The beauty of crayfish

The beauty of crayfish

Strindberg enjoyed his food and drink, and to him eating his favourite food was a truly sensual experience.I recently came across one of Strindberg’s short pieces about food, which I translated some years ago and I think it is a good example of his passion for certain foods.


MUST

‘At half past eight, on the dot, one winter evening, he is standing by the door in the glass porch of the restaurant. While pulling off his gloves with mathematical precision, he peers above his misted up glasses, first to the right, then to the left to see if any of his acquaintances are there. Then he hangs up his overcoat on his hook, the one to the right of the stove. The waiter, Gustav, his former pupil, has brushed the crumbs off his table, stirred the mustard in the jar, raked the salt basin and, unprompted, unfolded the napkin. Then he fetches a bottle of Medhamra, still without having received any order, pours half a pint of Försoningens, hands over the menu for the sake of appearances and utters, more like a formality than a question: ‘Crayfish.’

‘Female crayfish?’ asks the schoolmaster.

‘Big female crayfish,’ answers Gustav and walks over to the kitchen hatch and calls out:’Big female crayfish for the schoolmaster, and a lot of dill!’

Then he gets a tray of butter and cheese, cuts two slices of black bread and puts it on the schoolmaster’s table. The latter has raided the porch for evening papers but has only managed to get hold of Posttidningen. As a substitute he picks up the Dagbladet which he did not have time to read earlier, then he places the Dagbladet on his chair, sits on it, turns the Posttidningen inside out and places it to the left, on top of the bread basket. Then he spreads some geometrical butter figures on the black bread, cuts s rectangle out of the Swiss cheese, fills his akvavit glass to three quarters and holds it up to his mouth; at this stage he pauses as if hesitating before taking his medicine, throws his head back and says:’Huh!’ That is what he has done for twelve years and that is what he will carrying on doing until he dies.

When the crayfish, all six of them, arrive he examines their gender and having found nothing objectionable about them, he begins the pleasurable procedure. The napkin gets tucked under the loose collar, two open sandwiches with cheese are being placed on guard beside the plate and then he pours himself a glass of beer and half a glass of akvavit. After that he picks up the little crayfish knife and starts the slaughter. There is no one else in Sweden who knows how to eat crayfish like him. First he makes a cut around the head of the crayfish and when he has put the hole to his mouth he sucks.

‘That is the best of all,’ he says. Then he loosens the thorax from the lower part, draws his sword, as he calls it, digs his teeth into the carcass and sucks in deeply; whereupon he pulls the little legs as if they were asparagus. Afterwards he eats a sprig of dill, takes a swig of beer and takes a bite out of the sandwich. When he has peeled the claws carefully and sucked the finest legs he consumes the meat and moves on to the tail. After three crayfish he drinks another glass of akvavit and studies the appointments in Posttidningen. That is what he has done for twelve years and that is what he will always keep doing.

A Blue Book, like a modern day blog.

In 1906 Strindberg started work on a book that was to occupy him practically up to his death in 1912. It ran to more than 1000 pages and is a kind of diary where he broods over the existence of God, the meaning of life and where he also feels free to jot down some scathing portraits of friends and acquaintances. The book was called En blå bok, A Blue Book.

A few months after he had started on it he wrote to Carl Larsson, the painter: ‘This summer I have solved once and for all the question of religion, in 300 pages which will never be published. Now I feel anchored and I shall quote Luther who said that neither the pope in Rome nor the Devil in Hell is going to lure me onto some new philosophical currents.’

He dedicated the book to the 18th century Swedish philosopher and mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, who had spent much of his life in England and who had died in London where his ashes were buried in the Swedish cemetery. As Strindberg was writing the first volume of En blå bok Swedenborg’s ashes were being brought to Sweden with great ceremony.

In A Blue Book Strindberg also set out to prove that all languages originated from one world language and God had given Man that original language. Some fanciful articles about linguistics make up a large part of the later volumes of En blå bok. But in the end the book spans the whole human experience, or Strindberg’s life experience at least. In 1906 he was living alone and recapturing the years of marriage and bachelorhood. Under the heading ‘The Most Secret’ he wrote:

‘Some years ago a young man came up to me, asking for advice in sexual matters. My answer was and remains: I know nothing about it. Experience has given me so many contradictory answers that I can’t have an opinion in the matter. But about love I know something and the cardinal points are: Don’t play with love. Don’t look at another man’s wife. Be faithful to your spouse.

In marriage it is very tricky. Sometimes it is supposed to be one way, sometimes another. Sometimes you have to pay a price for your virtue, other times for your transgressions.

I have lived as a married man and as a celibate. Afterwards I thought it was equally good, but while it was happening both states were just as difficult. The marriage tied me to the ground so that it felt as if I would never be free, the celibate state gave me freedom which I could use and which emanated in a suicidal mania – which I believe to be the reverse side of the creative force.

But to the ordinary man marriage is necessary. It offers interest in life, keeps your spirits up, creates warmth around you and keeps your egotism in check. It is a tough school which leaves beautiful memories behind, even if, at times, it was very ugly.

People should not analyse and judge each other when it comes to the hidden erotic aspect of life. One person was born with a greater need for reproduction than someone else. There is no scale. And nature is best at getting it right.’

Strindberg’s various entries or posts in this mammoth book are, on the whole, the size of a normal blog. As in so many other areas he was obviously before his time. He would have been a keen blogger.

Strindberg and religion

Strindberg and religion




Was Strindberg religious? Yes and no and yes! That is, like practically all Swedish citizens at that time he was brought up in the Lutheran faith. The church and the state were not separated until the year 2000, we had our Church of Sweden, like England still has its CofE. Right up until the late 1950s all schoolchildren had a religious morning assembly and about six hours of religious instruction a week. That would include comparative religious studies as well, as you got older. The result was that you knew the stories from the Old Testament, you knew your catechism and the basics, at least, of the New Testament. That, in turn, meant that you could relate to the classics, you could spot the allusions to the Bible and you had a foundation on which to stand on when it came to education.

Many writers, including Strindberg rebelled against Christianity and the power of the Church at the end of the 19th century. Working class people often felt marginalised and discriminated against by the church.

Strindberg went through an atheistic phase in the eighties. It went hand in hand with anti-Establishment ideas and a radical outlook. This didn’t stop him from baptizing his children, however, although his keen criticism of the church was very apparent in his play The Father.
After two failed marriages he was living in Paris when, in the mid 1890s he went through a religious crisis, which he later called his Inferno, and after that he called himself a Christian again.

His second wife, Frida Uhl, had been a non-practising Catholic but her family were all devout Catholics and Strindberg was deeply influenced by them, even after the break-up from Frida.

‘I am not a Catholic,’ he wrote in his essay ‘Religion’, published in Stridsskrifter, ‘but after spending seven years in Catholic countries and having Catholic relations I discovered that the difference between the Catholic and the Protestant doctrine is non-existent, or simply superficial; and that the break that happened once (The Reformation) was simply political or it may have been about theological issues that don’t really adhere to religion. Hence my tolerance towards Catholicism, especially in Gustav Adolf (a History play).’

He blames Darwinism for a general feeling of hopelessness. He cites the preposterous unfair idea that the stronger should be eligible for supreme power merely because of his strength. He sees the evil of capitalism as a direct result of this teaching. ‘Everything that is contrary to charity, compassion, fairness are the consequences of Darwinism.’

He goes on to say that Darwinism is the philosophy of the upper classes, it is conservative, anti-people, the opposite of socialism.

Strindberg claimed that without religion there is no honour, no faith, no sacrifice. People can’t trust each other because they are without faith. That is the victory of science over compassion.

Strindberg was not a church-goer, at least not while he was living in Sweden, but he knew his Bible and he read it and quoted from it throughout his life. He preferred the stern God of the Old Testament to the meek Saviour of the New Testament, but his Chamber plays which were written towards the end of his life all have a Christian message.

Strindberg battled with his God, as with everything else, but after his Inferno period in Paris he announced that from 1896 he considered himself a Christian.


When he died he had the Bible on his bedside table and he had given instructions about his grave where he wanted a simple wooden cross raised, with the inscription: Ave crux, spes unica. Hail the cross, my only hope.

Strindberg, the Berliner

One of the most popular meeting  places in Berlin in the 1890s was a wine cellar called 'Turkes', better known as 'Zum Schwarzen Ferkel', a name that Strindberg invented in reference to the sign above the door. 'The Ferkel' functioned as a delicatessen and off licence, with a couple of rooms set aside for customers who wanted to drink on the premises. The landlord, Gustav Turke, was said to have kept 900 varieties of liquor in stock. Strindberg was a frequent visitor and quickly gained a reputation as a prodigious drinker. He would also entertain the company by playing the guitar and singing songs that he had composed himself.
The 'Ferkel's' popularity may have had something to do with the fact that Herr Turke offered his customers generous credit and would sometimes take a work of art in lieu of payment. He accepted one of Stridnberg's paintings and promptly displayed it on the wall of the bar for many years.
The bohemian set gathered at the 'Ferkel' was headed by the temperamental Polish writer and womanizer Stanislaw Przybyszewski and the German poet Richard Dehmel, known as the 'wild man'.
Other writers in the circle included Adolf Paul and Karl August Tavastjerna from Finland and Holger Drachmann from Denmark. It was here that Strindberg first met the Norwegian painters Edvard Munch and Christian Krogh. Munch was another  'wild man' and just before he met Strindberg he had had an exhibition in Kristiania (Oslo) that had been forced to close because his avant-garde paintings had so shocked the visitors. Berliners were similarly shocked when the exhibition opened in their city but at least the authorities were tolerant enough to keep it open.
Munch encouraged Strindberg to paint and  became an important influence in his life.
Both Krogh and Munch painted portraits of Strindberg during this period. Ibsen bought Krogh's painting at an exhibition in 1895. 'It is really a portrait of Strindberg,' he wrote to his wife, Suzannah, 'but Sigurd calls it 'The Revolution' and I call it 'Madness Breaking Out.'
When Strindberg died Munch gave his portrait, which he had never sold, to the
Swedish Mational Museum. 'To be honest,' he wrote to them at the time, 'it feels empty in the room where Strindberg has been hanging for twenty years. To me, the picture is the incarnation of those two remarkable years in Berlin.'

Translating the untranslatable

When it comes to translation it is not always words and phrases which cause the biggest problems, but a cultural concept. I have yet to see a satisfactory rendering of Midsummer Eve in an English production of Fröken Julie, for instance.

Still, it is quite clearly stated in the script how Strindberg intended the scene. The peasants enter the kitchen, sing an ambiguous - but not obscene - song, dance around and leave.

Clearly, this pagan festival has given rise to all kinds of sexual fantasies when English directors have staged the play. Why is that, I wonder? Where do the huge phallus symbols come from, where the simulated sex scenes in the kitchen? ‘Peasants shag like rabbits, don’t they’, seem to be the general assumption.

I have shown my students these particular scenes from various English TV productions and compared them with Alf Sjöberg’s film from the 1950s and the students are invariably shocked and annoyed at the misrepresentation of Strindberg and can’t understand why the directors have chosen this coarse interpretation.

But what do you do when you have to translate something quintessentially Swedish as Midsummer, Lucia celebrations - and Walpurgis night with its bonfires, singing and undergraduates’ white caps. And the yearning for the countryside or the sea from the month of May onwards is a fever with no recognizable equivalent in England.

When Strindberg refers to autumn already in August it is hard for most Europeans to understand why, since August often is the main summer holiday month south of Scandinavia. But keep in mind that Swedish children go back to school after the middle of August when daylight hours are shrinking fast and you realise that the arrival of the lamplighter at that time, as in Strindberg’s Thunder in the air (Oväder) really means that the first signs of autumn have appeared. All this is very difficult to put across to any audience south of the Baltic. August - autumn? August, the foremost holiday month?

Another concept which is practically untranslatable is ‘innanfönster’ which is a very important word in Strindberg’s The Father. Double glazing and secondary glazing conjure up quite different ideas. What Strindberg is referring to is the extra windows that you can hook onto the window frames on the inside and keep in place for the length of the winter months. They helped to keep the cold out and the heat in before the days of universal double glazing. Taking them away in the spring became a symbolic act of saying farewell to winter. You could then open the window again and let in the air, sounds and scents of spring. Because spring had, indeed, arrived.

When Bertha in The Father makes her strong and passionate statement about her father by saying that when he comes home it is like taking away the inner windows on a spring morning, it is a beautiful and moving declaration of love - but it is untranslatable. If we use words like double glazing or secondary glazing they would refer to a 1960s suburban middle-class home. And that misses the point completely. So, as a translator, you have to find another expression, another way of putting Strindberg’s message across. It is not always easy or possible. As George Barrow, the English 19th century linguist, put it:’Translation is at best an echo.’

Strindberg's revolutionary play

Mäster Olof

My first encounter with Strindberg on stage was at Gothenburg Civic Theatre in 1958. They were showing Mäster Olof - which is translated as Master Olof but I would prefer to call it Father Olof, since it is about a monk who breaks away from the Catholic church and follows in Luther’s footsteps.
It is a play which has been revised endlessly and Strindberg wrote three different versions of it. The prose version, which is perhaps considered the best, was finished in 1872. Two years later he wrote another version which is partly in verse, and in 1876 he finished the verse drama on the same character. It took nine years before the play was produced on stage in Sweden. The cast list is huge and I can understand why foreign companies shy away from a production for that reason, but it is fascinating play of ideas in Ibsen’s and Schiller’s vein, and it works on two levels. On the one hand it is a play about the priest Olof who studied under Martin Luther in Germany and who returned to Sweden in 1518 with revolutionary ideas about the church. He wanted to fight ‘the spiritual death and corruption in the Catholic church’. With the help of the king, Gustav Vasa, he brought about the Reformation in Sweden. At the time when Strindberg started work on this play there was another strong movement gathering momentum in Europe and, undoubtedly, Strindberg was referring to the rise of Socialism in Mäster Olof. Like Luther, Olof falls in love with a nun and marries her, thus breaking the law of celibacy. Olof’s wife, Kristina, is portrayed as an unusually gentle and yet strong woman. She stands by her husband, but at the same time, she points out the importance of appreciating flowers and birds. The lofty ideals must not eradicate the real values in life. She represents a kind of Francis of Assisi in her naivety and all-embracing love.

KRISTINA:
Are you too grand to look at a flower or listen to a bird? Olof, I put the flowers on your table for you to rest your eyes on , but you ask the maid to take them away because they give you a headache, you say. I wanted to break the silence when you were engrossed in your work so I offered you birdsong, but you call it shrieking. I asked you to come in for dinner a short while ago, but you didn’t have time. I wanted to talk to you, but you don’t have time. You despise this small reality and yet you have placed me in it. You don’t want to elevate me, but then spare me your contempt at least. I shall remove everything that might disturb your thoughts. I shall leave you in peace and keep myself and my rubbish away from you. (She throws the flowers out of the window, takes the birdcage and is about to leave the room)
OLOF:
Kristina, my child, forgive me! You don’t understand!

The play lasts for six hours if performed in its entirety. It took Dramaten another nine years before they put it on. They chose the verse play. In 1887 while the Strindbergs were living in southern Germany August asked his brother Axel to sell the original manuscript. It brought in a much needed 500 kronor and Strindberg wrote to his brother in a desperate but jocular tone:
‘Well, now I have sold everything that can be sold. The only thing remaining is my corpse (and above all the skull) which I donate to Medical Science.’
But soon after he sat down to write his most popular novel, The People of Hemsö, which became a huge success.

Strindberg and Music

Strindberg and Music

Strindberg came from a musical family. Two of his siblings. Axel and Anna, became professional musicians although his sister gave up her career when she married Hugo von Philp. Axel later set to music several of August’s poems and was the key player during the so-called Beethoven evenings towards the end of his life when a group of friends gathered in his apartment at Drottninggatan to play music and enjoy a late supper.

 Strindberg did not have any formal musical training, unlike the rest of his siblings, but he managed to teach himself to play several instruments:  piano, flute, mandolin, guitar, cornet.

During his many travels he would bring his guitar and sing at social gatherings.

While he was still living at home his favourite composers were Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart. Later on, while he was living in Berlin at the beginning of the 1890’s he also came to love Chopin and Schumann  who were introduced to him through the Polish writer and amateur musician Prsybyszewski. Schumann’s rousing piece, Aufschwung, became a favourite of his. 

During his more melancholy years in Paris leading up to his ‘Inferno crisis’ music became his greatest comfort and one of his friends has told us how Strindberg used to visit another Swedish expat, fru Sophie Kjellberg, who lived in Montparnasse. She would play Bach, Grieg and Sinding for him and often Strindberg would turn up before Sophie had cleared away the dishes after dinner. Strindberg was so keen to start the musical enjoyment that he would volunteer to dry the dishes to speed up proceedings. Algot Ruhe writes: ‘He sat on a wicker chair without a back rest in the middle of the floor and undertook his chosen task under bizarre monologues. When it was all done, fru Kjellberg went over to her pianino which almost occupied the whole of one of the small rooms. On the other side of the wall, behind the pianino, there was a small sofa and in the corner of that sofa Strindberg would sit for hours, alone in the dark, listening to the music.’

As soon as he had put down roots in Stockholm again in 1899 Strindberg hired a piano and started his ‘Beethoven evenings’ which continued until a few months before his death in 1912.

Even though his brother Axel and his new friend Tor Aulin, the composer, tried to introduce him to different composers Strindberg was not very keen on Brahms and he hated Wagner whom he called ‘the musical representative of Evil’.  The music should be emotional, passionate, stirring. Purely romantic music did not cut any ice with Strindberg.

Music plays an important role in Strindberg’s later dramatic works. In fact, The Chamber Plays have borrowed their title and format from chamber music. It is significant that all his wives and his last love, Fanny Falkner, were very good pianists. After the divorce from Harriet he asked his sister, Anna, to come and play for him. Music had a soothing and healing effect on Strindberg. It was almost a religious feeling. When Tor Aulin and Axel three months before Strindberg’s death  played The Eroica and Schumann’s third symphony for him, Strindberg commented on that evening in a birthday card to Aulin  with immense gratitude:  ‘From Saul to David’.

Strindberg and others: Strindberg raped

Strindberg and others: Strindberg raped: Mies Julie I have just been to see the much praised South African production of Mies Julie, set in a desolate farmland district in Sou...

Strindberg raped

Mies Julie

I have just been to see the much praised South African production of Mies Julie, set in a desolate farmland district in South Africa with a black John and a white Julie. Christine is John’s mother in this production and there is also an old woman with her face painted white, walking around and making some exotic Xhosa sounds with an instrument similar to a mouth organ. She represents ‘Ancestor’.

The bare stage, apart from a rather tatty kitchen table and chairs, a bucket and a whole row of dirty wellies lined up at the back, invoked an unglamorous hard-working farm.

Hilda Cronje, who plays Julie, circles around John and Christine, at a loss what to do, angry, dishevelled even from the beginning of the play and gives the impression of a cat on heat.

The plot has been adapted to suit South African circumstances and the resentment between John and Julie  works very well, but the director - who also calls herself the writer of this piece - has done away with all subtleties, which means that the flirtatious scenes at the beginning of the play are gone and the eroticism has been replaced by brute force. The simulated rape scene, which took place in front of the audience, was almost unbearable to watch. After that drawn-out violent scene Julie puts her hand on her crutch and produces a bloody hand which is supposed to indicate that she was a virgin. She spits in John’s face, he handles her physically like a slave and she brandishes a sickle which she finally uses in order to miscarry.

I walked away thinking Strindberg had been raped as well. Everything except the violence had been peeled away and what was left was a brutal, unsubtle, but maybe truthful picture of South Africa during and after Apartheid. I doubt that Strindberg would have approved, though, but, on the other hand, it is remarkable that this play still manages to engage and shock. I think where it failed, as far as I am concerned, is that Julie was never the lady in this production. She looked like a wayward child, picked up from the gutter. The problem with that is that she had nowhere to go. There was no real fall. The count was never a threat either. His riding boots with spurs had been abandoned and John was polishing some sturdy shoes instead. No bell announced the count’s arrival at the end and that, in turn, meant that there was no urgency to get away or commit suicide. Here, Julie produced a bucket full of  ‘blood’ when she stuck her sickle up her vagina. To underline the message Christine then turns up with a bucket of blood as well which she pours into the drain. Julie’s dog had also miscarried.

The production was very bleak, and black and white in more than one sense.

Siri Strindberg as a budding actress

When practical obstacles or family problems stand in the way for my writing 

I often think about the Herculean task that Siri von Essen took on when she set her mind to become an actress. Everything seemed to go against her at the beginning, but she was unswerving in her determination and did not let anything stop her. With that kind of inner strength she was to become an ideal companion for Strindberg for many years to come. She has often been dismissed as a poor or not very good actress by people who have not bothered to go back to the sources, but the reviews and eyewitnesses speak a different story.

After her divorce from Baron Carl Gustaf Wrangel she took lessons from a voice coach and a drama teacher and she worked hard at eradicating her Finland-Swedish accent. Meanwhile, Sigrid, her young daughter, was ill with meningitis which developed into pneumonia. The day for Siri’s debut performance as an actress was set for 27 January 1877 and on 13 January her daughter died. On 19 January she was buried. Siri’s mother insinuated that it could be God’s punishment. Under these truly awful circumstances Siri made her long-awaited debut on the stage of The Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm.The newspaper Aftonbladet singled her out and wrote: ‘Mrs von Essen shows more promise than  usual for a beginner. She moves with ease and has stillness; her gestures are economical, but have the desired effect when used; her voice is clear and pleasant, although it drops in volume occasionally; it possesses a sensitive and varied expression, but you can sometimes detect a slight Finnish accent. It is so slight, though, that it could easily be eradicated with a bit of effort. Her ability to hold an animated conversation with a good sense of timing is remarkable, but she is not as successful in her exclamations or asides; her face, on the other hand, is capable of more varied expressions than many an experienced actor. That applies especially to her eyes; and her presence is graceful if somewhat weak in certain scenes.‘

The two other major morning papers, Stockholms Dagblad and  Dagens Nyheter also praised her talent and Dagens Nyheter emphasized her naturalness and beauty. All the critics seemed to agree that she moved gracefully and had a very pleasant voice. She was called in three times after the curtain call. After this initial success she was offered the lead in Charlotte Birch-Pfeisser’s play Jane Eyre. Again Siri had to battle with personal problems while preparing for a huge part. Her mother died during the run and since she was without siblings it was up to her to deal with the funeral and disperse of the contents of the family home.

Miraculously, she pulled through and was offered a one-year contract at The Royal Dramatic Theatre but when she came back after the summer break she was pregnant again, but continued working until the end of the year. Strindberg and Siri got married on 30 December and the child, who was called Kerstin, was born, on 24 January 1878 and died the same day. Kerstin was buried on 27 January and eight days later Siri was back on stage in the same role that she had been playing before Christmas. 

A few happy years followed when they both develeoped as artists and enjoyed success in their chosen fields. Eleven years Siri was to give her last professional performance as an actress in Copenhagen. Her part that time was Lady Julie.

Strindberg and Love is now available as an e-book. It is published by Amber Lane Press and sold through Amazon. 

Strindberg and others: Strindberg's three foreign wives

Strindberg and others: Strindberg's three foreign wives: It is strange to think that Strindberg, who revolutionized the Swedish language, chose three wives who in different ways st...

Strindberg's three foreign wives

It is strange to think that Strindberg, who revolutionized the Swedish language, chose three wives who in different ways struggled with the language. Siri von Essen, his first wife, had grown up in Finland speaking French with her mother and Swedish with her father but since she had no formal education she never learnt to spell properly in Swedish and Strindberg often had to correct her spelling. Also, when she started working as an actress, she had a Finland-Swedish accent which was not acceptable on the Swedish stage at that time. She worked hard at trying to eradicate that accent and it is dubious whether she ever got rid of it altogether.

Frida Uhl, Strindberg’s second wife, set out to learn Swedish. She even suggested that Strindberg’s eldest daughter Karin should come and live with them in order to teach her Swedish. Frida’s letters from England in 1894 show that she made some attempts at least to pick up vocabulary but the marriage did not last long enough for her to make any serious progress. She was fluent in French and English, and German was her native tongue, so given the right circumstances she probably could have mastered Swedish well enough to translate Strindberg’s works into German, as was her intention.

Harriet Bosse, Strindberg’s third wife, was born in Norway and lived in Norway until her mid teens so when she arrived in Sweden she was told by various theatre producers that she needed to master ’King’s Swedish’ before she could hope for major parts.  When she auditioned at Dramaten the Artistic Director said that he would only employ her when she had learnt to speak like a normal person, i.e. without a Norwegian accent. Harriet spent two months with a voice coach, working intensively at her pronunciation and intonation and after that she was offered her first part at Dramaten. She continued to struggle with the language for a long time after that and complained that the Swedish language ’did not want to get into my head, which is understandable, because  I previously spoke the most beautiful language in the world.’ But Harriet was stubborn and ambitious and she felt sure that one day she would master the Swedish language and speak like a native. For a long time she conversed in Norwegian with her sisters but in the end she gave in and spoke Swedish in private as well.

Strindberg international

So, the centenary of August Strindberg’s death has come to a close. It has been an extraordinary year and I wish I could have spent more of it in Sweden where there was an impressive number of new productions. At least I managed to see Lucky Per’s Journey at Intiman in January and that was a truly marvellous performance. It is a play which is not often done but this production was so inventive and imaginative that I long to find some English producers who could put it on here in England. George Bernard Shaw believed in the play but Strindberg himself thought it was too ‘bourgeois’ (‘brackig’).

One of my favourite Strindberg plays is The Ghost Sonata and I had the good fortune to enjoy three different productions of that play this year alone. One was in my translation at the Chelsea Theatre in London in July, directed by Eldarin Yeong, a young Chinese woman director. She had chosen a very physical approach and this created an eerie, surreal atmosphere. The production was her Master’s Thesis in Directing at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and she had managed to cast only professional actors. Like so many English actors they had found Strindberg odd and difficult. Judging by what I saw at one of the last rehearsals - because I missed the performances in the theatre - we shall see more of this Chinese director.

The second version of  the play was at a small theatre in San Francisco as part of the Strindberg conference there in October. The set and the costumes were more solid and the style of acting was less adventurous but it went down well with the audience on the night I was there. The last production of The Ghost Sonata was in December in Uddevalla where I was giving a talk about Strindberg and it was put on by a dance company. It was totally absorbing and had that marvellous, zany, unpredictable quality. The costumes, the mobile set and the movement were all beautifully in tune with the play. In September, a French ensemble came to London and performed Mademoiselle Julie at the  Barbican, with Juliette Binoche in the lead. It was a contemporary setting with disco dancing and see-through screens which separated the audience from the actors. It was powerful but I didn’t believe in Jean who walked in a stooping fashion with unkempt hair and with a generally rather slovenly appearance. 

Anna Pettersson gave a shortened version of her brilliant performance of Miss Julie in San Francisco and I can now see why the critics raved about it.

Personally, I have given twelve lectures about Strindberg this year and it has been heartening to see how people warm to different aspects on Strindberg. My topics have covered Translation problems, Strindberg and his Women, Faith and Doubt in Strindberg’s works, Strindberg productions in England, The Chamber Plays  and a summary of my experience  with Strindberg. It has been a truly inspirational year and it has been my privilege to talk in London, Seattle, San Francisco, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Uddevalla and Trollhättan.

Apart from that I continue to spread the word to my small group  of students at Southbank International School, London. 

Strindberg's directing tips

Strindberg was never a theatre director in the modern sense of the word but he was very keen to help his actress wives and his last protégé, Fanny Falkner, to achieve the best results on the stage. He was perceptive and had an intuitive approach to acting. He first spotted Fanny when she was appearing in a non-speaking part at Intiman in one of his plays. He looked at her without saying anything but he went straight to August Falck, the artistic director of the theatre and told him: ‘There is our Easter girl, alive and well. She must play the girl in Easter.’ Falck was appalled and thought Strindberg was mad to think of casting a completely inexperienced and untrained girl in a leading part. Falck already had another actress in mind for that part but without consulting Falck Strindberg invited Fanny and a young actor called Alrik Kjellgren to his apartment at Karlavägen and there he rehearsed the young couple privately. After a few rehearsals Strindberg was moved to tears. He turned to Kjellgren and said:’What do you think, she is a born artist. Her expressions, her eyes, her hair - her hair!’

He drew up a list of the basic principles of speaking on stage. In a letter that he wrote to Fanny on 30 May 1908 he gave her the following advice:

‘1. Speak slowly, legato, all words in the sentence strung together; the commas and full stops must not produce a staccato, but glide across with a little extra sound which I shall teach you.

2. Speak naturally, but do not ‘talk’.

3. A broad register in the beginning, a little affected; imagine making a speech or preaching but without shouting.

4. Begin to speak grammatically correctly, and get used to a slightly pedantic speech on a daily basis, as if you were reading aloud or giving a lecture. Stop talking or chatting when you are speaking normally. In other words: don’t be careless, but speak slowly.

5. Watch your consonants, especially your R’s. The vowels are easier to hear.

6. If you make a habit of speaking carefully every day you won’t need to read so much.

7. Speak, articulate, ‘phrase’ like a singer. Listen to your own voice and enjoy it when it sounds good.

8. Flygare speaks carefully as a rule, listen to her, imitate her. It should sound a little exaggerated, important!

And the whole secret about speech is : slowly, drawn out, legato. Beginners prattle but do not speak. They deliver in staccato, which is the worst of all.

Walk in nature; speak to yourself there, read poetry; that strengthens your voice.

And learn to breathe through the nose, when you speak, then you get the best delivery...

I am determined to make you into a great actress; but take it seriously and work at it because it is not child’s play.’

Did he succeed? Well, Fanny became a member of the original company at Intiman and took part in many plays during the next two years until the theatre had to close due to financial problems.She played Bertha in The Father and she took over the role of Eleonora in Easter when Flygare went on tour with the play. She was also the first actress to play the leading role in Swanwhite, the play Strindberg had written specifically for Harriet Bosse. Her youth and innocence and not least her beauty seduced the critics and audiences alike. 

Strindberg akso asked her to design the cover for his play Abu Casem’s Slippers and after Strindberg’s death she returned to painting and became a well-known miniature portrait artist.

What's in a name?

What’s in a name?

About twelve years ago I came across an attractive, young-looking woman who could have been in her mid forties. She introduced herself as Madeleine Strindberg, August Strindberg’s granddaughter.

‘Hello, hello,’ I thought. ‘Something funny here.’ She can’t be one of Siri von Essen’s granddaughters. Karin only had one daughter, also called Karin and she married her cousin, Hans’ adopted son, Erik. They didn’t have any children so there were no grandchildren from Strindberg’s eldest daughter, or only son for that matter. Greta, the second daughter, died in a train crash just a month after August’s death. She was pregnant at the time but the child did not survive either.  Anne-Marie, Strindberg’s daughter by Harriet Bosse, only had two sons, so Madeleine could not belong to that family either. Who was she then? Could it have been one of Frida Uhl’s offspring? Frida had one daughter by Strindberg, Kerstin, who in turn had one son, Kristoffer Sulzbach. 

‘Ah!’ But Frida had an affair with another well-known playwright, Franz Wedekind, and managed to produce a son before her divorce from Strindberg was made absolute. In other words, Madame Strindberg, as she called herself for the rest of her life, had given birth to another Strindberg who could legitimately keep the name and who, because of that name, got Swedish citizenship and helped thousands of Jews  flee from Germany during the  Second World War. He became a journalist and writer and wrote a very interesting novel about life in Berlin during the war. The German title was Die Juden in Berlin. Wie sie leben, lieben und sterben. When the book was published in Sweden the Strindberg family were not pleased to have this ‘bastard’ Strindberg in their midst so he published the Swedish version under another name, Fredrik Uhlson.

The book was reissued by Bonniers a few years ago with an afterword by Jan Myrdal. So it was this Friedrich Strindberg, August’s legitimate (since he was born in wedlock) but not biological son who had a daughter in the 1950s called Madeleine. She is a well-known artist, based in London and she has won the prestigious Jerwood Prize for her art. In a way, of course, Madeleine was right. She is August Strindberg’s granddaughter, even if his blood is not running through her veins.

I bought one of her expressive paintings at an exhibition, signed in flamboyant handwriting: Madeleine Strindberg. So now I can boast that I have a Strindberg painting in my collection. 

Talking about Strindberg

August has followed me everywhere this year so far and if things work out we shall stick together until the end of the year, like an old couple. Maybe it is time to live apart for a while after that. We shall see.

 I am amazed at how many people are jumping on the bandwagon this centenary year and holding forth about the most incredible aspects of him. Is there any Swedish writer who has been so thoroughly examined and dissected even after his death, I wonder? In many cases he did a better job himself in his autobiographical or semi-autobiographical books and I can't help wondering whether some of the new Strindberg 'experts' may have exploited  this centenary without any real research or depth behind them. I have just come back  from the Gothenburg Book Fair and wherever you turned  there was someone  speaking with great conviction but not always matched by knowledge about August Strindberg.

I remember Mary Sandbach, a chain-smoking grande dame who translated some prose works by Strindberg in the seventies. When my first volume of Strindberg plays came out she was obviously very suspicious of me and wondered where I was coming from and who I was to enter her field, so to speak. Since I rarely touched the prose she forgave me but after that I had Michael Meyer to contend with. He was the drama translator par preference when it came to Scandinavian authors from the sixties onwards. His Swedish was not perfect but at least he had lived in the country and he spoke the language - albeit with a strong accent and with many linguistic mistakes. However, we locked horns on one occasion, but since I realised I couldn’t afford to have him as an enemy I told him straightaway that he would never find any of his phrases or expressions in my translations. I also told him that I never look at another translator’s work when I am translating and he could rest assured that I would only work from the original. He gave me one long look and after that we were friends.

This year will see me travelling all over the place, giving talks on a number of subjects related to Strindberg: ‘Translation problems from Swedish to English’, ‘How to teach Strindberg to teenagers’, ‘Strindberg productions that my husband and I have been involved in’, ‘Strindberg and his women’ - of course, ‘Strindberg and drama’, ‘Strindberg in my life’, ‘Faith and doubt in Strindberg’s work’, etc. Some are in English and some in Swedish. Several talks are written in both languages.

So what has this year taught me? I will have given more than a dozen talks in all by the time I return from my last trip in December. Most audiences have been very attentive, appreciative and grateful, but there have been quite small gatherings. People haven’t exactly been bending over backwards to listen or buy the book, Strindberg and Love or the Swedish version, Lite djävul, lite ängel, Strindberg och hans kvinnor. We can’t compete with self-revelatory books, ‘feel good’ books or Cookery and Gardening books.  There may be slightly more interest in him after this year of celebrations but do not let us be deceived by that. He is still an oddball, viewed with suspicion by the young.  And it is going to be very hard to change his image. To many he will remain the madman and the misogynist.     

Strindberg still in the news - August

Strindberg still in the news

There has been a lot of media coverage about Strindberg this year, especially in Sweden in Sweden. Judging by the opinions offered on a number of subjects concerning our literary genius he is obviously just as controversial today as he was a hundred years ago. 

What surprises me is that it’s Strindberg the person who is nearly always in focus - rather than Strindberg, the author. Why is it that his life is more interesting to the majority of people rather than his work?

He did, of course, lead an extraordinary life and he liked to draw attention to his person, even if it meant that he was the subject of ridicule or, in some cases, a hate campaign. He lived on the edge most of the time and thrived on provocation. That is not something which is going to endear him to all and sundry. He was generally considered a bad influence on the young with his revolutionary and indecent ideas. After all, a man who advocated free love and who made fun of the holy communion, the royal family, the military establishment and politicians in general would probably be more on the side of the rebels than the establishment.

This year I have been asked to give around a dozen talks about him and most of them will be about his attitude to women because that is the subject most people have requested. I find the fact that he was a serious religious seeker more remarkable, especially when you consider that he lived at a time when the established church (similar to the Church of England) had a tremendous hold on society.

When working on his plays I have struggled with some beautifully expressed sentences which resist translation. At the same time, he offers the translator a forum for imaginative solutions which make the translator’s job very rewarding. He was a master of dramatic dialogue and performing it is most gratifying to actors. Just look at the way he uses punctuation. His dashes and exclamation marks mark the tempo and energy - The way his characters talk over each other, interrupt each other or simply don’t listen  - all this creates a very intense and realistic atmosphere.

Maybe a little less personal exposure would have been beneficial to his career as a writer. A certain amount of reserve could have meant that people concentrated more on his writing than his histrionics.

Yes, he did actually say A. but he also said B. He changed opinions shamelessly, but not without reason. It would help greatly in understanding this complex man if we read everything in context, rather than pick some provocative statements to score a quick sensational point.

I was asked once in an interview what I thought about Strindberg’s famous measuring of his penis or of the alleged rape of a sixteen-year-old servant girl at Skovlyst in Denmark.

My answer to the first question was that I didn’t find it particularly odd or shocking that he measured the length of his penis. I remember many of my girl friends measuring their boobs in their teens, while chasing the ideal measurements. Presumably, the size of a man’s penis is as vital to his masculinity as the size of the boobs to a woman’s femininity, although that logic  defeats me.

As regards the famous ‘rape story’, the girl in question was not a servant but the sister of the manager of Skovlyst Manor, and she had turned up in Strindberg’s bedroom in the early hours and late at night, in a way which Strindberg found provocative.

According to the girl’s own admission she consented to the intercourse but her brother quickly tried to make a big scene of it and used blackmail. Strindberg was acquitted but contracted a venereal disease for his sins.

When taken thus in its entire context this story takes on a different hue. That is the case with most of the ultra sensational episodes in Strindberg’s life.

Strindberg's spiritual search

Strindberg’s spiritual search

Strindberg loved battles. He would enter any battle like a war-hungry soldier. He wrote about the battle of the sexes, the class struggle and the battle of brains, and in his early play, Master Olof, he lets the main character, Olaus Petri, say: ‘It wasn’t the victory that I wanted, but the struggle.’

In Master Olof, which is about the introduction of Protestantism in Sweden he uses the Reformation as a metaphor fo the rise of Socialism. Towards the middle of the 1880s Strindberg went through a period of atheism and he wrote to his publisher, Bonnier: ‘Since I am about to become an atheist (the world is run by idiots, consequently God is an idiot) I shall probably attack God from now on as well.’ 

This warning to his publisher must have been very worrying indeed. Strindberg had already stood trial for blasphemy once and Bonnier, who was Jewish was, naturally, uncomfortable with anything which might be interpreted as an attack on the Church of Sweden. In another letter to the Danish critic Edvard Brandes, Strindberg admitted that he was preparing to become an atheist but he found it horribly difficult. His atheism was - in his own words - a mental experiment which had failed at once.

During his short marriage to Frida Uhl he was drawn to Catholicism which he was introduced to through his mother-in-law in Austria. But with Strindberg we can never know for sure what he stands for. As soon as we have put a label on him he changes and is already on his way somewhere else. His Austrian mother-in-law was a believer and a good Catholic, but she was also drawn to Swedenborg who became one of Strindberg’s idols during the 1890s.

He bought a Catholic prayer book and a rosary and even thought of entering a monastery. In Inferno he writes:’I have bought a rosary. Why? It is beautiful and the Evil One is afraid of the cross.’ The thing that held him back was the need to obey. Strindberg found it very difficult to obey anyone. 

‘I am not a wild man. I prefer strolling by the sea and growing cucumbers. But people hate me because I write so bloody well. My motto is: Leave me alone, I am prickly. Why the hell do they have to probe me when I am prickly. But everyone has to have a feel. And then they get stung!’

The road back to Christianity meandered along some narrow paths, via Swedenborg, Kierkegaard, Buddhism and Islam. But in the end Strindberg found his way back to the faith of his childhood and by that time regret and remorse had replaced his wrath and defiance. ‘What shall I regret? How much shall I regret?,’ he asks himself. ‘How should I live in order to please God?’ At the same time he realises that his greatest sin was the way he had treated his wife and children. He accuses himself of hubris, the only sin that the gods won’t forgive. Maybe Christ is an avenging spirit? 

In 1897 he abandoned Swedenborg  and didn’t return to him until the end of his life. In May 1897 he applied for a place in a Benedictine monastery but when he found out that the abbot had been sacked because of a sexual offence he withdrew his application.

‘I want to have religion as a quiet accompaniment to the monotonous everyday tune of life.

A buddhist book has made a more lasting impression than all the other holy books because it puts positive suffering above abstinence.’ 

His most beloved drama, A Dreamplay, is a synthesis of all his thoughts about faith and the meaning of life. The leading character, Indra’s daughter, an invention by Strindberg, has been interpreted in many ways - as a human being or as a divine being. She walks through life like a female Jesus and returns to heaven at the end of the play. Her recurring line is: ‘Det är synd om människorna,’ a sentence which is practically untranslateable. ‘Mankind is to be pitied,’ is perhaps the closest we can get to this sigh of compassion.

The pain was his fuel

The pain was the fuel for his creativity.

 It strikes me that Strindberg indulged in pain rather than trying to avoid it. When he was in a highly emotional state it was like an engine switched on. It would make sense then that he didn’t shun big emotions, explosive passion or unreasonable hatred. In fact, he sought these extremes. He rarely rested on his laurels and when things became a bit too cosy - which didn’t happen often, admittedly – he’d launch into one of his sudden attacks to stir things up. The only people who escaped his wrath were children. Again and again we find how he creates a sanctuary for his own children, and other young people who came in his path.

When he was living in Drottninggatan towards the end of his life, for instance, he often let Fanny Falkner's little sisters come to play and on one occasion he laid the table for a children’s party with place cards and proper napkins and he was so engrossed in the play that he was unavailable to the adult visitor who called on him.

 On another occasion he was holding a small child’s hand and refused to let go of it in order to shake the visitor’s hand.

Adversely, if you were on the receiving end of one of his attacks you would find it hard to come to terms with his hot temper.

But by picking on each outburst and using it as evidence of Strindberg’s unstable mind or madness we are denying the importance of a charged atmosphere to many artists, including Strindberg. I think it is interesting that so few Strindberg scholars touch upon the correlation between the creative process and the adrenaline that sparks the anger and aggression.

Anyone who has lived with an artist will recognize that behaviour and will understand the reasons for some unreasonable and unpredictable conduct. In that sense, Siri was the perfect artist’s wife - extremely patient and understanding. She may have been an idle baroness when she met Strindberg but she had the unruffled temperament to support an artist who was frequently walking through fire and who was more often than not consumed by his own fire.