Chapter 4

TEKLA. Do you think one really knows what one wants at that time? And then the mammas insist on all kinds of pretensions, of course.

GUSTAV. Well, now you must be having all the excitement you can wish. They say that life among artists is rather swift, and I don't think your husband can be called a sluggard.

TEKLA. You can get too much of a good thing.

GUSTAV. [Trying a new tack] What! I do believe you are still wearing the ear-rings I gave you?

TEKLA. [Embarrassed] Why not? There was never any quarrel between us--and then I thought I might wear them as a token--and a reminder--that we were not enemies. And then, you know, it is impossible to buy this kind of ear-rings any longer. [Takes off one of her ear-rings.]

GUSTAV. Oh, that's all right, but what does your husband say of it?

TEKLA. Why should I mind what he says?

GUSTAV. Don't you mind that?--But you may be doing him an injury. It is likely to make him ridiculous.

TEKLA. [Brusquely, as if speaking to herself almost] He was that before!

GUSTAV. [Rises when he notes her difficulty in putting back the ear-ring] May I help you, perhaps?

TEKLA. Oh--thank you!

GUSTAV. [Pinching her ear] That tiny ear!--Think only if your husband could see us now!

TEKLA. Wouldn't he howl, though!

GUSTAV. Is he jealous also?

TEKLA. Is he? I should say so!

[A noise is heard from the room on the right.]

GUSTAV. Who lives in that room?

TEKLA. I don't know.--But tell me how you are getting along and what you are doing?

GUSTAV. Tell me rather how you are getting along?

(TEKLA is visibly confused, and without realising what she is doing, she takes the cover off the wax figure.)

GUSTAV. Hello! What's that?--Well!--It must be you!

TEKLA. I don't believe so.

GUSTAV. But it is very like you.

TEKLA. [Cynically] Do you think so?

GUSTAV. That reminds me of the story--you know it--"How could your majesty see that?"

TEKLA, [Laughing aloud] You are impossible!--Do you know any new stories?

GUSTAV. No, but you ought to have some.

TEKLA. Oh, I never hear anything funny nowadays.

GUSTAV. Is he modest also?

TEKLA. Oh--well--

GUSTAV. Not an everything?

TEKLA. He isn't well just now.

GUSTAV. Well, why should little brother put his nose into other people's hives?

TEKLA. [Laughing] You crazy thing!

GUSTAV. Poor chap!--Do you remember once when we were just married--we lived in this very room. It was furnished differently in those days. There was a chest of drawers against that wall there--and over there stood the big bed.

TEKLA. Now you stop!

GUSTAV. Look at me!

TEKLA. Well, why shouldn't I?

[They look hard at each other.]

GUSTAV. Do you think a person can ever forget anything that has made a very deep impression on him?

TEKLA. No! And our memories have a tremendous power. Particularly the memories of our youth.

GUSTAV. Do you remember when I first met you? Then you were a pretty little girl: a slate on which parents and governesses had made a few scrawls that I had to wipe out. And then I filled it with inscriptions that suited my own mind, until you believed the slate could hold nothing more. That's the reason, you know, why I shouldn't care to be in your husband's place--well, that's his business! But it's also the reason why I take pleasure in meeting you again. Our thoughts fit together exactly. And as I sit here and chat with you, it seems to me like drinking old wine of my own bottling. Yes, it's my own wine, but it has gained a great deal in flavour! And now, when I am about to marry again, I have purposely picked out a young girl whom I can educate to suit myself. For the woman, you know, is the man's child, and if she is not, he becomes hers, and then the world turns topsy-turvy.

TEKLA. Are you going to marry again?

GUSTAV. Yes, I want to try my luck once more, but this time I am going to make a better start, so that it won't end again with a spill.

TEKLA. Is she good looking?

GUSTAV. Yes, to me. But perhaps I am too old. It's queer--now when chance has brought me together with you again--I am beginning to doubt whether it will be possible to play the game over again.

TEKLA. How do you mean?

GUSTAV. I can feel that my roots stick in your soil, and the old wounds are beginning to break open. You are a dangerous woman, Tekla!

TEKLA. Am I? And my young husband says that I can make no more conquests.

GUSTAV. That means he has ceased to love you.

TEKLA. Well, I can't quite make out what love means to him.

GUSTAV. You have been playing hide and seek so long that at last you cannot find each other at all. Such things do happen. You have had to play the innocent to yourself, until he has lost his courage. There ARE some drawbacks to a change, I tell you--there are drawbacks to it, indeed.

TEKLA. Do you mean to reproach--

GUSTAV. Not at all! Whatever happens is to a certain extent necessary, for if it didn't happen, something else would--but now it did happen, and so it had to happen.

TEKLA. YOU are a man of discernment. And I have never met anybody with whom I liked so much to exchange ideas. You are so utterly free from all morality and preaching, and you ask so little of people, that it is possible to be oneself in your presence. Do you know, I am jealous of your intended wife!

GUSTAV. And do you realise that I am jealous of your husband?

TEKLA. [Rising] And now we must part! Forever!

GUSTAV. Yes, we must part! But not without a farewell--or what do you say?

TEKLA. [Agitated] No!

GUSTAV. [Following after her] Yes!--Let us have a farewell! Let us drown our memories--you know, there are intoxications so deep that when you wake up all memories are gone. [Putting his arm around her waist] You have been dragged down by a diseased spirit, who is infecting you with his own anaemia. I'll breathe new life into you. I'll make your talent blossom again in your autumn days, like a remontant rose. I'll----

(Two LADIES in travelling dress are seen in the doorway leading to the veranda. They look surprised. Then they point at those within, laugh, and disappear.)

TEKLA. [Freeing herself] Who was that?

GUSTAV. [Indifferently] Some tourists.

TEKLA. Leave me alone! I am afraid of you!

GUSTAV. Why?

TEKLA. You take my soul away from me!

GUSTAV. And give you my own in its place! And you have no soul for that matter--it's nothing but a delusion.

TEKLA. You have a way of saying impolite things so that nobody can be angry with you.

GUSTAV. It's because you feel that I hold the first mortgage on you--Tell me now, when--and--where?

TEKLA. No, it wouldn't be right to him. I think he is still in love with me, and I don't want to do any more harm.

GUSTAV. He does not love you! Do you want proofs?

TEKLA, Where can you get them?

GUSTAV. [Picking up the pieces of the photograph from the floor] Here! See for yourself!

TEKLA. Oh, that's an outrage!

GUSTAV. Do you see? Now then, when? And where?

TEKLA. The false-hearted wretch!

GUSTAV. When?

TEKLA. He leaves to-night, with the eight-o'clock boat.

GUSTAV. And then--

TEKLA. At nine! [A noise is heard from the adjoining room] Who can be living in there that makes such a racket?

GUSTAV. Let's see! [Goes over and looks through the keyhole] There's a table that has been upset, and a smashed water caraffe--that's all! I shouldn't wonder if they had left a dog locked up in there.--At nine o'clock then?

TEKLA. All right! And let him answer for it himself.--What a depth of deceit! And he who has always preached about truthfulness, and tried to teach me to tell the truth!--But wait a little--how was it now? He received me with something like hostility--didn't meet me at the landing--and then--and then he made some remark about young men on board the boat, which I pretended not to hear--but how could he know? Wait--and then he began to philosophise about women--and then the spectre of you seemed to be haunting him--and he talked of becoming a sculptor, that being the art of the time--exactly in accordance with your old speculations!

GUSTAV. No, really!

TEKLA. No, really?--Oh, now I understand! Now I begin to see what a hideous creature you are! You have been here before and stabbed him to death! It was you who had been sitting there on the sofa; it was you who made him think himself an epileptic--that he had to live in celibacy; that he ought to rise in rebellion against his wife; yes, it was you!--How long have you been here?

GUSTAV. I have been here a week.

TEKLA. It was you, then, I saw on board the boat?

GUSTAV. It was.

TEKLA. And now you were thinking you could trap me?

GUSTAV. It has been done.

TEKLA. Not yet!

GUSTAV. Yes!

TEKLA. Like a wolf you went after my lamb. You came here with a villainous plan to break up my happiness, and you were carrying it out, when my eyes were opened, and I foiled you.

GUSTAV. Not quite that way, if you please. This is how it happened in reality. Of course, it has been my secret hope that disaster might overtake you. But I felt practically certain that no interference on my part was required. And besides, I have been far too busy to have any time left for intriguing. But when I happened to be moving about a bit, and happened to see you with those young men on board the boat, then I guessed the time had come for me to take a look at the situation. I came here, and your lamb threw itself into the arms of the wolf. I won his affection by some sort of reminiscent impression which I shall not be tactless enough to explain to you. At first he aroused my sympathy, because he seemed to be in the same fix as I was once. But then he happened to touch old wounds--that book, you know, and "the idiot"--and I was seized with a wish to pick him to pieces, and to mix up these so thoroughly that they couldn't be put together again--and I succeeded, thanks to the painstaking way in which you had done the work of preparation. Then I had to deal with you. For you were the spring that had kept the works moving, and you had to be taken apart--and what a buzzing followed!--When I came in here, I didn't know exactly what to say. Like a chess-player, I had laid a number of tentative plans, of course, but my play had to depend on your moves. One thing led to the other, chance lent me a hand, and finally I had you where I wanted you.--Now you are caught!

TEKLA. No!

GUSTAV. Yes, you are! What you least wanted has happened. The world at large, represented by two lady tourists--whom I had not sent for, as I am not an intriguer--the world has seen how you became reconciled to your former husband, and how you sneaked back repentantly into his faithful arms. Isn't that enough?

TEKLA. It ought to be enough for your revenge--But tell me, how can you, who are so enlightened and so right-minded--how is it possible that you, who think whatever happens must happen, and that all our actions are determined in advance--

GUSTAV. [Correcting her] To a certain extent determined.

TEKLA. That's the same thing!

GUSTAV. No!

TEKLA. [Disregarding him] How is it possible that you, who hold me guiltless, as I was driven by my nature and the circumstances into acting as I did--how can you think yourself entitled to revenge--?

GUSTAV. For that very reason--for the reason that my nature and the circumstances drove me into seeking revenge. Isn't that giving both sides a square deal? But do you know why you two had to get the worst of it in this struggle?

(TEKLA looks scornful.)

GUSTAV. And why you were doomed to be fooled? Because I am stronger than you, and wiser also. You have been the idiot--and he! And now you may perceive that a man need not be an idiot because he doesn't write novels or paint pictures. It might be well for you to bear this in mind.

TEKLA. Are you then entirely without feelings?

GUSTAV. Entirely! And for that very reason, you know, I am capable of thinking--in which you have had no experience whatever-and of acting--in which you have just had some slight experience.

TEKLA. And all this merely because I have hurt your vanity?

GUSTAV. Don't call that MERELY! You had better not go around hurting other people's vanity. They have no more sensitive spot than that.

TEKLA. Vindictive wretch--shame on you!

GUSTAV. Dissolute wretch--shame on you!

TEKLA. Oh, that's my character, is it?

GUSTAV. Oh, that's my character, is it?--You ought to learn something about human nature in others before you give your own nature free rein. Otherwise you may get hurt, and then there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

TEKLA. You can never forgive:--

GUSTAV. Yes, I have forgiven you!

TEKLA. You!

GUSTAV. Of course! Have I raised a hand against you during all these years? No! And now I came here only to have a look at you, and it was enough to burst your bubble. Have I uttered a single reproach? Have I moralised or preached sermons? No! I played a joke or two on your dear consort, and nothing more was needed to finish him.--But there is no reason why I, the complainant, should be defending myself as I am now--Tekla! Have you nothing at all to reproach yourself with?

TEKLA. Nothing at all! Christians say that our actions are governed by Providence; others call it Fate; in either case, are we not free from all liability?

GUSTAV. In a measure, yes; but there is always a narrow margin left unprotected, and there the liability applies in spite of all. And sooner or later the creditors make their appearance. Guiltless, but accountable! Guiltless in regard to one who is no more; accountable to oneself and one's fellow beings.

TEKLA. So you came here to dun me?

GUSTAV. I came to take back what you had stolen, not what you had received as a gift. You had stolen my honour, and I could recover it only by taking yours. This, I think, was my right--or was it not?

TEKLA. Honour? Hm! And now you feel satisfied?

GUSTAV. Now I feel satisfied. [Rings for a waiter.]

TEKLA. And now you are going home to your fiancee?

GUSTAV. I have no fiancee! Nor am I ever going to have one. I am not going home, for I have no home, and don't want one.

(A WAITER comes in.)

GUSTAV. Get me my bill--I am leaving by the eight o'clock boat.

(THE WAITER bows and goes out.)

TEKLA. Without making up?

GUSTAV. Making up? You use such a lot of words that have lost their--meaning. Why should we make up? Perhaps you want all three of us to live together? You, if anybody, ought to make up by making good what you took away, but this you cannot do. You just took, and what you took you consumed, so that there is nothing left to restore.--Will it satisfy you if I say like this: forgive me that you tore my heart to pieces; forgive me that you disgraced me; forgive me that you made me the laughing-stock of my pupils through every week-day of seven long years; forgive me that I set you free from parental restraints, that I released you from the tyranny of ignorance and superstition, that I set you to rule my house, that I gave you position and friends, that I made a woman out of the child you were before? Forgive me as I forgive you!--Now I have torn up your note! Now you can go and settle your account with the other one!

TEKLA. What have you done with him? I am beginning to suspect--something terrible!

GUSTAV. With him? Do you still love him?

TEKLA. Yes!

GUSTAV. And a moment ago it was me! Was that also true?

TEKLA. It was true.

GUSTAV. Do you know what you are then?

TEKLA. You despise me?

GUSTAV. I pity you. It is a trait--I don't call it a fault--just a trait, which is rendered disadvantageous by its results. Poor Tekla! I don't know--but it seems almost as if I were feeling a certain regret, although I am as free from any guilt--as you! But perhaps it will be useful to you to feel what I felt that time.--Do you know where your husband is?

TEKLA. I think I know now--he is in that room in there! And he has heard everything! And seen everything! And the man who sees his own wraith dies!

(ADOLPH appears in the doorway leading to the veranda. His face is white as a sheet, and there is a bleeding scratch on one cheek. His eyes are staring and void of all expression. His lips are covered with froth.)

GUSTAV. [Shrinking back] No, there he is!--Now you can settle with him and see if he proves as generous as I have been.--Good-bye!

(He goes toward the left, but stops before he reaches the door.)

TEKLA. [Goes to meet ADOLPH with open arms] Adolph!

(ADOLPH leans against the door-jamb and sinks gradually to the floor.)

TEKLA. [Throwing herself upon his prostrate body and caressing him] Adolph! My own child! Are you still alive--oh, speak, speak!--Please forgive your nasty Tekla! Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me!--Little brother must say something, I tell him!--No, good God, he doesn't hear! He is dead! O God in heaven! O my God! Help!

GUSTAV. Why, she really must have loved HIM, too!--Poor creature!

(Curtain.)

PARIAH

INTRODUCTION

Both "Creditors" and "Pariah" were written in the winter of 1888-89 at Holte, near Copenhagen, where Strindberg, assisted by his first wife, was then engaged in starting what he called a "Scandinavian Experimental Theatre." In March, 1889, the two plays were given by students from the University of Copenhagen, and with Mrs. von Essen Strindberg as Tekla. A couple of weeks later the performance was repeated across the Sound, in the Swedish city of Malmo, on which occasion the writer of this introduction, then a young actor, assisted in the stage management. One of the actors was Gustav Wied, a Danish playwright and novelist, whose exquisite art since then has won him European fame. In the audience was Ola Hansson, a Swedish novelist and poet who had just published a short story from which Strindberg, according to his own acknowledgment on playbill and title-page, had taken the name and the theme of "Pariah."

Mr. Hansson has printed a number of letters (Tilskueren, Copenhagen, July, 1912) written to him by Strindberg about that time, as well as some very informative comments of his own. Concerning the performance of Malmo he writes: "It gave me a very unpleasant sensation. What did it mean? Why had Strindberg turned my simple theme upsidedown so that it became unrecognisable? Not a vestige of the 'theme from Ola Hansson' remained. Yet he had even suggested that he and I act the play together, I not knowing that it was to be a duel between two criminals. And he had at first planned to call it 'Aryan and Pariah'--which meant, of course, that the strong Aryan, Strindberg, was to crush the weak Pariah, Hansson, coram populo."

In regard to his own story Mr. Hansson informs us that it dealt with "a man who commits a forgery and then tells about it, doing both in a sort of somnambulistic state whereby everything is left vague and undefined." At that moment "Raskolnikov" was in the air, so to speak. And without wanting in any way to suggest imitation, I feel sure that the groundnote of the story was distinctly Dostoievskian. Strindberg himself had been reading Nietzsche and was--largely under the pressure of a reaction against the popular disapproval of his anti-feministic attitude--being driven more and more into a superman philosophy which reached its climax in the two novels "Chandalah" (1889) and "At the Edge of the Sea" (1890). The Nietzschean note is unmistakable in the two plays contained in the present volume.

But these plays are strongly colored by something else--by something that is neither Hansson-Dostoievski nor Strindberg-Nietzsche. The solution of the problem is found in the letters published by Mr. Hansson. These show that while Strindberg was still planning "Creditors," and before he had begun "Pariah," he had borrowed from Hansson a volume of tales by Edgar Allan Poe. It was his first acquaintance with the work of Poe, though not with American literature--for among his first printed work was a series of translations from American humourists; and not long ago a Swedish critic (Gunnar Castren in Samtiden, Christiania, June, 1912) wrote of Strindberg's literary beginnings that "he had learned much from Swedish literature, but probably more from Mark Twain and Dickens."

The impression Poe made on Strindberg was overwhelming. He returns to it in one letter after another. Everything that suits his mood of the moment is "Poesque" or "E. P-esque." The story that seems to have made the deepest impression of all was "The Gold Bug," though his thought seems to have distilled more useful material out of certain other stories illustrating Poe's theories about mental suggestion. Under the direct influence of these theories, Strindberg, according to his own statements to Hansson, wrote the powerful one-act play "Simoom," and made Gustav in "Creditors" actually CALL FORTH the latent epileptic tendencies in Adolph. And on the same authority we must trace the method of: psychological detection practised by Mr. X. in "Pariah" directly to "The Gold Bug."

Here we have the reason why Mr. Hansson could find so little of his story in the play. And here we have the origin of a theme which, while not quite new to him, was ever afterward to remain a favourite one with Strindberg: that of a duel between intellect and cunning. It forms the basis of such novels as "Chandalah" and "At the Edge of the Sea," but it recurs in subtler form in works of much later date. To readers of the present day, Mr. X.--that striking antithesis of everything a scientist used to stand for in poetry--is much less interesting as a superman in spe than as an illustration of what a morally and mentally normal man can do with the tools furnished him by our new understanding of human ways and human motives. And in giving us a play that holds our interest as firmly as the best "love plot" ever devised, although the stage shows us only two men engaged in an intellectual wrestling match, Strindberg took another great step toward ridding the drama of its old, shackling conventions.

The name of this play has sometimes been translated as "The Outcast," whereby it becomes confused with "The Outlaw," a much earlier play on a theme from the old Sagas. I think it better, too, that the Hindu allusion in the Swedish title be not lost, for the best of men may become an outcast, but the baseness of the Pariah is not supposed to spring only from lack of social position.

PARIAH

AN ACT

1889

PERSONS

MR. X., an archaeologist, Middle-aged man.

MR. Y., an American traveller, Middle-aged man.

SCENE

(A simply furnished room in a farmhouse. The door and the windows in the background open on a landscape. In the middle of the room stands a big dining-table, covered at one end by books, writing materials, and antiquities; at the other end, by a microscope, insect cases, and specimen jars full of alchohol.)

(On the left side hangs a bookshelf. Otherwise the furniture is that of a well-to-do farmer.)

(MR. Y. enters in his shirt-sleeves, carrying a butterfly-net and a botany-can. He goes straight up to the bookshelf and takes down a book, which he begins to read on the spot.)

(The landscape outside and the room itself are steeped in sunlight. The ringing of church bells indicates that the morning services are just over. Now and then the cackling of hens is heard from the outside.)

(MR. X. enters, also in his shirt-sleeves.)

(MR. Y. starts violently, puts the book back on the shelf upside-down, and pretends to be looking for another volume.)

MR. X. This heat is horrible. I guess we are going to have a thunderstorm.

MR. Y. What makes you think so?

MR. X. The bells have a kind of dry ring to them, the flies are sticky, and the hens cackle. I meant to go fishing, but I couldn't find any worms. Don't you feel nervous?

MR. Y. [Cautiously] I?--A little.

MR. X. Well, for that matter, you always look as if you were expecting thunderstorms.

MR. Y. [With a start] Do I?