The Red Room, August Strindberg [the mitten read aloud txt] 📗

round the beehives, the gardener was kneeling by the hotbeds, sorting radishes; the warblers and brand-tails were singing in the gooseberry bushes, while lightly clad children chased the fowls bent on examining the germinative capacity of various newly sown seeds. A brilliant blue sky spanned the scene and the dark forest framed the background.

Two men were sitting close to the hotbeds, in the shelter of the fence. One of them, wearing a tall, black hat and a threadbare, black suit, had a long, narrow, pale face, and looked like a clergyman. With his stout but deformed body, drooping eyelids, and Mongolian moustache, the other one belonged to the type of civilized peasant. He was very badly dressed and might have been many things: a vagabond, an artisan, or an artist; he looked seedy, but seedy in an original way.

The lean man, who obviously felt chilly, although he sat right in the sun, was reading to his friend from a book; the latter looked as though he had tried all the climates of the earth and was able to stand them all equally well.

As Falk entered the garden gate from the high road, he could distinctly hear the reader’s words through the fence, and he thought it no breach of confidence to stand still for a while and listen.

The lean man was reading in a dry, monotonous voice, a voice without resonance, and his stout friend every now and then acknowledged his appreciation by a snort which changed occasionally into a grunt and became a splutter whenever the words of wisdom to which he was listening surpassed ordinary human understanding.

“ ‘The highest principles are, as already stated, three; one, absolutely unconditioned, and two, relatively unconditioned ones. Pro primo: the absolutely first, purely unconditioned principle, would express the action underlying all consciousness and without which consciousness cannot exist. This principle is the identity A⁠–⁠A. It endures and cannot be disposed of by thought when all empirical definitions of consciousness are prescinded. It is the original fact of consciousness and must therefore, of necessity, be acknowledged. Moreover, it is not conditioned like every other empirical fact, but as consequence and substance of a voluntary act entirely unconditioned.’

“Do you follow, Olle?” asked the reader, interrupting himself.

“It’s amazing! It is not conditioned like every other empirical fact. Oh! What a man! Go on! Go on!”

“ ‘If it is maintained,’ ” continued the reader, “ ‘that this proposition without any further proof be true.⁠ ⁠…’ ”

“Oh! I say! What a rascal! without any further proof be true,” repeated the grateful listener, bent on dissipating all suspicion that he had not grasped what had been read, “without any further reason, how subtle, how subtle of him to say that instead of simply saying ‘without any reason.’ ”

“Am I to continue? Or do you intend to go on interrupting me?” asked the offended reader.

“I won’t interrupt again. Go on! Go on!”

“Well, now he draws the conclusion (really excellent): ‘If one ascribes to oneself the ability to state a proposition⁠—’ ”

Olle snorted.

“ ‘One does not propose thereby A (capital A), but merely that A⁠–⁠A, if and in so far as A exists at all. It is not a question of the essence of an assertion but only of its form. The proposition A⁠–⁠A is therefore conditioned (hypothetically) as far as its essence is concerned, and unconditioned only as far as its form goes.’

“Have you noticed the capital A?”

Falk had heard enough; this was the terribly profound philosophy of Upsala, which had strayed to Stockholm to conquer and subdue the coarse instincts of the capital. He looked at the fowls to see whether they had not tumbled off their roosts; at the parsley whether it had not stopped growing while made to listen to the profoundest wisdom ever proclaimed by human voice at Lill-Jans; he was surprised to find that the sky had not fallen after witnessing such a feat of mental strength. At the same time his base human nature clamoured for attention: his throat was parched, and he decided to ask for a glass of water at one of the cottages.

Turning back he strolled towards the hut on the right-hand side of the road, coming from town. The door leading into a large room⁠—once a bakery⁠—from an entrance-hall the size of a travelling trunk, stood open. The room contained a bed-sofa, a broken chair, an easel, and two men. One of them, wearing only a shirt and a pair of trousers kept up by a leather belt, was standing before the easel. He looked like a journeyman, but he was an artist making a sketch for an altarpiece. The other man was a youth with clear-cut features and, considering his environment, well-made clothes. He had taken off his coat, turned back his shirt and was serving as the artist’s model. His handsome, noble face showed traces of a night of dissipation, and every now and then he dozed, each time reprimanded by the master who seemed to have taken him under his protection. As Falk was entering the room he heard the burden of one of these reprimands:

“That you should make such a hog of yourself and spend the night drinking with that loafer Sellén, and now be standing here wasting your time instead of being at the Commercial School! The right shoulder a little higher, please; that’s better! Is it true that you’ve spent all the money for your rent and daren’t go home? Have you nothing left? Not one farthing?”

“I still have some, but it won’t go far.” The young man pulled a scrap of paper out of his trousers pocket, and straightening it out, produced two notes for a crown each.

“Give them to me, I’ll take care of them for you,” exclaimed the master, seizing them with fatherly solicitude.

Falk, who had vainly tried to attract their attention, thought it best to depart as quietly as he had come. Once more passing the manure heap and the two philosophers, he turned to the left. He had not gone far when he caught sight