August Strindberg, the Spirit of Revolt: Studies and Impressions

by L. Lind-af-Hageby

His motives were complicated. One was fright and a desire to be on the safe side. For he had read books which predicted a terrible fate in store for youthful sinners upon attaining the age of twenty-five. He knew he was a sinner, and, if his body were condemned to painful afflictions and death, his soul would, at least, be saved. Another was spiritual jealousy. His stepmother professed great religious devotion. She and his eldest brother seemed to outshine him in religious fervour. That could not be tolerated. August imposed severe restrictions upon himself. All worldly pleasures were to be shunned. One Saturday evening the family planned an excursion for the following Sunday. August asked his father's permission to stay at home for conscientious reasons. He spent Sunday morning in one of the "free" churches, where the elect gloried in their exclusive and dearly bought salvation. In the afternoon he studied Thomas à Kempis and Krummacher. The stepmother had broken the Sabbath. She was inconsistent and a prey to the temptations of the devil; she could no longer compete with him in religious virtue. That was balm to the soul, but the peace of Jesus, which he had been told would descend like a clap of thunder and be followed by absolute certainty, would not come. He walked alone to Haga Park, praying all the time that Jesus would seek him out. In the park he saw happy families absorbed in picnics and carriages filled with gay men and women. All these were destined to eternal damnation. His reason protested, but his faith assented. He returned home unharmonious and unsatisfied. When late in the evening his brothers and sisters related the incidents of their happy day, his envy was mixed with pangs of remorse.

The puritanical phase culminated during the confirmation, which had been postponed by the father, who, knowing the waywardness of the child, feared the unrestraint of the youth. A number of circumstances contributed to the reaction which followed upon his first Holy Communion. He had whipped his reason into submission to an elated sentiment which in due course exhausted itself. The Sacramental bread was robbed of its mystery by the fatal familiarity with which he had treated it in the sexton's kitchen.

But the disintegration of the puritan was accomplished through the influence of new friends. One of these decided to cure the hungry dreamer in Strindberg by a good meal. One day on the way to the Greek lesson, Fritz, "the friend with the eye-glasses," suggested that they should play truant and lunch at a restaurant. Scruples overcome, August enjoyed his first meal in a restaurant and his first glass of brandy. The luxuries of beefsteak and beer in quantitative perfection, and the audacity with which his friend treated the waiter, made a profound impression on him. The friend paid for the feast, and August came out a changed man.

"This was not an empty pleasure, as the pale man had asserted," he writes. "No, it was a solid pleasure to feel red blood run through half-empty arteries which were to nourish the nerves for the struggle of life. It was a pleasure to feel spent strength return and the lax sinews of a half-crushed will stretched again. Hope was awakened, the mist became a rosy cloud, and the friend let him see glimpses of the future as it was formed by friendship and youth."

The friend advised him to earn money by giving private lessons. This would secure freedom from parental tyranny. He encouraged independence and self-confidence in August, who, acting upon his advice, obtained a post as private tutor. By exercising economy in the expenditure of brains at the gymnasium and limiting his studies to those absolutely necessary for the final examen, he succeeded in his dual work of learner and teacher. The sense of sin departed; he was able to take part in the festivities of his school-fellows. The platonic friendship with the woman of thirty evaporated with the advent of a less ethereal admiration for the beauty of waitresses et hoc genus omne. He went to dances and sought jollity in the "punsch-evenings" of the students. A craving for alcohol had been aroused; under its influence the demons of gloom and insoluble problems departed.

The change in his attitude to life was hastened by an influence which now made itself felt for the first time. Literature as a great tradition and interpretation of human problems became known to him. The belletristic and the puritanical conceptions of life presented themselves in their profoundest antithesis. Natural selection did the rest. His range of reading was wide and varied, as were the demands of his many-sided self. He devoured Shakespeare, admired Dickens, found Walter Scott tedious, Alexandre Dumas puerile, and Eugène Sue's Le Juif Errant grandiose. He detested poetry; it was affected and untrue. People did not talk in that manner and seldom thought of such beautiful things. The realisation of God in Nature replaced the desire to seek God in the churches, and August gradually discovered that he was a freethinker. The alarm and public prayers of the elect, which he had deserted, did not alter his course.

During the summer holidays he acted as tutor to an aristocratic family in the country. Fritz had warned him against saying everything he thought and doing everything he wanted, or disputing vehemently with his superiors. But the difficulty of submitting to the conventions of the social order could not be overcome.

August's plans for the future were vacillating and embarrassing to the father. For a short time he cherished the idea of becoming a non-commissioned officer in a cavalry regiment, at another time the plan of spending his days as a country curate, joined in happy wedlock to a pretty waitress (a brand snatched from the fire), had captivated him. But the University conquered. At the University a man could be poor and badly dressed and yet be counted a gentleman; it was the only place where one could sing, get drunk and have fights with the police without losing social standing. There was a secret satisfaction in the thought.

One day during the tutorage in the country the vicar, who was overworked, invited August to preach a "proof-sermon." The practice of permitting serious-minded students and undergraduates to try their priestly powers was not uncommon. The idea was glorious and irresistible. The baron, the baroness, the squires and the ladies would all have to listen reverently to August as the mouthpiece of the Lord. But he remembered that he was a freethinker. The orthodox conception of Jesus was no longer his. It was hypocrisy to accept the offer. And yet, he believed in God, he had thoughts to give, opinions he wanted to voice. He confessed to the vicar, who reassured him. If he believed in God, there was no real difficulty—the good Bishop Wallin had never mentioned Jesus in his sermons. August should only not talk too much about his aberrations.