This rapidity of composition was probably to some extent responsible for the frequent repetitions of the same word within a short paragraph, the careless tautology of ideas, situations and episodes in his books. Many instances of such episode-repetition could be given. Thus Comrades and Charles XII contain similar phrases about the woman clipping the man's hair of strength, whilst his head rests in her lap. The Dream Play has several scenes which are "the doubles" of those related in Fairhaven and Foulstrand. A certain event connected with the tearing up of The Swiss Family Robinson serves the author's psychological purposes both in To Damascus and in The Dream Play. In The Father Laura secretly abstracts the contents of her husband's letter-bag, and in To Damascus "The Lady" is guilty of the same offence. Both in Fairhaven and Foulstrand and in To Damascus the woman promises not to read a certain book by the man which deals with his first marriage. She breaks the promise, and the disastrous effect is related with emphasis in both books. In The Dance of Death the remorseless Captain calmly refers to his attempt to drown his wife by pushing her into the water; the incident is more fully worked out in Fairhaven and Foulstrand, and is the theme of a story in Fisher Folk. Such repetitions cannot be attributed to poverty of imagination; they are the outcome of a too retentive emotional memory and an insistent need of expression, immediate expression.
It is curious to note that in spite of the richness and purity of his Swedish, in which the living tongue of the people is heard as never heretofore, there is not infrequently an admixture of foreign words and expressions. That his early verse-play In Rome should contain rhymes on "jouissance" and "connaissance," coupled with Swedish words, and that some of his early poems were adorned in the same manner is not surprising. But when Göran Persson in Eric XIV lightly throws out a hybrid drawing-room phrase: "Tant mieux for my enemies!" a jarring note is introduced which is difficult to explain in a dialogue, otherwise so carefully balanced. The habit of using root-words from many languages, to which he gave Swedish shape, grew upon Strindberg in later years. In the plays his characters suddenly begin to spout Latin and Greek, like the philosophic beggar in To Damascus and the sergeant-major in Gustavus Adolphus. Such dramatic exercises in the classics may have had a good and sufficient reason. The use of words of foreign extraction was no doubt fostered by his familiarity with the literature of many countries, and by the limitations of each language. To this may be added his growing interest in philological research. A short time before his death he was keenly at work on the etymology of Finnish, Hebrew and Greek.
Uddgren's account of Strindberg's manner of working in 1907 shows that the fever had not left him. "When I have finished my work for the day," Strindberg said, "I always note on a piece of paper what I shall begin with the next day. The whole long afternoon and evening I collect material for next day's work. During my morning walk my thoughts are further condensed, and when I return from my wanderings I am charged like an electric machine. I put on a dry vest, for after my walk I am always very hot, and then I sit down at my writing-table. As soon as I have paper and pen ready it bursts out. The words literally tumble over me, and the pen works under high pressure in order to get everything down on paper. When I have written for a while I have a feeling that I am floating in space. Then it is as if a higher will than my own made the pen glide over the paper, guide it to write down words which seem to me entirely inspired."
The same ecstasy of writing is shown in Alone, where he says of his life at the writing-table: "I live, and I live the manifold lives of all the human beings I describe, happy with those who are happy, evil with the evil ones, good with the good; I creep out of my own personality, and speak out of the mouths of children, of women, of old men; I am king and beggar, I have worldly power, I am the tyrant and the most despised of all, the oppressed hater of the tyrant; I hold all opinions and profess all religions; I live in all times and have myself ceased to be. This is a state which brings indescribable happiness." These words remind us of Flaubert who felt "in the space of a minute a million thoughts, images and combinations of all kinds, throwing themselves into my brain at once as it were the lighted squibs of fire-works,"[9] and recall the plastic and yearning girl-soul of Marie Bashkirtseff who, when walking in Rome, exclaimed: "I want to be Cæsar, Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, Caracalla, the Devil, the Pope," and who adds: "I love to weep, I love to be in despair. I love to be grieved and sad ... and I love life in spite of everything."
Amiel, remembering a night when he lay stretched full length on the sandy shore of the North Sea, cries: "Will they ever return to me, those grandiose, immortal, cosmogonic dreams, in which one seems to carry the world in one's breast, to touch the stars, to possess the infinite?"[10] Amiel dreamt, Strindberg created; Amiel found literary exultation in dreamy contemplation of the universe, Strindberg in the spiral revolutions of humanity.
But sometimes the joy of literary creation gave way to profound self-disgust. "What an occupation," he writes in The Quarantine Master's Tales,[11] "to sit and flay one's fellow-humans, offer the skins for sale, and expect people to buy them. It is like the famished hunter who cuts off his dog's tail, eats the meat himself, and gives the bones to the dog, the dog's own bones. To go about spying out people's secrets, exposing the birthmark of one's best friend, using one's wife as a vivisection rabbit, storming like a Croat, cutting down, violating, burning and selling. The devil take it all."
Harriet Bosse, Strindberg's third wife as Biskra in Samum 1902.