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August Strindberg (1849-1912), the Swedish playwright, novelist, poet and painter, wrote A Blue Book towards the end of his life. It came out in four parts, beginning in 1907. Strindberg originally intended it as a kind of universal breviary, with a passage of wisdom for each day of the year. As he wrote the plan changed and the book became a motley collection of thoughts, observations and scientific speculation. Most of the book takes the form of a dialogue between “the Pupil”, Johannes Damascenus, and “the Teacher”. Johannes Damascenus is more or less a pseudonym, in the style of Kierkegaard, for Strindberg and the Teacher appears to be a proxy for Emmanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish mystic and theologian to whom Strindberg dedicated the book.

These pieces express a view of the world that had its roots partly in a life-long distrust of appearances (often finding expression in satire), and more particularly in the consequences of Strindberg’s so-called Inferno crisis. Living in Paris in the 1890s Strindberg underwent a series of crises, partly psychological and partly religious. He felt himself alternately guided and punished by unseen powers, although he could never quite determine their beneficence. This came to an end at about the time he discovered Swedenborg and converted to Christianity. His Christianity was, however, paradoxical, eclectic and idiosyncratic, as are the pieces translated here. Following his crisis Strindberg returned to drama with renewed vigour, turning out a number of remarkable ‘dream plays’ that broke with his earlier naturalism and anticipated some of the major developments of twentieth century theatre, including absurdism, surrealism and expressionism.

The pieces translated here all come from part 1 of A Blue Book. The first four pieces form a sequence, the rest are taken from disparate parts of the book. I have not sought to be representative of the whole work, but chosen some pieces that throw light on Strindberg’s later drama and the pre-occupations he explored in them. They are also, I think, worth reading for their own sake. They concern perception, damnation and love, as well as character and role. Most of them have not, as far as I know, been translated into English.

Note: The reader may be puzzled by a use of the personal pronoun ‘she’ for people in general that seems anachronistic, especially in a writer with the misogynistic reputation of Strindberg. In all such cases, I am following Strindberg’s original. Although he could be vilely misogynistic, Strindberg’s attitude to women was complex. In the preface to his short story collection Married, for instance, he advocates giving women the vote and allowing them to enter any profession they please. In the case of A Blue Book, however, his use of ‘she’ is in fact derogatory: he usually uses it of human nature in a state of bondage.

The Pupil became curious and asked: How did your eyes get opened to Swedenborg? – Well, it’s hard to describe, but I’ll try to explain. In my flat I had a room that I believed to be the most beautiful room there was. It had not always been beautiful, but several significant things had happened there; a child was born there, a man died there. In the end I refurbished the room as a temple of memories, and I never showed it to anyone. But one day I was possessed by the demons of pride and boastfulness, and I showed it to a guest. He happened to be a “black man”, hopeless and despairing, who only believed in fists and anger, a cartload of earth as he called himself. When I let him in, I said: now you will see the most beautiful room in the land; and I lit the electric light which used to cast sunshine from the ceiling so that there wasn’t a dark corner in the room. The man stood in the middle of the room, looked around him, and muttered: I can’t see it! – When he said that, the room got darker; the walls closed in, the floor shrank, and my temple full of light was transformed before my eyes, so that I saw it as a hospital room with cheap wallpaper, the lovely floral curtains looked grubby, the little white desk was covered in ink-spots, and the gilding had gone black; the tile-stove’s brass doors were dull – the whole room was changed, and I felt ashamed. It was enchanted.

The Teacher continued: Now we come to Swedenborg, but it gets a little harder; I must also warn you in advance, so that you don’t believe that I think myself an angel. By an angel Swedenborg means a dead person, who by death has been freed from the body’s prison and through suffering in faith has regained his soul’s highest faculties. Otherwise we can rid ourselves of the concept, as it has no relevance either to you or to me, remember this. Well, Swedenborg portrays these immaterial beings like this: Everything that shows itself and exists around these beings appears to be brought forth and created by them. That they are so to speak brought forth and created is obvious, because when the being departs, these surroundings no longer appear; also because, when other beings arrive in the former’s place, everything forms itself in a different way around them; paradisal climes change their trees and fruit, flower-gardens change their roses and plants, just as fields do their herbs and grass… Such things display themselves and are changed in this way because they all come into being out of the angels’ inclinations and from their flowing thoughts.

Isn’t this a fine observation of Swedenborg’s? And doesn’t this situation correspond to something in our lower life? Doesn’t this resemble my adventure in the enchanted room? And doesn’t it explain an everyday experience, which otherwise I would have ignored. Perhaps you have experienced something similar?

The pupil answered: I have probably experienced wonderful things without understanding them, because I was thinking with the flesh; now though that you tell me that our experiences can be understood symbolically, it reminds me of a similar case to the one you just told me about and compared with an observation of Swedenborg...

After an adolescence of unbearable oppression and too much work, a friend gave me some money so I could spend the summer writing by the sea. I had never lived by the sea before, and when I got to see the “Verdant Isle”, with its carpets of flowers, pointed bays, its elder-lined shores, oak-groves, and hazel-woods, I imagined I saw paradise. Together with three other young poets I lived the summer through in a state of bliss I have never known since. We were moderately pious in outlook, although we did not believe in the State’s gods according to the letter, and we lived by and large fairly blameless lives, with simple pleasures like swimming, sailing and fishing. But there was a wicked man among us; autocratic and treating people as enemies, a denier of everything good, seeking out others’ faults, delighting in others’ adversity. Every time he went into town, I found the island still more beautiful, as if it was Sunday. I was always a target for his sarcasm but I did not understand his nastiness, and my friends were surprised that I, who was so fierce, didn’t get angry at him. – I did not understand it, but it was as if I was shielded, I never got offended, however things went. – You will probably ask if the island was really so marvellous? I answer: I thought so then, but it was perhaps my beautiful way of seeing.

The pupil continued: Next summer I came back, but this time in different company, and I myself was different. Life’s bitterness, the spirit of the time, new ideas, bad company had made me doubt the beneficence of Providence, and finally deny its existence. We had a horrible time together; we slandered each other, suspected each other, even of theft; we all wanted to give directions, no-one wanted to follow to the best swimming-place, but everyone went to his own; we couldn’t go sailing because everyone wanted to steer the boat; we quarrelled from morning till night; we drank as well, and half the company were treating incurable diseases---[1]

My verdant isle, my youth’s first paradise became so ugly to me, so horrible; I could no longer see beauty in nature, however much I worshipped nature at the time. But listen to this (this is definitely Swedenborg) the lovely bays started to stink, so that I got malaria; the mosquitoes tormented us all night and got through the finest net; if I wandered in the woods and stooped to pick a flower, an adder raised its head; I remember, one day I lifted the moss off a rock and saw immediately the black zigzag slither away – it was inexplicable! But the peaceful inhabitants must also have become infected by our wickedness, because they also became wicked, ugly, quarrelsome and acted out domestic tragedies…It was hell! And when I got sick, my companions made fun of me, became angry that I was taking up a whole room, and treated me brutally; borrowed my money that wasn’t really mine, and wouldn’t fetch a doctor when I needed one.

The teacher spoke: When understanding and reflection have matured and you think about people, then their outlines begin to dissolve and become like ghosts. You never know a person; you know only your own and others’ images of her, but because these images grow, the picture becomes blurred and marred by a veil. Someone you have never met imagines you according to other peoples’ depictions. In this way I had a famous painter’s personality described to me by a writer; two years later the writer had acquired a new understanding of the painter and shared it with me, so I had to alter my picture of him; but then someone else came along and gave me a completely different interpretation of the painter: then came a third and a fourth. Afterwards I saw the painter’s work and did not understand how he could paint in that way. I never saw the painter himself, and these days he is to me a ghost, without fixed contours, assembled from differently coloured bits of glass that don’t go together, and changing according to my mood. I suppose that if I met him he would not at all resemble my painter, and consequently he would seem like a ghost-image of himself.

The pupil said: When a man begins to love a woman, he puts himself in a trance, becomes a poet and an artist; out of her mouldable unindividualised astral substance he makes a thought-form, into which he infuses everything beautiful he has inside him, and so creates a homunculus, that she adopts as her double; and it is this she allows the man to operate with. But this astral picture is also the mannequin that she, the huntress, displays as a lure, while she herself lurks behind a bush with a loaded rifle waiting for her prey.

The man’s love for his homunculus often survives all his illusions, and he may have conceived a deadly hatred towards the woman herself, while his love for her double continues. But this masque causes the deepest disharmony and suffering; he becomes cock-eyed through looking at two pictures that don’t coincide; he wants to embrace his cloud, but grasps a body; he wants to hear his poem, but it is someone else’s; he wants to see his artwork but it is only a model. He is happy in his trance although the world cannot understand his happiness; if he awakens out of his sleepwalking, then his hate against the woman grows greater the less she corresponds to his prototype, and when she has murdered her double, then love is over and only boundless dry hate remains.

The teacher continued: When Karin came to Askanius as a waitress, she was not a nice girl, because she was narrow-minded, envious and domineering, but she was scared to begin with and timid; afraid of losing her sought-after job, she behaved submissively and obligingly, trying to please everybody. The guests therefore addressed her as “sweet Karin,” and when they wanted something, they said: “You are always so kind.” Karin got the role of a kind person, adopted the manner and remained in that mood. Her voice became milder, her manner softer, her thoughts followed along, and her feelings as well. She found it advantageous for her job, got used to it and she seemed to have changed her nature. – Here the teacher paused for a while, so the student had to interject: Well, what happened then? – Well, I really shouldn’t tell you, because then you’ll believe that people cannot change for the better. – Let me guess then, said the student: She got married to the restaurant-keeper and removed the mask! – Take another guess, said the teacher. – In due course she had a child, who made her good again! – More! – She was kind to the child, but nasty to everyone else! – More! – So the child grew nasty towards her, copied all the mother’s faults, tormented her night and day. – More! – So the mother finally became kindly towards everyone else! – Perhaps! I don’t know so much.

The teacher continued: In order to live your life you have to go like a sleepwalker, and you also have to be a poet, fooling both yourself and others. I’ve done it quite well, and I have walked on gutters of thinnest lead, walked through fire and pretended it was water; I have lived in hell and seen it as a paradise; I have lived intimately with my most dangerous enemies and lulled them to sleep by treating them as my best friends; I have stayed with Omphalos who lured me to my death, and I came out of it alive only by showing her the greatest trust and the most faithful love. She pondered on me, questioned me, but she understood nothing; I became so shallow that she could not solve my riddle, and so she pondered herself out of understanding. It was fit for a sphinx! – I once came into a beautiful home, where peace and beauty were in the air. There was a young unknown mother with a lovely child, and there were other things also. As time passed I was fully under the illusion that I had seen the most beautiful that life can offer. But for two seconds something happened that was so ugly I didn’t believe my eyes; I didn’t let the ugliness in, and the scene continued just as beautifully as before. But, those two seconds! Those, two, seconds! Still today I try to imagine that it was an illusion. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don’t; and I don’t dare to talk about it; “A tale told by an idiot.” (Shakespeare.)

The teacher said: I knew a man in my youth, who was domineering, bad-tempered, vindictive, passionate. By chance he discovered he had talent as a speaker; he could take a hold of the audience’s mood and re-tune it, raise them and almost transport them. But at a certain moment, when he was on the heights, he overdid it, became baroque, ridiculous, and everyone laughed. The first few times he was downhearted, but people thought he meant to be funny, and he got a reputation as a humorous speaker. Well, he turned his misfortune to his advantage, took up the role in which they had caste him, became a humorist, and enjoyed as such a great reputation. He wore this mask for the rest of his life, but only as a speaker. Otherwise in his daily life he was heavy, spiteful, and got angry if anyone made fun of his weaknesses. The role of a fool sometimes tormented him, but the desire to hear his own voice and be greeted by applause pushed him ceaselessly towards new triumphs. The public had made a homunculus of him, which they cultivated; but in his family and his work it did not exist.

The teacher continued: Swedenborg has in his inferno… - Call it hell, interrupted the pupil, I know it exists, because I have been there. – Well, Swedenborg has in his hell a disrobing room, where the dead are sent immediately after death. There they are stripped of the clothes they were forced to make in their society, their social circle and family; and the angels presently see how they really are. – Does he mean that we are all hypocrites? – Well, in a way; an inborn modesty compels us to hide the animal part of ourselves, politeness forces us to keep quiet, consideration, friendship, blood-relation, love make us gloss over other’s weaknesses, although we privately disapprove of them; it’s a pretty picture. A person who feels shame for his faults of course conceals them; and to brag about his wrongdoing is shameless. Is it right to call that hypocrisy? - Hardly, especially as it’s equally wrong however you behave. – Yes, life is unmanageable. It isn’t easy to be a human being. It is almost impossible.

The Pupil: Everyone has her vault of heaven, that she carries with her, and in which she is the central point. In the same way she has her horizon, her rainbow. But the heavens, the horizon and the rainbow are subjective impressions or illusions; it is this way also with egoism, in principle. The one who tried to sail to the horizon and never reached it, but always found a new one, resembles the egoist, who is always the apparent centre, but never approaches his limit, which is also only apparent.

If he could only reach a point on the radius or the circumference, then he could move the earth, like Archimedes. But then he must move out of his egoistic centre and seek the solely real that is invisible, unearthly; he must leave illusions at home and his false horizon, escape from the circle and become the tangent which stretches out into the infinite. The infinite is drawn as everyone knows with the bent line ∞ or Cassini’s curve. It has no centre, but it has focal points that are permanent, and if you pull your lines through this in a particular way, then you find something constant, unchangeable, permanent, which can be needed in this world of illusions, reeling and unstable.

The Pupil continued: I once signed a contract with a merchant. When I had slept that night, I realised that he had cheated me. Occupied by furious thoughts I went out for a walk. When I came home I decided to change my clothes and dropped my handkerchief on the table. When I had changed, I noticed that thanks to restless fingering the handkerchief was crumpled and now formed, where it lay, a cast of the merchant’s head, like a plaster bust. The question is: had my hand unconsciously made an image of my thoughts? Linen and cotton are very easy to form into images, and you often find splendid sculptures in handkerchiefs, sheets and pillow-cases. When a married man comes home from a ball with his wife, he should look at her handkerchief, which she has fingered the whole evening, and he will probably see whom she most wanted to dance with. In India they say the Buddhist-priests describe the 208 reincarnations of Vishnu in this way – that he sticks his hand in a cotton bag and from within hastily makes an elephant, a turtle etc., out of the bag’s material.

When Veronica’s sweat-cloth reproduced Christ’s face[2], it is no more unlikely than that my pillow in the morning shows faces that are unlike my own.

I have read about Indian vases that are modelled so that at first you see a chaos resembling clouds, intestines or a brain. When the eye has accustomed itself, it starts to clear up, and all created things, plants and animals, emerge, taking form. I do not know if every viewer sees the same. But I think the sculptor worked without a purpose, unconsciously, with no plan.

[1] Probably a reference to syphilis, treated by injecting mercury

[2] St. Veronica, according to legend, gave Christ a cloth to wipe his face on the way to Golgotha. Christ handed back the cloth, which miraculously retained an image of his face.