowed with another value as mother, and the ugly side
-of their relationship, which already had been noticeable, disappeared.
-A great, high mutual interest ennobled the relationship, made it
-more intimate and roused dormant forces to activity. This time of
-waiting was more beautiful than the period of the engagement and the
-honeymoon, and the arrival of the child the most beautiful in his life."
-
-Those who see in Strindberg's attitude towards marriage and women
-nothing but the ravings of a sacrilegious and obscene mind deliberately
-shut their eyes to aspirations, such as the above, which, however
-fleeting, were as much a part of the man's attitude as the profanities
-which even his warmest panegyrists cannot defend.
-
-Strindberg continues: "When he held the new-born daughter in his arms
-he felt that the soul only achieves immortality through transformation
-in a younger body, and that a childless life is a carnivore which only
-eats others without being eaten. But he also experienced a strange
-feeling of having flowered and gone to seed. He was child again in his
-child, but he himself felt that he had grown old. He was deposed and
-there was already a successor in the house."
-
-The feeling of being deposed did not prevent subsequent acts of
-unimpaired autocracy, but the record of the first rush of feelings of
-paternal solidarity is of interest in view of the anarchic hostility to
-the family which Strindberg's writings so often express.
-
-The troubled course of love had not interfered with the rising wave
-of literary productivity. Before marriage he had continued to write
-short stories descriptive of coast life, and in addition to his labours
-as assistant librarian he had obtained fairly remunerative work as an
-art-critic. He had experienced so much disappointment as a dramatist
-that he decided to employ another literary form.
-
-In 1877 a collection of short stories appeared, entitled _From
-Fjardingen and Svartbacken_, which described the undergraduates' life
-at Upsala and caused annoyance by its disclosure of the swamps and
-pitfalls in the academical training-ground. These twelve sketches,
-written with directness of phrase and a vividness of description which
-show keen powers of observation, were met with charges of exaggeration.
-The superannuated student who spins out a worthless existence in
-gasconade and song, supplementing the weakness of his mind by a few
-high-sounding philosophical catch-words; the popular poet who wins
-applause and friends by impromptu doggerel, stupid and coarse; the
-refined and sensitive youth who is hated because he is a devotee of
-outer and inner cleanliness and decorum; the wild spendthrift who
-smashes windows and extinguishes street-lamps as a pastime worthy
-of his caste--these and others are drawn against a background of
-traditional cant, humbug and soul-destroying lies. Several of the
-stories have autobiographical patches. There is withal a good-humoured
-satire, not free from youthful pathos, permeated by sympathy and a
-personal note of an experience acutely felt. The book is interesting as
-the first specimen of Strindberg's realistic style as a prosaist. The
-reviews of the book expressed divergent opinions; Strindberg read them
-with the composure of one who knows how such views are manufactured.
-
-Rebuffed by the refusal of theatrical managers to accept _Master Olof_,
-he had re-written it in verse. The new edition was published in 1877,
-and the reception brought its author bitter disappointment, and fuller
-experience of the indifference which kills. The critics were silent.
-They ignored the masterpiece of his youth, and presented a deaf ear to
-the poetry of the heretic. One paper declared the play to be humbug.
-His old colleagues of the press-table saw no reason for acclamation.
-
-The satire which had shone with a mellow light in the sketches of
-Upsala life was fanned into hot flame through contact with the world
-of Philistines. Determined to speak his mind untrammelled by accepted
-standards of literary form, whether poetic or prosaic, historical
-or modern, he now wrote a novel which he called _The Red Room_. The
-book was published in 1879, and produced an outburst of anger and
-admiration. Voltaire's words, "Rien n'est si desagreable que d'etre
-pendu obscurement," had been chosen by Strindberg as a motto for
-the book and in protest against the treatment he had received. The
-force and style of _The Red Room_ effectively protected its author
-from continued obscurity. Strindberg's name was made by this book;
-henceforth it was the war-cry of opposing factions. As a novel the
-book fails through lack of cohesive development of character-study
-and events. As a series of sketches of the follies and vanities which
-permeate the social hierarchy it compels attention by its direct,
-speaking style, and the singular freshness and spontaneity of its
-satire. The central figure of the book is Arvid Falk--Strindberg the
-idealist--a journalist whose contact with the world results in a series
-of disillusionments. Everything that is dishonest, cruel, banal,
-hypocritical and vile in the social system is exposed to view in the
-pages of _The Red Room_, which still, after thirty years, retain their
-freshness and the warmth of the burning moral indignation which caused
-them to be written.
-
-He had found in the depth of the human heart the seven deadly sins,
-and he traced their poison in every human relationship, under the
-cloak of respectability, in the qualities which lead to worldly
-success and honour. Oblique finance, dishonest company-promoting,
-show philanthropy, unctuous religiosity, servile journalism, create
-characters which are drawn in bold and dark outline with strongly
-concentrated colours, but without the exaggeration of which he
-was accused. The characters are so typical of human weakness and
-wickedness, the psychological analysis of motives and acts so accurate,
-that the indictment of the book remains true in spite of changes
-in social form and personal types. The pompous publisher who grows
-fat on the brains of young authors, whilst he intimidates them by
-depreciation; the editor who finds favour with his party and his
-employers by suppressing every unwelcome truth and spreading every
-useful party lie; the moneylender who builds up a banking business
-through exploitation of the financial ruin of others, are contrasted
-with the unsuccessful and the unworldly.
-
-Amongst the artists and intellectual _dilettanti_ who assembled in the
-Red Room of Berns Restaurant in the evening, and whose hard struggle
-for bread in the day formed such a sharp contrast to the comfort of the
-time-servers, Strindberg found the Dionysian madness, without which the
-sanity of the rest of the world would have been unbearable. There is
-still life in the making, goodness inviolable, a brotherhood that woos
-the joy and beauty of life, contemptuous of the badges and labels of
-Society! But the majority who writhed under his satirical portraiture
-did not find compensation in his exceptions. For the lightning
-of his satire had not only played upon the time-worn objects of
-ridicule--those from which they dissociated themselves with a smile of
-tolerant amusement--it had illuminated and rent the pillars of Society
-to which they clung with superstitious respect. Had he not shown how
-literary and dramatic reputations were made and unmade by the personal
-ill-will or good-humour of self-constituted critics? Had he not handled
-the activities of the ancient art-critic, who bestowed automatic
-praise on all his old friends, and chilly silence on all new painters
-with merciless severity? Did not his unseemly badinage with the
-civil service, and with the well-established routine in governmental
-departments, stamp him as an enemy of Society? Some method of silencing
-him had to be found.
-
-The manner in which the book was written was provocative by its
-idiomatic phrasing and the naturalness of its scenes--every sentence
-was charged with revolt against the ultra-academical style which had
-been the accepted standard of good writing. This was a realism in
-fiction which was dangerous alike to morals and literary comportment,
-introduced by a man who proved himself to be master of a new art in
-words. The anxiety was abated, when some outraged critic hit upon the
-idea that Strindberg was but an imitator of Zola. This was not true;
-the author of _The Red Room_ had not read any of Zola's writings, but
-he had read Dickens--thoroughly--and admired the gentle humour with
-which the great English novelist unmasked social injustices and their
-complacent representatives. He had felt a desire to be able to clothe
-his indictment of Society in similar form. There is little similarity
-between the writings of Dickens and those of Strindberg; the latter
-lacked altogether the child-like and detached interest with which
-Dickens watched and chronicled the doings of the amazing people around
-him.
-
-In Dickens's books there is a distinct line of cleavage between the
-good and the bad characters. _The Red Room_ contains well-marked
-specimens of both, but most of Strindberg's writings depict the hybrids
-of good and evil, the psychological complexity in the human struggle
-for knowledge. As a novelist Strindberg shows some affinity with
-George Gissing. Strindberg's descriptions of the squalid tragedy of
-poverty--honest, hopeless, heaven-forsaken poverty--have the same power
-of spoiling the enjoyment of a good dinner as those of Gissing. In _New
-Grub Street_ Gissing lets Biffen say, "Show the numberless repulsive
-features of common decent life." The repulsive features of human life
-generally met with protesting resonance in Strindberg's poignant
-sensibility; he described them and the result is "unpleasant."
-
-The publication of The Red Room was followed by an intense literary
-activity on the part of its restless author. He had found his tongue,
-and he had found an audience.
-
-The versatility of mind and production which was the despair of his
-critics became apparent. In 1880 _The Secret of the Guild_, a comedy
-in four acts, was published. The theme of the play is the unsuccessful
-attempt to complete a church by a guild of masons in Upsala in 1402.
-For fifty years the work has proceeded, but envy, dishonesty and pride
-of trade have stood in the way of its completion. The old alderman is
-deposed and his son becomes master of the work. Jacques, the son, is
-a man of action, ambitious and unscrupulous, who urges on the work
-without the cautiousness of old age. The roof is laid, the tower is
-built, but the secret of success has eluded Jacques. The tower falls
-as a result of ignorance of the spiritual secret which would have
-preserved it. "The church was built in sin and therefore it lies
-in ruins," says the old alderman. The play faithfully reflects the
-Middle-Age atmosphere, and harmonises with Strindberg's earlier plays
-in its vivid presentation of the struggle between two generations.
-
-Its infusion of faith and Christian symbology had the effect of
-modifying the storm of execration, with which pious respectability
-strove to break the author of _The Red Room_.
-
-The performance of _Master Olof_ at the Swedish Theatre in 1880 was
-a great success, and it was no longer possible to ignore Strindberg
-as a dramatist. Revised five times in deference to criticism and
-technique, the play had at last conquered opposition by the richness
-of its historical imagination, the splendour of its form and the fiery
-youthfulness of its treatment of the oldest of spiritual problems. The
-tardy acknowledgment was balm even to Strindberg's sceptical soul, and
-the two plays which he now wrote breathed "faith, hope, and charity,"
-as if the gloomy truths of _The Red Room_ had been forgotten.
-
-_The Journey of Lucky Peter_[4] satirises humanity and Society in its
-narrative of what befell Peter who wanted to see the world and taste
-its luxuries, but like all good fairy-tales the drama ends happily,
-and Peter regains peace of heart, and finds his dual-soul. And the
-satire is tempered with a humour, so sympathetic, an understanding
-of the doers and victims of evil, so delicate, that the reader of
-this fairy-play puts down the book with a sigh of satisfaction that,
-after all, the worst experiences in this world prove themselves to be
-but necessary milestones of the pilgrim's progress. Lucky Peter who
-discovers the nothingness of the rich man's pleasures, of the king's
-power, the bitterness of fame, the changeability of human institutions!
-We envy him his rapid liberation from the chains of flesh, the severe
-tuition under his fairy-teacher. The charm of the play is irresistible;
-it has the mysterious eventfulness of _Peter Pan_ and _The Blue Bird_,
-but none of the fatuities which often distort plays for children of all
-ages. Even when he entered fairyland Strindberg could not leave his
-intelligence behind.
-
-In _Sir Bengt's Wife_, the other play of this period, he gives us
-an historical drama of marriage, in which love rises triumphant and
-purified through life's difficulties and misunderstandings. Sir Bengt
-has fallen in love with the nun who is doing penance for the sinful
-response of her unruly woman's heart. He delivers her from the tyranny
-of the abbess, and the wedding festivities promise a life-long feast
-for the bold knight and his fair lady. But the fates are jealous of
-so much happiness, such blending of strength and beauty, and disaster
-overtakes them in the person of the king's bailiff who demands the
-payment of a heavy fine in consequence of the knight's negligence in
-not having provided the king with a mounted soldier. Sir Bengt is
-unable to pay, and loses his knighthood. The unscrupulous bailiff, who
-has designs upon Lady Margit, helps Sir Bengt to accept the services
-of a moneylender by which complete ruin is averted. Sir Bengt conceals
-his trouble from his bride, and seeks to redeem his position by hard
-and honest work. A child is born, but the harmony between husband and
-wife is disturbed through misunderstandings. To Lady Margit the change
-in her husband is distressing: he works like a peasant, and has become
-oblivious of the arts and graces of knightly conduct.
-
-One day when, by ignorance and womanish love of the beautiful, she
-has thwarted his plan for the restitution of his property he lifts
-his hand to strike her. Protected by the Reformation, which has now
-been accomplished, she asks the king to dissolve her marriage with a
-brutal and unworthy man. The wicked bailiff is watching the disruption
-of the home with satisfaction, and succeeds in gaining Lady Margit's
-affection. Fortunately she discovers the villainy of his plan, and
-tastes the reprobation of "the world" in time. The _denouement_ of the
-play is reached by a reconciliation between husband and wife, following
-upon the mutual discovery of sterling merit and the inviolability of
-marriage, parenthood and home. The simplicity of the love-drama, the
-inherent goodness of the characters, including the Father Confessor
-who, to fit the general harmony, kills the phantoms of his lower nature
-is scarcely Strindbergian. One dominant note rings clear and undefiled
-through the three plays of this period: the sense of the sacredness
-of paternity. The pathos and tragedy of fatherhood are interwoven in
-many of Strindberg's plays, but generally entangled in a multitude of
-disturbing emotions.
-
-_Sir Bengt's Wife_ was published in 1882, _The Journey of Lucky Peter_
-in 1883. During the years 1880-82 a work entitled _Old Stockholm_[5]
-appeared, with Strindberg and Claes Lundin as joint authors. It is
-a popular and comprehensive account of past customs, institutions
-and pleasures of the citizens of the capital of Sweden, profusely
-illustrated. Strindberg had collected the material at the Royal
-Library, and planned to write the whole work. His health broke down
-through overwork, and he found it necessary to engage a collaborator.
-He managed, however, to write entertainingly on guilds and orders,
-legends and superstitions, street music and amusements, celebration of
-Christmas and Easter, slang, fauna and flora of the city of his birth.
-_The Red Room_ had already shown Strindberg's keen observation of the
-character and peculiarities of Stockholm life; the _genius loci_ had
-in him a faithful, though not always flattering, _raconteur_. In _Old
-Stockholm_ the comprehensiveness of his knowledge of the history of the
-Swedish capital became apparent.
-
-The solidity of his antiquarian and historical research brought him
-an offer to write a popular history of Swedish culture which he
-accepted, on condition that the independence of his historical sense
-should not be suppressed. Having prepared his material he was lost in
-philosophical speculation over the absence of an intelligent connection
-between cause and effect. "Was not history a capricious muddle, a walk
-in a circle? Had not civilisations risen and perished, social systems
-appeared and disappeared, religions changed and men remained unwise and
-unhappy?" He succeeded in contracting his point of view, and wrote his
-history with the intention of counteracting the prevalent method of
-viewing historical events through the medium of privileged personages.
-Others had overrated the personal factor. Strindberg admits that he
-under-rated it. _The Swedish People_ met with angry criticism and
-resentment of the sceptical manner in which time-worn and honoured
-tenets were treated.
-
-The reception of _The Swedish People_ aroused the powers of satire
-which had been lulled to sleep during a temporary spell of optimism.
-The warm and sunny atmosphere, in which the warrior had rested, gave
-place to storm and thunder, and Strindberg gathered his force for a
-fresh attack on Society. This time he disdained the form of the novel
-which, though thin and undeveloped, had yet made it possible for some
-of the parties arraigned to dismiss _The Red Room_ as a piece of clever
-but fantastic fiction.
-
-_The New Kingdom_, which appeared in 1882, is a series of satirical
-descriptions of the ideals and conduct of the inhabitants of the
-"new kingdom" which was supposed to have been created by the Swedish
-constitution of 1865. The book is an attack upon everything that
-average humanity holds dear; the scorching satire plays like lightning
-upon royalty, militarism, history, aristocracy, bureaucracy, the press,
-the theatre, and, with special annihilative pleasure, on the Swedish
-Academy. It was impossible to deny that Strindberg had descended from
-generalisations to portraiture, that well-known and highly-respected
-personages had been pilloried and caricatured. Affronted Society
-declared the book to be simply a lampoon on spotless individuals.
-Though the personal attacks were doubtless in bad form, and, though
-there are passages in the book which strain ridicule to the point of
-the grotesque and the vulgar, the brilliant wit, the profusion of
-ideas, and, above all, the incomparably good temper place The New
-Kingdom in the forefront of contemporary satirical writings. The genre
-of Grenville Murray's Les Hommes du Second Empire had suggested the
-form. An affinity with Max Nordau is noticeable in certain chapters,
-and especially in that on "The Official Lie"; but Strindberg's
-exposure of conventional hypocrisy and social humbug is achieved by a
-tempestuous outburst, compared with which Nordau's strictures seem a
-discursive and spiritless sermon.
-
-The year which saw the storm of _The New Kingdom_ also witnessed more
-moderate winds in the first instalment of _Swedish Destinies and
-Adventures_, a collection of stories in historical setting which showed
-Strindberg as an interpreter of the genial and peaceful aspects of
-life, as a humorous onlooker whose memory is stored with pictures of
-the kaleidoscopic reign of joy and sorrow, sin and virtue. Now and then
-the fresh narrative is oppressed by a distant rumble of the preacher
-who finds it difficult to suppress his views on women, political
-economy and over-rated civilisation.
-
-_Swedish Destinies and Adventures_ had reconciled the critics to
-Strindberg's existence. There was talent--undoubtedly; there was a mine
-of creative imagination; there was a calm current of lyrical content
-which the wild torrents of satire and abuse had not swallowed. Perhaps
-he might yet be redeemed, tamed to run a less dangerous and offensive
-literary course?
-
-The praise won by the historical stories was cut short by the
-appearance in 1883 of _Poems in Verse and Prose_. The novelist, the
-historian, the dramatist in Strindberg had stood aside to let the
-poet speak. And the poet spoke in words which were a challenge to the
-phrase-mongers and the purists, in hot and rugged verse which acted
-like an over-dose of pepper on the jaded literary palate. There were
-lapses of metre, there were faults of rhythm, but the energy of thought
-sustained the poet on a height from which the custodians of formal
-rhyme could not dislodge him. If De Quincey's differentiation between
-the literature of power and the literature of knowledge be applied to
-Strindberg's first volume of poems there can be little doubt as to the
-category to which they belong.
-
-The most typical poems of the series are "Loke's Blasphemies," in
-which he lets Loke, the enemy of the deities of Northern mythology,
-sing his own song of defiance and contempt for the "Gods of time";
-and "Different Weapons," a finely cut satire on the way his literary
-executioners had avoided open duel and resorted to secret poison. The
-poet introduced his work by a militant preface, in which he declared
-that he was a challenger who was forced to employ the weapons chosen
-by his opponents. He stated that the poetic form imposes unnecessary
-fetters on thought, and is, therefore, destined to fall into disuse.
-"Stronger spirits have formerly broken them, but dared not throw them
-away. The mediocrities of our time dare not place such bad verse on the
-Christmas market as that written by our great poets. In this respect,
-i.e. the writing of bad verse, I dare compare myself with the greatest
-without danger of contradiction." He intimated that the metrical
-blemishes were deliberate sacrifices of form to thought, and left his
-detractors to believe or disbelieve in his theoretical perfection as a
-poet.
-
-Tired after so many battles, so many literary peregrinations,
-Strindberg had left Sweden before the publication of his poems. He
-settled in Paris with his family, and, with the industry of mind which
-in him was identical with life, proceeded to study the intellectual and
-artistic resources of the "gay" city. The result was the conviction
-that a large town should not be likened to the heart of a body, but to
-an abscess which corrupts the blood and poisons the system.
-
-The most important event during Strindberg's stay in Paris was probably
-his contact with Bjornson. A friendship sprang up between the two
-Scandinavian rebels which was rich in sympathy and exchange of ideas.
-In _The Author_ Strindberg gives us his impressions of Bjornson, and
-Bjornson has written an interesting description of Strindberg.[6]
-Strindberg found Bjornson a complex of personalities, consisting of
-the preacher, the peasant, the theatrical manager and the good child.
-Bjornson found Strindberg young throughout, at home everywhere, free
-everywhere, an incurable idealist in whose eye something sinister
-battled with something roguish.
-
-By the side of the massive Norwegian Strindberg experienced an unusual
-sense of security which developed into filial love.
-
-Bjornson's democratic drama _The King_ had been attacked as
-_lese-majeste_ and a political scandal. They had many experiences
-in common, were relatives in thought. Bjornson in exile appealed
-to whatever vestige of hero-worship was left in Strindberg's soul.
-Suffering from nervous depletion, and in a generally weakened state
-of health, he adopted a deferential attitude towards Bjornson which,
-being foreign to his temperament, was logically bound to be followed
-by emancipation. Early in their intercourse Strindberg had made the
-characteristic discovery that he was endowed with greater knowledge and
-a more incisive understanding than Bjornson. Bjornson begged Strindberg
-to be less personal in his satire, apparently unconscious of the
-extremely personal nature of his own attacks upon the common enemy.
-The tie of friendship was gradually loosened, until Bjornson's role of
-"conscience" and father confessor came to an abrupt end in 1884.
-
-Strindberg was content to dwell for a time amongst the _literati_ of
-different nationalities who had assembled in Paris. Free from the
-stings of the bourgeois wasps upon whose nest he had trampled, he
-enjoyed the fresh air and the keen winds in the great republic of mind.
-Like other men he knew the exhilaration which follows upon the _jeu
-d'esprit_ in the highways of thought, the intellectual union which
-rejuvenates and fatigues by its fertility. But unlike most men he
-soon tired of even the best company, and the craving for solitude and
-independence became imperative.
-
-Paris was deserted for Lausanne. In a little chalet by the shore of
-the lake he recovered physical strength and mental poise. The sight of
-the Alps acted as a tonic to his nervous system, and solitary morning
-walks on the shore brought him the stillness of mind out of which new
-faith is moulded. The way to Rousseau was straight and easy; the peace
-of Nature, the sinlessness, the simplicity of the peasant's life,
-as compared with the vitiated conditions of town labour, impressed
-themselves on his thought. The diseases of mind and body, caused by the
-unnatural oppression of civilisation, were amenable to treatment, more
-practical than satire, and more human than the loathing with which he
-had decried the false gods and the vulgar tyrants. The remedies were to
-be found in a combined "return to Nature," and reorganisation of the
-conditions of labour. Socialism, internationalism, the theories of a
-broad and humanitarian outlook upon industrial processes of development
-which tend towards a more equal distribution of wealth and power, now
-fed Strindberg's hunger after social righteousness. He attempted to
-throw off national limitations; to feel and act as a European with
-pan-national sympathies and interests.
-
-The peace movement presented itself to him as one of the greatest
-thoughts of the time. In his youth he had felt at one with the
-proletariat, trampled down by the hoofs of militarism. In his satirical
-writings the peacocks of the social fowl-yard--the proud bearers of
-epaulets and tinsel--had received a full share of his attention. In
-Switzerland he came into contact with the organised peace movement,
-and the result was the novel _Remorse_, a powerful analysis of the
-mental torture endured by a German officer who in obeying orders has
-caused three innocent Frenchmen to be shot. The inhumanity of war and
-the reality of human brotherhood are here presented in a manner which
-makes the story a stirring, yet delicately artistic appeal against the
-horrors of the battlefield. Whilst he thus placed himself in the ranks
-of the world's peace-makers the struggle with the sex-problem, from
-which he never wholly escaped, developed into a battle, the noise of
-which was destined to reverberate through his whole life. During the
-summer of 1884--whilst exposed to the unromantic surroundings of a
-Swiss mountain _pensionnat_--he wrote twelve stories of married life,
-to which he gave the innocuous title _Married_. They were published
-in Stockholm in September by Herr Bonnier, and had the effect of a
-bomb thrown amidst sleepy and contented people--contented to be rid
-of the enemy. The book was eagerly read by everyone, by the high
-priests of morality as well as by libertines; it sent shudders of
-indignation through the respectability which covers vice and sin with
-silence, and called forth shouts of delight from the champions of
-"free" morals. It was denounced as indecent, and as a grave danger to
-the youth of Sweden by representatives of religion and education. The
-Queen of Sweden read the book and came to the conclusion that it was
-injurious to morality and offensive to religion. She was undoubtedly
-sincere in her condemnation, whilst the majority who joined the hue
-and cry against Strindberg were but tainted reflections of the purity
-upon which they prided themselves. This time the author of _The Red
-Room_ and _The New Kingdom_ had placed himself within reach of the
-law. Within a fortnight of the publication of _Married_ the book was
-impounded, and proceedings were instituted against the publisher.
-
-But it was not the indecency which was the subject of legal
-proceedings. It was the sacrilegious handling of Holy Communion in
-the first story, entitled "The Reward of Virtue," which afforded the
-opportunity for legal repression. True to the irreverent impulse which
-owed its origin to the ecclesiastical preparations in the sexton's
-kitchen, Strindberg had vented his feelings of opposition to the tenets
-of Christianity in a tasteless sentence. It recorded the commercial
-value of the wafers and the wine and ridiculed the "insolent fraud"
-which enabled the priest to foist these articles of commerce on the
-congregation, as the flesh and blood of the "Agitator" who was executed
-more than 1800 years ago.
-
-The story, which to a great extent was autobiographical, dealt with
-the alleged evils of chastity in a youth and consequent declination of
-mental faculties. The problems of puberty, which Wedekind subsequently
-dramatised with tragic force in _Fruehlings Erwachen_, were amongst the
-painful experiences which Strindberg dwelt upon in his autobiography.
-In _Married_ the conflict between Nature and virtue is falsely
-presented. The auxiliary influences of moral and physical culture are
-ignored.
-
-Some stories treat of love and marriage, of the transformation of
-raptures and idylls into painful struggles for the maintenance of
-the family, of helpless young men captured in the economic trap of
-matrimony, of the monotony of daily domestic drudgery which makes
-fretful wives and impatient husbands out of ardent Romeos and dreamy
-Juliets. There are squabbles and reconciliations, there are scenes
-and _interieurs_ in the comedy of marriage, to which the stories bear
-witness with little regard for the usual restraint of description. The
-characters are life-like types of Swedish middle-class society. They
-have been drawn with a realism which shows them as the pathetic puppets
-of marital fate, or as the unreflecting fools of sexual idealism. There
-is the deft touch of Maupassant in the rendering of love's irony, there
-is the inevitableness of Balzac and--in the "indecencies"--not a little
-of Boccaccio's mirth of imagination.
-
-Withal there is an absence of the cynicism which is a general
-characteristic of Strindberg's writings on sexual love; we get a
-surfeit of realism, but we also get pages of playful and almost tender
-sympathy with love's happiness and sweet illusion. The story of a young
-couple's improvident marriage, of their enjoyment of the home with its
-brand-new things--from the sky-blue quilts to the well-cut glasses--of
-the careless happiness which is young and foolish, and forgets all
-about work and duty and the wolves without until the birth of the child
-and bankruptcy disturb the dream, is an imperishable gem of human
-description. And the story of the crotchety and greedy old bachelor
-of irreproachable private life and well-timed permissible vices, who
-finally marries and becomes an ideal husband and a doting father, is
-proof of the author's recognition of family-life as a bridge between
-egotism and altruism.
-
-The youth who falls in love with the blossoming girl of fourteen, and
-is compelled to postpone marriage until he joins his fate to the faded
-and sickly woman of twenty-four, with a worm-eaten nose (who ever saw
-anyone with a worm-eaten nose? Strindberg's strength of expression is
-embarrassing), spends married life in vain languishing for the perished
-beauty of fourteen. Finally--and when too late--he discovers that the
-lost angel has all the time been by his side, though disguised in
-ungainliness of form and feature. The story is a miniature of man's
-earthly conduct. The child is always the apotheosis of sexual union,
-the redeemer of the petty nature of husband and wife. The woman who
-shouts "I am not your servant" to the exasperated husband does so
-because she is not sanctified by motherliness. Though the primitive
-fidelity with which Strindberg sketches his matrimonial types, jars
-on our sensibilities through ineptitudes of diction and occasional
-vulgarisms, though we feel irritated with his boneless and martyrised
-husbands, _Married_ is at once a work of art, and a plea for the
-super-marriage which is yet to come.
-
-When the news of the action against the publisher of _Married_ reached
-Strindberg in Switzerland, he hesitated as to the right course to
-pursue. He considered the charge of blasphemy to be merely a peg on
-which his enemies had hung their long-suppressed lust for revenge.
-The efforts to suppress the book as a pornographic publication had
-proved futile and absurd, and had served to show well-intentioned
-people that realism is not necessarily rank immorality. He resented
-the attack on freedom of religious thought. On discovering that the
-Swedish law punishes denial of the pure Lutheran doctrine with two
-years' hard labour, he reflected that, if the law were enforced Jews,
-Roman Catholics, Unitarians, Methodists and Baptists would all be
-incarcerated in Langholmen--the prison in which certain newspapers in
-Stockholm had already joyfully deposited their image of Strindberg.
-To plead guilty to the charge of blasphemy was to admit the existence
-of a legitimate censorship on thought and religious conviction which
-he denied. But the publisher was in danger of being punished, and
-Strindberg could not stand by whilst a scapegoat suffered the penalty
-of his transgressions. A letter of protest against the proceedings had
-been ignored. Another letter to the authorities, in which Strindberg
-formally admitted his authorship, was followed by the request that he
-should appear personally before the Court. A consultation in Geneva
-with Herr Bonnier, junior, followed, and as there seemed little doubt
-that the publisher would be found guilty, if the author shirked his
-responsibility for any motive whatever, Strindberg left for Stockholm.
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Photo by G. Florman, Stockholm--1884.]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Photo by Lina Jonn, Lund--1897.]
-
-He received warnings on the way, gloomy prophecies that the prisoner's
-cell was the ultimate destination of his journey. On arriving in
-Stockholm on October 2nd, he was met at the station by an inquisitive
-and admiring crowd. There were cries for a speech as he stepped out of
-the train amid cheers. Did this mean that there were friends as well
-as enemies awaiting him? He was not, after all, a _vox clamantis in
-deserto_. There were supporters and sympathisers ready for his message.
-Standing on the platform, amid the bustle and noise of the station, he
-addressed the people on the meaning and object of his realism. Within
-a few minutes he experienced the vicissitudes of the "leader" of a
-movement: acclaimed by some and insulted by others, he reached his
-hotel opposite the station amidst the excitement which is meat unto the
-agitator and dross to the thinker.
-
-In the evening there was a special performance of _The Journey of Lucky
-Peter_ which the author was invited to attend. At the theatre he was
-the centre of interest, the object of inquisitive glances. The public
-cheered him again--was it possible that he too had a following, a
-circle of responsive souls willing to stand by him in the struggle for
-new thought? But no, the sceptic within him did not believe in this
-adulation. "No, I am no good as a 'great' man," he reflected. "I can
-never learn to believe in cheers. They cheer to-day and boo to-morrow!'"
-
-During the weeks that followed he had ample opportunity for
-philosophical studies of the cheering-booing propensity of human
-nature. The violent attacks in the Conservative press had all the
-psychological elements of the booing which is an essential stimulus to
-continued self-satisfaction and placid Phariseeism; the cheering which
-echoed from another quarter was not always attuned to the highest
-aspirations of the hero of the moment.
-
-The trial of the case was painful to Strindberg. He had none of the
-qualities which make men revel in loud publicity. Despite the character
-of his writings, and the war which he had waged with his pen, he had
-all the personal reserve of the sensitive and the recluse. On November
-17th the jury found a verdict of "Not guilty" for the author and
-publisher of _Married_. His friends cheered, working men in the street
-cheered and triumphantly escorted Strindberg to his hotel. The victory
-over the enemies of "free speech" was celebrated in the evening by a
-banquet, and on the following day Strindberg left Stockholm for Geneva,
-where he joined his wife.
-
-In Sweden the controversy ran high. _Married_ was once more on sale.
-It was stated that no less than 3500 copies of the book had been sold
-during the short interval between the day of publication and the
-confiscation.
-
-The advertisement provided by the prosecution now ensured the widest
-publicity for the book. Pedagogues and moralists saw not only a grave
-danger to the youth of Sweden in the circulation of the book, but the
-cause of actual and deplorable corruption amongst the boys in public
-schools. A pamphlet entitled _Strindberg-Literature and Immorality
-amongst Schoolboys_, by John Personne, a master in one of the Stockholm
-public schools, is a curious document in proof of the animosity against
-Strindberg which at this time possessed many excellent people. Herr
-Personne claimed to have personal knowledge of the evil wrought by
-Strindberg's theories, and his pages bristle with indignation. He
-flouts the idea that Strindberg is a man of courage, and accuses him
-of supplying indecencies at a good price. He inveighs against the
-"satanical tricks" by which this "literary ragamuffin" makes vice
-appear identical with joy, thereby luring boys to destruction. One
-need not be a pedant in matters of moral perception to sympathise with
-Herr Personne's motive, despite the acerbity which characterises his
-ebullitions. Whatever may be said for realism in the description of
-sexual struggles from the artistic and scientific points of view, it
-has yet to be proved that youth benefits by free access to the wares
-offered by the _l'art pour l'art_ vendors of life's intimacies.
-
-The feminists joined the schoolmasters in bitter denunciation of
-Strindberg, though, as yet, there was none of the radical opposition
-to every phase of woman's emancipation which developed with deepening
-experience of conjugal misery. The first volume of _Married_ was,
-it is true, written as a protest against the "sickly" deification
-of the liberty of woman underlying the _Nora-Cult_. In opposing
-Ibsen, whom Strindberg calls "the famous Norwegian blue-stocking,"
-he had carried out what to him was a sacred duty. But the preface to
-_Married_ contained views on the rights of women which, but for the
-general commotion, would have preserved the writer from the charge of
-uncompromising enmity towards the souls of women. After analysing the
-cause of unhappy marriages in some epigrammatic pages, he slaughters
-the "romantic monstrosity" which is Ibsen's Nora, and presents his
-scheme for the future regeneration of woman under the title _Woman's
-Rights_.
-
-The first of these is the right to have the same educational advantages
-as man. There is to be wholesale educational reform from which class
-and sex differences are to be eliminated; "unnecessary" learning is
-to be abolished and the substitute is to be found in a universal
-citizen's examination--a degree of social competency requiring the
-arts of reading, writing, arithmetic and elementary knowledge of the
-laws of one's country, with appreciation of the duties and rights of
-citizenship. To this curriculum one living foreign language will be
-added, but there will not be time for much more, for "the future will
-require every citizen to earn his living by manual labour in accordance
-with the law of nature." The regeneration of woman and the reform of
-marriage are thus--according to August Strindberg of 1884--inseparably
-bound up with socialistic hopes of equality.
-
-In co-education he sees the remedy for the insipid gallantry and
-sex mystification which are responsible for so many pangs of
-disillusionment after marriage. He wishes the theoretical equality
-of the sexes to be enforced in the relations between brothers and
-sisters. A girl should not expect a boy to give up his seat to her,
-and a brother should not count upon his sisters for the restoration of
-missing buttons and other creature comforts. And, last but not least,
-he proclaims _Votes for Women_ as the prerogative of the enlightened
-woman of the future! We may, therefore, claim indulgence for the
-woman-hater's life-long growl of discontent against the feminine sex,
-for, underlying all his dislike of the present, there was a radiant
-vision of the future. There are propositions in this preface which
-should satisfy even the most consistent advocates of votes for women.
-"Woman shall be eligible for election to every occupation," writes
-Strindberg; in marriage she is to retain her own name and not, as now,
-be a feminine appendix ignominiously tacked on to the man; she is to
-be master of her own body, and of the choice of motherhood. Of the
-spiritual functions of motherhood he writes:
-
-"Is anyone wiser or more fit to rule than an old mother who, through
-motherhood and the household, has learnt to reign and to administer?"
-Through the influence of the mother, he continues, "customs and laws
-will be softened, for no one has learnt forgivingness as a mother,
-no one knows as she does how patient, how indulgent one must be with
-erring human children."
-
-Whilst the waves of the Strindberg storm were beating against the
-breakwater of Swedish society, the author of paradoxes was working out
-his own matrimonial fate in Geneva and Paris. His dreams of a better
-future took form in _Real Utopias_, published in 1885, a collection
-of stories in which the socialistic and utilitarian solution of
-heart-rending problems is presented in a novelistic form which shows
-Strindberg at his best. The style is instinct with a tender pity for
-human suffering; there is a keen sense of character, and a wealth of
-exuberant descriptive warmth which are in sharp contrast with the
-meagre and stunted sociology to which they have been made subservient.
-They show the addition of a new string to his lyre, a tone of southern
-richness which accentuates the superiority of the artist in Strindberg
-to the social philosopher.
-
-At the age of thirty-seven he gathers the riches of his
-experiences--external and internal--sits down to draw up an account
-with life and writes his _Autobiography_: The first three volumes deal
-with the period 1849-79, and were published during 1886. During the
-same year the second part of _Married_ appeared--in many respects
-the antithesis of the first. After a prolonged plunge into the depths
-of subjectivity, Strindberg rose endowed with a new creative force.
-He had spoken that which was within him, and through the process of
-self-renewal which followed he attained his highest powers as artist.
-
-
-[1] The first Swedish edition will shortly appear amongst the collected
-works of Strindberg which are being issued by Messrs. Albert Bonnier.
-
-[2] _En bok om Strindberg_, af Holger Drachmann, Knut Hamsun, Justin
-Huntly McCarthy, Bjornstjerne Bjornson, Jonas Lie, Georg Brandes, etc.
-(Karlstad, 1894).
-
-[3] _The Confession of a Fool_. English translation by Ellie
-Schleussner.
-
-[4] The name of this play has been wrongly translated into English.
-It is generally written of as _The Journal of Lucky Peter_, a mistake
-which even appears in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
-
-[5] A third and unaltered edition of this book, which is now regarded
-as one of the classical works on the subject, was issued during 1912
-(H. Gebers Forlag, Stockholm).
-
-[6] _En Bok om Strindberg_ (Karlstad, 1894).
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-THE ARTIST
-
-
-Whilst fighting the battle of realism in fiction Strindberg had
-prepared the dramatic form which was to be his contribution to the
-"new" theatre, on which the curtain was about to rise. The demand for
-a new dramatic art had become imperative. Tired of the admonitions and
-stale declamations of the old rhetorical play, the public had asked
-for a representation of life. Dumas pere had responded by writing the
-drama of personality, Dumas _fils_ by establishing the play of moral
-problems. Ibsen had built the psychological play on the foundation
-of Dumas and had endowed the Norwegian language with a new sonority.
-Scribe had supplied fine technique and neat carpentry for the new
-French stage, but Paris, the petulant playgoer, sighed for other things.
-
-Zola raised the cry of naturalism. The artificial plots of Dumas,
-Augier and Sardou were to be superseded by dramatic flashes of
-reality. "I yearn for life, with its shiver, its breath and its
-strength; I long for life as it is," cried the author of _Therese
-Raquin_, and Strindberg responded. In September, 1887, _The Father_
-was published, the first of the series of naturalistic plays through
-which Strindberg's European reputation as a modern dramatist and a
-woman-hater was established. The institution in the same year of the
-Theatre Libre, by M. Andre Antoine, provided a stage which was wholly
-adapted to the revolt against old-fashioned theatricality.
-
-M. Antoine was an employee at the gas-works who had a passionate
-faith in realistic drama. With a group of sympathetic _dilettanti_ he
-began evening performances in a large room in Place Pigalle without
-the stage mechanism of the commercial theatre. Success attended the
-enthusiastic players, and the performances at the Theatre Libre became
-the rendezvous of the intellectual and artistic world which gravitates
-to Paris. The soul of the enterprise, M. Antoine, was manager,
-actor, scene-painter, and mechanic. The theatre was semi-private.
-Special invitation cards to elect audiences protected the actors
-from the attention of gallery-opinion. The actors and authors of the
-new plays were the hosts in this home of dramatic revolution, where
-every original playwright was welcome. Strindberg's _The Father, Lady
-Julie_ and _Creditors_ were amongst the first plays produced, and he,
-therefore, had the satisfaction of being played in Paris before any
-appearance on the French stage of the "famous Norwegian blue-stocking."
-Tolstoy's _Powers of Darkness_, Zola's _Therese Raquin_, Emile Fabre's
-_L'Argent_, an adaptation of the brothers de Goncourt's Soeur Philomene
-and Villiers' "_L'Evasion_," belonged to the early repertoire.
-_Ghosts_ was the first of Ibsen's plays to appear; it was followed by
-_Rosmersholm_. The Theatre Libre lasted eight years. It had time to
-create a "modernity" in taste and dramatic expression which produced
-similar free theatres in Berlin and London, and a vogue of naturalism
-which included every variety of "life," and which, occasionally, gave
-undue preference to lubricity and morbidity.
-
-The Swedish edition of _The Father_ was followed by a French edition,
-containing a sympathetic prefatory letter by Zola. The three acts of
-this tragedy present a drawn-out duel between man and woman for the
-possession of the soul of the child. The father, a cavalry captain, is
-intellectual, serious, studious, lovable. His wife is stupid, selfish
-and diabolically resourceful in the choice of weapons for the final
-defeat of the ill-used man. He is mentally poisoned by the suggestion
-that he is not the father of the child. Laura, the wife, has herself
-administered the poison in order to shatter the man's peace of mind,
-and break the foundation of his love for the child. Her hatred knows no
-bounds. She not only seeks to drive him mad, but contrives by skilful
-intrigue to procure evidence of his insanity. She informs the doctor
-that her husband suffers from extraordinary delusions regarding the
-uncertainty of paternity, and that he talks of little else. When the
-doctor meets the Captain the question which is eating his mind shows
-itself as an obsessing idea. Everybody and everything conspires to make
-the man appear a raving lunatic. Finally, even the old nurse who has
-been a true and good woman is induced to betray him. He believes in
-her kindness of heart, and allows her to approach him. She slips the
-strait-jacket over him, thereby adding the last link to the chain of
-feminine treachery and cruelty which has enslaved him. Subjugated,
-robbed of his faith and his mind, the man dies--the victim of woman.
-
-In the preface Zola expressed his interest in the boldness of the
-idea. "Your Laura," he wrote, "is woman as she is in her conceit and
-in her mystical unconsciousness of her qualities and faults." _The
-Father_ was one of the few dramatic works which had the power of moving
-him deeply. But he found a certain want of reality in the characters
-and the construction of the play. The nameless captain and his cruel
-entourage were thought-forms, lacking the solid dimensions which Zola
-identified with reality. In a critical appreciation of Strindberg,
-published in 1894, Georg Brandes praised _The Father_ as a tragedy of
-concentrated energy, magnificent in its composition and powerful in
-its effect. "There is something eternal in The Father," he writes, "an
-unforgettable psychology of woman, showing typically feminine weakness
-and vice." Brandes thinks the symbolism of the final scene, in which
-the man of intellect is ruined by woman, inherently true. He adds: "The
-strength of the indignation and the hatred which have produced the
-drama are impressive. This tragedy is a cry of anguish which clings
-to one's memory, which grips and terrifies through the depth of the
-passionate suffering that uttered the cry."
-
-Laura may be regarded as the most complete type of Strindberg's
-Inferno-women. She has not even the _beaute du diable_ which creates
-an illusion of goodness in some of his types. She is the man-eater,
-the destroyer of all that is noble, consistent, progressive in man.
-Strindberg sees a cannibalistic tendency in woman which makes marriage
-a feast of horror, and this is a theme to which he often returns. In
-_The Father_ the distraught man says to his child: "You see, I am a
-cannibal, and I will eat you. Your mother wanted to eat me, but she
-could not. I am Saturn who ate his children, because it had been
-prophesied that they would eat him. To eat or to be eaten? That is the
-question. If I do not eat you, you will eat me, and you have already
-showed me your teeth." ...
-
-The callous egotism with which Laura kills her husband is shown by the
-following words, with which she assaults him: "Now you have fulfilled
-your function as an unfortunately necessary father and bread-winner,
-you are not needed any longer, and you must go. You must go, since you
-have realised that my intellect is as strong as my will, and since you
-will not stay to acknowledge it."
-
-It is perhaps not unnatural that the Captain should throw a lighted
-lamp at Laura after listening to this speech. But the speech itself is
-certainly unnatural, and would be more in keeping with the sentiments
-of a female spider--if that callous insect could formulate her
-generative philosophy--than those of a woman. As a self-expository wife
-Laura severely taxes our credulity.
-
-_Lady Julie_[1] is a different type. She is the pretty, neurotic,
-sensual, useless woman, blue-blooded and empty-minded, destined to
-total extinction in the process of natural selection. Her tragedy is
-unfolded in a play of one act, which is the quintessence of Strindberg
-as a "naturalistic" dramatist. The scene is laid in the Count's
-kitchen. The Count's daughter, Lady Julie, is alone in the house
-with Jean, the valet, and Christine, the cook. It is St. John's Eve;
-the farm hands belonging to the estate are assembled for the annual
-midsummer dance. They do not dance in the kitchen, but there is
-midsummer madness in the air. Christine is betrothed to Jean who treats
-the products of her culinary art with epicurean disdain. He knows his
-value as a man and a servant. Jean is an excellent valet, well-made,
-well-behaved, who knows when to show self-confidence and when to
-cringe. Lady Julie has graced the servants' dance with her presence.
-She has favoured Jean with such marked attention that the people have
-begun to gossip. Alone with him in the kitchen she encourages him to
-make love to her. The valet is uneasy; the man is eager to make himself
-master of the Count's daughter, but the servant shrinks from the
-sacrilege. But Lady Julie taunts him with his unmanliness, tempts him
-with her beauty, and the effervescence of her highly-strung nerves. A
-strange love-scene follows.
-
-The sound of approaching country-folk forces Jean and Lady Julie to
-hide from their prying eyes. They do not wish to be found alone in the
-kitchen. Jean's room is near at hand and becomes their refuge, whilst
-the peasants make the kitchen the scene of their midsummer merry-making.
-
-When the kitchen is deserted, Lady Julie and Jean reappear. There is
-an autumnal chill in the air. For Lady Julie is no longer Lady Julie.
-The valet is master. They are both conscious of the monstrous breach of
-social etiquette which has been committed. And the grey dawn will not
-only bring the shame of day, but the home-coming of the Count.
-
-Jean is chivalrous. He proposes immediate flight to Switzerland or the
-Italian lakes. There, he thinks, they can start an hotel--a first-class
-hotel for first-class guests. He waxes enthusiastic over the joys
-of the hotel-owner. She will be mistress of the house, queen of the
-accounts, before whom the guests will humbly lay their gold.
-
-She cannot rise to his enthusiasm. She wants the comfort of love:
-
-     _Julie_. That is all very fine. But, Jean, you must give me
-     courage. Say that you love me. Come and take me in your arms.
-
-     _Jean_ (_hesitating_). I would like to, but I dare not. Not here
-     in this house. I love you without doubt. Can you doubt it?
-
-     _Julie_ (_shyly, with true womanly feeling_). You! Say "thou" to
-     me. Between us there are no longer any barriers. Say "thou."
-
-     _Jean_ (_troubled_). I cannot. There are still barriers between us
-     so long as we remain in this house. There is the past, there is
-     the Count. I have never met anyone who compelled such respect from
-     me. I have only to see his gloves lying on a chair to feel quite
-     small. I have only to hear his bell, and I start like a shying
-     horse. And when I now look at his boots, standing there so stiff
-     and stately, it is as if something made my back bend. (_He kicks
-     the boots_.) Superstition, prejudice which have been driven into
-     us from childhood, but which may be as easily forgotten again. If
-     you will only come into another country, into a republic, people
-     will cringe before my porter's livery. People shall cringe, but
-     I shall not cringe. I was not born to cringe, for there is stuff
-     in me; there is character in me; and if once I grip the lowest
-     branch, you shall watch me climb. To-day I am a lackey, but next
-     year I am a proprietor; in ten years I shall be independent, and
-     then I go to Roumania and get myself an order. I can--mark well I
-     say I _can_--a count.
-
-     _Julie_. Fine, fine!
-
-     _Jean_. Ah, in Roumania a man can buy a count's title, and then
-     you will be a countess--my countess.
-
-     _Julie_. What do I care for what I have cast aside! Say that you
-     love me, or else--ah, what am I else?
-
-     _Jean_. I will say it a thousand times--later on. But not here.
-     And, above all, no sentimentality, or all is lost. We must keep
-     cool like sensible people. (_He takes out a cigar, cuts the end,
-     and lights it_.) Sit down there, and I will sit here, and then we
-     can chat as if nothing had happened.
-
-     _Julie_ (_in despair_). Oh, my God! Have you no feelings?
-
-     _Jean_. I! Why, there is no one more sensitive than I, but I can
-     command my feelings.
-
-     _Julie_. A short time ago you would have kissed my shoe, and
-     now----
-
-     Jean (_coldly_). Yes, before. But now we have something else to
-     think about.
-
-They cannot flee without money. Jean suggests that she can steal the
-necessary sum in her father's room. He taunts her with her weakness
-until she robs her father. They prepare to leave the house. The girl
-wants to bring her greenfinch. Infuriated by her sentimentality,
-Jean snatches the bird from her and kills it. The man's brutality
-and meanness are suddenly revealed to her; her brain reels under the
-humiliation which she has brought upon herself. She hurls curses at
-the head of the impudent domestic. The morning has come, and Christine
-enters the kitchen on her way to church. The girl appeals to her,
-seeks her sympathy, but Christine's feelings of propriety are too
-shocked to allow of any pity for the fallen girl. She leaves them. The
-Count returns. They hear him in his room, know that he will discover
-the theft. His daughter is half demented with fear, remorse, shame; she
-is incapable of deciding what to do. Jean's servant conscience has been
-awakened by the arrival of his master. The Count is there to command,
-Jean to obey. And when Lady Julie wants him to tell her what to do he
-hands her a razor--with the complacency with which he might hand his
-mistress the riding-whip. She leaves the kitchen and kills herself.
-
-Such are the outlines of this painful play, the most "successful" of
-Strindberg's naturalistic dramas. Again we have a struggle between
-man and woman, but this time the opposites of class and blood are
-added to those of sex. The healthy egotism, the common instincts of
-self-preservation in the valet endow him with a physical stability
-against which Lady Julie's emotions break like foam against a rock. She
-goes, he remains. Like _The Admirable Crichton_, Jean knows that there
-must be masters and servants in this world of inequality, and, though
-his passions for once mastered his conviction, he is soundly submissive
-to social law and order. In Lady Julie, Strindberg has sketched the
-useless, unnatural, pleasure-loving, hysterical woman of the leisured
-classes whom he detests.
-
-In the preface to the play he analyses this type of woman. "Lady Julie
-is a modern character," he writes, "not as if the half-woman, the
-man-hater, had not existed in all times, but because she has now been
-discovered, has appeared on the scene, and created a disturbance." In
-such women he sees a danger to the race, for, as a rule, they attract
-degenerate men, and transmit their own misery to another generation.
-They sell themselves for "power, decorations, distinctions, diplomas,"
-and produce beings of undecided sex to whom life is useless. For such
-psycho-pathological creatures Strindberg sees no hope beyond that of
-elimination through contact with reality (Jean was "reality" to Lady
-Julie), or a fatal outburst of long-suppressed sexual instincts. "The
-type is tragic," he concludes, "offering the spectacle of a desperate
-struggle against nature; tragic as a romantic inheritance which is now
-being destroyed by the naturalism which only seeks happiness; and only
-strong and good species are compatible with happiness."
-
-Justin McCarthy translated _Lady Julie_ into English, and expressed
-his admiration for the unalloyed realism of the piece in an article in
-_The Fortnightly Review_. The mental intensity with which Strindberg
-visualised the character of Lady Julie is strangely impressive.
-There is no extravagant or jejune theorising; it is drama vehemently
-conceived and true to its creator. But the horror which moved Justin
-McCarthy when reading the play, and which most readers experience, is
-a product of Strindberg's peculiar misogyny which, for the purposes
-of the play, he coupled with the ordinary standard of convention and
-morality. Lady Julie's disgrace is unpardonable from the point of view
-of society. She dies in deference to its verdict. We cannot imagine a
-drama by Strindberg, in which tragedy is woven out of the misconduct
-of a Lord Julius instead of a Lady Julie. A young "blood," neurotic,
-suffering from ennui, and seeking temporary distraction in the company
-of Jeanne, the valet's daughter, would not have inspired a naturalistic
-drama of sex and caste. There is a wealth of material which can be
-used to _epater le bourgeois_ in the idea of a well-bred woman's
-precipitous "return to nature." The commonplace spectacle of a similar
-descent on the part of a well-bred man affords none.
-
-In _Comrades_ we meet the type of woman who surpasses _Lady Julie_ in
-anti-social attributes. Laura is something of a female tigress, the
-mother whose claws are ready to tear all but the cub; Lady Julie, with
-her hysteria I and her caprices is still the womanly woman. But Bertha
-who is united to her "comrade" Axel in a marriage of equality is worse
-than they. She is plain, mannish, ambitious; a mental parasite who
-suppresses her womanhood and simulates her husband's talents. The rival
-of man, the unsexed, simian-brained shrew, Strindberg's _bete noire_.
-
-_Comrades_ is a four-act comedy of marriage. Axel Alberg and his wife
-are Swedish painters in Paris. They have each painted a picture which
-has been submitted to the Salon. In Act I we find Axel at work in the
-studio. He is a good fellow, honest, painstaking, generous. Friends
-call and discover his embarrassing position as a married comrade. There
-is the doctor, mature in experience and philosophical in outlook,
-who when Axel asks him if he does not believe in woman answers: "No,
-I don't. But I love her." There is the sensible, matter-of-fact
-Lieutenant Starck, who will stand no nonsense from women, and whose
-happy, normal wife knows that woman's real happiness is found in
-subjection unto her husband. They are shocked to hear of Bertha's
-tastes and habits. Bertha comes home. She has kept her nude male model
-waiting, and her poor husband has had to pay five francs in consequence
-of her unpunctuality. This is a small part of the sacrifices he has
-made for her artistic career. In the scenes that follow we see Bertha
-insisting on keeping the household accounts, though her head cannot
-grapple with the simplest problems of addition and subtraction. She has
-made false entries, and deliberately deceives Axel as to the manner in
-which the funds of the comradeship are expended. She coquettes with
-Willmer, a young writer, and receives presents from him. Intent upon
-securing the acceptance of her picture, she makes nefarious use of
-Axel's love for her.
-
-     _Bertha_. Will you be very kind to me? Very?
-
-     _Axel_. I always want to be kind to you, my dear.
-
-     _Bertha_. Do you? Look here, you know Roubey, don't you?
-
-     _Axel_. Yes, I met him in Vienna, and we became good friends.
-
-     _Bertha_. You know that he is a member of the jury?
-
-     _Axel_. Well, what about that?
-
-     _Bertha_. Yes, now you will be angry. I know it.
-
-     _Axel_. If you know it, don't make me angry.
-
-     _Bertha_ (_caresses him_). You won't sacrifice anything for your
-     wife--nothing.
-
-     _Axel_. Go and beg? No, that I won't do.
-
-     _Bertha_. Not for yourself, for your picture will probably be
-     accepted all the same, but for your wife?
-
-     _Axel_. Don't ask me.
-
-     _Bertha_. I should really never ask anything of you.
-
-     _Axel_. Yes, things which I can do without sacrificing....
-
-     _Bertha_. Your manly pride.
-
-     _Axel_. Let us leave it at that.
-
-     _Bertha_. But I should sacrifice my womanly pride, if I could help
-     you.
-
-     _Axel_. You have no pride.
-
-     _Bertha_. Axel!
-
-     _Axel_. There, there, forgive me.
-
-     _Bertha_. I am sure you are jealous of me. I am sure you would not
-     like my picture to be accepted.
-
-     _Axel_. Nothing would delight me more, I assure you, Bertha.
-
-     _Bertha_. Would it also delight you if I were accepted and you
-     were refused?
-
-     _Axel_. I must feel (_laying his hand on his heart_). I am sure
-     it would be an unpleasant feeling--sure. Both because I paint
-     better than you, and because....
-
-     _Bertha_. Say it straight out,--because I am a woman.
-
-     _Axel_. Yes, also for that reason. It is strange, but I have a
-     feeling as if you women were intruders, forcing your way in and
-     demanding the spoils of the battle which we men have fought whilst
-     you sat by the fireside. Forgive me, Bertha, for saying this, but
-     such thoughts come to me.
-
-     _Bertha_. You are just like all other men, exactly.
-
-     _Axel_. Like all other men. I hope so.
-
-     _Bertha_. And lately you have assumed such superiority; you used
-     not to be like that.
-
-     _Axel_. I suppose that is because I am superior. Do something
-     which we men have not already done.
-
-     _Bertha_. What! What are you saying? Are you not ashamed?
-
-Bertha changes her tone, and plays the humble comrade who is sorely
-in need of a little encouragement. Axel rejects her arguments, but
-eventually goes to Monsieur Roubey. During Axel's absence a letter
-arrives containing the information that his picture has been refused.
-Bertha guesses its contents and revels in the luxury of pity and
-_schadenfreude_. Axel returns, after finding Madame Roubey at home,
-(a meeting cleverly foreseen by Bertha) with the news that Bertha's
-picture has already been accepted. He congratulates Bertha on her
-success. He is confident that his picture will also be accepted. She
-hands him the letter. The _scene de rupture_ is inevitable.
-
-     _Axel_ (_lays his hand on his heart and sits down_). What ...
-     (_controls himself_). This is a blow which I did not expect. This
-     is most unpleasant.
-
-     _Bertha_. Well, perhaps I can help you now.
-
-     _Axel_. You look as if you enjoyed my defeat, Bertha. Oh, I feel a
-     great hatred of you stirring within me!
-
-     _Bertha_. I look happy, perhaps, because I have had a success, but
-     when one is tied to a man who cannot rejoice in one's happiness it
-     is difficult to feel sorry when he is unhappy.
-
-     _Axel_. I don't know what has happened, but it seems to me that
-     we have become enemies now. The struggle for a position has come
-     between us, and we can no longer be friends.
-
-     _Bertha_. Does not your sense of justice tell you that the one who
-     was most competent won the battle?
-
-     _Axel_. You were not the most competent.
-
-     _Bertha_. But the jury thought so.
-
-     _Axel_. The jury? But you know very well that you cannot paint as
-     well as I do.
-
-     _Bertha_. Are you sure of that?
-
-The dialogue that follows is a crescendo of the sex-against-sex
-quarrel. "A comrade," concludes Axel, "is a more or less loyal
-competitor, but we are enemies." Bertha, selfish, mean, inebriated
-by her triumph, goes out to celebrate her victory in the company of
-friends. Axel stays at home to nurse his sorrow. The curtain descends
-upon the dejected husband begging his wife not to come home drunk.
-
-Act II shows us Bertha usurping Axel's place as teacher. She finds
-fault with his technique, and snatches the brush out of his hand to
-show him how to paint. Her puny mind reels with the desire to humiliate
-him. Malicious tongues have whispered that he has painted her picture,
-that he has good-humouredly let her reap the honour of his toil. Bertha
-is casting about for a means of crushing Axel for ever. To-morrow
-they will give an evening-party. Her friend Abel--another of the
-emancipated, heartless, false, perverse, masculine women of artistic
-Bohemia--makes a welcome suggestion. Why not arrange to have Axel's
-rejected picture sent home at the very hour when their friends are
-assembled in the studio? The idea fascinates Bertha, but she dare not
-be responsible. "I should like it to be done, but I don't want to be
-concerned in it," she says. "I want to stand guiltless and to be able
-to swear that I am innocent." And Abel undertakes to manage the matter.
-
-The sex-war reaches its climax in Act III. Axel has tom himself
-free from the meshes of his decaying love. Now he knows Bertha as
-she really is. He has discovered her dishonest book-keeping, her
-money transactions with Willmer, her insidious efforts to emasculate
-his soul--he realises the full horror of her short hair, and of
-their union. He has broken his marriage-vows, and throws down the
-wedding-ring. He is free. But Bertha's malignity clings to him:
-
-     _Bertha_. And this, all this noble revenge, simply because you
-     were inferior to me.
-
-     _Axel_. I was your superior when I painted your picture.
-
-     _Bertha_. When you painted my picture! Say that again and I will
-     strike you.
-
-     _Axel_. You who despise brute force are always the first to appeal
-     to it. Strike me if you like.
-
-     _Bertha_ (_advancing towards him_). You think I have not the
-     strength.
-
-     _Axel_ (_seizing both her wrists and holding them_). No, not that.
-     Are you convinced now that I am also physically the stronger? Bow
-     down, or I will break you!
-
-     _Bertha_. Dare you strike me?
-
-     _Axel_. Why not? I only know of one reason why I should not.
-
-     _Bertha_. And that is----?
-
-     _Axel_. That you are irresponsible.
-
-     _Bertha_ (_struggling to free herself_). Ah, let me go!
-
-     _Axel_. Not until you have begged my pardon. Down on your knees.
-     (_He forces her down with one hand_.) Now look up to me from
-     below. That is your place, the place you yourself have chosen.
-
-     _Bertha_ (_gives in_). Axel, Axel, I don't know you e any longer.
-     Can this be you who swore to love me, you who begged to be allowed
-     to support me?
-
-     _Axel_. Yes, I was strong then and believed I had strength to do
-     it. But you clipped the hair of my strength while my tired head
-     lay in your lap. During sleep you stole my best blood, and yet
-     enough remains to subdue you. Stand up, and let us have done with
-     speeches. There is business to be talked over. (_Bertha gets up,
-     then sits down on the sofa, weeping_.)
-
-     _Axel_. Why are you crying?
-
-     _Bertha_. I don't know. Perhaps because I am weak.
-
-     _Axel_. You see! I was your strength. When I took back what was my
-     own you had nothing left. You were like a rubber ball which I blew
-     out; when I threw you down you collapsed.
-
-     _Bertha_ (_without looking up_). I don't know if it is as you
-     say, but since we quarrelled my strength has left me. Axel,
-     believe me, I have never felt for you what I now feel.
-
-     _Axel_. Really! What do you feel?
-
-     _Bertha_. I can't say. I don't know if it is love, but....
-
-     _Axel_. What do you mean by love? Is it not a secret longing to
-     eat me alive once more? You begin to love me. Why not formerly,
-     when I was good to you? Goodness is stupidity. Let us be wicked.
-     What do you think?
-
-     _Bertha_. Yes, I would rather have you a little wicked than weak.
-     (_Gets up_.) Axel, forgive me, but don't desert me. Love me, oh,
-     love me!
-
-But Axel is not caught again. He consents to allow the party to take
-place, as if they were still good comrades, but he is determined to
-obtain a divorce. In Act IV we again meet the happy pair, Starck,
-Willmer, Abel, Dr. Ostermark, the _raisonneur_ of the play, and his
-divorced wife, Mrs. Hall, a dubious middle-aged woman whom Bertha
-imagines to be a victim of man's brutality and a living argument in
-favour of the woman's movement. She and Abel have arranged, not only to
-punish Axel by confronting him with his unsuccessful picture, but to
-disconcert Dr. Ostermark by confronting him with the wife and daughters
-whom he has not seen for eighteen years. But Bertha's calculations
-are faulty, as usual. The picture is carried into the studio by order
-of the _concierge_ who has protested against its unexpected appearance
-at the door. Axel is annoyed. She wants everybody to see the picture,
-to look at it closely. They do, and it turns out to be Bertha's picture.
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Portrait in Oil by Chr. Krogh, 1893]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Portrait in Oil by Richard Bergh, 1906.]
-
-The last scenes of the play show us a shame-faced Bertha recovering
-from the fainting-fit which followed upon the sight of the picture. She
-knows that Axel has nobly changed the numbers in order to give her a
-better chance. She knows that circumstances have combined to unmask her
-completely. He is the stronger, and she offers him her love. Relentless
-in his masculine strength, Axel shakes her off, turns her out into the
-street. "You once asked me to forget that you are a woman," he cries,
-"well, I have forgotten it." She reminds him of a man's duty to his
-wife. Axel hands her some bank-notes. Bertha departs consoled and Axel
-goes to meet his mistress. "I want comrades at the _cafe_, but at home
-I want my wife," he cries, before the final exit of Bertha.
-
-_Comrades_ has been confounded with the typical _comedie rosse_. But
-here, as in _Lady Julie_, the collision of character is presented
-with the intensity which is possible only when a dramatist treats
-of a question which to him is vital. One inadequately described as
-a "tragedy," the other as a "comedy," there is in both plays the
-pessimistic despair of the absolutely sincere anti-feminist. It raises
-them high above the facile farce of passion, satiety and change.
-Bertha is to Strindberg the New Woman--a creature to be shunned and
-exterminated. Nietzsche thought that the "beautiful and dangerous cat,"
-which is woman, should never be visited without a whip. Strindberg
-would not only bring the whip, but poison to the defeminised monster
-who wishes to be the rival of man.
-
-In _Comrades_ the dramatist presents his characters with that ironical
-smile which is the condiment of life's bitter draughts. There is a
-general consciousness of _blague_ pervading the studio. The doctor who
-finds the wife, on whom he once lavished a romantic love, a drunken
-slattern, her daughters in a second union in the service of vice, helps
-the reeling woman out of the house and expresses his feelings thus:
-"Oh, Dolce Napoli! Joy of life, where art thou? Went away as she did.
-Such was the bride of my youth!... Oh, Dolce Napoli! I wonder if the
-cholera-sick fishing harbour is so sweet, after all! Blague probably.
-Blague, blague! Brides, love, Naples, _joie de vivre_, ancient, modern,
-liberal, conservative, ideal, real, natural--blague. Blague all the
-way."
-
-_Creditors_ is a one-act play in which we meet the erotic woman, the
-alluring, treacherous, unmoral creature of instinct and passion, who
-battens on men's souls--in short, the vampire. After the _blague_ of
-_Comrades_ the anguish of _Creditors_. There are two men and one woman
-in the piece. Tekla has been married to Adolf, a painter, for seven
-years. Adolf adores her--their love has been a ceaseless giving on
-his part. He has merged his personality in hers, he has laid his art
-as a sacrifice on the altar of his devotion. He has thought of her,
-painted her, modelled her, given her the treasures of his mind, filled
-her soul until his own is empty, and now he is weak whilst she is
-strong. They are staying at the seaside place, to which they come every
-summer. Tekla has been away for a week when the curtain rises on Adolf
-engaged in modelling the figure of his wife. He is a nervous wreck,
-semi-epileptic, with crutches by his side. He is talking confidentially
-to Gustaf, whose acquaintance he has made during Tekla's absence. He
-does not know that Gustaf is the husband from whom Tekla was separated
-before he married her, does not know that Gustaf is the _creditor_ to
-whom they are both in debt. Gustaf induces Adolf to tell the story of
-his married life, of his sacrifices, his self-effacement, his reckless
-giving. He subtly leads Adolf to realise Tekla's voracious egotism,
-her falseness, her voluptuousness, plays upon his jealousy, rouses
-his suspicions, wrecks his peace of mind. Adolf is fascinated against
-his will by the force and coolly analysing mind of Gustaf. He cannot
-understand why there is something in Gustaf's manner of speaking, and
-in his eye which reminds him of Tekla. Gustaf replies that Tekla and he
-may be distant relatives, as are all human beings.
-
-They discuss Tekla's first husband. Adolf has never seen him, but
-knows that he is an idiot, for Tekla has written a book in which the
-ridiculous man is described. Gustaf shows Adolf that he is treated
-as the second idiot by Tekla. He asks why Tekla sent away her child.
-Adolf hesitates to tell his friend, then confesses that at the age of
-three the child showed a likeness to the first husband which Tekla
-found unendurable. Gustaf asks Adolf if he has never felt jealous of
-the first husband. "Would it not nauseate you to meet him when out for
-a walk, when his eyes on your Tekla would say to you: We instead of
-I--We?" Adolf admits that the thought has haunted him. Gustaf draws a
-picture of the torment caused by the indelible memory of the third.
-"But they know that _one_ sees them in the darkness--and then they are
-frightened and in their fright the figure of the absent one begins
-to haunt them, to assume dimensions, to change until he becomes a
-nightmare disturbing their sleep of love, a creditor who knocks at the
-door, and they see his black hand between theirs, they hear his grating
-voice in the silence of the night which should only be disturbed by
-their beating pulses. He does not prevent their union, but he disturbs
-their happiness. And when they feel his invisible power of disturbing
-their happiness, when at last they flee--but flee in vain from the
-memory which persecutes them--from the debt they have left behind, and
-the judgment which frightens them, they lack the strength to bear their
-transgression and find a scapegoat which must be slaughtered...."
-
-Tortured by the suggestion that Tekla has now been unfaithful to
-him, which every sentence spoken by Gustaf drives more deeply into
-the inflamed brain, Adolf consents to test Tekla's fidelity by means
-devised by Gustaf. When she comes home Adolf is to study her manner,
-and lead her to reveal her real self, whilst Gustaf listens in another
-room. When the husband has reached the limit of his power of deduction
-he is to go out, and leave to Gustaf the role of inquisitor. Adolf is
-to be a secret witness of the second examination. He can hear all in
-the adjoining room.
-
-Tekla comes home. She is playful, loving, treats him as her naughty
-child--just as Gustaf said she would, if guilty. She has enjoyed
-herself, and Adolf's solemn tones of reproach and impending disaster
-cause a revulsion of feeling, in which she shows herself as the
-heartless coquette, the _mangeuse d'hommes_, to whom conjugal monotony
-is insupportably dull. Adolf goads her vanity by saying that she has
-reached the age, when admirers are no longer troublesome. She wishes to
-assure him of the contrary, warns him, threatens that in future he will
-have to play the ridiculous part of the jealous and deceived husband
-who, lacking evidence, can only injure himself.
-
-Adolf tells her that her plumes are borrowed, that he has endowed her
-with sense, electrified her once empty brain, made her famous by his
-pictures and his deification. She concludes that he means to tell her
-that he has written her books. The rhythm of the quarrel rises until
-Adolf in the throes of an approaching fit, cries: "Be quiet. Leave me.
-You destroy my brain with your clumsy pincers--you thrust your claws in
-my thoughts and tear them to pieces."
-
-At the sight of Adolf's condition Tekla grows tender. He recovers,
-and she makes him beg her forgiveness. After summoning his remaining
-strength he leaves her. Gustaf enters the room. There is a touching
-scene of recognition, embarrassment and assurances of mutual respect.
-The virile mind of Gustaf soothes Tekla's overwrought nerves.
-She allows him to understand that her present husband is feeble,
-backboneless, and unreasonably jealous.
-
-They revive memories. Gustaf observes that she still wears the
-ear-rings which he gave her. The magnetism of old associations, old
-regrets, draws them together. Gustaf puts his arm round her waist;
-she resists and confesses herself afraid of his presence. She does not
-wish to do any real wrong to Adolf, for she knows that he loves her.
-But Gustaf knows more than she does. He shows her the tom pieces of her
-photograph, thrown on the floor by Adolf some time before. He makes
-her see clearly that Adolf treats her with contempt. He begs her to
-liberate herself from Adolf's sick fancies, and to come back to the man
-of will. Some scruples, a short struggle, and she promises to meet him
-in the evening when Adolf will be away.
-
-The sound of something falling comes from the adjoining room. Gustaf
-assures her that it is nothing--probably a dog that has been locked
-up. But Tekla is smitten with sudden understanding. She sees through
-Gustaf's plot, knows that her husband has heard everything. The
-horrible revenge of the man she betrayed revolts her, yet impresses
-her by its diabolical consistency. Gustaf is about to leave her,
-declaring that the debt has been paid, when the door is opened, and
-Adolf appears, deadly pale, a cut across the cheek, his eyes vacant,
-and foaming at the mouth. He falls. Tekla throws herself over the body,
-from which life is fast ebbing. "Adolf, my beloved child, say that you
-are alive, forgive, forgive; Oh, God! he does not hear, he is dead. Oh,
-God in Heaven!" And the curtain falls as Gustaf exclaims: "Really, she
-loves him too! Poor thing!"
-
-_Creditors_ has added an important psychological factor to Strindberg's
-usual duel of sex. Here we have, not only the sinful nature of woman,
-the instinctive selfishness, the absence of moral sense, but the
-operation of a mysterious law of unity, which assists in the downfall
-of the woman and the victory of the stronger man. Tekla, once mother
-of Gustaf's child, is held to him by cords of a sympathy which may be
-called physiological, and which constitutes nature's irrefrangible
-banns of marriage.
-
-The thesis has since been fully developed in Paul Hervieu's _Le
-Dedale_. Here the dissonance of divorce and re-marriage resounds
-through a highly artistic presentment of the conflict between religion,
-morality, affection and "nature." Marianne de Pogis has left Max, her
-husband, because of his infidelities. She re-marries and finds in
-Le Breuil, her second husband, the virtues which her former husband
-lacked. Her child by the first marriage falls ill, and she meets her
-first husband by its bedside. She remains in his house to nurse the
-child, and succumbs to the old love which has never died. The end is
-tragic. She cannot go back to Le Breuil. Hervieu cuts short the agony
-of three souls by the death of the two men. Le Breuil kills Max and
-himself; together they go over the rock into the foaming waters where
-human passion is extinguished. Strindberg also summons death as the
-only solution of Adolf's martyrdom, but, with characteristic sense of
-the hideous interminableness of life's complexities, leaves Tekla and
-Gustaf to loathe the tie which they cannot break. Gustaf is the strong
-man who, knowing woman, despises her and masters her. Adolf is the
-woman-worshipper, the slave who has sold his masculine birthright for
-worthless favours. He is killed by disillusionment.
-
-The production of _The Father, Lady Julie,_ and _Creditors_ at the
-Theatre Libre was followed by their performance at the Theatre de
-l'Oeuvre in Paris, another experimental theatre which was founded in
-1893 by M. Lugne-Poe. _Lady Julie_ was part of the early repertory
-of the Freie Buehne, an advanced playhouse which had been established
-in Berlin in 1889 to meet the demand for realism on the stage. _The
-Father_ and _Creditors_ were performed in Copenhagen in 1889, and the
-latter play was soon presented at the Residenz Theater in Berlin. The
-Independent Theatre in London, founded by Mr. J.T. Grein in 1891,
-introduced Ibsenism to England, and suffered the penalty of the
-pioneer. Strindbergism might have wrecked the undertaking before the
-work was accomplished. Mr. Grein's services to the British playgoer
-have not yet been fully appreciated. He broke one or two windows in
-the suffocating theatre of banalities and bon-bon amours. Thanks to
-his courage we can now enjoy an increased amount of oxygen. But the
-West-End stage still thrives on airlessness. The popular long-run
-play, in which the charming actress appears as mannequin for the
-best costumier, whilst social inanities are paraded as absorbing
-problems--with a happy ending--contracts the lungs of all who in the
-drama seek a mirror and a criticism of life. To find modern dramatic
-art they must perforce go to the sporadic centres of unconventional
-and non-commercial performances, or to the semi-private stages of
-societies which fight the prevalent stagnation by bold experimental
-presentation of new dramatic ideas. Strindberg's plays are practically
-unknown in England. The Adelphi Players produced _The Father_ in July,
-1911, and _Lady Julie_ in April, 1912. The Stage Society, which is the
-descendant of Mr. Grein's Independent Theatre, has played _Creditors_.
-The Stronger, an atmospheric sketch with two characters, of whom the
-one maintains silence, whilst the other uses her tongue, was acted
-by Madame Lydia Yavorskaia and Lady Tree in 1909. Of the remainder
-of the fifty-one plays by which he has encompassed many "schools" of
-playwriting, evolved new dramatic forms, and tested different methods
-of expression the British public knows little or nothing.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Naturalism has passed away. The shallow materialism, the false
-simplicity of presentation, with which it sought to kill romantic
-methods of dramaturgy, proved fatal. They were found to be as unreal
-as the old-fashioned conventions of the stage. But there were other
-qualities in the movement which have not died, but profoundly
-influenced the character-drawing and scenic development of the modern
-drama. Hauptmann, Hervieu, Wedekind, Schnitzler, Gorky, Tchekhov
-have transmuted and individualised the permanent elements of the
-early realism. As an exponent of naturalism Strindberg's personality
-towered high above the first noisy purveyors of what M. Jullien named
-"slices of life"--some distressingly indigestible. It is true that
-the fabric of his drama was woven out of the ever-recurring theme of
-sexual antagonism. He described it with the undertone of personal
-suffering--the suffering of experience and of pity--with which Tolstoy
-made his peasants articulate in _Powers of Darkness_, or Henry Becque
-the ill-used women in _Les Corbeaux_.
-
-But Strindberg's plays are highly "unpleasant," says some defender of
-the morality of the stage. True, but they are honestly unpleasant. They
-differ from the popular play of amorous escapades and half-uttered
-indecencies, as the mountain torrent differs from the garden fountain.
-They are written by the impelling force of an idea, whilst the
-conventional immorality play exists in the interests of frivolous
-entertainment. However much we may disagree with the _leitmotif_ in
-Strindberg's naturalistic plays, and realise the limitations of his
-theses, we cannot ignore them. And do they not, after all, treat of
-"love," the obsessing object of dramatic interest from the plaintive
-demi-monde of Dumas _fils_ to the man-hunting Ann of Bernard
-Shaw? From Sudermann and Pinero to Schnitzler and Capus, through
-sentimentalism, conventionalism, and cynicism, the theme persists in
-absorbing dramatic imagination. Compared with Schnitzler, the prince
-of amorists, Strindberg's _milieu_ is sombre with fateful retribution.
-Like Strindberg, Schnitzler dramatises the illusion and disillusionment
-of love; his lovers and mistresses are also on the road to knowledge.
-The ten couples who pass over the stage in _Reigen_ might be sparks
-from Strindberg's anvil. But on closer inspection we find that there
-has been no fire. Schnitzler's world is the play-room of the passions,
-Strindberg's their inferno.
-
-In _Lady Julie_ and _Creditors_, both one-act plays and each with only
-three speaking parts, he created a new dramatic form. He now assailed
-the old theatre with the same vigour with which he had attacked old
-social institutions. In the preface to _Lady Julie_ he contemptuously
-writes:
-
-"The theatre has long appeared to me, as art in general, to be a
-_Biblia Pauperum_, a bible in pictures for those who cannot read
-writing or print, and the playwright as a lay preacher who disseminates
-the thoughts of the period in popular form, so popular that the middle
-classes, which chiefly fill the theatres, can understand what it is all
-about without much mental exertion. The theatre has therefore always
-been a board-school for young people, the half-educated, and women who
-still possess the primitive capacity for deceiving themselves, and
-allowing themselves to be deceived, i.e. to accept illusion, receive
-suggestion from the author."
-
-The influence of Edmond de Goncourt, who called the theatre an
-exhibition of spouting marionettes and a place for the exercise of
-educated dogs, can be traced in this passage. Rudimentary, incomplete
-processes of thought, dependent on imagination, are, concluded
-Strindberg, necessary to theatrical enjoyment. With the development of
-reflection, investigation, and the higher mental attributes, decay of
-pleasure in theatrical performances would follow as the shell drops
-from the ripe fruit. In the theatrical crisis which raged in Europe at
-this time (1888), and in the moribund state of drama in England and
-Germany he saw evidence of an approaching extinction of the theatre.
-
-It would, however, be a mistake to invest these views with a greater
-seriousness than they contained. As Henry Becque pointed out in
-his "Souvenirs," _la fin du theatre_ has repeatedly been proclaimed
-by dissatisfied critics, without causing the slightest impediment
-in the ceaseless flow of dramatic production. In the preface to _Le
-Fils Naturel_, Dumas had compared the moralising functions of the
-stage to those of the Church. Strindberg replied, twenty years later,
-by predicting the downfall of both as vehicles of human progress.
-Hot-headed attacks on the theatre precede the evolution of new dramatic
-forms; they are the outcome of the modernity which is ever at war
-with methods which have become classic. "To save the theatre, the
-theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of
-the plague," is the sweeping verdict of Eleonora Duse,[2] but there
-is no disparagement in the reflection that the melancholy prophecies
-are often uttered by dramatists who are misunderstood and rejected. In
-Anton Tchekhov's _The Seagull_, published in 1900, the familiar protest
-is heard: "To me the theatre of to-day," says the poet Constantine,
-through whom the author speaks, "is no more than an antiquated
-prejudice, a dull routine." He protests against the trivialities, the
-commonplace morality, the repeated dishing up of the same story in
-a thousand varieties. He wants to flee, as Maupassant fled from the
-Eiffel Tower. Each malcontent finds solution in his own new method of
-drama. Rousseau's letter to d'Alembert contains the genuine criticism
-of the theatre, with which no born dramatist can sympathise. From the
-effect of fostering artificial emotions, of indulging in sham joys
-and sorrows, there is no escape through improvement of dramatic form.
-Whether for good or ill it remains with us. But there is happily little
-danger of the rationality, in which Strindberg saw the doom of the
-theatre.
-
-The choice of naturalistic subjects was to be a contributing factor in
-the process of rationalism. Of the painful impression created by _Lady
-Julie_ Strindberg writes:
-
-"When I chose this subject from life, just as it was told to me
-some years ago when it stirred me deeply, I found it suitable for a
-tragedy, for it still makes a painful impression to see a happily
-placed individual go to the wall, and still more to see a family die
-out. But the time may come when we shall be sufficiently evolved and
-enlightened to contemplate with indifference the coarse, cynical, and
-heartless drama which life offers, when we have laid aside the inferior
-and unreliable registration-machines which we call feelings, and which
-will be superfluous and injurious when our organs of judgment are fully
-developed....
-
-"The fact that my tragedy makes a sad impression on many is the
-fault of the many. When we become strong, as were the first French
-revolutionaries, it will make an exclusively pleasant and cheerful
-impression to see the royal parks cleared of rotting, superannuated
-trees which have too long stood in the way of others with equal right
-to vegetate their full life-time; it will make a good impression in the
-same sense as does the sight of the death of an incurable.
-
-"The reproach was levelled against my tragedy, _The Father_, that it
-was so sad, as though one wanted merry tragedies. People clamour for
-the joy of life, and theatrical managers order farces, as though the
-joy of life consisted in being foolish, and in describing people as if
-they were each and all afflicted with St. Vitus's Dance or idiocy. I
-find the joy of life in the powerful, cruel struggle of life, and my
-enjoyment in discovering something, in learning something. Therefore
-I have chosen an unusual, though instructive, case, in other words, an
-exception, but a great exception which confirms the rule, and which
-is sure to offend the lovers of the banal. The simple brain will
-further be shocked by the fact that my motives behind the action are
-not simple, and that there is not one view alone to be taken of it. An
-event in life--and this is a comparatively new discovery--is generally
-produced by a whole series of more or less deep-seated motives, but
-the spectator chooses for the most part the one which is easiest for
-him to grasp, or the one most advantageous to the reputation of his
-judgment. Take a case of suicide as an example. 'Bad business,' says
-the bourgeois. 'Unhappy love!' say the women. 'Sickness!' says the
-disease-ridden man. 'Shattered hopes!' the bankrupt. But it is possible
-that the motives lay in all of these causes, or in none, and that the
-dead man hid the real one by putting forward another which has thrown a
-more favourable light on his memory."
-
-In an essay entitled _On Modern Drama and the Modern Theatre_, written
-in March, 1889, and published in the first volume of a collection of
-plays and essays under the title _Things Printed and Unprinted_,
-Strindberg proclaims the regenerating powers of the Naturalistic
-Theatre in the following words:
-
-"Let us have a theatre, where we can be horrified by the horrible,
-where we can laugh at what is laughable, play with playthings; where we
-can see everything without being shocked, if that which has hitherto
-been concealed behind theological and aesthetical hangings is revealed.
-Though old, conventional laws may have to be broken, let us have a
-free theatre, where everything is admitted except the talentless, the
-hypocritical and the stupid."
-
-He distinguishes between true and false naturalism, and deprecates
-the commonplace dulness of the subject chosen by Henry Becque in _Les
-Corbeaux_. To Strindberg the choice of such subjects depends on a
-soullessness or a lack of temperament, which must bore the spectator
-instead of stimulate him. He calls such a dramatic method simple
-photography which "includes everything, even the speck of dust upon the
-lens of the camera. This is realism," he writes; "a method, latterly
-exalted to an art, a little art which cannot see the wood for the
-trees. This is the false Naturalism which believed that art consisted
-merely in sketching a piece of nature in a natural manner, but it is
-not the true naturalism which seeks out those points in life, where the
-great conflicts occur, which loves to see that which cannot be seen
-every day, rejoices in the battle of elemental powers, whether they be
-called love or hatred, revolt or sociability; which cares not, whether
-a subject be beautiful or ugly, if only it is great."
-
-"I do not know the modes," cried Socrates, "but leave me one which
-will imitate the tones and accents of a brave man, enduring danger or
-distress, fighting with constancy against fortune." The Naturalism
-of which Strindberg was a prophet might have chosen these words as
-a motto. Socrates continued: "And also one fitted for the work of
-peace, for prayer heard by the gods, for the successful persuasion or
-exhortation of men, and generally for the sober enjoyment of ease and
-prosperity." With this side of man's natural life young Naturalism had
-no sympathy. That came with years of discretion.
-
-The transformation of the diffuse drama in many acts into the concise
-and dynamic one-act play with few characters, and the simplification of
-stage technique, were the salient points in Strindberg's proclamation
-of Theatre Reform. He held that there is generally but one scene,
-towards which the playwright mounts on devious paths, and that author
-and audience alike are made to endure painful side-shows for the sake
-of one thing worth seeing. A man's dramatic talent may outlast his
-one-act play, but it is taxed to depletion in the construction of five
-acts, just as the imaginative patience of the audience is exhausted by
-the long intervals.
-
-The Greek art of the one-act play had been revived in the eighteenth
-century in the _Proverbes Dramatiques_ of Carmontelle, developed by
-Musset and Feuillet, and had finally found a modern interpretation in
-the style of the _Quart d'Heure_ of which _Entre Freres_ by Guiche and
-Lavedan is a typical example. When writing _Lady Julie_, Strindberg
-had in mind the monographic novels of the brothers de Goncourt. The
-dialogue in Lady Julie is interrupted twice. There is singing and
-a folk-dance. Such diversions do not leave the spectator time to
-escape from the suggestion of the playwright, or to lose the precious
-illusion. The performance of Lady Julie lasts an hour and a half,
-and Strindberg saw no reason why the public should not be educated
-to endure one act which lasts the whole evening. There may be mental
-diversions, such as are provided by monologue, pantomime and ballet;
-but people can listen for hours to sermons and speeches, and may
-consequently learn true dramatic concentration.
-
-The scenery should be simple. "With the aid of a table and two chairs
-the strongest conflicts which life offers could be presented," he
-writes of the genre of the proverbe, "and by that form of art it
-became possible to popularise the discoveries of modern psychology."
-The decorations should only be suggestive of place and time.
-An impressionistic representation of a corner of a room and its
-furniture--not the whole room--is all that is needed. Grotesque
-scene-painting should be abolished together with the stagey villain who
-can create no illusion of wickedness. Footlights were an abomination
-to Strindberg. M. Ludovic Celler[3] tells us of their humble and
-smoky origin in the tallow candles which, for economical reasons,
-were placed on the floor to illuminate the darkness of stage and
-auditorium. Whatever their origin, they have a power of distorting
-facial expression against which Strindberg vehemently protested. His
-protest has been echoed by numerous reformers of the theatre. But the
-footlights remain to disfigure noses and blacken eyes in accordance
-with time-honoured custom. With proper side-lighting and less paint
-on the faces of the actors Strindberg saw possibilities for the mimic
-art, which are hidden under shadows and heavy layers of powder and
-rouge. The visible orchestra was another obstacle to scenic progress;
-in the shrinking of stage and auditorium to a size compatible with
-artistic presentation, he saw another means of improvement. In the
-small, simplified theatre, with well-regulated light effects and actors
-with natural intonation and gestures, Strindberg found a chance for the
-continuance of the theatre. Many of his ideas have been realised in the
-Kuenstler Theater of Munich.
-
-In the preface to _Lady Julie_ he deals with the all-important subject
-of characterisation. "As modern characters," he writes, "living in a
-period of transition more hurried and hysterical than its immediate
-predecessor, I have drawn my characters vacillating, broken, mixtures
-of old and new.... My souls (characters) are conglomerations of
-past and present stages of culture, scraps of books and newspapers,
-fragments of men and women, tom shreds of Sunday attire that are now
-rags, such as go to make up a soul. And I have thrown in some history
-of origins in letting the weaker steal and repeat the words of the
-stronger, in letting the souls borrow ideas, or so-called suggestions
-from one another."
-
-He ridicules the ordinary idea of a strong character. The person
-"who has acquired a fixed temperament or accommodated himself to a
-certain role in life, who in a word has ceased to grow, was supposed
-to have character; whilst one who developed, the skilful navigator on
-the stream of life who does not sail with close-tied sheets, but who
-knows when to fall off before the wind and when to luff again, was
-deemed deficient in character.... This bourgeois conception of the
-fixity of the soul was transferred to the stage, where all that is
-bourgeois has ever reigned supreme. Such a character became synonymous
-with a gentleman, fixed and ready-made, one who invariably appeared
-drunk, jocular, melancholy.... I do not, therefore, believe in simple
-theatrical characters. And the summary judgments which authors pass on
-human beings, such as: this one is stupid; that one is brutal; he is
-jealous; he is mean, etc., should be refuted by naturalists who know
-the rich complexity of the soul, and who realise that 'vice has an
-obverse which shows a considerable likeness to virtue.'"
-
-The secret of Strindberg's great influence on the theatre of twenty
-years ago lay in this very conception of character. His men and women
-are _alive_, moving, changing, growing, shrinking in ceaseless response
-to the pressure of existence. He is the dramatist of the _perpetuum
-mobile_ in the modern heart, the interpreter of inexhaustible
-discontent in himself and others. His personality vibrates in the
-dialogue, and lifts the idea of the play to the surface in every
-consecutive scene, but the artist in him is stronger than the
-idealogue. The curtain and the settled problem do not drop together.
-Strindberg has answered a question or two, tentatively, in his own
-manner, but others crowd in upon him and his audience. The absence
-of finality is felt through the tragic endings, through the strong
-blend of moods, emotions and desires of his exceptional characters,
-through the unreasonableness of his prejudices. In spite of pessimism
-and cynicism a hope of change is communicated to the spectator, which
-penetrates depression and stimulates the curiosity to live.
-
-Amongst the one-act plays which were written between 1887 and 1897,
-_Samum_, _Pariah, The Stronger, Playing with Fire_ and _The Link_
-present the typical characters of psychic intensity and neuropathic
-activity. _Samum_ is the story of the revenge of an Arabian girl and
-her lover upon a hapless Frenchman, lieutenant in a Zouave regiment.
-She kills him, not with a dagger, for that might involve the punishment
-of her tribe, but with words. With the help of "Samum," the hot,
-suffocating wind of the desert which blows phantoms into the white
-man's brain, she thrusts suggestion after suggestion into his mind. She
-makes the sick man believe that he has been bitten by a mad dog; she
-offers him sand instead of water in the drinking bowl, and rejoices
-when he dreads the drink; she invokes hideous pictures of the defeat of
-his regiment, the faithlessness of his wife, the death of his child,
-before his fevered imagination. She finally makes him stare in a mirror
-at the ghastly image of a skull, and tells him that this is his face,
-that he is dead. And when the Frenchman, murdered by horror, sinks back
-dead, Youssef, her lover, proud of race and proud of the woman's black
-magic, hails her as the worthy mother of his child.
-
-_Pariah_ is a dialogue which bears the mark of the master-craftsman
-in the dramatic presentation of psychological events. It is a contest
-of minds founded on a tale by Ola Hansson. Two middle-aged men, one
-an archaeologist, the other a somewhat mysterious man of unknown
-occupation, who has returned to Sweden from America, have met in the
-country. The archaeologist is engaged in recovering antique ornaments
-from the bowels of the earth. In the room where the two men face each
-other there stands a box, containing bracelets and trinkets of gold
-which he has found. Herr X., the archaeologist, talks of his poverty,
-of how easily he might appropriate to his own use some of the gold
-he has found. Debts could be paid, and his wife's anxiety allayed
-by one single bracelet. So simple and yet impossible to do. Herr Y.
-listens to the reasons which prevent Herr X. from becoming a thief
-though there can be no fear of detection. Incapable of stealing
-himself, Herr X. expresses his pity for others who fall under similar
-temptation. He suspects that the man by his side is in need of such
-pity--his conduct has already betrayed the convict. By a series of
-psychologically timed questions Herr X. unmasks Herr Y., who, taken
-by surprise, confesses that he has served a term of imprisonment for
-fraud. The wild anger which for a moment surged through the brain of
-the criminal has given way to servile admiration of the superior mind.
-He kisses the archaeologist's hand. All is known, and yet there is no
-condescension on the part of the stronger man. Herr Y. tells the story
-of how he came to write a false signature; he wishes to persuade Herr
-X. of his spiritual innocence, show him that he was the victim of an
-uncontrollable impulse which never defiled his real self. Herr X. has
-fallen into an introspective mood. Hesitating, half afraid of what he
-is doing, he confides to Herr Y. that he has killed a man--a worthless,
-drunken old servant, and without intention to inflict deadly injury,
-it is true, but such is the fact: he is a murderer. In reply to Herr
-Y.'s eager questions why he escaped without punishment, Herr X. gives
-the reasons, why he believed it to be a greater wrong to give himself
-up to justice than to conceal the deed--there were his parents, his
-career, his fitness for life. Herr Y. has the scoundrel's alert sense
-of opportunity. He begins by pointing out his moral superiority over
-Herr X., and ends by trying to extort money. Let Herr X. only put his
-hand in the box, and transfer some of its contents to Herr Y., and
-nothing more will be said of the crime. Let him refuse to do this, and
-the whole story will be told at the nearest police-station. The end of
-this incisive piece of psychology shows us Herr Y., driven to flight by
-the cold-blooded logic of Herr X., who demonstrates that the would-be
-accuser is a forger who is "wanted," and whose dread of the police
-authorities is a guarantee of his discretion in the matter.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_The Stronger_ is a contest of temperaments carried out by one voice
-only. Two women--the wife and the mistress of one man--have met in
-a cafe. Mademoiselle Y. sits silent, whilst Madame X. talks. But
-her silence conveys more than speech. It drives Madame X. to reveal
-the humiliation she has suffered, it drives her through jealous and
-angry recriminations to a triumphant and vindictive assertion of her
-superior position as the legal wife and mother. As an ironical and
-adroit study of two types of the soul feminine, and by the skilful
-handling of the monologue the piece is one of the best of its genre.
-
-_Playing with Fire_ is a triangular comedy of marriage, in which
-conjugal fidelity is saved at the eleventh hour through sudden and
-truly Strindbergian disillusionment which makes the friend of husband
-and wife depart like a rocket from the house of temptation, whilst the
-peace of an orderly lunch descends upon the family. _The First Warning_
-is a conjugal squabble, and one of the weakest dramatic episodes
-conceived by Strindberg. The character of the jealous and enslaved
-husband, who has made six vain attempts to flee from the devastating
-charm of his wife, is a diluted rechauffe of an incident related in
-_The Confession of a Fool_, including the significant moment when
-the wife is subjugated by the shock of losing her first front tooth,
-and the attendant discovery of the vanity of all things of beauty.
-The dialogue is unreal, and Strindberg's sketch of the young girl so
-unnatural that we may be grateful that the type has not been more
-frequently chosen for "naturalistic" treatment.
-
-_The Link_, a tragedy published in 1897, is a masterly divorce-court
-scene. Here Strindberg draws the shame and agony of the broken
-marriage-tie with bitter realism, and yet with a delicate touch of that
-all-human compassion before which the flowers of satire wither. The
-Baron and the Baroness have decided to separate, and proceedings for a
-deed of separation have been entered by the husband. There is a link
-between them which cannot be broken--the child whom they both love; and
-for his sake they are determined not to expose their differences before
-the hungry eyes of scandal-mongers. The husband is willing to let the
-mother have the custody of the child. But the questions of the judge
-pierce the veneer of amiability. Who is the cause of dissension? What
-has brought them before the Court? The answers bring accusations and
-recriminations, a parade of quarrels and dissensions, angry revelations
-of infidelity, disgust, espionage, lies, hatred, and, when the Court
-exercises its legal power of depriving both parents of the custody
-of the child, the torture of vain regret and empty lives. There is
-consummate art in the picture of the emotional revolution, through
-which husband and wife are forced into self-damning revelations. The
-minor characters of the jurymen and court officials are drawn with a
-calm observation and quiet humour which form an effective background
-to its central tragic figures. Incidentally, the inadequacy of the law
-to secure justice for the wronged is shown, and the lawyer in the play
-has some affinity with the legal luminaries in M. Brieux's _La Robe
-Rouge_. But Strindberg's judge is a righteous man who chafes under the
-limitations and responsibilities of his profession.
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--1904 (Photo by Andersson, Stockholm.)]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--1906 (Photo by Haminqvist, Stockholm)]
-
-Those, whose knowledge of Strindberg's writings is limited to his
-naturalistic plays, have judged his powers as a literary artist from
-an entirely inadequate point of view. When Justin McCarthy spoke of
-the real Strindberg, as revealed in _The Father, Lady Julie_ and
-_Comrades_, he ignored, not only the volumes of essays, stories and
-novels which preceded the plays mentioned, but those which were
-published at the same time. Strindberg has been described as a man who
-had no interest to spare for social problems, or politics, or the great
-movements of his time--as a dramatist whose knife was forever delving
-in the pathological tissue of passions, and whose eyes saw nothing
-but the broad and sombre outlines of inevitable tragedy. Those who
-know _The People of Hemso_ (1887), a novel of the fishermen's life
-in the Stockholm Archipelago, fresh as the salt breeze of the sea,
-bright with sunshine, and the jollity of a man with steady nerves,
-who is thoroughly at home in a boat and in a hut, are familiar with
-another side of Strindberg. Or the volume of short stories entitled
-_Fisher Folk_ (1888), with its sketches of life on the island, broadly
-humorous, impressive in its unaffected narrative of the struggles and
-ambitions of the hardy toilers among the rocks. The stories bring us
-in the midst of the island folk: we know their practical, wind-dried
-minds where superstition lurks in a corner; we see their sparse
-bodies--sometimes fed on herring-heads and potatoes. We attend the
-dance which the poor, hunch-backed tailor gives to the young people as
-an offering on the altar of joy, and lament with him the devastation
-wrought by terpsichorean orgies in his garden. We accompany Westman,
-the ungodly pilot who has harpooned a seal from his little boat,
-and is dragged out to sea by the cruel monster in spite of pitiful
-recitals of the Lord's Prayer, and offers of a pure silver chandelier
-to the local church. We are made to participate in the people's life.
-In both books there is a wealth of descriptive power, and there is
-something fundamentally healthy in the figures of the common people
-whom he draws, a natural pathos in their vulgarity, and even in their
-criminality.
-
-There are some who see exclusively _das Daemonische_ in Strindberg,
-and who picture him as perpetually skirting precipices of moral
-and intellectual negation, or as a Lucifer who never emerges from
-consuming tongues of fire. They have nothing to say of such books as
-his _Sketches of Flowers and Animals_ (1888). Here we meet him, a
-mild and patient gardener, sowing his salad and spinach, revelling in
-the reward which his cool cucumbers offer after having been carefully
-tended by loving hands. Here he initiates us into his cult of the
-flower, his adoration of colour and form in the plant world; he
-anticipates Maeterlinck in his sensitive studies of the intelligence
-of flowers and the mysteries of seeds. His _Fables_ are stories of
-birds, insects and bushes, betraying an intimate knowledge of nature,
-and sparkling with a good-humoured satire. In these books there are
-strokes of brilliant imagination, there is a womanly tenderness for
-the lives of plant-children. In one of his stories[4] he tells us of
-a tall fir that can feel and suffer, and his description of the spirit
-within the tree which sobs under the wood-cutter's axe, and which some
-day we shall recognise, reminds us of Fiona Macleod's _Cathal of the
-Woods_. Strindberg's love of Nature had many qualities in common with
-Thoreau--there is the same pleasure in cultivating the cabbage-patch,
-the same ecstatic contemplation of green life. Thoreau could find his
-way in the wood during the night by the touch of his feet. Strindberg,
-treading his way through the forest in the dark hours, knows whether he
-walks on soil, clubmoss or maidenhair, "through the nerves, of his large
-toe."[5]
-
-There is also a practical, homely side of Strindberg, which is
-generally ignored, qualities appertaining to the small farmer with a
-keen eye to profitable cultivation of the land. Without these qualities
-he could not have written _Among French Peasants_ (1889), which is
-a series of articles on the life and conditions in agricultural
-France. They are the product of the mind of a true son of the
-soil, equipped with a journalist's power of rapid generalisation.
-Strindberg travelled through France, notebook in hand, stayed amongst
-the peasants, measured hay and corn, attended weddings and fairs,
-annotating the prices of meat and butter, studied the ravages of
-the phylloxera and geological formations. The book is crammed with
-facts and comparative statistics of town and country, wheat and wine,
-village education, libraries, labourers' wages, cheese-making, the best
-fertilisers, and other matters of import to rural economy.
-
-He shirked no trouble, avoided no obstacles to equip himself as a
-writer on gigantic subjects. His encyclopaedic grasp of a many-sided
-subject is shown in this book, and in his numerous essays on
-sociological questions. It carries with it a certain superficiality,
-and readiness to theorise from insufficient data which may necessitate
-a graceful retraction of opinions, once loudly proclaimed. But there is
-ample compensation in the freshness and vigour of a mind which bears
-crop after crop without exhausting itself. Such a quickly grown crop,
-verdant and luxurious in ideas, is the essay, written in 1884, _On the
-General Discontent, its Causes and Remedies_, in which he inveighs
-against the evils of a false Culture, and within the space of a hundred
-pages lets Society pass in review before his critical pen in the types
-of the king, the bureaucrat, the physician, the teacher, the merchant,
-the sailor, the artisan, the manufacturer, the labourer, the servant,
-the scientist, the author, the journalist, and the artist, and finally
-prescribes the pills of self-help, self-government and limitation of
-useless luxuries, artfully mixed. There is much of Rousseau, Tolstoy,
-Spencer, Mill and de Quesnay in the social philosophy, with which he
-wished to build on the ruins, wrought by _The Red Room_ and _The New
-Kingdom_. The ideal peasant--in Tolstoyan garb--was then Strindberg's
-hope for humanity.
-
-When he wrote _At the Edge of the Sea_, in 1890, the horrors of
-unchecked democracy had been revealed to him. It is the story of a
-highly intelligent, refined and super-sensitive man who is forced
-to live amongst coarse and ignorant people, and who is gradually
-driven to insanity and suicide. This book is the apex of Strindberg's
-novelistic art. The scene is again laid on one of the islands outside
-Stockholm, the life of the fisherfolk is once more described. But the
-tone and the colour are changed. There is the same brilliancy in the
-description of scenery, and the psychological imagination is more
-lavish than ever, but the mists of Nietzscheanism lie heavily over the
-book. The distinction between "slave-morality" and "master-morality" is
-emphasised with truly Dionysian pessimism.
-
-The same influence coloured the preface to _Lady Julie_, and the novel
-_Tschandala_, published in 1889, and led Mr. Edmund Gosse into the
-error of describing Strindberg as "the most remarkable creative talent
-started by the philosophy of Nietzsche." Strindberg was certainly
-not "started" by Nietzsche who was entirely unknown to him until the
-autumn of 1888, when George Brandes brought the two writers together.
-A correspondence between Nietzsche and Strindberg began in 1889, and
-continued until Nietzsche's illness. Nietzsche read Strindberg's novels
-with interest, and Strindberg duly acknowledged the influence which
-Nietzsche exercised upon him, but protested against the mistaken view
-expressed by Mr. Gosse and others, in the following words: "Those
-who have followed my career as a writer at its different stages of
-development know sufficiently well how early I adopted the so-called
-Nietzschean standpoint with regard to conventional morals, and the
-emancipation of women to give me my due, and Nietzsche his with clear
-consciences."
-
-The statement that Strindberg was a Nietzschean _pur et simple_ is as
-absurd as the statement that he was a Darwinist or a Methodist. He
-passed through the fatalism of Hartmann, the pessimism of Schopenhauer,
-the naturalism of Zola, the realism of Turgenev and Dostoevsky. On one
-occasion he speaks of Balzac as his master, on another he calls himself
-a Voltairean. These influences are but lights on the way. He passes on,
-and speaks to us with a new tongue. When charged with inconsistency
-he might well have answered with Walt Whitman: "I am large--I contain
-multitudes."
-
-
-[1] _Froken Julie_, the Swedish name of this play, has been translated
-into English as "Miss Juliet" and "Miss Julia." The meaning of the
-Swedish title and the idea of the play are more faithfully rendered by
-the title _Lady Julie_. In the choice of a title for his feminine type
-of aristocratic degeneracy, Strindberg was probably influenced by Anna
-Maria Lenngren's _Froken Juliana_, a well-known satirical poem on a
-similar subject which belongs to classical Swedish literature. Up to
-the middle of the nineteenth century the title "Froken" was exclusively
-used-when addressing the unmarried daughters of the hereditary nobility
-of Sweden. An unmarried daughter of a Swedish count is a countess,
-though she is addressed as "Froken." Upon marriage with a commoner she
-may use or drop her title.
-
-[2] _Studies in Seven Arts_, by Arthur Symons.
-
-[3] _"Les decors, les costumes et la mise-en-scene au XVII siecle."_
-
-[4] Confused Sensations.
-
-[5] The Confession of a Fool.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-SELF-TORMENTOR AND VISIONARY
-
-
-He restlessness of Genius is a sore trial to Mediocrity. Mediocrity
-in the Critic's chair, whose business it is to pass judgment upon the
-artist and his work, to affix a label to his back, and to place him
-on a particular shelf where the public can find him. The literary
-artist is expected to have a point of view which he has reached through
-certain early influences, to express himself in a certain form, and,
-when mature, to be measurable and easily recognisable in size and
-colour. If his personality and his writings make the critic's work easy
-he will be blessed by his contemporaries, or possibly condemned. But
-he will always be understood, and in the understanding there is solid
-comfort. You may sneer at the gods of society, you may shake your fist
-at law and authority, you may ridicule humanity, but you must, like Mr.
-George Bernard Shaw, always say the same thing. Voltaire is always
-expected to contemplate the world with a truly Voltairean smile of
-irony, Rousseau to cling innocently to Nature, Swift to see humanity
-only from the satirist's vantage-point.
-
-The man of genius who, conscious of the limitations of a single point
-of view, seeks another, who strides across the hilltops of past thought
-in rapid search of a higher one, who hugs philosophies and drops them,
-holds faiths and deserts them, is a phenomenon before which the critic
-feels uneasy. He calls in the doctor, and together they prepare the
-last label of madness--red, like a warning against poison--and hurl
-it at the extraordinary man when he happens to pass at a convenient
-distance. Believing that there is nothing further to be said, they
-return to their respective vocations.
-
-From the points of view of Mediocrity and Eugenics Strindberg presented
-the typical signs of degeneration, irrespectively of the traits and
-characteristics which are inadequately defined as the insanity of
-genius. He was a truth-seeker, and, consequently, a fault-finder. He
-knew peace and comfort like other men, and brief hours of sunshine,
-but spiritual discontent compelled him to be a nomad, a wanderer in
-many lands. Hence the critic's failure to classify him as a romanticist
-or realist, a socialist or individualist, a pessimist or humorist,
-a maniac or mystic, or to map out his life into periods and squares
-of thought. There was something of the eternal recurrence in him, an
-alchemical consciousness of all in all. He leaves beliefs, parts with
-influences, conquers new lands through violent crises of awakening
-which well-nigh wreck the body, and returns to the first camp, richer
-and yet the same. Through soul-sickness and hallucinations, through
-delirium and phrenopathic punishments he is led to the super-sanity
-of genius. He becomes the visionary of things hidden, the medium of
-spirits, the sinner on the road to Damascus, the prophet of divine
-justice.
-
-Mistakes and bitter experiences prepared the way for the religious
-crisis of 1894. In 1887 he left Switzerland and France for Bavaria,
-where he wrote _The Father_ and The _People of Hemso_. He lived in
-Denmark from the autumn of 1887 to the summer of 1889. The prosecution
-of _Married_ had inspired cautiousness in the hearts of Swedish
-publishers, and Strindberg had only with difficulty found a publisher
-for _The Father_ and _Lady Julie_. The plays were promptly attacked
-by Swedish critics, amongst them Professor Warburg, author of a
-history of literature, who thought their naturalism an unmistakable
-form of decadence. When Strindberg returned to his country in 1889
-the hostility aroused by _Married_, and augmented by lively tales of
-the author's views on morality took an unexpectedly practical form.
-When yachting along the west coast for the purpose of collecting
-material for a great work on _The Scenery of Sweden_, he was actually
-refused permission to land in one of the fishing villages.[1] During
-the two years which he now spent in Sweden he became embittered by
-the enmity of his critics. He isolated himself on one of his beloved
-islands outside Stockholm, wrote and painted. In the autumn of 1892 an
-exhibition of his pictures was held in Stockholm. It was impressions
-of the sea which his brush had chosen--ice, mist, storm--and painted,
-not only with a tender feeling for island scenery, but disclosing
-considerable technical merit and accuracy of hand. The principal
-cause of suffering lay in Strindberg's eroticism, his interminable
-suspiciousness against his wife which made his divorce in 1892 a
-merciful end to a marriage of torment. There is much in the repulsive
-pages of _The Confession of a Fool_ which betrays its author's lack of
-mental balance; the incessant puling over the woman's wickedness, and
-the attendant self-appreciation are not apt to command the reader's
-sympathy. The same may be said of the second volume of _Married_,
-published in 1886. There are a carelessness of style, and a bluntness
-of accusation against womankind which make the book inartistic. The
-_ad captandum_ controversialist has overruled judgment; there is a
-tone of personal irritation in the stories which Strindberg tells
-us were written "in self-defence" against the attacks, made upon
-him by feminists. Like John Knox, when he wrote _The First Blast of
-the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regimen of Women_, Strindberg was
-actuated by a kind of religious fervour. Like John Knox he detested
-"this monstriferous empire of women," whilst his admiration for
-the dangerous sex repeatedly cast him in chains of bondage. Like
-Schopenhauer he mocked all womankind "long of hair and short of
-sense," and threw misogyny to the winds before the first pair of
-charming eyes or dainty feet.
-
-In the autumn of 1892 we find Strindberg in Germany. The curse of
-marriage is no longer upon his head. He lives at Friedrichshagen, near
-Berlin, with his friends, the Swedish writer Ola Hansson, and his
-wife Laura Marholm who has written an interesting psychological study
-of Strindberg. Strindberg has passed through one of those "deaths,"
-in which he found temporary Nirvana when the battle of thoughts had
-been too sanguinary. He has forsaken literature, thrown away the pen
-as a worthless tool of a tormented imagination which can scratch but
-not solve the riddle of the Sphinx. He has been re-born--a scientist.
-The exact sciences--chemistry, physics, astronomy--hold out hopes of
-complete replies to questions which the playwright can dress in human
-shape but not analyse.
-
-Strindberg's friend, Gustaf Uddgren,[2] has described a visit to him
-at this time. His study was bare and uninviting. On the floor there
-lay stacks of scientific books piled up against the wall. They had
-been bought with the first money he had earned in Germany, and none had
-been wasted on the luxury of a bookcase. The room contained a large,
-old easel, not unlike a brown skeleton; a writing-table from which the
-usual heaps of manuscript and notes were conspicuously absent; and, for
-the comfort of the body, a few easy chairs and a sofa, arranged so as
-to give the impression of a drawing-room. Strindberg did not wish to
-discuss literary subjects. He was glad to have left off writing, and
-looked forward with eager joy to scientific research. Uddgren tried in
-vain to induce him to talk about Walt Whitman. Strindberg preferred to
-discuss Red Indians with his guest who knew something of the wild west.
-
-After a few months at Friedrichshagen Strindberg moved to Berlin.
-He was in need of change and expansion. In the evenings he was now
-found in a little Wein Stube in Unter den Linden which is called "Zum
-Schwarzen Ferkel." It had already won fame as the favourite resort of
-Heine and E.T.A. Hoffmann. Here he was the centre of a literary and
-scientific coterie. Guitar in hand, amidst sympathetic friends, he
-became Dionysos, the singer of glad tidings, of wine-born joy. He
-improvised songs, and the nights were made short with wit and sparkling
-discussions. The Polish writer, Stanislav Przybyszewski, became much
-attached to Strindberg who found in him whirling depths of imaginative
-thought which attracted him, and made him seek his society on the
-principle of _similia similibus curantur_. Amongst other friends of the
-coterie were Holger Drachmann, Gunnar Heiberg, Adolf Paul, and Edvard
-Munch. "Zum Schwarzen Ferkel" is impregnated with the Strindbergian
-spirit. The landlord proudly shows the visitor the portraits which
-Strindberg gave him, and the picture by Strindberg, entitled _Die
-Welle_, which hangs on the wall.
-
-The plunge into the "exact" physical sciences, from which he had
-expected so much, proved disappointing. The boundaries of experimental
-research were soon reached by his penetrative imagination. He had a
-passion for facts, but he could not, like the typical man of science,
-content himself with systematised classification of things observable.
-His speculative writings are studded with allusions to scientific
-theories, and show an extensive knowledge of the history of chemistry
-and botany, of the facts of astronomy, geology, and zoology. He
-garnered the fruits of nineteenth-century science with the pleasure of
-the true dilettante, and having tasted them, declared them insipid.
-The imaginative processes of his mind continued where those of others
-stop; he passed from the visible to the occult, from rigid induction
-to extravagant fancy. Beyond the uttermost limits of science he came
-to see another world, in which chemistry became alchemy, astronomy
-astrology, physics the servant of magic, and the form of man the
-tool of mighty forces. He became a student of magnetism, hypnotism,
-telepathy, spiritism, of the secret knowledge which has persisted
-throughout the ages as the pearl within the oyster.
-
-Whilst literary Berlin was acclaiming Strindberg as the naturalistic
-playwright, his mind was centred on the hyperchemical speculations
-which later on found expression in his _Antibarbarus I or the
-Psychology of Sulphur or All is in All_, and in _Sylva Sylvarum_.
-Whilst wings of imagination were lifting him to new planes of thought,
-there was a sudden jerk on the chain which bound him to earth. He
-fell in love. The ideal woman had again appeared, now in the person
-of Fraeulein Frida Uhl, a young Austrian girl, daughter of Hofrath
-Friedrich Uhl, in Vienna. They became engaged, and art-loving Berlin
-was one day surprised to see Strindberg escorting his fiancee to
-the National Gallery. He was attired in the fashionable apparel of
-the Berlin dandy. A check suit of a large pattern, a short yellow
-overcoat, a garish tie, a grotesque walking-stick, and an immaculate
-silk hat which, according to the account given by Gustaf Uddgren,
-retained its place with difficulty on the leonine mane, gave him an
-appearance of unwonted worldliness. They were married in April, 1893,
-and spent the honeymoon at Gravesend. An injunction had meanwhile been
-granted against the German edition of _The Confession of a Fool_, and
-Strindberg returned to Berlin in order to appear before the Court in
-the action which followed. The prosecution failed. Strindberg and his
-wife spent the winter at her father's country place at Armstadten, on
-the Danube, where he returned to his esoteric studies, and wrote his
-_Antibarbarus_. In August, 1894, Strindberg went to Paris. His wife
-had accompanied him, and left their child in Austria. The tie was now
-irksome to him; _les hautes etudes_ and not woman had again become the
-mistress of his soul. In November he sent his wife back to her parents.
-
-"It was with a feeling of wild joy," he writes, "that I returned from
-Gare du Nord, where I had left my dear little wife who was going to
-our child who had fallen ill in a distant country. The sacrifice of
-my heart was thus made complete." Their last words, "When do we meet
-again?--Soon," were deceptive; an intuition truly told him that they
-had parted for ever. He had placed human affection on the altar of
-truth-seeking, thus practising the motto with which _Inferno_ opens:
-
-     Courbe la tete, fier Sicambre!
-     Adore ce que tu as brule,
-     Brule ce que tu as adore!
-
-At the Cafe de la Regence he sat down at the table where he used to sit
-with his wife, "the beautiful wardress of my prison who spied on my
-soul day and night, guessed my secret thoughts, watched the course of
-my ideas, jealously observed my spirit's striving towards the unknown."
-He felt free, a sense of mental expansion, of liberated power, a call
-to reach the arcanum of human knowledge.
-
-In Paris he was now the playwright of the day. The success of _Lady
-Julie_ and _Creditors_ was followed by a brilliant performance of _The
-Father_ at Theatre de l'Oeuvre in December. All Paris talked of his
-originality and of his misogyny which provided a piquant sensation,
-and a subject for interesting gossip in literary and dramatic circles.
-He was interviewed and photographed--he was the _cher maitre_ of the
-theatrical manager who expected from him a sensible appreciation of
-his possibilities for further triumphs on the stage. In Berlin he
-was the literary lion of the moment. His plays and novels lay in the
-booksellers' windows in attractive German dress, his portrait was
-exhibited, his personality was discussed. He was saluted as a leader of
-a new movement. But he turned his back on all this. Another self was
-shed; a voice within whispered the old burning "Beyond this"--drove him
-across the borderland of sanity, and into the chaos of unhuman desires.
-
-He left the cafe, and returned to his rooms in Quartier Latin. From
-their hiding-place in his trunk he took six crucibles made of fine
-porcelain, bought with money which he "had stolen from himself," made
-up a fierce fire in the stove, and pulled down the blinds for the
-night's experiment. His theory regarding the composition of sulphur
-which had met with such merciless ridicule was now to be put to the
-final test. A packet of pure sulphur and a pair of tongs completed
-the equipment of the laboratory. The sulphur burnt with infernal
-flames, and towards the morning he was able to demonstrate that it
-contained carbon. He believed that he had solved the great problem,
-overthrown orthodox chemistry, and gained scientific immortality. He
-had not noticed that the intense heat had burnt his hands, and caused
-the skin to fall off in flakes, but the pain of undressing in the
-morning made him conscious of the injury. The joy in the pursuit of the
-problems which haunted him was, however, greater than the pain, and
-the experiments were continued night after night. He had proved the
-existence of carbon in sulphur, now he had to show that it contained
-hydrogen and oxygen. The burns on his hands became filled with
-fragments of coke, they were bleeding, and caused him great pain, but
-he persisted in the work. He avoided his friends, and sought absolute
-loneliness. Meanwhile he wrote love-letters to his wife, relating
-to her the wonderful discoveries which he had made. She replied by
-warnings against such futile and foolish occupations, in which she
-saw nothing but waste of money. Irritated by her want of sympathy,
-Strindberg sent her a letter of farewell to wife and child, in which he
-led her to understand that a love affair had absorbed all his thoughts.
-She replied by instituting proceedings for divorce.
-
-The charge which he had made against himself was not true, and he was
-soon the prey of remorse. His injured pride had led him to write a
-letter which he describes as shameful and unpardonable, and in the
-loneliness which followed he saw himself as a suicide and assassinator.
-On Christmas Eve the vision of his deserted wife and child by the
-Christmas tree caused him to flee from the company which he had sought,
-and visit cafe after cafe, where he failed to find comfort in the usual
-glass of absinthe. During the night the feeling of being persecuted
-by an unknown power, bent on preventing his great task, overcame him.
-He slept badly, and was repeatedly awakened by a cold current of air
-sweeping across his face. Poverty, his persistent enemy, did hot
-leave him in peace. He lacked the necessary means to pay for rent
-and regular meals. His hands were black and swollen through neglect,
-and symptoms of blood-poisoning in the arms set in. The news of his
-helplessness and misery spread amongst his countrymen in Paris. He
-was sought out by a persistent countrywoman who raised a sum of money
-amongst the Swedes in Paris, and Strindberg was brought to the Hospital
-of Saint Louis, his cup of humiliation filled to overflowing.
-
-At the hospital he felt imprisoned amongst ghosts, punished by having
-to live in the midst of people with the faces of the dead and dying,
-the wrecks of humanity who offended his sense of beauty by appearing
-without a nose or an eye, with a split lip or a mortifying cheek.
-Amongst these derelicts Strindberg watched the gentle ministrations
-of the old soeur de charite. She was kind to him, allowed him little
-privileges, called him her boy, and he responded by calling her "my
-mother." "How blissful," he writes, "to say this word mother which
-had not passed my lips for thirty years. The old woman who belongs to
-the Order of Saint Augustine, and who wears the costume of the dead
-because she has never taken part in life, is gentle as self-sacrifice,
-and teaches us to smile at our pains, as if they were pleasures, for
-she knows how beneficial suffering can be. Not a reproachful word, no
-expostulations or sermons." "This nun has played a part in my life,"
-he adds, and, when writing down his _Inferno_ experiences three years
-later, he sends her thoughts of gratitude for having shown him the path
-of the cross.
-
-During the months which he spent in the hospital his chemical
-speculations continued to absorb his interest. He submitted his
-insufficiently burnt sulphur to an independent analysis which confirmed
-his demonstration that it contained carbon. The chemist at the hospital
-encouraged his researches, and Strindberg laid the results before the
-public in an article which appeared in _Le Temps_, and brought him
-requests for further articles on his theories. He left the hospital
-in February, and spent two months in chemical work during which he
-became a student at the Sorbonne, and used the analytical laboratory.
-At the conclusion of his experiments he was satisfied that sulphur is a
-ternary combination consisting of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen.
-
-A superstitious faith in signs and warnings had meanwhile developed.
-A mysterious meaning in the names of the streets and places which
-he passed made itself known to him--rue Beaurepaire, rue Dieu, Porte
-Saint-Martin--a gorgeous signboard above a dyeing business, displaying
-his own initials on a white silver cloud surmounted by a rainbow,
-became a good omen of the future. The chemist Orfila revealed himself
-as a kind patron saint to whom he was strangely led, first by finding
-his chemical treatise in a bookseller's shop, then by discovering his
-grave in the course of a morning walk in the Montparnasse cemetery, and
-finally by being attracted to Hotel Orfila--the monasterial guest-house
-from which women were excluded.
-
-In his daily experiences he discerned the guidance and punishment of
-an unseen hand which, for a high and inscrutable purpose, was leading
-him out of his past folly. Sometimes the Unknown One delivered him into
-the hands of demons; at other times he received the grace which saved
-him from temptations and evil. The idea of persecution permitted for
-the sake of the chastisement needed by his spirit became paramount.
-The simultaneous playing of three pianos in the rooms adjoining his,
-the unexpected presentation of the hotel bill, an inexplicable noise
-in the room, during which the plaster of the ceiling fell on his head,
-roused his suspicions. He moved to Hotel Orfila which looked like a
-monastery. It harboured Roman Catholic students, and an atmosphere of
-mysticism.
-
-Annoyances, revelations, and delusions of persecution now crowded in
-upon him. Strange dreams foretold the future, commonplace objects
-assumed fantastic shape. One day, when looking at the embryo of a
-sprouting walnut under the microscope, he saw two little white hands
-folded as if in prayer. Immovable, perfect in form, they were there,
-the hands of a child or a woman, raised beseechingly towards him.
-Shortly before the incident he had sinned grievously against his child.
-Seized by an uncontrollable longing to be reunited to his wife, in
-spite of the divorce proceedings, he had wished--with a concentrated
-and occultly sharpened desire--that the child might fall ill, and
-thus become a link of reunion. There were other mysteries. The coal in
-his stove burned itself into grotesque shapes, works of some kind of
-elemental sculptor, which were so realistic that the sparrows, feeding
-on crumbs by his window, were frightened by the sight of them. His
-pillow-case, crumpled by the after-dinner nap, showed him one day a
-head in marble modelled on the lines of Michel-Angelo; another day a
-mighty Zeus rested on his bed; one night, after a festive evening with
-friends, he was received by the devil himself in correct middle-age
-attire, thus competing with Blake who one day, whilst ascending the
-stairs of his house, saw Satan glaring at him through a window.
-
-From sulphur he turned to iodine as a subject of original
-experimentation, and then, oblivious of Aristotle's injunctions, to
-the goldmaker's art. He did not possess "the most precious stone of
-the philosophers," by which base metals are changed into gold, and
-he had to be unorthodox--even when practising the alchemistic art.
-He therefore rejected the alchemical faith that gold alone is free
-from sulphur, and commenced experiments with solutions of sulphate of
-iron in support of the theory that gold contains iron and sulphur. He
-succeeded in making gold--his special gold of art--but it vanished
-when put to the ordinary chemical test. Signs and guidance from unseen
-Powers encouraged him to persist in spite of failure. Whilst out for
-a walk his eyes were riveted by the letters F and S intertwined. At
-first he thought of his wife's initials, and of her faithful love, but
-such a commonplace interpretation was quickly dismissed. The letters
-meant _Fer_ and _Soufre_--the secret of the generation of gold was thus
-laid bare before his eyes. Another time two pieces of paper lying at
-the foot of a monument attracted his attention. One bore the imprint
-207, the other 28. What could this be but a reminder of the atomic
-weights of lead (207) and silicum (28)? Subsequent experiments in
-which he extracted gold from lead and silicum confirmed the wisdom of
-the exegesis made. But the spirit of gold is fickle. One day, after
-repeated failures, when standing naked to the waist as a smith before
-the fiercely burning furnace, he looked into the crucible, and saw a
-skull with a pair of glittering eyes. The eyes looked into his soul
-with a supernatural irony, and the goldmaker was struck by paralysing
-doubt, by fear of the consequences of his folly.
-
-One day he was forcibly reminded that the fruits of his labour should
-be consecrated to Wisdom, not Mammon. He had written an article in _Le
-Temps_, and drawn public interest to his theory that iodine could be
-made from benzine. An enterprising agent called on him, and showed
-him that his idea contained possibilities for a highly successful
-commercial undertaking, and that a patent might be worth millions of
-francs. Strindberg repudiated the suggestion, though the agent offered
-him 100,000 francs if he would go with him to Berlin, and subordinate
-his experiments to industrial usages. Unpaid bills and the usual want
-of money caused him to give more serious thought to the offer made.
-After some time he was willing to meet the agent and a chemist, for the
-purpose of making a conclusive experiment, and to turn his art into
-much-needed cash. He collected his retorts and reagents, and arrived at
-the agent's office on the day appointed. It happened to be Whit-Sunday,
-and the office, which looked out on a dark and grimy street, was so
-dirty that the result was one of those mental revolutions to which
-hyper-aesthetic senses are subject. "Memories of childhood were
-awakened," he writes. "Whitsuntide, the feast of joy, when the little
-church was decorated with foliage, tulips, and lilies, when it was
-opened for the children's first Communion, the girls clad in white
-like angels ... the organ ... the tolling of the bells...."
-
-A feeling of shame overcame him, he returned home determined not to
-turn science into a business. He cleared his room of the chemical
-apparatus, swept and dusted it, and made it beautiful with flowers. A
-bath and clean clothes added to the feeling of purification, and during
-a walk in the Montparnasse cemetery gentle thoughts of peace filled his
-mind. _O crux ave spes unica_--these words from the graves carried a
-message of the future. Not love, not gain, not honour for him, but the
-cross, the only path to wisdom!
-
-This unfitness for practical life, this sudden change of personality,
-through which the poet or the child within are confronted with
-unbearable conditions, brings a smile to the lips of the man who is
-thoroughly "fit." The man of the world does not only keep religion and
-business in water-tight compartments, he keeps dreams for the night,
-and poetical recollections for important occasions, such as weddings
-and funerals. He is not troubled by unexpected visitants from his
-subconscious self which cause inconsistencies and poetic delirium. He
-may well deplore the unpracticality of men like Renan who dreamily
-allow themselves to be exploited by "sharper" brains, whilst they
-spend years in contemplation of their own complexity. "I am a tissue
-of contradictions," wrote Renan, "... one of my halves is constantly
-occupied in demolishing the other, like the fabulous animal of Ctesias
-who ate his paws without knowing it."[3]
-
-Instead of selling his process of manufacturing iodine, Strindberg
-returned to the hyperchemical task which he had set himself: to
-eliminate the barriers between matter, and that which is called spirit.
-An object worthy indeed of concentrated effort, worthy even in the
-face of the inevitable failure of seeking to grasp that which to human
-intelligence is unknowable!
-
-Meanwhile he went "mad." Mad as Tasso and Cellini, Poe and Blake. We
-cannot dispute the madness, but we may hold that the madness of genius
-is more valuable to humanity than the sanity of mediocrity.
-
-In Strindberg we can clearly distinguish between cerebral derangements
-causing auditory hallucinations as well as delusions of persecution,
-and the super-conscious activity which produced the state of
-_clairpsychism_, which is generally classed with insanity. Dr. W.
-Hirsch has studied Strindberg's disease from the ordinary alienist's
-point of view, and concluded that he suffered from _paranoia simplex
-chronica_--a diagnosis which is empty of meaning when applied to
-such a mind. Dr. S. Rahmer[4] made Strindberg the subject of a more
-comprehensive psychopathic study, and defined his case as one of
-_melancholia daemomaniaca_. The inadequacy of such diagnoses will be
-apparent to every serious student of _Inferno_ and _Legends_--the
-books which are mostly extracts from the diary in which he recorded
-his madness--and of plays like _To Damascus, Advent, Easier, The Dream
-Play_, and _The Great Highway_, which give evidence of his lucidity,
-and of the mysticism which he distilled from mental torture.
-
-There is nothing original in the fact that a man describes his own
-madness in prose or verse. Such descriptions may even be regarded as a
-distinct genre of literary activity, perverse and detestable to those
-who, like Mr. Balfour, want only the "cheerful" note in literature, but
-of infinite interest to those who place a truthful account of the
-human soul above one which is pleasing. Nathaniel Lee's poems, Lenan's
-_Traumgewalten_, Hoffmann's _Kreisler_ possess a psychological interest
-which no clamour for literary cradle-songs can remove. Strindberg's
-self-revelations have a touch of that exultation which, through a
-dominant curiosity, survives the most complete cheerlessness, horror,
-and pain--that joy of which Charles Lamb wrote to Coleridge: "Dream
-not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy
-till you have gone mad," and which made him look back upon his lunacy
-"with a gloomy kind of envy."
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--1906]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--1907. Photo's: A. Malmstrom, Stockholm.]
-
-Comparisons between Rousseau's _Confessions, Dialogues_, and
-_Reveries_, and Strindberg's _Inferno_ readily suggest themselves.
-Both writers reveal, by their minute analysis of sick thoughts, the
-consciousness of a lunacy which is a necessary experience on the
-road to spiritual health, and, therefore, shameless. There is much
-similarity in the stories of persistent attacks by invisible enemies,
-of plots, and persecutions, in the egocentric deductions from natural
-phenomena and the events of the world. But there is also a great
-difference. Rousseau manages to keep a watchful eye on the preservation
-of friendly relations with the world throughout his aberrations, whilst
-Strindberg recklessly defies its judgment.
-
-Strindberg's persecutional mania developed rapidly during the spring
-and summer of 1896. Every object, every incident was charged with a
-sinister meaning. He became obsessed with the idea that his former
-friend, Przybyszewski, whom he writes of as Popoffsky, intended to
-murder him. The reason for this suspicion lay in Strindberg's former
-intimacy with the woman who afterwards became Przybyszewski's wife. One
-day his ear caught the strains of Schumann's _Aufschwung_, played by an
-unseen musician in an adjoining house. He became strangely agitated.
-The pianist who played _Aufschwung_ in such a manner could only be
-Przybyszewski, and the music must be a prelude to the revenge which he
-was about to inflict on Strindberg. With the horror of his impending
-fate mingled remorse and self-accusation. "My friend, the Russian,"
-he writes, "my disciple who called me father because he had learnt
-everything from me, my _famulus_ who looked upon me as master, and
-kissed my hands because his life began where mine ended. It is he who
-has come from Vienna to Paris in order to kill me...." The reflection
-that he had not borne the Pole's efforts to injure him meekly, but
-retaliated, at first invested the thought of death with a sacrificial
-grandeur. But when _Aufschwung_ was played every day between four
-and five fear of death increased. He felt a fierce hatred of the man
-who thus hunted him down. He sought confirmation of his suspicions
-by questioning the coterie of artists which met at Mme. Charlotte's
-_cremerie_ in rue de la Grande Chaumiere. The answers seemed to him
-evasive, and Strindberg withdrew from the circle of friends, convinced
-that there was a widespread plot against him. The Norwegian artist,
-Edvard Munch, was at this time painting Strindberg's portrait, and was
-alternately trusted by him, and suspected as an accomplice in the crime
-contemplated.
-
-His inflammable fancy saw warnings of danger everywhere. A large dane,
-lying outside Munch's house, was a sign that he must not enter it, and
-he returned, thanking the powers which had protected him. Another time
-he turned away from the house after seeing a child sitting outside the
-door with a card in its hand which happened to be a ten of spades. In
-the Luxembourg Gardens two dry twigs, broken by the storm, lay in such
-a manner as to form the Greek letters P and Y--the first and the last
-letters of the dreaded name. He implored, the help of Providence, and
-recited the Psalms of David against his enemies.
-
-The terror of being delivered into the hands of his persecutors was
-temporarily dispelled by a sense of divine protection, of nearness
-to the Lord. On March 29th Balzac's _Seraphita_ had fallen into his
-hands, by chance apparently, but really, he thought, through heavenly
-guidance. The day was the anniversary of Swedenborg's death, and
-the coincidence became a token of a spiritual bond between him and
-the great Swedish seer which outlasted his disease, and remained a
-source of illumination until his death sixteen years later. Orfila
-and Swedenborg now spoke to him in his hours of hope; he conversed
-with them as Blake conversed with Dante, Virgil, and Moses. The Old
-Testament shed strength upon him. He found comfort in the Book of Job,
-for Satan had obtained leave to tempt him, as Job was tempted. There
-were moments when he felt drawn away from life by a heavenly nostalgia,
-sustained by a realisation of spiritual worth which, at other times,
-increased his sense of guilt by adding the sin of pride to the many
-others for which he atoned. Of such moments he writes: "I despise
-the earth, this impure and unworthy world, humanity and the works of
-humanity. I see in myself the righteous man to whom the Almighty has
-sent trials, and whom the purgatory of earthly life shall make worthy
-of approaching deliverance."
-
-His customary chair at the Brasserie des Lilas was engaged one evening,
-when he came to seek oblivion in the glass of green absinthe. On
-another occasion the glass was mysteriously upset, and on a third a
-chimney above him caught fire, and sent two large pieces of soot into
-his glass. In these and similar incidents he recognised a guiding hand,
-tribulations arranged for the purpose of breaking him of a dangerous
-habit. One is reminded of Rousseau's belief that unfavourable winds had
-been prepared, as a special trial, for his journey.
-
-Short intervals of spiritual calm did not allay Strindberg's fear of
-Przybyszewski. Though substantially unfounded, and, though he was in
-possession of incontrovertible evidence that the Pole was not in Paris,
-the fear increased until he was mastered by terror. Hotel Orfila was no
-longer a retreat of peace. Women were admitted--a circumstance which
-in itself was calculated to disturb his nerves--and with them followed
-a host of troubles. A mysterious stranger had taken the room adjoining
-his, and seemed to imitate all Strindberg's movements. Strindberg sat
-writing at his table, so apparently did the stranger. When Strindberg
-rose and pushed back his chair, the stranger did likewise. When
-Strindberg went to bed, the stranger also went to bed. The unseen
-enemy was there dose to him, watching every movement, waiting for an
-opportunity to slay him by infernally subtle means. Outside the hotel
-there were signs of danger. One day he felt Quai Voltaire and Place
-des Tuileries shake under his feet. Another day a sudden feeling of
-lameness proved to him that he was being poisoned, and that the Pole
-had contrived to send gas through the wall. He thought of giving
-information to the police, but the possibility that he might be
-imprisoned as a lunatic restrained him. He could no longer work or
-sleep. There were whispering voices around him; the shadow of a woman
-on the wall outside his window suggested the fearful revenge of his
-feminist protagonists. One night he felt an electric current passing
-through his body. The stranger and his accomplices were evidently
-doing their murderous work in a thoroughly scientific manner. With the
-thought, "They are killing me. I will not be killed," he rose from the
-bed, found the proprietor, and obtained another room for the night.
-This happened to be under the one tenanted by the terrible stranger,
-and Strindberg's suspicions were confirmed by hearing a heavy object
-being dropped into a bag, and securely locked up. Evidently an electric
-machine, he thought. On the following day he packed up his belongings,
-and hurriedly left Hotel Orfila.
-
-His suspicions fell on friends and foes alike. One day, after a
-sitting, Munch received a post card from Strindberg which put an end to
-further visits:
-
-"When last you came to see me you looked like a murderer, or the
-accomplice of a murderer. I only want to inform you that the
-Pettenkofer gas-oven in the room next to mine is unusable, and
-therefore unsuitable for the purpose. Sg."[5]
-
-Side by side with the mania of which the message to Munch is typical,
-Strindberg retained a sanity during this time which Uddgren had
-occasion to observe. He went to see Strindberg at Hotel Orfila, and saw
-the traces of the torture through which he had passed in his haggard,
-ashen face. Uddgren had heard that Strindberg's insanity was on the
-point of breaking out, but in the course of a long talk with him he
-could find no signs of brain-softening. The mania, the eccentricities,
-the flashing imagination, the instinct for self-martyrisation were
-there intensified, but not the incoherency which he had observed
-in other literary friends who were victims of insanity. It is also
-remarkable that throughout Strindberg's period of lunacy his writings
-were accepted and printed.
-
-After the flight from Hotel Orfila he hid himself in an hotel in rue
-de la Clef. All went well for some time. Feeling that he was at a safe
-distance from his persecutors, he abandoned his incognito, and sent
-his address to Hotel Orfila. There was an immediate recurrence of the
-attacks. An old man, with "grey and wicked eyes like a bear," carried
-empty cases, pieces of tin, and other mysterious objects into the room
-adjoining his. In the room overhead a noise of hammering and dragging
-began which suggested the installation of an infernal machine. The
-noisy preparations were followed by the sound of a revolving wheel,
-suggestive of preparations for his execution. "I am sentenced to
-death," he thought; but by whom? By the pietists, catholics, jesuits,
-theosophists? Was he condemned as a sorcerer or as a black magician? Or
-was it by the police? Was he suspected of being an anarchist? In the
-manners of the landlady and the servant he read suspicion and contempt.
-The struggle seemed hopeless. Preparing to die at the hands of his
-enemies, he arranged his papers, wrote necessary letters, and said a
-solemn farewell to Nature as represented by the Jardin des Plantes.
-"Farewell," he cried, "stones, plants, flowers, trees, butterflies,
-birds, snakes, all created by God's good hand." Resigned and at peace
-with Fate he re-entered his hotel, but his anguish returned at the
-sight of the change which had been made in the room adjoining his.
-On the mantelpiece lay sheets of metal isolated from each other by
-pieces of wood, and on the top of each pile a book or a photographic
-album had been placed, so as to give an innocent look to what could be
-nothing but accumulators, infernal machines. Two workmen on the roof of
-a neighbouring house were handling some objects, and pointing to his
-window--the chain of evidence was complete.
-
-At night he made the last toilet of the condemned, took a bath, shaved,
-and attired himself in a manner worthy of a solemn parting from the
-body and its miseries. Waiting for the end, he reflected that he could
-harbour no fear of hell in another world--he had passed through a
-thousand hells in this life. Anguish endowed him with a burning desire
-to quit the vanities and deceptive pleasures of the world. "Born
-with a heavenly nostalgia," he writes, "as a child I cried over the
-uncleanliness of existence; amongst relatives and in society I felt a
-stranger, far away from the land of my home. Ever since my childhood I
-have sought my God, and found the devil. I carried the cross of Christ
-in my youth, and I have denied a God who is content to rule over slaves
-who love those who whip them."
-
-After a few hours' sleep he was awakened by the sensation of being
-lifted out of bed by a pump, sucking his heart. He had scarcely put his
-feet on the floor before he felt an electric douche fall upon his neck,
-and press him to the ground. He rose, snatched his clothes, and rushed
-out into the garden. A light cough from the room, wherein dwelt his
-enemy, was answered by a cough from the other room. The conspirators
-were clearly signalling to each other. To return to the room of horror
-was out of question. He dragged an arm-chair into the garden, and
-finally went to sleep under the star-lit sky, soothed by the presence
-of the flowers. On the following morning he fled to friends in Dieppe,
-cursing his unknown enemies. His friends were horrified at his
-appearance, and when his kind hostess led him to a looking-glass he saw
-in his own face, not only the traces of suffering and neglect, but an
-expression which filled him with shame and detestation of himself. "If
-I had then read Swedenborg," he writes, "the imprint left by the evil
-spirit would have explained to me my mental state and the events of the
-last weeks." Despite the efforts of his sympathetic friends to convince
-him that the house was free from dangers of any kind, the night brought
-new terrors. Sitting at a table, and waiting for the sinister moment
-when the clock should strike two, Strindberg was determined bravely
-to face the worst. Uncovering his chest, he challenged the unknown
-persecutors to strike him. The response was the sensation of an
-electric current directed against his heart, gradually increasing in
-strength until he could resist it no longer. As if struck by a clap of
-thunder, he felt his body filled by a fluid which was suffocating him,
-and drawing out his heart.
-
-He rushed downstairs where another bed had been made up for him in
-case of need. He lay down, and tried to collect his thoughts. Could
-this be electricity? No, for he had used the compass as indicator,
-and the result had been negative. Whilst pondering on the mysterious
-force, another discharge of "electricity" struck him with the strength
-of a cyclone, and lifted him out of bed. He tried in vain to escape.
-His own graphic description of what followed shows the agony through
-which he passed. "I hide behind walls, I lie down by the thresholds,
-and in front of the stoves. Everywhere, everywhere the furies seek me
-out. My soul's anguish overpowers me. The panic terror of everything
-and nothing gets hold of me, and I flee from room to room, and end
-my flight on the balcony, where I remain crouching." At dawn he went
-into his friend's studio, where he lay down on a rug. Even here he was
-disturbed, but now by rats, and, fearing that he might be a victim
-of delirium, he fled to the hall, where the door-mat became his
-resting-place. He hurriedly left Dieppe for the south of Sweden, and
-sought refuge in the house of his friend, Dr. Eliasson, in Ystad.
-
-Strindberg had rightly surmised that his friends in Dieppe were
-convinced of his insanity. His conduct during the first days of his
-stay in Ystad caused his medical friend to treat him with the firmness
-and authority necessary towards one who is mentally irresponsible.
-The result was that Strindberg suspected that the doctor intended
-to imprison him in a lunatic asylum, and to appropriate his secret
-of gold-making. The month which he spent at the doctor's house was
-devoted to a cold-water cure which did not assuage his misery. The
-shape and material of the bed in which he had to sleep suggested
-electrical devices of evil, the nightly assault by the vampire which
-sucked his heart was repeated, and brought him out of bed in terror
-of death; he heard voices, saw signs, feared he was being poisoned by
-hemlock, hashish, digitalis, or daturine. One night he heard the doctor
-handle a very heavy object and wind up a spring, and through the wall
-which separated them he felt the approach of the electric current.
-It reached his heart. Seizing his clothes he fled through the window
-into the street, and to the house of another physician who succeeded
-in calming him, and--so he believed--in intimidating his treacherous
-friend, and thus saved Strindberg's life.
-
-These delusions of horror were suspended by a letter from his wife
-which breathed love and pity, and in which she invited him to come
-to Austria and see his little daughter. The thought of the child, of
-holding her in his arms, of begging her to forgive him, of making
-her happy by a father's tenderness, brought about a spiritual
-metamorphosis. He left Sweden, and arrived at his mother-in-law's
-country house on the Danube in September, 1896. During the months which
-he spent there he did not meet his wife-a separation which he bore with
-equanimity, in consequence of "an indefinable lack of harmony in our
-temperaments"--but he saw the child daily.
-
-"Every man, if he is sincere, may tread again for himself the road to
-Damascus-a journey which must vary for each individual soul," wrote
-Victor Hugo. Here, in the presence of the child, Strindberg was brought
-face to face with his own sinfulness. He had set out to persecute, but
-the light from heaven had prostrated him and struck him with blindness.
-Before the scales could fall from his eyes his penance must be made
-complete. He had left an infant of six weeks. The little girl of two
-and a half years, who now met him, scrutinised his soul with eyes
-full of serious inquiry, and then allowed her father to clasp her to
-his breast. "This is Dr. Faust's resurrection to earthly life, but
-sweeter and purer," he writes. "I cannot cease carrying the little
-one in my arms, and feeling her little heart beat against mine. To
-love a child is for a man to become woman; it is to lay aside the
-manly, to experience the sexless love of the dwellers in heaven, as
-Swedenborg called it." But an incident soon occurred which disturbed
-his peace. At supper he gently touched the child's hand in order to
-help her. She cried out, and, drawing back her hand with a look full
-of horror, said, "He hurts me." Another evening he was humiliated by
-the mysterious conduct of the child. Pointing at an invisible person
-behind Strindberg's chair, she began to cry with fear, and said, "The
-sweep is standing there." Her grandmother who believed in clairvoyance
-in children made the sign of the cross over the child's head, and-a
-painful silence fell upon the company.
-
-Whilst he accepted these trials as punitive messages and warnings,
-his scarified soul became receptive to Roman Catholic influences. His
-wife's mother and aunt were Catholics; his child had been brought up in
-that faith. He had seen human souls sanctified by a catholic mysticism
-which bore humility and fortitude. The symbols, the certainty, the rich
-imagery of the Catholic Church had appealed to him, when the poverty of
-philosophical speculation had made him despair of human intelligence.
-He had bought a rosary in Paris because it was beautiful, and because
-"the evil ones were afraid of the cross." One day an image of the
-Madonna, carried through the streets of Paris on a cart following a
-hearse, had strangely attracted him. Like Tasso's vision of the Virgin
-in the midst of his feverish torment by noises and tinkling bells,
-Strindberg's gaze on the image of all-merciful motherhood brought
-comfort. At first attracted to Catholic prayers, and to the ideal of
-the monastic life by the instinct which makes the man in pain seek an
-anodyne, he was gradually led to a deeper understanding of esoteric
-Christianity. Swedenborg continued to reveal the mysteries of symbols
-and correspondences to him; in the scenery around the Austrian village
-he found, not only an exact replica of a Swedenborgian hell, but the
-original of a landscape which had precipitated itself in the zinc bath
-used in his gold-making experiments in Paris.
-
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--1902]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--1908--In his home in Stockholm.
-Photo by A. Blomberg, Stockholm]
-
-
-Strindberg's early blasphemies and atheism were the fruits of an
-inverted religiosity which left him no peace. His devotional mood
-could find no bridge of union with his scientific mood. The search
-for knowledge and the search for God led to different goals. Whilst
-his brain struggled for breadth, his heart cried for the narrow depth
-of dogma and creed. His researches into occultism and the philosophy
-of religions, his acquaintance with theosophy did not reconcile his
-religion with his science. The sense of sin, of having sought unlawful
-knowledge haunted him in his studies of black magic and Satanism, and
-in the exercise of the occult powers of which he was conscious. Though
-Strindberg had not read Huysmans' _La-Bas_ and _En Route_ when he wrote
-_Inferno_, there is a strong resemblance between the books and the
-religious evolution of the authors.
-
-Strindberg accepted the doctrine of reincarnation as a Christian
-tenet, and the corollary of a Karmic law which compels us to suffer
-for sins committed before birth, but he resisted what he believed to
-be the central teaching of theosophy, i.e. the necessity for killing
-personality. A theosophical friend sent him Madame Blavatsky's _Secret
-Doctrine_ which Strindberg criticised severely, though he knew that
-his outspokenness would deprive him of a friend and a benefactor. He
-declined to join a "sect" which denied a personal God, the only one
-who could satisfy his religious needs. He declared Madame Blavatsky's
-masterpiece to be "detestable through the conscious and unconscious
-deceptions, through the stories of the existence of Mahatmas,"
-interesting through the quotations from little-known authors,
-condemnable, above all, as the work of "a gynander who has desired
-to outdo man, and who pretends to have overthrown science, religion,
-philosophy, and to have placed a priestess of Isis on the altar of the
-crucified One."
-
-In spite of this denunciation, Strindberg had absorbed many
-theosophical ideas, and his later writings are not altogether free from
-the influence of the despised "gynander" and the theories of occult
-science which she expounded.
-
-During the time spent in Austria Strindberg slowly recovered his
-mental balance, whilst his visionary powers and spiritual clairvoyance
-were in process of development. He stayed with his wife's mother and
-aunt, two pious and gentle old women, who treated his soul-sickness
-with Christian forbearance and healing sympathy. He was still subject
-to "astral" attacks, to "electric" discharges, to nightmares and
-ghostly visitations. Unacquainted with the higher aspects of
-psychical research and modern theories of psychological phenomena,
-he was as yet unable to bring about order in the unruly house of his
-mind. Whether we use spiritualistic language and call him a medium,
-or that of psychology and label the messages which reached him
-"teleological automatism," there can be no doubt that the keynote of
-his soul's gloom and glory was a hyper-sensitiveness which made him
-a lightning-conductor for the psychic currents of his time. We may
-turn away with disdain from the pitiful picture of Strindberg at his
-writing table, warding off the imaginary attacks of elementals, incubi,
-lamiae, by thrusts in the air with a dalmatian dagger, and we may smile
-at the childish superstition with which he accepted the oracular
-guidance of the cock on the top of Notre Dame, or the direction chosen
-by a ladybird visiting his manuscript. But that there were within him
-cryptopsychic gifts of telepathy, clair-audience, and divination, a
-somnambulistic consciousness of a reality other than that which is
-cognisable to the senses, no student of psychic forces can doubt.
-
-In December, 1896, Strindberg returned to Sweden. Swedenborg's _Arcana
-Coelestia_, which he now read, dissipated his fears of persecution by
-showing him that all the horrors through which he had passed, were
-recognised by Swedenborg as incidental to the purgation of soul which
-is the highest object of life. Strindberg found that, before receiving
-his momentous revelations, Swedenborg had passed through nightly
-tortures resembling his own. By informing him of the real nature of
-the horrors Swedenborg liberated him from the electricians, the black
-magicians, the destroyers, the jealous gold-makers, and the fear of
-madness. "He has shown me the only path to salvation: to seek out
-the demons in their dens within myself, and to kill them ... through
-repentance."
-
-_Inferno_ was composed in Lund, the little University town in the south
-of Sweden, between May 3rd and June 25th, 1897. _Legends_, which is
-but a rifacimento of the struggle to slay the "demons in their dens,"
-was begun in Lund, and finished in Paris in October, 1897. In March,
-1898, Strindberg went back to Lund, free from haunting obsessions of
-evil, master of his madness, enriched by religious experiences which
-produced an exuberant rise of new ideas. He had crossed the Rubicon.
-Henceforth he shared in that direct vision which makes paralysing doubt
-impossible, and which is the prerogative of God's fools all over the
-world. To the end of life his mind retained intellectual disquiet;
-there remained in him a strain of the wild man, an over-balance of
-curiosity which set up eternal enmity between him and convention. The
-Swedish critic, Oscar Levertin, succinctly summed up Strindberg in the
-Italian proverb: _All soul, all gall, all fire_. But after 1898 there
-is a calm light which the unruly flames cannot hide. His spiritual
-wrestlings continue through the zenith of his literary production, but
-they leave him stronger.
-
-A comparison between his views on the "nature of man" in 1884 and in
-1910 is interesting. In an essay on _The Joy of Life_, written in
-1884, he greatly offended the Swedish Mrs. Grundy by the following
-passage: "After long centuries of the voluntary or involuntary lie, of
-artificialising custom and speech, a general craving for brutality is
-sometimes awakened, a delirious desire to throw off one's clothes and
-walk about naked, to reveal the indecent, to approach the repulsive,
-to be a happy and joyous animal." In an article on _Religion_, written
-in 1910, and published in _Speeches to the Swedish Nation_, he wrote:
-"I apply my biblical Christianity to my own personal and inner use,
-so as to curb my somewhat riotous nature, rendered riotous by the
-veterinary philosophy and animal doctrine (Darwinism) in which I was
-brought up. The fact that I practise, as far as I can, the Christian
-doctrines should not, I maintain, give people reason to complain. For
-it is only through religion, or the hope for something better, and the
-realisation of the inner meaning of life as a time of probation, a
-school, possibly a house of correction, that we can bear life's burden
-with sufficient resignation. In the understanding of the relative
-insignificance of external conditions of life, compared with the
-possession of hope and faith, one finds that moral courage to renounce
-everything--which the ungodly lack--to suffer everything for the sake
-of a mission, to speak out when others remain silent."
-
-In the same "speech" he says: "Since 1896 I call myself a Christian
-(see _Inferno_). I am not a Catholic, and have never been one,
-but during seven years' life in Catholic countries and in intimate
-relationship with Catholics I discovered that there was no difference
-between Catholicism and Protestantism, or merely an outward one, and
-that the schism which took place once was purely political, or was only
-concerned with theological points which in reality have nothing to do
-with religion. This was the cause of my tolerance towards Catholics
-which found a special expression in my _Gustavus Adolphus_, and gave
-rise to the fable about my being a Catholic. I am entered on the parish
-register as a Protestant, and shall remain one, but I am probably not
-orthodox, nor am I a pietist, but rather a Swedenborgian."
-
-At the time when _Inferno_ was written Strindberg was, however,
-more completely under the spell of Rome than he acknowledges in his
-later writings. He contemplated retreat in a Belgian monastery, and
-in _Inferno_ he tells us that, when he read Sar Peladan's _Comment
-on devient Mage_, "Catholicism held its solemn and triumphant entry
-into my life." He found many points of contact between Swedenborg's
-mystical philosophy and that of the Catholic Church. The profound
-influence on modern thought exercised by Swedenborg, and which is
-clearly discernible in the writings of Goethe, Emerson, Balzac,
-Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, Ruskin, Coventry Patmore, and Carlyle, is
-evidence of the spiritual catholicity of the great Swedish mystic.
-Superficial criticism is apt to dismiss Swedenborg as a deluded
-ghost-seer, whose psychical derangements are responsible for a
-farrago of communications on heaven and hell, prodigiously wearisome
-in details and lacking the saving grace of humour. Such criticism is
-made by those who know nothing of the intellectual versatility, and
-the scientific achievements of Swedenborg. His writings on anatomy,
-physiology, geology, and metallurgy alone would have entitled him to a
-distinguished place among the pioneers of science. Swedenborg studied
-mechanics, engineering, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and music,
-and took a keen interest in handicrafts.
-
-There is a striking resemblance between Swedenborg and Strindberg in
-this versatility of mood and thought. It is emphasised by many minor
-traits of character and taste, such as the great love for children and
-flowers which both evinced. Separated by more than a century and a
-half, Strindberg found himself the spiritual descendant of Swedenborg.
-To him he dedicates his first _Blue Book_ (1907) in the following
-words: "To Emanuel Swedenborg, Teacher and Leader, this book is
-dedicated by the Disciple." The _Blue Books_ deal with every thinkable
-subject--religious, philosophical, scientific--in an aphoristic and
-combative manner which is pervaded by a curious mixture of pride and
-humility. Here speaks the High Priest of Knowledge, here quivers the
-helpless embryo of the humanity which is to come. In these motley pages
-the Teacher and the Disciple talk of telepathy, chemistry, astronomy,
-meteorology, spectral analysis, atoms and crystals, the psychology
-of plants, the secrets of birds, the formation of clouds, Darwinism,
-radium, woman, the secrets of chess, the secrets and magic of numbers,
-the Mesopotamian language, hieroglyphics, Hebraic research, symbolism,
-clairvoyance, and a hundred other subjects. In the preface to _The
-Bondswoman's Son_ Strindberg speaks of his Blue Book as the synthesis
-of his life. The Disciple is worthy of the Master; to the Swedenborgian
-and eighteenth-century conception of the natural world and the
-spiritual world Strindberg has added the craving for a synthetic
-interpretation of facts, which was characteristic of the nineteenth
-century, and which found its foremost representatives in Spencer and
-Comte. In his sense of truth, in his work for the correlation of
-knowledge, in his readiness to forsake pleasant beliefs for unpleasant
-facts, Strindberg realised Swedenborg's description of a certain phase
-of angelic life: "To grow old in heaven is to grow young."
-
-The renewal of intellectual youth, with its baffling polymathy and
-selfcontradictions, led Strindberg to question the composition of his
-own soul. In the preface to _The Bondswoman's Son_ he confesses that he
-has sometimes wondered if he has incarnated different personalities.
-Dissociated fields of consciousness may be a psychopathic phenomenon,
-or indicative of an advanced state of psychic evolution. The problem
-has been approached from many points of view. The mystery of
-personality metamorphosis, of primary and secondary individualities,
-contained within the frame of one human body, is now a recognised
-subject of inquiry in the domain of abnormal psychology. Cases of
-multiple personality in which there is an absolute division between
-the "entities," and in which the memories do not intermingle, have
-been carefully studied and classified. The ease with which Strindberg
-apostatised, the mutually destructive theories which he advanced at
-different periods of life, the power with which he could objectify his
-past selves, and repeatedly paint "the face of what was once myself,"
-point to a multiplicity of consciousness which, though not rare in
-genius, was especially active in him. In the preface to _The Author_,
-written in 1909, Strindberg says of himself as the writer of the book
-twenty years earlier: "The personality of the author is just as much a
-stranger to me as to the reader--and just as unsympathetic."
-
-There is undoubtedly a gulf between the personality responsible for the
-preface to _Lady Julie_ with its crude materialism, and the sensitised
-consciousness of the man who pours out his soul in the _Blue Books_
-and in _Alone_. Nietzscheanism was but a cloak, with which Strindberg
-covered the _cor laceratum_, which always suffered acutely through
-the misfortunes of others. The cloak did not fit him. In _Alone_,
-the dulcet autobiographical finale to the agitato of _Inferno_, we
-find him in self-imposed and vicarious suffering for the sins of a
-neighbouring grocer who has failed in business through incompetence and
-dishonesty. "I went through all his agony," he writes; "thought of his
-wife, of the approaching quarter-day, of the rent, of the cheques."
-Strindberg now lived in open enmity with the theories of the survival
-of the fittest and natural selection; his conception of the evolution
-idea led him to repudiate the current belief in the descent of man as a
-glorification of brute-nature, and to cry: "What a shame to have paid
-homage to the Ape-King, the seducer of my youth!"
-
-To the natural capacity for suffering was added that imposed on him
-through the development of his psychic powers. He did not only live
-the lives of others "telepathically"; his sensibility became so
-exteriorised as to receive impressions at a great distance. Thus he
-used to feel, when one of his plays was being performed for the first
-time in some part of Europe, though he had received no information in
-regard to the performance. In 1907 he told Uddgren that, after going to
-bed at ten in the evening, he was sometimes awakened by the sound of
-loud applause which caused him to sit up in bed, wondering if he was
-at a theatre. Such a telepathic ovation was invariably followed by the
-news of some dramatic success. In the first _Blue Book_, "the Disciple"
-relates the following: "In a company I interrupted myself with a smile
-in the middle of an animated conversation. 'What are you smiling at?'
-somebody asked. 'The southern express pulled up at the Central Station
-just now,' was the reply. Another time something similar happened, and
-I said: 'The curtain has now fallen on the last act in Helsingfors, and
-I heard the applause after my first night.' I perceive the talk of the
-people in restaurants after the performance as ringing in the ears. I
-can hear this all the way from Germany when I have a first performance,
-though I have no previous knowledge of being played."
-
-He records the psychic rapport which sexual union establishes between
-him, and the woman he loves. When she is absent, and thinks kindly
-of him, he perceives the fragrance of incense or jessamine; when she
-is travelling he knows if she is on a steamer or in a train. He can
-distinguish the throbbing of the propeller from the thumping of the
-buffers on the railway carriage.
-
-The most remarkable passage in the _Blue Book_ is perhaps the following
-summary of his _clairpsychism_:
-
-"I feel at a distance when somebody touches my fate, when enemies
-threaten my personal existence, but also when people speak kindly of
-me or wish me well; I feel in the street if I meet friend or enemy; I
-have participated in the suffering caused by an operation on a person
-towards whom I feel comparatively indifferent; I have twice gone
-through the death agony of others with attendant physical and mental
-suffering; the last time I passed through three diseases in six hours,
-and rose well when the absent one had been liberated through death.
-This makes life painful, but rich and interesting."
-
-
-[1] _Boken on Strindberg_ af Gustaf Uddgren.
-
-[2] _En Ny Bok on Strindberg_.
-
-[3] _Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse_.
-
-[4] Grenzfragen der Literatur und Medizin, Munich, 1907.
-
-[5] _En Ny Bok om Strindberg af Gustaf Uddgren_.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-THE THEATRE OF LIFE
-
-
-Strindberg's fiftieth birthday was celebrated quietly in Lund in
-1899. A general feeling of distrust and bewilderment was prevalent
-amongst his countrymen. At the age of fifty he had returned to Sweden,
-apparently healthy in mind and body, in the prime of life, charged with
-a literary vitality which confounded current theories of his insanity.
-He had calmly and unostentatiously resumed his task of writing drama.
-The haunted, feverish expression had left his countenance; he had
-made himself a new visage, upon which were stamped self-mastery and
-tranquillity of mind. And, yet, he had recently published _Inferno_ and
-_Legends_, and laid bare his soul's misery and delirium in throbbing
-pages, over which the reviewers had poured acrid contempt. He had
-written _To Damascus_ in a gust of mediaeval repentance, and uncovered
-himself in the transports of asceticism. With a sigh of relief his
-enemies had laid aside their opposition to his indiscretions and
-revelations, his materialism and transcendentalism, his socialism and
-individualism. They felt that there was no need to take a lunatic
-seriously. His friends had waited patiently for the "dancing star"
-which they knew would arise out of the chaos.
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Bust by K.I. Eldh (Bought by the
-Swedish State. In the National Museum, Stockholm)]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Portrait by Carl Larsson, 1899. (In
-the National Museum, Stockholm)]
-
-_The Saga of the Folkungs, Gustavus Vasa_ and _Eric XIV_ appeared in
-1899, and showed that the author of _Master Olof_ had returned to the
-art with which, twenty-seven years earlier, he had given his country
-its greatest historical play. With the precision of the somnambulist
-who takes up the thread of mental events, regardless of the time that
-has passed, Strindberg resumed the story of _Master Olof_ where he had
-left off. In _Gustavus Vasa_ we again meet Olof, the renegade, but he
-is now--as befits his character--a secondary person, duly subservient
-to the Power of the Time, King Gustavus Vasa. With _Gustavus Vasa_ and
-_Eric XIV_ Strindberg attained to mastery of a dramatic art, in which
-he stands unsurpassed. The art of writing _the psychological drama of
-history_ is his, and his alone. No other dramaturge of modern times
-has approached him in clarity of historical vision, or in imaginative
-reconstruction of living characters which are at once true to their
-time and to all times.
-
-No period of Swedish history lends itself better to dramatic treatment
-than that dominated by the first of the Vasas, Gustavus Erikson,
-the chosen king of the people, the incarnation of will, of a wholly
-masculine personality. The king's struggle to quell the rebellious
-spirit of the freemen of Dalecarlia, the vast inland county north of
-Stockholm, to whom he owes his throne and his power, is the subject
-of the play. The wrath of the king pervades the first act with an
-atmospheric suggestion of fateful horror which is the antithesis
-of melodramatic art, and shows Strindberg's power of restraint and
-concentration in the unfoldment of tragedy. The king has marched to
-Dalecarlia in order to punish the stiff-necked peasants who think that
-they can make and unmake kings with impunity. When the curtain rises
-upon the assembled leaders of the peasants the king is not seen, but
-his presence is felt. Master Olof has arrived as the emissary of the
-sovereign; solemn messengers bid the veterans of the soil to remain
-seated until they are called to appear before the king. There is a
-sense of suppressed fear in the room; the quiet, slow-thinking men,
-dad in white sheep-skin coats, suspect something, but cannot grasp the
-unthinkable audacity of the king's plans. One by one they are called
-out, but no one returns. Then a messenger from the king brings in three
-blood-stained sheep-skin coats, and throws them on the table. This is
-the king's warning to those who remain, and who are permitted to live.
-
-In the five acts of this play Strindberg lets us see the human
-qualities of Gustavus Vasa; the dramatist draws a living soul, not
-a marionette; a man, hot-tempered, hard, strong, with a vein of
-irresoluteness running through the granite of his will, a man whose
-strength is blended with the weakness of the child within that
-never grows up. We see in him the inconsistency of all flesh: the
-mighty reformer of the Roman Catholic Church who upholds evangelical
-Lutheranism and yet clings to catholic habits; the brutal tyrant who
-has a way of his own of enforcing obedience by bringing his little
-steel hammer in ominous contact with obstinate heads, and who yet
-remains the kind, fatherly friend of his people. The patriarch who
-has identified himself with his country before the Lord, who has
-stood forth as a prophet of patriotism, and who is forced by growing
-self-knowledge to separate the personal from the impersonal, is at
-last humiliated by the goodness of others. Threatened by rebels who
-march towards Stockholm from the south, outwitted by his treacherous
-allies in Luebeck, the old king trembles at the news that the sturdy men
-of Dalecarlia are on their way to Stockholm. The retribution for his
-harsh deeds of suppression is upon him, and he bows his head before
-the chastisement of God. But the men of Dalecarlia are made of stuff
-which outlasts a few fallen heads. They have come in their thousands to
-help their king and their country to put the common enemy to flight.
-Engelbrecht, their leader--jolly, true and a little tipsy--bursts into
-the king's palace, and proudly offers him the arms and the devotion of
-the men in sheep-skin coats, true representatives of the Swedish spirit.
-
-Eric, the king's dissolute and epileptic son, heir to the throne, is
-in every way a contrast to his father: he is the chronic weakling who
-oscillates between unholy desire and self-disgust, the born pariah
-in the realm of the mind, whether he be clad in purple or in rags.
-Of such, we think, the Kingdom of Heaven is not made. Yet Strindberg
-shows us Eric's glimpse of heaven. In the fourth act Eric and his boon
-companion and evil counsellor, Goran Persson, bent on the pleasures of
-the tavern, meet Karin, the flowergirl. She asks Eric to buy her wreath
-of flowers:
-
-_Prince Eric_ (_looks fixedly at the girl_). Who--is--that?
-
-_Goran Persson_. A flowergirl.
-
-_Prince Eric_. No--it--is--something else--do you see?
-
-_Goran Persson_. What am I supposed to see?
-
-_Prince Eric_. You ought to see what I see, but you can't.
-
-The girl kneels before the prince. He takes the wreath from her hands,
-places it on her head, and asks her to rise. "Rise, my child," he says,
-"you must not kneel before me, but I shall kneel before you. I do not
-want to ask your name, for I know you, though I have never seen you, or
-heard anything about you." He begs her to ask a favour of him. She asks
-him to buy her flowers. Eric takes a ring off his finger, and gives it
-to the girl. She dare not wear it, and returns it. She leaves them, and
-Eric asks Goran if he has not seen the marvellous apparition, heard the
-wonderful voice. Goran has heard nothing but the voice of a common
-lass, a little cheeky.
-
-     _Prince Eric_. Hold your tongue, Goran, I love her.
-
-     _Goran Persson_. She is not the first one.
-
-     _Prince Eric_. Yes, the first one, the only one.
-
-     _Goran Persson_. Well, seduce her then.
-
-     _Prince Eric_ (_draws his sword_). Take care, or by God----
-
-     _Goran Persson_. Is he going to prick me now again?
-
-     _Prince Eric_. I do not know what has happened, but from this
-     moment I detest you; I cannot live in the same town as you; you
-     pollute me with your eyes, your whole being stinks. Therefore I
-     leave you, and never want to see you before my face again. I leave
-     you as if an angel had come to fetch me from the dwellings of the
-     wicked; I detest the past, as I detest you and myself. (_Follows
-     Karin_.)
-
-Though Strindberg shows an understanding of love's miracles--with
-which he is not generally credited--he makes no attempt to endow the
-first meeting between Eric and the peasant girl who became the mother
-of his children, and finally his queen, with a greater transfiguring
-power than it possessed. Here, as in all his historical dramas, he
-writes with the sense of the importance of the infinitely small, with
-the knowledge that "characters" and events arise out of the mind's
-contact with things that seem insignificant to the superficial
-observer. The wooden rigidity which the ordinary historian gives to
-the figures of the past, is the result of the incapacity to visualise
-the daily, the commonplace, in lives lived long ago. Strindberg's
-psychological conception of characters of the past is based on an
-almost microscopical power of seeing details. His own hypersensitive
-emotional memory initiated him into the manner, in which history is
-made by mood and temper, aches and pains--as well as by deliberate
-purpose of will and political programmes. Whether it be true or not
-that the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was due to the toothache of
-Louis XIV, and that history was thus made by the ill-timed activity of
-molar nerves, psychological research into the origin of great events
-on the world's stage would reveal causes which the historian does not
-deign to consider.
-
-_Eric XIV_, the drama of the reign of the mad son of the sane King
-Gustavus, is a masterpiece of life-like presentation. Searching
-comparisons between the arts of Strindberg and Shakespeare are otiose.
-But in the dramatic treatment of lunacy the author of _Eric XIV_ may
-well be compared with the author of _Hamlet_, _Lear_, and _Macbeth_.
-The dramatic verisimilitude of Strindberg's lunatics is made perfect
-through an experiential familiarity with the nethermost adventures
-of the mind, which Shakespeare lacked. In _Eric XIV_ the monomania
-of persecution, the fitful _delires de grandeur_, the half-conscious
-cruelty are drawn with a spontaneous realism which is heightened by
-a terrible psychological accuracy of analysis. Strindberg has drawn
-almost as many mad and half-mad folk as Shakespeare. He can describe
-every form of mental derangement, and has not forgotten the soul
-obsessed by God and, therefore, detached from the world. In _The Saga
-of the Folkungs_ the Voice of the Unseen speaks through an obsessed
-woman who sees the souls of people, and is able to reveal the hidden
-treachery of those who surround King Magnus. "One must be mad," says
-a barber in this play, "to have the courage to reveal all secrets at
-once." In _Easter_, the most mystical of Strindberg's plays, he draws
-an exquisite character of a young girl who is "mad," whose soul is pure
-and lovely, and who sees and hears things that happen far away. To her,
-also, all secrets are open; she can see the stars during the daytime,
-and, though her head is "soft," her spirit dwells in the realms of
-pure beauty. There is a fool in To Damascus; there is the frenzy of
-despair in _The Father_. The novels _Remorse, At the Edge of the Sea_
-and _The Gothic Rooms_ present a gallery of psycho-pathological types.
-
-Strindberg's novelistic treatment of lunacy has a natural profuseness
-of imagination, not unlike that of E.T.A. Hoffmann and Dostoevsky. It
-therefore bears little resemblance to the more artificial composition,
-typified by Paul Hervieu's _L'Inconnu_ or Guy de Maupassant's _Le
-Horla_.
-
-The scenes in _Eric XIV_ are constructed with a finished workmanship,
-and an economy of events which make it one of Strindberg's most
-playable pieces. Consumed by jealous hatred of his brother, Johan,
-Eric keeps him a prisoner; a prey of malignant suspicion against
-everybody, Eric commits atrocious murders and endures frantic remorse.
-At last, Eric's excesses can no longer be endured by the people. He is
-imprisoned, and Johan becomes king. In _Eric XIV_ the psychological
-dissection of character does not hinder the dramatic movement of
-the play; the playwright combines brilliant impressionism with due
-subservience to the laws of the theatre. In _The Saga of the Folkungs_
-he has allowed the psychological treatment to usurp the domain of
-drama. The play deals with a period in Swedish history when two brother
-kings occupied the throne. Here, too, we have sombre tragedy. There
-is no lack of dramatic elements, for the horrors of plague, hanging,
-flagellants and execution are shown upon the stage. But Strindberg
-has psychologised his characters so intensely that the flesh has, as
-it were, fallen away from their souls, and with that the obscurity of
-motives and objects which creates the deception upon which human action
-is built, and which is essential to drama. The effect of the play on
-the spectator is the intense, yet real, terror of a nightmare, from
-which we vainly struggle to awaken. The over-balance of psychological
-analysis mars some of the later historical dramas. It makes some of the
-transcendental plays and the chamber plays mere dramatic dialogues,
-pictures of minds in conflict; it gives us the Shadow Theatre of
-the Soul, and leads Strindberg to bold defiance of the rules of
-dramaturgy--including those laid down by himself.
-
-The cycle of the Vasa plays--_Master Olof_, _Gustavus Vasa_ and _Eric
-XIV_--bears the mark of the consummate craftsman. Their strength is
-the strength of reality, their beauty a perfect proportion of dramatic
-construction. A row of historical plays followed: _Gustavus Adolphus_
-(1900); _Engelbrecht_ (1901); _Charles XII_ (1901); _Gustavus III_
-(1903); _Queen Christina_ (1903); _The Nightingale of Wittenberg_
-(1903); _The Last Knight_ (1908); _The National Director_ (1909); _The
-Earl of Bjalbo_ (1909). Of these, _Gustavus Adolphus_ with its breadth
-of battlefield panorama; _Charles XII_ with its narrow searchlight
-on the declining figure of the lion-hearted, but beaten king; _Queen
-Christina_ with its flamboyant sketch of the clever and capricious
-daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, are eminently playable. _Gustavus
-III_ has pointed dialogue, cameo-like pictures of word-fencing; it
-faithfully paints the decadent time when Sweden was steeped in the
-sterile scepticism of France; it portrays the reaction which led to the
-assassination of the King of Masquerades, but the play is not woven
-with the dramaturgic skill of the former dramas. _The Last Knight_
-is an historical jugglery with ideas in five acts which strains the
-dramatic form beyond its measure of elasticity.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-It would require a separate volume to deal adequately with
-Strindberg's historical writings. It is not only his dramas which bear
-testimony to the originality of his historical conception, but a number
-of treatises, essays, and stories, such as _Studies in the History
-of Culture, The Swedish People, Swedish Destinies and Adventures,
-Historical Miniatures_, and _The Conscious Will in the History of the
-World_. His independent historical researches unearthed documents and
-accumulated evidence with a painstaking thoroughness which should
-have endowed him with a special "authority." But he has been derided
-and abused because of his lack of a truly professorial treatment of
-historical characters. His powers of visualisation and interpretation
-have given offence to historical specialists. He has been accused of
-distorting the calm faces of royal personages, of encumbering his
-pictures of the past with ugly and unnecessary details. He has been
-condemned because there is a twentieth-century atmosphere about his
-characters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But we may
-well ask: Has any historical chronicler or dramatist ever given a
-faithful representation of the past except through the medium of his
-own personality, his own time? There are anachronisms in _Hamlet_;
-so there are in _Eric XIV_. In a wider sense, all historical writings
-are anachronistic. In that sense Strindberg's history is less burdened
-with errors than that of most writers. The offence which Strindberg
-committed--if it be an offence--is that he saw and threw upon the
-canvas the lasting psychological features which persist through the
-vicissitudes of time, through the altered conditions of morality,
-custom, and nationality. He saw the eternally human beneath the masks
-of canonised and apotheosised individuals.
-
-_Gustavus Adolphus_, Strindberg's drama of the fair hero-king of Sweden
-who played an illustrious part in the Thirty Years' War, and who landed
-with twenty thousand men in Pomerania in 1630 as friend and protector
-of oppressed Protestants in Germany, has all the elements of a powerful
-historical play. It has been severely criticised in Sweden and in
-Germany. Strindberg has himself explained that the Swedes objected to
-his portrait of Gustavus Adolphus because he had made him too small,
-and the Germans objected because he had made the conquering hero
-too great. Strindberg did not hesitate to show the blemishes on the
-historical idol of Sweden: the weakness, the impetuousness, the spells
-of fear, the carelessness, the moral elasticity which characterised
-Gustavus Adolphus. Nor did he hesitate to show the horrors and
-self-deception of war, the blackguardly deeds which are glorified
-by militarism, or the petty quarrels between Catholics, Lutherans,
-and Calvinists which prolonged the strife. The king is represented
-as being brought--by the force of events--to see the unworthiness of
-the cause which he espouses, and for which he finally dies. This was
-an unpardonable offence against the sacro-sanctity of tradition, and
-the fact that Strindberg's Gustavus Adolphus lost none of his heroic
-qualities by being stripped of pseudo-angelic ones did not temper the
-wind of the general condemnation. The famous generals of the Swedish
-army, Horn, Baner, Tott, Brahe, Torstensson, Stenbock, have been shorn
-of none of their glory.
-
-In _Charles XII_ Strindberg repeats the offence committed in _Gustavus
-Adolphus_. With irreverent and destructive hands Charles XII broke the
-greatness of Sweden,[1] builded by Gustavus Adolphus, and Strindberg
-mercilessly analyses the foolhardy mind of Charles XII, through which
-his campaigns and his country were foredoomed to disaster.
-
-The attacks made upon Strindberg by those who cling to stereotyped
-methods of historical judgment have but served to show the importance
-of the method which he inaugurated. It will undoubtedly guide the
-historian of the future. The average historian moulds his material to
-the conventional view; he has no place for the shapes of originality
-which, but for his cramped pages, would stand forth lifelike and real.
-Mr. William Archer tells us that the historical dramatist must not
-flagrantly defy or disappoint popular knowledge or prejudice. But
-popular knowledge can take no account of the deeper psychological
-traits which it is the business of the historical dramatist to
-discover. Mr. Archer holds that the dramatist must not run counter to
-"generally accepted tradition." "New truth, in history," he adds, "must
-be established either by new documents, or by a careful and detailed
-reinterpretation of old documents; but the stage is not the place
-either for the production of documents or for historical exegesis."[2]
-Those who thus separate the known past from the revivifying influence
-of imaginative art seek to impose the academic view of history upon the
-artistic conscience. That conscience is never free from impressions
-of the accumulated experience of the past. Every play which depicts
-yesterday's customs, manners, costumes, conflicts of thought and
-morality is "historical," and artistic exegesis alone can make real
-to us that which is absent from school treatises, statistics and
-blue-books.
-
-The series of plays which have been designated as symbolical,
-transcendental, mystical and mad--according to the mental outlook of
-the reader--bring us nearest to the real Strindberg, to the essential
-in his imaginative art which, though illusive and often completely
-submerged, yet stands forth as the structure of his life. To this
-series belong _To Damascus_, I and II (1898), _Advent_ (1899), _The
-Dance of Death_, I and II (1901), _Easter_ (1901), _The Crown Bride_
-(1902), _Swanwhite_ (1902), _The Dream Play_ (1902), _The Great
-Highway_ (1909). In these plays we have the eternal questions of the
-human mind, the joys of illusion, the sorrows of knowledge, the fruits
-of sin and hatred, the rise through pain and suffering, the soul's
-battle with relentless fate, the awful mystery of existence, and the
-ultimate hope of something better to come, cast into the weird and
-haunting shapes of the people of Strindberg's inner world; the souls
-that are at once real and unreal, mad and sane, acting in the solid
-world of matter, and held in shadowy bondage by the mists of dreamland.
-Here we meet them all, the souls that have gone by, that are here
-around us, that are yet to come. They meet us with tears and smiles,
-with lies and truth, with virtue and vice, pathetic and repulsive,
-lovable and loathsome--humanity.
-
-[Illustration: Strindberg in his library in the "Blue Tower," 1911. His
-Last Home in Stockholm]
-
-Strindberg suggests the soul's corruption and the soul's ineffable
-sweetness with the same impassioned power of creation. In _Swanwhite_,
-the charming fairy play in which the influence of Maeterlinck is
-discernible, the budding love between a fairy-like princess and a
-chivalrous prince is described with a delicacy which brings the reader
-into a land of romance and roses, of stainless purity and spring-like
-innocence. In _Advent_ we are brought into the house of wickedness, of
-cruel, designing, ancient wickedness. The old judge and his wife are
-steeped in every variety of human treachery and vileness. They die, and
-we follow them into the darkness of hell, where the seven deadly sins
-have grouped themselves around the throne of the monarch. Through the
-pain of being made to see themselves as they really are, they cry out
-for light. In both pieces the "supernatural" plays the most important
-part; the wicked stepmother in _Swanwhite_ exhales a breath of evil
-before which the rose fades, and the dove falls dead; the ill-treated
-children in _Advent_ are comforted by a mysterious playmate, clad in
-white, who brings light into the dark cellar in which they have been
-imprisoned. The story in _The Crown Bride_ of a peasant girl, who kills
-her child, is told with an exalted simplicity, and given a setting
-of the old fairy-faith of Dalecarlia which peoples the rivers with
-nature-spirits and the forests with _trolls_. Here, as in the other
-fairy plays, things are endowed with souls, and the fierce hatred
-between the two old peasant families is reflected by every object that
-surrounds them. Unknown forces are all the time engaged in a mystic
-underplay which is the real action of the piece.
-
-The law of _karma_--the chain of cause and effect--runs through all
-these plays, and binds together the psychological sequence where the
-dramatic construction fails. In _Easter_ Strindberg has drawn the
-anguish of a little bourgeois family, labouring under the misfortunes
-following upon the father's defalcations. He is in prison, and Elis,
-his son, a schoolmaster, who is meticulously honest, is weighed down
-by shame, and tormented by the fear that the man to whom the father
-is heavily indebted, will exercise his right and seize the furniture.
-The family look upon this man, Lindkvist, as an ogre, and when they
-learn that he has come to live in the same town they are in constant
-fear that he will ruin them. Throughout the three acts of this very
-playable piece Strindberg gives a highly finished and concentrated
-picture of those multiple and long-lived sufferings of the innocent,
-which follow in the wake of transgressions committed by the guilty.
-But he makes Lindkvist an arbiter of fate, a messenger of hope who
-shows that good as well as evil is minutely recorded in the great Book
-of Events. For long ago when Elis' father was a young man, and before
-he placed himself within the meshes of the law, he did Lindkvist a
-kindness. That kindness has never been forgotten; it lay like a seed
-of life in Lindkvist's soul, and, as it grew, it made him a generous
-man. And thus Lindkvist forgives and forgets, and the spirit of Easter
-is resurrected in the hearts of the family. Eleonora, the pure and
-tender-spirited girl who went mad on the day when her father was sent
-to prison, is wrongfully suspected of having stolen a daffodil plant in
-the shop of the adjoining florist. The symbolism of the piece is made
-complete by the strange play of the shadow of paternal crime on the
-guiltless child. In her mad innocence of the world's ways Eleonora has
-taken the flowerpot and left a shilling and her name on the counter,
-but the coin and the name are not seen by the agitated shopkeeper who
-is anxious to brand the suspected culprit. The "theft" is at last
-satisfactorily explained. Eleonora speaks with the wisdom of many lives
-when she says: "I was born old ... I knew everything already when I
-was born, and when I learnt something I only recollected. When I was
-four years old I knew men's ... thoughtlessness and foolishness, and
-therefore people were unkind to me."
-
-The force of suggestion, the primary importance of thought form the
-keynote of several of Strindberg's plays. In _Eric XIV_ he lets Goran
-Persson say to Eric: "King and friend, you so often use the word hate
-that at last you imagine yourself to be the enemy of humanity. Don't
-use it! The word is the first realisation of the creative force, and
-you throw a spell over yourself by this incantation. Say 'love' a
-little oftener, and you will imagine yourself loved." _There are Crimes
-and Crimes_, a play in four acts which has been a great theatrical
-success, is built around the subtle force of evil thought. Maurice, a
-dramatist of the Bohemian world in Paris, who is about to receive the
-laurels of fame deserts his mistress and his child to follow a woman
-bent on pleasure only; in the elation of their passion they wish death
-to Maurice's child and destruction to all obstacles in their way. The
-child dies mysteriously in the morning, and through a combination of
-malign circumstances Maurice is accused of being the murderer. He is
-innocent, but he has sinned in thought, and when, at the end of the
-fourth act, he is mercifully extracted from the vortex, into which he
-has brought himself, the Abbe says to him: "You were not innocent,
-for we are also responsible for our thoughts, words, desires, and you
-murdered in thought when your evil will wished for the death of your
-child."
-
-_There are Crimes and Crimes_ does full justice to Strindberg as an
-accomplished stage craftsman; in _The Dance of Death_ we have, perhaps,
-the most sharply chiselled dramatic form of all his later plays. It is
-a symphony of married hatred and misery in which the orchestration is
-perfect. The dialogue is at once natural and calculated; the silent
-play of the piece even more intensely suggestive than the spoken
-words. We get glimpses of the dramatic art of bygone days: that of
-Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; we are mercilessly ground in the
-mill of a ghastly nineteenth-century problem play. The figure of the
-Captain of the Fortress, the untruthful, scheming old rascal who has
-attained to a diabolical mastery in the art of making others unhappy
-and uncomfortable, is drawn with a supreme irony which makes it unique
-in vital drama. Amongst Strindberg's realistic plays it has another
-distinction: it represents his only stage-creation of a vampire-like
-_husband_. The wife is naturally not far behind him. Death stands
-behind the central figures of the play, the dancing death of Holbein
-and Saint-Saens. The strains of his tune drown the jarring notes of
-conflict, and bring the voice of hope to the Captain's lips: "Wipe
-out, and pass on!"
-
-The trilogy _To Damascus_, with its autobiographical wanderings on the
-crooked paths of experience, is perhaps the strangest literary play
-ever written. It contains the elements of the old miracle and morality
-plays, the soul's battle with itself and with the Devil, its final
-renouncement of the world and entry into the new Life. "The Stranger"
-meets "The Lady"; together they journey from station to station on
-the road of suffering and disillusionment. They part in hatred, and
-meet again in the vicissitudes of love. They separate finally as
-The Stranger attains to peace, religious peace, in the monastery of
-dead passions on the top of the hill. The stages that He between the
-beginning and the end of the journey are described in scenes which are
-both possible and impossible. The Beggar, The Doctor, The Sister, The
-Mother, The Old Man, The Confessor, The Abbess, The Fool, The Shadows,
-and The Children all take their assigned parts as separate individuals.
-And yet they seem to be one and the same, fragments of a multiple
-personality. All things and all thoughts come back in this play like
-the top spun by a skilful player of diabolo. The Stranger climbs a
-mountain, and arrogantly threatens the Lord of the skies with a cross
-which he has snatched from a Calvary. He falls, and is found in raving
-delirium by the kind Samaritans of the Convent who bring him to their
-hospital. He regains consciousness, and finds himself seated at a table
-in the Refectory in company with the shades of all whom he has injured,
-or with whose fate his own is bound up. The scene is one of the deepest
-religious realism. It has a touch of that crushing and unreasonable
-sense of guilt which often accompanies the return to physical life of
-one who has been to the very gates of death. The curse of Deuteronomy
-is read by The Confessor, and every word brands the memory of The
-Stranger with the seal of The Law. Of this consciousness of guilt The
-Stranger says: "There are moments when I feel as if I carried within me
-all the sin and sorrow and uncleanliness and shame of the world; there
-are moments when I believe that the wicked act, crime itself, is an
-imposed punishment."
-
-The world gives a banquet in honour of The Stranger, who has succeeded
-in making gold. But the banquet is so arranged as to show the envy
-and hatred and treachery which lie behind the festive speeches,
-the fickleness of public approval. In the portrait gallery of the
-monastery The Stranger is shown the real selves of great men who have
-been honoured for their consistency, whilst they have been bundles
-of inconsistencies--Napoleon, Luther, Voltaire, Goethe, Bismarck.
-The yearning for the peace that passeth all understanding is well
-expressed when The Stranger, bruised and tired, weary of searching and
-self-disgust, sees the white monastery on the hill and cries:
-
-"Anything so white I never before beheld on this dirty earth, except in
-my dreams; yes, this is my youth's dream of a house wherein dwell peace
-and purity. I greet thee, white house.... Now, I am at home."
-
-It is as if the heat of imagination, which produced some of
-Strindberg's great books, were too great to permit him to leave a
-subject, when, artistically, it is finished. After _Inferno_ he wrote
-Legends which was but a faint echo. The theme of _To Damascus_ is
-weakly repeated in _The Great Highway_, a drama in verse and prose
-which also deals with the soul's fearful struggle and disillusionment.
-_To Damascus_ contains some shallow thoughts and some banalities of
-expression, but it is a powerful creation, magnificently conceived. In
-_The Great Highway_ the mysticism falls flat, the play does not grip by
-any poetic power; it is an _olla podrida_ of its author's philosophy
-of life which sometimes is not even lukewarm. But it does contain some
-gems of lyrical beauty, and one or two passages in which Strindberg
-reaches his own heights.
-
-The _Dream Play_ is a new conception and a new art. In a memorandum to
-the play Strindberg writes: "In this Dream Play, as in the previous
-one _To Damascus_, the author has sought to imitate the disconnected,
-but apparently logical form of the dream. Anything may happen;
-everything is possible and probable. Time and space do not exist;,
-on an insignificant background of reality imagination spins threads
-and weaves new patterns: a mixture of memories, experiences, free
-fancies, absurdities and improvisations. The characters split, double,
-multiply, evaporate, solidify, diffuse, clarify. But one consciousness
-reigns above them all--that of the dreamer; it knows no secrets, no
-incongruities, no scruples, no law."
-
-The texture of _To Damascus_ is solid compared with that of _The Dream
-Play_. The story of the descent of the Daughter of Indra into matter,
-of human life as typified by The Glazier, The Officer, The Lawyer, The
-Bill-poster and The Poet, is told without any dramatic sequence, such
-as is required by the theatre of to-day. It is a play written for a
-stage not yet built, to be performed by some diaphanous visitants from
-the astral world. Strindberg calls _The Dream Play_ a Buddhistic and
-proto-Christian drama. It is more than that: it is pre-cosmic.
-
-The paradoxical versatility of a man who holds all the keys of
-successful drama in his hands, and yet sacrifices the theatre to the
-transcendentalism of his ideas, is not easily explained. Strindberg
-told Dr. John Landquist, now editor of the posthumous edition of his
-collected works, that he really found it difficult to write modern
-plays, and that he loved pomp and circumstance in drama.[3] That
-love is displayed in the sumptuous repast introduced into the second
-part of _To Damascus_, at once coarsely barbaric and uncomfortably
-ethereal, a strange combination of the Banquet of Life and the Swedish
-_hors-d'oeuvre_ table. And yet, this is the man who wrote the Chamber
-Plays: _Storm, The Burned Lot, The Pelican, The Black Glove_ and _The
-Spook Sonata_ (1907), in which the figures move, physical, yet free
-from the three dimensions, impersonated ideas, brain-spectres who walk
-the boards with unsteady feet. This is the man who wrote the preface
-to _Lady Julie_, who sought the realisation of his theatrical ideal in
-the one-act play with two or three characters, and who later came to
-write _Gustavus Adolphus_ with fifty-four characters, _Midsummer_ with
-thirty-two characters; who created twenty-four characters for _Gustavus
-Vasa_, and twenty for _Eric XIV_ and _The Saga of the Folkungs_
-respectively, and whose dramatic lavishness necessitated a succession
-of five-act dramas. It seems strange that the author of saga plays,
-like _The Journey of Lucky Peter_, and _The Keys of Heaven_, with its
-parodied Sancho Panzaisms, should have composed _The Dance of Death_;
-that the conscience-stricken visions of To Damascus should be followed
-by _The Slippers of Abu Casem_. This ingenious "toy for children"
-Strindberg dedicated to his youngest daughter, the little Anne-Marie,
-on her sixth birthday.
-
-The two great Norwegian dramatists presented an orderly development
-in the choice of dramatic form, which makes the study of their art
-an exercise in the logic of temperament. The natural romanticism of
-Ibsen's early plays passed into the classical art of _Ghosts_. The
-intellectual modernism of the later Ibsen was the ripeness anticipated
-by every shrewd observer of the course of his mind. The art of Ibsen
-is complex, yet simple. Born out of the depths of his love of truth
-and his love of beauty, it arose, well-formed, palpable, a thing for
-all the world to see and hear, an indictment of the gigantic social
-fraud to which all must ultimately listen. It is essentially exoteric.
-So is the art of the rival and minor playwright, Bjornson, who has
-given the world its most perfect dramatised sermons. Strindberg's art
-is incalculable, subtle, the caprice of a spirit that cannot exhaust
-itself: esoteric because it is ever rooted in the unconscious. His
-plays may be read and seen by the many, but at present they will be
-understood only by the few.
-
-In versatility of dramatic form Hauptmann stands nearest Strindberg.
-He has almost as many strings to his harp as the Swede--he has written
-naturalistic plays and fairy drama, social plays and mystical drama,
-farce, comedy, romance and realism. Both dramatists are impelled by
-pity for human suffering, but the pity that guides Hauptmann, and
-which is typified by _The Weavers_, is an elemental, earthbound pity,
-concerned with food and poverty, lack of shelter and work. Strindberg's
-pity is transcendentalised; it hovers round the greater mysteries of
-existence itself, seeks to extract the human spirit from the curse of
-illusions. Hence the absence of finality in his writings. No book gives
-the impression of being quite finished; they all transmit the ache for
-a new point of view. Whilst Maeterlinck has evolved a philosophy of
-spiritualised tranquillity, and administers a soothing narcotic for
-the Soul Rampant in the twilight of his charmed castles, Strindberg
-walks on, acutely conscious of the thorns upon which he treads. Whilst
-Bjornson, satisfied, proclaims his ideal of physical purity, and throws
-down _A Gauntlet_ at vice, Strindberg is haunted by the ideal of the
-human soul's unattainable purity from dross. Whilst Bernard Shaw cuts
-the world's perplexities with a joke, a flashing paradoxical joke,
-Strindberg raises his bands in threatening condemnation at the God-head
-Himself. In Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's _Elen_, Samuel says to Goetze:
-"Science will not suffice. Sooner or later you will end by coming to
-your knees." Goetze: "Before what?" Samuel: "Before the Darkness."
-Strindberg was brought to his knees by the Darkness, but he rose with
-the dawn that followed.
-
-During the thirteen years that passed between the quiet celebration of
-Strindberg's fiftieth birthday, and the national festivities with which
-the Swedish people acclaimed him on January 22nd, 1912, his countrymen
-were gradually made aware of his greatness. Men of all parties
-fearlessly proclaimed his genius over the open grave, though some would
-never have ventured to do so if they had not felt quite sure that he
-could not prepare any further shocks of surprise.
-
-It is impossible to present a study of the experiences which caused
-the corrosive bitterness in Strindberg's attacks on everything and
-everybody, without reference to the unjust and Pharisaical criticism
-to which he had to submit. On the other hand, there can be no doubt
-that it was difficult to live with Strindberg. The Swedes had to live
-with him, and the household of those who set themselves up to guard the
-propriety and integrity of literary art was day by day threatened by
-his revolutionary ideas, his personal attacks on spotless individuals,
-his coarse-grained descriptions of indescribable things. We must
-therefore extend sympathy to his detractors as well as to him. There
-is, besides, a reversionary power in the mere passage of time which
-calls for special tolerance. The reviewers of the _Athenaeum_ and
-_Blackwood's Magazine_, who suggested that Ruskin's _Modern Painters_
-had emanated from Bedlam, are more entitled to our sympathy than the
-object of their criticism.
-
-The Swedes have a peculiar fear of praising that which is their own.
-They labour under a feeling that such praise is egotistical, blustering
-and discourteous to others. In Swedish peasant homes the housewife
-does honour to her guests by loud depreciation of the contents of her
-house and its offerings, no matter how well-appointed the home may
-be. The trait persists in the judgment of cultured people on national
-qualities, art and literature. It is certainly graceful, and makes the
-Swede an excellent companion, a polite and generous appreciator of the
-talents of others. But it is inimical to the toleration of a forceful
-and self-confident personality within one's own family or nation,
-and favourable to the mediocritisation of boisterous originality.
-If Strindberg had been an Italian or a Spaniard he would in all
-probability have been the recipient of the Nobel Prize during his
-life-time, in addition to posthumous honours.
-
-[Illustration: Strindberg in his study, 1911.]
-
-[Illustration: The Strindberg Theatre in Stockholm.]
-
-In the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy (of Literature), the
-late Dr. C.D. af Wirsen, Strindberg had a persistent enemy. Wirsen
-acted as Secretary to the Academy from 1884 to his death in 1912, and
-exercised considerable influence over the selection of recipients
-of the Nobel Prize in literature which is awarded by the Swedish
-Academy. To Wirsen who wrote idyllic and elegiac poetry, and who held
-everything that is old in reverence, Strindberg was incomprehensible.
-By his attacks on Strindberg, and also by his derisive criticism of
-another free-thinking Swedish writer, Ellen Key,[4] Wirsen shows a
-close resemblance to the type of foolish biographer for which Mr.
-A.C. Benson has found an admirable name: the eagle-eating monkey.
-There is a pseudo-aristocracy of mind which receives not truth in its
-house, unless she be arrayed in garments of classical cut, and has
-not journeyed along the highways of humankind. Wirsen looked upon
-Strindberg as a parvenu of intelligence, just as certain academicians
-regarded Spencer as a parvenu of science. Wirsen's diligent criticisms
-of Strindberg range over twenty years,[5] and may in some measure
-explain Strindberg's delusions of persecution. In 1882 Wirsen gave
-qualified praise to _Master Olof_, and took the opportunity of
-reminding his readers that _The Red Room_ was pervaded by "evil but
-empty wit." His virtuous indignation over "the blasphemous effusions"
-and "ridiculous vanity" of Strindberg's autobiography was sustained
-by the discovery that it contained much boastfulness, but no solid
-thought, and he searched in vain for any proof that the unlucky author
-was--what he might have been--a noble, though eccentric personality. He
-received _The Father_ with feelings of pity for he could see nothing
-in it, but the impotence of a diseased imagination and a mixture of
-coarseness and paradoxicality. When Comrades was published Wirsen
-expressed his astonishment that such a play had found a publisher.
-He dismissed _The Stronger_, as giving "no evidence of strength
-in the composition. Anything weaker has seldom been put together."
-He could find no artistic merit in _At the Edge of the Sea_. In
-1897 he condemned _The Link_ and _Playing with Fire_ by declaring
-that both were equally "unpleasant and painful." He naturally found
-Strindberg's verses bad, and shuddered over their invectives of
-hatred and revenge. When _Inferno_ was published he derived comfort
-from announcing that Strindberg's intellect "has now gone to pieces,"
-but recorded mournfully that the pen that wrote _Legends_ was as
-evil as ever. Wirsen did not believe in Strindberg's delusions; he
-claimed to see through them: they were nothing but coquetry with
-the public, sensational advertisement. _To Damascus_ was to him "a
-horrid and depressing work--excessively loathsome." The most unjust
-of all Wirsen's accusations against Strindberg is, perhaps, that of
-dulness. The autopsychological quest for truth in Strindberg's writings
-bored Wirsen, and he thought others must be bored too. Between the
-chastisements Wirsen exhibited a truly Christian forbearance, and
-graced a corner of his literary column by beseeching Strindberg and his
-followers to return to the path of goodness. He assured the sinners
-that their return to sounder ideas and purer production would be met
-with a warm welcome and undisguised joy in spite of the past.
-
-But the prodigal son of Swedish literature did not return to the house
-of the Academy. He had been well castigated for his brilliant satire on
-that somnolent institution in The _New Kingdom_, but he continued to
-mock "the Gods of Time" until the end of his days. In 1910 he took the
-Academy to task for its admiration of Baron Klinkowstrom, a poetaster,
-whose puerile and pompous verses were free from any menace to the
-existing order of things.
-
-It is true that Wirsen did not represent the whole of literary
-criticism in Sweden. It is also true that Strindberg always had a small
-circle of faithful followers who admired him, believed in him--and
-copied him. But during the many years when Strindberg was absent from
-Sweden a new school of literature was formed which was equally out of
-touch with his early realism and his late mysticism. Oscar Levertin,
-Werner von Heidenstam, Gustaf af Geijerstam and Selma Lagerlof are
-the most prominent names of modern Swedish literature. Geijerstam's
-Erik Grane is an offshoot of early Strindbergism, and Heidenstam's
-brilliant stories of the soldiers of Charles XII, _Karolinerna_, are
-not without traces of the influence of Strindberg's _Swedish Destinies
-and Adventures_. But Strindberg was always too sceptical to stake his
-fortune on any particular breed of Pegasus. In his last two "terrible"
-novels, _The Gothic Rooms_ (1904) and _Black Flags_ (1907), he again
-delivered himself of violent and personal attacks upon society in
-general and the priests of literature and art in particular, thereby
-widening the gulf that lay between him and them.
-
-The many attacks made upon Strindberg in Sweden had one practical
-effect which caused him bitter disappointment. Theatrical managers
-fought shy of his plays. Fourteen years passed between the successful
-production of _The Father_ in Paris and its performance in Stockholm.
-_Lady Julie_ had to wait eighteen years before she was allowed to
-appear in Stockholm. In 1906 the play had a run of several weeks at
-"Folkteatern," in Stockholm, a playhouse for the working classes,
-where the aristocratic lady's downfall was appreciated in a crude, but
-wholehearted manner.
-
-Whilst the theatrical managers of Sweden were hesitating as to the
-expediency of allowing Strindberg to overshadow the stage, Herr
-Lauthenburg gave popular performances at the "Residenz Theater" in
-Berlin of _Creditors_, _Playing with Fire_ and _Facing Death_. Together
-with Hauptmann and Ibsen, Strindberg now won theatrical triumphs all
-over Germany.
-
-The indifference shown in Sweden towards the performance of
-Strindberg's plays led him to plan a Strindberg-Theatre to be run
-on lines similar to those of the Theatre Maeterlinck. After many
-difficulties the plan was at last realised in the autumn of 1907, when
-_The Intimate Theatre_ began its stormy career with _The Pelican, The
-Burned Lot, Storm_, and the Hoffmanesque and elliptic _Spook Sonata_.
-These plays were promptly attacked by critics who made little attempt
-to understand them.
-
-The efforts made in certain quarters to silence Strindberg could not
-suppress the rising wave of admiration. When once the public had been
-brought in touch with him, the anathema of the powerful literary
-coterie was useless. In 1901 Herr Albert Ranft had courageously staged
-_Gustavus Vasa_ and _Eric XIV_ at "Svenska Teatern" in Stockholm.
-They became theatrical successes. "Dramatiska Teatern" followed suit
-with _Charles XII_, _Easter_ and _There are Crimes and Crimes_. A
-young Norwegian actress, Harriet Bosse, played the part of Eleonora
-in _Easter_ with so much charm that she fascinated both audience and
-author. She became a favourite actress and--Strindberg's third wife.
-Several of Strindberg's great historical plays were performed before
-the opening of his own Intimate Theatre. Though the change in public
-opinion was making itself felt, Strindberg could not but resent the
-tardy recognition of his works.
-
-He was out of touch with the literary men of his own country. To them
-he appeared as an outlander, and yet he was, withal, so intensely
-Swedish. He sought in vain to denationalise himself. He was not
-Swedish with the passionate, reverential love with which Dostoevsky
-was Russian. Strindberg was Swedish in spite of his efforts to the
-contrary; his country was in his blood and bones. When Herr A.
-Babillotte,[6] a German writer, says of Strindberg: "He is without
-roots ... though a Swede, he is certainly not Swedish," he shows scant
-understanding of one of the mainsprings in Strindberg's character and
-production. The statement is on a par with his contemptuous dismissal
-of Strindberg's historical dramas.[7] These plays drew nourishment
-from his love of his country, and derived actuality from his identity
-with Sweden. His heart hankered after Sweden, and drove him home when
-pride would have kept him away. In one of his first poems, entitled In
-Paris, he sang wittily of his incorrigible heart's longing for Sweden,
-despite the allurements of Montmartre. He felt lonely in Switzerland
-because he had not spoken to a countryman for three months.
-
-The difficulty in tracing Strindberg's literary ancestry in Sweden
-is responsible for attempts to find his roots elsewhere. Thus Laura
-Marholm elaborates a fantastic theory, according to which the mixture
-of genius and nomadic barbarism in Strindberg is to be explained by
-his "Mongolian blood." The union of mystic melancholy and exuberant
-sensuousness in Strindberg caused close, but futile comparisons
-to be made between him and E.J. Stagnelius, a Swedish poet of the
-romantic school who died in 1823. But a greater number of points of
-contact could be established between Strindberg and the "wizard" of
-Swedish literature, K.J.L. Almqvist, who lived in open revolt against
-authority and convention of all kinds, and whose prolific writings
-showed a remarkable versatility of mind. Almqvist was a realist and
-symbolist who loved to throw out paradoxical _bons-mots_ on current
-morals with a generous hand. "Two things are white," he said, "...
-innocence and arsenic." The amoral note of his writings and the general
-bizarrerie of his metaphors may show a certain likeness to Strindberg,
-but it vanishes upon closer comparison. Almqvist was not a dramatist.
-
-Though without direct literary parentage in Sweden, Strindberg is the
-most typical representative of his country's temperament and spiritual
-struggles. His genius is indigenous in spite of its universality. His
-is the race-consciousness which is enriched by contact with other
-races, but which never loses its distinct quality.
-
-He writes an idiomatic Swedish which, in a sense, is not reproducible
-in another language. His sentences, whether in the dialogue of a drama,
-or in the story of a novel, are wrought with a nervous force which
-is untranslatable. His phrases seem to be innervated, warm-blooded
-entities, and support the theory that the sentence preceded the word
-in the evolution of speech. He is often ungrammatical; each sentence
-is a living whole which cannot be divided. Analyse him with syntax and
-dictionary, and you will find "mistakes" and startling neology. The
-meaning will sometimes be obscure. But read him as you would listen
-to a piece of music with your ear to the harmonics, and you will find
-a consummate artist in words. Laura Marholm says that the sound of
-Strindberg is like bell metal in Swedish, whilst it resembles tin in
-German. There is much truth in the statement. Even the vigorous and
-cogent translations into German by Herr Emil Schering cannot retain
-the soul and magic of Strindberg's style. Translated from German into
-English he is unrecognisable. The difficulty of fusing his meaning
-and style in a new form is also apparent in the direct translations
-into English which have been made. Some of his plays have been
-sympathetically done into English by Herr Edwin Bjorkman. Mr. Bjorkman
-quotes from an article in _The Drama_, in which the belief is expressed
-that Strindberg's prose will be rendered better in "American" than in
-English. Mr. Bjorkman's translations are certainly American rather
-than English. The question whether this is an advantage to the style
-and beauty of the translation is a matter of taste which it would be
-invidious to discuss.
-
-Strindberg never strove to build up a style, like Stevenson who "played
-the sedulous ape" to Lamb, Wordsworth and Baudelaire. He knew nothing
-of the terrible torture of style which made Flaubert's literary
-labours a martyrdom. Ideas haunted Strindberg as they haunted Jules
-de Goncourt, but he never experienced the slavery to literary form in
-which the Goncourts lived. He did not live in order to write; he wrote
-in order to live.
-
-In an article of reminiscences by Madame Helene Welinder,[8] who
-spent the summer of 1884 with Strindberg and his family at Chexbres
-in Switzerland, there is a vivid account of Strindberg's manner of
-writing. He wrote with feverish restlessness, and tried to overcome
-sleeplessness with large doses of bromide. She asked him if rest would
-not be better than bromide. Strindberg put his hand to his forehead as
-if in pain, and replied with a tone of despair: "I cannot rest, however
-much I should like to. I must write for bread in order to maintain
-wife and children, and, even apart from this, I cannot stop. Whether
-I travel by train, or do anything else, my brain works incessantly,
-it grinds and grinds like a mill, and I cannot make it stop. I get no
-peace before I see my thoughts on paper, and then something new begins
-immediately, and there is the same misery. I write and write, and do
-not even read through what I have written."
-
-This rapidity of composition was probably to some extent responsible
-for the frequent repetitions of the same word within a short paragraph,
-the careless tautology of ideas, situations and episodes in his
-books. Many instances of such episode-repetition could be given. Thus
-_Comrades_ and _Charles XII_ contain similar phrases about the woman
-clipping the man's hair of strength, whilst his head rests in her lap.
-_The Dream Play_ has several scenes which are "the doubles" of those
-related in _Fairhaven and Foulstrand_. A certain event connected with
-the tearing up of _The Swiss Family Robinson_ serves the author's
-psychological purposes both in _To Damascus_ and in _The Dream Play_.
-In _The Father_ Laura secretly abstracts the contents of her husband's
-letter-bag, and in _To Damascus_ "The Lady" is guilty of the same
-offence. Both in _Fairhaven and Foulstrand_ and in _To Damascus_ the
-woman promises not to read a certain book by the man which deals with
-his first marriage. She breaks the promise, and the disastrous effect
-is related with emphasis in both books. In _The Dance of Death_ the
-remorseless Captain calmly refers to his attempt to drown his wife by
-pushing her into the water; the incident is more fully worked out in
-_Fairhaven and Foulstrand_, and is the theme of a story in _Fisher
-Folk_. Such repetitions cannot be attributed to poverty of imagination;
-they are the outcome of a too retentive emotional memory and an
-insistent need of expression, immediate expression.
-
-It is curious to note that in spite of the richness and purity of his
-Swedish, in which the living tongue of the people is heard as never
-heretofore, there is not infrequently an admixture of foreign words and
-expressions. That his early verse-play _In Rome_ should contain rhymes
-on "jouissance" and "connaissance," coupled with Swedish words, and
-that some of his early poems were adorned in the same manner is not
-surprising. But when Goran Persson in _Eric XIV_ lightly throws out a
-hybrid drawing-room phrase: "_Tant mieux_ for my enemies!" a jarring
-note is introduced which is difficult to explain in a dialogue,
-otherwise so carefully balanced. The habit of using root-words from
-many languages, to which he gave Swedish shape, grew upon Strindberg
-in later years. In the plays his characters suddenly begin to spout
-Latin and Greek, like the philosophic beggar in _To Damascus_ and the
-sergeant-major in _Gustavus Adolphus_. Such dramatic exercises in the
-classics may have had a good and sufficient reason. The use of words of
-foreign extraction was no doubt fostered by his familiarity with the
-literature of many countries, and by the limitations of each language.
-To this may be added his growing interest in philological research. A
-short time before his death he was keenly at work on the etymology of
-Finnish, Hebrew and Greek.
-
-Uddgren's account of Strindberg's manner of working in 1907 shows that
-the fever had not left him. "When I have finished my work for the day,"
-Strindberg said, "I always note on a piece of paper what I shall begin
-with the next day. The whole long afternoon and evening I collect
-material for next day's work. During my morning walk my thoughts are
-further condensed, and when I return from my wanderings I am charged
-like an electric machine. I put on a dry vest, for after my walk I am
-always very hot, and then I sit down at my writing-table. As soon as I
-have paper and pen ready it bursts out. The words literally tumble over
-me, and the pen works under high pressure in order to get everything
-down on paper. When I have written for a while I have a feeling that I
-am floating in space. Then it is as if a higher will than my own made
-the pen glide over the paper, guide it to write down words which seem
-to me entirely inspired."
-
-The same ecstasy of writing is shown in _Alone_, where he says of his
-life at the writing-table: "I live, and I live the manifold lives
-of all the human beings I describe, happy with those who are happy,
-evil with the evil ones, good with the good; I creep out of my own
-personality, and speak out of the mouths of children, of women, of old
-men; I am king and beggar, I have worldly power, I am the tyrant and
-the most despised of all, the oppressed hater of the tyrant; I hold all
-opinions and profess all religions; I live in all times and have myself
-ceased to be. This is a state which brings indescribable happiness."
-These words remind us of Flaubert who felt "in the space of a minute
-a million thoughts, images and combinations of all kinds, throwing
-themselves into my brain at once as it were the lighted squibs of
-fire-works,"[9] and recall the plastic and yearning girl-soul of Marie
-Bashkirtseff who, when walking in Rome, exclaimed: "I want to be Caesar,
-Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, Caracalla, the Devil, the Pope," and who
-adds: "I love to weep, I love to be in despair. I love to be grieved
-and sad ... and I love life in spite of everything."
-
-Amiel, remembering a night when he lay stretched full length on the
-sandy shore of the North Sea, cries: "Will they ever return to me,
-those grandiose, immortal, cosmogonic dreams, in which one seems to
-carry the world in one's breast, to touch the stars, to possess the
-infinite?"[10] Amiel dreamt, Strindberg created; Amiel found literary
-exultation in dreamy contemplation of the universe, Strindberg in the
-spiral revolutions of humanity.
-
-But sometimes the joy of literary creation gave way to profound
-self-disgust. "What an occupation," he writes in _The Quarantine
-Master's Tales_,[11] "to sit and flay one's fellow-humans, offer the
-skins for sale, and expect people to buy them. It is like the famished
-hunter who cuts off his dog's tail, eats the meat himself, and gives
-the bones to the dog, the dog's own bones. To go about spying out
-people's secrets, exposing the birthmark of one's best friend, using
-one's wife as a vivisection rabbit, storming like a Croat, cutting
-down, violating, burning and selling. The devil take it all."
-
-[Illustration: Harriet Bosse, Strindberg's third wife as Biskra in
-_Samum_ 1902.]
-
-[Illustration: Anne-Marie Bosse-Strindberg, Strindberg's only child in
-his third marriage. Born 1902.]
-
-Strindberg's style expands to fit his wild excursions into the world
-of ideas and his eccentricities of conception, such as the story of
-when he tried to catch dead "souls" with a bottle containing sugar
-of lead, on the Montparnasse cemetery,[12] or that of the madman's
-microscopical studies of the genesis of humanity in _At the Edge
-of the Sea_. His expressions and metaphors often bear the imprint
-of overwrought feeling, as when he speaks of the "blood-poisoning
-cares of the household," or when the impression produced by a visit
-to parents-in-law is that "of a serpent's hole into which Satan had
-enticed him." When he describes poor people asleep at night in
-a railway carriage, as presenting the appearance of corpses on a
-battlefield and scattered human limbs, we cannot but congratulate
-ourselves on the dulness of our imagination.
-
-Strindberg's "wildness" has been falsely attributed to the influence of
-alcohol. His use of absinthe, and his habit of heaping all sins upon
-himself--including that of drunkenness--account for the fable that
-he was incapable of writing without the aid of alcoholic excesses.
-He cannot even be placed in the long list of literary and artistic
-"drunkards "--including the names of Bums, Byron, Charles Lamb,
-Addison, Musset, Hoffmann, Poe and Baudelaire--to whom alcohol was a
-means of attaining to inspiration. Strindberg did not seek cortical
-excitation. He sought oblivion. In _The Great Highway_, "The Hunter"
-says to "The Wanderer" (Strindberg): "Mr. Incognito, why do you
-drink so much?" _The Wanderer_: "Because I am always lying on the
-operating-table, and have to chloroform myself."
-
-He was not a man who suffered from chronic congestion of the head
-in consequence of indifference to all hygienic laws. Ever since the
-early days when he used to throw himself headlong into the open sea
-from a rock, he was devoted to cold-water ablutions. His morning
-exercise, which sometimes was taken so vehemently as to tire him out
-completely, was part of the routine of daily life. In his home-life he
-was of methodical, orderly habits; he detested alike uncleanliness and
-untidiness--in fact, precisely the opposite of what some people have
-imagined him to be.
-
-The roots of his "wildness" cannot be found in the fumes of alcohol.
-There was a strain of the publicist and the agitator in Strindberg
-which found but an insufficient outlet. His craving for social reform
-was not satisfied by corresponding activity. He suffered from too much
-happening within him, and too little without. His stored-up energy
-caused a series of eruptions. Strindberg was an orator afflicted with
-dumbness. His faults of style are those of the typical orator. The
-splendour and vigour of his phrasing often hide blunders of logic
-and hasty conclusions. If Strindberg had met audiences face to face,
-like Bjornson, and been in actual touch with the people, his tongue
-would have lost its sting. Bjornson's pulpit manner would have fitted
-Strindberg badly, but it would have protected him against himself.
-
-But Strindberg could not be a public speaker. Though he was essentially
-a "Confessor" on paper of the race of St. Augustine and Chateaubriand,
-he dreaded the personal jostling and exhibition which are inseparable
-from political life. Loneliness was necessary to him. The emanations,
-opinions and habits of others were apt to oppress him, if brought too
-closely within his own circle. In Paris he fled from his friendship
-with Jonas Lie; in _Inferno_ he shows this dread of paying the taxes
-of friendship. He felt the identity of other people pressing on him
-in much the same way as Keats did. In company he did not like to be
-contradicted. Though a genial and generous host, he could turn friends
-out of his house if they proved themselves possessed of too great
-pugnacity of argument. "I have never hated human beings, rather the
-reverse," he says, "but ever since I was born I fear them."
-
-This fear of an alien invasion of the soul, of losing himself in
-another, made him flee again and again from the prison-house of love.
-In all his books the attraction between man and woman is a duel
-between love and hatred. Sexual love is never spiritualised; it drags
-man into the illusions of Maya, it robs him of strength of purpose,
-of intellectual freedom. Hence Strindberg's men are ever struggling
-to get out of the clutches of woman. When the ties are too strong
-to be broken, when passion obscures reason, hatred is born. Anatole
-France calls himself "a philosophical monk." The monk is always by
-Strindberg's side, pointing out the degradation of carnal love, urging
-him to seek liberation at all costs. But he is not yet ready. He wants
-to go, and he wants to stay. And all his couples, autobiographical and
-purely imaginative, bum in the fires of love-hatred. "I love her," he
-writes in Inferno, "and she loves me, and we hate each other with a
-wild hatred, born of love, which is intensified by the great distance."
-In _Fairhaven and Foulstrand_ the lover says: "At bottom we hate
-each other, because we love each other. We are afraid of losing our
-personalities through the assimilating power of love, and therefore we
-must break away sometimes so as to feel that I am not you...."
-
-After some time love always becomes irksome to Strindberg. He longs for
-male companionship. He experiences a sense of relief when he is free
-from the woman, from the consciousness of always being watched. His
-voice resumes its manly tones, his chest expands. This trait subsists
-in his stories; it makes marital happiness impossible.
-
-He can describe the marriage of souls with exquisite delicacy, the
-first hours of newborn tenderness, the maiden's innocence, the youth's
-wonder at the miracle which is taking place within his heart, the
-chaste abandonment of reserve before the unifying power of love. But
-when once love has descended from Heaven to Earth, Strindberg does
-not leave the lovers in peace. From earth's paradise they are driven
-to hell; they must hate each other, torment each other, devour each
-other's substance with the cruelty of vampires. Even the first kiss is
-fraught with untold dangers. In _Midsummer_--a sunny play emphasising
-the worth of man and the dignity of work, remarkably free from
-distressing problems--this pathological trait is introduced. Julius, a
-healthy young gardener, kisses Louise, his sweetheart, on the mouth,
-and the demoniacal depths of human nature are immediately revealed to
-both. Julius begins to understand the meaning of hatred, and gives
-utterance to startling thoughts. Louise no longer recognises his voice.
-"Why did you kiss me?" says Julius, "we ought never to have done
-that." "What happened?" says Louise. "I have just read in a book,"
-answers Julius, "that when two innocent bodies, carbon and nitrogen,
-unite a dreadful poison is formed. The poison has been born on our lips,
-and hatred has been born out of our innocent love."
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Bust by Max Levi, 1893.]
-
-[Illustration: August Strindberg--Bust by Agnes Kjellberg-Frumerie, 1896.]
-
-Shakespeare married a shrew. She served as an excellent model for his
-portraits of angry women. Led by a malignant fate Strindberg married
-three women who had interests outside the home. He loved _the ideal_
-of the womanly woman, the mother who lives for home and children. He
-came to detest the intellectual woman; she was to him the man-woman, a
-danger to the race, the enemy of man who steals his qualities because
-she is bent on his destruction.
-
-In _The Confession of a Fool_ his love for his first wife suffers at
-an early stage through the necessary introduction of business into the
-divorce arrangements. "Where is the charm of a woman who is always worn
-out with contention, whose conversation bristles with legal terms?" he
-asks plaintively. In _Fairhaven and Foulstrand_ the second story of the
-Quarantine Master shows the same sad development: "... But this evening
-he found her ugly, carelessly dressed, with ink on her fingers, and
-her conversation was so business-like that she appeared to him in a
-detestable light." "A lady," he says in one of his essays on the art
-of the theatre, "must never be snappish or grumpy, even if her part is
-one of opposition. A lady should always be graceful, even in moments of
-anger."
-
-Already as a youth he found it difficult to talk sense to girls.
-He denied that friendship could exist between the two sexes. The
-presence of emancipated and "free" women was sufficient completely
-to disorganise his work and temper. He told Uddgren that he did not
-feel happy in Switzerland, because he found women enjoying the same
-freedom as men in marriage. "I experienced a sense of peace when I
-came to Bavaria where the men are the rulers in marriage, and the
-women are obedient and faithful. The mere fact of returning to these
-old-fashioned, patriarchal conditions was sufficient to restore my
-literary powers which, during the last time in Switzerland, had been in
-abeyance."
-
-In an essay entitled _Woman-Hatred and Woman-Worship_, published
-in 1897, Strindberg wrote: "As I have the reputation of being a
-woman-hater, and people amuse themselves by calling me one, I am
-forced to ask myself if I really am one. On looking back at my past
-life I discover that, ever since I became man, I have always lived
-in regular relations with women, and that their presence has aroused
-pleasant feelings in me, in so far as they have remained women towards
-me. But when they have behaved as the rivals of man, neglected their
-beauty and lost their charm, I have detested them by dint of a natural
-and sound instinct, for in them I sensed something of man, and an
-element of my own sex which I detest from the bottom of my heart....
-Consequently, as I have been married twice and had five children, it is
-not very likely that I should be a woman-hater."
-
-"The most beautiful thing I know," says The Stranger to The Lady in _To
-Damascus_, "is a woman bent over her needlework or her child." And The
-Lady crochets. The good women in his plays are all fitted for "the most
-beautiful thing": Gunlod in _The Outlaw_, Margaretha in _The Secret of
-the Guild_, Karin in _Eric XIV_.
-
-The following passage throws light, not only on Strindberg's attitude
-towards women, but on the attitude of women towards him: "To return
-to woman was to me to come back to nature, and in a corner of my soul
-I made myself unconscious, instinctive, a child, and thus renewed my
-power to think, act and fight.... I have always worshipped women, these
-enchanting, criminal minxes whose worst crimes are not registered in
-criminal statistics. But I have had sufficiently bad--or good--taste
-to tell them the troth, and they have revenged themselves by calling
-me woman-hater. Just think, if these priestesses of revenge knew
-how many successes with the fair sex their revenge has brought me!
-Inquisitiveness, the original sin of Eve, drew the little ingenues
-to the monster, and the monster put no obstacles in the way for even
-the most inquisitive to satisfy their curiosity ... many thanks, my
-charming enemies."
-
-It is little wonder that a man so constituted should be appalled at
-the prospect of the New Woman with her independence, her clubs, her
-cigarettes, her politics, her sport. Monsieur Casimir Dudevant, the
-husband of George Sand, who was "just an ordinary man" was at first
-puzzled by his wife's extraordinary qualities, and then came to the
-conclusion that she was "idiotic." Poor Monsieur Dudevant! He was the
-forerunner of a long row of perplexed husbands, injured in their sense
-of the fitness of things. Strindberg merely made himself a spokesman
-for what the majority of masculine men feel in regard to intellectual
-women, even though they may not be capable of expressing it. Since he
-abandoned his early championship of woman's suffrage, he came to utter
-much bad and ill-tempered abuse of woman. Some of the things which he
-said of "lazy, stingy and cowardly woman," of her mental and physical
-inferiority to man, might well be included in Flaubert's _Dossier de la
-Sottise Humaine_. His arguments in favour of the theory that woman is
-an intermediary biological form, whose development has been arrested
-somewhere between man and youth, are interesting but unconvincing. The
-evidence he offers in support of his views on the general incapacity
-of woman--an incapacity which ranges from the handling of musical
-instruments to making coffee--bears the imprint of petulance rather
-than research. Sometimes there is a cross and quarrelsome tone in these
-utterances which reflects personal irritation, something of Alfred de
-Musset's words in _Nuit d'Octobre_:
-
-     Honte a toi, qui la premiere
-     M'a appris la trahison...!
-
-But, after all, there is not much difference between the reasons
-against woman's political emancipation put forward by Strindberg, and
-those to which Mrs. Humphry Ward clings. And there is a close affinity
-between the psychological and physiological arguments against woman's
-suffrage, advanced in leading articles in _The Times_, and those on
-which Strindberg based his objections to giving women greater freedom.
-The dread of the subjection of man, of a general feminisation of the
-world, and its effects on social life and politics, is the common
-ground of opposition.[13]
-
-Some people have found an appropriate analogy in the fact that
-Strindberg "hated," not only women, but dogs. The hatred of dogs
-pervades his books, and has a note of the same bitter unreasonableness
-as his strictures on women. His first wife had a King Charles, "a
-blear-eyed little monster," which apparently received more loving
-attention than her husband. She even "prayed for dogs, fowls and
-rabbits," whilst, presumably, she did not pray for him. This was
-intolerable, and henceforth the dog became Strindberg's symbol of the
-worthless recipients of the good things of this world, of sneaking
-cupboard-love and uncleanliness. He has surpassed the Bible in
-contemptuous references to the dog.
-
-From this hatred the rest of the animal world was exempt. He cautions
-the angler against inflicting unnecessary suffering on the worm. He
-feeds the birds on his window-sill and the bear in the Zoo. He tells
-a story of a certain island where all the people were abominable
-drunkards, and where the only eyes which could still reflect
-intelligence and the blue sky were those of animals. He is not in
-sympathy with the aimless destruction of life. "Why must one always
-have a gun when one sees an innocent creature in the forest?" he asks,
-and adds: "There are other occasions in life when a gun would be of
-better use." In _The Crown Bride_ the life of an ant is spared, and the
-mystic "White Child" proclaims the love that is greatest of all, "love
-for every living thing, great and small."
-
-Strindberg's life in Stockholm during the last years of his great
-dramatic production flowed in a calm stream, the surface of which
-showed no signs of the storms within. He lived the life of a literary
-hermit, wrapped up in his studies and his art. He took his morning
-walks when the greater part of Stockholm was still asleep, and received
-only a few privileged friends in his home. Solitude had become his best
-friend. In the morning he made his own coffee, and partook of a light
-repast before going out. As a rule he lived frugally, and his little
-home was arranged with the greatest simplicity. "When I get out of bed
-the morning after a sober evening and a restful night, life itself is
-a distinct enjoyment. It is like rising from the dead," he says in
-_Alone_.
-
-Poverty, the faithful companion of his youth, dung to him to the end.
-Even during the last years he was often in monetary difficulties; in
-his attacks upon the powers of the day he had no thought of what the
-morrow would bring to him. He had again and again to pay the penalty
-of speaking unpopular truths. And when money came his way he did not
-love it well enough to make it stay with him. He gave with a lavish,
-careless hand, with a heart ever warm and bleeding for those who had
-less than he. When, on his last birthday, a purse containing 50,000
-kronor had been presented to him, as a token of the people's love and
-admiration, he gave away large sums to the cause of peace, to the poor.
-When, at last, a great publisher bought the rights of all his published
-works in Sweden for some L11,000, the affluence came too late--for him.
-
-In 1901 he married Harriet Bosse who had been the sympathetic
-interpreter on the stage of the women in some of his plays. The
-marriage was amicably dissolved in 1904. During his third marriage he
-wrote _The Dance of Death_ and _Swanwhite_, and published a volume
-of poems, in which his lyrical powers were perfected through greater
-sensitiveness and restraint. Among these poems there is one, strange
-and beautiful, spiritual and earthly, in which he sings of the glory of
-the form of woman--the theme of artists and lovers since the beginning
-of time--but here treated in a new manner. In her he sees the motion of
-stars and planets, the lines of sphere, parabola and ellipse. He sees
-the infinite possibilities of the Cosmic procession, of the creative,
-ever-moving force, the highest and the lowest, in the symbol of the
-eternally feminine.
-
-The "music of the spheres" has been captured in this little poem. It
-is strange how often one is constrained to use musical metaphors in
-describing Strindberg's style. There is always music in his language.
-He was conscious of this himself, for in his last plays he always chose
-music to fit the mood of his dramatic movement. Thus the spiritual
-peace of _Easter_, the change from fear of fate to certainty of God's
-presence, is accompanied by Haydn's _Sieben Worte des Erloesers_, the
-sinful thoughts of Maurice and Henriette in _There are Crimes and
-Crimes_ are followed by the finale of Beethoven's Sonata in D minor.
-_The Dream Play_ is interluded with Bach's Toccata con Fuga; the _Dance
-of Death_ is trodden to the tune of the "Entry of the Boyars."
-
-Over his piano there hung a death-mask of Beethoven. The final movement
-of the "Moonlight Sonata" was to him the highest interpretation of
-humanity's yearning for deliverance. Music brought him peace. It gave
-him strength when words failed--even during the last days when he sat
-at his piano, improvising variations on the Death hymn of the Titanic.
-Strindberg's old friend Tor Aulin, the well-known Swedish composer,
-received a characteristic message from Strindberg's deathbed: "A last
-farewell from Saul to David."
-
-[Illustration: Strindberg's Funeral, May 19th, 1912. Trades-Unions and
-Undergraduates in Procession.]
-
-The little Anne-Marie Bosse-Strindberg, his daughter in the last
-marriage, was very dear to his heart. He had found her gifted with
-something of the second sight which was his own, and his great
-tenderness for children found response in her. Amongst his three
-children by the first marriage his daughter Greta, married to Dr.
-Henry von Philp in Stockholm, understood him best. She was an actress,
-and took the part of Kerstin in _The Crown Bride_ during the national
-festivities in his honour in January, 1912. Happily he did not live
-to mourn over the tragic fate that overtook her. She was killed in
-a terrible railway accident which took place a few weeks after her
-father's death.
-
-The illness which was to end his life had long been battling with his
-wonderful vitality. He caught cold during the Christmas of 1911, when
-he went to pay a visit to his daughter Greta. Pneumonia supervened and
-laid him low for some time. He regained strength and once again put on
-his warrior's armour. Of this illness he gave an account in Berliner
-Tageblatt of February 4th, 1912. After describing an etymological
-challenge which he had sent to three Finnish friends he writes:
-
-"The challenge had hardly been accepted before I fell ill; I first
-noticed it on the morning of Christmas Day, when I was so tired, so
-tired, that I would neither get up, nor drink my coffee. I had no
-pains, but experienced a great calm and an indifference towards the
-outer world, and felt as if I had at last found peace. Usually I get
-up punctually at seven, take a walk, and hurry home, driven by an
-irresistible longing for work. Now this restlessness had left me; I
-felt my life-work was completed. I had said all I wished to say, and my
-unprinted manuscripts were put away in perfect order in boxes."
-
-But the recovery was apparent only. The real trouble was cancer of the
-stomach. An operation was performed, but could not check the advance of
-the disease.
-
-On January 22nd, 1912, the whole Swedish nation celebrated his
-sixty-third birthday. It was nearly too late. The breath of death was
-already upon him as he stood on his balcony, waving his hand to the
-torchlight procession which passed his house, bending his head before
-the deafening cheers which rose from the multitudes, from whose lips
-the cry for August Strindberg rose in tones of jubilant hero-worship.
-As he stood there, raised above the bands and banners of the festive
-acclamation, it may be that the memories of past mistakes, past
-humiliation, and past struggle for goodness, rose within that mighty
-brow, and kept pace with the steps of the marching crowd below. For he
-knew, as few have known, the comedy and the tragedy of life.
-
-That night the theatres of Stockholm vied with each other in performing
-his plays. Laurel-wreathed busts and portraits of Strindberg were
-on view in the foyers and restaurants. The night came with public
-festivities in his honour, music and speeches of approbation.
-
-But the dramatist remained at home in his Blue Tower with a few
-friends. The applause of the public touched his heart, but did not
-deceive him. He knew that the curtain was about to fall on his part in
-the perpetual performance in the Theatre of Life, and that new scenes
-were to follow, to be hissed and applauded until Time puts its last
-figure upon the stage.
-
-
-[1] In 1658 the kingdom of Sweden included the whole of the present
-Sweden and Finland, and in addition Esthonia, Livonia, part of
-Ingermanland, Pomerania, Wismar, Bremen and Verden.
-
-[2] _Play-Making. A Manual of Craftsmanship_, by William Archer.
-
-[3] Idun, May, 1912.
-
-[4] Ellen Key's _Lifsaskadning och Verksamhet som Forfattarinna_. En
-undersokning af C.D. af Wirsen.
-
-[5] Kritiker, af C.D. af Wirsen.
-
-[6] August Strindberg. _Das Hohe Lied seines Lebens_, von Arthur
-Babillotte.
-
-7:
- "Ich halte Strindberg's historische Dramen fuer das
-Schwaechste was er je geschrieben."
-
-[8] _Ord och Bild_, No. IX, 1912.
-
-[9] Correspondence.
-
-[10] Amiel's Journal.
-
-[11] _Fairhaven and Foulstrand_.
-
-[12] _Fables and Other Stories_.
-
-[13] The reader is referred to the following leading articles:
-_Insurgent Hysteria_ (March 16th, 1912), _The Subjection of Man_ (July
-31st, 1912), and _Militant Suffragism_ (September 24th, 1912).
-
-
-
-
-LIST OF STRINDBERG'S CHIEF WRITINGS
-
-
-A uniform edition of Strindberg's collected works is in course of
-publication by Messrs. Albert Bonnier of Stockholm, who are the owners
-of the copyright of Strindberg's writings. The following list includes
-some unpublished works which will now be issued for the first time by
-Messrs. Bonnier.
-
-In a preface to _The Author_, one of the autobiographical volumes,
-Strindberg gave a chronological list of his most important works,
-and added explanatory remarks. The appended notes embody some of
-Strindberg's views on his own writings:
-
-
-  The Freethinker                     1869
-  Hermione                            1869
-  In Rome                             1870
-  The Outlaw                          1871
-  Master Olof                         1872
-  The Year 'Forty-Eight               1881
-
-"In Rome," "The Outlaw," and "Hermione" are classified by Strindberg as
-"studies."
-
-  From Fjardingen and Svartbacken     1877 Stories
-  The Red Room                        1879 Novel
-  From the Sea                        1880}
-  Here and There                      1880} Stories
-  Old Stockholm                       1880}
-
-He and She....
-
-(To be published for the first time in the posthumous edition of
-Strindberg's Collected Works.)
-
-  The Secret of the Guild             1880}
-  Sir Bengt's Wife                    1882} Plays
-  The Journey of Lucky Peter          1883}
-  Studies in the History of Culture   1881
-  The Swedish People               1881-82  History.
-  The New Kingdom                     1882  Satirical sketches
-  Swedish Destinies and Adventures
-   (Two Volumes)                   1883-92  Stories in Historical Setting.
-
-Strindberg defines "The New Kingdom" as a criticism of "The Changeably
-Permanent."
-
-  Poems in Verse and Prose            1883
-  Somnambulistic Nights after
-    Wakeful Days                      1884
-  Miscellanea (Likt och Olikt) Essays: Society under Review.
-  From Italy                          1884
-  Married (Two Volumes)            1884-86 Stories.
-
-Strindberg points out that the first volume of "Married" is a defence
-and glorification of marriage, of home, mother, and child, and that the
-second part is a criticism.
-
-  The Impoundage Journey
-
-An account of the prosecution following upon the publication of
-"Married." It will now be issued in book-form.
-
-  Real Utopias                        1885 Stories.
-
-Described by Strindberg as positive suggestions in the spirit of
-Saint-Simonism. REMORSE--"The Peace Story"--is included in this
-collection.
-
-  The Bondswoman's Son}
-  Fermentation Time.  }
-  In the Red Room     }            1886-87 Autobiography
-  The Author          }
-  The People of Hemso                 1887}
-  Fisher folk                         1888} Novels
-
-These novels represent the author's emancipation from the bondage of
-"problems"; Strindberg points out that they are simply descriptions of
-country life and scenery.
-
-  Sketches of Flowers and Animals     1888
-  The Father                          1887}
-  Lady Julie                          1888}
-  Comrades                            1888}
-  Creditors                           1890}
-  Pariah                              1890}
-  Samum                               1890}
-  The Stronger                        1890}Plays
-  Facing Death                        1893}
-  The First Warning                   1893}
-  Debit and Credit                    1893}
-  Mother-Love                         1893}
-  Playing with Fire                   1897}
-  The Link                            1897}
-  Among French Peasants               1889
-  Tschandala                          1889}
-  The Island of Bliss                 1890}Stories
-  At the Edge of the Sea              1890 Novel
-
-Strindberg remarks that "At the Edge of the Sea" was influenced by
-Nietzsche, but "the individual succumbs in the struggle for absolute
-individualism."
-
-  Things Printed and Unprinted
-  (Two Volumes)                    1890-97  Essays
-
-  The Associations of France and Sweden
-  up to the Present Time              1891
-  (To be published for the first time in Swedish.)
-
-  Fables                           1890-97
-  The Keys of Heaven                  1892 Play
-
-Strindberg's remark: "Darkness, sorrow, despair, absolute scepticism."
-
-  The Confession of a Fool            1893 Autobiographical Novel.
-
-(A German edition was published in 1893; a French edition in 1894; it
-will now be published in Swedish.)
-
-  Jardin des plantes
-  Antibarbarus                     1892-98 Essays.
-  Types and Prototypes
-  Inferno                             1897}
-  Legends                             1898} Autobiography.
-  To Damascus. I and II               1898}
-               III                    1904} Plays.
-  Advent.                             1899}
-
-"The great crisis at fifty," remarks Strindberg, "revolutions in my
-mental life, wanderings in the desert, devastation, Hells and Heavens
-of Swedenborg. Not influenced by Huysmans' "En Route," still less by
-Peladan, who was then unknown to the author ... but based on personal
-experiences."
-
-  There are Crimes and Crimes         1899}
-  The Saga of the Folkungs            1899}
-  Gustavus Vasa                       1899} Plays.
-  Eric XIV                            1899}
-  Gustavus Adolphus                   1900}
-
-"Light after darkness," writes Strindberg. "New production, with Faith,
-Hope, and Charity regained--and absolute certainty."
-
-  Midsummer                           1901}
-  Easter                              1901}
-          "The school of suffering."      }
-  The Dance of Death. I and II        1901} Plays.
-  Engelbrecht                         1901}
-  Charles XII                         1901}
-  The Crown Bride                     1902
-  Swanwhite                           1902
-  The Dream Play                      1902
-  Christina                           1903
-  Gustavus III                        1903
-  The Nightingale in Wittenberg       1903
-  Fairhaven and Foulstrand            1902  Stories.
-     (Partly autobiographical.)
-  Sagas                               1903
-  Alone                               1903  Mediative Autobiography.
-  The Gothic Rooms                    1904  Novel.
-  Word-Play and Handicraft                  Poems.
-  The Conscious Will in the History
-    of the World                            Historical.
-  A Free Norway[*]
-    (* To be published for the first time.)
-
-  Historical Miniatures               1905} Stories in
-  New Swedish Adventures.             1906} Historical Setting.
-  Black Flags                         1907  Novel.
-
-  A Blue Book. I, II, III             1907-8
-     The Synthetic Philosophy of Strindberg's Life.
-
-  Storm                               1907}
-  The Burned Lot                      1907}
-  The Spook Sonata                    1907} Chamber Plays.
-  The Pelican                         1907}
-  The Black Glove                     1909}
-  The Festival of the Finished
-     Building.                        1907}
-  The Scapegoat                       1907} Stories.
-  The Last Knight                     1908}
-  The Slippers of Abu Casem           1908}
-  The Earl of Bjalbo                  1909} Plays.
-  The National Director               1909}
-  The Great Highway                   1909}
-
-"The Great Highway" is a "farewell to life and a self-declaration."
-
-  Hamlet                            }
-  Julius Caesar                      }
-  Memorandum to the Members of      }
-     the Intimate Theatre.          }
-  Macbeth and Other Plays by        } 1908-9 Dramaturgy.
-     Shakespeare                    }
-  An Open Letter to the Intimate    }
-     Theatre                        }
-
-  The Origins of our Mother Tongue    1910}
-  Biblical Proper Names               1910} Philology.
-  Roots of World-Languages            1910}
-  Speeches to the Swedish Nation      1910
-  The State of the People             1910
-  Religious Renaissance               1910
-  China and Japan[1]                  1911
-
-Dr. John Landquist, the editor of the posthumous edition of
-Strindberg's collected works, has kindly placed the following note on
-Strindberg's manuscripts at our disposal:
-
-"The MSS., most of which are still in existence, are written with the
-utmost care in Strindberg's clear and energetic hand, and are often
-beautifully ornamented. They reflect the neatness and order with which
-the author surrounded himself, and also the love with which he carried
-out his work. When writing mediaeval drama, Strindberg illuminated
-his MSS. like a mediaeval handwritten manuscript with artistically
-designed and coloured initial letters, and with miniatures painted by
-himself--the whole harmonising with the period and surroundings in
-which the action takes place. On other pages there is interspersed
-in the writing itself such ornamentation as would correspond to the
-time and atmosphere of the written work. As a rule he used hand-made
-Lessebo-paper, and generally made very few alterations. He hardly ever
-copied out his MSS. In later years he seldom corrected anything when
-once it had been written down. He did not like to read through his own
-works after having completed them."
-
-
-[1] All correspondence relating to the authorisation of translations
-of Strindberg's works and the rights of performing his plays in England
-and America should be addressed to Herr Albert Bonnier, of Stockholm.
-He is now the sole representative of Strindberg's literary executors.
-
-
-
-
-    INDEX
-
-
-    A
-
-    Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 119
-    Addison, 338
-    Adelphi Players, The, 204
-    _Admirable Crichton, The_, 181
-    _Advent_, 304, 305, 306
-    Aeschylus, 310
-    Ahasuerus, 16
-    Albericus, 89
-    Alembert, d', 209
-    Almqvist, K.J.L., 328, 329
-    _Alone_, 19, 284, 285, 335, 350
-    Amiel, _Journal_ of, 336
-    _Antibarbarus I, or the Psychology of Sulphur_,
-       _or All is in All_, 241, 242
-    Antoine, Monsieur Andre, 171
-    Aphrodite Pandemos, 128
-    Archer, Mr. William, _Play-Making. A Manual of Craftsmanship_ by, 303
-    Aristotle, 251
-    _Athenaeum_, 320
-    Augier, 170
-    Augustine, St. 340
-    Augustus, 336
-    Aulin, Tor, 352
-    _Author, The_, 19, 122, 133, 134, 152, 284
-    _Autobiography_, 56, 86, 98, 169
-
-
-    B
-
-    Babillotte, Herr Arthur,_ August Strindberg_.
-       _Das Hohe Lied seines Lebens_ by, 327, 328
-    Bach, 352
-    Balfour, A.J. 256
-    Balzac, 159, 232; _Seraphita_ by, 260; 281
-    Bashkirtseff, Marie, 336
-    Baudelaire, 331, 338
-    Becque, Henry, _Les Corbeaux_ by, 205, 212; _Souvenirs_ by, 208
-    Beethoven, _Sonata in D minor_ by, 352;
-       _Moonlight Sonata_ by, 352
-    Benson, Mr. A.C., 321
-    Berliner Tageblatt, 353, 354
-    Bismarck, 313
-    Bjorkman, Herr Edwin, 330
-    Bjornson, Bjornstjerne,
-       _Mary Stuart_ by, 67, 75, 123, 152;
-       _The King_ by, 153, 154, 317;
-       _A Gauntlet_ by, 318, 339
-    _Black Flags_, 325
-    _Black Glove, The_, 316
-    _Blackwood's Magazine_, 320
-    Blake, 251, 255, 260
-    Blavatsky, Madame, _The Secret Doctrine_ by, 274, 275
-    _Blotsven_, 79
-    _Blue Bird, The_, 144
-    _Blue Book, A_, 282, 284, 286, 287
-    Boccaccio, 159
-    _Bok om Strindberg, En_, af Holger Drachmann, Knut Hamsun,
-       Justin Huntly McCarthy, Bjornstjerne Bjornson, Jonas Lie,
-       Georg Brandes, etc., 123, 152
-    _Bondswoman's Son, The_, 18, 19, 282, 283
-    Bonnier, Herr Albert, 123,161, 162
-    _Book of Job, The_, 260
-    Bosse, Harriet, 327, 351
-    Brandes, Georg, 123, 174, 175, 231
-    Brieux, Monsieur, _La Robe Rouge_ by, 225
-    Browning, Mrs., 281
-    Buckle, 97
-    _Burned Lot, The_, 316, 326
-    Burns, Robert, 121, 338
-    Byron, _Manfred_ by, 58, 338
-
-
-    C
-
-    Capus, 206
-    Caracalla, 336
-    Carlyle, 281
-    Carmontelle, _Proverbes Dramatiques_ by, 214
-    Celler, Monsieur Ludovic, _Les decors, les costumes_
-       _et la mise-en-scene au XVII siecle_ by, 215
-    Cellini, Benvenuto, 255
-    _Charles XII_, 299, 302, 303, 326, 332
-    Chateaubriand, 61, 340
-    Chemistry, 244, 245, 248, 251, 252, 253
-    Clairpsychism, 256, 276, 278, 285, 286, 287
-    Coleridge, 257
-    _Collected Works of August Strindberg, The_, 13, 123
-    Comedie rosse, 193
-    _Comrades_, 122, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192,
-       193, 194, 195, 225, 322, 332
-    Comte, 283
-    _Confession of a Fool, The_, 22, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126,
-       127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 223, 228, 237, 242, 343
-    _Confused Sensations_, 228
-    _Conscious Will in the History of the World, The_, 300
-    Corot, 96
-    _Creditors_, 172, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203,
-       204, 206, 244, 326
-    _Crimes and Crimes, There are_, 309, 310, 326, 352
-
-    Criticism, Literary, 77, 78, 84, 139, 148, 150, 233, 234, 235,
-       236, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325
-    _Crown Bride, The_, 304, 306, 349, 353
-
-
-    D
-
-    _Dagens Nyheter_, 115
-    _Damascus, To_, 256, 288, 297, 304, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316,
-       323, 332, 334, 345
-    _Dance of Death, The_, 304, 310, 311, 316, 333, 351, 352
-    Dante, 83;
-       the _Commedia_ by, 89, 260
-    De Quincey, 151
-    Dickens, 47, 140
-    _Different Weapons_, 151
-    Dostoevsky, 232, 297, 327
-    Drachmann, Holger, 123, 240
-    _Drama, The_, 330
-    Drama, Naturalistic, 170, 171
-    "Dramatiska Teatern," 323
-    _Dream Play, The_, 256, 304, 314, 315, 332, 352
-    Dryden, 113
-    Dudevant, Monsieur Casimir, 346
-    Dumas fils, Alexandre, 170, 206;
-       _Le Fils Naturel_ by, 208
-    Dumas pere, Alexandre, 47, 170
-    Duse, Eleonora, 208
-
-
-    E
-
-    _Earl of Bjalbo, The_, 299
-    _Easter_, 256, 296, 304, 306, 307,
-    308, 326, 327, 352
-    _Edge of the Sea, At the_, 230, 231, 297, 323, 337
-    Eliasson, Dr., 269
-    Emerson, 281
-    _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 143
-    _Engelbrecht_, 299
-    _Eric XIV_, 289, 295, 296, 297, 298, 301, 308, 309, 316,
-       326, 333
-    Essen, Siri von, 122;
-       divorce of, 130;
-       becomes an actress, 130;
-       marries August Strindberg, 132;
-       divorce of, from Strindberg, 237
-    Euripides, 310
-
-
-    F
-
-    _Fables_, 227, 228, 337
-    Fabre, Emile, _L'Argent_ by, 172
-    _Facing Death_, 326
-    _Fairhaven and Foulstrand_, 332, 333, 336, 337, 341, 343
-    _Father, The_, 22, 122, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 202, 203,
-       204, 210, 225, 235, 244, 297, 322, 325, 332
-    _Fermentation Time_, 19, 53, 69, 86, 87
-    Feuillet, 214
-    _First Warning, The_, 223
-    _Fisher Folk_, 226, 227, 333
-    _Fjardingen and Svartbacken, From_, 135, 136
-    Flaubert, 331;
-       _Correspondance_ of, 336;
-       _Dossier de la Sottise Humaine_ by, 347
-    "Folkteatern," 325
-    France, Anatole, 341
-    _Freethinker, The_, 78, 79
-    "Freie Buehne," 202
-    _French Peasants, Among_, 228, 229
-
-
-    G
-
-    Geijerstam, Gustaf af, _Erik Grane_ by, 324
-    _General Discontent, its Causes and Remedies, On the_, 229, 230
-    Geographical Society, The Imperial Russian, 119
-    Gissing, George, _New Grub Street_ by, 141
-    Goethe, _Faust_ by, 61, 62, 83
-       _Goetz von Berlichingen_ by, 102, 281, 313
-    Goncourt, the brothers de, _Soeur Philomene_ by, 172, 214, 331
-    Goncourt, Edmond de, 207
-    Goncourt, Jules de, 331
-    Gorki, Maxim, 17, 204
-    Gosse, Mr. Edmund, 231
-    _Gothic Rooms, The_, 297, 325
-    _Great Highway, The_, 256, 304, 313, 314, 338
-    Grein, Mr. J.T., 203, 204
-    Guiche, _Entre Freres_ by, 214
-    _Gustavus Adolphus_, 280, 299, 301, 302, 316, 334
-    _Gustavus III_, 299
-    _Gustavus Vasa_, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 298, 316, 326
-
-
-    H
-
-    Hamsun, Knut, 123
-    Hansson, Ola, 220, 238
-    Hartmann, 232
-    Hauptmann, 204, 317;
-       _The Weavers_ by, 318; 326
-    Haydn, _Sieben Worte des Erloesers_ by, 352
-    Heiberg, Gunnar, 240
-    Heidenstam, Werner von, 324;
-       _Karolinerna_ by, 325
-    Heine, 239
-    Henry VII, 89
-    Hervieu, Paul, _Le Dedale_ by, 201, 204;
-       _L'Inconnu_ by, 297
-    Hirsch, Dr. W., 256
-    _Historical Miniatures_, 300
-    Hoffmann, E.T.A., 239
-       _Kreisler_ by, 257, 297, 338
-    Holbein, 310
-    Homer, 90
-    Horace, 90, 113
-    Hospital of Saint Louis, 247
-    Hugo, Victor, 271
-    Huysmans, _La-Bas_ by, 274;
-       _En Route_ by, 274
-    Hoeffding, 93
-
-
-    I
-
-    Ibsen, 13;
-       _Brand_ by, 75, 166, 170;
-       _Ghosts_ by, 172, 317;
-       _Rosmersholm_ by, 172, 203, 326
-
-    Independent Theatre, The, 203, 204
-    _Inferno_, 15, 19, 243, 248, 256, 257, 274, 277, 279, 280, 285,
-       288, 313, 323, 340, 341
-    Internationalism, 155
-    Intimate Theatre, The, 326, 327
-
-
-    J
-
-    _Journey of Lucky Peter, The_, 143, 144, 146, 316
-    _Joy of Life, The_, 278
-    Julius Caesar, 336
-    Jullien, Monsieur, 205
-
-
-    K
-
-    Keats, 340
-    Key, Ellen, 321
-    _Keys of Heaven, The_, 316
-    Kierkegaard, Soren, _Enten-Eller_ by, 79
-    Knox, John, _The First Blast of the Trumpet against_
-       _the Monstrous Regiment of Women_ by, 237
-    "Kuenstler Theater," 216
-
-
-    L
-
-    La Bruyere, 98
-    _Lady Julie_, 172, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184,
-       193, 202, 204, 206, 209, 210, 211, 214, 216, 217, 218, 225,
-       231, 236, 244, 284, 316, 325
-    Lagerlof, Selma, 324
-    Lamb, Charles, 257, 331, 338
-    Landquist, Dr. John, Article in _Idun_ by, 315
-    _Last Knight, The_, 299
-    Latini, Brunetto, 89
-    Lauthenburg, Herr, 326
-    Lavedan, Entire Freres by, 214
-    Lee, Nathaniel, 257
-    _Legends_, 256, 277, 288, 313, 323
-    Lenan, _Traumgewalten_ by, 257
-    Lenngren, Anna Maria, _Froken Juliana_ by, 176
-    Lessing, 61
-    Levertin, Oscar, 278, 324
-    Library of Stockholm, The Royal, 118
-    Lie, Jonas, 123, 340
-    _Link, The_, 122, 219, 224, 225, 323
-    _Loke's Blasphemies_, 151
-    Louis XIV, 295
-    Lucanus, 90
-    Lugne-Poe, Monsieur, 202
-    Lundin, Claes, 146
-    Luther, 313
-
-
-    M
-
-    Macaulay, 70
-    McCarthy, Justin Huntly, 123;
-       article in _The Fortnightly Review_ by, 183, 225
-    Macleod, Fiona, _Cathal of the Woods_ by, 228
-    Maeterlinck, 227, 305, 316
-    Marcus Aurelius, 336
-    Marholm, Laura, 238, 328, 330
-    _Married_, 123, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164,
-       165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 235, 236, 237
-    _Master Olof_, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 136, 142, 289, 298, 322
-    Maupassant, Guy de, 159, 209;
-       _Le Horla_ by, 297
-    Michel-Angelo, 251
-    _Midsummer_, 316, 342, 343
-    Mill, John Stuart, 230
-    _Modern Drama and the Modern Theatre, On_, 211, 212
-    Moses, 260
-    Multiple personalities, 283, 284
-    Munch, Edvard, 240, 259, 263
-    Murray, Grenville, _Les Hommes du Second Empire_ by, 149
-    Musset, Alfred de, 214, 338;
-       _Nuit d'Octobre_ by, 347
-
-
-    N
-
-    Napoleon, 313
-    _National Director, The_, 299
-    Naturalism, 170, 204, 205, 212, 213
-    _New Kingdom, The_, 148, 149, 157, 230, 324
-    Newman, 51
-    Nietzsche, 13, 194, 231, 232, 284
-    _Nightingale of Wittenberg, The_, 299
-    Nobel Prize, The, 321
-    Nordau, Max, 149
-
-
-    O
-
-    Oehlenschlager, 79, 82
-    _Old Stockholm_, 146, 147
-    Orfila, 248, 260
-    _Outlaw, The_, 81, 84, 85, 86, 345
-    Ovid, 90
-
-
-    P
-
-    _Pariah_, 219, 220, 221, 222
-    _Paris, In_, 328
-    Patmore, Coventry, 281
-    Paul, Adolf, 240
-    Peace movement, The, 155, 156
-    Peladan, Sar, _Comment on devient Mage_ by, 280
-    _Pelican, The_, 316, 326
-    _People of Hemso, The_, 226, 227, 235
-    Personne, John, _Strindberg-Literature and Immorality_
-       _amongst Schoolboys_ by, 165
-    _Peter Pan_, 144
-    Philp, Greta Strindberg von, 353
-    Pinero, Sir Arthur, 206
-    _Playing with Fire_, 219, 223, 323, 326
-    Poe, 255, 338
-    _Poems in Verse and Prose_, 150, 151
-    Przybyszewski, Stanislav, 240, 258, 259, 260, 262
-
-
-    Q
-
-    _Quarantine Master's Tales, The_, 336, 337, 343, 344
-    _Queen Christina_, 299
-    Quesnay, de, 230
-
-
-    R
-
-    Rahmer, Dr. S., Article in _Grenzfragen der Literatur_
-       _und Medizin_ by, 256
-    Ranft, Herr Albert, 326
-    Realism, 170, 183, 212
-    _Real Utopias_, 168
-    _Red Room, In the_, 19, 110, 111, 112, 113
-    _Red Room, The_, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147, 148,
-       157, 230, 322
-    Reformation, the Protestant, 99, 291
-    Religion, 279
-    _Remorse_, 156, 297
-    Renan, _Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse_ by, 255
-    "Residenz Theater," 203, 326
-    _Reward of Virtue, The_, 157
-    Rodin, _Le Penseur_ by, 16
-    _Rome, In_, 74, 76, 77, 78, 333
-    Rosen, George von, _Erik XIV and Karin Mansdotter_ by, 95
-    Rousseau, 19, 154, 209, 230, 234;
-       _Confessions_ by, 257;
-       _Dialogues_ by, 257;
-       _Reveries_ by, 257, 260
-    "Rune," the formation of the, 73
-    Ruskin, 281;
-       _Modern Painters_ by, 320
-
-
-    S
-
-    _Saga of the Folkungs, The_, 289, 296, 297, 298, 316
-    Saint-Saens, 310
-    _Samum_, 219, 220
-    Sand, George, 61, 346
-    Sardou, 170
-    _Scenery of Sweden, The_, 236
-    Schering, Herr Emil, 330
-    Schiller, _Die Raeuber_ by, 58, 63;
-       _On the Theatre as an Institution for Moral Education_ by, 62
-    Schnitzler, 204;
-       _Reigen_ by, 206
-    Schopenhauer, 232, 237, 238
-    Schumann, _Aufschwung_ by, 258, 259
-    "Schwarzen Ferkel, Zum," 239, 240
-    Scott, Sir Walter, 47
-    Scribe, 170
-    _Secret of the Guild, The_, 142, 345
-    Shakespeare, 47, 82, 83, 101;
-       _Hamlet_ by, 106, 295, 301;
-       _Lear_ by, 295;
-       _Macbeth_ by, 295, 296, 343
-    Shaw, George Bernard, 206, 233, 234, 318
-    Sinology, 118
-    _Sir Bengt's Wife_, 144, 145, 146
-    _Sketches of Flowers and Animals_, 227
-    _Slippers of Abu Casem, The_, 316
-    Socialism, 167, 169, 229, 230
-    Socrates, 213
-    Sophocles, 82, 310
-    Sorbonne, La, 248
-    _Speeches to the Swedish Nation_, 279
-    Spencer, 106, 230, 283
-    _Spook Sonata, The_, 316, 326
-    Stage Society, The, 204
-    Stagnelius, E.J., 328
-    Stevenson, R.L., 331
-    Stockholm's Skargard, 30, 83, 99, 226
-    _Storm_, 315, 326
-    Street riots in Stockholm, 66, 67, 126
-    Strindberg, Anne-Marie Bosse-, 316, 353
-    Strindberg, August,
-       death of, 11;
-       scientific studies of, 12, 37, 60, 83, 238, 239, 240, 241,
-         244,245;
-       diary of, 14;
-       faith in the Bible, 14;
-       love of the early morning, 15;
-       funeral of, 16;
-       birth of, 20;
-       parents of, 20;
-       ancestry of, 20;
-       poverty of, 21, 75, 83, 107, 117, 350;
-       views of, on the family as an institution, 22, 23;
-       misogyny of; 22, 124, 125, 171, 184, 194, 244, 344, 345;
-       attacks upon women, 23, 75, 76, 175, 237, 347;
-       early home of, 24, 29;
-       early religious doubts of, 25, 32, 33;
-       early school-days of, 27, 28;
-       love of nature, 29, 30, 31, 32, 53, 227, 228, 265;
-       independence of, at school 33, 34;
-       death of the mother of, 35, 36, 37;
-       interest of, in music, 38, 53, 352;
-       constructs machines, 39, 40;
-       as "gymnasist," 41;
-       becomes a pietist, 42, 43, 44, 45;
-       as private tutor, 46, 47, 48;
-       influence of literature on, 47;
-       becomes a freethinker, 47;
-       preaches a sermon, 49;
-       passes the "student--examen," 50;
-       enters the University of Upsala, 51;
-       criticism of academical routine, 51, 52, 53;
-       becomes a schoolmaster, 54;
-       studies social conditions, 54, 55, 103, 154, 155, 228, 229, 230;
-       sympathy of, with the people, 56, 64, 65;
-       contempt of current morals, 56, 120;
-       takes up the study of medicine, 59;
-       comes under the influence of art, 60;
-       decides to become an actor, 62;
-       makes his debut at the Dramatic Theatre, 67;
-       tries to commit suicide, 69, 80, 129;
-       composes his first play, 69;
-       first attempts to write verse, 71;
-       first plays refused, 71, 72;
-       returns to the University, 73;
-       first performance of a play by, 76;
-       burns the MSS. of Blotsven, 80;
-       passes his Latin examination, 81;
-       presents his aesthetic thesis. 81;
-       performance of a Viking play by, 84;
-       King Charles XV sends for, 85;
-       as a painter, 90, 96, 103, 236, 240;
-       becomes a journalist, 92;
-       as an art critic, 95;
-       lack of self-confidence of, 107;
-       edits an insurance paper, 108;
-       financial crash, 109;
-       obtains a post as telegraph clerk, 114;
-       resumes journalistic work, 115;
-       becomes parliamentary reporter and dramatic critic, 116;
-       is nominated assistant librarian, 118;
-       class-consciousness of, 126, 127;
-       first marriage of, 132;
-       views of, on the sacredness of parenthood, 133, 134;
-       increasing literary activity of, 135;
-       first great dramatic success, 142, 143;
-       on the tragedy of fatherhood, 146, 175;
-       historical point of view of, 147, 148;
-       criticises poetry as a form of literary expression, 151;
-       leaves Sweden, 152;
-       is prosecuted for blasphemy, 157;
-       is cheered by the people in Stockholm, 162, 163, 164;
-       attacks of Conservative press 163;
-       is found "not guilty," 164;
-       is denounced by feminists, 165;
-       advocates rights of women and marriage reform, 167;
-       views of, on spiritual functions of motherhood, 168;
-       begins a series of naturalistic plays, 171;
-       on the educational value of the theatre, 206, 207;
-       views of, on theatre reform, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218;
-       obtains divorce from his first wife, 237;
-       second marriage of, 242;
-       becomes an alchemist, 251;
-       madness of, develops, 255;
-       persecutional mania of, becomes acute, 265;
-       prepares to die, 266;
-       fears detention in an asylum, 269;
-       love of, for his child, 271, 272;
-       is influenced by Roman Catholicism, 272, 280;
-       religious feeling of, 273, 279;
-       attitude of, towards theosophy, 274, 275;
-       recovery of, 275;
-       psychic development of, 276;
-       fiftieth birthday of, 288;
-       resumes the writing of drama, 288;
-       as an historical psychologist, 289, 301;
-       criticism of, as an historian, 301, 302, 303;
-       national celebration of, 319, 353, 354, 355;
-       tautology in the writings of, 332, 333;
-       philological studies of, 334;
-       attitude towards animals of, 348, 349;
-       third marriage of, 351;
-       last illness of, 353, 354;
-    _Stronger, The_, 204, 219, 222, 223, 322
-    _Studies in the History of Culture_, 300
-    Sudermann, 206
-    Sue, Eugene, _Le Juif Errant_ by, 47
-    "Svenska Teatern," 326
-    _Swanwhite_, 304, 305, 306, 351
-    Swedenborg, Emanuel, 260, 267, 272, 273, 277, 280, 281, 282, 283
-    Swedish Academy, The, 321, 324
-    _Swedish Destinies and Adventures_, 150, 300, 325
-    _Swedish People, The_, 148, 300
-    Swift, Dean, 234
-    _Sylva Sylvarum_, 241
-    Symons, Arthur, _Studies in Seven Arts_ by, 208
-
-
-    T
-
-    Tasso, 255, 273
-    Tchekhov, Anton, 204; _The Seagull_ by, 208
-
-
-
-***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUGUST STRINDBERG, THE SPIRIT OF
-REVOLT***
-
-
-******* This file should be named 44025.txt or 44025.zip *******
-
-
-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
-http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/4/4/0/2/44025
-
-
-
-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
-will be renamed.
-
-Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
-one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
-(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
-permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
-set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
-copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
-protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
-Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
-charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
-do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
-rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
-such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
-research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
-practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
-subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
-redistribution.
-
-
-
-*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
-
-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
-
-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
-  www.gutenberg.org/license.
-
-
-Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works
-
-1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
-(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
-all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
-If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
-terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
-entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
-
-1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
-paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
-and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
-
-1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
-or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
-collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
-individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
-located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
-copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
-works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
-are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
-Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
-freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
-this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
-the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
-keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
-Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
-
-1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
-what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
-a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
-the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
-before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
-creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
-Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
-the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
-States.
-
-1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
-
-1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
-access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
-whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
-phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
-copied or distributed:
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
-from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
-posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
-and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
-or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
-with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
-work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
-through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
-Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
-1.E.9.
-
-1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
-terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
-to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
-permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
-
-1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
-
-1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm License.
-
-1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
-word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
-distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
-"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
-posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
-you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
-copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
-request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
-form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
-
-1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
-that
-
-- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
-     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
-     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
-     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
-     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
-     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
-     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
-     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
-     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
-     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
-     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
-     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
-
-- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
-     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
-     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-     License.  You must require such a user to return or
-     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
-     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
-     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
-     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
-     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
-     of receipt of the work.
-
-- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
-     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
-forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
-both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
-Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
-Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
-
-1.F.
-
-1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
-public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
-collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
-"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
-corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
-property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
-computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
-your equipment.
-
-1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
-fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
-DAMAGE.
-
-1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
-written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
-your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
-the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
-refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
-providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
-receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
-is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
-opportunities to fix the problem.
-
-1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
-WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
-WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
-
-1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
-If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
-law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
-interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
-the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
-provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
-
-1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
-with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
-promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
-harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
-that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
-or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
-work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
-Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
-
-
-Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
-including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
-because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
-people in all walks of life.
-
-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
-assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
-remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
-To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
-and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
-and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
-Foundation
-
-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
-Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
-number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
-permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
-
-The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
-Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
-throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
-North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
-contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
-Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
-
-For additional contact information:
-     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
-     Chief Executive and Director
-     gbnewby@pglaf.org
-
-Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
-array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
-status with the IRS.
-
-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
-States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
-with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
-SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
-particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
-approach us with offers to donate.
-
-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
-outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
-
-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
-methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
-To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-
-Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
-works.
-
-Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
-concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
-with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
-Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
-editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
-unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
-keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
-
-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
-
-     www.gutenberg.org
-
-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/44025.zip b/44025.zip
deleted file mode 100644
index fcadaca..0000000
--- a/44025.zip
+++ /dev/null