Strindberg the Man/Introduction

There are two distinct ways in which to deal with genius and the works of genius: The old and the new.

The old method may be characterized as the descriptive. It is, generally speaking, negative. It occupies itself mainly with the conscious motives and the external phases of the artist and his life and gives a more or less literal interpretation of his creation. From an historical point of view the descriptive method has its own peculiar value; from the psycho-analytic viewpoint it is less meritorious, since it adds but little, if anything, to the deeper understanding of the creative mind.

The new or interpretative method is based on psychology. It is positive. It deals exclusively with man’s unconscious motivation as the source and main-spring of works of art of whatever kind and independent of time and locality. Thus while the descriptive method accepts at its face value the work of genius, the new or psychoanalytic method penetrates into the lower strata of the Unconscious in order to find the key to the cryptic message which is indelibly though always illegibly written in large letters on every work of art.

Gustaf Uddgren’s Strindherg The Man (En ny bok om Strindberg) is not a psycho-analytic interpretation of Strindberg in the true sense of the term. It is rather descriptive with a strong analytic tendency. As a matter of fact, it contains a number of elements of such general ​interest as to justify the translator’s ambition of rendering the work accessible to the English speaking public.

It constitutes the unpretentious message in the form of biography and reminiscence of one of those relatively few and highly favored individuals who can lay claim to a certain amount of intimate personal contact with the great Swedish author. Furthermore, Gustaf Uddgren possesses such a clear insight into and so profound an appreciation of the complex problems with which Strindberg wrestled unceasingly all his life, as to be entitled to a hearing abroad as well as at home.

The book affords an excellent general survey of the many-sided, turbulent life and activities of Sweden’s foremost author. Here we meet the juvenile poet and indomitable revolter such as he appeared to the people of the seventies; the so-called misogynist who in the eighties caused a world-wide sensation with his Married, his novels, autobiography and naturalistic plays; the wandering scientist, acid psycho-analyst, mystic and paranoiac of the nineties who rises out of his Dantesque Inferno, like the bird Phoenix from his ashes, to produce over a score of dramas—historical, transcendental, social—of such unprecedented excellence as to compare favorably with the greatest dramatic monuments of all times—the Shakespearian. We follow him to his native land after long years of exile on the Continent only to find him rejected, hated and harassed by his own. And finally we retire with him to the Blue Tower where he spends his declining years like a hermit until death claims him on the 14th of May, 1912.

​The chapters containing Uddgren’s straightforward, unadorned account of his several interviews with Strindberg in Germany, France and Sweden are not only highly interesting from an historical point of view, but shed a great deal of new light upon the complex psychic life and personality of the poet and reformer.

Uddgren’s broad, sympathetic views and simplicity of presentation cannot help producing a tonic effect upon the reader when juxtaposited with the intolerance and the depression wrought by the distortion of facts, malicious attacks, meaningless bombast and glittering generalities of some of the self-appointed high priests of Strindberg criticism on both sides of the Atlantic.

With the exception of Lind af Hageby, Hermann Esswein, Emil Schering and Drs. Schleich and Landquist, the translator knows of no other writer who seems so well qualified to discuss Strindberg’s extraordinary life and immortal achievements as the author of this little volume. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the book will be welcomed by all students of Strindberg, and that it may fall into the hands of many of those whose knowledge of a great and good man is limited to the glaring misrepresentations, wilful or otherwise, of that stubbornly narrow-minded and vociferous clique of reactionaries who have justly been branded with the fitting epithet of eagle-eating monkeys.

Philadelphia, Pa.

May 1920.