Strindberg Plays

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-3-7364-0966-8
Verlag: anboco
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 500 Seiten

Since the accompanying biographical note, which aims solely at outlining the principal events of Strindberg's life up to 1912, was put in type, the news of his death from cancer, at Stockholm on May 14, 1912, has been reported. Of the plays included in the present volume, 'The Father' and 'Countess Julie' are representative of Strindberg's high water mark in dramatic technique and have successfully maintained their claim to a permanent place, not only in dramatic literature, but, as acting plays. 'The Stronger,' than which no better example of Strindberg's uncanny power for analysis of the female mind exists, while essentially a chamber play, is from time to time presented at the theatre, and affords a splendid test of the dramatic ability of the actors, only one of whom speaks. The author has boldly thrown on the other the burden of maintaining her share in the development of the action by pantomime, facial expression, and an occasional laugh. 'The Outlaw,' although inferior in construction to the others, is still played with success and is full of dignity and atmosphere. The important part it played in promoting the fortunes of the author lends to it an added interest which fully justifies its inclusion in this volume: THE FATHER; COUNTESS JULIE; THE OUTLAW; THE STRONGER

Autoren/Hrsg.

Strindberg, August

Leseproben

PLAYS

BY AUGUST STRINDBERG

TRANSLATED BY EDWIN BJÖRKMAN

INTRODUCTION

The province of Dalecarlia has often been called the heart of Sweden. It is a centrally located inland province, said to contain a sample of everything the country can offer in the way of natural beauty. For centuries it played a remarkable part in Swedish history, taking the leadership time and again in the long struggle to rid the nation of a perverted and abused union with Denmark and Norway. It has preserved the original stock, the original language, and the original customs of the race as no other province. The dialects used in Dalecarlia are among the most difficult to understand for outsiders and have an air of antiquity that irresistibly leads the thought back to old Norse. The picturesque costumes characteristic of the different parishes are still in use, and one of these—that of Rättvik—has almost become the national costume of Sweden.

The people are simple and shrewd, stem and kindly, energetic and obstinate, loyal and independent. They have much in common with the old New England stock, but possess, in spite of their unmistakably Puritanical outlook, a great store of spontaneous and pleasant joy in life. They are thinkers in their own humble way, but not morbid. In their attitude toward each other and toward the family they are distinctly and quaintly patriarchal, and in this respect, too, they preserve a quality that used to be characteristic of the whole Scandinavian north. It is impossible to read "The Bridal Crown," with its typical Dalecarlian atmosphere and setting, without being struck at once by the extent to which the individual plays the part of a link in the unbroken chain of generations rather than of an isolated, all-important point of personality. And the same impression is obtained from Selma Lagerlöf's contemporaneous novel, "Jerusalem."

Always a very religious race, though not always good church-goers, the Dalecarlians have long had and still have the Puritanical closeness to the Bible as the book, and they talk naturally in quotations from that source. At the same time the old Norse stores of legend and homely wisdom survive among them to an extent that is perhaps paralleled only in Iceland. And when Strindberg in this play makes his characters quote the old poetic Edda he violates no law of probability, although it is doubtful whether the expression in question would actually come in just such a form from living lips. I mean that the sentiment of such a phrase as "Vagrant women make bread of mould for their men as only food" survives among the people, while it is likely to have gradually changed into a form more wholly their own.

No matter from where the inspiration of their utterances may come, the Dalecarlians are apt to express themselves picturesquely, and this inclination to lapse into rhyme and alliteration is noticeable—sometimes in quoting old saws dating back to heathen times and sometimes in improvising. Strindberg has used this tendency in both ways. When the old grandfather says to the bride that she is "comely as he is homely," he is merely repeating a phrase dear to the heart of a people strongly bound up in traditions. When, on the other hand, he lets the fisherman in the last scene answer, "Krummedikke's castle and Krummedikke's lake, Krummedikke's church, and soon it will break," he is probably illustrating the tendency toward roughly rhymed improvisations.

A typical feature of Dalecarlian life has always been the sending of the cattle to upland pastures during the summer months in care of young men and women, who, in communication among themselves as well as with the people at the home farm, have availed themselves of the ancient alpenhorn, or lur, made out of wood and birch bark, as well as of the horn made out of the natural horn of the ox. And instinctively they have realised that melodious utterance carries farther than ordinary speech, and so they have come to sing or hum their communications. Furthermore, they have grown accustomed to use some song already familiar to the listener rather than what they might improvise, and have thus learned to pass on simple pieces of news, or a mere mood, perhaps, in what might be called a code.

Throughout Sweden such songs and snatches and tunes, made up in olden days by some more than usually audacious village genius, survived until far into the past century, and in Dalecarlia and a few neighbouring provinces they have survived to the present day in actual use. With the flaring up of a true historical interest that followed the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century came a recognition of the beauty and value of those old songs and tunes. The first man in Sweden to make a systematic collection of them was Richard Dybeck, who, during the years 1842-50 published a periodical for lovers of the old which he called Runa—"The Rune." In 1846 the same man published a separate collection of the folk-material just referred to under the name of Svenska Vallvisor och Hornlåtar—"Swedish Herd-Songs and Horn-Melodies."

Both this little volume and the issues of "The Rune" must have come under the attention of Strindberg at an early period, and to both he remained strongly attached throughout life. In the pages of those two Dybeck publications he found almost everything that makes "The Bridal Crown" what it is—a remarkable picture of the external life and internal spirit of the Dalecarlian people. The musical duet between Kersti and Mats in the first scene is the basis of the whole play. It is found in Dybeck's work just as Strindberg has used it—both the music and the words. The legend has it that a young man and a young woman, herding cattle in adjoining pastures, fell in love with each other. The girl bore a child, which they nursed together as they best could, having tried to legitimise it by going through a simple wedding ceremony of their own improvisation. Once, when the girl could not get back to the pasture at night, she used her alpenhorn to communicate that fact to her lover and ask him to look after the baby. This legend is found all over Sweden in very slightly modified form.

To the old legend Strindberg has added the still more ancient Montecchi and Capuletti theme from "Romeo and Juliet," making the two lovers the offspring of mutually jealous and hostile families, and thereby giving the play the tragical twist which his mood required. How he was turned in this direction I don't know, but his work on the historical play, "Gustavus Vasa"—it was written in 1899, and "The Bridal Crown" seems to have been completed in the winter of 1900-1—had taken his mind to Dalecarlia, where its first act is laid. And the idea of a play built on Swedish folk-themes seems to have been long present in his mind.

For folk-colour as well as for local verisimilitude, he drew freely both on Dybeck and on other repositories of old Swedish lore and legend and superstition. One of the beauties of the play is that so many of the extranatural figures and elements introduced are common to the whole country. The Neck, or the Man of the Rapids, or the Brookman (Necken, Forskarlen, or Bäckamannen) exists in popular fancy wherever a peasant has put his plough into Swedish soil. He is a creature of the thousand rivers and brooks that beribbon the land from the arctic circle down to the fertile planes of Scania, and always he is associated with an unusual gift of music and with the fallen angel's longing for the lost Paradise. From Norrland to Scania is told the anecdote of the tot who heard the Neck sing the song used by Strindberg—"I am hoping, I am hoping that my Redeemer still liveth"—and who called out to him: "There is no Redeemer for you." On returning home, the child told his parents of what had happened and was ordered to go back with a less discouraging message to the wailing spirit of the waters.

The Midwife, half human, half extranatural, is another familiar figure, mostly called the Wood-Imp (Skogsrå). The queer snatches uttered by her from time to time are old Swedish riddles or "guess-rhymes," which Strindberg also found in Dybeck's work, and which he has employed very effectively as spells or incantations. That quaint dualistic revenant, which is called the Mewler as an apparition, and the Mocker as a bodiless voice, exists in the imagination of the people all over Sweden. It is a creation of the moral instinct, designed for the discouragement of poor maidens who have born a child "in hiding," as the old phrase puts it, and who may be tempted into ridding themselves of such a burden—a crime that has figured too frequently in the criminal annals of the country.

The word Myling, which I have had to translate as Mewler, is said to come from a verb meaning to kill, to choke, to bury, or to cover up. It is related to mylla, mould, however, and when we find the same term, mylingar, Mewlings, applied to the relatives of Kersti, this characterises them not as "murtherlings," as Strindberg's German translator would have it, but as "mouldings," as people delving in the soil. In the original text, the name applied both to the apparition of Kersti's dead baby and to her relatives is the same. I have thought this too confusing for English-speaking readers, and have made two terms to get the needed dearness and distinction.

It remains finally to say a word about the keystone to the whole dramatic conflict in the play—the desire of Kersti to wear a crown at her wedding—to be a "crown-bride," as the Swedish phrase and the name of the original text both have it. The chief ornaments of a Swedish bride have always been the...