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THE AMERICAN-SC AN DIN A VI AN REVIEW 
be used as a motto for all his works, for they show both his strength 
and his limitations. Mine is not the keenest intellect! It must be ad¬ 
mitted that he lacked judgment and discrimination. He was never 
able to put his finger on the flaw in a demonstration, but accepted it 
blindly with implicit faith, only to throw it all overboard the next mo¬ 
ment as obsolete and worthless. 
Although he lacks the ability to develop his ideas logically, never¬ 
theless Strindberg’s judgment of society taken as a whole goes deeper 
and is more accurate than that of any other Swedish writer of the past 
century. For he saw essentials intuitively and with remarkable clear¬ 
ness of vision. According to his own statement there was a demon 
that whispered in his ear. He often showed originality in his judg¬ 
ment of a period or of various personages, even if his account was 
biased and lacking in detail. 
The sources of Strindberg’s characters have been the subject of 
much discussion. But it can scarcely be said that Strindberg was con¬ 
tent with a mere photographic reproduction of a character; he looked 
inside the outer shell until he discovered the qualities which he con¬ 
sidered the most important. Moreover he had the gift—rare even 
among great writers—of being able to choose a number of traits from 
various persons, blend them and produce a new character. It is due 
to his wonderful imaginative power that Strindberg never degenerates 
into a scandalmonger, even when his satire is most spiteful and per¬ 
sonal. 
However, both as a satirist and mysticist, Strindberg looked upon 
life with jaundiced eyes. He sees all that is ugly and evil; he reveals 
all that is hollow and vain in the life of man. His world is like Dante’s 
Inferno f teeming with descriptions of all the mistakes, vices, and crimes 
of humanity. But his contempt for the human race is even deeper, and 
is perhaps equaled only by Swift’s frightfully bitter satire in Gulliver s 
Travels. 
In the long gallery hung with Strindberg creations there is 
scarcely a man or woman who is thoroughly likeable. It is characteristic 
of the author that whenever, as in some of his later dramas, he attempts 
to strike a milder note or be less cutting in the expression of his views, 
he becomes insipid and sentimental. His innate love of beauty finds 
expression only in the masterly landscapes which he uses as settings 
for even his gloomiest portrayals of humanity. 
Strindberg’s misanthropic views are, of course, a consequence of 
the times in which he lived and in which his development took place. 
It was a period of readjustment which made the contrast between the 
ideal and reality stand out more sharply. The state of restless ferment 
and diffusion in Strindberg’s case and his dissatisfaction with the exist¬ 
ing order of things are but an expression of the mental attitude of the 
whole period. 
