Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger | Page 4

by such munificence, and the interview was concluded by his introduction to the court treasurer, from whom he received his first quarter's allowance of two hundred crowns.
Full of thankfulness for this unexpected turn of fate, the young dramatist returned to Upsala. For once he appeared satisfied with his lot, and took up his studies with more earnestness than ever. The year 1871 closed brilliantly for the young writer, for in addition to the kingly favor be received honorable mention from the Swedish Academy for his Greek drama "Hermione." The following year, 1872, life at the university again began to pall on his restless mind, and he took to painting.
Then followed a serious disagreement with one of the professors, so that when he received word from the court treasurer that it was uncertain whether his stipend could be continued on account of the death of the king, he decided to leave the University for good. At a farewell banquet in his honor, he expressed his appreciation of all he had received from his student friends, saying, "A personality does not develop from itself, but out of each soul it comes in contact with, it sucks a drop, just as the bee gathers its honey from a million flowers giving it forth eventually as its own."
Strindberg went to Stockholm to become a literateur and, if possible, a creative artist. He gleaned a living from newspaper work for a few months, but in the summer went to a fishing village on a remote island in Bothnia Bay where, in his twenty-third year, he wrote his great historical drama, "Master Olof." Breaking away from traditions and making flesh and blood creations instead of historical skeletons in this play, it was refused by all the managers of the theatres, who assured Strindberg that the public would not tolerate any such unfamiliar methods. Strindberg protested, and defended and tried to elucidate his realistic handling of the almost sacred historical personages, but in vain, for "Master Olof" was not produced until seven years later, when it was put on at the Swedish Theatre at Stockholm in 1880, the year Ibsen was writing "Ghosts" at Sorrento.
In 1874, after a year or two of unsuccessful effort to make a living in various employments, he became assistant at the Court library, which was indeed a haven of refuge, a position providing both leisure for study and an assured income. Finding in the library some Chinese parchments which had not been catalogued; he plunged into the study of that language. A treatise which he wrote on the subject won him medals from various learned societies at home, as well as recognition from the French Institute. This success induced the many other treatises that followed, for which he received a variety of decorations, and along with the honors nearly brought upon himself "a salubrious idiocy," to use his own phrase.
Then something happened that stirred the old higher voice in him,-- he fell in love. He had been invited through a woman friend to go to the home of Baron Wrangel, where his name as an author was esteemed. He refused the invitation, but the next day, walking in the city streets with this same woman friend, they encountered the Baroness Wrangel to whom Strindberg was introduced. The Baroness asked him once more to come. He promised to do so, and they separated. As Strindberg's friend went into a shop, he turned to look down the street; noting the beautiful lines of the disappearing figure of the Baroness, noting, too, a stray lock of her golden hair, that had escaped from her veil, and played against the white ruching at her throat. He gazed after her long, in fact, until she disappeared in the crowded street. From that moment he was not a free man. The friendship which followed resulted in the divorce of the Baroness from her husband and her marriage to Strindberg, December 30, 1877, when he was twenty-eight years old. At last Strindberg had someone to love, to take care of, to worship. This experience of happiness, so strange to him, revived the creative impulse.
The following year, 1878, "Master Olof" was finally accepted for publication, and won immediate praise and appreciation. This, to his mind, belated success, roused in Strindberg a smoldering resentment, which lack of confidence and authority of position had heretofore caused him to repress. He broke out with a burning satire, in novel form, called "The Red Room," the motto of which he made Voltaire's words "Rien n'est si désagréable que s'etre pendu obscurément."
Hardly more than mention can be made of the important work of this dramatist, poet, novelist, historian, scientist and philosopher. In 1888 he left Sweden, as the atmosphere there had become too disagreeable for him through controversy after controversy in which lie became involved.