Harriet Sofie Bosse (19 February 1878 – 2 November 1961) was a Swedish Sweden (pronounced /ˈswiːdən/ SWEE-dən, Swedish: Sverige [ˈsvær.jə]), officially the Kingdom of Sweden (Swedish: Konungariket Sverige (help·info)), is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden has land borders with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast, and water borders with Denmark, Germany and–Norwegian After World War II, Norway experienced rapid economic growth, with the first two decades due to the Norwegian shipping and merchant marine and domestic industrialization, and from the early 1970s, a result of exploiting large oil and natural gas deposits that had been discovered in the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea. Today, Norway ranks as the actress. A celebrity in her own day, Bosse is today most commonly remembered as the third wife of August Strindberg Johan August Strindberg ( pronounced ; 22 January 1849 – 14 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, and essayist. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis,, an influential playwright. Bosse began her career in a minor company run by her forceful older sister Alma Fahlstrøm in Kristiania (now Oslo Oslo (Norwegian pronunciation: [ùʃlu] or [ùslu]) is the capital and largest city in Norway. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by a fire in 1624. The Danish–Norwegian king Christian IV rebuilt the city as Christiania (briefly also spelt Kristiania). In 1925 the city reclaimed its original, the capital of Norway). Having secured an engagement at the Royal Dramatic Theatre ("Dramaten"), the main drama venue of Sweden's capital Stockholm Stockholm (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈstɔkːɔlm] ) is the capital and the largest city of Sweden. It is the site of the national Swedish government, the Riksdag (parliament), and the official residence of the Swedish monarch as well as the prime minister. Since 1980, the monarch has resided at Drottningholm Palace outside of Stockholm and uses, Bosse caught the attention of Strindberg with her intelligent acting and exotic "oriental" appearance.

After a whirlwind courtship, which unfolds in detail in Strindberg's letters and diary, Strindberg and Bosse were married in 1901, when he was 51 and she 22. Strindberg wrote a number of major roles for Bosse during their short and stormy relationship, especially in 1900–1901, a period of great creativity and productivity for him. Like his previous two marriages, the relationship failed as a result of Strindberg's jealousy, which some biographers have characterized as paranoid Paranoia is a thought process heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. Historically, this characterization was used to describe any delusional state. The spectrum of Strindberg's feelings about Bosse, ranging from worship to rage, is reflected in the roles he wrote for her to play, or as portraits of her. Despite her real-life role as muse The Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature are the goddesses or spirits who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths to Strindberg, she remained an independent artist.

Bosse married Swedish actor Carl-Gunnar Wingård in 1908, and Swedish screen actor, director, and matinee idol Edvin Adolphson in 1927. All three of her marriages ended in divorce after a few years, leaving her with a daughter by Strindberg and a son by Wingård. On retiring after a high-profile acting career based in Stockholm, she returned to her roots in Oslo.

Contents

Early career

Bosse was born in Norway's capital Kristiania, today called Oslo Oslo (Norwegian pronunciation: [ùʃlu] or [ùslu]) is the capital and largest city in Norway. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by a fire in 1624. The Danish–Norwegian king Christian IV rebuilt the city as Christiania (briefly also spelt Kristiania). In 1925 the city reclaimed its original, as the thirteenth of fourteen children of Anne-Marie and Johann Heinrich Bosse. Her German father was a publisher and bookseller, and his business led to the family's alternating residence in Kristiania and Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Bosse was to experience some confusion of national identity throughout her life, and to take the 512 kilometres (318 mi) rail trip between the cities many times. A bold, independent child, she first made the journey alone when she was only six years old.[1]

Two of Bosse's older sisters, Alma (1863–1947) and Dagmar (1866–1954), were already successful performers when Harriet was a small child. Inspired by these role models, Harriet began her acting career in a Norwegian touring company run by her sister Alma and Alma's husband Johan Fahlstrøm (1867–1938). Invited to play Juliet in Romeo and Juliet Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young "star-cross'd lovers" whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with Hamlet and Macbeth, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today,, the eighteen-year-old Harriet reported in a letter to her sister Inez that she had been paralysed by stage-fright before the premiere, but had then taken delight in the performance, the curtain-calls, and the way people stared at her in the street the next day.[2] Alma was Harriet's first and only—rather authoritarian—acting teacher.[3][4] Their harmonious and sisterly teacher–pupil relationship became strained when Alma discovered that her husband Johan and Harriet were having an affair.[5] Both Bosse parents were now dead, and Harriet, ordered by Alma to leave, used a modest legacy from her father to finance studies in Stockholm, Copenhagen Copenhagen ; Danish: København (pronounced [kʰøb̥ənˈhaʊ̯ˀn] ( listen)) is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,181,239 (2010) and a metropolitan population of 1,894,521 (2010). Copenhagen is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager. With around 2.7 million inhabitants within a 50 km radius,, and Paris.

The Paris stage—at that time in dynamic conflict between traditional and experimental production styles—was inspirational for Bosse and convinced her that the low-key realistic acting style in which she was training herself was the right choice.[6] Returning to Scandinavia Scandinavia is a region in northern Europe that includes Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Modern Norway and Sweden form the Scandinavian Peninsula. The name Scandinavia is considered to have the same etymology as Scania. Finland is sometimes considered a Scandinavian country in common English usage, and Iceland and the Faroe Islands are sometimes also, she was hesitant as to whether she should carve out a career in Stockholm, with its greater opportunities, or in Kristiania, to which she had closer emotional ties. In spite of the disadvantage of speaking Swedish with a Norwegian accent, Bosse let herself be persuaded by her opera-singer sister Dagmar to try her luck in Stockholm. She applied for a place at the Royal Dramatic Theatre ("Dramaten"), the main drama venue of Stockholm, governed by the conservative tastes of King Oscar II and his personal advisors.[7] After working hard at elocution Elocution is the study of formal speaking in pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone lessons to improve her Swedish, which was Dramaten's condition for employing her, Bosse was eventually to become famous on the Swedish stage for her beautiful speaking voice and precise articulation.[8] Having trained her Swedish to a high level, she was engaged by Dramaten in 1899, where the sensation of the day was the innovative play Gustaf Vasa by August Strindberg.[9][10]

Marriage to August Strindberg

August Strindberg

Main article: August Strindberg Johan August Strindberg ( pronounced ; 22 January 1849 – 14 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, and essayist. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis,

Although Bosse was a successful professional, she is chiefly remembered as the third wife of Swedish dramatist August Strindberg Johan August Strindberg ( pronounced ; 22 January 1849 – 14 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, and essayist. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, (1849–1912).[11] Strindberg, an important influence on the development of modern drama, had become nationally known in the 1870s as an angry young socialist muckraker A muckraker is, primarily, a reporter or writer who investigates and publishes truthful reports involving a host of social issues, broadly including crime and corruption and often involving elected officials, political leaders and influential members of business and industry. The term is closely associated with a number of important writers who and had risen to fame with his satire on the Swedish establishment The Establishment is a term used to refer to the traditional ruling class elite and the structures of society that they control. The term can be used to describe specific entrenched elite structures in specific institutions, but is usually informal in application. For example, candidates for political office are often said to have to impress the &, The Red Room (1879).[12] In the 1890s, he had suffered a long and miserable psychotic interlude, known as the "Inferno Crisis", and, emerging from this ordeal, he remained marked by it.[13] He turned from naturalism Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character. It was depicted as a literary movement that seeks to replicate a believable everyday reality, as opposed to such movements as Romanticism or to symbolism Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the movement had its roots in Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire. The works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire greatly admired and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes in his prolific literary output, and his convictions and interests at the turn of the 20th century focused less on politics and more on theosophy Theosophy is a doctrine of religious philosophy and mysticism. Theosophy holds that all religions are attempts by the "Spiritual Hierarchy" to help humanity in evolving to greater perfection, and that each religion therefore has a portion of the truth. The founding members, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky , Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907),, mysticism Mysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or awareness. Mysticism may be dualistic, maintaining a, and the occult The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g. an "occult bleed" may be one detected indirectly by the presence of otherwise unexplained anaemia. When Bosse met him in 1899–1900, he was, at age 51, at the height of his creative powers, his name "red-hot" on the stage.[14]

Strindberg had the reputation of a misogynist CERD · CEDAW · CDE · ILO C111 · ILO C100 · ILO C169 · Protocol No. 12 ECHR, something which all of his wives stoutly denied.[15] Bosse wrote in an unpublished statement which she left to her daughter with Strindberg, Anne-Marie: "During the years I knew and was married to Strindberg I saw only a completely natural, kind, honorable, faithful man—a 'gentleman'".[16] However, all of Strindberg's marriages were blighted by his jealousy and a sensitivity which has sometimes been considered paranoid Paranoia is a thought process heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. Historically, this characterization was used to describe any delusional state and delusional A delusion, in everyday language, is a fixed belief that is either false, fanciful, or derived from deception. Psychiatry defines the term more specifically as a belief that is pathological . As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, dogma, stupidity, apperception, illusion, or other effects of.[17]

Courtship

Bosse as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written around 1594 to 1596. It portrays the adventures of four young Athenian lovers, a group of amateur actors, their interactions with the Duke of Athens, Theseus, the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta, and with the fairies who inhabit a moonlit forest. The. After the marriage was over, Strindberg kept a life-size copy of this photo mounted on a wall behind a drapery.[18]

Bosse later published Strindberg's letters from their courtship and marriage. Incidents narrated in those letters and in Bosse's own interspersed comments have been analysed at length by biographers and psychiatrists, and have become part of the "Strindberg legend".[19] Even before their first meeting, Bosse had been inspired by the newness and freshness of Strindberg's pioneering plays; an iconoclast Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction within a culture of the culture's own religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually for religious or political motives. It is a frequent component of major domestic political or religious changes. It is thus generally distinguished from the destruction by one culture of the images of another, for and radical with two turbulent marriages already behind him presented an intriguing and irresistible mix to her.[20][21]

Strindberg was susceptible to strong, independent career women, as well as to dainty, delicate-looking young girls; like his first and second wives—Siri von Essen and Frida Uhl—Bosse combined these qualities.[22] He was entranced when he saw the dark, exotic-looking, petite 22-year-old Bosse, who was often cast in sprite The term sprite is a broad term referring to a number of preternatural legendary creatures. The term is generally used in reference to elf-like creatures, including fairies, and similar beings , but can also signify various spiritual beings, including ghosts. In Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books, sprites are a race of fairies with green skin and roles or what were conceptualized as "Oriental" roles,[23] play her first major part, an impish Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written around 1594 to 1596. It portrays the adventures of four young Athenian lovers, a group of amateur actors, their interactions with the Duke of Athens, Theseus, the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta, and with the fairies who inhabit a moonlit forest. The.[24] He immediately picked her out as a suitable actress for the part of The Lady in his coming play To Damascus I, and invited her to his bachelor establishment to discuss the role. At this famous first meeting, Strindberg, according to Bosse's narrative of the event, met her at the door all smiles and charm.[25] Offering her wine, flowers, and beautifully arranged fruit, he shared with her his fascination with alchemy Alchemy, derived from the Arabic word al-kimia , is both a philosophy and an ancient practice focused on the attempt to change base metals into gold, investigating the preparation of the "elixir of longevity", and achieving ultimate wisdom, involving the improvement of the alchemist as well as the making of several substances described, showing her a golden brown mixture he told her was gold he had made.[26] When she got up to leave, Bosse claims Strindberg asked for the feather in her hat to use for writing his plays. Bosse gave it to him, and he used this feather, with a steel nib insert, to write all his dramas during their marriage. It is now in the Strindberg Museum in Stockholm.[27]

Strindberg wooed Bosse by sending her books about theosophy and the occult, by attempting to mould her mind, and by furthering her career. Throwing himself into writing plays with central parts he considered suitable for her, he tried to persuade her to act them, and the Dramaten management to cast her in them. Bosse asserts in her edition of the Letters that she tended to hang back, as did the management, being in agreement that she lacked the experience for major and complex roles. Strindberg, a power in the theatre, nevertheless often prevailed. The role of Eleonora in Easter (1901), which intimidated Bosse by its sensitivity and delicacy,[28] but which she finally undertook to play, turned out to be Bosse's most successful and beloved role, and a turning-point in Bosse's and Strindberg's relationship. They became engaged in March 1901, during the rehearsals of Easter, in what in Bosse's narrative may be the best-known incident of the Strindberg legend.[29] Bosse relates how she went to see Strindberg to ask him to give the part to a more experienced actress, but he assured her she would be perfect for it. "Then he placed his hands on my shoulders, looked at me long and ardently, and asked: 'Would you like to have a little child with me, Miss Bosse?' I made a curtsey and answered, as though hypnotized: 'Yes, thank you!'—and we were engaged."[30]

Marriage and divorce

Bosse and Strindberg were married on 6 May 1901. Strindberg insisted that Bosse bring none of her possessions to the home he had furnished for her, creating a "setting in which to nurture and dominate her".[31] In this setting, his taste in interior decoration was revealed to be Oscarian and old-fashioned, with pedestals, aspidistras, and dining-room furniture in hideous imitation of German renaissance, to Bosse's modern judgment.[32]

Enamel picture of August Strindberg in the Stockholm subway, Rådmansgatan station

Striving towards the life beyond, Strindberg explained, he could permit nothing in the apartment that would lead the thoughts towards the earthly and material. In her comments in the Letters, Bosse described with loyalty and affection Strindberg's protectiveness and his efforts to bring his young wife with him along his own spiritual paths; nevertheless, she chafed under these efforts, pointing out that she herself, at 22, was not even remotely finished with this world.[33] Increasingly agoraphobic Agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder, traditionally thought to involve a fear of public places and open spaces. However, it is now believed that agoraphobia develops as a complication of panic attacks. However, there is evidence that the implied one-way causal relationship between spontaneous panic attacks and agoraphobia in DSM-IV may be incorrect, Strindberg attempted to overcome his anxieties and allow his young wife the summer excursions she longed for. He planned sunny drives in hired victorias, but often the mystical "Powers" which governed him intervened. A crisis came as early as June 1901, when Strindberg arranged, and then at the last moment called off, a honeymoon trip to Germany and Switzerland. Bosse wrote in the Letters that she had nothing to do but stay at home and choke down the tears while Strindberg attempted consolation by giving her a Baedeker Verlag Karl Baedeker is a Germany-based publisher and pioneer in the business of worldwide travel guides. The guides, often referred as simply "Baedekers" , contain important introductions, descriptions of buildings, of museum collections, etc., written by the best specialists, and are frequently revised in order to be up to date. For "to read a trip in".[34]

Bosse with Anne-Marie, aged six months

The cancelled journey was the beginning of the end. A crying, defiant Bosse went off by herself to the seaside resort Hornbæk in Denmark Denmark (pronounced /ˈdɛnmɑrk/ ; Danish: Danmark, pronounced [ˈd̥ænmɑɡ̊], archaic: [ˈd̥anmɑːɡ̊]) is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark borders, a much shorter trip, but to her senses, a delightfully refreshing one. There, she was soon followed by Strindberg's letters, full of their agonized remorse at having given her pain, and then by Strindberg himself, steeling himself to bear the social life Bosse relished. However, the relationship quickly foundered on jealousy and suspicion, as when Strindberg struck a photographer over the head with his stick, unable to endure public, or any, attention to Bosse.[35] In August, when Bosse discovered that she was pregnant, even Strindberg's delight (he was a fond parent of the four children of his previous marriages) could not save a marriage full of distrust and accusation.[36] When their daughter Anne-Marie was born on 25 March 1902, they were already living apart. "For the sake of us both it is best that I do not return", wrote Bosse in a letter to Strindberg. "A continuation of life together with suspicion of every word, every act of mine, would be the end of me."[37] At her insistence, Strindberg began divorce proceedings.

Strindberg's roles for Bosse

The relationship of Strindberg and Bosse was highly dramatic. Strindberg would lurch back and forth from adoration of Bosse as the regenerator of his creativity ("lovely, amiable, and kind")[38] to a wild jealousy (calling her "a small, nasty woman", "evil", "stupid", "black", "arrogant", "venomous", and "whore").[39] His letters show that Bosse inspired several important characters in his plays, especially during the course of 1901, and that he manipulated her by promising to pull strings so that she could play them.[40] During the brief, intense, creative 1901 period, the roles Strindberg wrote as artistic vehicles for Bosse, or that were based on their relationship, reflect this combination of adoration and "suspicion of every word, every act". Carla Waal counts eight minor and six major roles written for Bosse to act, or as portraits of her, several of them classics of Western theatre history. The major roles enumerated by Waal are The Lady in To Damascus I (1900; mainly already written when Bosse and Strindberg met, but used between them to enhance their intimacy); Eleonora in Easter (1901; modelled on Strindberg's sister Elisabeth, but intended for Bosse to star in); Henriette in Crimes and Crimes (1901); Swan White in Swan White (1901); Christina in Queen Christina (1901); and Indra's daughter in A Dream Play (1902).[41] The years refer to dates of publication; Bosse never played in Swan White, even though Strindberg kept proposing it, and though she was many years later to describe this play as Strindberg's wedding present to her.[42]

Strindberg claimed that Queen Christina was an "explanation" of Bosse's character as being that of an actress in real life, flirtatious and deceitful.[43] In his influential Strindberg biography, Lagercrantz describes this play as a synopsis of the entire course of the Bosse–Strindberg marriage. He sees the courtiers as representing various stages of Strindberg's own emotions: Tott, in the first glow of love; de la Gardie, betrayed but loyal; Oxenstierna, who has rejected her. Each of the three men has words to speak which Strindberg himself had spoken to Bosse.[44]

A Dream Play is positioned at the median In probability theory and statistics, a median is described as the numeric value separating the higher half of a sample, a population, or a probability distribution, from the lower half. The median of a finite list of numbers can be found by arranging all the observations from lowest value to highest value and picking the middle one. If there is of Strindberg's series of portrayals of his own marriage, the Bosse role imbued with both light and darkness. With its associative dream structure, this play is a milestone of modernist Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The term drama, described by Strindberg as a lawless reflection of The Dreamer's (Strindberg's) consciousness, limited only by his imagination which "spins and weaves new patterns" "on an insignificant basis of reality".[45] Agnes, played by and representing Bosse, is the daughter of the Vedic The religion of the Vedic period is a historical predecessor of Hinduism. Its liturgy is reflected in the Mantra portion of the four Vedas, which are compiled in Sanskrit. The religious practices centered on a clergy administering rites that often involved sacrifices. This mode of worship is largely unchanged today within Hinduism; however, only a god Indra Indra is the King of the gods or Devas and Lord of Heaven or Svargaloka in Hindu mythology, and also he is the God of War, Storms, and Rainfall, descending to earth to observe human life and bring its disappointments to the attention of her divine father.[46] Yet she is also drawn into mere humanity and into a claustrophobic marriage to The Lawyer, one of the versions of The Dreamer and thereby of Strindberg. Shut up indoors by a possessive husband, Agnes can not breathe; she despondently watches the servant working to exclude light and air from the house by pasting insulating strips of paper along the windows' edges. Recognizably, the "insignificant basis of reality" of Agnes' marriage to The Lawyer is the frustration of the newly married Bosse, yearning for fresh air, sunshine, and travel but fobbed off with a Baedeker.[47]

Independence

Bosse as Steinunn in Jóhann Sigurjónsson's The Wish, 1917

Both before and after the divorce from Strindberg, Bosse was a Stockholm Stockholm (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈstɔkːɔlm] ) is the capital and the largest city of Sweden. It is the site of the national Swedish government, the Riksdag (parliament), and the official residence of the Swedish monarch as well as the prime minister. Since 1980, the monarch has resided at Drottningholm Palace outside of Stockholm and uses celebrity in her own right.[48] Her independence and self-supporting status gained her a reputation for being strong-willed and opinionated, insisting on, and receiving, high pay and significant roles. She left Dramaten with its conventional repertoire and began working at Albert Ranft's Swedish Theatre, where she and the skilful but more modest actor Gunnar Wingård (1878–1912) formed a popular co-star team.[49] She travelled frequently, particularly for guest performances in Helsinki Helsinki ( listen ; Swedish: Helsingfors, listen (help·info)) is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the southern part of Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, by the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is 584,420 (31 March 2010), making it the most populous municipality in Finland by a wide margin. Helsinki, leaving little Anne-Marie with Strindberg, a competent and affectionate father. In 1907, Bosse made theatrical history as Indra's daughter in Strindberg's epoch-making Dream Play. She and Strindberg met weekly for dinner at his house, and remained lovers until she severed connections in preparation for her marriage with Gunnar Wingård in 1908.[50] In 1909 the Wingårds had a son, Bo. This marriage was also brief, ending in divorce in 1912. According to rumour, the cause of the divorce was Wingård's infidelity. However, Strindberg also heard gossip that Wingård's large debts threatened Bosse's finances.[51]

In 1911, a divorced woman with two children to care for and support, Bosse returned to Dramaten. Strindberg was at that time fatally ill with cancer; he died on 14 May 1912. 1912 was altogether a year of death and disaster for the Bosse and Strindberg families: Alma Fahlstrøm's son Arne went down with the Titanic The RMS Titanic was the largest passenger steamship in the world when she set off on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, on 10 April 1912. Four days into the trip, on 14 April 1912, she struck an iceberg and sank, resulting in the deaths of 1,517 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history on 15 April; Strindberg's first wife Siri von Essen died later the same month; von Essen's and Strindberg's daughter Greta, a promising young actress, was killed in a train crash in June; and Bosse's divorced husband Gunnar Wingård shot himself on 7 October. Strindberg's funeral was a national event. Gunnar Wingård, a popular and charming actor, was also the subject of public grief. Throughout these shattering events, which left both her children fatherless, Bosse kept up her busy schedule, apart from a few days off, distraught and grief-stricken, after Wingård's suicide. For months after it, she received anonymous letters and threatening phone-calls, blaming her for Wingård's depression and death.[52]

Bosse's third marriage, 1927–1932, was to Edvin Adolphson (1893–1979), fifteen years her junior. Adolphson had abandoned his stage career in order to become instead a film director and one of the best-known Swedish film actors, a ruggedly handsome matinee idol whose screen persona Nils Beyer referred to as a combination of "apache, gangster A gangster is a criminal who is a member of a gang. The term is mostly used to refer to members of criminal organizations associated with Prohibition or with an American offshoot of the Italian Mafia and gigolo".[53]

Bosse made two films, ambitiously shot and directed and based on novels by well-known writers. The artistic achievement of Sons of Ingmar (1919) has been highly praised. Directed by and co-starring Victor Sjöström Victor Sjöström (in the United States sometimes known as Victor Seastrom) (20 September 1879 – 3 January 1960) was a Swedish actor, screenwriter, and film director, it was based on a novel by Swedish Nobel Prize The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" (original Swedish: den som inom litteraturen har producerat det utmärktaste i idealisk riktning). The & winner Selma Lagerlöf Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈsɛlma ʊˈtiːlɪa lʊˈviːsa ˈlɑːɡərˌløːv] ; 20 November 1858–16 March 1940) was a Swedish author. She was the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and most widely known for her children's book Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige (The Wonderful; many years later, Ingmar Bergman Ernst Ingmar Bergman (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈɪŋmar ˈbærjman] ; 14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. His influential body of work often dealt with themes such as bleakness and despair, as well as comedy and hope, in his cinematic exploration of the human condition referred to Sons of Ingmar as a "magnificent, remarkable film" and acknowledged his own debt to Sjöström. Bosse, who played the female lead Brita, called Sons of Ingmar "the only worthwhile Swedish film I was involved in." However, the film failed to give her career the kind of fresh start that the Swedish film industry had given Edvin Adolphson, and it was seventeen years before she made another film. This was Bombi Bitt and I (1936), her only talkie A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially practical. Reliable synchronization was difficult to, based on Fritiof Nilsson Piraten's popular first novel with the same title and directed by Gösta Rodin. Bombi Bitt was a successful though more lightweight production, with a smaller Bosse role ("Franskan").[54]

Retirement

After many years of ambitious and successful free-lance acting, Bosse found her options narrowing in the 1930s. The Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s. It was the longest, most widespread, and deepest depression of the 20th century, and is used brought her economic hardship, and, even though she looked younger than her age, most important women's roles were out of her age range. Her technique was still often praised, but also sometimes perceived as old-fashioned and mannered, in comparison with the more ensemble-oriented style of the times.[55] Finding herself unneeded by any Swedish repertory theatre, she only managed to return as a member of Dramaten by means of skilful persuasion and pointed reminders of her long history there. A humble employee at a humble salary, she played only fifteen roles, all minor, during her last ten years at Dramaten, 1933–1943.[56]

Retiring from the stage during World War II, Bosse considered moving back to Norway's capital Oslo, the home of her childhood and youth. Both her children had settled there. The move was delayed for ten years, during which she travelled whenever possible, and when it took place in 1955, she perceived it to be a mistake. Her brother Ewald's death in 1956 left her the only survivor of the fourteen children of Anne-Marie and Johann Heinrich Bosse. "How I long desperately for Stockholm", she wrote to a friend in 1958. "My whole life is there."[57] She became chronically melancholy, enduring failing health and bitter memories of the final phase of her career at Dramaten.[58]

Bosse always guarded her privacy, so much so that the memoir she wrote of her life with Strindberg was deemed to be too uninterestingly discreet to be publishable.[59]

Notes

  1. ^ Waal, 2.
  2. ^ Waal, 4–5.
  3. ^ According to Olof Molander, iconic director at Dramaten, quoted by Waal, 8.
  4. ^ "I had great respect for Alma", Harriet wrote later in an unpublished memoir. "Although she was always right when she commented on something, it wasn't easy ... to hear her shouting at me ... as I stood grieving, bent over my dear Axel's grave in Adam Oehlenschläger's Axel and Valborg, 'Harriet, don't stand there looking like a boiled shrimp.'" Translated and quoted by Waal, 8.
  5. ^ Waal, 10.
  6. ^ Waal, 12–15.
  7. ^ Waal, 18.
  8. ^ Waal, 22–23.
  9. ^ Comment by Bosse in Letters of Strindberg, 13.
  10. ^ Lagercrantz, 295.
  11. ^ Waal, 234–235.
  12. ^ Strindberg on Drama and Theatre, 11.
  13. ^ Brandell, Strindbergs infernokris.
  14. ^ Lagercrantz, 295.
  15. ^ Martinus, 11.
  16. ^ Translated by Carla Waal. Waal, 246.
  17. ^ Lagercrantz, 207, 221.
  18. ^ Waal, 30, 65.
  19. ^ Waal, 28–31.
  20. ^ Comment by Bosse in Letters, 14.
  21. ^ Waal, 25–30.
  22. ^ Martinus, 195; Waal, 204.
  23. ^ Waal, 22.
  24. ^ Letters, 13–18.
  25. ^ Comment by Bosse in Letters, 16.
  26. ^ Comment by Bosse in Letters, 16.
  27. ^ Comment by Bosse in Letters, 17.
  28. ^ Letter from Strindberg to Bosse, 25 February 1901; Letters, 23.
  29. ^ Lagercrantz (303) refers to it as "the question quoted even in brief accounts of his life: 'Miss Bosse, will you have a little child with me?'"
  30. ^ Comment by Bosse in Letters, 26.
  31. ^ Comment by Carla Waal, 30, on the basis of Strindberg's letters.
  32. ^ Comment by Bosse in Letters, 40.
  33. ^ Comments by Bosse in Letters, 41–42.
  34. ^ Comment by Bosse in Letters, 42.
  35. ^ Letters, 45–46.
  36. ^ This was illustrated in Strindberg's increasingly frantic letters to Bosse; see, for example, 28 and 29 August 1901; Letters, 49–55.
  37. ^ Letters, 55.
  38. ^ Lagercrantz, 302.
  39. ^ Lagercrantz, 348.
  40. ^ Waal, 195.
  41. ^ Waal, 221–234.
  42. ^ Waal, 160.
  43. ^ Waal, 233.
  44. ^ Lagercrantz, 310–311.
  45. ^ See Strindberg's note, published together with the play, reprinted in Strindberg on Drama and Theatre, 95.
  46. ^ The "Oriental" aspect of the play is based on Bosse's dark, exotic looks. "That he made the part the daughter of an Eastern God came about through his indulging in fantasies about my Eastern origin. 'You are from Java,' he often used to say to me." Comment by Bosse in Letters, 41.
  47. ^ Waal, 229.
  48. ^ Waal, 45–84.
  49. ^ Waal, 54–68.
  50. ^ Strindberg on Drama and Theatre, 92.
  51. ^ Waal, 66.
  52. ^ Waal, 70–72.
  53. ^ Skådespelare, 23; quoted by Waal, 149.
  54. ^ Waal, 126–132.
  55. ^ Waal, 84.
  56. ^ Waal, 174.
  57. ^ Waal, 189.
  58. ^ Waal, 187–189.
  59. ^ Waal, 191–192.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Harriet Bosse
Persondata
NAME Bosse, Harriet
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Actor
DATE OF BIRTH 19 February 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Oslo Oslo (Norwegian pronunciation: [ùʃlu] or [ùslu]) is the capital and largest city in Norway. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by a fire in 1624. The Danish–Norwegian king Christian IV rebuilt the city as Christiania (briefly also spelt Kristiania). In 1925 the city reclaimed its original
DATE OF DEATH 2 November 1961
PLACE OF DEATH Oslo Oslo (Norwegian pronunciation: [ùʃlu] or [ùslu]) is the capital and largest city in Norway. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by a fire in 1624. The Danish–Norwegian king Christian IV rebuilt the city as Christiania (briefly also spelt Kristiania). In 1925 the city reclaimed its original

Categories: 1878 births | 1961 deaths | Norwegian actors | Norwegians of German descent | Swedish actors | People from Oslo

 

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'Harriet Bosse' Blogs
Strindberg: I have your soul in a Japanese box
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Strindberg: I have your soul in a Japanese box

J. Camilo

Sun, 28 Nov 2004 04:07:00 GM

Strindberg sent a Swedish translation of this poem to . Harriet Bosse. with the following dedication: 'Give me more beautiful things to write about, Swanwhite, gave (sic) me a new golden pen. Chrysaetos.' ** Really a digestive furnace used ...

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