Sartor Resartus
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Thomas Carlyle >> Sartor Resartus
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"Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by the deeds rather than the
looks of her now veteran Othello, lived not in altogether military
subordination; for, as Andreas said, 'the womankind will not drill (_wer
kann die Weiberchen dressiren_):' nevertheless she at heart loved him both
for valor and wisdom; to her a Prussian grenadier Sergeant and Regiment's
Schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero and Cid: what you see, yet
cannot see over, is as good as infinite. Nay, was not Andreas in very deed
a man of order, courage, downrightness (_Geradheit_); that understood
Busching's _Geography_, had been in the victory of Rossbach, and left for
dead in the camisade of Hochkirch? The good Gretchen, for all her
fretting, watched over him and hovered round him as only a true
house-mother can: assiduously she cooked and sewed and scoured for him; so
that not only his old regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but the whole
habitation and environment, where on pegs of honor they hung, looked ever
trim and gay: a roomy painted Cottage, embowered in fruit-trees and
forest-trees, evergreens and honeysuckles; rising many-colored from amid
shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling in through the very windows; under
its long projecting eaves nothing but garden-tools in methodic piles (to
screen them from rain), and seats where, especially on summer nights, a
King might have wished to sit and smoke, and call it his. Such a Bauergut
(Copyhold) had Gretchen given her veteran; whose sinewy arms, and
long-disused gardening talent, had made it what you saw.
"Into this umbrageous Man's-nest, one meek yellow evening or dusk, when the
Sun, hidden indeed from terrestrial Entepfuhl, did nevertheless journey
visible and radiant along the celestial Balance (_Libra_), it was that a
Stranger of reverend aspect entered; and, with grave salutation, stood
before the two rather astonished housemates. He was close-muffled in a
wide mantle; which without farther parley unfolding, he deposited therefrom
what seemed some Basket, overhung with green Persian silk; saying only:
_Ihr lieben Leute, hier bringe ein unschatzbares Verleihen; nehmt es in
aller Acht, sorgfaltigst benutzt es: mit hohem Lohn, oder wohl mit
schweren Zinsen, wird's einst zuruckgefordert_. 'Good Christian people,
here lies for you an invaluable Loan; take all heed thereof, in all
carefulness employ it: with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty,
will it one day be required back.' Uttering which singular words, in a
clear, bell-like, forever memorable tone, the Stranger gracefully withdrew;
and before Andreas or his wife, gazing in expectant wonder, had time to
fashion either question or answer, was clean gone. Neither out of doors
could aught of him be seen or heard; he had vanished in the thickets, in
the dusk; the Orchard-gate stood quietly closed: the Stranger was gone
once and always. So sudden had the whole transaction been, in the autumn
stillness and twilight, so gentle, noiseless, that the Futterals could have
fancied it all a trick of Imagination, or some visit from an authentic
Spirit. Only that the green-silk Basket, such as neither Imagination nor
authentic Spirits are wont to carry, still stood visible and tangible on
their little parlor-table. Towards this the astonished couple, now with
lit candle, hastily turned their attention. Lifting the green veil, to see
what invaluable it hid, they descried there, amid down and rich white
wrappages, no Pitt Diamond or Hapsburg Regalia, but, in the softest sleep,
a little red-colored Infant! Beside it, lay a roll of gold Friedrichs, the
exact amount of which was never publicly known; also a _Taufschein_
(baptismal certificate), wherein unfortunately nothing but the Name was
decipherable, other document or indication none whatever.
"To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and always thenceforth.
Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire of
any such figure as the Stranger; nor could the Traveller, who had passed
through the neighboring Town in coach-and-four, be connected with this
Apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise. Meanwhile, for
Andreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was: What to do with
this little sleeping red-colored Infant? Amid amazements and curiosities,
which had to die away without external satisfying, they resolved, as in
such circumstances charitable prudent people needs must, on nursing it,
though with spoon-meat, into whiteness, and if possible into manhood. The
Heavens smiled on their endeavor: thus has that same mysterious Individual
ever since had a status for himself in this visible Universe, some modicum
of victual and lodging and parade-ground; and now expanded in bulk, faculty
and knowledge of good and evil, he, as HERR DIOGENES TEUFELSDROCKH,
professes or is ready to profess, perhaps not altogether without effect, in
the new University of Weissnichtwo, the new Science of Things in General."
Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think he well might,
that these facts, first communicated, by the good Gretchen Futteral, In his
twelfth year, "produced on the boyish heart and fancy a quite indelible
impression. Who this reverend Personage," he says, "that glided into the
Orchard Cottage when the Sun was in Libra, and then, as on spirit's wings,
glided out again, might be? An inexpressible desire, full of love and of
sadness, has often since struggled within me to shape an answer. Ever, in
my distresses and my loneliness, has Fantasy turned, full of longing
(_sehnsuchtsvoll_), to that unknown Father, who perhaps far from me,
perhaps near, either way invisible, might have taken me to his paternal
bosom, there to lie screened from many a woe. Thou beloved Father, dost
thou still, shut out from me only by thin penetrable curtains of earthly
Space, wend to and fro among the crowd of the living? Or art thou hidden
by those far thicker curtains of the Everlasting Night, or rather of the
Everlasting Day, through which my mortal eye and outstretched arms need not
strive to reach? Alas, I know not, and in vain vex myself to know. More
than once, heart-deluded, have I taken for thee this and the other
noble-looking Stranger; and approached him wistfully, with infinite regard;
but he too had to repel me, he too was not thou.
"And yet, O Man born of Woman," cries the Autobiographer, with one of his
sudden whirls, "wherein is my case peculiar? Hadst thou, any more than I,
a Father whom thou knowest? The Andreas and Gretchen, or the Adam and Eve,
who led thee into Life, and for a time suckled and pap-fed thee there, whom
thou namest Father and Mother; these were, like mine, but thy
nursing-father and nursing-mother: thy true Beginning and Father is in
Heaven, whom with the bodily eye thou shalt never behold, but only with the
spiritual....
"The little green veil," adds he, among much similar moralizing, and
embroiled discoursing, "I yet keep; still more inseparably the Name,
Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. From the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece of
now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands of others. On the Name I have
many times meditated and conjectured; but neither in this lay there any
clew. That it was my unknown Father's name I must hesitate to believe. To
no purpose have I searched through all the Herald's Books, in and without
the German Empire, and through all manner of Subscriber-Lists
(_Pranumeranten_), Militia-Rolls, and other Name-catalogues; extraordinary
names as we have in Germany, the name Teufelsdrockh, except as appended to
my own person, nowhere occurs. Again, what may the unchristian rather than
Christian 'Diogenes' mean? Did that reverend Basket-bearer intend, by such
designation, to shadow forth my future destiny, or his own present malign
humor? Perhaps the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred Parent, who
like an Ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred offspring to be hatched into
self-support by the mere sky-influences of Chance, can thy pilgrimage have
been a smooth one? Beset by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been; or indeed
by the worst figure of Misfortune, by Misconduct. Often have I fancied
how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at, and slung at, wounded,
hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and bedevilled by the Time-Spirit
(_Zeitgeist_) in thyself and others, till the good soul first given thee
was seered into grim rage, and thou hadst nothing for it but to leave in me
an indignant appeal to the Future, and living speaking Protest against the
Devil, as that same Spirit not of the Time only, but of Time itself, is
well named! Which Appeal and Protest, may I now modestly add, was not
perhaps quite lost in air.
"For indeed, as Walter Shandy often insisted, there is much, nay almost
all, in Names. The Name is the earliest Garment you wrap round the
earth-visiting ME; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously (for
there are Names that have lasted nigh thirty centuries) than the very skin.
And now from without, what mystic influences does it not send inwards, even
to the centre; especially in those plastic first-times, when the whole soul
is yet infantine, soft, and the invisible seedgrain will grow to be an all
overshadowing tree! Names? Could I unfold the influence of Names, which
are the most important of all Clothings, I were a second greater
Trismegistus. Not only all common Speech, but Science, Poetry itself is no
other, if thou consider it, than a right _Naming_. Adam's first task was
giving names to natural Appearances: what is ours still but a continuation
of the same; be the Appearances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars,
or starry movements (as in Science); or (as in Poetry) passions, virtues,
calamities, God-attributes, Gods?--In a very plain sense the Proverb says,
_Call one a thief, and he will steal_; in an almost similar sense may we
not perhaps say, _Call one Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, and he will open the
Philosophy of Clothes_?"
"Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all ignorant of his Why,
his How or Whereabout, was opening his eyes to the kind Light; sprawling
out his ten fingers and toes; listening, tasting, feeling; in a word, by
all his Five Senses, still more by his Sixth Sense of Hunger, and a whole
infinitude of inward, spiritual, half-awakened Senses, endeavoring daily to
acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange Universe where he had
arrived, be his task therein what it might. Infinite was his progress;
thus in some fifteen months, he could perform the miracle of--Speech! To
breed a fresh Soul, is it not like brooding a fresh (celestial) Egg;
wherein as yet all is formless, powerless; yet by degrees organic elements
and fibres shoot through the watery albumen; and out of vague Sensation
grows Thought, grows Fantasy and Force, and we have Philosophies,
Dynasties, nay Poetries and Religions!
"Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by such diminutive had they
in their fondness named him, travelled forward to those high consummations,
by quick yet easy stages. The Futterals, to avoid vain talk, and moreover
keep the roll of gold Friedrichs safe, gave out that he was a grandnephew;
the orphan of some sister's daughter, suddenly deceased, in Andreas's
distant Prussian birthland; of whom, as of her indigent sorrowing widower,
little enough was known at Entepfuhl. Heedless of all which, the Nursling
took to his spoon-meat, and throve. I have heard him noted as a still
infant, that kept his mind much to himself; above all, that seldom or never
cried. He already felt that time was precious; that he had other work cut
out for him than whimpering."
Such, after utmost painful search and collation among these miscellaneous
Paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of Herr Teufelsdrockh's
genealogy. More imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem to few readers than
to us. The Professor, in whom truly we more and more discern a certain
satirical turn, and deep under-currents of roguish whim, for the present
stands pledged in honor, so we will not doubt him: but seems it not
conceivable that, by the "good Gretchen Futteral," or some other perhaps
interested party, he has himself been deceived? Should these sheets,
translated or not, ever reach the Entepfuhl Circulating Library, some
cultivated native of that district might feel called to afford explanation.
Nay, since Books, like invisible scouts, permeate the whole habitable
globe, and Timbuctoo itself is not safe from British Literature, may not
some Copy find out even the mysterious basket-bearing Stranger, who in a
state of extreme senility perhaps still exists; and gently force even him
to disclose himself; to claim openly a son, in whom any father may feel
pride?
CHAPTER II.
IDYLLIC.
"HAPPY season of Childhood!" exclaims Teufelsdrockh: "Kind Nature, that
art to all a bountiful mother; that visitest the poor man's hut with
auroral radiance; and for thy Nursling hast provided a soft swathing of
Love and infinite Hope, wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced round
(_umgaukelt_) by sweetest Dreams! If the paternal Cottage still shuts us
in, its roof still screens us; with a Father we have as yet a prophet,
priest and king, and an Obedience that makes us free. The young spirit has
awakened out of Eternity, and knows not what we mean by Time; as yet Time
is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful sunlit ocean; years to the child
are as ages: ah! the secret of Vicissitude, of that slower or quicker
decay and ceaseless down-rushing of the universal World-fabric, from the
granite mountain to the man or day-moth, is yet unknown; and in a
motionless Universe, we taste, what afterwards in this quick-whirling
Universe is forever denied us, the balm of Rest. Sleep on, thou fair Child,
for thy long rough journey is at hand! A little while, and thou too shalt
sleep no more, but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles; thou too, with
old Arnauld, wilt have to say in stern patience: 'Rest? Rest? Shall I
not have all Eternity to rest in?' Celestial Nepenthe! though a Pyrrhus
conquer empires, and an Alexander sack the world, he finds thee not; and
thou hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eyelids, on the
heart of every mother's child. For as yet, sleep and waking are one: the
fair Life-garden rustles infinite around, and everywhere is dewy fragrance,
and the budding of Hope; which budding, if in youth, too frost-nipt, it
grow to flowers, will in manhood yield no fruit, but a prickly,
bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which the fewest can find the kernel."
In such rose-colored light does our Professor, as Poets are wont, look back
on his childhood; the historical details of which (to say nothing of much
other vague oratorical matter) he accordingly dwells on with an almost
wearisome minuteness. We hear of Entepfuhl standing "in trustful
derangement" among the woody slopes; the paternal Orchard flanking it as
extreme outpost from below; the little Kuhbach gushing kindly by, among
beech-rows, through river after river, into the Donau, into the Black Sea,
into the Atmosphere and Universe; and how "the brave old Linden,"
stretching like a parasol of twenty ells in radius, overtopping all other
rows and clumps, towered up from the central _Agora_ and _Campus Martius_
of the Village, like its Sacred Tree; and how the old men sat talking under
its shadow (Gneschen often greedily listening), and the wearied laborers
reclined, and the unwearied children sported, and the young men and maidens
often danced to flute-music. "Glorious summer twilights," cries
Teufelsdrockh, "when the Sun, like a proud Conqueror and Imperial
Taskmaster, turned his back, with his gold-purple emblazonry, and all his
fireclad bodyguard (of Prismatic Colors); and the tired brickmakers of this
clay Earth might steal a little frolic, and those few meek Stars would not
tell of them!"
Then we have long details of the _Weinlesen_ (Vintage), the Harvest-Home,
Christmas, and so forth; with a whole cycle of the Entepfuhl
Children's-games, differing apparently by mere superficial shades from
those of other countries. Concerning all which, we shall here, for obvious
reasons, say nothing. What cares the world for our as yet miniature
Philosopher's achievements under that "brave old Linden "? Or even where
is the use of such practical reflections as the following? "In all the
sports of Children, were it only in their wanton breakages and defacements,
you shall discern a creative instinct (_schaffenden Trieb_): the Mankin
feels that he is a born Man, that his vocation is to work. The choicest
present you can make him is a Tool; be it knife or pen-gun, for
construction or for destruction; either way it is for Work, for Change. In
gregarious sports of skill or strength, the Boy trains himself to
Co-operation, for war or peace, as governor or governed: the little Maid
again, provident of her domestic destiny, takes with preference to Dolls."
Perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, considering who it is that
relates it: "My first short-clothes were of yellow serge; or rather, I
should say, my first short-cloth, for the vesture was one and indivisible,
reaching from neck to ankle, a mere body with four limbs: of which fashion
how little could I then divine the architectural, how much less the moral
significance!"
More graceful is the following little picture: "On fine evenings I was
wont to carry forth my supper (bread-crumb boiled in milk), and eat it
out-of-doors. On the coping of the Orchard-wall, which I could reach by
climbing, or still more easily if Father Andreas would set up the
pruning-ladder, my porringer was placed: there, many a sunset, have I,
looking at the distant western Mountains, consumed, not without relish, my
evening meal. Those hues of gold and azure, that hush of World's
expectation as Day died, were still a Hebrew Speech for me; nevertheless I
was looking at the fair illuminated Letters, and had an eye for their
gilding."
With "the little one's friendship for cattle and poultry" we shall not much
intermeddle. It may be that hereby he acquired a "certain deeper sympathy
with animated Nature:" but when, we would ask, saw any man, in a
collection of Biographical Documents, such a piece as this: "Impressive
enough (_bedeutungsvoll_) was it to hear, in early morning, the Swineherd's
horn; and know that so many hungry happy quadrupeds were, on all sides,
starting in hot haste to join him, for breakfast on the Heath. Or to see
them at eventide, all marching in again, with short squeak, almost in
military order; and each, topographically correct, trotting off in
succession to the right or left, through its own lane, to its own dwelling;
till old Kunz, at the Village-head, now left alone, blew his last blast,
and retired for the night. We are wont to love the Hog chiefly in the form
of Ham; yet did not these bristly thick-skinned beings here manifest
intelligence, perhaps humor of character; at any rate, a touching, trustful
submissiveness to Man,--who, were he but a Swineherd, in darned gabardine,
and leather breeches more resembling slate or discolored-tin breeches, is
still the Hierarch of this lower world?"
It is maintained, by Helvetius and his set, that an infant of genius is
quite the same as any other infant, only that certain surprisingly
favorable influences accompany him through life, especially through
childhood, and expand him, while others lie close-folded and continue
dunces. Herein, say they, consists the whole difference between an
inspired Prophet and a double-barrelled Game-preserver: the inner man of
the one has been fostered into generous development; that of the other,
crushed down perhaps by vigor of animal digestion, and the like, has exuded
and evaporated, or at best sleeps now irresuscitably stagnant at the bottom
of his stomach. "With which opinion," cries Teufelsdrockh, "I should as
soon agree as with this other, that an acorn might, by favorable or
unfavorable influences of soil and climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or
the cabbage-seed into an oak.
"Nevertheless," continues he, "I too acknowledge the all-but omnipotence of
early culture and nurture: hereby we have either a doddered dwarf bush, or
a high-towering, wide-shadowing tree; either a sick yellow cabbage, or an
edible luxuriant green one. Of a truth, it is the duty of all men,
especially of all philosophers, to note down with accuracy the
characteristic circumstances of their Education, what furthered, what
hindered, what in any way modified it: to which duty, nowadays so pressing
for many a German Autobiographer, I also zealously address myself."--Thou
rogue! Is it by short clothes of yellow serge, and swineherd horns, that
an infant of genius is educated? And yet, as usual, it ever remains
doubtful whether he is laughing in his sleeve at these Autobiographical
times of ours, or writing from the abundance of his own fond ineptitude.
For he continues: "If among the ever-streaming currents of Sights,
Hearings, Feelings for Pain or Pleasure, whereby, as in a Magic Hall, young
Gneschen went about environed, I might venture to select and specify,
perhaps these following were also of the number:
"Doubtless, as childish sports call forth Intellect, Activity, so the young
creature's Imagination was stirred up, and a Historical tendency given him
by the narrative habits of Father Andreas; who, with his
battle-reminiscences, and gray austere yet hearty patriarchal aspect, could
not but appear another Ulysses and 'much-enduring Man.' Eagerly I hung
upon his tales, when listening neighbors enlivened the hearth; from these
perils and these travels, wild and far almost as Hades itself, a dim world
of Adventure expanded itself within me. Incalculable also was the
knowledge I acquired in standing by the Old Men under the Linden-tree: the
whole of Immensity was yet new to me; and had not these reverend seniors,
talkative enough, been employed in partial surveys thereof for nigh
fourscore years? With amazement I began to discover that Entepfuhl stood
in the middle of a Country, of a World; that there was such a thing as
History, as Biography to which I also, one day, by hand and tongue, might
contribute.
"In a like sense worked the _Postwagen_ (Stage-coach), which, slow-rolling
under its mountains of men and luggage, wended through our Village:
northwards, truly, in the dead of night; yet southwards visibly at
eventide. Not till my eighth year did I reflect that this Postwagen could
be other than some terrestrial Moon, rising and setting by mere Law of
Nature, like the heavenly one; that it came on made highways, from far
cities towards far cities; weaving them like a monstrous shuttle into
closer and closer union. It was then that, independently of Schiller's
_Wilhelm Tell_, I made this not quite insignificant reflection (so true
also in spiritual things): _Any road, this simple Entepfuhl road, will
lead you to the end of the World_!
"Why mention our Swallows, which, out of far Africa, as I learned,
threading their way over seas and mountains, corporate cities and
belligerent nations, yearly found themselves with the month of May,
snug-lodged in our Cottage Lobby? The hospitable Father (for cleanliness'
sake) had fixed a little bracket plumb under their nest: there they built,
and caught flies, and twittered, and bred; and all, I chiefly, from the
heart loved them. Bright, nimble creatures, who taught you the
mason-craft; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic incorporation, almost
social police? For if, by ill chance, and when time pressed, your House
fell, have I not seen five neighborly Helpers appear next day; and swashing
to and fro, with animated, loud, long-drawn chirpings, and activity almost
super-hirundine, complete it again before nightfall?
"But undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl child's culture, where as
in a funnel its manifold influences were concentrated and simultaneously
poured down on us, was the annual Cattle-fair. Here, assembling from all
the four winds, came the elements of an unspeakable hurry-burly. Nut-brown
maids and nut-brown men, all clear-washed, loud-laughing, bedizened and
beribanded; who came for dancing, for treating, and if possible, for
happiness. Topbooted Graziers from the North; Swiss Brokers, Italian
Drovers, also topbooted, from the South; these with their subalterns in
leather jerkins, leather skull-caps, and long ox-goads; shouting in
half-articulate speech, amid the inarticulate barking and bellowing. Apart
stood Potters from far Saxony, with their crockery in fair rows; Nurnberg
Pedlers, in booths that to me seemed richer than Ormuz bazaars; Showmen
from the Lago Maggiore; detachments of the _Wiener Schub_ (Offscourings of
Vienna) vociferously superintending games of chance. Ballad-singers
brayed, Auctioneers grew hoarse; cheap New Wine (_heuriger_) flowed like
water, still worse confounding the confusion; and high over all, vaulted,
in ground-and-lofty tumbling, a particolored Merry-Andrew, like the genius
of the place and of Life itself.
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