Edvard Munch
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:20:01
a meeting place for writers.
:20:03
Amongst them, now living in Berlin,
:20:06
August Strindberg, who holds court
in "The Black Pig",

:20:10
where, in the words of a historian,
:20:12
"he is virtually a tourist attraction
for the intelligentsia."

:20:17
Laura Marholm, journalist,
:20:19
who with her husband has given
financial aid to Strindberg,

:20:23
a source of growing resentment to the
poverty-stricken Swedish celebrity.

:20:28
With Strindberg in this room
:20:30
are as many Scandinavians
as there are Germans.

:20:34
Christian Krohg, who has accompanied
his wife Oda to Berlin,

:20:38
where he watches
her intense love affair

:20:41
with the Norwegian author
Gunnar Heiberg.

:20:45
Sigbjørn Obstfelder and,
next to him, Bengt Lidforss,

:20:50
Swedish botanical student,
:20:52
recently engaged
to a 12 year-old girl.

:20:56
Hermann Schlittgen,
painter and engraver.

:21:01
In this room, a centre
of the literary storm

:21:04
that is to sweep over Europe,
:21:06
are those who have already
rejected Naturalism,

:21:09
who are now seeking
an artistic or literary means

:21:12
of presenting the interior
macrocosm of the soul,

:21:16
peering into
the darkest abyss of man.

:21:20
Here, in the words of a historian,
:21:22
ideas change hands
"faster than mistresses."

:21:26
Here the writers feed upon
the stacatto genius in their midst,

:21:30
August Strindberg,
in self-exile from Sweden,

:21:34
where he has been condemned
as a blasphemer,

:21:37
where educationalists clamour
for the suppression of his books,

:21:41
and where he is spat upon
by parents in the streets.

:21:45
Within this room, all is discussed:
:21:48
art, black magic, spiritualism,
the philosophy of Nietzsche,

:21:53
the erotic work of
the Belgian etcher, Félicien Rops,

:21:56
such as Thievery and
Prostitution Rule The World.


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