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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 more or less in ill odour with the
fatherly authorities of the university because of their radical way of
thinking.

Of the same age, and formerly a companion of the professors, who now
no longer tolerate me, I am compelled to find my friends among the
students, and so to take upon myself the role of an enemy of the
seniors and of the social circles of solid respectability. Come down,
indeed! That is just the right word, and why? Because I scorned to
submit myself to the laws of social life and domestic slavery. I have
regarded the conflict for the upholding of my personality as a sacred
duty, quite irrespective of the fact of its being a good or bad one.

Excommunicated, regarded with suspicion, denounced by fathers and
mothers as a corrupter of youth, I am placed in a situation which
reminds one of a snake in an ant-heap, all the more as I cannot leave
the town through pecuniary embarrassment.

Pecuniary embarrassment! That has now been my lot for three years,
and I cannot explain how all my resources were dried up, as soon as
my profits were exhausted. Four-and-twenty dramas of my composing are
now laid up in a corner, and not a single one performed any more; an
equal number of novels and tales, and not one in a second edition.
All attempts to borrow a loan have failed and continue to fail. After
I had sold all that I possessed, need compelled me at last to sell
the letters which I had received in the course of years, _i.e._ other
people's property.

This constant condition of poverty seems to me so clearly to depend
upon some special purpose of Providence that I finally endure it
willingly as a part of my penance and do not try to resist it any
more. As regards myself, I want of means signifies nothing to me
as an independent author, but it is disgraceful not to have the
wherewithal to support my children. Very well! I make up my mind to
bear the disgrace though it involve pains like hell. I will not yield
to the temptation to pay for false honour with my life. Prepared for
anything, I endure resolutely to the uttermost the most extraordinary
humiliations and observe how my expiatory pangs commence. Well-educated
youths of good family treat me one night to a serenade of caterwauling
in my corridor. I take it as something I have deserved without
disturbing myself. I try to hire a furnished lodging. The landlord
refuses with transparent excuses, and the refusal is flung in my
face. I pay visits and am not received. These are mere trifles. But
what really wounds me is the sublime irony shown in the unconscious
behaviour of my young friends when they try to encourage me by praising
my literary works, "so fruitful in liberating ideas, etc." And this to
me, who have just flung these so-called ideas on the dust-heap, so that
those who entertain these views are now my opponents! I am at war with
my former self, and while I oppose my friends and those once of the
same mind with me, I lay myself prostrate in the dust.

This is irony indeed; and as a dramatist I must admire the composition
of this tragi-comedy. In truth, the scenes are well-arranged.

Meanwhile people, taking into consideration the way in which old and
new views become entangled with each other in a period of transition,
do not reckon too rigidly with a veteran like myself. They do not
prick up their ears so solemnly at my arguments, but rather ask after
novelties in the world of ideas. I open for them the vestibule to the
temple of Isis, and say, by way of preliminary, that occultism is going
to be the vogue. Then they rage, and cut me down with the same weapons
which during twenty years I have been forging against superstition and
mysticism.

Since these debates always take place in garden-restaurants to the
accompaniment of wine-drinking, one avoids violent arguments, and I
confine myself to relating facts and real occurrences, assuming the
mask of an enlightened sceptic. It can certainly not be said that
people are opposed to everything new--quite the contrary; but they
become conservative as regards ideals which have been won by hard
fighting and which one is not inclined to desert. Still less are they
disposed to abjure a faith which has been purchased by a baptism of
blood. It falls to my share to strike out a path between naturalism
and supernaturalism, by expounding the latter as a development of the
former.

For this purpose, I address myself to the problem of giving, as just
indicated, natural and scientific explanation for all the mysterious
phenomena which appear to us. I split up my personality and show to the
world a rationalistic occultist, but I keep my innermost individuality
unimpaired and cherish the germ of a creedless religion. Often my
outer role gets the upper hand; my two natures become so intricately
intermixed that I can laugh at my newly won belief. This helps my
theories to find entrance into the most oppositely constituted minds.

The gloomy December days drag on lazily under a dark-grey smoky sky.
Although I have discovered Swedenborg's explanation regarding the
character of my sufferings, I cannot bring myself once for all to
bend under the hand of the Powers. My disposition to make objections
asserts itself, and I continually refer the real causes of my suffering
to external things, especially the malice of men. Attacked day and
night by "electric streams," which compress my chest and stab my
heart, I quit my torture-chamber, and visit the tavern where I find
friends. Fearing sobriety, I drink ceaselessly, as the only way of
procuring sleep at night. Shame and disgust, however, combined with
restlessness, compel me to give this up, and for some evenings I visit
the Temperance Cafe called the "Blue Band." But the company one meets
with there depresses me,--bluish, pale, and emaciated faces, terrible
and malicious eyes, and a silence which is not the peace of God.

When things go wrong, wine is a benefit, and refraining from it a
punishment. I return to the half-sober tavern, without, however,
transgressing the bounds of moderation, after having disciplined myself
for several evenings by drinking tea.

Christmas is approaching, and I regard the children's festival with a
cool bitterness that I can hardly dignify with the name of resignation.
For six years I have had all kinds of sufferings, and am now prepared
for anything. Loneliness in an hotel! That has long been my nightmare,
and I have become accustomed to it. It seems as though the very thing
that I dislike is forced upon me.

Meanwhile a closer intimacy has sprung up between me and a friendly
circle, so that they begin to make confidences to me. The fact is that
during the last months so many things have happened, so many unusual
unexpected things. "Let me hear them," I say. "They tell me that the
head of the revolutionary students, the freest of freethinkers, after
having come out of a temperance hospital and taking the pledge, has
been now converted, so that he forthwith----"

"Well, what?"

"Sings penitential psalms."

"Incredible!"

In fact the young man, who was unusually gifted, had for the present
spoilt his prospects by attacking the views prevalent at the
university, including the misuse of strong drink. When I arrived in the
town he kept a little aloof from me on the ground of his temperance
principles, but it was he who lent me Swedenborg's Arcana Coelestia,
which he had taken from his father's library. I remember that after
I had begun to read the work I gave him an account of Swedenborg's
theories, and suggested to him to read the prophet in order to gain
light, but he interrupted me with a gesture of alarm.

"No! I will not! Not now! Later!"

"Are you afraid?"

"Yes, for the moment."

"But read it merely as a literary curiosity."

"No."

I thought at first he was joking, but later on it became clear to me
that he was quite in earnest. So there seems to be a general awakening
going on through the world, and I need not conceal my own experiences.

"Tell me, old fellow, can you sleep at night?"

"Not much. When I lie awake my whole past life comes in review before
me; all the follies which I have committed, all my sufferings
and unhappiness pass by, but especially the follies. And when the
procession ends, it commences all over again."

"You also?"

"What do you mean by 'also'?"

"That is the disease of our time. They call it 'the mills of God.'"

At the word "God" he makes a grimace and answers, "Yes, it is a queer
age we live in; the world turns round and round."

"Or rather it is the re-entrance of the Powers."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Christmas week is over. In consequence of the holidays my table
companions are scattered over the neighbourhood of Lund. One fine
morning my friend, the doctor and psychologist, comes and shows me
a letter from our friend the poet, containing an invitation to his
parents' house, a country property a few miles from the town. I decline
to go as I dislike travelling.

"But he is unhappy," says the doctor.

"What is the matter with him?"

"Sleeplessness; you know he has lately been keeping Christmas."

I take shelter behind the excuse of having some business to do, and the
question remains undecided. In the afternoon I get another letter, to
say that the poet is ill and wants his friend's medical advice.

"What is he suffering from now?" I ask.

"He suffers from neurasthenia and believes himself persecuted----"

"By demons?"

"Not exactly that, but anyhow----"

An access of grim humour elicited by the fact of having a brother
in misfortune makes me determine to go with him. "Very well then,
let us start," I say; "you see to the medicine and I will see to the
exorcism." When the matter is settled, I pack my portmanteau, and as I
go down the hotel steps I am unexpectedly accosted by an unknown female.

"Excuse me, are you Dr. Norberg?"

"No, I am not," I answer, not exactly politely, for I thought she was a
disreputable person.

"Could you tell me what time it is?" she continued.

"No!"

And I go off.

How unmeaningful this scene was, it did nevertheless leave me with me
an unsettling impression.

In the evening we stay in a village, to pass the night there. I have
just entered my room, on the first floor, and washed up a little, when
the usual sounds reach my ears; someone moves furniture around and I
hear dance-steps.

This time I don't leave it with a suspicion, but run in the company of
my comrades up the servants' stairs, to get certainty. But upstairs
nothing suspicious can be found, because above my room, under the
roofpanes, there's nobody living.

After a bad night with little sleep, we continue our journey and a
couple of hours later we are in the parental home of the Poet, who
almost appears as a prodigal son before religious parents, good and
honest man. The day is spent with walks in a beautiful country-side
and innocent conversations. The evening descends and brings an
indescribable peace in a very homely environment, in which the doctor
and I seem completely lost to ourselves, he even more than I, because
he's an atheist.

Late in the evening we retire to the room that was assigned to the
Doctor and me. When I'm searching for something to read, I lay hands
upon "Magic of the Middle Ages" by Viktor Rydberg. Again this writer,
whom I avoided, as long as he lived, and who keeps pursuing me after
his death!

I page through the book, and my eye is caught by the part about
Incubi and Succubi. The author doesn't believe in such things and
ridiculizes the thought of devils. But I cannot laugh; I'm offended by
what I'm reading, and I console myself with the thought that by now the
author may have altered his views.

In the mean time, reading about things magical and weird isn't very
suitable to induce any sleep, and I experience a certain nervous
restlessness.

Therefore, the proposal to come along to the sanitary rooms is taken as
a welcome distraction and a hygienic preliminary for the night, which I
fear.

Provided with a lantern, we walk over the inner court, where, under a
cloudy sky, the skeletons of frosted trees crash under the playful and
capricious whirlwind.

"I think you're afraid of your own shadows my good fellows," laughs the
doctor contemptuously. We give no answer, for the violence of the wind
nearly throws us down. When we reach the place which is near the stable
and under the hayloft, we are greeted by a noise over our heads, and,
strange to say, it is exactly the noise which has followed me for half
a year.

"Listen!" I said; "don't you hear something?"

"Yes, it is only the farm servants feeding the cattle."

I do not deny the fact, but why must they do it just as I enter the
place? And how comes it that the disturbance always takes an acoustic
form? There must be some unseen agent who arranges these serenades for
me, and it is no mere illusion of my ears, for others hear them too.
When we return to our bedroom, all is still. The poet who has behaved
quietly all day, and who sleeps in an attic begins to look uneasy,
and finally confesses that he cannot sleep alone, as he suffers from
nightmare. I give him up my bed, and go into a large room close by,
where there is an enormous one. This room, unwarmed, without blinds,
and almost unfurnished, makes me feel a depression which is increased
by the damp and cold. In order to distract myself, I look for books,
and find on a small table a Bible illustrated by Gustave Dore, together
with a number of books of devotion. Then I remember that I am an
intruder into a religious home, that I, the friend of the prodigal son,
am regarded as a corrupter of youth. What a humiliating role for a man
of eight and forty!

I understand the young man's discomfort at being penned up with
excellent and pious people. He must feel like a devil obliged to attend
mass. And it is to drive out devils with devils that I have been
invited hither. I have come in order to make this rarefied air possible
to breathe by defiling it, since the young man cannot bear it, pure.

With such thoughts I retire to bed. Sleep was formerly my last and
surest refuge whose pity never failed me. But now my comforter has left
me in the lurch and the darkness alarms me. The lamp is lit and there
is stillness after the storm. Then a strange buzzing noise rivets my
attention and rouses me from my drowsiness. I observe an insect flying
hither and thither in the upper part of the room. But I am astonished
to find that I cannot identify it, though I am well up in entomology,
and flatter myself that I know all the winged insects in Sweden. This
is not a butterfly or a moth, but a fly, long and black, which makes a
sound like a wasp. I get up to chase it. Chasing flies at the end of
December! It disappears. I creep again under the bedclothes and resume
my meditations.

But the cursed insect flies out from under my cushion cover, and, after
having rested and warmed itself in my bed, it flies in all directions,
and I let it go, feeling sure that I shall soon catch it by the lamp,
whose flame will attract it. I have not long to wait; as soon as the
fly gets within the lamp-shade a match scorches its wings. It dances
its death-dance and lies lifeless on its back. I convince myself by
ocular demonstration that it is an unknown winged insect, about an
inch long, and of a black colour, with two fiery red spots on its wings.

What is it? I don't know, but in the morning I will give the others the
opportunity of ratifying its existence.

Meanwhile, after accomplishing this auto-da-fe, I go to sleep. In the
middle of the night I am awakened by a sound of whining and chattering
of teeth which comes from the next room. I kindle a light and go in.
My friend the doctor has thrown himself half out of bed, and writhes
in terrible convulsions, with his mouth wide open. In a word, he shows
all the signs of hysteria described in Charcot's treatise, which calls
the stage he is in now "possession." And he a man of conspicuous
intelligence and good heart, not morally worse than others, of full
growth, with regular and pleasant features, now disfigured to such a
degree that he looks like the picture of a mediaeval devil.

In alarm, I wake him up, "Have you been dreaming, old fellow?"

"No, it was an attack of nightmare."

"Incubus!"

"Yes, indeed! It squeezed my lungs together, something like angina
pectoris."

I gave him a glass of milk; he lights a cigar, and I return to my
room. But now all my chance of sleep is gone. What I had seen was too
terrible, and till the morning my companions continue their conflict
with the invisible.

We meet at breakfast, and make a joke of the adventures of the night.
But our host does not laugh, a circumstance which I ascribe to his
religious way of thinking, which makes him hold the hidden Powers in
awe. The delicate position in which I find myself between the seniors
whom I admire, and the juniors whom I have no right to blame, makes me
hasten my departure. As we rise from table the master of the house asks
the doctor for a special consultation, and they retire for half an hour.

"What is the matter with the old man?" I ask, when the doctor returns.

"He cannot sleep,--has heart attacks at night."

"He also! That good and pious man! Then it is an epidemic which spares
no one."

I will not deny that this circumstance restored my courage, and the
old spirit of rebellion and scepticism took possession of my soul. To
challenge the demons, to defy the invisible, and finally to subdue
it,--that, was the task I proposed to myself as I left this hospitable
family in order to proceed upon my projected excursion in Schonen.

       *       *       *       *       *

Reaching the town Hoeganaes the same evening, I take my evening meal
in the large dining-hall of the hotel, and have a journalist for my
companion. 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.

But the night has a surprise in store for me which alarms me more than
all the last days together. Tired with my journey, I go to bed at
eleven o'clock. All is silent in the hotel, and no noise audible. My
courage