Sartor Resartus
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Thomas Carlyle >> Sartor Resartus
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Great, among the more enlightened classes, was the admiration of this new
Professorship: how an enlightened Government had seen into the Want of the
Age (_Zeitbedurfniss_); how at length, instead of Denial and Destruction,
we were to have a science of Affirmation and Reconstruction; and Germany
and Weissnichtwo were where they should be, in the vanguard of the world.
Considerable also was the wonder at the new Professor, dropt opportunely
enough into the nascent University; so able to lecture, should occasion
call; so ready to hold his peace for indefinite periods, should an
enlightened Government consider that occasion did not call. But such
admiration and such wonder, being followed by no act to keep them living,
could last only nine days; and, long before our visit to that scene, had
quite died away. The more cunning heads thought it was all an expiring
clutch at popularity, on the part of a Minister, whom domestic
embarrassments, court intrigues, old age, and dropsy soon afterwards
finally drove from the helm.
As for Teufelsdrockh, except by his nightly appearances at the _Grune
Gans_, Weissnichtwo saw little of him, felt little of him. Here, over his
tumbler of Gukguk, he sat reading Journals; sometimes contemplatively
looking into the clouds of his tobacco-pipe, without other visible
employment: always, from his mild ways, an agreeable phenomenon there;
more especially when he opened his lips for speech; on which occasions the
whole Coffee-house would hush itself into silence, as if sure to hear
something noteworthy. Nay, perhaps to hear a whole series and river of the
most memorable utterances; such as, when once thawed, he would for hours
indulge in, with fit audience: and the more memorable, as issuing from a
head apparently not more interested in them, not more conscious of them,
than is the sculptured stone head of some public fountain, which through
its brass mouth-tube emits water to the worthy and the unworthy; careless
whether it be for cooking victuals or quenching conflagrations; indeed,
maintains the same earnest assiduous look, whether any water be flowing or
not.
To the Editor of these sheets, as to a young enthusiastic Englishman,
however unworthy, Teufelsdrockh opened himself perhaps more than to the
most. Pity only that we could not then half guess his importance, and
scrutinize him with due power of vision! We enjoyed, what not three men
Weissnichtwo could boast of, a certain degree of access to the Professor's
private domicile. It was the attic floor of the highest house in the
Wahngasse; and might truly be called the pinnacle of Weissnichtwo, for it
rose sheer up above the contiguous roofs, themselves rising from elevated
ground. Moreover, with its windows it looked towards all the four _Orte_
or as the Scotch say, and we ought to say, _Airts_: the sitting room
itself commanded three; another came to view in the _Schlafgemach_
(bedroom) at the opposite end; to say nothing of the kitchen, which offered
two, as it were, _duplicates_, showing nothing new. So that it was in fact
the speculum or watch-tower of Teufelsdrockh; wherefrom, sitting at ease he
might see the whole life-circulation of that considerable City; the streets
and lanes of which, with all their doing and driving (_Thun und Treiben_),
were for the most part visible there.
"I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," we have heard him say,
"and witness their wax-laying and honey-making, and poison-brewing, and
choking by sulphur. From the Palace esplanade, where music plays while
Serene Highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane, where
in her door-sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood sits to
feel the afternoon sun, I see it all; for, except Schlosskirche
weather-cock, no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive bestrapped and
bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow bagged up in pouches of leather: there,
top-laden, and with four swift horses, rolls in the country Baron and his
household; here, on timber-leg, the lamed Soldier hops painfully along,
begging alms: a thousand carriages, and wains, cars, come tumbling in with
Food, with young Rusticity, and other Raw Produce, inanimate or animate,
and go tumbling out again with produce manufactured. That living flood,
pouring through these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest thou
whence it is coming, whither it is going? _Aus der Ewigkeit, zu der
Ewigkeit hin_: From Eternity, onwards to Eternity! These are Apparitions:
what else? Are they not Souls rendered visible: in Bodies, that took
shape and will lose it, melting into air? Their solid Pavement is a
Picture of the Sense; they walk on the bosom of Nothing, blank Time is
behind them and before them. Or fanciest thou, the red and yellow
Clothes-screen yonder, with spurs on its heels and feather in its crown, is
but of To-day, without a Yesterday or a To-morrow; and had not rather its
Ancestor alive when Hengst and Horsa overran thy Island? Friend, thou
seest here a living link in that Tissue of History, which inweaves all
Being: watch well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more."
"_Ach, mein Lieber_!" said he once, at midnight, when we had returned from
the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it is a true sublimity to dwell
here. These fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and
thousand-fold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night,
what thinks Bootes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over the Zenith in
their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic
has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here
and there through distant streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed in, and
lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to
moan like nightbirds, are abroad: that hum, I say, like the stertorous,
unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven! Oh, under that hideous
coverlet of vapors, and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a
Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid! The joyful and the sorrowful are
there; men are dying there, men are being born; men are praying,--on the
other side of a brick partition, men are cursing; and around them all is
the vast, void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed
saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness cowers into
buckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw: in obscure
cellars, _Rouge-et-Noir_ languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard
hungry Villains; while Councillors of State sit plotting, and playing their
high chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. The Lover whispers his
mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and fear, glides
down, to fly with him over the borders: the Thief, still more silently,
sets to his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen
first snore in their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and
dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts; but,
in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and
bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness, which is around and within,
for the light of a stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the
morrow: comes no hammering from the _Rabenstein_?--their gallows must even
now be o' building. Upwards of five hundred thousand two-legged animals
without feathers lie round us, in horizontal position; their heads all in
nightcaps, and full of the foolishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and
staggers and swaggers in his rank dens of shame; and the Mother, with
streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips
only her tears now moisten.-- All these heaped and huddled together, with
nothing but a little carpentry and masonry between them;--crammed in, like
salted fish in their barrel;--or weltering, shall I say, like an Egyptian
pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling to get its _head above_ the
others: _such_ work goes on under that smoke-counterpane!--But I, _mein
Werther_, sit above it all; I am alone with the stars."
We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of such
extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might be traced there; but with
the light we had, which indeed was only a single tallow-light, and far
enough from the window, nothing save that old calmness and fixedness was
visible.
These were the Professor's talking seasons: most commonly he spoke in mere
monosyllables, or sat altogether silent and smoked; while the visitor had
liberty either to say what he listed, receiving for answer an occasional
grunt; or to look round for a space, and then take himself away. It was a
strange apartment; full of books and tattered papers, and miscellaneous
shreds of all conceivable substances, "united in a common element of dust."
Books lay on tables, and below tables; here fluttered a sheet of
manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside;
ink-bottles alternated with bread-crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes,
Periodical Literature, and Blucher Boots. Old Lieschen (Lisekin, 'Liza),
who was his bed-maker and stove-lighter, his washer and wringer, cook,
errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the rest a very orderly
creature, had no sovereign authority in this last citadel of Teufelsdrockh;
only some once in the month she half-forcibly made her way thither, with
broom and duster, and (Teufelsdrockh hastily saving his manuscripts)
effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such lumber as was not
Literary. These were her _Erdbeben_ (earthquakes), which Teufelsdrockh
dreaded worse than the pestilence; nevertheless, to such length he had been
forced to comply. Glad would he have been to sit here philosophizing
forever, or till the litter, by accumulation, drove him out of doors: but
Lieschen was his right-arm, and spoon, and necessary of life, and would not
be flatly gainsayed. We can still remember the ancient woman; so silent
that some thought her dumb; deaf also you would often have supposed her;
for Teufelsdrockh, and Teufelsdrockh only, would she serve or give heed to;
and with him she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs; if it were not
rather by some secret divination that she guessed all his wants, and
supplied them. Assiduous old dame! she scoured, and sorted, and swept, in
her kitchen, with the least possible violence to the ear; yet all was tight
and right there: hot and black came the coffee ever at the due moment; and
the speechless Lieschen herself looked out on you, from under her clean
white coif with its lappets, through her clean withered face and wrinkles,
with a look of helpful intelligence, almost of benevolence.
Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither: the only one we
ever saw there, ourselves excepted, was the Hofrath Heuschrecke, already
known, by name and expectation, to the readers of these pages. To us, at
that period, Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of those purse-mouthed,
crane-necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals, perhaps sufficiently
distinguished in society by this fact, that, in dry weather or in wet,
"they never appear without their umbrella." Had we not known with what
"little wisdom" the world is governed; and how, in Germany as elsewhere,
the ninety-and-nine Public Men can for most part be but mute train-bearers
to the hundredth, perhaps but stalking-horses and willing or unwilling
dupes,-- it might have seemed wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be
named a _Rath_, or Councillor, and Counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. What
counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particular Hofrath give; in
whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and
fro, in minute incessant fluctuation,--you traced rather confusion worse
confounded; at most, Timidity and physical Cold? Some indeed said withal,
he was "the very Spirit of Love embodied:" blue earnest eyes, full of
sadness and kindness; purse ever open, and so forth; the whole of which, we
shall now hope, for many reasons, was not quite groundless. Nevertheless
friend Teufelsdrockh's outline, who indeed handled the burin like few in
these cases, was probably the best: _Er hat Gemuth und Geist, hat
wenigstens gehabt, doch ohne Organ, ohne Schicksals-Gunst; ist gegenwartig
aber halb-zerruttet, halb-erstarrt_, "He has heart and talent, at least has
had such, yet without fit mode of utterance, or favor of Fortune; and so is
now half-cracked, half-congealed."--What the Hofrath shall think of this
when he sees it, readers may wonder; we, safe in the stronghold of
Historical Fidelity, are careless.
The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of Teufelsdrockh, which
indeed was also by far the most decisive feature of Heuschrecke himself.
We are enabled to assert that he hung on the Professor with the fondness of
a Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps with the like return; for
Teufelsdrockh treated his gaunt admirer with little outward regard, as some
half-rational or altogether irrational friend, and at best loved him out of
gratitude and by habit. On the other hand, it was curious to observe with
what reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protection, our Hofrath,
being the elder, richer, and as he fondly imagined far more practically
influential of the two, looked and tended on his little Sage, whom he
seemed to consider as a living oracle. Let but Teufelsdrockh open his
mouth, Heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides
his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at
every pause in the harangue, he gurgled out his pursy chuckle of a
cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion,
and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, _Bravo! Das
glaub' ich_; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if
Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his
self-seclusion, and godlike indifference, there was no symptom, then might
Heuschrecke pass for his chief Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could
knead and publish was other than medicinal and sacred.
In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did Teufelsdrockh, at the
time of our acquaintance, and most likely does he still, live and meditate.
Here, perched up in his high Wahngasse watch-tower, and often, in solitude,
outwatching the Bear, it was that the indomitable Inquirer fought all his
battles with Dulness and Darkness; here, in all probability, that he wrote
this surprising Volume on _Clothes_. Additional particulars: of his age,
which was of that standing middle sort you could only guess at; of his wide
surtout; the color of his trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed
steeple-hat, and so forth, we might report, but do not. The Wisest truly
is, in these times, the Greatest; so that an enlightened curiosity leaving
Kings and such like to rest very much on their own basis, turns more and
more to the Philosophic Class: nevertheless, what reader expects that,
with all our writing and reporting, Teufelsdrockh could be brought home to
him, till once the Documents arrive? His Life, Fortunes, and Bodily
Presence, are as yet hidden from us, or matter only of faint conjecture.
But, on the other hand, does not his Soul lie enclosed in this remarkable
Volume, much more truly than Pedro Garcia's did in the buried Bag of
Doubloons? To the soul of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, to his opinions, namely,
on the "Origin and Influence of Clothes," we for the present gladly return.
CHAPTER IV.
CHARACTERISTICS.
It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work on Clothes
entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like the
very Sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of genius,
has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid its
effulgence,--a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dulness,
double-vision, and even utter blindness.
Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and prophesyings
of the _Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger_, we admitted that the Book had in a
high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any
book; that it had even operated changes in our way of thought; nay, that it
promised to prove, as it were, the opening of a new mine-shaft, wherein the
whole world of Speculation might henceforth dig to unknown depths. More
specially may it now be declared that Professor Teufelsdrockh's
acquirements, patience of research, philosophic and even poetic vigor, are
here made indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and
tortuosity and manifold ineptitude; that, on the whole, as in opening new
mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his Book, though
likewise specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popularity in
England we cannot promise him. Apart from the choice of such a topic as
Clothes, too often the manner of treating it betokens in the Author a
rusticity and academic seclusion, unblamable, indeed inevitable in a
German, but fatal to his success with our public.
Of good society Teufelsdrockh appears to have seen little, or has mostly
forgotten what he saw. He speaks out with a strange plainness; calls many
things by their mere dictionary names. To him the Upholsterer is no
Pontiff, neither is any Drawing-room a Temple, were it never so begilt and
overhung: "a whole immensity of Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and
ormolu," as he himself expresses it, "cannot hide from me that such
Drawing-room is simply a section of Infinite Space, where so many
God-created Souls do for the time meet together." To Teufelsdrockh the
highest Duchess is respectable, is venerable; but nowise for her pearl
bracelets and Malines laces: in his eyes, the star of a Lord is little
less and little more than the broad button of Birmingham spelter in a
Clown's smock; "each is an implement," he says, "in its kind; a tag for
_hooking-together_; and, for the rest, was dug from the earth, and hammered
on a stithy before smith's fingers." Thus does the Professor look in men's
faces with a strange impartiality, a strange scientific freedom; like a man
unversed in the higher circles, like a man dropped thither from the Moon.
Rightly considered, it is in this peculiarity, running through his whole
system of thought, that all these shortcomings, over-shootings, and
multiform perversities, take rise: if indeed they have not a second
source, also natural enough, in his Transcendental Philosophies, and humor
of looking at all Matter and Material things as Spirit; whereby truly his
case were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable.
To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of which class it is firmly
believed there are individuals yet extant, we can safely recommend the
Work: nay, who knows but among the fashionable ranks too, if it be true,
as Teufelsdrockh maintains, that "within the most starched cravat there
passes a windpipe and weasand, and under the thickliest embroidered
waistcoat beats a heart,"--the force of that rapt earnestness may be felt,
and here and there an arrow of the soul pierce through? In our wild Seer,
shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist living on locusts and wild honey, there is
an untutored energy, a silent, as it were unconscious, strength, which,
except in the higher walks of Literature, must be rare. Many a deep
glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast into mysterious
Nature, and the still more mysterious Life of Man. Wonderful it is with
what cutting words, now and then, he severs asunder the confusion; sheers
down, were it furlongs deep; into the true centre of the matter; and there
not only hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home,
and buries it.--On the other hand, let us be free to admit, he is the most
unequal writer breathing. Often after some such feat, he will play truant
for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and mumbling and maundering
the merest commonplaces, as if he were asleep with eyes open, which indeed
he is.
Of his boundless Learning, and how all reading and literature in most known
tongues, from _Sanchoniathon_ to _Dr. Lingard_, from your Oriental
_Shasters_, and _Talmuds_, and _Korans_, with Cassini's _Siamese fables_,
and Laplace's _Mecanique Celeste_, down to _Robinson Crusoe_ and the
_Belfast Town and Country Almanack_, are familiar to him,--we shall say
nothing: for unexampled as it is with us, to the Germans such universality
of study passes without wonder, as a thing commendable, indeed, but
natural, indispensable, and there of course. A man that devotes his life
to learning, shall he not be learned?
In respect of style our Author manifests the same genial capability, marred
too often by the same rudeness, inequality, and apparent want of
intercourse with the higher classes. Occasionally, as above hinted, we
find consummate vigor, a true inspiration; his burning thoughts step forth
in fit burning words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame
and splendor from Jove's head; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque
allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; all the graces
and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded to the clearest Intellect,
alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer sleeping and
soporific passages; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure
doting jargon, so often intervene! On the whole, Professor Teufelsdrockh,
is not a cultivated writer. Of his sentences perhaps not more than
nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite
angular attitudes, buttressed up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and
ever with this or the other tagrag hanging from them; a few even sprawl out
helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered.
Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies in him a singular
attraction. A wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its
keynote and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of
Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of Fiends; now sinking in cadences, not
without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the
common pitch, when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the
true character is extremely difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have
never fully satisfied ourselves whether it is a tone and hum of real Humor,
which we reckon among the very highest qualities of genius, or some echo of
mere Insanity and Inanity, which doubtless ranks below the very lowest.
Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse, do we
still lie with regard to the Professor's moral feeling. Gleams of an
ethereal love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite pity; he
could clasp the whole Universe into his bosom, and keep it warm; it seems
as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then again he is
so sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine; shows such indifference,
malign coolness towards all that men strive after; and ever with some
half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humor, if indeed it be not mere
stolid callousness,--that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some
incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial
Round, after all, were but some huge foolish Whirligig, where kings and
beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were
chaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest. His look,
as we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever seen: yet it is not of that
cast-iron gravity frequent enough among our own Chancery suitors; but
rather the gravity as of some silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps
the crater of an extinct volcano; into whose black deeps you fear to gaze:
those eyes, those lights that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the
heavenly Stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of Nether Fire.
Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigmatic nature, this
of Teufelsdrockh! Here, however, we gladly recall to mind that once we saw
him _laugh_; once only, perhaps it was the first and last time in his life;
but then such a peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the Seven
Sleepers! It was of Jean Paul's doing: some single billow in that vast
World-Mahlstrom of Humor, with its heaven-kissing coruscations, which is
now, alas, all congealed in the frost of death! The large-bodied Poet and
the small, both large enough in soul, sat talking miscellaneously together,
the present Editor being privileged to listen; and now Paul, in his serious
way, was giving one of those inimitable "Extra-Harangues;" and, as it
chanced, On the Proposal for a _Cast-metal King_: gradually a light
kindled in our Professor's eyes and face, a beaming, mantling, loveliest
light; through those murky features, a radiant ever-young Apollo looked;
and he burst forth like the neighing of all Tattersall's,--tears streaming
down his cheeks, pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air,--loud,
long-continuing, uncontrollable; a laugh not of the face and diaphragm
only, but of the whole man from head to heel. The present Editor, who
laughed indeed, yet with measure, began to fear all was not right:
however, Teufelsdrockh, composed himself, and sank into his old stillness;
on his inscrutable countenance there was, if anything, a slight look of
shame; and Richter himself could not rouse him again. Readers who have any
tincture of Psychology know how much is to be inferred from this; and that
no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether
irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith
we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in
the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to
laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger
from the throat outwards; or at best, produce some whiffling husky
cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool: of none such comes
good. The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems,
and spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.
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