Sartor Resartus

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That to Teufelsdrockh the aspect of the world was nowise so faultless, and
many things besides "the Outrooting of Journalism" might have seemed
improvements, we can readily conjecture. With nothing but a barren
Auscultatorship from without, and so many mutinous thoughts and wishes from
within, his position was no easy one. "The Universe," he says, "was as a
mighty Sphinx-riddle, which I knew so little of, yet must rede, or be
devoured. In red streaks of unspeakable grandeur, yet also in the
blackness of darkness, was Life, to my too-unfurnished Thought, unfolding
itself. A strange contradiction lay in me; and I as yet knew not the
solution of it; knew not that spiritual music can spring only from discords
set in harmony; that but for Evil there were no Good, as victory is only
possible by battle."

"I have heard affirmed (surely in jest)," observes he elsewhere, "by not
unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real increase of human happiness,
could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or
rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies
and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of
twenty-five. With which suggestion, at least as considered in the light of
a practical scheme, I need scarcely say that I nowise coincide.
Nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as young ladies (_Madchen_) are,
to mankind, precisely the most delightful in those years; so young
gentlemen (_Bubchen_) do then attain their maximum of detestability. Such
gawks (_Gecken_) are they, and foolish peacocks, and yet with such a
vulturous hunger for self-indulgence; so obstinate, obstreperous,
vain-glorious; in all senses, so froward and so forward. No mortal's
endeavor or attainment will, in the smallest, content the as yet
unendeavoring, unattaining young gentleman; but he could make it all
infinitely better, were it worthy of him. Life everywhere is the most
manageable matter, simple as a question in the Rule-of-Three: multiply
your second and third term together, divide the product by the first, and
your quotient will be the answer,--which you are but an ass if you cannot
come at. The booby has not yet found out, by any trial, that, do what one
will, there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no
net integer quotient so much as to be thought of."

In which passage does not there lie an implied confession that
Teufelsdrockh himself, besides his outward obstructions, had an inward,
still greater, to contend with; namely, a certain temporary, youthful, yet
still afflictive derangement of head? Alas, on the former side alone, his
case was hard enough. "It continues ever true," says he, "that Saturn, or
Chronos, or what we call TIME, devours all his Children: only by incessant
Running, by incessant Working, may you (for some threescore-and-ten years)
escape him; and you too he devours at last. Can any Sovereign, or Holy
Alliance of Sovereigns, bid Time stand still; even in thought, shake
themselves free of Time? Our whole terrestrial being is based on Time, and
built of Time; it is wholly a Movement, a Time-impulse; Time is the author
of it, the material of it. Hence also our Whole Duty, which is to move, to
work,--in the right direction. Are not our Bodies and our Souls in
continual movement, whether we will or not; in a continual Waste, requiring
a continual Repair? Utmost satisfaction of our whole outward and inward
Wants were but satisfaction for a space of Time; thus, whatso we have done,
is done, and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do anew. O
Time-Spirit, how hast thou environed and imprisoned us, and sunk us so deep
in thy troublous dim Time-Element, that only in lucid moments can so much
as glimpses of our upper Azure Home be revealed to us! Me, however, as a
Son of Time, unhappier than some others, was Time threatening to eat quite
prematurely; for, strive as I might, there was no good Running, so
obstructed was the path, so gyved were the feet." That is to say, we
presume, speaking in the dialect of this lower world, that Teufelsdrockh's
whole duty and necessity was, like other men's, "to work,--in the right
direction," and that no work was to be had; whereby he became wretched
enough. As was natural: with haggard Scarcity threatening him in the
distance; and so vehement a soul languishing in restless inaction, and
forced thereby, like Sir Hudibras's sword by rust,

"To eat into itself, for lack
Of something else to hew and hack;"

But on the whole, that same "excellent Passivity," as it has all along
done, is here again vigorously flourishing; in which circumstance may we
not trace the beginnings of much that now characterizes our Professor and
perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin of the Clothes-Philosophy itself?
Already the attitude he has assumed towards the World is too defensive;
not, as would have been desirable, a bold attitude of attack. "So far
hitherto," he says, "as I had mingled with mankind, I was notable, if for
anything, for a certain stillness of manner, which, as my friends often
rebukingly declared, did but ill express the keen ardor of my feelings. I,
in truth, regarded men with an excess both of love and of fear. The
mystery of a Person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a sense for the
Godlike. Often, notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by half-strangers
hated, for my so-called Hardness (_Harte_), my Indifferentism towards men;
and the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, as my favorite dialect in
conversation. Alas, the panoply of Sarcasm was but as a buckram case,
wherein I had striven to envelop myself; that so my own poor Person might
live safe there, and in all friendliness, being no longer exasperated by
wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil;
for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it. But how many
individuals did I, in those days, provoke into some degree of hostility
thereby! An ironic man, with his sly stillness, and ambuscading ways, more
especially an ironic young man, from whom it is least expected, may be
viewed as a pest to society. Have we not seen persons of weight and name
coming forward, with gentlest indifference, to tread such a one out of
sight, as an insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (_balkenhock_),
and thence fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not
without indignation, when he proved electric and a torpedo!"

Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper make way for himself
in Life; where the first problem, as Teufelsdrockh too admits, is "to unite
yourself with some one, and with somewhat (_sich anzuschliessen_)"?
Division, not union, is written on most part of his procedure. Let us add
too that, in no great length of time, the only important connection he had
ever succeeded in forming, his connection with the Zahdarm Family, seems to
have been paralyzed, for all practical uses, by the death of the "not
uncholeric" old Count. This fact stands recorded, quite incidentally, in a
certain _Discourse on Epitaphs_, huddled into the present Bag, among so
much else; of which Essay the learning and curious penetration are more to
be approved of than the spirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary
inscriptions, of what sort soever, should be Historical rather than
Lyrical. "By request of that worthy Nobleman's survivors," says he, "I
undertook to compose his Epitaph; and not unmindful of my own rules,
produced the following; which however, for an alleged defect of Latinity, a
defect never yet fully visible to myself, still remains
unengraven;"--wherein, we may predict, there is more than the Latinity that
will surprise an English reader:

HIC JACET
PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS,
ZAEHDARMI COMES,
EX IMPERII CONCILIO,
VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRI
EQUES.
QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT,
QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES
PLUMBO CONFECIT:
VARII CIBI
CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA,
PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE,
HAUD SINE TUMULT DEVOLVENS,
IN STERCUS
PALAM CONVERTIT.
NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM
OPERA SEQUUNTUR.
SI MONUMENTUM QUAERIS,
FIMETUM ADSPICE.
PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [_sub dato_]; POSTREMUM [_sub dato_].

CHAPTER V.
ROMANCE.

"For long years," writes Teufelsdrockh, "had the poor Hebrew, in this Egypt
of an Auscultatorship, painfully toiled, baking bricks without stubble,
before ever the question once struck him with entire force: For
what?--_Beym Himmel_! For Food and Warmth! And are Food and Warmth
nowhere else, in the whole wide Universe, discoverable?--Come of it what
might, I resolved to try."

Thus then are we to see him in a new independent capacity, though perhaps
far from an improved one. Teufelsdrockh is now a man without Profession.
Quitting the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers, where indeed his
leeward, laggard condition was painful enough, he desperately steers off,
on a course of his own, by sextant and compass of his own. Unhappy
Teufelsdrockh! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic, nor Commodores pleased
thee, still was it not _a Fleet_, sailing in prescribed track, for fixed
objects; above all, in combination, wherein, by mutual guidance, by all
manner of loans and borrowings, each could manifoldly aid the other? How
wilt thou sail in unknown seas; and for thyself find that shorter Northwest
Passage to thy fair Spice-country of a Nowhere?--A solitary rover, on such
a voyage, with such nautical tactics, will meet with adventures. Nay, as
we forthwith discover, a certain Calypso-Island detains him at the very
outset; and as it were falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning.

"If in youth," writes he once, "the Universe is majestically unveiling, and
everywhere Heaven revealing itself on Earth, nowhere to the Young Man does
this Heaven on Earth so immediately reveal itself as in the Young Maiden.
Strangely enough, in this strange life of ours, it has been so appointed.
On the whole, as I have often said, a Person (_Personlichkeit_) is ever
holy to us; a certain orthodox Anthropomorphism connects my _Me_ with all
_Thees_ in bonds of Love: but it is in this approximation of the Like and
Unlike, that such heavenly attraction, as between Negative and Positive,
first burns out into a flame. Is the pitifullest mortal Person, think you,
indifferent to us? Is it not rather our heartfelt wish to be made one with
him; to unite him to us, by gratitude, by admiration, even by fear; or
failing all these, unite ourselves to him? But how much more, in this case
of the Like-Unlike! Here is conceded us the higher mystic possibility of
such a union, the highest in our Earth; thus, in the conducting medium of
Fantasy, flames forth that fire-development of the universal Spiritual
Electricity, which, as unfolded between man and woman, we first
emphatically denominate LOVE.

"In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjecture, there already blooms
a certain prospective Paradise, cheered by some fairest Eve; nor, in the
stately vistas, and flowerage and foliage of that Garden, is a Tree of
Knowledge, beautiful and awful in the midst thereof, wanting. Perhaps too
the whole is but the lovelier, if Cherubim and a Flaming Sword divide it
from all footsteps of men; and grant him, the imaginative stripling, only
the view, not the entrance. Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is
still an impassable celestial barrier; and the sacred air-cities of Hope
have not shrunk into the mean clay-hamlets of Reality; and man, by his
nature, is yet infinite and free!

"As for our young Forlorn," continues Teufelsdrockh evidently meaning
himself, "in his secluded way of life, and with his glowing Fantasy, the
more fiery that it burnt under cover, as in a reverberating furnace, his
feeling towards the Queens of this Earth was, and indeed is, altogether
unspeakable. A visible Divinity dwelt in them; to our young Friend all
women were holy, were heavenly. As yet he but saw them flitting past, in
their many-colored angel-plumage; or hovering mute and inaccessible on the
outskirts of _AEsthetic Tea_: all of air they were, all Soul and Form; so
lovely, like mysterious priestesses, in whose hand was the invisible
Jacob's-ladder, whereby man might mount into very Heaven. That he, our
poor Friend, should ever win for himself one of these Gracefuls
(_Holden_)--_Ach Gott_! how could he hope it; should he not have died
under it? There was a certain delirious vertigo in the thought.

"Thus was the young man, if all-sceptical of Demons and Angels such as the
vulgar had once believed in, nevertheless not unvisited by hosts of true
Sky-born, who visibly and audibly hovered round him wheresoever he went;
and they had that religious worship in his thought, though as yet it was by
their mere earthly and trivial name that he named them. But now, if on a
soul so circumstanced, some actual Air-maiden, incorporated into
tangibility and reality, should cast any electric glance of kind eyes,
saying thereby, 'Thou too mayest love and be loved;' and so kindle
him,--good Heaven, what a volcanic, earthquake-bringing, all-consuming fire
were probably kindled!"

Such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst forth, with
explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner man of Herr Diogenes; as
indeed how could it fail? A nature, which, in his own figurative style, we
might say, had now not a little carbonized tinder, of Irritability; with so
much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humor enough; the whole lying
in such hot neighborhood, close by "a reverberating furnace of Fantasy:"
have we not here the components of driest Gunpowder, ready, on occasion of
the smallest spark, to blaze up? Neither, in this our Life-element, are
sparks anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some Angel, whereof so many
hovered round, would one day, leaving "the outskirts of _AEsthetic Tea_,"
flit higher; and, by electric Promethean glance, kindle no despicable
firework. Happy, if it indeed proved a Firework, and flamed off
rocket-wise, in successive beautiful bursts of splendor, each growing
naturally from the other, through the several stages of a happy Youthful
Love; till the whole were safely burnt out; and the young soul relieved
with little damage! Happy, if it did not rather prove a Conflagration and
mad Explosion; painfully lacerating the heart itself; nay perhaps bursting
the heart in pieces (which were Death); or at best, bursting the thin walls
of your "reverberating furnace," so that it rage thenceforth all unchecked
among the contiguous combustibles (which were Madness): till of the so
fair and manifold internal world of our Diogenes, there remained Nothing,
or only the "crater of an extinct volcano"!

From multifarious Documents in this Bag _Capricornus_, and in the adjacent
ones on both sides thereof, it becomes manifest that our philosopher, as
stoical and cynical as he now looks, was heartily and even frantically in
Love: here therefore may our old doubts whether his heart were of stone or
of flesh give way. He loved once; not wisely but too well. And once only:
for as your Congreve needs a new case or wrappage for every new rocket, so
each human heart can properly exhibit but one Love, if even one; the "First
Love which is infinite" can be followed by no second like unto it. In more
recent years, accordingly, the Editor of these Sheets was led to regard
Teufelsdrockh as a man not only who would never wed, but who would never
even flirt; whom the grand-climacteric itself, and _St. Martin's Summer_ of
incipient Dotage, would crown with no new myrtle-garland. To the
Professor, women are henceforth Pieces of Art; of Celestial Art, indeed,
which celestial pieces he glories to survey in galleries, but has lost
thought of purchasing.

Psychological readers are not without curiosity to see how Teufelsdrockh in
this for him unexampled predicament, demeans himself; with what specialties
of successive configuration, splendor and color, his Firework blazes off.
Small, as usual, is the satisfaction that such can meet with here. From
amid these confused masses of Eulogy and Elegy, with their mad Petrarchan
and Werterean ware lying madly scattered among all sorts of quite
extraneous matter, not so much as the fair one's name can be deciphered.
For, without doubt, the title _Blumine_, whereby she is here designated,
and which means simply Goddess of Flowers, must be fictitious. Was her
real name Flora, then? But what was her surname, or had she none? Of what
station in Life was she; of what parentage, fortune, aspect? Specially, by
what Pre-established Harmony of occurrences did the Lover and the Loved
meet one another in so wide a world; how did they behave in such meeting?
To all which questions, not unessential in a Biographic work, mere
Conjecture must for most part return answer. "It was appointed," says our
Philosopher, "that the high celestial orbit of Blumine should intersect the
low sublunary one of our Forlorn; that he, looking in her empyrean eyes,
should fancy the upper Sphere of Light was come down into this nether
sphere of Shadows; and finding himself mistaken, make noise enough."

We seem to gather that she was young, hazel-eyed, beautiful, and some one's
Cousin; high-born, and of high spirit; but unhappily dependent and
insolvent; living, perhaps, on the not too gracious bounty of moneyed
relatives. But how came "the Wanderer" into her circle? Was it by the
humid vehicle of _AEsthetic Tea_, or by the arid one of mere Business? Was
it on the hand of Herr Towgood; or of the Gnadige Frau, who, as an
ornamental Artist, might sometimes like to promote flirtation, especially
for young cynical Nondescripts? To all appearance, it was chiefly by
Accident, and the grace of Nature.

"Thou fair Waldschloss," writes our Autobiographer, "what stranger ever saw
thee, were it even an absolved Auscultator, officially bearing in his
pocket the last _Relatio ex Actis_ he would ever write, but must have
paused to wonder! Noble Mansion! There stoodest thou, in deep Mountain
Amphitheatre, on umbrageous lawns, in thy serene solitude; stately,
massive, all of granite; glittering in the western sunbeams, like a palace
of El Dorado, overlaid with precious metal. Beautiful rose up, in wavy
curvature, the slope of thy guardian Hills; of the greenest was their
sward, embossed with its dark-brown frets of crag, or spotted by some
spreading solitary Tree and its shadow. To the unconscious Wayfarer thou
wert also as an Ammon's Temple, in the Libyan Waste; where, for joy and
woe, the tablet of his Destiny lay written. Well might he pause and gaze;
in that glance of his were prophecy and nameless forebodings."

But now let us conjecture that the so presentient Auscultator has handed in
his _Relatio ex Actis_; been invited to a glass of Rhine-wine; and so,
instead of returning dispirited and athirst to his dusty Town-home, is
ushered into the Garden-house, where sit the choicest party of dames and
cavaliers: if not engaged in AEsthetic Tea, yet in trustful evening
conversation, and perhaps Musical Coffee, for we hear of "harps and pure
voices making the stillness live." Scarcely, it would seem, is the
Garden-house inferior in respectability to the noble Mansion itself.
"Embowered amid rich foliage, rose-clusters, and the hues and odors of
thousand flowers, here sat that brave company; in front, from the
wide-opened doors, fair outlook over blossom and bush, over grove and
velvet green, stretching, undulating onwards to the remote Mountain peaks:
so bright, so mild, and everywhere the melody of birds and happy creatures:
it was all as if man had stolen a shelter from the SUIT in the
bosom-vesture of Summer herself. How came it that the Wanderer advanced
thither with such forecasting heart (_ahndungsvoll_), by the side of his
gay host? Did he feel that to these soft influences his hard bosom ought
to be shut; that here, once more, Fate had it in view to try him; to mock
him, and see whether there were Humor in him?

"Next moment he finds himself presented to the party; and especially by
name to--Blumine! Peculiar among all dames and damosels glanced Blumine,
there in her modesty, like a star among earthly lights. Noblest maiden!
whom he bent to, in body and in soul; yet scarcely dared look at, for the
presence filled him with painful yet sweetest embarrassment.

"Blumine's was a name well known to him; far and wide was the fair one
heard of, for her gifts, her graces, her caprices: from all which vague
colorings of Rumor, from the censures no less than from the praises, had
our friend painted for himself a certain imperious Queen of Hearts, and
blooming warm Earth-angel, much more enchanting than your mere white
Heaven-angels of women, in whose placid veins circulates too little
naphtha-fire. Herself also he had seen in public places; that light yet so
stately form; those dark tresses, shading a face where smiles and sunlight
played over earnest deeps: but all this he had seen only as a magic
vision, for him inaccessible, almost without reality. Her sphere was too
far from his; how should she ever think of him; O Heaven! how should they
so much as once meet together? And now that Rose-goddess sits in the same
circle with him; the light of _her_ eyes has smiled on him; if he speak,
she will hear it! Nay, who knows, since the heavenly Sun looks into lowest
valleys, but Blumine herself might have aforetime noted the so unnotable;
perhaps, from his very gainsayers, as he had from hers, gathered wonder,
gathered favor for him? Was the attraction, the agitation mutual, then;
pole and pole trembling towards contact, when once brought into
neighborhood? Say rather, heart swelling in presence of the Queen of
Hearts; like the Sea swelling when once near its Moon! With the Wanderer
it was even so: as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly as at the touch of
a Seraph's wand, his whole soul is roused from its deepest recesses; and
all that was painful and that was blissful there, dim images, vague
feelings of a whole Past and a whole Future, are heaving in unquiet eddies
within him.

"Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still Friend shrunk forcibly
together; and shrouded up his tremors and flutterings, of what sort soever,
in a safe cover of Silence, and perhaps of seeming Stolidity. How was it,
then, that here, when trembling to the core of his heart, he did not sink
into swoons, but rose into strength, into fearlessness and clearness? It
was his guiding Genius (_Damon_) that inspired him; he must go forth and
meet his Destiny. Show thyself now, whispered it, or be forever hid. Thus
sometimes it is even when your anxiety becomes transcendental, that the
soul first feels herself able to transcend it; that she rises above it, in
fiery victory; and borne on new-found wings of victory, moves so calmly,
even because so rapidly, so irresistibly. Always must the Wanderer
remember, with a certain satisfaction and surprise, how in this case he sat
not silent but struck adroitly into the stream of conversation; which
thenceforth, to speak with an apparent not a real vanity, he may say that
he continued to lead. Surely, in those hours, a certain inspiration was
imparted him, such inspiration as is still possible in our late era. The
self-secluded unfolds himself in noble thoughts, in free, glowing words;
his soul is as one sea of light, the peculiar home of Truth and Intellect;
wherein also Fantasy bodies forth form after form, radiant with all
prismatic hues."

It appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there talked one
"Philisitine;" who even now, to the general weariness, was dominantly
pouring forth Philistinism (_Philistriositaten_.); little witting what hero
was here entering to demolish him! We omit the series of Socratic, or
rather Diogenic utterances, not unhappy in their way, whereby the monster,
"persuaded into silence," seems soon after to have withdrawn for the night.
"Of which dialectic marauder," writes our hero, "the discomfiture was
visibly felt as a benefit by most: but what were all applauses to the glad
smile, threatening every moment to become a laugh, wherewith Blumine
herself repaid the victor? He ventured to address her she answered with
attention: nay what if there were a slight tremor in that silver voice;
what if the red glow of evening were hiding a transient blush!

"The conversation took a higher tone, one fine thought called forth
another: it was one of those rare seasons, when the soul expands with full
freedom, and man feels himself brought near to man. Gayly in light,
graceful abandonment, the friendly talk played round that circle; for the
burden was rolled from every heart; the barriers of Ceremony, which are
indeed the laws of polite living, had melted as into vapor; and the poor
claims of _Me_ and _Thee_, no longer parted by rigid fences, now flowed
softly into one another; and Life lay all harmonious, many-tinted, like
some fair royal champaign, the sovereign and owner of which were Love only.
Such music springs from kind hearts, in a kind environment of place and
time. And yet as the light grew more aerial on the mountaintops, and the
shadows fell longer over the valley, some faint tone of sadness may have
breathed through the heart; and, in whispers more or less audible, reminded
every one that as this bright day was drawing towards its close, so
likewise must the Day of Man's Existence decline into dust and darkness;
and with all its sick toilings, and joyful and mournful noises, sink in the
still Eternity.

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