Inferno by August Strindberg

How hard is Inferno to read?

Inferno scores 60 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 52 out of 100

Strindberg's prose (in English translation) employs 19th-century literary diction, occasional Latin phrases, and theological terminology from Swedenborg's cosmology — 'Devastation,' 'Arcana Cœlestia,' 'vastation.' Specialized chemical and alchemical terms appear in the early sections (sulphur, carbon, cetology of the laboratory). The register sits between Dostoevsky and Moby-Dick: readers encounter unfamiliar terms from religious and esoteric traditions, but context consistently clarifies meaning.

Sentence structure: 45 out of 100

Sentences run moderate to long with Latinate subordination typical of 19th-century European prose, but the diaristic form keeps syntax grounded. Paragraphs accumulate detail rather than nesting clauses recursively. The prose is considerably clearer than Proust or James; it reads closer to Dostoevsky's confessional mode — driven forward by psychological urgency rather than ornamental complexity.

Abstraction: 68 out of 100

The book shuttles constantly between concrete sensory incident — burned hands in a Paris hotel, absinthe at a Boulevard café, the sound of a jew's-harp at night — and sustained theological-philosophical speculation drawing on Swedenborg, Luther, Nietzsche, and Dante. Roughly half the text is abstract reflection on Providence, punishment, the nature of spirits, and the existence of hell on earth. The abstraction rises sharply in the final chapters as the narrator attempts theological synthesis.

Information density: 60 out of 100

Each section compresses autobiographical event with dense literary allusion: Balzac's Séraphita, Dante's Inferno, Nietzsche's Superman, Luther's articles against the Romish bull, and Swedenborg's Arcana Cœlestia are woven into the narrative texture. Readers must hold multiple reference frames — alchemical, theological, autobiographical, occult — simultaneously. Less encyclopedic than 2666 or War and Peace, but far more allusion-laden than straightforward memoir.

Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100

Strindberg states his mental states, fears, and spiritual conclusions directly — the first-person narrator tells us exactly what he believes is happening to him. The challenge is not inference but calibration: readers must continuously assess how much credence to give the narrator's paranoid interpretations (invisible persecutors, occult signs, electric girdles). The auto-fictional 'I' is unreliable in content rather than manner, closer to Lolita's self-deception than Pedro Paramo's ontological blur.

Symbolic density: 72 out of 100

Everyday objects become signs throughout: a splinter of wood marks a passage in Séraphita, faces form in pillow covers, the Invalides dome silhouettes Napoleon's profile, a chimney sweep spirit appears to his daughter. The entire text operates as a theater of Providence — nothing is merely accidental. Strindberg explicitly announces this interpretive framework, making the symbolism dense but legible, comparable to Heart of Darkness in its insistence that surface events encode metaphysical meaning.

Ironic distance: 58 out of 100

The gap between Strindberg's self-dramatization as prophet and scourge of God and the translator's dry footnote — 'Strindberg never actually entered the Roman Church' — is structurally built in. The Epilogue itself undercuts the narrative: 'Now I am revealed as a braggart.' Sincere torment and self-aware absurdity coexist without resolving, giving the text a bitter, oscillating irony that refuses the reader a stable position toward its narrator.

Resolution withholding: 72 out of 100

The book ends mid-conversion, awaiting an answer from a Belgian convent — and the translator confirms the conversion never happened. The 'Whither?' of the final chapter is not answered but deepened: the narrator suspects God may reduce even his new religion to absurdity within a decade. The Epilogue reframes the entire memoir as a sign and proverb rather than a resolution, leaving the spiritual crisis documented but deliberately unresolved.

Structural complexity: 48 out of 100

The book is broadly chronological but organized by thematic-spiritual episodes rather than strict diary sequence. The Epilogue undercuts the narrative contract established by the 'memoir' frame. There is no radical formal experimentation — no POV shifts, no timeline fragmentation — but the slippage between autobiographical fact, paranoid interpretation, and spiritual allegory creates consistent ontological friction for the reader.

How Inferno is regarded

Inferno holds a literary regard score of 71 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

About the author

August Strindberg