The Weekly Machen
In this rare article, Arthur Machen puts the Swedish novelist August Strindberg to his literary test. As a result, Strindberg falls into one of the categories Machen defined in his treatise, Hieroglyphics. Will the foreign author be assigned the category shared by Thackeray or the heights occupied by Cervantes? Of further note, Machen, like Strindberg, has been accused, or promoted—depending upon your enthusiasm—as a Decadent by some. This doesn’t quite pass muster and Machen’s feelings about that movement, here and elsewhere, seem lukewarm at best.
The following is not listed in the bibliography by Goldstone and Sweetser.
A Strand Meditation
Eminent Swedish Novelist’s Outlook on Life
by
Arthur Machen
April 30, 1913
I was walking in the Strand, “The Son of a Servant” in my pocket, and it struck me that I should like to have a list of August Strindberg’s books which may be had in English. So I turned into the first booksellers on my way and was kindly supplied with the following catalogue:—
“In Midsummer Days” and Other Tales.
“Married.”
“The Son of a Servant.”
“Zones of the Spirit.”
“Creditors, Parish Plays.”
“Confessions of a Fool.”
“The Inferno.”
“Legends, Autobiographical Sketches.”
“Miss Julia.”
“Plays.”
“There are Crimes and Crimes: A Comedy.”
Strindberg, then, is now part of our English stock, as it were; we are assimilating him as we assimilated Tolstoi and Dostoievsky, as we assimilated Ibsen; and yet on that day before yesterday, which is the literary year, he was but the shadow of a name to us. Continuing these meditations westward I encountered a literary friend, to whom I mentioned my preoccupation. “Strindberg?” he said. “A decadent, isn’t he?”
I think I shook my head vaguely, as if in denial; but to tell the truth I have been wondering for many years what a decadent is. Mr. Le Gallienne once said that a decadent is one who will think more of the picturesqueness of a beggar’s robes than of the beggar’s empty stomach. If that be a satisfactory definition, then the decadent is a bad man with the æsthetic sense strongly developed. I do not think that Strindberg is a decadent of this kind, at all events.
A Man of Science
To me it appears that August Strindberg was far more a man of science than an artist; his anxiety was not to discover the eternal truth which is the same thing as beauty, but to register observations and discoveries in psychology, sociology, sensations, schoolrooms, hospitals, and backyards.
No doubt there are people who would object to Strindberg because he is not always “pleasant.” This plea can be dismissed in this particular instance as in all other instances as irrelevant and absurd in the highest degree. “Lear” is not pleasant, “Hamlet” is not pleasant; it would be difficult to conceive a plot more acutely “unpleasant” than that of “Œdipus Tyrannus”; and since the universal judgment is agreed that these are great and supreme masterpieces, we need not trouble to consider this allegation.
But I certainly think there would be a great deal to be said for the critic who allowed genius to handle any topic—so long as there were no doubt about the genius. Here is the failing of Strindberg; he sees the world, not as genius sees it, an assembly of august symbols, but as a mere collocation of facts.
“David Copperfield”
Thus, in the “Son of a Servant,” he writes:
In the nursery lived the grandmother. She was a stern old lady who mended hose and blouses, taught the A B C, rocked the cradle, and pulled hair. She was religious, and went to early service in the Clara Church. In the winter she carried a lantern, for there were no gas lamps at that time. She kept in her own place, and probably loved neither her son-in-law nor his sister. They were too polite for her. He treated her with respect, but not with love.
Very accurate, no doubt, very acutely and carefully observed; and rather less like a real grandmother than a skeleton is like a man.
And see the curious revenge that the false scientific method brings on its own head; the author, evidently, is resolved to palter with no idealisms, no generalities; he will draw his own particular grandmother. The result is that he has made a picture like a faded daguerrotype of the forties; he has given a vague grandmotherly figure, which is common, and yet not in the least universal.
Compare this “naturalism” with Betsy Trotwood in “David Copperfield.”
Strindberg then—with submission—is not by any means a great artist. But he is a great observer; he is a most candid psychologist; he will remember and put down in cold hard print all sorts of matters which most of us conceal even from our own spirits.
Previous: With the King’s Poulterer
Next:
darklybrightpress.com 