Visions of a Transfigured Humanity: Strindberg and Lenormand

VISIONS OF A TRANSFIGURED HUMANITY: STRINDBERG ANDLENORMAND DEFINITION OF THE BOUNDARIES separating "sickness" and "health," in appraising theatrical creativity, is obviously perilous. Many of Strindberg 's plays exemplify this difficulty. A rather characteristic American view of Strindberg was phrased by John Gassner in his semi-ironic verdict, "[The United States] ... is the Bernard McFadden of nations, and· Strindberg is definitely not healthy." Today, this categorical conclusion appears untenable. Qualification and explanation of Strindberg's "maladies" are needed. One of the most provocative early summaries of the basic soundness underlying the Apocalyptic prophecies dramatized by Strindberg was offered by Henri-Rene Lenormand, the French playwright of the 1920's and 1930's. Throughout his entire career, Lenormand freely admitted his artistic debt to Strindberg. In an unpublished speech of tribute delivered in 1948, the French dramatist recalled particularly the prophetic accuracy and the spiritual depth of Strindberg's dramas of the so-called "second manner": A century after his birth, August Strindberg appears to us as the prophet (alas how clairvoyantI) of the times we are now experiencing . By anticipation, Strindberg drew a frightfully exact portrait of . . . modem man and of what he is becoming. He showed man ravaged by his own ambivalences, nightmares, remorse and cruelty. Three quarters of a century ago, Arthur Rimbaud predicted "the epoch of murderers." It is now here! If we consider what man has made of the world in the last twenty years, we are astonished to see how completely the earthly inferno of Strindberg has taken on the face and form of reality. Since the last World War, criticism has enjoyed pointing out the prophecies and premonitions indicated in Saint John's Apocalypse. There would be much more justification, it seems to me, in relating our broken world of today, its shredded collective conscience, its collapse of moral personality, to the Strindbergian universe, where hatred, tortures, and a desperate call for redemption rule. I have never concealed the importance Strindberg's theater presented to my way of thought. [He is] one of the great innovators of all time. . . . When questioning myself about Strindberg, I discover ... a strange feeling of consanguinity, almost of filiation, ... a fraternity of attitude toward the human species.... 323 324 MODERN DRAMA December In France, we are not sufficiently convinced of the importance of IStrindberg's dramas].... It is always the same corpus of plays we read and perform: Creditors, The Dance of Death, Miss lulie. We have not.become attached to the capital works of Strindberg 's second manner. However, it was with The Ghost Sonata, Crimes and Crimes, To Damascus, Easter, and Advent that the mystic and spiritual message of Smndberg was unveiled to us in its evidence. . . . Strindberg is for me, in 1948, the most up-to-date poet in the theater. His quests ... and [his] hallucinating visions ... formbetween nightmare and reality-a psychic, poetic, and dramatic compound of -immense value for our knowledge of man. His theatrical message is as important as Shakespeare's. It seems more and moce probable at present that Lenormand was correct in discovering Strindberg's most profound talent as that of the mystic prophet who wrote The Ghost Sonata, Crimes and Crimes, To Damascus, Advent, and Easter. The "mystic and spiritual message" Lenonnand sensed in these works left a strong imprint on his thinking and his own dramas. Why is it relevant, in 1962, to compare Lenormand's theatrical visions, now almost forgotten, to Strindberg's? We must first recall that during the early 1920's Lenormand was the acknowledged leader of French vanguard drama, which was influenced in those years chiefly by Nietzsche, Freud, Pirandello, Chekhov, and Strindberg. One perceptive American critic, S. A. Rhodes, described Lenormand as "the Eugene O'Neill of the French stage." No doubt it is evident now that the comparison is only partially valid. Unlike O'Neill and Strindberg, Lenormand never testified that he had undergone the agonies of religious torment. In fact, the French playwright claimed that he and his dramas were "amoral" and "a-religious ." On the other hand, Lenormand repeatedly stressed his belief in the spiritual nature and function of the theater. In an unpublished essay written during the German occupation of France...