WRESTLING JACOB
(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.
I commence my questioning—
"Thou art he who has followed me for two years. What would'st thou of me?"
Without opening his mouth the Unknown answered me with a kind of smile full of super-human kindness, forbearance, and urbanity,—
"Why dost thou ask me since thou knowest the answer thyself?"
And, as if within me, I hear thy voice sound again, "I wish to raise thee to a higher life, to lift thee out of the mire."
"Born as I am out of mire, created for baseness, feeding on decay, how shall I be freed from earthly grossness except by death? Take my life then! Thou wilt not? It must be the infliction of punishment which is to educate me? But let me assure thee that humiliations make me proud; being denied the little enjoyments of life produces desire for them; fasting occasions gluttony, which is not my besetting sin; chastity whets the edge of lust; enforced loneliness produces love of the world and its unwholesome delights; poverty gives birth to greed; and the evil companionship to which I am relegated instils contempt of humanity into me, and produces unawares the suspicion that justice is maladministered. Yes, at certain moments it seems to me as though Providence was not kept sufficiently informed by its satraps to whom it has intrusted the rule over mankind; that its prefects and sub-prefects allow themselves to be guilty of malversations, falsifications, baseless denunciations. Thus it has happened to me, that I have been punished where others have sinned; suits have been brought against me, in which I was not only innocent, but actually the defender of right and the accuser of crime. All the same the punishment has lighted on me while the guilty triumphed.
"Allow me a plain question: Have women been admitted to a share in the rule? For the present method of government seems so irritable, so petty, so unjust, yes,—unjust. Is it not the case that every time when I have brought a righteous and lawful case against a woman, she, however unworthy she may have been, has been acquitted, and I have been condemned?
"Thou wilt not answer? And then thou demandest from me that I should love criminals, soul-murderers who poison the mind and falsify truth, and perjurers! No, a thousand times no! 'O Eternal! should I not hate them that hate thee? Should I not abhor them that rise up against thee. I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them mine enemies.' So speaks the Psalmist, and I add, 'I hate the wicked as I hate myself'; and my prayer is this, 'Punish, O Lord, those who persecute me with lies and malice as Thou hast punished me when I was false and malicious! Have I now blasphemed the Eternal, the Father of Jesus Christ, the God of the Old and New Testament? Of old time He listened to the reproaches of mortals, and permitted the accused to defend themselves. Listen to the way in which Moses defended himself before the Lord when the Israelites were tired of the manna, "Wherefore hast Thou afflicted Thy servant? and wherefore have I not found favour in Thy sight, that Thou layest the burden of all this people upon me? Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that Thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which Thou swearest unto their fathers? Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this people? for they weep unto me, saying Give us flesh, that we may eat. I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me."'
"Is not this plain speaking on the part of a mortal? Is it quite befitting, this speech of an angry servant? Yet consider, the Lord does not smite the bold speaker with a thunderbolt, but lightens his load by choosing seventy leaders to share the burden of the people with Moses. The way in which the Eternal grants the prayer of the people when they clamour for flesh to eat, is only slightly contemptuous, like that of a kindly father when he grants the wishes of his unreasonable children. 'Therefore the Lord will give you flesh and ye shall eat. Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days nor twenty days, but even a whole month, until it come out at your nostrils, and it be loathsome to you.'
"That is a God after my ideal, the same God to whom Job cries, 'Oh that one might plead with God as a man pleadeth with his friend.' But without waiting for this, the sufferer takes the liberty of demanding explanations from the Lord regarding the evil treatment to which he is exposed. 'I will say to God, "Condemn me not; show me wherefore Thou goest against me in judgment. Doth it please Thee to oppress me, to overthrow the work of Thine own hands, and to further the devices of the wicked?"' These are reproaches and imputations which the good God accepts without anger, and which He answers without using thunderbolts. Where is He, the Heavenly Father, who can smite at the follies of His children and pardon after He has punished them? Where does He hide Himself, the Master of the house who kept it in good order, and watched the overseers in order to prevent injustice?"
During my disconnected speech the Unknown regarded me with the same indulgent smile, without betraying impatience. But when I had finished, he disappeared. I found myself breathing a stifling atmosphere of carbonic oxide, and standing alone on the gloomy, dirty, autumnal-looking Rue Medici. While I went down the Boulevard Saint Michel I felt vexed with myself, that I had neglected the opportunity of speaking out everything. I had still many shafts in my quiver, if only the Unknown had waited to answer, or to direct an accusation against me.
But as soon as the crowd again presses round me in the glaring light of the gas lamps, and all the exposed wares in the shops remind me of the trivialities of life, the scene in the garden appears like a miracle, and I hasten in alarm to my lodging, where meditation plunges me into an abyss of doubt and anxiety. There is a ferment going on in the world, and men are waiting for something new, of which a glimmering has already appeared. France is preparing for a return to the Middle Ages,—the period of faith and of dogma, to which it has been led over the downfall of an empire, and of a miniature Augustus, just as at the time of the decay of the power of Rome and the invasion of the barbarians. One has seen Paris—Rome in flames, and the Goths crowning themselves in the capitol, Versailles. The great heathen Taine and Renan have gone down to perdition, and taken their scepticism with them, but Joan of Arc has again woken to life. The Christians are persecuted, their processions dispersed by gens d'armes; saturnalias are held on carnival days, and shameful orgies take place in the open streets under the protection of the police, and with the aid of money grants from the Government, which to satisfy the discontented offers shows, with or without gladiatorial encounters. "Panem et Circenses" (Dear)—bread and games. All is readily bought with money, honour, conscience, fatherland, love, administration of justice,—truly the infallible and regular symptoms of decay in a community, whence Virtue, both in name and reality, has been banished for thirty years. Yet for all that we are in the Middle Ages. Young men assume monkish cowls, wear the tonsure and dream of convent life. They compose legends and perform miracle-plays, paint Madonnas and carve images of Christ, drawing their inspiration from the magician,[2] who has bewitched them with Tristan and Isolde, Parzival and the Holy Grail. Crusades against Jews and Turks begin afresh; the Anti-Semites and Philhellenes see to that. Magic and alchemy have already been re-established, and they only wait for the first proved case of witchcraft in order to erect a funeral pile to burn witches on. Middle Ages indeed! Witness the pilgrimages to Lourdes, Tilli-sur-Seine, Rue Jean Goujon. Heaven also gives the sleepy world signs to be ready. The Lord speaks through water-spouts, cyclones, floods, and thunder-storms.
Mediæval also is the leprosy which has just appeared again, and against which the doctors of Paris and Berlin have combined.
But they were beautiful, the Middle Ages, when men knew how to enjoy and to suffer, when strength and love and beauty in colour, in line, and harmony were revealed for the last time, before they were drowned and sabred by the renaissance of heathenism which is called Protestantism.
The evening has come, and I burn with desire to renew my meeting with the Unknown, well prepared, as I now am, to confess all and to defend myself before I am condemned. After I have taken my melancholy meal alone I go up the Via Dolorosa, the Rue Bonaparte. This street has never appeared to me so monstrous as this evening; the shop windows yawn like abysses in which Christ is portrayed in many forms —half-martyred, half-triumphant. I go on and on, while the sweat runs in great drops down my face, and the soles of my boots burn my feet, yet I do not seem to advance a step. Am I the Wandering Jew who refused the Redeemer a drink of water? and am I, now that I wish to follow and imitate Him, unable to approach Him?
Finally, and without myself knowing how, I find myself before the Fleurus Gate, and in the next moment within the garden, which lies there, dark, damp, and still. Immediately a gust of wind sets the skeletons of the trees in motion, and the Unknown takes up his position quicker as he approaches in his summer-like garment of light. With the same smile as before he invites me to speak.
And I speak, "What demandest thou of me, and wherefore plaguest thou me with thy Christ? A few days ago in some mysterious manner thou placedst the Imitation of Christ in my hand, and I read it as in my youth when I learned to despise the world. How can I have the right to despise the creation of the Eternal and the beautiful earth? And whither has thy wisdom led me? To neglect my affairs, till I have become a burden for my fellow-men, and ended as a beggar. This book, which forbids friendship, which lays worldly intercourse under a ban, which demands solitude and renunciation, is written for a monk, and I have not the right to be a monk and expose myself to the danger of letting my children die of want. See whither the love for a lonely life has led me. On the one hand thou enjoinest the life of a hermit, and as soon as I withdraw myself from the world I am attacked by the evil spirits of madness, my affairs fall into confusion, and in my isolation I do not possess a single friend from whom I can ask help. On the other hand, as soon as I seek out men, I meet the worst kind, who annoy me with their arrogance, and that in proportion to my humility. For I am humble, and treat all as my equals, till they trample me under their feet, when I behave like a worm which raises its head but cannot bite.
"What then demandest thou of me? Is it to make me a martyr at all costs, whether I do thy will or disregard it? Wilt thou make me a prophet? That is too great an honour for me, and I lack the vocation to be one. Besides I cannot take up that attitude, for all prophets which I have known have been finally unmasked as half-charlatans, half-lunatics, and their prophecies have always failed.
"Moreover, if thou pressest upon me this vocation, I must be favoured with electing grace, so that I become free from all destructive passions which are degrading for a preacher; I must have adequate support for my life instead of being, as I am, besmirched with poverty, which makes one's character deteriorate and ties one's hands. It is certainly true, and I grant it, that contempt of the world has led me to despise myself and to neglect my calling through undervaluing honour. I confess that I have been a sorry guardian of my own person, but that is because of the superiority of my better self which despised the unclean sheath in which thou hast immured my immortal soul. From my earliest years I have loved purity and virtue—verily I have. Yet my life has dragged itself dong in filth and wickedness, so that I often suppose my sins to be punishments inflicted upon me, with the object of arousing in me a permanent disgust of life. Why hast thou condemned me to ingratitude, which I hate more than any other sin? Thou hast entangled me, who am naturally grateful, in snares, in order to compel me to feel obligation to the first benefactor who came in my way. So I have become involved in dependence and slavery, since benefactors demand as compensation control over the thoughts, wishes, inclinations, and devotion,—in a word, the whole soul, of those whom they benefit. Always I have been compelled to withdraw myself, laden with debt and ungrateful, in order to preserve my individuality and manly worth; I have been forced to tear asunder the bonds which threatened to strangle my immortal soul. And that, too, with the spiritual torment and pangs of conscience of a thief who goes his way with some one else's property.
"As a matter of fact, by choosing the royal road of the Cross I have entangled myself in the thorny thicket of theology, so that doubts more terrible than ever have taken possession of me, and whispered plainly in my ear that all unhappiness, all injustice, and the whole work of redemption is only an enormous temptation which one must manfully resist. Often I believe that Swedenborg, with his terrifying hells, is only a fire and water-ordeal which must be undergone. And although I owe a debt of gratitude, which I cannot pay to this prophet, who has saved me from madness, I feel rise again and again in my heart a burning desire to overthrow him, to defy him as an evil spirit who always plots to ensnare my soul in order to enslave me, after he has driven me to despair and suicide. Yes, he has insinuated himself between me and my God, whose place he has wished to take. It is he who tyrannises over me with terrors of the night and threatens me with madness. Though possibly he has only fulfilled his task in drawing me back to the Lord and making me submit to the Eternal. It may be that his hells are only a scarecrow; I take them as such, but believe no more in them, for I cannot believe in them without slandering the good God who demands that we should forgive, because He can Himself forgive. If the unhappiness and trouble I meet with are not punishments, then they are initial tests. I am inclined to explain them in this way, and it is likely that Christ is the Example, because He has suffered much, although I do not understand what end such great sufferings serve, except to throw into relief future blessedness. I have said what I had to say. Give me now an answer."
But the Unknown, who had listened with wonderful patience, answered only with a gesture of gentle irony, and vanished.
When I found myself back in the street, I was, as usual, angry at having forgotten the best arguments, which always turn up when it is too late. A whole long speech presents itself to me now, while my heart swells and my courage rises again. The awe-inspiring and sympathetic Unknown has, at any rate, heard me without crushing me. He has also waited to hear my grounds of complaint, and he will now consider the injustice to which I have been a sacrifice. Perhaps I have succeeded in convincing him, as he stood there and did not answer me.
The old idea that I am Job comes into my mind, I have really lost my property; they have taken my movable goods and books, means of existence, wife, and children. Hunted from one land to another, I am condemned to a lonely life in the desert. Is it I who have written these lamentations, or is it Job: "My neighbours have forsaken me, and my friends have forgotten me. My wife makes herself strange to me, and my prayers reach not the sons of my mother. Little children also despise me. He has made me a by-word among the people, and I have become their music. I find only slanderers, and my eye wakes the whole night while they persecute my soul. My skin breaks and is dissolved. When I say, 'My bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint,' then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions." This fits me exactly; the cracks in the skin, the dreams and the visions. But there is an over-plus on my side. I have endured the extremest sufferings, as circumstances brought about by invisible powers which hemmed me in, in order to compel me to leave unfulfilled the simplest duty of a man,—to support his children. Job retired from the game with his honour unaffected; for me all was lost, even honour, and yet I overcame the temptation to suicide; I possessed the courage to live without honour.
For three months I seek in vain to come into personal connection with the Swedenborg Society in Paris. For a whole week I go every morning past the Pantheon to reach the Rue Thouin, where the chapel and the library of the Swedish prophet are situated. Finally I find some one who says that the librarian only receives strangers in the afternoon, just the time when I wish to be alone with my thoughts, and am too tired to walk. However, time after time I make the attempt to reach the Rue Thouin. The first time I felt uncomfortably depressed as I wont out, and at the end of the bridge of Saint Michel this feeling amounted to a positive fear, which compelled me to return home. A second time it is Sunday, and they are going to have service in the Swedenborgian chapel. I arrive an hour too soon, and do not feel strong enough to wait an hour in the street. The third time I find the pavement taken up in the Rue Thouin, and workman blocking the way with their planks and tools. Then I conclude that Swedenborg is not destined to be my leader on the right path, and under this impression I retrace my steps. But when I get home, it occurs to me that I have allowed myself to be deceived by Swedenborgs invisible enemies, and that I must fight them.
My last attempt I make in a carriage. This time the street is barricaded, as it expressly to frustrate my purpose. I get out of the carriage and clamber over the obstructions, but when I reach the door of the Swedenborgian chapel I find the pavement and steps have been taken away. In spite of all I manage to reach the door, pull the bell, and am told by a stranger that the librarian is ill.
With a kind of feeling of relief I turn my back on the gloomy, shabby little chapel with its dark window panes soiled with rain and dust. This edifice, built in the severe barbaric depressing Methodist style, had always repelled me. Its want of beauty reminded me of the Protestantism of the north, and it cost my pride a struggle to bring myself to seek to enter it. I did it as a pious duty towards Swedenborg, nothing more.
As I turned round with a light heart, I saw on the pavement a tin-coated piece of iron, in the shape of a clover-leaf, and superstitiously picked it up. Simultaneously a recollection sprang to life in my mind. The year before, on the 2nd November in the terrible year 1896, as I was walking one morning in Klam in Austria, the sun disappeared behind a wall of cloud shaped like an arch, with clover-shaped outlines surrounded by blue and white rays. This cloud and my tinned iron-plate resembled each other as closely as two drops of water. My diary, in which I made a sketch of the former, can verify this fact.
What does that signify? The Trinity, that is clear. And further?—
I leave the Rue Thouin, joyful as a school-boy who has escaped a hard task because the teacher is ill. As I pass by the Pantheon, I find the great gate wide open in a sort of challenging way, as if to say, "Come in!" As a matter of fact, in spite of my long residence in Paris I have never visited this church, chiefly because people have told me lies about the wall-paintings, and said that they dealt with certain modern subjects which I strongly dislike. One may imagine my delight as I enter and find myself in a shower of radiance falling from the central dome, and surrounded by a golden legend—the sacred history of France, which closes immediately before the time of Protestantism. The ambiguous inscription without—"Aux grands hommes," had also misled me. There are few kings, still fewer generals, and not a single deputy; I breathe again. On the other hand, there are St Denis, St Geneviève, St. Louis, Joan of Arc. Never would I have believed that the Republic was Catholic to such a degree. There is only wanting the Altar and Tabernacle. In place of the Crucified and the Virgin is the statue of a woman of the world, set up here by women who admire her; but I comfort myself with the thought that this celebrity will finally descend to the gutter like so many more honoured ones have done before. It is pleasant and interesting to roam about this temple which is dedicated to sanctity, but it is sad to see at the same time how the virtuous and benevolent have been beheaded. Must one not out of reverence to God believe that all the evil treatment which has fallen to the lot of the just and merciful is only an apparent wrong, and that, however discouraging the path of virtue may appear, it leads to some good end, which is hidden from our view? Otherwise these infernal stakes and scaffolds, where executioners triumph over saints, must suggest blasphemous thoughts regarding the goodness of the supreme Judge who only seems to hate and persecute the saints below, in order to reward them in a higher world. "Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy." Meanwhile, as I leave the Pantheon, I cast a look at the Rue Thouin and wonder that the road to Swedenborg has led me to the Church of St. Geneviève. Swedenborg, my guide and prophet, has hindered me from going to his modest chapel. Has he then rejected himself and become better instructed, so that he has been converted to Catholicism. While I studied the works of the Swedish seer, it has struck me how he sets himself up as an opponent to Luther, who valued faith alone. In fact, Swedenborg is more Catholic than he has wished to appear, since he preaches faith in conjunction with works, just like the Catholic Church.
If it is so, then he is at war with himself, and I, his disciple, will be crushed between anvil and hammer.
One evening, after a day filled with pangs of conscience and doubts, I betook myself, after I had taken my lonely midday meal, to the garden which draws me like a Gethsemane where unknown sufferings await me. I have a foreboding of torments, and cannot escape them; I long for them almost as a wounded man wishes to subject himself to a cruel operation, which will bring him cure or death. Reaching the Fleurus Gate, I find myself at once upon the racecourse which is terminated by the Pantheon surmounted by the Cross. Two years ago this temple signified to my worldly mind the honour paid to "great men," now I look upon it as dedicated to the martyrs and the sufferings which they have endured; so greatly has my point of view changed. The fact that the Unknown remains absent causes me to feel an oppression of the chest. Lonely, and prepared for controversy, I feel myself weary for want of a visible opponent. To fight with phantoms and shadows is worse than to contend with dragons and lions. Terror seizes me, and urged on by the courage of the coward, I go forward with firm steps on the slippery ground between the plane trees. A close smell of dirty cod-fish mixed with that of tar and tallow chokes me; I hear the slapping of waves against the sides of ships and the quay; I am led into the courtyard of a yellow brick building; I mount upstairs, traverse enormous halls and countless galleries, passing between showcases and glass cabinets full of animals stuffed or preserved in tins. Finally, an open door invites me into a hall of strange appearance; it is dark, but faintly illuminated by patches of light reflected from a number of coins and medals in well-arranged showcases. I stop before a glass-covered case near a window, and my eye is attracted among the gold and silver medals by one of another metal, which is as dark as lead. It bears the picture of myself, the type of an ambitious criminal with hollow cheeks, hair erect, and an ugly mouth. The reverse of the medal bears the inscription, "Truth is always ruthless".[3] Oh! Truth! which is so veiled from mortals, and which I was bold enough to believe I had unveiled, when I despised the Holy Communion, the miracle of which I now recognise. The medal is a godless memorial to the dishonour of the godlessness of blasphemous friends. It is true I have always been ashamed of this glorification of brutality, and not taken the trouble to keep this memorial. I have thrown it to the children to play with, and it has disappeared without my missing it. Similarly, by a fateful "coincidence," the artist who made the medal, went out of his mind soon afterwards, having deceived his publisher and committed forgery. Oh, this disgrace, which cannot be wiped out, but must for ever be preserved in memory, as the law orders this indictment to be kept in the State museum! Here one sees what "honour" comes to! But what have I to complain of, since Providence has only granted fulfilment to an unholy prayer which I addressed to it in my youth?
I was about fifteen years old when, weary of useless conflicts against the young hot blood that longed to satisfy its passions, exhausted by the religious doubts which devastated my soul, which was eager to solve the riddle of existence, surrounded by pietists who worried me under the plea of winning my soul to love the God-like, I roundly asserted to an old lady friend who had lectured me to death, "I pitch morality overboard, provided I can be a great genius and universally admired!"
I was, moreover, strengthened in my views by Thomas Henry Buckle, who taught us that morality was "a nothing," incapable of development, and that intelligence was everything. Later on, when I was twenty, I learnt from Taine that evil and good were indifferent matters, possessed of unconscious and irresponsible qualities, like the acidity of acids, and the alkalinity of alkalis. And this phrase, which was quickly caught up and developed by George Brandes, has stamped an impress of immorality on Scandinavian literature. A sophism, that is a weak syllogism which has missed the mark, has seduced a whole generation of freethinkers.
Weak indeed it is! For if we analyse Buckle's epigram, "Morality is incapable of development, and therefore does not matter," it is easy to discover that the inference should rather be, "Morality, which remains invariably the same, thereby proves her divine and everlasting origin."
When my wish was finally attained, I became an acknowledged and admired genius, and the most despised of all men born in my country in this century. Banished from the better circles, neglected by the smallest of the small, disavowed by my friends, I received the visits of my admirers by night, or in secret. Yes, all do homage to morality, and a minority reverence talent, a fact which gives rise to various reflections concerning the essence of morality.
Still worse is the reverse of the medal! Truth! As though I had never given myself over to the power of falsehood, in spite of my pretence to be more truthful and sincere than others. I do not dwell on the petty falsehoods of childhood, which signify so little, occasioned as they mostly were by fear or the incapacity of distinguishing between fact and imagination, and because they were counterbalanced by punishments unjustly inflicted and based upon false accusations of my schoolfellows. But there are other falsehoods, and more serious ones because of the injurious consequences which evil example and excuse for grievous wrongdoing involve. For example, the untrue description in my autobiography, "The Son of a Servant," with regard to the crisis of puberty. When I wrote that youthful confession, 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.
As I bring these bitter reflections to a close, the coin-cabinet contracts, the medal retreats to a distance, and diminishes to the size of a lead button,—and I see myself in a dormitory in a school for boys in the country on the bank of the Malar in 1861. Children born of unlawful unions, children of parents who had tied from their country, badly brought-up children who in too many families were in the way, live here together huddled in a loft, without oversight, tyrannising over and ill-treating each other, in order to revenge themselves for the cruelty of life. A hungry herd of little evil-doers, ill-clothed and ill-nourished, a terror to the country people and especially to the gardeners.
Pains of conscience follow immediately on a fall, and I see myself in the twilight of a summer evening sitting at a table in my night-dress with a prayer-book before me, stung by conscience and shame, although wholly unacquainted with the nature of sin. Innocent because I was ignorant, and yet a criminal. Led astray, and afterwards leading others astray, suffering remorse and relapsing, doubting the justice of my accusing conscience, and doubting the mercy of God who allows an innocent child to be exposed to the most terrible temptations. Unhappy victim without strength to stand first in the unequal strife with all-powerful Nature 1 Meanwhile the infernal fire is lit which will burn till the grave.
I burn with desire to accuse myself and to defend myself at the same time, but there is no judgment-seat and no judge, and I devour myself here in solitude.
As I cried out in my despair towards all quarters of heaven, I became enveloped in a dark mist, and when I began to see again clearly I found myself standing in the Fleurus Avenue with my head leant against a chestnut tree. It was the third tree counting from the entrance gate, and the avenue has forty-seven on each side. Nine seats are placed between the trees to rest on. Thus there are forty-four halting places for me before I reach the first Station.
For a moment I remain quite depressed, watching the path of tears stretch before me. Suddenly under the leafless trees a ball of light approaches, borne along by two birds' wings. It stops before me on a level with my eyes, and in the clear light which the ball radiates I see a white sheet of paper ornamented like a menu-card. At the top I read in smoke-coloured letters, "Eat!" Then in a second the record of my whole past life is enrolled like a micrographic reproduction on an enormous placard. Everything is there! All the horrors, the most secret sins, the most loathsome scenes in which I have played the chief part Alas! I could die with shame as I see those scenes depicted, which my eye, which seems to grow in size, takes in at once, without needing to read and interpret them.
I do not die, however. On the contrary, for a minute which is forty-eight years long, I review my whole life from early childhood to this day. My bones are dried up to the marrow, my blood ceases to circulate, and, consumed by fiery pangs of conscience, I fall to the ground with the cry, "Mercy! Mercy! I must cease to justify myself before the Eternal, and I must cease to accuse my neighbours."
When consciousness returned I found myself on the Rue de Luxembourg, and as I looked through the trellis-gate I saw the garden blooming, while a choir of little mocking-birds greeted me from the bushes and trees.
The next evening there was h knock at my door about six o'clock, and there stepped in the American painter whom, in my book Inferno, I have identified with Francis Schlatter. As we had parted from each other quite indifferently, without friendship or enmity, our meeting was quite cordial. I notice that the man is somewhat altered. He seems physically smaller than I remember him, and I cannot get him as before to smile at the vexations of life and at sorrows already endured, which are so easily borne when they are happily over. But he treats me with a surprising respect which contrasts strongly with his former cameraderie. Meanwhile this meeting rouses me from my lethargy, partly because I have some one to speak to who understands every word I say, partly because he forms a link with a period when the development of my life, belief, and growth was strongest. I feel as if the clock had been put back two years, and feel a wish to get free, to spend half a night on the Boulevard pavement in talk, with our glasses before us.
We agree to have our lunch at Montmartre, and take that direction. The noise of the street somewhat interrupts the current of conversation, and I notice in myself an unusual difficulty in hearing and understanding his words.
At the entrance to the Avenue de l'Opéra the crowd is great, and we are constantly separated by those who meet us. It happens that a man carrying some cotton wool stumbles against my companion so that he is covered over with white. With my head full of Swedenborgs symbols, I try to remember what this should signify, but can only think of the opening of the grave at St. Helena, when Napoleon's body looked as though it were covered with white down.
In the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin I am already so tired and nervous that we resolve to take a carriage. Since it is dinner-time the street is very full, and when we have driven for some minutes the carriage suddenly stands still. Simultaneously I receive such a blow in the back that I rise from my seat, and as I turn round there are three horses' heads opposite me,—an omnibus with a shouting driver on the top of it. This puts me out of humour, and I ask myself if it is intended for a warning.
We alight at the Place Pigalle and dine. Here I am reminded of my residence in Paris in the seventies, when I was young, but it makes me sad, for the changes are great. My lodging-house in the Rue Douai is no more. The "Black Cat" which stood there then is closed, and Rodolphe Salis has been buried this year. The "Café de l'Ermitage" is only a recollection, and the "Tambourin" has changed its name and title. The friends of those days are dead, married, scattered, and the Swedish colony has transferred its quarters to Mont Parnasse. I feel that I have grown old.
The dinner is not so lively as I expected. The wine is of the bad kind that puts one out of humour. My having got out of the habit of listening and speaking makes the conversation disjointed and exhausting. The hope of recovering our former cheerful mood with the coffee is not realised, and soon that terrible silence begins which betrays a desire to get away from each other.
For a long while we struggle against the growing embarrassment, but in vain. As early as nine o'clock we rise from table, and my companion, guessing my mood, takes his own way, under the pretext of having an appointment to keep. As soon as I am alone I feel an indescribable relief; my discomfort ceases, my headache disappears, and I feel as though the convolutions of my brain, and the network of my nerves which had become entangled, were slowly returning to their normal state. In truth, solitude has made my personality so sensitive that I cannot bear the contact of a stranger.
Quietly, but with an illusion the less, I return home, glad to be in my cell again; but I notice that the room has undergone a change; it is no longer the same, and a sort of domestic discomfort seems to pervade it. The furniture and small articles are in their places, but give a strange impression. Some one has been here and left traces of himself behind. I am undone!
The next day I go out to seek for society, but find none. The third day I go by appointment to my friend the artist to see his etchings. He lives in Marais. I ask the porter whether he is at home. "Yes," he answered, "but he is in the café, with a lady." Since I have nothing to say to the lady I go away again. The next day I go again to Marais, and since he is at home I proceed to mount the six flights of stairs, which wind narrowly like stairs in a tower. When I have ascended three I begin to remember a dream and a reality. The dream which is often repeated has to do with just such narrow cork-screw stairs up which I crawl till I am stifled, as they grow ever narrower. The first time I remembered this dream was in the tower at Putbus, and I immediately went down again. Now I stand here squeezed, panting, my heart palpitating, but determine to ascend. I manage to get up, enter the studio, and find my friend with a lady. After I have sat for five minutes I get a severe headache and say, "My good friend, it seems as though I must renounce your society, for your stairs kill me. Just now I have a distinct conviction that if I come up here again I shall die."
He answered, "But you lately ascended the Montmartre and the stairs at the church of the Sacred Heart."
"Yes," I reply, "it is very strange."
"Well," he said, "then I will come to you, and we will dine in the evening together."
So the next day we actually have our meal together, and fall into the pleasant mood which is desirable at such times. We treat each other with respect, avoid saying unpleasant things, put ourselves at each other's point of view, and obtain the illusion of being of one mind in all matters. After our meal, since the evening is mild, we continue our conversation, and cross the river, proceeding to the Boulevards till we finally reach the Café du Cardinal. It is now midnight, but we are far from being tired, and now begin those wonderful hours when the soul gets free from her wrappings, and the spiritual faculties, which would ordinarily be employed in dreaming, are roused to waking, and clear conceptions and keen glances into the past and future. During these night hours, my spirit seems to hover over and outside my body, which sits there like a stranger. Our drinking is merely a secondary matter which serves to keep sleep away, perhaps also to open the flood-gates of memory whence all the occurrences of my life flow forth, so that at every moment I can call up facts, dates, years, scenes, and pictures. That is the attraction and power of vinous excitement over me, but a religious-minded occultist has told me that it is a sin, for it is wrongfully antedating salvation, which consists in the liberation of the soul from matter. Therefore this trespass is punished with terrible subsequent tortures.
Meanwhile they begin to disturb us by giving signs of closing the Boulevard cafés, but as I do not want to finish, I name the word "Baratte," and my friend is ready at once. Café Baratte, near the "Halls," has always had a wonderful attraction for me, without my exactly knowing why. It may be the proximity of the "Halls." When it is night on the Boulevard, it is morning in them—all through the night in fact—which with its enforced want of occupation and dark dreams is banished. The mind which has become intoxicated in immaterial worlds descends to eating, sin, and noise. This scent of fish, flesh, and vegetables, over the refuse of which we step, seems to me an effective contrast to the lofty themes which we have just been discussing.
That is the stuff out of which we are created and re-created three times a day, and when one enters from the darkness, dirt, and knots of seedy figures outside, into the comfortable café, one is greeted by light, warmth, song, mandolines, and guitars. At this hour of the day all class distinctions are wiped out. Here sit artists, students, authors, drinking at long tables, and in a sort of waking trance. Or have they fled from the sad sleep which, perhaps, has ceased to visit them? There is no sparkling hilarity, but a kind of stupor broods over the whole, and it seems to me as if I had entered into a realm of shadows peopled by half-real phantoms.
I know an author who used to sit there at night and write. I have seen strangers there dressed as though they came from a brilliant supper at Parc Monceau. I have seen a public man, with the appearance of a foreign ambassador, stand up and sing a solo. I have seen people who looked like disguised princes and princesses drinking champagne, and I really don't know whether they are real mortals, all these shadows, or the projected "astral" bodies of sleepers outside who hallucinate those drunk with sleep who sit there. The remarkable thing is that no coarseness prevails in the company packed together in the narrow café. The songs are mostly sentimental, and the melancholy guitars heal the needle-pricks with which the sharp steel-strung mandoline pricks the brain.
Now in the night, after my long course of loneliness, I feel happy in the crowd, which seems to radiate warmth and sympathy. For the first time after a long interval I am seized with a sentimental pity for the unhappy women of the night. Near our table sit half a dozen of them looking depressed, and not having ordered anything. They are most of them ugly, despised, and probably unable to order anything. I suggest to my friend, who is as disinterested as myself, to invite two of the ugliest who sit near us. He agrees; and I invite two, asking if they will have anything to drink, adding at the same time that they must have no other designs and behave with propriety.
They seem to understand the part they have to play, and ask first for food. My friend and I continue our philosophical conversation in German, now and then speaking a word to the women, who are not presuming, and who seem more anxious to eat than to be attended to.
For a moment the thought strikes me, "Suppose one of your acquaintances saw you now?" Yes, I know what he would say, and I know what I would answer: "You have thrust me out of society, condemned me to solitude, and I am compelled to purchase the companionship of pariahs, outcasts like myself, and hungry as I have been. My simple pleasure is to be able to see these despised ones plume themselves on a conquest which is no conquest, to sec them eat and drink, and to hear their voices, which are at any rate those of women. Moreover, I have not paid them in any way, not even in order to append a moral exhortation."
I simply find a pleasure in sitting together with human beings, and in being able to give out of my momentary superfluity, for in a month I may be as poor as they are.
It is now morning; the clock strikes five, and we go. But my companion demands fifteen francs for having given me her society, a demand which from her point of view I find quite comprehensible, for my society is as worthless as my power to protect her against the police. But I do not believe that will increase my self-respect, rather the opposite.
Meanwhile I go home with a good conscience after a well-spent night, sleep till ten o'clock, awake well rested, and spend the day in work and meditation. But the following night I have an attack of the terrible kind which Swedenborg describes in his Dreams. So that was the punishment! What for? I really don't understand. I thought that this was a new lesson in the art of life,—that I should learn that all men alike are good cabbage-eaters, and had actually for a moment imagined that the part I had played in the night-café was rather that of a philanthropist than of a sinner, or at any rate morally indifferent. During the following days I was much depressed, and one evening I looked forward to passing a night of terror. At nine o'clock I had Cicero's Natura Deorum before me, and was so pleased with Aristotle's doctrine that the gods quite ignored our world, and would pollute themselves if they had anything to do with this filth, that I determined to copy it out. At the same time I noticed that blood had broken out on the back of my right hand without any apparent cause. When I wiped it off, I found no mark of a scratch. But I forgot it, and went to bed. About half-past twelve I awoke with the fully developed symptoms of what I have called "the electric girdle." Notwithstanding that I know its nature and inner significance, I am compelled to seek the cause of it outside myself. I made an effort and lighted the lamp. As the Bible lay close by I determined to consult it, and it gave the answer: "I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way that thou shalt go; I will guide thee with Mine eye: be not like to horse and mule, whose mouths must be drawn with bit and bridle, else they will not come near thee."
That was an answer, and I went to sleep again, satisfied that it was not anything evil, but a benignant power that spoke to me, though somewhat ambiguously.
After I had quieted myself with some days' solitude, I went out again one evening with the American and a young Frenchman who corrects my manuscripts. It was somewhat tedious, and I returned home shortly before midnight with a bad conscience, because, being drawn into a heated conversation, I had been compelled to speak evil of some one absent. What I said was in self-defence against a liar, and absolutely true. About two o'clock I awoke and heard some one stamping in the room above me, and then come down the stairs and go into the room by the side of mine. Am I then watched? I had already had the same experience here in the hotel in September, when I lived on the third storey. So it cannot be an accident If now, as is probable, my unseen mentor wishes to punish me, how cunning it is to keep me uncertain whether they are human beings who persecute me or not! Though I have convinced myself that no one persecutes me, I am again drawn into the old circle of the self-torturing belief that some one does. When once the question is raised, there begins a dance of conjectures kept up by my conscience, which accuses me even when I have acted in pure self-defence in rebutting unjust accusations. I feel as though I were tied backwards to a stake, and that all the passers-by have the right to spit on me unpunished, but if I spit back, I am scourged, choked, hunted by furies. The whole world, even the meanest beggar, has rights against mu. If I only knew why! All the tactics are so feminine that I cannot get rid of my suspicion. For when a woman for years has done injury and wrong to a man, and he, out of innate nobility, has not lifted his hand in return, but at last strikes round him as when one drives away a fly, the woman raises an outcry, calls the police, and exclaims, "He defends himself!" Or, when in school an unreasonable teacher falls on a pupil, who is groundlessly accused, and the latter, from an injured sense of justice, seeks to defend himself, what does the teacher do? He proceeds to corporal punishment, exclaiming, "So you answer back, do you?" I have answered back. And therefore I am punished. The punishment continues eight days and nights successively. The consequence is that I become depressed and unfit for social intercourse. My friend the American, weary of me, quietly withdraws, and as he has set up a domestic establishment, I find myself again alone. But it is not entirely a mutual aversion which has a second time separated us, for we have both noticed that during our last meeting strange things have happened, which could be only ascribed to the intervention of conscious powers who intended to arouse aversion between us. This man, who knows hardly anything of my past life, seems during our last interview to have had the purpose of wounding me on all my sore points, and it seemed as though he guessed my most secret thoughts and intentions, which are yet only known to myself. As I remarked something of this sort to him, a light seemed to break upon him, "Is that not the Devil?" he broke out. "I thought there was something wrong, for the whole evening you could not open your mouth without wounding me to the quick, but I saw by your quiet face and friendly expression that you had nothing evil in your mind." We tried to defy the malefic influence. But for three days in succession my friend traversed the long road to me in vain. I was not there, nor did he find me where I usually dine.
Thus loneliness closes round me again like a thick darkness. It is nearly Christmas-time, and the being without home and family oppresses me. The whole of life becomes distasteful, and I begin again, in consequence, to look after what is from above. I buy the Imitation of Christ and read it.
It is not the first time that this wonderful book has fallen into my hands, but this time it finds the ground prepared. Its purport is to die, while yet alive, to the world,—the contemptible, wearisome, filthy world. The unknown author has the remarkable faculty of not preaching or reproaching, but he speaks in a friendly way, convincingly, logically, and invitingly. He regards our sorrows not as punishments but tests, and thereby arouses in us the ambition to endure. Now I have Jesus again, not Christ this time, and He steals softly in to me, as though He came in velvet sandals. And the Christmas-displays in the Rue Bonaparte help towards the belief: there is the Christ-child in the manger, the Jesus-child with royal mantle and crown, the Child-redeemer on the Virgin's arm, the Child playing, lying, and on the cross. Yes, the Child! Him I can understand. The God who has so long heard the lamentations of men over the misery of mortal life that He finally resolved to descend, to let Himself be born and to live, in order to prove how hard it is to drag oneself about with a human life. Him I comprehend.
One Sunday morning I passed by the Church Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. This building has always exercised a strong influence on me, because it looks so familiar; the vestibules with their paintings have an inviting air, and the congregations are so small that one is not crushed or lost. As I pass in at the door, there are twilight and organ music, coloured pictures and wax candles. Whenever I enter a Catholic church I remain standing at the door and feel embarrassed, restless, and outside the pale. When the gigantic Swiss guard approaches with his halberd, my conscience feels uneasy, and I expect him to drive me out as a heretic. Here in Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois I feel a certain anxiety, for I remember that it was in this tower that the bell for some unknown reason began to sound at two o'clock in the night of St. Bartholomew. To-day ray position as a Huguenot makes me more uncomfortable than usual, for two mornings ago I read in the Osservatore Romano congratulations sent by the Catholic priests to the persecutors of the Jews in Russia and Hungary, followed by a highly coloured comparison with the great days of the St. Bartholomew massacre, the return of which the writer evidently wished for.
The organ, which was out of sight, plays tunes which I have never heard before, but which seem to me like memories—memories of the times of my ancestors, or still further back. When I hear fine music, I always ask myself, "Where did the composer find it?" Not in nature and in life, for in music there are no models, as in the other arts. The only remaining conjecture is, to consider music as the recollection of a condition, which every man in his best moments longs for. And that very longing shows a vague consciousness of having lost something which one has formerly possessed.
There are six lighted candles on the altar. The priest, arrayed in white, red, and gold, says nothing, but his hand hovers with the graceful movements of a butterfly over a book. Behind him come two little children dressed in white, and bend their knees. The priest washes his hands, and proceeds to do something which I do not understand. Something rare, beautiful, and wonderful is taking place there in the distance amid the gold ornaments, incense-smoke, and light I understand nothing, but feel an easily explicable fear and reverence, and am convinced that I have gone through the same experience before.
This is succeeded by the feeling of shame of the outcast, the heathen, who has nothing to do here. And then the whole truth is apparent: a Protestant has no religion,—for Protestantism is free-thinking, revolt, separation, dogmatism, theology, heresy. And the Protestant is under the ban of excommunication. This is the curse which rests over us and makes us dissatisfied, melancholy, restless. At this hour I feel the curse, and I understand why the victor at Lützen was cut off, and why his own daughter contradicted him; why Protestant Germany was devastated, while Austria remained untouched. And what was won for us? The freedom to be cast out, the freedom to separate ourselves and to split off, in order to end finally without a creed.
The surging congregation moves out through the doors, and I remain alone, enduring, as it seems to me, their looks of disapproval. It is dark at the door where I stand, but I see all those who pass out touch the holy water in the stoup and cross themselves, and as I stand directly in front of it, it seems as though they were crossing themselves in defence against me. I know what that means, as in Austria I was exposed to the danger of those who met me on the roads crossing themselves against the "Protestant."
At last, as I am left alone, I approach the consecrated font out of curiosity or some other motive. It is made out of yellow marble in the form of a conch-shell, and over it hangs a winged cherub's head. The face of the child has a lively and radiant expression such as one only sees in good, beautiful, and well-cared-for children. The mouth is open, and the corners of it show a suppressed smile. The large fine eyes arc cast down, and one sees how the little rogue contemplates his image in the water, but under the protection of his eyelids, as though he were conscious of doing something wrong, but yet he is not afraid of his chastiser, whom he knows he can disarm with a single look. That is the child, which still keeps the impress of our distant origin, a gleam of the supernatural, which belongs to heaven. So then it is possible to smile in heaven, and not only to bear the cross! How often in my self-reproachful hours, when everlasting punishments have seemed to me objective realities, have I not put to myself the question which many would consider irreverent, "Can God smile?"—smile at the folly and over-daring of human ants? If He can, then He can also forgive.
The cherub's face smiles at me and looks at me under its eyelids, and open mouth says banteringly, "Try it; the water is not dangerous." I touch the holy water with two fingers,—a ripple passes over the surface, as though it were the pool of Bethesda, and then 1 make a motion with my finger from my forehead to my heart and across from left to right, as I have seen my daughter do. But in the next moment I am outside the Church, for the cherub laughed, and I—I will not say I was ashamed, but I had rather no one had seen it.
Outside, on the church door, there is a notice about something, which informs me that it is Advent. In front of the church an old woman sits in the terrible cold and sleeps. I lay gently a silver coin in her lap without her noticing it, and although I would have gladly seen her awaking, I go my way. What a noble and real joy to be able to act as the agent of Providence in hearing a request and to give for once, after having so long received.
Now I read the Imitation and Chateaubriand's La Genie du Christianisme. I have taken the sign of the cross and carry a medal which I have received at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Montmartre. But the cross is for me the symbol of sufferings patiently borne, and not the token that Christ has suffered in my stead, for I must do that for myself. I have, in fact, framed a theory, as follows: When we unbelievers did not want to hear any more about Christ, He left us to ourselves, His vicarious satisfaction for sin ceased, and we must drag ourselves along with our own misery and consciousness of guilt. Swedenborg says expressly that Christ's suffering on the cross was not His work of atonement, but a test which God laid upon Himself rather of shame than of suffering.
At the same time as the Imitatio Christi, I get Swedenborg's Vera Religio Christiana in two thick volumes. With an attractive power that defies all resistance he drags me into his gigantic mill and begins to grind me. At first I lay the book aside and say, "This is not for me." But I take it up again, for there is so much in it that chimes in with my observations and experiences, and so much worldly wisdom that interests me. Again I cast it aside, but have no peace till I take it up again; and the terrible thing about the matter is that when I read, I have the distinct impression "This is the truth, but I cannot reach it." Never! for I will not Then I begin to revolt, and say to myself, "He has deceived himself, and this is the spirit of falsehood." But then comes the fear that I have made a mistake.
What is it after all in the book, which is to be a word of life to me? I find the whole arrangement of grace and eternal hell; childish recollections of the hell of childhood with its everlasting miseries. But now I have got my head in the noose, and am held fast. The whole day and half the night my thoughts revolve round this one theme,—I am damned, for I cannot speak the word "Jesus" without adding "Christ," and according to Swedenborg, this is the shibboleth of evil spirits.
Now a whole abyss opens within me, and the gentle Christ of the Imitation has become the Tormentor. I am keenly conscious that if this process continues I shall become a "Reader," but that I will not.
Three days have passed since I have put Swedenborg away again, but one evening, as I am studying the physiology of plants, I remember to have seen something especially interesting regarding the position of plants in the Vera Religio Christiana. Cautiously I begin to look for the well-known passage, but cannot find it; on the other hand, I find everything else, "the call, the enlightenment, sanctification, conversion," and, as I turn the page and try to hurry on, my eye is arrested by the most terrible passages which stab and burn. I hunt through both volumes twice, but what I seek has disappeared. It is an enchanted book, and I should like to burn it, but dare not, for night is approaching and two o'clock will come.
I feel myself becoming a hypocrite, and I have resolved to-morrow, if I can only sleep this night in peace, to commence a battle against this soul-destroyer.
I will survey his weaknesses with a microscope. I will pluck his stings out of my heart, even though it should be torn in the process, and I will forget that be has saved me from one madhouse in order to conduct me into another.
After I had slept in the night, although I had expected to be tormented, I set to work the following morning, not without scruples, for to take up weapons against a friend is the saddest of all enterprises. But it must be; it concerns my immortal soul, whether it is to be destroyed or not.
So long as Swedenborg in the Arcana and the Apocalypse treats of revelations, prophecies, interpretations, he has a religious effect upon me, but when in the Vera Religio he begins to reason about dogmas, he becomes a freethinker and Protestant. When he draws the sword of reason, he has himself chosen the weapons, and they are likely to prove bad ones for himself. I wish to have religion as a quiet accompaniment to the monotonous music of life, but here it is a matter of professional religion and pulpit-discussion—in brief, a struggle for power.
Already, while I read the Apocalypse, I came across a passage which repelled me, by betraying a human vanity, which I do not like to see in a man of God. But out of respect I passed it by, not, however, without erasing it. The passage is as follows: In heaven Swedenborg meets an English king, to whom he complains that English newspapers have not thought it worth while to notice certain of his writings. He also expresses his vexation against certain bishops and lords, who had received his writings but given them no attention. The king (George II.) is astonished, and turns to the unworthy recipients, saying, "Go your ways! Woe betide him who can remain so indifferent when he hears of heaven and eternal life."
I may remark in passing that I do not like the way in which both Dante and Swedenborg send their enemies and friends to hell, while they themselves scale the heights; and I praise myself a little like Paul, were it the proper time to remember the fact that I, in contrast to the great masters, have placed myself alone in the furnaces of hell,[4] and have at any rate set the rest above me in Purgatory.
In the Vera Religio the matter is still more uncomfortable, for there one finds Calvin in a brothel, because he has taught that faith is everything and works nothing, as in the case of the crucified thief. Luther and Melanchthon, in spite of their Protestantism, are exposed to coarse scorn and mockery. But no! it disturbs me to seek out these flaws in the picture of a noble mind. And I hope it has fared with Swedenborg in his spiritual experience as he says it fared with Luther: "When he entered the spirit world he made strenuous efforts to propagate his dogmas, but as these were not rooted in the innermost depth of his mind, but only imbibed from his infancy, he soon obtained greater illumination, so that he finally shared the new heavenly faith."
Is my Teacher angry that I have written this? I cannot believe it: perhaps he shares my opinions now, and has come to find that there are no theological disputes over there. His description of life in the spiritual world, with pulpits and hearers, objectors and answerers, has prompted in me the irreverent question, "Is God a theologian?"
I had now locked away Swedenborg and taken leave of him with gratitude, as of one who, although with alarming pictures, had frightened me like a child back to God. And now the White Christ, the Child who can smile and play, approaches with the Advent season. At the same time I can view life with more happiness and confidence, that is, as long as I keep watch over my acts, words, and even thoughts, which it seems cannot be kept secret from the Guardian and Avenging Angel who follows me everywhere.
Enigmatic occurrences continue to happen, but not in such a threatening way as before. I have abandoned Swedenborg's Christianity because it was ugly, revengeful, petty, slavish, but I keep to the Imitation with certain reservations, and a quiet religion of compromise has sprung out of that ominous condition which accompanies the search for Jesus.
One evening I sit at dinner with a young French poet, who has just read my Inferno, and from the occultist point of view wishes to find an explanation for the assaults to which I have been exposed and have endured.
"Have you no talisman against them?" he asked. "You must have a talisman."
"Yes, I have the Imitation" I answered. He looked at me, and I, somewhat embarrassed because I had just deserted from the ranks of the freethinkers, took out my watch, in order to have something to occupy myself with. At the same moment the medal of the Sacred Heart with the picture of Christ fell from my watchchain. I felt still more embarrassed, but said nothing.
We soon got up, and went to a café to drink a glass of beer. The hall was large, and when we entered we took our places at a table exactly opposite the door. There we sat for a time, and the conversation turned on Christ and what He signifies.
"He has certainly not suffered for us," I said; "for, if He had, our sufferings would have been diminished. They have not been lessened, however, but are as severe as ever."
Just then a waiter made an exclamation, and with a broom and sawdust began to sweep the ground between us and the door, though no one had come in since we had entered. On the white inlaid floor there was a circle of red drops, and as the waiter turned away he looked at us askance as if we were guilty. I asked my companion what it was.
"It is something red."
"Then we have done it, for no one has stepped there after us, and when we entered the floor was clean."
"No," answered my friend, "we have not done it, for the mark is not that of a foot, but as if some one had bled; and we are not bleeding."
This was weird and also uncomfortable, because we were attracting the attention of the other occupants of the café in an embarrassing way.
The poet read my thoughts, though he had not seen what had happened with the medal. Therefore, in order to relieve my mind, I said finally, "Christ persecutes me." He made no answer, although he would have gladly found a natural explanation of the occurrence, but could not.
Before I leave my friend the American, whom I have provisionally identified with the doctor, Francis Schlatter, I must relate some incidents which increase the suspicion that this man had a "double."
When we recently renewed our acquaintanceship, I told him exactly all my opinions on the subject, and showed him the number of the Revue Spirite in which was the article "My friend H." He appeared undecided, but inclined to be sceptical.
After some days, when he came to dinner, he was quite disturbed, and related, with a good deal of emotion, that his mistress had disappeared without leaving any information, and without bidding him farewell. She remained some days absent and then returned. On being questioned, she acknowledged that she was afraid of her master, for whom she acted as housekeeper. Further questioning elicited the fact that once when she awoke in the night, and he was asleep, his face appeared as white as chalk and irrecognisable, and this frightened her indescribably.
Moreover, he said, he did not dare to go to sleep before midnight, for if he did he was tortured as though he were stuck on a roasting skewer which turned him slowly round, so that he had to leave his bed.
When he had read my book, Inferno, he said—
"You have not had a persecution mania, but have been persecuted, though not by men."
Stimulated by my related experiences, he began to search in his memory, and imparted to me some inexplicable incidents of his life during the last few years. For instance, there was a certain spot on the Pont Saint-Michel where a rheumatic pain in his leg always obliged him to stand. This occurred regularly, and he had caused his friends to witness it He had also noticed many other strange incidents, and had learnt to say "punished."
"If I smoke, I am punished; and if I drink absinthe, I am punished."
One evening when we had met, but it was not yet midnight, we entered the Café de la Fregata in the Rue du Bac. Talking energetically, we took the first place that offered, and asked for absinthe. The conversation continued, but all of a sudden my companion stopped and, looking round him, broke out, "Have you ever seen such a collection of bandits? They are all criminal types."
When I looked round I was startled, for there were not the usual occupants of the café, but a collection of ruffians, most of whom seemed disguised and made grimaces. My companion had leant himself against an iron pillar which looked as though it grew out of his back: "And you are in the pillory!" I exclaimed.
It seemed to us that they were all watching us; we became morose, depressed, and stood up, without finishing our drink.
That was the last time that I drank absinthe with my friend. I made another attempt to drink it alone, but I did not repeat it. Waiting for some friends to come to dinner I took a seat on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, exactly opposite Cluny, and ordered a glass of absinthe. Immediately three figures came forward, I know not from where, and stood before me. Two fellows with torn clothes, spattered with dirt, as if they had been dragged out of sewers; beside them a woman, bareheaded, with unkempt hair and traces of beauty, drunken, dirty; they all looked at me scornfully and boldly, with a cynical air as though they knew me and expected to be invited to my table. I have never seen such types in Paris or Berlin, though I may have done so near London Bridge, where the people really have a weird appearance. I try to tire them out by lighting cigarettes, but in vain. Then the thought strikes me, "These are not real people at all, but half-visions." I stand up, and since then I have not ventured to touch absinthe.
Amid all my vacillations one thing seems certain to me, and that is that an invisible hand has undertaken my education, for it is not the logic of circumstances which is operating here. It is not, for instance, a natural result that a chimney should take fire, or that figures previously non-existent should appear when I drink absinthe. Nor is it natural that I should be taken out of bed at night if I have spoken evil about any one in the day. But in all these dealings there is revealed a conscious, planning, all-knowing intelligence with a good purpose. It is, however, difficult for me to obey it, for my experience of so-called kindness and disinterestedness have been unfortunate. Meanwhile it has fashioned a regular system of signalling, which I begin to understand, and whose correctness I have proved.
Thus, for six weeks I had made no chemical experiments, and there had been to smoke in the room. One morning I took out my apparatus for producing gold and prepared the chemical baths. Immediately the room filled with smoke; it rose from the ground, from behind the mantelpiece mirror, everywhere. When I summoned the landlord, he declared it was incomprehensible, because it was coal smoke, and coals were not used in the house at all! This meant that I was not to make experiments in alchemy.
The wooden concertina, mentioned above, betokens peace, for I have noticed when it is absent there is always trouble. A whimpering child's voice, which is often heard in the chimney and cannot be accounted for on material grounds, signifies "You must be industrious," and, in addition, "You must write this book and not occupy yourself with another."
If I am rebellious in thoughts, words, or writing, or approach improper subjects, I hear a deep base note as though it came from an organ or the trunk of an elephant when he trumpets and is angry.
I mention two proofs which show that these are not mere subjective impressions on my part. The American, the French poet, and I, were dining at the "Place de la Bastille." The conversation for a couple of hours had turned upon art and literature, when, during dessert, the American proceeded to tell some stories of bachelor life. Immediately there was heard in the wall the trumpeting of an elephant. I made as though I heard nothing, but my companions noticed it, and changed the topic of their talk with a certain vexation. Another time I was breakfasting with a Swede in quite another café. Towards the end of the dessert he talked about Huysmans' La Bas and was proceeding to describe the Black Mass. Immediately there was the sound of a trumpet, but this time in the middle of the hall, which was empty.
"What was that?" he asked, breaking of.
I did not answer, and he continued the terrible description. Again there was the sound of a trumpet, so powerful this time that the narrator stopped short, first poured out a wineglass, upset the whole of the creamjug over his clothes, and quitted the topic which annoyed me.
[1] An earlier work by Strindberg.
[2] Wagner.
[3] Strindberg had been prosecuted for assailing the doctrine of the Holy Communion; he was acquitted, and the medal in question seems to have been struck on the occasion.
[4] One of Strindberg's autobiographical works is called Inferno.
[NOTE]
As the reader has probably perceived, the second part of this book, called "Wrestling Jacob," is an attempt to give a symbolical description of the religious struggles of the author, and as such it is a failure. Therefore it has only remained a fragment, and, like all religious crises, has ended in a chaos. The inference seems to be that all investigation of the secrets of Providence, like all attempts to take heaven by storm, are struck with confusion, and that every attempt to approach religion by the way of argument leads to absurdities. The reason is that religion like science begins with axioms, whose peculiarity is that they do not need to be proved, and cannot be proved, so that when we try to prove self-evident necessary pre-suppositions we fall into absurdities.
When the author, in 1894, gave up his scepticism, which threatened to make havoc of the whole of his intellectual life, and began to place himself experimentally at the stand-point of a believer, there opened to him a new spiritual life, which is described in the Inferno and in these Legends. As time went on, and the author had given up all resistance, he found himself attacked by influences and powers which threatened to destroy him. Feeling himself sinking, he clutched at lighter objects which might keep him afloat; but these also began to give way, and it was only a question of time when he would perish. At such moments the terror of the drowning man takes a straw for a support, and then the faith, to which he is compelled, lifts him out of the waves in which he is sinking, so that he can walk upon the water. Credo quia absurdum. I believe, because the absurdity which reasoning leads to, shows me that I was trying to prove an axiom. And thus we are linked to what is above us.