Here we have the secret of what I believe to be the great Swedish
dramatist's strongest hold on our interest. How could it otherwise
happen that so many critics, of such widely differing
temperaments, have recorded identical feelings as springing from a
study of his work: on one side an active resentment, a keen
unwillingness to be interested; on the other, an attraction that
would not be denied in spite of resolute resistance to it! For
Strindberg DOES hold us, even when we regret his power of doing
so. And no one familiar with the conclusions of modern psychology
could imagine such a paradox possible did not the object of our
sorely divided feelings provide us with something that our minds
instinctively recognise as true to life in some way, and for that
reason valuable to the art of living.

There are so many ways of presenting truth. Strindberg's is only
one of them--and not the one commonly employed nowadays. Its main
fault lies perhaps in being too intellectual, too abstract. For
while Strindberg was intensely emotional, and while this fact
colours all his writings, he could only express himself through
his reason. An emotion that would move another man to murder would
precipitate Strindberg into merciless analysis of his own or
somebody else's mental and moral make-up. At any rate, I do not
proclaim his way of presenting truth as the best one of all
available. But I suspect that this decidedly strange way of
Strindberg's--resulting in such repulsively superior beings as
Gustav, or in such grievously inferior ones as Adolph--may come
nearer the temper and needs of the future than do the ways of much
more plausible writers. This does not need to imply that the
future will imitate Strindberg. But it may ascertain what he aimed