Creditors and Pariah

Creditors and Pariah [2 plays]

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Title: Creditors; Pariah (2 plays)
Author: August Strindberg
Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5053] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 11,
2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CREDIT
ORS; PARIAH (2 PLAYS) ***

Nicole Apostola, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.

PLAYS BY
AUGUST STRINDBERG
CREDITORS PARIAH
TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH, WITH INTRODUCTIONS
BY EDWIN BJORKMAN

CREDITORS
INTRODUCTION
This is one of the three plays which Strindberg placed at the head of his
dramatic production during the middle ultra-naturalistic period, the
other two being "The Father" and "Miss Julia." It is, in many ways, one
of the strongest he ever produced. Its rarely excelled unity of
construction, its tremendous dramatic tension, and its wonderful
psychological analysis combine to make it a masterpiece.
In Swedish its name is "Fordringsagare." This indefinite form may be
either singular or plural, but it is rarely used except as a plural. And the
play itself makes it perfectly clear that the proper translation of its title
is "Creditors," for under this aspect appear both the former and the
present husband of Tekla. One of the main objects of the play is to
reveal her indebtedness first to one and then to the other of these men,
while all the time she is posing as a person of original gifts.
I have little doubt that Strindberg, at the time he wrote this play--and
bear in mind that this happened only a year before he finally decided to
free himself from an impossible marriage by an appeal to the
law--believed Tekla to be fairly representative of womanhood in
general. The utter unreasonableness of such a view need hardly be
pointed out, and I shall waste no time on it. A question more worthy of

discussion is whether the figure of Tekla be true to life merely as the
picture of a personality--as one out of numerous imaginable variations
on a type decided not by sex but by faculties and qualities. And the
same question may well be raised in regard to the two men, both of
whom are evidently intended to win our sympathy: one as the victim of
a fate stronger than himself, and the other as the conqueror of adverse
and humiliating circumstances.
Personally, I am inclined to doubt whether a Tekla can be found in the
flesh--and even if found, she might seem too exceptional to gain
acceptance as a real individuality. It must be remembered, however,
that, in spite of his avowed realism, Strindberg did not draw his men
and women in the spirit generally designated as impressionistic; that is,
with the idea that they might step straight from his pages into life and
there win recognition as human beings of familiar aspect. His realism is
always mixed with idealism; his figures are always "doctored," so to
speak. And they have been thus treated in order to enable their creator
to drive home the particular truth he is just then concerned with.
Consciously or unconsciously he sought to produce what may be
designated as "pure cultures" of certain human qualities. But these he
took great pains to arrange in their proper psychological settings, for
mental and moral qualities, like everything else, run in groups that are
more or less harmonious, if not exactly homogeneous. The man with a
single quality, like Moliere's Harpagon, was much too primitive and
crude for Strindberg's art, as he himself rightly asserted in his preface
to "Miss Julia." When he wanted to draw the genius of greed, so to
speak, he did it by setting it in the midst of related qualities of a kind
most likely to be attracted by it.
Tekla is such a "pure culture" of a group of naturally