Strindberg distorted

When you are faced with a biography of someone you have studied for years and feel you know intimately and you suddenly don’t recognize what is written about that person you get an eerie feeling. I was curious to read about a new biography on Strindberg since I have spent the last thirty years or so translating his works and writing about him in journals and in book form. But when I saw the reviews of Sue Prideaux’s book Strindberg – a life I was alarmed to find some serious errors. It is not often that a biography on Strindberg is published in this country, although the publisher’s claim that it is thirty years since the last biography appeared is not true. My biography Strindberg and Love which deals with his wives and works was published in 2001 by Amber Lane Press
In her book Prideaux makes some hair-raising claims; she writes, for instance, that Strindberg’s and Siri’s eldest daughter, seven-year-old Karin kept a vigil at Viktoria Benediktsson’s bedside at the Leopold Hotel in Copenhagen on that fateful night in January 1888 when Benediktsson tried to commit suicide by taking morphine. Benediktsson survived on that occasion because she vomited in the night but six months later she used a razor instead and succeeded. Two weeks after her death Strindberg finished his play Lady Julie (Miss Julie) and let Julie use the same method as Benediktsson when taking her life in the final scene.
Karin wrote about this whole dramatic event in her book Strindbergs första hustru (Strindberg’s First Wife), but in doing so she is quoting another writer and friend of both Benediktsson and Strindberg who had witnessed the suicide attempt but was sworn to secrecy. It was he who had been sitting by Benediktsson’s bedside as she was drifting off, but at the last moment he got cold feet and knocked at Strindberg’s door in the middle of the night and told him about Benediktsson’s suicide attempt.  By putting this story squarely into Karin’s mouth and ignoring the fact that she was retelling Axel Lundegård’s experience Prideaux makes Strindberg into a complete monster. If he had been alive today he would have sued her for libel.
As Ruth Scurr writes in the Guardian review of 21 April 2012: Karin remarked: ’I’ll never forget the expression on his face. He was so interested. Not a smidgen of human sympathy or compassion crossed his features, just naked curiosity; he was fascinated.’
Karin NEVER said or witnessed that. Karin was simply quoting Axel Lundegård in her sober, restrained way.

Another glaring mistake is Prideaux’ assumption that Strindberg persuaded Siri to give up her first child, husband, most of her fortune and her social respectability. Where does she get this information from, I wonder? If you read Siri’s letters from that period you’ll see quite clearly that Siri did not want to be burdened with a small child when she started out as an actress. She wanted her first husband to have custody of their daughter so that she could have the freedom to develop as an actress. As far as her fortune is concerned she came to a complicated arrangement which I have written about at length in my biography but she certainly did not abandon her fortune at Strindberg’s request. Her first husband did rather well out of her. More so than Strindberg.
Where did Strindberg declare Frida’s journalism useless? On the contrary, he read some of her articles while she was staying on in England after their honeymoon and he was  surprised to find that she had a very good writing style and told her so in a letter.

When it comes to his third wife, Harriet Bosse, he did not try to cancel their honeymoon because he wanted to work. He was feeling uneasy about travelling at that time because ’the powers that be’ didn’t want him to go. It has been suggested that he was deeply affected by Dagny Juel’s murder that summer. Dagny had been one of his girl-friends during the Berlin period and he and Harriet were planning to go to Berlin on their honeymoon.
I could go on picking at details which are untrue or distorted but suffice it to say that it is rather sad to see so many sensational titbits presented as facts.
There are enough reliable sources around. There are no reasons for getting the facts so wrong.
It makes me both sad and angry.

Barabbas

Strindberg's slot in March was taken over by one of the 'others', an old favourite of mine, the Swedish Nobel Laureate Pär Lagerkvist. It must have been more than fifty years since I first read his novel Barabbas, the story about the crucifixion seen from the point of view of Barabbas, the evil-doer who was released instead of Christ.

‘Everyone knows how they hung there on their crosses,’ writes Lagerkvist. It may have been true in many western countries fifty years ago but the story cannot be expected to have the same familiar feel today when most people are not obliged to study the Bible at school or necessarily attend Sunday school where they might learn about the most famous stories from the Bible.

Lagerkvist introduces the disciples, Lazarus,  Mary Magdalene but without naming them. We simply assume that they are these well-known figures from the New Testament, judging by their speeches and actions. So what is the point of retelling a story that is already covered in four gospels?

Lagerkvist, who had been brought up in a pious home with a non-conformist religion, was put off by the claustrophobic atmosphere in the halls and churches he used to attend as a child. He called himself an atheist believer. He was certainly an agnostic, but throughout this slim novel there is quite clearly a longing for a god, for communion with other people who have a faith. Barabbas is baffled and visibly shocked by Christ's death. He watches that thin ‘rabbi’ on the cross and can't understand how he ended up there. A weakling who could not even carry his own cross but who had to let Simon of Cyrene do it for him. Barabbas cannot imagine Christ committing the kind of crimes which would call for the worst death penalty imaginable, so he lingers on Golgotha and watches the crucifixion and observes the people surrounding the cross. He can't help thinking that if it had been him hanging there on a cross there would not have been such a crowd watching. After this shattering experience his old friends do not hold such fascination for him any more. He goes back to their den and drinks with his old companions and makes love to his favourite whore, but he is not himself and he can't let himself go like the others. His curiosity brings him to the disciples and he starts talking to them about Golgotha. When they realise who he is they curse him and don't want any more to do with him but Barabbas goes to the place where Christ had been buried amongst the rocks and there he waits to see if Christ is going to rise from the dead like he said he would. Barabbas doesn't believe he will but he goes there all the same and finds a  woman there, waiting for the resurrection. She actually sees an angel descending from heaven and it is her story that Barabbas repeats when he is chained to a Christian slave in the copper mines later. The slave reveres Barabbas because he has seen God, he was there when it happened. The kindness that he receives from the woman and his fellow slave gradually softens him and when the slave dies for his faith Barabbas is visibly moved and, for the first time in his life, he feels compassion. The book cleverly argues that goodness spreads and it is the chain reaction of goodness which gives us hope for peace and love among people.

This novel was translated and adapted for the stage by me and presented as an Easter drama   at the Swedish church on Palm Sunday 2012.

Taking it out on Strindberg

It is quite remarkable that Strindberg still manages to create such a stir and that so many people are outraged at what he wrote or said over a hundred years ago.

What is often forgotten is that he was such a multi-faceted person that you can find almost anything in his character. When people choose to highlight only his less attractive features and make a huge mountain of them it says more about the people criticizing Strindberg than it says about Strindberg. I have come across many people in my life who, after a heavy drinking session, may lash out in an uncharacteristic, venomous fashion. Feelings of suppressed anger, frustration and hatred rise to the surface and lands on unsuspecting bystanders. The devil drink doth stoke up fires in hell, indeed. Strindberg drank a lot, almost all his life. He also imbibed absinthe which could bring about symptoms similar to those associated with drugs. He was poisoning his brain with alcohol over the years and he never tried rehab, unlike his friend Edvard Munch.

I truly believe that the worst aspects of Strindberg were due to two things: his intake of alcohol and his fear of financial ruin. The daytime August, the Strindberg who played shops with his little daughter or her friends was the gentlest of creatures. The man who tended his garden and wrote lovingly of birds and plants was a harmless Strindberg. I don't deny that he sometimes said some awful things to people, some of whom had previously been his friends, but at least he wasn't hypocritical. He certainly didn't elevate himself. His last play, The Great Highway, is an important testament to his humility before God or 'the powers'.

Bless me, your poor mankind

Who suffers, suffers from your gift of life!

Me first who’s suffered most

Who’s suffered most and grieved

Because I couldn’t be the man I’d hoped to be!

He admitted that The Madman's Defence was a terrible book. He fell out with von Heidenstam but who wouldn't after he had revealed his true colours. He was disenchanted with Carl Larsson after he had met with success and become conservative. He was very close to his siblings, Anna and Axel, most of his life, but he also managed to fall out with them on some occasions. He adored his mentally fragile sister Elizabeth and he missed his late mother terribly.

Tor Aulin, the composer, stood by him right up to the end and so did several of his other friends.

Honesty hurts. Strindberg could be ruthlessly honest, not only to others but also to himself. Yes, it is uncomfortable, yes, he must have been jolly difficult to live with, but he possessed the fire, the greatest fire in Sweden, as he so boastfully put it. And thank God for that commitment and that passion which still engages people. He gave us a language that sparkles and burns and for that we are truly grateful.

Other gods and Gravesend

Between 1907 and until his death in 1912 Strindberg wrote down reflections and ideas in a book which he called A Blue Book. In this book he writes about love, jealousy, religion, philosophy. One entry caught my eye recently because it could have been written today. Like so many other authors around the end of the 19th century he studied Buddhism and  even incorporated Buddhist ideas into at least two of his later works. He was fascinated by Buddhism for a while, but he also saw the funny side of this appetite for new religions and the way the grass is always greener on the other side. In A Blue Book he writes: 'When Buddhism became fashionable in 1890 all renegades rushed in and tried to fill their religious vacuum. Six thousand new gods were acclaimed at once; the new trinity, Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva did not raise any objections; spirits, ghosts, genies, fairies were natural phenomenons; Gautama's hells and heavens were part of the parcel; a little asceticism also belonged to the story. Those who recently had denied the resurrection found the reincarnation unproblematic. But the favourite, however, was Krishna. He was the god Vishnu who had been sent down to earth, and was born by human parents in order to save mankind. His arrival was prophesied and feared so that Bethlehem-like child murders were instigated on new-born children, but without success. Krishna fulfilled his mission and fought against evil, and he suffered and died voluntarily.
That was acceptable. The trinity Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva was alright, but The Father- The Son - The Holy Ghost was not. Krishna was acceptable but not Christ. How funny!'

Strindberg was never fond of England. He admired Dickens, Shakespeare and Turner and his paintings show quite clearly the influence by Turner, but during his brief visit to England in 1893 he couldn't wait to leave London and go back to the island of Rügen in North Germany where several of his friends were then staying. It didn't help that he and his second wife, Frida Uhl, arrived in Gravesend after a stormy crossing that had taken forty-eight hours.  Frida suffered terrible sea-sickness so they had to stay in Gravesend for a few days for her to recover.
When they reached London it was hot and stifling and he didn't know the language so he was miserable and wanted to leave at once. After ten days Frida pawned her lace and jewellery, including her wedding ring, and  managed to raise £5 which was enough for Strindberg's travelling expenses so he set off, leaving his new wife behind. Frida had been to a convent school in London and she knew the city well. She was hoping to make some contacts in the theatre or secure some contracts for Strindberg. At least that was her excuse. She found a small Swedish colony in Putney and suggested in a letter that they might settle down there. But Strindberg never returned to England. However, Frida's son, Friedrich Strindberg, lived there for some years, but despite having the same surname as August and consequently being his legal son, he was the offspring of an extra-marital relationship between Frida and Frank Wedekind. But more of that anon.

Fröken Julie - a lady or a miss?

Fröken Julie is the daughter of a count, and as such she is part of the aristocracy. I usually tell drama students that Diana Spencer was the daughter of an Earl and no one ever called her Miss Diana. It is true that today and ever since the end of the 19th century the title 'fröken' has been used for all unmarried women, but before then it was limited to girls of noble birth. The middle-class girls had to make do with 'mamsell' and the servant class with 'jungfru'. The first few translations of this play into English were keen to use Lady and Countess in the title. The point is, it makes total sense when it comes to the acting. Jean has to beat about the bush when he addresses her at the beginning and after their passionate encounter in his room he simply drops the title and calls her by her first name. That dramatic effect gets lost when she is simply Miss Julie throughout, but that is the way she is known these days and I don't think I shall be able to persuade any directors to call her by her proper name.
When it comes to that play it never ceases to amaze me how the scene with the peasants can be interpreted in so many different ways. I have just been watching Alf Sjöberg's film from 1951 again, with Anita Björk and Ulf Palme in the leading parts and the midsummer jollifications are recognizable and believable in their drunken, sensual fun. Strindberg leaves much to the imagination and it is therefore even more remarkable that English productions often depict a kind of orgy. It is eroticism turned pornography. I urge students to go back to the play and see if there is any justification for such an interpretation.
It took twenty years after he had written the play t before it was produced in Sweden. When George Bernard Shaw came to Stockholm in 1909 Strindberg called in his leading actors from the archipelago and asked them to give a private performance for Shaw. But he was clearly worried about the emotions it would give rise to. He and his first wife had put the play on for one night only in Copenhagen in 1889. Siri had played Julie and that was the last time she worked as an actress. It was also the last time they were living together. Their marriage was breaking up after that. The play evoked so many painful memories for Strindberg so he asked his actors in Stockholm to go lightly, very lightly when it came to the passionate scenes. There is no record of what Shaw thought of it. Little did they know, though, that it was going to be the most performed of all his plays and in the autumn of 2012 the French actress Juliette Binoche is playing the part at the Barbican in London. They are calling the play Mademoiselle Julie.

Strindberg's centenary

With Strindberg's centenary coming up in 2012 Sweden and U.S.A are preparing to celebrate in grand style. The Swedish theatres are pulling out all the plugs and producing a number of plays which have not seen the light of day for ages. How pleased August would have been if he knew.
In 1911 his Intimate Theatre had just closed after three years' of existence. He had fallen out of favour yet again and was busy fighting the state and the world in the press like a latter-day Don Quixote. His last play, The Great Highway (1909) had not been a success. The Nobel Prize had gone to Selma Lagerlöf in 1909 so he realised that he was never going receive that ultimate accolade.
However, the amazing demonstration of love and support that he enjoyed on his last birthday in January 1912 must have gone some way towards comforting him.
The young and the poor were on his side, as were the members of the Socialist party, and a huge crowd gathered outside the building where he lived, on his last birthday in January 1912.
The fascinating thing about Strindberg is that he never ceases to upset. There is nothing cosy about him. You read him and the blood pressure rises. There is so much energy in his writing, so much passion in what he writes that you can't help getting sucked in and forced to take a stand.
He leaves no one unmoved. His language gives off sparks and there is an unstoppable rhythm about his dramatic dialogue.