The Inferno - August Strindberg (best book club books for discussion .txt) 📗

the two, good, kindhearted sisters who tend me like a sick child. Besides this, my poverty, which I must conceal from them, depresses me, together with the futility of my attempts to avert approaching beggary. For my own good they wish for my departure, since such a lonely life is not good for a man; moreover, they believe that I need a doctor. In vain I wait for the necessary money to be sent from Sweden, and prepare to depart, even though I have to tramp the high roads. “I have become like a pelican of the wilderness, and like an owl in the desert.” My presence is a trial to my relatives, and but for my love to the child, they would have hurried me away. Now that mud or snow makes walking difficult, I carry the little one along the paths on my arms, climb hills, and clamber up rocks, so that both the old ladies say, “You will make yourself ill, you will get giddy, you will kill yourself.”

“And a beautiful death that would be!” I reply.

On the 20th of November, a grey, gloomy, dreary day, we sit at the midday meal. Altogether worn-out after a sleepless night and new conflicts with the Invisible, I curse life, and lament that no sun shines.

My mother-in-law has prophesied that I will not be well till Candlemas (February 2nd), when the sun returns again. “That is my only ray of sunlight,” I answer, pointing to my little Christina who sits opposite to me. At this moment the clouds, which have been massed together for weeks, part, and through the cleft a ray of light shines into the room and illuminates my face, the table-cover, the glasses.

“See, papa! see! there is the sun!” exclaims the child, and clasps her hands together. I rise in confusion, a prey to the most conflicting feelings. “A chance? No!” I say to myself. Is it the wonder, the sign I prayed for? But that would be too much to grant to one fallen into disfavour like me. The Eternal does not interfere in the little affairs of earthworms. And yet this ray of light abides in my heart like a happy smile on a discontented face. During the couple of minutes which I take in walking to my little house, the clouds have formed themselves into strange-shaped groups, and in the east, where the veil has lifted, the sky is as green as an emerald, or a meadow in midsummer. I stand in my room and wait in a state between reverie and mild compunction, which has no fear in it, for something which I cannot exactly define.

Then suddenly there is a single thunderclap over my head. No flash has preceded it. At first I feel alarmed, and wait for the usual rain and storm to follow. But nothing happens; all is perfectly quiet, and it is over. “Why,” I ask myself, “have I not sunk down in humility before the voice of the Eternal?” Because, when the Almighty with majestic condescension allowed an insect to hear His voice, this insect felt elevated and puffed up by such an honour, considering itself in its pride to be possessed of some special desert. To speak freely, I felt myself almost on a level with the Lord, as an integral part of His personality, an emanation of His being, an organ of His organism. He needed me in order to reveal Himself; otherwise he would have sent a thunderbolt and struck me dead upon the spot. But whence springs this monstrous arrogance in a mortal? Must I trace my origin to the primeval Titans who revolted against a despot who delighted in ruling over slaves? Is this why my earthly pilgrimage has become a mere running the gauntlet, while the dregs of humanity delight to strike, spit on, and defile me? There is no imaginable humiliation which I have not endured, yet the more I am crushed the more my pride asserts itself. I am like Jacob wrestling with the angel, and though a little lamed, maintaining the conflict manfully; or Job, chastised, and yet steadily justifying himself in the face of undeserved punishments.

Attacked by so many conflicting thoughts, I relapse from my megalomania, and feel so insignificant, that the incident dwindles down to a mere nothing⁠—a thunderclap in November.

But the echo of the thunder reverberates, and once more in a sort of religious ecstasy I open the Bible at haphazard, and pray the Lord to speak more plainly that I may understand Him. My eyes immediately fall upon this verse in Job: “Wilt thou disannul my judgment? Wilt thou condemn me that thou mayest be justified? Hast thou an arm like God? Or canst thou thunder with a voice like Him?”

I doubt no more. The Eternal has spoken! O Eternal! What demandest Thou of me? Speak, for thy servant heareth!

No answer!

Good! I will humble myself before the Eternal Who has humbled Himself to speak to His servant. But bow my knee before the mob and the mighty? Never!

In the evening my good mother-in-law receives me with a manner that is enigmatic. She casts a searching look at me sideways, as though she wished to ascertain what sort of impression the stupendous occurrence had made on me. “You have heard it?” she asks.

“Yes, it is strange⁠—a clap of thunder in November.” She at any rate no longer considers me damned.

XI Hell Let Loose

Meanwhile, in order to entirely bewilder me regarding the real nature of my illness, a current number of L’Événement contains the following notice:

“The unhappy Strindberg, who brought his misogyny to Paris, was quickly compelled to take himself off. Since then his partisans are dumb and confounded before the feminist flag. They do not wish to undergo the fate of Orpheus, whose head was torn off by the Thracian Bacchanals.”

So they actually did lay a plot against me in the Rue de la Clef, and the morbid