Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the text
- Introduction
- from Vivisections (1887)
- ‘On Modern Drama and Modern Theatre’ (1889)
- from Vivisections II (1894)
- ‘I’
- ‘The Making of an Aspasia’
- ‘Nemesis Divina (Cont.)’
- ‘The New Arts! or The Role of Chance in Artistic Creation’
- ‘Whence We Have Come’
- ‘Character a Role?’
- ‘Césarine’ (1894)
- ‘Deranged Sensations’ (1894)
- ‘In the Cemetery’ (1896)
- from Jardin des Plantes (1896)
- ‘On the Action of Light in Photography’ (1896)
- ‘A Glance into Space’ (1896)
- ‘Edvard Munch's Exhibition’ (1896)
- ‘The Synthesis of Gold’ (1896)
- ‘Contemporary Gold-Making’ (1896)
- ‘The Sunflower’ (1896)
- ‘The Mysticism of World History’ (1903)
- ‘August Strindberg on Himself’ (1909)
- Notes and commentary
- Index
‘I’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the text
- Introduction
- from Vivisections (1887)
- ‘On Modern Drama and Modern Theatre’ (1889)
- from Vivisections II (1894)
- ‘I’
- ‘The Making of an Aspasia’
- ‘Nemesis Divina (Cont.)’
- ‘The New Arts! or The Role of Chance in Artistic Creation’
- ‘Whence We Have Come’
- ‘Character a Role?’
- ‘Césarine’ (1894)
- ‘Deranged Sensations’ (1894)
- ‘In the Cemetery’ (1896)
- from Jardin des Plantes (1896)
- ‘On the Action of Light in Photography’ (1896)
- ‘A Glance into Space’ (1896)
- ‘Edvard Munch's Exhibition’ (1896)
- ‘The Synthesis of Gold’ (1896)
- ‘Contemporary Gold-Making’ (1896)
- ‘The Sunflower’ (1896)
- ‘The Mysticism of World History’ (1903)
- ‘August Strindberg on Himself’ (1909)
- Notes and commentary
- Index
Summary
While out walking alone have you never sat down on a bench and with the stick in your hand begun to draw geometrical figures in the sand of the park path, the boulevard or the square? After a while you look at your unconscious work and see yourself enclosed in an infinity of concentric circles in which you yourself are the midpoint. It is the self's instinct for expansion, the tendency to make oneself the earth's axis, the desire to enclose a patch of earth, to trace a horizon about oneself that guides your stick, the radius of the circle which each and every one of us carries with him and cannot leave.
Each of us sees his rainbow, and my neighbour, two or three paces to the left or right of me, is no longer on the same longitude as I am.
Why then this ceaseless and merciless fight against people and things? The need to be right, the lust for power, the desire to carry other people's minds along in the movement of molecules.
My friends have long accused me of being subjective. I have given some thought to what they have in mind and now see what the word means. Quite simply, they want me to think what they think, to assume their point of view, to adopt their opinions.
To say that I detest their antiquated ideas is tantamount to saying that we are enemies, and they prefer to remain my false friends. Consequently, I continue to write from my point of view, to say what I have seen, to think in accordance with what life has taught me.
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- Chapter
- Information
- August Strindberg: Selected Essays , pp. 89 - 91Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996