(Rapport från ett föredrag jag bevistade i måndags. På engelska, då texten även
går i andra fora där kunskaper i svenska är förvånansvärt bristfälliga. Den
Henrik Johnsson som pratade misstänker jag f ö starkt är samma HJ som en viss
Rickard Berghorn kände en gång i tiden. Så kan det gå. --AE)
Strindberg, Science and the Occult
Author and playwright August Strindberg (1849-1912) is together with Astrid
Lindgren Sweden's perhaps most well-known writer,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Strindberg. ;(If we leave out recent
Larssons and Mankells of more criminal inclination.) Besides writing plays like
"A Dream Play", "The Father" and "Miss Julie" he was intensely interested in
philosophy, science, chemistry and the occult. He worked with telegraphy in his
youth and was an enthusiastic photographer. He wrote non-fiction books with his
thoughts on science, much of which we today would consider pseudoscience. Much
of this took place in the 1890's when Strindberg had psychic breakdowns known
as the "inferno crisis". This was also the time when Strindberg after having
earlier cracked down on religionbecame religious, in an "Old Testament manner".
This is covered in the new book by Henrik Johnsson, Det oändliga sammanhanget
(title means "The Eternal Circumstances"; Malört förlag, 2015,
http://www.malortforlag.se ;), and Monday February 23rd he talked about his
Strindberg research, in the beautiful main hall of the Stockholm City Library
(the main branch, built by the famed architect Gunnar Asplund). The Johnsson
wrote his PhD thesis on Strindberg and occultism and is presently teaching at
Aahus University in Denmark. Johnsson's lecture was very popular and the
library had to set up a new section with extra chairs for the crowd listening.
Strindberg's basic worldview early on was rationality and what Johnson called
"evolution morality", inspired by Darwin, but during the inferno crisis he
drifted into all kinds of fringe teachings. He was living in Paris and got in
touch with French alchemists and Strindberg experimented with making gold in
his hotel room. This sounds like a wasted effort today, but in atomic theory
and inalterable elements wasn't universally accepted in the 1890's. Strindberg
leaned towards a monistic theory where everything consisted of basic "monads"
which could evolve into different manifestations. Just as a snail can evolve
into a clam - it can't, of course - lead may become gold.
Another of his experiments were the so called "celestographs" (see examples
http://www.sfoto.se/f/artiklar/fotografen-august-strindberg ;) where he took
pictures of the night sky without lenses. Strindberg corresponded with
scientists like Ernst Haeckel and was interested in using science to gain
knowledge of metaphysics in some sort of "religious science". He became very
interested in the 18th century mystic, philosopher and scientist Emmanuel
Swedenborg and studied Carl Linnaeus. Metaphysics and the occult could "lead to
God", he thought, when ordinary science can't be used, but after that faith had
to taker over. Strindberg "accepted God, but not Jesus", ie he was against the
trinity launched in the New Testament. He thought he saw "signs" of a hidden
reality all around him, and that and objective and a subjective reality existed
side by side. This is recorded in his The Occult Diary, written 1896-1906 (see
https://www.wdl.org/en/item/14294/ ;). Many of Strindberg's weird ideas, often
bordering science, are to befound in his 1000+ pages En blå bok ("A Blue Book",
1907, see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44118)
But he denounced spiritism, talking to the dead and things like that ("It's
only women and Far East and Mahatmas, and not science"). Johnson called
Strindberg one of the first modernists, before modernism really existed.
Wikipedia calls his play "The Ghost Sonata" a "key text in the development of
modernism drama...a world in which ghosts walk in bright daylight, a beautiful
woman is transformed into a mummy and lives in the closet, and the household
cook sucks all the nourishment out of the food before she serves it to her
masters." Modernism has roots in the occult, Johnson claimed. The surrealists
were for instance very interested in paraphysics phenomena, seances and other
stuff out of this world.
When audience input was welcomed I raised my hand and asked Johnson about if
Strindberg also studied Newton. This great scientist was also into gold making
and Newton too denounced trinity. The lecturer looked into the index of his
book and answered that Newton is covered on three pages.
Strindberg never received the Nobel Prize. He was too radical for the members
of the Swedish Academy. But when he died, of stomach cancer in 1912, his
funeral march was followed by 60 000 stockholmers.
--Ahrvid
Ps. I have earlier, in Swedish, reviewed a book about Strindberg and his last
home, Strindberg i Blå Tornet, the "Blue Tower"
(//www.freelists.org/post/skriva/Strindberg-i-Bl-Tornet , the links in the ;
text leads to pictures of Strindberg's apartment), now restored, as a
Strindberg museum, to what it was when he lived there.
--
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