Legends: Autobiographical SketchesStrindberg, August
General
Legends: Autobiographical Sketches
Strindberg, August
Dramatists, Swedish -- 19th century -- Biography; Strindberg, August, 1849-1912
While the above narrative with its details is fresh in the reader's
memory, I will introduce another, which, through its connection
with the former, may perhaps bring us a little nearer our goal. On
the first of May I went pretty early through the Park to eat dinner
with a school-master. When we had sat down at a table in the large,
open balcony, which was empty, I suddenly experienced a feeling of
discomfort, and as I turned round on my chair I perceived a man of very
questionable appearance, and with an unsteady, irresolute expression in
his eyes.
"Who is that?" I asked my companion, who was an old inhabitant of Lund,
and knew the whole population.
"A foreigner, certainly."
The stranger, bare-headed and silent, came near, and, when he stood
directly in front of me, he regarded me with such a piercing look that
I felt a burning pain in my breast. We changed our seats. The man
followed us without breaking silence. His looks were neither malicious
nor severe, but rather melancholy and expressionless like those of a
somnambulist. Then I had a recollection, which was too vague to be
conscious, and addressed a question to my companion. "That man there
resembles one of our friends, but which of them?"
"Yes, certainly; he is just like what our friend Martin would be at
forty-five."
At this moment there sprang up from a mass of confused memories the
Berlin Lavatory and "Friend Martin" (as the unfortunate doctor was
called), pursued by this stranger.
Meanwhile the man had taken a seat near us and turned his back. How
great was my astonishment when I noticed a protuberance on his neck!
In order to clear up the matter, I asked my companion, "Can you see a
protuberance on this fellow's neck?"
"Yes, distinctly. What of that?"
I did not answer, because it would have been too long a story. Besides,
the school-master was a declared foe of occultism.
The same evening I saw Friend Martin in the middle of a swarm of
students. Without beating about the bush I asked him directly, "Where
were you to-day between one and two o'clock?"
"Why? Why do you ask that?" And he looked embarrassed as he spoke.
"Only answer my question."
"I was asleep. I am not accustomed to sleep in the day, and therefore
your question embarrassed me."
"And yet you go outside and roam about during your sleep."
"It looks like it, for some days ago, while I slept, I saw the fire
which had broken out in the Museum. That is the simple truth."
After this admission on his part, I described to him the appearance in
the Park, and compared it with what he had seen in Berlin.
But he was in good spirits, and though the protuberance in the neck
made him shudder, he exclaimed, "The description fits to a T. It is my
double!"
And we both laughed.
* * * * *
I pause here for a moment in order to expound the possible theories of
the phenomenon known as a man's "double" (_doppelgänger_).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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