File:Auguststrindberg00lind (14592179697).jpg

Identifier: auguststrindberg00lind (find matches)
Title: August Strindberg : the spirit of revolt : studies and impressions
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Lind-af-Hageby, L. (Lizzy), 1878-1963
Subjects: Strindberg, August, 1849-1912
Publisher: London : Stanley Paul
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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ad been liberated through death. Thismakes life painful, but rich and interesting. CHAPTER VIII THE THEATRE OF LIFE STRINDBERGS fiftieth birthday wascelebrated quietly in Lund in 1899.A general feeling of distrust and bewilder-ment was prevalent amongst his countrymen.At the age of fifty he had returned to Sweden,apparently healthy in mind and body, in theprime of life, charged with a literary vitalitywhich confounded current theories of hisinsanity. He had calmly and unostenta-tiously resumed his task of writing drama.The haunted, feverish expression had left hiscountenance ; he had made himself a newvisage, upon which were stamped self-masteryand tranquillity of mind. And, yet, he hadrecently published Inferno and Legends, andlaid bare his souls misery and delirium inthrobbing pages, over which the reviewers hadpoured acrid contempt. He had written ToDamascus in a gust of mediaeval repentance,and uncovered himself in the transports ofasceticism. With a sigh of relief his enemies 288
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THE THEATRE OF LIFE 289 had laid aside their opposition to his indis-cretions and revelations, his materialism andtranscendentalism, his socialism and individ-ualism. They felt that there was no need totake a lunatic seriously. His friends hadwaited patiently for the dancing starwhich they knew would arise out of thechaos. The Saga of the Folkungs, Gustavus Vasa andEric XIV appeared in 1899, an(* showed thatthe author of Master Olof had returned to theart with which, twenty-seven years earlier,he had given his country its greatest his-torical play. With the precision of thesomnambulist who takes up the thread ofmental events, regardless of the time that haspassed, Strindberg resumed the story ofMaster Olof where he had left off. In Gus-tavus Vasa we again meet Olof, the renegade,but he is now—as befits his character—asecondary person, duly subservient to thePower of the Time, King Gustavus Vasa.With Gustavus Vasa and Eric XIV Strind-berg attained to mastery of a dramatic art,in wh

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