Stirling

Author: August Strindberg
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: August Strindberg is the founder of modern Swedish literature and the most outstanding novelist and playwright in the history of Swedish literature. Although his era is more than a century apart from today, the Swedish Ambassador to China still described the significance of Strindberg's works for the present day as "surprisingly modern and contemporary." Due to his works often being censored, Strindberg also missed out on the Nobel Prize in Literature, yet the Swedish Royal Academy of Letters still endures public condemnation to this day. Eugene O'Neill, the 1936 Nobel Prize laureate, openly admitted: "It was Strindberg's works that first inspired me with the concept of modern drama." Strindberg was portrayed as a "" (strange person) and "" (madman) during his lifetime, but in later years, the Swedes regarded him as a (troublesome soul's friend). "If you are Swedish, Strindberg lives within you and occasionally irritates you. His extremity is actually a pursuit of the essence of life. Once you are infected by his 'virus,' he will follow you for life, tormenting you." Not only the Swedish Ambassador to China but also actors who performed Strindberg's plays in China shared similar feelings. Rainer Bonnafous, the lead actor in The Solitary Voice of Strindberg, described him as such a friend after spending two months reading Strindberg in a library: "He never lets you feel at ease, but he tells you the truth. I feel he has always been by my side." Strindberg's name is not entirely unfamiliar in China. It is reported that as early as the 1930s, his work Who Is the Father was translated into Chinese, and in the 1980s, the People's Literature Publishing House published his masterpiece The Red Room and related biographies. However, none of these previous works were translated from the original Swedish, and their publication was on a small scale. The collection of works launched by the People's Literature Publishing House this time is based on the original Swedish and translated from the Swedish National Edition of the Complete Works. The Swedish National Edition is the largest humanities project in Sweden to date, ongoing since 1980, with a plan to publish over seventy volumes, covering all of Strindberg's creative works and annotations. The Chinese translation of Strindberg's Collected Works includes 1.5 million words of novels, dramas, essays, and letters, with the selections made by Swedish Strindberg scholars participating in the National Edition. The Chinese edition also directly adopts the indexes and annotations of the Swedish National Edition. Since some of Strindberg's works contain religious backgrounds and historical events in Sweden, these annotations and indexes are undoubtedly essential for readers who are ( -) for the first time.