VIII
Swedenborg
My mother-in-law and my aunt completely resemble each other in character, tastes, and inclinations, and each sees in the other her counterpart. On the first evening of my stay I narrate to them my mysterious adventures, doubts, and sufferings. They both exclaim, with a certain look of satisfaction in their faces, “You are where we have already been.” Both starting from a neutral point of view as regards religion had begun to study occultism. From that moment onwards they suffered from sleepless nights, mysterious accidents accompanied by terrible fears, and at last, attacks of madness. The invisible furies pursue their prey up to the very gates of the city of refuge—religion. But before they have got so far the protecting angel reveals himself—and that is Swedenborg. The good ladies wrongly suppose that I have a thorough acquaintance with the writings of my fellow-countrymen. Astonished at my ignorance, they give me, with a certain air of reserve, however, an old volume in German, saying, “Take it, read, and don’t be afraid.”
“Afraid? Why should I be?” I answer.
Returning to the rose-coloured room, I open the book at haphazard and read. The reader may conceive my astonishment when my eyes fall on the description of one of Swedenborg’s hells which exactly reproduces the landscape of Klam, as I saw it in the zinc bath. The crater-shaped valley, the pine-crowned hill, the ravine with the stream, the heaps of dung, the pigsty—they are all there.
Hell? But I have been brought up in the profoundest contempt of the doctrine of hell, as one consigned to the rubbish-heap of outworn ideas. And yet I cannot deny the fact—and that is the novelty in this exposition of the doctrine of so-called eternal punishment—we are already in hell. Earth, earth is hell—the dungeon appointed by a superior power, in which I cannot move a step without injuring the happiness of others, and in which others cannot remain happy without hurting me. Thus Swedenborg depicts hell, and perhaps without knowing it, earthly life, at the same time.
The fire of hell is the wish to rise in the world; the powers awaken this wish and allow the damned souls to get all they want. But as soon as the goal is reached, and the wish is fulfilled, everything is seen to be worthless and the victory is null and void. Oh, vanity of vanities! Then, after the first disappointment, the powers rekindle the flame of ambition and desire; and satisfied greed and satiety are still a worse torment than unquenched appetite. Thus the Devil suffers everlasting punishment, for he gets all he wants at once, so that he cannot enjoy it.
When I compare the Swedenborgian hells with the punishments described in the German Mythology, I find an obvious likeness, but for me the bare fact that both these books have fallen into my hand exactly at the right moment is the essential point. I am in hell, and damnation weighs upon me like a heavy burden. When I go over my past, my childhood already appears to me like a prison house or torture chamber. In order to explain the sufferings inflicted upon innocent children, one has only to suppose an earlier existence, out of which we have been cast down in order to bear the consequences of forgotten sins. With a docile mind, which is my chief weakness, I receive a deep and sombre impression from my reading of Swedenborg. And the powers let me rest no more. Walking along the little brook in the neighbourhood of the village, I reach the so-called ravine path between the two mountains. The entrance between fallen and precipitous rocks has a wonderful attraction for me. The almost perpendicular hill, crowned by the deserted castle, forms the gate of the ravine, in which the stream drives a water-mill. A freak of nature has given the rock the form of a Turk’s head, a fact well known in the neighbourhood. Underneath, the miller’s shed leans against the wall of rock. Upon the latch of the door hangs a goat’s horn smeared over with fat, and by it stands a broom. This is certainly quite natural and ordinary, yet I cannot help asking myself what devil has put these two symbols of witchcraft, the goat’s horn and the broom, just this morning in my way? I press farther on up the damp, dark, and uneven path, and come to a wooden building, the strange aspect of which makes me stop. It is a long, low erection, with six openings like oven doors. Oven doors! Ye gods, where am I then?
The image of Dante’s hell, the red-glowing tombs of the heresiarchs, rises before me—and the six oven doors! Is it a bad dream? No, commonplace fact, for a frightful stench, a stream of dirt, and a chorus of grunting reveals to me immediately that I have a pigsty in front of me.
Between the miller’s house and the hill, just under the Turk’s head, the path contracts to a narrow passage. As I go farther along it, I find myself confronted by a large, wolf-coloured Danish dog, a counterpart of the monster which guarded the studio in the Rue de la Santé in Paris. I retreat two steps, but immediately remember Jacques Cœur’s motto, “To a brave heart nothing is impossible,” and press onward into the ravine. Cerberus appears not to notice me, and so I pursue the path which now winds between low and gloomy houses. On one side, a black, tailless fowl with a red comb is running about, on the other a woman wearing a red crescent-shaped ornament on her forehead comes out of a house. She looks beautiful at first, but as she comes nearer, I see that she is toothless and ugly.
The waterfall and the mill combined make a noise like that roaring in the ears which I had during my first period of disquiet in Paris. The white-powdered miller’s men, who control the machinery, look like angels or executioners, and the never-ceasing stream of water rushes from under the great never-resting wheel. Then I reach the smithy with its bare-armed, blackened workmen armed with tongs, choppers, screw-vices, and hammers; amid the flames and sparks of the furnace there lie red-glowing iron and molten lead. There is a frightful din, which makes my brain vibrate and my heart leap. Farther on groans the great saw of the sawmill, and tortures with gnashing teeth the giant tree-trunks which lie on the block, while the sawdust trickles down on the damp ground.
The ravine-path, terribly devastated by cyclones and storms, continues along the stream; the subsiding overflow has left a greyish-green layer of mud behind, covering the sharp pebbles on which my feet continually slip. I wish to cross the water, but since the little bridge has been swept away, I halt under a precipice whose overhanging rock threatens to fall on an image of the Virgin, who seems to support the sinking hill on her tender shoulders.
Meditating on this combination of coincidences, which, taken together, without being supernatural, form a remarkable whole, I return home.
Eight days and eight quiet nights I spend in the rose-coloured room. My peace of mind returns with the daily visits of my little daughter, who loves me, and whom I love. By my relations I am treated like a sick, spoilt child. The reading of Swedenborg occupies me during the day and depresses me by the realism of its descriptions. All my observations, feelings, and thoughts are so vividly reflected there, that his visions seem to me like experiences and real “human documents.” It is no question of blind faith; it is enough for me to read his experiences and to compare with them my own. The book I have is only an extract; the chief riddle of the spiritual life will be solved for me later on when his Arcana Cœlestia falls into my hands. In the midst of my reflections, which lead to the newly-won conviction that there is a God who punishes, some lines of Swedenborg comfort me, and immediately I begin to excuse myself and yield to my old pride. In the evening I take my mother-in-law into my confidence, and ask her, “Do you think I am a damned soul?”
“No; although I have never seen any human destiny like yours; but you have not yet found the right way to lead you to the Lord.”
“Do you remember Swedenborg and his Principia Cœli, how he describes the stages of spiritual progress? First, an elevated ambition. Now, my ambition has never led me to strive after honour, nor to try to impress people with a sense of my ability. Secondly, love of happiness and money, in order to profit people. You know that I seek no gain and despise money. As regards my gold-making, I have sworn in the presence of the powers that any profits I made should be used for humanitarian, scientific, and religious objects. Finally, wedded love. Need I say that from my youth I have concentrated my love of woman on the idea of marriage, of the family, and the wife. What in actual experience befell me that I should marry the widow of a man who was still alive, is an irony of fate which I cannot explain, but which cannot be regarded as a serious misdemeanour when contrasted with the irregularities of ordinary bachelor life.”
After some moments of reflection, my mother-in-law replied: “I cannot dispute your assertion; for I have found in your writings a spirit of aspiration and endeavour, whose efforts have been involuntarily frustrated. Certainly, you must be doing penance, for sins which you committed before your birth. You must in your former existence have been a bloodstained conqueror, and therefore you suffer repeatedly the terrors of death without being able to die. Now be religious inwardly and outwardly.”
“You mean that I should become a Catholic?”
“Yes.”
“Swedenborg says it is forbidden to quit the religion of one’s fathers, for everyone belongs to the spiritual territory on which he is born.”
“The Catholic religion receives graciously everyone who seeks it.”
“I will be content with a lower position. In case of need I can find a place among the Jews and Mohammedans, who are also admitted to heaven. I am modest.”
“Grace is offered you, but you prefer the mess of pottage to the right of the firstborn.”
“The right of the firstborn for the Son of a Servant!10 Too much! Too much!”
Restored to self-respect by Swedenborg, I regard myself once more as Job, the righteous and sinless man, whom the Eternal tries in order to show the wicked the example of a righteous man enduring unjust sufferings.
My pious vanity is tickled by the idea. I am proud of the distinction of being persecuted by misfortune, and am never weary of repeating, “See! how I have suffered.” Before my relatives I accuse myself of living in too much luxury, and my rose-coloured room seems to me to be a satire upon me. They notice my sincere repentance, and overwhelm me with kindnesses and little indulgences. In brief, I am one of the elect; Swedenborg has said it, and confident of the protection of the Eternal, I challenge the demons to combat.
On the eighth day which I spend in my rose-coloured room the news arrives that my mother-in-law’s mother, who lives on the bank of the Danube, is ill. She has a pain in the liver accompanied with vomiting, sleeplessness, and attacks of palpitation at night. My aunt whose hospitality I enjoy is summoned thither, and I am to return to my mother-in-law in Saxen. To my objection that the old lady has forbidden it, they reply that she has withdrawn her order of expulsion, so that I am free to arrange my residence where I like. This sudden change of mind astonishes me, and I hardly dare to attribute it to her illness. The next day she gets worse. My mother-in-law gives me in the name of her mother a bouquet as a sign of reconciliation, and tells me in confidence that, besides other wild fancies, the old lady thinks she has a snake in her body. The next news is that she has been robbed of 1000 gulden, and suspects her landlady of stealing them. The latter is enraged at the unjust suspicion and wishes to bring an action for libel. The old lady, who had retired hither to die quietly, finds her domestic peace completely destroyed. She is continually sending us something—flowers, fruit, game, pheasants, poultry, fish.
Is the old lady’s conscience troubled at the prospect of judgment? Does she remember that she once had me put out on the street, and so obliged me to go to hospital? Or is she superstitious? Does she think she is bewitched by me? Perhaps the presents she sends are meant as offerings to the wizard, to still his thirst for vengeance.
Unfortunately, just at this juncture, there comes a work on magic from Paris containing information regarding so-called witchcraft. The author tells the reader that he must not regard himself as innocent, if he merely avoids using magic arts; one must rather keep watch over one’s own evil will, which by itself alone is capable of exercising an influence over others in their absence.
The results of this teaching on my mind are twofold. In the first place, it arouses my scruples at the present juncture, for I had raised my fist in anger against the old lady’s picture and cursed her. Secondly, it reawakens my old suspicions that I myself am the victim of malpractices on the part of occultists or theosophists. Pangs of conscience on one side, fear on the other! And the two millstones begin to grind me to powder.
Swedenborg describes Hell as follows: The damned soul inhabits a splendid palace, leads a luxurious life there, and regards himself as one of the elect. Gradually the splendours disappear, and the wretched soul finds that it is confined in a wretched hovel and surrounded by filth. This is parallelled in my own experience.
The rose-coloured room has disappeared, and as I remove into a large chamber near that of my mother-in-law, I feel that my stay here will not be of long duration. As a matter of fact, all possible trifles combine to poison my life and to deprive me of the necessary quiet for work. The planks of the floor sway under my feet, the table wobbles, the chair is unsteady, the articles on the washing-stand clash together, the bed creaks, and the rest of the furniture moves whenever I cross the floor. The lamp smokes, the ink-pot is too narrow so that the pen-holder gets inky. The farmhouse smells of dung and manure, ammonia, sulphuretted hydrogen, and sulphuric acid. The whole day there is a noise of cows, swine, calves, cocks, turkeys, and doves. Flies and wasps worry me by day, and gnats by night. At the village shop there is nothing to be had. Because there is no other sort, I must use rose-coloured ink. Strange, too! In a packet of cigarette papers which I buy there is a single rose-coloured one among a hundred white. It is a miniature hell, and I, who am accustomed to bear great sufferings, suffer inexpressibly from these needle-pricks, all the more that my mother-in-law believes that I am not satisfied by her kind attentions.
.—I awake at night and hear the church clock of the village strike thirteen. Immediately I feel the electric band encircle me, and think I hear a noise in the attic above me.
.—I search the attic and discover a dozen distaffs, the wheels of which remind me of electric machines. I open a large box; it is empty; only five staves painted black, the use of which is unknown to me, lie in the form of a pentagram at the bottom of the box. Who has played me this trick, and what does it mean? I do not venture to ask anything about it, and the riddle remains unsolved.
Between midnight and two o’clock a terrible storm breaks out. As a rule a storm exhausts itself and soon subsides; this one, however, remains raging for two hours over the village. Every lightning flash is a personal attack on me, but none of them strike me.
In the evening my mother-in-law relates to me the history of the district. What a monstrous collection of domestic and other tragedies, consisting of adulteries, divorces, lawsuits between relatives, murders, thefts, violations, incests, slanders. The castles, the villas, the huts are occupied by unhappy people of all kinds, and I cannot take my walks without thinking of Swedenborg’s hells. Beggars, imbeciles of both sexes, sick persons and cripples line the high roads or kneel at the foot of a crucifix, a Madonna, or a martyr. At night the wretched creatures try to escape their sleeplessness and their bad dreams by wandering about in the meadows and woods in order to fatigue themselves, and to be able to sleep. Members of good society, well-educated ladies, even a pastor, are among them.
Not far from us is a convent which serves as a penitentiary and rescue home. It is a real prison, in which the strictest rules prevail. In the winter when the thermometer registers twenty degrees of frost, the penitents must sleep on the cold stone pavement of their cells, and their hands and feet, which they cannot warm, are covered with chilblains.
Among the others is a woman who has sinned with a priest, which is a deadly sin. Tortured by pangs of conscience, she flies in her despair to her confessor, who, however, refuses her absolution and the sacrament. A deadly sin entails damnation. Then the wretched creature loses her reason, imagines that she is dead, wanders from village to village and implores the priests to be merciful and to bury her in consecrated ground. Shunned and driven away everywhere, she wanders about, howling like a wild beast, and those who see her cross themselves and exclaim, “She is damned!” No one doubts but that her soul is already in hell, while her shadow, a wandering corpse, wanders about as a terrible warning.
They tell me of a man who, possessed by the Devil, has so altered his personality that the Evil One can make him utter blasphemies against his will. After long search they discover a suitable exorcist in a young Franciscan monk of acknowledged purity of life. He prepares himself by fast and penance; the great day comes, and the possessed man makes his confession in church before the people. Thereupon the young monk sets to work and succeeds, after prayers and conjurations which last an entire day, in driving out the Devil. The alarmed spectators have not ventured to relate the details of the affair. A year later the young monk dies. These and still more tragic narratives confirm me in my conviction that this district has been marked out as a place for penance, and there must be some mysterious connection between this neighbourhood and Swedenborg’s hell. Has he perhaps visited this part of upper Austria, and, just as Dante describes the region south of Naples, drawn from nature in his account of hell?
After a couple of weeks have passed in work and study I am again unsettled, as with the setting in of autumn my aunt and mother-in-law wish to live together in Klam. We therefore break up our camp. In order to preserve my independence, I hire a cottage consisting of two rooms, so as to be quite close to my little daughter.
The first evening after settling in my new quarters I am overcome by a terrible depression, as though the air were poisoned. I go to my mother-in-law: “If I sleep up there you will find me dead in bed tomorrow. Shelter a pilgrim for this night, my good mother!”
The rose-coloured room is at once placed at my disposal, but, good heavens! how it has altered since my aunt’s departure! There is black furniture in it; the empty pigeonholes of a bookcase gape like so many jaws; a tall iron oven, ornamented with ugly devices of salamanders and dragons, confronts me like a spectre. In a word, there reigns such a disharmony in the room as makes me feel poorly. Moreover, every irregularity upsets my nerves, for I am a man of ordered habits who does everything at stated hours. In spite of my efforts to conceal my dissatisfaction, my mother-in-law reads my thoughts.
“Always dissatisfied, my child?”
She does her best to allay my discontent, but when the spirit of dissension is once aroused, everything is in vain. She tries to remember my favourite dishes, but everything goes wrong. There is nothing I dislike more than calf’s head with brown butter.
“Here is something nice,” she says to me, “expressly for you,” and sets calf’s head with brown butter before me. I understand that it is an unconscious mistake on her part, but can only eat with scarcely-concealed repugnance and simulated appetite.
“You are not eating anything!”
It is too much! Formerly I attributed these annoyances to feminine malice; now I acquit everyone and say, “It is the Devil!”
From my early days I am accustomed to plan out the day’s work during my morning walk. No one, not even my wife, has ever been allowed to accompany me on it. And, as a matter of fact, in the morning my mind rejoices in a feeling of harmony and happy elevation which borders on ecstasy. My corporeal part seems to have disappeared, my griefs too have fled; I am all soul. The early morning is my time of self-collection, my hour of prayer, my matins.
Now I must sacrifice it all, and give up my most innocent pleasure. The powers compel me to renounce this last and purest enjoyment. My little daughter wishes to accompany me. I embrace her tenderly, and tell her why I wish to be alone, but she does not understand it. She cries, and I have not the heart to sadden her today, but make a firm resolve not to allow her again to misuse her rights. She is certainly thoroughly fascinating as a child, with her originality, her cheerfulness, her gratitude for trifles, that is, when one has leisure to be occupied with her. But when one is absentminded and distracted, it is intensely annoying to be plagued with endless questions and changes of mood about mere nothings.
My little one is as jealous as a lover about my thoughts; she seems to watch for the exact opportunity to destroy a carefully-woven web of thought with her prattle—but no, it is not she who does it; she is only an instrument, but I seem to be the object of deliberate attacks by a poor little innocent. I go on with slow steps; I don’t seek to escape any more, but my soul is a prisoner, and my brain exhausted by the effort of continually having to descend to a child’s level. What, however, pains me intensely is the deep, reproachful look she casts at me when she thinks I find her a nuisance, and imagines that I love her no longer. Then her open joyous little face falls, her looks are averted, her heart is closed to me, and I feel myself bereft of the light which this child had brought into my dark soul. I kiss her, take her on my arm, look for flowers and pretty pebbles for her, cut a switch for her, and pretend to be a cow which she is driving to the meadow. She is contented and happy, and life smiles at me again.
I have sacrificed my morning hour. So do I atone for the evil which in a moment of madness I had wished to conjure down on this angel’s head. What a penance—to be loved! Truly the powers are not so cruel as we are!