boffo's Full Review: Egil Tornqvist - Strindberg's Ghost Sonata
Strindberg is perhaps after children's book writer Astrid Lindgren Sweden's most internationally famous writer. Internationally he perhaps best known for his plays that are still played around the world, but he was also an accomplished writer and poet. He started out in the 1880:s as a naturalist writer who's writing was full of social commentary. Later on he would embrace the new modernist moments and wrote several plays and novels that leaned towards expressionism and symbolism.
One of these dramas is Ghost Sonata from 1907. It's original swedish title is Spöksonaten. In this drama Strindbergs social consciense is still present but is brought forward in an entirely different manner.
The main character of the drama is a young student by the name of Arkenholtz. He is invited into what he believes is a harmonic and well-to-do family. Slowly he learns of all lies, madness and disease present in the home. As the drama continues pretty much everything Arkenholtz thinks he knows turns out to be a lie even things he thought he knew about himself.
The social commentary is present in the fact that the family Strindberg picks apart is part of the swedish upper-middle class, a group of people that Stridberg, who was born a workers home, saw as particulary full of lies. This social perspective puts it apart from more typical expressionist dramas that are usually impossible to place in time or place usually going for a more generic situation.
However the expressionism is still present in the way the characters are presented. Some of the characters verge on the grotesque such as the wife of the family who lives in a closet a spends half the play thinking she's a parrot.
The way that this drama is written sometimes makes the dialogue hard to follow particulary in the first act where a lot of things are talked about that ísn't explained to the audience until later on.
I think that this drama might be disturbing to some but it is masterfully written an is interesting to see as well as read. Reading is actually how I came into contact with it since I study literature and Strindberg is a very important figure in swedish literature. I would recommend seeing or reading this drama if you're into modernist literature or if you wan't to boost your knowledge on swedish literature. However it might not be the best of dramas to go see if you're looking for something light and entertaining.
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