(A FRAGMENT)
After my return to Paris at the end of August 1897, I found myself
suddenly isolated. My friend the philosopher, whose daily companionship
had been a moral support for me, and who had promised to follow me to
Paris in order to spend the winter there, has delayed in Berlin. He is
not able to explain what detains him in Berlin, as Paris is the goal of
his journey, and he is very eager to see the City of Light.
I have waited for him three months, and receive the impression that
Providence wishes to have me alone, in order to separate me from the
world and to drive me into the desert, that the chastising spirits may
thoroughly shake and sift my soul. In this Providence has done right,
for solitude has educated me by compelling me to hold aloof from my
social pleasures, which had considerably increased, and by depriving
me of every friendly support. I have grown accustomed to speak to the
Lord, to confide only in Him, and have as good as ceased to feel the
need of men; an attitude which has always seemed to me to be the ideal
one of independence and freedom.
I am obliged to renounce even the convent in which I expected to find
the protection of religion and of harmony with one's fellows. The
life of the eremite was imposed upon me, and I have received it as a
chastisement and an education, regardless of the fact that at the age
of forty-eight it is difficult to change one's rooted habits for new
ones.
I live, as mentioned above, in a small room, narrow as a convent cell,
with a barred window high up under the ceiling, which looks out on a
courtyard and a stone wall overgrown with an immense quantity of ivy.
In the evening I go out for my meal, and go straight to the
restaurant, without first taking a liqueur to provoke an appetite,--a
thing I dislike doing now. Why I choose the little restaurant on the
Boulevard St. Germain it would be difficult for me to explain. Perhaps
it is the recollection of the two terrible evenings I spent there last
year with my occultist friend, the German-American, which fascinates
and draws me thither, to such a degree that every attempt to go to
another restaurant results in a degree of discomfort which might be
called unfair, and which drives me back to this one, which I hate. The
reason is that my former friend has left unpaid debts here, and that
I have been recognised as his companion. For this reason, and because
we have been heard speaking German, I am treated as a Prussian, that
is to say, I am served very badly. It is no use for me to make silent
protests by leaving my visiting cards behind, or purposely forgetting
letters bearing the Swedish postmark. I sec myself compelled to
suffer and to pay for the guilty. No one but I sees the logic in this
position, nor that it is an atonement for a crime. It is simply a
piece of justice which cannot be objected to, and for two months I chew
the horribly bad food which reeks of the dissector's knife.
The manageress, who, pale as a corpse, sits installed at the cashier's
desk, greets me with a triumphant air, and I am accustomed to say to
myself, "Poor old woman, she has certainly had to eat rats during the
siege of Paris in 1871!"
But it seems as though she begins to feel sympathy with me when she
sees my dull submission and endurance. There are moments when she seems
to me to look paler,--when she sees me come alone, always alone, and
always thinner. It is the bare truth that after passing two months in
this way, when I buy new collars I must buy them nearly two inches
smaller. My cheeks have become hollow and my clothes hang in folds.
Then all of a sudden they seem disposed to give me better food, and
the manageress smiles at me. At the same time the feeling of being
bewitched ceases, and I go my way without rancour, and as if freed
from a burden, with the assurance that for my part the penance is over,
and perhaps also for my absent friend. If it was mere fancy on my part
that I was badly treated, and if the manageress was quite blameless,
I ask her pardon. In that case it was I who punished myself with a
well-deserved chastisement.
"The chastising spirits take possession of the imagination of the man
who deserves punishment, and effect his moral improvement by letting
him see everything distorted" (Swedenborg).
How often it has happened to me that when I really wished to enjoy a
meal, all the dishes inspired disgust in me as though they were bad,
while my companions were enthusiastically unanimous in praising the
good food. The man "continually discontent" is an unfortunate under the
scourge of the invisible Powers, and it is with very good reason that
people avoid him, for he is condemned to be a disturber of the peace,
who, doomed to solitude and suffering, atones for secret misdoings.
Accordingly I go about alone, and when, after not hearing my own voice
for weeks at a time, I seek any one's company, I so overpower him with
my loquacity that he is bored and retires, and involuntarily gives me
to understand that he does not wish for another meeting. There are
other moments when the longing to see a human being drives me into bad
society. Then it happens that in the midst of conversation a feeling of
discomfort, accompanied by headache, seizes me. I become dumb, unable
to bring out another word. And I find myself compelled to leave the
circle, who always show that they are glad to be rid of an intolerable
person who had no business there.
Condemned to isolation, outlawed among men, I take refuge in the Lord,
who for me has become a personal Friend. He is often angry with me,
and then I suffer; often He seems absent, engaged with some one else,
and then it is much worse. But when He is gracious, then my life is
sweet, especially when I am alone. By a curious accident I have taken
up my abode in the Rue Bonaparte, the Catholic street. I live exactly
opposite the École des Beaux Arts, and when I go out, I walk between
rows of plateglass windows filled with Puvis de Chavanne's Legends,
Botticelli's Madonnas, Raphael's Virgins, which accompany me to the
upper part of the Rue Jacob, whence the Catholic bookshops with their
prayer-books and missals follow me to the church St. Germain des Prés.
From that point the shops with their objects of devotion form a line of
Saviours, Madonnas, Archangels, Demons, and Saints, all the fourteen
stations of the Passion of Christ, and Christmas mangers on the right
hand. On the left there is a series of devotional picture-books,
rosaries, clerical vestments, and altar vessels, as far as the Saint
Sulpice market-place, where the four lions of the church, with Bossuet
at their head, guard the noblest religious edifice in Paris. After
I have passed observantly through this repertory of sacred history,
I often enter the church in order to strengthen myself by looking
at Eugene Delacroix's picture of Jacob wrestling with the angel.
The fact is that this picture always sets me thinking, by rousing
irreligious ideas in me, in spite of the religious character of the
subject. And when I pass out again, through the kneeling worshippers,
I keep remembering the wrestler who holds himself upright although
lamed in the sinew of his thigh. Afterwards I pass by the Seminary of
the Jesuits, a kind of terrible Vatican, from which emanate floods
of psychic force, whose effect may be felt from far, if one may
believe the Theosophists. I have now reached my goal, the Garden of
the Luxembourg. From the time of my first visit to Paris in 1876,
this park has exercised a mysterious influence over me, and it was my
day-dream to be able to live near it. This idea was realised in 1893,
and from that time on, although with interruptions, this garden has
become part of my recollections, and so to speak, of my personality.
Although actually of moderate extent, it seems in my imagination of
immeasurable size. It has twelve gates, just like the Holy City in
the Book of Revelation, and in order to complete the resemblance, "On
the east, three gates; on the north, three gates; on the south, three
gates; on the west, three gates" (Rev. xxi. 13). Every entrance gives
me a different impression, derived from the arrangement of the plants,
buildings, and statues, and perhaps also from personal reminiscences
connected with them.
So I feel quite glad as I enter by the first gate after the Rue de
Luxembourg as one comes from Saint Sulpice. The ivy-grown cottage of
the gatekeeper, with a duckpond close by, seems like an unpublished
idyll. Further on is the building containing pictures, by living
artists, in clear bright colours. The thought that the friends of my
youth, Karl Larsson, the sculptor Ville Vallgren, and Fritz Thaulow,
have there deposited, so to speak, parts of their souls, strengthens
and makes me feel younger, and I seem to feel the irradiation of
their spirit pierce through the walls, and bid me take courage, since
my friends are close by. Further on we have Eugene Delacroix, whose
right to his laurels is questioned by contemporaries, and will be by
posterity. The second gate of the pair which open on the Rue de Fleurus
leads me to the racecourse, which is as broad as a hippodrome, and
ends with a flower-terrace where a marble Victory stands as a boundary
pillar, and from which one sees in the distance the Pantheon surmounted
by a cross. The third gate forms the continuation of the Rue Vanneau,
and leads me to a dusky alley which, on the left, merges itself into
a sort of Elysian field where the children have chosen for themselves
spots to play in and amuse themselves with wooden horses which go in
pairs with lions, elephants, and camels, just as in Paradise; further
on is the tennis ground, the children's theatre among flower-beds, the
Golden Age, Noah's Ark. Here the springtime of life meets me in the
autumn of my own.
On the south side, past the Rue d'Assas, the vegetable and nursery
garden present a picture of midsummer; the blossoming time is over.
It is the season of fruit, and the beehives close by, with their
citizen-like inhabitants who collect gold dust for the winter,
strengthen the impression of maturity which this part of the garden
makes. The second gate, immediately opposite the Lyceum "Louis le
Grand," opens up a paradisal prospect; velvet-like meadows with
ever fresh green; here and there a rose bush and a single peach
tree. I shall never forget how one spring this last, arrayed in its
dawn-coloured blossoms, enticed me to spend a whole half-hour in
contemplation, or rather in adoration, of its slim, youthful, virginal
form.
The Observatory Avenue leads to the gate of the main entrance, which
with its gilded "fasces" looks really majestic. But, as it is really
too majestic for me, I generally remain standing outside--in the
morning admiring the palace, in the evening the bright outline of
Montmartre showing above the roofs, and in clear weather the Great Bear
and the Polar Star circling above the great barred gate, which serves
me in my astrological observations as a mural quadrant.
On the east side the only gate that attracts me is that which opens
on the Rue Soufflot. From that point I discovered my favourite
garden, with the charming outlines of the giant plane trees, and in
the blue distance hinting at mysteries, as I did not yet know the
Rue de Fleurus, which later on became dear to me as the entrance to
a new life. Thence I am accustomed to look back over the path I have
traversed, which is interrupted on one side by the pool, and on the
other by the little statue of David with the broken sword.
One morning in early autumn the fountain presented the spectacle of a
rainbow, which reminded me of the dyer's shop in the Rue de Fleurus
where "my rainbow" expanded as a sign of my covenant with the Eternal
(vide _Inferno_[1]). When I go on to the descent of the terrace I have
to pass by the row of statues of women who were more or less queens or
sinners, and I remain standing at the top of the great flight of stairs
where, in springtime, a hedge of red hawthorn acts as a framework to
the outspread panorama of flowers.
The last gate, that by the museum, makes a mixed impression, with
the vulture that for no apparent cause has swooped down on the head
of the Sphinx, and with Hero kissing Leander, overtaken by an early
death, which might have been easily predicted. Passing it, I increase
my topographical knowledge by skirting the gallery of contemporary
paintings, and burying myself in the rose garden avenue with its
thousands of roses.
This constitutes my morning walk, and I tune my mood to whatever pitch
I like, according to the gate through which I enter. For my return
route I use the Boulevard Saint Michel, and keep the top of the steeple
of the Sainte Chapelle in sight. This serves as a cynosure to guide
me between the vain attractions spread out in the shop windows and
exhibited on the pavement in the shape of _filles de joie_ and children
of the world. Arrived at the Saint Michel market-place, I feel myself
protected by the statue of the noble archangel who kills the dragon.
The feeling that this emblem displays the spirit of evil is not
derived from its lizard-like tail, nor the ram's horns, nor the lifted
eyebrows, but from its mouth, which does not close at the corners,
while the lips are drawn forward so as to hide the four front teeth.
The tusks cannot be hidden, and its hideous sidelong smile displays the
deathless evil, which still grins contempt, with the spearpoint in its
breast.
Three times in my life I have met this mouth, in an actor, a female
painter, and another woman, and I have never been deceived in my
feeling about it.
I have now reached the crowded opening of the Rue Bonaparte. This
narrow road forms a discharge outlet for the Mont Parnasse quarter,
Luxembourg, and part of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. One has to
manoeuvre skilfully to make one's way into the outflowing torrent,
hemmed in as it is by foot-passengers and vehicles, while the firm
ground is represented by a pavement a yard broad.
Meanwhile nothing makes me so nervous as these omnibuses drawn by three
white horses, because I have seen them in dreams, and, moreover, these
white horses remind me, perhaps, of a certain "pale horse" mentioned in
the Book of Revelation. Especially in the evening, when they follow one
another three abreast with the red lantern suspended above, I imagine
that they turn their heads towards me, look at me maliciously, and say,
"Wait a little; we will soon have you."
In brief, this is my "vicious circle" which I traverse twice a day, and
my life is so thoroughly enclosed in the frame of this circuit, that if
I once take the liberty to go another way, I go wrong, as if I had lost
fragments of myself, my recollections, my thoughts, and feelings of
self-coherence.
* * * * *
One Sunday afternoon in November I betook myself to the restaurant
to eat alone. Two little tables are set out on the pavement of the
Boulevard St. Germain, flanked by two green oleander pots, and shaded
by two fibre-mats, which form an enclosure. The air is warm and
still; the street lamps, which have been lit, illuminate a vivid
kinematographic picture, as omnibuses, chaises and cabs drive home from
the parks, filled with holiday-makers in their best clothes, who sing,
blow horns, and shout at the passers-by.
As I sit down to eat, both my friends, two cats, come and take their
usual places on both sides of me, waiting till the meat appears.
As I have not heard my own voice for weeks, I make them a short
address without getting any answer. Condemned to this dumb and hungry
companionship, because I have abandoned evil companionship where my ear
was vexed by irreligious and coarse language, I feel rebellious against
such injustice. For I abominate animals, cats as well as dogs, as it is
my right to hate the animal within myself.
Why is it that Providence, which takes the trouble to educate me,
always banishes me to evil companionship when good companionship would
be more adapted to improve me by the power of example?
At this very moment there comes a black poodle with a red collar and
drives my feline friends away. After he has swallowed their portions,
he makes his acknowledgments by defiling the foot of my seat, and then
the ungrateful cynic takes up a sitting position on the asphalt and
turns his back on me. From the frying-pan into the fire! It is no use
complaining, for swine might come instead of him and offer me their
society, as they did to Robert the Devil or Francis of Assissi. One can
ask so little of life: So little! and yet it is too much for me.
A flower-seller offers me pinks. Why must it be pinks, which I dislike
because they resemble raw flesh and smell of a chemist's shop? To
please her I take a handful at my own price, and since it was a
generous one, the old woman rewards me with a "God bless the gentleman
for giving me such a fine douceur to-night!" Although I know the dodge,
the blessing sounds pleasantly in my ears, for I have great need of one
after so many curses.
About half-past eight the news-vendors cry _La Presse_, and that is a
signal for me to go. If I remain sitting to eat some dessert, and to
drink an extra glass of wine, I am certain to be annoyed in some way or
other, either by a troop of cocottes, who sit down exactly opposite me,
or by roaming street urchins, who abuse me. There is no mistake about
it; I am put upon diet, and if I take more than three courses and half
a flask of wine, I am punished. After my first attempts to transgress
the limits at meal-times have been frustrated in this way, I give up
making any more, and finally find myself contented to be put on half
rations. So I get up from table, in order to betake myself to the Rue
Bonaparte and from thence up to the Luxembourg.
At the corner of the Rue Gozlin I buy cigarettes, and pass the "Gold
Pheasant" restaurant. At the corner of the Rue du Four I pause by a
strikingly realistic picture of Christ. The spiritually minded artists
during their campaign against the Zola-literature have not been able
to avoid the contagion of realism, and with the help of one devil seek
to drive out another. It is impossible to pass such pictures without
pausing to contemplate them, drawn as they are after living models and
painted with the glaring colours of the impressionists.
The shop is closed and veiled in shadow, and the Redeemer stands
there in His royal robe lit by the street lamp, showing His bleeding
heart and head crowned with thorns. For more than a year I have been
persecuted and followed by the Redeemer, whom I do not understand and
whose help I should like to dispense with by bearing my own cross if
possible. This is due to a remnant of manly pride which finds something
repulsive in the cowardice of casting one's sins on the shoulders of
the innocent.
I have seen the Crucified everywhere--in the toy shops, at the picture
dealers', at the Art Exhibitions particularly, in the theatre, and in
literature. I have seen Him on the cover of my cushion, in the burning
logs in the oven, in the snow over there in Sweden, on the coast cliffs
of Normandy. Is He preparing for His return, or has He arrived? What
does He want? Here in the shop window in the Rue Bonaparte He is no
longer the Crucified. He comes from heaven as Victor, adorned with gold
and jewels. Is He the "Good Tyrant" which youth dreams of, a Prince of
Peace, a glorious hero?
He has cast away His cross and resumed His sceptre, and, as soon as
His temple on the Mont de Mars (formerly called "Mount of Martyrs")
is ready, He will come and rule the world Himself, and hurl from the
throne the false usurper, who finds the eleven thousand rooms known
as the _infamia Vaticani loca_ too narrow for him, laments over his
luxurious imprisonment, and kills the time with small excursions into
the field of poetry.
Leaving the picture of the Redeemer, as I arrived at the Saint Sulpice
market, I am astonished to find that the Church seems removed to
a great distance. It has gone back at least half a mile, and the
fountains proportionably. Have I then lost the sense for distances? As
I pass along the seminary wall it seems as though it would never end,
so interminable does it appear this evening. I spend half an hour in
traversing this small portion of the Rue Bonaparte, which generally
takes only five minutes. And before me there walks a figure, whose
gait and manner remind me of some one whom I know. I quicken my steps,
I run, but the Unknown presses forward with exactly corresponding
celerity, so that I never succeed in shortening the distance between
us. At last I have reached the trellis-gate of the Luxembourg. The
garden which was closed at sunset is sunk in silence and solitude, the
trees are bare, and the border-beds laid waste by frost and autumn
storms. But there is a good wholesome smell of dry leaves and fresh
earth.
Following the enclosing wall I go up the Rue de Luxembourg, and
always see in front of me the Unknown, who begins to interest me.
Clad in a traveller's mantle, which resembles mine, but is of opaline
whiteness, slight and tall like myself, he goes forward when I do,
remains standing when I remain standing, so that it seems as if I
were his guide and he depended on my movements. But one circumstance
particularly draws my attention to him, viz. that his mantle flutters
in a strong breeze which is quite imperceptible to me. In order to
clear up the matter I light a cigar, and as I perceive the smoke rise
steadily upward without wavering, my conviction that there is no
air-current, is strengthened. Moreover, the trees and bushes in the
garden are motionless. After we have reached the Rue Vavin I turn off
to the right, and at the same moment find myself transported from the
pavement to the middle of the garden without understanding how it has
happened, as the gates are closed.
Before me, at a distance of twenty steps, stands my companion turned
towards me. Round his beardless face of dazzling whiteness spreads
a luminous ring in the shape of an ellipse with the Unknown in the
centre. After he has given me a sign to follow him, he goes further.
The crown of rays accompanies him, so that the gloomy, cold, and
squalid garden is lit up as he goes. Moreover the trees, the bushes,
the plants grow green and blossom just as far as the rays of his
halo reach, but fade again when he has passed. I recognise the
great flowering canes with leaves like elephant's ears hanging over
the statuary group of Adam and his family, also the bed of Salvia
fulgens, the fire-red sage, the peach tree, the roses, the banana
plants, the aloes,--all my old acquaintances, each in his own place.
The only strange thing is that the seasons of the year seem to be
mingled together, so that the spring and autumn flowers are blooming
simultaneously.
But what surprises me more than anything is that nothing of all this
seems strange to me; it all appears quite natural and inevitable. So as
I walk along the bee-garden, a swarm of bees buzzes about the plants
and settles on the flowers, but in such an exactly defined circle
that the insects disappear as soon as they fly into the shadow. The
illuminated part of a sage-plant is covered with leaves and blossoms,
while the part in shadow is withered and blighted with hoar frost.
Under the chestnut trees there is a fascinatingly beautiful sight, as,
under the foliage, an empty dove's nest is suddenly taken possession of
by a cooing pair of doves.
At last we have reached the Fleurus Gate, and my guide signs to me to
remain standing. Within a second he is at the other end of the garden,
at the Gay-Lussac Gate, at a distance which appears to me immense,
although it is only about a quarter of a mile. In spite of the distance
I can see the Unknown surrounded by his oval halo. Without speaking a
word or moving a muscle of his mouth he bids me approach. I seem to
divine his purpose as I traverse the long avenue, the racecourse well
known to me for years bounded at the end by the cross of the Pantheon,
which stands in blood-red relief against the dark sky.
The Way of the Cross and, perhaps, the fourteen Stations, if I
am not mistaken. Before I begin it, I make a sign that I wish to
speak, question, and receive explanation. My guide answers with an
inclination of the head that he is ready to hear what I have to
say. At the same moment the Unknown changes his position without the
slightest perceptible movement or rustle. The only thing I notice is,
that as he approaches me the air is filled with a perfume as of balsam,
which makes my heart and lungs swell, and gives me courage to dare the
contest.