August Strindberg

“ TEKLA. Sit down a moment. You don't offend me, for you possess that rare gift—which was always yours—of tact and politeness.
GUSTAV. It's very kind of you. But one could hardly expect—that your husband might regard my qualities in the same generous light as you.
TEKLA. On the contrary, he has just been speaking of you in very sympathetic terms.
GUSTAV. Oh!—Well, everything becomes covered up by time, like names cut in a tree—and not even dislike can maintain itself permanently in our minds.
TEKLA. He has never disliked you, for he has never seen you. ”

“ TEKLA. [Smiling] No, I have never read Bret Something.
ADOLPH. As a pale creature that cannot blush.
TEKLA. Not at all? But when she meets her lover, then she must blush, I am sure, although her husband or Mr. Bret may not be allowed to see it.
ADOLPH. Are you so sure of that?
TEKLA. [As before] Of course, as the husband is not capable of bringing the blood up to her head, he cannot hope to behold the charming spectacle.
ADOLPH. [Enraged] Tekla!
TEKLA. Oh, you little ninny!
ADOLPH. Tekla!
TEKLA. He should call her Pussy—then I might get up a pretty little blush for his sake. ”

“ It is a trait—I don't call it a fault—just a trait, which is rendered disadvantageous by its results. Poor Tekla! I don't know—but it seems almost as if I were feeling a certain regret, although I am as free from any guilt—as you! But perhaps it will be useful to you to feel what I felt that time.—Do you know where your husband is?
TEKLA. I think I know now—he is in that room in there! And he has heard everything! And seen everything! And the man who sees his own wraith dies! ”

“ TEKLA. That's a lot! And if it be true, then I must have taken it. Are you beginning to send in bills for your gifts now? And if I have taken anything, this proves only my love for you. A woman cannot receive anything except from her lover.
ADOLPH. Her lover, yes! There you spoke the truth! I have been your lover, but never your husband.
TEKLA. Well, isn't that much more agreeable—to escape playing chaperon? But if you are not satisfied with your position, I'll send you packing, for I don't want a husband. ”

“ TEKLA. Are you having an attack of bad conscience?
ADOLPH. I am.
TEKLA. You feel like a thief, do you?
ADOLPH. Almost!
TEKLA. Isn't that lovely! Women can be stolen as you steal children or chickens? And you regard me as his chattel or personal property. I am very much obliged to you!
ADOLPH. No, I regard you as his wife. And that's a good deal more than property—for there can be no substitute. TEKLA. Oh, yes! ”

“ You are a dangerous woman, Tekla!
TEKLA. Am I? And my young husband says that I can make no more conquests.
GUSTAV. That means he has ceased to love you.
TEKLA. Well, I can't quite make out what love means to him.
GUSTAV. You have been playing hide and seek so long that at last you cannot find each other at all. Such things do happen. You have had to play the innocent to yourself, until he has lost his courage. There ARE some drawbacks to a change, I tell you—there are drawbacks to it, indeed. ”

“ TEKLA. There we are again! Who has put it into his head that he is not to paint any longer?
ADOLPH. Who? You are always looking for somebody else behind me and my thoughts. Are you jealous?
TEKLA. Yes, I am. I'm afraid somebody might take him away from me.
ADOLPH. Are you really afraid of that? You who know that no other woman can take your place, and that I cannot live without you!
TEKLA. Well, I am not afraid of the women—it's your friends that fill your head with all sorts of notions. ”

“ GUSTAV. Do you think a person can ever forget anything that has made a very deep impression on him?
TEKLA. No! And our memories have a tremendous power. Particularly the memories of our youth.
GUSTAV. Do you remember when I first met you? Then you were a pretty little girl: a slate on which parents and governesses had made a few scrawls that I had to wipe out. And then I filled it with inscriptions that suited my own mind, until you believed the slate could hold nothing more. That's the reason, you know, why I shouldn't care to be in your husband's place—well, that's his business! ”

“ An emotion that would move another man to murder would precipitate Strindberg into merciless analysis of his own or somebody else's mental and moral make-up. At any rate, I do not proclaim his way of presenting truth as the best one of all available. But I suspect that this decidedly strange way of Strindberg's—resulting in such repulsively superior beings as Gustav, or in such grievously inferior ones as Adolph—may come nearer the temper and needs of the future than do the ways of much more plausible writers. This does not need to imply that the future will imitate Strindberg. ”

“ 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. ”

“ TEKLA. Well, what do I care? Can't I kiss my own husband, perhaps? Oh yes, that's my lawful right.
ADOLPH. Yes, but don't you know—in the hotel here, they don't believe we are married, because we are kissing each other such a lot. And it makes no difference that we quarrel now and then, for lovers are said to do that also.
TEKLA. Well, but what's the use of quarrelling? Why can't he always be as nice as he is now? Tell me now? Can't he try? Doesn't he want us to be happy? ”

“ There are discords in this life which can never be reduced to harmony. For this reason you had better put wax in your ears and go to work. If you work, and grow old, and pile masses of new impressions on the hatches, then the corpse will stay quiet in the hold.
ADOLPH. Pardon me for interrupting you, but—it is wonderful how you resemble Tekla now and then while you are talking. You have a way of blinking one eye as if you were taking aim with a gun, and your eyes have the same influence on me as hers have at times. ”

“ This is exactly what Strindberg seems to have done time and again, both in his middle and final periods, in his novels as well as in his plays. In all of us a Tekla, an Adolph, a Gustav—or a Jean and a Miss Julia—lie more or less dormant. And if we search our souls unsparingly, I fear the result can only be an admission that—had the needed set of circumstances been provided—we might have come unpleasantly close to one of those Strindbergian creatures which we are now inclined to reject as unhuman. ”

“ Here we have the secret of what I believe to be the great Swedish dramatist's strongest hold on our interest. How could it otherwise happen that so many critics, of such widely differing temperaments, have recorded identical feelings as springing from a study of his work: on one side an active resentment, a keen unwillingness to be interested; on the other, an attraction that would not be denied in spite of resolute resistance to it! For Strindberg DOES hold us, even when we regret his power of doing so. ”

“ And when they became aware of his invisible interference with their happiness; when they took flight at last—a vain flight from the memories that pursued them, from the liability they had left behind, from the public opinion they could not face—and when they found themselves without the strength needed to carry their own guilt, then they had to send out into the fields for a scapegoat to be sacrificed. They were free-thinkers, but they did not have the courage to step forward and speak openly to him the words: "We love each other!" ”

“ Stupid you were when you thought yourself cleverer than me, and when you thought that I could be lured into becoming a thief. Stupid you were when you thought balance could be restored by giving the world two thieves instead of one. But most stupid of all you were when you thought I had failed to provide a safe corner-stone for my happiness. Go ahead and write my wife as many anonymous letters as you please about her husband having killed a man—she knew that long before we were married!—Have you had enough now? ”

“ TEKLA. Why don't you keep calm then?
ADOLPH. No, you upset me constantly by your coquetry. Why do you play that kind of game?
TEKLA. It is no game. I want to be admired—that's all!
ADOLPH. Yes, but only by men!
TEKLA. Of course! For a woman is never admired by other women. ”

“ TEKLA. Nothing at all! Christians say that our actions are governed by Providence; others call it Fate; in either case, are we not free from all liability?
GUSTAV. In a measure, yes; but there is always a narrow margin left unprotected, and there the liability applies in spite of all. And sooner or later the creditors make their appearance. Guiltless, but accountable! Guiltless in regard to one who is no more; accountable to oneself and one's fellow beings. ”

“ For you are weak, and you can never carry your own burdens of guilt and debt. And so you picked me for a scapegoat and doomed me to slaughter. But when you cut my thews, you didn't realise that you were also crippling yourself, for by this time our years of common life had made twins of us. You were a shoot sprung from my stem, and you wanted to cut yourself loose before the shoot had put out roots of its own, and that's why you couldn't grow by yourself. ”

“ TEKLA. Of what?
ADOLPH. Of the knife!
TEKLA. [Prattling] Little brother had better not play with such dangerous things.
ADOLPH. I have quit playing.
TEKLA. Oh, it's earnest, is it? Dead earnest! Then I'll show you that—you are mistaken. That is to say—you'll never see it, never know it, but all the rest of the world will know It. And you'll suspect it, you'll believe it, and you'll never have another moment's peace. You'll have the feeling of being ridiculous, of being deceived, but you'll never get any proof of it. For that's what married men never get. ”

“ GUSTAV. I admit you were in a miserable condition when I first met you, and you had to use your crutches when you walked, but this is not to say that my presence has been the cause of your recovery. You needed a rest, and you had a craving for masculine company.
ADOLPH. Oh, that's true enough, like everything you say. Once I used to have men for friends, but I thought them superfluous after I married, and I felt quite satisfied with the one I had chosen. ”

“ ADOLPH. Oh, she would be to me what God was before I became an atheist: an object that might help me to exercise my sense of veneration.
GUSTAV. Bury your sense of veneration and let something else grow on top of it. A little wholesome scorn, for instance.
ADOLPH. I cannot live without having something to respect—-
GUSTAV. Slave! ”

“ 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 ”

“ TEKLA. I have always liked youth. That's why I love you. Do you object?
ADOLPH. No, but I should prefer to have no partners.
TEKLA. [Prattling roguishly] My heart is so big, little brother, that there is room in it for many more than him.
ADOLPH. But little brother doesn't want any more brothers.
TEKLA. Come here to Pussy now and get his hair pulled because he is jealous—no, envious is the right word for it!
(Two knocks with a chair are heard from the adjoining room, where GUSTAV is.)
ADOLPH. No, I don't want to play now. I want to talk seriously. ”

“ ADOLPH. What mishap?
GUSTAV. However, the first husband was a tyrant, and she took him only to get her freedom. You see, a girl cannot have freedom except by providing herself with a chaperon—or what we call a husband. ”

“ TEKLA. But you blush. I think little brother is not telling the truth. Come and tell Pussy now what he has on his conscience.
(Draws him toward herself so that he sinks down with his head resting in her lap.)
ADOLPH. You're a little devil—do you know that?
TEKLA. No, I don't know anything at all about myself.
ADOLPH. You never think about yourself, do you?
TEKLA. [Sniffing and taking notes] I think of nothing but myself—I am a dreadful egoist. But what has made you turn so philosophical all at once? ”