Strindberg’s next novel, _Tschandala_, is one of his least known works; as literature it is of comparatively small importance, but as a contribution to the psychology of the author it is an exceedingly valuable production. Strindberg had gone to spend the summer in a country lodging where the proprietors are notoriously bad people. An ordinary man would have perceived the fact at once, but Strindberg’s imagination began to work and swelled itself into a book of gigantic proportions. The outward circumstances remain the same, but the scene is pushed back a century and becomes a war between the patrician with the great mind and the plebeians with the small minds, who do all that they possibly can to ensnare him and to bring about his ruin. The only reason given is the envy felt by inferior minds and small souls for the great and noble. It is difficult to understand how a learned and distinguished man can exist with his wife and children amid such extremely revolting surroundings as those described, unless he is too poor to make a change; it is still more difficult to understand why he should have any dealings with the populace, unless it is that he takes a psychological interest in their study. The landlady’s gipsy lover, who rules the house, has got him almost in his power, when the distracted lodger resolves on a plan whereby to annihilate him, well knowing that the ignorant man is subject to superstitious fear. He allures him into the meadow at night, and by the aid of a magic lantern he causes superhuman figures to pass before him. The trick is successful. The tormented and ignorant landlord dies from his fear of ghosts. This single instance proves to how great an extent Strindberg works upon his own experiences, and it also shows that his imagination is of a nature to magnify everything to a degree that is quite immense. It is a characteristic trait in his nature. His imagination is not the weak, tame, conventional imagination of a bourgeois, which is elsewhere commonly met with in literature. It is the imagination of a savage, in which every impression is echoed a thousandfold on the sounding-board of fear. It is fresh as the wind that blows from the mountains and no less incessant. It is always at first hand, and that is the secret of its power. After reading Strindberg you may raise objections against his arguments, but at the moment you are forced to agree with him. There has never been an author who could convince with such brutal authority as he. As long as you are under his immediate influence, everything seems possible, even probable. While recognising the truth of the principal traits, you forget the numerous errors that are never absent, the superabundance of evil qualities which he never omits to pile upon his enemies--woman and the lower orders--with both of whom he once felt himself related, and by whom he now feels himself pursued.