[2] En Ny Bok on Strindberg.
[3] Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse.
[4] Grenzfragen der Literatur und Medizin, Munich, 1907.
[5] En Ny Bok om Strindberg af Gustaf Uddgren.
[CHAPTER VIII]
THE THEATRE OF LIFE
Strindberg's fiftieth birthday was celebrated quietly in Lund in 1899. A general feeling of distrust and bewilderment was prevalent amongst his countrymen. At the age of fifty he had returned to Sweden, apparently healthy in mind and body, in the prime of life, charged with a literary vitality which confounded current theories of his insanity. He had calmly and unostentatiously resumed his task of writing drama. The haunted, feverish expression had left his countenance; he had made himself a new visage, upon which were stamped self-mastery and tranquillity of mind. And, yet, he had recently published Inferno and Legends, and laid bare his soul's misery and delirium in throbbing pages, over which the reviewers had poured acrid contempt. He had written To Damascus in a gust of mediæval repentance, and uncovered himself in the transports of asceticism. With a sigh of relief his enemies had laid aside their opposition to his indiscretions and revelations, his materialism and transcendentalism, his socialism and individualism. They felt that there was no need to take a lunatic seriously. His friends had waited patiently for the "dancing star" which they knew would arise out of the chaos.