Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh
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