This is one of the three plays which Strindberg placed at the head of
his dramatic production during the middle ultra-naturalistic period, the
other two being "The Father" and "Miss Julia." It is, in many ways,
one of the strongest he ever produced. Its rarely excelled unity
of construction, its tremendous dramatic tension, and its wonderful
psychological analysis combine to make it a masterpiece.
In Swedish its name is "Fordringsagare." This indefinite form may be
either singular or plural, but it is rarely used except as a plural. And
the play itself makes it perfectly clear that the proper translation of
its title is "Creditors," for under this aspect appear both the former
and the present husband of Tekla. One of the main objects of the play is
to reveal her indebtedness first to one and then to the other of these
men, while all the time she is posing as a person of original gifts.
I have little doubt that Strindberg, at the time he wrote this play--and
bear in mind that this happened only a year before he finally decided
to free himself from an impossible marriage by an appeal to the
law--believed Tekla to be fairly representative of womanhood in general.
The utter unreasonableness of such a view need hardly be pointed out,
and I shall waste no time on it. A question more worthy of discussion is
whether the figure of Tekla be true to life merely as the picture of
a personality--as one out of numerous imaginable variations on a type
decided not by sex but by faculties and qualities. And the same question
may well be raised in regard to the two men, both of whom are evidently
intended to win our sympathy: one as the victim of a fate stronger
than himself, and the other as the conqueror of adverse and humiliating
circumstances.
Personally, I am inclined to doubt whether a Tekla can be found in
the flesh--and even if found, she might seem too exceptional to gain
acceptance as a real individuality. It must be remembered, however,
that, in spite of his avowed realism, Strindberg did not draw his men
and women in the spirit generally designated as impressionistic; that
is, with the idea that they might step straight from his pages into
life and there win recognition as human beings of familiar aspect.
His realism is always mixed with idealism; his figures are always
"doctored," so to speak. And they have been thus treated in order to
enable their creator to drive home the particular truth he is just then
concerned with.
Consciously or unconsciously he sought to produce what may be designated
as "pure cultures" of certain human qualities. But these he took great
pains to arrange in their proper psychological settings, for mental and
moral qualities, like everything else, run in groups that are more
or less harmonious, if not exactly homogeneous. The man with a single
quality, like Moliere's Harpagon, was much too primitive and crude for
Strindberg's art, as he himself rightly asserted in his preface to "Miss
Julia." When he wanted to draw the genius of greed, so to speak, he did
it by setting it in the midst of related qualities of a kind most likely
to be attracted by it.
Tekla is such a "pure culture" of a group of naturally correlated mental
and moral qualities and functions and tendencies--of a personality built
up logically around a dominant central note. There are within all of us
many personalities, some of which remain for ever potentialities. But it
is conceivable that any one of them, under circumstances different
from those in which we have been living, might have developed into its
severely logical consequence--or, if you please, into a human being that
would be held abnormal if actually encountered.
This is exactly what Strindberg seems to have done time and again, both
in his middle and final periods, in his novels as well as in his
plays. In all of us a Tekla, an Adolph, a Gustav--or a Jean and a Miss
Julia--lie more or less dormant. And if we search our souls unsparingly,
I fear the result can only be an admission that--had the needed set of
circumstances been provided--we might have come unpleasantly close to
one of those Strindbergian creatures which we are now inclined to reject
as unhuman.
Here we have the secret of what I believe to be the great Swedish
dramatist's strongest hold on our interest. How could it otherwise
happen that so many critics, of such widely differing temperaments, have
recorded identical feelings as springing from a study of his work: on
one side an active resentment, a keen unwillingness to be interested; on
the other, an attraction that would not be denied in spite of resolute
resistance to it! For Strindberg DOES hold us, even when we regret his
power of doing so. And no one familiar with the conclusions of modern
psychology could imagine such a paradox possible did not the object of
our sorely divided feelings provide us with something that our minds
instinctively recognise as true to life in some way, and for that reason
valuable to the art of living.
There are so many ways of presenting truth. Strindberg's is only one of
them--and not the one commonly employed nowadays. Its main fault lies
perhaps in being too intellectual, too abstract. For while Strindberg
was intensely emotional, and while this fact colours all his writings,
he could only express himself through his reason. An emotion that would
move another man to murder would precipitate Strindberg into merciless
analysis of his own or somebody else's mental and moral make-up. At any
rate, I do not proclaim his way of presenting truth as the best one
of all available. But I suspect that this decidedly strange way of
Strindberg's--resulting in such repulsively superior beings as Gustav,
or in such grievously inferior ones as Adolph--may come nearer the
temper and needs of the future than do the ways of much more plausible
writers. This does not need to imply that the future will imitate
Strindberg. But it may ascertain what he aimed at doing, and then do it
with a degree of perfection which he, the pioneer, could never hope to
attain.