Sartor Resartus (Oxford World's Classics) (27 page)

So that for Teufelsdröckh also there has been a “glorious revolution:” these mad shadow-hunting and shadow-hunted Pilgrimings of his, were but some purifying “Temptation in the Wilderness,” before his apostolic work (such as it was) could begin; which Temptation is now happily over, and the Devil once more worsted! Was “that high moment in the
Rue de l’Enfer
,” then, properly the turning point of the battle; when the Fiend said,
Worship me or be torn in shreds
, and was answered valiantly with an
Apage Satanas?
*
—Singular Teufelsdröckh, would thou hadst told thy singular story in plain words! But it is fruitless to look there, in those Paper-bags, for such. Nothing but innuendoes, figurative crotchets: a typical Shadow, fitfully wavering, prophetico-satiric; no clear logical Picture. “How paint to the sensual eye,” asks he once, “what passes in the Holy-of-Holies of Man’s Soul; in what words, known to these profane times, speak even afar off of the Unspeakable?” We ask in turn: Why perplex these times, profane as they are, with needless obscurity, by omission and by commission? Not mystical only is our Professor, but whimsical; and involves himself, now more than ever, in eye-bewildering
chiaroscuro
. Successive glimpses, here faithfully imparted, our more gifted readers must endeavour to combine for their own behoof.

He says: “The hot Harmattan-wind had raged itself out; its
howl went silent within me; and the long-deafened soul could now hear. I paused in my wild wanderings; and sat me down to wait, and consider; for it was as if the hour of change drew nigh. I seemed to surrender, to renounce utterly, and say: Fly, then, false shadows of Hope; I will chase you no more, I will believe you no more. And ye too, haggard spectres of Fear, I care not for you; ye too are all shadows and a lie. Let me rest here; for I am way-weary and life-weary; I will rest here, were it but to die: to die or to live is alike to me; alike insignificant.”—And again: “Here, then, as I lay in that C
ENTRE OF
I
NDIFFERENCE
; cast, doubtless, by benignant upper Influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually away, and I awoke to a new Heaven and a new Earth. The first preliminary moral Act, Annihilation of Self (
Selbst-tödtung
), had been happily accomplished; and my mind’s eyes were now unsealed, and its hands ungyved.”

Might we not also conjecture that the following passage refers to his Locality, during this same “healing sleep;” that his Pilgrim-staff lies cast aside here, on “the high table-land;” and indeed that the repose is already taking wholesome effect on him? Were it not that the tone, in some parts, has more of riancy, even of levity, than we could have expected. However, in Teufelsdröckh, there is always the strangest Dualism: light dancing, with guitar-music, will be going on in the forecourt, while by fits from within comes the faint whimpering of woe and wail. We transcribe the piece entire:

“Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, musing and meditating; on the high table-land, in front of the Mountains; over me, as roof, the azure Dome; and around me, for walls, four azure flowing curtains,—namely, of the Four azure Winds, on whose bottom-fringes also I have seen gilding. And then to fancy the fair Castles that stood sheltered in these Mountain hollows; with their green flower-lawns, and white dames and damosels, lovely enough: or better still, the straw-roofed Cottages, wherein stood many a Mother baking bread, with her children round her:—all hidden and protectingly folded up in the valley-folds; yet there and alive, as sure as if I beheld them. Or to see, as well as fancy, the nine Towns and Villages, that lay round my mountain-seat, which, in still
weather, were wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with metal tongue; and, in almost all weather, proclaimed their vitality by repeated Smoke-clouds; whereon, as on a culinary horologe, I might read the hour of the day. For it was the smoke of cookery, as kind housewives, at morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their husbands’ kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose up into the air, successively or simultaneously, from each of the nine, saying, as plainly as smoke could say: Such and such a meal is getting ready here. Not uninteresting! For you have the whole Borough, with all its love-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as in miniature, and could cover it all with your hat.—If, in my wide Wayfarings, I had learned to look into the business of the World in its details, here perhaps was the place for combining it into general propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom.

“Often also could I see the black Tempest marching in anger through the Distance: round some Schreckhorn, as yet grim-blue, would the eddying vapour gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad witch’s hair; till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the clear sunbeam, your Schreckhorn stood smiling grim-white, for the vapour had held snow. How thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy great fermentingvat and laboratory of an Atmosphere, of a World, O Nature!—Or what is Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee G
OD
? Art thou not the ‘Living Garment of God?’ O Heavens, is it, in very deed, H
E
, then, that ever speaks through thee; that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me?

“Foreshadows, call them rather fore-splendours, of that Truth, and Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; ah! like the mother’s voice to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults; like soft streamings of celestial music to my too exasperated heart, came that Evangile. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres; but god-like, and my Father’s!

“With other eyes too could I now look upon my fellow man; with an infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thou not tried, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether thou bear the Royal mantle or the
Beggar’s gabardine, art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, my Brother! why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy eyes.—Truly, the din of many-voiced Life, which, in this solitude, with the mind’s organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but a melting one: like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven are prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor joys, was now my needy Mother, not my cruel Stepdame; Man, with his so mad Wants and so mean Endeavours, had become the dearer to me; and even for his sufferings and his sins, I now first named him Brother. Thus was I standing in the porch of that ‘
Sanctuary of Sorrow;
’ by strange, steep ways, had I too been guided thither; and ere long its sacred gates would open, and the ‘
Divine Depth of Sorrow
’ lie disclosed to me.”

The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that had been strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and was free. “A vain interminable controversy,” writes he, “touching what is at present called Origin of Evil, or some such thing, arises in every soul, since the beginning of the world; and in every soul, that would pass from idle Suffering into actual Endeavouring, must first be put an end to. The most, in our time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough Suppression of this controversy; to a few some Solution of it is indispensable. In every new era, too, such Solution comes out in different terms; and ever the Solution of the last era has become obsolete, and is found unserviceable. For it is man’s nature to change his Dialect from century to century; he cannot help it though he would. The authentic
Church-Catechism
of our present century has not yet fallen into my hands: meanwhile, for my own private behoof, I attempt to elucidate the matter so. Man’s Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in joint-stock company, to make one Shoeblack
HAPPY
? They cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two; for the Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other than his Stomach; and would require, if you consider it, for his
permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, no more, and no less:
God’s infinite Universe altogether to himself
, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose. Oceans of Hochheimer, a Throat like that Ophiuchus!
*
Speak not of them; to the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men.—Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: it is even, as I said, the
Shadow of Ourselves
.

“But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint: only such
overplus
as there may be do we account Happiness; any
deficit
again is Misery. Now consider that we have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, and what a fund of Self-conceit there is in each of us,—do you wonder that the balance should so often dip the wrong way, and many a Blockhead cry: See there, what a payment; was ever worthy gentleman so used!—I tell thee, Blockhead, it all comes of thy Vanity; of what thou
fanciest
those same deserts of thine to be. Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp.

“So true is it, what I then said, that
the Fraction of Life can be increased in value not so much by increasing your Numerator, as by lessening your Denominator
. Nay, unless my Algebra deceive me,
Unity
itself divided by
Zero
will give
Infinity
. Make thy claim of wages a zero, then; thou hast the world under thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our time write: ‘It is only with Renunciation (
Entsagen
) that Life, properly speaking, can be said to begin.’
*

“I asked myself: What is this that, ever since earliest years, thou hast been fretting and fuming, and lamenting and self-tormenting, on account of? Say it in a word: is it not because thou art not H
APPY
? Because the T
HOU
(sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honoured, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly
cared for? Foolish soul! What Act of Legislature was there that
thou
shouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to
be
at all. What if thou wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after somewhat to
eat
; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? Close thy
Byron
; open thy
Goethe
.”

“
Es leuchtet mir ein
, I see a glimpse of it!” cries he elsewhere: “there is in man a H
IGHER
than Love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to preach forth this same H
IGHER
that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspired Doctrine art thou too honoured to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou become contrite, and learn it! O thank thy Destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain: thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not engulphed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the E
VERLASTING
Y
EA
, wherein all contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him.”

And again: “Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee: thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for this a Greater than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent. Knowest thou that
‘Worship of Sorrow?’
The Temple thereof, opened
*
some eighteen centuries ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation of doleful creatures: nevertheless, venture forward; in a low crypt, arched out of falling fragments, thou findest the Altar still there, and its sacred Lamp perennially burning.”

Without pretending to comment on which strange utterances, the Editor will only remark that there lies beside them, much of a still more questionable character; unsuited to the
general apprehension; nay wherein he himself does not see his way. Nebulous disquisitions on Religion, yet not without bursts of splendour; on the “perennial continuance of Inspiration;” on Prophecy; that there are “true Priests, as well as Baal-Priests, in our own day:” with more of the like sort. We select some fractions, by way of finish to this farrago.

“Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire,” thus apostrophises the Professor: “shut thy sweet voice; for the task appointed thee seems finished. Sufficiently hast thou demonstrated this proposition, considerable or otherwise: That the Mythus of the Christian Religion looks not in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth. Alas, were thy six-and-thirty quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos and folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed before and since on the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little! But what next? Wilt thou help us to embody the divine Spirit of that Religion in a new Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our Souls, otherwise too like perishing, may live? What! thou hast no faculty in that kind? Only a torch for burning, no hammer for building? Take our thanks, then, and——thyself away.