The Red Room - August Strindberg (best summer reads TXT) 📗

the punch as if it were poison, but he drank it nevertheless.

“But you wrote that beautiful story of the guardian angel, or the Marine Insurance Society Triton, for Smith,” remarked Falk. “Didn’t it go against your convictions?”

“Convictions? I have no convictions.”

“Haven’t you?”

“No, only fools have convictions.”

“Have you no morals, Ygberg?”

“No! Whenever a fool has an idea⁠—it comes to the same thing whether it is original or not⁠—he calls it his conviction, clings to it and boasts of it, not because it is a conviction, but because it is his conviction. So far as the Marine Insurance Society is concerned, I believe it’s a swindle! I’m sure it injures many men, the shareholders at all events, but it’s a splendid thing for others, the directors and employees, for instance; so it does a fair amount of good, after all.”

“Have you lost all sense of honour, old friend?”

“One must sacrifice everything on the altar of duty.”

“I admit that.”

“The first and foremost duty of man is to live⁠—to live at any price! Divine as well as human law demands it.”

“One must never sacrifice honour.”

“Both laws, as I said, demand the sacrifice of everything⁠—they compel a poor man to sacrifice his so-called honour. It’s cruel, but you can’t blame the poor man for it.”

“Your theory of life is anything but cheerful.”

“How could it be otherwise?”

“That’s true!”

“But to talk of something else: I’ve had a letter from Rehnhjelm. I’ll read it to you, if you like.”

“I heard he had gone on the stage.”

“Yes, and he doesn’t seem to be having a good time of it.”

Ygberg took a letter from his breast-pocket, put a piece of sugar into his mouth and began to read.

“If there is a hell in a life after this, which is very doubtful.⁠ ⁠…”

“The lad’s become a freethinker!”

“It cannot be a worse place than this. I’ve been engaged for two months, but it seems to me like two years. A devil, formerly a wheelwright, now theatrical manager, holds my fate in his hand, and treats me in such a way that three times a day I feel tempted to run away. But he has so carefully drafted the penal clauses in the agreement, that my flight would dishonour my parents’ name.

“I have walked on every single night, but I’ve never been allowed to open my lips yet. For twenty consecutive evenings I have had to smear my face with umber and wear a gipsy’s costume, not a single piece of which fits me; the tights are too long, the shoes too large, the jacket is too short. An under-devil, called the prompter, takes good care that I don’t exchange my costume for one more suitable; and whenever I try to hide myself behind the crowd, which is made up of the director-manufacturer’s factory hands, it opens and pushes me forward to the footlights. If I look into the wings, my eyes fall on the under-devil, standing there, grinning, and if I look at the house, I see Satan himself sitting in a box, laughing.

“I seem to have been engaged for his amusement, not for the purpose of playing any parts. On one occasion I ventured to draw his attention to the fact that I ought to have practice in speaking parts if I was ever going to be an actor. He lost his temper and said that one must learn to crawl before one can learn to walk. I replied that I could walk. He said it was a lie and asked me whether I imagined that the art of acting, the most beautiful and difficult of all arts, required no training. When I said that that was exactly what I did imagine, and that I was impatiently waiting for the beginning of my training, he told me I was an ignorant puppy, and he would kick me out. When I remonstrated, he asked me whether I looked upon the stage as a refuge for impecunious youths. My reply was a frank, unconditional glad ‘Yes.’ He roared that he would kill me.

“This is the present state of my affairs.

“I feel that my soul is flickering out like a tallow candle in a draught, and I shall soon believe that ‘Evil will be victorious, even though it be concealed in clouds,’ as the Catechism has it.

“But the worst of all is that I have lost all respect for this art, which was the dream and the love of my boyhood. Can I help it when I see that men and women without education or culture, spurred on by vanity and recklessness, completely lacking in enthusiasm and intelligence are able to play in a few months’ time character parts, historical parts, fairly well, without having a glimmer of knowledge of the time in which they move, or the important part which the person they represent played in history?

“It is slow murder, and the association with this mob which keeps me down⁠—some of the members of the company have come into collision with various paragraphs of the penal code⁠—is making of me what I’ve never been, an aristocrat. The pressure of the cultured can never weigh as heavily on the uncultured.

“There is but one ray of light in this darkness: I am in love. She is purest gold among all this dross. Of course she, too, is persecuted and slowly murdered, just as I am, since she refused the stage-manager’s infamous proposals. She is the only woman with a living spirit among all these beasts, wallowing in filth, and she loves me with all her soul. We are secretly engaged. I am only waiting for the day when I shall have won success, to make her my wife. But when will that be? We have often thought of dying together, but hope, treacherous hope, has always beguiled us into continuing this misery. To see my innocent love burning with shame when she is forced to wear improper costumes, is more than I can bear. But I will drop this unpleasant subject.

“Olle and Lundell wish