Review by Choice Review
The revival of interest in Strindberg reaches a climax with this, the biggest of the three major books on the Swedish dramatist appearing in the last few years. Meyer, whose Ibsen (CH, Dec '71) remains definitive and whose translations of Ibsen and Strindberg are widely used in the English-speaking theater, has now surpassed himself with this biography. Quoting often from the letters of Strindberg and Strindberg intimates, Meyer reveals more than has hitherto been exposed of the man for whom explaining himself was so obsessive that he wrote seven autobiographical novels. It is mainly in his letters that we often see the creative, revolutionary Strindberg-who could make great plays out of his misogyny-transformed into a classic anti-Semite who could only repeat the shibboleths of that breed. There are telling parallels and contrasts with Ibsen and interesting facts about such remote relations as could exist between the two great Scandinavians, given Strindberg's lifelong aversion to Ibsen. Meyer highlights Strindberg the dramatist, almost the reverse of Olof Lagercrantz's August Strindberg (CH, Mar '85), which slights the plays. But Meyer's discussions of the plays are more often judgment than criticism; for the latter, Evert Sprinchorn's Strindberg As Dramatist (CH, Dec '82) is preeminent. The same close scrutiny that reveals the warts makes Strindberg emerge more than ever as a giant-in Meyer's words, ``the voice of modern drama.'' Excellent photographs, bibliography, and documentation. For upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and general readers.-A.H. Silverman, City Colleges of Chicago, Wilbur Wright College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
This work complements last year's August Strindberg , by Olof Lagercrantz ( LJ 10/1/84). Where Lagercrantz focused on a psychological character study of the Swedish genius, Meyer has produced a full-scale literary biography of the highest caliber. While he presents the life fully and chronologically, Meyer avoids irrelevant details and trivialities. He makes apt use of primary sources to enlarge his commentary, particularly regarding Strindberg's marriages and children. The analyses of the works are consistently cogent and useful. Meyer has created a masterful portrait that deserves a place near his much-praised Ibsen (1971). Recommended for all subject collections. Starr E. Smith, Georgetown Univ. Lib., Washington, D.C. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The impact on a reader coming afresh to his encounter with the fearsomely obsessive Swedish playwright-novelist can be soul-searing and profound. And even for the reader renewing his knowledge of Strindberg's great paranoid swings from exaltation to suicidal distraction, from battering misogyny to infernal occultism, Meyer's restraint herein, his avoidance of hyperbole and baroque inflation, allow a stinging, bare-fleshed intimacy with tormented genius that feels ever fresh. Where Olof Lagercrantz's recent August Strindberg (1984), translated from the Swedish, had a readable, densely researched style, Meyer's work somehow brings off a harder, more compact figure of Strindberg page for page. Also, Meyer focuses far more strongly on Strindberg's plays and theatrical history than Lagercrantz. Who was Strindberg (1849-1912)? A giant of tragic drama, who dug with a surgeon's bloody fingers into his own madness for artistic subject matter. Seeking the bare truth about himself, he put his sexual autobiography on stage with characters so wound up they shivered the boards. He wrote about sex, says Meyer, ""with a realism which none of his predecessors in the theatre, not even Ibsen, had matched. He knew, and said, that people can fuck each other and bate each other; he even suggested that that is what marriage often means."" He was a pioneer in symbolic and expressionistic drama, ""another border country, that in which reality and fantasy merge""; he was, in bis own words, trying ""to imitate the inconsequent yet transparently logical shape of a dream."" He also invented a jagged, terse dialogue like nerve-fragments, which takes both actors and audience into an earthbound hallucination full of strangling wives and killer mothers. He says of his monstrous Captain in The Dance of Death, ""The Captain! What a part!. . . A refined demon! Evil shines out of his eyes. . . His face is bloated with liguor and corruption, and he so relishes saying evil things that he almost sucks them, tastes them, rolls them around his tongue before spitting them out. He thinks of course that he is cunning and superior. . ."" Strindberg was also, off and on, crazy. Thrice married wretchedly, leaving each wife. Held his schnapps poorly. A Swedenborgian spiritist. A man with sapphire-blue eyes, a shy smile, wildly hated and slandered, much loved; 10,000 came to his funeral--at eight o'clock in the morning. Strindberg found it ever harder to separate his real life from his artistic fantasies, but Meyer neatly parts the rebel from his romance. A spellbinder. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
