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

“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 outworn 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 skywards, “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.

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.”13 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 Hymenaeus 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