Soul Murder
Strindberg: Not everyone’s cup of cyanide
Sunday. 2/6/2022. 2:58 pm Riot Café. Louisville, Kentucky.
Reading August Strindberg — Miss Julie and Other Plays. Notes to follow.
The Red Room, A satirical novel written by Strindberg in 1879. It is not a far cry to go from Red Room to Redrum to Murder. Just saying.
“Strindberg’s naturalism is not a slice of life, but rather the intense, immediate drama associated with what he called, ‘the battle of the brains.’ This is fought, not with theatrical swords or daggers, but with the equally lethal mental cut and thrust of two implacably hostile minds, bound to each other by desire and hatred. It is a battle in which one of them ultimately destroys the other’s will and commits ‘soul murder.’”
One is immediately put in mind of Edward Albee’s, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Indeed, Robinson makes the very same observation writing about, The Dance of Death, a play written by August Strindberg in 1900, as a depiction of a marital inferno. He cites the numerous critics who regard it as the forerunner to Eugene O’Neill’s, Long Day’s Journey into Night and Edward Albee’s, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?
More to come…
