The second part of The Road to Damascus is dominated by the scenes of the great alchemist banquet which, in all its fantastic oddity, is one of the most suggestive ever created on the ancient theme of the fickleness of fortune. It was suggested above that there were two factors beyond all others binding Strindberg to the world and making him hesitate before the monastery; one was woman, from whom he sets himself free in Part II, after the birth of a child—precisely as in his marriage to Frida Uhl—the other was scientific honour, in its highest phase equivalent, to Strindberg, to the power to produce gold. Countless were the experiments for this purpose made by Strindberg in his primitive laboratories, and countless his failures. To the world-famous author, literary honour meant little as opposed to the slightest prospect of being acknowledged as a prominent scientist. Harriet Bosse has told me that Strindberg seldom said anything about his literary work, never was interested in what other people thought of them, or troubled to read the reviews; but on the other hand he would often, with sparkling eyes and childish pride, show her strips of paper, stained at one end with some golden-brown substance. 'Look,' he said, 'this is pure gold, and I have made it!' In face of the stubborn scepticism of scientific experts Strindberg was, however, driven to despair as to his ability, and felt his dreams of fortune shattered, as did THE STRANGER at the macabre banquet given in his honour—a banquet which was, as a matter of fact, planned by his Paris friends, not, as Strindberg would have liked to believe, in honour of the great scientist, but to the great author.
In Part I of The Road to Damascus, THE STRANGER replies with a hesitating 'Perhaps' when THE LADY wants to lead him to the protecting Church; and at the end of Part II he exclaims: 'Come, priest, before I change my mind'; but in Part III his decision is final, he enters the monastery. The reason is that not even THE LADY in her third incarnation had shown herself capable of reconciling him to life. The wedding day scenes just before, between Harriet Bosse and the ageing author, form, however, the climax of Part III and are among the most poetically moving that Strindberg has ever written.
Besides having his belief in the rapture of love shattered, THE STRANGER also suffers disappointment at seeing his child fall short of expectations. The meeting between the daughter Sylvia and THE STRANGER probably refers to an episode from the summer of 1899, when Strindberg, after long years of suffering in foreign countries, saw his beloved Swedish skerries again, and also his favourite daughter Greta, who had come over from Finland to meet him. Contrary to the version given in the drama, the reunion of father and daughter seems to have been very happy and cordial. However, it is typical of the fate-oppressed Strindberg that in his work even the happiest summer memories become tinged with black. Once and for all the dark colours on his palette were the most intense.
The final entry into the monastery was more a symbol for the struggling author's dream of peace and atonement than a real thing in his life. It is true he visited the Benedictine monastery, Maredsous, in Belgium in 1898, and its well stocked library came to play a certain part In the drama, but already he realised, after one night's sojourn there, that he had no call for the monastic life.
Seen as a whole the trilogy marks a turning point in Strindberg's dramatic production. The logical, calculated concentration of his naturalistic work of the 1880's has given way to a freer form of composition, in which the atmosphere has come to mean more than the dialogue, the musical and dreamlike qualities more than conciseness. The Road to Damascus abounds with details from real life, reproduced in sharply naturalistic manner, but these are not, as things were in his earlier works viewed by the author a priori as reality but become wrapped in dreamlike mystery. Just as with Lady Julia and The Father Strindberg ushered in the naturalistic drama of the 1880's, so in the years around the turn of the century he was, with his symbolist cycle The Road to Damascus, to break new ground for European drama which had gradually become stuck in fixed formulas. The Road to Damascus became a landmark in world literature both as a brilliant work of art and as bearer of new stage technique.
GUNNAR OLLÉN
Translated by ESTHER JOHANSON