August Strindberg

“ At the end of January I take rooms in a private house, and confront my fate steadfastly without seeking to find distraction in the presence of a friend. It is a duel, and there is no possibility of escape. As soon as I come home in the evening I ascertain at once how it stands with my conscience. A choking atmosphere, even when the windows are open, gives warning of a bad night. The terrible fear I feel brings on fever accompanied with a cold sweat, and when I search my conscience I at once find where the shoe pinches. ”

“ For a long while we struggle against the growing embarrassment, but in vain. As early as nine o'clock we rise from table, and my companion, guessing my mood, takes his own way, under the pretext of having an appointment to keep. As soon as I am alone I feel an indescribable relief; my discomfort ceases, my headache disappears, and I feel as though the convolutions of my brain, and the network of my nerves which had become entangled, were slowly returning to their normal state. In truth, solitude has made my personality so sensitive that I cannot bear the contact of a stranger. ”

“ Chrysostom, the misogynist, says: "What is woman? The enemy of friendship, the punishment that cannot be escaped, the necessary evil, the natural temptation, the longed for misery, the fountain of tears which is never dry, the worst masterpiece of creation in white and dazzling array."
"Since the first woman made an agreement with the Devil, why should her daughters not do so likewise? Created as she was from a crooked rib, her whole turn of mind is crooked, and inclined towards evil." ”

“ Through the bars of the window, which looks into a deep courtyard, I can see a fragment of the sky and a grey wall overgrown with ivy which climbs upward to the light. My loneliness, which I find terrible in itself, is still more oppressive in the restaurant among a noisy crowd of people twice a-day. Add to this the cold—a perpetual draught through the room which has given me violent neuralgia,—pecuniary anxieties with no means of relieving them, the daily increasing bill, and it may be imagined what the total effect is!
And then the pangs of conscience! ”

“ One evening, after a day filled with pangs of conscience and doubts, I betook myself, after I had taken my lonely midday meal, to the garden which draws me like a Gethsemane where unknown sufferings await me. I have a foreboding of torments, and cannot escape them; I long for them almost as a wounded man wishes to subject himself to a cruel operation, which will bring him cure or death. Reaching the Fleurus Gate, I find myself at once upon the racecourse which is terminated by the Pantheon surmounted by the Cross. ”

“ But what cannot be denied is the startling coincidence between Swedenborg's visions, and all events great or small which have happened to me and my friends during this year of terror.
It was not till March that I found in an antiquarian bookseller's shop The Wonders of Heaven and Hell and Conjugal Love. Not till then was I freed from the spiritual burden that had secretly oppressed me ever since I first became aware of the Invisible. In them I learned that God is Love. He does not reign over slaves, and has therefore bestowed on mortals the gift of free will. ”

“ It must be the infliction of punishment which is to educate me? But let me assure thee that humiliations make me proud; being denied the little enjoyments of life produces desire for them; fasting occasions gluttony, which is not my besetting sin; chastity whets the edge of lust; enforced loneliness produces love of the world and its unwholesome delights; poverty gives birth to greed; and the evil companionship to which I am relegated instils contempt of humanity into me, and produces unawares the suspicion that justice is maladministered. ”

“ While my mind thus tortures itself, my health deteriorates, my strength decreases, and, together with the emaciation of the body, the soul begins to have a presentiment of her deliverance, from the mire.
At present I read Töpffer's Le Presbytere and Dickens's Christmas Tales, and they impart to me an indescribable inward calm and joy. I return to the ideals of the best period of my youth, and recover the treasures which I had squandered in the game of life. Faith returns, and with it, trust in the natural goodness of men; faith in innocence, unselfishness, virtue. ”

“ Let us acknowledge that the state of affairs is desperate, and that we are all handed over to the power of the Prince of this world to be bowed in the dust and humbled till we are disgusted with ourselves, in order that we may feel homesick for heaven. Self-contempt, anger at one's own personality, the result of vain endeavours to improve oneself—that is the way to a higher life. ”

“ After I have taken my melancholy meal alone I go up the Via Dolorosa, the Rue Bonaparte. This street has never appeared to me so monstrous as this evening; the shop windows yawn like abysses in which Christ is portrayed in many forms —half-martyred, half-triumphant. I go on and on, while the sweat runs in great drops down my face, and the soles of my boots burn my feet, yet I do not seem to advance a step. Am I the Wandering Jew who refused the Redeemer a drink of water? ”

“ I have waited for him three months, and receive the impression that Providence wishes to have me alone, in order to separate me from the world and to drive me into the desert, that the chastising spirits may thoroughly shake and sift my soul. In this Providence has done right, for solitude has educated me by compelling me to hold aloof from my social pleasures, which had considerably increased, and by depriving me of every friendly support. I have grown accustomed to speak to the Lord, to confide only in Him, and have as good as ceased to feel the need of men ”

“ I am astonished that anyone has ever been able to love me. I accuse myself of every possible crime; there is not a meanness, not a disagreeable act, which is not marked in black chalk on a white slate. I am filled with terror at myself, and would like to die.
There are moments when shame sends the blood to my cheeks and to my ear-tips. Selfishness, ingratitude, malice, envy, pride—all the deadly sins weave their ghostly dance before my awakened conscience. ”

“ We begin to love a woman, and deposit our soul piece-meal, so to speak, with her. We double our personality, and the loved one, who was formerly indifferent and neutral, begins to clothe herself in our other "I," and becomes our counterpart. When she takes it into her head to depart with our soul, the pain which it causes us is perhaps the most violent that there is, only to be compared to that of a mother who has lost her child. There is a painful sense of emptiness and woe to the man who has not strength enough to begin to divide himself again and to find another vessel to fill. ”

“ But as soon as the crowd again presses round me in the glaring light of the gas lamps, and all the exposed wares in the shops remind me of the trivialities of life, the scene in the garden appears like a miracle, and I hasten in alarm to my lodging, where meditation plunges me into an abyss of doubt and anxiety. There is a ferment going on in the world, and men are waiting for something new, of which a glimmering has already appeared. ”

“ I confess that I have been a sorry guardian of my own person, but that is because of the superiority of my better self which despised the unclean sheath in which thou hast immured my immortal soul. From my earliest years I have loved purity and virtue—verily I have. Yet my life has dragged itself dong in filth and wickedness, so that I often suppose my sins to be punishments inflicted upon me, with the object of arousing in me a permanent disgust of life. Why hast thou condemned me to ingratitude, which I hate more than any other sin? ”

“ This book, which forbids friendship, which lays worldly intercourse under a ban, which demands solitude and renunciation, is written for a monk, and I have not the right to be a monk and expose myself to the danger of letting my children die of want. See whither the love for a lonely life has led me. On the one hand thou enjoinest the life of a hermit, and as soon as I withdraw myself from the world I am attacked by the evil spirits of madness, my affairs fall into confusion, and in my isolation I do not possess a single friend from whom I can ask help. ”

“ Tired with my journey, I go to bed at eleven o'clock. All is silent in the hotel, and no noise audible. My courage rises, and I fall into a deep sleep, but to be awoken in half an hour by a tremendous noise overhead. There seems to be at least a score of young people who sing, stamp on the ground, and push chairs about. The disturbance lasts till morning. Why don't I complain to the manager? Because never once in my life have I succeeded in obtaining justice. Being born and predestinated to suffer injustice, I have ceased to complain. ”

“ Immediately there breaks out a noise on the ceiling over my head. I rise and fly from the battlefield, and from that hour I never remain for coffee after dinner except on holidays. In the evening, on the other hand, I can drink a glass with my friends, since the object is not so much drink as the interchange of thought with learned people, who represent all branches of science. But often it happens that mere love of drink gets the upper hand, accompanied by unbridled hilarity and cynical suggestions. One's lower nature breaks through and the brutal instincts find free scope. ”

“ I have endured the extremest sufferings, as circumstances brought about by invisible powers which hemmed me in, in order to compel me to leave unfulfilled the simplest duty of a man,—to support his children. Job retired from the game with his honour unaffected; for me all was lost, even honour, and yet I overcame the temptation to suicide; I possessed the courage to live without honour.
For three months I seek in vain to come into personal connection with the Swedenborg Society in Paris. ”

“ Though I have convinced myself that no one persecutes me, I am again drawn into the old circle of the self-torturing belief that some one does. When once the question is raised, there begins a dance of conjectures kept up by my conscience, which accuses me even when I have acted in pure self-defence in rebutting unjust accusations. I feel as though I were tied backwards to a stake, and that all the passers-by have the right to spit on me unpunished, but if I spit back, I am scourged, choked, hunted by furies. The whole world, even the meanest beggar, has rights against mu. ”

“ Do I suffer from optical delusion? Has anyone got the power to tamper with my faculty of sight? Can one make oneself invisible? These are unsolved questions which make me feel near despair. Am I mad? No, the doctors say I am not. There is inducement enough to believe in miracles.
If one may believe Swedenborg, I am a damned soul in hell and the Powers punish me ceaselessly and mercilessly. The spirits which I conjure up have no wish to enter the flask which I have unsealed.
I spend the evening of the same day in a good first-class hotel in the town of Malmö. ”

“ One evening, while he sits in a merry circle of friends, some power, unknown to the exact sciences, snatches the cigar from his mouth so that it falls to the ground. A little surprised, he picks up the cigar again, as though nothing had happened. But the same thing happens three times. Then the sceptic becomes as pale as death, and quits the place in silence, while his friends sit mute with astonishment. ”

“ I was about fifteen years old when, weary of useless conflicts against the young hot blood that longed to satisfy its passions, exhausted by the religious doubts which devastated my soul, which was eager to solve the riddle of existence, surrounded by pietists who worried me under the plea of winning my soul to love the God-like, I roundly asserted to an old lady friend who had lectured me to death, "I pitch morality overboard, provided I can be a great genius and universally admired!" ”

“ You have thrust me out of society, condemned me to solitude, and I am compelled to purchase the companionship of pariahs, outcasts like myself, and hungry as I have been. My simple pleasure is to be able to see these despised ones plume themselves on a conquest which is no conquest, to sec them eat and drink, and to hear their voices, which are at any rate those of women. ”

“ Under some pretext or other, I don't remember what, I ascend the stairs, only to find a large empty room above. Since the mines cannot be visited before twelve o'clock, I have myself driven to a fishing village some miles north, where there is a celebrated view over the Sound. As the carriage drives through the turnpike gate before the village, I feel a violent compression of the chest, just as though someone pressed his knees into my back. The illusion is so complete that I turn round to see the enemy who is sitting behind me. ”

“ As soon as we have sat down to table, the usual noise is heard overhead. In order to guard against any possibility of illusion on my part, I let the journalist describe the phenomenon, and find him convinced of its reality. As we went out after finishing our meal, the unknown woman who had accosted me before my departure from Lund, stood motionless before the door, and let me and my companion pass by. I forget the demons and the invisible, and begin again to suspect that I am persecuted by visible foes. Terrible doubts gnaw at my brain, fever my blood, and make me feel disgusted with life. ”

“ So long as Swedenborg in the Arcana and the Apocalypse treats of revelations, prophecies, interpretations, he has a religious effect upon me, but when in the Vera Religio he begins to reason about dogmas, he becomes a freethinker and Protestant. When he draws the sword of reason, he has himself chosen the weapons, and they are likely to prove bad ones for himself. I wish to have religion as a quiet accompaniment to the monotonous music of life, but here it is a matter of professional religion and pulpit-discussion—in brief, a struggle for power. ”

“ A few nights ago I had a dream which again aroused my longing to be able to die, by holding out the hope of a better existence, where there is no danger of a relapse into the misery of life. Having gone too far on a projecting ledge bounded by a steep precipice hid in darkness, I fell head foremost in an abyss. ”