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

am in hell, and damnation weighs upon me like a heavy burden. When I go over my past, my childhood already appears to me like a prison house or torture chamber. In order to explain the sufferings inflicted upon innocent children, one has only to suppose an earlier existence, out of which we have been cast down in order to bear the consequences of forgotten sins. With a docile mind, which is my chief weakness, I receive a deep and sombre impression from my reading of Swedenborg. And the powers let me rest no more. Walking along the little brook in the neighbourhood of the village, I reach the so-called ravine path between the two mountains. The entrance between fallen and precipitous rocks has a wonderful attraction for me. The almost perpendicular hill, crowned by the deserted castle, forms the gate of the ravine, in which the stream drives a water-mill. A freak of nature has given the rock the form of a Turk’s head, a fact well known in the neighbourhood. Underneath, the miller’s shed leans against the wall of rock. Upon the latch of the door hangs a goat’s horn smeared over with fat, and by it stands a broom. This is certainly quite natural and ordinary, yet I cannot help asking myself what devil has put these two symbols of witchcraft, the goat’s horn and the broom, just this morning in my way? I press farther on up the damp, dark, and uneven path, and come to a wooden building, the strange aspect of which makes me stop. It is a long, low erection, with six openings like oven doors. Oven doors! Ye gods, where am I then?

The image of Dante’s hell, the red-glowing tombs of the heresiarchs, rises before me⁠—and the six oven doors! Is it a bad dream? No, commonplace fact, for a frightful stench, a stream of dirt, and a chorus of grunting reveals to me immediately that I have a pigsty in front of me.

Between the miller’s house and the hill, just under the Turk’s head, the path contracts to a narrow passage. As I go farther along it, I find myself confronted by a large, wolf-coloured Danish dog, a counterpart of the monster which guarded the studio in the Rue de la Santé in Paris. I retreat two steps, but immediately remember Jacques Cœur’s motto, “To a brave heart nothing is impossible,” and press onward into the ravine. Cerberus appears not to notice me, and so I pursue the path which now winds between low and gloomy houses. On one side, a black, tailless fowl with a red comb is running about, on the other a woman wearing a red crescent-shaped ornament on her forehead comes out of a house. She looks beautiful at first, but as she comes nearer, I see that she is toothless and ugly.

The waterfall and the mill combined make a noise like that roaring in the ears which I had during my first period of disquiet in Paris. The white-powdered miller’s men, who control the machinery, look like angels or executioners, and the never-ceasing stream of water rushes from under the great never-resting wheel. Then I reach the smithy with its bare-armed, blackened workmen armed with tongs, choppers, screw-vices, and hammers; amid the flames and sparks of the furnace there lie red-glowing iron and molten lead. There is a frightful din, which makes my brain vibrate and my heart leap. Farther on groans the great saw of the sawmill, and tortures with gnashing teeth the giant tree-trunks which lie on the block, while the sawdust trickles down on the damp ground.

The ravine-path, terribly devastated by cyclones and storms, continues along the stream; the subsiding overflow has left a greyish-green layer of mud behind, covering the sharp pebbles on which my feet continually slip. I wish to cross the water, but since the little bridge has been swept away, I halt under a precipice whose overhanging rock threatens to fall on an image of the Virgin, who seems to support the sinking hill on her tender shoulders.

Meditating on this combination of coincidences, which, taken together, without being supernatural, form a remarkable whole, I return home.

Eight days and eight quiet nights I spend in the rose-coloured room. My peace of mind returns with the daily visits of my little daughter, who loves me, and whom I love. By my relations I am treated like a sick, spoilt child. The reading of Swedenborg occupies me during the day and depresses me by the realism of its descriptions. All my observations, feelings, and thoughts are so vividly reflected there, that his visions seem to me like experiences and real “human documents.” It is no question of blind faith; it is enough for me to read his experiences and to compare with them my own. The book I have is only an extract; the chief riddle of the spiritual life will be solved for me later on when his Arcana Cœlestia falls into my hands. In the midst of my reflections, which lead to the newly-won conviction that there is a God who punishes, some lines of Swedenborg comfort me, and immediately I begin to excuse myself and yield to my old pride. In the evening I take my mother-in-law into my confidence, and ask her, “Do you think I am a damned soul?”

“No; although I have never seen any human destiny like yours; but you have not yet found the right way to lead you to the Lord.”

“Do you remember Swedenborg and his Principia Cœli, how he describes the stages of spiritual progress? First, an elevated ambition. Now, my ambition has never led me to strive after honour, nor to try to impress people with a sense of my ability. Secondly, love of happiness and money, in order to profit people. You know that I seek no gain and despise money. As regards my gold-making, I have sworn in the presence of the