Strindberg, AUGUST

Strindberg, AUGUST, the most prominent figure in modern Swedish literature, was born at Stockholm on 22d January 1849, and became successively 'schoolmaster, actor, physician, telegraph employé, civil servant, painter, preacher, private tutor, and librarian of the state,' all to get his experience at first hand. The first book of his that made its mark was The Red Room (1879), a bitter satire upon conventional (Swedish) society. This made its author enemies, and to their attacks he replied in another stinging satire, The New Kingdom (1882); but after its publication he had to go into voluntary banishment, and has ever since lived abroad. Two years later he published a collection of short stories (Married Life), in which he describes all sorts and conditions of nuptial alliances with cynical frankness. Accused of outraging Christianity in this book, Strindberg repaired to Stockholm, stood his trial, and after making an eloquent defence was acquitted. His next important work was a plea for the socialistic conception of society in Utopias in the Real World (1885). Two books descriptive of the life and manners of the inhabitants of the Stockholm skerries—The People of Hemsö (1887) and Life of the Skerry-Men (1888)—are probably the best things he has written; though the play The Father (1887), one of four dramatic works in which he attacks the female sex, also deserves to rank high in Swedish literature. Two other novels, Tschandala (1889) and On the Open Sea (1890), turn upon the superiority of the aristocrat of brain over every other class of human being. Besides the books mentioned, Strindberg has produced—for he is a most prolific worker—a host of others, and in nearly all departments of literature. Unfortunately his artistic and poetic tendencies are in almost permanent conflict with his tendencies as thinker, reformer, and scientific observer; and this inherent dualism of his nature prevents his otherwise clever books from attaining the harmony, repose, and unity so essential to good literature. See Ola Hansson, Das junge Skandinavien (Dresden, 1891).