Zones of the Spirit: A Book of ThoughtsStrindberg, August
Religion
Zones of the Spirit: A Book of Thoughts
Strindberg, August
Swedish literature
=Morse Telepathy.=--The pupil continued: "I was spending one
evening at home alone; I did not know where she was, but had the
feeling that she was lost to me. At 10.40 p.m. I was aware of a passing
breath of perfume. Then I said to myself, 'She has been in the theatre!
But in which?' I took the daily paper, read the theatre advertisements,
and found that one theatre closed at 10.40. Further inquiry proved that
my surmise was right.
"On another occasion when in company I broke off a lively conversation
with a smile. 'What are you smiling at?' 'Just now the train from the
south entered the terminus.' Another time under similar circumstances
I said: 'Now the curtain falls on the last act in _Helsingfors_!' and
I heard the applause which greeted the prima donna who had played in
my piece. The conversation of the people in the restaurant after the
conclusion of the piece sounded like ringing in my ears. I can hear
that as far as from Germany when a prima donna is acting in one of my
pieces there, although I do not know beforehand that it is going to
be played. One evening I had gone to bed about half-past nine, and
was awoken about half-past eleven by a smell of punch and tobacco and
in the impression that two of my acquaintances in a café were talking
about me. I had every reason to believe that I had been present there
in some way or another, but I was so accustomed to this phenomenon that
this time I did not test it. Flammarion gives a hundred such cases in
his book _The Unknown_."
=Nisus Formativus, or Unconscious Sculpture.=--The pupil
continued: "Once I signed a contract with a merchant. After sleeping
the night over it, I noticed that he had cheated me. With angry
thoughts I went out for my morning stroll. When I came back I wished
to change my clothes, and threw my handkerchief on the table. After I
had undressed myself I noticed that the handkerchief had been crumpled
together by my nervous clutch, and now, where it lay, formed a cast
of the merchant's head, like a plaster-of-Paris bust. The question
arises: Had my hand unconsciously formed an image of my thoughts? Linen
is a very plastic material, and one often finds excellent pieces of
'sculpture' in handkerchiefs, sheets, and cushions. When a married
man comes home with his wife from a ball, he should look at the
handkerchief chief which she has held the whole evening in her hand,
and then perhaps he might see with whom she preferred most to dance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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