Monologue

Gustav Monologue from The Creditor

From The Creditor by August Strindberg

male · anguished · 1:48 min

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I don't know how it is—I think I am beginning to hate you, but all the same I can't do without your being near me. You have helped to drag me out of the slough which I was in, and, as luck would have it, I just managed to work my way clear and then you knocked me on the head and plunged me in again. As long as I kept my secrets to myself I still had some guts—now I'm empty. There's a picture by an Italian master that describes a torture scene. The entrails are dragged out of a saint by means of a windlass. The martyr lies there and sees himself getting continually thinner and thinner, but the roll on the windlass always gets perpetually fatter, and so it seems to me that you get stronger since you've taken me up and that you're taking away now with you, as you go, my innermost essence, the core of my character, and there's nothing left of me but an empty husk. Oh, what fantastic notions; besides, your wife is coming back with your heart. No; no longer, after you have burnt it for me. You have passed through me, changing everything in your track to ashes—my art, my love, my hope, my faith.

About this piece

30s · despair · identity · betrayal · love

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