the significance of human agonies in august strindberg…alustathiq.com/lionimages/news/6e.pdf ·...
TRANSCRIPT
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
113
The Significance of Human Agonies in August Strindberg's
A Dream Play Ghassan Awad Ibrahim
Asst. Instructor
Department of English
Al-Turath University College
ABSTRACT This research paper deals with August Strindberg's treatment of humanity's
suffering by depending on the art of expressionism in which the author uses symbols
and exaggeration to reveal emotions, rather than representing physical reality through
showing various samples of tortured people from the community where they live and
suffer great pain and discomfort.
Strindberg's A Dream Play is written for the improvement of human beings'
conditions when it firmly tries to make people go back to spiritual values rather than
materialistic possessions to achieve happiness in life.
August Strindberg (1849-1912) is a Swedish playwright,
novelist, poet, essayist, and painter, born in Stockholm of Carl
Oscar Strindberg, a shipping agent, and his former maid-servant
Eleonora Ulrika Norling. Strindberg had an unfortunate childhood.
He was the fourth child, out of more than ten others. His father
went bankrupt when he was only four, and his mother died when he
was thirteen. In his autobiographical novel The Son of a Servant
(1913), Strindberg explained that his childhood was afflicted by
"emotional insecurity, poverty, religious fanaticism and neglect."1
Moreover, he failed in his university and could not realize his wish
to be a successful player, but he did not despair and subsequently he
became a journalist, a tutor, and a librarian; and one week after
publishing his first volume of short stories, Getting Married, on
September, 27, 1884, Strindberg was prosecuted for "blasphemy
against God or mockery of God's word or sacrament"2
Despite his hardships Strindberg had married three times,
but none of his marriages was a success since all of them were ended
in divorce. He is, unlike Henrik Ibsen (1828 – 1906); he is against
woman's emancipation because he believes that woman's duty is no
more than a wife and a mother. In his preface to Miss Julie (1888),
Strindberg shows a great hostility to the women of his time as he
states that "the half-woman is a type coming more and more into
prominence, selling herself nowadays for power, decorations,
distinctions, diplomas, as formerly for money, and the type indicates
degeneration",3
by saying these words, Strindberg gives an
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
114
indication that he is an anti-feminist, a woman-hater, and a
misogynist who shows a strong dislike of women. That is why he is
exposed to be detested and criticized by some people who advocate
the emancipation of women. Many critics publicly express disgust at
Strindberg's much hatred to women and criticize at the same time
some critics who do not regard him as a misogynist:
I dislike August Strindberg’s work, though
I reluctantly acknowledge its seminal impact
on the formation of modern theater.
(I vastly prefer Chekhov and Ibsen, his fellow
pioneers.) It’s hard to warm up to a playwright
who hates women as much as Strindberg does,
especially since that’s usually what he’s writing
about. I am un persuaded by the critics who argue
that he’s not a misogynist because the men in his
plays behave just as badly as women.4
Furthermore, Strindberg's family members are not excluded
from his open misogyny of women when he candidly expresses his
own feelings of hatred towards not only his wife, but the rest of his
family female members, including his mother, sister and daughter,
regarding women as the real enemy of man as he at the same time
gives the reasons that stand behind his loathing for them in his
masterpiece the Father (1887) which assumes an entire warfare
between men and women as he explains through the mouth of his
male character, the Captain, the real aggressive emotions of his
household towards him, indicating that every woman in the world is
either adulterous or treacherous, and, thus she is, according to
Strindberg, the natural enemy of man:
My mother did not want me to come into
The world because my birth would give
her pain. She was my enemy. She robbed
my embryo of nourishment, so I was born
incomplete. My sister was my enemy when
she made me knuckle under to her. The first
woman I took in my arms was my enemy.
She gave me ten years of sickness in return
for the love I gave her. When my daughter
had to choose between you and me, she
became my enemy. And you, you, my wife,
have been my mortal enemy, for you have
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
115
not let go until there is no life left in me.
According to Strindberg's speech aforementioned above, one
can easily realize that Strindberg's much hostility to women does
not only stem from his agony due to his tragic experiments with his
evil ex-wives but it has a root in his household. Apparently,
Strindberg has been psychologically abused by all his familial
surroundings. As a result of his miserable life, Strindberg is
threatened with personal neurosis to the extent that he imagined
witches attempting to murder him.6
Besides, during the last decade
of the nineteenth century he spent a significant time abroad and
engaged in scientific experiments and studies of the occult which
resulted in a series of psychotic attacks against him exactly between
the years 1894 to 1896 that lead to his hospitalization. After being
recovered from his mental crisis, Strindberg returns to Sweden and
writes his novel Inferno7which is an autobiographical novel written
in French during the years (1896-97) at the height of Strindberg's
troubles with both censors and
women. The novel is dealt with Strindberg's life both in and after
living in Paris, investigating his various obsessions, including
alchemy and occultism, and showing signs of paranoia and
neuroticism.
In fact, Inferno has often been cited as a proof of
Strindberg's own personal neuroses, such as a persecution complex,
but evidence also suggests that though Strindberg experiences mild
neurotic symptoms both invented and exaggerated much of the
material in the book is made for dramatic effects.8
In Miss Julie (1888), which is written a year after the Father,
Strindberg seems to have got a great deal of control not only on
himself but also over his material since "The play is a decided
advance in objectivity, generally free from the author's paranoiac
symptoms" as Robert Brustein remarks in an essay.9 The idea of
women being somewhat of a "monster" is still to accompany
Strindberg as shown through the character of Julie in the play,
indicating Strindberg's permanent abhorrence to women. But, it is
significant to mention that the play appears to mark something of a
turning point in Strindberg's view towards the triumph of both
sexes (male and female). Though the subject matter of the play is
still the mortal struggle of the sexes, apparently the play proves the
domination of men over women on the contrary of his former plays
such as the Father whose hero (The Captain) is the victim of the
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
116
heroine (Laura). In Miss Julie, the male character (Jean) conquers,
and the female (Julie), who carries the title, goes down to
destruction or as Robert Brustein puts it when he says that "The
dramatic design of Miss Julie is like two intersecting lines going in
opposite directions: Jean reaches up and Julie falls down."10
Moreover, the play is underscored by social contradictory images of
rising and falling, cleanliness and dirt, life and death that form the
entire play which at the same time is unified by the contrasted
poetic metaphor which is the recurrent dreams of Julie and Jean:
"In Julie's dream, she is looking down from the height of a great
pillar, anxious to fall to the dirt beneath, yet aware that the fall
would mean her death; in Jean's, he is lying on the ground beneath
a great tree, anxious to pull himself up from the dirt to a golden nest
above. "11
However, Strindberg's misogyny was the central cause of the
many psychotic episodes he suffered throughout the last decade of
the 19th
century, episodes that put an end to his dramatic production
altogether in which he began to feel a more sympathetic view of
women. Actually, Strindberg himself was aware of his misogyny,
explaining that it was "only
the reverse side of my fearful attraction towards the other sex."12
Apparently, Strindberg does not only have two different views of
love and hatred towards women but he is also changeable for "he
was always attracted to women he could love for their maternal
qualities and hate for their masculinity, reacting to them with
bewildering changeability"13
This is the very thing which is
confirmed by his third wife, Harriet Bosse, as she sympathetically
analyses Strindberg's personality concerning his behavior towards
his wives, saying "I have a feeling that Strindberg reveled in
meeting with opposition. One moment his wife had to be an angel.
The next the very opposite. He was as changeable as a chameleon."14
In fact, he hates emancipated females whom "he detested for their
masculinity, infidelity, competitiveness, and unmaternal attitudes,"
15 and he loves at the same time "more motherly women (generally
sexless) - such as Mamma Uhl, his mother in law, and the Mother
Superior of the hospital of St. Loius"16
towards whom he feels great
love and admiration for their humanity and kindness.
Strindberg is a prolific writer who often depicts directly his
personal experience. He wrote over 60 plays and more than 30
works of autobiography, fiction, history, culture analysis, and
politics. His early dramatic works were considered naturalistic, the
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
117
best examples of which are already mentioned above like The Father
and Miss Julie.17
Furthermore, his plays are full of psychological
realism in which he analyzed marriage and the war of the sexes in
more depth than any playwright had done before. He also writes
symbolic plays such as Dance of Death (1900) and Easter (1901), and
in his final years, a series of one-act plays such as The Ghost
Sonata(1907).
Strindberg has a great influence on the twentieth century
theatre. Although hailed as a naturalist in his lifetime, it is his
symbolic plays and his formal experimentations that have been most
influential, notably his influence can be seen on many later famous
writers such as Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, Sean O’Casey,
Harold Pinter, Max Reinhardt, Tennessee Williams, and especially
his greatest disciple in America Eugene O'Neill (1888 – 1953), whose
life mostly paralleled that of Strindberg's.
Moreover, Strindberg is known as one of the fathers of
modern theatre. His works fall into two major literary movements,
Naturalism and Expressionism.18
Naturalism is the idea or belief
that only natural (as
opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the
world,19
while Expressionism is a modernist art or movement in
drama and theatre that emerges in Germany around 1910 and later
in the United States.20
It expresses man's views over the inner
meaning of life or a character to reveal the conflict inside human
minds. The first Germanic expressionistic drama is The Son (1914)
written by the German playwright Walter Hasenclever. Other
famous German expressionistic dramatists are Ernst Toller (1893-
1939) in his widely-known plays Man and the Masses (1921) and The
Machine Wreckers (1922) and Georg Kaiser (1878-1945) in his play
From Morn to Midnight (1918).
On the other hand, expressionism had its origin in Germany;
it left its influence not only over Europe, but also on America where
its impact is felt in such plays as Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine
(1923) and Eugene O'Neil's The Hairy Ape (1922).
Expressionism is the most significant rebellion against realism
in which things and people are presented for example in paintings,
stories, or films in a way that is like real life since expressionism is
meant to reveal man's internal conflicts going on in his mind by
using symbols and exaggeration to represent emotions, rather than
representing physical reality. Expressionists sometimes give these
inner conflicts human forms or symbols so that they can be seen,
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
118
heard or watched easily as is the case in O'Neil's The Emperor Jones
(1921) when the reverberation of Negro's heart beats is echoed by
offstage drumming. Furthermore, the characters in most cases are
not given individual names but only professional, social or familial
ones. Besides they are usually given asides and monologues and at
the same time they are more types and individuals and their
language is sometimes disconnected and telegraphic.
A good example of expressionistic plays is Strindberg's
masterpiece A Dream Play which is the subject matter of this
research paper, written in 1902 and first performed in Stockholm in
1907. Having been abandoned by his wife, Strindberg wrote the play
in the midst of his mental breakdown, dubbing the play "the child of
my greatest pain."21
In fact, Strindberg suffers a lot during that
time when he became extremely paranoid, believing that witches
were attempting to murder him.22
However, Strindberg is the first major modern Swedish
dramatist who is globally famous. Before his death, Strindberg was
honoured by his people when scores of them made a torchlight
procession and speeches because his good attitudes towards the poor
and the oppressed people that he was always defending. However,
sickness keeps attacking the health of Strindberg who suffered a lot
throughout his lifetime. During Christmas 1911, Strindberg was
infected with pneumonia and he never recovered. Meanwhile, he
also started to suffer from a stomach disease, presumably cancer.
Sicknesses do not leave him until he died on May 14, 1912 at the age
of 63. Strindberg was buried in Stockholm, and thousands of people
attended his funeral.23
Olof Lagercrantz, who is one of his
biographers praises the acumen and the convincing style of
Strindberg, saying that his "talent to make us believe what he wants
us to believe" and his unwillingness to accept any characterization
of his person. 24
Many others of Strindberg's works are expressionistic such as
The Road To Damascus (1898-1901), The Ghost Sonata (1907), and
his last play The Great Highway (1909) of which are more precisely
described by Strindberg himself as "dream plays" for "they are
alike in their use of free form, so close to the form of a dream, and in
their languid abstractness: locations are vague; space is relative;
chronological time is broken; and characters possess names like the
Stranger, the Student, the Poet, the Hunter, and the Dreamer"25
as
Robert Brustein puts it. In fact, Strindberg believes too much in
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
119
dreams since once he says "I dream, therefore I exist."26
However,
the dream plays use dream sequences and it is something natural to
see characters dreaming about things they would like them to
happen. It is important to mention that expressionists oppose
industrialism, thinking that it reduces man to "machine like
creature" because man is the main concern of the expressionists'
interest and it is he who is responsible for his problems that he can
change the world if he sets himself free from his self-enslavement, or
as Oscar G. Brockett points out that:
Man is always the center of the
expressionist's interest. He is seen
as being capable of nobility and as
a creature who strives for greatness.
But industrialism and science have
Kept man's eyes on the ground and
have reduced him to machine like
creature through the ideals of mass
production and conformity of behavior.27
Thus, it is clear that the aim of the expressionism as a revolutionary
movement is social reformation and change. In writing his dream
plays, Strindberg would seem to be the most revolutionary spirit in
the theatre of revolt in which he strives hardly for reforming and
changing man. But actually neither reformation nor change can be
felt tangible unless man himself is eager and desirous to do so since
they emerge from man himself. If man does not help himself there
will be no one to help him. Unfortunately, the expressionistic
glorification of man lost its effect after World War I, as this terrible
war showed man's selfishness and destructive motives more than his
spiritual and humanitarian achievements.
In his A Dream Play, Strindberg confirms the idea, as the title
suggests, of the dream-like life where people indulge themselves in
dreams, imaginations and speculations, forgetting time and place
where events of different times and places are mixed together.
Besides, the dream plays involve transformations of plot as well as
character as Strindberg wrote about A Dream Play and The Road to
Damascus (1898-1901):
The Author has sought to imitate the
Disconnected but apparently logical
form of a dream. Anything can happen;
everything is possible and plausible.
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
121
Time and space do not exist. Upon an
insignificant background of real life
events the imagination spins and weaves
new patterns; a blend of memories,
experiences, pure inventions, absurdities,
and improvisations.28
Furthermore, according to Strindberg's belief that "the dream
is usually painful, less frequently cheerful ... and ... tormenting,"29
there will be no character in the play that is able to take some
comfort from its dream which it might be no more than a nightmare
which is usually harmful rather than pleasant that causes a lot of
trouble to the dreamer himself and "yet beyond them all lies the
dreamer himself, seeing evil come of the incorporation of the pure
intelligence in fleshly forms,"30
as Allardyce Nicoll remarks.
It is a matter of fact that when some people are, for example,
in agony, sadness, and misery they unconsciously escape into
dreams or deliberately into daydreams of things they would like to
happen, but unfortunately in A Dream Play the characters who are
keen to see their dreams achieved they finally realize that all their
dreams go in vain, obliging spectators to feel a sudden tender pity
for them since their life is really miserable and they are really in a
bad need for kindness and compassion. Those tortured figures
represented by the characters are real images of life to oblige
indirectly not only spectators but also Strindberg's chief character
in the play, The Daughter, the child of the god Indra, to feel
depressed about them and express sorrow over their distresses after
experiencing their agonies. It seems that Strindberg wants to say
that even the heavens offer a shoulder to cry on people's miserable
life when The god Indra listens sympathetically to the wail of human
voices rising from below, pushing him as a creator and ruler of the
world to send his daughter through the foul vapours to make sure if
human lamentation and agony are justified. Strindberg makes
Indra's daughter live among people so that she can practice the
happiness and sadness of their life and endure the agonies of their
existence until she puts off her mortal flesh and returns to her
father. By using supernatural forces represented by the female
Indra, apparently, Strindberg wants to present his common theme
of war of the sexes from the woman's point of view.
On earth, Indra's daughter is incarnated as a beautiful and
mature girl. She meets and marries a poor lawyer, who spends his
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
121
life to no avail but trying to advise people in righting their wrongs.
After experiencing people's real anguish, the descending goddess
feels the trauma of the people severe living on earth and that is why
she prays to God to listen to people's sufferings and help them when
she says "Eternal God, hear them! Life is evil! Human beings are to
be pitied" (p.53).
As a result, one can discern that the play does not only present
earthly characters but also mythological ones such as the daughter
of Indra who confirms that mankind's life is evil and man suffers a
lot in this mortal world, and therefore, the critic Raymond Williams
describes the play, saying it "is based on the familiar idea of the
Goddess who descends to earth to discover the truth about the
suffering of mankind."31
Moreover, after experiencing both joys and woes of mankind
in this mortal world, Indra's daughter finds out that the world
scourges all people from all walks of life. She experiences the
domestic life when she gets married to a lawyer. She begins to suffer
as she is torn between the familial duties and her private life.
The Lawyer suffers when he tries hardly to defend the poor
and after that his suffering begins to escalate when he denies his law
degree and is misguided by the four faculties; philosophy, medicine,
law, and theology. His wife has realized the sufferings of her
husband, trying to soothe him by telling him that life is an illusion.
In this play, Strindberg presents real disgusting images of different
kinds of human miserable conditions, including domestic life, when
he gives us a good example of the humble and the old small house of
the lawyer and his wife (Indra's daughter) when Kristin, the maid,
keeps pasting up cracks on the walls and windows to prevent the
bitterly cold air from entering the house so that she can keep it
warm. This action makes the daughter very upset that she feels
choked and makes at the same time the lawyer satisfied as he thinks
that pasting is economical and costs nothing because he cannot
afford heating due to his poverty.
Kristin: I paste! I paste!
Daughter: (pale and worn, is sitting by the stove): You're shutting
out the air! I'm suffocating! ...
Kristin: Now there's only one little crack left!
Daughter: Air, air! I can't breathe!
Kristin: I paste! I paste!
Lawyer: That's right, Kristin! Heat is expensive!
Daughter: It's as if you were gluing my mouth shut (p.41)
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
122
According to the episode just mentioned above, Strindberg confirms
that the happiness of a person, represented by the lawyer, is the
torture of another, represented by the daughter "the one's pleasure,
the other's pain" (p.44).
Generally speaking, any newly-married couple in the world
wish to have a baby to fill their life with happiness but even when
the wife and her husband have a baby they suffer especially the
lawyer who expresses sorrow over the existence of their newly-born
baby when he says that "his crying frightens my clients away"
(p.41). Moreover, the sufferings of the
married couple are not only because of their infant but also because
of their house which is small and they have not enough money to
buy a larger one so that they can have more space. Furthermore, the
couple's suffering continue to include their personal preference for
food as each one of them has his own keen sense of taste as the
husband likes cabbages, his wife hates them. She likes fish while he
hates them and then she wants a flower but he prefers food to it.
The couple's ongoing disagreements do not stop on that but
they continue to contain their conflicts about furniture since each
one of them has his own view about it. The escalating problems
between the two persons make the wife a deeply nervous woman
and these problems have too much affected her view about
marriage, pushing her to have an extremely strong feeling of dislike
for marriage as she says "It's terribly hard to be married ... it's
harder than anything else" (p.43). Besides she expresses her own
real feelings towards her husband when she reveals that "I think
I'm beginning to hate you" (p.43).
Strindberg's play is full of human sufferings, as man suffers
despite his attempts to achieve progress throughout his life.
Everyone in the play suffers not only do the couple suffer in the
play, but also all the other characters. The miserable life also
torments The Officer, another character in the play, who is not only
tortured by his unhappy childhood memories but also by the
humiliation of his current job when his position is degraded to a
groom whose job is to look after the horses in a stable and to keep
them clean. He also suffers as he is "unfairly punished for taking a
coin that was later found" (p.26). The officer dreams of reliving his
past love relationship with his absent beloved if she comes so that he
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
123
can relieve much of his mental pain and her existence near him may
help in enduring the difficulties of his miserable life. Thus he resorts
to keep waiting for her for a long time to come but his efforts are
useless since his sweetheart never showed up.
The officer's current sufferings are mixed with the
psychological negative effects of his childhood bad memories due to
the loss of time and space in this play. In other words, the Officer's
physical great pain is
mingled with his inward agony that makes him a very grievous man,
especially when he frequently remembers, for example, his
schoolmaster carrying his horrible cane as a threat and asking
him:"Well, my boy, can you tell me how much two times two is"
(p.55)? Or when he remembers the everlasting conflict between his
father and mother whom is always insulted by his father as she
once, for example, wanted to do something "nice" to Lina, the maid,
by giving her mantilla; her husband was extremely raged due to her
action, considering it "ugly" as he claimed that it was a present
from him. Being kind, the Officer's mother suffers as she explains
that "when you do something nice, there's always someone to whom
it's ugly. ... If you do something good for someone, you hurt someone
else" (p.27). Lina, the maid, herself also suffers from hunger
and beating though she has five children. She is mistreated and is no
longer young and pretty.
As a matter of fact, when someone is in agony, he thinks of
changing himself for the better, but in the case of the Officer who
leaves the castle, where he works, so that he can get a sigh of relief
by going to the land of summer (Fairhaven) with the Daughter, he
again suffers because instead of reaching their impending
destination, the (Fairhaven), they by mistake reach Foulstrand, an
ugly place where sick people live in a quarantine station.
Another image of miserable life is presented in the play in
which He and She are in love but they are made miserable when
their boat is driven from Fairhaven to Foulstrand mentioned above,
and as a result they have been through the trauma of the squalid
current place (Foulstrand) for forty days. No one feels at ease in the
play, the Old Fop (Don Juan) who is made really depressed as he is
in a wheelchair and still in love with the sixty-year old Coquette who
is faithless since she is in love with another man. This episode
revives the Officer's old wound as it reminds him of his old love
Victoria who doesn't care about him, leaving him waiting for her for
a long time and she never appeared. The Pensioner, another
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
124
character in the play, becomes a useless man as he retired at the age
of fifty-four. His early retirement comes as a severe blow to him
since he expects to live twenty-five more years. Being a pensioner, he
is made to do nothing except waiting for food and newspaper daily
until death comes to relieve him from his misery. The Billposter
suffers because he does not get what he really wants. He waits for a
long time to get the dip green colour net but "it wasn't just what I'd
wanted, so I didn't enjoy it so much" (p.33). The doorkeeper
suffers because she wastes thirty years of her age waiting for her
fiancé to come but he never showed up. Thus in her old age she is
unhappy since she
is no longer the most favourite dancer in the ballet and finally she
quits dancing.
Strindberg successfully depicts the meaninglessness of life as
his play reflects the real human critical conditions when some of his
characters do no nothing to solve their problems but dreaming or
waiting for someone who may show up and save them from their
misery. Thus, his characters seem incapable of taking right
decisions to improve their lives. The Pensioner, the Officer, the
Billposter, and the doorkeeper resemble each other in spending
their time doing very little, because they cannot normally behave
until that thing happens or that person arrives. All of them are
tortured because they obsess themselves in dreaming and waiting
and the process of waiting in itself is boring.
In general, time is so significant throughout human practical
life because life itself is very short. When someone has a job to do,
he will be in a bad need for more time to finish it and because of
man's many obligations, for example, he does not find more time to
finish all his work throughout his life. Thus we can see easily the
process of finishing work for such busy man is a race against time.
Moreover, the process of waiting itself for another who never comes
is to some extent boring and almost unbearable. Apparently, the
four distressed figures in the play are forced to keep waiting since
they have no other choice left for them due to their cruel
circumstances though "the act of waiting is itself a contradictory
combination of doing nothing and doing something."32
However,
waiting with no avail for someone who would never come is not only
suffering but tedious and tiresome, reflecting the absurdity of
miserable life, loneliness, bitter realism, resentment, doubt and
ambiguity.
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
125
The Poet, another character in the play, inwardly suffers since
he feels that he is doomed to failure in his career as a poet that he is
misunderstood by people and he also physically suffers from the
gadflies' stings while writing his poems, thus he keeps staining his
body with mud to avoid the bites of the troublesome insects so that
"he doesn't feel the gadflies' stings after that" (p.49).
Edith, another character in the play, suffers from her ugliness
which makes her so unattractive and unpleasant that no one likes
her or at least try to dance with her. Her feelings of despair increase
when she sees Alice's happiness which ignites the emotion of
bitterness inside her as she wishes that she could have the qualities
of Alice. One can easily conclude that life is full of contradictions, in
which someone is happy, another is sad, thus while "Alice is
rejoicing … Edith is weeping"(p.60).
In this play, Strindberg successfully confirms the idea of
contradiction when sometimes he makes happiness goes side by side
with sadness, especially when he gives in the play two factual
contradictory images of the sea which gives and takes. The sea once
is good when it gives the poor fisherman a fish, making him
delighted with his fishing as he "pulls a fishhook out of a fish and its
heart comes along through its throat". (p.59) Once again, the sea is
evil when it takes the souls of some sailors or fishermen since it "is
salt because the sailors weep so much … They're always going
away" (Ibid). Strindberg is right in his assessment of life's
contradictions since it is a matter of fact that Mighty God has
created everything on this earth in contrast to each other. He creates
life versus death, love versus hatred, happiness versus sadness,
reward versus punishment, strength versus weakness, coldness
versus heat and so on. Human beings should willingly accept this
fact because man in general cannot do anything about it despite the
fact that man in general strives hard to enhance his conditions
throughout his lifetime. Strindberg does his best when he depicts a
gloomy contradictory image of the dullness of life on the tongue of
the Lawyer when he says:
Yes, I wake up in the morning with a
headache , and the repetition begins
… in reverse. In such a way that
everything that last night was a
beautiful, pleasant, clever, memory,
today presents as evil, vile, stupid.
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
126
Pleasure sort of rots, and joy goes to
pieces. What human beings call success
always becomes the cause of the next
defeat. The success I've had in life became
my ruination. … Being talented is extremely
dangerous, for you can easily starve to
death! (p.61).
Though man always attempts to make progress throughout his
lifetime he should not expect a joyful and better life to himself or to
others because when life is good and pleasant! No wonder it ends up
with something bad or unpleasant as the lawyer pessimistically
concludes that it "ends up either in prison or in the insane asylum"
(p.64).
Some people in this mortal world according to their
experience in life have an excessively pessimistic view of happiness,
considering it deceitful as the Newlyweds family do in the play when
the Husband expresses fear of happiness as he reveals: "I fear
happiness! It's deceitful!", (p.59) or they avoid being happy due to
their belief that the seed of sadness stems from happiness when they
think that "in the midst of happiness grows the seed of unhappiness;
it consumes itself as the flame of fire" (p.58).
The Blindman, another character in the play, suffers due to
his blindness that he is unable to see and his suffering is increased as
he expresses concern about his only son who travels abroad via the
sea where he may be harmed or killed because the sea is full of
dangers as he says: "My son, my only child, is going to foreign
countries by way of the wide sea" (p.59).
Although the Coalheavers, other characters in the play, are
skilled manual workers, spending most of their time in work, are
still poor, lamenting their bad luck when they compare themselves
with rich people, saying "We who work the most get to eat the least;
and the rich who don't do anything have the most" (P.63). Besides,
they also suffer when they are indirectly deprived of their
expectations, hope, entertainment and even the opportunity to bathe
themselves in the sea.
The play is a genre by itself as it gathers expressionism,
romance, contradictions, and absurdity of life. Moreover,
Strindberg effectively implies comic, tragic, and absurd elements in
dynamic fusion in his play by depending on showing contradictory
and ridiculous situations of happiness and sadness at the same time,
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
127
making spectators and readers laugh, for instance, at the Poet when
the latter soaks his body with mud to avoid the gadflies' stings and
then they pity him when the Daughter recites his poem in which he
is very indignant, expressing great regret at the humanity's
destiny when he painfully asks that: "Why are we born like beasts/
We who are divine and human"(p.71). The poet's poem is so
pessimistic that it expresses a contradictory image of life when
"Every joy which you enjoy/ Brings sorrow to all others" (Ibid). For
the poet, life is a puzzle and that "No one has yet solved the riddle of
life" (Ibid)! The Poet also gives an example of the absurdity of life
when ships named "Justice, Friendship, The Golden Peace, Hope"
are sunk. After mentioning the shipwrecks, the poet offers an
indirect appeal to Mighty God to elevate man's inferior status as a
human being to a superior one as a spiritual being, in the form of an
anguished question:
Why are we born like animals?
We who stem from God and man,
Whose souls are longing to be clothed
In other than this blood and filth. (Ibid).
The play successfully demonstrates not only the power of
environment and its negative effects on all characters but also the
latter's passive thinking that wraps their life and makes it gloomy
especially when the Officer is not only shackled by the castle which
is like a jail, that surrounds him where he is degraded to do the job
of a groom but also by his wishful thinking to expect that his
beloved will one day return. Furthermore, the play attempts to show
the power of dreaming in rescuing the scourged people from their
agonies, but unfortunately, nothing has been achieved. Yet,
Strindberg tries to solve the painful enigma that stands behind
man's existence which is the purpose of his play. For Strindberg the
life is a puzzle and that "No one has yet solved the riddle of life"
(Ibid)! He bases his play on similar differences, psychological inner
conflicts, and contradictions, such as body versus soul, Fairhaven
versus Foulstrand, beauty versus ugliness, love versus hate, and the
like, as if he wanted to say that these are the components of the
mortal world not the spiritual one, thus one can easily conclude that
Strindberg as a social reformer who is fully aware of the agonies of
life has a strong desire to help and care for people when he
embodies his beliefs and thoughts in the character of the Poet.
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
128
The play can be regarded as a message not only to God when
Indra's daughter takes the Poet's poem which is full of humanity's
agony to her father to let him acquainted with but also to all human
beings to disdain the impermanent materialistic world and follow
the steps of the permanent
spiritual life by keeping distance from worldly matters and even this
is difficult for them since it is hardly to be achieved in this mortal
world because man himself is made of two contradictory things;
body and soul. The human body is physical which emerges from
dust and will belong to dust while the soul is non-physical part
which continues existing after the body is dead as most people
believe. The body and the soul are created by mighty God and the
contrast between them is further emphasized by their conflicting
characteristics of dirt (the body) and cleanliness (the soul). Thus,
man who always seeks perfection throughout his lifetime is always
at war with himself because the quality of perfection is exceedingly
rare unless man resolves to leave the materialistic life whose
sequences are terrible and unpleasant and resort to the true life
through selecting its heavenly path which is very pleasant and
enjoyable.
In fact, there is no development in the play as no character
develops; on the contrary the lives of all of them in their striving to
improve their conditions go from bad to worse because all of them
were not satisfied and contented with their life. Moreover, all the
characters except the Poet who strives hard through his poem
mentioned above to promote humans' conditions, attach too much
importance to material possessions which vanish sooner or later.
The Irish dramatist Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) remarks in his
masterpiece She Stoops to Conquer (1773) through the mouth of Mr.
Hasting as the latter advises his beloved Miss Neville to "Perish
fortune. Love and content will increase what we possess beyond a
monarch's revenue." 33
In other words, Goldsmith intends to say
that only spiritual things achieve happiness for humanity.
However, A Dream Play can be regarded as a chaotic strife of
man during his searching to discover the truth of life which is
described by Strindberg throughout the events of the play as it is
full of depression, sufferings, agonies, repetition, in addition to
contradictions, leading to the downfall of all the characters in the
play and sometimes to more agony especially when someone loses
his best lovers, such as brothers, sons, and friends because life itself
is "Meeting and parting! Parting and meeting" (p.60)!
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
129
Many examples are mentioned in English literature,
especially in William Shakespeare's tragic plays, of people who
reach their downfall when they degrade themselves to worldly
things rather than elevating
themselves to a higher state of spirituality when selecting the path of
evil, imagining their choice will bring them happiness as they
previously desire due to their social and psychological diseases such
as excessive ambition, insatiable greed, and selfishness. Macbeth,
the tragic hero of the play which bears his name Macbeth reaches
his downfall as he chooses evil under the pressure of his a greedy
wife as a way to fulfill their ambition for power. He commits
regicide to become King and then furthers his moral descent with a
series of murderous terror to stay in power, eventually plunging the
country into civil war and losing not only his life but also his wife's.
In Hamlet, King Claudius also meets his downfall when he commits
a regicide by murdering and usurping the wife and the throne of his
brother. In Richard II, King Richard reaches his downfall as he
indulges himself in his personal interests such as frivolity and self-
centeredness.
However, if man falls into despair, he should not yield to his
self-destructive voices that lead him to his agony but to his self-
denial voices which eventually lead him to happiness. The play's
miserable characters who oppress themselves when they only
submit to the processes of waiting or dreaming about things that
they would very much like to happen or have are confined to their
self imprisonment that they enable themselves to do nothing but
dreaming or waiting for a miracle that may come and pick them up
from their misery. It is a matter of fact that real power gushes out
from inside man not from outside. Thus, man must have a great
deal of faith in himself to feel confident about his ability to achieve
his goal in life by working seriously on it. Man should appreciate his
current situation and enjoy each moment throughout his life
because life itself is short and time is passing whether he accepts or
not. However, there are many examples in English literature,
showing characters facing their distress and painful emotions
seriously and defeating them such as the smart and the pretty girl,
Viola, in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night when she is exposed along
with her brother Sebastian to a shipwreck near Illyria. She survives
the shipwreck, believing that Sebastian is drowned. Being lonely,
vulnerable, and lost in an unknown country, Viola gathers all her
mental and self powers to protect herself from the snares of
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
131
mischievous people. Thus, she disguises herself as a page-boy and
works in the Illyria governor palace. Being beautiful, decent, and
intelligent, Viola conquers the governor's heart and finally they got
married.
Another example is the character of Pamela in Samuel
Richardson novel whose title carries its heroine name. Pamela tells
the story of a beautiful young poor maid named Pamela whose
master, Mr. B. makes unwanted advances towards her. She is so
sincere that she rejects him continually and her virtue is eventually
rewarded when he shows his sincerity by proposing an equitable
marriage to her.
Strindberg's play is for the betterment of mankind when it
shows the difficult situations of different slices of people who have to
struggle against all kinds of contradictions to ease their life, the
expression of agony and grief of humanity due to its attach to
physical surroundings rather than spiritual values as well as the
dramatist's intention to redeem depressed humans through sharing
their suffering.
Notes
1-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Strindberg#cite_note-105
2-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Married_(Strindberg)
3-http://voices.yahoo.com/the-misogyny-august-strindberg.
4- http://wendysmithbrooklyn.wordpress.com/tag/august-strindberg
5- In an essay written by Robert Brustein in a book edited by Travis
Bogard and William I. Oliver, Modern Drama, Essays in Criticism
(London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p.332.
6- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionism_ (theatre)
7-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Strindberg)).
8- Ibid
9-Travis Bogard and William I. Oliver, Modern Drama, Essays in
Criticism (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p.333.
10- Ibid 335
11- Ibid.336
12- Ibid p.321
13- Ibid.
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
131
14- Arvid Paulson, ed. and trans. Letters of Strindberg to Harriet
Bosse, p.87. as quoted in Modern Drama, Essays in Criticism p. 351.
15- Ibid p.321
16- Ibid
17- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Strindberg
18-http://www.geni.com/people/August-Strindberg.
19- http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat
20-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionism_ (theatre).
21- http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-D
22- Ibid
23- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Strindberg
24- Ibid
25- Travis Bogard and William I. Oliver, Modern Drama, Essays in
Criticism (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p.342.
26- http:www.notable.quotes.com
27- Oscar G. Brockett, The Theater: An Introduction (New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), p.298.
28- August Strindberg," An explanatory Note" to A Dream Play in
Walter Johnson, trans., A Dream Play and Four Chamber Plays
(New York: Norton & Co., Inc., 1975), p.19. Subsequent references
to this edition will appear in this paper.
29- Ibid
30- Allardyce Nicoll, World Dreams: From Aeschvlus to Anoulith
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1964), p. 562.
31- Raymond Williams. Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (London:
Chatto & Windus, 1971), p.95.
32-Ronald Hayman, Samuel Beckett (London: Heinemann, 1980),
p.4.
33- Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer, ed. A.N. Jeffares,
York Press, Beirut, 1989, p. 78.
AL-USTATH No 209 volume Two 2014 AD, 1435 AH
132
مغزى آالم االنسان في مسرحية أوكست سترندبرك المسرحية الحمم م.م.غسان عواد أبراهيم
لجامعةامتراث الكمية / لمغة أالنجميزيةاقسم مستخمصال
لمعاناة البشرية بأألعتماد عمى فن ألمذهب التعبيري حيث استخدم أوكست سترندبركبمعالجة يعني هذا ألبحثة ليظهر المشاعر, بدال من تقديم الحقيقة المادية من خالل عرض نماذج منوعة الكاتب رموز وعبارات مبالغ
الشخاص معينين من المجتمع الذي يعيشون فيه ويعانون الم وقمق كبيرين.البشرية عندما حاولت بشدة جعل الناس ان يرجعوا الى القيم الروحية كتبت مسرحية سترندبرك لتحسين أالوضاع
بدال من الممتمكات المادية لتحقيق السعادة في الحياة.