August Strindberg Inferno

Strindberg down and almost out in Paris

Strindberg´s great novel Inferno, a story of human suffering and paranoia. The novel Inferno is mainly based on his strange experiences in Paris 1896. He wrote Inferno in French, some parts in the form of a diary. It can be said to be a story of human suffering and paranoia, that in the end leads to clarity and reconciliation. Strindberg sees himself haunted by misfortunes and hardships, much like Job in the bible´. Strindberg was eager to emphasize that the book was autobiographical. At the end of Inferno he writes:

"The reader who believes this book is fiction is invited to read my diary which I have kept daily since 1895, and of which the above is only an expanded and organized extraction"

August Strindberg making gold.

Alone, completely alone I have my dinner on a tray in my room, and I eat so little that the goodnatured servant is inconsolable. I have not heard my own voice for a whole week, and due to lack of practise it is vanishing. I have not got a sou in my pockets, no tobacco or stamps either. Then I gather all my strength of will in a last effort. I want to make gold using the dry method with the aid of fire."
From Inferno

Deathwish
In July Strindberg´s crisis reaches a peak. The heat in Paris is intense and Strindberg feels that life is unbearable. He expects a catastrophe. Death seems a solution and he writes:

I had been reading the precious little pamphlet The Delight of Dying and it aroused a longing to leave this world. In order to investigate the borderland between life and death I lie down on bed, uncork the bottle of cyanide and let its deadly fumes fill the room. He is coming closer, the Reaper, so mild and seductive, but at the last moment someone always appears or something happens that cuts everything off; The waiter has an errand, a wasp flies in through the window.
The Powers refuse me this one and only happiness, and I bow to their will.

What´s real?
After "a night of horror" Strindberg fled from the Hotel Orfila in July 1896. The day before he wrote a letter about the reality of fantasy:

Cover by Strindberg, 1897

"If I see my pillow taking on human shapes, then those shapes are there, and if someone says that they are only (!) generated by imagination, I will reply: Only you say?
- What my inner sees, is more to me! And what I see in that pillow is made out of the feathers of birds, which once were carriers of life, with a soul, with the power to create forms, and out of linen which once carried the life force in its fibres, reality, since I am able to draw these forms and show them to others. There are times when I hear a cricket singing inside that pillow. The sound made by the grasshoper has always seemed to me as if it came from some empty hall down below, underneath the surface of the earth. Now, assume that these once sang in a field of flax, do you not believe that Nature or the Creator could use the vegetable fibre as a phonograph, so that it plays to my inner ear which trough suffering, deprivation and prayer has become willing to hear farter than before? But that is where natural explanations do not suffice, and I abandon them instantly!! "

Strindberg´s favourite painting.

August Strindberg goes back to Sweden in the autumn of 1896 and next spring he writes Inferno, one of his masterpieces. My conviction is that he ever was really crazy, just put under a strain. Remember that he hardly never stopped writing even during the critical weeks that hot July.

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