Legends: Autobiographical SketchesStrindberg, August
General
Legends: Autobiographical Sketches
Strindberg, August
Dramatists, Swedish -- 19th century -- Biography; Strindberg, August, 1849-1912
Between a married pair the invisible bond often develops itself in a
mediumistic fashion. They can call each other from a distance, read
each other's thoughts, and practise mutual "suggestion" when they
like. They no longer feel the need of speech; the mere presence of the
beloved gives joy, her soul radiates warmth. When they are divided the
bond between them expands; the sense of longing and pining increases
with distance, sometimes to such a degree as to involve the breaking of
the bond, and thereby death.
For many years I have taken notes of all y dreams, and have arrived
at the conviction lat mail leads a double life, that imaginations,
fancies, and dreams possess a kind of reality.
So that we are all of us spiritual somnambulists, and in dreams commit
acts which, according to their varying character, accompany us when we
are awake with feelings of satisfaction or an evil conscience and fears
of the consequences. And from reasons, which I reserve the right to
explain some other time, I believe that the so-called persecution-mania
really springs from pains of conscience after evil deeds which one
has committed in sleep, and of which vague recollections haunt us.
The imaginations of the poet, which prosaic, souls so despise, are
realities.
"And what about death?" you ask.
To the brave man who does not set too great a value on life, I would
at an earlier stage of my experience have recommended the following
experiment, which I have repeatedly made, not without troublesome, but
in all cases easily cured, physical results.
After closing windows, doors, and the stove-flue, I place an open
bottle containing cyan-kalium on the table and lie down on the bed. The
carbonic acid in the air liberates in a little time the cyanic acid
in the bottle, and the well-known physical symptoms follow--a slight
throbbing of the throat, and an indescribable taste in the mouth, which
I might by analogy call "cyanic," paralysis of the biceps-muscle, and
pain in the stomach. The deadly effect of cyanic acid remains still a
mystery. Different authorities ascribe different methods of operation
to this poison. One says, "paralysis of the brain"; another, "paralysis
of the heart"; a third, "suffocation as a secondary consequence of the
medulla oblongata being attacked," etc.
But since the effect may show itself at once, before absorption has
taken place, the method of operation must be regarded much more as
psychical, especially when one has regard to the use of cyanic acid in
medicine as a quieting remedy in so-called nervous diseases.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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