Strindberg across Borders, edited by Massimo Ciaravolo

A world-famous playwright, but also a writer of genius in all literary genres, and, in addition, a man with an interest in painting, photography, languages, history, politics, natural sciences, religion and occultism, August Strindberg (1849-1912) sometimes reminds us of the universal Renaissance genius, though endowed with the anxious spirit of an artist in the age of modernity and advanced capitalism. Strindberg practised border crossing as a transgression against norms and a questioning of authorities; his position as a layman was perhaps uncomfortable but also a guarantee for the freedom and mobility he needed for artistic creativity and experimentation. Strindberg’s border crossing was, furthermore, a clearly developed transnational and multilingual agenda. Finally, his border crossing dealt with the historical condition of moving back and forth over the threshold between good old times and modernity. He was conscious of the contradictions involved, and torn between a constant avant-garde attitude, eager to connect with the most advanced artistic trends in Europe and conquer new grounds, and a nostalgic look backward, which explains, for example, his perception of a loss of natural space as well as his nostalgia for a lost patriarchal order. Thanks to this unruly fire and inexhaustible linguistic vitality, Strindberg became a seminal forerunner of modernism and twentieth-century art. Today his innovative work is more alive and challenging than ever. This volume gathers twenty-one contributions, written either in English or Swedish, by scholars from Sweden, Italy, Lithuania, France, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Russia, and the United States. The collected essays testify to the manifold aspects of border crossing in August Strindberg’s work, and the wide range of approaches to this aspect: world literature and the construction of Strindberg’s authorship (Vera Gancheva, Ann-Charlotte Gavel Adams); translation studies (Elisabeth Tegelberg, Alexander Künzli and Gunnel Engwall); interaction with discourses focused on gender, politics and science (Tobias Dahlkvist, Massimo Ciaravolo, Cecilia Carlander); Strindberg’s anti-materialistic and anti-positivistic binary oppositions between outward and inward, lower and upper reality (Annie Bourguignon, Deimantė Dementavičiūtė-Stankuvienė, Polina Lisovskaya, Astrid Regnell); forms of intertextuality in Strindberg’s work, or deriving from it (Maria Cristina Lombardi, Andreas Wahlberg, Roland Lysell, Martin Hellström); theatre studies and stage productions (Franco Perrelli, Gytis Padegimas, Elvyra Markevičiūtė, Richard Bark); visual interpretations of Strindberg’s work such as sketches for a stage production and comics (Astrid von Rosen, David Gedin).