whether it were to bring about a reconciliation or for occultist
reasons, because she is a clairvoyante and visionary. I had postponed
the visit under various pretexts, but now that my departure was
resolved on, my mother-in-law obliged me to visit the old lady and bid
her farewell, probably for the last time on this side of the grave.
On November 26th, a cold, clear day, my mother-in-law, the child, and
I made the pilgrimage to the bank of the Danube, where the family
residence is. We alighted at the inn, and while my mother-in-law went
to announce my visit to her mother, I wandered through the meadows and
woods, which I had not seen for two years. Recollections overpowered
me, and in all of them was interwoven the figure of my wife. And now
everything is blighted by autumnal frosts; there is now not a single
flower, nor a green blade of grass where we both plucked all the
flowers of spring, summer, and autumn!
After the mid-day meal I am taken to the old lady who occupies the
annex to the villa, the little house in which my child was born. Our
meeting is, considering the circumstances, a cold one; they seem to
expect that I should appear as the prodigal son, but I have no wish
to act that rôle. I confine myself to indulging in reminiscences of
our lost paradise. She and I had painted the door-and window-panels
in honour of the little Christina's arrival in the world. The roses
and clematis which adorn the front of the house were planted by my own
hands. I had cut out the path through the garden. But the walnut tree
which I planted the morning after Christina's birth has disappeared.
The "life-tree," as we called it, is dead. Two years, two eternities,
have elapsed since the farewell between her on the shore and me on the
ship, in which I went to Linz in order to proceed thence to Paris.
Who has caused the breach between us? I, for I have murdered my own
love and hers. Farewell, my white house, where grew thorns and roses.
Farewell, Danube! I say to comfort myself, "You were a dream, short as
summer, too sweet to be real, and I do not regret it."
The night comes. My mother-in-law and my child have, at my request,
taken up their quarters in the inn, in order to protect me against the
deadly attacks, which I forebode by means of a sixth sense which has
been developed in me during the six months of persecution which I have
suffered.
About ten o'clock in the evening a gust of wind begins to shake the
door of my room, which is on the ground-floor. I make it fast with
wooden wedges; it is no use; the door shakes still more. The windows
rattle; there is a dog-like howling in the stove; the whole house reels
like a ship. I cannot sleep; at one time my mother-in-law groans, at
another the child cries. The next morning my mother-in-law, exhausted
by sleeplessness and something else, which she conceals from me, says:
"Depart, my child; I have enough of this hellish stench!" And I travel
northwards, a restless pilgrim, into the fire of a new purgatory.
XII
PILGRIMAGE AND PENANCE
There are ninety towns in Sweden, and the powers have condemned me to
go to the one which I most dislike. First of all, I visit the doctors.
The first speaks of neurasthenia, the second of angina pectoris, the
third of paranoia, a mental disease, the fourth of emphysema. This is
enough to ensure me against being put into a lunatic asylum. Meanwhile,
in order to procure the means of livelihood, I am forced to write
articles for a newspaper. But whenever I sit at the table to write,
hell is let loose. A new discovery comes to make me wild. Whenever I
take up my quarters in an hotel there breaks out a fiendish noise,
just as there did in the Rue de la Grande Chaumière in Paris; I hear
shuffling footsteps and the moving of furniture. I change my room, I
go into another hotel, and still there is the noise over my head. I
visit the restaurants, but as soon as I sit down to a meal the noise
begins there also. And it should be observed that whenever I ask those
present whether they hear the same noise too, they say "yes," and their
description of it tallies with mine.
It is then no acoustic hallucination from which I suffer; everywhere
there are plots, I say to myself. But one day, as I go by chance into a
shoemaker's shop, the noise instantaneously breaks out. It is no plot,
then! It is the Devil himself! Hunted from hotel to hotel, pursued
everywhere by electric wires even to my bed, attacked everywhere
by electric currents which lift me from my chair, or out of bed, I
deliberately set about planning my suicide. The weather is terrible,
and in my depression I seek distraction in drinking bouts with friends.
One dreary day, after such a bout, I have just finished my early
breakfast in my room. I turn round towards the table on which the
breakfast things are standing. A slight noise attracts my attention,
and I see that a knife has fallen on the ground. I lift it up and place
it so that it cannot do so again. The knife moves and falls.
So it is electricity!
The same morning I write a letter to my mother-in-law, and complain
of the bad weather and life in general. As I write the sentence,
"The earth is dirty, the sea is dirty, and dirt rains from the sky,"
imagine my astonishment, as I see a clear drop of water fall upon the
paper. No electricity! A miracle! In the evening as I am still working
at the table, a noise from the washing-stand startles me. I look in
that direction, and see that a wax-cloth, which I use in my morning
ablutions, has fallen down. In order to get at the rights of the
matter, I hang it up, so that it cannot fall down again.
It falls again!
What is that? My thoughts now revert to the occultists and their secret
powers. I leave the town with my written indictment of them in my
pocket, and betake myself to Lund, where there are old friends of mine:
doctors, specialists in mental disease, and even theosophists on whose
aid I reckon.
How have I come to settle down in this little university town, this
place of rustication and penance for the students of Upsala, when they
have lived too freely at the cost of their purses and their health?
Is this my Canossa, where I must retract my false doctrines before
the same set of youths who between 1880 and 1890 regarded me as their
standard-bearer? I understand my position exactly, and know well that
I am under the ban of most of the professors as a seducer of youth, and
that the fathers and mothers fear me like the Evil One himself.
Moreover, I have made personal enemies here, and have contracted debts
under circumstances which set my character in a dubious light. Here
Popoffsky's sister-in-law and her husband live, and both of these, who
have an influential position in society, are able to stir up powerful
enemies against me. I have also here relations who ignore me, and
friends who have left me to become my enemies. In a word, it is the
worst place I could have chosen for a quiet residence; it is hell, but
a hell contrived with masterly logic and divine ingenuity. Here I must
drain the cup of humiliation, and reconcile the youth of Lund with the
alienated powers. By a picturesque accident, I buy myself a mantle with
cape and cowl, of a flea-brown colour, like a Franciscan's. Thus, after
a six years' banishment, I return to Sweden in a penitent's costume.
About the year 1885 there was formed in Lund a Students' Association
called "The Old Boys," whose literary, scientific, and social programme
was best expressed by the word "Radicalism." It was coloured by
modern ideas; it was first socialistic, then nihilistic, and tended
finally to a general dissolution of society. It had besides a fin de
siècle flavouring of Satanism and decadence. The head of that party,
the most conspicuous of their champions, a friend of mine, whom I
have not seen for three years, pays me a visit. Dressed like myself
in a monkish-looking mantle of a grey colour, grown old, lean, with
melancholy aspect, he shows his history in his face.
"You also?" I ask him.
"Yes! It is all up with us."
On my inviting him to take a glass of wine, he declares himself a
teetotaller.
"How are the 'Old Boys'?" I ask.
"Dead, come croppers, turned into Philistines and steady members of
society."
"It is a case of Canossa, then!"
"Canossa all along the line."
"Then it is Providence Itself which has brought me here."
"Providence! That is the right word."
"Do they know the 'powers' in Lund?"
"The 'powers' are preparing to return."
"Do people sleep well here?"
"No; they complain of nightmares, constrictions of the breast and
heart."
"My arrival is appropriate, then; for that is precisely my case."
We talk for some hours over the strange times we are living in, and my
friend relates to me some extraordinary occurrences which have recently
happened. Finally, he gives a brief account of the minds of the present
young generation, who are looking out for something new.
People want a religion; a reconciliation with the "powers" (that is the
phrase), a new approach to the invisible. The fruitful and important
epoch of naturalism is past. One cannot say anything against it, nor
regret it, for the powers willed that we should pass through it. It was
an experimental epoch, the negative results of which have disproved
certain theories when they were put to the test. A God, unknown at
present, seems to be developing, growing, and revealing Himself from
time to time. In the intervals, so it seems, He leaves the world to
itself, like the farmer, who lets the tares and wheat grow together
till the harvest. Each epoch of revelation shows Him animated with
new ideas, and practically improving His methods. Thus Religion will
return, but under new aspects, for a compromise with the old religions
seems impossible. We do not await an epoch of reaction, nor a return
to out-worn ideals, but an advance towards something new. But of what
sort? Let us wait!
At the end of our conversation a question escapes my lips like an arrow
which flies sky-wards, "Do you know Swedenborg?"
"No; but my mother has his works, and has found wonderful things in
them."
From atheism to Swedenborg is only a step!
I beg him to lend me Swedenborg's works, and my friend, that Saul among
the young prophets, brings me the _Arcana Cœlestia_. Moreover, he
introduces a young man to me who has been highly gifted by the powers.
The latter relates to me events in his life which only too closely
resemble my own. When we compare our trials, we find a new light thrown
upon them, and we gain deliverance by the help of Swedenborg. I thank
Providence which has sent me into this small despised town to expiate
my sin and to be delivered.
XIII
THE DELIVERER
When Balzac introduced me to my noble countryman, "The Buddha of the
North," by means of his book _Séraphita_, he showed me the evangelistic
side of the Prophet. Now it is the Law which encounters, crushes, and
releases.
A single word suffices to illuminate my soul, and to scatter my doubts
and vain fancies regarding supposed enemies, electricians, black magic,
etc., and this single word is "Devastation."[1] All my sufferings I
find described by Swedenborg--the feelings of suffocation (angina
pectoris), constrictions of the chest, palpitations, the sensation
which I called the "electric girdle"--all exactly correspond, and
these phenomena, taken together, constitute the spiritual catharsis
(purification) which was already known to St. Paul, "Whom," he says
speaking of someone, "I have determined to hand over to Satan for the
destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of
the Lord Jesus," and "Among whom are Hymenæus and Alexander, whom I
have delivered over to Satan, that they may be taught not to blaspheme."
When I read the visions of Swedenborg belonging to the year 1744, the
year preceding his establishment of relations with the spiritual world,
I discover that the Prophet has endured the same nightly tortures as I
have, and what astonishes me still more is the complete identity of the
symptoms, which leave me no longer room for doubting the real nature of
my illness. In the _Arcana Cœlestia_, the mysterious occurrences of
the last two years are explained with such convincing exactness, that
I, a child of the renowned nineteenth century, am firmly convinced that
there is a hell--a hell, however, on earth, and that I have just come
out of it.
Swedenborg explains to me the reason of my detention in the Hospital
St. Louis thus:
"Alchemists are attacked by leprosy and scratch the scurf off like
fish-scales. It is an incurable skin disease." The apparition of the
chimney sweep which my daughter saw in Austria is also explained:
"Among the spirits, there is a kind called 'chimney sweeps,' because
they actually have faces blackened by smoke, and seem to wear
soot-coloured clothes.... One of these 'chimney sweep' spirits came
to me, and begged me earnestly to pray for his admission into heaven.
'I don't think,' he said, 'I have done anything on account of which I
should be excluded. I have often rebuked the inhabitants of earth, but
after rebuke and punishment, I have always given them instruction.'
"The chastising, reforming, or instructing spirits approach a man from
the left side, lean on his back, consult his book of memory, and read
his deeds and even his thoughts in it. For when a spirit enters a man,
he first of all takes possession of his memory. If they behold an evil
deed or the intention to commit one, they punish him with a pain in the
foot or in the hand, or the neighbourhood of the stomach, and they do
this with unexampled dexterity. A shudder announces their approach.
"Besides inflicting pains in the limbs, they employ a painful pressure
against the navel, which gives the sensation of being surrounded with
a prickly girdle; moreover, they sometimes cause constrictions of
the chest, which they intensify to a terrible degree; finally, they
inspire a disgust of all food except bread, which continues for days.
"Other spirits try to convince their victims of the opposite to that
which the instructing spirits have said. These spirits of contradiction
were, during their earthly existence, men who had been expelled from
society on account of some crime. Their approach is heralded by a
flickering flame, which seems to hover about one's face; their place is
above the back, whence they make themselves felt to the extremities."
(These flickering flames or sparks have appeared to me twice, and both
times on occasions when I resisted my better self, and rejected all
apparitions as idle dreams.)
"These spirits of contradiction tell men not to believe what the
instructing spirits have been commissioned by the angels to say,
and not to rule their lives accordingly, but to live in all licence
and wantonness as they choose. Usually the former come as soon as
the latter have gone. Men know what to expect from them, and do not
trouble much about them, but they learn through their assaults to
distinguish between good and evil. For the knowledge of good is first
gained through that of its opposite, just as every perception or idea
of a matter is obtained by carefully observing what distinguishes it
from its contrary." The reader may remember the faces like antique
sculptures which I saw formed by the white cover of my pillow in the
Hôtel Orfila. Swedenborg speaks regarding them as follows:
"Two signs show that they (the spirits) dwell with a man; one is an old
man with a white face. This sign will signify to him that he is always
to speak the truth, and to act justly.... I myself have seen such an
antique human face. There are faces of pure whiteness and great beauty,
from which uprightness and modesty beam."
(In order not to alarm the reader, I have purposely concealed the fact,
that all the above relates to the inhabitants of the planet Jupiter.
My surprise may be imagined when one spring morning they bring me a
French review containing a picture of Swedenborg's house in the planet
Jupiter, drawn by Victorien Sardou. Why on Jupiter? What a remarkable
coincidence! And has the master and doyen of the Théâtre Français
observed that the left façade of the building seen from a sufficient
distance forms an antique human face? This face is the same as that
which was formed by my cushion-cover.
But in Sardou's drawing there are more of such silhouettes formed by
the lines of the building. Has the master's hand been guided by another
hand, so that he produced more than he knew?)
Where has Swedenborg seen his heaven and hell? Are they visions,
intuitions, inspirations? I hardly know, but the correspondence of his
hell to that of Dante, and of the Greek, Roman, and German mythologies,
leads to the idea that the powers have generally used similar means to
realise their purposes. And what are these purposes? The completion
of the human type; the production of the higher Man--the Superman, as
Nietzsche, that rod of chastisement prematurely used and cast into the
fire, has announced him. So the problem of good and evil is again set
up for us to solve, and Taine's moral indifference seems insipid before
these new demands.
The belief in spirits follows as a natural consequence. What are
spirits? As soon as we admit the immortality of the soul, we see that
the dead are still alive and continue their relationships with the
living. "Evil spirits," then, are not evil, for their object is good,
and it would be better to call them, with Swedenborg, "corrective
spirits," than to abandon oneself to fear and to despair. Accordingly,
there exists no Satan, as an autonomous personality opposed to God,
and the undeniable apparitions of the Evil One in his traditional form
must be regarded as a scarecrow conjured up by Providence--Providence
the Supreme and Good, which carries on its government by means of an
enormous comprehensive staff, consisting of departed souls.
Be comforted, and be proud of the grace bestowed upon you, all ye who
suffer from sleeplessness, nightmares, apparitions, palpitations, and
fears of death! _Numen adest!_ God is seeking for you!
[1] According to Swedenborg the name of a stage in the religious life.
XIV
TRIBULATIONS
Interned in this little university town, without hope of getting out
of it, I engage in the terrible fight against my worst enemy--myself.
Every morning, when I go for a walk on the wall under the plane trees,
the large red lunatic asylum reminds me of the danger I have escaped,
and of that which still awaits me, if I relapse. Swedenborg, by
explaining to me the true character of my terrors during the last year,
has delivered me from the fear of electricians, "black" magicians,
wizards, the ambition of the gold-maker, and from madness. He has
pointed out the only way to salvation: to seek out the demons in their
dens within myself, and there to slay them by--repentance. Balzac,
the Prophet's assistant, has taught me in _Séraphita_ that "Pain of
conscience is a weakness which does not put an end to sin; repentance
is the only power which makes a decisive end of all." Very well,
let us repent! But is not that equivalent to criticising Providence,
which has chosen me for its scourge? and to saying to the powers: "You
have guided my destiny ill; you have made me and commissioned me to
chastise, to overthrow idols, to stir up revolt, and then you withdraw
your protection from me and disown me in an absurd way, telling me to
creep to the cross and repent!"
Strange "circulus vitiosus," which I already foresaw in my twentieth
year, when I wrote my drama _Meister Olaf_, and which has constituted
the tragedy of my life. Why be tormented during thirty years in order
to be taught by experience what one had already foreboded? When young
I was sincerely pious, and you have made me a freethinker. Out of
the freethinker you have made an atheist, and out of the atheist a
religious man. Inspired by humanitarian ideas, I have been a herald
of socialism. Five years later, you have shown me the absurdity of
socialism; you have made all my prophecies futile. And supposing I
become again religious, I am sure that, in another ten years, you will
reduce religion to an absurdity.
Ah! what a game the gods play with us poor mortals! And therefore,
in the most tormented moments of life, we too can laugh with
self-conscious raillery.
How is it that you wish us to take earnestly what is nothing but a huge
bad joke?
For whom was Christ the Saviour? Consider the most Christian of all
Christians, our pious Scandinavians, these amæmic, wretched, timid
creatures, who look as though they were possessed. They seem to carry
an evil spirit in their hearts, and observe how most of their leaders
have ended in prison as criminals. Why has their master delivered them
over to the enemy? Is religion a punishment, and Christ an Avenger?
* * * * *
The sun shines, everyday life proceeds on its usual course, the
cheerful bustle of business raises the spirits. Then one feels
rebellious, and challenges heaven with doubts. But when night, silence,
and loneliness reign, the heart beats, and the breast suffers from
constriction. Then one jumps out of window into a hedge of thorns,
and humbly begs a physician for help, and seeks someone to share the
sleeping chamber.
Go again into your room, and you will find someone is there; he is
invisible, but you feel his presence. Then go to the asylum, and ask
the doctor; he will talk to you about neurasthenia, paranoia, angina
pectoris, and stories of that kind, but will never heal you. Whither,
then, will you go, all ye who, sleepless, wander through street after
street, waiting for the dawn? "The mills of the universe," "The mills
of God," are two expressions in common use. Have you had that roaring
in your ears which is like the noise of a water-wheel? Have you in
the solitude of night or in broad daylight observed how memories of
the past stir and arise, singly or in groups? Memories of all your
faults, crimes, and follies which make your ears tingle, your brows
perspire, your spine shudder? You re-live your life from your birth
to the present day, you suffer over again all the sorrows you have
endured; you empty again all the cups which you have drunk to the dregs
so often; you crucify your skeleton when there is no more flesh left to
crucify; you consume your soul when your heart is reduced to ashes!
You know all that?
Those are the "mills of God" which grind slowly but exceeding small.
You are ground to powder, and think it is over. But no! You are brought
again to the mill. Be thankful! That is hell upon earth, as Luther knew
it, and reckoned it a special grace to be pulverised on this side of
the grave.
Think yourself happy and be thankful!
What is one to do then? Humble oneself?
If you humble yourself before men, you will arouse their pride, for all
will think themselves, no matter how guilty they may be, better than
you.
Well, then, is one to humble oneself before God? But is it not
disgraceful to degrade the Highest by conceiving of Him as the overseer
of a slave plantation?
Shall we pray? What! Presume to try to alter the will and decision
of the Eternal by flattery and crawling? I look for God and find the
Devil! That is my destiny! I have repented and reformed myself.
* * * * *
I renounce alcohol, and come about nine o'clock soberly home to drink
milk. The room is filled with all kinds of demons, who drag me out of
bed and try to stifle me under the blankets. But if I come home at
midnight intoxicated, I sleep like an angel and wake up strong as a
young god, and ready to work like a galley-slave.
I live a chaste life, and am troubled by unwholesome dreams. I accustom
myself to think only good of my friends, entrust my secrets and my
money to them, and am betrayed. If I show offence at such treachery, it
is always I who am punished.
I try to love mankind in the mass; I shut my eyes to their faults,
and with inexhaustible patience endure their meanesses and slanders,
and one fine day I find myself a sharer of their crimes. Whenever
I withdraw from society which I consider injurious, the demons of
solitude attack me, and when I look for better friends, I come on the
track of the worst. Yes, after I have conquered my evil inclinations
and through loneliness have attained to a certain degree of inward
peace, I am caught in the snare of self-satisfaction and despising
my neighbour. And self-conceit is the deadliest of sins, which is
instantly punished.
How is one to explain the fact that every step of progress in virtue
gives rise to a fresh sin?