August Strindberg

“ It was the first time that John had remained away from church. He determined to defy his father's command and his own conscience. He got excited, inveighed against religion and domestic tyranny, and talked of the church of God in nature; he spoke with enthusiasm of the new gospel which proclaimed salvation, happiness, and life to all. But suddenly he became silent.
"You have a bad conscience," said his friend.
"Yes," answered John; "one should either not do what one repents of, or not repent of what one does." ”

“ When John came home, he gave his mother the bouquet as from Gustav, and she was touched. At supper-time the flowers attracted his father's attention. "Gustav sent me those," said his mother. "He is always a kind boy," and John received a sad look because he was so cold-hearted. His father's eyes gleamed behind his glasses.
John felt no bitterness. His youthful, enthusiastic love of sacrifice had found vent, the struggle against injustice had made him a self-tormentor, and he kept silent. ”

“ It was the castle of Drottningholm—the most beautiful memory of his childhood, even including the fairy-tale books.
Their things are unpacked in a little white house on a hill, and now the children roll on the grass, on real green grass without dandelions, like that in the Clara churchyard. It is so high and bright, and the woods and fiords are green and blue in the distance.
The dust-bin is forgotten, the schoolroom with its foul atmosphere has disappeared, the melancholy church-bells sound no more, and the graves are far away. ”

“ Childhood to begin with has its little cares and disagreeables; youth has its great temptations, on the victorious resistance to which the whole subsequent life depends; mature life has anxieties about the means of existence and the fulfilment of duties; finally, old age has its thorns in the flesh, and its frailty. What are all enjoyments and all joys, which are regarded by so many men as the highest good in life? Beautiful illusions! Life is a ceaseless struggle with failures and misfortunes, a struggle which ends only in death.
"But we will consider the matter from another side. ”

“ Fritz began to give him instructions how he should behave. One should not be cringing, he said, but be yielding; should not say all that one thought, for no one wished to know that; it was good if one could say polite things, without indulging in too gross flattery; one should converse, but not argue, above all things not dispute, for one never got the best of it. Fritz was certainly a wise youth. John thought the advice terribly hard, but stored it up in his mind. What he wanted to get was a salary, and perhaps the chance of a tour abroad to Rome or Paris with his pupils ”

“ The scenery of the islands had for him a greater charm than the banks of the Mälar, and his magic recollections of Drottningholm faded. In the past year he had climbed up a hill in Tyreso with the volunteer sharpshooters. It was covered with a thick fir-wood. They crawled through bilberry and juniper bushes till they reached a steep, rocky plateau. From this they viewed a panorama which thrilled him with delight: water and islands, water and islands stretched away into infinite distance. Although born in Stockholm he had never seen the islands, and did not know where he was. ”

“ Thou art supposed to be the home of the virtues, where innocent children are tortured into their first falsehood, where wills are broken by tyranny, and self-respect killed by narrow egoism. Family! thou art the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.
After this John lived in perpetual disquiet. ”

“ The chiming at night, when John lay awake, was weird; but worst of all was the ringing of an alarm when a fire broke out. When he heard the deep solemn boom in the middle of the night for the first time he shuddered feverishly and wept. On such occasions the household always awoke, and whisperings were heard: "There is a fire!"—"Where?" They counted the strokes, and then went to sleep again; but he kept awake and wept. Then his mother came upstairs, tucked him up, and said: "Don't be afraid; God protects unfortunate people!" ”

“ In the evening, when he is tired and has been washed and put to bed, he hears how the silence seems to hum in his ears, and waits in vain to hear the strokes and chiming of the bell in the tower.
The next morning he wakes to get up and play. He plays day after day for a whole week. He is in nobody's way, and everything is so peaceful. The little ones sleep in the nursery, and he is in the open air all day long. ”

“ John felt as though he had never eaten before. Then he drank beer. "Is each of us to drink half a bottle?" he asked his friend. "You are really mad!"
But at any rate it was a meal,—and not such an empty enjoyment either, as anæmic ascetics assert. No, it is a real enjoyment to feel strong blood flowing into one's half-empty veins, strengthening the nerves for the battle of life. It is an enjoyment to feel vanished virile strength return, and the relaxed sinews of almost perished will-power braced up again. ”

“ He did actually inform his brother about the inspector's daughter, and the latter was pleased with her. But, instead of sighing behind the trees like John, Gustav went straight up to her and spoke to her in an innocent boyish way. This was the most daring thing which John had ever seen done in his life, and he felt as if it had added a foot to his own stature. He became visibly greater, his weak soul caught a contagion of strength from his brother's strong nerves, and he identified himself with him. He felt as happy as if he had spoken with the girl himself. ”

“ John's father, who generally had the outward imperturbability of the Icelander, was now softened. He took his sons by the hands and said: "God has visited us; we will now hold together like friends. Men go about in their self-sufficiency, and believe they are enough for themselves; then comes a blow, and we see how we all need one another. We will be sincere and considerate with each other."
The boy's sorrow was for a moment relieved. He had found a friend, a strong, wise, manly friend whom he admired.
White sheets were now hung up at the windows of the house in sign of mourning. ”

“ Religion had spoilt him, for it had educated him for heaven instead of earth; family life had ruined him by educating him for the family instead of for society; and school had educated him for the university instead of for life.
He was irresolute and weak. When he bought tobacco, he asked his friend what sort he should buy. Thus he fell into his friends' power. The consciousness of being popular drove away his fear of the unknown, and friendship strengthened him.
He was a prey to capricious moods. One day, when he was a tutor in the country, he came into the town in order to visit Fritz. ”

“ Do not these people recognise that society as it exists is a case of miscarriage in evolution, and is itself simultaneously hostile to culture and to nature?
Society, like everything else, is a natural product, they say, and civilisation is nature. Yes, but it is degenerate nature, nature on the down-grade, since it works against its own object—happiness. It was, however, the engineer, John's leader, and a nature-worshipper like himself, who revealed to him the defects of civilised society, and prepared the way for his reception of the new views of man's origin. ”

“ John was now his own master; he came and went, and did what he liked. His father's housekeeper was sympathetic with him, and they never quarrelled. He avoided intercourse with his school-fellows, shut himself in his room, smoked, read, and meditated. He had always heard that knowledge was the best thing, a capital fund which could not be lost, and which afforded a footing, however low one might sink in the social scale. ”

“ The shadows of the sun fall and alter everything without hiding everything, like the night. He begins to miss something. He has a feeling of emptiness, of being deserted, broken off. He wants to go home, but the consciousness that he cannot do so at once fills him with terror and despair and he weeps. ”

“ But now he goes about with pangs of conscience. Good! Good! He is sick with too much thought, he gropes in his in-side, inspects his actions till they dissolve into nothing. And he loves another's betrothed; that resembles John's life completely. He begins to doubt whether he is an exception after all. That, then, is a common story in life! Very well! He did not need then to worry about himself, but he had lost his consciousness of originality. ”

“ Children are often obliged to play with their brothers and sisters whether they are congenial to them or not. That is tyranny. But to compel an elder child to go about with the younger ones is a crime against nature; it is the mutilation of a young growing tree. John had a younger brother, a delightful child of seven, who trusted everyone and worried no one. John loved him and took good care that he was not ill-treated. But to have intimate intercourse with such a young child, who did not understand the talk and conversation of its elders, was impossible. ”

“ We believe the calendar, for example, without possessing a scientific knowledge of the movement of the planets."
"Yes," answered his friend, "we believe it, because our reason does not revolt against it."
"But," said John, "in Galileo's time they revolted against the idea that the earth revolves round the sun. 'He is possessed by a spirit of contradiction,' they said, 'and wishes to be thought original.'"
"We don't live in Galileo's age," returned his friend, "and the enlightened reason of our time rejects the Deity of Christ and everlasting punishment." ”

“ John became a pietist from many motives. Bankrupt on earth, since he was doomed to die at twenty-five without spinal marrow or a nose, he made heaven the object of his search. Melancholy by nature, but full of activity, he loved what was melancholy. Tired of text-books, which contained no living water because they did not come into contact with life, he found more nourishment in a religion which did so at every turn. Besides this, there was the personal motive, that his stepmother, aware of his superiority in culture, wished to climb above him on the Jacob's ladder of religion. ”

“ No, there is no happiness without virtue. No one is happy except the man who leads a really virtuous life. Well, but there are many really virtuous men. There are men who have never fallen into gross sin, who are modest and retiring, who injure no one, who are placable, who fulfil their duties conscientiously, and who are even religious. They go to church every Sunday, they honour God and His Holy Word, but yet they have not been born again of the Holy Spirit. Now, are they happy, since they are virtuous? There is no virtue without real religion. ”

“ He learned his lessons imperfectly, for he despised them, but he understood the art of life.
John needed a hero to worship, and wished to form an ideal out of some other material than his own weak clay, round which his own aspirations might gather, and now he exercised his art for eight days. He prepared for his brother's arrival by painting him in glowing colours before his friends, praised him to the teacher, sought out playing-places with little surprises, contrived a spring-board at the bathing-place, and so on. ”

“ They went into the open plain, where they met some of his comrades, and John felt the presence of his little brother like a clog on his leg. He took care that no one hurt him, but he wished the little boy was at home. Pelle talked at the top of his voice and pointed with his finger at passers-by; John corrected him, and as he felt his solidarity with him, felt ashamed on his account. Why must he be ashamed because of a fault in etiquette which he had not himself committed? He became stiff, cold, and hard. ”

“ When he came home, he was examined by the baroness. "How did he like the baron?" John answered that he was pleasant and condescending. He was also prudent enough to say nothing of the baron's friendship with his father. "They will learn it anyhow," he thought. Meanwhile he already felt more at home, and was no more so timid. One day he borrowed a horse, but he rode it so roughly that he was not allowed to borrow one again. Then he hired one from a peasant. It looked so fine to sit high on a horse and gallop; he felt his strength grow at the same time. ”

“ It must be mutual."
"John," went on the letter, "you think you have attained to a higher conception of God through the study of nature and through reason than when you believed in the Deity of Christ and the Bible, but you do not realise the tendency of your own thoughts. You think that a true thought can of itself ennoble a man, but in your better moments you see that it cannot. You have only grasped the shadow which the light throws, but not the chief matter, not the light itself. ”