Talk:August Strindberg

Grammatical error
There is a dangling modifier in the second sentence: "A prolific writer" etc. is supposed to modify "Strindberg", but the subject of the sentence, which it modifies, is "Strindberg's career". Currently, the import of the sentence is that Strindberg's career was a prolific writer. Can somebody take care of that? I am unaccustomed to editing Wikipedia articles.

Talk
Tell me how he could have hung out with Søren Kierkegaard in Paris in the 1890s when Kierkegaard died in 1855, when Strindberg was 5 years old.--Robert Waalk (talk) 01:49, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * (I'd be surprised if he hung out with Ibsen, either, since Strindberg detested Ibsen.) Anyway, it doesn't say that in the lead now, and didn't when you posted the above, see History. It says that he hung out with Hamsun (only), and that Strindberg and the other guys listed were some of the most influential Scandinavian writers.


 * That said, it seems quite disproportionate to mention hanging out with Hamsun in the lead at all. It's only a short paragraph, and it should mention only very important stuff about Strindberg, in a concise, boiled-down way. The lead is not supposed to contain anything that's not in the article proper. Hamsun and S trindberg being drinking buddies in Paris is something that's only mentioned in the lead. In fact, I'm going to remove it from there. It's out of place. Bishonen | talk 12:24, 4 February 2010 (UTC).

Genderitis/POV
I dropped by here expecting a more equitable presentation of Strindberg's views on women's liberation, and instead only found two straightfoward and one dimensional comments about misogyny; this is the second:
 * ''Strindberg's relationships with women were troubled and have often been interpreted as misogynistic by contemporaries and modern readers. Most acknowledge, however, that he had uncommon insight into the hypocrisy of his society's gender roles and sexual morality.

Myself, I remember in the foreword or one of the play-prologues in the Bantam Books voluem Seven Plays by August Strindberg a passage which went something along the lines of "Women want all the rights and privileges of equality with men without wanting to surrender their natural advantages and the obligations from men that they hold over them. Equality is only possible with a sense of fair play and mutual respect.  They display none of these qualities, while viciously insisting on their right to control how men think and how they can act". I'm not quoting it exactly; I believe it was written in association with The Stronger, if that's the one where the artist makes his wife his equal partner in his career and she immediately coopts his gifts for her own advancement and prestige; part of it was a quote from his own words, as I recall; I no longer own the book or would find the passage verbatim. Given that the only other example of his comments about women are the vitriolic "half-apes" quote, it seems highly POV to not represent the more intellectualized side of his thoughts about women. I remember him also speaking, as Robert Graves does though less harshly, of guarding against the return of the mother-religion and its obsession with male emasculation and even human sacrifice. All this seems barely fair to boil down to "being a misogynist" and quoting something quite vicous-sounding without the true context of this thinking on the subject. Anyway I'd hoped to find something fair here; instead it's somewhere between evasive and dismissive towards him. Scarcely NPOV....Skookum1 (talk) 02:52, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Also, perhaps a minor point but... There is no misogyny in "The Ghost Sonata". Far from it. Rather the opposite: the Daughter is seen as the epitome of beauty, innocence and grace in a fallen world. In fact after he had got through his Inferno Period his plays showed a marked difference in his view of women. Apart from "The Dance Of Death" where the husband and wife are equally monstrous, in "Easter", "To Damascus", "Storm", "A Dream Play" and "The Ghost Sonata" women are seen as images of purity or sought after embodiments of forgiveness. In short, Strindberg changed his mind and lost his misogyny in his later years, clearly wracked with guilt and in search of resolution and healing. ThePeg (talk) 22:48, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Legacy
Its worth adding Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee and John Osborne to the list of playwrights influenced by him. Stanley Kowalski and Blanche Dubois have deliberate echoes of Jean and Miss Julie, "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf' owes a huge debt to plays like "The Dance Of Death" and Osborne actually did a translation of "The Father". Bizarrely, Joe Orton parodies an entire scene from "The Father" in "What The Butler Saw". Meanwhile Martin Esslin cites "A Dream Play" as 'a direct inspiration for the Theatre Of The Absurd" (ie Genet, Beckett, Ionesco etc). Maxim Gorky is also on record as saying he admired him. ThePeg (talk) 22:46, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Recent clean-up
I've started working my way through the biography section of this article, working from Michael Meyer's biography and providing inline citations. I have a copy of Lagercrantz's biography on its way to me (it's available pretty cheaply second-hand), so I'll add citations to support from that later. To that end, I have kept the citations from Meyer from the same page number separate, rather than grouping them together, because this would only have to be undone once additional citations for each claim are added.

I've cleaned up the existing citations, though many of them lack specific page numbers - I've marked the missing ones with invisible notes (viewable when editing). I have removed some that appeared to be dead (non-existent ISBN and reference to a journal without indication of which article/page was being cited). The same information will be available in the biographies, so I've kept the article text in each case. I've made the citations format consistent throughout the article (MLA author-date system) and given all titles of works in their standard English-language translation, as per Wikipedia naming conventions.

I've located public domain copies of some translations of the plays (from the Internet Archive and added them into the sources and external links (they're important enough, I think, for the "duplication.") I have re-arranged the images slightly to conform with Wikipedia guidelines, though I don't have a wide-screen monitor to check how it looks on one of those.

I've again removed "Karen Blixen" from the sentence about most-known Scandinavian authors, simply because she's not well-known--certainly not in the same league as Strindberg or the others mentioned in the intro.

The article still lacks a decent section on analysis and criticism of his drama, which is what most people are likely to come here for, I imagine. The biography needs a substantial edit too, as it's a little long--much of the tangential detail could be moved into footnotes. I'll try to make time to look at a few general introductions / encyclopaedias of theatre/drama articles to see if I can improve the introduction too. It's great to see that the list of works has evolved into its own substantial bibliography article, though we need to have a scaled-down list here too for the "quick browser", as per the Peer Review. DionysosProteus (talk) 14:42, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I've now added a new introduction to the article with citations from three or four sources. It's arranged into a general outline in the first paragraph, Naturalism work in the second, and Inferno and after work in the third. DionysosProteus (talk) 00:42, 27 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm glad you;re working on this, particularly with the Lagercrantz. If you look in the present form of the article, under the 1890s, it says that L. believed Strindberg turned himself into a guinea pig. That strikes me either as vandalism, or something that needs to be clarified. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.32.64.44 (talk) 21:17, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

There is a major new biography available:
 * Prideaux, Sue, Strindberg: A Life, Yale University Press, May 15, 2012. ISBN 978-0300136937

Should anyone desire to further work on the article hopefully it could supplement the 1985 Meyer biography which currently dominates as a main source of the article. Green Cardamom (talk) 19:57, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Cryptic letters
The "Legacy" section contains the following words: "He also exchanged a few cryptic letters with Friedrich Nietzsche." I have read the letters and I don't find them to be cryptic [containing secret, hidden thoughts]. This sentence is subjective and merely reflects some individual's personal opinion. In other words, it is POV.98.110.87.71 (talk) 02:18, 31 July 2015 (UTC)Hans Wurst

External links modified
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minh nho 1997 Minhnho1997 (talk) 18:09, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 08:06, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Strindbergmetro.jpg

Who was his son-in-law?
At present the politics section states "Strindberg's daughter Karin Strindberg married a Russian Bolshevik of partially Swedish ancestry, Vladimir Smirnov ("Paulsson")" The link to Vladimir Smirnov goes to Vladimir Mikhailovich Smirnov 1887-1937. However, his wiki page has no mention of Karin or indeed any links with Sweden. The original citation link (to an article in Russian) seems to be broken. In Smirnov's talk section there is an entry from 'Kielimiliisi' from 2013 stating:  "This Smirnov is not the husband of Karin Smirnoff. Her husband husband was another Vladimir Smirnoff, teaching Russian in Helsinki University and born 1876 and died 1952." but giving no references. On the 'Family Search' website (is this a reputable source for wiki?) (https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/M9Q2-KCV/karin-strindberg-1880-1973) Karin Strindberg's husband's dates are given as 1876-1952. The evidence seems pretty strong that Karin was not married to the Russian Bolshevik who was shot in the purges and I would suggest that this sentence is removed (I'd also suggest that it's an odd sentence anyway: what relevance would it have to Strindberg's politics if his daughter had married a Bolshevik, given that he died 5 years before the October revolution). Furthermore, the Swedish entry for Karin repeats the "Vladimir Mikhailovich Smirnov 1887-1937" mistake but the talk page has more information about her real husband: Vladimir Martynovich Smirnoff, a senior lecturer in Russian at the University of Helsinki and later the Consul General of the Soviet Union in Sweden. This information is supplied by 'Aina Liljefors' who adds that the best source about Vladimir Marynovich Smirnoff is "Russian Post" by Hans Björkegren, Bonniers 1985. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BobBadg (talk • contribs) 19:19, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

"August Strindberg's Little Catechism for the Underclass"
The article "August Strindberg's Little Catechism for the Underclass" can easily be expanded by whoever wishes to do it.

I tried writing about it and summarise its content, to the apparent dislike of two editors. So whoever wishes to expand the article, or just read a version with some content on can start here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=August_Strindberg%27s_Little_Catechism_for_the_Underclass&oldid=1093297580

Kind regards,

Pauloroboto Pauloroboto (talk) 15:17, 17 June 2022 (UTC)