August Strindberg

“ I wished to hate you when you left me; I wished to kill you, because you were willing to sacrifice your child, and still I love you. Do you not now believe in the power of love over our evil wills?'
"So he said; and I say now like the fabulist: this fable teaches that love is a great power which passes all understanding and against which our wills can do nothing. Love bears all things, gives up all things, and of faith, hope, and love, sir, love is the greatest." ”

“ He continued to smoke and kept silence, but he thought how low he had sunk to deny his old and tried friends; how despicable it was to plead for forgiveness with his eyes for the performance of Wagner. His thoughts ran parallel with her loud chatter, and he spoke them in silence.
"You despise my friends because they do not court their friend's wife, do not pay her little compliments on her figure and dress; and you hate them because you feel how my strength grows in the circle of their sympathies for me. You hate them as you hate me, and would hate anyone else who was your husband." ”

“ The room looked like a pigsty, and the meals were so prepared as to be purposely repulsive. Dirt and disorder prevailed to such a degree that he felt himself in hell. With longing he thought of his lonely attic which had always been tidy, however careless he had been about expenses.
Two months had passed since their marriage. All smiles and even conversation had ceased; love was changed into unreasoning hate, and he began to find her ugly. ”

“ One talks a lot of nonsense on the spur of the moment. I have no views but only speak impromptu, and life would be very monotonous if one thought and said the same things every day. It should be something new! Life is only a poem, and it is much jollier to float over the marsh than to stick one's feet in it and to feel for firm ground which is not there. ”

“ She sulked for half a day, then crept up to him, fell on her knees and was pardoned.
"At bottom," he said once, "we hate each other because we love each other. We fear to lose our individualities through the assimilating force of love, and therefore we must sometimes have a breach in order to feel that I am not you, and you are not I."
She agreed, but it was no remedy against the spirit of revolt, the struggle of the ego for self-justification. She loved him as a woman loves a man, for she thought him handsome, although he was ugly. ”

“ They were confronted by a fact before which they were helpless; love the good genius who magnifies every trifle, rejuvenates what is old, beautifies what is ugly, had abandoned them, and life stretched before them in naked monotony.
But it did not occur to them that they would be separated or were separated, for their grief itself was an experience they shared, which held them together. They were also united in a common grudge against Fate, which had so deceived them in their tenderest emotions. In their great dejection they were not capable of such a strong feeling as hate. ”

“ She had cast one look to the ceiling as though she sought there for something—an invisible hand perhaps, or had she resigned herself to it, because she had at last seen that it was a well-deserved retribution, and therefore not called him to account? It was strange, that in spite of desperate efforts to produce pangs of conscience, he never felt any self-reproach on the subject. It seemed to have happened without his will, and as though it must happen.
Nevertheless, it marked a boundary-line in his life. The cord was cut and he fell out in life alone, away from his mother and domesticity. ”

“ But the conversation of the betrothed pair kept them above the banalities of everyday life, and they lived, as people say rightly, above the earth. But they began to feel afraid of the solitude which surrounded them and drove them together. They tried to go among other people, partly from the need of showing their happiness, and partly to quiet themselves. But when after the theatre they entered a restaurant, and she arranged her hair at the glass in the hall, he felt as though she was adorning herself for strangers. ”

“ They were no longer one person, but two, irrevocably two, who did not belong together.
Yet another half-day in wretchedness and boredom; a night with changes of train in the darkness, and at last they were in Copenhagen. There they were unknown and had no need to feel embarrassed. But when they entered the dining-saloon, she began to pass the "searchlight" of her looks, as he called it, over all those present, so that when the baron looked at her he never saw her eye except in profile. At last he became angry and kicked her shin under the table. ”

“ At the same time excessively heavy rain had flooded a corridor and two rooms; the water could not be drained off but stagnated and stank. The garden went to ruin as no one looked after it.
Then he longed that he could get far away, somewhere where there was light and purity, peace, love, and reconciliation. He dreamed again his old dream of a convent within whose walls he might be sheltered from the world's temptations and filth, where he might forget and be forgotten. But he lacked faith and the capacity for obedience. ”

“ Education lies behind us like the seeds of weeds which may remain in the ground for a year or two, but which only need proper cultivation in order to spring up again. One day she looked in the glass and found that she had become pale, thin, and ugly. She saw that the bloom of her youth was past, and her charms decayed. Then the woman awoke in her or rather one side of the mysterious being which is called a woman: and then came the longing to be beautiful, to please, to feel herself ruling through her beauty. ”

“ She answered: "I know that I have never been so malicious towards anyone as towards you, without being able to give any reasons for it."
"I can, though," he said. "You hate me because I am a man, and your husband."
He had packed his portmanteau and she was prepared for his departure. When now the time of separation approached and she believed it would be for ever, her hatred vanished, and behold! love was there again! ”

“ She entered, dressed in black and at first full of suspicion. But to be able to consult with the doctor gave her an advantage which pleased her. She said she would come next morning together, with the doctor, and then she went, after secretly imprinting a kiss on the patient's hand.
"You must not play with your feelings," said the doctor who remained behind. "This woman loves you and you love her. That is as plain as a pikestaff."
The Norwegian lay alone all the evening and sought to find some guiding thread through all this chaos, but in vain. What a tangled thicket was the human soul! ”

“ I thought it was a pity that the young wife should be torn so suddenly out of her dreams of happiness and joy, and I was short-sighted enough to advise that she should not be told the real state of affairs till the first year was over."
"In that you were right! Why should women mix in business? It would only lead to trouble and confusion and their poor husbands would never have peace."
"No, sir, I was wrong, for in a true marriage husband and wife should have full confidence in each other and be one. ”

“ When he saw her so happy and pretty, he felt a stab in his heart, and thought to himself, "Now she brightens up, when she can dress for others and not for me." When he then conducted her to the theatre, he felt as though he were escorting a stranger, for her thoughts were already in the auditorium, which was her stage, where she wished to appear, and where she could now appear under her husband's escort without being insulted. ”

“ They reached the land and found themselves immediately in the ghostly castle. They were conducted up whitewashed stairs over which hung dark oil-paintings in black frames. Then he found himself in a warm, well-lighted room, among her relatives, of whom he only knew his mother-in-law.
With his incredible pliability, he immediately adapted himself to his position, and behaved like the young relation who under all circumstances must show reverence to his elders.
Here in the house his right of self-determination ceased; he must conform to other people's views, wills, and habits. ”

“ But the steamer paddles made some powerful forward strokes, the bond stretched itself, stretched itself, and broke!
"That was an infernal story," exclaimed the postmaster when the reading was over. "What can one say about it, except what you yourself have said in it? But do you think, generally speaking, that marriage will continue to exist?"
"Although I regard wife, child and home as desirable objects," answered the doctor, "I do not think lifelong marriages will be long possible" for in our days the individual—man or woman—is too egotistic and desirous of independence. ”

“ I was present, young sir, and helped to shut up the convents, and to announce the abolition of the old faith, but, sir, there are things which all-powerful Nature herself has founded, and which we had better not attempt to pull down. I wish to speak now of Amor or Love, whose fire burns unquenchably when it is rightly bestowed, but when wrongly, can soon be quenched, or even turn to hate when things go quite wrong. ”

“ It seemed to me that her clothes dropped from her and she stood there exposed, and for the first time I thought of the abysmal depths of the human soul, over which a judge must walk with bandaged eyes, for he has no right to punish us in our interior life of thought; there we punish ourselves and that is what the pietists do. ”

“ He spent a week in Rügen without hearing anything from his wife in London. At first he had found life on the island tolerable in contrast to that in the Hamburg hotel; but when he woke one day and reflected on his situation, it seemed to him simply hellish. He had hired an attic room and the sun beat fiercely on the iron plates of the roof, which was only a foot above his head. Sixteen years previously he had, as a young bachelor, left his garret at the top of five flights of stairs, in order to enter a house as a married man. ”

“ But he found a great charm in the silence and emptiness. He breathed unpoisoned air, enjoyed the solitude, and went to his work with the imperturbable calm of a Buddha. His travelling-bag was already packed, and the journey money might come any day.
The afternoon passed. As he looked out of the window, he noticed an unusual stillness round the great house; none of the family were to be seen. But a maidservant was going to and fro between the cottage and the house as though she were giving information. Once she asked if he wished for anything. "I wish for nothing," he answered. ”

“ Alone after a long double loneliness with his wife and with himself!
He felt as though he were under some curse, to be so treated by this insignificant, uncultivated Ilmarinen whom he had lifted up from nothingness, introduced to his own circle, fed and lodged, because he executed business matters for him with the theatres and publishers. This employment was partly an honour for the young unknown author, and partly an advantage, for it helped him to find openings for his own work. ”

“ The whole carefully-thought-out device of the baron to avoid the gaze of curious eyes was defeated, and as their sailing-boat was towed into the harbour of Hven, the unhappy pair were saluted from the bridge by hundreds of their fellow-countrymen with derisive applause and peals of laughter, though the latter did not know whom they were applauding. But the chagrin of the captured pair was greater than the others guessed, for they believed that people were ridiculing their unfortunate love affair. ”

“ Then for a moment he was released from his enchantment, and continued to think of flight till sleep had pity on him.
A couple of weeks passed in dull silence. He could not get rid of the thought that it was a pity about her, and when she was bored, it was his fault for the moment, because he was her husband—for the moment. To seek for others' society was now no longer possible, since his friends had been rejected, and she had no more pleasure in her own. They tried to go out each his own way but always returned home. ”

“ The fact that she had discovered his very natural thought, which he had self-denyingly repressed, hurt him like a rudeness for one has no right to punish the thoughts of another. He would have borne it more easily if there had been no tickets left, for he was already accustomed to be a scapegoat. But now he lamented over his lost happiness, and that he had not the power to amuse her. ”

“ Her hatred increased continually; she could not go into society, nor to theatres, and hardly on the street. What most annoyed her was the fact that the doctor who had been summoned to declare that she had a dangerous disease, hitherto unknown, only smiled, saying that all the symptoms were normal, and ordered soda-water. Instead of an intelligent friend, the Norwegian found a malicious, spoilt, unreasonable child at his side, and longed to be out of all this wretchedness. All conversation ceased, and they only carried on communications by writing. ”

“ She would naturally weep and appeal with her eyes to those present as if to ask whether she was not very unfortunate with such a husband. It was indeed her habit so to appeal with her eyes, and when he expected an answer from her, she always turned her looks on those around as if asking for help against her oppressor. He was always treated as a tyrant, although out of pure kindness he had made himself her slave. ”