Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger | Page 6

and accept suggestions from
the dramatist. *** Some people have accused my tragedy, 'The Father'
of being too sad, as though one desired a merry tragedy. People call
authoritatively for the 'Joy of Life' and theatrical managers call for
farces, as though the Joy of Life lay in being foolish, and in describing
people who each and every one are suffering from St. Vitus' dance or
idiocy. I find the joy of life in the powerful, terrible struggles of life;
and the capability of experiencing something, of learning something, is
a pleasure to me. And therefore I have chosen an unusual but
instructive subject; in other words, an exception, but a great exception,
that will strengthen the rules which offend the apostle of the
commonplace. What will further create antipathy in some, is the fact
that my plan of action is not simple, and that there is not one view
alone to be taken of it. An event in life--and that is rather a new
discovery--is usually occasioned by a series of more or less deep-seated
motifs, but the spectator generally chooses that one which his power of
judgment finds simplest to grasp, or that his gift of judgment considers
the most honorable. For example, someone commits suicide: 'Bad
business!' says the citizen; 'Unhappy love!' says the woman; 'Sickness!'
says the sick man; 'Disappointed hopes?' the bankrupt. But it may be
that none of these reasons is the real one, and that the dead man hid the
real one by pretending another that would throw the most favorable
light on his memory. *** In the following drama ('Julie') I have not
sought to do anything new, because that cannot be done, but only to
modernize the form according to the requirements I have considered
present-day people require."
Following the mighty output, of those years, in 1891 Strindberg went
out: to the islands where he had lived years before, and led a hermit's

life. Many of his romantic plays were written there, and much of his
time was spent at painting.
In 1892 he was divorced from his wife.
After a few months Strindberg went to Berlin, where he was received
with all honors by literary Germany. Richard Dehmel, one of their
foremost minstrels, celebrated the event by a poem called "An
Immortal,--To Germany's Guest." In the shop windows his picture hung
alongside that of Bismarck, and at the theatres his plays were being
produced. About this time he heard of the commotion that "Countess
Julie" had created in Paris, where it had been produced by Antoine.
During these victorious times Strindberg met a young Austrian writer,
Frida Uhl, to whom he was married in April 1898. Although the literary
giant of the hour, he was nevertheless in very straightened pecuniary
circumstances, which led to his allowing the publication of "A Fool's
Confession," written in French, and later, with out his permission or
knowledge, issued in German and Swedish, which entangled him in a
lawsuit, as the subject matter contained much of his marital miseries.
Interest in chemistry had long been stirring in Strindberg's mind; it now
began to deepen. About this time also he passed through that religious
crisis which swept artistic Europe, awakened nearly a century after his
death by that Swedenborgian poet and artist, William Blake. To this
period belongs "To Damascus," a play of deepest soul probing, which
was not finished however until 1904.
Going to Paris in the fall of 1894, to pursue chemical research most
seriously, he ran into his own success at the theatres there. "The
Creditors" had been produced and Strindberg was induced to undertake
the direction of "The Father" at the Theatre de l'Oeuvre, where it was a
tremendous success. A Norwegian correspondent was forced to send
word home that with "The Father" Strindberg had overreached Ibsen in
Paris, because what it had never been possible to do with an Ibsen play,
have a run in Paris, they were now doing with Strindberg. At the same
time the Theâtre des Ecaliers put on "The Link," the Odean produced
"The Secret of the Guild," and the Chat Noir "The Kings of Heaven,"
and translations of his novels were running in French periodicals. But

Strindberg turned his back on all this success and shut himself up in his
laboratory to delve into chemistry. This he did with such earnestness
that with his discovery of Swedenborg his experimentations and
speculations reduced him to a condition of mind that unfitted him for
any kind of companionship, so that when his wife left him to go to their
child who was ill and far away, he welcomed the complete freedom.
Strindberg says of their parting at the railway station that although they
smiled and waved to each other as they called out "Auf wiedersehen"
they both knew that they