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).