The Ghost Sonata

The Ghost Sonata, one-act drama in three scenes by August Strindberg, written and published as Spöksonaten in 1907 and performed the following year. The drama is considered the best of Strindberg’s four chamber plays, written during his years as director of Stockholm’s Intima Theatre, and it is one of the most macabre, wrathful works in all of world literature. The playwright’s antirealist invocation of ghosts, vampires, and evil spirits helped usher in Expressionist drama.

The work concerns the vampirish old man Hummel, who seeks to destroy the Colonel, who years ago seduced the woman Hummel loved. Hummel introduces a Student to his peculiar coterie, which includes both the Colonel’s wife (known as the Mummy) and her frail daughter, who draws life from hyacinths. At an elaborate “ghost supper” in the Colonel’s apartment, Hummel humiliates the Colonel and tells the guests that the hyacinth girl is his child, but when the Mummy reveals Hummel’s sordid past he hangs himself. Later, as the girl slowly dies, the Student declaims how appearances can mask evil; he turns to the audience and warns them that they too cannot escape their sins.