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not on account of it being politically so red, since we in the country never had had any respect for bureaucratic Stockholm against which Strindberg directed his biting satire, but rather on account of the violent indignation which these initial clashes with life had aroused in the breast of the young poet.

In Master Olof he had as yet been on the great main road which seems to lead directly up to the heights. With The Red Room he had turned in on a by-path which meandered among the underbrush. He had thrown himself into the opposition and revolted against this provincialistic community which tried to keep him down and force him to turn away from the lofty genre of composition whose rhythm echoed in Master Olof.

The poet who revolted against his entire surroundings, whose indignation gave him a courage so great that not even the highest fortress-tower of tradition frightened him, the poet with the thorn pointing towards his head—we could not but love and admire, we who were young at that time.

Is it to be wondered at that we stuck to him through thick and thin? That we ourselves became revolters, each in his own little circle?

Besides this there were in The Red Room glorious descriptions of Bohemian life which for all time to come opened our eyes to the beauty of a life led in such proud simplicity as that of those young artists among their garden plots in the vicinity of Lill-Jans’.^[1] These Strindberg stories prevented many of us from making