| Summary: | Strindberg, Happiness, and Nothingness. A Comment on The Son of a Servant and Miss Julie
For many years, critics have agreed on the fact that Strindberg’s writing has its roots in experience. In the field of biographical research, this has been utilized as a premise for knowledge regarding the empirical author. This article seeks to find a new understanding of the poet in the poetry. It claims that Strindberg’s literary oeuvre not only tells stories about objects; it also expresses a creative consciousness. Through a systemized interpretation, it focuses on how Strindberg’s experience is fundamental to the process of articulating the world, and how this is expressed directly or indirectly in his style of writing. The article makes use of a method of thematic criticism, which is influenced by the phenomenological philosophy of mind and modern hermeneutics.
In Strindberg’s world of experience, essential happiness is a major structuring theme, towards which his linguistic gestures are intended. The goal of happiness arises from a fear of nothingness, which is discernible in his autobiography The Son of a Servant (1886–1909). Here, Strindberg expresses a fundamental experience of not being considered valuable, of being rejected as weak, sensitive and dreamy. From this experience, a scientifically oriented project of life develops, manifested on the text’s surface in the image of the ideal author’s. Beneath the surface, however, Strindberg tries to overcome nothingness. The naturalistic drama Miss Julie (1888) illustrates how Strindberg conjures up negative self-experiences in the female character, and a personal monument for the male, rational character. However, at the end of the drama, Strindberg switches to an expressionistic style, through which his female character regains honour and harmony. This indicates Strindberg’s doubt in reason as a means of illuminating meaning.
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