into chemistry. This he did with such earnestness that with his
discovery of Swedenborg his experimentations and speculations
reduced him to a condition of mind that unfitted him for any kind
of companionship, so that when his wife left him to go to their
child who was ill and far away, he welcomed the complete freedom.
Strindberg says of their parting at the railway station that
although they smiled and waved to each other as they called out
"Auf wiedersehen" they both knew that they were saying good bye
forever, which proved to be true, as they were divorced a year
later. In 1896 he returned to Sweden so broken in health through
his tremendous wrestling with the riddle of life that he went into
the sanitorium of his friend, Dr. Aliasson at Wstad. After two
months he was sufficiently restored to go to Austria, at the
invitation of his divorced wife's family, to see his child. Then
back to Sweden, to Lund, a university town, where he lived solely
to absorb Swedenborg. By May of that year he was able to go to
work on "The Inferno," that record of a soul's nightmare, which in
all probability will remain unique in the history of literature.
Then came the writing of the great historical dramas, then the
realistically symbolic plays of Swedenborgian spirit, of which
"Easter" is representative, and the most popular.

When "Easter" was produced in Stockholm a young Norwegian, Harriet
Bosse, played Eleanora, the psychic, and in 1901 this young actress
became Strindberg's wife. This third marriage ended in divorce
three years later. In 1906, the actor manager, August Folk,
produced "Countess Julie" in Stockholm, seventeen years after it
had been written. To Strindberg's amazement, it won such tremendous
attention that the other theatres became deserted. In consequence
of this success an intimate theatre was founded for the production