August Strindberg by Martin Lamm (review)

BOOK REVIEWS A. UGUST STRINDBERG~ by Martin Lamm. Translated and edited by Harry G. Carlson. New York: Benjamin Blorn, 1971. 543 pp. $17.50. In an age when living authors are honored with casebooks and monographs while still in their artistic teens, it is strange to note that the first thorough examination of Sttindberg as a qeative artist did not appear in his native country until twelve years after his death. In 1924 and 1926 Martin Lamm published a tl\fovolume study of Strindberg's dramas, treating of literary influences and relating the plays to the life of their author. Subsequently, Lamm expanded his study to include the non-dramatic works as well, considerably reducing the space given to the plays. This was published in 1940 and 1942 and in a revised edition in 1948. Now, nearly a quarter of a century later, this basic tool of Strindberg scholarship has been made available to English readers. In Sweden it is still difficult to see Strindberg except through Lamm's spectacles. He stands to Strindberg as Koht does to Ibsen. Lamm's initial work in 1924 seemed unimpeachable because he had access to a great many of Strindberg's manuscripts, and even in the more comprehensive later versions Lamm's approach to Strindberg is usually through the workshop. :Feeling that art endures and ideologies die. Lamm declared that his primary concern was with Strindberg the artist and not with the social reformer and the religious mystic. This cautionary note suggests both the virtues and failings of his book on Strindberg. The man is reduced to his manuscripts. The tumult of the nineteenth century is heard only dimly through the walls of Strindberg's library; the political, social and psychological forces penetrate those walls only in the neutralized form of books. Even the Strindberg who creates is present only as a kind of abstraction. From a reading of Lamm one would never guess that Strindberg was a major political force in Sweden, who. like Shaw in England, concerned himself with the burning issues of the day, which Strindberg reduced to two basic ones: class conflict and feminism . In Lamm the extraordinary Strindberg feud that rocked Sweden only a couple of years before his death is dismissed in a bare page or two. although echoes of that controversy are still heard today in Sweden. There Lamm was a needful corrective to the politically and sexually biased views of Strindberg held by most people. Writing for Swedes, he can properly assume that the reader is all too familiar with the political Strindberg, the impassioned performer in the public arena. "I may not have the keenest mind in Sweden," said the young Strindberg, "but I burn with the brightest flame." To this Dionysian Strindberg, Lamm is not the best of guides. Though he never allows himself to be embarrassed by Strindberg's wilder extravagances. he is sometimes hesitant and timorous in evaluating them, and frequently he is too easily taken in by his fabulous subject. His book is a passionless study of a man who was all passion. The flame is quenched but the mind that was the crucible stands revealed. It is no easy task to deal with Strindberg's mind. It was as comprehensive as Goethe's and as self-contradictory. Both were children of nature. shunning systems and responding aspen-like to the worlds they lived in. Strindberg read omnivorously , but much of what he swallowed. he regurgitated in a half-digested form. 209 210 MODERN DRAMA September What Lamm does extremely well is to describe Strindberg's diet, but the man's metabolism remains a mystery~ Moving with sovereign ease through a vast amount of material, Lamm makes his points concisely and effortlessly. Anyone who has gone through the fifty-five volumes of Strindberg's incompletely collected works knows that the traffic of ideas there is incredibly heavy. But Lamm never loses his way, never allows himself to get rumed, never raises his voice or blows his hom. Every important writer and thinker of the nineteenth century seems to pass by, and a great many minor ones stand persistently in the way. Twain, Flaubert, Dickens, Zola, Hugo, Ibsen, Schopenhauer , Darwin, Hartmann...