strengthen the rules which offend the apostle of the commonplace.
What will further create antipathy in some, is the fact that my
plan of action is not simple, and that there is not one view alone
to be taken of it. An event in life--and that is rather a new
discovery--is usually occasioned by a series of more or less
deep-seated motifs, but the spectator generally chooses that one
which his power of judgment finds simplest to grasp, or that his
gift of judgment considers the most honorable. For example, someone
commits suicide: 'Bad business!' says the citizen; 'Unhappy love!'
says the woman; 'Sickness!' says the sick man; 'Disappointed
hopes?' the bankrupt. But it may be that none of these reasons is
the real one, and that the dead man hid the real one by pretending
another that would throw the most favorable light on his memory.
*** In the following drama ('Julie') I have not sought to do
anything new, because that cannot be done, but only to modernize
the form according to the requirements I have considered
present-day people require."

Following the mighty output, of those years, in 1891 Strindberg
went out: to the islands where he had lived years before, and led a
hermit's life. Many of his romantic plays were written there, and
much of his time was spent at painting.

In 1892 he was divorced from his wife.

After a few months Strindberg went to Berlin, where he was received
with all honors by literary Germany. Richard Dehmel, one of their
foremost minstrels, celebrated the event by a poem called "An
Immortal,--To Germany's Guest." In the shop windows his picture
hung alongside that of Bismarck, and at the theatres his plays were