Strindberg on Drama and Theatre Is an Invaluable Resource for Those Interested in One of the Most Influential Among Modern European Playwrights

egil törnqvist and birgitta steene Sweden’s August Strindberg (1849-1912) has long been recognized as one of the leading dramatists around the turn of the last century. A restless innovator of various drama forms, he has proved extremely seminal to the development of modern drama. Strindberg frequently commented on drama and theatre in general, and on his own plays and their staging in particular. This book presents the most important of these comments, chronologically assembled and annotated, many of them for the first time in an English translation. Strindberg on Drama and Theatre is an invaluable resource for those interested in one of the most influential among modern European playwrights. Egil Törnqvist is professor emeritus in Scandinavian studies at the University of Amsterdam. Among his more recent books are Ibsen, Strindberg and the Intimate Theatre: Studies in TV Presentation (1999), Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata: From Text to Performance (2000), Bergman’s Muses: Æsthetic Versatility in Film, Theatre, Television and Radio (2003), and Eugene O’Neill: A Playwright’s Theatre (2004). He received the Strindberg Prize in 2004. Birgitta Steene is professor emerita in literature and film at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is the author of August Strindberg: The Greatest Fire (1974) and the editor of Strindberg and History (1986) and the year book Strindbergiana (1997- strindberg on drama and theatre 2005). Her most recent work is Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide (2006). What a gift it is to hear Strindberg’s clear and daring voice and to experience how truly modern he was in his thinking. His understanding of the theatre and the art of acting and his constant search for truth and meaning – in everything and egil törnqvist and birgitta steene everyone – demands that we stay truthful to his plays and to ourselves. Bo Corre, member of the New York Actors Studio. Whether studying or teaching Strindberg, preparing to produce one of his plays or simply enjoying engaging with 19th-20th century theatre and drama seen through the eyes of one of its giants, this work is an indispensible companion, resource and Strindberg guide. Anne-Charlotte Harvey, Professor Emerita of the School of Theatre, Television and Film, San Diego State University. on Drama and Theatre www.aup.nl Amsterdam University Press 9 789053 563502 Amsterdam University Press Törnqvist.indd 1 10-09-2007 13:47:18 strindberg on drama and theatre strindberg on drama and theatre a source book Selected, translated, and edited by Egil Törnqvist and Birgitta Steene Amsterdam University Press Cover illustration: August Strindberg at his writing desk. Etching by Anders Zorn, 1910. Cover: Geert de Koning, Ten Post Lay-out: Het Steen Typografie, Maarssen isbn 9789053560204 nur 670 © Amsterdam University Press, 2007 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or trans- mitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Contents Preface 7 Introduction 11 Strindberg on Drama and Theatre - - - - - Strindberg’s Plays 174 Notes 179 Select Bibliography 190 Name and Title Index 195 Subject Index 202 Preface Together with Norway’s Henrik Ibsen and Russia’s Anton Chekhov, Sweden’s August Strindberg (1849-1912) has long been recognized as a leading dramatist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Of these three, Strind- berg has proven the most seminal to the development of modern drama. What is less known is that throughout his adult life, Strindberg frequently commented on drama and theatre in general and on his own plays and the staging of them in particular. Two such texts are widely distributed and frequently reprinted, the preface to Miss Julie, often hailed as the manifesto of modern drama, and the prefatory note to A Dream Play, outlining the techniques of what later became known as dramatic expressionism. But a host of others are virtually unknown to an English-speaking audience. This regrettable oversight motivates the present book, which is being published at an auspicious moment in Strind- berg scholarship. The Swedish edition of Strindberg’s letters in 22 carefully annotated volumes is now complete and most of the projected 72 volumes in a new scholarly edition of his collected works have been published, including virtually all of the plays as well as the volume entitled Teater och Intima Teatern (Theatre and the Intimate Theatre). Both editions provide a firm underpinning for this source book. Selections include most of Strindberg’s significant statements on drama and theatre. Most, but not all, for we have tried to avoid repetitiveness by limiting, for example, similar statements to different addressees and by leaving out cer- tain technical descriptions related to specific productions. Moreover, our volume does not include texts which have only thematic rele- vance to Strindberg’s plays. A concrete example may illustrate this point. In his A Blue Book I (1907), one of the short pieces – there are hundreds of them – is entitled “A Whole Life in an Hour.” Here the narrator describes how he one morn- ing, “obeying an exhortation,” went for a walk in town, seemingly at random. He passed the neighborhood where he was born and had been educated, where he had worked as a teacher, where he was accepted as an actor, where he handed in his first play, where he married his first wife, and where his third wife and their child had been living three years earlier. He concludes: “In an hour I had gone through my life in living pictures; another three years and I would have arrived preface 7 at the present time. It was like an agonie or moment of death when all of life trav- els past.” This suggestive description can easily be related to several of Strindberg’s plays. There is the telescoping of time, recognizable in The Ghost Sonata where the Student-narrator experiences a whole life in not much more than an hour, the playing time of the drama. There is the idea of retracing one’s steps, appear- ing in the pilgrimage drama To Damascus. And there is the sense of imminent death at the end of A Dream Play where the Poet, commenting on what we have just witnessed in the stage action, remarks: “I read somewhere that when life ap- proaches its end, everyone and everything passes quickly by in review ... is this the end?” To which Indra’s Daughter answers: “For me, yes.” The Blue Book fragment obviously sheds light on all three plays. We have nev- ertheless refrained from including texts of this kind since doing so would not only have increased the size of this book immensely, it would also have been ex- ceedingly difficult to find a principle for limiting the material. Our book opens with a brief introduction, sketching Strindberg’s relation- ship to drama and theatre and outlining some of his most important ideas on these subjects. This is followed by the main part, i.e. the relevant texts by Strind- berg himself, all in chronological order with regard to the time of writing. Each item is provided with a date of composition, explanatory notes and, in the case of the letters and memos, a short presentation of the addressee the first time s/he is mentioned. It would naturally have been helpful if the letters from the addressees could have been included, but unfortunately these are, with few excep- tions, no longer extant. The brief presentations of the addressees give at least an indication of the context; more comprehensive presentations can be found in Michael Robinson’s edition of Strindberg’s letters. The volume concludes with a list of Strindberg’s plays, plus dates when they were first published and first performed, again in chronological order with regard to the time of writing. For further reading, we have included a rather exten- sive list of works dealing with Strindberg’s plays. A few illustrations are provided to highlight the material. Finally, there is a name and title index and a subject index to enable the reader to explore topics of particular interest. The choice of a chronological arrangement warrants an explanation. One ob- vious alternative, grouping relevant material around a number of Strindberg’s plays, would have had the disadvantage of leaving out much pertinent subject 8 strindberg on drama and theatre matter simply because it would not fit under the chosen headings. Moreover, such an organizational principle would necessarily blur the developmental as- pect preserved in a chronological arrangement. With a dramatist as impulsive and protean as Strindberg, there is every reason to keep track of when a state- ment was made. Besides, as already indicated, our indexes give readers the op- portunity to make their own systematization of the material. Stylistically, Strindberg’s observations on drama and theatre share the charac- teristics of much of his other work. His mode of expression is highly idiosyncrat- ic, often very direct, sometimes extremely laconic, sometimes rather circum- stantial, frequently drastically colorful. Bearing signs of having been written in haste, his comments may occasionally seem inconsistent and are at times am- biguous. Though we have tried to retain the author’s spontaneity, we have provided brief notes or have made emendations to those passages which require clarification in order to be understood. In one case, this has resulted in a change of terms. When speaking of the individual member of the audience, Strindberg often refers to the åhörare (listener) rather than the åskådare (spectator).

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