August Strindberg 1862—(Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. Albert Bonnier, Stockholm)
August Strindberg 1862—(Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. Albert Bonnier, Stockholm)
August Strindberg 1870
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 theGymnasiumwhich, 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 hisstudent-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.
[1]Gymnasia are preparatory schools for Universities.
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 tediousand 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 inFermentation 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 senseof 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 hadsmarted 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 samedetached 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, butonly 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'sManfredand Schiller'sDie Räuber. He tried to translate the former into Swedish, but discovered to his chagrin that he could not write blank verse. Karl Moor inDie Räuberlaid 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 beinga 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 inaristocratic 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 seizedthe 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 headand 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 frequentedpromenadein Stockholm.
The doctor's house was made the scene of his dramatic exercises. Here he prepared the performance ofDie Räuberand 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 manœuvres. 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 manœuvres sometimes came too near him. Therewas 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 callof 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, wereseized 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, encompassedin 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 elderactors 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 Surgeonand 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 inFermentationTime, "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 theend 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. Thetragedy 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 titleJesus of Nazarethwas 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.
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 nameRune—"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 calledIn Romeand 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 theRune. 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 savehim 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 byBrand, 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 againstwomen 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 1870In Romewas 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 theirWeltanschauung; 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 thebitter-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 wroteBlotsven, a tragedy in five acts, which reiterated the religious rebellion ofThe 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 bookEnten-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 hisBlotsven. 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 thefatal 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.Blotsvenrose from the ashes. He re-wrote it in a fortnight. It was now condensed into one act under the titleThe Outlaw, and was sent to the theatre.
Being thus relieved of the supreme duties to his dramaticdaimon, 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 academicaldiscourse. 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 beenmellowed 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 andwished 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 adrapa, sung in faithful celebration of life's attempts and hard-won victories. Gunlöd, the daughter of Thorfinn, the old heathen Viking, has been secretlybaptised 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 theordinary 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. Theroyal 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. TheRunewas 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, astronomyand 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 theCommediato 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 greenbushes 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."