Plays by August Strindberg Volume II Part 51

GUSTAV. With him? Do you still love him?

TEKLA. Yes!

GUSTAV. And a moment ago it was me! Was that also true?

TEKLA. It was true.

GUSTAV. Do you know what you are then?

TEKLA. You despise me?

GUSTAV. I pity you. It is a trait--I don't call it a fault--just a trait, which is rendered disadvantageous by its results. Poor Tekla! I don't know--but it seems almost as if I were feeling a certain regret, although I am as free from any guilt--as you! But perhaps it will be useful to you to feel what I felt that time.-- Do you know where your husband is?

TEKLA. I think I know now--he is in that room in there! And he has heard everything! And seen everything! And the man who sees his own wraith dies!

(ADOLPH appears in the doorway leading to the veranda. His face is white as a sheet, and there is a bleeding scratch on one cheek.

His eyes are staring and void of all expression. His lips are covered with froth.)

GUSTAV. [Shrinking back] No, there he is!--Now you can settle with him and see if he proves as generous as I have been.--Good-bye!

(He goes toward the left, but stops before he reaches the door.)

TEKLA. [Goes to meet ADOLPH with open arms] Adolph!

(ADOLPH leans against the door-jamb and sinks gradually to the floor.)

TEKLA. [Throwing herself upon his prostrate body and caressing him] Adolph! My own child! Are you still alive--oh, speak, speak!-- Please forgive your nasty Tekla! Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me!--Little brother must say something, I tell him!--No, good G.o.d, he doesn't hear! He is dead! O G.o.d in heaven! O my G.o.d! Help!

GUSTAV. Why, she really must have loved _him_, too!--Poor creature!

(Curtain.)

PARIAH

INTRODUCTION

Both "Creditors" and "Pariah" were written in the winter of 1888- 89 at Holte, near Copenhagen, where Strindberg, a.s.sisted by his first wife, was then engaged in starting what he called a "Scandinavian Experimental Theatre." In March, 1889, the two plays were given by students from the University of Copenhagen, and with Mrs. von Essen Strindberg as _Tekla_. A couple of weeks later the performance was repeated across the Sound, in the Swedish city of Malmo, on which occasion the writer of this introduction, then a young actor, a.s.sisted in the stage management. One of the actors was Gustav Wied, a Danish playwright and novelist, whose exquisite art since then has won him European fame. In the audience was Ola Hansson, a Swedish novelist and poet who had just published a short story from which Strindberg, according to his own acknowledgment on playbill and t.i.tle-page, had taken the name and the theme of "Pariah."

Mr. Hansson has printed a number of letters (_Tilskueren_, Copenhagen, July, 1912) written to him by Strindberg about that time, as well as some very informative comments of his own.

Concerning the performance of Malmo he writes: "It gave me a very unpleasant sensation. What did it mean? Why had Strindberg turned my simple theme upsidedown so that it became unrecognisable? Not a vestige of the 'theme from Ola Hansson' remained. Yet he had even suggested that he and I act the play together, I not knowing that it was to be a duel between two criminals. And he had at first planned to call it 'Aryan and Pariah'--which meant, of course, that the strong Aryan, Strindberg, was to crush the weak Pariah, Hansson, _coram populo_."

In regard to his own story Mr. Hansson informs us that it dealt with "a man who commits a forgery and then tells about it, doing both in a sort of somnambulistic state whereby everything is left vague and undefined." At that moment "Raskolnikov" was in the air, so to speak. And without wanting in any way to suggest imitation, I feel sure that the groundnote of the story was distinctly Dostoievskian. Strindberg himself had been reading Nietzsche and was--largely under the pressure of a reaction against the popular disapproval of his anti-feministic att.i.tude--being driven more and more into a superman philosophy which reached its climax in the two novels "Chandalah" (1889) and "At the Edge of the Sea" (1890).

The Nietzschean note is unmistakable in the two plays contained in the present volume.

But these plays are strongly colored by something else--by something that is neither Hansson-Dostoievski nor Strindberg- Nietzsche. The solution of the problem is found in the letters published by Mr. Hansson. These show that while Strindberg was still planning "Creditors," and before he had begun "Pariah," he had borrowed from Hansson a volume of tales by Edgar Allan Poe. It was his first acquaintance with the work of Poe, though not with American literature--for among his first printed work was a series of translations from American humourists; and not long ago a Swedish critic (Gunnar Castren in _Samtiden_, Christiania, June, 1912) wrote of Strindberg's literary beginnings that "he had learned much from Swedish literature, but probably more from Mark Twain and d.i.c.kens."

The impression Poe made on Strindberg was overwhelming. He returns to it in one letter after another. Everything that suits his mood of the moment is "Poesque" or "E. P-esque." The story that seems to have made the deepest impression of all was "The Gold Bug,"

though his thought seems to have distilled more useful material out of certain other stories ill.u.s.trating Poe's theories about mental suggestion. Under the direct influence of these theories, Strindberg, according to his own statements to Hansson, wrote the powerful one-act play "Simoom," and made _Gustav_ in "Creditors"

actually _call forth_ the latent epileptic tendencies in _Adolph_.

And on the same authority we must trace the method of: psychological detection practised by _Mr. X._ in "Pariah" directly to "The Gold Bug."

Here we have the reason why Mr. Hansson could find so little of his story in the play. And here we have the origin of a theme which, while not quite new to him, was ever afterward to remain a favourite one with Strindberg: that of a duel between intellect and cunning. It forms the basis of such novels as "Chandalah" and "At the Edge of the Sea," but it recurs in subtler form in works of much later date. To readers of the present day, _Mr. X._--that striking ant.i.thesis of everything a scientist used to stand for in poetry--is much less interesting as a superman _in spe_ than as an ill.u.s.tration of what a morally and mentally normal man can do with the tools furnished him by our new understanding of human ways and human motives. And in giving us a play that holds our interest as firmly as the best "love plot" ever devised, although the stage shows us only two men engaged in an intellectual wrestling match, Strindberg took another great step toward ridding the drama of its old, shackling conventions.

The name of this play has sometimes been translated as "The Outcast," whereby it becomes confused with "The Outlaw," a much earlier play on a theme from the old Sagas. I think it better, too, that the Hindu allusion in the Swedish t.i.tle be not lost, for the best of men may become an outcast, but the baseness of the Pariah is not supposed to spring only from lack of social position.

PARIAH AN ACT 1889

PERSONS

MR. X., an archaeologist, Middle-aged man.

MR. Y., an American traveller, Middle-aged man.

SCENE

(A simply furnished room in a farmhouse. The door and the windows in the background open on a landscape. In the middle of the room stands a big dining-table, covered at one end by books, writing materials, and antiquities; at the other end, by a microscope, insect cases, and specimen jars full of alchohol.)

(On the left side hangs a bookshelf. Otherwise the furniture is that of a well-to-do farmer.)

(MR. Y. enters in his shirt-sleeves, carrying a b.u.t.terfly-net and a botany-can. He goes straight up to the bookshelf and takes down a book, which he begins to read on the spot.)

(The landscape outside and the room itself are steeped in sunlight. The ringing of church bells indicates that the morning services are just over. Now and then the cackling of hens is heard from the outside.)

(MR. X. enters, also in his shirt-sleeves.)

(MR. Y. starts violently, puts the book back on the shelf upside-down, and pretends to be looking for another volume.)

MR. X. This heat is horrible. I guess we are going to have a thunderstorm.

MR. Y. What makes you think so?

MR. X. The bells have a kind of dry ring to them, the flies are sticky, and the hens cackle. I meant to go fishing, but I couldn't find any worms. Don't you feel nervous?

MR. Y. [Cautiously] I?--A little.

MR. X. Well, for that matter, you always look as if you were expecting thunderstorms.

MR. Y. [With a start] Do I?

MR. X. Now, you are going away tomorrow, of course, so it is not to be wondered at that you are a little "journey-proud."-- Anything new?--Oh, there's the mail! [Picks up some letters from the table] My, I have palpitation of the heart every time I open a letter! Nothing but debts, debts, debts! Have you ever had any debts?

MR. Y. [After some reflection] N-no.