What do you think?
Rate this book
Het klooster
Het klooster is een autobiografisch relaas—een van Strindbergs huwelijksdrama’s—geschreven als een roman. De Zweed ontwaakt berooid van alles wat hem dierbaar is in een hotel te Berlijn. Om de eenzaamheid te ontvluchten brengt hij avond aan avond door in de kunstenaarskroeg Het klooster, waar hij de Weense journaliste ontmoet met wie hij spoedig besluit te trouwen... om voor de tweede maal een onverdraaglijk echtgenoot te worden! Het aanvankelijk geluk blijkt een paralyserende invloed te hebben op beider werklust en na vergeefse pogingen om niet ook dit huwelijk te laten mislukkien, zoekt de verre van a-seksuele vrouwenhater zijn toevlucht in Parijs.
- GenresFiction
156 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1898
3 people are currently reading
31 people want to read
About the author
August Strindberg
1,938 books776 followersJohan August Strindberg, a Swede, wrote psychological realism of noted novels and plays, including
Miss Julie
(1888) and
The Dance of Death
(1901).
Johan August Strindberg painted. He alongside Henrik Ibsen, Søren Kierkegaard, Selma Lagerlöf, Hans Christian Andersen, and Snorri Sturluson arguably most influenced of all famous Scandinavian authors. People know this father of modern theatre. His work falls into major literary movements of naturalism and expressionism. People widely read him internationally to this day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_...
Johan August Strindberg painted. He alongside Henrik Ibsen, Søren Kierkegaard, Selma Lagerlöf, Hans Christian Andersen, and Snorri Sturluson arguably most influenced of all famous Scandinavian authors. People know this father of modern theatre. His work falls into major literary movements of naturalism and expressionism. People widely read him internationally to this day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 16, 2011
Why, oh why, are August Strindberg's 'novels' no longer available? Or why any of his non-dramatic work is only available in a bastardized print on demand format?
As far as I know all of his 'novels' are roman a clefs, or not veiled at all auto-biographical writings about his life and numerous doomed marriages.
How could we endure the misery of life if we didn't treat it as unreal? If I were to take it seriously I should sit and weep all day, and I've no desire to do that.
Strindberg's life is filled to the brim with miseries, mostly that seem to be of his own making. If his books are to be believed (and according to the commentary section they pretty much are true to life) he ruins just about everything in his life by his actions. He takes offense at just about everything, he is wildly impulsive (this is from a scene where a person looking out for his business interests tells him he has to goto a party that night where a producer wants to meet him in order to stage on of his plays, something he needs to have done since he's living in poverty. "Give me one good reason why you should hurt his feelings by absenting yourself when the party as arranged partly for you." "I haven't got a reason. The thing has seized hold of me like an idee fixe, a whim, an impulse. I know quite well that I shall lose by it, but I can't do it otherwise. At one moment I'm assailed by pangs of conscience, chiefly because I know I shall hurt his feelings, but that the next moment I'm filled with delight, with malicious delight, because I've brought suffering upon myself... suffering which I should all the same prefer to avoid.").
As a person, Strindberg was probably an insufferable prig but as a person who cannibalized his life and relations for literature he is wonderful. I love reading about him and even though some of his views are less than enlightened he's great fun to read about. In a lot of ways reading his 'novels' has the same pleasures for me as reading Kafka's letters to Felicia or watching that scene in Swingers where Jon Favreau keeps calling up the answering machine of the girl he just met. Strindberg's life seems to be like that scene but carried on for years at a time.
This novel is the story first of a group of Swedish expatriate artists living in Berlin during the 1890's, and it's sort of the usual Moveable Feast type of ex-pat story for the first twenty or so pages, and then the novel shifts to his relationship and marriage to a young Austrian journalist that is doomed before it even begins. She's an emancipated woman, he's an anarchist with some very conservative views when it comes to certain social decorums and the woman-question. It's the continual conflict in his life of being something of a revolutionary in his artistic thinking but also being traditional in other ways of thinking that cause him so many of his problems. His wife is going to fail no matter what she does for him, if she is too modern he is disgusted and begins to hate her, if she is too traditional he tires of her and begins to hate her. It doesn't help that she finds one of his books where he wrote about the breakdown of his earlier marriage and starts to hate him for some of the things he wrote, nor that every time they separate they will come back together, be joyous at being reunited and promise to never leave each others side spend every waking moment with each other for a month or two before they once again hate each other and can't stand to even speak to one another. During their brief marriage they never seem to learn anything and their attempts at making the marriage work are ridiculously naive. If this were just a straight forward novel the story line would feel contrived, but there is something fascinating about reading that a forty something year old literary genius would really think that he and his wife hate each other and the solution to that hatred should be to have a child because that will bring them together. How can someone so perceptive about his own inner-workings and the relations of other people be so stupid in his day to day goings on? Ah literature.
From the few Strindberg novels I've read this one is the weakest. The history of it's publication is partly to blame for this I think. He wasn't finished with the story he meant to tell, there was supposed to be a follow up that he never wrote but being short of money he sent off what would makes up this novel to a friend to be published but changed certain details to hide the identities of people, but he forgot to change all of the details in the story so there were glaring inconsistencies in the book that didn't fool anyone. The form that this version took was with all of the detail changes taken out, but it still feels like an incomplete work. It is still quite fun to read though.
As far as I know all of his 'novels' are roman a clefs, or not veiled at all auto-biographical writings about his life and numerous doomed marriages.
How could we endure the misery of life if we didn't treat it as unreal? If I were to take it seriously I should sit and weep all day, and I've no desire to do that.
Strindberg's life is filled to the brim with miseries, mostly that seem to be of his own making. If his books are to be believed (and according to the commentary section they pretty much are true to life) he ruins just about everything in his life by his actions. He takes offense at just about everything, he is wildly impulsive (this is from a scene where a person looking out for his business interests tells him he has to goto a party that night where a producer wants to meet him in order to stage on of his plays, something he needs to have done since he's living in poverty. "Give me one good reason why you should hurt his feelings by absenting yourself when the party as arranged partly for you." "I haven't got a reason. The thing has seized hold of me like an idee fixe, a whim, an impulse. I know quite well that I shall lose by it, but I can't do it otherwise. At one moment I'm assailed by pangs of conscience, chiefly because I know I shall hurt his feelings, but that the next moment I'm filled with delight, with malicious delight, because I've brought suffering upon myself... suffering which I should all the same prefer to avoid.").
As a person, Strindberg was probably an insufferable prig but as a person who cannibalized his life and relations for literature he is wonderful. I love reading about him and even though some of his views are less than enlightened he's great fun to read about. In a lot of ways reading his 'novels' has the same pleasures for me as reading Kafka's letters to Felicia or watching that scene in Swingers where Jon Favreau keeps calling up the answering machine of the girl he just met. Strindberg's life seems to be like that scene but carried on for years at a time.
This novel is the story first of a group of Swedish expatriate artists living in Berlin during the 1890's, and it's sort of the usual Moveable Feast type of ex-pat story for the first twenty or so pages, and then the novel shifts to his relationship and marriage to a young Austrian journalist that is doomed before it even begins. She's an emancipated woman, he's an anarchist with some very conservative views when it comes to certain social decorums and the woman-question. It's the continual conflict in his life of being something of a revolutionary in his artistic thinking but also being traditional in other ways of thinking that cause him so many of his problems. His wife is going to fail no matter what she does for him, if she is too modern he is disgusted and begins to hate her, if she is too traditional he tires of her and begins to hate her. It doesn't help that she finds one of his books where he wrote about the breakdown of his earlier marriage and starts to hate him for some of the things he wrote, nor that every time they separate they will come back together, be joyous at being reunited and promise to never leave each others side spend every waking moment with each other for a month or two before they once again hate each other and can't stand to even speak to one another. During their brief marriage they never seem to learn anything and their attempts at making the marriage work are ridiculously naive. If this were just a straight forward novel the story line would feel contrived, but there is something fascinating about reading that a forty something year old literary genius would really think that he and his wife hate each other and the solution to that hatred should be to have a child because that will bring them together. How can someone so perceptive about his own inner-workings and the relations of other people be so stupid in his day to day goings on? Ah literature.
From the few Strindberg novels I've read this one is the weakest. The history of it's publication is partly to blame for this I think. He wasn't finished with the story he meant to tell, there was supposed to be a follow up that he never wrote but being short of money he sent off what would makes up this novel to a friend to be published but changed certain details to hide the identities of people, but he forgot to change all of the details in the story so there were glaring inconsistencies in the book that didn't fool anyone. The form that this version took was with all of the detail changes taken out, but it still feels like an incomplete work. It is still quite fun to read though.
December 13, 2017
Review to come, but a couple things:
The Germans, yes, the Germans, prosecuted Strindberg over this book, citing it as "immoral" - what does an "immoral" book look like, can anyone tell me? No, didn't think so.
The Germans, yes, the Germans, prosecuted Strindberg over this book, citing it as "immoral" - what does an "immoral" book look like, can anyone tell me? No, didn't think so.
March 16, 2024
Lähinnä rasittava (omaelämänkerrallinen) kuvaus miehestä, jolle kaikki naiset ovat samanlaisia, virheiden toistaminen välttämätöntä ja tunneskaala typistyy lähinnä hillittömään menestyksen hattuun kihahdukseen sekä surkeaan epätoivon alhoon.
November 4, 2022
A weak semi-obscurity in Strindberg's oeuvre. Immature and insubstantial.
December 16, 2015
I noticed that another Book Reader participant was bemoaning the fact that it's impossible to get your hands on Strindberg books. I would concur. I've had to special order through interlibrary loan for everything I've read. There is a certain thematic sameness to his plays and fiction that he never seems to move beyond: women, poverty, the life of the artist, science, rage. How long do we chew this bone?
July 16, 2014
Un libro que, a pesar de no estar entre los mejores de Strindberg, sí contiene algunos de sus párrafos más memorables. El análisis final de Mary Sandbach es imprescindible para cualquier estudioso de Strindberg.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews