CHAPTER XIII

THE WINDING UP

(1872)

At the beginning of the spring term, John took up his quarters with an elder comrade in order to continue his studies. But when he had again the old books before him which he had already studied so long, he felt a distaste for them. His brain was full of impressions, of collected literary material, and refused to take in any more; his imagination and thought were busily at work and would not let memory be alone active; he had fits of doubt and apathy and often remained the whole day lying on the sofa. Then the desire would sometimes awake to be altogether free and to plunge into the life of activity. But the royal stipend held him fast in fetters and imposed on him obligations. Having received it, he was bound to go on studying for his doctor's degree, the course of reading for which he had half completed. So he applied himself to philosophy, but when he read the history of it, he found all systems equally valid or invalid, and his mind resisted all new ideas.

In the literary club there was disunion and lethargy. All their youthful poems had been read and no one produced any more, so that they only met together to drink punch. Is had exposed himself, and after a scene with another member, he had been thrown out. He drew his knife and got well thrashed. He saved himself from worse by affecting to treat the affair as a joke, and was now a mere laughing-stock, since it had been discovered that his wisdom consisted in quotations from the students' periodicals which the others had not had the wit to utilise. At the beginning of term an Æsthetic Society had been founded by the professor of Æsthetics, and this made their own literary society, the "Runa," superfluous.

At one of the meetings of the former, John's discontent with classical authorities broke out. He had been drinking that evening and was half-intoxicated. In conversation with the professor dangerous ground was touched upon and John was enticed so far out of his reserve as to declare Dante without significance for humanity and overestimated. John had plenty of reasons to allege for his opinion, but could not express them to advantage when the professor set upon him, and the whole company gathered round the disputants, who were squeezed into a corner by the stove. He wanted in the first place to say that the construction of the _Divine Comedy_ was not original, but a very ordinary form which had already been employed shortly before in the _Vision of Albericus_. Furthermore his opinion was that in this poem Dante did not reflect the culture and thoughts of his period, because he was so uncultured that he did not even know Greek. He was not a philosopher, for he hampered thought by the fetters of revelation, and therefore he was no precursor of the Renaissance or the Reformation. He was no patriot, for he venerated the German empire as established by God. He was at most a local patriot of Florence. Nor was he a democrat, for he always dreamt of a union of the empire and the papacy. He did not attack the papacy, but only individual popes who lived immoral lives, as he himself had done in his youth. He was a monk, a truly idiotic child of his age, for he sent unbaptised children to hell. He was a narrow-minded royalist who put Brutus next to Satan in the deepest hell. He was entirely wanting in the power of selfcriticism;--while he reckons ingratitude to friends and betrayal of one's fatherland among the worst of crimes, he places his own friend and teacher, Brunetto Latini, in hell, and supports the German Emperor, Henry VII, against his native city Florence. He had bad literary taste, for he reckoned as the six greatest poets of the world Homer, Horace, Lucan, Ovid, Virgil and himself. How could modern critics who were so severe on all scandalous literature praise Dante, who in his poem cast dishonour on so many contemporary persons and families? He even scolds his own dear native city, exclaiming when he finds five nobly-born Florentines in Hell: "Rejoice! O Florence! for thy name is not only great over land and sea, but also in hell. Five of thy citizens are in thieves' company; my cheeks blush at the sight of them. But one thing I know; punishment will light upon thee, Florence, and may it happen soon!"

As is usual in such debates, the attacked and the attacker often changed their ground. John wished to prove to the professor that from his point of view the _Commedia_ was a political pamphlet, but then the professor veered round, adopted the enemy's point of view and said that _he_ should value it as such. Whereupon John answered that it was exactly as such that he designated it, but not as a magnificent poem of everlasting value, which the professor had declared it to be in his lectures. Again the professor changed his ground, and said that the poem should be judged by the standard of the period at which it was composed.

"Exactly so," answered John, "but you have judged it by the standard of our time and all succeeding times, and therefore you are wrong. But even with regard to its own time the work is not an epoch-making one; it is not in advance of its period, but belongs strictly to it, or rather lags behind it. It is a linguistic monument for Italy, nothing more, and should never be read in a Swedish university, because the language is antiquated, and finally because it is too insignificant to be regarded as a link in the development of culture."

The result of the controversy was that John was regarded as shameless and half-cracked.

After this explosion he was exhausted and incapable of work. The whole of the life in a town where he did not feel at home was distasteful to him. His companions advised him to take a thorough rest, for he had worked too hard, and so, as a matter of fact, he had. Various schemes again presented themselves to his mind, but without result. The grey dirty town vexed him, the scenery around depressed him; he lay on a sofa and looked at the illustrations in a German newspaper. Views of foreign scenery had the same effect as music on his mind and he felt a longing to see green trees and blue seas; he wished to go into the country but it was still only February, the sky was as grey as sack-cloth, the streets and roads were muddy. When he felt most depressed, he went to his friend the natural science student. It refreshed him to see his herbarium and microscope, his aquarium and physiological preparations. Most of all he found a pleasure in the society of the quiet, peaceable atheist, who let the world go its way, for he knew that he worked better for the future, in his small measure, than the poet with his excitable outbreaks. He had a little of the artist left in him and painted in oils. To think that he could call up as if by enchantment a green landscape amid the mists of this wintry spring and hang it on his wall!

"Is painting difficult?" he asked his friend.

"No, indeed! It is easier than drawing. Try it!"

John, who had already, with the greatest calm, composed a song with a guitar-accompaniment, thought it not impossible for him to paint, and he borrowed an easel, colours, and a paint-brush. Then he went home and shut himself up in his room. From an illustrated paper he copied a picture of a ruined castle. When he saw the clear blue of the sky he felt sentimental, and when he had conjured up green bushes and grass he felt unspeakably happy as though he had eaten haschish. His first effort was successful. But now he wished to copy a painting. That was harder. Everything was green and brown. He could not make his colours harmonise with the original and felt in despair.

One day when he had shut himself up he heard a visitor talking with his friend in the next room. They whispered as though they were near a sick person. "Now he is actually painting," said his friend in a depressed tone.

What did that mean? Did they consider him cracked? Yes. He began to think about himself, and like all brooders came to the conclusion that he was cracked. What was to be done? If they shut him up, he would certainly go quite mad. "Better anticipate them," he thought, and as he had heard of private asylums in the country, where the patients could walk about and work in the garden, he wrote to the director of one of them. After some time he received a friendly answer advising him to be quiet. His correspondent had received information about John through his friend and understood his state of mind. He told him it was only a crisis which all sensitive natures must pass through, etc.

_That_ danger, then, was over. But he wished to get out into active life when ever it might be.

One day he heard that a travelling theatrical company had come to the town. He wrote a letter to the manager and solicited an engagement, but he received no answer and did not call on the manager. Thus he was tossed to and fro, till at last fate intervened and set him free. Three months had passed and he had received no money from the court-treasurer. His companions advised him to write and make a polite inquiry. In reply he was told that it had never been his Majesty's intention to pay him a regular pension, but only a single donation. However, in consideration of his needy circumstances, by way of exception, he had made him a grant of 200 kronas, which would shortly be sent.

John at first felt glad, for he was free, but afterwards the turn which affairs had taken made him uneasy, for the papers had stated that he was the king's stipendiary, and the king had really promised him a stipend during the year that he must read for his degree. Besides this the court-marshal had given him a sort of half promise for the future which could hardly be considered as adequately fulfilled by a donation of 200 kronas. Different opinions were expressed on the matter. Some thought that the king had forgotten, others that the state of his finances did not allow of a further gift, or that his good wishes exceeded his powers. No one expressed disapproval, and John was secretly glad, had he not felt a certain disgrace in the withdrawal of the stipend, so that he might be suspected of having groundlessly boasted of it. Those who believed that John was in disfavour at court ascribed this to the fact that he had omitted to wait upon the king in person when he was in Stockholm at Christmas and the New Year. Others attributed it to the fact that he had not formally presented his tragedy, _Sinking Hellas_, but had simply sent it to the palace, instead of going with it, which his sense of independence forbade him to do. Ten years later he heard quite a new explanation of this disfavour. He was said to have composed a lampoon on the king. But this was a pure legend, probably the only one of its obscure fabricator which would reach posterity. Anyhow facts remained as they were and his resolve was quickly taken. He would go to Stockholm and become a literary man, an author if possible, should he prove to possess sufficient capacity for that calling.

The student who shared his room undertook to pay his return journey, and alleged as a pretext that John must wait some time in Stockholm lest the landlord should be uneasy. Meanwhile he could collect enough money to pay the rent which was due at the end of the term.

His friends gave John a farewell feast and John thanked them, acknowledging the obligations which each owes to those he meets in social intercourse. Every personality is not developed simply out of itself, but derives something from each with whom it comes in contact, just as the bee gathering her honey from a million flowers, appropriates it and gives it out as her own.

Thus he stepped into life, abandoning dreams and the past to live in reality and the present. But he was ill-prepared and the university is not the proper school for life. He felt also that the decisive hour had come. In a clumsy speech he called the feast a "svensexa," _i.e_. a farewell supper for a bachelor on the eve of his marriage, for he was now to be a man and leave boyhood behind; he was to become a member of society, a useful citizen and eat his own bread.

So he believed at the time, but he soon discovered that his education had unfitted him for society, and as he did not wish to be an outlaw the doubt awoke in him whether society, of which after all school and university were a part, was not to blame for his education, and whether it had not serious defects which needed a remedy.