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The Ghost Sonata | Introduction

The Ghost Sonata is one of August Strindberg's ‘‘Chamber Plays,’’ a series of short, simple dramas he wrote for his 161-seat Intimate Theatre, which opened its doors in Stockholm, Sweden in 1907. The plays were inspired by the chamber music of composers like Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven. Strindberg created The Ghost Sonata with Beethoven's Geistertrio, Opus 70, No. 1, in D Major in mind, and the play echoes the style of the music. It creates an atmosphere by repeating various themes, rather than developing a story through conventional portrayals of character and a linear plot. The themes of The Ghost Sonata mainly relate to secrets, illusions, and the disappointments and tragedies of life, and it is the revelation of these terrible details of the characters' past lives that form the action of the play.

The Ghost Sonata does not take place in the real world; or at least not in a world most people would recognize as reality. Strindberg originally subtitled his play "Kama-Loka," the name of a mystical dream world through which some mortals have to wander before reaching the kingdom of death in the afterlife. Accordingly, the characters in The Ghost Sonata speak, move and act as if they are part of a dream—or a nightmare. One sees glimpses of the future, another embodies tragedies from the past. There are literal ghosts and vampires in the play, as well as a mysterious woman known as the Mummy.

The world Strindberg created in The Ghost Sonata was one he found in his own tortured imagination. On stage, his vision of an alternate reality was a forerunner to later twentieth century experiments in non-realistic dramatic literature, such as Expressionism, popular in Germany in the 1920s, and the Absurdist movement of the 1950s, made popular by writers like Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and Jean Genet. When the play was originally staged at the Intimate Theatre in 1908, its strange, avant-garde style and grim view of the world made it unpopular with critics. It wasn't until the famous director Max Reinhardt staged the play in Berlin in 1916, then toured it to Strindberg's native Sweden in 1917, that it won acclaim from audiences and reviewers. Reinhardt's production toured central Europe through the 1920s, and the play was produced by Eugene O'Neill's Provincetown Players in New York in 1924 and at the Globe and Strand Theatres in London in 1926. In 1930 it was turned into an opera with music by Julius Weissmann and performed in Munich, and the British Broadcasting Corporation aired a television production of The Ghost Sonata in 1962. Reviewer Maurice Richardson noted that, even though the television production was probably seen by fewer than a million people, ‘‘it was probably a larger audience than the total number of people who had ever seen it before.''

The Ghost Sonata Summary

Scene 1
The Ghost Sonata begins the morning after a terrible disaster. A house collapsed in Stockholm, Sweden, where the action of the play is set, and a poor student, named Arkenholz, witnessed the tragedy and spent all night tending to the wounded and dying. He appears the next morning, filthy and rumpled, at a public drinking fountain outside of an expensive city apartment house.

The Student meets a milkmaid at the fountain and tells her about his experience of the night before. The Milkmaid, it turns out, is actually an apparition, seen only by the Student. She is the first of several "ghosts'' in the play. Still, she listens to him and even hands him a cup of water and helps him rinse his face with a cloth. Not far away, Jacob Hummel, an old man in a wheelchair, watches the scene and listens to the Student speak, apparently, to thin air. The Old Man has been reading about the accident, and the Student's heroics, in the newspaper, and recognizes the boy as the son of a man he once knew.

The Old Man approaches the Student and asks him questions about his life and family. The Student confesses that his father was, indeed, the merchant the Old Man remembers, though they each have a different story about the relationship the two men shared. The Student recalls his father as bankrupt and ruined, and remembers him blaming his misfortune on the Old Man. For his part, the Old Man insists it was the merchant himself who squandered his fortunes, then robbed him of his life savings. Confused about what to believe, the Student agrees to help the Old Man with "a few small services.'' In exchange, the Old Man will help the Student take advantage of his heroic actions and become well-known, wealthy, and happy.

The first task the Old Man assigns the Student is to attend an opera performance of"The Valkyrie'' in order to meet the Colonel and the Girl, who is allegedly the Colonel's daughter. The Colonel and his daughter live in the beautiful house near the fountain—the very building the Student has been passing by each day and jealously admiring. He has had dreams of living in such a home, with a wife, two children, and a generous income. The Old Man, amused by the Student's fantasies, tells him a little about the house and describes each of its inhabitants one by one as they appear.

There is a statue of a beautiful woman, seen through a window, that represents the Mummy who lives inside. Once a lovely, radiant young lady, the Mummy is now, according to the Old Man, a half-crazed recluse who lives in a closet and worships her own statue. Seated at the window of another room is the Fiancee, a white-haired old woman who was once engaged to the Old Man. Outside on the steps are the Lady in Black and the Caretaker's Wife. The Lady in Black is the daughter of the Caretaker's Wife and the Dead Man, a former government official whose ghost now haunts the house.

Because the Student is a ‘‘Sunday child,’’ the Old Man explains, he is able to see things others cannot. This supernatural ability allowed him to see into the future the night before, and save the inhabitants of the house that collapsed. With his second sight, he also saw the apparition of the Milkmaid at the fountain, and is now able to see the ghost of the Dead Man walk out of the house and around the corner to see how many people have come to pay their respects. The Dead Man, the Old Man explains, was a ‘‘charitable scoundrel’’ who gave generously to the poor in order to increase his own stature. Now the poor are lined up around the house, mourning his passing.

The house the Student so desperately wants to enter is filled with this odd collection of characters and one other figure who attracts his attention more than anyone else: the Girl. The Old Man and the Student watch as she returns from a morning of horseback riding and enters the house. The Student is struck to the soul by her beauty, and more determined than ever to do whatever the Old Man wants in order to meet her and enter her house.

The Old Man's servant, Johansson, returns from an errand in time to wheel his master around the corner of the house to watch the beggars mourn the Dead Man. While the Old Man is entertaining himself in this macabre way, Johansson returns for a brief conversation with the Student, who tries to learn more about his new benefactor. Johansson compares the Old Man to the god Thor, riding in his wheelchair chariot, and says he has the power to build and destroy both homes and lives. It is no mere coincidence that the Old Man encountered the Student and has convinced him to do his bidding. The Student suspects the Old Man has some kind of sinister plan for the inhabitants of the mysterious beautiful house, and he is ready to walk away and leave it all behind him when the Girl suddenly drops a bracelet out of... » Complete The Ghost Sonata Summary