FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28  
29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   >>   >|  
my ability, I practise the Christian teachings. For only through religion, or the hope of something better, and the recognition of the innermost meaning of life as that of an ordeal, a school, or perhaps a penitentiary, will it be possible to bear the burden of life with sufficient resignation." Here, as elsewhere, it is made patent that Strindberg's religiosity always, on closer analysis, reduces itself to morality. At bottom he is first and last, and has always been, a moralist--a man passionately craving to know what is RIGHT and to do it. During the middle, naturalistic period of his creative career, this fundamental tendency was in part obscured, and he engaged in the game of intellectual curiosity known as "truth for truth's own sake." One of the chief marks of his final and mystical period is his greater courage to "be himself" in this respect--and this means necessarily a return, or an advance, to a position which the late William James undoubtedly would have acknowledged as "pragmatic." To combat the assertion of over-developed individualism that we are ends in ourselves, that we have certain inalienable personal "rights" to pleasure and happiness merely because we happen to appear here in human shape, this is one of Strindberg's most ardent aims in all his later works. As to the higher and more inclusive object to which our lives must be held subservient, he is not dogmatic. It may be another life. He calls it God. And the code of service he finds in the tenets of all the Christian churches, but principally in the Commandments. The plain and primitive virtues, the faith that implies little more than square dealing between man and man--these figure foremost in Strindberg's ideals. In an age of supreme self-seeking like ours, such an outlook would seem to have small chance of popularity, but that it embodies just what the time most needs is, perhaps, made evident by the reception which the public almost invariably grants "There Are Crimes and Crimes" when it is staged. With all its apparent disregard of what is commonly called realism, and with its occasional, but quite unblushing, use of methods generally held superseded--such as the casual introduction of characters at whatever moment they happen to be needed on the stage--it has, from the start, been among the most frequently played and most enthusiastically received of Strindberg's later dramas. At Stockholm it was first taken up by the Royal Dramat
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28  
29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Strindberg
 

Crimes

 

happen

 

Christian

 
period
 
square
 

object

 
supreme
 

seeking

 

ideals


inclusive

 

figure

 
foremost
 

dealing

 
virtues
 
subservient
 

service

 

primitive

 
dogmatic
 

Commandments


principally

 

tenets

 

churches

 
implies
 

moment

 
needed
 

characters

 

generally

 

methods

 

superseded


casual

 

introduction

 
Stockholm
 

Dramat

 

dramas

 

received

 
frequently
 
played
 

enthusiastically

 

unblushing


evident

 

reception

 

public

 

invariably

 
chance
 

popularity

 
embodies
 

grants

 
called
 

commonly