Notes on August Strindberg's A Dream Play (1901)

The Daughter, the Portress and the star-pattern bed-spread

[Image source: Theater pictures by Magda Molin. From a 1947 production at the Malmö Stadsteater, directed by Olof Molander. The Daughter was played by Inga Tidblad and the Portress by Jullan Kindahl. The Swedish Wikipedia entry on Ett drömspel says "Which side of Strindberg is emphasized is a question of the director's choice; while the modernist abstract side was emphasized by Max Reinhardt, Olof Molander placed greater emphasis on the realistic aspects in his sets of A Dream Play." Ingmar Bergman considered Molander his greatest inspiration as a theatre director. Molander's Strindberg productions were celebrated for their deep psychological power. The drama critic Herbert Grevenius wrote that Molander was famously dictatorial and unhappy, with a sadistic streak. During each production he would victimize one of the company.]

This post reads the Swedish text alongside Edwin Björkman's translation. None of the texts I've consulted organize the play into numbered acts or scenes; and that seems to be an important aspect of the dramaturgy, even though late in the play one of Strindberg's own SDs refers back to "the first scene of the first act" . Anyway these notes are in sequence and I'm sure you'll find your way if you know the play.

1.

Fonden föreställer molnkåpor liknande raserade skifferberg med slott och borgruiner

The background represents cloud banks that resemble corroding slate cliffs with ruins of castles and fortresses.

(Opening SD of the Prologue)

On 6 May 1901 Strindberg married for the third time, to the young actress Harriet Bosse. She walked out at the end of August after a quarrel, saying it was forever. Strindberg continued to write to her and she came back on October 5th. A Dream Play was written around this time. It was finished in November 1901, except for the scene with the coalheavers, added early in 1902. Later in 1902 the play was published.* 

But Strindberg made another addition in 1906, the verse Prologue. Bergman's TV version (see below) misses out the Prologue, except for a glimpse of this mysteriously powerful cloudscape. Then he jumps straight into the Daughter's conversation with the Glazier, like the 1902 text. 

A Dream Play was first performed in 1907, with Harriet Bosse playing the Daughter. She and Strindberg had been divorced since 1904 but they still retained some kind of relationship. 

fond = background. Useful vocabulary when reading stage directions!

raserade = rased, destroyed. 

skifferberg = shale or slate cliffs. 

slott and borg are more or less synonymous, the latter perhaps with more emphasis on the idea of a stronghold. 

2.

Modren: Den Schweiziske Robinson . . .

The Mother: Swiss Family Robinson . . .

The book that the Officer damaged as a boy (and for which his brother was punished). The word schweiziske (=Swiss) adopts German spelling (Schweiz / schweizerisch) but with a Swedish ending.  

3.

Det är synd om människorna!

Men are to be pitied.

(This is the Daughter's repeated comment, the play's leitmotiv. But it's not really a philosophical proposition. It's a much more homely expression in Swedish, unfortunately one for which English has no close equivalent. Poor mankind! or I'm so sorry for mankind! or It's so hard for mankind! (Or maybe humans or people ...) 

The word synd, outside this expression, means "sin" or "transgression". As here:

Dottern: Finns det icke angenäma plikter?

Advokaten: De bli angenäma när de äro uppfyllda . . .

Dottern: När de icke finnas mera . . . Plikt är således allt oangenämt! Vad är då det angenäma?

Advokaten: Det angenäma är synd.

Dottern: Synd?

Advokaten: Som skall straffas, ja! Har jag haft en angenäm dag och afton, så har jag helveteskval och ont samvete dagen efter.

The Daughter. Are there no pleasant duties?

The Lawyer. They become pleasant when they are done.

The Daughter. When they have ceased to exist—Duty is then something unpleasant. What is pleasant then?

The Lawyer. What is pleasant is sin.

The Daughter. Sin?

The Lawyer. Yes, something that has to be punished. If I have had a pleasant day or night, then I suffer infernal pangs and a bad conscience the next day.

4.

Fonden  dras upp; nu synes en ny fond föreställande en gammal ruskig brandmur. Mitt i muren är en grind som öppnar till en gång, vilken mynnar ut i en grön ljus plats, där en kolossal blå stormhatt (Aconitum) synes. Till vänster vid grinden sitter Portvakterskan med en schal över huvud och axlar virkande på ett stjärntäcke. Till höger är en affischtavla som affischören rengör; bredvid honom står en sänkhåv med grön skaft. Längre bort till höger är en dörr med lufthål i form av en fyrväppling. Till vänster om grinden stär en smal lind med kolsvart stam och några ljusgröna löv; därinvid en källarglugg.

The background is raised and a new one revealed, showing an old, dilapidated party-wall. In the centre of it is a gate closing a passageway. This opens upon a green, sunlit space, where is seen a tremendous blue monk's-hood (aconite). To the left of the gate sits THE PORTRESS. Her head and shoulders are covered by a shawl, and she is crocheting at a bed-spread with a star-like pattern. To the right of the gate is a billboard, which THE BILLPOSTER is cleaning. Beside him stands a dipnet with a green pole. Further to the right is a door that has an air-hole shaped like a four-leaved clover. To the left of the gate stands a small linden tree with coal-black trunk and a few pale-green leaves. Near it is a small air-hole leading into a cellar.

In A Dream Play the dream-like quality extends to the staging. There's a doubling and splitting of properties as well as characters. The portress' shawl and star-patterned bed-spread seem somehow to be one thing, at least symbolically. The billposter's net seems later to split in two; he tells the Daughter that he has a sänkhåv (=sink-net) and also a green sump (=a corf: immersed basket or box for keeping live fish or crayfish). 

Brandmur A fire wall (intended to stop fire spreading from one building to another). The significance, visually, is that it's a mainly blank wall without windows or door openings.  

There is a gatekeeper's lodge (portvakterskans rum), which is mentioned in a later SD, when this scene transforms into the Lawyer's office. The lodge must be where the Officer goes to use the telephone, and where the Daughter withdraws to talk with the Billposter. Did Strindberg forget to mention it here, or is it to be identified with the mysterious källarglugg that the play never refers to again?

Stormhatt (=storm hat) is the normal name for monkshood. In this case it's probably a dream-like enlarged version of the popular garden plant Aconitum napellus known in Sweden as Äkta Stormhatt (=True Storm Hat). This is "True" as contrasted with the native plant of Scandinavian fells, Nordisk Stormhatt (=Nordic Storm Hat, Aconitum lycoctonum)

Fyrväppling -- Yes, it means a lucky clover leaf with four leaflets. Though actually the normal Swedish word used in naming clover species is klöver. Väppling is used in the names of other leguminous species like melilot and kidney vetch. 

5.

Dottern: (böjer huvud mot bröstet) Icke de korta tonfallen, Axel!

The Daughter: (with bent head) Beware of the short accents, Axel!

That doesn't sound like English to me. A better translation would be "Not the sharp tone ..." or "Not the harsh tone ...". 

6.

Fagervik / Skamsund

Fairhaven / Foulstrand

The Daughter and the Officer think they are going to Fairhaven, but arrive at Foulstrand instead -- the place of quarantine. (The scene shifts to Fairhaven later.)

The form of the two Swedish placenames is highly credible. (In fact there really are a couple of Fagerviks in Sweden).  Vik means a bay or inlet or cove. Sund means any sort of strait (same as the English word "sound", but less restricted in its application). In this case it evidently refers to the strait that separates the two locations). So, literally, the names mean "Fair Cove" and "Shame Sound". 

The pair of places also appear in Strindberg's collection of stories Fagervik och Skamsund (1902). Strindberg based them on two locations in the northern Stockholm archipelago:  Furusund [=Fagervik] was a fashionable seaside resort at the time, its buildings and roads given fancy Italian names like Monte Bello and Venezia. It had restaurants, theatres, bathing and sports equipment.

Just across the strait, Köpmanholm on Yxlan [=Skamsund] was far less developed and less scenic, its hillsides clear-felled and scorched as the play describes. Archipelago pilots and teetotallers lived quietly here. 

Strindberg first came to Furusund in summer 1899, and later hired the summer villa Isola Bella with Harriet Bosse. This exclusive villa had once been the quarantine hospital!  By now the quarantine station had moved -- though not to Köpmanholm, but further north, to the island of Fejan (it was used for travellers from Russia or Finland during cholera outbreaks). 

The Furusund resort attracted many foreign visitors from Russia and Germany. With the First World War it fell into rapid decline. During the Second World War Furusund was once again used as a quarantine station, this time for refugees. 

7.

Inhabitants of Skamsund...

Karantänmästaren: Här bo de sjuka, däröver bo de friska!

Officern: Här äro väl bara fattiga då?

Karantänmästaren: Nej, mitt barn, här äro de rika! Se på den där på sträckbänken! Han har ätit för mycket gåslever med tryffel och druckit så mycket Bourgogne att fötterna gått i masur!

Officern: Masur?

Karantänmästaren: Han har fått masurfötter! . . . Och den där som ligger på guillotin; han har druckit Henessy så att ryggraden måste manglas ut!

Master of Quarantine: Here you find the sick; over there, the healthy.

The Officer: Nothing but poor folk on this side, I suppose.

Master of Quarantine: No, my boy, it is here you find the rich. Look at that one on the rack. He has stuffed himself with paté de foie gras and truffles and Burgundy until his feet have grown knotted.

The Officer: Knotted?

Master of Quarantine: Yes, he has a case of knotted feet. And that one who lies under the guillotine—he has swilled brandy so that his backbone has to be put through the mangle.

masur = an unusual growth form of birch (apparently genetic), also known as Karelian birch or curly birch, valued by woodcarvers for its mottled grain (somewhat resembling burl wood). SAOB doesn't record its use in a figurative sense, so it isn't surprising the Officer is rather confused. "Knotted" is perhaps a good translation. 

Pen-knife from my childhood, with masur birch handle

Henessy i.e. Jas Hennessy & Co, producers of >40% of the world's cognac, founded by the Irish Jacobite officer Richard Hennessy in 1765. 

8.

The Poet's fondness for mud. 

Karantänmästaren: Nej, han håller sig alltid i de högsta rymderna,så att han får en hemlängtan efter gyttjan . . . det gör huden hård som på svinen, att välta sig i dyn. Sedan känner han icke bromsarnes stygn!

Master of Quarantine: No, he is roaming about the higher regions so much that he gets homesick for the mud—and wallowing in the mire makes the skin callous like that of a pig. Then he cannot feel the stings of the wasps.

dy another word for mud, ooze, sludge (gyttja), especially in swamps and morasses. 

broms is actually a horse-fly, a stinging insect well-known to all Swedish lake-bathers. Horse-flies frequent sunny spots and are attracted to wet skin. 

stygn is a variant form of styng or sting. (It also means a stitch made with a needle.) 

9. 

In Fingal's cave. In Swedish the song of the waves is a sound incantation. The English translation doesn't really hint at this. 

Dottern: Tyst! Vågorna sjunga.

(Reciterar vid svag musik.)

Det är vi, vi, vågorna,

som vagga vindarne

till vila!

Gröna vaggor, vi vågor.

Våta äro vi, och salta;

likna eldens lågor;

våta lågor äro vi.

Släckande, brännande,

tvättande, badande,

alstrande, avlande.

Vi, vi, vågorna,

som vagga vindarne

till vila!

The Daughter: Hush! Now the waves are singing.

(Recites to subdued music.)

We, we waves,

That are rocking the winds

To rest—

Green cradles, we waves!

Wet are we, and salty;

Leap like flames of fire—

Wet flames are we:

Burning, extinguishing;

Cleansing, replenishing;

Bearing, engendering.

We, we waves,

That are rocking the winds

To rest!

10. The scene with the four Deans/Dekaner.

Dekanus För Juridiska Fakultaten: Hör, hon väcker själv tvivel om vår auktoritet hos de unga, och så anklagar hon oss att väcka tvivel. Är det inte en brottslig handling, frågar jag alla rätt-tänkande?

Alla Rätt-tänkande: Jo, det är brottsligt.

Dekanus För Juridiska Fakultaten: Alla rätt-tänkande människor ha dömt dig! --  Gå i frid med din vinning! Eljes . . .

Dottern: Min vinning? -- Eljes? Eljes vad?

Dean of the Faculty of Jurisprudence: Listen to her—she herself is making the young question our authority, and then she charges us with sowing doubt. Is it not a criminal act, I ask all the right-minded?

All the Right-Minded: Yes, it is criminal.

Dean of the Faculty of Jurisprudence: All the right-minded have condemned you. Leave in peace with your lucre, or else——

The Daughter: My lucre? Or else? What else?

Vinning . It does mean "winning" or "profit" or "gain", but it tends to be used pejoratively, implying greed. Björkman's "lucre" captures that pejorative overtone.

Eljes = else, otherwise. More commonly annars or i annat fall.

Lordkanslern: Vill dottern vara god och säga oss vad hon menat med denna dörröppning?

Dottern: Nej, go vänner! Om jag sade't, skullen I icke tro't.

Dekanus För Medicinska Fakulteten: Där är ju intet. 

Dottern: Du sade't. -- Men du förstod det intet.

Dekanus För Medicinska Fakulteten: Det är bosch vad hon säger.

Alla: Bosch!

\Lord Chancellor: Will the Daughter please tell us what she meant by having this door opened?

The Daughter: No, friends. If I did, you would not believe me.

Dean of the Faculty of Medicine: Why, then, there is nothing there.

The Daughter: You have said it—but you have not understood.

Dean of the Faculty of Medicine: It is bosh, what she says!

All: Bosh!

I = old-style/high-style pronoun meaning "you" (plural or addressed to a superior). More or less equivalent to ni in modern Swedish. Curiously, just like the English pronoun "I", it's always capitalized. 

intet . Edwin Björkman's testimony is to be respected. He was a native Swede, born in 1866. His translation of the Daughter's response ("but you have not understood") interprets intet in the Daughter's response as meaning "not" (i.e. icke, inte). This is indeed a variant form recorded in the SAOB as found between 1521 and 1889. It would therefore have been unusual if not archaic in 1901. 

However Edward S. Franchuk  (Symbolism in the works of August Strindberg, p. 1111) rejects this translation, arguing that intet can only mean "nothing" (i.e. inget), as in the Dean's previous speech. He translates the Daughter's remark as "But you have understood the nothing". I.e. the physical universe is indeed nothing, but the key point is that you have understood this. 

If we go with Björkman for the primary sense, then the unusual word choice clearly signals that the Daughter is making a pun, referring to the Dean's use of intet. But I don't think that the secondary sense could then be as Franchuk interprets it, since the two meanings would then be in stark contradiction ("you have not understood" and "you have understood"). Instead, the secondary sense might convey something like "But you have understood it to be nothing (though it isn't really)". 

So that's the choice, as I see it. 1. As per Björkman, but with an underlying secondary sense; or 2. as per Franchuk, and unambiguous. 

bosch = bosh, contemptible nonsense. Derived from Turkish; James Justinian Morier used it frequently in his novel Ayesha, The Maid of Kars (1834), and it became a fashionable word across Europe. 

Ingmar Bergman's 1963 TV version of Ett drömspel / A Dream Play, with English subtitles. I've read that he wasn't very happy with it, but I found it spellbinding. It's quite a faithful rendering; a far closer realization of the staging described by Strindberg than you're ever likely to witness in the theatre. 

*

* Here's the original text of Ett drömspel, as printed in 1902 (PDF):

https://litteraturbanken.se/txt/lb999200037/lb999200037.pdf

It uses the spelling of Strindberg's time. The quotations in this post come from a text that uses the modern system of Swedish spelling  (first proposed in 1906, and adopted for official publications in 1912, the year of Strindberg's death).