Plays by August Strindberg Volume I Part 15

Mr. Hansson has printed a number of letters (Tilskueren, Copenhagen, July, 1912) written to him by Strindberg about that time, as well as some very informative comments of his own. Concerning the performance of Malmo he writes: "It gave me a very unpleasant sensation. What did it mean? Why had Strindberg turned my simple theme upsidedown so that it became unrecognisable? Not a vestige of the 'theme from Ola Hansson'

remained. Yet he had even suggested that he and I act the play together, I not knowing that it was to be a duel between two criminals. And he had at first planned to call it 'Aryan and Pariah'--which meant, of course, that the strong Aryan, Strindberg, was to crush the weak Pariah, Hansson, coram populo."

In regard to his own story Mr. Hansson informs us that it dealt with "a man who commits a forgery and then tells about it, doing both in a sort of somnambulistic state whereby everything is left vague and undefined."

At that moment "Raskolnikov" was in the air, so to speak. And without wanting in any way to suggest imitation, I feel sure that the groundnote of the story was distinctly Dostoievskian. Strindberg himself had been reading Nietzsche and was--largely under the pressure of a reaction against the popular disapproval of his anti-feministic att.i.tude--being driven more and more into a superman philosophy which reached its climax in the two novels "Chandalah" (1889) and "At the Edge of the Sea"

(1890). The Nietzschean note is unmistakable in the two plays contained in the present volume.

But these plays are strongly colored by something else--by something that is neither Hansson-Dostoievski nor Strindberg-Nietzsche. The solution of the problem is found in the letters published by Mr. Hansson. These show that while Strindberg was still planning "Creditors," and before he had begun "Pariah," he had borrowed from Hansson a volume of tales by Edgar Allan Poe. It was his first acquaintance with the work of Poe, though not with American literature--for among his first printed work was a series of translations from American humourists; and not long ago a Swedish critic (Gunnar Castren in Samtiden, Christiania, June, 1912) wrote of Strindberg's literary beginnings that "he had learned much from Swedish literature, but probably more from Mark Twain and d.i.c.kens."

The impression Poe made on Strindberg was overwhelming. He returns to it in one letter after another. Everything that suits his mood of the moment is "Poesque" or "E. P-esque." The story that seems to have made the deepest impression of all was "The Gold Bug," though his thought seems to have distilled more useful material out of certain other stories ill.u.s.trating Poe's theories about mental suggestion. Under the direct influence of these theories, Strindberg, according to his own statements to Hansson, wrote the powerful one-act play "Simoom," and made Gustav in "Creditors" actually CALL FORTH the latent epileptic tendencies in Adolph. And on the same authority we must trace the method of: psychological detection practised by Mr. X. in "Pariah" directly to "The Gold Bug."

Here we have the reason why Mr. Hansson could find so little of his story in the play. And here we have the origin of a theme which, while not quite new to him, was ever afterward to remain a favourite one with Strindberg: that of a duel between intellect and cunning. It forms the basis of such novels as "Chandalah" and "At the Edge of the Sea," but it recurs in subtler form in works of much later date. To readers of the present day, Mr. X.--that striking ant.i.thesis of everything a scientist used to stand for in poetry--is much less interesting as a superman in spe than as an ill.u.s.tration of what a morally and mentally normal man can do with the tools furnished him by our new understanding of human ways and human motives. And in giving us a play that holds our interest as firmly as the best "love plot" ever devised, although the stage shows us only two men engaged in an intellectual wrestling match, Strindberg took another great step toward ridding the drama of its old, shackling conventions.

The name of this play has sometimes been translated as "The Outcast,"

whereby it becomes confused with "The Outlaw," a much earlier play on a theme from the old Sagas. I think it better, too, that the Hindu allusion in the Swedish t.i.tle be not lost, for the best of men may become an outcast, but the baseness of the Pariah is not supposed to spring only from lack of social position.

PARIAH

AN ACT

1889

PERSONS

MR. X., an archaeologist, Middle-aged man.

MR. Y., an American traveller, Middle-aged man.

SCENE

(A simply furnished room in a farmhouse. The door and the windows in the background open on a landscape. In the middle of the room stands a big dining-table, covered at one end by books, writing materials, and antiquities; at the other end, by a microscope, insect cases, and specimen jars full of alchohol.)

(On the left side hangs a bookshelf. Otherwise the furniture is that of a well-to-do farmer.)

(MR. Y. enters in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, carrying a b.u.t.terfly-net and a botany-can. He goes straight up to the bookshelf and takes down a book, which he begins to read on the spot.)

(The landscape outside and the room itself are steeped in sunlight. The ringing of church bells indicates that the morning services are just over. Now and then the cackling of hens is heard from the outside.)

(MR. X. enters, also in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves.)

(MR. Y. starts violently, puts the book back on the shelf upside-down, and pretends to be looking for another volume.)

MR. X. This heat is horrible. I guess we are going to have a thunderstorm.

MR. Y. What makes you think so?

MR. X. The bells have a kind of dry ring to them, the flies are sticky, and the hens cackle. I meant to go fis.h.i.+ng, but I couldn't find any worms. Don't you feel nervous?

MR. Y. [Cautiously] I?--A little.

MR. X. Well, for that matter, you always look as if you were expecting thunderstorms.

MR. Y. [With a start] Do I?

MR. X. Now, you are going away tomorrow, of course, so it is not to be wondered at that you are a little "journey-proud."--Anything new?--Oh, there's the mail! [Picks up some letters from the table] My, I have palpitation of the heart every time I open a letter! Nothing but debts, debts, debts! Have you ever had any debts?

MR. Y. [After some reflection] N-no.

MR. X. Well, then you don't know what it means to receive a lot of overdue bills. [Reads one of the letters] The rent unpaid--the landlord acting nasty--my wife in despair. And here am I sitting waist-high in gold! [He opens an iron-banded box that stands on the table; then both sit down at the table, facing each other] Just look--here I have six thousand crowns' worth of gold which I have dug up in the last fortnight. This bracelet alone would bring me the three hundred and fifty crowns I need. And with all of it I might make a fine career for myself. Then I could get the ill.u.s.trations made for my treatise at once; I could get my work printed, and--I could travel! Why don't I do it, do you suppose?

MR. Y. I suppose you are afraid to be found out.

MR. X. That, too, perhaps. But don't you think an intelligent fellow like myself might fix matters so that he was never found out? I am alone all the time--with n.o.body watching me--while I am digging out there in the fields. It wouldn't be strange if I put something in my own pockets now and then.

MR. Y. Yes, but the worst danger lies in disposing of the stuff.

MR. X. Pooh! I'd melt it down, of course--every bit of it--and then I'd turn it into coins--with just as much gold in them as genuine ones, of course---

MR. Y. Of course!

MR. X. Well, you can easily see why. For if I wanted to dabble in counterfeits, then I need not go digging for gold first. [Pause] It is a strange thing anyhow, that if anybody else did what I cannot make myself do, then I'd be willing to acquit him--but I couldn't possibly acquit myself. I might even make a brilliant speech in defence of the thief, proving that this gold was res nullius, or n.o.body's, as it had been deposited at a time when property rights did not yet exist; that even under existing rights it could belong only to the first finder of it, as the ground-owner has never included it in the valuation of his property; and so on.

MR. Y. And probably it would be much easier for you to do this if the--hm!--the thief had not been prompted by actual need, but by a mania for collecting, for instance--or by scientific aspirations--by the ambition to keep a discovery to himself. Don't you think so?

MR. X. You mean that I could not acquit him if actual need had been the motive? Yes, for that's the only motive which the law will not accept in extenuation. That motive makes a plain theft of it.

MR. Y. And this you couldn't excuse?

MR. X. Oh, excuse--no, I guess not, as the law wouldn't. On the other hand, I must admit that it would be hard for me to charge a collector with theft merely because he had appropriated some specimen not yet represented in his own collection.

MR. Y. So that vanity or ambition might excuse what could not be excused by need?

MR. X. And yet need ought to be the more telling excuse--the only one, in fact? But I feel as I have said. And I can no more change this feeling than I can change my own determination not to steal under any circ.u.mstances whatever.

MR. Y. And I suppose you count it a great merit that you cannot--hm!--steal?

MR. X. No, my disinclination to steal is just as irresistible as the inclination to do so is irresistible with some people. So it cannot be called a merit. I cannot do it, and the other one cannot refrain!--But you understand, of course, that I am not without a desire to own this gold. Why don't I take it then? Because I cannot! It's an inability--and the lack of something cannot be called a merit. There!

[Closes the box with a slam. Stray clouds have cast their shadows on the landscape and darkened the room now and then. Now it grows quite dark as when a thunderstorm is approaching.]

MR. X. How close the air is! I guess the storm is coming all right.