- Green-Eye and Mimetic Desire in Strindberg
Like Marcel Proust, the late Strindberg stands on the threshold between realism and modernism, where memory and the hidden truths of the mind demand radically new literary representation. The great realist tradition of the nineteenth century still remains vital for him in a novel like The Scapegoat [Syndabocken] (1907), where the heritage from Balzac is obvious. But in the last decades before his death in 1912 he also produces some of his most spectacular works, experimenting with genre conventions, with dream logic and stream of consciousness. One can even—and this is my interest here—discern signs of astonishing insight concerning triangular desire, one of his most stubborn motifs since The Defence of a Madman [En dåres försvarstal], written in French in 1887–1888 to avoid public scandal. Since this plays a crucial role even in my argument, focusing on the late Strindberg, it is of importance that references are made to the critical edition (1999) of The Defence of a Madman, a version based on the French original found in the estate of the famous painter Edvard Munch in Oslo in 1972. Since 2014 this version has also been available in an English translation.1 The text has a problematic philological status and a fascinating history, revealing Strindberg's split and diverging intentions.2 [End Page 33]
Triangular desire in Strindberg is no new discovery. It has previously been treated by scholars, most energetically by Ann-Sofie Lönngren in her dissertation, where she studies six works from 1887 to 1901.3 Before her, Gunnar Brandell in his grand biography has stressed the importance and constancy of the motif of the "erotic triangle" in Strindberg. Interpretation of this triangle can, however, vary greatly, and neither of them uses, as far as I can see, the term "mimetic desire," leaving significant violent aspects of desire aside.4
Here, I would like to widen the scope of desire and go one step further in Strindberg's writings to the late novella The Roofing Ceremony [Taklagsöl] from 1906. There, the dominant voice belongs to a mortally wounded person with a desintegrating mind, revealing the violent and traumatic consequences of triangular desire. In this narrative Strindberg seems to be on the verge of understanding the powers that so long had been working in the dark. In this essay I argue that a more strict Girardian perspective is needed, where mimetic violence, paranoia, and the scapegoat mechanism are made visible.5 I also try to show the relevance of Freud's theory of trauma and compulsive repetition, integrating it in the general Girardian framework.
Let us first recall how dependent Strindberg was on solitude for his writing, and how his need for being alone often manifests itself in jubilant moments of escape from family life, which are marked by suffocating triangular desire.
ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE TRIANGULAR DESIRE
Few moments in Strindberg's production are as full of euphoria as the first sentences of Inferno.
The narrator takes farwell of his wife at the railway station in Paris, intending to try his luck as scientist and writer in the metropolis of the civilized world, thereby leaving his position as a minor writer belonging to the periphery of the North. "Det var med vild glädje jag återvände från Gare du Nord i Paris efter att där ha avlämnat min lilla hustru vilken skulle fara till vårt barn som insjuknat i främmande land."6 This triumphal separation, suggesting spiritual rebirth, indicates at the same time the inevitable price of liberty: love, or, in the words of the narrator: "the sacrifice of my heart" ["offret av mitt hjärta"]. But this sacrifice seems to make the breaking up even more necessary, because sacrifice serves writing that demands solitude.
Very soon, however, triumph turns into its opposite. Hopeful solitude is filled with signs to interpret, where the surrounding world and the specters of the past call for his attention and where the protagonist once again is captured [End Page 34] by the fetters from which he believed he was freed. It is this imaginary imprisonment, aggravated to the brink...