Strindberg's Ghost Sonata

Abstract

An Important event in theatre history occurred III late autumn 1906 when the young actor and theatre manager August Falck met the elderly writer August Strindberg. It was then that the idea of founding an intimate theatre in Stockholm, solely devoted to Strindberg's plays, arose. A year later the idea had become reality.Strindberg had several times earlier tried to set up a theatre of his own, notably In r888 when he founded his sbortlivcd Scandinavian Experimental Theatre In Copenhagen. Now, after the emergence of intimate stages in Paris (Antoine), Berlin (Brahm), and London (Grem), and encouraged by Falck's successful tour with Miss ]ulie, the situation seemed more favourable. Precisely in 1906 Max Rcinhardr, influenced by the Preface of Miss fulie, had opened his Kanunerspiel-Haus in Berlin.Inspired by the new theatre plans, Strindberg quickly wrote his four dumber plays, each of them characterized, as he puts it, by the intimate in form, a restricted subject, treated In depth, few characters, large points of View, free imagination, but based on observation, experience, carefully studied; simple, but not too simple; no great apparatus, no superfluous minor roles, no regular five" nctcrs or "old machines," no long-drawn-our whole evenings.' Bcim Himrnel, chests Kind ist schon! So ctwas hab ich nie gesehn. By heaven, this child is beautiful! Never have I seen anything like it.When the Student sees the Young Lady in the street he bursts our: "I've never seen such a woman of woman born." As soon as Mephistopheles, diabolic like Hummei, notes Faust's interest in Cretchcn, he assures him that he will find her for him, and he adds:Und selig, wer das gure Schick sal hat, Als Brautigam sic heimzufuhrcn! And blessed he whose good fate it is To bring her home as ,1 bridegroom! As Spnnchorn has observed," these lines seem paraphrased by Smndbcrg's Student when he says: "Happy the man who may lead her to altar and home." After which the Student calls his agreement With Hummel "a pact" and wonders: "Must I sell my soul?" Crerchen dwells m "a small, clean room," Adeie in a beautiful little room which she is anxious to keep clean. Both women are connected with flowers -as is aphelia -and their windows are filled with flower pots. The flower-woman connection is explicitly stated in both plays. Faust 1 ends with Cretcben's death, The Ghost Sonata with Adele's. A voice from above tells us that Gretchen, despite her sins, "is saved." Similarly, the Student's final prayer for Adele combined with the angelic music coming from the Isle of the Dead suggests that she is saved. '0 An obvious loan is "The Song of the Sun," twice recited by the Student. This is a fragment, adapted by Stnndberg, from the Old Icelandic poem Sdlarlj68, dating back to the J ath or r jrh century. This visionary poem, though metrically and to some extent mythologically related to the poems of the Elder Edda." is conceptually Christian."Other works that may have had an impact on The Ghost Sonata include Charlotte Bronte's [ane Eyre, Balzac's Seraph ita, severa...

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