His friend was vexed. John promised to have it repaired, and took the
pince-nez home. It weighed upon his mind, for he did not know whence
he should get the money in order to have it mended. Then he determined
to mend it himself. He took out the screws, bored holes in an old
clock-spring, but did not succeed. His friend jogged his memory; John
was in despair. His father would never pay for it. His friend said,
"I will have it repaired, and you must pay." The repair cost fifty
öre. On Monday John handed over twelve coppers, and promised to pay
the rest the following Monday. His friend smelt a rat. "That is your
breakfast-money," he said; "do you get only twelve coppers a week?"
John blushed and begged him to take the money. The next Monday he
handed over the remainder. His friend resisted, but he pressed it on
him.
The two continued together as school-fellows till they went to the
university at Upsala and afterwards. John's friend had a cheerful
temperament and took the world as it came. He did not argue much with
John, but always made him laugh. In contrast to his dreary home, John
found the school a cheerful refuge from domestic tyranny. But this
caused him to lead a double life, which was bound to produce moral
dislocation.
[1] Famous Swedish poet.
[2] In a later work, _Legends_ (1898), Strindberg says: "When I wrote
that youthful confession (_The Son of a Servant_) the liberal tendency
of that period seems to have induced me to use too bright colours, with
the pardonable object of freeing from fear young men who have fallen
into precocious sin."
[3] The Swedish Parliament.
VII
FIRST LOVE
If the character of a man is the stereotyped rôle which he plays in the
comedy of social life, John at this time had no character, _i.e._, he
was quite sincere. He sought, but found nothing, and could not remain
in any fixed groove. His coarse nature, which flung off all fetters
that were imposed upon it, could not adapt itself; and his brain, which
was a revolutionary's from birth, could not work automatically. He was
a mirror which threw back all the rays which struck it, a compendium of
various experiences, of changing impressions, and full of contradictory
elements. He possessed a will which worked by fits and starts and with
fanatical energy; but he really did not will anything deeply; he was
a fatalist, and believed in destiny; he was sanguine, and hoped all
things. Hard as ice at home, he was sometimes sensitive to the point
of sentimentality; he would give his last shirt to a poor man, and
could weep at the sight of injustice. He was a pietist, and as sincere
an one as is possible for anyone who tries to adopt an old-world point
of view. His home-life, where everything threatened his intellectual
and personal liberty, compelled him to be this. In the school he was a
cheerful worldling, not at all sentimental, and easy to get on with.
Here he felt he was being educated for society and possessed rights.
At home he was like an edible vegetable, cultivated for the use of the
family, and had no rights.
He was also a pietist from spiritual pride, as all pietists are.
Beskow, the repentant lieutenant, had come home from his pilgrimage
to the grave of Christ. His _Journal_ was read at home by John's
step-mother, who inclined to pietism. Beskow made pietism gentlemanly,
and brought it into fashion, and a considerable portion of the lower
classes followed this fashion. Pietism was then what spiritualism is
now--a presumably higher knowledge of hidden things. It was therefore
eagerly taken up by all women and uncultivated people, and finally
found acceptance at Court.
Did all this spring from some universal spiritual need? Was the period
so hopelessly reactionary that one had to be a pessimist? No! The
king led a jovial life in Ulriksdal, and gave society a bright and
liberal tone. Strong agitations were going on in the political world,
especially regarding representation in parliament. The Dano-German
war aroused attention to what was going on beyond our boundaries; the
volunteer movement awoke town and country with drums and music; the new
Opposition papers, _Dagens Nyheter_ and the powerful _Sondags-Nisse_,
were vent-holes for the confined steam which must find an outlet;
railways were constructed everywhere, and brought remote and sparsely
inhabited places into connection with the great motor nerve-centres. It
was no melancholy age of decadence, but, on the contrary, a youthful
season of hope and awakening. Whence then, came this strong breath of
pietism? Perhaps it was a short-cut for those who were destitute of
culture, by which they saved themselves from the pressure of knowledge
from above; there was a certain democratic element in it, since all
high and low had thereby access to a certain kind of wisdom which
abolished class-distinctions. Now, when the privileges of birth were
nearing their end, the privileges of culture asserted themselves, and
were felt to be oppressive. But it was believed that they could be
nullified at a stroke through pietism.
John became a pietist from many motives. Bankrupt on earth, since he
was doomed to die at twenty-five without spinal marrow or a nose, he
made heaven the object of his search. Melancholy by nature, but full
of activity, he loved what was melancholy. Tired of text-books, which
contained no living water because they did not come into contact with
life, he found more nourishment in a religion which did so at every
turn. Besides this, there was the personal motive, that his stepmother,
aware of his superiority in culture, wished to climb above him on the
Jacob's ladder of religion. She conversed with his eldest brother
on the highest subjects, and when John was near, he was obliged to
hear how they despised his worldly wisdom. This irritated him, and he
determined to catch up with them in religion. Moreover, his mother
had left a written message behind in which she warned him against
intellectual pride. The end was that he went regularly every Sunday to
church, and the house was flooded with pietistic writings.
His step-mother and eldest brother used to go over afterwards in memory
the sermons they had heard in church. One Sunday after service John
wrote out from memory the whole sermon which they admired. He could
not deny himself the pleasure of presenting it to his step-mother. But
his present was not received with equal pleasure; it was a blow for
her. However, she did not yield a hair-breadth. "God's word should be
written in the heart and not on paper," she said. It was not a bad
retort, but John believed he detected pride in it. She considered
herself further on in the way of holiness than he, and as already a
child of God.
He began to race with her, and frequented the pietist meetings. But
his attendance was frowned upon, for he had not yet been confirmed,
and was not therefore ripe for heaven. John continued religious
discussions with his elder brother; he maintained that Christ had
declared that even children belonged to the kingdom of heaven. The
subject was hotly contested. John cited Norbeck's _Theology_, but
that was rejected without being looked at. He also quoted Krummacher,
Thomas à Kempis, and all the pietists on his side. But it was no
use. "It must be so," was the reply. "How?" he asked. "As I have it,
and as you cannot get it." "As I!" There we have the formula of the
pietists--self-righteousness.
One day John said that all men were God's children. "Impossible!" was
the reply; "then there would be no difficulty in being saved. Are all
going to be saved?"
"Certainly!" he replied. "God is love and wishes no one's destruction."
"If all are going to be saved, what is the use of chastising oneself?"
"Yes, that is just what I question."
"You are then a sceptic, a hypocrite?"
"Quite possibly they all are."
John now wished to take heaven by storm, to become a child of God,
and perhaps by doing so defeat his rivals. His step-mother was not
consistent. She went to the theatre and was fond of dancing. One
Saturday evening in summer it was announced that the whole family
would make an excursion into the country the next day--Sunday. All
were expected to go. John considered it a sin, did not want to go, and
wished to use the opportunity and seek in solitude the Saviour whom
he had not yet found. According to what he had been told, conversion
should come like a flash of lightning, and be accompanied by the
conviction that one was a child of God, and then one had peace.
While his father was reading his paper in the evening, John begged
permission to remain at home the next day.
"Why?" his father asked in a friendly tone.
John was silent. He felt ashamed to say.
"If your religious conviction forbids you to go, obey your conscience."
His step-mother was defeated. She had to desecrate the Sabbath, not he.
The others went. John went to the Bethlehem Church to hear Rosenius. It
was a weird, gloomy place, and the men in the congregation looked as
if they had reached the fatal twenty-fifth year, and lost their spinal
marrow. They had leaden-grey faces and sunken eyes. Was it possible
that Dr. Kapff had frightened them all into religion? It seemed strange.
Rosenius looked like peace itself, and beamed with heavenly joy. He
confessed that he had been an old sinner, but Christ had cleansed him,
and now he was happy. He looked happy. Is it possible that there is
such a thing as a happy man? Why, then, are not all pietists?
In the afternoon John read à Kempis and Krummacher. Then he went out
to the Haga Park and prayed the whole length of the Norrtullsgata
that Jesus would seek him. In the Haga Park there sat little groups
of families picnicking, with the children playing about. Is it
possible that all these must go to hell? he thought. Yes, certainly.
"Nonsense!" answered his intelligence. But it is so. A carriage full of
excursionists passed by: and these are all condemned already! But they
seemed to be amusing themselves, at any rate. The cheerfulness of other
people made him still more depressed, and he felt a terrible loneliness
in the midst of the crowd. Wearied with his thoughts, he went home as
depressed as a poet who has looked for a thought without being able to
find one. He laid down on his bed and wished he was dead.
In the evening his brothers and sisters came home joyful and noisy, and
asked him if he had had a good time.
"Yes," he said. "And you?"
They gave him details of the excursion, and each time he envied them he
felt a stab in his heart. His step-mother did not look at him, for she
had broken the Sabbath. That was his comfort. He must by this time soon
have detected his self-deceit and thrown it off, but a new powerful
element entered into his life, which stirred up his asceticism into
fanaticism, till it exploded and disappeared.
His life during these years was not so uniformly monotonous as it
appeared in retrospect later on, when there were enough dark points to
give a grey colouring to the whole. His boyhood, generally speaking,
was darkened by his being treated as a child when arrived at puberty,
the uninteresting character of his school-work, his expectation of
death at twenty-five, the uncultivated minds of those around him, and
the impossibility of being understood.
His step-mother had brought three young girls, her sisters, into the
house. They soon made friends with the step-sons, and they all took
walks, played games, and made sledging excursions together. The girls
tried to bring about a reconciliation between John and his step-mother.
They acknowledged their sister's faults before him, and this pacified
him so that he laid aside his hatred. The grandmother also played the
part of a mediator, and finally revealed herself as a decided friend of
John's. But a fatal chance robbed him of this friend also. His father's
sister had not welcomed the new marriage, and, as a consequence, had
broken off communications with her brother. This vexed the old man
very much. All intercourse ceased between the families. It was, of
course, pride on his sister's part. But one day John met her daughter,
an elegantly-dressed girl, older than himself, on the street. She was
eager to hear something of the new marriage, and walked with John along
the Drottningsgata.
When he got home, his grandmother rebuked him sharply for not having
saluted her when she passed, but, of course, she added, he had been
in too grand company to take notice of an old woman! He protested his
innocence, but in vain. Since he had only a few friends, the loss of
her friendship was painful to him.
One summer he spent with his step-mother at one of her relatives', a
farmer in Östergötland. Here he was treated like a gentleman, and lived
on friendly terms with his step-mother. But it did not last long, and
soon the flames of strife were stirred up again between them. And thus
it went on, up and down, and to and fro.
About this time, at the age of fifteen, he first fell in love, if it
really was love, and not rather friendship. Can friendship commence
and continue between members of opposite sexes? Only apparently, for
the sexes are born enemies and remain always opposed to each other.
Positive and negative streams of electricity are mutually hostile, but
seek their complement in each other. Friendship can exist only between
persons with similar interests and points of view. Man and woman by the
conventions of society are born with different interests and different
points of view. Therefore a friendship between the sexes can arise only
in marriage where the interests are the same. This, however, can be
only so long as the wife devotes her whole interest to the family for
which the husband works. As soon as she gives herself to some object
outside the family, the agreement is broken, for man and wife then have
separate interests, and then there is an end to friendship. Therefore
purely spiritual marriages are impossible, for they lead to the slavery
of the man, and consequently to the speedy dissolution of the marriage.
The fifteen-year old boy fell in love with a woman of thirty. He could
truthfully assert that his love was entirely ideal. How came he to love
her? As generally is the case, from many motives, not from one only.
She was the landlord's daughter, and had, as such, a superior position;
the house was well-appointed and always open for visitors. She was
cultivated, admired, managed the house, and spoke familiarly to her
mother; she could play the hostess and lead the conversation; she was
always surrounded by men who courted her. She was also emancipated
without being a man-hater; she smoked and drank, but was not without
taste. She was engaged to a man whom her father hated and did not
wish to have for his son-in-law. Her _fiancé_ stayed abroad and wrote
seldom. Among the visitors to this hotel were a district judge, a man
of letters, students, clerics, and townsmen who all hovered about her.
John's father admired her, his step-mother feared her, his brothers
courted her. John kept in the background and observed her. It was a
long time before she discovered him. One evening, after she had set all
the hearts around her aflame, she came exhausted into the room in which
John sat.
"Heavens! how tired I am!" she said to herself, and threw herself on a
sofa.
John made a movement and she saw him. He had to say something.
"Are you so unhappy, although you are always laughing? You are
certainly not as unhappy as I am."
She looked at the boy; they began a conversation and became friends. He
felt lifted up. From that time forward she preferred his conversation
to that of others. He felt embarrassed when she left a circle of grown
men to sit down near him. He questioned her regarding her spiritual
condition, and made remarks on it which showed that he had observed
keenly and reflected much. He became her conscience. Once, when she
had jested too freely, she came to the youth to be punished. That was
a kind of flagellation as pleasant as a caress. At last her admirers
began to tease her about him.
"Can you imagine it," she said one evening, "they declare I am in love
with you!"
"They always say that of two persons of opposite sexes who are friends."
"Do you believe there can be a friendship between man and woman?"
"Yes, I am sure of it," he answered.
"Thanks," she said, and reached him her hand. "How could I, who am
twice as old as you, who am sick and ugly, be in love with you?
Besides, I am engaged."
After this she assumed an air of superiority and became motherly. This
made a deep impression on him; and when later on she was rallied on
account of her liking for him, she felt herself almost embarrassed,
banished all other feelings except that of motherliness, and began to
labour for his conversion, for she also was a pietist.
They both attended a French conversation class, and had long walks
home together, during which they spoke French. It was easier to speak
of delicate matters in a foreign tongue. He also wrote French essays,
which she corrected. His father's admiration for the old maid lessened,
and his step-mother did not like this French conversation, which she
did not understand. His elder brother's prerogative of talking French
was also neutralised thereby. This vexed his father, so that one day he
said to John, that it was impolite to speak a foreign language before
those who did not understand it, and that he could not understand
that Fräulein X., who was otherwise so cultivated, could commit such
a _bêtise_. But, he added, cultivation of the heart was not gained by
book-learning.
They no longer endured her presence in the house, and she was
"persecuted." At last her family left the house altogether, so that now
there was little intercourse with them. The day after their removal,
John felt lacerated. He could not live without her daily companionship,
without this support which had lifted him out of the society of those
of his own age to that of his elders. To make himself ridiculous by
seeking her as a lover--that he could not do. The only thing left was
to write to her. They now opened a correspondence, which lasted for
a year. His step-mother's sister, who idolised the clever, bright
spinster, conveyed the letters secretly. They wrote in French, so that
their letters might remain unintelligible if discovered; besides, they
could express themselves more freely in this medium. Their letters
treated of all kinds of subjects. They wrote about Christ, the battle
against sin, about life, death and love, friendship and scepticism.
Although she was a pietist, she was familiar with free-thinkers, and
suffered from doubts on all kinds of subjects. John was alternately her
stern preceptor and her reprimanded son. One or two translations of
John's French essays will give some idea of the chaotic state of the
minds of both.
_Is Man's Life a Life of Sorrow_? 1864
"Man's life is a battle from beginning to end. We are all born into
this wretched life under conditions which are full of trouble and
grief. Childhood to begin with has its little cares and disagreeables;
youth has its great temptations, on the victorious resistance to which
the whole subsequent life depends; mature life has anxieties about the
means of existence and the fulfilment of duties; finally, old age has
its thorns in the flesh, and its frailty. What are all enjoyments and
all joys, which are regarded by so many men as the highest good in
life? Beautiful illusions! Life is a ceaseless struggle with failures
and misfortunes, a struggle which ends only in death.
"But we will consider the matter from another side. Is there no reason
to be joyful and contented? I have a home and parents who care for
my future; I live in fairly favourable circumstances, and have good
health--ought I not then to be contented and happy? Yes, and yet I
am not. Look at the poor labourer, who, when his day's work is done,
returns to his simple cottage where poverty reigns; he is happy and
even joyful. He would be made glad by a trifle which I despise. I envy
thee, happy man, who hast true joy!
"But I am melancholy. Why? 'You are discontented,' you answer. No,
certainly not; I am quite contented with my lot and ask for nothing.
Well, what is it then? Ah! now I know; I am not contented with myself
and my heart, which is full of anger and malice. Away from me, evil
thoughts! I will, with God's help, be happy and contented. For one is
happy only when one is at peace with oneself, one's heart, and one's
conscience."
John's friend did not approve of his self-contentment, but asserted
in contradiction to the last sentence, that one ought to remain
discontented with life. She wrote: "We are not happy till our
consciousness tells us that we have sought and found the only Good
Physician, who can heal the wounds of all hearts, and when we are ready
to follow His advice with sincerity."
This assertion, together with long conversations, caused the rapid
conversion of the youth to the true faith, _i.e._, that of his friend,
and gave occasion for the following effusion in which he expressed his
idea of faith and works:
_No Happiness without Virtue; no Virtue without Religion_. 1864
"What is happiness? Most worldlings regard the possession of great
wealth and worldly goods, happiness, because they afford them the
means of satisfying their sinful desires and passions. Others who
are not so exacting find happiness in a mere sense of well-being, in
health, and domestic felicity. Others, again, who do not expect worldly
happiness at all, and who are poor, and enjoy but scanty food earned
by hard work, are yet contented with their lot, and even happy. They
can even think 'How happy I am in comparison with the rich, who are
never contented.' Meanwhile, _are_ they really happy, because they are
contented? No, there is no happiness without virtue. No one is happy
except the man who leads a really virtuous life. Well, but there are
many really virtuous men. There are men who have never fallen into
gross sin, who are modest and retiring, who injure no one, who are
placable, who fulfil their duties conscientiously, and who are even
religious. They go to church every Sunday, they honour God and His Holy
Word, but yet they have not been born again of the Holy Spirit. Now,
are they happy, since they are virtuous? There is no virtue without
_real religion_. These virtuous worldlings are, as a matter of fact,
much worse than the most wicked men. They slumber in the security
of mere morality. They think themselves better than other men, and
righteous in the eyes of the Most Holy. These Pharisees, full of
self-love, think to win everlasting salvation by their good deeds. But
what are our good deeds before a Holy God? Sin, and nothing but sin.
These self-righteous men are the hardest of all to convert, because
they think they need no Mediator, since they wish to win heaven by
their deeds. An 'old sinner,' on the other hand, once he is awakened,
can realise his sinfulness and feel his need of a Saviour. True
happiness consists in having 'Peace in the heart with God through Jesus
Christ.' One can find no peace till one confesses that one is the chief
of sinners, and flies to the Saviour. How foolish of us to push such
happiness away! We all know where it is to be found, but instead of
seeking it, seek unhappiness, under the pretence of seeking happiness."
Under this his friend wrote: "Very well written." They were her own
thoughts, or, at any rate, her own words which she had read.
But sometimes doubt worried him, and he examined himself carefully. He
wrote as follows on a subject which he had himself chosen:
_Egotism is the Mainspring of all our Actions_