“My friend, who returned from Stockholm the day before Strindberg’s death, brought me a large portrait of him. I look at these working shoulders, at the unruly head and suffering face, and I want to call the great Swede simply: “old August.” This big stubborn forehead, these angry eyebrows, this nose of a “simple” man, a worker, this persistent gaze of stern eyes, before which, it seems, everything petty, everything dishonest, unable to say a definite “yes” or “no” to anything “... After all, all this is so dear and so infinitely close to us; Maybe no one cares and needs it as much as Russians, and Russian writers in particular...”