Animation: Strindberg and Helium

The Misadventures of a Swedish Playwright & Essayist & Radical Visionary and his Pink Friend Helium
[Featured in Flash! animation.]



The Strindberg and Helium creative staff have merged the morose August Strindberg (during his Inferno period) with Helium, a character they describe as a "joyous, floating friend [they] created to brighten Strindberg's day." The result is sublime:

I had forgotten that a female saint is, after all, a woman. That is to say: man's enemy.
[Followed by the cooing marshmallow]
[i.e. the effect does not translate to text]

However even the misanthrope ages like a patient or dignitary:


He lived an extreme life, aesthetic and extremist, detached or lunatic, somehow unscrewed from the worlds socket and blinking with the shaking of the fan. Here is a sample of his Occult Diary, kept the years 1896-1902:

When I married Bosse I got her with child immediatly. But she grudged me that great honour, and out of spite she went off with her unborn child. She alleged that I had deserted our bedroom, but the truth was that she had begged me to move, as pregnancy had given her a dislike for my person. She returned and the child was born. The next thing was that she did not want to have more children, but did want to continue "married life". This resulted in distaste and disgust. First we separated, then we got a divorce. After that we came together again and I became her lover, and still am. This then is the question, in what way have I failed ? My reputation was restored, but is so no longer, for her lies are enduring, in spite of all there is to confute them! At 50 I was no good as a husband, but at 58 I am good enough to be a lover! It is sublime! Sublime !!!"

The reason this is best-of-the-web is the lack of a self-conscious mold in the humor genre. Strindberg and Helium act according to their characters, not sacrificed to general sarcasm in front of an audience.

A link to a more biographical breakdown of Strindberg's sum of days. I think the man himself might prefer the cartoon.