of struggle, the story of a restless, arduous pilgrimage through
the chimeras of the world towards the border beyond which eternity
stretches in solemn peace, symbolised in the drama by a mountain,
the peaks of which reach high above the clouds.

In this final settling of accounts one subject is of dominating
importance, recurring again and again throughout the trilogy; it is
that of woman. Strindberg him, of course, become famous as a writer
about women; he has ruthlessly described the hatreds of love, the
hell that marriage can be, he is the creator of _Le Plaidoyer d'un
Fou_ and _The Dance of Death_, he had three divorces, yet was just
as much a worshipper of woman--and at the same time a diabolical
hater of her seducing qualities under which he suffered defeat
after defeat. Each time he fell in love afresh he would compare
himself to Hercules, the Titan, whose strength was vanquished by
Queen Omphale, who clothed herself in his lion's skin, while he had
to sit at the spinning wheel dressed in women's clothes. It can be
readily understood that to a man of Strindberg's self-conceit the
problem of his relations with women must become a vital issue on
the solution of which the whole Damascus pilgrimage depended.

In 1898, when Parts I and II of the trilogy were written,
Strindberg had been married twice; both marriages had ended
unhappily. In the year 1901, when the wedding scenes of Part III
were written, Strindberg had recently experienced the rapture of a
new love which, however, was soon to be clouded. It must not be
forgotten that in his entire emotional life Strindberg was an
artist and as such a man of impulse, with the spontaneity and
naivity and intensity of a child. For him love had nothing to do
with respectability and worldly calculations; he liked to think of