The Ghost Sonata | Strindberg's Ghost Sonata: Parodied Fairy Tale on Original Sin
In the following essay, Mays contends ''that The Ghost Sonata takes as its main structural mode the fairy tale, and that this form is the means of saying something about Original Sin.''
Despite a good deal of interest in Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata, critics, as Evert Sprinchorn puts it, ‘‘seem reluctant to declare that the play possesses any great coherence.’’ There has been, in fact, a marked willingness to take the dodge that"dreams needn't make sense’’: doubly specious, since plays are not dreams, however "dreamlike," and even dreams have, if not a logic, a psychologic. The many readers who find The Ghost Sonata one of the most exciting pieces in modern drama—however much avoided by pusillanimous directors—are surely correct. The play,...
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