



Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org
(Images generously made available by the Hathi Trust)





LEGENDS

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

BY

AUGUST STRINDBERG



LONDON: ANDREW MELROSE

3 YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN


1912




CONTENTS

       I. The Possessed Exorcist
      II. My Wretchedness Increases
     III. My Wretchedness Increases (cont.)
      IV. Miracles
       V. My Incredulous Friend's Troubles
      VI. Miscellanies
     VII. Studies in Swedenborg
    VIII. Canossa
      IX. The Spirit of Contradiction
       X. Extracts from my Diary, 1897
      XI. In Paris
     XII. Wrestling Jacob

Note




I

THE POSSESSED EXORCIST


Hunted by the furies, I found myself finally in December 1896 fixed
fast in the little university town Lund, in Sweden. A conglomeration
of small houses round a cathedral, a palace-like university building
and a library, forming an oasis of civilisation in the great southern
Swedish plain. I must admire the refinement of cruelty which has chosen
this place as my prison. The University of Lund is much prized by the
natives of Schonen, but for a man from the north like myself the fact
that one stays here is a sign that one has come to an inclined plane
and is rolling down. Moreover, for me who am well advanced in the
forties, have been a married man for twenty years and am accustomed
to a regular family life, it is a humiliation to be relegated to
intercourse with students, bachelors who are given to a life of riot
and carousing, and who are all