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BOOK REVIEWS GUSTAV ADOLF, by August Strindberg, translation and Introduction by Walter Johnson, Seattle, University of Washington Press, New York, The AmericanScandinavian Foundation, 1957, pp. xi + 233. Price $4.00. American writers on the drama defer to Strindberg, but, generally speaking, they are familiar with only a few of the Swedish master's many works. More than a chance assortment of novels and plays is however needed in order to judge the achievement of a pivotal figure in the history of both Swedish literature and Western drama. The English-speaking world, notoriously lax in producing translations of important foreign writers who are not best-sellers, should therefore be humbly grateful to Walter Johnson for another translation of a late historical work by August Strindberg. The gratitude we feel in possessing a new translation need nevertheless not affect our judgment of Gustav Adolf as a play. Gustav Adolf is Strindberg, but it is scarcely "modem drama." It is important for the understanding of the later Strindberg, but it cannot be called a drama for today's stage. In his lengthy introduction, Professor Johnson makes it clear thai: we are dealing with a Buchdrama . He valiantly tries to rescue the work for the theater by suggesting that it should be subjected to much judicious cutting; but the argument is not convincing . The drama embodies too much history and too many ideas ever to have the appeal of The Father or A Dream Play in England or America. In order to appreciate the drama, the reader should familiarize himself with its historical background-which Professor Johnson's introduction provides-but even then not all the allusions will be comprehended. What, if any, connotation does a remark like "it will be a mid-summer fire to direct the Swedes!" (p. 73) or the stage direction, "with a West Gothic accent" (p. 142), have for the reader in Kalamazoo? Professor Johnson also proposes that the drama could be fihned. The spectacular nature of the piece and its many historical scenes would lend themselves better to the cinema than to the stage, but a faithful translation cannot provide a satisfactory script for the screen. While the translator implies that the dialogue is naturalistic, much of it certainly is not, and the Swedish lines do not seem any more like everyday speech when turned into English. Consider two random examples of dialogue which may be adjudged typical of the entire play. What sergeant, even a one-time university student, would say: Is there such a terrible hurry about your abracadabra? Give the boys vacation from school today and let them throw stones down at the seashore . But, if they yell, you'll have to twist their necks; it's to be quiet, for the generals are coming here to sleep (p. 79). Or can we believe that the miller, a simple man, would muse: The starlings have never come; there are no rooks or wild doves on the unsown field, which only bears thistles and thorns; no pike leaps among the reeds, no perch in the stony shallows; the fish in the river and the brook have wandered out to sea, frightened by gunshot and the thunder of cannons (p. 67). The dialogue is sometimes tiresome. Baner fills a whole page (p. 162) with historical exposition, beginning 101 102 MODERN DRAMA May However, the elector of Saxony was called a traitor then, but he wasn't one, for with his help the French had shot a wedge between Spanish Flanders and the Hapsburg crownlands, and the Spanish Satan, who after the conquest of America ... [etc.] The genealogies the King expounds on pp. 196-7 have a function, but are quite lost, at least on the foreign reader, not to mention a possible theater-goer. In short, Gustav Adolf is Strindberg's attempt to portray Sweden's national hero and the Thirty Years' War on a single canvas. It can be read as if it were an historical novel, for Strindberg does succeed in making Gustav Adolf seem a real person and he does call up the disasters of the most destructive of European wars. The accuracy of the translation can be questioned very few places. The translator...

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