A Drama of Souls: Studies In O'Neill's Super-Naturalistic Technique by Egil Törnqvist (review)

1971 BOOK REvIEws 117 A DRAMA OF SOULS: STUDIES IN O'NEILVS SUPER-NATURALISTIC TECHNIQUE, by Egil Tornqvist. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969. 284 pp., $7.50. A word first about the possibly misleading subtitle of this book. Eugene O'Neill once said that Strindberg "carried Naturalism to a logical attainment of such poignant intensity that, if the work of any other playwright is to be called 'naturalism,' we must classify a play like The Dance of Death as 'super-naturalism.''' Besides praising him for "intensifying the method of his time" into super-naturalism, the American lauded the Swedish master for "'foreshadowing both in content and form the methods to come. All that is enduring in what we loosely call 'Expressionism' -all that is artistically valid and sound theater-can be clearly traced back ... to Strindberg's The Dream Play, There Are Crimes and Crimes, The Spook Sonata, etc." These latter works O'Neill, in another word coinage, called "behind-life" plays. Egil Tornqvist, however, regards the two neologisms as complementary, with one referring to technique, the other to content, and uses "super-naturalism" in a sense wide enough to include the other term. "Any play element," he says, "or dramatic device-characterization, stage business, scenery, lighting, sound effects, dialogue, nomenclature, use of parallelisms-will be considered super-naturalistic if it is dealt with in such a way by the dramatist, that it transcends (deepens, intensifies, stylizes or openly breaks with) realism in the attempt to project what O'Neill terms 'behind-life' values." Fair enough; at least Professor Tornqvist has defined his usage of the terms. A member of the Scandinavian Institute at the University of Amsterdam, he has apparently read everything of consequence ever written about O'Neill; more importantly , he has read the plays with a microscopic scrutiny, paying special attention to the copious stage directions (hitherto a rather neglected feature of the playwright's work), and has come up with a great many fresh observations. Not that I always agree with him, but he constantly stimulates one's own thinking. Since the professor writes well-exceptionally well considering that English is not his first language-he has produced a scholarly work that is most readable, in short a notable addition to the canon of critical writings on our foremost playwright . A Drama of Souls is, above all, a thoughtful book. Although it may seem mild praise to say that its author apparently read the plays not only with his eyes but with his mind, one gets the impression that he carefully weighed every line, every word, indeed, every comma, to extract maximum meaning. Just as there are key words in O'Neill-"diff'rent" in DiU'rent, "desire" in Desire Under the Elms, etc. -the key word here is "significance." It recurs constantly as the author finds meanings that had not occurred to anyone else. A good example of his thoughtful approach can be found in his discussion of Beyond the Horiz.on as paralleling to some extent, in the story of Robert and Ruth, the Biblical account of the pair in Eden. As he notes, the initial setting on the farm contains "an old, gnarled apple tree . . . A snake-fence sidles from left to right ... passing beneath the apple tree," and he goes on to comment: "It is when sitting on the snake-fence that Ruth beguiles Robert to give up his 'beyond~ dream. . . . In the second act we find Robert tilling the unrewarding ground . . • in the sweat of his face ... Ruth's situation is no better. To a man she does not love she has borne a child in sorrow." The fate of the Mayo couple, in other words, is not merely individual but archetyPal. While Professor Tornqvist'S searching examination of the plays leads him to lIS l\fODERN DRAMA l\lay many valid new insights, it also misleads him at times, in my opinion, into overloading an episode or character or bit of dialogue with more significance than seems warranted. And in his quest for deeper and deeper meanings, he occasionally falls overboard into misinterpretation. This tendency is nowhere more apparent than in his elaborate deductions from the Harker-Shaughnessy story...