Although there are a few more misfortunes still
to come, I have taken time out to cover a few associated points and issues.
One very obvious question to ask is how much of what Strindberg wrote in his book Inferno is actually true. There is also the problem of the accounts of his experiences getting changed or lost in translation.
One very obvious question to ask is how much of what Strindberg wrote in his book Inferno is actually true. There is also the problem of the accounts of his experiences getting changed or lost in translation.
Problems with the Inferno book
Colin Wilson gives a good summary of some of
the incidents; his account made me want to read the whole story for myself. I
was delighted to find Inferno available in the public domain on Project
Gutenberg. However, there are some drawbacks that other people interested in
going to directly to the source should be aware of.
August Strindberg was Swedish; he wrote
Inferno in French; there are many different English editions and translations
available, with a variety of introductions.
Inferno is a novel. It is autobiographical, but Strindberg’s stories about incidents in his life may have been invented, exaggerated or distorted, possibly for concealment or for dramatic purposes.
Strindberg jumps around in time and from
place to place and country to country, so it is not always easy to see when and
where an incident happened and whether or not it can be directly connected to
his evil action against his family.
Strindberg sounds melodramatic and paranoid
for much of the time. He frequently mentions a ‘Hidden Hand’ that he
believes guides events and intervenes in his affairs, for good and evil. He was an absinthe drinker and is said to have suffered
from schizophrenia. This makes it difficult to take some of his ramblings and
ravings seriously; it also makes it difficult to determine whether or not something
actually happened, and if so whether or not it had any real significance.
Problems with Strindberg’s credibility
Colin Wilson covers some of these issues in
The Occult. He gives a balanced opinion on Strindberg, his writings, his inner
state and the possible causes of his metaphysical experiences.
I expect that people who have no experience
of unseen influences and people who have never endured similar misfortunes will
dismiss Strindberg’s account of his nightmare experiences as the ramblings and
delusions of insanity, as lies and exaggerations or the creations of a very
strong imagination. They will say that
he misunderstood or over-reacted to some incidents. They will not take
what he says seriously.
On the other hand, people who have
both read about and experienced metaphysical phenomena as I have done will recognise some familiar
elements and take much of it seriously as independent confirmation of the
proposition that curses and bad energy can affect people and their lives and
that setbacks, misfortunes and suffering are not always a result of chance and
ordinary bad luck.
Some incidents in Inferno come very close to
home; I have also read about similar incidents in other books. This makes me
take much of Strindberg’s misfortune material seriously.
Strindberg and his life
It is important not to get the impression
that Strindberg had a good life right up until he did the bad thing.
He certainly had a period of plain sailing
and good fortune just before he deliberately tried to make his little girl ill,
but he mentions uncanny coincidences and bad experiences that happened long
before and long after the event.
His books make his life seem like one big
mess, one big disaster, one long sojourn in Hell.
This is another factor that increases his
credibility for me. I see his life of suffering and his far from normal inner
state as his credentials. It is just this sort of person who experiences amazing coincidences and strange incidents.
Colin Wilson says something similar in his introduction to Joyce Collin-Smith’s Call No Man Master:
Colin Wilson says something similar in his introduction to Joyce Collin-Smith’s Call No Man Master:
“...I also came to accept that there are many
people who spend their lives on the borderland between two worlds, and that
such people can occasionally throw some interesting light into the dark corners
of human existence.”
The best approach is to neither automatically dismiss everything that Strindberg has to say as paranoid delusions nor to blindly accept his stories and his interpretations as the truth, but to put it all into context, look for explanations and compare Strindberg's experiences with what other people have reported to see what they all have in common.
Strindberg’s credibility is not a black and white issue.
The best approach is to neither automatically dismiss everything that Strindberg has to say as paranoid delusions nor to blindly accept his stories and his interpretations as the truth, but to put it all into context, look for explanations and compare Strindberg's experiences with what other people have reported to see what they all have in common.
Strindberg’s credibility is not a black and white issue.
