[CHAPTER X]
TORN TO PIECES
John's entrance into the boarding-house secured for him intercourse with a large and varied circle,—perhaps too varied. There were students of all ages, of all subjects, and from all districts, from clergymen who were reading for their last examination to young medical and law students. There were also ladies in the house, and John was for the eighth time in love. Again the object of his affections was unattainable, being engaged to another. The variety of this social intercourse overloaded his brain with impressions from all circles; his personality became relaxed and distracted through the self-adaptation and compromises with other people's views which are necessary in society. Besides this a great deal of drinking went on nearly every evening. On one of the first days after his arrival appeared a criticism of his play in one of the evening papers. It was very sharp but just, and therefore hit John hard. He felt stripped and seen through. The critic said that the author had concealed his insignificant personality behind a great name—Thorwaldsen—but that the disguise did not avail him and so on. John felt altogether bankrupt. In such cases one tries to defend oneself, and he compared his own with other bad plays, which the same severe critic had praised. He felt treated unjustly, and indeed when compared with others it was so, but not when he was regarded by himself alone. The fact that the critic was worse did not make his piece better.
John became shy and averse to company. This was increased by the students' club starting a paper in which they made merry over him and his play. He fancied he saw grimaces and contempt everywhere, and went preferably by back streets on his walks.
Then there came a yet severer blow. A friend had, on his own account, published one of John's first plays,—the Free-thinker. While he was spending an evening with Rejd an acquaintance brought in the hated evening paper. It contained a scathing article on the play, which was mocked at and cut to pieces. John was obliged to read the article in the presence of his friends. He had, against his will, to admit that the critic was not unjust, but it upset him terribly.
Why is it so hard to hear the truth from others, while at the same time one can be so severe against oneself? Probably because the social masquerade in which we all take part makes every one fear being unmasked, probably also because responsibility and unpleasantness are involved in it. One feels oneself overreached and cheated. The critic who sits at ease and unmasks others would feel himself equally scourged and exposed if his secrets were betrayed. Social life is honeycombed with falsity, but who likes to be discovered? That is why at times of solitude, when the past rises up unescapably, we do not feel remorse for our faults, but for our follies and necessary cruelties. Mistakes were necessary and had some use, but follies were merely injurious and should have been avoided. It is for this reason that men pay greater honour to intelligence than to morality, for the former is a reality, the latter an idea.
Meanwhile John felt the same pains which he imagined a criminal must feel. He felt impelled to obliterate as soon as possible the impression made by his stupidity. But he felt also that a kind of injustice had been done him since he had been criticised simply and solely as a writer, although his production was a year old, and he himself, therefore, maturer than it, by a year. But it was not the fault of the critic that there was an incongruity between the criticism and the corpus delicti.
He began to compose another tragedy, The Assistant at the Sacrifice. This was intended to deal with Christendom in artistic form, and to handle the same problem and the same questions as his former play. By "artistic form" at that period was meant the laying of the scene of the play in a past epoch. John wrote the piece under the influence of Oehlenschläger and the Icelandic sagas which he had lately read in the original.