The Confession of a Fool

by August Strindberg

Remembering that incident, with all its ridiculous details, I could not help admitting to myself that, at any rate at times, I was subject to mental delusions.

What was I to do now? Should I communicate with my friends before the rumour of my attack had reached the town? But the disgrace and shame of having to acknowledge that henceforth I was on a level with the irresponsible! The thought was unbearable.

Lie, then! Double without being able to throw the pursuers off the scent. It went against the grain. Tormented by doubts, hesitating between different plans of escape from this maze, I longed to run away in order to be spared the terrible questions which awaited me. Like a wild beast which feels the approach of death, I thought of hiding myself in the wood to die.

With that idea in my mind, I went slowly through the narrow streets. I climbed over huge rocks, saturated and rendered slippery by the autumnal rains, crossed a stubble field, reached the little house where I once had lived. The shutters were tightly closed; the wild vine which covered the walls up to the roof was stripped of its leaves, and the green lattice-work was plainly visible. As I stood again upon that sacred spot, sacred to my heart because it had seen the first blossoming of our friendship, the sense of my loss, which for a time had been forced into the background, reasserted itself. Leaning against one of the supports of the wooden balcony, I wept like a forsaken child.

I remembered having read in the Thousand and One Nights that lovers fall ill with unsatisfied longing, and that their cure depends entirely on the possession of the beloved one. Snatches of Swedish folk-songs came into my mind, about young maidens who, in despair of ever being united to the object of their affections, waste away, and bid their mothers prepare their deathbeds for them. I thought of Heine, the old sceptic, who sings of the tribe of the Asra, "who die when they love." There could have been no doubt of the genuineness of my passion, for I had gone back to childhood, obsessed by one thought, one picture, one single, overpowering sensation, prostrating me and rendering me unable to do anything but sigh.

To distract my thoughts, I let my eyes travel over the glorious landscape spread out at my feet. The thousands of islands bristling with Scotch firs, with here and there a pine tree, which seemed to swim in the enormous bay, gradually decreased in size and transformed themselves into reefs, cliffs and sandbanks, until the huge archipelago terminated at the grey-green line of the Baltic, where the breakers dashed against the steep bulwarks of the remotest cliffs.

The shadows of the drifting clouds fell in coloured strips on the surface of the water, passing from dark brown through all the shades of bottle-green and Prussian blue to the snowy white of the crested waves. Behind a fortress, situated on a steep cliff, rose a column of black smoke, ascending without a break from an invisible chimney, to be blown down again by the wind on to the foaming waves. All of a sudden the dark hull of the cargo-boat which I had just left came into view. The sight wrung my heart, for the steamer seemed like a witness of my disgrace. Like a shying horse, I bolted and fled into the wood.

Underneath the pointed arches of the Scotch firs, through the needles of which the wind whistled, my anguish increased. Here we had been walking together when the spring sunshine lay on the tender green, when the Scotch firs put forth their purple blossoms, which exhale a perfume like that of the wild strawberry; when the juniper scattered its yellow pollen into the wind; when the anemones pushed their white heads through the dead leaves under the hazel bushes. Her little feet had pressed the soft, brown moss, spread out like a rug, while with a silvery voice she had sung her Finnish songs. Guided by the clear light of remembrance, I found again the two gigantic trees, grown together in an unending embrace; the two trunks were bending to the violent gusts of the wind, and rubbed against each other with a grating noise. From here she had taken a little footpath to gather a water-lily which grew in a swamp.

With the zeal of a setter I tried to discover the trace of her pretty foot, the imprint of which, however light, I felt sure I could not miss. With bent shoulders and eyes glued to the ground, I searched the path without finding anything. The ground was covered with the foot-prints of the deer, and I might just as well have tried to follow the trail of a wood nymph, than discover the spot which the dainty shoe of the adored woman had trod. Nothing but mud-holes, refuse, fungi, toadstools, puff-balls, decaying and decayed, and the broken stalks of flowers. Arrived at the edge of the swamp, which was filled with black water, I found a certain fleeting comfort in the thought that it had once reflected the sweetest face in all the world. In vain I looked for the spot where the water lilies grew; it was covered up by dead leaves, blown down by the wind from the birch trees.

I retraced my footsteps and plunged into the heart of the forest; the soughing of the wind in the branches deepened with the growing size of the trees. In the very depth of despair I sobbed aloud, the tears raining down my cheeks; like a wild stag I trampled on the fungi and toadstools, tore up the young plants, dashed myself against the trees. What did I want? I didn't know myself. My pulses throbbed, an inexpressible longing to see her again came over me. She, whom I loved too deeply for desire, had taken possession of my soul. And now that everything was at an end, I longed to die, for life without her was impossible.