A Restless Pilgrim: Strindberg in The Inferno

A RESTLESS PILGRIM: STRINDBERG IN THE INFERNO FROM The Inferno, written in 1896-97, are usually culled those details which support the notion that Strindberg suffered some kind of mental illness, and also those autobiographical incidents which help to explain or interpret the subject matter of the difficult plays, notably To Damascus, which followed the Inferno experience. Strindberg wrote no plays between The Bond (1893) and To Damascus (1898), and it is during this period of dramatic inactivity that his concerns turned away from naturalism and toward expressionism. It is a relatively simple matter to say that the mental illness forced Strindberg's thoughts inward, so far inward that much of his subsequent production was highly personal and private, almost to the point of obscurity. However , there seem to be reasons for reducing the importance of the insanity (if, indeed, there was an actual insanity) and for looking into the techniques of The Inferno in order to determine that Strindberg knew fairly well what he was doing and that he was undergOing a process of change considered quite normal among sensitive artists. The Inferno opens with a brief account of the departure of Frida Uhl in November, 1894. Yet, this first autobiographical fact is dealt with in terms which suggest a suspenseful mystery story: 'With a feeling of wild joy I returned from the northern railway station. . . . I have not seen my dear wife again."l The break-up of the second marriage is used-whether deliberately or not-as the frame for the narrative. It is this fact which hangs in the background, to which other things may be referred as the narrative proceeds. Therefore, it is useful as an artistic device, and perhaps this is more important a reason than Strindbergs alleged hatred for women. In fact, it becomes increasingly obvious that his hatred comes out of a simple frustration-he expects and wants more than he gets, especially in support of his work. This is the old and yet very new theme of potentiality against actuality. Of the theater, Strindberg says: "Now the theater repelled me, as everything does when one has reached it. . . ." (p. 10) Strindberg had done all that he could in the naturalistic drama, and, having achieved a measure of success in that genre, considered it insignificant. But he had not yet succeeded in finding a woman who would provide him with the intellectual stimulation necessary to his work, and so he must continue 1. The Inferno, translated by Claud Field (New York, 1913). p. 9. All page references are to this translation. 306 1962 STRINDBERG IN THE INFERNO 3m to search for that woman even while reacting bitterly against the failures. The search is important Strindberg, like many other idealistic artists, was a perpetual searcher, a striver for something always just out of his reach. He could not stand still, nor could he accept a particular dramatic form as the ultimate end. The Inferno experience must be understood as that transition period during which Strindberg was desperately looking for a new direction to replace the naturalism of the 1880's and early 1890's. It seems quite plausible to assume that the search caused the experience, not that the experience was the cause of the search. Strindberg reveals himself on many occasions as a moralist objecting to the "free and easy manners, loose morals, deliberate and fashionable irreligion" (p. 26) of those people who succumb to the tides of fashion "in what they consider the position of the realist. The realist takes things as they are at the moment, but Strindberg had retained an idealism of art as well as of the meaning of life right on through his naturalistic plays and his two marriages. Like Baudelaire and Mallarme, he was engaged in a quest which was to take him eventually deep within himself for the subjects and materials of his art. As he retreated into himself, acquiring in the process an almostprivate symbolism, he was repelled by social intercourse and wished to free himself from his natural environment. Again, as seen in the French Symbolists of approximately the same period, this was a sensitive man's normal reaction against a kind of...