Creditors and Pariah | Page 2

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.

CREDITORS
A TRAGICOMEDY

1889

PERSONS
TEKLA
ADOLPH, her husband, a painter
GUSTAV, her divorced husband, a high-school teacher (who is
travelling under an assumed name)

SCENE
(A parlor in a summer hotel on the sea-shore. The rear wall has a door
opening on a veranda, beyond which is seen a landscape. To the right
of the door stands a table with newspapers on it. There is a chair on the
left side of the stage. To the right of the table stands a sofa. A door on
the right leads to an adjoining room.)
(ADOLPH and GUSTAV, the latter seated on the sofa by the table to
the right.)
ADOLPH. [At work on a wax figure on a miniature modelling stand;
his crutches are placed beside him]--and for all this I have to thank you!
GUSTAV. [Smoking a cigar] Oh, nonsense!
ADOLPH. Why, certainly! During the first days after my wife had
gone, I lay helpless on a sofa and did nothing but long for her. It was as
if she had taken away my crutches with her, so that I couldn't move
from the spot. When I had slept a couple of days, I seemed to come to,
and began to pull myself together. My head calmed down after having
been working feverishly. Old thoughts from days gone by bobbed up
again. The desire to work and the instinct for creation came back. My
eyes recovered their faculty of quick and straight vision--and then you
showed up.
GUSTAV. I admit you were in a miserable condition when I first met
you, and you had to use your crutches when you walked, but this is not
to say that my presence has been the cause of your recovery. You
needed a rest, and you had a craving for masculine company.
ADOLPH. Oh, that's true enough, like everything you say. Once I