The Inferno, August Strindberg [classic english novels TXT] 📗

guide the course of the world and the destinies of men, as self-conscious entities or, as the theologians say, as “hypostases.” The second difference of opinion was regarding the denying and putting to death of one’s own self, which always seemed to me perfectly foolish, and seems so still.

Everything, i.e., the little which I know, goes back to the Ego as its central point. Not the cultus, indeed, but the culture of this Ego seems, therefore, the highest and ultimate aim of existence. My final and constant answer to his objections, therefore, was: “The killing of the Ego is self-murder.”

Moreover, before whom should I bow myself? Before the theosophists? Never! But before the Eternal, the Powers, Providence, I seek to subdue my evil propensities daily as much as possible. To combat for the preservation of my ego, against all influence which a sect or party, from love of ruling, may bring to bear upon me, that is my duty enjoined on me by conscience; the guide which the grace of my divine protector has given me.

Nevertheless, because of the qualities of this unseen friend, whom I felt drawn to love and admire, I put up with his admonitions when he often addressed me in a presumptuous way as his inferior. I always answered him, but did not conceal from him my dislike for theosophy.

Finally, however⁠—it was during the Popoffsky episode⁠—he assumed such a domineering tone, and became so intolerable in his tyranny, that I feared he took me for a fool. He called me “Simon Magus, the necromancer,” and recommended me to take Madame Blavatsky as my teacher. I wrote back to him that I had no need of the lady, and that no one had anything to teach me. Thereupon what did he threaten me with? That he would bring me back to the right path with the aid of stronger powers than mine. Then I asked him not to meddle with my destiny, which the hand of Providence had always so well protected and guided. And in order to further impress upon him my conviction by means of an example, I related to him the following incident out of my life, which has been so rich in providential occurrences, premising at the same time that by relating this very incident I feared lest I should be challenging Nemesis.

It was ten years before this time, during the most stormy period of my literary life, when I was raging against the feminist movement, which, with the exception of myself, everyone in Scandinavia supported. The heat of the conflict hurried me on, so that I so far overstepped the bounds of propriety that my countrymen considered me mad.

I was just then staying with my wife and the children of my first marriage in Bavaria, when I received a letter from a friend of my youth inviting me and my children to stop with him for a year, he made no mention of my wife. This letter, with its affected style, its corrections and omissions, seemed to betray some hesitation on the part of the writer in the choice of the reasons which he alleged for his invitation. As I suspected some trap, I declined the offer in a few noncommittal polite phrases.

Two years later, after my first divorce, I went to him of my own accord and found him living on a little island off the coast of the Baltic Sea as an inspector of customs. His reception of me was friendly, but his whole manner embarrassed and equivocal, and our conversation was more like a police examination. After giving a wakeful night’s consideration to the matter, I understood it. This man, whose self-love I had wounded in one of my novels, in spite of his display of sympathy, was not really my well-wisher. An absolute tyrant, he wanted to interfere with my destiny, to tame and subdue me, in order to show me his superiority.

Quite unscrupulous in his choice of means, he tormented me for a week long, poisoned my mind with slanders and stories invented to suit every occasion, but did it so clumsily that I was more and more convinced that he wished to have me incarcerated as a person of unsound mind.

I offered no special resistance, and left it to my good fortune to liberate me at the right time.

My apparent submission won my executioner’s favour, and there alone, in the midst of the sea, hated by his neighbours and subordinates, he yielded to his need to confide in someone. He told me, with incredible frankness for a man of fifty, that his sister during the past winter had gone out of her mind, and in a fit of frenzy had destroyed all her savings. The next morning he told me, further, that his brother was in a lunatic asylum on the mainland.

I asked myself, “Is that why he wants to see me confined in one, in order to avenge himself on fate?” After he had thus related to me his misfortunes, I won his complete confidence, so that I was able to leave the island, and hire a house on a neighbouring one, where my children joined me. Four weeks later a letter summoned me to my “friend,” whom I found quite broken down because his brother in a fit of mania had shattered his skull. I comforted my executioner, and his wife whispered to me with tears that she had long feared lest the same fate should overtake her husband. A year later the newspapers announced that my friend’s eldest brother had taken his life under circumstances which seemed to indicate that he was out of his mind. Thus three distinct blows descended on the head of this man who had wished to play with lightning.

“What a strange chance!” people will say. And stranger, and more ominous still, every time that I relate this history, I am punished for doing so.

The fierce July heat broods over the city; life is intolerable, and everything is