令嬢ジュリー／父 — August Strindberg
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : Plays: the Father; Countess Julie; the Outlaw; the Stronger Author : August Strindberg Translator : Edith Oland Warner Oland Release date : July 1, 2005 [eBook #8499] Most recently updated: January 26, 2013 Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8499 Credits : Produced by Nicole Apostola and David Widger *** START OF C. S. and J. H. S., Under whose rooftree these translations were made. CONTENTS PUBLISHER'S NOTE. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE THE FATHER ACT I. ACT II. ACT III. COUNTESS JULIE THE OUTLAW THE STRONGER PUBLISHER'S NOTE. Since the accompanying biographical note, which aims solely at outlining the principal events of Strindberg's life up to 1912, was put in type, the news of his death from cancer, at Stockholm on May 14, 1912, has been reported. Of the plays included in the present volume, "The Father" and "Countess Julie" are representative of Strindberg's high water mark in dramatic technique and have successfully maintained their claim to a permanent place, not only in dramatic literature, but, as acting plays. "The Stronger," than which no better example of Strindberg's uncanny power for analysis of the female mind exists, while essentially a chamber play, is from time to time presented at the theatre, and affords a splendid test of the dramatic ability of the actors, only one of whom speaks. The author has boldly thrown on the other the burden of maintaining her share in the development of the action by pantomime, facial expression, and an occasional laugh. "The Outlaw," although inferior in construction to the others, is still played with success and is full of dignity and atmosphere. The important part it played in promoting the fortunes of the author lends to it an added interest which fully justifies its inclusion in this volume. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE "I tell you, you must have chaos in you, if you would give birth to a dancing star."—Nietzsche. In Stockholm, living almost as a recluse, August Strindberg is dreaming life away. The dancing stars, sprung from the chaos of his being, shine with an ever-increasing refulgence from the high-arched dome of dramatic literature, but he no longer adds to their number. The constellation of the Lion of the North is complete. At sixty-three, worn by the emotional intensity of a life, into which has been crowded the stress and storm of a universe, he sits at his desk, every day transcribing to his diary a record of those mystical forces which he says regulate his life. Before him lies a crucifix, Hardly as a symbol of sectarian faith, for Strindberg is a Swedenborgian, but a fitting accompaniment, nevertheless, to a state of mind which he expresses in saying "One gets more and more humble the longer one lives, and in the shadow of death many things look different." A softer light beams from those blue eyes, which, under that tossing crown of tawny hair flung high from a speaking forehead, in times past flashed defiance at every opposition. For him the fierce, unyielding, never-ceasing, ever-pressing strife of mind and unrest of life is passing, an eddy in the tide has borne him into quieter waters, and if the hum of the world reaches his solitude, it no longer rouses him to headlong action. Secure in his position as the foremost man of letters Sweden has produced in modern times, the last representative of that distinguished group of Scandinavian writers which included Ibsen, Bjornson and Brandes, with a Continental reputation surpassing that of any one of them, Strindberg well may be entitled to dream of the past. One day when in the evolution of the drama Strindberg's technique shall have served its purpose and like Ibsen's, be forced to give way before the advance of younger artists, when his most radical views shall have become the commonplaces of pseudo-culture, the scientific psychologist will take the man in hand and, from the minute record of his life, emotions, thoughts, fancies, speculations and nightmares, which he has embodied in autobiographical novels and that most remarkable perhaps of all his creations, abysmal in its pessimism, "The Inferno," will be drawn a true conception of the man. That the individual will prove quite as interesting a study as his literary work, even the briefest outline of Strindberg's life will suggest. The lack of harmony in his soul that has permeated his life and work with theses and antitheses Strindberg tries to explain through heredity, a by no means satisfying or complete solution for the motivation of his frequently unusual conduct and exceptional temperamental qualities, which the abnormal psychologist is in the habit of associating with that not inconsiderable group of cases in which the emotional and temperamental characteristics of the opposite sex are dominant in the individual. His ancestry has been traced back to the sixteenth century, when his father's family was of the titled aristocracy, later, generation after generation, becoming churchmen, although Strindberg's father, Carl Oscar, undertook a commercial career. His mother, Ulrica Eleanora Norling, was the daughter of a poor tailor, whom Strindberg's father first met as a waitress in a hotel, and, falling in love with her, married, after she had borne him three children. August, christened Johann August, the fourth child, was born at Stockholm, January 22, 1849, soon after his father had become a bankrupt. There was little light or cheer in the boy's home; the misfortune that overtook the family at the time of August's birth always hung over them like a dark cloud; the mother became nervous and worn from the twelve child-births she survived, the father serious and reserved. The children were brought up strictly