Married

August Strindberg

Description

Never one to shy away from incendiary topics or controversial stances, Swedish writer August Strindberg tackles a series of tough issues in the engaging short stories collected in Married. Strindberg's life-like characters grapple with and debate issues ranging from racial discrimination to the education of women.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776534739
• Langue: English

Extrait

MARRIED
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AUGUST STRINDBERG
 
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Married First published in 1884 Epub ISBN 978-1-77653-473-9 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77653-474-6 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Introduction Asra Love and Bread Compelled To Compensation Frictions Unnatural Selection or the Origin of Race An Attempt at Reform A Natural Obstacle A Doll's House Phoenix Romeo and Julia Prolificacy Autumn Compulsory Marriage Corinna Unmarried and Married A Duel His Servant or Debit and Credit The Breadwinner
Introduction
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These stories originally appeared in two volumes, the first in 1884,the second in 1886. The latter part of the present edition is thusseparated from the first part by a lapse of two years.
Strindberg's views were continually undergoing changes. Constancy wasnever a trait of his. He himself tells us that opinions are but thereflection of a man's experiences, changing as his experiences change.In the two years following the publication of the first volume,Strindberg's experiences were such as to exercise a decisive influenceon his views on the woman question and to transmute his earlypredisposition to woman-hating from a passive tendency to a positive,active force in his character and writing.
Strindberg's art in Married is of the propagandist, of the fighterfor a cause. He has a lesson to convey and he makes frankly for hisgoal without attempting to conceal his purpose under the gloss of"pure" art. He chooses the story form in preference to the treatise asa more powerful medium to drive home his ideas. That the result hasproved successful is due to the happy admixture in Strindberg ofthinker and artist. His artist's sense never permitted him to distortor misrepresent the truth for the sake of proving his theories. Infact, he arrived at his theories not as a scholar through the study ofbooks, but as an artist through the experience of life. When life hadimpressed upon him what seemed to him a truth, he then applied hisintellect to it to bolster up that truth. Hence it is that, howeveropinionated Strindberg may at times seem, his writings carry thatconviction which we receive only when the author reproduces' truths hehas obtained first-hand from life. One-sided he may occasionally be in Married , especially in the later stories, but rarely unfaithful. Hismanner is often to throw such a glaring searchlight upon one spot oflife that all the rest of it stays in darkness; but the places he doesshow up are never unimportant or trivial. They are well worth seeingwith Strindberg's brilliant illumination thrown upon them.
August Strindberg has left a remarkably rich record of his life invarious works, especially in his autobiographical series of novels. Hewas born in 1849 in Stockholm. His was a sad childhood passed inextreme poverty. He succeeded in entering the University of Upsala in1867, but was forced for a time on account of lack of means tointerrupt his studies. He tried his fortune as schoolmaster, actor,and journalist and made an attempt to study medicine. All the while hewas active in a literary way, composing his first plays in 1869. In1874 he obtained a position in the Royal Library, where he devotedhimself to scientific studies, learned Chinese in order to cataloguethe Chinese manuscripts, and wrote an erudite monograph which was readat the Academy of Inscriptions in Paris.
His first important literary productions were the drama Master Olof (1878) and the novel The Red Room (1879). Disheartened by thefailure of Master Olof , he gave up literature for a long time. Whenhe returned to it, he displayed an amazing productivity. Work followedwork in quick succession—novels, short stories, dramas, histories,historical studies, and essays. The Swedish People is said to be themost popular book in Sweden next to the Bible. The mere enumeration ofhis writings would occupy more than two pages. His versatility led himto make researches in physics and chemistry and natural science and towrite on those subjects.
Through works like The Red Room , Married , and the dramas TheFather and Miss Julia , Strindberg attached himself to thenaturalistic school of literature. Another period of literaryinactivity followed, during which he passed through a mental crisisakin to insanity. When he returned to the writing of novels and dramashe was no longer a naturalist, but a symbolist and mystic. Among theplays he composed in this style are To Damascus , The Dream Play ,and The Great Highway .
Strindberg married three times, divorced his first two wives, butseparated amicably from the third. He died in 1913. The vastdemonstration at his funeral, attended by the laboring classes as wellas by the "upper" classes, proved that, in spite of the antagonisms hehad aroused, Sweden unanimously awarded him the highest place in herliterature.
THOMAS SELTZER.
Asra
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He had just completed his thirteenth year when his mother died. Hefelt that he had lost a real friend, for during the twelve months ofher illness he had come to know her personally, as it were, andestablished a relationship between them which is rare between parentsand children. He was a clever boy and had developed early; he had reada great many books besides his schoolbooks, for his father, aprofessor of botany at the Academy of Science, possessed a very goodlibrary. His mother, on the other hand, was not a well-educated woman;she had merely been head housekeeper and children's nurse in herhusband's house. Numerous births and countless vigils (she had notslept through a single night for the last sixteen years), hadexhausted her strength, and when she became bedridden, at the age ofthirty-nine, and was no longer able to look after her house, she madethe acquaintance of her second son; her eldest boy was at a militaryschool and only at home during the week ends. Now that her part asmother of the family was played to the end and nothing remained of herbut a poor invalid, the old-fashioned relationship of strict discipline,that barrier between parents and children, was superseded.The thirteen-year-old son was almost constantly at her bedside,reading to her whenever he was not at school or doing home lessons.She had many questions to ask and he had a great deal to explain, andtherefore all those distinguishing marks erected by age and positionvanished, one after the other: if there was a superior at all, it wasthe son. But the mother, too, had much to teach, for she had learnther lessons in the school of life; and so they were alternatelyteacher and pupil. They discussed all subjects. With the tact of amother and the modesty of the other sex she told her son all he oughtto know of the mystery of life. He was still innocent, but he hadheard many things discussed by the boys at school which had shockedand disgusted him. The mother explained to him all she could explain;warned him of the greatest danger to a young man, and exacted apromise from him never to visit a house of ill-fame, not even out ofcuriosity, because, as she pointed out, in such a case no man couldever trust himself. And she implored him to live a temperate life, andturn to God in prayer whenever temptation assaulted him.
His father was entirely devoted to science, which was a sealed book tohis wife. When the mother was already on the point of death, he made adiscovery which he hoped would make his name immortal in the scientificworld. He discovered, on a rubbish heap, outside the gates of Stockholm,a new kind of goose-foot with curved hairs on the usually straight-hairedcalyx. He was in communication with the Berlin Academy of Sciences, andthe latter was even now considering the advisability of including the newvariety in the "Flora Germanica"; he was daily expecting to hear whetheror not the Academy had decided to immortalise his name by calling theplant Chenopodium Wennerstroemianium. At his wife's death-bed he wasabsentminded, almost unkind, for he had just received an answer in theaffirmative, and he fretted because neither he nor his wife could enjoythe great news. She thought only of heaven and her children. He could nothelp realising that to talk to her now of a calyx with curved hairs wouldbe the height of absurdity; but, he justified himself, it was not somuch a question of a calyx with straight or curved hairs, as of ascientific discovery; and, more than that, it was a question of hisfuture and the future of his children, for their father's distinctionmeant bread for them.
When his wife died on the following evening, he cried bitterly; he hadnot shed a tear for many years. He was tortured by remorse, rememberedeven the tiniest wrong he had ever done her, for he had been, on thewhole, an exemplary husband; his indifference, his absent-mindednessof the previous day, filled him with shame and regret, and in a momentof blankness he realised all the pettishness and selfishness of hisscience which, he had imagined, was benefiting mankind. But theseemotions were short-lived; if you open a door with a spring behind it,it will close again immediately. On the following morning, after hehad drawn up an announcement of her death for the papers, he wrote aletter of thanks to the Berlin Academy of Sciences. After that heresumed his work.
When he came home to dinner, he longed for his wife, so that he mighttell her of his success, for she had always been his truest friend,the only human being who had never been jealous or envious. Now hemissed this loy