The Saga of the Folkungs. Engelbrekt by August Strindberg (review)

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 hews close to the original, but occasional slang terms used in an effort to reproduce colloquial speech seem discordant: ''big shots" for storgubbar and pampema, "kids" for grabber, "those birds" for gokame, and "shut up" for tig. A few infelicitous phrases fail to convey Strindberg's meaning: "twist their necks" (supra), "in the nick of time" (for "in a lucky hour" p. 170), "I already have" (for "I have with all my heart" p. 198), "live well" (for "farewell" p. 213), the ambiguous "minister" (for "clergyman" or "priest" p. 85). Three phrases should have been included: "for 12 years" in the first speech of the miller's wife, "like John Baner" at the conclusion of Sparre's remarks on p. 209, and the stage direction "a strong light is thrown on the face of the king" at the very end of the play. In a note Professor Johnson defends the first omission by assuming that Strindberg failed to co-ordinate the temporal references in the play-less than a page apart in the text. Does not the miller's wife's complaint, "we have sinned," suggest how she could have grown children by the husband to whom she has been married "for 12 years"? P. M. MITCHELL University of Illinois THE SAGA OF THE FOLKUNGS. ENGELBREKT, by August Strindberg, translated by Walter Johnson, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1959, 204 pp. Price $4.00. The immensity of Strindberg's share in the dramatic portrayal of human character has dawned slowly on the theater-goers of a distracted world. His alleged pessimism, hysteria, and hate have disconcerted entire audiences, and college students who absorb Ibsen with equanimity respond to the great Swede with puzzlement or horror. To the best of them, none the less, his vast energies are a revelation indeed. But not until very recent years has Strindberg been particularly known among the Angles and the Saxons as a writer of historical dramas. Owing to the Herculean labors of Professor Walter Johnson, an entire new dimension in Swedish drama is now available to our theaters, for with the present volume he has completed the translation and publication, with literary introductions and historical notes, of a round dozen of Strindberg's plays based on Swedish history. The great of England have an ancestral attraction for us, and the speeches set down for them by the Bard of Avon are in themselves priceless portions in our collective inheritance. If it must be quite otherwise with the translated products of a land whose history concerns most Americans not at all, just what interest does the "new" Strindberg hold for us? Strindberg's formula is not pessimism per 88, nor horror, nor hatred of women, however brilliantly the playwright's transitory prejudices and fleeting hostilities are captured intact for the purposes of drama. Uncanny penetration of the psychic realities that underlie external conduct, an almost unerring sense of 1961 BOOK REvIEWS 103 dramatic structure, brilliant individuation of character even among the minor roles in a sizable cast-these are his strong points. Add to this a directness of language-found as well in Strindberg the novelist-which affords a real challenge to any translator owing to the speed and at times almost intolerable immediacy of the Swede's linguistic image and situation. English usage is...