Strindberg, August

▪ Swedish dramatist

Introduction

born Jan. 22, 1849, Stockholm

died May 14, 1912, Stockholm

 Swedish playwright, novelist, and short-story writer, who combined psychology and Naturalism in a new kind of European drama that evolved into Expressionist drama. His chief works include The Father (1887), Miss Julie (1888), Creditors (1888), A Dream Play (1902), and The Ghost Sonata (1907).

Early years

      Strindberg's father, Carl Oskar Strindberg, was a bankrupt aristocrat who worked as a steamship agent, and his mother was a former waitress. His childhood was marred by emotional insecurity, poverty, his grandmother's religious fanaticism, and neglect, as he relates in his remarkable autobiography Tjänstekvinnans son (1886–87; The Son of a Servant, 1913). He studied intermittently at the University of Uppsala, preparing in turn for the ministry and a career in medicine but never taking a degree. To earn his living, he worked as a free-lance journalist in Stockholm, as well as at other jobs that he almost invariably lost. Meanwhile he struggled to complete his first important work, the historical drama Mäster Olof (published in 1872), on the theme of the Swedish Reformation, influenced by Shakespeare and by Henrik Ibsen's Brand. The Royal Theatre's rejection of Mäster Olof deepened his pessimism and sharpened his contempt for official institutions and traditions. For several years he continued revising the play—later recognized as the first modern Swedish drama—thus delaying his development as a dramatist of contemporary problems.

      In 1874 he became a librarian at the Royal Library, and in 1875 he met the Finno-Swedish Siri von Essen, then the unhappy wife of an officer of the guards; two years later they married. Their intense but ultimately disastrous relationship ended in divorce in 1891, when Strindberg, to his great grief, lost the custody of their four children. At first, however, marriage stimulated his writing, and in 1879 he published his first novel, The Red Room, a satirical account of abuses and frauds in Stockholm society: this was something new in Swedish fiction and made its author nationally famous.

      He also wrote more plays, of which Lucky Peter's Travels (1881) contains the most biting social criticism. In 1883, the year after he published Det nya riket (“The New Kingdom”), a withering satire on contemporary Sweden, Strindberg left Stockholm with his family and for six years moved restlessly about the Continent. Although he was then approaching a state of complete mental breakdown, he produced a great number of plays, novels, and stories. The publication in 1884 of the first volume of his collected stories, Married, led to a prosecution for blasphemy. He was acquitted, but the case affected his mind, and he imagined himself persecuted, even by Siri.

      He returned to drama with new intensity, and the conflict between the sexes inspired some of the outstanding works written at this time, such as The Father, Miss Julie, and The Creditors. All of these were written in total revolt against contemporary social conventions. In these bold and concentrated works, he combined the techniques of dramatic naturalism—including unaffected dialogue, stark rather than luxurious scenery, and the use of stage props as symbols—with his own conception of psychology, thereby inaugurating a new movement in European drama. The People of Hemsö, a vigorous novel about the Stockholm skerries (rocky islands), always one of Strindberg's happiest sources of inspiration, was also produced during this intensively creative phase.

      The years after his return to Sweden in 1889 were lonely and unhappy. Even though revered as a famous writer who had become the voice of modern Sweden, he was by now an alcoholic unable to find steady employment. In 1892 he went abroad again, to Berlin. His second marriage, to a young Austrian journalist, Frida Uhl, followed in 1893; they finally parted in Paris in 1895.

      A period of literary sterility, emotional and physical stress, and considerable mental instability culminated in a kind of religious conversion, the crisis that he described in Inferno. During these years Strindberg devoted considerable time to experiments in alchemy and to the study of theosophy.

Late years

      His new faith, coloured by mysticism, re-created him as a writer. The immediate result was a drama in three parts, To Damascus, in which he depicts himself as “the Stranger,” a wanderer seeking spiritual peace and finding it with another character, “the Lady,” who resembles both Siri and Frida.

      By this time Strindberg had again returned to Sweden, settling first in Lund and then, in 1899, in Stockholm, where he lived until his death. The summers he often spent among his beloved skerries. His view that life is ruled by the “Powers,” punitive but righteous, was reflected in a series of historical plays that he began in 1889. Of these, Gustav Vasa is the best, masterly in its firmness of construction, characterization, and its vigorous dialogue. In 1901 he married the young Norwegian actress Harriet Bosse; in 1904 they parted, and again Strindberg lost the child, his fifth.

      Yet his last marriage, this “spring in winter,” as he called it, inspired, among other works, the plays The Dance of Death and A Dream Play, as well as the charming autobiography Ensam (“Alone”) and some lyrical poems. Renewed bitterness after his parting from his last wife provoked the grotesquely satirical novel Svarta Fanor (1907; “Black Banners”), which attacked the vices and follies of Stockholm's literary coteries, as Strindberg saw them. Kammarspel (“Chamber Plays”), written for the little Intima Theatre, which Strindberg ran for a time with a young producer, August Falck, embody further developments of his dramatic technique: of these, The Ghost Sonata is the most fantastic, anticipating much in later European drama. His last play, The Great Highway, a symbolic presentation of his own life, appeared in 1909.

Assessment

      To the end, Strindberg debated current social and political ideas (returning to the radical views of his youth) in polemical articles, while his philosophy was expounded in the aphoristic Zones of the Spirit (1907–12). He was ignored in death, as in life, by the Swedish Academy but mourned by his countrymen as their greatest writer. On Swedish life and letters he has exercised a lasting influence and is admired for his originality, his extraordinary vitality, and his powerful imagination, which enabled him to transform autobiographic material into dramatic dialogue of exceptional brilliance.

      The pregnant, colloquial style of Strindberg's early novels and, especially, of his short stories, brought about a long-overdue regeneration of Swedish prose style, and The Son of a Servant gave perhaps the strongest impulse since Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions to the publication of discreditable self-revelations. His greatest influence, however, was exerted in the theatre, through his critical writings (such as the introduction to Miss Julie), his plays, and the production devices that their staging dictated. The continuous, brutal action and the extreme realism of the dialogue of Miss Julie and other plays written between 1887 and 1893 reached the ne plus ultra of naturalistic drama.

      With the later phantasmagoric plays, such as To Damascus, A Dream Play, and The Ghost Sonata, Strindberg led that section of the revolt against stage realism that issued in the Expressionist drama, which was developed mainly in Germany after 1912 and which influenced such modern playwrights as Sean O'Casey, Elmer Rice, Eugene O'Neill, Luigi Pirandello, and Pär Lagerkvist.

Brita Maud Ellen Mortensen

Major Works

Plays.

Den fredlöse (first performed 1871, published 1881; The Outlaw, 1912); Mäster Olof (poetic version published 1878, performed 1890; Master Olof, 1915); Lycko-Pers resa (published 1881, performed 1883; Lucky Peter's Travels, 1930); Fadren (published and performed 1887; The Father, 1899); Kamraterna (published 1888, performed 1905; Comrades, 1912); Fröken Julie (published 1888, performed 1889; Countess Julie, 1912; Miss Julie, 1918); Fordringsägare (first published in Danish trans., 1888; Creditörer, published and performed 1890; Creditors, 1914); Paria (performed 1889, published 1890; Pariah, 1913); Till Damascus (parts 1 and 2 published 1898, performed 1900; part 3 published 1904, performed 1916; To Damascus, 1913); Folkungasagan (published 1899, performed 1901; The Saga of the Folkungs, 1931); Gustav Vasa and Erik XIV (published and performed 1899; Eng. trans. 1931); Påsk (published and performed 1901; Easter, 1912 and 1929); Dödsdansen (published 1901, performed 1905; The Dance of Death, 1912); Kronbruden (published 1902, performed 1906); Ett Drömspel (published 1902, performed 1907; A Dream Play, 1929); Brända tomten (performed and published 1907; After the Fire, 1913); Spöksonaten (published 1907, performed 1908; The Spook [or Ghost] Sonata, 1916); Stora landsvägen (published 1909, performed 1910; The Great Highway, 1954).

Novels.

Röda rummet (1879; The Red Room, 1913); Hemsöborna (1887; The People of Hemsö, 1959); I havsbandet (1890; By the Open Sea, 1913).

Short stories.

Giftas, 2 vol. (1884–85; Married, 1913); Fagervik och skamsund (1902; Fair Haven and Foul Strand, 1913); Sagor (1903; Tales, 1930).

Autobiography.

Tjänstekvinnans son (1886–87; The Son of a Servant, 1913); Le Plaidoyer d'un fou (first published in French, 1888; enlarged, 1893; The Confession of a Fool, 1912); Inferno (1898; Eng. trans. 1912); Legender (1898; Legends, 1912); Ensam (1903).

Translations.

There is no English-language edition of the complete works of Strindberg. Individual works are, however, readily available. Recommended modern translations include Twelve Plays by Elizabeth Sprigge (1963); The Plays of Strindberg by Michael Meyer (1964); and the series begun by Walter Johnson in 1955.

Additional Reading

Editions.

Samlade Skrifter, ed. by John Landquist, 55 vol. (1911–21); several collections of letters (Brev, ed. by Torsten Eklund, 1948); Legends, Autobiographical Sketches (1912, reprinted 1973); Letters of Strindberg to Harriet Bosse (1959); and The Cloister (Eng. trans. 1969); Inferno and from an Occult Diary (1979).

Criticism and biography.

Axel Johan Uppvall, August Strindberg (1920, reprinted 1970), a psychoanalytic study; Erik Hedén, Strindberg en ledtråd vid studient av hans verk (1921); Martin Lamm, Strindbergs dramer, 2 vol. (1924–26), August Strindberg, 2 vol. (1940–42; Eng. trans. 1971); Vivian Jerauld, August Strindberg, the Bedeviled Viking (1930, reprinted 1965); George A. Campbell, Strindberg (1933, reprinted 1973); Torsten Eklund, Tjänstekvinnans son (1948); Gunnar Ollén, Strindbergs dramatik (1948); Gunnar Brandell, Strindbergs Infernokris (1950); S. Ahlstrom and Torsten Eklund (eds.), August Strindberg, 2 vol. (1959–61); Joan Bulman, Strindberg and Shakespeare (1933, reprinted 1971); Elizabeth Sprigge, The Strange Life of August Strindberg (1949, reprinted 1972); Maurice Gravier, Strindberg et le théâtre moderne (1949); B.M. Mortensen and B.W. Downs, Strindberg: An Introduction to His Life and Works (1949, reprinted 1966); F.L. Lucas, The Drama of Ibsen and Strindberg (1962), inimical to Strindberg; Elie Poulenard, August Strindberg, romancier et nouvelliste (1962); Walter Johnson, Strindberg and the Historical Drama (1963), and August Strindberg (1976); C.R. Smedmark (ed.), Essays on Strindberg (1966); E.O. Johannesson, The Novels of August Strindberg (1968); Goran Lindstrom, “Strindberg Studies 1915–1962,” Scandinavica, 2:27–50 (1963); Lizzy Lind-af-Hageby, August Strindberg, a Study (1970); Carl Gustaf Uddgren, Strindberg the Man (1972); Karl Jaspers, Strindberg and Van Gogh (1977).

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