AND THE THEORY OF CORRESPONDENCES: AN ESOTERIC COMPLEX OF IDEAS AND A POETICS

Ancient philosophy was a way of life as well as an intellectual method premised on the trinity of existence (physical, mental and spiritual); a trinity subject to the laws of rationality. In a similar manner, for Emanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish scientist, scholar and theosophist, who epitomizes the ideas and the criteria of the Enlightenment, the need for rationality and the benefits one could derive from the acquisition of knowledge are of prime importance to humanity. These benefits involve the formation of a powerful balancing consciousness, capable of pushing the world ahead and accelerating the evolution of rational nature, whose slower progress is determined by the norms and the conditions of whatever is universally accepted as natural. It is no accident, then, that among his favorite interlocutors in the beyond we see the names of Aristotle (384-322) and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716). Like them, Swedenborg draws upon the visible and the familiar in order to picture the invisible and the unfamiliar, in order to gain an insight into the transcendental plane that he will recreate in the form of a philosophical system based on logic. “It looks as if the simple is less perfect than the complex, but the simple from which the complex originates, is perfect”¹, he asserts in his Sapientia angelica de divina providentia (Angelic Wisdom Concerning Divine Providence, 1764). Such an emblematic summation of Swedenborg’s quest in the sphere of Naturphilosophie and religion sounds fully acceptable even at the turn of the 20th century, when August Strindberg makes of it a motto of the first piece in a series of articles entitled “A Religious Renaissance, or Religion against Theology” (the articles appeared in the form of a booklet in 1910). The statement holds true even today, or it could actually have been formulated by, say, Aristotle, with whom Swedenborg has an affinity on the basis of his belief in the attainable reality of “knowledge without bounds”, if we borrow the phrase of American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), who is another disciple of the Swedish thinker. 

Empiricist and mystic, Swedenborg epitomizes the duality of his age, a time which combines the clarity and the irrefutable power of reason with a penchant for the irrational, the occult, and the elaborately obscure. In short, it is a time that combines mechanicism (the dominant view that brings together most of the representatives of the age) with the metaphysical instinct, which often prevails over the mechanicist streak. In forming his worldview and his concepts, Swedenborg draws upon the available scientific and spiritual experience, on the basis of which he constructs the grand edifice of his philosophical and religious system. Its key building block is the doctrine of correspondences, which is based on the idea about the spiritual projections of objects and phenomena in the physical world; the doctrine makes use of the method of analogy, which is a key tool in art and literature for the creation and decoding of the associative imagery and the symbolism of aesthetic works ( the importance of this method finds its confirmation in a considerable part of August Strindberg’s work).

   This paper is devoted to tracing the impact of Swedenborgianism on August Strindberg as a writer who shows a marked preference for encyclopedic synthesis. In this synthetic worldview we discern elements of ancient Gnostic schools; Aristotelian logic and metaphysics; mysticism combined with then contemporary theoretical approaches and categories; scientific discoveries that have crucial applications; not only visions but also well-founded statements about mankind’s historical and meta-historical development, and more specifically about mankind’s technological, social and cultural progress, about its potential to overcome the increasing vacuum in the sphere of the spiritual, which a hypertrophic science will prove powerless to fill. 

Elaborating on this subject involves, on the one hand, tracing and highlighting the similarities between the two great Swedes and the ages they lived in, while at the same time pointing out the differences between them. These differences, however, do not challenge the rationale for drawing a parallel, nor do they undermine the statement of an analogy between the two, both in the broad and in the strict sense of the word. There is actually an analogy here in the truly Swedenborgian sense of the word, i.e. as a synonym of harmony.  The common ground between the writer and the mystic amounts to their similar perception of the Universe as an infinite totality of mutually related worlds, as some kind of  prosody or a majestic poem made of rhythms and symbols. The doctrine of correspondences has been transformed into a peculiar aesthetic formula, a mathematically designed and calculated yet romantically elevated dream of a visionary access beyond the veil of Nature and discursive language. The yearning for whatever lies beyond the phenomenal world is peculiar to the worldview and the spirit of Romanticism, whose forerunner and revered icon Swedenborg is. Strindberg actually incorporates Swedenborgianism into his own specific complex of ideas and aesthetic perceptions, which corresponds to a particular outlook on life. This complex has provided impetus for a poeticized recreation of the absolute, which has contributed to the development of a radically new way of writing. It has made possible the structural and stylistic experiments within the framework of modernism, which have opened up the space for dynamic transformations in the sphere of art. For the Author of Heaven and Hell, A Hieroglyphic Key to Natural and Spiritual Arcana, as well as for the author of Inferno, The Road to Damascus, Dream Play, Ghost Sonata, everything – objects and phenomena, words and elements, natural conditions and emotions – have a meaning that lies beyond the quotidian, beyond what we regard as instinctive. They are all correspondences and symbols of higher truths. Like all components of the visible world, they form a totality, in which the correlated meanings, or reversible parallelisms, are defined by the analogies between them as the clauses of the same law, as isomorphic presences, as identical ensembles. Analogy therefore is a parallel structure; correspondence is a parallel function. Analogy is the correlation between two or more entities; correspondence is the correlation between two or more parts. In this line of thought one could refer to a specific form of dialogue between Swedenborg and Strindberg, which spans across the centuries, and which seems to be intensified with time. One could think of this dialogue as  an analogy, which builds through its correspondences something more than just similarity: it builds a common system of multifaceted interpenetration, whereby remote spiritual traditions and aspirations, radically different alternatives to a particular state of affairs (be it religious, political or cultural), two completely different personalities and temperaments end up projected onto the plane of a primordial artistic and conceptual movement, known as philosophia perennis. Its very name points to a continuity in the sphere of knowledge, a continuity of amazing scope and profundity. Italian humanist Agostino Steuco (1497-1548) was the first to use this appellation, it was later reaffirmed by Leibnitz, perpetuated in the modern age by, say, Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), and popularized by such iconic novels as Herman Hesse’s (1877-1962) The Glass Bead Game. Philosophia perennis is a form of intellectual continuity rooted in an ancient perception of man’s affinity with the universal. This intellectual tendency constitutes an inseparable part of the world’s esoteric tradition, which is not so much a doctrine as it is an authentic, practically oriented school of thought, promoting a transformation of the spiritual inner world as well as a  reinforcement, over the ages, of the uniform core amidst the diversity of religious cults and forms of worship. Such intellectual orientation leads to a specific mental, emotional and physical attitude, which could provide an insight into the hidden dimension of the order of the universe, more specifically an insight into the very constitution of the different worlds. Reason is seen here as a “portal” between the inner and the outer world and in this perspective the transcendental is an immanent characteristic of the earthly, the physical, and the graspable. Undoubtedly, such a tremendous leap of the intellect and the imagination also appealed to Strindberg , who, despite his aspiration towards factual knowledge, reached towards extra-empirical, trans-physical experiences and experiments, as well as towards the accumulation of a truly impressive erudition. His model in this respect was Swedenborg, who does not seem to have been concerned about his teachings bearing the imprint of ideas borrowed from both contemporary and ancient philosophers. He considered the world of thought and spirit as infinite; at the same time, he was well aware of the limitations of his own intellect, however developed or downright powerful it might be; he perceived knowledge as a given, neither impersonal, nor objective in the abstract sense of the word, but closely connected with the subject who possesses it. Contrary to the belief, dominant in philosophy from Aristotle to Averroes and from St. Thomas Aquinas to Descartes, Swedenborg’s view does not presuppose a severing the ties between knowledge and the knower, between the object and the subject, between the outer world and the inner world. Such a perception provides scope for myth-creation, which has inspired, over the centuries, poetic frescoes or cosmogonic epics by many a poet and prose writer, such as Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843), Novalis (1772-1801), Victor Hugo (1802-1885), Gérard de Nerval (1808-1926), Paul Claudel (1868-1955), Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Octavio Paz (1914-1998)… One could add more names to this list, and they would all be the names of authors who have pursued an absolute goal: to transcend the barriers of words in order to break into the space of the universal and the symbolic reflections that mirror it. 

Analogy, in contrast to irony, which according to Octavio Paz is the guise it assumes after the modernist transfigurations, does not originate from linear time, i.e. time that runs only one way. Instead, it possesses the characteristics of the cycle, in which the present is an alloy of the past and the future. This is the temporal dimension we associate with myth, whose foundation lies in analogy; analogy is the skeleton and a manifestation of the order of Creation, an open fan of innumerable correspondences (the simile belongs to Octavio Paz). The perception of myth, proposed by Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), as a symbolic theatre of the inner and outer battles that man has fought in the course of his evolution, as well as his understanding of myth as a homogeneous story that incorporates a number of analogical situations, thus highlighting constant relationships, i.e. structures – such a view of myth would certainly have appealed to Swedenborg. This attitude would have been shared by Strindberg, whose interest in the mythopoetic, barely studied even today, lies at the core of all his works, and is well documented in many of his letters and essays. This streak is, of course, most prominent in Strindberg’s Occult Diary, whose composition coincides with the writer’s spiritual and religious crisis of the 1890s. According to Harry G. Carlsson, this tendency in Strindberg’s work is particularly notable in The Road to Damascus (1898-1904), which, with its aesthetic and its ideology, is one of the most remarkable and revolutionary plays in the history of the dramatic art. In this play, Carlsson argues, Strindberg resorts to the polyphonic mythical hero, in whose image we identify the author himself in this particular period of his life. The complexity of the image is undoubtedly due to the writer’s preoccupation with the revival of Hermeticism in the mid-1890s, especially in Paris (the development involved a revived interest in alchemy, Kabbalah, Indian philosophical teachings…). The image should also be associated with the impact of Swedenborgianism, from which (like Blake, Balzac and Baudelaire) Strindberg borrowed the principle of the quest for and the formulation of analogies on all existential levels. The Swedish playwright has also applied this principle in other metaphysical and symbolic interpretations on the subject of “the stages in personal growth” or the meaning of existence. The principle appears in an archetypal and prospective guise in Dream Play and The Great Highway; it appears in the form of religiously and mythically informed versions of ancient and quaint plots in Simoom, Advent, There Are Crimes and Crimes as well as in his chamber plays, among others. In these works we can discern numerous traces of the doctrine of correspondences. We can find here a phenomenology of esoteric knowledge about the true and the apparent, about the absolute and the relative. This phenomenology provides us with a clue to an interpretation of the universal and the microcosmic dimensions; it gives guidelines as to the direction one should follow in order to cover the long distance between the individual and the universal. The route is not only symbolically available but is also delineated through the key postulates of the system.             

    “What is above is what is below and what is below is what is above”² – this maxim conveys one of the key messages of Hermetic philosophy; it also constitutes a synthesized expression of the doctrine of correspondences. Applied to the physical world, the maxim aims to represent it as a miracle, as a receptacle of mysteries and messages; a receptacle accessible only on condition that its primordial code is accurately interpreted. Such interpretation could be achieved through analytical knowledge, but also through intuition and artistic invention. According to the view put forward in Lynn R. Wilkinson’s book The Dream of an Absolute Language (1996), the rationalist aspects of Swedenborg’s doctrine of correspondences are the ones that attracted the writers and literary theorists of the 19th century. In France, Wilkinson points out, as well as in England and Germany, the concept of a language of nature was a common term in the philosophy and aesthetics of the 18th century. The only difference consists in the French authors’ tendency to perceive the language of nature as a-historical, i.e. akin to the immutable structures of logic and mathematics, whereas Swedenborg’s doctrine of correspondences views this language as, on the one hand, mediating between science and theology, and on the other as highlighting the inner logic under the surface of the corrupted world. Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), Charles Baudelaire (1821- 1867), Stephan Mallarmé (1842-1898) and Stendhal (1783-1842) are among the most eminent advocates of this dimension of Swedenborg’s philosophy of nature. For them, Swedenborg was a prominent bearer of the 17th and 18th century idea of a universal language that could convey thoughts with the accuracy of mathematics (Leibnitz’s characteristica universlis, for instance, represents this idea). Swedenborg’s doctrine was also a stimulus for the abovementioned French writers in their quest for transcendental artistic expression. For some more politically and socially oriented authors (Charles Fourier 1772-1837, Louis de Bonald 1754-1840, Joseph de Maistre 1753-1821) the doctrine provided the basis for different, often diametrically opposed, views on the ideal public order. In fact, each of these writers and thinkers interpreted and applied the doctrine in their own way and contributed to its popularization not only in France but in other parts of Europe as well. We witness the same pattern of publicity in the case of Strindberg, whose specific reception has been well documented. 

It is well known that the writer’s worldview draws largely upon Darwin-Spencer’s theories of evolution as well as upon the messages of Georg Brandes (1842-1927) and The Modern Breakthrough movement in Scandinavia. Another notable influence is the aesthetics of naturalism, more specifically the belief of many of its theorists and practitioners that there exists a coincidence between social and biological phenomena. Strindberg’s ideology was also shaped by Nietschean ideas and by his own interests and experiments in the theory and the practice of science, which provided him with a reassuringly neutral attitude and language. As a result of his deep religious and psychological mid-life crisis in the 1890s, similar to the crisis that overcame Swedenborg in the 1740s, Strindberg found himself on the threshold of “the mental gate” to transcendental realities, which crystallized in his dreams and in his hallucinatory visions with an astonishing, often scary, vividness. This “mystical death”, or this “night of fire”, as some refer to the spiritual and creative slump, which is part of the biography of figures such as Dante, St Augustine and Pascal, shapes the contours of a painfully transcendental consciousness and constitutes a transition to a new beginning. It could be viewed as a precarious yet inevitable initiation, from which the two great Swedes emerge resurrected not only in the physical sense of the word; both of them have recorded this transfiguration in their respective diaries – Swedendorg’s Journal of Dreams (1743-1744) and Strindberg’s Occult Diary (1896-1908). The interpretation of these diaries has proved a litmus test of critical perspicacity for a number of historians, theorists of culture, psychologists, and experts in the sphere of religion, mysticism and paranormal phenomena. Strindberg’s Occult Diary represents a chaotic collage of events, confessions, thoughts, experiences, impressions (sometimes fleeting and sometimes profound), newspaper clippings, and dream-like traces of the presence of the invisible powers in our quotidian existence. More often than not, the writer believed that these visions have the value of signs or even of prophetic messages. For him, the book was some kind of “closet” or “dressing room” – avklädningsrum – a concept he elaborates on in a text that bears the same title in the first volume of his huge Blue Book (1907-1912), which Martin Lamm considers a sequel to Occult Diary. Drawing upon Swedenborg’s inferno, the concept denotes, and I quote, “a dressing room where the deceased are introduced right after their death. There they take off those garments that they were obliged to wear in a social environment and with their families, so that the angels could immediately see what kind of individuals are coming along.”³

    Like Swedenborg, Strindberg opens his diary in the condition of psychological strain, or in the depths of neuro-pathological depression. This lapse into depression follows, with many mystics, the original ecstasy of enlightenment, of “spiritual insatiability”. It serves as a preparation, a peculiar form of training, for the next higher stage of evolving predestination in the conditions of an existence that finds its extension in the beyond, an existence subject to different laws, without being transformed into a mere “life beyond the grave”. Strindberg conveys this complex message in a number of his works. The quality of transcendental existence is exclusively dependent on our previous existence; actually it is our earthly existence that informs the pace of further self-improvement as one follows the ascending curves of the metaphysical spiral. The word mystic is rather vague or rather complex, but we could safely state that it presupposes the combination between a certain attitude and a certain predisposition on the one hand, and phenomena and actions which bind man in a peculiar manner with the immaterial; they bind the human spirit with the absolute, regardless of the particularities of space, time, and physical causality. This is a view supported, for instance, by Russian religious philosopher, poet and metaphysician Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900). He argues that mysticism is a peculiar philosophical and cognitive activity, which constitutes itself beyond the usual methods of pursuing the truth (experience, pure argumentative thinking, the legend, the authority of the precedent). Mysticism has always assumed a direct link between the knowing subject and the absolute object of knowledge, which could be defined as the essence of everything or divinity. The inner communication of the human spirit with the absolute is considered as an indispensable foundation for authentic knowledge by the mystics of the 19th century. This is the time that saw the rise of doctrines, which, depending on the prevalence of religion or philosophy, are referred to as mystical theology, mystical philosophy or theosophy. 

Occult Diary provides firsthand evidence of the Swede writer’s quest in this direction. We could actually describe Strindberg as a mystic par excellence, and we could attach the same label to an important part of his work, including Inferno, Legends, Play Dream, vandringsdramerna, the chamber plays, the novels Gothic Rooms and Black Banners. This tendency in Strindberg’s oeuvre testifies to the fact that he was well acquainted with the specific atmosphere associated with the boom of occultism in Paris. The city was the true Mecca of mystical teachings, much more so than London, St Petersburg or some other European capitals. As in Swedenborg’s time, the French capital was a cauldron teeming with conflicting ideas, affiliations and attitudes, which could be seen as a sign of the anxiety of human consciousness to refract the scientific materialism as well as the social and economic upheavals of the age through the prism of a more emotional appropriation of a fast-paced technological world, the prism of a more sophisticated response to the exigencies of the day. The influence of mystics and magi like Eliphas Levi (1810-1875), Sar Peladan (1859-1918), Papus (1865-1916), the alchemists’ experiments, spiritualism, the shocking prose of the decadents (Huysmans 1848-1907), or decadent poetry (Stanislas de Guaita 1861-1897) could be regarded as a reaction against industrialization and materialism, which had violated the spiritual legacy of Romanticism, a reaction against the ideas of positivism and utilitarianism, which were not alien to Strindberg himself. It was in this restless fin-de-siècle Paris that he was preparing for that inner metamorphosis, which, he felt, would help him emerge from the unfathomable abyss of the mind and the soul in this period of psychological hardship. He effected the metamorphosis through Inferno three years later. According to some, the novel achieves “a transformation, one of the most profound in our literary history” (Martin Lamm)⁴, while others believe that it creates its own religion under the strong influence of Swedenborgianism (Axel Herlin), which impressed Strindberg both with its unorthodox theology and with its matter-of-fact attitude to the divine and the eternal. We cannot but agree with Olle Hjern, who points out that after Strindberg found a spiritual explanation of his mental crisis he was no longer frustrated by it. I will also draw upon Olle Hjern’s reflections concerning the dramatic fragment The Island of the Dead (1906), which although it was never completed, contains the key motif of man’s journey after death, a motif that Strindberg picks up again in the third volume of his Blue Book. In The Island of the Dead the writer depicts an angel-like figure, the master, who takes up the instruction of the novice in the beyond in order to help him cope with the tribulations of intermediate states, which Swedenborg describes as vastationes or ödeläggelser, i.e. stages on the road towards maturity and deeper knowledge. 

Like many other representatives of world literature and art, who have been influenced by the Swedish theosophist, Strindberg appropriates and applies his teachings idiosyncratically; to a certain extent he even hyperbolizes Swedenborg’s impact on his personality and his identity as a writer. He transforms the ethical principle of analogy between the earthly and the beyond into a highly individualized artistic method, flexible and effective in its own right. At the same time, the method taps into Swedenborgian images, symbols and associations, which amplify aesthetically the doctrine of correspondences and thus add new forms to the treasury of world literature. Strindberg uses the doctrine not only because of his ambition to prove himself as an occultist and an esoteric thinker with a particular contribution to science, or para-science, but also because as an artist he believes that the acquisition of this knowledge provides one with a peculiar form of intellectual and emotional literacy, which lies at the core of a new aesthetic, giving access to a universal set of values that art can and must make available to modern man. Reality, transformed into a metaphor, becomes its own metamorphosis, which is a dimension peculiar to myth. Such transfiguration, then, provides the culture of art with a ground that it shares with myth in a magical or even hypnotic manner. This is confirmed by Swedenborg’s theosophy, which has preserved both the vitality of cosmogonist myths, and the power of their philosophical and literary emanations. This mythical quality is peculiar to the work of thinkers and writers associated with Neoplatonism, which should be seen as an invariant of esotericism; Neoplatonist ideas have actually been influential in art, literature and philosophy over the centuries. The parallels between Plotinus’ Neoplatonism and the doctrine of correspondences actually delineate the contours of that “organic synthesis between theology, philosophy and empirical science, containing the ultimate truth of knowledge, which free theosophy is”⁵, according to Solovyov’s definition. This is a synthesis that both Swedenborg and Strindberg would have been in favor of. 

    Like Swedenborg, Strindberg takes up the tough yet intellectually stimulating experiment which involves merging natural science and metaphysics into an all-encompassing field of knowledge as well as replacing the well-established old hierarchy of the earthly and the celestial with an integrated nature, which is actually equivalent to a universum. This nature is interpreted by the scientist in the discourse of cause-and-effect relations, whereas the writer recreates it with his emotion, while at the same time analyzing it with his mind. The parallel between the two great Swedes is symbiotically useful for both, since it rests upon a constant and growing interest in their legacy to this day. It wouldn’t be far-fetched to claim that Strindberg adds to his stature thanks to the scientific and philosophical originality of Swedenborg’s work, which has enriched science and literature not only with its seminal insights into the order of the universe, but also with the scope of its unbridled imagination, with its poetic quality and with its scale. Being at the same time a reader, an interpreter and a communicator, Strindberg has transferred the inexhaustible resource of analogy into the space of modern literature and art, among whose innovators he stands out thanks to his idiosyncratic reading and application of Swedenborg’s doctrine. 

    In analogy, seen as a science of correspondences, everything is a metaphor of something else, which makes it applicable as a poetics; in fact, the doctrine of correspondences at large has provided philosophical and ideological impetus for a number of cultural and historical phenomena and processes. Among them particularly notable are the “transcendental revolution” of the Romantics (Novalis, Schelling), French symbolism (Baudelaire, Nerval, Mallarmé, Rimbaud), dodecaphony in music (Schönberg, Webern) modern painting, in which object and idea, color and spirit are closely bound up with each other (Van Gogh, Gaugin), the lyrical trance at the merging of Nature, man and God in Scandinavian poetry (Wergeland, Wecksell, Södergran, Diktonius, Ekelöf ) etc. Spanning its applications in the culture of more than two centuries, the doctrine incorporates this culture in the universal set of mystical liaisons, which is probably as old as human civilization. Swedenborg’s perception of the Universe as a gigantic spiritually energized ensemble of signs and symbols has inspired and motivated many minds virtually all over the world. The causes and the effects of our interest in Swedenborgianism, which has been rising, especially since the second half of the 19th century, deserve consideration. Special attention should be paid to the aesthetic aspect of Swedenborg’s ideas, with their openness towards free interpretations and impulses, towards various associations and juxtapositions. This openness plays a key role in inscribing the intellectual and artistic aspirations of the different ages in the context of ancient cultural traditions, the traditions of several consecutive civilizations in human history. Swedenborg’s purposeful ambition to reveal, to sustain and to perpetuate the continuity of this tendency is remarkable in itself, especially in the conditions of the Scandinavian North, where these ideas took more time to take root than elsewhere in Europe. One of the outstanding representatives of Sweden’s Enlightenment, Swedenborg has made a major contribution to the country’s opening towards Europe. He had a role to play in the process both with his empirical research and with his physical and theological doctrine of the eternal workings of the Universe. In a similar way, a century later, August Strindberg provides a general perspective on Europe’s aesthetic experience in his novel Red Room (1879), integrating it in a parochial setting which he then transforms into a continental environment. In his scathing criticism of Swedish social mores, Strindberg invariably supports the European alternative, which presents him as a bold thinker ahead of his time, ready to pay, like Swedenborg, a high price for his unorthodox ideas.

    The Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf (1907-1968), in whose poetry one could discern Swedenborgian motifs, argues in his book devoted to painter Ivan Aguéli (1869-1920) (another admirer of Swedenborg) that Sweden’s universal genius is radically different from, say, the genius of the Italian Renaissance, because in the Swedish case happiness is rarely achieved  while the artist is alive. Nordic personalities of this rank do not have direct access to international recognition, and therefore do not bask in the warm rays of emotional immediacy, with which men of genius are blessed in other parts of the Continent. Scandinavian artists are often misunderstood in their own small countries; they are alienated from their compatriots, which adds pain, doubt and uncertainty to the essence of their existence. Still, they are endowed with genius, Ekelöf contends, because what brings them together is the ambition to transcend the physical and the visible; to create something more magnificent than the magnificent, more beautiful than the beautiful, more mysterious than the mysterious. These exceptional artists transform disillusionment into a spiritual power, a power that enables them to overwhelm the primitive elements that are part of the Scandinavian epic tradition. Their triumph comes at a cost, but it is inevitable and lasting; a case in point is the career of Kierkegaard, Andersen and Ibsen, who have all converted their personal drama into a new way of thinking and a new aesthetic. In Inferno Strindberg states that Swedenborg has provided him with a model for his own crisis, his “night of fire”, as well as with a pattern for a form of writing that seeks the absolute. There is a striking similarity in the two Swedes’ attempt to establish a new science or a new type of creative art in order to neutralize their forced existential, social and intellectual isolation. Thus they have managed to transform not only their own world, but also the world they have explored or depicted, which means they have transformed our world.

2010

Notes

1. Swedenborg Emanuel: Änglavisheten om den gudomliga försynen. Stockholm 1860, S. 116.↩

2. Three Initiates: The Kybalion. A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of ancient Egypt and Greece. Chicago 1908, S.13↩

3. Strindberg August: En blå bok I. Stockholm 1997, S. 56.↩

4. Lamm Martin: August Strindberg. Stockholm 1948, S. 252.↩

5. Соловëв Владимир: Сведенборг. Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауз/Eфрон. Bd. 57. Sankt Petersburg 1900.↩

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