“Strindberg’s Dreams Game” in Brief Content
The author recalls that he strove to imitate the incoherent, but seemingly logical form of the dream. Time and space does not exist, clinging to the tiny foundation of reality, imagination spinning its yarn. Heroes are split, evaporated, condensed, merged together. Above all – the mind of the dreamer.
In the prologue Daughter of Indra descends on a cloud to Earth. Indra sends her to find out whether the fate of people is really so difficult. The daughter of Indra feels like the ruin of the air below: it is a mixture of smoke and water. Indra urges her to be filled with courage and endure this trial.
The daughter and the Glazier come to the castle, which grows straight out of the ground. Its roof is crowned with a bud, which, according to the Daughter, is about to dissolve. The daughter thinks that the prisoner is languishing in the castle, and wants to release him. Entering the castle, she frees the Officer, who sees in her the embodiment of beauty and is willing
Christine pastes the windows in the house. The daughter complains that it is very stuffy for her. The lawyer objects that if the windows are not glued, the heat will leave and they will freeze. The child with his crying scares the customers. It would be nice to rent an apartment, but there is no money. The daughter is not used to living in the mud, but neither to her nor to the Advocate can the floor be washed, and Kristin is busy sealing the windows. The lawyer notices that many live even worse. Learning that the Daughter had scattered the fire with his newspaper, the lawyer scolded her for his lack of discipline. Although they do not get along, they have to endure each other for the sake of the child. Daughter pities people. Kristin continues to seal the cracks in the house. The lawyer leaves, colliding in the door with the Officer, who came to call Daughter with him to the Bay of Beauty. But instead of the Bay of Beauty, the Officer and the Daughter fall into the Strait of Shame. The chief quarantine asks the Officer if he could open the door. The officer replies that no, because the trial is not over yet. The head of the quarantine draws the attention of the Daughter to the Poet, who is going to take a mud bath: he always hovers in higher spheres, so he misses the mud. In the distance, a white sailboat sailing to the Bay of Beauty is visible. He and She embraced at the helm. The officer forces them to turn into the Strait of Shame. He and She descend to the shore, sad and ashamed. They do not understand what they got here for, but the Chief of Quarantine explains to them that it is not necessary to do anything bad to incur petty trouble. Now they have to stay here for forty days. Daughter pities people. floating in the Bay of Beauty. He and She embraced at the helm. The officer forces them to turn into the Strait of Shame. He and She descend to the shore, sad and ashamed. They do not understand what they got here for, but the Chief of Quarantine explains to them that it is not necessary to do anything bad to incur petty trouble. Now they have to stay here for forty days. Daughter pities people. floating in the Bay of Beauty. He and She embraced at the helm. The officer forces them to turn into the Strait of Shame. He and She descend to the shore, sad and ashamed. They do not understand what they got here for, but the Chief of Quarantine explains to them that it is not necessary to do anything bad to incur petty trouble. Now they have to stay here for forty days. Daughter pities people.
In the Bay of Beauty there is fun, everyone dances. Only Edith sits at a distance and is sad: she is not good herself and nobody invites her to dance.
The teacher checks the Officer’s knowledge, but he can not answer in any way how many will be twice two. Although the Officer was awarded a doctorate, he must remain in school until he ripens. The officer understands and himself that has not yet matured. He asks Teacher what time is. The teacher answers that time is what runs while he speaks. One of the disciples rises and runs away while Teacher speaks, it turns out that he is time? Teacher believes that this is perfectly correct according to the laws of logic, albeit insanely.
The officer shows the Daughter of a man to whom everyone envies, for he is the richest man in these places. But he also murmurs: he is blind and does not even see his son, whom he came to see. The blind man argues that life consists of meetings and partings: he met a woman, the mother of his son, but she left him. He has a son left, but now he leaves him. The daughter comforts Slepts, saying that his son will return.
The lawyer tells the Daughter that now she saw almost everything except the most terrible. The most terrible thing is eternal repetition and return. He calls Daughter to return to his duties. Duties are all that she does not want, but she must do. The daughter asks if there are any pleasant duties? The lawyer explains that the duties become enjoyable when executed. The daughter understands that the duties are all that is unpleasant, and wants to know what is pleasant then. The lawyer explains to her that pleasant is a sin, but we punish sin, and after a pleasant day or evening a person suffers with remorse. The daughter sighs: it is not easy to be a man. She wants to go back to heaven, but first you need to open the door and find out the secret. The lawyer says that she will have to return to her former track, go all the way back and relive all the nightmarish process of repetition, recreation, repetition, repetition… The daughter is ready, but first she wants to retire to the desert land in order to find herself. She hears the loud groans of the wretched creature from the Strait of Shame and wants to free them. The lawyer says that one day a liberator appeared, but the righteous crucified him on the cross. The daughter falls on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. She thinks that this is a paradise, but she sees two coal miners who carry coal into the terrible heat and have no right to bathe or tear an orange from the tree. The coal miners explain to her that every person has committed a bad deed once, but some have been punished and now they carry coal all day long with their sweat, while others have not been punished and are sitting in a casino and they are eating an eight-course dinner. The daughter is surprised that people do nothing to ease their situation. The lawyer says that those who are trying to do something, fall either in prison or in a lunatic asylum. The place that seemed to the daughter of paradise, in fact turns out to be a real hell.
The daughter leads the Poet to the end of the world into a cave, which is called the ear of Indra, for here the heavenly ruler listens to the mortal appetites. The daughter tells the Poet what the wind moans, what the waves are singing about. The poet finds the wreckage of ships, including the one that sailed from the Bay of Beauty. Daughters think that the Bay of Beauty, and the Strait of Shame, and the “growing castle”, and the officer she dreamed. The poet says that he composed all this. Poetry is not reality, but more than reality, not a dream, but a dream in reality. The daughter feels that she has been too long downstairs, on the ground, her thoughts can no longer fly. She asks for help from her Heavenly Father. The poet asks the daughter of Indra to convey to the Lord of the world the petition of humanity, composed by a dreamer. He hands Daughter a scroll with his poem. The poet notices a ship in the distance from the reefs. His team is praying for help, but seeing the Savior, seamen in fear jump overboard. The daughter is not sure that the ship is really in front of them, it seems to her that this is a two-story house, and next to it is a telephone tower, reaching to the clouds. The poet sees a snowy wasteland, a training ground on which the platoon of soldiers marches. On the wasteland, closing the sun, the cloud descends. Everything disappears. The moisture of the cloud extinguished the fire of the sun. Sunlight created the shadow of the tower, and the shadow of the cloud smothered the shadow of the tower.
The daughter asks the Gatekeeper to call the Deans of the four faculties: now they will open the door, behind which is the solution of the mystery of the world. Appears shining with joy Officer with a bouquet of roses: his beloved – Victoria is about to come down. Both the Poet and the Daughter seem to have seen it all somewhere: whether it was a dream to the Poet, or whether he composed it. The daughter remembers that they have already said these words somewhere else. The poet promises that soon the Daughter will be able to determine what is reality. The Lord Chancellor and the Deans of the four faculties are discussing the question of the door. The Lord Chancellor asks what the Dean of the Theological Faculty thinks, but he does not think, he believes. The Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy has an opinion, the Dean of the Medical Faculty knows, and the Dean of the Faculty of Law doubts. A dispute develops. The daughter accuses them of all, that they sow doubt and discord in the minds of the young people, in response to which the Dean of the Faculty of Law accuses the Daughter on behalf of all the righteous in that it awakens the doubt among their youth about their authority. They drive her, threatening reprisals. The daughter calls the Poet with him, promising him that soon he will find out the answer to the mystery of the world. The door opens. The righteous shout “hurray,” but they see nothing. They scream that the daughter deceived them: there is nothing beyond the door, The daughter says they did not understand this nothing. The righteous want to beat her. The daughter is about to leave, but the lawyer takes her hand and reminds her that she has duties. The daughter answers that she obeys the command of the highest duty. The lawyer says that the child is calling her, and she understands how strongly attached to the ground. She feels remorse, the only salvation from which is to fulfill her duty. The daughter is very afflicted. She says that all around her are her children. Alone, each of them is good, but when they come together, they begin to quarrel and turn into demons. She leaves the lawyer.
Daughter and Poet at the walls of the castle, growing out of the earth. Daughter realized how hard it is to be human. The poet reminds her that she promised to reveal to him the mystery of the world. The daughter tells that at the dawn of the times of Brahma, the divine principle, he let the mother of the world Maya tempt herself in order to multiply. This contact of the divine first-mother with the earth became the fall of the sky. Thus, the world, life, people are nothing more than a phantom, a visibility, a dream. To free oneself of earthly matter, the descendants of Brahma seek deprivation and suffering. But the need for suffering encounters a thirst for pleasure, or with love. There is a struggle between the pain of pleasure and the enjoyment of suffering. This struggle of opposites produces power. The daughter suffered on earth much stronger than humans, for her sensations are thinner. The poet asks her what caused her the most severe suffering on earth. The daughter answers, that her existence: the feeling that her eyesight is weakened by the eyes, the hearing is blunted with ears, and the thought is entangled in a labyrinth of fat gyruses. To shake off the ashes from their feet, Daughter takes off her shoes and throws them into the fire. The doorkeeper enters and throws her shawl into the fire, the officer – her roses, on which there are only thorns, and Glazhschik – his diamond, which opened the door. The theologian throws a martyrology into the fire, for he can no longer defend God, who does not protect his children. The poet explains the Daughter, who are the martyrs for the faith. The daughter explains to him that suffering is redemption, and death is redemption. The poet read that when life comes to an end, everything and everything whirls past. The daughter says goodbye to him. She enters the castle. The music is heard. The castle lights up and the bud on its roof dissolves into a giant chrysanthemum flower. On the back, lit by the flame of a burning castle,
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