Introduction to "Pariah"
PARIAH


THERE ARE CRIMES AND CRIMES
INTRODUCTION


Strindberg was fifty years old when he wrote "There Are Crimes and
Crimes." In the same year, 1899, he produced three of his finest
historical dramas: "The Saga of the Folkungs," "Gustavus Vasa,"
and "Eric XIV." Just before, he had finished "Advent," which he
described as "A Mystery," and which was published together with
"There Are Crimes and Crimes" under the common title of "In a
Higher Court." Back of these dramas lay his strange confessional
works, "Inferno" and "Legends," and the first two parts of his
autobiographical dream-play, "Toward Damascus"--all of which were
finished between May, 1897, and some time in the latter part of
1898. And back of these again lay that period of mental crisis,
when, at Paris, in 1895 and 1896, he strove to make gold by the
transmutation of baser metals, while at the same time his spirit
was travelling through all the seven hells in its search for the
heaven promised by the great mystics of the past.

"There Are Crimes and Crimes" may, in fact, be regarded as his
first definite step beyond that crisis, of which the preceding
works were at once the record and closing chord. When, in 1909, he
issued "The Author," being a long withheld fourth part of his
first autobiographical series, "The Bondwoman's Son," he prefixed