August Strindberg, Ingmar Bergman and the Ghost Sonata

Abstract

August Strindberg, Ingmar Bergman, and The Ghost Sonata This essay considers the best known of Strindberg's chamber works, The Ghost Sonata (1907), in light of a production of the play by Ingmar Bergman that took place in 1973 at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. Bergman stated the concept for his production of The Ghost Sonata as follows: In the end, I have stressed the fact that the only thing that can give man any kind of salvation-a secular one is the grace and compassion which come out of himself. In the process of thoroughly analyzing the whole of The Ghost Sonata, the author differs with Bergman and in particular with his interpretation of the third scene of the play, where he equates the Student's nihilistic despair with the loss of faith in God. On the contrary, the author contends, it is the Student's faith in a benevolent God that is a logical outgrowth of his experiences during the play. Instead of looking to Christ for relief from his unhappy existence, however, the Student redefines Christian salvation in his own terms. At the centre, he places, not salvation through Christ in this lift, but salvation in Heaven through death. Bergman correctly argued for secular salvation through human compassion in his production of The Ghost Sonata, but he removed a large source of the play's power and fascination by denying the Student's conclusion that there can be no ultimate salvation in this life, that such salvation is possible only in Heaven.