In the audience was Ola
Hansson, a Swedish novelist and poet who had just published a
short story from which Strindberg, according to his own
acknowledgment on playbill and title-page, had taken the name and
the theme of "Pariah."
Mr. Hansson has printed a number of letters (Tilskueren,
Copenhagen, July, 1912) written to him by Strindberg about that
time, as well as some very informative comments of his own.
Concerning the performance of Malmo he writes: "It gave me a very
unpleasant sensation. What did it mean? Why had Strindberg turned
my simple theme upsidedown so that it became unrecognisable? Not a
vestige of the 'theme from Ola Hansson' remained. Yet he had even
suggested that he and I act the play together, I not knowing that
it was to be a duel between two criminals. And he had at first
planned to call it 'Aryan and Pariah'--which meant, of course,
that the strong Aryan, Strindberg, was to crush the weak Pariah,
Hansson, coram populo."
In regard to his own story Mr. Hansson informs us that it dealt
with "a man who commits a forgery and then tells about it, doing
both in a sort of somnambulistic state whereby everything is left
vague and undefined.
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