Reply to Professor Sprinchorn1

I wonder if one reason for Professor Sprinchorn's objections to my paper might be that many critics and opponents have attempted to denigrate Strindberg's work by labeling him a madman and degenerate, to say nothing of bringing him to public trial on charges of blasphemy. Surely this is not my intent. I stand in awe and admiration of his genius and prodigious works. Nor, is it my intent to fit him into a preconceived mold. I believe that Professor Sprinchorn would agree that one of Strindberg's outstanding characteristics was that he could not fit or be fitted to any one mold. He was an enormously complex and divided man.

Strindberg, the anarchist, could speak of bombing the king, but he also spoke admiringly of Napoleon and Bismarck because they would bring order and unity. The realist was also a romantic, the atheist a providentialist, the scientist an occultist, the defiant rebel a humble penitent, and the inconoclast an inconophile. His hatred of society was in conflict with a hunger for social approval. While in exile, whether self-imposed or not, he often yearned