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August Strindberg The Dance of Death

Category : Modern Drama: Ibsen to Jean Genet
Published by Brian on 2007/12/29

THE DANCE OF DEATH

In THE DANCE OF DEATH, Strindberg is in a fighting mood. The play is a masterpiece of
paranoid naturalism, an extended sick joke and it is hard to say how seriously Strindberg takes his
characters and their battles It is a bizarre boxing match where all the rules are being cheerfully
broken and which is slugged out until one of the maimed combatants drops exhausted. This
happens, in Part Two. The Scandinavian sense of humor may be an acquired taste but to me it is
most satisfactory at least in Ibsen and Strindberg. It is a grim humor that comes from a very deep
sense of the ultimate absurdity of things, of the meaninglessness of what most people think is
important or true. Samuel Beckett shares this same sense of the absurd the comedy at the other
side of anguish.. The best account of THE DANCE OF DEATH I know is Alfred Turco's in THEATER
THREE SPRING 1988.
Many will see how the play seems a blueprint for Albee's Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. But
Strindberg's play is tougher. Actually, the mood and the action are closer to that of Beckett's
Endgame. The relation of EDGAR and ALICE resembles that of Hamm and Clov: - of human
relation reduced to a loveless symbiosis: of resentful dependence. The play is a superb vehicle for
the three main characters, EDGAR, ALICE and KURT, for they have to go through sudden and
startling changes of mood. My favorite is Act Two Sc, 2. when ALICE is about to deliver the coup de
grace to EDGAR: 161 - 162).
This is the point when the play quite shamelessly is going to modulate from macabre tragedy to
sardonic comedy, as the pair agree to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary, and to simply stare
down their astonished and satiric neighbours. (165) And the play, especially Part One, continually
brings off such startling transitions, all within seconds. Strindberg's strength is in his dramatic
psychology: putting his characters through the most surprising turns of mood and making them
totally convincing. THE DANCE OF DEATH is, I think, one of the most outrageous comedies ever
written, stretching the resources of the actors to their utmost.
The play manages to forestall the temptation of audiences simply to laugh at the overwrought
situations: for the play is able to laugh at itself even as it goes all out for perverse passion. One of
the most striking effects is the Captain's repeated strokes, collapsing into catatonic stillness, and
recovering again and again to resume the combat with his wife and KURT. It gives a profound
unpredictability to the whole action, keeping the audience on edge.
Strindberg arrives at this tension by dissovling any sense of controlling structure, so that the play
seems unpredictably to veer in any direction. As audience, we just cant be sure where the play is
taking us. A typical scene is that of EDGAR trying to kill ALICE with his sabre and only managing to
strike the furniture (162) Even more than in MISS JULIE, Strindberg devised a fluid, naturalistic
method - very different from the highly structured realism of IBSEN - into which the grotesque can
naturally erupt.

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Even the stage directions manage to be grim and tongue-in-cheek at the same time. The idea
Strindberg is conveying is of people living in the condition of damnation, driven by their passions and
inflicting torture on each other. The 'tower' in which EDGAR and ALICE live is a fortress that once
was a prison. We see, all the time, through the glass doors, a sentry marching back and forward, his
saber glittering in the sun, This is a visual pun: the sentry is an 'angel' guarding the guilty
pair,extending the image of a prison or dungeon guarded by a sentry, so that EDGAR and Alive are
metaphorically amd metaphysically 'trapped' inside. This idea comes from the Swedish
theologian-philosopher SWEDENBORG, who describes the souls hellish imprisonment on earth. in
just such terms as ALICE and EDGAR's condition.
Yet, against this grim image, and others, the actions and dialogue suggest a liveliness, a grim
gaiety even, a sense of sardonic humor, that seems to combat the idea of damnation. Al Turco
suggests that in this play, the militant philosopher NIETZSCHE is dominant over the mystic
SWEDENBORG though the two philosophers are, as it were, fighting it out for control of the play as
the CAPTAIN (Nietzsche) and KURT (Swedenborg).
. Whereas SWEDENBORG would proclaim the Christian virtues of resignation before evil, evinced
by KURT, NIETZSCHE would proclaim the pagan virtues of joy of life, beyond good and evil, where
energy is almost its own justification. And EDGAR, in his military uniform, seems to sum up this
pagan militancy. This clash of two utterly incompatible ways of viewing life, - of two philosophies - ,
might be one reason for the extraordinary switches of mood of the married couple. The
SWEDENBORGIAN element supplied by KURT and his capacity to forgive - is stretched to incredible
limits in Part Two. In the later play, The Ghost Sonata, KURT's resignation is better represented by
the Student (Saint Strindberg) whereas EDGAR is more simply represented by Hummel.
The play has some stunning scene effects, as the Captain, EDGAR, staggers from stroke to
stroke, falling to the ground and rising again. The wind suddenly blowing a door shut, signalling a
storm and then, later, (p. 138-9) a door blows open revealing an enigmatic "shabby and
disagreeable" old woman, a bit like the Rat-virgin of Little Eyolf. For the audience the sight of this old
woman would be uncanny, and the Captain seems at first to associate it with something like an
image of Death: but very quickly the old woman becomes sarcastically realistic nothing more than a
disagreeable old woman - and is tersely identified by ALICE, entering with pillows and a blanket - the
props neatly deflating the sinister image: This seems a joke against or with the audience: raising
the convention of the supernatural only to utterly deflate it. This jusxtposition of the uncanny and the
banal is typical of Strindberg's procedure in this play alone. Whereas Ibsen would integrate such a
startling image into his overall meaning, linking it to other themes and images in the play, as in
LITTLE EYOLF, Strindberg just walks away from it and it is never referred to again
The famous expressionist painter, Edvard Munch admired Ibsen and illustrated his plays, but he was
more closely acquainted with Strindberg, who was of his own generation. Munch's paintings and
engravings of tortured couples, of vampire women draining the blood of their lover-victims, would
make almost too -good illustrations of many Strindberg's plays.
The Scene effects of THE DANCE OF DEATH are not scenographically extensive and 'symbolic" as
with Ibsen, but they suggest states of mind, - how the environment is pressing upon the psyches of
the characters: as with the Captain's fright at the sight of the old woman.
In his late plays, such as The Ghost Sonata and especially The Dream Play and To Damascus,
Strindberg almost wants the scenery to tell the story. In THE DANCE OF DEATH, however, the
characters are too vital to be overwhelmed by the scenery: Indeed they seem to control, to have
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shaped, the scene: they refuse to become symbols and instead, they dominate the play from the
beginning. It is a curious fact that this play stands out from the 'mystical' and rather preciously
symbolic religiosity of the other plays of this late period of his writing. (1900)
EDGAR, the monster-hero, in Part One, is matched in resourceful wickedness by the witch-like
ALICE: in Part Two his evil grows immensely beyond her's or or anyone's control except that of his
daughter, Judith. Yet, EDGARS 'evil' is also seen as a heroic and even noble response to the
pusillanimity and untrustworthiness of the world around him. What is more, his antagonism keeps
ALICE "up to the mark" forcing her to be almost as resourceful as he. Turco has suggested that
EDGAR is, in fact, a Savior and even martyr, by forcing virtue to go beyond passivity and to find the
strength to fight back: EDGAR's evil forces virtue to be successfully militant, as with ALICE and her
daughter JUDITH.
In the grimly hilarious opening of the play we see EDGAR and ALICE condemn their whole
surrounding society as "rabble" and then lose the last two in a long line of disgruntled servants,
Jenny and Kristin. They already have pronounced judgment on KURT for, as they think, going to the
Doctor's party instead of visiting them: Unfortunately for poor KURT, they are wrong, and, like an
unwilling and ineffectual marriage-counselor, he gets to spend the harrowing night with EDGAR and
ALICE, hungry, and without getting his dinner. He arrives just as the second servant, Kristin, leaves.
It is incidents like these that make the 'mood' of the play so hard to establish but also so intriguing.
The situation is simultaneously funny and appalling all throughthe play. It is an effect Edwrd Albee
also sought in Virginia Woolf.
THE DANCE OF DEATH expands on Strindberg's earlier play, The Father. The revisiting of these
old themes, and their expansion, allows Strindberg now to present his subject within more adequate
perspectives, including that of grim but funny humour which is missing from the earlier
nightmare-play. In fact, Strindberg revolved round the same themes, the same obsessions, from the
beginning to the end of his career, never managing to get out of this paranoid vision, but playing
striking variations on it. In this play, the dramatist pushes his method, realism, beyond its limits,
pushing it towards the grotesque. From the the CATPAIN and ALICES perspective of the
outrageously grotesque, the ordinary realist level of life can be looked at with some kind of sardonic
contempt.
Strindberg's cavalier way with his 'realism'
The play shows complete disregard for plausibility or consistency of action. The shifts of the fictional
situation change according to the needs of the 'plot-moment'
In Part One of THE DANCE OF DEATH , EDGAR and ALICE are isolated, hated by everyone and
hating everyone. The Doctor won't come to tend EDGAR when he has his first stroke. The servants
desert them. It is insisted on that they are powerless, and that EDGAR can only keep his captainship
because the military feels some pity for his family. They are so broke they cannot afford food
(though how they then have srvants or how they even survve, is not explained. And there seems
no shortage of whiskey)
In Part One, Act Two, EDGAR suddenly becomes powerful and can use his influence to get
KURTs son in his power and to divorce ALICE. And in PART TWO and with no explanation,
EDGAR, recovered, is all powerful. He seems to control everyone, has powerful friends, has taken
total control of KURT, has taken over his house, his job, his son, Allan and is even going to run for
Parliament instead of KURT. Somehow, he has become hugely popular as well as powerful.
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Strindberg does not bother to explain how this astonishing transformation of circumstances came
about. In any playwriting class he would be told to account for these glaring inconsistencies and to
rewrite. Strindberg has a Shakespearean cavalier disregard of his wild implausibilities. This
naturalistic play is no more logical than the sequences in the surreal The Ghost Sonata.
The texture is naturalistic: the story is surreal.
That is, the plot, at times, wants to emphasize EDGAR and ALICE's utter isolation and
'imprisonment' within their fortress 'Little Hell': they know no-one; even their servants never stay
more than a week; they have made only enemies. At other times, however, Strindberg wants to
show EDGAR as controlling almost unlimited influence and power - enough to defeat ALICE's
counter-plans,. to totally take control over KURT's life, even running his Quarantine job, running his
son's life, furthering his ambitions for parliament, even his scientific publications, and so on.
EDGAR, we are told, has embezzled, and this puts him in ALICE's power: yet there is no
evidence of this embezzlement, and the matter is simply dropped when the plot finds it convenient.
In this play, facts are merely what they are said to be at the moment. The next moment they can be
supplanted merely with contradictory facts.
The same is true of the versions of the past that we hear, where we are told, without any plausible
explanation, how EDGAR has wrecked KURT's marriage, gained power over his wife, and separated
KURT from his children. This cavalier way with the facts gives Strindbergs method a great freedom,
where anything goes. But you have to be a Strindberg to get away with it.
In EDGAR and ALICE we have the male-female duel he dramatized in The Father - but this time it is
the military male who is triumphant and cruel, not the wife. Each of these combatants is given
certain weapons-of-the-moment to wield, wonderfully. At times, ALICE seems triumphant, only to
have EDGAR pull some wonderful coup, to defeat her. It is towards the end of Act I. after we have
been introduced to what has been described as unmitigated hell and suffering, that we are also told,
for a moment, that perhaps the grotesque sexual duel is nothing more than a joke between the two:
p. 165:
Part 1. of the play then concludes with EDGAR and ALICE deciding to defy their neighbours by
celebrating their silver wedding. And what they think is worth celebrating is, I think, the battle itself
which they feel has lifted them above the level of the surrounding 'rabble' of decent, contented
bourgeois families. They've been good fighters, like two good boxers, and so the Nietzschean
military aspect of EDGAR is something he has communicated to ALICE and Judith, but fails to
communicate to the SWEDENBORGian KURT, who simply has no weapons to fight back with. (See
EDGAR's comment p. 162)
The introduction of KURT to the play brings in another, equally important duel: that between the
wolves and the sheep of this world. This, again, is a familiar Strindbergian theme: Strindberg as wolf,
merciless to his enemies until, when attacked, he metamorphosizes into Saint Strindberg, the sheep,
suffering the world's wicked ways. (This made Strindberg an infuriating enemy!)
EDGAR is the wolf and KURT the sheep. EDGAR'S onslaughts on KURT's life reduce KURT to
helpless martyrdom whose few efforts at self-defence, aided by ALICE, are easily defeated. As
Turco suggested, in some ways EDGAR is a grotesque redeemer, himself taking on the evil of the
world, becoming evil, in order to force his opponents, including the younger generation, to fight back
and defend their virtues. Just as purity must grow out of filth so virtue must emerge from its trial with
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evil.
And indeed, purity-filth, good-evil are not alternative concepts but totally dependent on each other.
The concept 'good' makes no sense, cannot exist, where there is no concept 'evil'. The same goes
for all the other conventional opposites of virtues and vices.
THE DANCE OF DEATH seems to accept this necessary, and healthy, dialectical co-existence and
therefore is able to allow EDGAR's evil actions to reach almost sublime heights, for they draw
sublime responses from his victims: not virtuous responses, but defiant, life-affirming ones. This
makes much of the play a huge black joke: funnier than the 'games' of Who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?.
EDGAR and ALICE manage to be monstrous while remaining only human and eccentric. They lift
domestic meanness into a form of high combat art.
The younger generation of PART II is shown in innocent contrast to their elders' guilt. This
Shakespearean contrast of guilty elders and innocent youth (as in THE WINTERS TALE teeters on
the sentimental. It is saved (for dramatic art) by EDGAR when he forces Judith to defend herself
and her lover, Allan by drawing upon some of her father's steely nature. EDGAR, that is, forces the
innocent to give up passivity for the moment and fight back.
But this drama of the younger generation, which is to represent the flowers that can grow from filth
seems to stem from another world altogether: one not convincingly linked to what preceded.
IN PART II EDGARs capacity for evil grows superhumanly monstrous, and Allan and Judith are like
very sane young people who have stepped into the lunatic asylum of their elders. All the genius of
Strindberg is in the duel between the grim older couple and their tormenting of KURT, not in the
sweet budding of youthful love.

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