Plays by August Strindberg Volume II Part 36

Yes, and you're going to say that she was reading a comic paper-- that's a different case, my dear.

[A WAITRESS brings a cup of chocolate, places it before MRS. X., and disappears again.]

MRS. X. [Sips a few spoonfuls; opens the basket and displays a number of Christmas presents] See what I've bought for my tots.

[Picks up a doll] What do you think of this? Lisa is to have it.

She can roll her eyes and twist her head, do you see? Fine, is it not? And here's a cork pistol for Carl. [Loads the pistol and pops it at Miss Y.]

[MISS Y. starts as if frightened.]

MRS. X. Did I scare you? Why, you didn't fear I was going to shoot you, did you? Really, I didn't think you could believe that of me.

If you were to shoot _me_--well, that wouldn't surprise me the least. I've got in your way once, and I know you'll never forget it--but I couldn't help it. You still think I intrigued you away from the Royal Theatre, and I didn't do anything of the kind-- although you think so. But it doesn't matter what I say, of course-- you believe it was I just the same. [Pulls out a pair of embroidered slippers] Well, these are for my hubby-?tulips--I've embroidered them myself. Hm, I hate tulips--and he must have them on everything.

[MISS Y. looks up from the paper with an expression of mingled sarcasm and curiosity.]

MRS. X. [Puts a hand in each slipper] Just see what small feet Bob has. See? And you should see him walk--elegant! Of course, you've never seen him in slippers.

[MISS Y. laughs aloud.]

MRS. X. Look here--here he comes. [Makes the slippers walk across the table.]

[MISS Y. laughs again.]

MRS. X. Then he gets angry, and he stamps his foot just like this: "Blame that cook who can't learn how to make coffee." Or: "The idiot--now that girl has forgotten to fix my study lamp again."

Then there is a draught through the floor and his feet get cold: "Gee, but it's freezing, and those blanked idiots don't even know enough to keep the house warm." [She rubs the sole of one slipper against the instep of the other.]

[MISS Y. breaks into prolonged laughter.]

MRS. X. And then he comes home and has to hunt for his slippers-- Mary has pushed them under the bureau. Well, perhaps it is not right to be making fun of one's own husband. He's pretty good for all that--a real dear little hubby, that's what he is. You should have such a husband--what are you laughing at? Can't you tell?

Then, you see, I know he is faithful. Yes, I know, for he has told me himself--what in the world makes you giggle like that? That nasty Betty tried to get him away from me while I was on the road?- can you think of anything more infamous? [Pause] But I'd have scratched the eyes out of her face, that's what I'd have done if I had been at home when she tried it. [Pause] I'm glad Bob told me all about it, so I didn't have to hear it first from somebody else.

[Pause] And just think of it, Betty was not the only one! I don't know why it is, but all women seem to be crazy after my husband. It must be because they imagine his government position gives him something to say about the engagements. Perhaps you've tried it yourself--you may have set your traps for him, too? Yes, I don't trust you very far--but I know he never cared for you--and then I have been thinking you rather had a grudge against him.

[Pause. They look at each other in an embarra.s.sed manner.]

MRS. X. Amelia, spend the evening with us, won't you? Just to show that you are not angry--not with me, at least. I cannot tell exactly why, but it seems so awfully unpleasant to have you--you for an enemy. Perhaps because I got in your way that time [rallentando] or--I don't know--really, I don't know at all--

[Pause. MISS Y. gazes searchingly at MRS. X.]

MRS. X. [Thoughtfully] It was so peculiar, the way our acquaintance-- why, I was afraid of you when I first met you; so afraid that I did not dare to let you out of sight. It didn't matter where I tried to go--I always found myself near you. I didn't have the courage to be your enemy--and so I became your friend. But there was always something discordant in the air when you called at our home, for I saw that my husband didn't like you--and it annoyed me just as it does when a dress won't fit. I tried my very best to make him appear friendly to you at least, but I couldn't move him--not until you were engaged. Then you two became such fast friends that it almost looked as if you had not dared to show your real feelings before, when it was not safe--and later--let me see, now! I didn't get jealous--strange, was it not? And I remember the baptism--you were acting as G.o.dmother, and I made him kiss you--and he did, but both of you looked terribly embarra.s.sed--that is, I didn't think of it then--or afterwards, even--I never thought of it?-till--_now_!

[Rises impulsively] Why don't you say something? You have not uttered a single word all this time. You've just let me go on talking. You've been sitting there staring at me only, and your eyes have drawn out of me all these thoughts which were lying in me like silk in a coc.o.o.n--thoughts--bad thoughts maybe--let me think.

Why did you break your engagement? Why have you never called on us afterward? Why don't you want to be with us to-night?

[MISS Y. makes a motion as if intending to speak.]

MRS. X. No, you don't need to say anything at all. All is clear to me now. So, that's the reason of it all. Yes, yes! Everything fits together now. Shame on you! I don't want to sit at the same table with you. [Moves her things to another table] That's why I must put those hateful tulips on his slippers--because you love them.

[Throws the slippers on the floor] That's why we have to spend the summer in the mountains--because you can't bear the salt smell of the ocean; that's why my boy had to be called Eskil--because that was your father's name; that's why I had to wear your colour, and read your books, and eat your favourite dishes, and drink your drinks--this chocolate, for instance; that's why--great heavens!-- it's terrible to think of it--it's terrible! Everything was forced on me by you?-even your pa.s.sions. Your soul bored itself into mine as a worm into an apple, and it ate and ate, and burrowed and burrowed, till nothing was left but the outside sh.e.l.l and a little black dust. I wanted to run away from you, but I couldn't. You were always on hand like a snake with your black eyes to charm me--I felt how my wings beat the air only to drag me down--I was in the water, with my feet tied together, and the harder I worked with my arms, the further down I went--down, down, till I sank to the bottom, where you lay in wait like a monster crab to catch me with your claws--and now I'm there! Shame on you! How I hate you, hate you, hate you! But you, you just sit there, silent and calm and indifferent, whether the moon is new or full; whether it's Christmas or mid-summer; whether other people are happy or unhappy.

You are incapable of hatred, and you don't know how to love. As a cat in front of a mouse-hole, you are sitting there!--you can't drag your prey out, and you can't pursue it, but you can outwait it. Here you sit in this corner--do you know they've nicknamed it "the mouse-trap" on your account? Here you read the papers to see if anybody is in trouble, or if anybody is about to be discharged from the theatre. Here you watch your victims and calculate your chances and take your tributes. Poor Amelia! Do you know, I pity you all the same, for I know you are unhappy--unhappy as one who has been wounded, and malicious because you are wounded. I ought to be angry with you, but really I can't--you are so small after all-- and as to Bob, why that does not bother me in the least. What does it matter to me anyhow? If you or somebody else taught me to drink chocolate--what of that? [Takes a spoonful of chocolate; then sententiously] They say chocolate is very wholesome. And if I have learned from you how to dress--_tant mieux_!--it has only given me a stronger hold on my husband--and you have lost where I have gained. Yes, judging by several signs, I think you have lost him already. Of course, you meant me to break with him--as you did, and as you are now regretting--but, you see, _I_ never would do that.

It won't do to be narrow-minded, you know. And why should I take only what n.o.body else wants? Perhaps, after all, I am the stronger now. You never got anything from me; you merely gave--and thus happened to me what happened to the thief--I had what you missed when you woke up. How explain in any other way that, in your hand, everything proved worthless and useless? You were never able to keep a man's love, in spite of your tulips and your pa.s.sions--and I could; you could never learn the art of living from the books--as I learned it; you bore no little Eskil, although that was your father's name. And why do you keep silent always and everywhere-- silent, ever silent? I used to think it was because you were so strong; and maybe the simple truth was you never had anything to say--because you were unable to-think! [Rises and picks up the slippers] I'm going home now--I'll take the tulips with me?-your tulips. You couldn't learn anything from others; you couldn't bend and so you broke like a dry stem--and I didn't. Thank you, Amelia, for all your instructions. I thank you that you have taught me how to love my husband. Now I'm going home--to him! [Exit.]

(Curtain.)

CREDITORS

INTRODUCTION

This is one of the three plays which Strindberg placed at the head of his dramatic production during the middle ultra-naturalistic period, the other two being "The Father" and "Miss Julia." It is, in many ways, one of the strongest he ever produced. Its rarely excelled unity of construction, its tremendous dramatic tension, and its wonderful psychological a.n.a.lysis combine to make it a masterpiece.

In Swedish its name is "Fordringsagare." This indefinite form may be either singular or plural, but it is rarely used except as a plural. And the play itself makes it perfectly clear that the proper translation of its t.i.tle is "Creditors," for under this aspect appear both the former and the present husband of _Tekla_.

One of the main objects of the play is to reveal her indebtedness first to one and then to the other of these men, while all the time she is posing as a person of original gifts.

I have little doubt that Strindberg, at the time he wrote this play--and bear in mind that this happened only a year before he finally decided to free himself from an impossible marriage by an appeal to the law--believed _Tekla_ to be fairly representative of womanhood in general. The utter unreasonableness of such a view need hardly be pointed out, and I shall waste no time on it. A question more worthy of discussion is whether the figure of _Tekla_ be true to life merely as the picture of a personality--as one out of numerous imaginable variations on a type decided not by s.e.x but by faculties and qualities. And the same question may well be raised in regard to the two men, both of whom are evidently intended to win our sympathy: one as the victim of a fate stronger than himself, and the other as the conqueror of adverse and humiliating circ.u.mstances.

Personally, I am inclined to doubt whether a _Tekla_ can be found in the flesh--and even if found, she might seem too exceptional to gain acceptance as a real individuality. It must be remembered, however, that, in spite of his avowed realism, Strindberg did not draw his men and women in the spirit generally designated as impressionistic; that is, with the idea that they might step straight from his pages into life and there win recognition as human beings of familiar aspect. His realism is always mixed with idealism; his figures are always "doctored," so to speak. And they have been thus treated in order to enable their creator to drive home the particular truth he is just then concerned with.

Consciously or unconsciously he sought to produce what may be designated as "pure cultures" of certain human qualities. But these he took great pains to arrange in their proper psychological settings, for mental and moral qualities, like everything else, run in groups that are more or less harmonious, if not exactly h.o.m.ogeneous. The man with a single quality, like Moliere's _Harpagon_, was much too primitive and crude for Strindberg's art, as he himself rightly a.s.serted in his preface to "Miss Julia."

When he wanted to draw the genius of greed, so to speak, he did it by setting it in the midst of related qualities of a kind most likely to be attracted by it.

_Tekla_ is such a "pure culture" of a group of naturally 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 a.s.sumed name)

SCENE

(A parlor in a summer hotel on the sea-sh.o.r.e. 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!