PART THREE

INTRODUCTION

Strindberg's great trilogy _The Road to Damascus_ presents many mysteries to the uninitiated. Its peculiar changes of mood, its gallery of half unreal characters, its bizarre episodes combine to make it a bewilderingly rich but rather 'difficult' work. It cannot be recommended to the lover of light drama or the seeker of momentary distraction. _The Road to Damascus_ does not deal with the superficial strata of human life, but probes into those depths where the problems of God, and death, and eternity become terrifying realities.

Many authors have, of course, dealt with the profoundest problems of humanity without, on that account, having been able to evoke our interest. There may have been too much philosophy and too little art in the presentation of the subject, too little reality and too much soaring into the heights. That is not so with Strindberg's drama. It is a trenchant settling of accounts between a complex and fascinating individual--the author--and his past, and the realistic scenes have often been transplanted in detail from his own changeful life.

In order fully to understand _The Road to Damascus_ it is therefore essential to know at least the most important features of that background of real life, out of which the drama has grown.

Parts I and II of the trilogy were written in 1898, while