Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh
sort of relation, indeed, continued, for a time, to connect our
Autobiographer, though perhaps feebly enough, with this noble House, we
have elsewhere express evidence. Doubtless, if he expected patronage, it
was in vain; enough for him if he here obtained occasional glimpses
of the great world, from which we at one time fancied him to have been
always excluded. "The Zahdarms," says he, "lived in the soft, sumptuous
garniture of Aristocracy; whereto Literature and Art, attracted and
attached from without, were to serve as the handsomest fringing. It was
to the _Gnadigen Frau_ (her Ladyship) that this latter improvement was
due: assiduously she gathered, dexterously she fitted on, what fringing
was to be had; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded." Was Teufelsdrockh
also a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising to be such? "With his
_Excellenz_ (the Count)," continues he, "I have more than once had the
honor to converse; chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the
world, which he, though now past middle life, viewed in no unfavorable
light; finding indeed, except the Outrooting of Journalism (_die
auszurottende Journalistik_), little to desiderate therein. On some
points, as his _Excellenz_ was not uncholeric, I found it more pleasant
to keep silence. Besides, his occupation being that of Owning Land,
there might be faculties enough, which, as superfluous for such use,
were little developed in him."
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