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continued in the autobiography Tjänstekvinnans son, is detectable
in the narrator’s distant, neutral, and at times even sceptical attitude
towards the popular subject matter in his stories. The social and
cultural differences, caught with subtlety, are seen with no hope or
desire for reform. Even in Skärkarlsliv different worlds meet and, to a
certain extent, mingle. In ‘Den romantiske klockaren på Rånö’ (SV XXVI:
17-70) the protagonist’s life connects the mainland (the small town of
Trosa), the capital town of Stockholm, a bigger island (Rånö) and the
outer skerries, where the hidden and traumatic past of the protagonist
is also concealed (Johannesson 1968: 109-120). Wilderness is no
more a positive marker as such; the archipelago can appear on the
contrary – in ‘Den romantiske klockaren på Rånö’ (SV XXVI: 59-68) as
well as in ‘En brottsling’ (A Criminal) (SV XXVI: 89-103) – as a miserable
social milieu where poverty fosters crime. Another interesting meeting
point between the urban and the rural sphere is described in ‘Min
sommarpräst’ (My Summer Priest) (SV XXVI: 71-78), where the narrator
and protagonist is a cultivated atheist from the city, who enjoys the
company of his friend the rural (and also cultivated) priest, with whom
he can quarrel and escape the crowd of other summer holiday makers.
The archipelago becomes again a peaceful oasis in Blomstermålningar
och djurstycken
67
(Flower Paintings and Animal Pieces) from 1888, a
fascinating and nostalgic autobiographical book, where Strindberg
represents himself as a lover of nature, a hiker, a gardener, a fisher and
a hunter. The bliss of a quiet, white summer night in the archipelago
is evoked, with its almost sacred feeling of proximity to the elements
of the universe: the sky, the moon, the sun and the sea (SV XXIX: 194-
195). The archetype of Eden is even actualized in the description of
Strindberg’s garden on Kymmendö (SV XXIX: 219-225), where the writer
is finally conscious that he will never see that island again, since both
Hemsöborna and Skärkarlsliv have made him unwelcome (SV XXIX:
224). Even here, the preparations for the gardening and the purchase
of seeds take place in Stockholm, the urban point of departure (SV
XXIX: 219-220).
In 1890 Strindberg’s second archipelago novel I havsbandet
68
is
characterized by the sharpest dissociation from his earlier democratic
radicalism. It is however also based on the description of Baltic herring
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fishing in the Middle Ages, given some years before in the cultural
history Svenska Folket, as we have seen. The author’s standpoint
has now changed from popular and democratic to Nietzschean and
aristocratic. Such a change is also detectable in the spatial relations: in
and out, i.e. mainland and open sea, civilized town life and wilderness
on the islands, acquire opposite connotations, and account for the
author’s new world model. The opposition is no longer constriction
versus freedom, rotten society versus authenticity, but rather reason
and rules versus dumbness and lawlessness. The fishery inspector
Borg tries to teach updated fishing methods, but in vain, because the
fishers prove to be pariahs, who live a basic and almost animal life.
Skärkarlsliv introduced the motif of the skerries by the open sea as
a secluded place, where concealed crimes are committed, away from
legal social life; this motif is developed in I havsbandet. The tragic
thing about Borg is, however, that he neither belongs to the urban
and lawful society on the mainland or to the more disordered and
less constricted social life by the open sea. Rather, the small island
where he is living becomes a place of banishment and a prison for
him, and he literally does not know which direction to take, either in or
out.
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Contact with mankind becomes detestable, only nature is sacred
and desirable.
70
The image of Borg’s pathological isolation reaches its
peak in chapter nine, when he enjoys sitting alone on an outer rock
surrounded by a thick fog (SV XXXI: 120-136).
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After that, only the
voluntary journey towards darkness remains. The remarkable beauty
of Strindberg’s Nietzschean, decadent and tragic novel consists also in
the fact that the natural elements are described with such delicacy. As
the narrator says at the beginning of the novel, this landscape leads
Borg back to the origins (SV XXXI: 34).
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This declaration of love is
expressed through Borg’s new aesthetics. His culture is urban; he is a
refined aesthete and a scientist at the same time.
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The combination
allows him to perceive the variety and beauty in the only apparently
simple nature of the islands and skerries by the open sea.
In a certain sense, the coastal area near Stockholm and the bigger
islands were conquered by the urban sphere as early as in the
seventeenth century, when the powerful Swedish nobility became the
owner of large estates and built manor houses and castles, especially
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in the southern archipelago (Hedenstierna 2000b: 9-10, 31). The
young Strindberg’s second encounter with the archipelago dates back
to 1867, when he worked as a private tutor for children belonging to
a noble family, and stayed with them at their estate to the south of
Dalarö (SV XX: 144-157). A similar setting, the Sandemar Castle near
Dalarö, is used in ‘En häxa’ (A Witch), a short story that takes place
in the seventeenth century. The protagonist Tekla, a social climber
from the lower class in Stockholm, happens to experience some days
of paradise at Sandemar, when she is invited by Ebba, a noblewoman
and friend of hers (SV XIV: 133-149). The boat trip from Stockholm
to Sandemar, described from Tekla’s perspective, accounts for the
captivating change of place, from the constricted urban room to the
natural paradise outside of it.
Between 1889 and 1891, when he is back in Sweden after his long
stay abroad, Strindberg spends some periods in the archipelago,
among other things to write I havsbandet. He wants to come back to
his landscape, but also hide himself. He is divorcing from Siri von Essen
and the children, and in his letters from Sandhamn and Runmarö, in
the spring of 1889, he evokes the summer paradise in a desperate
attempt to draw them there, reunite the family, and restore what has
irreparably fallen to pieces.
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Strindberg’s archipelago mythology
is developed even further in these vivid descriptions. In the short
story ‘Silverträsket’ (SV XXIX: 273-294) (The Silver Pond) published
first in 1898 but connected to the personal events of 1889-90
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,
the protagonist’s psyche undergoes a process of dissolution in the
aftermath of the traumatic separation from his family, especially from
the children. The setting is an island in the archipelago, with its both
enchanting and disquieting nature. What could be a summer paradise
has turned to a sense of irremediable loss, and the protagonist’s
growing isolation from the human community reminds one of Borg in
I havsbandet (Lagercrantz 1986: 270-272).
While the process of divorce is going on, during winter 1890-91, both
Strindberg and his wife live on Värmdö, a bigger, inner island, but they
do not live together. The writer’s mood is gloomy, and the archipelago
appears now as the stage of a bourgeois drama; August and Siri, well-
known people in the capital, hide from the public eye to perform their
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