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Hedda Gabler: A Woman's Will to Power Hedda Gabler (1890) is the eighth of Henrik Ibsen’s twelve social plays from The Pillars of Society (1877) to When We Dead Awaken (1899). Most critics and stage directors construe it as a play in the realist tradition and as a pièce bien faite. In this essay, I argue for a different kind of interpretation based on the important studies of the play by Else Høst, John Northam and Brian Johnston. Like Høst, I start with the protagonist’s (Hedda’s) comments about vine leaves in Ejlert Løvborg’s (her former suitor’s) hair. Through these comments, Hedda can be associated to the wineleaves of Emperor Julian in Ibsen’s Emperor and Galilean (1873), where the protagonists Julian and Maximos, a kind of mystic, discuss a utopian realm built on both the Dionysic Greek and the Christian mystical tradition. Hedda is a late follower of this mysticism. In this essay, I emphasize the existential aspect of Hedda’s searching for authentic values. I consider Hedda as an outsider, although she is involved in a fight for power, just as the other characters are. The other characters are described in detail and their actions are fully understandable, whereas Hedda’s character lacks determination. We do not know why she married Tesman. We do not know if she is pregnant. We do not know why she sets fire to Løvborg’s manuscript. Jealousy is too weak an explanation. Whereas the other characters search for the lukewarm indifference of everyday life, Hedda aims at the magnificent and the impossible. She represents the indeterminate aspect of the play, she is the character which does not fit into the realist structure, the character looking beyond and above the other characters, the character open to completely different interpretations, also on stage. Through her suicide she motivates the reader and the spectator to reflect on the metaphysical aspects of life.

The article criticises an Ibsen tradition who has seen the last scene of Little Eyolf as a reconciliation. Instead, the article discusses the improbability of a happy marriage characterised by social engagement. The play is open but it is hardly probable that Rita, with her erotic desire, and Allmers, whose desire has turned into metaphysics, can be happy together. The arguments refer to inner criteria and the constantly present dramatic tradition.

Maria Wahlström om TILDA MARIA FORSELIUS GOD DAG, MIN LÄSARE! BLAND BERÄTTARE, BREVSKRIVARE, BOKTRYCKARE OCH ANDRA BIDRAGSGIVARE I TIDIG SVENSK VECKOPRESS 1730–1773 Göteborg: Institutionen för litteratur, idéhistoria och religion, Göteborgs universitet, 2013, 311 s. (diss. Göteborg) Stephan Larsen om JOHAN SVEDJEDAL (RED.) SVENSK LITTERATUR SOM VÄRLDSLITTERATUR. EN ANTOLOGI Uppsala: Avdelningen för litteratursociologi, Uppsala universitet, 2012, 190 s. Anna Bohlin om SARA DANIUS DEN BLÅ TVÅLEN. ROMANEN OCH KONSTEN ATT GÖRA SAKER OCH TING SYNLIGA Stockholm: Albert Bonniers förlag, 2013, 434 s. Roland Lysell om PAUL TENNGART DEN KOMPLEXE BAUDELAIRE. OM NYANSERNAS POETIK I LES FLEURS DU MAL Lund: ellerströms, 2012, 310 s. Anders Johansson om ULF OLSSON SILENCE AND SUBJECT IN MODERN LITERATURE. SPOKEN VIOLENCE Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013, 216 s. Maria Österlund om EVA HEGGESTAD, ANNA WILLIAMS & ANN ÖHRBERG (RED.) FÄLT I FÖRVANDLING. GENUSVETENSKAPLIG LITTERATURFORSKNING Hedemora: Gidlunds förlag, 2013, 336 s. Viola Bao om MARTIN HÄGGLUND DYING FOR TIME. PROUST, WOOLF, NABOKOV Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012, 197 s.

The Strindberg Legacy / Arvet efter Strindberg, Stockholms universitet, 31 maj–3 juni 2012 Föredrag av Björn Meidal: Strindberg – in Sweden and in the World Scandinavian Spaces: Memory – Art – Identity, Lunds universitet, 7–9 juni 2012 Föredrag av Petra Broomans: Kreativa lösningar och missade chanser. Hur överlever den akademiska skandinavistiken i världen? och av Dag Blanck: Från det norröna till välfärdsstaten. Scandinavian studies i USA

Strindberg’s Dramas on German Stages This article provides an overview of stage productions of Strindberg’s plays on German stages from 1890 to 2011, and discusses their importance for German directors. The first Strindberg performance to be staged in Germany was Otto Brahm’s The Father produced by the Freie Bühne in Berlin in 1890. The most suitable authors for the naturalistic aesthetic ideals of the Freie Bühne, however, were Hauptmann, Ibsen and Tolstoy. Strindberg was involved in several lawsuits during the 1890’s, making him a controversial figure. However, by the first decade of the 20th century, about twenty-five of his plays were being performed in Germany. In 1912 the so-called “Strindberg Boom” began; fifty Strindberg dramas were put on stage and the German expressionists even compared Strindberg to Shakespeare. Two theatres were of greater significance than the others. At the Deutsches Theater and the Kammerspiele Max Reinhardt – the first director able to fulfill Strindberg’s dramatic intentions in his late plays – made five legendary productions, beginning with The Dance of Death in 1912. At the Theater in Königgrätzer Straße in 1916, Rudolf Bernauer produced A Dream Play in a more idyllic and less experimental fashion than his contemporary, Reinhardt. By contrast, Reinhardt’s productions utilized lighting, sound effects and a gloomy milieu in order to emphasize the metaphysical anxiety of human beings in a world beyond their comprehension. The importance of the expressionists – and, eventually, of Strindberg himself – decreased after World War I. Given the Nazi party’s dislike of his work, Strindberg’s plays were not performed in Germany at all after 1933. The first important Strindberg production staged after World War II was Fritz Kortner’s The Father, first performed in Munich in 1949. In the 1950’s the influence of Kafka and Existentialism had revised Strindberg’s image. About ten of his plays had survived, and today, the most frequently performed of these is Miss Julie. During the 1960’s, when the German stage was dominated by political theatre, Strindberg was hardly performed at all. However, in the early 1970’s stage productions of The Dance of Death by Rudolf Noelte and The Ghost Sonata by Hans Neuenfels were the peaks of a new, ephemeral wave of interest in Strindberg. To this day, the final important German stage director possessed of a pronounced interest in Strindberg was Ernst Wendt. Wendt was, however, strongly criticized by literary scholars and translators for placing emphasis upon the destructive and depressive aspects of Strindberg’s work, and overlooking Strindberg’s role as a radical critic and an inquisitive inventor.

Annika Olsson om Margareta Petersson, Globaliseringens ansikten: den indoengelska romanen Stockholm: Carlssons, 2008, 400 s. Mattias Pirholt om Leena Eilittä, Ingeborg Bachmann’s Utopia and Disillusionment: Introduction Helsingfors: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2008, 164 s. Anna Bohlin om Boel Englund & Lena Kåreland, Rätten till ordet: En kollektivbiografi över skrivande Stockholmskvinnor 1880–1920 Stockholm: Carlsson, 2008, 409 s. Örjan Torell om Christer Ekholm och Staffan Thorsson (red.), Främlingskap och främmandegöring: Förhållningssätt till skönlitteratur i universitetsundervisningen Göteborg: Daidalos, 2009, 554 s. Roland Lysell om Johan Sahlin, Om kyrklundheten: Värde, kunskap och skrivande i Willy Kyrklunds Om godheten Lund: ellerströms, 2008, 252 s. (diss. Växjö) Sofi Qvarnström om Peter Forsgren, I vansklighetens land: Genus, genre och modernitet i Elin Wägners smålandsromaner Göteborg: Makadam förlag, 2009, 263 s. Alexandra Borg om Örjan Torell, Den osynliga staden: en gestaltningsmodell hos Olof Högberg, Ludvig Nordström, Bertil Malmberg, Birger Sjödin, Karl Östman, Lars Ahlin och andra svenska författare fram till våra dagar Umeå: Bokförlaget H:ström – Text & Kultur, 2009, 301 s. Jørgen Bruhn om Christer Johansson, Mimetiskt syskonskap: en representationsteoretisk undersökning av relationen fiktionsprosa- fiktionsfilm Stockholm: Acta universitatis stockholmiensis, 2008, 446 s. (diss. Stockholm)

Annelie Bränström Öhman om Lina Sjöberg, Genesis och Jernet Rochelle Wright om Cecilia Lindhé, Visuella vändningar Roland Lysell om Henrik Wallheim, En underbar berättelse om ridderliga äventyr Karl Axelsson om Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology, red. Steven M. Cahn & Aaron Meskin samt English Literature in Context, red. Paul Poplawski Martin Fredriksson om Gunnar Petri, Författarrättens genombrott Eva Nilsson Nylander om Stefano Fogelberg Rota, Poesins drottning Anders Mortensen & Peter Westerlund om Torbjörn Forslid & Anders Ohlsson, Hamlet eller Hamilton?