Page:Prophets of dissent essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche and Tolstoy (1918).djvu/87

 II

THE ECCENTRICITY OF AUGUST STRINDBERG

NE cannot speak of August Strindberg with much gusto. The most broadminded critic will find himself under necessity to disapprove of him as a man and to condemn  so many features of his production that almost one might question his fitness as a subject of literary discussion. Nevertheless, his importance is beyond dispute and quite above the consideration of personal like or dislike, whether we view him in his creative capacity,—as an intellectual and  ethical spokesman of his time,—or in his human  character,—as a typical case of certain mental  and moral maladies which somehow during his time were more or less epidemic throughout the  lettered world. We have it on excellent authority that at his début in the literary theatre he made the stage quake with the elemental power of his  personality. Gigantic rebels like Ibsen, Bjoernson, Nietzsche, and Tolstoy, we are told, dwindled