ABSTRACT
In Crime and Crime Johan August Strindberg develops the Swedenborgian view that crime is its own punishment; but this time the treatment is realistic, and the play is something of a psychological thriller at one level and a spiritual adventure at a deeper one. It is extremely autobiographical: the scenes set in places Strindberg himself frequented, and the hero a playwright at the moment of his first brilliant success in the Paris theatre. Although Maurice’s play is spoken of as redeeming slandered human nature, which could not be said of The Father, Strindberg was certainly thinking of the fame which came to him overnight with the first performance of The Father in Antoine’s Theatre Libre. During the Inferno period he had practised black magic and believed that he had once caused the illness of one of his children, although he had not actually, like Maurice, “wished the life out of” the child.
