Epic of the Afterlife: a Literary Approach to Swedenborg
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Epic of the Afterlife Swedenborg Studies No.13 Epic of the Afterlife A Literary Approach to Swedenborg by Olof Lagercrantz Translated by Anders Hallengren The Swedenborg Foundation West Chester, Pennsylvania ©2002 by Swedenborg Foundation Publishers This work was originally published in Swedish as Dikten om livet på den andra siden: en bok om Emanuel Swedenborg. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1996. ©1996 by Olof Lagercrantz. Copyright © of the German edition by Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 1997 All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the publisher. Swedenborg Studies is a scholarly series published by the Swedenborg Foundation. The primary purpose of the series is to make materials available for understanding the life and thought of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) and the impact his thought has had on others. The Foundation undertakes to publish original studies and English translations of such studies and to republish primary sources that are otherwise difficult to access. Proposals should be sent to: Senior Editor, Swedenborg Studies, Swedenborg Foundation, 320 North Church Street, West Chester, Pennsylvania 19380. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lagercrantz, Olof Gustaf Hugo, 1911– [Dikten om livet på den andra siden. English] Epic of the afterlife : a literary approach to Swedenborg / by Olof Lagercrantz; translated by Anders Hallengren. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-87785-248-0 (pbk.); 0-87785-197-2 (hc.) 2. Swedenborg, Emanuel, 1688–1772. I. Title. BX8748 .L3413 2002 289′ .4′ 092 – dc21 2002001712 Edited by Mary Lou Bertucci Cover design by Karen Connor Interior design by Sans Serif, Inc., Saline, MI Set in Adobe Garamond by Sans Serif, Inc., Saline, Michigan CONTENTS Foreword by William Ross Woofenden vii Introduction to the Swedish Edition xi 1 The Dream Crisis 3 2 Life after Death 12 3 Life in the Spiritual World 19 4 The Book of God 28 5 The Demon and His Harlot 43 6 Free Will 50 7 Faith 54 8 The Grand Man 58 9 The Speech of Spirits 68 10 The Five Senses 76 11 Other Planets 81 12 Imagery 92 13 Happiness in Heaven 97 14 Hell: The World of Evil 106 15 Memory 115 16 Moral Notes 119 17 Love Between Spouses 132 18 Apocalypse 144 Bibliography 151 Bibliography of Works by Emanuel Swedenborg 153 FOREWORD lof Lagercrantz is one of Sweden’s most famous writers and critics. OHe was born in Stockholm in 1911 and in his early adult years gained fame as a poet, poems that are still read and recited in Sweden. In 1952, Lagercrantz received his doctorate in the History of Literature from Stockholm University, writing his dissertation on another Swedish author, Agnes von Krusenstjerna (1894–1940). The complete bibliography of Lagercrantz’s life work to date includes hundreds of titles, ranging from full biographies to essays on a wide vari- ety of subjects. Two of his major works have been translated and pub- lished in English: From Hell to Paradise: Dante and His Comedy (Washington Square Press, 1966), and August Strindberg (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1984). He has also written books on Nelly Sachs, Marcel Proust, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and George Orwell, and translated Izaak Walton’s The Complete Angler (1653) into Swedish. His travel journals from the United States of America, the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, and the People’s Republic of China, have also attracted much attention. His high reputation as an author rests on a strange brilliance of style, his distrust of entrenched opinions, the originality of his critical perspective, and his conscientious research and broad learning. Of his later books, The Art of Reading and Writing (Konsten att läsa och skriva) has become a bestseller in Europe and has been translated into a number of different languages. Most recently, Lagercrantz turned his attention to Emanuel Sweden- borg, another literary giant in his series of critical monographs. Being a modern literary scholar and critic, Lagercrantz approaches the works of all authors as a sincere and careful reader, the texts being his field of scrutiny and analysis. Secondary literature is of secondary interest to him, and the use of biographical data or ideological and historical frame- work is subordinated to the actual words of the literary text. In all his vii viii Foreword books, Lagercrantz has avoided the beaten track and has assiduously started from the beginning to guide himself through the work of the au- thor, ignoring what other people have told him about it, and never led astray by any current opinion or scholarly standpoint whatsoever, search- ing for basic lines in the warp of the texture and clues to the heart be- hind it. In this way he approached the fourteenth-century work of Dante Alighieri, and this is still his method when studying Swedenborg as another great writer in the history of literature, one of the eighteenth century. For this reason, Lagercrantz’s study of Swedenborg is an original and very personal approach, quite unlike any earlier monograph or biogra- phy of Swedenborg, except possibly the unusual study published in 1915 by a fellow Swede, Martin Lamm, another scholar from the same depart- ment at Stockholm University and one of Lagercrantz’s teachers. Lamm’s book was later translated and published in German in 1922 and also translated and published in French in 1936. It is a strongly positivistic study, demonstrating that there is a logical and consistent line of thought development in Swedenborg from his earliest childhood experi- ences to his most mature theological statements. But what is perhaps most remarkable about this work is that, in Lamm’s opinion, other- worldly experience is quite irrelevant to the conclusions reached; for Lamm, Swedenborg’s claim that his theological concepts were largely based on such experiences is simply something for those interested in the paranormal to investigate. Lamm’s concern was an analysis of the texts, and he approached them from the point of view of the history of ideas, finding that Swedenborg’s scientific work and his theological work were built on the same set of ideas or the same kind of paradigm. As a scholar, Lamm tried to outline structure and to understand it. To believe in what is written or not to believe in it is not considered as a matter of knowl- edge, and faith has never been the concern of comparativists like Lamm. Actually, a similar stand has been taken by all Swedish Swedenborg scholars from the department of Literature at Stockholm University: Martin Lamm, Olof Lagercrantz, Inge Jonsson, and Anders Hallengren, the translator of the present work. Foreword ix Very much the same might be said of Lagercrantz, even though he long ago turned his back on the university to become a free writer be- yond all restricted views. He takes a long stride further, however, looking upon Swedenborg as merely an author of literary texts, open to new in- terpretation. For instance, Lagercrantz declares: “I will read the works of Swedenborg as a poem about an unknown country with strange laws and customs.” And, “Call Swedenborg’s God that force that makes peo- ple rise from a gross material subsistence to seek a new and deeper sense of community. Replace the term “God” with the everlasting longing for something that braves time and death or that brings solidarity and justice to the human race.” At the same time, Lagercrantz states sincerely that Swedenborg’s works contain an enormous amount of wisdom about the human being and all the passions that shake us and make us human. Early in the book, he reacts with bewilderment to Swedenborg’s “commission,” his claim that Christ appeared to him and appointed him to be a revelator. But the author then states, “I feel compelled to write this book because of what he wrote and taught after he endured this dream crisis.” A little further on he writes, “Swedenborg guides us through a long series of ex- citing metamorphoses; his commentary contains suggestions enough to keep a whole celestial academy busy with new ideas.” Lagercrantz did his homework. He clearly read deeply in Sweden- borg’s works before he began to write. His book deals concisely with a great many fundamental Swedenborgian concepts, and he often inserts references to his sources. But he makes no claim to be a believer, a dedi- cated Swedenborgian, one who has accepted the faith of Swedenborg. Why? It is my conclusion that Lagercrantz fits quite precisely the definition of an adherent to “a twentieth-century philosophy—naturalistic humanism— a belief system that rejects belief in all forms of the supernatural; that considers the greater good of humanity on this earth as the supreme eth- ical goal; and that relies on the methods of reason, science, and democ- racy for the solution of human problems,” as described in the Dictionary of Philosophy ( Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1968). x Foreword It is in this sense that Lagercrantz is so attracted to the wisdom he found in Swedenborg. Thus he pays high tribute to his fellow Swede time after time, while at the same time either denying his claims or mak- ing clear that he has no interest in where Swedenborg states he received the wisdom that he wrote. Dedicated well-read Swedenborgians will find statements here and there with which they may disagree. Or possibly they will smile and conclude that the author just didn’t understand the point. The editors, in fact, may deem it advisable from time to time to insert a footnote to clarify or to dispute a view expressed by the author.