August Strindberg
Overview
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, and politics. A bold experimenter
Experimental theatre
Experimental theatre is a general term for various movements in Western theatre that began in the late 19th century as a retraction against the dominant vent governing the writing and production of dramatical menstrophy, and age in particular. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream...

 and iconoclast throughout, he explored a wide range of drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

tic methods and purposes, from naturalistic
Naturalism (theatre)
Naturalism is a movement in European drama and theatre that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It refers to theatre that attempts to create a perfect illusion of reality through a range of dramatic and theatrical strategies: detailed, three-dimensional settings Naturalism is a...

 tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

, monodrama
Monodrama
A monodrama is a theatrical or operatic piece played by a single actor or singer, usually portraying one character.- Monodrama in opera :...

, and history plays, to his anticipations of expressionist and surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 dramatic techniques.
Quotations

People who keep dogs are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.

In that first prolific period of painting,my painting had a theraputic function.(Strindberg was also a talented amateur painter)

When is revolution legal? When it succeeds!

I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people.

What is economics? A science invented by the upper class in order to acquire the fruits of the labor of the underclass.

When they say Christ descended into Hell, they mean that he descended to earth, this penitentiary, this madhouse and morgue of a world.

Woman, being small and foolish and therefore evil, should be suppressed like barbarians and thieves. She is useful only as an ovary and womb, best of all as a cunt.

By aiming for the impossible, you reach the highest level of the possible. (Or: To reach for the outmost possibility, you've got to aim for the impossible)

See you in my next book, you bastard! (From a letter to a journalist who had criticized his work)

 
x
OK