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modernity.
39
The archipelago appears within a historical frame – the first part of
the sixteenth century – also in the short story ‘En ovälkommen’ (An
Unwelcome Man), published in the series Svenska öden och äventyr
(Swedish Destinies and Adventures) in 1882.
40
In the story of Kristian,
who loathes social rules and prefers a wild life fishing and hunting
in the outer skerries by the open sea, we find, conveyed by spatial
relations, an opposition of world models that is typical of Strindberg’s
anarchistic tendencies during the early Eighties, whereby society
corresponds to lies and falsehood (Edqvist 1961: 198-201).
The archipelago plays a relevant part in the section ‘Högsommar‘
(High Summer) of Dikter på vers och prosa (Poems in Verse and Prose),
Strindberg’s first collection of poetry from 1883.
41
The prose and verse
poem ‘Solrök’ (Heat Haze) (SV XV: 77-86) is interesting also from the
stylistic point of view, as the protagonist’s story is conveyed by an
interior monologue in the third person, a form of ‘Erlebte Rede’. He
and his family are initially on a steamboat, together with a crowd of
Stockholmers going from town to the islands on a summer day (SV
XV: 77-78). These people are excited and expecting a regeneration
in nature; the protagonist observes them with detachment, but he is
after all a part of that same collective movement from the civilized to
the natural space. In the last section of the poem (SV XV: 83-86), a trip
to a virgin island is described. The protagonist is now alone; he needs
loneliness and wants to reach as far as possible from the crowd. The
unmasking of his dream of regeneration occurs when he sees human
traces on the island (Kylhammar 1985: 43-45). A feldspar cave was
there; now it has been abandoned, leaving devastation behind. It is
common to find veins of feldspar, a more recent kind of rock, in the
primary bedrock. Feldspar became important in the eighteenth and
nineteenth century for the industrial production of pottery, and even
the archipelago was exploited for the purpose (Hedenstierna 2000a:
17-18). In ‘Solrök’, where the author’s perspective is inspired by
Rousseau, the protagonist draws the conclusion that he cannot escape
civilization, as human traces, even one’s own, are everywhere, and
unspoiled nature is an illusion. What finally saves him from pessimism
is the view of his wife in a white summer dress with their child in a pram
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under the oak trees. In spite of the latent tensions behind the apparent
harmony, expressed in the poem ‘Lördagskväll’ (Saturday Evening)
(SV XV: 96), summer family life on the island appears as a form of
paradise in Dikter. In another poem, ‘Morgon’ (Morning) (SV XV: 97-
98), Strindberg depicts what Roland Barthes has defined the modern
myth of the writer on vacation in a natural environment, which helps
him to find concentration and produce more (Barthes 1957: 29-32).
The poem shows how the protagonist, a loving father and husband,
but above all a writer, has an intellectual social function that inevitably
links him to urban activities, projects and habits, although he is in the
silent wilderness.
42
Strindberg’s skrivarstuga on Kymmendö, the hut
where he wrote in front of the sea, is a symbol of this myth.
Strindberg would never see Kymmendö again after summer 1883,
but for some years he hoped that he might go there again. The
nostalgic feeling makes the archipelago appear suddenly, as a vision,
while the writer is living abroad. It happens in the sequence ‘Fjärde
Natten’ (The Fourth Night) of the long poem Sömngångarnätter på
vakna dagar (Sleepwalking Nights in Broad Daylight) from 1884, when
the constricted and falsified nature in Bois de Boulogne, embodied by
a small spruce fir that the protagonist sees there, arouses memories
of Swedish summer and its Nordic nature (SV XV: 206-207).
43
This
contemporary presence of real and imagined space determines the
structure of Sömngångarnätter (thus shortened), with its interaction
between Paris and Stockholm, civilization and nature.
44
The final vision
of ‘Fjärde Natten’, again inspired by Rousseau, consists of a new ice
age, by which civilization – with its excesses, privileges, establishments
and rules – is swept away, and after which a mythical rebirth takes
place (Ciaravolo 2012b: 181-182). The images of glaciation and post-
glacial natural rebirth create associations to the archipelago (SV XV:
219-220).
A similar nostalgic vision is described in the series of articles Från
det vaknande Italien. Sommarbrev i mars
45
(From the Awakening
Italy. Summer Letters in March), when the writer is watching the
Mediterranean sea near Genova at sunrise in March 1884 (SV XVIII:
81-82). The tendency of this reportage is to observe Italy from the
point of view of a fault finder, in order to question its romantic myth
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(Ciaravolo 2012c); and even when things are beautiful, as in front
of the Mediterranean sea, the subjective reporter finds something
lacking, for example some islands and skerries scattered in the gulf,
to fill its emptiness: ‘[…] not islands with oranges, laurel trees and
marble palaces, but small rough gneiss hillocks with thorny spruce firs
and red cottages’.
46
Strindberg’s identification with a landscape can
even be expressed in such peripheral annotations.
In Western culture the classical and Christian traditions join, through
the Middle Ages and up to the Renaissance, in search of an earthly
paradise, and the conjectures about the existence of paradisiac islands
were frequent.
47
These traditions, describing a state of harmony among
human beings and in the whole creation, acquired a political meaning
in the Renaissance, when the myths of Atlantis and of the Fortunate
Isles were welded into new utopian visions of society. Thomas More’s,
Tommaso Campanella’s and Francis Bacon’s utopias all take place on
islands.
48
Even Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s state of nature is, according to
Delumeau, part of this cultural heritage (Delumeau 1992: 297).
49
Some traces can also be found in Strindberg’s utopian essays in
Likt och Olikt
50
(A Bit of Everything) from 1884. In ‘Om det Allmänna
Missnöjet, dess Orsaker och Botemedel’ (SV XVII: 9-83) (On the
General Discontent, Its Causes and Cures) the proposed solution of
the social issue can be summarized in a return to self-sufficient rural
villages, simpler living conditions and less demand for comforts and
consumption (Ciaravolo 2012c: 275-279). These ideas are based, as
the author reports, on his concrete experience of the rural and pastoral
Kymmendö, where the population typically combines agriculture,
fishing and hunting (SV XVII: 69
51
). In the same essay Strindberg
condemns the polluting steamboats (SV XVII: 66), i.e. the means of
transportation which actually allow his moving back-and-forth between
Stockholm and the islands. Here the writer seems to be more consistent
with his utopia than with his life experience.
Strindberg’s depiction of marital conflicts finds one of its settings
in the archipelago. In Dikter the family is for the poet, as we have
seen, an anchor against pessimism. The short story ‘Ett dockhem’
52
(A Doll’s House) in the collection Giftas I (Getting Married I) – a story
and a collection that in many respect will determine a turning point
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