Paris as a Site of Confinement in August Strindberg’s Inferno
Abstract
August Strindberg’s Inferno, pivotal work in the author’s production, narrates the mental and existential crisis of its protagonist, A. S., supposedly the author’s alter ego. Most of the narrative is set in Paris, in the streets and cafés of the city, in hotel rooms, a hospital dormitory, and the laboratories of the Sorbonne. In the experience of the protagonist, these spaces are perceived as oppressive and ultimately punitive, authentic places of confinement.
In this contribution, I contend that Paris in its entirety (not only the abovementioned spaces) turns out to be a fragmented and multiform reality that, at the same time, is experienced as chaotic and suffocating. In his depiction of Paris at the end of the 19th century, Strindberg, drawing on Baudelaire’s poems, observes and describes the city as a nightmarish place.
Strindberg’s Paris, therefore, functions as a surreal scenario for the individual crisis of the protagonist. Moreover, the city turns out to be a mythical space, charged with a strong symbolic significance. Finally, as the prototype of the modern metropolis, it is the ideal target of Strindberg’s polemic against any optimistic idea of progress.
Downloads
References
Abolgassemi, Maxime, “Reconsidering the Place of Strindberg in Surrealism: André Breton and the Light of the Objective Chance Encounter”, The International Strindberg. New Critical Essays, Ed. Anna Westerståhl Stenport, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 2012: 71-87.
Ahlström, Stellan, Strindbergs erövring av Paris: Strindberg och Frankrike 1884-1895, Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell, 1956.
Althusser, Louis, Ideologie et appareils ideologiques d’Etat (1970), trad. it. “Ideologia ed apparati ideologici di stato”, Freud e Lacan, Ed. e tr. Claudia Mancina, Roma, Editori Riuniti, 1981: 65-123.
Baudelaire, Charles, Les fleurs du mal (1857), Paris, Cercle Grolier, 1921.
Benjamin, Walter, Schriften, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1955, trad. it. Angelus novus. Saggi e frammenti, Torino, Einaudi, 1961.
Id., Charles Baudelaire. Un poeta lirico nell’età del capitalismo avanzato, Eds. Giorgio Agamben - Barbara Chitussi - Clemens-Carl Härle, Vicenza, Neri Pozza Editore, 2012.
Brandell, Gunnar, Strindbergs Infernokris, Stockholm, Bonnier, 1950.
Briens, Sylvain, Paris. Laboratoire de la littérature scandinave moderne 1880-1905, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2010.
Burnham, Donald Lee, “Restitutional Functions of Symbol and Myth in Strindberg’s Inferno”, Psychiatry. Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes, 36.3 (1973): 229-243.
Casanova, Pascale, La République mondiale des lettres, Paris, Seuil, 1999.
Ciaravolo, Massimo, “Parigi ‘capitale del XIX secolo’ nella visione strindberghiana”, Nord ed Europa. Identità scandinava e rapporti culturali con il continente nel corso dei secoli, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi (Genova, 25-27 settembre 2003), Eds. Gianna Chiesa Isnardi - Paolo Marelli, Genova, Tilgher, 2003.
Id., “A Nineteenth-Century Long Poem Meets Modernity: Sleepwalking Nights”, The International Strindberg. New Critical Essays, Ed. Anna Westerståhl Stenport, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 2012a: 67-193.
Id., “Between Vision and Doubt: Re-assessing the Radicalism of Strindberg’s Italian Travel Writing and Likt och olikt (1884)”, Scandinavian Studies, 84.3, (2012b): 273-298.
Codignola, Luciano, “La scrittura di Inferno”, Inferno: Inferno, Leggende, Giacobbe lotta, August Strindberg, Ed. e trad. it. Luciano Codignola, Milano, Adelphi, 2012 (1972).
Falgas-Ravry, Cecilia A., “The Riddle of Inferno: Strindberg, Madness, and the Problem of Interpretation”, The Modern Language Review, 106.4 (2011): 988-1000.
Ferrari, Fulvio, “Esoterismo d’Occidente, mitologie d’Oriente: sincretismo religioso nel teatro strindberghiano dopo la ‘crisi d’Inferno’”, A.I.O.N. Sezione germanica, 22.1-2 (2012): 21-35.
Fournel, Victor, Les Rues de vieux Paris (1873), Paris, Firmin - Didot, 1879.
Gavel Adams, Ann-Charlotte, “Inferno: Intended Readers and Genre”, Strindberg and Genre, Ed. Michael Robinson, Norwich, Norvik Press, 1991: 220-228.
Ead., ”Strindberg som Ockultismens Zola”, Strindbergiana 8 (1993): 123-138.
Ead., “Strindberg and Paris 1894-1898. Barbarian, Initiate, and Self”, August Strindberg and the Other: New Critical Approaches, Eds. Poul Houe - Sven Hakon Rossel - Göran Stockenström, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2002: 91-100.
Ead., “The Surreal Paris of August Strindberg’s Jacob lute”, Scandinavian Studies, 84.3 (2012): 347-358.
Hedén, Erik, Strindberg. En ledtråd vid studiet av hans verk, Stockholm, Nutiden, 1921.
Ishikawa, Kiyoko, Paris dans quatre textes narratifs du surréalisme: Aragon, Breton, Desnos, Soupault, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1998.
Jasper, Karl, Strindberg und van Gogh. Versuch einer pathographischen Analyse unter vergleichender Heranziehung von Swedenborg und Hölderlin, Bern, E. Bircher, 1922.
Lagercrantz, Olof, August Strindberg (1979), trad. ingl. Anselm Hollo, New York, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1984.
Lamm, Martin, August Strindberg, Stockholm, Bonniers, 1948.
Lombardi, Maria Cristina, “August Strindberg e Stoccolma”, Urbanistica 87 (1987): 95-97.
Melberg, Arne, ”Strindberg i underjorden”, Läsa långsamt. Essäer om litteratur och läsning, Ed. Arne Melberg, Stockholm - Stehag, Symposion, 1999: 85-107.
Mercier, Sebastien, Le Tableau de Paris (1782-88), Ed. Jean-Claude Bonnet, Paris, Mercure de France, 1995, 2 voll.
Olsson, Ulf, ”Den andra rösten: Strindbergs galenskap och litteraturhistoriens”, Strindbergiana 13 (1998): 139-159.
Pizza, Antonio, “La Parigi ‘moderna’ di Charles Baudelaire e Walter Benjamin”, Archiletture. Forma e narrazione tra architettura e letteratura, Eds. Andrea Borsari - Matteo Cassani Simonetti - Giulio Iacoli, Milano-Udine, Mimesis, 2019.
Rahmer, Sigismund, August Strindberg: Eine Pathologische Studie, München, Reinhard, 1907.
Robinson, Michael, Strindberg and Autobiography, London, Ubiquity Press, 2013 (1986).
Sica, Paolo, Storia dell’urbanistica. L‘Ottocento - I, Roma - Bari, Laterza, 1981.
Sjöblad, Christina, Baudelaires väg till Sverige: Presentation, mottagande och litterära miljöer 1855-1917, Lund, LiberLäromedel, 1975.
Stenport, Anna Westerstahl. “Imagining a New Stockholm. Strindberg’s Gamla Stockholm and the Construction of Metropolitan Space”, Scandinavian Studies, 74.4 (2002): 483-504.
Ead., Locating August Strindberg’s Prose. Modernism, Transnationalism, and Setting, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2017.
Stockenström, Göran, “August Strindberg: A Modernist in Spite of Himself”, Comparative Drama, 26.2 (1992): 95-123.
Id., ”Strindberg and Swedenborg”, Emanuel Swedenborg a Continuing Vision, Eds. Robin Larsen et. al., New York, Swedenborg Foundation, 1988: 137-158.
Storskog, Camilla, “Myth as an Interpretive Paradigm of Reality: Strindberg’s and Göranson’s Inferno“, A.I.O.N. Sezione germanica, 22.1-2 (2012): 147-172.
Stounbjerg, Per, “A Modernist Hell: on August Strindberg’s Inferno”, Scandinavica, 39 (1999): 35-39.
Strindberg, August, August Strindbergs brev. 11. Maj 1895-november 1896, Eds. Strindbergssällskapet - Torsten Eklund, Stockholm, Bonniers, 1969.
Id., Röda rummet (1879), Samlade Verk 6, Ed. Carl Reinhold Smedmark, Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell, 1981.
Id., Tjänstekvinnans son I-II (1886), Samlade Verk 20, Ed. Hans Lindström, Stockholm, Norstedts, 1989.
Id., Inferno [fransk text] (1897), Samlade Verk 37, Ed. Ann-Charlotte Gavel Adams, Stockholm, Norstedts, 1994.
Id., Dikter på vers och prosa. Sömngångarnätter på vakna dagar och strödda tidiga dikter (1883-1884), Samlade Verk 15, Ed. James Spens, Stockholm, Norstedts, 1995.
Id., Gamla Stockholm. Anteckningar ur tryckta och otryckta källor (1882), Samlade Verk 8, Ed. Hans Söderström, Stockholm, Norstedts, 2006.
Id., Inferno: Inferno, Leggende, Giacobbe lotta, Ed. e trad. it. Luciano Codignola, Milano, Adelphi, 2012a (1972).
Id., Ockulta dagboken (1) (1886-1908), Samlade Verk 59:1, Ed. Karin Petherick - Göran Stockenström, Stockholm, Norstedts, 2012b.
Swedenborg, Emanuel, De caelo et ejus mirabilibus et de inferno ex auditis et visis (1758), New York, American Swedenborg printing and publishing society, 1890.
Uppvall, Axel Johan, “Strindberg in the Light of Psychoanalysis”, Scandinavian Studies, 21.3 (1949): 133-150.
Williams-Hogan, Jane, “Swedenborgianism in Scandinavia”, Western Esotericism in Scandinavia, Eds. Henrik Bogdan - Olav Hammer, Leiden/Boston, 2006: 534-553.
Copyright (c) 2021 Angela Iuliano
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Copyright Notice
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to adapt the work. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
