CHAPTER VI

THE ARTIST

Whilst fighting the battle of realism in fiction Strindberg had prepared the dramatic form which was to be his contribution to the "new" theatre, on which the curtain was about to rise. The demand for a new dramatic art had become imperative. Tired of the admonitions and stale declamations of the old rhetorical play, the public had asked for a representation of life. Dumas père had responded by writing the drama of personality, Dumas _fils_ by establishing the play of moral problems. Ibsen had built the psychological play on the foundation of Dumas and had endowed the Norwegian language with a new sonority. Scribe had supplied fine technique and neat carpentry for the new French stage, but Paris, the petulant playgoer, sighed for other things.

Zola raised the cry of naturalism. The artificial plots of Dumas, Augier and Sardou were to be superseded by dramatic flashes of reality. "I yearn for life, with its shiver, its breath and its strength; I long for life as it is," cried the author of _Thérèse Raquin_, and Strindberg responded. In September, 1887, _The Father_ was published, the first of the series of naturalistic plays through which Strindberg's European reputation as a modern dramatist and a woman-hater was established. The institution in the same year of the Théâtre Libre, by M. André Antoine, provided a stage which was wholly adapted to the revolt against old-fashioned theatricality.

M. Antoine was an employee at the gas-works who had a passionate faith in realistic drama. With a group of sympathetic _dilettanti_ he began evening performances in a large room in Place Pigalle without the stage mechanism of the commercial theatre. Success attended the enthusiastic players, and the performances at the Théâtre Libre became the rendezvous of the intellectual and artistic world which gravitates to Paris. The soul of the enterprise, M. Antoine, was manager, actor, scene-painter, and mechanic. The theatre was semi-private. Special invitation cards to elect audiences protected the actors from the attention of gallery-opinion. The actors and authors of the new plays were the hosts in this home of dramatic revolution, where every original playwright was welcome. Strindberg's _The Father, Lady Julie_ and _Creditors_ were amongst the first plays produced, and he, therefore, had the satisfaction of being played in Paris before any appearance on the French stage of the "famous Norwegian blue-stocking." Tolstoy's _Powers of Darkness_, Zola's _Thérèse Raquin_, Emile Fabre's _L'Argent_, an adaptation of the brothers de Goncourt's Sœur Philomène and Villiers' "_L'Evasion_," belonged to the early repertoire. _Ghosts_ was the first of Ibsen's plays to appear; it was followed by _Rosmersholm_. The Théâtre Libre lasted eight years. It had time to create a "modernity" in taste and dramatic expression which produced similar free theatres in Berlin and London, and a vogue of naturalism which included every variety of "life," and which, occasionally, gave undue preference to lubricity and morbidity.

The Swedish edition of _The Father_ was followed by a French edition, containing a sympathetic prefatory letter by Zola. The three acts of this tragedy present a drawn-out duel between man and woman for the possession of the soul of the child. The father, a cavalry captain, is intellectual, serious, studious, lovable. His wife is stupid, selfish and diabolically resourceful in the choice of weapons for the final defeat of the ill-used man. He is mentally poisoned by the suggestion that he is not the father of the child. Laura, the wife, has herself administered the poison in order to shatter the man's peace of mind, and break the foundation of his love for the child. Her hatred knows no bounds. She not only seeks to drive him mad, but contrives by skilful intrigue to procure evidence of his insanity. She informs the doctor that her husband suffers from extraordinary delusions regarding the uncertainty of paternity, and that he talks of little else. When the doctor meets the Captain the question which is eating his mind shows itself as an obsessing idea. Everybody and everything conspires to make the man appear a raving lunatic. Finally, even the old nurse who has been a true and good woman is induced to betray him. He believes in her kindness of heart, and allows her to approach him. She slips the strait-jacket over him, thereby adding the last link to the chain of feminine treachery and cruelty which has enslaved him. Subjugated, robbed of his faith and his mind, the man dies--the victim of woman.

In the preface Zola expressed his interest in the boldness of the idea. "Your Laura," he wrote, "is woman as she is in her conceit and in her mystical unconsciousness of her qualities and faults." _The Father_ was one of the few dramatic works which had the power of moving him deeply. But he found a certain want of reality in the characters and the construction of the play. The nameless captain and his cruel entourage were thought-forms, lacking the solid dimensions which Zola identified with reality. In a critical appreciation of Strindberg, published in 1894, Georg Brandes praised _The Father_ as a tragedy of concentrated energy, magnificent in its composition and powerful in its effect. "There is something eternal in The Father," he writes, "an unforgettable psychology of woman, showing typically feminine weakness and vice." Brandes thinks the symbolism of the final scene, in which the man of intellect is ruined by woman, inherently true. He adds: "The strength of the indignation and the hatred which have produced the drama are impressive. This tragedy is a cry of anguish which clings to one's memory, which grips and terrifies through the depth of the passionate suffering that uttered the cry."

Laura may be regarded as the most complete type of Strindberg's Inferno-women. She has not even the _beauté du diable_ which creates an illusion of goodness in some of his types. She is the man-eater, the destroyer of all that is noble, consistent, progressive in man. Strindberg sees a cannibalistic tendency in woman which makes marriage a feast of horror, and this is a theme to which he often returns. In _The Father_ the distraught man says to his child: "You see, I am a cannibal, and I will eat you. Your mother wanted to eat me, but she could not. I am Saturn who ate his children, because it had been prophesied that they would eat him. To eat or to be eaten? That is the question. If I do not eat you, you will eat me, and you have already showed me your teeth." ...

The callous egotism with which Laura kills her husband is shown by the following words, with which she assaults him: "Now you have fulfilled your function as an unfortunately necessary father and bread-winner, you are not needed any longer, and you must go. You must go, since you have realised that my intellect is as strong as my will, and since you will not stay to acknowledge it."

It is perhaps not unnatural that the Captain should throw a lighted lamp at Laura after listening to this speech. But the speech itself is certainly unnatural, and would be more in keeping with the sentiments of a female spider--if that callous insect could formulate her generative philosophy--than those of a woman. As a self-expository wife Laura severely taxes our credulity.

_Lady Julie_[1] is a different type. She is the pretty, neurotic, sensual, useless woman, blue-blooded and empty-minded, destined to total extinction in the process of natural selection. Her tragedy is unfolded in a play of one act, which is the quintessence of Strindberg as a "naturalistic" dramatist. The scene is laid in the Count's kitchen. The Count's daughter, Lady Julie, is alone in the house with Jean, the valet, and Christine, the cook. It is St. John's Eve; the farm hands belonging to the estate are assembled for the annual midsummer dance. They do not dance in the kitchen, but there is midsummer madness in the air. Christine is betrothed to Jean who treats the products of her culinary art with epicurean disdain. He knows his value as a man and a servant. Jean is an excellent valet, well-made, well-behaved, who knows when to show self-confidence and when to cringe. Lady Julie has graced the servants' dance with her presence. She has favoured Jean with such marked attention that the people have begun to gossip. Alone with him in the kitchen she encourages him to make love to her. The valet is uneasy; the man is eager to make himself master of the Count's daughter, but the servant shrinks from the sacrilege. But Lady Julie taunts him with his unmanliness, tempts him with her beauty, and the effervescence of her highly-strung nerves. A strange love-scene follows.

The sound of approaching country-folk forces Jean and Lady Julie to hide from their prying eyes. They do not wish to be found alone in the kitchen. Jean's room is near at hand and becomes their refuge, whilst the peasants make the kitchen the scene of their midsummer merry-making.

When the kitchen is deserted, Lady Julie and Jean reappear. There is an autumnal chill in the air. For Lady Julie is no longer Lady Julie. The valet is master. They are both conscious of the monstrous breach of social etiquette which has been committed. And the grey dawn will not only bring the shame of day, but the home-coming of the Count.

Jean is chivalrous. He proposes immediate flight to Switzerland or the Italian lakes. There, he thinks, they can start an hotel--a first-class hotel for first-class guests. He waxes enthusiastic over the joys of the hotel-owner. She will be mistress of the house, queen of the accounts, before whom the guests will humbly lay their gold.

She cannot rise to his enthusiasm. She wants the comfort of love:

_Julie_. That is all very fine. But, Jean, you must give me courage. Say that you love me. Come and take me in your arms.

_Jean_ (_hesitating_). I would like to, but I dare not. Not here in this house. I love you without doubt. Can you doubt it?

_Julie_ (_shyly, with true womanly feeling_). You! Say "thou" to me. Between us there are no longer any barriers. Say "thou."

_Jean_ (_troubled_). I cannot. There are still barriers between us so long as we remain in this house. There is the past, there is the Count. I have never met anyone who compelled such respect from me. I have only to see his gloves lying on a chair to feel quite small. I have only to hear his bell, and I start like a shying horse. And when I now look at his boots, standing there so stiff and stately, it is as if something made my back bend. (_He kicks the boots_.) Superstition, prejudice which have been driven into us from childhood, but which may be as easily forgotten again. If you will only come into another country, into a republic, people will cringe before my porter's livery. People shall cringe, but I shall not cringe. I was not born to cringe, for there is stuff in me; there is character in me; and if once I grip the lowest branch, you shall watch me climb. To-day I am a lackey, but next year I am a proprietor; in ten years I shall be independent, and then I go to Roumania and get myself an order. I can--mark well I say I _can_--a count.

_Julie_. Fine, fine!

_Jean_. Ah, in Roumania a man can buy a count's title, and then you will be a countess--my countess.

_Julie_. What do I care for what I have cast aside! Say that you love me, or else--ah, what am I else?

_Jean_. I will say it a thousand times--later on. But not here. And, above all, no sentimentality, or all is lost. We must keep cool like sensible people. (_He takes out a cigar, cuts the end, and lights it_.) Sit down there, and I will sit here, and then we can chat as if nothing had happened.

_Julie_ (_in despair_). Oh, my God! Have you no feelings?

_Jean_. I! Why, there is no one more sensitive than I, but I can command my feelings.

_Julie_. A short time ago you would have kissed my shoe, and now----

Jean (_coldly_). Yes, before. But now we have something else to think about.

They cannot flee without money. Jean suggests that she can steal the necessary sum in her father's room. He taunts her with her weakness until she robs her father. They prepare to leave the house. The girl wants to bring her greenfinch. Infuriated by her sentimentality, Jean snatches the bird from her and kills it. The man's brutality and meanness are suddenly revealed to her; her brain reels under the humiliation which she has brought upon herself. She hurls curses at the head of the impudent domestic. The morning has come, and Christine enters the kitchen on her way to church. The girl appeals to her, seeks her sympathy, but Christine's feelings of propriety are too shocked to allow of any pity for the fallen girl. She leaves them. The Count returns. They hear him in his room, know that he will discover the theft. His daughter is half demented with fear, remorse, shame; she is incapable of deciding what to do. Jean's servant conscience has been awakened by the arrival of his master. The Count is there to command, Jean to obey. And when Lady Julie wants him to tell her what to do he hands her a razor--with the complacency with which he might hand his mistress the riding-whip. She leaves the kitchen and kills herself.

Such are the outlines of this painful play, the most "successful" of Strindberg's naturalistic dramas. Again we have a struggle between man and woman, but this time the opposites of class and blood are added to those of sex. The healthy egotism, the common instincts of self-preservation in the valet endow him with a physical stability against which Lady Julie's emotions break like foam against a rock. She goes, he remains. Like _The Admirable Crichton_, Jean knows that there must be masters and servants in this world of inequality, and, though his passions for once mastered his conviction, he is soundly submissive to social law and order. In Lady Julie, Strindberg has sketched the useless, unnatural, pleasure-loving, hysterical woman of the leisured classes whom he detests.

In the preface to the play he analyses this type of woman. "Lady Julie is a modern character," he writes, "not as if the half-woman, the man-hater, had not existed in all times, but because she has now been discovered, has appeared on the scene, and created a disturbance." In such women he sees a danger to the race, for, as a rule, they attract degenerate men, and transmit their own misery to another generation. They sell themselves for "power, decorations, distinctions, diplomas," and produce beings of undecided sex to whom life is useless. For such psycho-pathological creatures Strindberg sees no hope beyond that of elimination through contact with reality (Jean was "reality" to Lady Julie), or a fatal outburst of long-suppressed sexual instincts. "The type is tragic," he concludes, "offering the spectacle of a desperate struggle against nature; tragic as a romantic inheritance which is now being destroyed by the naturalism which only seeks happiness; and only strong and good species are compatible with happiness."

Justin McCarthy translated _Lady Julie_ into English, and expressed his admiration for the unalloyed realism of the piece in an article in _The Fortnightly Review_. The mental intensity with which Strindberg visualised the character of Lady Julie is strangely impressive. There is no extravagant or jejune theorising; it is drama vehemently conceived and true to its creator. But the horror which moved Justin McCarthy when reading the play, and which most readers experience, is a product of Strindberg's peculiar misogyny which, for the purposes of the play, he coupled with the ordinary standard of convention and morality. Lady Julie's disgrace is unpardonable from the point of view of society. She dies in deference to its verdict. We cannot imagine a drama by Strindberg, in which tragedy is woven out of the misconduct of a Lord Julius instead of a Lady Julie. A young "blood," neurotic, suffering from ennui, and seeking temporary distraction in the company of Jeanne, the valet's daughter, would not have inspired a naturalistic drama of sex and caste. There is a wealth of material which can be used to _épater le bourgeois_ in the idea of a well-bred woman's precipitous "return to nature." The commonplace spectacle of a similar descent on the part of a well-bred man affords none.

In _Comrades_ we meet the type of woman who surpasses _Lady Julie_ in anti-social attributes. Laura is something of a female tigress, the mother whose claws are ready to tear all but the cub; Lady Julie, with her hysteria I and her caprices is still the womanly woman. But Bertha who is united to her "comrade" Axel in a marriage of equality is worse than they. She is plain, mannish, ambitious; a mental parasite who suppresses her womanhood and simulates her husband's talents. The rival of man, the unsexed, simian-brained shrew, Strindberg's _bête noire_.

_Comrades_ is a four-act comedy of marriage. Axel Alberg and his wife are Swedish painters in Paris. They have each painted a picture which has been submitted to the Salon. In Act I we find Axel at work in the studio. He is a good fellow, honest, painstaking, generous. Friends call and discover his embarrassing position as a married comrade. There is the doctor, mature in experience and philosophical in outlook, who when Axel asks him if he does not believe in woman answers: "No, I don't. But I love her." There is the sensible, matter-of-fact Lieutenant Starck, who will stand no nonsense from women, and whose happy, normal wife knows that woman's real happiness is found in subjection unto her husband. They are shocked to hear of Bertha's tastes and habits. Bertha comes home. She has kept her nude male model waiting, and her poor husband has had to pay five francs in consequence of her unpunctuality. This is a small part of the sacrifices he has made for her artistic career. In the scenes that follow we see Bertha insisting on keeping the household accounts, though her head cannot grapple with the simplest problems of addition and subtraction. She has made false entries, and deliberately deceives Axel as to the manner in which the funds of the comradeship are expended. She coquettes with Willmer, a young writer, and receives presents from him. Intent upon securing the acceptance of her picture, she makes nefarious use of Axel's love for her.

_Bertha_. Will you be very kind to me? Very?

_Axel_. I always want to be kind to you, my dear.

_Bertha_. Do you? Look here, you know Roubey, don't you?

_Axel_. Yes, I met him in Vienna, and we became good friends.

_Bertha_. You know that he is a member of the jury?

_Axel_. Well, what about that?

_Bertha_. Yes, now you will be angry. I know it.

_Axel_. If you know it, don't make me angry.

_Bertha_ (_caresses him_). You won't sacrifice anything for your wife--nothing.

_Axel_. Go and beg? No, that I won't do.

_Bertha_. Not for yourself, for your picture will probably be accepted all the same, but for your wife?

_Axel_. Don't ask me.

_Bertha_. I should really never ask anything of you.

_Axel_. Yes, things which I can do without sacrificing....

_Bertha_. Your manly pride.

_Axel_. Let us leave it at that.

_Bertha_. But I should sacrifice my womanly pride, if I could help you.

_Axel_. You have no pride.

_Bertha_. Axel!

_Axel_. There, there, forgive me.

_Bertha_. I am sure you are jealous of me. I am sure you would not like my picture to be accepted.

_Axel_. Nothing would delight me more, I assure you, Bertha.

_Bertha_. Would it also delight you if I were accepted and you were refused?

_Axel_. I must feel (_laying his hand on his heart_). I am sure it would be an unpleasant feeling--sure. Both because I paint better than you, and because....

_Bertha_. Say it straight out,--because I am a woman.

_Axel_. Yes, also for that reason. It is strange, but I have a feeling as if you women were intruders, forcing your way in and demanding the spoils of the battle which we men have fought whilst you sat by the fireside. Forgive me, Bertha, for saying this, but such thoughts come to me.

_Bertha_. You are just like all other men, exactly.

_Axel_. Like all other men. I hope so.

_Bertha_. And lately you have assumed such superiority; you used not to be like that.

_Axel_. I suppose that is because I am superior. Do something which we men have not already done.

_Bertha_. What! What are you saying? Are you not ashamed?

Bertha changes her tone, and plays the humble comrade who is sorely in need of a little encouragement. Axel rejects her arguments, but eventually goes to Monsieur Roubey. During Axel's absence a letter arrives containing the information that his picture has been refused. Bertha guesses its contents and revels in the luxury of pity and _schadenfreude_. Axel returns, after finding Madame Roubey at home, (a meeting cleverly foreseen by Bertha) with the news that Bertha's picture has already been accepted. He congratulates Bertha on her success. He is confident that his picture will also be accepted. She hands him the letter. The _scène de rupture_ is inevitable.

_Axel_ (_lays his hand on his heart and sits down_). What ... (_controls himself_). This is a blow which I did not expect. This is most unpleasant.

_Bertha_. Well, perhaps I can help you now.

_Axel_. You look as if you enjoyed my defeat, Bertha. Oh, I feel a great hatred of you stirring within me!

_Bertha_. I look happy, perhaps, because I have had a success, but when one is tied to a man who cannot rejoice in one's happiness it is difficult to feel sorry when he is unhappy.

_Axel_. I don't know what has happened, but it seems to me that we have become enemies now. The struggle for a position has come between us, and we can no longer be friends.

_Bertha_. Does not your sense of justice tell you that the one who was most competent won the battle?

_Axel_. You were not the most competent.

_Bertha_. But the jury thought so.

_Axel_. The jury? But you know very well that you cannot paint as well as I do.

_Bertha_. Are you sure of that?

The dialogue that follows is a crescendo of the sex-against-sex quarrel. "A comrade," concludes Axel, "is a more or less loyal competitor, but we are enemies." Bertha, selfish, mean, inebriated by her triumph, goes out to celebrate her victory in the company of friends. Axel stays at home to nurse his sorrow. The curtain descends upon the dejected husband begging his wife not to come home drunk.