Monist Dramaturgy in Strindberg's The Black Glove

During his Inferno period (1894–97), August Strindberg studied Ernst Haeckel's monism, which sought to bring the divine back into Darwinist natural science and proclaimed the unity of all matter. Monism influenced a range of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century artistic, social, and political movements, including art nouveau, the historical avant-garde, spiritualism and the occult revival, the early women's and homosexual rights movements, and eugenics. Strindberg's study of Haeckel's monism coincided with his alchemical investigations into the transformability of matter. These occult studies altered Strindberg's dramaturgical approach to human and non-human stage matter, particularly the affective relations among characters, settings, and props. This article tracks Strindberg's engagement with Haeckel's ideas and posits nineteenth-century monism as an inverse predecessor to present-day new materialisms.