August Strindberg's Antibarbarus

[Paul Ferguson]

"In his anti-literary 1890s, August Strindberg took to the laboratory to experiment in alchemy, and some of his thoughts led to a peculiar book published in Germany in 1894 called Antibarbarus I: oder Die Welt für sich und die Welt für mich (YA.1990.a.22668). His discovery of the process of transmuting lead into gold was conjecture and anti-scientific, if anti-anything, but 13 years later, this simple pamphlet, first published in Germany, transmuted into one of the finest luxury editions printed in Sweden."


https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2018/05/a-r...barus.html

   

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See also:

"Strindberg, the 'Shakespeare of the North', was obsessed with a passion for producing gold, and, like many alchemists before him, he failed to temper his imagination with reality. But his goldmaking 'research', like his other scientific studies, provides a valuable case study of a humanist genius whose amateur scientific activities enriched his literary and dramatic productions."

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10...214667.pdf

and

What happened when August Strindberg believed he could make gold? Playwright Howard Brenton on the remarkable period in the Swedish playwright’s life where he became an alchemist.

https://www.whatsonstage.com/london-thea...4605.html/

[Paul Ferguson]

The Antibarbarus text can be found here at GoogleBooks:

https://tinyurl.com/muxw29ex

[Paul Ferguson]

"Strindberg was greatly interested in monkeys, and had a theory that the gorilla was descended from the union of a shipwrecked sailor and a female monkey. He was also occupied with alchemy at that time and claimed to have extracted gold from earth which he had collected in the Cimitière Montparnasse. He showed me pebbles entirely coated with the precious metal and asked me to have one of these samples analysed by an eminent chemist of my acquaintance. My friend examined it and found it to be covered with pure gold. He was hugely interested and expressed the desire to make Strindberg's acquaintance. So I arranged a meeting in my rooms for a certain Wednesday afternoon at three o'clock."

From "Frederick Delius" by Peter Warlock, page 50, available here:

https://ia600302.us.archive.org/21/items...00warl.pdf