Strindberg on International Stages/Strindberg in Translation [1 ed.] 9781443858748, 9781443854405

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Strindberg on International Stages/ Strindberg in Translation

Strindberg on International Stages/ Strindberg in Translation

Edited by

Roland Lysell

Strindberg on International Stages/Strindberg in Translation, Edited by Roland Lysell This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Roland Lysell and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5440-9, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5440-5

CONTENTS

Contributors ............................................................................................... vii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Section I The Theatrical Ideas of August Strindberg Reflected in His Plays ........... 11 Katerina Petrovska–Kuzmanova Stockholm University Strindberg Corpus: Content and Possibilities ........ 21 Kristina Nilsson Björkenstam, Sofia Gustafsson-Vapková and Mats Wirén The Legacy of Strindberg Translations: Le Plaidoyer d'un fou as a Case in Point ....................................................................................... 41 Alexander Künzli and Gunnel Engwall Metatheatrical and Postdramatical Aspects of Strindberg’s Chamber Plays .......................................................................................................... 59 Roland Lysell Between Beethoven and Schönberg: Strindberg’s Idea of Chamber Music and its Significance For and In his Chamber Plays Hannah Hinz .............................................................................................. 79 Section II Challenges in Dramaturging Strindberg in the USA Today ...................... 95 Anne-Charlotte Hanes Harvey The Heritage of Strindberg on the 21st-century Italian Stage ................. 107 Franco Perrelli Strindberg in Portugal: 109 Years on Stage............................................. 119 Tânia Filipe e Campos

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Contents

Strindberg Visits the Suburbs: Strindberg’s Plays in Postdramatic Theatre ..................................................................................................... 139 Rikard Hoogland Staging August Strindberg in Two Eras .................................................. 149 Gyttis Padegimas

CONTRIBUTORS

Gunnel Engwall Professor emerita in French, Stockholm University, Department of French, Italian and Classical Languages. Tânia Filipe e Campos PhD. Affiliated Researcher, Instituto Nacional de Engenharia Biomédica (INEB), Porto, Portugal and Auxiliar Professor, Instituto Superior de Ciências da Saúde- Norte, Gandra, Portugal. Sofia Gustafsson-Capková PhD, Stockholm University Strindberg Corpus (SUSC) and Computational Linguistics (Department of Linguistics). Anne-Charlotte Hanes Harvey Professor emerita of theater at San Diego State University, dramaturg and translator. Hannah Hinz PhD student Department of Literature and History of Ideas, Stockholm University. Rikard Hoogland PhD and associate professor in Performance Studies at Stockholm University. Alexander Künzli Professor at University of Geneva, faculty of Translation and Interpreting. Roland Lysell Professor, Department of Literature and History of Ideas, Stockholm University. Kristina Nilsson Björkenstam PhD, Stockholm University Strindberg Corpus (SUSC) and Computational Linguistics (Department of Linguistics).

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Contributors

Gytis Padegimas Theatre director, teacher, lecturer and actor. Teaches at Klaipéda University, Lithuania. Franco Perrelli Professor of performing arts at the DAMS University of Turin. Katerina Petrovska-Kuzmanova PhD at "Marko Cepenkov" Institute of Folklore, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University Skopje. Mats Wirén Associate Professor, Computational Linguistics) at Stockholm University.

Linguistics

(Department

of

INTRODUCTION

Strindberg on International Stages and Strindberg in Translation is a collection of scholarly and critical articles looking upon Strindberg from different perspectives. Three articles are case studies about Strindberg performances in different countries, i.e. the United States, Italy and Portugal. Three further articles approach the problems of transformation of the text on stage, where one article is based on Strindberg’s texts about drama from an aesthetical point of view, another from the perspective of a Strindberg director and one article is an analysis of the to a certain extent postdramatic performances of a Swedish suburban theatre group. The postdramatic aspect is also important in an analysis of Strindberg’s Chamber Plays, followed by an article where especially the function of music is reflected upon. Translation problems have been important in all three countries discussed, especially Portugal. We have chosen Le Plaidoyer d’un Fou as a case study since the most radical consequences of translation can be seen in this text. Finally, we introduce our readers to the digital Stockholm University Strindberg Corpus. Anne-Charlotte Hanes Harvey's “Challenges in dramaturging Strindberg in the US today” is based on her work as a Strindberg translator and dramaturge in the United States. Reflecting on Sean Mathias’ production of The Dance of Death on Broadway in 2001 with Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren and David Strathairn Hanes Harvey discusses the problems of Strindberg productions in the four different categories of theatres in the United States: Academic theatre, Community theatre, Regional theatre and Commercial theatre. The gateway for Strindberg into American theatre was the Little Theatre Movement inspired by Antoine’s Théâtre Libre, and Eugene O’Neill considered him as the father of modernity. Still there are difficulties. Less is written about Strindberg’s texts than about his marriages and his writings about the battle of the sexes. Americans tend to look upon Strindberg as a misogynist, often grim and searching. Strindberg is the inspiring “troubled Nordic genius”. He is compared to Ibsen whose plays seem more efficient. Strindberg seems to be complex and difficult to Americans, a Strindberg text is sometimes a chaos of thoughts. Another problem is that the rehearsal times are shorter in the United States than in Europe.

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Introduction

According to Hanes Harvey, Strindberg should be produced with “insight and daring” and due to the demands of his dramaturgy Academic theatres seem to have the best possibilities. Regional theatres suffer under the economic recession and cannot afford to fulfil the intentions of the plays. Franco Perrelli discusses “The Heritage of Strindberg on the 21st century Italian Stages”. The first production he mentions, Luca Ronconi’s mise-en-scène of A Dream Play and Calderón’s La vida es sueño, at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, is an exception from the rule that Strindberg in Italy is “considered unilaterally nailed to the war of the sexes”. The Father, Miss Julie and The Dance of Death are his most famous plays in Italy, however. Perrelli describes Massimo Castri’s production of The Father in Cesena in 2005, which seems to be influenced by Castri’s version of Ibsen’s Ghosts, A Doll’s House and John Gabriel Borkman. Perrelli also discusses the critical reception. He finds the production “figuratively intense and admirable in its rhythms, broadened and thrusting at the same time”. In 2006, there were three productions of Miss Julie in Italy: Sergio Maifredi’s at Teatro della Tosse, where the tragic structure was emphasized, Carmelo Rifici’s at Teatro Litta in Milan and Armando Pugliese’s version, where the end of the drama was left open. Already in 2002, Pugliese had directed The Dance of Death at the Teatro della Fortuna in Fano, an excellent production according to Perrelli. Marco Bernardi’s version of the same play in Bolzano in 2006 emphasized Strindberg’s “wish to find shelter in metaphysics and spirituality”, without refraining from grotesque and tragicomic elements. Finally, Perrelli reflects upon Gabriele Lavia’s The Dance of Death in Modena in 2010 and Walter Malosti’s Miss Julie in Pinerolo in 2011, where the technical artistic work linked to light and sound seem to have been particularly impressive. Tânia Filipe e Campos starts earlier, already in the 20th century, when she investigates “Strindberg in Portugal – 109 Years on Stage”. She emphasizes that there was never a regular reception of Scandinavian literature in Portugal due to the geographical distance and that the translations were indirect, i.e. based on existing translations into NonScandinavian languages. Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was not printed until 1894 and performed in 1897. Strindberg’s reception is to a great extend dependent on Portuguese history, especially the rise and fall of the Salazar regime.

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The first play to be staged, O Pae (The Father), in 1903 was suspended after only one performance as it questioned the legitimacy of paternity and the male protagonist resembled King Carlos of Portugal. A Viagem de Pedro O Afortunado (Lucky Per’s Journey) had been translated in 1906, but the first performance was in 2002 directed by Fernanda Lapa at the National Theatre combining contemporary and baroque techniques. At the same time Ibsen’s Peer Gynt was performed at the Teatro Alberto Company A production of Miss Julie in 1960 seemed to be heavily influenced by Alf Sjöberg’s legendary Swedish version, which had been presented in Paris in 1955 and 1959. During the late Salazar era before the Carnation Revolution in 1974 another six plays were performed: Creditors (1962), The Father (1962), Pariah (1963), The Dance of Death (1969 and 1970), A Dream Play (1971) and Abu Casem’s Slippers (1971). After 1974, however, the interest in Strindberg increased and it reached its peak in the 1980s and 1990s. Luís Miguel Cintra made a remarkable production with avant-garde scenarios of The Island of the Dead in a cycle of three plays including Easter and The Father in 1985. In 1986, he staged The Ghost Sonata at Teatro du Cornucópia Luís Varela directed another Strindberg Cycle in Évora in 1996: Creditors, The Stronger and Pariah. The most popular Strindberg play in Portugal is Miss Julie and the latest performance in 2009 resembles Mike Figgis’ film. Most of them keep the conventions of naturalism and classic theatre, but a performance directed by Rui Sena in 1996 uses avant-garde technique. Today Strindberg is perceived as the first expressionist in drama. Katerina Petrovska puts her focus on his aesthetics in “The Theatrical Ideas of August Strindberg Reflected in His Plays”. Discussing documents as the preface of Miss Julie, his essay “On Contemporary Drama and Contemporary Theatre” and the motto of A Dream Play she shows how new concepts of acting as well and new functions of scenery and lighting transform drama. The actors are supposed to show emotional memories relevant to particular characters (Petrovska refers to Derrida’ concept “the alphabet of the body”). Scenography becomes a means of characterization in Strindberg’s texts and the visual space is sometimes an exact representation of the dramatized inner psychological perception. The dialectics between the public and the private is developed and Strindberg uses his knowledge of other arts. Finally, Strindberg’s open ends and principles of incompleteness are mentioned.

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Introduction

The Lithuanian director Gytis Padegimas has taken a strong interest in Strindberg for over forty years. Beginning with his early enthusiasm founded on surviving collections in old libraries from the Czarist era he tells us about his career as a Strindberg director. In 1970, Padegimas became a student at the Lunacharsky State Institute for Theatre Arts (GITIS) in Moscow. Already in 1977 he interpreted Miss Julie at the Siauliai Drama Theatre and in 1981 he directed his most successful Strindberg production so far, Creditors at The Kaunas State Drama Theatre as a diptych: two parallel versions with casts from different generations of actors. The technical difficulties seem to have been enormous but usually the performances ended with ovations. In 1992, Padegimas was invited to Sweden to direct The Stronger at a suburb theatre festival. Padegimas finishes with descriptions of two avantgarde productions after the Lithuanian declaration of independence: The Ghost Sonata at The Kaunas Drama Theatre in 1997 and Easter at the Slauliai Drama Theatre in 2009. Rikard Hoogland analyzes two Strindberg productions in his article “Strindberg in post dramatic theatre”: To Damascus – On the Ghost Train (2004) directed by Andreas Boonstra and A Dream Play (2010), directed by Pontus Stenshäll, both belonging to the suburb theatre Moment Teater in Stockholm (Gubbängen). The critics noticed affinities with German post-dramatic theatre, whereas Boonstra and Stenshäll maintained that The Actors Studio inspired them. Hoogland’s first focus is on Hans-Thies Lehmann’s Postdramatisches Theater (1999) and its thesis that modern avant-garde theatre has shifted into a new form, where the dramatic text has a completely new function. Hoogland notices an influence from Peter Szondi. Modern dramatists seem to be aware of this, e.g. an Elfriede Jelinek text is not intended to be a dominant sign in a performance. Hoogland uses five of Lehmann’s criteria of post dramatic theatre when he analyzes the Moment productions: parataxis, simultaneity, and play with the density of signs, plethora and irruption of the real. Hoogland proves that both productions include post dramatic elements but maintains that it is impossible to say whether these tendencies are strong enough to make the performances into pure post dramatic theatre. Both interpretations are placed in contemporary Sweden. This raises questions about location in time and space. Hoogland discusses the functions of the Strindberg script and other textual elements (e.g. from the popular author Ulf Lundell) from scene to scene. According to Hoogland, the two productions are good examples of post dramatic theatre and constitute radical ways to renew Strindberg and he finishes his article by

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comparing these productions to some surprisingly conventional German interpretations, e.g. Crime and Crime in Vienna in 2011. Lehmann’s criteria are also discussed in Roland Lysell’s “Metatheatrical and Postdramatical Aspects of Strindberg’s Plays”. First the texts of Storm/Thunder in the Air, The Burned Site, The Ghost Sonata, The Pelican and The Black Glove are discussed and analyzed in Aristotelian categories as plot (mythos), character (ethos) and dianoia (ideas) and then Lehmann’s categories of a post dramatic theory (parataxis, simultaneity, density of signs , plethora, musicalization etc.) are applied to the plays. In the Chamber Plays a multidimensional text is created where physical objects as well as music are not only emphasizing the words but are also elements in their own right in a dramatic structure. Not only are the destinies of the characters woven together, but also the elements of drama. Silence is just as important as repetition: “How many times have we sat here, saying the self-same things?” one of the characters exclaims. The plays are also plays where all the five senses are present, e.g. the carbolic smell after the funeral in The Pelican. In spite of Strindberg’s interest for drama tradition and contemporary theatre aesthetics, his Chamber Plays in many ways foreshadow 20th century avant-garde. From 1899 to 1912 Strindberg gathered a group of guests to Beethoven Evenings”. In her article “Between Beethoven and Schönberg: Strindberg’s Idea of Chamber Music and its Significance for and in His Chamber Plays” Hannah Hinz proves that his Beethoven interest was more than musical enthusiasm. It had a most obvious impact on the plays written in 1907 and performed at The Intimate Theatre, Thunder in the Air, The Burned Site, The Ghost Sonata and The Pelican as well as his fifth Chamber Play, The Black Glove written in 1909. Around 1900 Beethoven was an iconic cult figure in Germany and Sweden and Hinz describes Strindberg’s guests, The Beethoven Boys, and the performances in his flat – Strindberg was especially fond of having the music performed on the piano. Two of his plays involve Beethoven music: In The Ghost Sonata both Beethoven’s Geistertrio, Beethoven’s Piano Trio no. 5 D major opus 70 and his Piano Sonata no. 17 D minor, opus 31 no. 2 are of fundamental importance, both through the title of the play and through the musical structure of the drama. This musicalization opens up for a new kind of aesthetics, based on mood, atmosphere, even on pantomimic scenes, frequent pauses and silence. In The Black Glove, Strindberg goes even further. Beethoven’s music is supposed to be played from behind the scene. The subtitle of the play, “A lyrical fantasy (for the stage) in five scenes”, refers to a musical form – Chopin’s Fantaisie Improptu C sharp minor op. 6, is supposed to be

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Introduction

performed both in Thunder in the Air and in The Pelican. The setting of The Black Glove is a modern house and its tenants have “pianinos” at their disposal. In the performance of the play Beethoven’s Sonata 31, Opus 110, “L’istesso tempo di arioso”, Beethoven’s Funeral March, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 12, Opus 26 “Maestoso andante”, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 29, Opus 106 and Sinding’s Frühlingsrauschen are intended to be played. Referring to Charles Rosen’s analysis of Beethoven’s sonatas, their theatrical dramaturgy and their mood, Hinz makes the intricate functions of the music performed in the play evident. She also proves that there is an obvious contrast between the sonatas, which depict premonitions and lull the protagonist to sleep, and the Sinding melody, which is linked to light feelings, summer and happiness. Hinz also relates The Chamber Plays to Richard Wagner’s music; Strindberg does not appreciate Wagner’s dissonances, and finally she finds affinities with the fragmentation of musical continuity in Schönberg’s last movements of the String Quartet no. 2, Opus 10. Gunnel Engwall and Alexander Künzli discuss the French versions of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou as well as translations into Swedish, English and German. As Strindberg wrote the novel in French and the first version was corrected (and to a certain extent changed) by Georges Loiseau, there is no indisputable first text, which raises several questions: What is a translation? Where do we draw the line between a translation and an adaptation? How does the idea of translation change over time? Six Swedish, four German and three English translations interdependent in a very complicated way are discussed. Through two short passages chosen as examples Engwall and Künzli prove that there are simplifications at all levels (lexical, syntactic and stylistic) and normalizations. Several translations, especially an early English translation still in use, are bowdlerized. Finally Engwall and Künzli declare that there are still no faithful translations into English or German. Kristina Nilsson Björkenstam, Sofia Gustafson-Capková and Mats Wirén approach the works of Strindberg from a computational linguistic point of view. They refer to and introduce us to The Stockholm University Strindberg Corpus, consisting of seven of Strindberg’s autobiographical works with linguistic annotation. The authors describe the novels included in the corpus by keywords, they compare Strindberg’s use of emotionally charged words with selected prose of both his contemporaries and present-day authors, and finally they explore the semantic prosody of the words “kvinna” (“woman”) and “man”.

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Through this choice of articles we intend to give an overview of Strindberg’s legacy to world literature and world theatre from ten different perspectives. We hope that our ten articles read together pose the most relevant questions of Strindberg performances and Strindberg translations to modern Strindberg scholars, Strindberg enthusiasts and Strindberg directors.

SECTION I

THE THEATRICAL IDEAS OF AUGUST STRINDBERG REFLECTED IN HIS PLAYS KATERINA PETROVSKA–KUZMANOVA

Nowadays Strindberg is considered the first expressionist because of the new things he introduced into theatre. As an author and theatrical practitioner, he strived to reform the traditional people’s theatre. He realized that the theatre of his time had become a prisoner in the magical circle of light entertainment, and the drama itself had been put in the background. He opposed this practice and strived to return the lost functionality, seriousness, and authenticity of theatre. For this reason he was focused constantly on seeking a new dramatically form with an open structure and a new approach to the performance on stage. In this direction, in addition to being a practitioner (an actor, playwright, director), he showed an interest in theatre as a theorist. The kind of theatre Strindberg stands for can be seen in the preface of the drama Miss Julie, in which he defines the new concept of acting. In his treatise “On contemporary drama and contemporary theatre”, he develops the principles which exist in the new aesthetic, and apply to the building of dialogue, scenography, lighting, make-up, etc. Even though his work took place about forty years before expressionist theatre reached its culmination, he traced the way of the new theatre, the new way of scenic presentation. This happens by the means of destruction of the realistic approach in dramaturgy and existing theatrical practices. In this sense, it is said by John Gassner in “Directions of modern theatre and drama”: “When expressionists started destructing the realistic form in dramaturgy and theatrical performance (first Strindberg in his later works, and later his followers before and after the First World War) it became possible for the nature of drama and theatre to be remodelled in endlessly many ways. In each stage of this remodelling concepts or ideas of theatrical art, which have been developed as a reaction to realistic dramaturgy, have been used.” The requests for a theatre reform Strindberg made were a reflection of the time in which a surfeit of the present models of theatre was felt. In

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The Theatrical Ideas of August Strindberg Reflected in His Plays

his thoughts on the new theatre, we can often recognize the ideas of Wagner, Gordon Craig or Appia. But, it can also be said that they, in some periods of their work, independently of each other, arrived at similar conclusions. Strindberg thought that the future of theatre lies in the drama text which deals with essential questions of human behaviour, so that it will give up banality, including the unmotivated domination of the plot. Exactly these thoughts about the new language of the stage with which the new drama could be adequately articulated brought him to the finding of the necessity of a new actor. One of Strindberg’s basic requests is that the actor doesn’t copy reality. That means he shouldn’t be absorbed by the character, but enriches the character with his individuality. He allows the actor to improvise, and even change the text to a certain extent, so he says: “I want to give the actor the greatest possible freedom, because I found that it’s better to let him have his own perception of the pictures I’ve created than force a new interpretation on him which will break into pieces.” (Strindberg, 1977, p.84) He thinks that in this way, the actor has the chance to be a part of the play equally, and to have an equal responsibility for the work as the author who created it. In this respect he thought that acting creates an organic whole with the text and direction, and all three components must function together, be equally important, and above all, in harmony with each other. It can be said that solving the problem with acting is of crucial importance for the development of the new expressionist theatre. “If that essential form of acting performance doesn’t develop spontaneously, it must be created no matter the price. Here the question must be asked: who should create the new actor? What should he be like?” (Nikolova, 2000 ,p.96) The answer to the first of them follows automatically from the already made observations- if the author is the main means for expression of the director, and then the director should be the one to create the actor. The answer to the second question should be undoubtedly concrete and radical: the new actor is a man who can and must talk, not with reason, but with the body (i.e. with the rational side of his essence). The new actor is a man who substitute's ordinary language or scenic language based on the word and text with the alternative, primary, and therefore true and clear for everyone, language of the body. The formation of the new scenic language of the body is a difficult and long process. This mainly comes from the fact that it, as a radical substitute for the system of words and signs, doesn’t have an adequate predecessor from which it could get away, like the naturalistic scenic lexica does that in respect to the classical one. With

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this demand, the play is radically changed and the era of modernism in theatre begins. The request for a new actor led Strindberg to the creation of appropriate characters. The traditionally frozen character that has become similar to an automat and reflects a person who can’t develop is rather deeply tragic in the impossibility to adapt to the time. Strindberg thought that in order to stay in the modern scene, the actor has to transform, go through a psychological analysis, or, as Strindberg says, emphasize the person’s codes. (Strindberg, 1974, p.213) These considerations of his are most notable in the plays The Father and Miss Julie, in which Strindberg, while composing his characters, uses the (at the time) epochal discovery in psychology, the multiplication of the ego. The author sees the multiplication of the person in several ways. In the part of the process of the artistic creation we say that the artist goes through the process of identification with his characters, in order to achieve authenticity in the characterization, and in this way he becomes “rich with the wealthy and poor with the moneyless.” Strindberg sees the second option for multiplication of the ego in the way in which we perceive others in our everyday lives. The third possibility for multiplication of the person is consisted of the inner process within ourselves which we start with vivisection, when we discover many different unknown, and yet opposing persons. “The characters split, multiply, disappear, get stronger, fade away. But they are all ruled by one consciousness – the consciousness of the dreamer, before it there are no secrets, scruples, laws. There is no conviction or a verdict of freedom, only a description. The dream as a liberator usually plays a dark game, but the awakening comes when the pain is strongest, so the sufferer faces reality, which no matter how unsettling, still looks bright compared to the tortures of the dream.” (Strindberg, 1977, p.137) The split I is especially expressed in the play The Ghost Sonata, in which the visions of the past and the doubles of multiple characters in which they tangle and suffocate are crossed. The characters are an incarnation of committed sins (the Dead Man, the Milk Woman), as well as of the forthcoming transformations and actions (the woman – parrot is what Hummel is yet to become). Here the characters multiply in the various time layers and conversely collide in the past through the dense dough of time, whereby their false and unrealized identities fall apart. In this case the relation of the characters with their own past, identity and apparitions is interwoven with his social relations. The confrontation with the others leads to the identity decay of the character. The method is similar in the play The Road to Damascus, in

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which there is only one character, the Unknown, while the rest are only projections of his consciousness. The actor transforms his encounters with death into ‘poetry’, i.e. acting, through the synthesis of memories from a series of such street scenes. Different accidents that he or she has witnessed, and which repeat themselves, gradually become superimposed, thus enabling the actor to reenact on stage the essential emotion memories relevant to a particular play. (Rokem, 2009, p.169) The composition of Strindberg’s dramas as dramadream and the process of their execution uncover the contradiction between the principle of purely subjective expression of the self and using the language as a main means for its materialization. Solving this contradiction, he formulates a new dramatic language, a new alphabet – “the alphabet of the body.” (Derrida, 1978, p.98) That is clearly obvious in The Ghost Sonata, where the monolog I appear dressed as dramatis personae in the character of The Old Hummel. He says: “Everyone. At my age man knows everyone…but no one knows me really – I deal with people’s destiny!” (Strindberg, 1977, p.158) In order to express himself maximally in this case, he should pour out his soul into the people and objects on the stage. The gesture is what emotionalizes and turns him into his ecstatically lively medium. The actor and the environment are synchronized at the edge of vitalism. That gives the play the form of a dream in which the objects and the dead come to life and are moved by a greater power into foreign, frightening forms, poses and actions. A Dream Play (Ett Drömspel) is not a game of people themselves, but an epical game for people. Here Indra’s daughter is shown how that usually happens with them. She is developed with an epical distance towards humanity whereby the sentence “A shame for people” appears as a leitmotif. Seeing humanity as an object, Strindberg shows the characters as an embodiment of their profession, which can be best observed in the words of the Lawyer: “Look at these walls: isn’t it as if all the sins damaged the wallpapers! Look at these papers on which I register the committed justices! Look at me! (…) See how I look and do you think that with the look of a criminal I can get the love of a woman? Or do you think that anyone would want as a friend him who should pay all debts of the city, every single debt.” (Strindberg, 1977, p.157) A significant aspect of the Strindberg legacy is connected to the dialectics between the public and the private. One very important aspect of this legacy is its application in the major theories of acting, which in turn have influenced contemporary playwriting. Moreover, there is a significant dialectical interaction between these two poles. Street scenes are public events, just as the theatre is. The actor

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studies public events, like accidents in the street, in order to transpose them to another public event: the performance, which takes place in front of and for an audience? What is ‘accidentally’ public in the street accident is purposefully so in the theatre. The actor studies how to create the appearance of ‘accidence’ in his deliberate public presentation or demonstration. But these are only the most apparent similarities. What at the same time actually takes place is a personal or private tragedy: someone has caused the death of another person by an accident which could have been avoided. The street scene presents a private event in the public arena. This is a tension which Strindberg explored, and which has become crucial for modern drama and theatre. (Rokem, 2009, p.169)

Even though Strindberg with his stances on theatre doesn’t create a theory on acting like Stanislavski or Brecht, his thoughts still give a good basis to allow us to put him in the line of authors who contributed to innovations in acting performance, who are revolutionary and far ahead of their time. This is especially clear in the finding that his model of acting in a way announces the future concept of Brecht’s actor. In the creation of the concept of a new theatre, Strindberg applied his knowledge of other arts, transferred them to theatre by method of experiment, implemented them and transformed them into practice. He, seeing the lack of functionality of the scenography that was practiced in theatre, strives towards the new concept in determining the role of scenography and lighting in the performance. The ideas of a reduced or picturesque scenography come directly from Strindberg’s dramaturgy of essence and the psychological topic he will dedicate to. In his letter to Zola, Strindberg says: “As you can see, I took the freedom of putting before your judgment the drama written after an experimental formula, where the inner plot is more highly valued than theatrical tricks, the décor is minimized, and I respected the unity of time as much as I could.” (Strindberg, 1964, p.94) In the new dramaturgy the stage is a universe with qualities, and not a primal home of men. It’s reduced to, first, darkness, and then a podium covered with black canvas, with black curtains which limit different parts of the space on the podium. The objects present, usually only a few, are strongly and unusually deformed with impossible proportions, the walls and windows are drawn on the canvas and the curtains are lines which intersect in weird angles and are enriched with shadows. In this sense he says: “With one table and two chairs it is possible to represent the most complex conflicts life creates.” He transmits this one of his opinions in the form of a play in the chamber performance The Pelican, in which the décor is reduced to a prop with a symbolic meaning, for example, the rocking chair. In the preface to Miss Julie he says:

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The Theatrical Ideas of August Strindberg Reflected in His Plays As for the scenery, I have borrowed the asymmetry and cropped framing of impressionist painting, and believe I have thereby succeeded in strengthening the illusion; for not being able to see the whole room or all the furniture leaves us free to conjecture, that is, our imagination is set in motion and we complete the picture ourselves. (Strindberg, 1977, p.83)

He forces the spectator to imagine the extension of the décor which on the stage is hinted at only partially, an angle of a stove, the edge of a table, or three-quarters of an exit. The outside experience mustn’t influence the inner one, but rather highlight it. This way, in The Father and Miss Julie, the décor gets a different function, other than the realistic ambience of the play. In the play The Father the first thing that the spectator notices is the weapon on the wall and the hanger with the captain’s uniform, and the only weapon used in the play is the psychological one. In the play Miss Julie the count’s shoes replace his character on the stage, and the bell with which he calls for Jean has a profound effect on the characters. Scenography becomes a means of characterization of the character and introduces the spectator to the inner atmosphere of the play. I also came up with a single décor, firstly, because I wanted to make the actors become one with their surroundings, and secondly, to stop the décor of luxury… (Strindberg, 1977, p.83)

In the line of one-act plays he created in 1982, the marks of the décor get two meanings, expressed through remarks and dialogue. The dialogical painting of space brings the décor to life, so that it gives us the possibility for two-sided viewing: with our eyes we see the outer space, through the dialogue we see how it affects the characters. This can be most clearly seen in To Damascus. In this play in the remarks the visible décor is described in one way, and in the dialogue in another, because the characters experience it completely differently. In the one-act play Storm the author tries out simulative décor, on the façade of the house we see the events that take place. In this play the colour of the objects reflects the inner atmosphere; there are the red curtains, the red cloud in the sky, and the ember of the lit cigarette. Strindberg, while working in the Intimate Theatre, tried to eliminate the flaws on the exaggerated realism in the scenography. He experimented with curtain instead of décor on the wall, and he would keep doing this until the end of his practical work in theatre. But, after the performance of To Damascus, Strindberg realized that the drawn curtain couldn’t represent movement, so he decided for playing exclusively with colours and light on an empty stage, because it shows a reality different from the one we know. In its representation on stage he is looking for a styled beauty. In relation to lighting he would say:

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Another perhaps desirable innovation would be the removal of the footlights. I understand that the purpose of lighting from below is to make the actors' faces fatter, but I would like to ask: why all actors have to have fat faces? Does not this under lighting obliterate a great many features in the lower parts of the face, especially around the jaws, distort the shape of the nose, and cast shadows over the eyes? (Strindberg, 1977, pp.83–84)

The lighting, which in expressionism becomes the director’s principal instrument for composing of the act, is made of many colourful beams impossible in nature and material reality whose main function is to show and send back into the darkness the events, people, and facial regions, with which simultaneity and succession are ensured. The theatrical space in the drama-dream becomes reduced and symbolic in the own function of the dramatically form of the dream. It can be easily transformed following the logic of the dream and the unpredictable movement of time. The visible space is more exactly the dramatized inner psychological perception of the space surrounding us; depending on mood it expands or gets smaller and changes form, colour and quality. The same sense is followed by the relation to the costumes, which become in the dramas like ghosts because they underline the timeless character of dreams. This shows that Strindberg is an innovator on the stage, just as much as in the play. Strindberg chooses this active principle of taking part in the artistic work instead of passive observation, because he thinks that’s exactly what contains the essence of the open work: the active perception of the spectator is not finite. The principle of incompleteness applies, according to Strindberg, mostly to the dialogue and characterization, and then to time and space. It comes to the incompleteness that we encounter every day in life, in the fragments of events, words, memories, and perceptions of people, everything that our worldview is consisted of. In this way, modern theatre becomes a chronicle of the contemporary world in the lively pictures that give us the limits of the work, silhouettes of people, portraits of the epoch, important events, and even the current questions of the time. In the preface of Miss Julie, he says: “I made an attempt. If it doesn’t work, there is still time to start over.” (Strindberg, 1977, p.85) All the novelties that Strindberg introduced to theatre, above all breaking the autonomy of the character, introducing the verbal theme instead of a functional dialogue, and leaving the theatrical scene for the expressionist one, are regarded as a merit without which contemporary theatre couldn’t be imagined by some, and by others as the first articulated and convincing proof for establishing relations between the ambitions of contemporary authors and the theatre that stands at disposal. Strindberg himself didn’t find the way to the future, but discovered the most hidden

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depths of the human psyche, and with that the by the time unknown roads and forms in dramaturgy. That’s why Strindberg’s dramas will always be the subject of interest of contemporary theatre, mostly because his symbolic games are a constant challenge for a new scenic expression. T. Wilder claimed that Strindberg is the source of the overall modern drama. His influence carries on, a fact that is claimed by a large number of playwrights, such as T. Williams, E. Jonesco, and H. Pinter. And Ronald Harvud says: Ibsen and Strindberg are master bricklayers of 20th century Theatre. All signs show that theatre has big changes ahead of it. Theatre had the task of facing reality, but not with a simply expressive material, which led to the search for a new, different theatrical language of the opposite side of reason – the language of symbolism. (p. 281-282)

This can be observed in the efforts to release the theatrical scene from the limits of the classical form, and the freedom which is given to the actors by the stenographer as well. But, just as well, by application of various means which are characteristic for film, circus, classical or medieval theatre on the modern scene, he opened the road to its constant change.

Abstract Today Strindberg is perceived as the first Expressionist for his efforts to show that the new subjective person can create his or her own drama that could express ineffable content. He sought a new dramatic form with an open structure and stands for reform of the traditional civic theatre. His thoughts on the transformation of drama and theatre go in two directions to the new definition of the concept of acting and determine the role of scenery and lighting. The formation of the new scenic language of the body is a difficult and long process. This mainly comes from the fact that it, as a radical substitute for the system of words and signs, it doesn’t have an adequate predecessor from which it could get away, like the naturalistic scenic lexica does in respect to the classical one. With this demand, the play is radically changed and the era of modernism in theatre begins. That’s why Strindberg’s dramas will always be the subject of interest of contemporary theatre, mostly because his symbolic games are a constant challenge for a new scenic expression.

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Bibliography Derrida Jacques, (ed.) Writing and Difference. Trans. A. Bass. London, 1978. Gassner John, Directions in Modern theatre and Drama, New York, 1965. Harvud Ronald, Istorija pozorišta, (Gjorgje Krivokapic), Clio, Beograd, 1998. Nikolova Kamejija, Expressionist Theatre and the Language of the Body, University Kliment Ohridski, Sofija, 2000. Strindberg August, “Sur le drame moderne et le théâtre moderne”, Théâtre cruel et théâtre mystique (Maurice Cravier), Gallimard, Paris, 1964. —. Selected Plays, Skopje, 1977. —. Zones of the spirit: a book of thoughts, Haskell House Publishers, New York, 1974. Szondi Peter, Theory of Modern Drama (ed. Michael Hays) Cambridge, Polity Press, 1987.

STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY STRINDBERG CORPUS: CONTENT AND POSSIBILITIES KRISTINA NILSSON BJÖRKENSTAM, SOFIA GUSTAFSON-CAPKOVÁ AND MATS WIRÉN

1. Introduction The Stockholm University Strindberg Corpus (SUSC) consists of approximately 400 000 tokens and is annotated for parts-of-speech (PoS), including morphological analysis and lemmas. The linguistic annotation follows the Stockholm-Umeå Corpus (Källgren 2006) which is commonly regarded as a reference corpus for Swedish. Furthermore, the annotated texts have been converted to XML which makes the corpus searchable with analysis tools such as Xaira1 and AntConc.2 This allows for e.g., searching for keywords, concordances with a specific word form or lemma, for pattern matching (including PoS), and collocation extraction. In this paper we describe the content of the corpus, how it was constructed, and the linguistic annotation. Furthermore, we discuss how approaches in computational linguistics can be of use within the area of stylistic and literary analysis, and illustrate the possibilities of a corpusbased approach by describing three quantitative studies. We propose the use of computational methods, not as a substitute to other kinds of literary analysis, but as a set of tools for exploration and discovery.

1

Xaira. URL: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/rts/xaira/ Last checked: 2012-10-11 AntConc. URL: http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/index.html Last checked: 2012-10-11

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2. Content The current version of the corpus includes seven works by Strindberg which can all be classified as autobiographical (Robinson 2008):3 x x x x x x

Tjänstekvinnans son (The son of a servant, 1886-87) Han och hon (He and She, 1919) Inferno (Inferno, 1897)4 Legender, Jakob brottas (Legends and Jacob Wrestles, 1898) Fagervik och Skamsund (Fairhaven and Foulstrand, 1902) Ensam (Alone, 1903)

We are aware of three other electronic collections of Strindberg's works: Projekt Runeberg,5 Litteraturbanken,6 and Språkbanken.7 The first two collections consist of e-text, whereas the data available through Språkbanken Korp, a web concordance interface, is annotated for PoS, lemma, lexiconsemantic information, and dependency relations. While these collections are valuable resources, our corpus is an important addition because, unlike the first two, it is linguistically annotated, and unlike the third, the data is available for download and thus can be processed using the researcher's software of choice. Even more importantly, researchers can add their analyses as new layers of annotation of the corpus.

2.1 Data pre-processing The starting point was the digitized volumes of Samlade skrifter av August Strindberg (Collected Works, published 1912-1921), available from Projekt Runeberg, Linköping University.8 The plain text files for each of 3

(Robinson 2008) includes En dåres försvarstal (A Madman's Defense), Klostret (The Cloister), and Ockulta dagboken (The Occult Diary) in Strindberg's autobiographical writing. Because we do not at present have access to these works in electronic form, they are not included in the corpus. 4 Inferno and Legender were written in French and translated to Swedish by Eugene Fahlstedt. 5 Projekt Runeberg, URL: http://runeberg.org/ Last checked: 2013-10-25 6 Litteraturbanken, URL: http://litteraturbanken.se/ Last checked: 2013-10-25 7 Språkbanken Korp, URL: http://spraakbanken.gu.se/korp/ Last checked: 201310-25 8 Projekt Runeberg, Strindbergs samlade skrifter, URL: http://runeberg.org/strindbg/ Last checked: 2013-10-25

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the seven works were pre-processed by removing headers, footers, and page numbers. The novels were structured into chapters, paragraphs, sentences, and words. In addition, other segments, such as quotations, poems, and footnotes, were annotated. Pre-processing also included correcting OCR errors.

2.2 Linguistic annotation The texts were annotated with part-of-speech, morphological analysis and lemma form using STagger,9 a tagger that has been evaluated against the manually corrected annotation of the SUC corpus with an accuracy of 96.6% (Östling 2013). The results of the tagging were semi-automatically corrected. The most prevalent error types were archaic word forms such as plural nouns in masculine form, e.g., gossarne (“the boys”) and plural forms of verbs, e.g., gingo (“went”), foreign words (in English, French, German, Danish, and Latin), and proper names. The part of speech tag set is based on the SUC tag set (Källgren 2006). The tags are in PAROLEformat, and a key to the PAROLE codes is provided with the corpus.

2.3 Corpus format The pre-processed, segmented, and annotated texts were converted to XML format. This XML-encoding, presented in Figure 1, is not meant for human readers but makes the data searchable. Corpus search tools, such as Xaira and AntConc, include file view options where the XML data is converted to plain text while still allowing the user to search for combinations of word forms, morph -syntactic information, and lemmas.

9

STagger, URL: http://www.ling.su.se/nlp/stagger Last checked: 2013-10-25

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Stockholm University Strindberg Corpus: Content and Possibilities

Figure 1: Example XML structure of a sentence from SUSC, with lemma (bf), part of speech and morph-syntactic analysis in Parole format (ps), and surface form for each word.

3. Possibilities In this section we give three examples of corpus-based approaches with use of SUSC. Study 1 is based on keywords. Study 2 makes use of word distribution and study 3 exploits semantic prosody. All three studies show how a corpus-based approach can be used in order to extend traditional text analysis.

3.1 Study 1: Describing the contents of SUSC by keywords The content of a text can (to a degree) be described by the words that occur in that text. One way of exploring a collection of texts is to make a word list of surface forms or lemmas ranked by frequency for each text,

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and compare those lists. Moon (2007) showed that by dividing word lists into frequency bands identified from reference corpora and examining the most recurrent words within each band, both high-frequency and lowfrequency words can be included in the analysis. A commonly used approach to find the most salient words of a text is by comparing the text to a reference corpus of texts written by other authors and extracting the keywords of the text (Stubbs 2005, O’Halloran 2007). We use a reference corpus of texts written by the same author, in order to highlight salient topics and themes for each of the novels, compared to the rest. Using the corpus tool AntConc , we extract the keywords in each work in SUSC by comparing that work to the rest of SUSC; for example, Ensam is compared to Tjänstekvinnans son, Han och hon, Inferno, Legender, and Fagervik och Skamsund. Below, the ten most salient keywords for each text in SUSC are listed, starting with Tjänstekvinnans son. For each keyword, the log-likelihood value and the frequency are listed in brackets. If the log- likelihood value is greater than 6.63, the probability of the result happening by chance is less than 1% (p < 0.01), that is, we are 99% certain of the result (Dunning 1993). Johan (1053.5; 622), han (588.0; 2585), var (577.2; 1741), Han (515.292; 804), hade (173.2; 777), fadren (148.9; 118), skolan (132.7; 71), Hakon (113.3; 50), honom (110.4; 635), Fritz (108.6; 52). Table 1: Keywords for Tjänstekvinnans son The ten highest ranking keywords for Tjänstekvinnans son include the names of Strindberg’s alter- ego Johan and his friend Fritz, the noun fadren (“the father”), and the masculine third person pronouns han (“he”) and honom (“him”). Hakon (Jarl) is the subject of a thesis put forth by Johan. This novel describes the childhood and youth of Johan, as evident by the keyword skolan (“the school”). Other highly significant keywords signalling a childhood story are barnen (“the children”), modren (“the mother”), and gossarne (“the boys”). Er (1814.9; 533), Ni (1614.0; 516), jag (1562.8; 2446), dig (1039.4; 536), du (762.5; 681), mig (612.6; 1203), skall (454.9; 398), ej (409.1; 518), älskar (349.3; 134), Jag (327.5; 484). Table 2: Keywords for Han och hon

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Han och hon consists of letters, mainly between the two lovers Johan (Strindberg) and Maria (Siri von Essen). The letter format is reflected in the set of the ten highest ranking keywords, consisting of first (jag, mig, Jag) and second person pronouns (Ni, du, dig), the verb skall (“shall”, “will”), the negation ej (“not”). The only verb among the ten is älskar (“love”) in the present tense. mig (476.0; 946), min (317.8; 462), jag (206.3; 1270), mitt (167.5; 229), av (147.5; 686), mina (146.9; 161), Jag (72.3; 275), har (64.4; 367), ned (61.0; 44), makterna (54.6; 27). Table 3: Keywords for Inferno Inferno, Strindberg’s description of a psychological crisis, has the most coherent set of significant keywords of the texts in SUSC: of the ten most significant, six are first person pronouns (mig, jag, Jag) and first person possessives (min, mitt, mina). The only verb in this list is har (“have”, present tense). The preposition ned (“down”) occurs in the context of objects falling down (6 occurrences), somebody sitting down (3), and physically or metaphorically attacking something (1 and 2, respectively). Important to Inferno are the mysterious forces that guide Strindberg’s alter ego, and the noun makterna (“the powers”) occurs frequently in contexts where he believes himself saved (examples 1, 2) or condemned by the powers (3, 4), or when he discusses the intentions of the powers (5), for example: 1. ordningen, förvissad om att vara benådad av makterna, vilka tyckas ha uppskjutit straffen 2. samma väg jag kommit, inom mig tackande makterna för att de varnat mig, så viss var jag 3. jag befann mig i helvetet! förjagad dit av makterna. Vem var då min mästare? 4. skulle jag ha begripit att jag fann mig av makterna dömd till exkrement-helvetet . 5. den rörelsen, ingenting att ångra, eftersom makterna ha så velat, att vår väg skulle gå fram Among the significant keywords of Inferno are numerous words related to spiritual matters (Evige (“Eternal”), helvetet (“hell”), demoner (“demons”), försynen (“providence”), korset (“the cross”), slump (“chance”), sammanträffande (“coincidence”)), but also to (pseudo-)science and alchemy (guld (“gold”), experiment (“experiment”), svavel (“sulphur”)).

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jag (223.8; 1297), mig (181.2; 754), la (104.6; 46), av (101.2; 645), har (62.0; 367), rue (57.4; 34), Swedenborg (50.417; 34), natten (46.3; 42), mina (43.1; 112), min (38.3; 284). Table 4: Keywords for Legender. Like Inferno, Legender centers round a tumultuous period in Strindberg’s life. Among the most significant keywords for Legender are first person personal pronouns and possessives (jag, mig, mina, min). Other significant keywords for Legender are the French words la and rue (referring to addresses in Paris), the preposition av, the verb har (“have”, present tense), the proper name Swedenborg, and the noun natten (“the night”). han (642.3; 1617), hon (531.1; 485), Torkel (192.8; 53), hennes (128.6; 131), gick (123.1; 131), Och (118.8; 281), hade (114.7; 433), sig (110.7; 633), frun (101.8; 38), Fagervik (98.2; 27). Table 5: Keywords for Fagervik och Skamsund In the collection of short stories Fagervik och Skamsund, the most significant keywords are third person personal (han, hon), possessive (hennes) and reflexive pronouns (sig), the proper names Torkel and Fagervik, and the noun frun (“Madam”). The most high-ranking verbs are gick (“went”, “walked”) and hade (“had”). Sentence initial Och (“And”) is more frequent in Fagervik than in the other novels, although it occurs in all of them. jag (243.0; 803), ensamheten (40.4; 19), tjuta (36.2; 8), Vargarne (31.8; 6), förbi (26.7; 19), väggarna (26.2; 6), ty (25.0; 93), människor (24.8; 29), visserligen (23.4; 15), Ahasverus (21.2; 5). Table 6: Keywords for Ensam. As can be predicted from the title, among the most significant keywords for Ensam is the noun ensamheten (“the loneliness”). Other significant nouns are Vargarne (“The wolves”), väggarna (“the walls”), and människor (“people”). The only verb among the highest ranked words is tjuta (“howl”), which occurs in contexts describing what dogs (1 occurrence) or wolves (7 occurrences, all in a poem) do. The name Ahasverus also occurs in a poem. In Ensam, the adverb förbi (“past”) occurs 15 times with the meaning of someone passing something by, and 4

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times as in something having ended. The frequent use of the conjunction ty (“for”, “because”), with increasing frequency towards the end of Ensam, and the adverb visserligen (“indeed”) suggests that this is an argumentative or reasoning text. We argue that the keyword occurrences to a high degree mirror important aspects of Strindberg’s biography. The keywords reveal relations and emotions that can be seen as representative for the different periods during Strindberg’s life. While such major themes become visible by reading the texts, in addition, the keyword approach offers a clear quantitative foundation for further analysis.

3.2 Study 2: Emotionally charged words Strindberg is said to be an author with emotionally charged language. For our second study, we have carried out a close study of some emotionally charged words in Strindberg’s novels. As a starting point we have selected one of the keywords from the study 1, ÄLSKA (“to love”) together with the antonym HATA (“to hate”) and formed two sets of emotionally charged words. We identify all surface forms of following two sets of positively and negatively charged verbs: x ÄLSKA (“to love”), DYRKA (“to worship”), BEUNDRA (“to admire”) x HATA (“to hate”), AVSKY (“to abhor”), FÖRAKTA (“to despise”) First, we explore Strindberg’s use of emotionally charged words through frequency and distribution over the works included in SUSC. Second, we investigate whether Strindberg used these words more often than other authors, both contemporary and present-day did. 3.2.1 Word frequency and dispersion over the collection The most frequent of the positive verbs is ÄLSKA, which occurs 324 times in SUSC. This means that, if we assume that there are about 250 words per printed page, this word occurs on every 49th page. The most frequent negative verb HATA occurs 88 times, or on every 179th page. Table 7, below, shows the frequency of these words in SUSC.

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Table 7: Frequency of emotionally charged words in SUSC While the total frequency is interesting, these words are not evenly distributed in SUSC. Figures 2 and 3 (below) show the distribution of positive and negative words over each novel included in the corpus. The most striking observation is that Han och hon is the novel where both the positively and the negatively charged words are used the most frequently (and in this novel älska was one of the top 10 keywords). A second observation is that in Ensam, there are only two occurrences of the positive verbs (beundra in the context of admiring art, and älska in the context of loving one’s child), while there are 12 occurrences of the negative verbs: avsky (1), förakta (2), hata (9). The novels Han och hon and Fagervik och Skamsund, with higher frequencies of (mainly positive) emotionally charged words was written during, and centers round, Strindberg’s relationships with Siri von Essen and Frida Uhl, respectively, while Ensam describes the author’s alter-ego living alone.

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Figure 2: Distribution of ÄLSKA, DYRKA, BEUNDRA (plot produced with AntConc).

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Figure 3: Distribution of HATA, AVSKY, FÖRAKTA (plot produced with AntConc).

3.2.2 Frequency compared to other authors Next, we will compare Strindberg’s use of these words to other authors, both his contemporaries and ours. For this comparison, we use resources provided by Språkbanken10 as reference corpora, grouped as follows: x Strindberg's contemporaries: novels published between 1830 and 1930 by both male and female authors, e.g., C.J.L Almqvist, Fredrika Bremer, Victoria Benedictson, Hjalmar Bergman, Selma Lagerlöf, Hjalmar Söderberg, and Viktor Rydberg. Total: 4.3 million words.

10

Språkbanken. URL: http://spraakbanken.gu.se/swe/resurser Last checked: 201310-25.

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x Our contemporaries: four sets of novels published between 1976 and 1999: Bonniersromaner I (1976-1977), Bonniersromaner II (19801981), SUC-romaner (1992), Norstedtsromaner (1999). Total: 18 million words. Because the data sets are of different sizes we calculate the normalized frequency (as per million words) for each word in each data set. This allows for comparisons between the data sets. However, a difference in frequency between two data sets may be due to chance, and therefore we test the statistical significance of the difference by calculating the loglikelihood value for each result. A log- likelihood value of 3.84 or more means that the probability of the result being due to chance is less than 5% (p < 0.05), that is, the result is statistically significant (Dunning 1993). All results presented below are highly significant (with a log-likelihood value over 6.63; p < 0.01).

Figure 4: The use of ÄLSKA and HATA (normalized frequencies: per million words) by Strindberg, compared to his contemporaries (1800) and present-day authors (1900).

The diagram on the left in figure 4 shows the normalized frequency of all surface forms of ÄLSKA in the works of Strindberg, the set of works by 19th century authors (labelled 1800) and 20th century authors (1900). The differences are highly significant (p < 0.0001): ÄLSKA occurs more often in SUSC than in the two reference corpora. The diagram on the right shows that the surface forms of HATA occurs more often in SUSC than in the reference corpora. Again, this result is highly significant (p < 0.0001).

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Figure 5: Positive verbs DYRKA and BEUNDRA (left). Negative verbs AVSKY and FÖRAKTA (right). Normalized frequencies (per million words) by Strindberg, his contemporaries (labelled 1800) and present-day authors (1900).

The normalized frequencies of all surface forms of DYRKA (“to worship”) and BEUNDRA (“to admire”) are shown in the diagram to the left in Figure 5. Both words occur more frequently in SUSC than in the reference corpora written by Strindberg’s contemporaries and our present-day authors. In the diagram to the right, we see the same pattern for the negatively charged words AVSKY (“to detest”) and FÖRAKTA (“to despise”). 3.2.3 Contexts of ÄLSKA The high frequency of ÄLSKA in SUSC prompts the question in which types of contexts this word is used. We first attempt to answer this question by looking at the sequential word patterns (n-grams) in which ÄLSKA occurs. Such patterns are a means of approximating phrases (c.f., Starcke 2006). We extracted word patterns (consisting of two to five words) from SUSC with the AntConc n-gram tool. Pronouns occur in four out of the five most frequent two-word patterns with ÄLSKA (ranked by frequency). The only non-pronoun pattern is att älska (“to love”).

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Table 8: The most frequent two-word patterns of ÄLSKA in SUSC. If we look for longer patterns of three or four words, we still find mostly patterns with pronouns (e.g. jag älskar dig, att jag älskar Er) with decreasing frequency. If we look for patterns of five words we find only 11 patterns in all of SUSC (each pattern occurring only twice): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

du att jag älskar dig (2) jag älskar dig! Och du (2) jag älskar Er så att (2) jag älskar honom, men jag (2) måste säga att jag älskar (2) O, vad jag älskar Er (2) sant att du älskar mig (2) skall jag älska dig så (2) älska mig! Ja älskade! älska (2) älskar Er, älskar Er, älskar (2) är sant att du älskar (2)

These sequential patterns show a strong relationship between ÄLSKA and personal pronouns, but we are also interested in non-sequential relationships between ÄLSKA and other lexical items. To this end, we use statistical measures to find collocations of ÄLSKA, that is, frequently cooccurring words within a window of n words. We used the AntConc collocation tool to extract collocations with two measures of collocation strength, Mutual Information (MI) and t-score, on a window of four words to the left, and four words to the right of ÄLSKA. These two measures typically result in somewhat different sets of collocations for the same word on the same data: MI tends to find collocations with rare words, while t-score finds collocations with frequent words. Therefore, following Church et al. (1994), we select the overlap

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between the sets of MI and t-score collocations for ÄLSKA (with threshold values of more than 3 for the MI value, and more than 2 for the t-score value). The result is listed below, grouped by word class: x NOUNS guds (“god’s”), gud (“god”), kvinna (“woman”), barnet (“the child”), barn (“child”), kärlek (“love”) x PRONOUNS min (“my”), du (“you”+subj), dig (“you”+obj), din (“your”+utr), ditt (“your”+neutr), henne (“her”), ni (“you”+subj plur), er (“you”+obj plur), varandra (“each other”) x VERBS tro (“to believe”), tror (“believe”), vet (“know”) x ADVERB varför (“why”) x ADJECTIVES älskade (“beloved”), egen (“own”), lilla (“little”) x INTERJECTIONS farväl (“goodbye”), tack (“thank you”), förlåt (“forgive”), ja (“yes”) The sequential patterns showed a strong relationship between personal pronouns and ÄLSKA. In addition, the collocations show that objects (denoted by nouns) related to ÄLSKA includes “woman”, “child”, and “god”, and that related actions (denoted by verbs) are “believe” and “know”. We find that the figures from our study of emotionally charged words in Strindberg’s autobiographical works strongly support the view of Strindberg as an author with emotionally charged language. In addition, our results also mirror tendencies over time in Strindberg’s emotional life as communicated by the autobiographical works. Findings like these are interesting complements to a closer reading of the texts.

3.3 Study 3: Semantic prosody of KVINNA and MAN Inspired by the findings in study 1 and 2, which indicate the presence of emotional relations in Strindberg’s autobiographical works, we conducted a study on how Strindberg describes women and men in his texts. Semantic prosody, first proposed by Louw (1993), can be described as the semantic colouring a word gets by frequent co-occurrence with other words of a specific semantic category (Wynne 2006). For our final study, we explore the semantic prosody of KVINNA (“woman”) and MAN (“man”) in SUSC. First, we extract and analyze compounds with KVINNA and MAN, and second, we extract and categorize the most significant collocations of these words.

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3.3.1 Compounds We used the corpus search tool Xaira to search for compounds with KVINNA (“woman”) or MAN (“man”) as either a prefix or a suffix. To this end, we searched for words tagged as noun and matching one of the following regular expressions (where \b means word boundary): x KVINNA o Prefix: /\b(kvinna|kvinno)/ o Suffix: /(kvinna|kvinnor|kvinnan|kvinnorna)s?\b/ x MAN o Prefix: /\b(man|män)/ o Suffix: /(man|män|mannen|männen)s?\b/ This query resulted in lists of concordances, which were further analyzed manually. The frequencies are low, both of each compound and of such compounds as a set, but the tendencies are clear. Compounds with MAN are almost exclusively lexicalized forms, while there are few lexicalized compounds with KVINNA. The list of lexicalized compounds with KVINNA includes kvinnofrågan (lit. “the womanquestion”), kvinnokroppen (“the female body”), and tjänstekvinna (“female servant”).11 The list of lexicalized compounds with MAN is longer, and includes e.g., gentleman (“gentleman”), hedersman (lit. “honour-man”, an honourable man), herreman (“gentleman”), ämbetsman (“official”), uppsyningsman (“inspector”), ålderman (“elder”), vetenskapsman (“scientist”), and överman “master”). Few of the compounds with MAN are negative; one such example is avundsman (lit. “envy-man”, an envious man). In contrast, compounds with KVINNA are emotionally charged and mostly negative, for example: x kvinnodyrkan (lit. “woman-worship”); kvinnohat (“woman-hate”) x kvinnodjävul (lit. “woman-devil”, “she-devil”) 12 Tjänstekvinna only occurs in the phrase tjänstekvinnans son (“the son of a servant”). x primitivkvinnans (lit. “primitive-woman’s”), vildkvinnans (lit. “wild-woman’s”) x kvinnodömet (lit. “woman-dome”, the reign of women), 11 Tjänstekvinna only occurs in the phrase tjänstekvinnans son (“the son of a servant-woman”).

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kvinnosidan (lit. “woman-side”, the party of women) x kvinnotungor (lit. “woman-tongues”) 3.3.2 Collocations and semantic categories of KVINNA and MAN We extracted collocations of all surface forms of KVINNA and MAN using the AntConc collocation tool (measure MI, a window of four words to the left and right of the node word). Below, the collocations with a collocation measure above 3 are divided into a combination of semantic and grammatical categories. Collocations of MAN: x Personal traits: halvung (“youngish”), rättfärdige (“righteous”), unge (“young”), egyptisk (“Egyptian”), handlingens (“the action’s”, as in “man of action”), vise (“wise”), store (“great”), hygglig (“good”), framstående (“prominent”), rike (“rich”+masc), lille (“little”), hederlig (“honourable”), unga (“young”+pl), rik (“rich”), ung (“young”), intelligens (“intelligence”), ära (“honour”) x Personal attributes: utseendet (“the appearance”) x Feelings: vrede (“wrath”) x Family: familjeförsörjare (“family provider”), äkta (“wedded”), kvinnan (“woman”) x Spiritual: andans (as in “man of the cloth”), Evige (“Eternal”) x Other: Plutark (“Plutarch”), brutet (“broken”), egenskaper (“traits”), osynlige (“invisible”), skulden (“guilt”), misstankar (“suspicions”), tidens (“time’s”), kronor (“money”), x Verb: gissa (“guess”), kurtiserade (“courted”), erfarit (“experienced”), erfar (“experience”), slutade (“stopped”, “ended”) x Function words: denne, Denne (“this”), per (as in “per man”) Collocations of KVINNA: x Personal traits: skönaste (“the most beautiful”), ful (“ugly”), rå (“raw”) x Personal attributes: barhuvad (“bareheaded”), hår (“hair”) x Feelings: älskade (“loved”, “beloved”), älska (“to love”), älskat (“loved”), föraktar (“despise”), kärleken (“love”, noun), känslor (“feelings”) x Family: förbindelse (“relationship”), maka (“wife”), moder (“mother”), mannens (“the man’s”), skild (“divorced”, “separated”), gift (“married”), mannen (“the man”)

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x Spiritual: familjehelgd (“the sanctity of the family”), korsfästa (“crucify”), korsfäst (“crucified”) , gud (“god”), vördnad (“awe”) x Emancipation: oavhängiga (“independent”), arbetsmarknad (“labor market”), fria (“free”) x Other: dubbla (“double”), tavla (”painting”), sidor (”sides”), värd (”entitled to”), talan (“say”), blod (“blood”) x Verb: ingick (“entered into”), funnits (“has been”), gällde (“related to”), född (“born”), tillhörde (“belonged to”), stiger (“to rise”) x Function words: allmänhet (part of idiom: “in general”), vissa (“some”) The semantic categorization of the collocations for MAN shows that there are many, mainly positive, collocations describing the personal traits of MAN: e.g., rättfärdige (“righteous”), vise (“wise”), store (“great”), framstående (“prominent”). The verbs indicate that MAN is an agent of courtship and experiences. A number of collocations of MAN are associated with negative feelings, e.g., vrede (“wrath”), skulden (“guilt”), misstankar (“suspicions”). The collocations associated with family describe the role of the man as family provider and husband. In contrast, there are few and mainly negative collocations describing the personal traits of KVINNA, related to appearance (skönaste, “the most beautiful”; ful, “ugly”)), and behaviour (rå, “raw”). A long list of collocations describing feelings are related to KVINNA, mostly positive (forms of ÄLSKA) but also negative (forms of föraktar, “despise”). Strongly associated with KVINNA are words describing family and relationships, both nouns (förbindelse, maka, moder, skild, gift, mannen) and verbs (ingick, född, tillhörde). In summary, collocations of MAN show the man as an active experiencer defined through personal traits, while the collocations of KVINNA show the woman as defined through relationships and family, with personal traits relating to beauty (or the lack thereof). These are the semantic prosodies of a small set of words in a selection of autobiographical works by Strindberg; a fuller understanding of what they mean requires further analysis into both the life and times of Strindberg.

4. Concluding remarks In this paper we have presented the Stockholm University Strindberg Corpus, a new resource consisting of seven of Strindberg’s autobiographical works. This is our main contribution. In addition, we

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have carried out three corpus studies on SUSC using keywords, word distribution, and semantic prosody. Our findings support a prevalent view of Strindberg as an author using an emotionally charged language, with intense relationships to both men and women. A close reading of the texts reveals the emotions expressed in Strindberg’s texts; by complementing with corpus techniques we can also say something about the extent and degree of such expressions.

Bibliography Church, Kenneth Ward; Gale, William; Hanks, Patrick; Hindle, Donald & Moon, Rosamund. 1994. Lexical substitutability. In: Computational approaches to the lexicon, 153-177. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dunning, Ted. 1993. Accurate Methods for the Statistics of Surprise and Coincidence. Computational Linguistics, 19(1):61-74. Källgren, Gunnel. 2006. SUC 2.0 (eds.) Sofia Gustafson-Capková & Britt Hartmann, Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University. Louw, Bill. 1993. Irony in the Text or Insincerity in the Writer? The Diagnostic Potential of Semantic Prosodies. In Baker, M., Francis, G. & Tognini-Bonelli, E. (editors): Text and Technology. Philadelphia/ Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Moon, Rosamund. 2007. Words, frequencies, and texts (particularly Conrad): A stratified approach. Journal of Literary Semantics, 34(1):87-104. O’Halloran, Kieran. 2007. The subconscious in James Joyce's ‘Eveline’: a corpus stylistic analysis that chews on the `Fish hook’. Language and literature, 16(3):227-244. Robinson, Michael. 2008. An International Annotated Bibliography of Strindberg Studies 1870- 2005. (Vol. 1 General Studies, Vol. 2 The Plays, Vol. 3 Autobiographies, Novels, Poetry, Letters, Historical Works, Natural History and Science, Linguistics, Painting and the Other Arts, Politics, Psychopathology, Biography, Miscellaneous, Dissertations), MHRA. Starcke, Bettina. 2006. The phraseology of Jane Austen’s Persuasion: Phraseological units as carriers of meaning. ICAME Journal. Computers in English Linguistics, 30:87-104. Stubbs, Michael. 2005. Conrad in the computer: examples of quantitative stylistic methods. Language and Literature, 14(1):5-24. Wynne, Martin. 2006. Stylistics: Corpus Approaches. In: Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, pp. 223–226. Oxford: Elsevier, 2nd edition.

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Östling, Robert. 2013. Stagger: an Open-Source Part of Speech Tagger for Swedish. Northern European Journal of Language Technology, 3:1-18.

THE LEGACY OF STRINDBERG TRANSLATIONS: LE PLAIDOYER D'UN FOU AS A CASE IN POINT ALEXANDER KÜNZLI AND GUNNEL ENGWALL

1. Introduction Many international playwrights, directors, and screenwriters have cited August Strindberg as having had a major influence on their work. To a large extent, this influence can be attributed to translation, without which his works and ideas would not have spread outside of Sweden – or outside of France for his works written directly in French. In our paper, we will therefore focus on the autobiographically inspired novel Le Plaidoyer d’un fou and its translation and reception in the German- and English-speaking worlds. The novel raises interesting questions: What is a translation? Where do we draw the line between a translation and an adaptation? How does the idea of translation change over time? Moreover, the history of translation of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou, which Strindberg wrote in French, challenges the widespread assumption of a unique, stable source text. Indeed, there are many retranslations, relay translations, and revisions of the novel – terms that are sometimes used interchangeably but which need to be clearly separated. Whereas retranslation is used to denote “a second or later translation of a single source text into the same language” (Koskinen & Paloposki, 2010, p. 294), relay translation refers to an indirect translation via a third language. Finally, revision is understood as the activity of editing a text for (re)publication. These activities are increasingly coming into the focus of empirical translation research. In the Scandinavian context, an example is the recently published volume on retranslation by Eriksson (2012). Since there are many translations of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou, the novel can be used as a starting point to study how the idea of translation and of the translator’s duties and freedom changes over time. An interesting question in this regard is to what extent the different translators tried to

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reproduce Strindberg’s French, which in many ways is quite unconventional. We have previously worked with Le Plaidoyer d’un fou and have realized that it is by taking into account not only the translations themselves, but the wider translational context, including the social and political setting in which the translations were created, that it becomes possible to understand the sometimes radical manipulations of the source text made by the different translators (Künzli & Engwall, 2010, 2012). So far, we have investigated the early German and Swedish translations of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou. In this paper, we will expand our research to the English-speaking world, and even include the most recent German translations.

2. Principles of analysis In order to study what image of Strindberg and of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou the readers of the English and German translations get, we started by analysing the types of passages that were used in the argumentation of the Berlin Court of Justice when it charged Strindberg, the first German translator (Wilhelm Kämpf) and the editor with immorality in 1893. Indeed, the first publication of the novel created a real scandal in Germany, which in turn influenced the way later translators dealt with the novel. These passages contained explicit references to sexuality or venereal diseases, or could be interpreted as being blasphemous. Since they were judged to be controversial at the time when Le Plaidoyer d’un fou was first published, we expected that they might give rise to bowdlerisations for moral, religious, or commercial reasons even in subsequent translations. We also looked at how the translators dealt with Strindberg’s French in these passages, in order to find out to what extent they tried – if they tried at all – to render some of Strindberg’s creative use of the French language. And finally, our analyses took into account the paratext, i.e., other material supplied by the author, the editors, or the translators that surrounds the main text and can change its reception or interpretation by the public. Examples are the cover, the translator’s foreword or epilogue, and the footnotes, but even interviews with the authors and translators, correspondence and diaries (Genette, 1987). Our principles of analysis can thus be summarized as follows: • Identification of passages susceptible to being manipulated as regards content (references to venereal diseases, sexuality, etc., as well as passages that could be interpreted as blasphemous)

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ĺ bowdlerisations (semantic shifts) (see also Schreiber, 1993, Ch. 2.3.1.5) • Identification of shifts in punctuation, lexical choice, sentence structure, or textual organization in the selected passages ĺ simplifications (linguistic shifts) (see also Laviosa, 2009) • Analysis of the paratext surrounding the source text as well as the production context of the source text and the different translations.

3. Corpus Figure 1 below shows that Le Plaidoyer d’un fou was written by Strindberg directly in French in 1887-88.1 This autobiographically inspired novel relates the story of Maria and Axel, from Maria’s divorce from Baron Gustav to her marriage to the writer Axel and, finally, Axel and Maria’s relationship troubles. The novel first appeared in German in 1893 before being translated into Swedish: not from the French original, but indirectly via German. The first English translation appeared in 1912. It, too, was a relay translation, based on the second German translation from 1910, which had as a source text not Strindberg’s original from 1887-88, but a heavily revised French version by Georges Loiseau from 1895.2 As for this publication of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou in French, we can note that Georges Loiseau’s version from 1895 was reissued in Paris by Mercure de France in 1964. In 1990, Carl Gustaf. Bjurström published a new version of the novel based on Strindberg’s original French text, but also influenced by Loiseau’s version (Bjurström, 1990, p.1122). Figure 1 moreover reveals that Strindberg had made a copy of the manuscript at the same time as he wrote the novel. The first German translation by Wilhelm Kämpf was made from this copy, whereas Emil Schering, the author of the second German translation, used Georges Loiseau’s revised version. In an earlier study, it has been shown that Schering also used Kämpf’s version (Engwall, 1983). The third German translation by Hans-Joachim Maass from 1977 was made on the basis of Strindberg’s French manuscript from 1887-88, whereas the fourth and last 1

Figure 1 shows all published translations of the novel into German, English and Swedish. The arrows indicate the source texts for each translation, as they are pointed out by the translator. Thus, we have not indicated other possible sources found in earlier studies, as in Engwall (1983). It should be noticed that the flags represent the language and not the nations and that the British flag designates both British English and American English. 2 Engwall (1999) presents Loiseau and his connection with Strindberg and his works, including his revision of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou.

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German translation by Gerhard Worgt, published in 1987, is a relay translation: its source text is not Strindberg’s original French text, but the sixth Swedish translation by Hans Levander from 1976. Let us now turn to the three English translations of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou. The first was produced by Ellie Schleussner in 1912, the second in 1967 by Evert Sprinchorn, and the third and last by Anthony Swerling. Swerling’s version came out in 1968, only one year after Sprinchorn’s translation. Swerling (1968) heavily criticised Sprinchorn for having based his translation on Schleussner’s bowdlerized translation from 1912, which Sprinchorn had reviewed using not only Loiseau’s version from 1895 but also the two Swedish translations by Landquist/Staaff (1920) on the one hand, and Aurell (1962) on the other. Swerling also challenged Sprinchorn’s statement that he had produced a thoroughly revised translation. However, not even Swerling’s version is a faithful rendering of Strindberg’s text, as it is based on Loiseau’s heavily revised version. Consequently, there still is no English translation based on Strindberg’s original manuscript. It is against this backdrop that Norvik Press recently contacted the National Edition of Strindberg’s Complete Works as they plan to publish a new translation based on Strindberg’s manuscript. In what follows, we will give several examples of semantic and linguistic shifts that we consider representative of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou and its translations. Rather than illustrating these phenomena by means of a wide range of short excerpts, we will focus on two larger text segments that illustrate how the sometimes radical manipulations of Strindberg’s text by his revisers and translators affect the reception of the novel – and thus also of himself – abroad, that is, outside of the French-speaking world in this case.

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Figure 1. Le Plaidoyer d’un fou and its translations into German, English and Swedish

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4. Discussion of examples Example 1 Context: Axel, the male protagonist, has fallen in love with Maria who is still married to Gustav Baron X. Caught in an emotional tangle, Axel decides to break off his relationship with the couple. In order to forget his distress, he goes to see his friends in a club. French original (1887-88)3 Le soir je me proposai d’aller voir mes amis du Club. A mon entrée dans le laboratoire je fus salué par un cri d’enfer, qui me remontait le cœur. Au milieu de la pièce était dressée une table en guise d’autel, garnie d’une tête de mort, placée devant un bocal énorme de cyanure de potassium ; une bible ouverte tachetée de punch dont les feuilles étaient retenues en place par une bougie chirurgicale à titre de touche, et marquée ca et là par des capotes anglaises servant en signets. Tout autour, des verres à punch, desservis d’un alambic, et les camarades en train de se griser ! Après m’avoir offert un matras d’une contenance d’un demi-litre, que je vidais sur le pouce, tous les membres en concert jetèrent le mot d’ordre du Club : « Malédiction ! » Sur ce à quoi je répondis par entonner Le Cantique des Ribauds : Enivrement,/ Accouplement,/ V’là le vrai but de la vie ! Enivrement,/ Accouplement,/ V’là le seul but de la vie ! Le Plaidoyer d’un fou, SV 25 (1999, p. 317) First French edition (1895) Le soir je me décide à aller voir mes amis au Club. Dès mon entrée dans le laboratoire, je suis salué par un bruit infernal d’acclamations qui me remet un peu de cœur au ventre. Au milieu de la pièce une table est dressée en guise d’autel, garnie d’une tête de mort placée devant un énorme bocal de cyanure de potassium. Une Bible souillée de taches de punch est ouverte à côté de ce crâne. Des bougies chirurgicales en marquent les feuillets. Autour s’étale une rangée de verres à punch qu’on emplit à un alambic: les camarades sont en train de se griser. On m’offre un matras, de la contenance d’un demi-litre, que d’un seul trait je vide et tous les membres,

3

We reproduce the text of Volume 25 of the National Edition of Strindberg’s Complete Works [SV 25], which renders the wording of the manuscript without correcting it. Any language errors have to be attributed to Strindberg. The segments under discussion are marked in bold type.

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à l’unisson, poussent le mot de flétrissure du Club: “Malédiction”, auquel je réponds en entonnant la chanson des “Mauvais Sujets” : S’enivrer, S’accoupler, C’est le vrai but de la vie ! Le Plaidoyer d’un fou (1895, p. 94) The comparison of Strindberg’s original text with Loiseau’s revised version reveals important linguistic changes. Strindberg’s text is vivid and intense. The vocabulary is impressive, but sometimes not quite adequate. He wrote his French texts fluently, like his Swedish ones, and it is only natural that he made mistakes both because of the rapidity of his writing and because he was not writing in his mother tongue. One might discuss, for example, if feuilles should be changed to pages. However, Strindberg knew that his French ought to be revised. This is what Loiseau did, leaving practically no sentence unchanged, as is revealed by the excerpt above. Instead of Strindberg’s se proposer and cri d’enfer, for example, he chooses se decider and bruit infernal d’acclamations and Strindberg’s very concentrated expression in Tout autour, des verres à punch corresponds in his version to Autour s’étale une rangée de verres à punch. More importantly, Loiseau also makes numerous semantic changes. In our example, the reference to the condoms used as bookmarks in the Bible has disappeared, whereas the chorus of the song of The ne’er-do-wells has been reproduced, albeit only once. Sexual references are often bowdlerized in Loiseau’s revised version but less so if compared to many translations, as our earlier analyses also suggest (Künzli & Engwall, 2012). Fourth German translation (1987) Am Abend beschloß ich, meine Freunde im Klub aufzusuchen. Als ich ins Laboratorium kam, wurde ich von einem infernalischen Gebrüll begrüßt, das mich belebte. Mitten in den Raum hatte man einen Tisch als Altar gestellt, geschmückt mit einem Totenkopf, den man vor eine riesige Chemikalienbüchse mit Zyankali gestellt hatte. Eine punschbefleckte Bibel war aufgeschlagen: die Seiten wurden von einer chirurgischen Sonde festgehalten, die als Zeigestock diente, und hier und da waren Kondome als Lesezeichen eingelegt worden. Rundherum standen Punschgläser, die aus einer Retorte gefüllt wurden, und die Freunde waren dabei, sich zu besaufen! Nachdem man mir einen Halbliterkolben gereicht hatte, den ich stehenden Fußes leerte,

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stießen sämtliche Mitglieder im Chor die Parole des Klubs aus “Fluch!” Worauf ich als Antwort die ‘Hymne der liederlichen Seelen’ anstimmte: “Das Saufen, das Huren, das ist der wahre Lebenszweck! Das Saufen, das Huren, das ist der einzige Lebenszweck!” Plädoyer eines Wahnsinnigen (1987, pp. 75-76) The excerpt above reveals how the passage in the text was translated by Gerhard Worgt. Gerhard Worgt (1925-1997) had studied English, Nordic languages and Dutch and was appointed Professor of Dutch Studies at Karl-Marx-University Leipzig in 1976. He held this chair until his retirement in 1990. He also had a good knowledge of French and had worked as an interpreter for French in different French-speaking African countries. His translation is, as we have mentioned, the last German translation of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou. As can be seen, the translation follows Strindberg’s original manuscript faithfully as regards content. There are neither bowdlerisations nor other omissions or major semantic shifts. This was, however, not to be expected either, as one of the functions of the translation seems to have been to depict the shortcomings of capitalism. This is what can be inferred from the epilogue written by the editor (Plädoyer eines Wahnsinnigen, 1987, p. 382). There are, however, shifts at several linguistic levels that render Strindberg’s creative and lively syntax and style more conventional. We find, for example: (1) lexical simplifications: paraphrases are used to render emotionally charged expressions (me remontait le cœur is rendered by beleben in the second sentence); (2) syntactic simplifications: non-finite clauses are replaced with finite ones (une bible ouverte tachetée de punch is rendered by eine punschbefleckte Bibel war aufgeschlagen); (3) stylistic simplifications: compound sentences are broken up. Thus, the third sentence, which in the French original is a single sentence, is divided into smaller chunks in German. These shifts in punctuation, the substitution of commas with semicolons or full stops, the flattening of the dynamic rhythm, and the neutralization of metaphorical expressions all show a tendency towards textual conventionality that is a general feature of this translation. To be

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sure, Gerhard Worgt’s translation is a relay translation: He had used as a source text not August Strindberg’s original manuscript but the Swedish translation by Hans Levander from 1976. Levander’s translation too shows many instances of linguistic simplification. This tendency is, however, even more pronounced in Worgt’s translation. To give but one example: Levander writes Mitt i rummet hade man ställt ett bord som altare, prytt med en dödskalle, placerad framför en kolossal kemikalieburk med cyankalium; en punschfläckad bibel låg uppslagen: bladen hölls på plats av en kirurgisk bougie, använd som pekpinne, och här och var satt kondomer instuckna som bokmärken (En dåres försvarstal, 1976, pp. 6162). Worgt changes the participial clause placerad framför en kolossal kemikalieburk med cyankalium into a relative clause with a finite verb and chops up Levander’s complex sentence into two sentences. Yet linguistic simplifications can also be found in Hans-Joachim Maass’ translation, the third German translation, which was done on the basis of Strindberg’s French manuscript in 1977. The same sentence reads in his translation: Mitten in den Raum hatte man einen Tisch als Altar gestellt; er war mit einem Totenkopf geschmückt, den man vor einem riesigen Chemikalienglas mit Zyankali plaziert hatte; daneben eine aufgeschlagene, mit Punschflecken übersäte Bibel: Die Blätter wurden von einer als Zeigestock dienenden chirurgischen Sonde festgehalten, und hier und da steckten Kondome als Lesezeichen (Plädoyer eines Irren, 1977, pp. 54-55). Here, too, non-finite clauses are replaced with finite ones, which can be interpreted as an (unconscious) attempt to render Strindberg’s syntax more conventional. Let us now examine an English translation: First English translation (1912) I decided to spend the evening at the club with my friends. On entering the laboratory, I was greeted with deafening acclamations, which raised my spirits. The centre of the room was occupied by a table dressed like an altar, in the middle of which stood a skull and a large bottle of cyanide of potassium. An open Bible, stained with punch spots, lay beside the skull. Surgical instruments served as bookmarkers. A number of punch-glasses were arranged in a circle all round. Instead of a ladle a retort was used for filling the glasses. My friends were on the verge of intoxication. One of them offered me a glass bowl containing half-a-pint of the fiery drink, and I emptied it at one gulp. All the members shouted the customary “Curse it!” I responded by singing the song of the ne’er-dowellsņ

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Deep potations And flirtations Are life’s only end and aim … The Confession of a Fool (1912, p. 44) This translation was done by Ellie Schleussner who had translated six works by Strindberg within a very short period (1912-1913). Her translation of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou is a relay translation from the second German translation by Emil Schering – who in turn had used Loiseau’s version as a source text – and contains numerous bowdlerisations, especially of sexual references. Thus, in the excerpt above, there are no references to the condoms used as bookmarks in the Bible. Moreover, the Song of the ne’er-do-wells has become very innocent, enivrement ‘intoxication’ being rendered by potations and accouplement ‘sexual intercourse’ by flirtations. Likewise, there are many linguistic simplifications, one example being the division of the compound sentence into three. Already Emil Schering’s translation represents in many respects an adaptation rather than a translation; he even manipulated the macrostructure of the novel. However, seen from a target-oriented perspective, this is hardly something that the English readership would have thought about: they simply expected to read a translation that reflected as regards both content and style a faithful rendering of Strindberg’s text. Yet the combined effect of the bowdlerisations and simplifications of Loiseau, Schering and Schleussner leads to a text that renders Strindberg’s original in many ways beyond recognition – but it is still available in bookshops. Example 2 Context: Axel and Maria are married and have settled in a village close to Lake Constance. Axel fears that he is suffering from potassium cyanide poisoning. Maria thinks he is alluding to syphilis. French original (1887-88) La nuit, seuls, je m’en prends à Maria, et un entretien orageux se prolonge vers le matin. Comme elle a trop bu elle se dévoile malgré elle, et confesse des choses horribles, jamais devinées. Emporté par la colère, je vais répéter toutes les accusations, tous les soupcons en y ajoutant une nouvelle, que je trouve exagérée moi-même. – Et, pour cette maladie mysterieuse, m’écrie-je, qui m’a procuré des maux de tête …

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– Ah ! misérable, tu veux dire que je t’aie donné la syphilis … Je n’y eus pas pensé, parce que j’avais voulu indiquer des symptômes d’un empoissonnement de cyanure de potassium. Mais en ce moment un éclair de ressouvenir me tombe sur la tête, et je revis un incident, alors d’une invraisemblance exorbitante, pour laisser une empreinte durable dans ma mémoire. À l’époque des séances de massage, je m’aperçus un jour des efflorescences sur mes parties génitales. Plein de confiance j’en fais mention à Maria, qui, d’un embarras visible mais toujours alerte à riposter, me dit, que parfois la vulve excrète des humeurs corrocives. Je le connais très bien moi aussi, mais sous le nom de maladie vénérienne. Cependant les exanthèmes se guérissent et tout est oublié. Or, voici le moment où les soupçons s’aggravent. Le Plaidoyer d’un fou, SV 25 (1999, pp. 508-509) First French edition (1895) La nuit, seuls, je m’en prends à Maria. Un orageux entretien suit et se prolonge jusques au matin. Comme elle a trop bu elle dévoile ses plans, malgré elle, et me confesse d’horribles choses, insoupçonnées jusqu’ici. Emporté par la colère, je répète toutes mes accusations, tous mes soupçons, en y ajoutant ceci que je trouve moi-même de trop en y réfléchissant : – Et, cette maladie mystérieuse, m’écriais-je, qui me valut de si violentes douleurs de tête … – Misérable ! tu m’accuses alors de t’avoir donné la s…! J’avoue que je ne pensais point à cela. Je n’entendais parler que de ces symptômes d’empoisennement par le cyanure de potassium que j’avais observés sur moi. Mais en ce moment un ressouvenir me passe par l’esprit ; je me rappelle un incident dans nos rapports qui m’avait à l’époque paru d’une invraisemblance telle qu’il n’avait pu laisser une durable empreinte dans ma mémoire … Or, mes soupçons s’aggravent. Le Plaidoyer d’un fou (1895, p. 419) Strindberg is outspoken. His text contains explicit references to syphilis as well as to the human body and in particular the sex organs. Maria had consulted a doctor for her rheumatism. Axel later suspected Maria to have cheated on him with this doctor. Strindberg’s French reveals several mistakes, such as in the mode and tense of the verbs – aie subjunctive instead of indicative ai; eus pensé passé simple instead of past perfect

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avais pensé. From a linguistic point of view, however, the text reads easily. If we look at Loiseau’s version, we can immediately see that the text is much shorter. Loiseau has made important omissions and deleted several paragraphs. He only makes a vague allusion to syphilis by using the first letter of the word, followed by suspension points. The second part of the excerpt, in which Axel describes the symptoms of syphilis on his sex organs and in which Maria uses the word vulve, is deleted altogether. The omission of the sixth and seventh paragraphs of Strindberg’s original text radically changes the way Maria is portrayed. As Sjögren (2009, pp.21-22) points out, a middle-class woman of that time was hardly supposed to know what syphilis was. Loiseau’s version suggests that it is Maria who first refers to syphilis, whereas, in fact, she is probably only remembering an incident that had taken place several years ago, when Axel thought he was suffering from syphilis. Second German translation (1910) Als wir in der Nacht allein sind, nehme ich mir Maria vor. Eine stürmische Auseinandersetzung folgt und dauert bis gegen Morgen. Da sie zuviel getrunken hat, enthüllt sie, ohne es zu wollen, ihre Gedanken und beichtet mir schreckliche Dinge, die ich bisher noch nicht geahnt habe. Von Zorn hingerissen, wiederhole ich alle meine Anklagen, meinen ganzen Argwohn, indem ich diesen hinzufüge, den ich selber übertrieben finde, wenn ich nachdenke: – Und diese geheimnisvolle Krankheit, die mir so heftige Kopfschmerzen zugezogen hat … – Was, du klagst mich an, dich angesteckt zu haben! Das hatte ich gar nicht gemeint! Ich wollte von den Symptomen der Cyankalivergiftung sprechen, die ich an mir beobachtet hatte. In diesem Augenblick fährt mir eine Erinnerung durch den Kopf; ich denke an etwas, das mir damals so unwahrscheinlich vorgekommen war, daß es keine dauernde Spur in meinem Gedächtnis zurückließ … Mein Argwohn verschärft sich … Die Beichte eines Toren (1910, p. 384) Emil Schering (1873-1951) was the most important German translator for Strindberg. He was assigned the task of translating Strindberg’s complete works into German. Moreover, his translations also served as source texts for several relay translations into other languages, for example, English. He therefore influenced the reception of Strindberg even in the Englishspeaking world. If we look at his translation, it becomes obvious at first glance that the German reader did not get a faithful image of the scene. To

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be sure, Schering used Loiseau’s revised version as a source text. But – as we have already pointed out – this is hardly an argument that the Germanspeaking readers would have considered. They – as probably all readers of translated literature – expected to read a translation that faithfully rendered the source text. Yet Schering’s text is even more bowdlerized than Loiseau’s revision. Thus, he does not even reproduce the first letter of syphilis. Moreover, he flattens the emotional tone of the French text by omitting details considered as irrelevant (e.g., the agitated m’écriais-je). Since no mention is made of syphilis but only of headaches, the German reader might just as well conclude that Axel is accusing Maria of having given him the flu. The excerpt moreover reveals many examples of linguistic normalizations. We find shifts in punctuation, as when exclamation marks in emotionally charged parts of the dialogue between the two protagonists are deleted. There are also shifts in style. Thus, the representation of spoken language in the source text is adjusted towards the norm of written prose (e.g., the mais in the sentence Mais en ce moment… is deleted, possibly because it has always been considered inappropriate to start a written sentence in German with aber). Finally, we also find shifts in textual organization. Thus, paragraphs are reordered, for example, after the segment empoissement de cyanure de potassium – the latter reorganization is already present in Loiseau’s version and reproduced by Schering. However, it nevertheless changes the perception that the German reader gets of the rhythm of Strindberg’s prose. Even more important are Schering’s numerous semantic shifts, bowdlerisations, and the manipulation of the macrostructure of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou. Schering turned Strindberg’s Avant-Propos into an epilogue and expanded the novel with poems by Strindberg. His overall aim seems to have been to rehabilitate the work, as the paratext, i.e., Schering’s own epilogue, reveals. Le Plaidoyer d’un fou had been surrounded by an aura of scandal and immorality ever since the publication of the first German translation in 1893. This translation had led to the indictment of Strindberg, the translator and the editor. In his epilogue, Schering accuses the first German translator of being responsible for Strindberg’s indictment since he – a certain Wilhelm Kämpf – had used so much vulgar language. Schering goes on to declare that the aim of his own retranslation was to render Strindberg’s original fully, without any nonsense and using a dignified language (“Die Übersetzung ist nicht verstümmelt, produziert keinen Unsinn, führt eine würdige Sprache”, p. 427). If such a strategy is followed consistently, the resulting text hardly results in a translation, but rather a more or less loose adaptation of a

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source text. In the present case, this translation strategy affected not only the interpretation and reception of the novel in the German-speaking world, but also on the English literary scene, since the first English translation of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou was a relay translation based on Schering’s German translation. Third English translation (1968) At night, alone, I upbraided Maria. A stormy conversation followed and was prolonged until the morning. As she had drunk too much, she revealed her plans, in spite of herself, and confessed horrible things, hitherto unsuspected, to me. Carried away by anger, I repeated all my accusations, all my suspicions, adding this, which I myself find too much on reflection: “And that mysterious malady“, I exclaimed, “which brought me such violent headaches …” “Wretch! You’re accusing me then of having given you s ..!” I admit that I was not thinking of that. I only intended to speak of those symptoms of poisoning by cyanide of potassium that I had observed in myself. But at that moment a recollection passed through my mind; I remembered an incident in our relationship which had at the time appeared so unlikely to me that it was unable to leave a lasting imprint in my memory … Now my suspicions became aggravated. A Madman’s Manifesto (1968, p.223) This translation was done by Anthony Swerling (1944-2004), a dramatist, translator, linguist, artist, and researcher of Strindberg. As already mentioned, Swerling’s translation is the third and last English translation of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou. However, not even this version is a direct translation of Strindberg’s original manuscript, but is based on Loiseau’s heavily revised version. Not surprisingly then, the passage above does not convey to the English readership a faithful image of the tone, content and style of Strindberg’s manuscript. We find, of course, the same semantic shifts and bowdlerisations as in Loiseau’s text. Yet Loiseau’s already ‘domesticated’ version appears even more conventionalized. Thus, Swerling does not take into account the stylistically important variations in tenses in Loiseau’s version – which in this respect often follows Strindberg’s original. Whereas in this example in both Strindberg’s and Loiseau’s versions the present tense is prevalent, the English translation often resorts to the past tense. Swerling also uses a capital letter to

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continue after the exclamation mark following the segment Wretch!, which is grammatically correct but flattens the dynamic rhythm of Strindberg’s prose. Finally, it can also be mentioned that paradoxically, Swerling’s translation is less explicit regarding the reference to syphilis than the second English translation of Sprinchorn from 1967. Indeed, Sprinchorn had given his readers not only the first, but the first two letters of syphilis, i.e., sy, following the translation of Landquist/Staaff from 1920. All in all, these observations show that even to this day, the Englishspeaking readership is being given a distorted image of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou and of Strindberg’s intentions with and style in the novel.

5. Conclusions The analyses have revealed a large number of shifts of both form and meaning in the different German and English translations of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou. There are simplifications at all levels – lexical, syntactic, and stylistic – as well as normalizations, i.e., a general tendency towards textual conventionality. We have also found a large number of semantic changes. Some of these are bowdlerisations, i.e., more or less conscious decisions by the translator to omit potentially controversial allusions. Others are shifts in meaning that are the result either of the fact that the translations are relay translations – in other words, translations of translations – or of the fact that they rely not on Strindberg’s manuscript but on a revision of his manuscript. Sometimes, the translators manipulated the source text to such an extent that their target texts should probably be declared adaptations rather than translations, since the overall aim of the translators seems to have been to change Strindberg’s style and intentions rather than to keep the elements of the source text constant (see Schreiber, 1993, for the distinction between translation and adaptation). As a result, there still is no adequate, faithful translation of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou in either German or English. In English, the situation is particularly unsatisfactory, since the last translation by Anthony Swerling was done not using Strindberg’s original manuscript but the heavily revised version of Georges Loiseau. Our observations raise several questions. To begin with, a faithful translation of Strindberg’s French manuscript would in many respects imply a violation of target-language norms. What would such a translation need to look like? Would the literary scene be ready to receive such an experimental translation? Would there be a readership for such a translation? Secondly, the study of the phenomena of retranslation and relay translation implies a careful comparison of quite large data sets.

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Indeed, any retranslation or relay translation may contain chunks of earlier translations and relay translations. Before any final classification – retranslation, relay translation, revised translation – of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou can be done, a close textual comparison of many different translations is needed. To give but one example: Figure 1 in Section 3 above reveals that the second English translation of Le Plaidoyer d’un fou is based on at least four pretexts, i.e., Schleussner’s English relay translation, Loiseau’s French revision, Landquist/Staaff’s Swedish translation from 1920 and, finally, Aurell’s Swedish translation from 1962. Even a case study like the present one therefore requires considerable resources, all the more as any attempt at translation criticism would need to be conducted in collaboration with native speakers of all the languages involved. Finally, Le Plaidoyer d’un fou also raises the question of the rationale behind any retranslation: Which stakeholders decide that there is a need for a retranslation? How do they justify their decision? Only a combination of research methods will provide answers to this question, such as interview studies with editors and publishing houses, archival research for investigating late translators’ decision-making, and literary criticism.

Bibliography Studied texts Le Plaidoyer d’un fou, text established from the original manuscript by Gunnel Engwall, published in August Strindbergs Samlade Verk [SV] 25 (1999), pp. 263-517. Stockholm: Norstedts. Le Plaidoyer d’un fou (1895), French revision by Georges Loiseau. Paris: Albert Langen. Die Beichte eines Thoren (1893), German translation by Wilhelm Kämpf. Berlin: Verlag des Bibliographischen Bureaus. Die Beichte eines Toren (1910), German translation by Emil Schering. München/Leipzig: Georg Müller. Plädoyer eines Irren (1977), German translation by Hans-Joachim Maass. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Plädoyer eines Wahnsinnigen (1987), German translation by Gerhard Worgt. Leipzig: Dieterich. The Confession of a Fool (1912), English translation by Ellie Schleussner. London: Stephen Swift & Co. A Madman’s Defence (1967), English translation by Evert Spinchorn. New York: Doubleday & Co.

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A Madman’s Manifesto (1968), English translation by Anthony Swerling. Cambridge: Trinity Lane Press.

References Aurell, Tage (1962). En dåres försvarstal. Swedish translation. Stockholm: Bonnier. Bjurström, Carl-Gustaf (1990). Histoire de “mon histoire”. In: August Strindberg, Œuvres Autobiographiques II (pp. 1089-1152). Paris: Mercure de France. Budkaflen (1893–94). En dåres bikt. Anonymous translation [Birger Schöldström?], published from June 25, 1893 until April 29, 1894. Engwall, Gunnel (1983). En dåres försvarstal i Samlade skrifter. En studie kring John Landquists översättning av August Strindbergs Le Plaidoyer d'un fou. In: Gunnel Engwall & Regina af Geijerstam (Eds.), Från språk till språk (pp. 168-196). Lund: Studentlitteratur. —. (1999). Strindberg och hans franske introduktör. In: KVHAA Årsbok 1999 (pp. 85-105). Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhetsakademien. Eriksson, Olof (Ed.). (2012). Aspekter av litterär nyöversättning – Aspects de la retraduction littéraire. Växjö: Linnaeus University Press. Genette, Gérard (1987). Seuils. Paris: Seuil. Koskinen, Kaisa & Paloposki, Outi (2010). Retranslation. In: Yves Gambier & Luc van Doorslaer (Eds.), Handbook of Translation Studies (pp. 294-298). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Künzli, Alexander & Engwall, Gunnel (2010). Le Plaidoyer d’un fou de Strindberg en allemand. In: Jukka Havu et al. (Eds.), Actes du XVIIe Congrès des Romanistes Scandinaves (pp. 569-583). Tampere: Tampere University Press. http://tampub.uta.fi/handle/10024/65374 —. (2012). Le Plaidoyer d’un fou de Strindberg. Littérature, traduction, politique. In: Eva Ahlstedt et al. (Eds.), Actes du XVIIIe Congrès des romanistes scandinaves (pp. 471-483). (Romanica Gothoburgensia 69). Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg. http://hdl.handle.net/2077/30607 Landquist, John (1914). En dåres försvarstal. Swedish translation published in Samlade Skrifter 26 av August Strindberg. Stockholm: Bonnier. Landquist, John & Staaff, Erik (1920). En dåres försvarstal. Swedish translation published in Samlade Skrifter 26 av August Strindberg. Stockholm: Bonnier.

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Laviosa, Sara (2009). Universals. In Mona Baker & Gabriela Saldanha (Eds.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (pp. 306-310). London: Routledge. Levander, Hans (1976). En dåres försvarstal. Swedish translation. Stockholm: Forum. Nilsson, P.E. Bokförlagsaktiebolag (1903). Ett äktenskap. Anonymous illustrated Swedish translation [translation by Alexander Åkerberg? and illustrated by Wilhelm Gernandt?], published in five booklets. Stockholm: [Out of the planned 30 booklets, only 5 were printed and 3 distributed before the discontinuation of the publication]. Schreiber, Michael (1993). Übersetzung und Bearbeitung. Zur Differenzierung und Abgrenzung des Übersetzungsbegriffs. Tübingen: Narr. Sjögren, Kristina (2009). Translating gender in Strindberg’s Le Plaidoyer d’un fou. Scandinavica, 48(1), 8-30. Swerling, Anthony (1968). Concerning the art of translation: Being two letters to an English review, April-August 1968. Cambridge: Trinity Lane Press.

METATHEATRICAL AND POSTDRAMATICAL ASPECTS OF STRINDBERG’S CHAMBER PLAYS ROLAND LYSELL

August Strindberg’s Chamber plays – Storm, The Burned Site, The Ghost Sonata, The Pelican and The Black Glove – have been frequently discussed by Scandinavian literary critics as well as by scholars in English-speaking countries. Martin Lamm, Gunnar Brandell, Göran Lindström, John Northam, Gunnar Ollén, Evert Sprinchorn, Birgitta Steene and Egil Törnqvist belong to the most quoted. Hans-Göran Ekman consecrated an exhaustive monograph about the Chamber plays in 1997, Villornas värld. Studier i Strindbergs kammarspel and Erik van Ooijen published a dissertation about them in 2010: The Mold of Writing. Style and Structure in Strindberg’s Chamber Plays.1 Most of these studies are interpretations of the plays; the exception is van Ooijen who starting with a clearly unintegrated episode (in The Ghost Sonata The Old Man, Jakob Hummel, says that he identifies the Student by way of pronouncing the Swedish word “fönster”, “window”, but the Student never pronounces “fönster” on stage), formulates his project in an anti-hermeneutical way and wants to emphasize the friction between the intentional design of the author and “contingent whims” occurring during the writing process.2 The target of von Ooijen’s criticism is above all Törnqvist who is criticized for treating the plays “as a uniform meaning-construct”;3 Törnqvist tries to integrate as much as possible in his interpretation. The problem that van Ooijen too seldom seems aware of is that also a study of form includes 1

A commented bibliography can be found in Ann-Sofie Lönngren, “Från diagnostisering till intersekionalitet. Tendenser inom Strindbergsforskningen 1963–2011” in Tidskrift för litteraturvetenskap, 3–4, 2011, p. 3–21. Further comments in Erik van Ooijen, The Mold of Writing. Style and Structure in Strindberg’s Chamber Plays, Örebro (diss.) 2010. 2 For a criqiue of hermenutical readings see van Ooijen 2010, p. 114. 3 van Ooijen 2010, p. 118.

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moments of interpretation. Some of the interpreters, especially Northam, are very much aware of the plays’ having been written for the theatre, whereas others unfortunately seem to neglect this aspect. Many scholars focus on the non-aristotelian character of the plays and it has even been discussed if they have plots at all. One of the aims of the present writer is to illuminate this question in a more thorough way by means of regarding the dramas in the light of the concept of “mythos” (plot), one of the six constitutive elements of drama in Aristotle’s Poetics. The sources of my inspiration to this approach is the theatre semiotics of Patrick Pavis, Kear Elam and Sven Åke Heed.4 My intention is also to reflect upon the plays in relation to the development of post dramatic theatre as defined by Hans-Thies Lehmann.5 Of course this implies that my aim is less to focus Strindberg’s intention than the possible meaning of the text when read or heard by a reader or spectator who is aware of the development of 20th century drama and theatre. Aristotle describes the elements of drama in § 6 in Poetics and states: “The plot (mythos) is the first principle and as it were the soul of tragedy”. Its function is compared to the “outline” of a painting and “it is mainly because a play is a representation of action that it also for that reason represents people”.6 In Storm the surface plot – i.e. the plot constructed from the elements perceived on stage7 – concerns a protagonist, an old gentleman (Man), divorced from his wife Gerda, but still living in their apartment house, who finally tells a young female relative (Louise) that he “will move away from this silent house” in the autumn.8 Several minor plots are loosely connected to this gentleman: the marriage plot between the old gentleman and Gerda (as usual in Strindberg’s fiction marriages are dominated by conflict); the elopement of Fischer, Gerda’s new husband, with a young 4 Patrice Pavis, Dictionnaire du théâtre, Paris 1980; Patrice Pavis, L’Analyse des spectacles, Paris 1996; Keir Elam, Semiotics of Theatre, London & New York 1980; Sven Åke Heed, Teaterns tecken, Lund 2002. 5 Lehmann, Hans-Thies, Postdramatisches Theater, Frankfurt am Main 1999; Lehmann, Hans-This Postdramatic Theatre, transl. by Karen Jürs-Munby, London 2006. 6 Aristotle, Poetics; Longinus, On the Sublime, Demetrius, On Style, transl. by W. H. Fyfe & W. Rhys Roberts, Cambridge Mass. (1927) 1991, p. 27. 7 My concept ‘surface plot’ is not synonymous with the Aristotelian ‘mythos’, it is simply a scholar’s tool for neutral description. Thus a ‘surface plot’ can sometimes describe a static play without any ‘mythos’ in an Aristotelian sense at all. 8 August Strindberg, The Plays: Volume 2. The Chamber Plays & The Great Highway, transl. by Gregory Motton, London 2004, p. 78. Page references to this translation are henceforth given in the text above,

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girl, Agnes, the baker’s daughter; and the relationship between a child, Anne-Charlotte, Gerda’s daughter, with the old gentleman. The conflicts end in an approximate atonement: Gerda and the old gentleman approach one another in a friendly way and Fischer returns with his victims. Especially the marriage conflict is dominated by memories retold on stage. As van Ooijen emphasizes, the different versions of what has happened are main topics in the dialogue.9 The dialogue is to a certain extent ambiguous and contradictory, subjective versions are contrasted to one another.10 The kidnapping plot is to its greatest extent reported and the discussion about the reason why Fischer kidnaps not only Agnes but also Anne-Charlotte rendered by Törnqvist proves both Strindberg’s interest in traditional theatrical plots and his disinterest in their details.11 In almost all the interpretations, especially Törnqvist and Ekman, the illusion theme is very important. It is also of highest relevance when we consider the plot. In Storm the Brother tells the “Man”, i.e. the old gentleman, that Gerda has “murdered” his honour (p.46) and also that he has lived under a great delusion (p.47) and these new insights lead the Man to further actions. On the surface this technique might remind one of Ibsen’s Gengangere where hidden “truths” are revealed under respectable surfaces, but in Strindberg’s plays there is always a moment of ambiguity. In the long dialogue between Gerda and the Brother where the actions of the Man (his faithful and loving attitude to the wife who has left him) are told is an obvious plot fragment, a plot that is already past, a plot with two “truths”. For Gerda it seemed inevitable to disgrace her husband. A certain reluctance is also obvious. The Man declares: “After a certain age nothing changes, everything stops” (p.56) and “There is no present, what we have now is the empty nothingness” (p.58). He wants to keep his sentimental memory of little Anne-Charlotte (p.59) and time is not allowed to pass. Another structural element is the game of chess which is emphasized on the plane of actions at the end of Act I and beginning of Act II, but is also a symbolic rendering of certain aspects of the plot: the games between the Man and his Brother and between the Man and Gerda. The conventional dramatic device with the letter, or rather the postcard, is used, but only the Man, not the audience, notices what Herr Fischer wrote to him. There is also a curious moment of recognition (anagnorisis), when 9

van Ooijen 2010, p.47. van Ooijen 2010, p.52; Göran Lindström, “Dialog och bildspråk i Strindbergs kammarspel”, in Strindbergs språk och stil. Valda studier, Lund 1964, p.170. 11 Egil Törnqvist, Strindbergs dramatiska bildspråk, Amsterdam 2011, p.169; van Ooijen 2010, p.56. 10

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Gerda discovers that her former husband has not changed anything in their home since they divorced (s. 61). The protagonist in The Burned Site, (The Stranger), returns to his childhood home and discovers that the house has burned down. Concerning this play it is easy to see two lines of conflict: the mystery theme concerning the Stranger and Fate and the detective plot concerning the fire – who has committed arson? The Dyer? Gustavsson? Did the Student leave the lamp burning? Why did not the apple-trees and the tavern catch fire? There is also a traditional comedy plot: will the Stone maker's daughter and the Gardener’s Son marry or not? In the detective plot the Stranger’s brother, the Dyer, is the protagonist.12 Whereas traditional scholars like Ollén and Lindström – Lindström’s article gives an especially thorough analysis of the plots – explain the play with its fourteen characters and interrupted dialogues as “a deliberately complicated plot” and “digressions”; van Ooijen uses the rhizome concept of Deleuze/Guattari to explain the fact that there are multiple ways of approaching this play.13 Scholars seem to agree that the detective plot lacks efficiency. Important questions, e.g. if the Stranger is the father of the Student are never completely solved. The Burned Site has an open ending, very similar to the endings in To Damascus. The Stranger exclaims: “And so, out into the wide world again. Wanderer!” (p.122). Törnqvist has emphasized the intertextuality, especially the Biblical references of The Burned Site.14 Illusion is revealed. And there are moments of epiphanic insight: “that is life! The great weaver has woven it!” (p.95) The revelation-of-truth theme is even more important in The Burned Site than in Storm. A jar with calcium cyanide and other objects are hidden behind the books and ebony turns out to be coloured maple. The success of the family to which the two brothers belong depends on criminal actions in the past. When first looking at the context it seems a bit ridiculous that the 12

van Ooijen 2010 quotes Törnqvist, p.73; Törnqvist seems to consider the detective plot “the main thread, from the plot point of view”. Cf. Egil Törnqvist, Strindbergian Drama. Themes and Structures, Stockholm 1982, p. 164. My perspective differs from this. 13 Gunnar Ollén, “Kommentarer” in August Strindberg, Kammarspel 1907–1909, ed. Gunnar Ollén. Samlade Verk 58, Stockholm 1991; Göran Lindström, “Strindbergs Brända tomten. Ett bidrag till dramats tillkomsthistoria” in Diktaren och hans formvärld. Lundastudier i litteraturvetenskap tillägnade Staffan Björck och Carl Fehrman, red. Rolf Arvidsson, Bernt Olsson & Louise Vinge. Malmö 1975; van Ooijen 2010, p.77. 14 Törnqvist 2011, pp.179–197.

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Stranger gets so upset when he learns that Mr. Westerlund, dead long ago, fooled him when he was a child. Mrs. Westerlund, his surviving wife, tells the Stranger that her husband often did not mean what he said; his words were satirical. As a child the Stranger was fooled because he believed Mr. Westerlund (p. 111–2). The dialogue with Mrs. Westerlund is important from a meta dramatic point of view, however. What the Stranger did not understand as a child was simply the character of fiction. An even better example of meta theatre is the Stranger’s words: ”I’ve seen life from all points of the compass, from above and below, but always as if it was being staged for me in particular” (p. 96) – the Swedish expression ”satt i scen” is even more efficient.15 Considering these two plays it is easy to see that Strindberg seems obsessed with plots. But why are the plots shattered and why are cases cancelled?16 And why is the solution, especially of the main plots, in these cases possibly only surface plots, so banal compared to the final scenes of i. e. Master Olof, The Father and Miss Julie? Obviously Strindberg tries to question the concept of plot itself. There is, however, an obvious meta level, especially when the Man (Storm) and the Stranger (The Burned Site) reflect upon their lives. In a similar way drama seems to reflect upon plots/ “mythoi”: they are not significant as they are neither dominating the structure of the play nor supporting the “dianoia” (see below). As structure of the development of thought, however, they are extremely important. The structure of revelation in Aristotelian or Ibsenian sense is especially fundamental in Strindberg’s late dramas: a hidden truth is revealed. This would confirm the thesis that the late Strindberg is above all an avant-garde author and a meta dramatist testing ideas. That he does not refrain from comical scenes is proven by all five plays. The revelation theme is further sharpened in The Ghost Sonata, the third Chamber play, especially when the Colonel is physically and mentally divested by the Old Man Hummel and the following ghost supper where the spectators are informed about the inhabitants of the house. There are also fragments of subplots, i. e. the relation between Hummel and Arkenholz, the dead father of the student. The Ghost Sonata is often performed in Sweden, e.g. four times by Ingmar Bergman, and belongs together with Storm to those plays once

15

August Strindberg, Kammarspel 1907–1909, ed. Gunnar Ollén. Samlade Verk 58, Stockholm 1991, p.110. 16 Törnqvist 1982, p. 168; van Ooijen 2010, p.105.

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preferred by Max Reinhardt.17 An often repeated view, e.g. by Peter Szondi, is, however, that the play loses in dramatic tension after the death of Hummel, and the last act with the Student and the dying Young Lady is a completely different kind of drama.18 In the light of what has been stated above this is a misunderstanding. The main plot of The Ghost Sonata, which is by no means hidden, is the mystical or supernatural plot starting with the Student, who in contrast to Hummel actually sees the Milkmaid (curiously enough there is a Milk Girl already in Storm, p. 50) and ending with the Old Norse Sólarljó˜ (the song of the sun) and the projection of Böcklin’s Toteninsel. I saw the sun, it was as if I’d seen the Hidden One; a man receives as he has given, blessed is the he who does good. Do not seek to atone your deeds of anger with greater wickedness; Comfort those you have harmed, Your kindness is its own reward. He has nothing to fear who had done so wrong, Goodness is an innocent thing. (Whimpering can be heard behind the screen.) You poor little child, child of this world of delusion and guilt, suffering and death; the world of eternal change, misjudgement and pain! God in heaven keep you safe on your journey… (p.161)

The effective, sometimes almost expressionistic scenes, can be looked upon as meta theatrical elements that sometimes make fun of the stage.19 The projection of Toteninsel gets a very special metatheatrical dimension while Toteninsel is also reproduces at one of the sides of the stage of Strindberg’s Intima Teatern. The performance reiterates, so to speak, the painting on the wall.

17

Törnqvist gives an exhaustive overview and analysis of Swedish stage of The Ghost Sonata, especially Ingmar Bergman’s: Egil Törnqvist. Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata: from text to performance, Amsterdam 2000. Kela Kvam wrote her dissertation about Max Reinhardt’s Strindberg productions: Kela Kvam, Max Reinhardt og Strindbergs visionære dramatik. Teatervidenskabelige studier 99, København 1974. 18 Peter Szondi, Theorie des modernen Dramas. Schriften I, ed. Jean Bollack et al., Frankfurt am Main 1978, p.53. 19 van Ooijen discusses the concept of parody: van Ooijen 2010, p.125.

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In this play the illusion/revelation theme is driven to its extreme on stage, for example when the Old Man Hummel strips the colonel not only of his clothes and military titles but also of his false teeth (p.146–147). Several of the subplots concern this kind of revelation of secrets, e.g. the story of Butler Bengtson, are evident structural parallels of the plots in The Burned Site. They also lose their importance in a similar way, e.g. the accident where the Student played a heroic role seems to gradually disappear – and did the Student ever go to the opera? In The Burned Site the subplots are juxtaposed to the mystical plot, here they are subordinated to it, but in a hierarchical way. What is new here is the ambiguity. The Student is surprised: “It’s strange how a story can be told in two such conflicting ways” (p.130). According to Hummel, Arkenholz, the Student’s father, stripped Hummel of seventeen thousand crowns (p.136), according to the Student’s father Hummel had ruined him (p.130). We never learn if one or none of the stories is correct. Just as in the earlier drama Easter (1900) we meet an optimistic Strindberg in this play.20 Strindberg’s religious mysticism after the Inferno crisis is syncretistic with Swedenborgian as well as Buddhist elements. It seems to occur in a certain state of mind when the paranoid or critical thoughts that usually dominate are suspended or neutralized. This twolevel structure of the play reminds us of the tradition of the drama genre. Especially in Baroque and Romantic dramas, we are confronted with a religiously determined world and more or less hidden thoughts of salvation and an earthly stage, dominated by earthly actions, irony and delusion. 21 Of course, Strindberg is questioning in a very different way from the Romantic authors, but the two levels are without any doubt there. The Student is the protagonist in the mystical main plot and the Old Man Hummel is the protagonist in an earthly subplot ending in his death in the second act. The last words of the Student after the death of the Young Girl and the last spoken words of the play quoted above prove that Strindberg especially in The Ghost Sonata approaches the syncretistic Oriental mysticism of A Dream Play. How can we relate the plots of the two last Chamber plays to this insight? The Pelican resembles Strindberg’s earlier plays in many ways. It is the only Chamber play with a functioning earthly main plot: a mother 20

Cf. Karin Aspenberg, Strindbergs värld, Lund 2012. Margret Dietrich, Europäische Dramaturgie im 19. Jahrhundert, Graz 1961, pp. 27–42;Ulla-Britta Lagerroth, “Almqvist och scenkonsten” in Perspektiv på Almqvist. Dokument och studier samlade av Ulla-Britta Lagerroth & Bertil Romberg, Stockholm 1973, pp. 240–241; P.D.A. Atterbom, Lycksalighetens ö, Sagospel i fem äfventyr, Upsala 1824, 1827. 21

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who never loved her husband tries to destroy the happiness of her son and daughter. She is even the rival of her own daughter Gerda in her relationship with her son-in-law. Strindberg’s use of retributive patterns, structural reversals and letters refer to classical dramatic pattern so well that the play has been analyzed as an example of Gustav-Freytag dramaturgy.22 However, certain elements like the wind and the moving rocking chair point in another direction and the fire, accidentally set by Frederik, the son, at the end of the play gives a mystical dimension of the same kind as the final scene of The Ghost Sonata. The Mother jumps out of the window, while the son and the daughter remain in the burning house. Frederik ecstatically recalls: Is it summer? The clover must be in bloom, summer holidays are starting, do you remember when we went down to the white steamboats, and stroked them, when they were freshly painted and waiting for us. Papa was happy then, he was really alive, he said, and the textbooks were finished with! […] – Now the holidays can begin! (p.200)

Frederik and Gerda seem unable to move. They cannot escape the fire and sink to the floor. The final Chamber play, The Black Glove, performed in 1909 and by some scholars, e.g. Hans-Göran Ekman, not discussed among the four chamber plays from 1907, is a five-act minidrama. In many ways, especially through the presence of a Christmas Gnome and a Christmas Angel among the characters, it reminds us of earlier fairytale plays in the Strindberg canon, especially Lucky-Peter’s Travels (1882). At the beginning of the play there is a black glove lying on the floor. A young married woman has lost her ring and aggressively accuses her female servant, Ellen. She is punished by the Gnome who, supported by the Angel, hides her little child. The Young Wife mourns her baby as if it were dead. At the end of the play, after several who-is-to-blame-scenes, reminding of the arson question in The Burned Site, the ring is found in the glove and mother and child are reunited. The main character, the Old Man, who to a certain extent initiates the intrigue in the first four acts, is a philosopher and a preserver brooding over the enigmas of Life, reminding one of the protagonists of the first two chamber plays. Of course one could call the plot of the glove and the plot of the ring mock plots, and to a certain extent the last Chamber play corresponds to the Ancient Greek satyr plays performed after the tragedies.

22

Ingvar Holm, Drama på scen, Stockholm 1969, pp. 180–181.

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The Black Glove is not very appreciated on stage as it is a dramatic fairytale showing the almost naive religious attitude of a humble dramatist; the protagonists are reconciled and return to a simple belief in metaphysical powers.23 The Old Man dies and the Young Wife realizes that he is her own father. It is a five-act play and thus it completes in a metaphorical way the suite of Chamber plays – opus 1 to 5 – so that they form a five-act play on a higher level. It completes them through giving us an example of Strindberg’s fairytale dramaturgy. The Christmas Gnome who takes off his cap and blows kisses to the mother and child at the end of the play belongs to the genre. The Strindbergian Gnome hears and sees everything (p.209), distributes Christmas cards (p.213) and creates chaos and order, even among the papers of the Old Man (p.227). This Faustian spirit can, but must not, be seen. He tells the Old Man: “To exist is to be perceived, / You have perceived me! / Therefore I am.” (p.228). From a dramaturgic point of view he is extremely important as he arranges the play and on the last page but one his colleague The Christmas Angel declares: “Now our weft is almost complete” (p.240). The play is simply a mock version of the religious worldview of Strindberg’s late plays. In his last two chamber plays Strindberg recycles themes from his naturalistic dramas and from his fairytale plays. To a certain extent the whole series of Chamber plays can be looked upon as meta dramas where fragments of Strindbergian dramatic technique are used in a transformed way. To a certain extent metatheatrical moments are already hinted at by Strindberg. In Storm, for instance, the Brother says: “Those four red blinds look like theatre drapes, behind them they’re rehearsing bloody dramas” (p. 42) and it is a problem of interpretation to decide which plots are the most important in the drama. In his paragraph about the drama in Poetics Aristotle states that “character comes second”. Character (’ethos’) “shows what sort of thing a man chooses or avoids in circumstances where the choice is not obvious”.24 Character is certainly important in Storm, all events of the play are closely related to the protagonist. In that aspect, Storm is the most subjective of the Chamber plays: we have one central character, all the others, including the Brother, are peripheral. In this aspect Storm is totally different from A Dream Play with its shifting focus from character to character.25 In The Burned Site the Stranger and the Brother are 23

Cf. Gunnar Ollén, Strindbergs dramatik, Stockholm 1982, pp. 574–577. Aristotle (1927) 1991, p.27, p. 29. 25 Göran Rossholm, ”Ord och mun. Perspektiv i Strindbergs Ett drömspel”, Strindbergiana 11, ed. Boel Westin, Stockholm 1996, pp.134–157. 24

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protagonists on a more equal level and in The Black Glove there are two kinds of characters: the Christmas Gnome and the Christmas Angel on the supernatural level and The Old Man on the earthly level. In these three plays it is easy for the spectator to sympathize with the male protagonist, and easy to look upon him as upon the Stranger in To Damascus, even if he does not accept him as a Strindberg alter ego. In The Black Glove where the characters are good and evil, just as in fairytales, the Old Man, who is a preserver and philosopher and broods over the enigmas of life (p. 212), is beyond doubt one of these good characters. In The Ghost Sonata the characters are fragments. The Old Man; the Cook, who belongs to the weird Hummel family; the Mummy and the Young Lady, who cannot survive on her own, are related to the uncanny. The Mummy is a human cripple almost physically reduced to a parrot. This fragment character of the inhabitants of the house is especially evident in Bengtsson’s description of the ghost supper: “They drink tea and don’t say a word, or the colonel talks on his own; and they nibble at fancy biscuits, all of them at once, so they sound like rats in an attic.” (p.41) In The Pelican we meet a typical Strindbergian family with its marriage battles and generation conflicts. The characters in the chamber plays, even the Student in The Ghost Sonata, remain strangely abstract. Many of them are reduced to their function in the play and they are hardly drawn as individuals, or “round characters” in E.M. Forster’s sense, like, for example, Miss Julie. Most Strindberg characters seem to be left alone and isolated. In The Pelican the son maintains about his dead father: “He didn’t have any friends! An independent man can’t have friends, since friendship consists of pledging oneself to mutual admiration…” (p.173) The characters seem to cross the limits between the living and the dead. In The Ghost Sonata we see a dead man in his shroud on stage and in The Pelican the dead father, though absent in person, is present through the carbolic smell, the wind and the rocking chair. In Storm a dead male tenant lived in a flat behind red curtains. In The Burned Site the cemetery nearby is discussed, as well as the coffins and the funerals (p.87). The destinies of the characters are woven together, especially in The Burned Site (p.96). In The Ghost Sonata the Mummy declares: “Crimes and secrets and guilt bind us together! – We’ve broken with each other and parted so many times, it’s endless, but we’re always drawn together again…” (p.145). The theme of vampirism is evident in The Ghost Sonata as well as in The Pelican. The butler Johansson states that the Old Man Hummel tries to get involved in people’s interests (p. 140) and Hummel himself declares that he knows: “All of them […] I am interested in

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people’s destinies” (p.132). In this aspect the function of Hummel in the play is different from that of the old men in the other Chamber plays, but there are similarities on a functional level. Hummel describes it himself: ”My whole life is like a book of fairy stories, sir; but although the stories are all different they connect by a thread, and the theme recurs regularly” (p.132). Another example: “That was my mission in this house; to remove the weeds, reveal the crimes, settle the accounts so that the young may start afresh in this house which I give to them.” (p.150) On one level the statements seems ironic – Hummel is no hero, we rather believe Bengtsson – but nevertheless they prove that in these plays “ethos” seems more important than “mythos”. Hummel is just as ambiguous as the heathen gods – Johansson compares Hummel in his wheelchair to Thor in his chariot (p. 138). Frederik in The Pelican complains that he did not get enough to eat; his mother faked the bills, ate in the kitchen herself and let the family have “the diluted warmed-up leftovers” (p.186). When the Mother finally is attacked, she walks “around the room like a wild animal that has just been captured” (p.193). ’Ethos’, however, dominates also in another sense. Especially in The Black Glove good actions and good choices are easy to discern from sinful actions. In The Ghost Sonata, the ethical discussion is clearly related to the illusion theme. Especially important are those characters who can see “right through people” like the Stranger in The Burned Site (p.101) or the Student in The Ghost Sonata. In The Pelican, after the scene with the wind and the moving rocking chair the Son even states: “Gerda and I have been clairvoyants. We had a visit from a departed spirit.” (p.187) An important metaphor for remaining in one’s illusions is sleep. The Stranger in The Burned Site compares himself to a sleep-walker on the edge of a roof: “I know I’m asleep, but I am awake — and I’m just waiting to be woken up”(p.119). A similar sleepwalking theme can be found in The Pelican. Gerda’s husband says that Gerda “doesn’t know anything yet, she’s sleepwalking, but she’s beginning to wake up” (p.179). A few pages later Gerda says herself: “I’m sleepwalking, I know, but I don’t want to be woken up! I couldn’t bear to live!” and her brother answers “Don’t you think we’re all sleepwalking then?” (p. 182) Gerda is one of the most ethical characters in the Chamber plays. For her it hurts “to see that life’s greatest happiness is just emptiness!” (p. 183). In The Black Glove the Christmas Gnome gives the Old Man new glasses and declares: You shall have new eyes to see what isn’t visible to mere mortals!

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Aspects of Strindberg’s Chamber Plays Where once you saw laws, there you shall see the law maker, and then you shall meet the Judge; where once you saw nature and the mischief of blind chance, there you shall find creatures of the same sort as yourself!(p.226)

The third element of drama, according to Aristotle, is thought (“dianoia”): ”the ability to say what is possible and appropriate”. You find it “in speeches which contain an argument that something is or is not, or a general expression of opinion”.26 Thought dominates in four of the chamber plays. In Storm and The Burned Site the characters are reflecting upon life as such and in The Ghost Sonata and The Black Glove we find a dominant supernatural level. The protagonists in all the plays are more or less brooding over the riddle of life and the ideas seem more important than the plots and the characters as such, even in The Pelican where we just find the traces of a hidden mysticism: the wind, the rocking chair, the fire, the impossibility of moving). The fourth element is “lexis”/the language, “the expression and meaning of the words”, according to Aristotle. Language questions and questions concerning the two last elements, “melos” and “opsis” are treated below. * In 1999 Hans-Thies Lehmann, a German drama and theatre scholar, published an impressive work, Postdramatisches Theater, which has heavily influenced theatre studies as well as theatre journalism since then. The book was translated into English in 2006. Lehmann starts with an observation that many modern German plays, e.g. the works of Schwab, Jelinek and Goetz, are no longer conventionally written dramas with a traditional set of characters involved in a plot. They could be described as “language areas”. Modern theatre performance of older plays also emphasize this aspect, especially after the breakthrough of performance art as a genre of its own. Lehmann describes the aesthetical logic of this new form of art. The text that he analyzes is not first of all the literary text, but the “text of the performance”, i.e. the text that is included in the theatrical performance. He selects eleven different phenomena in the theatre performance: 26

Aristotle (1927) 1991, p.27, p.29.

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1. Parataxis – non-hierarchy or a “de-hierarchization of theatrical means”. 2. Simultaneity – the signs of the stage produce simultaneous effects. 3. Play with the density of signs; a dialectic of plethora and deprivation. 4. Plethora - deforming figuration (cf. Kresnik, Vandekeybus, Lalala Human Steps). 5. Musicalization (cf. Meredith Monk). 6. Scenography, visual dramaturgy. 7. Warmth and coldness – auto sufficient physicality or distancing. 8. Physicality. 9. Concrete theatre (cf. Fabre). 10. Irruption of the real. 11. Event / Situation – the event of the performance stands in focus. (Lehmann, p.86–107). Our discussion of the Aristotelian plot has already shown that the nonhierarchy is especially evident in The Burned Site with its many fragmentary scenes and characters related to one another. Only through interpretation is it possible to establish a hierarchy. Also Storm has to a certain extent (e.g. the short scene where the Potman asks for Herr Fischer and the next four scenes, pp.49–51) a paratactical structure, whereas The Pelican and The Black Glove keep a more conventional structure. In The Ghost Sonata the apartment house is used as a device of presenting a set of characters performing actions which have little to do with one another. Strindberg does not go so far as Heiner Goebbels with his theatre of objects, who is quoted by Lehmann (p. 86), but the phenomenon that many actions are talked about rather than juxtaposed can of course be looked upon as an extreme consequence of parataxis. On the other hand, the Kierkegaardian/Strindbergian ’gjentagelse’, repetition, is mentioned, but we never see it on stage and, as we have seen, there are secret connections between the inhabitants. The Stranger in The Burned Site declares: “There are even scenes from my life which have been repeated several times, so that I have often said to myself: I’ve done this before” (p.96). We are told that the ghost supper has been repeated for twenty years, but it just occurs once in the play: “They look like ghosts… And they’ve been doing it for twenty years, always the same people, saying the same things, or else they keep quiet to avoid feeling ashamed.” (Butler Bengtson, p.141) The criterion of simultaneity rather belongs to the stage performance than to the text, but the fragmentary actions going on behind the windows in the apartment houses in Strindberg’s first and third Chamber plays

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could with great advantage be shown simultaneously. In this aspect Strindberg’s text suits post dramatic aesthetics very well. The density of signs is extreme in The Ghost Sonata, especially in the stage directions at the beginning of the play (p.127) and the rhythm on stage where scenes with two characters are contrasted to scenes with many actors, like the Ghost Supper, is impressive. In the scene where the Old Man Hummel is attacked by the Mummy the text gives the direction “Long silence” five times (pp.149–150), just before the Mummy’s statement that she can “halt the passing of time”. In The Ghost Sonata the accumulation of past events sometimes approaches parody: the Student’s observation is not only example of revealing the truth, but also a good rhetoric example of accumulation: “Afterwards we went to a restaurant… And there we found out that the funeral mace had been in love with the deceased’s son… And that the deceased had borrowed money from his son’s admirer… The very next day the priest was arrested for embezzling the church funds! – Charming isn’t it?” (pp.158–159) A complex relationship like this is hardly possible for the audience to perceive; some spectators will probably feel that it is over kill. Under the aspect of “plethora” Lehmann discusses the “battles of materials” in certain German stage productions. The strange, possibly haunted, room in The Pelican, contrasted to the mystic final scene where the young protagonists cannot move, seems to represent a similar tendency. Also the garret of the apartment house in The Black Glove seems to be filled with objects with or without relevance for the action. The heavy symbolism in the third act of The Ghost Sonata might seem overloaded and the scenography is explicitly bizarre: “A room decorated in a somewhat bizarre style, with oriental motifs. Hyacinths of all colours are everywhere. On the tilestone sits a Buddha with a slice of a root in his lap, and out of it has grown the stalk of an Askalon plant with its spherical cluster of star-shaped petals!” (pp.152–153) These details are contrasted to the silent Mummy and the Death Screen (pp.141–152). Also the ecstatic enthusiasm for the hyacinth seems over determined: “Its maiden-like shape, slim and straight which rises up from the root and rests on the water then sinks its pure white roots into the colourless liquid; I love its colours; the innocent and pure snow-white, the sweet honey-yellow, the young pink and the mature red, but above all the blue, dew-like blue, the deep-eyed, the faithful… I love them all more than gold or pearls, have loved them since I was a child and admired them, since they possess all the qualities I lack… but… ” (p.153). The hyacinth is even “a model of the cosmos” (p.154). Buddha is holding the root and the “root is the Earth that rests on the water or lies on

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the soil; now the stalk shoots up, as straight as the world’s axis and at its top, the six-pointed sunflower” (p.153).27 Even if the Student’s love to the Young Girl is rendered as serious and devoted it cannot possibly carry associations like these. Musicalization can be found on two levels. Music is mentioned and used in the plays. In Storm we listen to Waldteufel’s Pluie d’or, Roeder’s Alcazar and Chopin’s Fantaisie impromptu and the Boston clubs are mentioned as stage directions. In The Ghost Sonata Beethoven is present already in the title, of course,28 and in The Pelican Chopin’s Fantaisie impromptu is used once again. In The Pelican also Godard’s “Berceuse” from Jocelyn and Ferrari’s “Il me disait” are performed, while we in The Black Glove return to Beethoven, this time to his sonata L’istesso tempo di ariose and to his Funeral march, along with Sindings Frühlingsrauschen. All these references are explicitly made in the play, and without doubt they belong to the play and should be used in the loyal productions. Musicalization means, however, more than this. The associative principle of composition with irregularly returning elements has certain affinities with music, i.e. the returning milkmaid in The Ghost Sonata. Silence is important in The Ghost Sonata with its anti aristotelian language scepticism – language rather hides than reveals. The Old Man Hummel, to whom languages are codes, declares: “I prefer silence. You can hear thoughts and see the past; silence doesn’t hide anything, but words do.” (p.149). The scenography or the visual dramaturgy is extremely strong in all the Chamber plays. First of all we have the house. The stage in Storm is dominated by the apartment house with its semi-basement of granite and its façade (Acts I and III) and in Act II we are inside the house; the protagonist has become immobile, according to himself. The house is described in detail, as well as the small square in front of it (p. 41). The relationship between house and man is intensive. The Man states that he is “bound to this apartment by the memories … only in there do I have peace and security” (p.43). Also in The Burned Site the house, or rather the ruin, becomes more and more significant: “The left-hand half of the upstage area is taken up by the walls of a burned-out single-storey house; we can see the wallpaper on 27

Ekman discusses smell, smell hallucinations and flower symbolism in the drama in Hans- Göran Ekman, Villornas värld. Studier i Strindbergs kammarspel, Hedemora 1997, pp. 180–184, 194–195. 28 Ollén discusses Beethoven’s Piano Sonata nr. 17, Opus 31, and his Opus 70 Geister-Trio in Strindberg 1991, p.413.

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the walls, and the tile stones.” One of the characters, the Bricklayer declares at the beginning of the play: “there’s something particular about his street; the ones as come here don’t ever leave it, that is to say, the ones as move away come back all the same, sooner or later; till they're carried out in the cemetery, which is down the end of the street” (p.83). The blocks around the street are called “the swamp”. As several scholars have observed the rooms staged in the Chamber plays emerge more and more during the performance and sometimes develop an increasingly claustrophobic character.29 The house in The Ghost Sonata is rather similar to the house in Storm: “Corner of the façade of the ground floor and first floor of a modern house. The corner is formed by a rounded room on the ground floor and by a balcony with a flagpole on the first” (p.127). The meta-aspect of these houses is already hinted at in the dialogue in Storm. The Baker says: “There’s dramas enough here though…” (p.42), referring to the house with its ten households. In The Black Glove, where latent tendencies in the earlier Chamber plays are laid open, we are confronted with the most haunted of the Strindberg houses, having a gnome and an angel in service. Acts I and II take place in “The entrance hall of an apartment building”, Act III in “The Caretaker’s room”, Act IV in ”The Garrett” and Act V in “The nursery” (pp.205, 216, 225, 236). The Tower of Babel with its plurality of mother tongues is first associated to the house with its six storeys plus the lower ground (p.217) and then to the Old Man and his attempt to “rise out from this vale of tears” (p.227). Thus a metaphoric connection is created: Apartment house –> Tower of Babel –> Enigma of life –> Language problem. Even the Caretaker notices that the building is haunted (p.219), although he seems to have an almost supernatural function of his own. The Old Man compares him to the Mountain King and continues: “you hold the keys to all the doors in the building, / and everyone holds the key to your heart; / you know all the destinies being woven here, /you hear, you see through walls and floors, / and this is where they all bring their confidences, their worries and their sorrows” (p.217). At the end of Act II the house on stage, i.e. the props, becomes surprisingly active: “There is a knocking on a wall; the lift creaks; the water pipes hiss; human voices murmur through the walls” (p.215). If one wants to it is also possible to focus on a glove as a title object and a main object in one of the plots, a black glove, “female, size six” (p. 205), that the gnome snatches and brings back. and the materiality of the paper of the Old Man – large, pale blue regal, an English vellum (p.227) is 29

Cf. van Ooijen 2010, p. 177.

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described in detail. In The Chamber plays objects on stage, e.g. the marble statue in The Ghost Sonata or the thermometer in the drawer in Storm (p.61), have a much more important function on stage than objects in naturalist dramas. Light effects are often significant. In Storm the Man is looking at Gerda and the Brother – and they are illumined by a flash of lightening (p.54). In this way one could maintain that there are elements of concrete theatre in the Chamber plays. Criteria like “warmth and coldness”, “physicality”, “interruption of the real” and “event” are too connected to the performance to be perceived in the dramatic text alone, but of course the Chamber plays seem to be extremely open for them, which many stage directors have shown in recent productions (an extreme example The Ghost Sonata at Teater Moment, Stockholm, in 2012, where quotations from contemporary relevant political speeches are added). The Chamber plays consist to a great extent of fragments. The Burned Site even starts in a symbolic way with a scene where some of the characters are moving in the ashes at the place where the house has stood. Characters are fragments and different plots seem to be juxtaposed and when past events are talked about there are contradicting versions. Traditional interpreters seem to neglect the importance of the props and the music. In Storm Gerda does not recognize feelings but does recognize each piece of furniture – piano, palm trees, buffet, etc. Modern media like the telephone are used.30 In the Chamber plays a multidimensional text is created where physical objects as well as music are not only emphasizing the words but are also elements in their own right in a dramatic structure. Not only are the destinies of the characters woven together, but also the elements of drama. Silence is just as important as repetition: “How many times have we sat here, saying the self-same things?” (p.98) As Ekman notices the plays are also plays where all the five senses are present, e.g. the carbolic smell after the funeral in The Pelican. In spite of Strindberg’s interest for drama tradition and contemporary theatre aesthetics, his Chamber plays in many ways foreshadow 20th century avant-garde.

30

Karin Marie Svenmo, “Strindberg and the Phone”, in Strindberg and Fiction, ed. Göran Rossholm, Barbro Ståhle Sjönell & Boel Westin, Stockholm 2001, pp.160– 167.

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Bibliography Aristotle, Poetics; Longinus, On the Sublime, Demetrius, On Style, transl. by W. H. Fyfe & W. Rhys Roberts, Cambridge Mass. (1927) 1991 Aspenberg, Karin, Strindbergs värld, Lund 2012 Atterbom, P.D.A., Lycksalighetens ö, Sagospel i fem äfventyr, Upsala 1824, 1827 Dietrich, Margret, Europäische Dramaturgie im 19. Jahrhundert, Graz 1961 Ekman, Hans- Göran, Villornas värld. Studier i Strindbergs kammarspel, Hedemora 1997 Elam, Keir, Semiotics of Theatre, London & New York 1980 Heed, Sven Åke, Teaterns tecken, Lund 2002 Holm, Ingvar, Drama på scen, Stockholm 1969 Kvam, Kela, Max Reinhardt og Strindbergs visionære dramatik. Teatervidenskabelige studier 99, København 1974 Lagerroth, Ulla-Britta, “Almqvist och scenkonsten” in Perspektiv på Almqvist. Dokument och studier samlade av Ulla-Britta Lagerroth & Beriil Romberg, Stockholm 1973 Lehmann, Hans-Thies, Postdramatisches Theater, Frankfurt am Main 1999 Lehmann, Hans-Thies, Postdramatic Theatre, transl. by Karen JürsMunby, London 2006 Lindström, Göran, “Dialog och bildspråk i Strindbergs kammarspel”, in Strindbergs språk och stil. Valda studier, Lund 1964 —. “Strindbergs Brända tomten. Ett bidrag till dramats tillkomsthistoria” in Diktaren och hans formvärld. Lundastudier i litteraturvetenskap tillägnade Staffan Björck och Carl Fehrman, red. Rolf Arvidsson, Bernt Olsson & Louise Vinge, Malmö 1975 Lönngren, Ann-Sofie, ”Från diagnostisering till intersektionalitet. Tendenser inom Strindbergsforskningen 1963–2011” in Tidskrift för litteraturvetenskap, 3–4, 2011, p. 3–21 Ollén, Gunnar, “Kommentarer” in August Strindberg, Kammarspel 1907– 1909, ed. Gunnar Ollén. Samlade Verk 58, Stockholm 1991 —. Strindbergs dramatik, Stockholm 1982 van Ooijen, Erik, The Mold of Writing. Style and Structure in Strindberg’s Chamber Plays, Örebro (diss.) 2010. Pavis, Patrice, Dictionnaire du théâtre, Paris 1980 —. L’Analyse des spectacles, Paris 1996 Rossholm, Göran, “Ord och mun. Perspektiv i Strindbergs Ett drömspel”, Strindbergiana 11, ed. Boel Westin, Stockholm 1996, pp. 134–157.

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Strindberg, August, Kammarspel 1907–1909, ed. Gunnar Ollén. Samlade Verk 58, Stockholm 1991 —. The Plays: Volume 2. The Chamber Plays & The Great Highway, transl. by Gregory Motton, London 2004 Svenmo, Karin Marie, ”Strindberg and the Phone”, in Strindberg and Fiction, ed. Göran Rossholm, Barbro Ståhle Sjönell & Boel Westin, Stockholm 2001 Szondi, Peter, Theorie des modernen Dramas. Schriften I, ed. Jean Bollack et al., Frankfurt am Main 1978 Törnqvist, Egil, Strindbergian Drama. Themes and Structures, Stockholm 1982 —. Strindbergs dramatiska bildspråk, Amsterdam 2011 —. Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata: from text to performance, Amsterdam 2000

BETWEEN BEETHOVEN AND SCHÖNBERG: STRINDBERG’S IDEA OF CHAMBER MUSIC AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR AND IN HIS CHAMBER PLAYS HANNAH HINZ

During his last years in life, August Strindberg regularly gathered the socalled “Beethoven Boys” (“Beethovengubbarna”) in the privacy of his home at Drottninggatan in Stockholm in order to listen to music, played mostly on the piano, before discussing aesthetics and having dinner. “The Beethoven Evenings” (“Beethovenaftnarna”) have been crucial for the image of Strindberg as a music lover ever since. Still, they can provide more than quaint information about the biographical author. The evenings with the Beethoven Boys did have an impact on Strindberg’s literary production, most obviously on his Chamber Plays. The four chamber plays Thunder in the Air, The Burned Site, The Ghost Sonata, and The Pelican were written during the first half of the year 1907, only months before Strindberg was to open the Intimate Theatre in collaboration with August Falck at Norra Bantorget in Stockholm. The fifth chamber play, The Black Glove, subtitled “a lyrical fantasy (for the scene) in five acts”, was written later than the other chamber plays and partly in iambic metre. In addition, while the first four were staged at Intima teatern, The Black Glove was premiered 1909 in Falun. Still, Strindberg marked the play as “Opus 5” as being part of the cycle and alludes thereby to music. He also declares music to be at the core of his aesthetics of an intimate theatre: “The idea of chamber music brought into the drama: an intimate experience, a meaningful motif, a meticulous treatment.”1 Music is no universal category and neither is Strindberg’s idea of chamber music timeless but rather closely connected to the frequent Beethoven evenings. Conceptions of music are reliant on 1

August Strindberg, The chamber plays of August Strindberg, 1st ed. (San Francisco, Calif.: Exit Press, 2012).

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historically determined practices, discourses and conventions.2 When Strindberg turns to music, he does so having a certain type of music in mind and aiming at a certain experience of music, resembling the experience the Beethoven evenings offered him and his fellow Beethoven Boys. The Beethoven evenings thus reveal a notion of music and a kind of aesthetic experience crucial for Strindberg’s orientation towards music in his Chamber Plays. The series of Beethoven Evenings was launched 1899, the last Beethoven evening taking place in February 1912, only three months before Strindberg’s death.3 A typical Beethoven Evening had only a few participants, carefully chosen by the host himself. August Strindberg’s brother Axel, a professional musician, was part of the core of the group, and so were Richard Bergh and Vilhelm Carlheim-Gyllensköld.4 The musician and violinist Tor Aulin became a frequent participant in 1907. Karl Nordström, Carl Eldh, August Palme, Ivar Nilsson, Nils Andersson, sometimes even Anders Zorn and Albert Engström, were occasional participants. Several guests remained only infrequent visitors at Drottninggatan: among others, Wilhelm Stenhammar.5 The Beethoven Boys formed a homogeneous group with a limited number of members. To be part of the group was intrinsically tied to certain rules of behaviour: in order to meet to the host’s expectations, a Beethoven Boy was obliged to keep full focus when listening to the music and should admire Beethoven without any constraint. First and foremost, the purpose of a Beethoven evening was to celebrate Beethoven and the power of his music. Doing so, the participants, and certainly their front man Strindberg, even aimed at being a part of a contemporary cult. Around 1900, Beethoven was an iconic cult figure in both Germany and Sweden.6 In Stockholm, the Aulin Quartet together with Wilhelm Stenhammar at the piano played a wide selection of

2

Cf. Lars Elleström, Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 25f. 3 Cf. Victor Hellström, Strindberg och musiken, (Stockholm, Norstedt, 1917) p.29. 4 Strindberg and Robinson, Strindberg's letters. Vol. 2, 1892-1912, p.655. 5 Cf. Hellström, Strindberg och musiken, 29.; Hellqvist, En sjungande August: om Strindberg och musiken i hans liv, p.213f. 6 Joachim Grage, “Strindbergs ‘Sista sonater’. Musikalisch-literarische Intermedialität in den Kammarspel,” in Strindberg and His Media : Proceedings of the 15th International Strindberg Conference, ed. Kirsten Wechsel (Leipzig ; Berlin: Ed. Kirchhof & Franke, 2003), p.318.

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Beethoven’s chamber music in a large concert series 1901 and 1902.7 As for the Beethoven evenings, Strindberg prioritised Beethoven’s works for piano. Axel Strindberg and Tor Aulin performed some of Beethoven’s works for violin and piano, on some occasions they played together with a cellist and once the whole Aulin Quartet actually gave a guest performance in Strindberg’s flat at Drottninggatan.8 Nevertheless, Strindberg made it clear that he preferred the piano as a solo instrument. The notion of chamber music and the preference for the piano, essential for the practice of Beethoven evenings, is fundamental for the idea of chamber music characterising Strindberg’s Chamber Plays. The two of Strindberg’s Chamber Plays bringing music to the fore by way of their titles, The Ghost Sonata and The Black Glove, even involve music by Beethoven. Both The Ghost Sonata and The Black Glove will in the following be looked at in their possibilities for staging, in several aspects resembling a musical score. At the same time I am fully aware of the fact that actual productions require other practical solutions and are often based on readings that adopt a critical attitude towards the author’s intention. Strindberg puts The Ghost Sonata in relation to Beethoven’s piano sonatas not only by title, but even by dint of comments on Beethoven given in a letter to Emil Schering. In this letter Strindberg proclaims a relation between The Ghost Sonata and Beethoven’s Geistertrio, Beethoven’s Piano Trio No. 5 in D major, Opus 70, and his Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Opus 31 No. 2: “It was a great and novel pleasure for me in my Easter suffering to find you so quickly taken by The Ghost Sonata (that’s what it should be called, both after Beethoven’s Ghost Sonata in D minor and his Ghost Trio, not ‘Spook’ [‘Spuk’] therefore).”9 Beethoven’s Piano Trio is generally called Geistertrio, referring to the “Largo espressivo” part assumed to create a ghostlike atmosphere in

7

Cf. Martin Nyström, “Det klingar om Strindbergs språk. Men hur djupt in i det trängde musiken?,” Dagens Nyheter, 2012-05-29 2012.; cf. a letter from Strindberg to Leopold Littmansson (5130), March 23th 1905: “Beethoven är högt oppe här. Aulin och Stenhammar gifva alla violinsonaterna, på fyra aftnar. Och Stenhammar ensam ger alla pianosonaterna på serie.” (August Strindberg and Torsten Eklund, August Strindbergs brev. 15, April 1904-april 1907 (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1976), s.113.) 8 Hellström, Strindberg och musiken, 24. The Aulin Quartet even performed at Intima teatern. 9 Letter to Emil Schering, April 1st, 1907, Strindberg and Robinson, Strindbergs letters. Vol. 2, 1892-1912, p.736.).

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performance.10 Strindberg’s use of the designation “Spöksonat” (“Ghost sonata”) for Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 17, however, is unconventional. This work generally bears the subtitle “Der Sturm” (“The Tempest”), resulting from the assumption that the composer recommended a reading of Shakespeare’s The Tempest to those who wanted to get a better understanding of his sonata. Whether a misunderstanding or not, Strindberg’s Ghost Sonata is thus indirectly related to Shakespeare, another of Strindberg’s favourites. And the tie to Beethoven becomes even more complex when Strindberg advises Schering in yet another letter to translate the Swedish title Spöksonaten to the German Gespenstersonate in order to clarify the relation to Beethoven’s music, not to Geistertrio or Geistersonate. The connection between The Ghost Sonata and music appears to be multifaceted and implies a miscellaneous play with connotations. Beethoven’s music is present in The Ghost Sonata both due to the title and subsequently in Strindberg’s innovations concerning a “motif”-based drama dialogue and drama structure, defying genre conventions by a disintegration of constituent parts of drama. The Ghost Sonata therefore lacks both a dominating chronological plot and an evident arc of suspense. Instead, the dialogue follows analogical and associative patterns, creating a structure resembling “the progressive unfolding of themes in musical development”.11 Still, a dramatic text will be interpreted in a different way from a piece of music even when based on a structure sharing distinctive features with patterns of composition typical for Western classical music. While instrumental music is usually interpreted as referring to “motions, emotions, bodily experiences or cognitive structures”, a dramatic text is interpreted on other grounds.12 In The Ghost Sonata the author’s orientation towards music entails a disarrangement of plot, resulting in a composition based on smaller elements (“the meaningful motif”) and associations. From a hermeneutical perspective on the art forms music and drama as “aesthetically developed forms of media”13 this can be interpreted as an expression for the modern human’s experience of the world as fragmented and incoherent, accompanied by an experience of the verbal language as untrustworthy and deficient. A musicalization of drama opens up for an aesthetics focussing on mood or atmosphere, implying not 10

Cf. e.g. John Naglee Burk and Ludwig van Beethoven, The Life and Works of Beethoven. (New York: Random House, 1943), p.399.) 11 Cf. Eric Prieto, Listening in: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), p.57. 12 See Elleström, Media borders, Multimodality and Intermediality, p.23. 13 Ibid. pp.11–13.

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only an associative composition of drama dialogue, but even silence, frequent pauses and pantomimic scenes.14 Beethoven’s music not only provides Strindberg with a point of orientation while hunting for a new kind of drama dialogue in The Ghost Sonata, but also is involved in The Black Glove, the only one of Strindberg’s Chamber Plays in which Beethoven’s music actually is supposed to be played from behind the scene. The Black Glove is set in a block of flats, described as a “tower of Babel”.15 Even if there are several recurring themes, the intrigue in The Black Glove is simple and fairly coherent, revolving around the glove the title refers to. A young woman’s black glove, concealing one of her rings, is missing and soon her daughter disappears. As the reader or the audience will know she, called the Young Wife, is being punished by “Tomten”, the Christmas Gnome, who wants to teach her a lesson because of her haughtiness. In the happy ending, mother and child are reunited on Christmas Eve. The Black Glove’s subtitle “A lyrical fantasy (for the stage) in five scenes” may be read as referring to musical categories. In music, a fantasy or fantasia is a composition free in form and Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu in C sharp minor, Op. 66, to be played in both Oväder (Thunder in the Air) and Pelikanen (The Pelican) makes a pertinent example. Furthermore, Swedish terms like “lyrisk teater” (“lyrical theatre”) or “lyriskt drama” (“lyrical drama”) were commonly used over a long period to describe opera.16 Equally relevant, “lyrisk” (“lyrical”) relates to a contemporary notion of lyrical music, a kind of music

14

For a more detailed discussion see Hannah Hinz, “Mjölkflickan och andra flyktiga illusioner i Spöksonaten,” in Okonstlad konst: om äkthet och autenticitet i estetisk teori och praktik, ed. Axel Englund and Anna Jörngården (Lindome: Brutus Östlings bokförlag Symposion, 2011). 49-56.; Concerning the difficulty of translating the Swedish “stämning” or German “Stimmung” to English cf. the different titles of Gumbrecht’s book on “Stimmungen” in English and German: Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stimmungen lesen: über eine verdeckte Wirklichkeit der Literatur, Edition Akzente (München: Hanser, 2011).; Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Erik Butler, Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung : On a Hidden Potential of Literature, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2012). 15 August Strindberg and Eivor Martinus, The Chamber Plays, Rev. ed. (Charlbury, Oxon, UK: Amber Lane Press, 2004), 14. 16 Cf. “lyriker,”in Nordisk familjebok : konversationslexikon och realencyklopedi innehållende upplysningar och förklaringar om märkvärdiga namn, föremål och begrepp. Vol. 10: Lloyd-Militärkoloni, (Stockholm: Nordisk familjeboks förl., 1886), p.377.

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supposed to depict subjective moods rather than dramatic or epic plot.17 The creation of certain moods or atmospheres is clearly essential for the idea of chamber music as pertinent in an intimate aesthetics characterizing The Black Glove.18 The aim to create a mood, rather than to tell a simple story in coherent scenes, implies in The Black Glove that music is used to accompany or replace the verbal dialogue. Piano music is to be heard from the nearby flats and thus motivated within the plot’s frame work and setting. According to the stage directions, the tenants living in the apartment building have exactly seven “pianinos”, small upright pianos, at their disposal, an instrument adapted to the limited space offered by a flat and sometimes even called “kammarpiano” (“chamber piano”). 19 In the scene in The Black Glove in which music is supposed to be played from behind the scene for the first time, music functions as a presage, a warning signal. The YOUNG WIFE comes into the hall with the candle which she puts down on the ice-box. There she finds the Christmas card with the thistle, which she reads, then tears to pieces. – Then she looks into the mirror and adjusts her hair. Now a piano can be heard from a neighbour who is playing Beethoven’s Sonata 31, Opus 110, L’istesso tempo di arioso. She listens. Then she takes the silver brush and begins to brush her child’s clothes; plucking threads, dusting; she discovers a loose button on the coat; takes the doll from the chair and places it on the ice-box; sits down on the chair, takes a needle and thread from her breast pocket and sews on the button. Then she gets up and takes a black glove from the glove basket; she looks for the other glove but without success; she looks for the child’s tiny galoshes under the chair; the odd glove she tucks into her dress at the breast, and stands there forlorn. The music changes to Beethoven’s Funeral March. She listens and is seized by fear. A rumbling noise comes from the icebox, as when lumps of ice are dislodged. The cry of a child! The YOUNG WIFE is horrified; wants to go but stands petrified. There is a knocking on a wall; the lift creaks; the water pipes hiss; human voices murmur through the walls. KRISTIN comes in, white-faced, her arms raised and her hands clasped together, speaks to the YOUNG WIFE words we cannot hear, and rushes out. 17

Ibid.: “sådan musik, som mera går ut på att skildra subjektiva stämningar än episka eller dramatiska handlingar.” 18 See August Strindberg et al., August Strindbergs samlade verk : [nationalupplaga]. 58, Kammarspel (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1991), p.439f. 19 Ibid., p.314.

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The YOUNG WIFE wants to run after her, but cannot – falls to her knees beside the chair, and hides her face in the little child’s coat which she strokes and embraces. Curtain falls quickly. 20

Beethoven’s music is here accompanying a pantomimic scene. Kristin seems to tell the Young Wife that something shocking has happened. However, it will take some time until Kristin will let the others know explicitly in scene three that the little girl is missing. The part of Beethoven’s piano sonata supposed to be played, “L’istesso tempo di arioso”, is included in the third movement of the sonata and marked “Perdendo le forze, dolente” (“exhausted, lamenting”). Reading the dramatic text as score-like in its possibilities to be staged, you find yourself confronted with the question whether a proposed audience could take note of a verbal characterisation of the music by its paratext. As Joachim Grage points out in his article on music in Strindberg’s Chamber Plays,21 one has to assume that the music’s emotional character or mood can be perceived even by an audience having access to neither the score or the music’s paratext. Conventions and cultural codes entail that the key G minor, a slow tempo marked “Adagio ma non troppo”, a melody line going down and repetitive chords are received as creating a calm, elegiac atmosphere or mood.22 In Charles Rosen’s analysis of Beethoven’s sonata for piano, the third movement “starts with a scene and recitative full of pain, continues with a lament that is, when it returns, literally choked with despair, goes through a condition close to death and ends with a triumphant return of life.”23 He outlines a dramaturgy known from theatre, often used when putting music into words. Rosen connects the part of the sonata Strindberg is demanding in The Black Glove with strong, breathtaking feelings of sorrow and despair.24 The pantomimic scene being enacted is thus given a certain emotional character by way of the accompanying music. And while Rosen interprets the following fugue in Beethoven’s sonata as expressing a return 20 In Motton’s translation, music terms tend to be misspelt, cf.: “Beethoven’s Sonata 31, Opus 110, L’intesso [sic] tempo di arioso”. August Strindberg and Gregory Motton, The plays: volume two (London: Oberon, 2004), 214f. 21 Grage, “Strindbergs ‘Sista sonater’. Musikalisch-literarische Intermedialität in den Kammarspel.” In his article Grage provides music examples and a detailed analysis of the scenes discussed here. 22 Ibid., 313. 23 Charles Rosen, Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas : a Short Companion (New Haven ; London: Yale University Press, 2002), p.235. 24 Ibid, p.239.

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to life, in Strindberg’s chamber play this part of the sonata will never be played as the stage directions demand a sudden change of music. While being preoccupied with her daughter’s belongings, the Young Wife does not yet know what soon is going to happen. Still, she becomes frightened when the music according to the stage directions shades into the third movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 12, Opus 26, “Maestoso andante”, marked “Marcia Funèbre sulla morte d’un eroe” (“On the Death of a Hero”), according to Rosen, a laconic, sober and dramatic movement.25 This change of music takes place before Kristin has told the Young Wife anything. Due to both the marking as a funeral march and the music’s emotional character according to western classical music’s tradition, this piece of music conveys grief and distress. In the pantomimic scene music thus appears as a presage for later occurrences and as an expression of the Young Wife’s inner feelings, while simultaneously exerting an effect on the intended audience, creating a mood and communicating wordlessly. Just like the fragmentation and disintegration of dialogue in The Ghost Sonata, even the pantomimic scenes form part of a crisis of language, coming along with the notion of human identity as instable and resulting in the modern human’s experience of the world as fragmented and incoherent. When verbal language discontinues permitting communication between stable characters, when verbal language is regarded untrustworthy and deficient, music is considered as an alternative due to its widely accepted capacity of creating moods and communicating emotions.26 This capacity is played on in The Black Glove where the focus in the scenes involving music lies on the effect music has in performance on both the audience and the characters on scene. The Young Wife is affected by music and so is the audience. The music’s emotional character will in all probability be conceived of by all listeners present at the theatre. In scene four another of Beethoven’s sonatas for piano, the Piano Sonata No. 29, Opus 106, takes a slightly different effect. This scene takes place at the garret where The Taxidermist, called “The Old Man”, lives. Later it will turn out that he is the missing child’s grandfather. .

(While the OLD MAN is searching amongst his papers someone is playing a piano: Beethoven’s Sonata 29, Opus 106, andante sostenuto.) How quickly I tire today! – I’ll rest a while! (He walks exhaustedly to his armchair and fall into it; the music continues.) My eyesight is odd;

25

Ibid, p.152. Grage, “Strindbergs ‘Sista sonater’. Musikalisch-literarische Intermedialität in den Kammarspel”, p.315. 26

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what’s near seems far away and what’s far away seems near; and my head is empty! (He closes his eyes; the music continues.) (The OLD MAN wakes up and attacks the piles of paper once more, but tires straight away and returns to the chair; attacks it once more but is beaten back. Now he falls asleep in the chair like a dead man. The CHRISTMAS GNOME pushes an armchair in from the right and sits himself down nonchalantly in front of the OLD MAN. The music stops; the OLD MAN wakes up.)27

Here the stage directions prescribe a melodramatic scene in the original sense of the word, presenting a character’s recitation with accompanying music. The music supposed to be played in scene four is not specified as exactly as in the preceding scene. Strindberg’s stage directions demand optional parts from the third movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 29, Opus 106, called “Große Sonate für das Hammerklavier” or shortly “Hammerklavier”. The third movement of this sonata is marked “Andante sostenuto. Appasionato e con molto sentimento” and has been interpreted as certainly expressive and sorrowful. This time, however, the focus in Strindberg’s use of music lies on the overwhelming power of music and on direct effects of music on the human body. The Taxidermist gets tired as soon as Beethoven’s music sets in and soon he falls asleep. After the music stops he wakes up. One more time music is supposed to be heard in The Black Glove, this time not a work by Beethoven, though: before the old Taxidermist dies, he is exposed to the Norwegian composer Christian Sinding’s Frühlingsrauschen from 1896, a popular piece of music around the turn of the century 1900.28 While listening, the Old Man remembers or maybe dreams an idyllic summer scene: OLD MAN: Leave my box alone! You call up spirits! CHRISTMAS GNOME: So be it! Then you’ll see that life is spirit, but imprisoned in a body, a thing! observe! Now I call them forth! I conjure them! (Opens the box.) OLD MAN: Ah! What an aroma! Is it Clover? O rose-filled month of May, when the apple trees blossom, the lilacs wave their shoots in the west wind and the newly dug garden that just now was white beneath the snow, now stretches out his black cloth 27

Strindberg and Motton, The Plays: Volume two, p.228. Strindberg et al., August Strindbergs samlade verk : [nationalupplaga]. 58, Kammarspel, p.350. 28

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In contrast to preceding scenes, in which music by Beethoven was to be played, this time, the sound of music is commented on directly by the character on scene. Sinding’s music takes, in combination with flavours from the mysterious box, a certain effect on the Taxidermist, putting him in a light mood, evoking memories and fantasies about youthfulness and summertime, thus providing him with an escape from the here and now. Despite the fact that he refuses the Christmas Gnome’s offer to make him young again, music in combination with certain olfactory sensations allows him to move back in time and thus is being ascribed a most powerful effect on the human senses. According to the stage directions, Sinding’s Frühlingsrauschen will be played yet another time. Now the Old Man is dead, the Young Wife is reunited with her daughter and even she begins hallucinating about summertime when listening to the music. Both Beethoven's and Sinding's works are used in specific aims and with certain ambitions regarding function and effects music has on both characters on scene and an audience. While Beethoven’s sonatas for piano are deployed to depict premonitions and to lull the Old Man to sleep, Sinding’s Frühlingsrauschen is linked to light feelings, summer and happiness. In his use of music in The Black Glove Strindberg thus follows the emotional character music is supposed to have according to paratext and by convention. He chooses on the one hand parts of Beethoven’s sonatas for piano commonly put in relation to grave and deep emotions 29

Even here, Motton misspells the title of the musical work in question: “Sindings ‘Frülingsrauschen’ is playing.” (Strindberg and Motton, The Plays: Volume two, p.232.)

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like sorrow, and on the other hand this music is contrasted by Sinding’s Frühlingsrauschen. By doing so, Strindberg follows the lines of a contemporary notion of Beethoven’s music as expressing a struggle, an attempt to overcome one’s own fate.30 Around 1900, Beethoven’s sonatas for piano were considered expressing various “moods” (“stämningar”, “Stimmungen”) which went along with the idea that his music succeeded better than anything else in giving account of a human inner life or psyche.31 Music in The Black Glove thus both functions as a communicative tool for transporting the characters’ unvoiced, unexpressed feelings or thoughts and is used in order to create moods or atmospheres affecting the intended audience. At the time when Strindberg’s Chamber Plays were written and first performed, such effects were by far not as ordinary as today when elaborated film scores and soundtracks stand for an important share in the effect a film has on its audience. Strindberg’s idea of chamber music and his notion of the effect of music as present in The Black Glove is grounded on a kind of aesthetic experience even aimed at during a Beethoven Evening. In many ways, though, the effects of music aimed at in the Chamber Plays were developed in an effort to distinguish the chamber musical qualities from Richard Wagner and his thoughts about a Gesamtkunstwerk, the “total work of art”. The sort of aesthetic experience aimed at in Wagner´s Gesamtkunstwerk would unite a variety of art forms and bring together individual spectators in order to form a unified audience. Strindberg’s aim is to create a Gesamtkunswerk of different character. In his Chamber Plays the focus lies on chamber music, on an intimate aesthetics for a limited number of spectators and on certain effects of music, all of which Strindberg is well familiar with, not least due to the Beethoven Evenings. Strindberg dissociates himself explicitly from Wagner and by doing so, he focuses on the impact music has on its audience. According to Strindberg, Wagner’s music is mainly characterised by bad dissonances.32 30

Cf. Grage, “Strindbergs ‘Sista sonater’. Musikalisch-literarische Intermedialität in den Kammarspel,” p.319. 31 E.g. Otto Klauwell, Geschichte der Sonate von ihren Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, Universal-Bibliothek für Musikliteratur ; 18/20 (Köln,1899), p.97. Klauwell is even referred to in the article “sonat,” in Nordisk Familjebok: konversationslexikon och realencyklopedi. Ny, reviderad och rikt illustrerad upplaga. Vol. 26: Slöke-Stockholm, (Stockholm: Nordisk familjeboks förl., 1917), p.397. 32 August Strindberg et al., August Strindbergs samlade verk : [nationalupplaga]. 57, Svarta fanor: sedeskildringar från sekelskiftet (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1995), p.133.

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Dissonances in Wagner’s music are dismissed as abnormal, as against the laws of nature and as a danger for one’s mind. However, it is not the phenomenon of dissonance as such that Strindberg rejects. In his essay “Förenklad pianoskola”, published in Idun no. 49, 1906, Strindberg argues for an abolition of all accidentals and harmony as a developed system of chords in Western music. On the whole, many of the rules governing Western classical music seem unnecessary to him.33 Even though he disapproves of dissonances in Wagner’s music, Strindberg promotes increasing freedom in the treatment of both musical and dramatic material. On that score, his thoughts anticipate some of the revolutionary ideas of composers such as Ferrucio Busoni and Arnold Schönberg. At the time when Strindberg was occupied with his Chamber Plays, Schönberg, in the last movements of his String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10, written between 1907 and 1908, not only includes a vocal part singing the poems “Litanei” and “Entrückung” by Stefan George, but is also searching for a new style and starts exploring atonality, leaving key centre and tonal hierarchy behind. This fragmentation of musical continuity resembles Strindberg’s effort to create a drama emanating from small elements and the fragmentation of dialogue in The Ghost Sonata. Schönberg, an enthusiastic reader of Strindberg’s work in the German translation by Schering, explicitly specifies Strindberg’s late work as a source of inspiration when striving for alternative structures in music. As Michael Robinson and Florian Heesch have shown in discussing works of Schönberg like Erwartung, Die glückliche Hand, and the oratorio fragment Die Jakobsleiter, Strindberg “is present as part of the complex intertextuality of Schönberg’s works.”34 The Beethoven Evenings not only are of biographical interest, illustrating the late Strindberg’s taste in music, they even had an impact on Strindberg’s literary work and even indirectly on Schönberg’s musical work. Strindberg’s idea of chamber music, informed by the practice of Beethoven Evenings, was conducive in the long run to later developments in music and music history.

33 ”Förenklad pianoskola” in August Strindberg and Conny Svensson, August Strindbergs samlade verk : [nationalupplaga]. P.71, Essäer, tidningsartiklar och andra prosatexter 1900-1912 (Stockholm: Norstedt, 2004), pp.95-99. 34 Michael July Robinson, Studies in Strindberg (Norwich: Norvik, 1998), p.172.; Florian Heesch, “Strindberg in der Oper: August Strindbergs Opernpoetik und die Rezeption seiner Texte in der Opernproduktion bis 1930” (Göteborg:, Institutionen för kultur, estetik och medier, 2006), pp.408–479.

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Bibliography Burk, John N., and Ludwig van Appendix Beethoven. The Life and Works of Beethoven. (Second printing.). New York: Random House, 1943. Elleström, Lars. Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Grage, Joachim. “Strindbergs 'Sista sonater’. Musikalisch-literarische Intermedialität in den Kammarspel.” In Strindberg and his Media : Proceedings of the 15th International Strindberg Conference, edited by Kirsten Wechsel. EKF Wissenschaft Skandinavistik, 305-324. Leipzig ; Berlin: Ed. Kirchhof & Franke, 2003. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. Stimmungen lesen: über eine verdeckte Wirklichkeit der Literatur. Edition Akzente. München: Hanser, 2011. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich, and Erik Butler. Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung : on a hidden potential of literature. Stanfors, California: Stanfors University Press, 2012. Heesch, Florian. “Strindberg in der Oper: August Strindbergs Opernpoetik und die Rezeption seiner Texte in der Opernproduktion bis 1930.” Diss Göteborgs universitet, 2006. Göteborg: Institutionen för kultur, estetik och medier, 2006. Hellström, Victor. Strindberg och musiken. Stockholm: Norstedt, 1917. Hinz, Hannah. “Mjölkflickan och andra flyktiga illusioner i Spöksonaten.” In Okonstlad konst: om äkthet och autenticitet i estetisk teori och praktik, edited by Axel Englund and Anna Jörngården, 49-56. Lindome: Brutus Östlings bokförlag Symposion, 2011. Klauwell, Otto. Geschichte der Sonate von ihren Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Universal-Bibliothek für Musikliteratur ; 18/20. Köln, 1899. “Lyriker.” In Nordisk familjebok : konversationslexikon och realencyklopedi innehållende upplysningar och förklaringar om märkvärdiga namn, föremål och begrepp. Vol. 10: LloydMilitärkoloni, Nordisk familjeboks förl., 1886. Nyström, Martin. “Det klingar om Strindbergs språk. Men hur djupt in i det trängde musiken?” Dagens Nyheter, 2012-05-29 2012. Prieto, Eric. Listening in : Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative. Stages. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Robinson, Michael July. Studies in Strindberg. Norwich: Norvik, 1998. Rosen, Charles. Beethoven's Piano Sonatas : a Short Companion. New Haven ; London: Yale University Press, 2002. “Sonat.” In Nordisk Familjebok: konversationslexikon och realencyklopedi. Ny, reviderad och rikt illustrerad upplaga. Vol. 26:

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Slöke-Stockholm, edited by Th. Westrin, p.396–397. Stockholm: Nordisk familjeboks förl., 1917. Strindberg, August. The Chamber Plays of August Strindberg. 1st ed. San Francisco, California: Exit Press, 2012. Strindberg, August, Lars Dahlbäck, Rune Helleday, Strindbergssällskapet, and Stockholms universitet. Litteraturvetenskapliga institutionen. August Strindbergs samlade verk : [nationalupplaga]. 57, Svarta fanor : sedeskildringar från sekelskiftet. Stockholm: Norstedt, 1995. Strindberg, August, Lars Dahlbäck, Gunnar Ollén, Strindbergssällskapet, and Stockholms universitet. Litteraturvetenskapliga institutionen. August Strindbergs samlade verk : [nationalupplaga]. 58, Kammarspel. Stockholm: Norstedt, 1991. Strindberg, August, and Torsten Eklund. August Strindbergs brev. 15, April 1904-april 1907. Stockholm: Bonnier, 1976. Strindberg, August, and Eivor Martinus. The Chamber Plays. Rev. ed. Charlbury, Oxon, UK: Amber Lane Press, 2004. Strindberg, August, and Gregory Motton. The Plays: Volume two. London: Oberon, 2004. Strindberg, August, and Conny Svensson. August Strindbergs samlade verk : [nationalupplaga]. 71, Essäer, tidningsartiklar och andra prosatexter 1900-1912. Stockholm: Norstedt, 2004.

SECTION II

CHALLENGES IN DRAMATURGING STRINDBERG IN THE USA TODAY ANNE-CHARLOTTE HANES HARVEY

My discussion is based on my own work as a Strindberg translator and dramaturge since the 1960s, on productions in academic or professional theatre in the US. In October 2001 Strindberg’s Dance of Death I opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on 44th street in NY. The production was doubly remarkable: A Strindberg play on Broadway, with leads played by Sir Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren! (The appearance of these two stars should not surprise; it was the raison d’être for the play on Broadway.) The poster for the production shows a dancing couple seen from above, he in military dress uniform, she in deeply décolleté black velvet, laughing with giddy abandon. The New York Times’ review was glowing. Dagens Nyheter’s critic Leif Zern’s was not.1 Zern does not mince words in his review, suggesting the poster more appropriate for The Merry Widow and the production “ett kitschigt hopkok på skräckromantik och urspårad professionalism, ett utstuderat förakt för Strindbergs intentioner” (“a kitschy mishmash of Gothic horror and derailed professionalism, a deliberate disdain for Strindberg’s intentions”). Far from arguing that the play must be performed in any certain way or based on a Swedish sensibility, Zern contends that the problem with the production was that the director (Sean Mathias) did not understand the text and, what was worse, flaunted his ignorance. “Broadway today is an artistic ruin,” Zern concludes, and quotes an American theatre critic friend: “They know nothing about Strindberg.” I, too, saw that production, and agree with Zern. What the audience saw was not Strindberg, it was two stars taking turns using Strindberg’s play to exhibit their brilliance. The Third major actor (David Strathairn), playing Curt, was miscast, forgettable, undirected, and lost in the fireworks. 1

Dagens Nyheter, 29 Oct. 2001, p. B2.

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Why then this warm New York reception? The New York Times reviewer was apparently thrilled to see Strindberg at all, and on Broadway to boot! For it is a fact that Strindberg is rarely produced in the US and almost never in commercial theatre, that he is not generally known— “who, did you say? Stringburg”?—and that he, if he is known at all, has a bad reputation. Why is this? And what can be done about it? One reason may be the distasteful and persistent label “misogynist.” As recently as May 28, 2012, New York Times critic Eric Grode glibly refers to “the relentless misogyny and scorched-earth worldview of Miss Julie and The Dance of Death.”2 If Americans “know” anything about Strindberg it is that he hated women. It is hard to build a successful media campaign or marketing strategy around that label. This fact touches on an important aspect of American theatre: the general need for labels in order to effectively promote and sell. There is certainly no demand for Strindberg, no general clamouring to see The Ghost Sonata. Strindberg must be marketed and sold to be produced at all.3

2

Review of a black-cast production of Playing With Fire, NY Times, 28 May 2012 The Dance of Death is probably the Strindberg play most easily aligned with the misogynist label, hence easier to sell. Its promotion also benefits from the play being linked with Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Dürrenmatt’s Play Strindberg. 3

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Another reason is that Strindberg is not seen as a writer of happy plays. Grode continues: August Strindberg isn’t the first playwright who springs to mind when the phrase ‘comedy of manners’ is uttered. Depending on how boisterous you find Georg Büchner and Neil LaBute, he may be the last.

Strindberg is never casual, seldom light-hearted, rarely happy and certain —rather, often grim and searching. American audiences want reassurance and happy endings. As political scientist Henry Janssen puts it, “they favour the melodramatic, not the tragic, vision.”4 Another reason is that, when mentioned, Strindberg is routinely coupled to and compared with Ibsen—to Strindberg’s disadvantage. Ibsen’s name is more recognizable, easier to spell, his main prose plays— the 12-play cycle from Pillars of Society on—more uniform in genre and style, their plots more penetrable, their issues more seemingly objective. Ibsen hit the Anglo-Saxon arena before Strindberg and was fortunate enough to be championed by G. B. Shaw. I recently sat in on a discussion of the upcoming season in a major regional theatre in California. They were looking for something “classic” Scandinavian, not American or Irish: I suggested Easter or The Father, they went for A Doll’s House. A main reason for Strindberg’s poor image in the US is the playwright and the plays themselves. Strindberg is not easily pigeonholed, labelled and summarized. As his friend Ola Hansson put it, “Strindberg’s mind is a chaos where all thoughts are coming together, scuffing, elbowing, somersaulting, an orgy of ideas, a carnival of contemporary thought, a battlefield of armed masses fighting together without a leader.”5 He is simply too varied and complex to be easily reduced and labelled, a dramatic genius bursting at the seams, restlessly seeking new expressions for new visions – challenging visions and challenging expressions. Though attracting attention and inviting involvement, he is not easily grasped and known. Strindberg is not liked also because he is not known. He is not known partly because he is complex and “difficult,” partly because he is rarely seen on stage or film, read, or discussed. (The one exception is the much anthologized and performed Miss Julie. The fact that he may be read and 4 I team-taught the course “Politics and the Tragic Vision” seven times with Professor Janssen at San Diego State University in the 1980’s; this was one of his core observations. 5 Quoted in Henrik Bering “Occultural Ambassador,” Wall Street Journal, 23 May 2012, review of Sue Prideaux’s new book Strindberg: A Life.

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discussed in universities does not interest theatres.) He is not produced because he is not known, which means “he does not sell.” This vicious circle is reinforced by distrust of complexity and foreignness as well as lack of rehearsal time. The circle could be broken by a director-dramaturge team with insight and enough rehearsal time to explore a play fully. (Bergman’s film After the Rehearsal casually mentions the rehearsal time in a Swedish theatre for A Dream Play as 10-13 weeks. Standard in the US is 3-5 weeks.) There is one other reason Strindberg is not known. Though my title implies that there is such a thing as “Strindberg in the US today”, there is no one Strindberg in American theatre. “Strindberg” is a kaleidoscope of many. A line of different “Strindbergs” have paraded down the years in the US, born of, accompanied and confirmed by theatre criticism, academic dogma and debate, translations, stage productions, films, and “public opinion.” And each type of theatre has, according to its own purpose, inspired, encouraged and attached its own labels to the Swedish playwright. Four main types of theatre in the US (a gross oversimplification of course) reflect the historical development of a Strindberg image in the increasingly commercialized American theatre. First, aside from Swedish-language Strindberg productions in Swedish America in the 1910s, the main portal/gateway for Strindberg into American theatre was the so- called Little Theatre Movement patterned on Antoine’s Théâtre Libre, Reinhardts’s Kammerspiele, and Strindberg’s own Intima Teatern. In the US the movement was founded with Chicago’s Little Theatre in 1912 and took off with Eugene O’Neill, co- founder of the Provincetown Players, in 1915. O’Neill was fascinated by Strindberg and is said to have locked a young Swedish woman in an attic in New York City and refused to let her out until she had translated A Dream Play for him.6 The little theatre movement soon fed into university speech departments, later renamed theatre departments. The purpose of academic theatre in the US has always been—and still is—to educate, to enlighten, to expose to new international currents. The Strindberg we meet here is “the father of modernity” (to paraphrase O’Neill). In the US, the impact of academic theatre, marginal at best in Swedish academe, should not be underestimated. In US colleges and universities there are around 1,000 theatre departments with some producing responsibilities, institutional support, and a steady supply of young talent. 6

Greta Hoving, daughter of prominent Swedish-American physician Johannes Hoving, later became a driving force in Swedish-American cultural life on the East Coast.

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Here Strindberg is produced — occasionally. Here there may not be insight but there is definitely the ability to swim against the commercial current. Second, there is community theatre—another un-Swedish phenomenon. Though he was never what you might call popular in this type of theatre, Strindberg has nevertheless over the years gained a certain following in community theatre by providing vehicles for its stalwarts playing Julie in Miss Julie or the Captain in The Father. The aim of community theatre is to stir and entertain—primarily its practitioners—and Strindberg here is “the Bedevilled Viking.” This type of theatre survives by volunteer effort and box office and can run the gamut from wildly experimental to wholly commercial. Third, there are the major regional theatres charged with affirming the value of culture and confirming the prestige of its community’s cultural elite. Partly underwritten by grants and municipal/state funds, they are still dependent on box office and must please their audiences. Their Strindberg is the inspiring “troubled Nordic Genius.” (Wording is important—there must be no suggestion of anything controversial or offensive. When Helluvaguy!!!, Agneta Elers-Jarleman’s one-act play about August Strindberg, was on tour in the US in 1996, a major San Diego theatre saw itself forced to retitle it Titan of Spring.) Fourth, there is the commercial theatre, epitomized by Broadway, whose main purpose, like that of fine race horses, is to make money for its owners/backers/producers. Broadway is not known for betting on Strindberg — he is a dark horse. The playwright is here billed as whatever may catch the theatregoing audience’s eye: The adjective “Swedish” always carries positive, though slightly salacious, overtones, whether it refers to a skin cream or a playwright. But the emphasis is not on the playwright, it’s on the stars and the production as a Broadway commodity—holding, as’t were, a mirror up to “the good life” in NYC. Thus, the program of the above-mentioned Broadway production of The Dance of Death devotes 89 lines to Ian McKellen’s biography, 54 to Helen Mirren’s and 20 to August Strindberg’s life and oeuvre. (The only actor biographies in the program shorter than Strindberg’s are those of the three understudies and the actors playing Maja and the non-speaking Sentry. The actor playing Jenny, the servant girl with 4 lines of dialogue, has a longer biography than Strindberg.) Aside from the biographies, the program contains Broadway gossip, actors’ recommendations of restaurants, 5 pages of restaurant listings, 5 pages of perfume ads, 4 pages of fashion advice, 2 pages about the playhouse itself, and various ads for cigarettes, Macy’s, white teeth, and

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automobiles. The production credits list casting agents, producers, technical supervisors, and so forth, but no dramaturge. The text was “adapted” by Richard Greenberg, a playwright for TV and the stage, who does not speak Swedish and has no single play translation to his credit. (His training is in Creative Writing.) No source for Greenberg’s “adaptation” is listed. What is needed in all four types of theatre can be summed up in two words: insight and daring. Insight into the plays, and daring to go against the commercial current in the American theatre world. The above mentioned Dance of Death on Broadway was a prime example of Strindberg produced without either insight or daring. (It was daring enough just to produce the play on Broadway, though in order to safeguard the producers’ investment the production was imported from the UK as a limited engagement with two mega stars.) Regional theatre has the potential for both insight and daring, but is increasingly hampered by time and personnel constraints and the current economic recession, requiring sure audience pleasers to generate enough box office. It all comes down to money. Community theatres rarely have either insight or daring, but being small operations they can occasionally be steered by strong and skilled leaders in more daring, less crowd-pleasing directions. Academic theatre should have the best conditions for doing Strindberg justice: less dependency on box office; a large, unpaid talent pool; a mandate to enhance the curriculum by producing less known plays; and design opportunities for advanced students. All this should help set the stage for insight and daring. Unfortunately, academe is run by academics, not theatre professionals; academic theatre is usually text based and label-happy. How do you produce a playwright variously labelled “naturalist,” “expressionist,” “symbolist,” “symbolic realist,” “modern,” or “post-modern”? Or characterized as “barking mad,” “given to absinthe-fuelled paranoia” (Bering) and prone to “descent into madness,”7 etc.? How does a label like “Zola of the occult” help a director? How do you stage an “influential series of expressionist and symbolic plays”? How do you read a playwright who was “a major influence on the course of modern drama”?8 Anthology writers and others characterizing Strindberg do not as a rule analyze the texts. They seem most enthusiastic and comfortable when focusing on his marriages or his writings about the battle of the sexes. 7

Sharon Mazer, The HBJ Anthology of Drama: Instructor’s Manual, HBJ College Publishers, 1993, p. 46. 8 W. B. Worthen, ed., HB Anthology of Drama, 2nd ed., HB College Publishers, Fort Worth, 1996, p. 611

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“Each of his three marriages was profoundly unhappy, ending in bitter divorce” (Mazer), he “suffered the destruction of three marriages” (Jacobus), indeed three “tempestuous marriages” (Worthen). “The battle of the sexes was also the battle that occupied Strindberg’s life outside the theatre. His three marriages all involved periods of psychological breakdown and creative fertility” and “much of Strindberg’s manic energy was focused on women” (Worthen). This focus is understandable. The sphere of male-female combat is more familiar and of greater interest to the American public than Strindberg’s struggles with God or the Powers.9 The battle of the sexes is more “sitcom” than The Great Highway. It sells Strindberg to the reader and theatregoer. It even sells Strindberg on Broadway. But in the theatre, we need not accept the latest trend in writing about Strindberg; instead, we may either consider all the labels he has been given over time or ignore them all. For labels—though meaningful to writers about theatre (critics, reviewers, writers of program copy, scholars, historians of literature and theatre), pigeonholing Strindberg’s dramas for convenient sorting—do not help theatre practitioners (translators, dramaturges, directors, actors, designers) or audiences to encounter the text. It makes more sense to see the images Strindberg describes, hear the sounds he invokes, follow the arcs he plots, sense the pulse of his plays, chart their undercurrents, and then score their text like an opera. What you need to do, in other words, is to study the plays themselves. You need “insight.” Assuming that the author’s voice counts—also when producing a “version,” a “take” or a “riff” on a Strindberg play—how does any theatre practitioner (director, actor, designer) then hear that voice most clearly? How do you gain the required “insight”? Whether Strindberg’s voice is speaking to today’s audiences in its original Swedish or in translation, it is, in my experience, unquestionably amplified and cleared up by the work of a dramaturge or—in the case of a translation—a translator-dramaturge. (The exception is a director like Ingmar Bergman who knew Strindberg better than well.10 )

9

It is worth noting that best-known in the US seem to be the Strindberg plays and parts of plays that involve male-female struggle: Miss Julie, The Father, Creditors, Comrades, The Stronger, The Dance of Death I, and the lawyer scene in A Dream Play. 10 “I have loved him, hated him, and thrown his books in the wall, but rid of him I cannot get.” Quoted in Lee A. Jacobus, The Bedford Introduction to Drama, 6th ed. Boston, NY: Bedford/St. Martins, 2009, p. 697.

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What does a dramaturge contribute to a production? Why dramaturge the plays of Strindberg in America today? Does a play by Strindberg require a dramaturge more than, say, a play by Ibsen or Chekhov? To answer the first question, a dramaturge can be—it varies from company to company, production to production—alternately literary manager and literary conscience; defender and explicator of text; champion of playwrights dead and living; interface with potential and actual audiences; spokesperson for the community; director’s auxiliary brain; and sounding board, researcher and all-round director’s assistant in all text-based tasks (script selection, translation, editing, program production, ad copy, and so on). You might call the dramaturge ”the ultimate enabler.” A brief clarification of the difference between dramaturges in Europe and in the US may be in order. European theatres often employ dramaturges cum literary managers as full time members of staff. They have considerable say in choice of season and overall artistic policy. This contributes to continuity and artistic integrity. American theatres in general see less need for dramaturges on “standard” plays and prefer to hire production dramaturges only for specific “foreign” plays. The bottom line in the US is dual: dramaturges cost money, and their contribution to a given production is invisible to the world, not only to the audience but also to many other theatre workers. Why pay for something that is invisible or does no proven good? It is then no surprise that the two types of theatre most focused on money, Broadway and community theatre, hardly ever credit a dramaturge (unless a production has moved to Broadway from a regional theatre that regularly uses a dramaturge's services). Some regional theatres do employ full time staff dramaturges, and academic theatre departments have a surfeit of student “dramaturges” — dramaturgy has become a popular academic undergraduate discipline in the last 15 years. But neither situation is ideal for producing a Strindberg play. Professional dramaturges are far more likely to have specialities among the more frequently produced playwrights: Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov, W. B. Yeats… but not Strindberg. The undergraduate eagerbeaver dramaturges are let loose on a play as part of a team of peers — all equally inexperienced — not in order to do justice to the play but to practise their craft in a safe, laboratory setting.11 11

I am not saying that fortunate collaborations do not happen, perhaps especially when a university has the funds to hire a professional actor, director, and dramaturge to “illuminate” a particular play.

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I argue that Strindberg should be dramaturged today, not only in the US but also in Sweden — the past is indeed a distant country. (Röda Rummet, Hemsöborna and Fröken Julie are now offered by LL-förlaget in easy to read editions, translated into modern Swedish. The new National Edition of Miss Julie [1984] glosses 113 items for modern Swedes.) Why does Strindberg need to be dramaturged? Why is he difficult to dramaturge? The answers are clearly linked. He makes great demands on his dramaturge, who must be sensitive to his idiosyncratic voice, his shifting world view, his “chaotic” complexity, his wide register of idioms, his formal and linguistic innovations, the specificity of his cultural sphere, his deliberate exoticisms, his theatrical concerns—demands exacerbated outside of Sweden by translation issues. Different types of play content need different dramaturgical glossing, explaining, and contextualizing. Clearly, references in the dialogue are especially sensitive, as they are heard by the audience once, in passing, and cannot be footnoted. (The Nebentext may be equally in need of explication, but the techniques available to provide that are more varied, including footnotes or explanatory essays.) There are references to persons, places, objects, customs, accepted exoticisms, clichés, stereotypes, that are no longer known and need to be understood (e.g., the Turkish pavilion in Miss Julie — in a class of over 200 undergraduate students in California only 2 understood that the pavilion is a privy, interestingly both of them foreign students). There are exoticisms which were in need of interpretation already in Strindberg’s own day (e.g., the supernatural beings and the folkloric wedding in The Crown Bride). Then there are Strindberg’s personal symbols (the Swedenborgian cat in Dance of Death I, the dissolution of the hyacinth room into Böcklin’s painting Isle of the Dead in Ghost Sonata, the sound of the detested “Alcazar Waltz” in Storm and Dance of Death I). The Turkish pavilion and the seemingly pointless cat in Dance of Death are intriguing enough, but then there are what I call the “invisibilities” in the text — details and aspects of his times and world which Strindberg took so for granted that he assumed his audiences (readers and spectators) would understand them without any reference or explanation. (Examples: Strindberg’s attacks on his contemporaries in The Great Highway, the chopped pine in Ghost Sonata, the bouillon in The Pelican, and the 24th of October and Jean spitting on the Count’s boots in Miss Julie.) Their function and significance are not spelled out in the printed text, only inferred, and therefore easily overlooked or misinterpreted. It is only the inquisitive theatre practitioner who will ask: What does this imply? What is missing here? What is the link between A

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and B? What is going on? Is this important? In Strindberg, nothing is unimportant or accidental. Echoing Tadeusz Kowzan’s “All is sign”12 on stage, in Strindberg “All is important,” in dialogue as well as in Nebentext, in action as well as in setting, in what is visible as well as in what is invisible. This is not to say that other playwrights — Ibsen, Chekhov — do not require the same spectrum of dramaturgical skills and insights. They, too, have references that need to be glossed, nuances that must be felt, invisibilities that must be made visible. They are all superb dramatists. But Strindberg is without question the most innovative when it comes to the language itself. Had he not written a single drama, his language would still be startlingly innovative, muscular, and alive. Strindberg’s language contributes an additional challenge for the dramaturge. And — it goes without saying — for the translator. So how should Strindberg be dramaturged? With care, with thought, with passion, with instinct, on all cylinders. With maximum insight, yes. But beyond that, one would do well to move his plays into the future by relinquishing older models of dramaturgy that treat theatrical performance as merely illustrating or “translating” the text into scenic terms, by moving beyond even the Susanne Langer and Rafael Spregelburd visions of text as “commanding form” and “a kernel . . . capable of being seen to grow and flower on stage,”13 in other words, by moving on to a view of performance as supplementing the text where page and stage have equal authority.14 The most incisive work you can do with a Strindberg play for production on stage is not to study what has been written about it, nor its production history, nor Strindberg’s life story, nor even what Strindberg himself has said about it, although these may all contribute to fuller insight. In order to maximally access the original you have to deal with the text itself: glossing, explicating, and above all contextualizing — the latter in the broadest sense possible. It hardly needs repeating that Strindberg’s language deserves and “demands the kind of attention that a director would give to Shakespeare’s, or to Beckett’s…”15

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“The Sign in the Theater: An Introduction to the Semiology of the Art of the Spectacle,” Diogenes 61 (Spring 1968): 57. 13 Feeling and Form (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953) and “Life of Course,” in “What’s at Stake in Theatrical Translation?” Theatre Journal 59.3 (Oct. 2007), p. 373. 14 Marvin Carlson, “Theatrical Performance: Illustration, Translation, Fulfillment, or Supplement?” Theatre Journal, March 1985, pp. 5-11. 15 Inga-Stina Ewbank, “Strindberg in English,” Moderna Språk, 1996, p. 133.

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This work will require a new generation of US dramaturges, preferably bilingual, who can bring the play texts to imaginative, daring theatre practitioners. It will take a new generation of theatregoers in the US who prefer being challenged to being reassured, prefer being intrigued to being lulled. It will take a theatre where investors’ interests do not dictate ticket prices; where ticket prices do not exclude some audience members and prod others to attend only “safe bets;” where audience taste does not push producers to produce nothing but “safe bets,” silencing other voices, old and new, along the way. This daring theatre of the future will bring Strindberg’s plays from page to stage into the moment in new yet unseen ways but based on insight past and present.

THE HERITAGE OF STRINDBERG ON THE 21ST-CENTURY ITALIAN STAGE FRANCO PERRELLI

In terms of Strindberg, the beginning of the 21st century in Italy was promising: on 8 February 2000, Luca Ronconi – the most famous of our living directors, who had just become director of our first National Theatre, the Piccolo Teatro in Milan – tackled Strindberg’s A Dream Play, thus opening a new artistic phase. A lover of vast, complex theatrical cycles, Ronconi, not by chance, had put it together with Calderón’s La vida es sueño, giving life to an intriguing show, which – while on the one hand it perhaps still looked to the style of Tadeusz Kantor (much in evidence in Italy in the preceding twenty years) – indisputably offered hope of a Strindberg Renaissance, after the glorious moment of publishing and theatrical interest that had been characteristic of the period from 1970 to 1990. It is difficult today to maintain that Ronconi’s example was of such clear importance. In fact, in the first decade of this century, all that can be recorded is an occasional experiment with the chamber dramas (not with the extraordinary Ghost Sonata), with a number of short naturalistic scripts, and with Easter, but it can be said without a doubt that Strindberg, for the Italian theatre, is reduced to The Father and still more to Miss Julie and The Dance of Death. The negative consequence is that Strindberg is seen as firmly considered unilaterally nailed to the war of the sexes; the positive consequence is the opposing possibility of a strict comparison among the various editions, in addition to the fact that the choice of dense, complex scripts which moreover, if only for financial reasons, can be staged with a small number of actors, normally mobilizes both the most able interpreters and the most curious directors, with the result of productions that are almost always of high quality, such as some of those that have been seen especially in the past six years. We may begin with 2005, with The Father, the first late-Strindberg production by one of the most valid Italian theatre directors, Massimo Castri (1943–2013), who came from the ranks of the avant-garde and is

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famed for his anti-conventional productions of Euripides, Goldoni, Pirandello and Ibsen (there was a memorable deconstructed Rosmersholm in 1980), though more recently his style has become rather normalised. Like Ronconi, Castri prefers to Strindberg (who is seen as too explicit and passionate) the cold desperation of Ibsen (a widespread position among Italian intellectuals, expressed, incidentally by Claudio Magris, in L’anello di Clarisse, Torino, Einaudi, 1984, p. 108: “The disappointment of Ibsen is closer to us than Strindberg’s brilliant emphasis”), yet precisely those cruel, anti naturalistic traits of his interpretations of Ibsen inevitably lead the director to read the Norwegian by way of the Swede, at least in terms of a sort of twinning between the two dramatists. Not by chance, in this Father, which debuted in Cesena on 18 October, from Act II on, there was an obvious concordance in terms of a Christmassy atmosphere with A Doll’s House, to say nothing of the circumstance – as the director himself declared – that the Strindberg script “ends like Ghosts” (directed by Castri in 2004), “with the male protagonist being reduced to imbecility. […] Strindberg at bottom is imitating Ibsen”. Furthermore, Castri sees in The Father above all “Imperialism, militarism, the Superman, Nietzsche, and then this terror that the male has of being nothing” (see Il Patalogo, 29, 2006, p. 44; P. Puppa, Il padre: la regia come autobiografia, in “Il Castello di Elsinore”, 55, 2007, p. 87). Maurizio Balò’s set changes perspective, revolving 45 degrees for each act and accompanying the fatal decline of the play towards the Captain’s regression (and supporting a dynamic already applied by Castri to Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman in 2002) starting with the almost bare light-blue room, in a bubbly barrack-room atmosphere, which hosts a protagonist who is still whole and vital. However, in Act II the set begins to be obstructed by a huge Christmas tree in the process of being decorated, while in the conclusion, the Captain does not direct the dazzling light against his wife, but shoots at her in vain, with a gun that he has in his hands from the beginning of the play. At the end of this descending curve, the stage welcomes a magnificent Christmas tree, not only by way of symbolic contrast to the darkness of the events, but also and above all because the Captain has become a child again and – timid and even resigned – he now attacks his valiant adversaries with toy weapons, to the music of Stille Nacht.

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The Father, director Massimo Castri, Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione –Nuova Scena - Arena del Sole - Teatro Stabile di Bologna , Cesena, 18 October 2005.

Overall, Elena Randi maintains that “Castri presents all the characters in a light that is less focussed than is suggested by Strindberg, in whose Act III, in the absence of a gunshot, they seem more treacherous. In the specific direction no one is really exempt from blame …” (cfr. E. Randi, La madre ti era amica, ma la donna nemica, in “Il Castello di Elsinore”, n. 55, 2007, p. 109). In fact the production did not see the director taking sides in favour of either the theses of “paranoid Strindberg” nor those of “his ideological victims, women” – as noted by one of our greatest critics, Franco Cordelli in Il Corriere della Sera on 5 November – adding: “Castri perhaps, in Strindberg, detests not only the female characters but also this male who, ensnared in the environment in which he lives (his three women, his three Furies), collapses under the weight of a sterile ‘doubt’”. Another important critic, Franco Quadri, in La Repubblica of 31 October, talks of “too obvious symbolisms” such as, for example, that of the three women who at the end, “surround the victim who is perhaps complicit with the destructive ritual, all dressed alike in purple clothes from the realm of fairytale”, as well as finding histrionic the male lead, Umberto Orsini, whom Masolino D’Amico, in La Stampa of 27 November – in contrast to Manuela Mandracchia’s Laura, “a mechanical witch, always over the top” – instead considered “solidly in the centre of the situation with all the weight and the resources of this great actor, in the most

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admirable balance between the gruff and ingenuous sides of the Captain, without relinquishing a pinch of humour”. Despite some imbalance, Castri’s Father remains one of the most interesting Strindberg productions put on in Italy: figuratively intense and admirable in its rhythms, broadened and thrusting at the same time; well balanced, in our view, in the acting of a masterly Orsini and in the convincingly vague Mandracchia; above all able to bring out, without pointless underlining, the desperate irony of the script. In 2006, there were no fewer than three versions of Miss Julie, all of some merit. Two were in the hands of young directors, who were showing their worth with this exceedingly difficult text by Strindberg. The first opened in Genoa, on 7 February at the Teatro della Tosse, and was directed by Sergio Maifredi (1966), who had trained, incidentally, in Iceland, and had subsequently maintained a relationship of constant attention to the Nordic world, with original productions of Hrafnhildur Hagalin and Havar Sigurdjonsson, as well as the screenplay of Bergman’s On the Threshold of Life (2004). Maifredi was gambling on an anthropological interpretation, opening the show with the feast of St. John in Piazza di S. Agostino, complete with blazing bonfires against the background of the majestic façade of a church, superimposing an element of barbarity, or one that could be traced back to hell, on a tangible dimension of spirituality. Then the audience was conducted into the theatre, not far away, and seated on benches surrounding a hexagonal “ring”, conceived by the set designer Emanuele Conte, not forgetting the Greek setting, but – according to Renato Palazzi, in Il Sole 24 Ore of 19 February – calling to mind the “trap […] that pins the characters to their fate like insects on an entomologist’s table”. The emphasis was on the tragic structure (indicated by Strindberg both in the famous preface and in the subtitle of the work), thus making possible the complete use of a chorus, in this case of peasants, who were not limited (as they are in many versions) but given value to the point that they seemed essential to the way affairs precipitated. The servant Kristin (Mariella Speranza), in this context, became the messenger or the witness of a catastrophe, whereas Valentina Picello’s Julie was anorexic and androgynous, indeed vocally harsh, though, in the cursing scene, she showed herself capable of bringing determination to the plot, in contrast to Enrico Campanati, not without evident bewilderment, in the irrational twisting of the seduction, until the woman’s suicide (see also our review in Hystrio, 2, April-June 2006). The second Miss Julie opened on 3 May at the Teatro Litta in Milan, directed by Carmelo Rifici (1973), a pupil of Ronconi. Franco Quadri, in

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La Repubblica of 19 May, spoke of a “production prepared with almost maniac sophistication” and Renato Palazzi, in Il Sole 24 Ore of 7 May, adjudged the production “mature and refined”, full of “metaphysical echoes that corrode its naturalistic pith”. On alternate evenings, in this version, Mariangela Granelli and Olga Rossi played Julie and Kristin or vice versa and – unusually – at the end it was Kristin who imposed herself on everyone, including the valet (Francesco Colella), because the peasant spirit (which here seemed almost demoniacal) prevailed over any circumstance or fate. The dialectic of the show could be intuited starting from the “disturbing apparatus of the set” designed by Guido Braganza, which in a way expanded the symbol of the cage of Julie’s canary: an iron kitchen-workshop, dark and suffocating, that allowed only a glimpse of ambiguous green outlines, becoming in the end “an eloquent projection of the director’s intention, according to which the nucleus of the drama is not the clash between the sexes or social classes, but the momentous conflict between a matriarchal culture and a patriarchal culture of industrial progress”, destined to go under (R. Palazzi). The third Miss Julie in 2006 opened on 9 November, at the Teatro Comunale in L’Aquila and was directed by Armando Pugliese (1947), an inventive, original Neapolitan. Vanessa Gravina and Edoardo Siravo were the young measured interpreters of the leading roles. Pugliese’s revisiting of the conclusion was remarkable: this was direction which Enrico Groppali, in Il Giornale of 21 November, found to be a “strategically treacherous reading” although one “of rare dramatic consistency”. In fact, “on the basis of an explicit absence of stage directions, Pugliese left Strindberg’s ending open, admitting a momentary doubt that the young woman might choose life rather than death, accepting passively her return to the ranks and at the same time condemning her accomplice, more seduced than seducer, to plunge into the abjectly servile role which he had tried by any means to avoid”.

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Miss Julie, director Armando Pugliese, Teatro Stabile d’Abruzzo, Teatro Comunale, L’Aquila, 9 November 2006.

Franco Cordelli, in Il Corriere della Sera of 3 December, acknowledged that the show offered “solid, meticulous, craftsmanlike workmanship”, but posed a more general problem for Strindberg as he is produced in Italy: in fact, the production emphasised “the tone of clash, of spite, of bourgeois discouragement, of a difficult pre- or para-conjugal situation”, whereas what was lacking was “the crash of the fall” and hence there emerged “the eternal Strindberg in his vulgate. There is no director who is prepared to face him like a samurai, which is what they ought to do”. Armando Pugliese had already tackled Strindberg in The Dance of Death (La danza macabra) which had opened in Fano, at the Teatro della Fortuna, on 26 January 2002. For Pugliese, this play was undoubtedly “governed by a mysterious balance between tragedy and farce” (see Il Patalogo, 25, 2002, p. 34), two pedals on which Pugliese had worked, he claimed, deliberately respecting the differing stylistic orientation of his actors: the naturalism of Giuliana Lojodice, the brilliant epic antinaturalism of Roberto Herlitzka (the Captain) and the powerful personality of Toni Bertorelli. According to Rodolfo di Giammarco, in La Repubblica of 16 February, Pugliese’s Danse Macabre was therefore presented as a “great celebration of being unhappy together” marvellously piloted by “three splendid actors from unreconciled traditions […], anomalous, dry production praiseworthy for its promiscuousness”, enhanced by “a set by Andrea Taddei, focussed by a characteristic oval space that is a reflection of the game of concentric massacre”.

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After this excellent production, on 9 November 2006 – an authentic annus mirabilis for Strindberg in Italy (among much else, in that period, mention should also be made of a debated reprise of Strehler’s classic direction of Temporale, staged by Enrico D’Amato) – The Dance of Death (Danza di Morte: the Italian translation of the title fluctuates slightly) opened in Bolzano directed by Marco Bernardi and the sober, intriguing sets by Gisbert Jaekel. Bernardi, in his particular controlled style – recovering the occasional Bergman-like figuration and some from the old film with von Stroheim, La prigioniera dell’isola (La Danse de Mort) – put on a rigorous production that made few concessions to excesses and Titanism, in the attempt to identify a clearer internal line (“In fact I did not want to put Strindbergism on stage, but Strindberg and his wish to find shelter in metaphysics and spirituality, without availing myself of an interpretative style”; see Il Giornale of 30 November). Bernardi too had at his disposal a formidable, somewhat mixed trio of actors: on the one hand, Patrizia Milani and Carlo Simoni, faithful interpreters of the director’s controlled intentions, but, in the role of the Captain, Paolo Bonacelli – an actor of the old avant-garde militia and protagonist of Salò, Pasolini’s last, scandalous film – whose interpretation of the Captain was more vulgar, wicked, fragile and at the same time, bewilderedly senile. In this case too, heterogeneity proved in the end to be a merit of the production.

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The Dance of Death, director Marco Bernardi, Teatro Stabile di Bolzano, 9 November 2006.

As Enrico Groppali pointed out in Il Giornale of 12 December, in the first part, in fact, the performance “oscillated smugly towards the grotesque with tragicomic streaks in the manner of an all too emphasised vaudeville, over the top in the acting of Bonacelli who […] gets the upper hand, putting his rightly varied companions in difficulty, thanks to the director, in the intimistic tones foreseen by the author. While in the second part where, alongside the dry, cool bitterness of Carlo Simoni […], it was Patrizia Milani who predominated simply perfect both as queen bee of the intrigue and as victim of marital oppression, Bonacelli too recovered that tragic that he had deliberately set aside, restoring to the production the dignified sacrality of a theatrical ceremony racked by smooth-tongued sadism…”. Franco Cordelli, in Il Corriere della Sera of 10 December, offered a far from negative judgment of Bernardi’s “successful” direction, but repeated his demand that Strindberg be tackled, in Italy, by “samurai”, in other words with pitiless immediacy, since this production too, in his opinion, failed to become “ever cutting, ever cruel, ever (this is the point)

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rhythmic. The music is softened in the bourgeois drama …”. Cordelli concluded: “… but how much is there of the intimately bourgeois in Strindberg? Nothing more, I believe, did he destroy, this is his greatness”. We conclude with two more recent productions: in 2010 (opening in Modena, 25 March), a new Dance of Death, directed by Gabriele Lavia, and another Miss Julie, directed by the Piedmontese Walter Malosti. If Malosti (1961) is an up-and-coming director of notable originality, Gabriele Lavia (born 1942) has behind him a long, assiduous militancy in Strindberg productions (The Father, 1976 and 1990; The Pelican, 1980; Crime for Crime, 1983; Miss Julie, 1992) and is also an actor and director of great emotional depth, certainly one of the last incarnations, one might say, of the great actor of the Italian tradition, who, however, tends to marry the most high-sounding drama with a modern corrosive irony. The most shameless, flaunted Strindberg (the kind, to be clear, that Claudio Magris dislikes), in this sense, suits him very well, and Lavia generally restores it in intriguing and at times desolate forms. In this key, there was a particularly memorable Miss Julie in 1992-93, with Monica Guerritore, which we had the good fortune to see in Rome with Erland Josephson, who was genuinely impressed by it. His Dance of Death not only, after years of separation, recovered his association with Monica Guerritore, but confirmed the line of a Strindberg that increases conjugal opposition, going back directly to other productions with the famous couple such as Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage (1997-98) (see Il Giornale, 2 March 2010). The set, enhanced by dim lights (by Alessandro Camera and Pietro Sperduti), thus seemed disastrously splendid (“a typical ‘Laviesque’ image of horror vacui”, according to Franco Cordelli, in Il Corriere della Sera on 10 April), swamped by the sand of the island that keeps the protagonists prisoners and which is also the dust of time that passes and approaches the end of life. For Cordelli, “the weight of the shipwreck is left to the set designer”, while the actors indulge in a contrasting vitalism and “Lavia sinks wholeheartedly something at which he excels, into a sort of madness”, which did not convince Franco Quadri (in La Repubblica of 10 April): “… the game gives too much room to laughter, taking every trace of rituality from the tragedy”.

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The Dance of Death, director Gabriele Lavia, Teatro di Roma, Modena, 25 March 2010.

Malosti’s Miss Julie opened on 7 January 2011 in Pinerolo, with Valeria Solarino and the director himself in the leading roles. Margherita Palli’s set offers surgical, frozen geometries and seems to be “studded with manholes and hatches, sounding boards of the subterranean crossroads and ravines that lead us towards hypnotic underworlds, in the most hidden entrails of interiority” (as Francesca Motta wrote in Il Sole 24 Ore on 17 January). The tragedy of the young aristocrat was consequently played as a continuous descent or precipitous fall into a subterranean world, and was stripped of the balance of the three main characters (the peasants’ unexpected entrance, stylised in Pugliese’s production as a dance, was cut here). Malosti had just directed a refined School for Wives by Molière in a somewhat Sadian key, Jean was offered as “a domestic servant between Sade and Koltès” (Rodolfo Di Giammarco, La Repubblica, 8 January), but above all his Miss Julie cannot be called alien, with a relative updating of the text, punctuated by alienating cartoon-style captions, from “dark” situations, declined at times in “rock” style, which, with good reason, allowed Malosti to talk of his direction also in terms of “technical-artistic work linked to lights and sound”. The inevitable “accomplice” – “pounding, uninterrupted music”, – again, these are Francesca Motta’s words – “unleashed a special effect [that is] emotionally surprising for the spectator, who mercilessly comes with the protagonists into a psychoanalytic whirlpool that captures him”. The interpretation is firmly

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fixed on this phonic background: “Valeria Solarino, in the title role, is strong from her first line, lovely with a physicality that is all tension and will, cruelly whirling in white with cowboy boots as she seduces Jean”.

Miss Julie, director Walter Malosti, Fondazione del Teatro Stabile di Torino / Teatro di Dioniso , Pinerolo, 7 January 2011.

For Franco Cordelli, in Il Corriere della Sera of 23 January, Malosti makes Julie substantially a Christlike, sacrificial figure, which Ms Solarino, in his view, does not maintain throughout, while Jean speaks in a captivating manner, “which is almost a singsong, it is all musical, singsong, hypnotic. As he is down below, in order to be heard he can only murmur, that is to say seduce”, thus successfully restoring the authentic modernity of Strindberg, the first writer “in whom reality is seen ‘from below’”. Malosti’s Noir altogether impresses as a fascinating Verklärte Nacht and might be interpreted as a good omen for the Italian theatre – in the last few years, increasingly timid in what it has offered and in evident retreat (in this perhaps mirroring the social and cultural crisis of the nation and of

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its identity) – in the sense of an opening up to a younger, even youthful artistic sensitivity, which seems justly propitiated by the “greater fire” of August Strindberg, who is once again called to bring down the more sluggish structures of the traditional scene.

STRINDBERG IN PORTUGAL: 109 YEARS ON STAGE TÂNIA FILIPE E CAMPOS

Although many authors may consider it doesn’t present the writer in a true light, the use of indirect translation is, sometimes, the way that allows the reception of playwrights who write in lesser-known languages abroad. That is the reality of August Strindberg’s works’ and plays’ receptions in Portugal. The usage of French, English or even Spanish intermediary texts constituted a fundamental resource in the importation process of this Swedish playwright’s literary products in Portugal. Although evaluating the role of indirect translation in the importation phenomenon of dramatic texts in a specific social and cultural moment, the reception of Strindberg in Portugal outlines a particular situation of stage production in the Portuguese scene because it can be figured out how the same author and the same play can symbolise innovation or obsolescence according to the period of its staging. The reception of this Swedish playwright is also interesting because the translator or the companies’ directors are not only importing a Swedish model of literature or of theatre: Portugal imports the French and the English stage and performances as well as their models of translation and literature. Swedish literature in Portugal has a direct relation with the promotion of Strindberg to an international writer (cf. Casanova, 1999). It was especially during the fifties and sixties that Portugal started to import regular translations of Swedish authors. Swedish language and culture were never very close to their Portuguese counterparts. This is due to geographical constraints and quite different historical influences: while the countries of Southern Europe have been under a strong Roman influence linguistically and culturally that influence did not reach Scandinavian countries in the same way. Given this historical explanation it is natural that Swedish culture has constituted an almost exotic element to Portugal, as it has always been practically unknown. It is true that relations between the two countries

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began to strengthen, especially in the nineteenth century, but the reality is that there was never a regular reception of Scandinavian literature in Portugal. The lack of tradition of importing Swedish literature has to do above all with the deficient affinity between the two countries, with the geographical distance and the fact that there weren’t many Swedish speakers or natives in Portugal . The Portuguese public had to wait until Swedish writers were widely acclaimed in the international cultural system first, before entering our country, and obviously Paris was the contact point. The first presentation of Strindberg in Portugal was in 1903 with the play O Pae (Fadren, today spelled O Pai). To understand the reactions that occurred during this first attempt of staging it must be taken a glance to the first Nordic playwright to be staged there. Ibsen wrote Et dukkehjem in 1879. Concerning the distance between Portugal and Norway and the long time that cultural approaches and influences used to take to reach the southern countries like Portugal and Spain or even Italy, surprisingly, it only took nineteen years to be staged in Coimbra1 (Porto, 1994:19). This staging occurred in 1897. Casa da Boneca (Et dukkehjem) (the Portuguese title) had an outrageous reception by the public, but this was a common reaction of European stages to the play. The Portuguese actress, Lucília Simões, who played Nora, found the role of her life. After this presentation in Portugal she took her company to Brazil to present the same play and had great success. In Portugal, the play was once more presented in Lisbon and in Oporto, in 1923 and 1947 with the same actress but with different companies. The first translation of Et dukkehjem was printed and available to the public in 1894, collected with Espectros (Gengangere),and the next year Hedda Gabler, in 1895, (McFarlane, 1994: 11-15) was printed. It was a great influence on the drama Sabina Freire written by Manuel Teixeira Gomes, the seventh President of Portugal.

1

: «…acabei por verificar os meus papéis e lá estava: 1897 – o ano da estreia de Casa de Boneca, em Coimbra, pela companhia de Lucília simões. O espectáculo veio depois para Lisboa onde esteve três meses em cena, o que era notável naquela época, depois no Brasil, sempre com grande êxito.» Porto, 1994:19. “I had checked my papers and there it was: 1897 — the year that A Doll’s House has been first staged in Coimbra, by Lucília Simões’ Theatre Company. Then the play was presented in Lisbon where it had been staged for three months, which is remarkable considering that time. Afterwards it went to Brazil and always with great success.”

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Lucília Simões, Lucinda’s daughter, was consecrated in Gymnasium Theatre in A Doll’s House and in D. Amelia Company with The Greatest Cagliostro (an adaptation of Carlos Malheiro Dias’ romantic novel).

At the beginning of the 20th century ʊ the precise year of the edition is unknown ʊ the translator E. Nascimento Correia presented another translation of the play in a single volume to the press and, in this publication, includes a preface by the translator with some notes on the author and the play. The text mentions that there are huge cultural differences between Nordic and Mediterranean countries, and Nascimento Correia’s purpose is to convince the public that Portuguese women could never behave like Nora: Já digo: é possível que na Noruega, um paiz essencialmente frio, as mulheres sejam como Ibsen nol-as descreve, porque também acho demais que um autor, cujo nome a trompeta da fama atirou para todos os cantos do Universo, errasse logo na observação das duas mulheres que apresenta. Mas n’este caso, o que não me parece possível é que a maioria dos que exalçaram a peça, elevando-a ás mais altas culminancias da gloria conheçam sufficientemente o meio norueguez, para poderem asseverar o contrário do que aqui digo, que não é negar o talento indiscutível de Ibsen, mas que é protestar contra a auréola de impeccavel de que o querem

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According to this explanation and the reaction from the Portuguese public the differences between north and south were already established, and during the first stage of a Strindberg play, the first reaction was basically the same. Theatre companies were, undoubtedly, the most responsible for the introduction of Strindberg in Portugal. There were other means that allowed his emergence, opening doors to different kind of publics. Academics had a special role on that subject. António Feijó, for instance, was a Portuguese consul in Sweden and decided to translate A Viagem de Pedro, O Afortunado (Lycko-Pers resa) as a linguistic exercise to learn Swedish. At that time, Feijó was ahead of its publication in Portugal, in 1906 (Cf. Feijó, 1906). There were two different translations of this play into Portuguese, and finally, in 2002, Fernanda Lapa directed it in the National Theatre developing a great work of scenarios, combining several contemporary and baroque techniques on stage and working in a new translation with fragments of the two existing texts.

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A Viagem de Pedro, O Afortunado (Lycko-Pers resa), 2002, director: Fernanda Lapa, TNDMII – Teatro Nacional D. Maria II (Dona Maria II National Theatre).

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This performance began with the presentation of a scenario with different level floors that were covered with a large piece of fabric. Slowly, the fabric was raised while the old man in the tower (Den Gamle i Tornet) — the Portuguese character is Sineiro, which means the man who rings the bell — is climbing up the stairs and rings the bell on the third floor. Then he runs out in panic, the fabric covers all the structure again and on the first level two mice heels are finally shown. The play begins with the dialogue between the two mice: Nisse and Nilla.

A Viagem de Pedro O Afortunado (Lycko-Pers resa), 2002, Director: Fernanda Lapa, TNDMII – Teatro Nacional D. Maria II (Dona Maria II National Theatre, Scenario. 1st Scene.

While Lycko-Pers resa was being stage in the National Theatre, Ibsen’s Peer Gynt was being performed in the theatre next door, the Teatro Aberto. This allows us to conclude that Strindberg and Ibsen were seen as direct rivals but, at the same time, as agents of the same kind of theatre: Nordic theatre. Academic reviews and newspapers also had importance in Strindberg’s reception. There were some news and articles about the author himself, his diaries, and his life and a few studies on the subject were presented: João da Silva Duarte, Jacinto Denis, Luís Francisco Rebello and Gonçalo Vilas

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Boas are some authors that I must underline. Finally, in national school curricula for high schools, the play Fröken Julie was one of the choices for students in the literature syllabus as well in academic courses related to Cinema and Theatre degrees. However, theatrical companies and editors were and still are the main people responsible for the importation and presentation of Strindberg’s works. There were twenty-six different translations into Portuguese including novels, short stories, essays and plays. Concerning drama translation, the text is usually re-written for a specific production and then published. Strindberg’s staging in Portugal has a very remarkable course because it has been received in different chronological periods of our national history with completely dissimilar reactions. Like Ibsen, the first presentation was done when our constitutional monarchy was already collapsing. Fadren (O Pae), had its official presentation in December 1903 but it was only staged in January 1904. It had a single presentation because the royal chancellor prohibited the next sessions. The play was suspended because it questioned the legitimacy of paternity and the actor that performed O Capitão (Ryttmästarn) resembled our King D. Carlos the first. Just after the murder of the king in 1908 the actor Ferreira da Silva staged this play again and again in some theatres in Lisbon and Oporto. 1916 was the last year that Ferreira da Silva performed Ryttmästarn in Fadren. After a long period without being staged, Strindberg was taken onto the National Scene again during Estado Novo ʊ Salazar’s regime between 1933 and1974 ʊ with Fröken Julie (A menina Júlia). Sweden was never so close to Portugal. Jacinto Ramos, the director who performed Jean as well, conceived a production which referred to the Sjöberg film and stage performances. Sjöberg had presented the play in Paris, during international theatre festivals. Redondo Junior wrote the stage translation, using Boris Vian’s French text. Sjöberg staged Fröken Julie in 1949 in Dramaten with Inga Tidblad playing Julie and Ulf Palme playing Jean. When the play was transposed to cinema Anita Björk replaced Inga Tidblad, but during its itinerancy in the Festival Intenational d’Art Dramatique, in 1955 and in 1959, it was Inga Tidblad who performed Julie once again.

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Jacinto Ramos, Lurdes Norberto and Helena Félix, A Menina Júlia, 1960, TNDMII. Director: Jacinto Ramos.

Ulf Palme and Anita Björk, Fröken Julie (film). Direction: Alf Sjöberg, 1951, 00:22:12.

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Ulf Palme (Jean) and Inga Tidblad (Julie), Fröken Julie, Théâtre Hébertot, 1955. Director: Alf Sjöberg.

The Portuguese performance was clearly influenced by the heroine model, scenarios and costume design. The copy of Anita Björk’s dress and blondish hair, for instance, are evident in the Portuguese first presentation. The white furniture, the lilacs above the table, and the ceiling lamp were a copy of Sjöberg’s film and the French performance. After this play other independent companies tried to stage the Swedish playwright but censorship was always erasing and adapting the lines. That was the case of Credores (Fordringsägare). In the pictures below examples of text erasure can be seen where complete paragraphs about the women’s bodies and feminine language were censored.

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Translation Júlio Gesta, Credores (Fordringsägare), 1962, TEP - Teatro Experimental do Porto (Oporto Experimental Theatre). Direction: João Guedes.

During Estado Novo eight plays of Strindberg were performed in Portugal. Five plays were staged during the sixties: 1960, A menina Júlia (Fröken Julie), TNDMII (National Theatre) 1962, Credores (Fordringsägare), TEP (Oporto Experimental Theatre) 1962, O Pai (Fadren), TNDMII (National Theatre) 1963, O Pária (Paria), Teatro Moderno de Lisboa – Sociedade de Actores (Lisbon Modern Theatre – Actors’ Society) 1969, A dança da morte (Dödsdansen) Casa da Comédia (Comedy House) and three during the seventies, before the Carnation Revolution 1970, Dança da Morte em doze assaltos (Play Strindberg) (Play Strindberg) Adaptation by Dürrenmatt – Casa da Comédia (Comedy House) 1971, Um Sonho (Ett drömspel) Teatro Estúdio de Lisboa (Lisbon Studio Theatre) 1971, As Babuchas de Abu Kassem (Abu Casems tofflor) Teatro do Gerifalto (Gerifalto’s Theatre)

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Álvaro Benamor and Augusto de Figueiredo, Dödsdansen, Casa da Comédia (Comedy House), 1969, Direction: Jorge Listopad.

Augusto de Figueiredo and Carmen Dolores in a boxing ring, in Play Strindberg, Dürrenmatt, Casa da Comédia (Comedy House), 1970. Direction: Jorge Listopad.

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After the collapse of the regime and the Carnation revolution in 1974, every independent company wanted to stage Strindberg and Fröken Julie was the easiest Strindberg play to be performed by small companies because they didn’t have to invest too much money in sets and actors. During the 80’s and 90’s Strindberg cycles or trilogies were on the top of the Portuguese scene and Luís Miguel Cintra made one of the most remarkable performances of Strindberg at Teatro da Cornucópia in Lisbon, with avant-garde sets.

Ilha dos mortos (Toten-Insel) Luís Miguel Cintra and José Manuel Mendes, 1985, Teatro da Cornucópia. Direction: Luis Miguel Cintra.

In the picture above, Luís Miguel Cintra is performing the Dead Man, and José Manuel Mendes performing the Colonel. Toten-Insel or A Ilha dos Mortos was the name given to the cycle by Teatro da Cornucópia. The cycle was composed by three plays: A Ilha dos Mortos, Páscoa (Påsk) and O Pai (Fadren). One year later, Luís Miguel Cintra decided to stage Spöksonaten using the same line of direction and artistic creation.

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Spöksonaten, 1986, Teatro da Cornucópia. Direction: Luís Miguel Cintra.

Spöksonaten, 1986, Teatro da Cornucópia. Direction: Luís Miguel Cintra.

Luís Varela provided another Strindberg cycle in Évora, a city in the south of Portugal, in 1996, presenting Credores (Fordringsägare), A mais forte (Den starkare), and Pária (Paria), and the Company Mala Voadora directed a trilogy in 2003, in Famalicão, in the northern region of Portugal, performing the same plays.

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Portuguese performances of Strindberg plays since 1903 till 2012.

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Analysing the chart above (numbering fifty five performances) that presents the Portuguese performances of Strindberg plays at a professional level, it is possible to conclude that Fröken Julie was the play staged most often in Portugal, but it still is attached to a naturalistic theatre and to an English classic model of performance. The last performance done in the National Theatre in Lisbon resembled Mike Figgis’ film, like in 1960 Jacinto Ramos’ production resembled Sjöberg’s film.

Saffrow’Burrows performing Julie. Miss Julie (film), 1999. Direction: Mike Figgis.00:07:18.

Beatriz Batarda performing Julie, Menina Júlia, TNDMII, 2009. Direction: Rui Mendes.

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It seems there is a tradition of importing cinematographic versions onto the National Theatre Stage, keeping the lines of naturalism and classic theatre. Considering professional companies, there was only a single performance of Fröken Julie, staged by Portuguese directors, that had completely broken with the nineteen century count’s daughter’s image and classic staging. This performance was directed by Rui Sena, in 1996, in an interior town of Portugal, Covilhã, and it was tailored to a public that was not used to attending the theatre. The repertoire in this theatre company was mainly attached to the classic Portuguese playwrights, such as Gil Vicente, and live animals were kept on stage to recreate pastoral scenes. Rui Sena brought avant-garde ideas of performance to this company, influenced by the years he spent in RDA and with foreign performers. To present Fröken Julie, Sena conceived a ramp as the main set, an inclined wood structure all covered with sheepskin, which is a typical product of that region of Portugal. When the public entered the dark room there was a smell of burnt rosemary to recreate Noite de São João, which is a national celebration and the nearest equivalent to the Swedish Midsommarafton. It was a contemporary scene and the kitchen was on the upper level of the stage while in other performances the kitchen is commonly on a lower one. The action took place on the ramp which resulted as a comfort zone for both actors. With the development of the action, Jean moved up on the structure while Julie was always descending. The environment was dark and the light seemed to be projected through the festivities’ paper candle lights attached to the structure of the set. These candle lights are typical elements of Noite de São João festivities.

A menina Júlia, 1996, Teatro das Beiras, Covilhã. Direction: Rui Sena.

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A menina Júlia, 1996, Teatro das Beiras, Covilhã. Direction: Rui Sena.

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Considering the reception of Strindberg’s dramas in Portugal, there is a possibility to understand what ways were chosen to present the Scandinavian author in our national territory. The procedure was then to consider the various norms of translational behaviour as well as norms of staging, reflecting on in whose favour they could have functioned. As Anthony Pym underlines, norms work according to features that can be effective or that can benefit certain groups, enabling others to cooperate: church, regimes, science, etc. (Pym, 1998: 111). As mentioned, the reception of Strindberg accompanied various political systems and social conjunctures: the monarchy, the First Republic, the Estado Novo, the postrevolutionary period and the present time in a democratic system. Although Strindberg was performed earlier in Portugal, a regular staging of his plays was never performed either in Portugal or in Spain during this period. Some plays were inclusively performed first in Portugal and then in Spain. Fröken Julie is an example: it was first performed in Portugal in 1960 and then in Spain in 1961. It must be highlighted that although the texts were translated indirectly, the direction and artistic performance of Jacinto Ramos in the National Theatre D. Maria II imported Swedish models of staging. Once the importation of Strindberg’s plays, as theatrical performance and literary structure and identity, was and still is done through the use of indirect translation, the Strindbergian theatrological trace in Portugal reveals that is important to question the relevance of staging Strindberg nowadays, the meaning of cultural boundaries of interference and the categories of belonging that define the structure of the Portuguese stage and that define the foreign author. This case study intends to sketch out a kind of interdisciplinarity between intercultural studies and systems that evolved alongside and in cooperation with others because there is a clear intersection and overlap of cultures where more than two different cultures were mixed at once: source culture/language, intermediary cultures/ languages (mainly French, English, Spanish texts and models), and target culture/language according to the work of stage translators and performers.

Bibliography Campos, Tânia Filipe e, 2007, Tradução Indirecta: Sintoma das relações entre literaturas. A recepção do teatro de August Strindberg em Portugal, Lisboa, Caleidoscópio. Casanova, Pascale, 1999, La République Mondiale des Lettres, Paris, Éditions du Seuil.

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Correia, E. Nascimento (transl.), [s.d.], Prefácio in Ibseb, Henrik, Casa de Boneca, Ed. Livraria Popular de Francisco Franco. Coppieters, Frank, 1981, «Performance and Perception», Poetics Today, vol. 2, number 3, Tel Aviv, The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Spring. Cruz, Duarte Ivo, 1986, Repertório básico de peças de teatro, Lisboa,Secretaria de Estado da Cultura. Direcção Geral de Acção Cultural. Divisão de Teatro. —. 2001, História do teatro português, Lisboa, Verbo. Lefevere, André, 1980, «Translating Literature / Translated Literature: The State of the Art”, in Zuber, The Languages of Theatre: Problems in the Translation and Transposition of Drama, Oxford, Pergamon Press, 153-161. MvFarlane, James, ed., 1994, The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Porto, Carlos, 1994, «Teatro em Portugal: reportório/reportórios», in Vértice, nº 62 (II série) Set/Out, Lisboa. Pym, Anthony, 1998, Method in Translation History, Manchester, St. Jerome. Feijó, António (transl.), 1906, Prefácio, in Strindberg, August, A Viagem de Pedro o Afortunado, Porto, Livraria Clássica A. M. Teixeira e C.ª.

Photographs Casa da Comédia — A dança da morte (1969); Play Strindberg (1970). Teatro das Beiras — A Menina Júlia (1996). Teatro da Cornucópia — A ilha dos Mortos (1985); A sonata dos espectros (1986). Teatro Nacional D. Maria II — A Viagem de Pedro, Afortunado (2000); Menina Júlia (1960, 2009). Théâtre Hébertot — Fröken Julie (1955). Ilustração Portugueza — Lucília Simões em a Casa de Boneca, 1897.

Film Figgis, Mike, 1999, Miss Julie, Metro Goldwin Mayer, USA. Sjöberg, Alf, 1951, Fröken Julie, Criterion, USA.

STRINDBERG VISITS THE SUBURBS: STRINDBERG’S PLAYS IN POSTDRAMATIC THEATRE RIKARD HOOGLAND

Strindberg’s exploration and experiments in dramatic form made him into a pioneer. He might almost be regarded as careless, impulsive and associative as Erik van Ooijen maintains in his doctoral thesis.1 The rapidity of his writing, his awareness of international trends and theatre, along with his knowledge of the history of drama and theatre were coactors in this development of new dramatic forms and in his prolific production of plays. Realism, naturalism, historical plays, pilgrim dramas, pre-expressionism, fairytale dramas and dream plays are all important steps in this development. In this article, my purpose is not to maintain that Strindberg was a postdramatic playwright, but I do consider his plays well suited for postdramatic productions. I will primarily discuss two productions at Teater Moment, which is a theatre group stationed in the Stockholm suburb Gubbängen. These productions are To Damascus – On the Ghost Train (2004) and A Dream Play (2010). Teater Moment often work with a group of actors, mainly with two directors Andreas Boonstra and Pontus Stenshäll; both frequently appearing as actors in their own productions. Without having made any great changes or refinements in their theatrical expression, they have gradually attracted interest and praise from critics, increasing from year to year. Theatre critics were quick to give them the label postdramatic theatre and claim that they were strongly influenced by modern German theatre. Teater Moment distinctly denied any such influences; Pontus Stenshäll resolutely maintained that the main source of inspiration was The Actors Studio, which instead could be regarded as the extreme opposite of post dramatic theatre.

1

Erik van Ooijen, The mold of writing: style and structure in Strindberg's chamber plays. Diss., Örebro: Örebro University, 2010.

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A new terminology was ‘thrust upon’ the discipline of theatre studies when Hans Thies Lehmann’s book Postdramatisches Theater was published. The concept of post dramatic theatre only really became widespread when a shortened English translation of the book was published in 2006. The German edition of the book was published as early as 1999, but still no conclusive critique has yet been published concerning the hypothesis of the book, claiming that post dramatic theatre involves a shift within modern theatre into a completely new form. However, during the spring of 2013, a couple of books in German will be published that question the postdramatic concept.2 The purpose of the concept, according to Lehmann, was to create a new genre. He criticised the concept of postmodernism as being too wide, evoking the idea of an epoch. Lehmann includes a chronology in which he divides time into pre-drama, drama and post-drama. The theory can be regarded to be based on Peter Szondi’s Theorie des modernen Dramas 1880-1950, (Theory of the Modern Drama).3 Szondi devotes much attention to Strindberg, not least concerning Strindberg’s role as a pioneer within expressionism, which he considers to represent an act of salvation of a drama in crisis. Lehmann, on the other hand, does not devote much thought to Strindberg; the only mention concerns the concept, which even in the English translation is termed Ich-Dramatik. This could be translated as IDrama, meaning that the perspective of the individual protagonist is of central importance.4 There is a section on dream images, although here he commences with the symbolists instead of mentioning Strindberg’s dream plays. How does Lehmann define postdramatic theatre? He is mainly interested in theatrical styles where the dramatic text and the plot are no longer of primal importance. This does not mean that they are without text or even that they do not include scenes representing some form of a story. As an example, he mentions Elfriede Jelinek’s plays and the mass of text they consist of.5 Her material often comes from a considerable amount of sources, there are no instructions as to how it should be produced and often there is no allocation of parts. The director uses the script as one source of material among others; the text is not intended to be a dominant sign. 2

A forthcoming example is Kritik des Theaters by Bernd Stegeman, published by Verlag Theater der Zeit during spring 2013. 3 Peter Szondi, Det moderna dramats teori 1880-1950, Stockholm : Wahlström & Widstrand, 1972. 4 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, London: Routledge, 2006, p.65. 5 Lehmann, p.18.

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Lehmann’s analytical model includes many influences from semiotics, with the crucial difference that signs do not necessarily contain meaning or constitute part of a common unity. His term for the unity of signs is ‘performance text’, which he in turn divides into eleven different stylistic features. He also observes that these features appear in other theatrical/performative forms, but not so distinctly.6 Lehmann’s text does not clarify whether all features must be present, or to which extent they should be present for the performance to be regarded as post dramatic theatre. Here, I have selected five of these stylistic features, which are of significance for the analysis of the two Strindberg plays produced by Teater Moment. Parataxis means that all signs on stage are of equal value, no sign is predominant (for instance, text and storyline are just as subordinate as all other signs).7 Simultaneity means that many signs are presented simultaneously, the audience cannot perceive all signs.8 Play with the density of signs; according to Lehmann, post dramatic theatre avoids implicit rules. Instead, the performance is charged with a too high or too low frequency of signs.9 Plethora; the signs develop in a chaotic order. He exemplifies this with the German director Frank Castorf, who combines the chaotic arrangement with jokes and tricks, which has become the stylistic form of his directorship.10 Irruption of the real makes the audience aware of their own part of the performance. How does the audience react to the development of events during the performance? The normal setting of a theatre performance becomes ambiguous and boundaries are erased.11 These five stylistic features are all actively used in the two Strindberg productions. Whether this makes the performances into post dramatic theatre or not is not possible to tell. Nevertheless, it is clear that the productions include post dramatic elements. One of the ways Lehmann defines postdramatic theatre is outlined as follows.

6

Lehmann, pp.85. Lehmann, p.86-87. 8 Lehmann, p.87-88. 9 Lehmann, p,89. 10 Lehmann, p.91. [Castorf directed a production of Strindberg’s Black Banners at Stockholms stadsteater in 1997] 11 Lehmann, p.99-104. 7

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Lehmann’s theories are contradictory in themselves, particularly when he discusses the different aspects and elements that might be included in post dramatic theatre. It is not a matter of theatre without text, but instead that the text does not necessarily build up a plot or a course of events. Dialogues with a concrete content may occur, but not as a basic way of developing the proceedings in the performance as a whole. It is doubtful whether any performances actually fulfil all Lehman’s qualifications, but it is certainly possible to speak of post dramatic tendencies. Lehmann considers expressionism, symbolism and Brechtian theatre as important predecessors of the post dramatic theatre. Expressionism is essential in its capacity of depicting nightmares and the hidden inner life of the main character. “Expressionism seeks ways of representing the unconscious whose nightmares and images of desire are not bound to a new dramatic logic.”13 This statement agrees well with Strindberg’s play To Damascus. Forty years previously, the German literary historian Peter Szondi wrote about Strindberg’s ‘I-drama’ and station drama. “The unity of action is replaced by the unity of the ego […].The individual scenes are not correlated in a causal relationship, they do not develop naturally one after the other as they would in drama.”14 However, Szondi does not mention A Dream Play. Most likely, because the form is so discontinuous and the different perspectives do not fit into his idea of the development of drama.

How does Teater Moment approach the play To Damascus? The cast consists of four actors; three of these play several parts. The actors were all related to each other; three siblings of the Stenshäll family and one in-law. At the doctor’s house, they call each other sister and brother, which is true in reality. However, the director Andreas Boonstra is not related to the actors, but he started Teater Moment together with Pontus Stenshäll. A model railway was arranged on the stage, which was filmed from the side of the stage, the journey and scenery were projected on a white half 12

Lehmann, p.85 Lehmann, p.65. 14 Szondi, p.37 (my translation). 13

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curtain. The scenery was not contemporary, apart from one scene that took place on a camping-site (called ‘At the sea-side’ in the script). Change of scenes was performed with the help of a hand camera that followed the railway line. Minor changes had been made to Strindberg’s script; certain parts were shortened and the language was modernised although some specific expressions were kept. The scene that is completely changed is the scene “At the sea-side”, in which the actors almost entirely depart from Strindberg’s script. They speak of the international setting of the campingsite with German and British tourists. With a bag-in-box, they continually ‘allow themselves’ more wine. They cite lines from Jan Hammarlund’s song “I want to live and die in Europe”. They then continue with the almost iconic song in Sweden “Jag vill bo i öppna landskap” (I want to live in an open countryside) by the Swedish author and rock-star Ulf Lundell. The actor Pontus Stenshäll turns this into a parody of all Ulf Lundell songs and of his style of singing and playing the guitar. The whole scene becomes a parody of swedishness; gradually, they return to Strindberg’s script, in part with the help of the dated Swedish word “kontokurant” (statement of account). Here, Ulf Lundell symbolises a certain other suffering Swede who feels misunderstood and who is not keen on young feminists. The title of the play was changed to To Damascus on the Ghost Train. In several scenes, the actors had masks from the joke shop Buttericks, as if it were Halloween. The repetitions of the play were augmented by recurring ghost effects and by reiterating jokes from the county of Blekinge (the Stenhälls come from Blekinge), which were received by a bored expression from The Unknown. Thus, features from popular culture were mixed with the refined cultivation that Strindberg stands for today. The mixture of genres is a stylistic approach often used in post dramatic and postmodern theatre. The actors wore striped blazers from the Norwegian clothes-chain Dressman, the shop one tube-station away from Gubbängen, in Hökarängen. In the scene “In the Hotel room”, the waiter wore a happy and mournful mask symbolising the theatre. This was a further token of the fact that we are at the theatre and are here ruled by the logics of theatre. One of the actors, Joakim Stenshäll who at the time also worked as a dramaturge at Riksteatern (the Swedish National Touring Theatre), stepped out of his part as a beggar and held a lecture analysing one of the scenes; the encounter between the beggar and The Unknown after his stay at the asylum. In the final scene, Joakim Stenshäll read aloud from a book about Barbie and Ken, ending with the words God Bless Gubbängen.

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Damascus – On the Ghost Train/ Teater Moment, photographer Petra Hellberg.

In the midst of all the action, there is a feeling of tranquillity and peace. For instance, when the Confessor reads the long malediction, we listen even when a person in a monster-mask sits alongside patting The Unknown in an excessively comforting way. Moreover, features are repeated in order to clarify the situation in the same way as occurrences recur in the play. When The Unknown returns to the doctor, he is treated in the same way as Ceasar, the maniac, using joke articles such as a mobile phone, a camera and a flower that squirt water. The dramatic plot of the script is not dominant; instead, this is a station drama where the interest is in the situations and the setting. In a preexpressionistic style, the state of mind and experiences of The Unknown govern the understanding of the scenery in the different scenes. Consequently, the scenery can be understood differently depending on memories of previous visits. The production of the play emphasises this characteristic, even if all scenes from Damascus I are included in the performance. No proceedings in the performance were more important than others; or as Szondi writes, there is no correlated causal relationship. Changes occur on an inner level. Nevertheless, characters that are consistent throughout the performance do occur, although even these change according to the situation. In Strindberg’s script, the doctor is called the werewolf; this could be regarded as the inspiration for the use of monster masks, Halloween

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symbols etc. Parataxis and Simultaneity are constantly present in the production. Irruption of the real occurs in several forms; the fact that the cast is based in the Stenshäll family is the clearest example. Another example of such an irruption, or intrusion of the real, was Joakim Stenshäll’s lecture on the dramatic effect of a scene. Play with the density of signs is included in scenes when there are several layers of contradictory signs, but also when lack of action and waiting is a central point of the scene. Plethoria involving an uncontrolled development of different signs can be seen in several scenes, primarily in the scene ‘At the sea-side’.

A Dream Play Continuing to the production of A Dream Play (2010), this became a dream about Teater Moment. In this production, characters from previous productions appeared together, enriching the scenes; sometimes scenes were replaced with scenes from previous productions. Birgitta Pelikan was there with her bag-in-box singing popular songs (from Strindberg’s The Pelican), while she waits for Victor to come out of the theatre. Maggan from Faust noisily sang along, her scoop net was replaced with a red guitar, which was not quite red. The couple from The Dance of Death ended up in the office of the lawyer, enthusiastically tormenting each other to death. Sometimes the characters were played by the same actors as in the original productions, sometimes their parts were copied by other actors. Indra’s daughter made her appearance on stage via the tube to Gubbängen, a journey that could be followed on video (this was an association to the ghost train in To Damascus). The scenery was a copy of the square outside Teater Moment, including the pizza restaurant, the little statue, the telephone booth and the front of the theatre. Indra’s daughter became a new staff member of the theatre with a laid-back attitude. The actor Louise Peterhoff, who played Indra’s daughter Agnes, had not worked with Teater Moment before; her previous experience was more within dance theatre than spoken theatre. The rest of the ensemble had worked with Teater Moment in several productions. In this way, the inquisitive feelings of a stranger were distinguished; a newcomer wanting to understand Teater Moment’s world. This was a much darker production than that of To Damascus on the ghost train. One of the major deviations from the script was the coalcarrying scene. In Teater Moment’s version, a factual lecture was held on child work in India as a condition for the cheap clothes we wear. This

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became an image of hell in our days. Here, the cast worked with Irruption of the real, but also with play with the density of signs when the charged signs of the scene changed distinctly and were thinned out. In the final scene, the emergency exit door was opened, representing the hidden door with the four-leaved clover. The actors went out and stood smoking and chatting outside the theatre. Indra’s daughter Agnes jumped upwards trying to reach heaven, but there was nobody there to pull her up. The distance between Agnes and the rest of the ensemble of characters was again emphasised. From the film screen Joakim Stenshäll (who had unexpectedly passed away a couple of months before the opening performance) read the Barbie story and pronounced his God Bless Gubbängen. Both plays were based on Strindberg’s script; the open form of the script made it possible to make changes in the cast and to fit other scenes into the performance. The theatre critic Jenny Teleman wrote in the newspaper Aftonbladet about A Dream Play. “The idea is obvious, anybody can slip in or out of Strindberg’s masterpiece, because there is no character who is not disappointed in life.”15 The open form of Strindberg’s A Dream Play has been used by several theatres; for instance in Robert Wilson’s production at Stockolms stadsteater (Stockholm City Theatre), in which the lines were reduced to a minimum and the coal carrying scene was also entirely changed. In Mattias Andersson’s production at the same theatre in 2012, the lines in Strindberg’s script were alternated with material from interviews about the situation in contemporary society with the placing of refugees in Skamsund. Teater Moment has produced other Strindberg plays; The Dance of Death, The Pelican and The Ghost Sonata. However, the use of post dramatic aesthetics succeeded best in A Dream Play and To Damascus. The discontinuous form and the lack of a clear storyline make it possible to replace sections of the play without spoiling the dramatic composition of the play.

Strindberg on the international stage In an international perspective, the Swedish productions based on Strindberg’s script are unique. In the linguistic area most associated with post dramatic theatre, the German speaking area, Strindberg is hardly ever played and the production of any of Strindberg’s pre-expressionistic plays or dream plays is extremely rare. Directors do not seem to take up the 15

Jenny Teleman, ”En träffsäker läsning”, Aftonbladet, 26 October 2010

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battle with Strindberg but choose to produce plays such as the performance of Rausch (Crimes and Crimes) at Akademitheater in Vienna 2011. Stefan Pucher produced a well-directed and highly serious performance entirely following Strindberg’s script. His production emphasised and enhanced the script, but without making any comment of his own. Considering that Pucher is often criticised for being an abuser of the classics and normally uses a mixture of styles including elements of popular culture in his productions, it is strange to see a production so entirely without association to contemporary conditions. One reason why a post dramatic approach to Strindberg’s plays has not had any impact internationally could be that his plays, after all, are not played particularly often. The wave of Ibsen that has swept over the world, with strong economic support from the Norwegian state, has set the difficult Strindberg to the side.16 The development of productions of Strindberg plays on the German speaking stage would be an interesting topic for research in itself; in this case, surely the last chapter is not yet written. An interesting example is a production “based” on Miss Julie at Schaubühne in Berlin, 2010, directed by the British director Kattie Mitchell and the filmmaker Leo Warner. Here, the story was told from Kristin’s point of view and the text was considerably minimised.

Abstract Teater Moment is a theatre group based in a suburb of Stockholm (Gubbängen) since the year 2000. Their repertoire consists of both contemporary and classical plays, amongst them five by Strindberg. The two directors of the theatre, Andreas Boonstra and Pontus Stenshäll, work within a postdramatic aesthetic. They also often appear as actors in their own productions, directly commenting the play and the production. The article analyses two Strindberg productions: To Damascus – On the Ghost Train (2004, directed by Boonstra) and A Dream Play (2010, directed by Stenshäll). Both are placed in contemporary Sweden (and in Gubbängen); this raises questions about location in time and space in a postdramatic

16 The Australian researcher Julie Hollidge has studied how Ibsen’s A Doll’s House has spread over the world. She has analysed the importance of the Norwegian state support of productions and has found that hundreds of millions have been spent on promoting the play (Julie Hollidge, ”Maps and networks; using new technologies to analyse the global production history of A Doll’s House, paper IFTR conference Mediating performance, Santiago de Chile, August 2012). This could be compared with the virtually non-existent jubilee investment of the Swedish State.

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context. In my opinion, Teater Moment’s concept constitutes a radical way to renew Strindberg’s legacy in our time.

Bibliography Julie Hollidge, “Maps and networks; using new technologies to analyse the global production history of A Doll’s House”, paper IFTR world conference Mediating performance, Santiago de Chile, August 2012 Lehmann, Hans Thies, Postdramatic Theatre, London: Routledge, 2006 Ooijen, Erik van, The mold of writing: style and structure in Strindberg's chamber plays. Diss., Örebro: Örebro University 2010 Szondi, Peter, Det moderna dramats teori 1880-1950, Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1972 Teleman, Jenny, ”En träffsäker läsning”, Aftonbladet, 26 October 2010

Strindberg productions Black Banners, 1997 Stockholms stadsteater, Stockholm Ett drömspel (A Dream Play), autumn 2010, Teater moment, Stockholm Fräulein Julie, spring 2011, Schaubühne, Berlin Rausch, spring 2011, Akademietheater, Wien Till Damaskus med spöktåget (To Damascus on the Ghost Train), autumn 2004, Teaterbiennalen Umeå, spring 2005, as well as a video recording of the performance at Teater Moment, Stockholm

STAGING AUGUST STRINDBERG IN TWO ERAS GYTIS PADEGIMAS

It so happened that August Strindberg's work has been my steady companion for over forty years, – ever since my student days and throughout my long, on-going career in theatre. He is the author whose plays I have staged more times than any other playwright's, and each of my eight encounters with his work in a variety of venues and at different points in time have marked certain stages of my creative biography. For people born and raised in a democratic society it is perhaps hard to imagine that such a writer as August Strindberg could be virtually ignored, remain unpublished, and be hardly ever staged, because he supposedly failed to meet the ideological standards set by the totalitarian state, and that every attempt to present his work to the public could mean a tough, relentless and not always eventually successful battle with the authorities. So today I would like to share with you the basic story of my Lithuanian “Strindbergiana”, which began many years ago in the Soviet Union and has continued in the European Union to the present day, and, by the same token, to point out the essential shifts which have occurred in the cultural history of my native land during the last four decades. In 1970, I, an eighteen-year-old lad from the Western outskirts of the Soviet Union, became a student at the Lunacharsky State Institute for Theatre Arts (GITIS) in Moscow, the capital metropolis of the huge empire. The contrast was breath-taking – I was suddenly transplanted from my green, provincial homeland, where I had lived among my family and countrymen, into this gigantic city, where everything was new to me – ranging from food to people's behaviour. However, I soon discovered a safe oasis – the Institute's library with its antique, pre-proletarian furniture, green glass table-lamp shades and bookshelves lined with tomes in oldfashioned leather bindings. This land of books had survived since the times before the Bolshevik revolution, when it had belonged to a boarding school for the daughters of gentlemen. It reminded me of Jorge Luis Borges's “Library of Babel”, and it was the place where I impatiently reaped fruits of knowledge. I was amazed that this excellent collection of early twentieth-century literature had remained virtually intact throughout

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the wars and revolutions, and that it had not been destroyed by the vigilant protectors of communist ideology like so many other similar libraries. Whatever the case, I found in it a multi-volume edition of Strindberg's works translated into melodious Russian by two outstanding symbolist poets, J. Baltrushaitis and K. Balmont, and published back in the days of Czar Nicholas II. This antique collection of Strindberg's writings became my artistic Bible, which I read for countless hours, some volumes many times over, and inner states of the protagonists of Alone and Inferno seemed very similar to mine. These examples and the possibility to identify with Strindberg helped me to escape from own loneliness, to withstand and to adapt in the hostile environment. The borderline world of his plays, based on the never-ending struggle between man and woman, the fight for one's personal freedom and dignity, appeared eerily familiar to me, reminding me of the tense, stormy relations within my own family and the society in which I grew up. I wanted to share my discovery of Strindberg, a playwright hardly ever mentioned in the Soviet Union, with my fellow students and, in the second or third year of my studies, I staged at the Institute a long scene for two actors from his Playing with Fire. To the mournful P. Hindemith's trumpet tune, I led my acting comrades-inarms through the labyrinths of Strindberg's passions. This march, actually, proved to be successful, since it not only earned me a good grade for directing on my exam, but also attracted much attention from students and teachers alike. Encouraged by this success, I became a real Strindberg fan. I frequented other Moscow libraries and, tried to gain access to the so-called special depositories, where all forbidden books were kept, in order to read and copy every possible text by and on my beloved author. So, when I returned to Lithuania after my graduation, I was not only thoroughly familiar with Strindberg's work but also had accumulated a small “library” of his writings in the form of hand-written pages and fuzzy copies made illegally on primitive machines. Later on, I kept adding to it new material which I found in private libraries in Lithuania. Being virtually “obsessed” with Strindberg, I had to stage his plays in professional theatre no matter what. At that time, “Strindbergiana” in Lithuanian theatre was a rather scanty affair. Back before the First World War, K. Glinka's had staged The Father with some amateur actors in a Lithuanian provincial town Jurbarkas, and in the beginning of the seventies, J. Miltinis had directed The Dance of Death at the Panevơžys Drama Theatre, and that was it. I and my friends once travelled all the way from Moscow to see this Miltinis's production, but its academic style clashed with the expressive vision of the feverish mind, which was already taking shape in my

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imagination, so the trip proved to be a disappointment. In 1977, I offered Strindberg's Fröken Julie (Miss Julie) to the Šiauliai Drama Theatre, despite numerous warnings from my friends and colleagues that I would never get permission to stage it.

Miss Julie, Šhiauliai drama theatre, 1977. Fröken Julie: Irena Liutikaite , Jean: Pranas Piaulokas.

The Šiauliai Drama Theatre at that time was living through its Golden Age under the guidance of its daring Chief Director A. Ragauskaitơ, so, to my boundless joy, my offer was accepted, I called in a creative team of then still young beginners and now famous masters – set designer A. Jacovskis and composer M. Urbaitis – and began rehearsing with utter inspiration. The part of Jean was played by a very intelligent and subtle actor P. Piaulokas, unfortunately, already deceased, who even back then was called the “young maestro”. We rehearsed with such abandon that I began actually getting into Strindberg's role. Whenever I. Liutikaitơ, who played Julie, and I would accidentally touch one another, an electric current would literally pass between us. I seemed to hear every word of

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hers, even if it was not in the script. Never before and never after have had I experienced such a state of embodying an author, even though I have since worked with plays by many a colourful and interesting dramatist. The production was a tremendous hit and was shown not only on the stages of major Lithuanian theatres, but also in numerous provincial venues of even the smallest towns. It was also filmed and shown on Lithuanian National TV. By the way, it was the first time in Lithuania that a production of one theatre employed an actress from another theatre's company – in this case, D. Kazragytơ who brilliantly played the role of Julie as a stand-in for I. Liutikaitơ.

Picture Miss Julie The production, when it was broadcast on television, gained such popularity, that in the same year I was first invited to direct a teleplay for our National TV – and not just any teleplay, but one based on Strindberg's The Stronger. In a pavilion of the television studio we set up a women's cafe to which, in addition to X and Y penned by Strindberg, I invited a number of additional characters of various ages with no spoken lines – just to create the atmosphere of an actual artists' cafe. This production became memorable to me because of a curious incident. One of the regulars in the cafe was played by a cat. To make her perform certain scenes, we marked her routes on the floor with the tincture of valerian. On the day, we began recording, we must have overdone with the dosage of the stuff, because the cat went into a truly Strindbergian frenzy – she dashed out of the set right into the electrical switchboard, caused a power cut and stopped our shooting. A panic ensued, but, thank God, the cat survived and the studio did not burn down. In 1981, I directed my best-known production of a Strindberg play, that of his Creditors, at the Kaunas State Drama Theatre. The concept of this production was unique because I staged it in two different parallel versions with two contrasting casts, which consisted, respectively, of young and mature actors. The older cast included the brilliant actress D. Kazragytơ, whom I have already mentioned, A. Masiulis, the famous male star of Soviet film and theatre who also happened to love Strindberg, and the talented, complex actor V. Šinkariukas. In this mature version, Gustav, played by A. Masiulis, was an experienced middle-aged gentleman who had gone through thick and thin in his life, a real teacher of Classical languages who now was destroying with pedantic yet passionate precision not only his ex-wife's new family but also his rival's psyche and emotional stability. The young team – J. Onaitytơ, V. Masalskis and R. Vaidotas –

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were as if by accident engaging in apparently innocent mind-games, which culminated in their eventual self-destruction. Critics and ordinary viewers would go to see the production a few times so as to compare the two casts and the two divergent directorial concepts of the play. Actually, this production of a single play became a kind of diptych, the sense of which was questioned by local critics during its tour in Georgia. Temperamental and categorical Georgians doubted the director's right to simultaneously have several different approaches to the same material. However, the production was very warmly received in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and, eventually, Salzburg – the city to which I was invited to stage a production in 1988, at the time when the Berlin wall was beginning to crack, and became the first Lithuanian non-emigrant theatre director to work in the “real West”. During our tour in Moscow, we were congratulated by the famous Russian director O. Yefremov who publicly announced that Moscow had seen a Strindberg play for the first time after 60 years, and even on the same stage where M. Chekhov had played the lead in Strindberg's Eric XIV directed by E. Vakhtangov. To me August Strindberg became a kind of an alter ego – by directing his plays I could most adequately express my views and most fully reveal my creative nature. In 1986, encouraged by the long-lasting success of Creditors, I decided to turn to a more complex, different style of Strindberg play To Damascus, I. The Ministry of Culture, most likely, motivated by our triumphant tour in Moscow, gave me a go-ahead to stage this production at the Kaunas State Drama Theatre. However, somewhat later, they must have realized that this play had a very powerful metaphysical level, which radically clashed with their Marxist-Leninist ideology. However, the rehearsals had already started, and stopping them would have caused quite a stir, so the censorship had to turn to other methods. One could write tomes about the ingenuity and pig-headedness of Soviet censors. In this case, they decided to undermine us from within, through the administration of the theatre. My set designer S. Bocullo had created different scenography for each of the numerous scenes of the production and it was very important to make the set easily transformable, so he presented to the theatre the exact drawings and technical solutions for building a light, mobile set. However, to our total surprise the workshops started manufacturing it from expensive, weighty metal components, as if deliberately trying to make it unmovable. Neither our admonitions, nor pleading had any positive effect, not even S. Bocullo's open letter, which he posted on the theatre billboard, was completely ignored. They kept telling us that everything was going to be all right, and that the set was being built so heavy and cumbersome due to some

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mysterious work safety regulations. We awaited the premiere with horror, and when it finally took place on December 31, the interest of theatregoers had reached its peak thanks to various rumours, which were circulating around the play and its production.

To Damascus, Kaunas State drama theatre,1986.Virginija Kochanskyte and Valdas Zilenas.

It so happened, that the bulk of the tickets to this opening- night performance had been purchased by students of the Kaunas Priest Seminary. The curtain rose and revealed the scenery – beautiful rocky seashore. The actors played the first scene with inspiration, and it was time to transform the set. Then it started – I remember that night as one of the worst nightmares in my life. The heavy metal structures could be moved only by a crowd of stagehands, and the transpositions got longer and longer. The actors and the audience were getting restless. It took more time to transform the set than to play any scene, the rhythm was completely off. However, regardless of these subversive, pre-planned disruptions, the actors were doing their utmost best, and the viewers were avidly catching every word of the Strindberg play, which they knew they could not get to read. The performance seemed to run forever, and yet it ended with stormy ovations. For the next few days, theatregoers virtually besieged the box-office, but the expensive set of our production soon lay scattered in the snow in the backyard behind the theatre, and the

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production itself was closed down and written off. “No, not because of ideological reasons”, the bosses kept repeating, but due to “technical failure”. Strange as it may be, this production, so cleverly destroyed by the censorship, still kept causing ripples. Many now prominent priests in various parts of Lithuania remember it with fondness to this day, and I am delighted that a few years ago my younger colleague O. Koršunovas succeeded there where I had been defeated – he brilliantly staged To Damascus at the Klaipơda Drama Theatre, and his production has survived. In the beginning of the nineties, when the “singing revolution” was in full swing in the Baltics, Scandinavians developed a lively interest for these neighbouring countries, which were so close yet had been for decades cut off by the Iron Curtain as if thrown into non-existence. In 1992, some Swedish friends of the Lithuanian theatre critic V. Saviþinjnaitơ invited her to Stockholm with an artistic project to participate in a festival launched by a suburb of this city. She knew me as a renowned admirer of August Strindberg and, likewise, of Sweden, so she called me in to work on the project. Thus for the second time I took up directing Strindberg's The Stronger. I gave the silent part of Y to the critic herself, while the role of X was played by actress D. Stubraitơ, and the natural professional antagonism between the two ladies charged their performance with the necessary field of tension. The duel of the women was intertwined with the music played by The Ganelin Trio, Lithuanian jazz stars of the time, and so the whole production pulsed with syncopated rhythms of jazz. We sailed from Tallinn to Stockholm on the ill-fated ferry “Estonia” which was to sink a couple of years later. It was my first crossing of our Baltic Sea, so I spent the whole night on the deck – from the melting away of the Estonian coastline to the gradual appearance of the Swedish skerries in the first rays of sunrise. This trip to Stockholm got etched in my memory by the euphoria of our new-found liberty – not so long ago I used to walk on our Baltic beaches and stare at washed-up Swedish milk cartons which appeared like letters from another world, harbingers of freedom, and now, lo behold, these very same unreachable Swedes were showing me around their capital, taking me to cafes, asking me questions about the situation in Lithuania. The production itself was shown in the turmoil of the festival and was drowned out by the impressions of our fantastic journey to Sweden like to a Promised Land. Upon return to Lithuania, I was dying to show my little production to the local audiences but the actress-critic refused point-blank to play the role of Y back home. By the way, in the first, the teleplay version of The

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Stronger, Y was also played by an amateur actress – a budding poet at the time and now the well-known politician D. Teišerskytơ. My next directorial encounter with a Strindberg play, in this case with The Ghost Sonata, took place in 1997, when I already had completely different possibilities at my disposal.

The Ghost Sonata, Kaunas State drama theatre,1977. Young Lady: Giedre Ramanauskaite, Student: Andrius Kurienius.

While my last production of The Stronger had been a privately funded venture, I was now the head of one of the largest theatres in Lithuania, the Kaunas Drama Theatre. The set designer I brought in was also one of the most prominent Lithuanian scenographers, J. Paulơkaitơ – who later on successfully worked in Scandinavian theatres as well. Her design, which, despite its complexity, was fully implemented, had truly grandiose

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proportions. The whole stage was occupied by a stable, three-storey-high metal structure which, at first, enshrouded in white cloth would serve as a screen for shadow play, and then, uncovered, would become a shaft for a sizable lift, easily moving up and down, where many impressive scenes could be played. I assembled a cast of well-known old-timers and some students from my own acting studio, which I had established at the theatre, for whom this was a chance to gain valuable experience. D. Kazragytơ stood out in this production with her masterfully created role of the Mummy. This was already her third excellent piece of work in a Strindberg play directed by me. She says that she remembers these three roles and treasures them.

The Ghost Sonata, Kaunas State drama theatre,1977. Mummy: Doloresa Kazragyte, Hummel: Leonardas Zelcius.

As for the fate of the production itself, ironically, it resembled the fate its predecessor – To Damascus – suffered at the hands of Soviet censorship – regardless of the fact that this time around I was already the head of the theatre with no censors undermining my work. Again, the set was very impressive but also very complex, demanding a few days of hard work to assemble it. Therefore, The Ghost Sonata could be shown rather seldom in our repertory theatre, and hence was sentenced to slow demise, because its

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rare performances did not allow the production to develop and it became a real “ghost” of stage fright for the actors engaged in it. I actually do not know, if it was due to the market-oriented economic conditions, which have noticeably pushed Lithuanian theatres towards commercialization, or due to my other interests that I staged my next, for now latest, production of a Strindberg play, again at the Šiauliai Drama Theatre, only in 2009. This time I chose his Easter, the play which is probably well-known and loved in Sweden, but which presented a stark contrast to the current post-modernist trend in Lithuanian theatre.

Easter, Shiauliai drama theatre,2009. Eleonora: Monika Saltyte, Benjamin: Povilas Liubinas.

While directing this production in our secularized world it was not that easy to keep faith in Strindberg's imperative quest of spiritual salvation and the divine nature in us by clearing our conscience and forgiving others for their sins. The acts of the performance were divided by a videoinstallation of a growing, wilting and again blooming flower of narcissus, which was accompanied by J. Haydn's The Last Seven Words of Jesus Christ interweaving with modern music. The production opened during Holy Week and, after the performance, received an unexpected extension – the Bishop of Šiauliai was seized by an impulse, climbed onstage out of the audience and addressed the actors and the theatregoers with fervent inspiration. Later, while delivering his Easter sermon, he told his parishioners that it was a must to go see our Easter, so, as a result, the theatre received some unexpected viewers, some of whom, judging by

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their behaviour, had never been there before. This production is still in the repertoire of the Šiauliai Drama Theatre, but is not actually being performed, since one of the lead actresses is currently on maternity leave.

Easter, Shiauliai drama theatre,2009. Mrs Heyst: Irena Liutikaite, Elis: Dalius Janciauskas.

Easter, Shiauliai drama theatre,2009. Benjamin: Povilas Liubinas, Elis: Dalius Janciauskas

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Paraphrasing Henrik Ibsen, I really can say that August Strindberg's feverish eyes have been looking at me for more than forty years, making me always turn back to my creative conscience, and urging me to just as painfully search for the uncomfortable humanity in our crazy world like he had been doing it every moment of his life. Sometimes the look in those eyes becomes mischievous and seems to challenge me: “Well, do you still have the oomph to grapple with me, man?” Oh, how I wish to have it!