Page:Strindberg the Man (1920).djvu/41

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FIRST MEETING WITH STRINDBERG
37

Brandes and Björnstjerne Björnson, pronounced their anathema over him and scattered broadcast over the entire North the opinion that the author of The Father was-—a madman. The story passed from ear to ear that one of Strindberg's psycho-pathological stories, written during his sojourn on a Danish island, was founded on personal experience and that he was ripe for the lunatic asylum.

In the midst of all this literary gossip about him, his The Inhabitants of Hemsö made its appearance. In it there was no sign of insanity. With a hand so light that we could hardly believe it to be that of Strindberg, he had painted this Japanese idyl of the skerries. It was a hymn of praise to the summers on Kymmendö,[1] those summers which had seen the birth of Master Olof and probably also that of The New Kingdom,—a hymn to the out-of-door life among the skerries to which he loved to return from the oppressive heat of France and Switzerland.

We can easily understand why Strindberg regarded his The Inhabitants of Hemsö as a literary transgression. His artistic love of truth accused him of having painted the picture in too light colors—like the well-known oil painting “Ruskprick”[2] by his own hand in which is seen nothing but a mist-white ocean and a

  1. ↑ In the Stockholm Archipelago.
  2. ↑ A sea-mark consisting of a slender pole to the top of which is fixed a small juniper bush or the like. Such navigation marks, rising several yards above the surface of the water, are very common in Swedish lakes and rivers.
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