August Strindberg

Johan August Strindberg (help·info) (January 22, 1849 – May 14, 1912) was a Swedish writer, playwright, and painter. Along with Henrik Ibsen, Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen he is arguably the most influential and most important of all Scandinavian authors. Strindberg is known as one of the fathers of modern theatre. His work falls into two major literary movements, Naturalism and Expressionism. [1]

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Early years

  Strindberg was the third son of Carl Oscar Strindberg, a shipping agent from a bourgeois family, and Ulrika Eleonora (Nora) Norling. Ulrika was twelve years Carl's junior and of humble origin, called a "servant woman" in the title of Strindberg's autobiographical novel, Tjänstekvinnans son (The Son of a Servant). Strindberg's paternal grandfather Zacharias was born in 1758 to a clergyman in Jämtland and settled in Stockholm, where he became a successful spice tradesman and a major in the Burghers' Military Corps. Strindberg's aunt Lisette was married to the English-born inventor and industrialist Samuel Owen. Carl Oscar Strindberg's older brother Johan Ludvig Strindberg was a successful businessman, the model for the protagonist Arvid Falk's wealthy and socially ambitious uncle in Strindberg's novel Röda rummet (The Red Room).

Strindberg's own version of his childhood is available in his novel The Son of a Servant, but at least one of his biographers, Olof Lagercrantz, warns against its use as a biographical source. Much of what Strindberg wrote has an autobiographical character, but Lagercrantz notes Strindberg's "talent to make us believe what he wants us to believe," and his unwillingness to accept any characterization of his person other than his own.

From the age of seven, Strindberg grew up in the Norrtull area on the northern, almost-rural periphery of Stockholm, not far from Tegnérlunden, the park where Carl Eldh's grand statue of Strindberg was later placed. He went to the elementary schools of Klara and Jakob parishes, continuing to the Stockholms Lyceum, a progressive private school for boys from upper and upper middle class families. He completed his graduation exams studentexamen on May 25 1867, and matriculated at the University of Uppsala in the fall.

Adult years

Early career

  Strindberg would spend the next several years between Uppsala and Stockholm, alternately studying for exams and trying his hand at non-academic pursuits. As a young student, Strindberg also worked as an assistant in a chemist's shop in the university town of Lund in southern Sweden. He first left Uppsala in 1868 to work as a schoolteacher, but then studied chemistry for some time at the Institute of Technology in Stockholm in preparation for medical studies, later working as a private tutor before becoming an extra at the Royal Theatre in Stockholm. He returned to Uppsala in January 1870 to study and work on a set of plays, the first of which opened at the Royal Theatre in September 1870, a biography of the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. In Uppsala, he started Runa, a small literary club with friends who all took pseudonyms from Nordic mythology; Strindberg called himself Frö after the god of fertility. He spent a few more semesters in Uppsala, finally leaving in March 1872 without graduating. He would often ridicule Uppsala and its professors, as when he published Från Fjerdingen och Svartbäcken ("From Fjerdingen and Svartbäcken", 1877), short stories depicting Uppsala student life. After leaving university for the last time, he embarked on his career as a journalist and critic for newspapers in Stockholm.

Relationships with women

Strindberg was married three times, to Siri von Essen (1850-1912), Frida Uhl (1872-1943), and Harriet Bosse (1878-1961). He had children with all his wives, but his hypersensitive, neurotic character led to bitter divorces. Late in his life he met the young actress and painter Fanny Falkner (1890-1963), whose book illuminates his last years, but the exact nature of their relationship is debated. He had a brief affair in Berlin with Dagny Juel before his marriage to Frida; it has been suggested that the shocking news of her murder was the reason he cancelled his honeymoon with his third wife, Harriet.

Strindberg's relationships with women were troubled and have often been interpreted as misogynistic by contemporaries and modern readers. Most acknowledge, however, that he had uncommon insight into the hypocrisy of his society's gender roles and sexual morality. Marriage and the family were under stress in Strindberg's lifetime as Sweden industrialized and urbanized at a rapid pace. Problems of prostitution and poverty were debated heatedly among writers, critics and politicians. His early writing often dealt with the traditional roles of the sexes imposed by society, which he criticized as unjust.

Politics

The rise and fall of the Paris Commune in 1871 became a political awakening for the young Strindberg, and he started to see politics as a conflict between the upper- and lower classes. Strindberg was admired by the Swedish working class as a radical writer. He was a Socialist (or maybe more of an Anarchist which he himself claimed on at least one occasion) and his daughter Karin Strindberg married Vladimir Smirnov, one of the leading Russian Bolsheviks. As for his political standpoints, Strindberg was heavily promoted in socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in the Soviet Union and Cuba.

Writing

A multi-faceted author, Strindberg was often extreme. His novel The Red Room (Röda rummet) (1879) brought him fame. His early plays were written in the Naturalistic style, and his works from this time are often compared with the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Strindberg's best-known play from this period is Miss Julie (Fröken Julie).

Later, he underwent a time of inner turmoil known as the Inferno Period, which culminated in the production of a book written in French, Inferno. He also exchanged a few cryptic letters with Nietzsche.

Strindberg subsequently broke with Naturalism and began to produce works informed by Symbolism. He is considered one of the pioneers of the Modern European stage and Expressionism. The Dance of Death (Dödsdansen), A Dream Play (Ett drömspel) and The Ghost Sonata (Spöksonaten) are well-known plays from this period.

Other interests

Strindberg was also a telegrapher, painter, photographer and alchemist. Painting and photography offered venues for his belief that chance played a crucial part in the creative process.^[1] Strindberg's paintings were unique for their time, and went beyond those of his contemporaries for their radical lack of adherence to visual reality. The 117 paintings that are accepted as being by his hand were mostly painted within the span of a few years, and are now seen as among the most original works of nineteenth century art.^[2] Though Strindberg was friends with Edvard Munch and Paul Gauguin, and was thus familiar with modern trends, the spontaneous and subjective expressiveness of his landscapes and seascapes can be ascribed also to the fact that he painted only in periods of personal crisis.^[3]

Last years

  Strindberg's last home was Blå tornet in Stockholm, where he lived 1908 - 1912. It is today a museum.

By the end of his life Strindberg had returned to Christianity, authoring religious works inspired by Emanuel Swedenborg.

One year before his death, his main book publisher Albert Bonniers förlag bought the rights to all his writings for 200 000 Swedish crowns, a fortune at that time, which Strindberg promptly shared with his children.

On Christmas 1911, Strindberg became sick with pneumonia, and he never fully recovered. At this time he also started to suffer from a stomach disease, presumably cancer. He died in May 1912 at the age of 63. Strindberg was interred in the Norra begravningsplatsen in Stockholm, and thousands of people followed him during the funeral proceedings.

Several statues and busts of him have been erected in Stockholm; most prominently Carl Eldh's erected in 1942 in Tegnérlunden, a park next to the house were Strindberg lived the last years of his life.

Quotations

• "When is revolution legal? When it succeeds!"

• "What is economics? A science invented by the upper class in order to acquire the fruits of the labour of the underclass."

• "I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves."

• "When they say Christ descended into Hell, they mean that he descended to earth, this penitentiary, this madhouse and morgue of a world."

• "I dream, therefore I am."

• "Only men can love, and it blinds them."

• "There's a view, current at the moment even among quite sensible people, that women, that secondary form of humanity(second to men, the lords and shapers of human civilisation) should in some way become equal with men, or could so be; this is leading to a struggle which is both bizarre and doomed. It's bizarre because a secondary form, by the laws of science, is always going to be a secondary form. Imagine two people, A (a man) and B (a woman). They start to run a race from the same point, C. A (the man) has a speed of, let's say, 100; B (the woman) has a speed of 60. Now, the question is 'Can B ever overtake A?" and the answer is 'Never!'. Whatever training, encouragement or self-denial is applied, the proposition is as impossible as that two parallel lines should ever meet."

In popular culture

• In Woody Allen's 1979 Academy Award nominated film Manhattan, the protagonist (played by Allen) says to a friend, "...You shouldn't ask me for advice. When it comes to relationships with women, I'm the winner of the August Strindberg Award."

• Strindberg's play The Father was mentioned in "The West Coast Delay", an episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, in a discussion between Nate Corddry and Matthew Perry. Corddry calls it the "scariest play I ever read" and used it to give advice on Perry's relationship troubles.^[4] Coincidentally, Strindberg was also named on 30 Rock, NBC's other show dealing with the behind the scenes drama at an SNL-esque show.^{[citation needed]}

• Strindberg was also referred to by Mortimer in Joseph Kesselring's play, Arsenic and Old Lace.

• Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander ends with a character reading aloud from Strindberg's A Dream Play.

• In a popular Hindi novel Ek Chithada Sukh (A torned Happyness) by Nirmal Verma, Strindberg looms large over the heads of many characters.

• In the Mel Brooks musical, The Producers, the line "So keep your Strindbergs and Ibsens at bay." is present in the song, "Keep It Gay".

Major works

He wrote 58 plays, an autobiography (9 volumes, A Soul's Advance, 1886-1903)

• The Outlaw, 1871
• From Fjerdingen and Svartbäcken, short stories, 1877
• Master Olof, drama, 1872
• The Red Room, novel, 1879
• Swedish People at Work and Play, social history, 1881-1882
• The New Country, novel, 1882
• Lucky Pehr, drama, 1883
• Swedish Destiny and Adventure, I-IV, short stories, 1882-1891
• Poetry in Verse and Prose, 1883
• Sleepwalker Awakens to the Day, fiction, 1884
• Married I-II, short stories, 1884-1886
• Utopian on Reality, short stories, 1885
• Son of a Servant, I-V, autobiography, 1886-1909
• Natives of Hemsö, novel, 1887
• The Defense's Speech of a Fool, 1887-1895
• The Father, drama, 1887
• Miss Julie, drama, 1888
• Comrades, drama, 1888
• Life of an Island Lad, short story, 1888
• Pariah, 1889
• Among French Peasants, 1889
• Creditors, drama, 1888-1889
• Inferno, novel/autobiography, 1897
• To Damascus, dramatic trilogy, 1898-1902
• Gustav Vasa, drama, 1899
• Erik XIV, drama, 1899
• The Dance of Death, 1900
• Easter, drama, 1900
• Engelbrekt, drama, 1901
• A Dream Play, drama, 1902
• Swan Blood, drama, 1902
• The Chamber Plays: The Storm, The Burned House, The Pelican, The Ghost Sonata, 1907
• Merry Christmas!, a verse drama, 1909
• The Great Highway, drama, 1909

References

1. ^ Strindberg exhibition, Tate Modern
2. ^ Gunnarsson, Torsten, Nordic Landscape Painting in the Nineteenth Century, pages 256-60. Yale University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-300-07041-1
3. ^ Gunnarsson, page 256.
4. ^ "The West Coast Delay". Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. NBC. 2006-10-09.