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. ↩

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

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• Carlsson Harry G.: Genom Inferno. Bildens magi och Strindbergs förnyelse. Stockholm 1995.
• Carlsson Harry G.: Strindberg och myterna. Stockholm 1979
• Ekelöf Gunnar: Ivan Aguéli. Göteborg 1944
• Eliade Mircea: Traité d’histoire des religions. Paris 1949
• Hjern Olle: Kring ”Dödens ö” av August Strindberg. I Swedenborgiana. Stockholm 1995
• Lamm Martin: Swedenborg. Stockholm 1987
• Lamm Martin: Strindberg. Stockholm 1948
• Paz Octavio: Lerans barn. Stockholm 1990
• Strindberg August: Samlade verk. Nationalupplagan, vol. 33, 39, 44, 46, 65, 66, 67, 68. Stockholm 1984-2000
• Swedenborg Emanuel: Arcana Coelestia. Himmelska hemligheter, som innehållas i den Heliga skrift eller Herrans ord. 1749-1756. Vol. 1-17.
• Stockholm 1861-1912
• Swedenborg Emanuel: Om andarnas värld. Stockholm 1984