Word: strindbergism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Unfortunately for Mr. Lucas and Mr. Gordon, this is an easy way out. As long as we can comfort ourselves in the belief that we are witnessing another person in a state of psychological undress, we can maintain exactly the kind of detachment which is the real Evil for Strindberg...
...trying to foist off on us. Rather they involve the immediate, second-to-second perceptions and judgments by which we decide within ourselves about the character of our fellow human beings. The nature of the Good and Evil on which these judgments are based (either by us or by Strindberg) is no more Nietzschean than it is Christian or humanitarian or Talmudie...
...this is within the play. The added conception by Strindberg which makes his play a brilliant contribution to the literature of morality is the dramatic relationship between the play per se and the audience. The play is not "lopsided, shambling and confused" if we enter into it with the same lack of knowledge that the Student demonstrates in the first scene. Like us, he wavers between condemnation of Hummel for the heinous sins done to his father and sympathy for the Old Man because of the telling presence of his mortality, the moments when decay and ruin reduce Hummel...
...slipping so easily into convenient beliefs about Good triumphing over Evil (Mummy defeats Hummel) or explanations like the mechanical one of the third scene with relation to the Cook, a critic reveals something more about his own modes of perception than he does about Strindberg's intentions, "fantasies and obsessions." In this sense, he both misses the truth of the play, and, by this very fault, proves its validity. We so much the more belong to Strindberg's configuration by every insufficient and damaging appraisal we make of the appearances before us. Thomas J. Babe, Jr. '63, Director, "Ghost Sonata...
...discount these weaknesses. Chris and Bitte Rawson's new translation gives a solid idiomatic script that never sounds awkward. Stephen Tucker has designed a brilliant, extremely compact set: the costumes and music are admirable. Babe has directed a Ghost Sonata that is a capable and striking rendition of Strindberg's fantasies and obsessions...