Weinstein - The Powers and The Self. Strindberg's Inferno and Gustafsson's Tennisspelarna

THE POWERS AND THE SELF: STRINDBERG'S "INFERNO" AND GUSTAFSSON'S
"TENNISSPELARNA"
Author(s): Arnold Weinstein
Source: Scandinavian Studies , WINTER 1987, Vol. 59, No. 1 (WINTER 1987), pp. 46-85
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Society for the Advancement
of Scandinavian Study
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40918826
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THE POWERS AND THE SELF: STRINDBERG'S INFERNO
AND GUSTAFSSON'S TENNISSPELARNA
Arnold Weinstein
Brown University
Gustafsson's 1977 novel, Tennisspelarna, hardly seemed an ep

making book, and many have assumed that New Directions brough
out in 1983 in English essentially because the story is an American o
(barely) fictionalized account of Gustafsson's 1974 stint at the Universi
Texas as professor of Scandinavian literature. When Verne Mober
viewed it for the Scandinavian Review in December 1983, she understa
bly placed the brief novel in the tradition of travel literature, in the
species of the Scandinavian author returning from American campus r
with bag of tall tales. And, indeed, Tennisspelarna is so overtly auto
graphical that it was inevitably treated as a kind of fantasy-report on lif
the-U.S. as experienced by Lars Gustafsson. Among the fantasies
tioned were those he presumably entertained about his own popularity
centrality at the University of Texas. Perhaps, he even inflated his pro
in tennis. The cover photo of the author ' 'serving" in long pants and
toned shirt seems suspiciously unprofessional, homemade, indicating
more strongly that his trip to America may have been some kind of ego-
as well, a self-indulgent self-portrait that hardly deserves more tha
cursory reading Verne Moberg gave to it.
Readers may recall, however, that Gustafsson's academic piec
resistance in his Texas seminar was no less than Strindberg's Inferno (1
arguably the most swollen piece of self-portraiture in Swedish literature,
case study of another Scandinavian intellectual abroad, but at the end o
nineteenth century. One may even discern parallel professorial trappin
this pairing: Gustafsson as "the real thing" at Austin, and Strindber
"larare i alchemi vid det ockultiskiska universitetet i Paris" (it is true
Strindberg never quite knew where his university was located).1 It is
known that an entire critical industry surrounds Inferno, and no small c
of Gustafsson's Texas story consists in the fact that an American Bl
graduate student presents an explosively new "Inferno-thesis" that w
obliterate the Swedish scholarly work put together over the years to ac
for Strindberg's breakdown and persecution mania. Gustafsson himsel
persistently argued that Strindberg criticism is blinded by its obsession w
the psychology of the author, and that the later work, from Inferno on,
been misread as autobiography, as the personal drama of August Strind
Scandinavian Studies 59 (1987):46-85

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The Powers and the Self 47
whereas it should be seen as something la

modernist writing: " . . . what is often
Strindberg's works from Inferno onward is
it is a compositional principle."2 In short,
aesthetic integrity, freed from the empirica
is to be properly understood; so, too, I am
liberated from the "Gustafsson memoir" ca
as a work of art in its own right. Each tex
narrative, but ultimately Inferno and Tennis
aims, relating to no less than the changing
power in their respective cultures. Lamm
character of "Makterna" in Strindberg's
articulated a progression from "elementals
sances invisibles"; however, it is possible
religious fashion: power as energy, electr
comparative essay that is to follow, an
Strindberg's text is more than "personal";
more attention, especially here in America
Gustafsson chose Inferno for his crucial "i
have much to gain in viewing them tog
wherein each redefines the other.
Let it be said, at the outset, that Inferno and Tennisspelarna are vastly
dissimilar works. Perhaps nothing so much differentiates them as their
respective tonalities: the agonizing and melodramatic account of near-
madness in Strindberg's war with the "Powers," and the whimsical, nostal-
gic evocation of Gustafsson's Texas idyll. But Inferno is such a seminal
modernist text that Gustafsson had his reasons for highlighting it in his
American story some eighty years later, and the following commentary may
suggest some of those reasons. One of the most remarkable features of
Inferno is that it prophetically mythicizes the Scientist as the central power
figure of modern society. In this light, Strindberg's withdrawal from literary
production and his dogged determination to make a name for himself as an
alchemist in Paris in the midnineties have a paradigmatic quality to them;
his life, as Spinchorn has put it, "became the burning glass of an epoch."4
To be sure, the Faustian image is close at hand, but Goethe's truth-seeker
seems scholarly and glamorous in comparison to the figure we encounter in
Inferno: begging funds to perform experiments, publishing articles and
entering the alchemist debate, displaying hands cracked and bleeding (so he
claimed) by the heat from ovens.5 But, if the elegance of Goethe's hero is
absent, the enterprise is as metaphysical as ever: Strindberg's goal is to
erase the boundary between matter and spirit. The monism he subscribed to

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48 Scandinavian Studies
goes beyond the confines of the ele

whereas all were agreed in recognizing t
selves monists without really being so,
conclusions of this doctrine, and elimin
and what was called the spirit. ' '6
Inferno has often been read as the m
deserves to be looked at as a visionary
unveiling of spirit in the so-called mate
extent, of Blake's program:
If the doors of perception were cleanse

man as it is, infinite. For man has clo
things thro' narrow chinks of his cave
Behind Blake, of course, there stand

Swedenborg whose "correspondence the
the greatest nineteenth-century writer
also Balzac and Baudelaire, even Emer
seminal figure here, and it is no accide
mystic's writings at a crucial turning po
purposes of this argument, let us turn
and concentrate on the "perceptual" rat
of the monist vision at work here, a vis
be double- vision as it incessantly yokes t
it can no longer even separate matter a
"cleansed" doors of perception may be
blessing.
What seems particularly striking about Inferno is its relentless pursuit
of "energy," of the forces that move both the material and the moral world.
Strindberg is delivering a picture of things where everything is suddenly
alive, where the ordinarily discrete realms of physics and religion are seen
to coexist in the same force-field. Sensory perceptions are doubled by a
strange spiritual aura; the phenomenal world is bristling with pattern for the
person who knows how to read; the individual (wittingly or not, like it or
not) is attuned to forces and powers ranging from cyclones of hatred to full-
fledged Doppelgdnger who appear in cafes and bars, implicating the pro-
tagonist's life in a strange relational mesh that mocks empirical logic. Such
a view of things in the 1890s, especially in Paris (as Lamm, Brandell and
Lindstrom have shown), was not unique to Strindberg, and much of the
literature and thinking of the times reflected a concern with the spiritual
aura of the phenomenal world, a concern shared by alchemists, the Parisian
occultists, the Symbolists, and the religious thinkers of the period. Lamm,

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not surprisingly, has interpreted Strindber

gious lines: "Det var ett gemon ateismen un
religiost behov, som tog sig uttryck i denna
oredan spara det oandliga sammanhanget" ("
by atheism but subconsciously of a religious
in this effort to trace the infinite patterns th
der4 ').8 But one could also say that Strindbe
grammar here, in that he refused (was una
divisive notions of here vs. there, spirit vs.
stead he was at pains to reconstruct his perc
NOW, a new composite of forces and energ
letter written to Hedlund during the height o
. . . Hallucinationer, fantasier, dromma

realitat. Om jag ser min hufvudkudda anta
finnas dessa former der, och sager nagon
min fantasi, sa svarar jag:
- Ni sager endast?- Hvad mitt inre oga
hvad jag ser pa kudden som ar gjord af fog
varit barare af lif, det ar sjal, formgifvand
sina fibrer fort lifskraft, ar verklighet, d
gurer, visa dem andra.
Och jag hor i kudden stundom som en s
i graset har alltid forefallit mig trollskt. Ett
alltid tyckt som om ljudet komme fran e
Antag att grashoppor sjungit i linakern,
skaparen kan dana en fonograf af vextfibe
for mitt inre ora nar detta gemon lidand
blifvit beredt att hora langre an eljes. Men
forklaringarne' till korta, och jag lemnar d
( . . . Hallucinations, fantasies, dreams, se

high degree of reality. If I see my pillow a
shapes are there, and if any one says they
imagination, I answer- you say only? W
means more to me! And what I see in my
birds' feathers, once bearers of life, and
vitality has traveled, is soul, creative pow
draw those shapes, show them to others.
And I hear a sound in my pillow, somet
noise that grasshoppers make in the grass
to me. Like a ventriloquist, for I have alwa

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came from an empty hall under the eart

per has sung in a field of flax, don't y
creator can make a phonograph from
resounds for my inner ear when, by
prayer, this has been prepared to receiv
normally does? But this is where your
us, and I abandon them forthwith.)9
There is something very special in this

and one is struck by the insistence that su
new cosmos. Above all, we see a kind
uncanny apprehension of energy and li
sense of opened channels and strange n
say that Strindberg 's famous monism is
man willing to act on his belief in unity,
what a unified, related world would look
To be sure, there is an unmistakable re
aid of Dante and Swedenborg, Strindb
travails as a living Hell, and some fifty
"l'Enfer, c'est les autres," Strindber
straitjacket: "Det ar jorden som ar helve
byggda fangelse, dar jag icke kan taga e
lycka, och dar mina medvarelser ej kun
mig ont" ("It is the earth itself that is Hel
an intelligence superior to our own, in w
injuring the happiness of others, and in w
enjoy their own happiness without causing
step to take from this view of Hell to its
a Hell of our own devising, that we a
throughout our lives.11 Strindberg hims
does much Suindberg criticism; and wh
cover, then a medical one is introduce
causal relationship between our deeds
abound as to what actually was producin
Inferno, and we have been treated to a s
schizophrenia, persecution complex, tox
absinth) to downright lying (on the part
carefully reasoned and scholarly study of
Barry Jacobs [Cambridge, 1974]), to wh
picture available of what went "into" th

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of sublimated guilt, and once again, one feels

given to the actual topography of Strindber
the so-called causes of which they are the so-
Thus, my central argument is that the bea
ferno lie on the far side of any explanatory my
emerge from Inferno: (1) matter and spirit a
tions fail. Let us examine both these premis
with the latter. As Strindberg and his frien
pected, naturally enough, to be a Doppelgange
Schlatter) compare their respective visionary
the strange human shapes formed by pansies i
the Hotel des Invalides, we hear the inevitab
vill ni forklara detta fenomen?' " (" 'How ar
phenomena?' "). Strindberg's answer is argua
ment in his book, but it is also of a piece with
" 'Forklara? Har man nagonsin kunnat for
omskriva en hop ord med en hop andra ord?
anyone ever explained anything except by par
another set?' " [p. 149]). Not only are visions
nations (and this cannot fail to count for the
selves are never more than a sleight-of-hand,
fling from one set of signifiers to another s
unitary logic of vision by breaking it up a
paradigm. One might say that the world has
and spontaneous, a place of untrammeled po
history is nothing but the successive explanat
is highly significant that the Swedenborg "m
text, but rather that Strindberg remains stu
that all explanation is provisional, even futile.
its close is not far from that of Lear, because
world in which men are sport for the gods, e
sume to understand their cosmos. This leads
which describes the exceptionally vicious cir
beliefs:
Det ar for galet med en sadan circulus vitios

har forutsett i mitt tjugonde ar, da jag diktad
Olof. som blivit mitt eget livs tragedi. Vad
framslapat en modosam tillvaro under trett
farenheter erna det som jag i forvag hade

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ungdom var jag en uppriktigt troende,

kare. Fran fritankare han I gjort mig
ligios. Inspirerad av humanitara id
Fern ar senare han I bevistat for mig
vad jag profeterat om han I gjort og
mitt liv at religiositeten, sa ar jag v
vederlagga religionen.
Frestas man icke tro, att gudarna s
att det ar darfor som vi medvetna sp
sammaste ogonblicken av vart liv!
Huru kunnen I begara att man skall
sig vara en omatlig humbug? [pp. 16
(Fantastic, but exactly the vicious

twentieth year when I wrote my pla
as the tragedy of my own life. What
out a laborious existence for thirty y
what I had already anticipated? In m
and you made of me a free-thinker. O
atheist, of the atheist a monk. Inspi
extolled socialism. Five years later yo
socialism. You have cut the ground f
and suppose that I now dedicate my
certainty that before ten years have p
religion is false.
Are not the Gods jesting with us m
too, sharing the jest, are able to lau
ments of our lives?
How can you require that we take
appears to be no more than a colossa
In this passage we see the pre-eminent

ery and belief flattened out into the p
change, almost an embroidery. Strindb
tions, much like that of Flaubert's
emblematic, mirroring the feverish qu
latter nineteenth century.14 But Strind
Flaubert's and also, one is tempted to
focal point of Strindberg's cosmology
experiences in his person the worki

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world's manifold interconnectedness.15 We

larger human ramifications of this peculiar
ments and forces related, (and, hence, the
exploit their kinships), but the human world
principles, in that the same person is successiv
atheist, monk, socialist and back again to be
that none of these appellations ' 'works, " th
for something beyond logic, an effort to gr
tial knowledge of the world. That is the know
the flesh, but no amount of explanatory
Strindberg, as in Kafka, we suffer the world
viscera and in our psyches:
Trad in ensam nattetid i din kammare, o

dar fore dig. Ga till asylen for sinnessjuk
rikern; han skall saga dig varjehanda om n
gina pectoris och sa vidare, men bota dig s
Vart gan i da, i alia som liden av somlos
kring pa gatorna och vanten pa soluppg&n
*
Varldskvarnen, Guds kvarn, det ar tva uttryck som kommit i

omlopp.
Han i hort den dar susningen i oronen, vilken liknar bullret fran
en vattenkvarn?
Han i markt under tystnaden nattetid eller till och med pa ljusa
dagen, hum minnena fran ert forflutna liv ateruppvackta rora pa sig,
ett i sander eller gruppvis. Alia felsteg som du begatt, alia for-
brytelser, alia dumheter; de jaga upp blodet i orsnibbarna pa dig,
kallsvetten i haret, rysning utefter ryggraden. Du aterupplever ditt
genomlevda liv anda fran fodelsen till den dag som inne ar; du lider
annu en gang alia genomlidna lidanden, du svaljer alia de kalkar du
sa ofta tomt till draggen; du korsfaster ditt skelett nar det icke mer
finnes nagot kott att korsfasta; du branner a bale din sjal, nar hjartat
ar lagt i aska.
Du kanner till detta?
Det ar Herrens kvarn, som mal langsamt, men mal fint- och
svart! Du ar upplost i stoft, och du tror att det ar slut med dig. Nej
da, det skall borja om igen, och man later dig ater ga igenom kvar-
nen! [pp. 165-66]

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(Enter your room alone at night-ti

someone has got there before you. You
sense his presence. Go to the lunatic a
atrist. He will talk to you of neurasth
and the like, but he will never cure yo
Where will you go, then, all you w
ness, and you who walk the streets wa
The Mills of the Universe, the Mill
expressions that are often used.
Have you had in your ears the hum
noise of a water-mill? Have you noticed,
or even in broad daylight, how memo
are resurrected, one by one or two by t
made, all your crimes, all your follies,
very ear-tips, bring a cold sweat to you
your spine. You relive the life you have
very day that is. You suffer again all
dured, you drink again all the cups of
drained. You crucify your skeleton, as t
mortify. You send your spirit to the
burned to ashes.
Do you recognize the truth of all th
There are the Mills of God, that grin
small- and black. You are ground to p
over. But no, it will begin again and yo
once more [pp. 263-64]).
Much of the force of Inferno is cau

Strindberg's direct address to the read
humanity, insisting that what the critic
actually public and widespread. All o
afflicted with symptoms and signs tha
cal explanations.16 To be sure, one's own
manifestations, but even the past is sho
rather, one's deeds and- perhaps more
lessly alive and potent, shaping one's en
sumably over or forgotten. The hummi
the fluidity of energy itself, seen in th
earlier in the shapes and sounds discov
image, of course, is the Mills of God,
phasize its status as image, expression,

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image is, it recovers some of its disturbing

makes of it: we see not only the crushing p
meted out by the gods, but equally important
image itself, the Mill as generator, as pro
Strindberg invites us to see in the hummin
origin of the memories and symptoms that a
is here defined as a power-system, a netw
through and over which energy flows.17
This cluster of images can be ' 'unpacked"
the later poem, "Gatubilder III," which leads
' 'power-station."
Mork ar backen, morkt ar huset-

morkast dock dess kallarvaning-
underjordisk, inga gluggar-
kallarhalsen ar bad' dorr och fonster-
och darnere langst i morkret
syns en dynamo som surrar,
sa det gnistrar omkring hjulen:
svart och hemsk, i det fordolda
mal han ljus at hela trakten.
(Dark is the hill, dark the house-

but darkest is its cellar-
subterranean, windowless-
the staircase serves as door and window-
and down there deepest in the darkness
stands a humming dynamo,
sparks flying around its wheels:
black and horrifying, hidden,
it grinds light for the entire neighborhood.)18
Gustafsson himself has offered one of the most eloquent commentaries

on this poem, emphasizing both the Freudian and the linguistic features of
the piece. The image of the dynamo is thus assessed:
Kan man tanka sig en battre bild av Freuds undermedvetna an den

har generatorn, som likt libidon, den manskliga grunddriften, star
och surrar nere i morkret, svart och hemsk, och anda producerar ljus
at hela trakten? Det ar ju genom en sublimerad sexualdrift som
konstverken uppstar: enligt Freud.

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(Where could we find a better metapho

than this generator, which, like the lib
drive, stands there, black and terrible, hu
still producing light for the entire area?
sublimated sexual urge that works of art
Freud.)19
But Gustafsson's most interesting observation has to do with the astonishing

metaphor of grinding light ("mal han ljus"). An old verb in a new role,
Gustafsson says, and he points out that whereas his parents still say, "Tand
ljuset" ("light the light"), his children now say "sla pa ljuset" ("turn on
the light"). Our metaphors speak our evolving history, and Strindberg has
intentionally mixed his registers, giving us an agrarian verb for an electrical
phenomenon. One is not too far here from the logic of Thomas Kuhn's
conceptual revolutions, the shifting of paradigms from one age to another.
Strindberg wants us to see that a new era is at hand, that the power from this
dark room makes our light, unseen though it is, accustomed though we are
to fearing the dark. Freud seems close here, but not only Freud, for the
poem centralizes the shift in the production and dispersal of energy, leaving
us ultimately with an image of the human mind as "public utility" in the
most rigorous sense of the term. As we will see, Inferno ushers in a new
vision of power, a view of energy and current that simply outruns any
traditional notion of psychology or religion.
But if the poem shows the mind-generator as the producer of current,
we see, in Inferno, a drastic picture of things the other way around. The
mills that grind exceeding fine, that purify the subject into black dust, seem
to have eroded all the defenses and barriers that usually keep the world at
bay. Instead, it rushes in, unstoppable, on currents and in channels against
which there is no defense: the ears hum, the heart palpitates, the objects and
the people seen are figures from one's past, from one's dreams. Here is the
imperious new eco-system that Strindberg has depicted, a view of psychic
entrapment that is infinitely more fascinating in its workings than it might
be in terms of any critical explanation offered for it. Lamm and Brandell
have pointed out Strindberg 's interest in figures like Rochas and Guaita,
both of whom advanced theories of telepathy and invisible currents, result-
ing in the capacity to strike people from afar. Indeed, as Hans Lindstrom
has shown in Hjdrnornas Kamp (1952), one could find figures all over
Europe evincing interest in mesmerism, hypnotism, suggestion psycholo-
gy, hysteria and the like, but it would not be easy to find any major artist
who transformed those materials into art quite the way Strindberg did.

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Inferno is a nodal text because it offers us a

place in his world. Opened and invaded, co-e
Strindberg self resembles nothing quite so m
drawn by Munch in "The Scream," a figu
medium in the most awful sense of the wor
coming to an end in these texts, and a new w
one considerably closer to our own Einsteinia
time to take a closer look at how Strindberg
Early on, Inferno informs us of a potent s
realize that the alchemist enterprise is a pu
secrets, and we learn that the protagonist is a
pati och forgoring [p. 29]" ("telepathy a
Above all, we see a world of energized signs
tory; portentous initials (such as A.S.) and n
crucial chemical compounds appear at drama
dents are quickly seen as tailor-made humilia
outside world increasingly loses its randomn
increasingly yoked into some preordained sc
ogy where everything fits and is locked into
precious little freedom in such a realm, and w
every event will be gruesomely overdeterm
earlier misdeed or vice on Strindberg 's part. A
pace and the density of these episodes begins
signaled by the entry of "doubles" onto the
shows us what Strindberg is able to do with
Det hander i hotellet saker som oroa m

ankomst f inner jag pa svarta tavlan i tamb
upphangas, ett brev adresserat till en herr
samma namn som min hustru. Frimarket
namnet pa den osterrikiska by dar min hu
Men som jag ar saker pa att intet postkontor
saken g&tlik.
Detta brev, ditsatt pa ett utmanande satt
bli bemarkt, foljes av flera andra. Det nas
doktor Bitter och avstamplat Wien. Ett tr
polska namnet Schmulachowsky.
Det ar djavulen som nu har ett finger m
namn ar travesterat och jag begriper varat
min dodsfiende, som bor i Berlin.

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En annan gang ar det ett svenskt nam

fiende i mitt hemland. Slutligen ett i
trycktyper anger doktor Eders kemis
att man spionerar pa min guldsyntes. I
en intrig, men djavulen har blandat ko
laga sa att mina misstankar irra krin
alltfor p&hittigt for vanliga korkade d
Da jag av uppassaren begar upplyssn
ger han det enfaldiga svaret att det ar
jag ej. En g&ng da jag aterkom efter m
brevkort i facket alldeles vid min nyck
frestelsen att losa gatan genom att kas
goda angel forlamade min hand just i
man tradde fram fran sitt gomstalle bak
Jag ser honom i ansiktet, och han
varandra utan att saga ett ord och gar v
Jag har aldrig kunnat utreda denna
annu de medspelande dari, da min hu
manliga kusiner.
Ovissheten, den standiga hotelsen
tillrackligtortyr under ett halvir. Jag
sasom ett straff for kanda och okanda
(Disquieting things happened in the

arrival I found, on the board in the ve
the rooms were hung, a letter address
name was the same as my wife's. The
nach, the name of the Austrian village w
living. This was mysterious, as I was q
no post office.
This letter, displayed in a way that
attract attention, was followed by se
addressed to Dr Bitter and postmarked
assumed Polish name, Schmulachowsk
Clearly the Devil now had a finger in
pure fabrication. I realized where my t
namely to one of my mortal enemies
Yet another that arrived had on it a Swedish name that re-
minded me of an enemy in my native land. Finally came a letter
posted in Vienna, on which was printed the name of Dr Eder's firm

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of analytical chemists. In fact, someone was

of gold.
I had no doubts left. This was a plot, but the Devil himself must
have shuffled the cards for the tricksters. No ordinary mortal could
have hit on the idea of sending my suspicions roaming to the four
quarters of the globe; it was altogether too contrived.
When I asked the waiter to tell me about Mr X he artlessly
replied that he was an Alsatian. I could get nothing more out of him.
Once, when I returned from my morning walk, there was a card in
the rack just by my key. For one moment I was tempted to solve the
riddle by having a look at it, but my good angel immobilized my
hand at the very instant that a young man appeared from his hiding
place behind the door.
I looked at his face. He was like my wife. We bowed to each
other without uttering a word, and walked off in opposite directions.
I have never been able to get to the bottom of this plot and still
do not know who the conspirators were, as my wife has neither
brothers nor male cousins.
This was a state of suspense and the perpetual threat of venge-

ance was torment and enough for half a year. I bore this, like
everything else, as a punishment for sins known and unknown [pp.
137-38].)
Quoted in its entirety, this episode displays the elaborateness and the fastidi-
ousness with which Strindberg ' 're-scripts" the events that befall him,
thrusting them all into a private psycho-drama, drenched with intentional-
ity: disguised names, devil's control, plots, hiding places and the like. The
fine sense of certainty conveyed by Strindberg's authoritative tone -
"saker" ("certain"), "i avsikt att bli bemarkt" ("obviously intended to
attract attention"), "uppdiktade polska namnet" ("assumed Polish
name"), "intet tvivel mera" ("I had no doubts left"), "alltfor pahittigt"
("altogether too contrived") - must give the reader pause, for there is
something unsettling in any narrative voice that is so oddly and intuitively
sure of its findings. It is especially worth noting the role accorded to lan-
guage: letters, names of villages and people, these are the harbingers of that
newer vision which Inferno announces, a vision of dreadful coherence,
since nothing can be random or innocuous in such a scheme. This peculiar
type of "feathering one's nest" borders on comedy in the passage just
quoted, as we see Strindberg reaching far and wide in his interpretations,
yet remaining significantly untouched by it all, bowing wordlessly to the

193.205.136.30 on Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:14:49 UTC
mysterious Mr X, as safe and distant in

tale by Henry James. Somewhat like a
the blank spots, the "unknowns," the M
the specificity of doom itself. It all begi
Jag spetsar orat sasom stridshasten vi

pi mig, kanner sjalen omstamd och an
Aufschwung. Och vad mera ar, d
spelar! Min van, ryssen min larjunge, s
att han hade lart allt av mig, min famul
net och kysste mina hander, darfor at
slutade. Det ar han som anlant fr&n Wi
sasom han dodade mig i Wien, och av v
hade velat sk att hans nuvarande maka var min alskarinna inan han
blev bekant med henne [p. 53].
(I pricked up my ears like a charger at the blast of a trumpet. I

straightened my back, drew a deep breath, my whole self metamor-
phosized. It was Schumann's Aufschwung. And what was more, I
was sure that it was he who was playing it. My friend the Russian,
my pupil who had called me 'Father' because I had taught him all he
knew, my famulus who had called me 'Master' and had kissed my
hands because his life had begun where mine had ended. He had
come from Berlin to Paris to kill me, just as he had killed me in
Berlin, and for what reason? Because Fate had decreed that the
woman who was now his wife had been my mistress before he had
known her? [pp. 151-52])
Thus begins the saga of Strindberg haunted by the Pole Stanislav Przybys-
zewski, called Popoffsky in the text, already hinted at in the assumed Polish
name, "Schmulachowsky," and obscurely lurking behind Mr X, now
rendered increasingly and pathologically present within the narrative.
Strindberg persistently interprets these unsettling experiences as some
personal punishment meted out for his past sins, both "kanda och okanda"
("known and unknown"), and a good deal is known about the relations
between Strindberg, Przybyszewski, Dagny Juel and Munch in the tumultu-
ous Berlin adventures that preceded his arrival in Paris. But, once again,
one needs to distinguish sharply between the harrowing psychic phenomena
depicted in Inferno and all explanatory theses that might account for them,
including Strindberg 's own hypotheses. What is rendered indelibly in In-
ferno is the transcendent power of spirit, the agonizing discovery that the

193.205.136.30 on Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:14:49 UTC
world is filled with ghosts, avenging angels th

and signs. Where they come from counts less
there. They cannot be explained (away):
Trad in ensam nattetid i din kammare, och

dar fore dig. Ga till asylen for sinnessjuka o
rikern; han skall saga dig varjehanda om nev
gina pectoris och sa vidare, men bota dig skal
165].
(Enter your room alone at night-time and you will find that
someone has got there before you. You will not see him, but you will
sense his presence. Go to the lunatic asylum and consult the psychi-
atrist. He will talk to you of neurasthenia, paranoia, angina pectoris,
and the like, but he will never cure you. [p. 263].)
In the haunting, lurking presence of Popoffsky, we may discern the begin-

ning of a veritable psychic invasion. The external signs pile up: spilled
absinth, filth in his glass, his being taken for a beggar, unaccountably
striking terror into Munch, staring at Munch's portrait of Przybyszewski in
which the Pole's head seems cut off (just as Strindberg had dreamed it), his
encountering the written words 'mard' ('marten') and 'gam' ('vulture') -
bringing to mind the Pole and his wife- hearing that the Pole has poisoned
his wife and children (sic) and fearing that he has come to Paris to do the
same to Strindberg himself. This sense of vampirism and encroachment is
expressed in a crucial image that is central to this entire study: "den arres-
terade ryssens hat gor ont i mig likasom strommen fran en elektricitetsmas-
kin [p. 65]" ("since his arrest, the Russian's hatred is causing me pain such
as one might feel from the current of an electric machine [p. 163]").
We have already seen the "humming" and the water-wheel and the
mill; these images can be said to constitute a coherent iconography of power
and energy, and they invariably appear as conduits for the visitations
Strindberg is to receive. But the dominant metaphor (if it is a metaphor) is
electricity, and as the poem "Gatubilder III" makes evident, electricity
betokens the energy of the mind, the flowing current between poet and
community, a current that can insidiously flow upstream as well as down-
stream. Hence, it comes as no surprise that the stranger who kept his dis-
tance as Mr X now reappears in a far more invasive fashion:
I borjan av juli blev hotellet overgivet av studenterna, som

reste bort over ferierna. Darfor vacktes min nyfikenhet genom an-

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komsten av en framling, som inlogera

betsbord. Den okande hors aldrig tala e
satt med skrivgora bakom bradvaggen
det i alia fall att han skjuter tillbaka si
flyttar min. Han upprepar mina rorel
han ville forarga mig.
Detta fortfar i tre dagar. Pa den
iakttagelser. Nar jag gar och lagger
rummet bredvid mitt bord, men val i s
det andra rummet och intaga sangen,
min. Jag hor hur han ligger och strack
bladdrar i en bok, slacker darefter l
vander sig och somnar in.
En fullstandig tystnad rader i rumm
alltsa i bagge tva. Det ar obehagligt at
[p. 75].
(At the beginning of July all the students left for the holidays
and the hotel was unoccupied. My curiosity was therefore aroused
by the arrival of a stranger, who was put into the room adjacent to
my writing desk. This unknown man never uttered a word; he
seemed to be occupied in writing something behind the wooden
partition that separated us. All the same, it was odd that he should
push back his chair every time I moved mine. He repeated my every
movement in a way that suggested that he wanted to annoy me by
imitating me.
This went on for three days. On the fourth I made the following
observation. When I went to bed the man in the room next to my
desk went to bed too, but in the room on the other side, next to my
bed. As I lay in my bed I could hear him getting into his on the other
side of the wall; I could hear him lying there, stretched out parallel
to me. I could hear him turning the pages of a book, putting out the
lamp, breathing deeply, turning over and falling asleep.
Complete silence then reigned in the room adjacent to my writ-
ing desk. This would only mean that he was occupying both rooms.
How unpleasant to be besieged on both sides at once! [p. 172-73])
Although the passage stresses physical separation (wooden partition, other

side of the wall), a form of ghostly, wordless intercourse is clearly taking
place. Whoever or whatever is there is beginning to fuse with Strindberg,

193.205.136.30 on Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:14:49 UTC
through repetition of movements and gestur

to see that this fusion is intricately related
writing desk, he is writing something, he i
itself seems linked to sleeping or dreaming,
privileged modes of communication. We see,
bed together ("belagrad fran tva hall" [' 'bes
has a disturbing ring to it), but this intimac
Strindberg now experiences being "foremal
emellan de tva angransade rummen" ("sub
passing between the two rooms on either si
" 'Man dodar mig! Jag vill inte bli dodad
me! I will not be killed [p. 175]' ").
Strindberg leaves the fateful Hotel Orfila
chase is now on. In the next hotel, near the
lodgers again appear, the servant girl looks at
that the execution has been decreed. But why
Nu har man ovanfor mig fatt upp ett hj

runt, runt. Domd till doden! Det ar det int
vem? Ryssarna? I vilken egenskap? Eller a
jesuiter, teosofer? Sasom trollkarl eller sva
Eller kanske polisen? Som anarkist
anklagelse for att komma at personliga fien
(In the room above mine they had set u

round and round all day. Condemned to dea
By by whom? By the Russians? By the devo
Jesuits, the theosophists? For what reason?
titioner of the black arts? Perhaps it was b
chist? That is a charge very commonly emp
personal enemies [pp. 178-79].)
Note, once more, the folly of explanations.

offended are legion, and one's crimes are end
varies. That night, after Strindberg has cere
prepared himself for death, that wheel whic
and grinds, goes again into action:
Jag vaknar upp; klockan slar tva fran en

igen och . . . jag ar ur sangen liksom lyft
mitt hjarta. Knappt har jag satt fotterna pa g

fff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff on Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC
dusch utgjutes over min nacke och pres

mig igen, rafsar kt mig kladerna och st
for den forfarligaste hjartklappning [p
(I awoke. A clock in the house struck

I was drawn from my bed as if by a v
at my heart.
Hardly had my feet touched the floor than a stream of electric-
ity was discharged upon the nape of my neck, pressing me to the
ground. I struggled up, grabbed my clothes, and tore out into the
garden, a prey to the most horrible palpitations [p. 182].)
He flees Paris for Dieppe and is again waylaid:
. . . men dk griper mig en urladdning likt en cyklon, den lyfter mig

ur sangen, och jakten ar i gang. Jag doljer mig bakom vaggar, jag
lagger mig ner vid dorrkamrarna, framfor kaminerna. Overallt,
overallt leta furierna reda pa mig [p. 89].
(But now a discharge like a cyclone fell upon me and tore me from
my bed. The hunt was on once more. I hid behind walls, I lay down
close to doorways, in front of fireplaces. Wherever I went, the furies
sought me out [p. 186].)
Then, in Ystad, he seeks asylum at the home of his friend, Dr. Eliassin, and
once again the fateful icons reappear, regrouped:
Inhyst i en liten lagenhet hos doktorn, lagger jag genast marke

till den amerikanska jarnsangen med fyra stolpar slutande i mas-
singskulor, vilka likna konduktorerna i en elektricitetsmaskin. Nar
dartill lagges den elastiska madrassen med fjadrar av koppartrad till
res&rer, alldeles som spiralerna i Ruhmkorffs induktionsrulle, si kan
man tanka sig hur ursinnig jag skulle bli infor denna djavulska
slump [pp. 92-93].
(The doctor installed me in a small flat in his house. My atten-

tion was immediately attracted to an American bedstead of iron,
whose four uprights were surmounted by brass knobs that resembled
the conductors of an electric machine. In addition there was a flexi-
ble mattress, the springs of which were made of copper wire,
twisted into spirals like those of a Ruhmkorff induction coil. You
may judge of my fury when I found myself faced by this piece of
devilish bad luck [p. 189].

193.205.136.30 on Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:14:49 UTC
The grand finale orchestrates all these "elemen

lar alchemist performance of the novel, a mome
energy, pure metamorphosis, in which all the d
fuse together, and the locus of their fusion is th
Samtidigt oroar mig det jamna bullret fran na

sa att en susning i oronen forfoljer mig alltsed
Orfila; den liknar stampningen av ett vatten
verkligheten av det namda maskinbullret frag
Pressen i tryckeriet har bredvid.
Allt forklaras sa ledigt, och likval forskrac
ten i medlen att gora mig galen.
Natten kommer, och jag ar radd. Himmeln
tung; man vantar ett ovader. Jag tors ej ga til
timmar med brevskrivning. Krossad av trott
och slinker mellan lakanen. En forfarlig tystn
jag slacker lampan. Jag kanner att nagon bes
snuddar vid mig, trevar pa mitt hjarta, och su
(I was also much disturbed by what sounded li

a machine. As it happened, I had been plague
ears ever since I left the Hotel Orfila, a nois
pounding of a water-wheel. I was therefore d
roaring noise I heard was real or not, and inqu
The press in the printing house next door. '
There was a simple and natural explanation
it was just this simplicity in the means emp
alarmed me and drove me mad.
Then came night with its terrors. The sky was overcast, the air
heavy; there was thunder about. I did not dare to go to bed and spent
two hours writing letters. Annihilated by weariness, I undressed and
crept between the sheets. An awful silence reigned over the house as
I put out the lamp. In the gloom I could feel someone watching me,
someone who touched me lightly, groped for my heart and sucked
[p. 190].)
The author never explains the possible connections between these electrical
disturbances and writing; indeed, the printing press seems to him an innocu-
ous source of the roaring noise. But the reader can hardly mistake the bold
logic of this text, a principle of linkage and connection that is so imperious
that the protagonist even puts his ear to a telegraph post whose humming
noise intrigues him, and listens "as if bewitched" (p. 196). On the one

193.205.136.30 on Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:14:49 UTC
hand, the writhing, buffeted figure wh

jolts of current is undergoing what eve
electrocution, or at the very least, an e
electrical overload in the brain. But the
presses, writing and dreaming indicat
extraordinary proportions, and we sense
each other: electric current is the neura
only one's own thoughts, but- and this
others as well; writing, too, we see, is a
connects minds divided by time and spac
also of power: psychic power, moral pow
Power is everywhere imaged in term
Strindberg's work. Lagercrantz has dem
nary interest in language studies at the ve
evidence throughout his work of the pe
and its vehicles can be vested.22 Wherea
boots in Froken Julie (1888), the speakin
still as an icon of authority, suffused wi
and sacraments possess; it is here the vo
at a critical moment, it will be heard, at l
and we realize that we are seeing a ninet
the Oracle. In some strange way, "langu
of Strindberg's protagonists, and we may
kus (1898) in a similar light, for there, t
messages, containing either money or hu
the classical messenger in Greek traged
larly magic apparatus in its telegraph, th
Alice is forbidden to use, the visible netw
prison to a larger world. Things^fow in S
the etymological purity of our dry term
precisely "flowing into"; this flow is ea
can refer to the impact of Nietzche's writ
has entered the uterus of his mind and
mind, jealousy is tantamount to a fear of
course with another man is experienced
The flip-side of Strindberg's well-known
decenters and displaces power, thinks in
knows itself to be vulnerable and perm
the face of the potent machinations of o
this heading, than the remarkable passa

193.205.136.30 on Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:14:49 UTC
where Strindberg recounts the frequent nigh

wife, Harriet Bosse, sexual encounters ex
helplessly. What does one make of these ' 'en
moving experiences that simply do not confor
tion or even dream, as we usually conceive it
It is essential to bear in mind this strange
terized Strindberg, when one tries to assess
thus perceive the radical defensiveness of hi
passage from Inferno acquires the resonance
Allt eller det lilla som jag mojligen vet ha

sasom centralpunkt. Val icke kulten, men k
framstaller sig foljaktligen som tillvarons
Mitt avgorande och standiga svar pa ha
mulerades pa detta satt: jagets dodande ar
(All that I know, little as that may be, spr

point, my Ego. It is not the cult but the c
seems to me to be the supreme and final g
swer to his objections was always given in t
to kill the Ego is to commit suicide [p. 168
Strindberg criticism has, understandably en

either with the all-too-available biographical
himself or with is formulations regarding "m
inattentive to the audacious re-definition of
informs so much of his work. Not only did
others as infectious, but he clearly regarded
with the seed of my soul."24 The combinatio
beliefs and his peculiar temperament led to t
verse that is astonishingly unified by channe
spiritual energy. Whereas the prevalent criti
Spinchorn) seems to be that Till Damaskus an
most fully successful artistic embodiments
coveries and obsessions, it is nonetheless Infe
provocatively makes the prophetic link betw
tween power and language. Yet, "language
troubling proposition, and it by no means ele
who uses it, no matter how much Strindberg
the contrary, it leads to a radically decentere
the humming wires and grinding mills and n

193.205.136.30 on Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:14:49 UTC
how pre-existed, antedated the fated

receivers. This is why the electricity
olutionizes the older concepts of cause-
ity is a force-field where contacts an
immediate, where the individual rece
tem. Seen in human terms, electricity
charged and flowing, where those who
the violent frequencies of which the w
such a scheme. Nor is protection poss
world in one's flesh, through the sho
view is, strangely enough, more anth
because it sees Mind itself as the great
origin of these forces.
It is not and need not be known exa

Inferno. But, the purpose of the rem
Tennisspelarna picks up those various
and it reworks them into a strange tap
we see a dazzlingly modernist, fully c
energy system, now become flagrant
tions of power in the New World.
Lars Gustaffson would doubtless be
Texas, in 1974, is unlike late nineteen
ten-speed up the steep Texas hills shor
whistle "Siegfrieds Rhenfard" ("Si
Wagner's Gdtterddmmerung, but no A
"ett litet pip" ("a faint peep")- not
tling hard, but also because "Siegfried
disk hjalte, p& vag nedfor en dimholj
manska aventyr i ett tatnande morker
allt starkare, allt klarare dagsljus till
Lamar Boulevard" (" 'Siegfried's Rhine
on his way down a dark, foggy river t
the gathering gloom, while I journeye
strength and brightness, toward the t
other side of Lamar Boulevard").25 Te
and Strindberg are all part of a dying w
link between these two realms is, of
dinaire Lars Gustafsson who must brin
det skandinaviska adertonhundratal
Nineteenth Century Scandinavia [p. 3

193.205.136.30 on Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:14:49 UTC
Texas would appear to be a world unto itsel

is quaintly "avsedd for krig och turistresor
tourism [p. 15]"). Americans cannot possib
Ubermensch, because when translated as "Su
annat an Stalmannen, som vi alia har foljt pa ha
ett eller annat koksbord, en fascistoid polisfi
telefonkiosker och deltar i alia storre polisla
character in the comics whose adventures we ha
hood at some kitchen table or other, a Fasci
into tights in telephone booths and takes pa
[p. 5]"). The view of America as Never-Never
a haven of total freedom and immediacy is
central physical and poetic activity of the n
speeding ball coming toward you, "en ordlos
orden [p. 17]" ("a wordless challenge in a w
you realize that there are no antecedents, no
verklighet ar du ingen [p. 18]" ("In reality y
olik en besokare fran en annan varld [p. 54]"
another planet [p. 36]"), the tennis ball anno
new; in such a scheme, '7 verklighet dr du i
endless present holds true: " . . .Det finns al
som du just har framfor dig [p. 88]" ("There
one you've got in front of you [p. 63]"). Thi
and Lars Gustafsson of Sweden is drawn to th
nuova. Superior athlete, tennis freak of no
physical shape, attuned to all sports, the Sw
Texas self that would have been unrecogniza
sunrise, he sees now, long afterward, was als
But the seductive appeal of America the New
like the song of the sirens, be resisted. The v
how alien his nineteenth-century European
effort of will is necessary for him to "leave"
Solbrand och spanstig som en ung gud, me

och en bunt bocker i den andra klattrade jag
ett trampolinsprang, en valdsam saltomorta
del, ett annat arhundrade, en varld dar Niet
enerar med Lou Salome, dar sommaren kom
see, dar Strindbergs gitarr klingar genom r
Ferkel i ett Berlin sa fyllt av genialitet och
ar mork, mork som morkret i den polske e

193.205.136.30 on Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:14:49 UTC
zewskis svarta ogon, en tid for irrlar

sallsamma elitteorier, en tid nar de in
stanga sina pannor blodiga mot lognens
sig om logn och sanning kanske inte a
och detsamma [p. 10-11].
(Tanned and fit as a young god, with

pile of books in the other, I climb
springboard dive, a violent somersa
another century, into a world where N
Salome, where summer comes acros
Strindberg's guitar twangs in the smok
a Berlin so filled with genius and coal
as the darkness in the black eyes o
Przybyszewski, a time of false dog
erodoxy, and strange elitist theories:
getting tired of beating their forehea
lies and instead start asking themselv
come to the same thing in the end [pp
The professor must bridge the apparent

for two reasons: (1) that is his job, (2) th
despair and hope- distant and alien th
shadow and a great light on America itse
En tid av stenkolsrok och absint,

hoppet och varje moralisk forpliktelse
snusbruna vindsrum eller pk pr
kurortsstrander vid Lago Maggiore [p
(A time of coal smoke and absinthe,

up hope, when every moral obligation
souls in sepia attics and during walks
Lago Maggiore, lined with health reso
This picturesque, history-book, scrap-b
leads to us: "Den tid nar v&ra egna katas
when our own catastrophes are being pr
of this whimsical book consists in maki
connect the old world to the new, that
nineteenth-century Europe a sign and

193.205.136.30 on Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:14:49 UTC
Where the historian might proceed in

novelist works more stealthily, more subve
at once a story of Texas and of Europe, a s
iniscences and also an anatomy of the soc
after Inferno. To achieve this simultaneit
separate things: inject past history into a liv
of the present in such a way that it resona
metaphoric extensions.
Hence, Gustafsson weaves into his accou
particular the circuitous journey of Bakun
Japan to San Francisco to New York to
apartment; thus, Herzen says in 1861 th
ogonblicket. . .forstod vi att aret 1848 ald
107]' " (" 'At that moment. . . we understo
in our hearts [p. 79]' "). And this, in turn
1968, the year of the last revolution, is s
Texas in 1974. The American view that th
mous is a cyclopic and tone-deaf view; no
event is without echo. The professor's sto
appears, and the individualist cult of the
into the ecosystem of history. It is not tru
("in reality you are no one"), that "det fi
den som du just har framfor dig" ("There
you've got in front of you"); the tennis met
New World, a blank slate, a timeless pres
nolla, som ett tecken utan mening h
("Empty, happily empty, like a zero, like a
just hung there ... [p. 27]"); but the entire
the other way, shows us that the moment is
sign can never, even in Texas, be without
The spectacle of Gustafsson's life in Au
ingly metaphoric as that of Strindberg's s
Verdi and Wagner is, as everybody comes
ridiculous) symbols, each profoundly ro
history, involving Democrats and Republi
trustees and faculty. No event in this boo
looks; things signal other things, hint at the
to be embedded and enmeshed in way
nowhere more in evidence that in Gustaf
Inferno, for it is in that treatment that we

193.205.136.30 on Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:14:49 UTC
In informing us how popular he was at

mentions another visiting professor, an In
for the Swede. These two Strangers are l
Gustafsson "av misstag holl pa att lagga e
'Inferno' pk samma timme som hans [pp.
put a seminar on Strindberg's Inferno in
which, we are assured, "holl . . . pii att u
14]" ("almost caused a campus riot [p. 6
Indian as a dark double for the Swede and
song "att hela verkligheten i grund och bo
oss sjalva [p. 13]" ("that all of reality is an
6]") as an alternative reading of Inferno
book would be a mystical, perhaps paranoi
now enters the Black graduate student B
Zygmunt I. Pietziewskoczky's Memoir es
evidence (sublimely invented by the auth
impact on all that seemed self-contained:
Inferno is the account of "real" ana
Strindberg may have thought he was recou
he was writing History; the doctors and
suffering from "nevrasteni, paranoia, ang
he was a more sensitized recorder of the
Bill's discovery places Inferno within a fa
the 19th century come to life:
For att komma till poangen: denna sa

neholl i ett av de sista kapitlen en fulls
alltsammans hade gktt till. August var
b&de han och hans lasare har misstagit s
grupp av polska landsflyktiga, vanner ti
till i v&ningen ovanfor Strindbergs pk H
tade, inte pk att doda honom, men pk at
hans guldmakeri for att storta samhallsor
enorma mangder guldfrancs pk den fra
gust holl pk att stryka med berodde helt
med en gas, som inslappt genom en vent
ingen ovanfor skulle sova ner honom til
kunna snyta hans anteckningar.
Under praktiskt taget hela Infernokri

verksamhet pkgktt, att de hade undgatt

193.205.136.30 on Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:14:49 UTC
enbart det faktum att August var sa barns

var tillvarons centrum att han nastan sjalvk
Makter som forfoljde honom [p. 34].
(To get to the point: in one of its last

memoir contains a complete confession
August was on the right track to begin wit
turned out to be mistaken. There was a gr
exile, friends of Przybyszewski's, who ga
above Strindberg's in the Hotel Orfila. The
but to find the secret behind his alchemy.
the social order by throwing huge amoun
French market. That August was almost
their experiments with some kind of gas w
apartment from the one above through a v
put him into a sleep just deep enough so
with his notes.
They had carried on this questionable ac
out the Inferno Crisis. Zygmunt ascribes
eluded detection to nothing more than A
that he was the center of the universe, a
assume the Powers were persecuting him
Memoires d'un Chimiste plays off of Inferno,

of Inferno, and each text must be seen as a
opening of what seemed closed and done. N
and the person-centered vision- whether it b
the critics of Inferno or Tennisspelarna, or of
the rocketing tennis ball- is liable to miss t
So it is time to reconsider Professor Gustaf
tin, Texas, but to widen our angle of vision
signs are in fact full. "Ja. Det var en lyc
happy time [p. 1]"), we are told at the outs
Gustafsson's America is, in a profound way,
socially as ontologically. These Americans a
Doobie is also the Lou Salome who captivated
Polly is revealed to be an American goddess
ogonblick visa sig for mig i sin ratta gesta
for a moment in her true shape [p. 90]"); Ch
cyberneticist, the Doctor Strangelove of the

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of the universe; and Abel is the philoso

Open and metaphysician of tennis. Th
Court, open to commoners and royalt
unparalleled mobility, where the laws
come. Sun-lit, it is an American parad
where Wagner's Norse hero is headed
ences a sense of pleasure in those prec
wonder that the ' 'other' ' book, the one
byr&kratiska labyrinten i sextiotalets
his way in the bureaucratic labyrinth
make much progress. Gustafsson's Te
radically unlike the tightly structured
blev for min romanhjalte i sitt vinterm
skrammande Sverige, desto lugnare o
torra, klara texanska morgon [p. 71]"
the protagonist of my novel in his wi
incomprehensible and frightening Sw
felt in my dry, clear Texas morning [
Austin, Texas, changes the Swede as
in alchemy, but the change is spiritua
ett fonster till det okanda [p. 15]" ("T
unknown [p. 7]"), and much like the l
window opens onto the unknown, hidd
egentligen bara ett satt [att gora en tenn
till den morka, den ordlosa sidan a
("There's really only one way [to m
yourself to the dark, wordless side of
sor tells us, and when he later mention
[p. 15]" ("My tan was dark as a black
that the American visit is an exercise
ethnic and racial diversity of the Unit
"realized" on the tennis court.
But there are other, still darker Americas to be recorded, and Gus-
tafsson is able to take their measure just as he moves into his own outer
reaches. What must Texas be for the visiting European? Cowboys, of
course. But in 1974 there is a new breed on hand:
Cowboyen rorde sig med bestamda steg och nar uret hogt uppe
i det hoga klocktornet slog fern tittade han pk sin egen silverrova och
okade farten. Det svartglansande laderholstret vid baltet inneholl

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naturHgtvis ingen Colt eller Peacemaker

Instruments. Det hade tagit mig ganska l
dessa manniskor pa universitetsomradet so
ter vid sina balten forvarade minicompute
grejor som raknar ut arcus, hyperboli
logaritmen, fakulteten, permutationen, fe
ranta pa ranta till vilket tal som heist inn
[pp. 20-21].
(The cowboy moved with determined gait. When the clock

high up in the bell tower struck five, he looked at his own silver
turnip pocketwatch and put on speed. Naturally the gleaming black-
leather holster on his belt didn't contain a Colt or a Peacemaker but
an SR-51 from Texas Instruments. It had taken quite a long time for
me to grasp that all those people on campus who carried heavy
black-leather holsters on their belts kept minicomputers in them.
Fabulous little gadgets that can calculate arcs, hyperbolic tangents,
logarithms, permutations, the square root of five, and the immediate
compound interest of whatever number you like before you even
have a chance to turn around [p. 11].)
The familiar icon of the cowboy is still there, but updated in such a
way that we ponder the transition from Colt to SR-51, ponder also the
linkages between revolvers and computers. Gustafsson is as surely working
with (American) mythology as Strindberg is (French) when he examines the
Hotel des Invalides. And we are meant to keep both guns and computers
alive in our mind, each as a figure of the other, even though the power
evolution would seem to have abandoned one for the other. We note, as
well, the discrete presence of the bell tower which authoritatively registers
time for Austin; Gustafsson then zeroes in on the tower, evoking its connec-
tion with the German past in Beethoven's Ninth and Schiller's Ode to Joy,
mentioning as well that it houses both the library and the university admin-
istration, and closing with the tradition of illuminating it with red lights
after each football victory, * 'vilket otvivelaktigt kom den att se ut som en
starkt erigerad manlig lem, en extatisk fallos som man kunde se pa langt
avstand nar man kom in och landade med flygplan [p. 23]" (" which defi-
nitely make it look like a stiff, erect, male member, an ecstatic phallus
which was even visible from the air as you came in for a landing [p. 13]").
The reader, sensitized to the multiple roles of the tower, momentarily " air-
borne" by the last phrase, is nonetheless unprepared for the paragraphs that

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follow, which begin innocuously eno

studenter hoppat ner friin tornet. Det v
bestamt en vacker, fyrtio grader het ju
students had jumped from the tower. Th
in 1966, more precisely on a beautiful
are plunged into 1966, and the Renoir-l
tradition: violence and massacre. Seemi
describes the gunning down of thirteen
the top of the tower, and it becomes clea
their revolvers has, as it were, "trigge
certain that the reader fully gauges th
tafsson adds, almost cavalierly, "Jag ta
s&dana dar vackra ungdomar som m&st
jord for ett vanvettigt, ett kriminellt
sadly of how many beautiful young pe
foreign Asiatic soil because of an insan
Tennis may be Gustafsson's private my
War certainly takes honors as the majo
1968 European mind. The Austin idyll i
and the scene begins to look as charged
hotel room. Indeed, one may not be goin
another speculation, by moving associa
this one in Dallas in 1963, this one equ
American psychic landscape. Open to s
surprises in Gustafsson's depiction of f
that the professor wants to introduce to
as "en av framtidens idrotter [p. 19]
10]"), and he adds, "Nar alia vira gamla
kommer frisbyen att dominera varlde
ballgames have died out, Frisbee will d
less enough, such language, but it doesn
described with scientific precision: "De
b&gar alltefter utg&ngshastighet, vink
g&ngslaget och en sex sju andra variab
20]" ("It rises, falls, swings in gentle p
angle, positive or negative spin at laun
ables that I'm not familiar with [p. 10]"
the description with a telling simil
markvardigt som elementarpartiklars [
is almost as remarkable as that of elem

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not to do a double-take here at Gustafsson's

rockets and missiles in all this chatter abou
ing the world and elementary particles. Yvo
to translate 'bagar' as 'parabolas' and 'utgan
American version of the novel. The gambit
its language, to make us see metaphoric ext
the past living in the present, to see the Am
imperialism lurking outside the tennis cour
We are expected to keep these alterna
minds, and therefore, when Chris, the te
happens to work at the Strategic Air Comm
his lodgings, the language is telling: "Det v
massor av bokhyllor och ett ordentligt astr
riktat mot balkongdorren [p. 60]" ("It was
lots of bookshelves and a real astronomica
the balcony doors [p. 41]"). On the face of
straightforward descriptive prose, but th
much any more, and we cannot fail to see
tower recalls all the power scenarios that
political, financial, athletic, intellectual and
Inferno at its hottest here, because the unsee
is behind appearances, is becoming so cogen
is intolerably clear; thus, we know that C
winningly) an element of a larger power c
system that rules over our own world. The
ers and computers has now borne fruit, and
the present are made and controlled by co
Gustafsson has been true to Strindberg, t
meditation about power and energy, and th
twilight of the gods.
In the most fascinating episode of the mod
Virgil to Gustafsson's Dante, and he escorts
New World, no longer the tennis court bu
power figures reign. The journey to this r
mans descend into the bowels of the earth
wasteland setting. Two elevators are neede
follows is a visit to the underworld. The n
citadel is entered: "Det rum vi kom in i kan
sa svagt upplyst av svaga punktvisa ljus och
mar att man ingenstans kunde urskilja

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room we entered may have been very lar

by weak, dotlike lights and terminal scre
that it was impossible to see the walls [
will, here is the Grand Laboratory that
Paris; Gustafsson has found it in the Strat
heart of the labyrinth we find nothing
modern minotaur:
Det var tydligen har som monstret var uppstallt. En andlos rad av
grona sk&p med rader av lampor som tandes och slacktes, mag-
netiska minnen pi bandspelarspolar som rullade fram och tillbaka
innanfor skyddande huvar av glas, skrivterminaler och bildskarmar
[p. 76].
(This was evidently where the monster had been set up. An endless
row of lamps that flickered and died, magnetic memory tapes rolling
back and forth inside protective glass shields, writing terminals and
screens [p. 54].)
Far now from the sunlit tennis court, we are dead center in the "tatnande
morker [p. 8]," that dark "gathering gloom [p. 2]," and there is no Sieg-
fried in sight. If Strindberg's text shows a revolutionary new sense of hu-
mans inscribed into a force-field that links them violently to each other and
the world, then Gustafsson comes at still a further nodal point, at a moment
in history when the electric circuits that the individual suffered in the past
have now been reassembled in their ultimate impersonal form: the com-
puter. Here, if ever, is an instance in which the recent book recalls the
earlier one, but it is well to measure the differences that such a comparison
brings to light.
The flowing energies of the world come to Strindberg as telepathy and
torture, as Mind. The electric currents that invade him are broadcasting the
story of his life, showing him that it is not over, never over. Tracked psychi-
cally by the powerful forces he was pursuing chemically, Strindberg is a
tragic figure of sublime economy: nothing is extraneous or alien in what he
sees or encounters, because it is revealed as a sign of his life, an annuncia-
tory emblem of his endless involvement with others. Moreover, we may say
that the channels of Inferno figure forth not only the neural circuitry of the
human brain but also the complex network of human sensations, the path-
ways of feeling as well as of thought. Strindberg apprehends the extended
contours of his life through suffering, and he is made to see that human
emotions- guilt, hate, desire- have common cause with electricity, cy-

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clones and water-wheels. The individual

affinities and linkages, but he is nonetheles
since his mind and body are the very scree
pens. Finally, it worth adding that Inferno i
that the gestures and feelings of one's past
cated in the events of one's life.
With all these factors in mind, we may
the eighty years between Strindberg and
outmoded unit of scale in the cybernetic s
Anonymous crew-cut figures gaze at a hu
chunk of the western hemisphere, and anyth
is immediately sighted and then "locked"
are very far from the individualist scenar
ghostly visitations or even the gunning dow
on the bell tower. The planet itself is now
feelings involved, nothing personal whatsoe
past, no human memory at all, since t
bandspelarspolar som rullade fram och til
av glas [p. 76]" ("magnetic memory tape
protective glass shields, writing terminals
over that function. Strindberg understood t
as power-broker, but in Gustafsson the elec
of the human mind and has moved into n
quarters. "[H]ela denna apparat med dod
machine [p. 56]"), anonymous and universal
great wheel that haunted Strindberg, th
against which there is no protection, and
surroundings amply proves that his interes
a tourist, but rather that of a historian-myt
the gods have stopped coming from machi
very machines themselves.26
Strindberg had charted, at the end of Infer
spiritual career, moving from believer to f
socialist and back again. In Tennisspelarna,
senseless, because the relationship of man
issue. When the Swedish professor asks th
EXIST?" the answer makes it patently clear
less in 1974: "INSTRUCTION INCOMP
revelation comes when the machine asks G
writes, "G0D," and the immediate respo

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FACT0RY." Strindberg had depicted th

into a pulsing system that pours the w
pretences of sanctuary, whereas Gust
prophetically taking Inferno to Austin
system discovered by Strindberg is al
portions and processed by computers,
that the "self" becomes a quaint, outda
than antiquated fables chronicled by a
In Tennisspelarna, the new god h
knowledge the name of the older one. I
When the professor sees the student agi
still alive, and when he hears the orche
ti-tam-ti-ti-daaa," his hopes rise that
ment: "Jag undrar hur m&nga som for
det var ett satt att tala om att de gam
kontrakten uppsagda [p. 108]" ("I won
the Siegfried Motif and that this was a
dead and that all the old contracts ha
is certain: the god-in-the-machine po
ganized as it was. In the Old Dispensati
individually, first for the one, then for
simultaneously for everyone. In the ol
comparing them meant respecting the
Kurt Godel,
"I princip kan man avbilda vilken struktur som heist bara den ar
differentierad och inneh&llsrik nog att fungera som bild. Du kan
gora en karta over Texas av brodsmulor och du kan avbilda Shake-
speare's 'Hamlet' some en produkt av primtal [p. 65]."
0 'In theory, it's possible to copy any structure on any other structure
as long as it's differentiated and has enough content to function as a
picture. You can make a map of Texas from bread crumbs and you
can picture Shakespeare's Hamlet as the product of indivisible num-
bers [p. 45].")
In the old world the number system had only ten integers; Godel changed
all that, too. In the old world, if you experienced humming in the ears and
knew that someone was in your room when you got there, they called it
paranoia (even if you knew better); in the new world, it is the planet not the
room that is being taken over, but the machines offer no more protection
than the doctors did, and academic psychiatry is absurdly unequal to the

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task: "Var det for resten over huvud taget

psykiatrin att bygga in jattelika, atomlad
bunkrar och lata dem styras av skumma elek
jorden? [pp. 93-94]" ("Anyway, could it b
modern psychiatry to build gigantic nuclear
kers and allow them to be governed by susp
the earth? [p. 68]"). Finally, for our purp
experienced, remembered, interpreted and c
their books; in the new world, in the final
machine has assumed those functions:
Men tanken pk den dar ensamma computorn, begraven fyrtio meter

under jordytan i en texansk oken, utrustad med en korprals er-
farenhet och matematikbegavningen hos en Einstein och Kepler
tillsammans, odsligt grubblande ar efter ar pa August Strindbergs
Makter och ater och iterigen genomspelande det drama som en g&ng
pa 1890-talet utspelades pa Hotell Orfila i Paris, hela dramat, i alia
dess varianter, med alia alternativdramer och mojliga forvecklingar
- den tanken ger mig ibland ett stank av daligt samvete [p. 124].
(But the thought of that lone computer, buried one hundred and fifty
feet underground in the Texas desert, equipped with the experience
of a corporal and the mathematical genius of an Einstein and a
Kepler combined, desolately ruminating year in and year out on
August Strindberg's Powers and running through, over and over
again, the drama that once was acted out at the Hotel Orfila in Paris,
in the 1890s, the whole drama with all its variants, with all the
alternative dramas and possible complications- sometimes that
thought gives me a twinge of bad conscience [p. 92].)
On the face of it, Gustafsson seems to have had his cake and eaten it, to
have written Tennisspelarna much the way the computer would have done it,
playing out all its variations, "alternativdramer och mojliga forvecklingar
[p. 124]" ("alternative dramas and possible complications [p. 92]"),
showing thereby the limitless permutations of his materials, the rich pos-
sibilities of semiosis itself, the seductive appeal of such an esthetic for any
writer who loves language. But Gustafsson has also taken that crucial final
step and taken the measure of his materials, recounted via his playful strat-
egy an American story of power. That story is, ultimately, inscribed in
history, and no amount of "Godel-transformation" will relativize it, alter
its status or change its meaning.

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In closing, it is worth saying that toda

equally drawn to all the endless permutat
the verbal consort of the text will enter
plicit preference for the text that "auth
ants." Yet, attention to the play of langu
Nor need it be blind to our ongoing nee
willing to privilege, because those pattern
are, but where we have been and where
intellectual procedure that is especially a
pattern that satisfies. To look for the seed
the shadow of the past in the present, t
story of the 1970s picks up and replays
crisis- all this is to express a belief (or,
tinuity. This study, it should be quite cle
comparison of two books, written (at
machine, written in the service of thos
memory and history.
1 Martin Lamm, Strindberg och makterna (Upp

bokforlag, 1936), p. 93.
2 Lars Gustafsson, "Strindberg as a Forerunne
Hero in Scandinavian Literature , eds. Weinsto
University of Texas, 1975), p. 136.
3 See Strindberg och makterna, passim.
4 Although Spinchorn's Strindberg as Dramat
1982) deals primarily with the drama, he also ha
"conversion" in the 1890s, and his remarks on t
(see, esp., pp. 75-102).
5 Mary Sandbach, in her fine "Introduction"
Classics, 1979), argues persuasively that Strindbe
afraid that it would be regarded as syphilis if it
August Strindberg, Inferno and From An O
mondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1979), p. 127.
7 William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and
and Prose of Blake (New York: Modern Librarv. 1953). d. 129.
8 Strindberg och makterna, pp. 64-65. My translation.
9 Vol, XI of Strindbergs Brev, ed. Torsten Eklund (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1969), pp.
268-69. The translation comes from Mary Sandbach's "Introduction" (p. 56). It is
interesting that Sandbach adds, after quoting this remarkable passage, "What had been a
game had now become an obsession," thereby demonstrating the kind of normative
thinking that characterizes so much Strindberg criticism.
10 August Strindberg, Inferno (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1912), p. 115. All subsequent
quotations from the original Swedish will be taken from this widespread edition and noted

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parenthetically in the body of the text. The use in s

the present tense of the verb "to have" (i.e., "nan")
translations that follow the Swedish are taken from
noted; page references will be noted in the body of th
Strindberg's comparison of earth to a "straffkolo
great step to be taken in order to arrive at Kafka's g
too, being a meditation on language and power, as w
12 See Sandbach's subchapter in her "Introducti
ferno," in which she juxtaposes diary entries and
Inferno, so as to illuminate Strindberg's alterations
just what is being proven.
13 See Karl Jaspers' famous Strindberg und Van Gog
Analyse unter vergleichender Heranziehung von Swed
1950), passim, for an old, but nonetheless compe
Strindberg's "testing" mania along lines of neuros
particularly drawn to Strindberg's astounding luc
disturbances.
See also, in this context, the famous 8th Scene of Till Damaskus, HI, in which
Strindberg presents two-headed portraits of Boccaccio, Luther, Gustav Adolf, Schiller,
Goethe, Voltaire, Napoleon, Victor Hugo, Leopold von Stolberg, Lafayette and Bismarck,
demonstrating not so much an ironic reading of these historical figures as a profound
skepticism regarding the so-called unified self, the integral self that stands unequivocally
for one thing.
15 Lamm has pointed out the relentless egoism of Strindberg's project: "Efter genom-
gangen religios kris ar han mer an nagonsin overtygad om att allt som hander honom och
hans omgivning, blott har en enda mening, att fresta, prova, straffa eller belona honom
sjalv [Strindberg och makterna, p. 138]" ("Having undergone this religious crisis, he is
more than ever convinced that everything that happens to him or to his surroundings has
only one meaning: to tempt, to try, to punish or to reward himself"). My translation.
16 As Spinchorn and others have pointed out, Strindberg later "discovered" these
symptoms to be exactly what Swedenborg had described in the experience of " vastation. ' '
17 Goran Stockenstrom, in Ismael i oknen: Strindberg som mystiker (Uppsala: Acta
Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1972), has suggested that the "humming" and "God's mills"
are connected in Strindberg's mind to a process of purification: "Forestallningen om
varldskvarnen far hos Strindberg symboliskt tolka skuldrevyn som slutmoment i den
moraliska reningsprocess, som adminstrerades av tuktoandarna under den Eviges uppsikt
[p. 192]" ("The concept of the 'Mill of the universe' symbolizes in Strindberg the
awareness of one's guilt as the last stage of the moral purification process that is adminis-
tered by the avenging angels under the supervision of the Eternal one"). My translation.
18 Quoted in Lars Gustafsson's Strandhugg i svenskpoesi (Kristianstad: FIB, 1977), p.
23. The English version is that of Robert Rovinsky, in his English translation of Gus-
tafsson's text, Forays into Swedish Poetry (Austin: University of Texas, 1978), d. 21.
19 Ibid., p. 25. Translation by Robert Rovinsky, p. 23.
20 Lamm has commented on the common propensity in Swedenborg as well as in
Strindberg to label each and every personal or chance occurrence a sign of the powers:
"Tandvark, klada, bristande matlust och obehagliga smaksensationer aro hos Swedenborg
vallade av andar och hos Strindberg av makterna [Strindberg och makterna, p. 143]"
("Toothache, itching, lack of appetite, unpleasant taste experiences are caused by spirits in

193.205.136.30 on Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:14:49 UTC
Swedenborg and by powers in Strindberg" [my

biography of Strindberg, he recounts the fo
Strindberg's Parisian acquaintance Frederick De
His [Strindberg's] interest in spirits caused Le

I asked them both to my rooms one evening, an
stance in the form of table rapping. The ligh
hands around a small table. After ten minutes
rap and Leclerc asked it what message the spirit
out was M, and with each letter Strindberg's
increase, and slowly came the momentous le
quite ever forgave us for this . . . [Strindberg
House, 1985), p. 335].
21 The "Epilogue" to Inferno is intriguing alon

view his own travails finally as a cog in the gr
skall vanda mitt ansikte emot en sadan man och
bliva till en varnagel och till ett atloje for alia,
och i skolen erfara, att jag ar Herren [pp. 174-
man, and will make him a sign and a proverb, and
people, and ye shall know that I am the Lord [p
word for 'atloje' in the 1822 French Bible from
which she terms 'laughing-stock', but which can
marionnette, plaything.
22 Olof Lagercrantz, August Strindberg (Stoc
pp. 442-46.
23 Consider, in this regard, a remarkable letter written by Strindberg to Lidforss in
1894:
Vet du hvad Sansclou ar? Buff on skrifver att man in hanars sadesledare funnit
befruktade agg. Sansclou ar en Droppel. En Droppel ar en suite af hopad sad,
manlig, i en vagina. Om nu en man bestiger en af sad ofverhopad kona, kan han fa
annans mans sad i sina ledande artiklar eller testiklar, och sa gro frona, och den
sansclouerade mannen befinner sig i en pervers grossess som dock afstannar
genom temperaturens sankande (isblasor!). . . Allt ar i allt, och allt flyter, tillock-
med sad. Lifmodrarne aro endast fogelbon i hvilka hannen 1 agger sina a*gg
[Strindbergs Brev, IX, ed. Torsten Eklund (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1965), pp. 357-
58].
(Do you know what sansclou are? Buffon writes that fuctified eggs have been
found in men's penises. Sansclou are a Droppel. A Droppel is a heap of male semen
found in a vagina. Now, if one mounts a woman over-filled with semen, a man can
get another man's semen in his penis or testicles, and so the seeds grow and the
sanscloued man finds himself in a perverse state of pregnancy which, however, is
stopped by the lowering of temperature (ice-bags!). . .Everything is in everything,
and everything moves, even semen. Wombs are only birds' nests in which the
cock lays his eggs [Meyer, Strindberg: A Biography, pp. 288-289].)
There is an amazing sense of multi-directionality expressed in this letter, and we can see
that Strindberg's exquisite sense of vulnerability stems, at least in part, from a view of the

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world as absolutely "charged," bristling with anarch

paradigms of active/passive or actor/recipient or subjec
24 Sandbach, "Introduction,/" p. 23.
25 Lars Gustafsson, Tennisspelarna (Stockholm: N
sequent quotations will be taken from this edition an
the body of the text. The English that follows the S
translation, The Tennis Players (New York: New Di
quotations will be taken from this edition and will be n
26 Gustafsson's interest in machines is, of course, w
title; yet, he deals more fully and perhaps more poeti
biodlares dod, especially in that sequence of chapte
PA ON OG" and the two that follow it (Sprickorna i m
pp. 693-98); here, he tries out a spectrum of narrative p
the models of the sci-fi story, the clinical description o
"realist" sensations of his dying protagonist.

193.205.136.30 on Tue, 12 Jan 2021 23:14:49 UTC

Weinstein - The Powers and The Self. Strindberg's Inferno and Gustafsson's Tennisspelarna

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Weinstein - The Powers and The Self. Strindberg's Inferno and Gustafsson's Tennisspelarna

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THE POWERS AND THE SELF: STRINDBERG'S "INFERNO" AND GUSTAFSSON'S

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40918826

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Gustafsson's 1977 novel, Tennisspelarna, hardly seemed an ep

Scandinavian Studies 59 (1987):46-85

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whereas it should be seen as something la

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goes beyond the confines of the ele

If the doors of perception were cleanse

Behind Blake, of course, there stand

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not surprisingly, has interpreted Strindber

. . . Hallucinationer, fantasier, dromma

( . . . Hallucinations, fantasies, dreams, se

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came from an empty hall under the eart

There is something very special in this

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of sublimated guilt, and once again, one feels

Det ar for galet med en sadan circulus vitios

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ungdom var jag en uppriktigt troende,

(Fantastic, but exactly the vicious

In this passage we see the pre-eminent

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world's manifold interconnectedness.15 We

Trad in ensam nattetid i din kammare, o

Varldskvarnen, Guds kvarn, det ar tva uttryck som kommit i

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(Enter your room alone at night-ti

Much of the force of Inferno is cau

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image is, it recovers some of its disturbing

Mork ar backen, morkt ar huset-

(Dark is the hill, dark the house-

Gustafsson himself has offered one of the most eloquent commentaries

Kan man tanka sig en battre bild av Freuds undermedvetna an den

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(Where could we find a better metapho

But Gustafsson's most interesting observation has to do with the astonishing

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Inferno is a nodal text because it offers us a

Det hander i hotellet saker som oroa m

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En annan gang ar det ett svenskt nam

(Disquieting things happened in the

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of analytical chemists. In fact, someone was

This was a state of suspense and the perpetual threat of venge-

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mysterious Mr X, as safe and distant in

Jag spetsar orat sasom stridshasten vi

(I pricked up my ears like a charger at the blast of a trumpet. I

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world is filled with ghosts, avenging angels th

Trad in ensam nattetid i din kammare, och

In the haunting, lurking presence of Popoffsky, we may discern the begin-

I borjan av juli blev hotellet overgivet av studenterna, som

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komsten av en framling, som inlogera

Although the passage stresses physical separation (wooden partition, other

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