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chemical bond/
ALBERT KIRSCH Boston University ~oston.Massachusetts 02215
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EdBor's Note. When chemistw "bonds'' to me humanities. certain unusual "reaction oraducts" can result. This is esoecialiv . so when s oitted artist like Strindbero iaraelv bv oreconcsotions and an a oriorireiection of .. ouided "~ . romantic~. ~" tries his hand at chemistw land . alchemvl es~abii~nmenl" mence it s of vahe toevetyons to urnerstand tne rno!ivations of thisaporoacnas we Ias me ras~lts;afler a I even loday we fmnd some segments ot the pop" al on reoe long against science inme most lrrationa way, although,sa tsrlnot w mthe flair of St, ndoerg HOWare we to handle our students as they check their daily hornscopes in the newspaper? Are they proceeding from some of the same assumption~8s this troubled genius? Can weshaw them what is wrong wlth theseassumptions? George Kauffman's paper, an extended study of Strindberg's work and motivations, provldes many of the facts and ideas (using just this one example) on which answers to these questions can be built. When we bridge the "two cultures." we must honor the respective methods of art and science and not impose those of one on the other, for then only failure can result.
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August'Strindberg's Chemical and Alchemical Studies George B. Kauffman California State University, Fresno, CA 93740
August Strindberg (1849-1912) (Fig. I), universally recognized as Sweden's greatest writer, has been called "the Shakespeare of the North," "after Goethe . . the most universa1 of all European writers" (1),and "that greatest genius of all modem dramatists" (Eugene O'Neill). This creative and prolific but tormented writer, whose life was marked by mental and emotional instabilitv. became the father of dramatir expressionism and precurkor of surrealism, and he exerred a proti~undinfluenreon European and Americandrama. Strindherg's "Samlade skrifter" (Collected Writings) in the standard 53-volume John Landauisr edition (1912-15'211 (21 comprises 115 works: plays, novels, histories, essays, poems, and stories, and his letters, most of them still unpublished, exceed 5,600 (3-6). His plays abound with re-Freudian psychological insights, and he was the first continental dramatist honored by a special issue of Modern Drama (7) In Sweden, a dozen motion picture films have been made from his plays and novels. His life and works have been extensively
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and meticulously investigated in literally thousands of books and articles (e.g., biographies (8-1 7), reminiscences (18-21 ), essays (22-251, bibliographies (26-31), and even plays (32, 33). Yet Strindberg's little-known chemical and alchemical research has been the subject of only a few generally unsymvathetic and cursow reviews of his "scientific" books ( 3 4 4 0 ) . 'Furthermore, unly h o of these reviewers were chemists (37. 38, 4G). The purpose ot this article is to introduce chemical educators to Strindherg's neglected scientific studies, which illuntrate the differences between the avuruarh toward science adopted by a gifted amateur, who happened to he agenius in his own field, and that of a professional scientist. By extension, they illustrate the differences between the layman's perception of what constitutes science and that of the trained scientist, a crucial topic in any science course in these times when citizens are being increasingly called upon to make decisions on issues involving scientific and technological questions. Traditionally, the humanities are considered to involve a large degree of subjectivity, whereas the sciences are cbaracterized by a rigorous objectivity that leaves little room for poetic flights of fancy. Virtually all of Strindberg's Literary and dramatic works are largely autohio@aphical, and the literary critic Martin Lamm noted Strindberg's "uncontrolled subjectivity and inordinate need of self-personification," while Edwin Bjorkman called Strindberg "the greatest subjectivist of all time." Although Strindberg would thus seem to possess the antithesis of the scientific temperament, his entire life and personality are a strange blend of contradictions and contrasts. Like Goethe. a comvlex and visionarv genius of widelv i s with another disparate interests'and taients, he and less well-known case study of a first-rank literary figure Thls feature explores all s& of connecttons wlth c h e m I s t v d M d s wim 0 U w sciences: wim society, energy, end envlmnmem: and wim philosophy and literature. "Chemlcai Bonds'' explores ail smts of bonds that chemistry makes with everyMlng else, both in the curriculum and outside It. Of PartiCUiw interest are connections not n w m i i y treated In science courses, such as chemistry's relationship to literature and the arts or its twowav interaction with ohiimohv,or soclai thouaht. Tha f e a t m 0s also open 10 ad c es 01fypas a ready tealma n me .WNM p a w 9 d l s o s o ng cnemlsny r bonds lo other sco-s. Ine e m g y Droolem. environmental 15SJW. and technolog ca and rocla change
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Figure 1. August Sb'indberg (1849-1912) in me inferno Period [Mill,Ref. (10).
P. 3421.
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Figure 2. August Strindberg (1849-1912) and his first wife Siri won Essen (1850-1912) at the time of their marriage (1877) [Sprigge. Ref. (12). p. 821.
who actively pursued theoretical and experimental work in the sciences. In Richard Vowles' words, "in Strindberg the empirical and the mystical meet in curious and hectic emb r a d ' (27). Thus, in-an era marked hy overspecialization, a brief examination of Strindberg's chemical and alchemical studies shows that the gap between C. P. Snow's "two cultures" is not a necessary one and that a knowledge of natural science can contribute and enrich a creative artist's literary and dramatic productions. Early Scicntlflc Works As earlv as the aae of fourteen, lone before he exhibited anv interest in literature, poetry, or plsbriting, Strindhere; had visions uf himself as ascientist. Kna~uragedby his father, who pro\ided him with tanks on chemistry and phpics, he carried out crude scientific experiments. Althongh he had chosen to a read aesthetics and mddern languages a t ~ p p s a l University, he was persuaded to study medicine by Dr. Axel Lamm, a physician friend of the family with whom Strindherg lived heginning with the autumn of 1868. He earned his keep by tutoring Dr. Lamm's sons. In 1869 Strindherg failed his preliminary examination in chemistry at Uppsala University and left Uppsala in a rage, convinced t h a t t h e examiners had a personalarudge against him. He used his failure as an excuse to abandon his study of medicine. Strindherg attended Uppsala University intermittently for five years (1867-1872) but never received his deeree. He was variouslv emnloved " . " in Stockholm as actor, editor, journalist, translator, reviewer, telegraph clerk, and librarian until he achieved fame in 1879 with his first novel "Roda rummet" (The Red Room), for which he was hailed as the Swedish Zola and one of the leaders of the "Realistic Breakthrough," a literary movement that dominated Scandinavia in the 1880s. Strindberg's three unhappy marriages to emancipated eareer women all ended in divorce and increased his well-known misogyny (41). His collection of short stories, "Giftas I" (Getting Married I) (1884), based on his marriage to his first wife, the Finlandic actress Siri von Essen (1850-1912) (Fig. 2). resulted in his self-exile from Sweden and his celebrated trial for blasphemy, which ended with his acquittal on November 17. 1884. The literary works of his first period (1870-1892), mostly naturalistic novels and plays; were written as a revolt against the prevailing romanticism of Swedish literature. Although Striudberg sometimes traced his interest in the natural sciences, especially chemistry, hack to his school days, he usually cited the year 1883as the date of his mature interest in science (42, p. 162). In his novel "Samvetskval" (Pangs of Conscience) (1884) (Fig. 3), the hero fantasizes about using the plentiful but unutilizable nitrogen of the air for useful purposes-an important problem (nitrogen fixation) later solved with great commercial success by the German chemist Fritz Haber (1868-1934) in 1907 with his famous ammonia synthesis (43). Strindberg himself entertained similar fan-
Figwe 3. Cavw of "Samvetskval" ( P m of Callscience): len. 1884, rim, i908 LLagercrantz. (j7).P. 14'1.
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Figure 4. Arthur Slogren's illustration of Strindberg as a chemist-Faust?-in "Antibarbam" (1905) [Legsrmentr.Ref. ( I n , 0.384).
tasies during the 1890s. In his play "Fadren" (The Father) (1887) (441, considered the first naturalistic drama, as well as in his novels "Tschandala" (1888) (45) and "I havshandet" (Bv the Onen Sea) (1890)~.(46). ., Strindbere's .. motaeoniste . . . ~ were all scientists. His correspondence with his friend, the Swedish writer Ola Hansson. contains numerous chemical hvootheses. In a letter of July 6,'1889 Strindherg wrote: " ~ i t e r a k k emakes me sick, and 1am gradually moving over to science, which i t is a matchless joy to practice" (4, Vol. 7, p. 348). This letter mentions Strindbera's future chemical work "Antibarbarus" (47) (Fig. 4), the preliminary sketch for which is described in Inspector Axel Borg's outlook in Chapter 3 of "I havsbandet" (46). During his writing of this novel, which can be regarded as a treatise on the philosophy of nature, Strindherg procured much scientific literature and began to study chemistry in earnest. In the autumn of 1890 he beaan systematic exoeriments to determine the composition i f airiand on ~ e h r b a r y 22,1891 he wrote his first laboratory report to which a date can be assigned (21, p. 38 ff.; 48). From this time, natural Volume 60 Number 7 July 1983
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Figure 6. Frida Uhi's grandparents' house in Dornach [Strindberg. A,. ''Bride an seine Tochter Kerstin." T. Eklund (Editor). Claassen. Hamburg, 19631.
F i r e 5. Fride UhI(1872-1943). Strindberg's s e d wife [Legercrantz, Ref. (17). P. 2851.
science. especially chemistry and botanv, became his primarv interest. ~ u r i n g t h ewintei of 1892 i n ~ e r l i nhe cariied oui experiments to prove that nitrogen and sulfur, which chemists viewed as elements, were actually compounds. He continued these experiments after his marriage to his second wife, the Austrian journalist, Frida Uhl (1872-1943) (Fig. 5 ) , both in Berlin and at her grandparents' estate a t Dornach in Moravia (now Austria) (Fig. 6 ) , where the couple lived after Frida's dowry was spent (49). In Berlin during March, 1894,together with his friend, the physician Carl Ludwig Schleich, Strindberg submitted to the chemist Hans Heinrich Landolt and the pharmacologist 0. Liebreich some paper sheets speckled with "gold" that he had claimed to have made by transmutation, but the two Univenitat Berlin professors were unimpressed (49, p. 283). The Inferno Period
Strindlwrg and C'rida sovn sepan~ted.Frum August 1894 rhrouyh the sommi,r d I b%i ht: turned his havk on the literary world. ahandmed his crvutive writinr and lived in Paris 115. chap.' 4; 50-521, then the center of occult sciences and the hermetic arts, where he made the acquaintance of Fran~ois Jollivet-Castelot, Louis Charles Omile Vial, F. C. Barlet, GBrard Encausse, Theodore Tiffereau, and other "modern alchemists" (53-55). He was made an honorary member of the Association Alchimiaue de France. In the Citv of Lieht Strindherg obsessive& pursued both theoretical and lah&atorv studies of the natural sciences (chemistrv, botanv. .. and optics) and occult sciences (alchemy, theosophy, mesmerism, numeroloav. and cabala) in an effort "to nrovide the link between science on the one side and occult&m and religion on the other" (Strindherg letter of Mar. 3,1891) (56, p. 89). His third wife, the Norwegian actress Harriet Bosse (1878-1961) (Fig. 71, to whom he confided his methods for producing gold, reported that "he took a much greater pride in his scientific discoveries than he did in being a great author" (6, p. 93). . 4 l t h , ~ a hduring the 18D4-lhY> theater season Strindherg war the mud d i s v u a 4 foreign dramalial in Paris.outshining evcn his rival Henrik Ibren. he disappotred t'rum puhlir view. 586
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Figure 7. Harriet Basse (1878-1961). Sbindberg's mird wife. in his play "Eastw'' [Sprigge. Ref. (13,p. 1901.
becoming a virtual recluse searching for the Philosopher's Stone in Ilia attemptrd transmuratim experiments curried w t in his ruum or in the lahr;lttxies "ithe J d r m n e (571. Most of his experiments were crude, nonquantitative, and lacking in objectivity; as an impatient and amateur scientist, he worked impulsively and obsessively with a selective approach which seized upon "evidence" apparently favoring his id6es fires of transmutation and the unity of matter yet which disregarded whatever observations did not support his hy~othesis.His exneriments. esneciallv those with sulfur (58. . , 59), suhstanceAwhichfascinked him for many years, precinitated a severe attack of osoriasis. a disease from which he had suffered all his life. B; ~ a n u a i y1895 his skin ailment became so painful that i t required his confinement for two weeks a t the Hbpital Saint-Louis. Like most of his experiences, Strindberg's suffering later found expression in his literary works. For example, alchemy and the elements sulfur, gold, and mercury ploy pnnninenr rdci in his dramatic trilog) "'l'ill D~maskur"I'CU Dannscws~r 1A9b--lYU4)rh'O~.>ilawyer with 1,leeding handn i < u chsra,.tt:r in "Ett driimspel" (A Dream I'la?) \lDOl1 161 I, nnd trat~smutatimuf the elements is a themt. d his nwrl .'Svurta ianur" \black Hannersl !I9071
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Figure 8. Cover a1 Strindberg's copy of Orfila's"EICments de Chimie" [Lindstrem, H., "Strindberg och bdckerna," Skriner utgivna av Svenska Littermurassallskapet 38. Stockholm, 19771.
and those which are merely random or coincidental. Strindberg, with his superstitious and paranoid personality, regarded all sorts of fortuitous events and experimental observations as nreenant with meaning. As a case in noint, in a letter ni ~ u l i, y 1 2 9 ~to. his trirnd 'forsten ~ c d l u n d( 4 . Vol. 11. ~ I I 2.13 . 2461, he related how (me mornine he had found a dopy of an obsolete book on chemistry ( 6 3 i ( ~ i g8) . by the Minorca-horn forensic chemist Matthieu-Josenh-Bonaventure Orfila (1787-1853) (64) in an antiquarianbookshop on the Boulevard St. Michel in Paris. When he shortly thereafter saw a monument to Orfila in the churchyard of Montpamasse and encountered the HBtel Orfila, a pension for monks and students, he moved into the H6tel Orfila, and with the aid of Orfila's book, which confirmed some of his own theories, "it was there that [he] solved the gold problem" (4, Vol. 11,p. 246). The same reliance on coincidence underlies many of Strindberg's scientific theories and conclusions. Strindberg's stay in Paris has become known as his "Inferno crisis" (12,Chap. 12; 13,Chap. 14; 15,Chap. 5; 16, Chap. 4; 42; 65-67], since it eventually culminated in his autobiographical novel "Inferno" (681, written in Lund (69,70) (May 3-June 25, 1897) (Fig. 9) and describing his "conversion" from a materialistic atheism to his own eclectic and mystical religion (71, 72) based on the tenets of the Swedish scientist, mystic, nhilosonher. and theoloeian Emmanuel Swedenbore and uthers (Swedenborg likewise had undergone a similar "deva&rntio" experience). Strindberg then largely abandoned science and reaumed his literary creation, iurging a new form or' art from his years u i suffering and self-diso,r.ery. In the wordq of Kwrt Sprirhorn. "011t of his trials and rrihulations a new s o d was formed. Out oi an inferno an a r t i ~ was t reborn" (42, p. viii). Strindberg's return to imaginative writing resulted in "Till Damaskus" (To Damascus) (189EL1904) (601, the first of his so-called "dream plays," which marked a turning point in the historv of dramatic techniaue. Strindhere regarded his ~ n f e r n o ~ e a ras ; the most intense-and excitin,: If g s liie, and they had such a vrofound inlluence on his artistic developm e k that his literary works are commonly dichotomized as "pre-Inferno" and "post-Inferno."
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F:igure 9. Strindberg in Lund, January, 1897 [Lagercrantz. Ref. i 17),p. 3481
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Strindberg's were mental as well as vhvsical. He .. aeonies ... . , iutrered irum vicual and duditor?. hallu~~ini~tiims and expt,r~enced five iirure vs\.chutic enisode, (Illring nis x,iuurn 1.51J His mental illness has been extensively &died (f3-80).'His ~ a t h o l o a vhas been variouslv. diagnosed as manic-denressive psychos;, melancholia, and paranoid schizophrenia, &though Sven Hedenberg, a Goteborg physician, concluded that Strindberg was aman of intense and labile emotionality, prone to spiritual crises, hut not very divergent from the norm i7f3 ~ -,Strindberg- save - two reasons for his insanity in "Till Damaskus" (77, p. 1131.First, his madness was o puniihnient rur his alrhemical attemprs tu decipher the secrets i~inature:"li a mortal succeeds in-penetrating the secrets of those above, no one believes him and he is struck with madness so that no one ever shall" (60). Second, he was consumed with guilt for his crime of stealing another man's wife (His first wife, Siri von Essen, divorced her husband Baron Carl Gustav Wrangel in order to marry Strindherg). Furthermore, his alchemical experiments provided an outlet for the paranoid hostility typical of schizophrenics (77, pp. 107,158,169). In "Till Damaskus" he revealed that eold-makine fed his megalomaniacal feelines 01 grandiosity, and he pruclaimed that rrnnsmuti~tion~ibase metals intoauld wit%intended nor ii~raccumula~ing u,ealth but as a calculated destructive art (601. Yet Strindher:: retained anrhor* in .smitv e r m during his wildest 1 1 ~ ~oi1insaniry s His irienrifi~ict~riociryand inreresri whirh urtwided the framework fur his ~ s w h u r i cwithdrnwal also heiped him maintain contact with ieakty (77, p. 106). For example, his taking a compass to bed with him to test for the presence of an electric current that he felt was being passed through his body (a common schizophrenic hallucination) prwi&s us with unique exanipleof j~ietitit'i,~rwlit?.-testing hya person in [he throesd insanity (77, v. 1711.Klar, himself apricticing psychiatrist, believed that strindberg's scientific interests functioned as "preservers of sanity" (77, p. 168): %.
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Without this background in rational scientific knowledge, it is probable that Strindherg's schizophrenic preoccupations would have remained fixed and unquestioned. Instead, his continuous efforts to understand himself and the structure of the physical world aided his struggle for recovery (77, p. 106). Although many creative artists have suffered from insanity and have written about their feelings, Strindberg, living in a pre-Freudian era and with a sense of reality buttressed by his scientific studies, possessed perceptions which "enabled him to see deeper and further than his psychotic brethren" (77, p. 175).For example, he recognized the importance of the early mother-son relationship before Freud proposed the Oedipus complex. Gifted with the ability to describe his feelings, he provided both psychiatry and literature, both science and the humanities, with unusual and vivid "inside" descriptions of mental illness as viewed by the sufferer himself. Scientific Works
Considerine himself a monist and follower of Haeckel and Darwin and rebel against the scientific establishment, Strindhere believed that the atomic theory was a fraud foisted on the wohd by the "learned camorra" of professors and that the number of elements was much smaller than generally believed. In accordance with plant and animal evoLtion, he soueht the sinale origin for all matter, inanimate as well as animate. strindberg< belief in the unity of matter was well within the realm of normative nineteenth-century chemistry. Despite the al~parrnt\.irttrr\. oi Lnvuiaier's L hvniixry at thr end uithr eighteenth renturs and thr develo~mt111 i , i Lhlton', atomic theory shortly thereafter, many-respected nineteenth-century chemists, especially the Englishmen Humphry Davy, William Prout, and William Crookes, suspected that Lavoisier's simple suhstances were not simple and that Dalton's atoms were compound bodies (81). Like certain modern critics of particle physics, they viewed with scepticism the prevailingbelief that nature w& so complex as to be composed of a multitude of elementary building blocks. Belief in the fundamental simplicity of matter andin Prout's hypothesis that all elements are composed of hydrogen, the lightest element, was given new life by the unexpected discovery of the radioactive disintegration of elements, which seemed to confirm the ideas of both ancient and modem alchemists and, of course, of Strindherg himself. However, although Strindherg's belief that many of the substances scientists called elements were composed of hydrogen atoms and that heavier elements could he decomnosed into lighter ones an" ticipated epochal discoveries of modern physics, his scientific theories were not taken seriouslv hv scientists. for thev were pure speculations without exper"imkd proof.'~evertheless, their brilliance testifies to his imaginative genius (77, p. 158) ---,. Althoueh Strindhere was constantlv in need of monev. his attempts at making goid from base me& were not motiGated hv greed but bv a desire to prove his belief in the ~ossihilitv of Gansmutatibn. For example, according to his second wife Frida Uhl's recollections four decades after the event, in May, 1895, when Hugo Massmann, the head of a Parisian chemical firm, offered Strindberg a 100,000-franc check to take out a German patent for his process of synthesizing iodine from coal by-products (82), Strindberg declined because he felt that his discoveries belonged to all humanity (12, p. 160; 49, pp. 436-438). Strindherg's major scientific works include the books "Antibarbarus" (1894) (471, "Hortus Merlini" (1897) (83), "Introduction B une Chimie Unitaire" (1895) (841, "Sylva Sylvarum" (1896) (85), "Typer och protyper inom mineralkemien" (1898) (86), "En blA b o k (1907-1908) (87, 88), "Ockulta dagboken" (1896-1908) (89) and articles in two Parisian occult journals L'Hyperchimie and L 'Initiation as well as in other journals, magazines, and newspapers. The wide-ranging topics include the correspondence between plant
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Excerpt from Slr ndberg s alchem ca notes [co.rte4) ol Margareta Bwnd n, dandskrrftsavaeln~ng. 6ung.lga Boo oteke! Stocrno ml F g.re 10
forms and crystal forms; synthesis of gold and iodine; the nonelementary nature of gold, iodine, mercury, and other elements, synthetic food from inorganic materials; correspondences between chemical and astronomical constants; photography; astronomy; spectral analysis; magnetism; and isomorphism and the life of nations; to mention only a few. An extensive collection of Strindberg's unpublished scientific works (drafts. manuscriots. lahoratorv nrotocols. and other documents) is preserved in ~andsk;i'ftsavdeln'ingen (the Manuscript Department) of Kungliga Biblioteket (The Royal Library) in Stockholm, where Strindberg served as Librarian from 1874 to 1882 (Fig. 10). His "Grona sacken" (the Green Bag), which served as the portable, expanding filing cabinet in which he deposited scraps of paper describing his ideas for future projects is also stored there. Although a detailed consideration of these works goes heyond the scope of this paper, we can sample some of the flavor of Strindberg's fallacious scientific thinking by briefly examining "Antibarbarus" (47), his first and most important scientific hook, which contains his declaration of war against modern natural science. "A curious mixture of Darwinian aftermaths and medieval alchemy" (151, it is written in German and is divided into four chapters or letters. In Letter 1, "On the Ontogeny of Sulfur" (18 pp.), on the haais ut snalog~ei. ~ n de ~ ~ r r i t n ~Strindberg n~s, c&luded that suliur 13 not a n element but is resin c
