Stringent Strindberg

With the recent release of a new biography of the Swedish playwright August Strindberg, I am minded to relate my own not so distant experience of the Scandinavian story-teller.  George Bernard Shaw considered Strindberg “the only genuinely Shakesperian [sic on my copy] modern dramatist,” which may not be such great praise given that Bernard Shaw was frequently disparaging of the Bard.

One of the books I inherited from my grandmother was Six Plays of Strindberg (translated Elizabeth Sprigge, 1955).  The opening three tales of the anthology – The Father, Miss Julie and The Stronger – have strongly materialistic bents with all the smug arrogance that this entails.  That should not be much of a surprise perhaps, for he must have been reacting against his strict Pietist and brutal upbringing, to tack the opposite way with heaving gloom.  The first two plays end with the deaths of the eponymous characters as they descend into despair.  I bridled against the themes deployed in The Father and it delayed me in completing the book.  I wrote down then (with a little finessing now), quoting from Strindberg “‘…a time may come when we have grown so developed and enlightened that we shall view with indifference life’s spectacle, now seeming so brutal, cynical and heartless.  Then we shall have dispensed with those inferior, unreliable instruments of thought called feelings which become harmful and superfluous as reasoning develops.’ This is probably indicative of the era – the nineteenth century – when emotions were generally repressed and to express openly one’s feelings was a sign of weakness and immaturity, but the way Strindberg attacks empathy, it could be a Cyberman philosophy.

“He is also rather hubristic, saying aloofly, ‘That my tragedy [his play] depresses many people is their own fault.  When we have grown [as] strong as the pioneers of the French revolution [zealotry, ahoy!], we shall be happy and relieved to see the national parks cleared of ancient rotting trees [the upper classes] which have stood too long in the way of others equally entitled to a period of growth – as relieved as we are when incurable invalid dies.’  This last is a sentiment shocking to modern ears but it prefigures the Swedish euthanasia programme of three decades between the 1920s and the 1950s.

“Having decried pity, Strindberg makes a play [no pun intended, at least now] for it himself. ‘My tragedy The Father [a moderately interesting divertissement into the exercise of power in the domestic household that veers into melodrama as the main protagonist succumbs to – justifiable – paranoia, with his family and professionals colluding to control him] was recently criticised for being too sad – as if one ants cheerful tragedies!  Everybody is clamouring for this supposed “joy of life” and theatre managers demand farces [as it was in Shakespeare’s day, plus ça change]…  I myself find the joy of life in its strong and cruel struggles, and my pleasure in learning, adding to my knowledge.’  What a worthy ascetic he is, in contrast to his worthless public.

“Even in 19^th century Sweden, he might have been insufferable to know [as I later found out, he beguiled women but found it harder to not drive them away, having three wives], looking down on almost all.  ‘What will offend simple minds is that my plot is not simple, nor its point of view single [possibly the translation, as for that last word I would have chosen ‘singular’].’  Even of the two countries he selects for intellectual and cultural praise – ‘England and Germany’ – he condescends, with the phrase ‘drama – like the other fine arts – is dead.’  Theatrically, he may have had a point [Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw being the exceptions perhaps but I honestly do not know enough of the literary merits of this age to make any accurate appraisal], but falls into a trap by widening it to the fine arts.  Later, he congratulates himself on his cleverness, something that must grate in whatever time period.

“Personality defects aside, his contemporaries valued his work.  [Having mentioned Bernard Shaw, I shall omit him here] Sean O’Casey was moved to exclaim ‘Strindberg, Strindberg, Strindberg, the greatest of them all!’  Friedrich Nietzche (ominous) and Emile Zola were moved to be generous too.  Strindberg may be a Swedish national treasure but there is baggage attached.”  I have mellowed in my approach to Strindberg since then, partly because young people as he was then can be moved to make intemperate comments but also as he was a very troubled individual and had a nervous mental collapse.  After that, he became less antagonistic, more wistful, at least going as far as the chronology of the anthology.

The Stronger, a two-hander in a café (with the occasional mute waitress) where only one of the character speaks is more upbeat as Mrs X discerns that her husband had a torrid affair with Miss Y and yet as Mrs X, in the second epiphany of this one act stager, admits adopting Miss Y’s habits and proclivities, she has nullified Miss Y’s impact on the shallow husband to emerge the stronger, for she ahs kept her spouse, leaving Miss Y lonely.  For fans of Strindberg, The Stronger having a very simple set must make it a favourite to produce, considering the Swede’s oftentimes extravagant demands of a theatre designer.

Easter is a play created after Strindberg had a breakdown and rediscovered a significant measure of spirituality.  It’s a tale with a family beset by financial crisis and humiliation in the wake of the father’s conviction for embezzling his students’ funds and the daughter’s committal to an asylum.  Yet the creditor, Lindkvist, forgives their debt as he takes into account the father’s kindness to him decades prior when he was in a matter of some distress. 

A Dream Play and The Ghost Sonata are highly surrealist with the former hard to understand as in the manner of unconscious minds with ideas pouring into one another.  According to Sprigge’s notes, Strindberg was strongly influenced by Theosophy when writing it.  Throughout, much mention is made of the ‘children of men’ (as compared, presumably, with the children of God).  The children of men are repeatedly pitied, living under the seemingly impossible strictures of life with its daily petty humiliations, where material needs become meaningless.  I wonder if this was the inspiration for the PD James novel The Children of Men.  It could well be.  A Dream Play concludes with the flowers of faith bursting into bloom.  The Ghost Sonata again features unhappy families with unhappy secrets, with an innocent character, sucked dry by the demands of society, perishing at the very end.  Strindberg, a born pessimist, reminds me greatly of Robert Schumann, the composer, in using his art to chronicle melancholy.  Strindberg died in 1912 – had he lived longer, goodness knows what he would have made of the World War One abattoir (even considering Sweden’s neutrality).