CHARACTERISTICS.
It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work on Clothes
entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like the
very Sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of genius,
has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid its
effulgence,--a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dulness,
double-vision, and even utter blindness.
Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and prophesyings
of the _Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger_, we admitted that the Book had in a
high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any
book; that it had even operated changes in our way of thought; nay, that it
promised to prove, as it were, the opening of a new mine-shaft, wherein the
whole world of Speculation might henceforth dig to unknown depths. More
specially may it now be declared that Professor Teufelsdrockh's
acquirements, patience of research, philosophic and even poetic vigor, are
here made indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and
tortuosity and manifold ineptitude; that, on the whole, as in opening new
mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his Book, though
likewise specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popularity in
England we cannot promise him. Apart from the choice of such a topic as
Clothes, too often the manner of treating it betokens in the Author a
rusticity and academic seclusion, unblamable, indeed inevitable in a
German, but fatal to his success with our public.
Of good society Teufelsdrockh appears to have seen little, or has mostly
forgotten what he saw. He speaks out with a strange plainness; calls many
things by their mere dictionary names. To him the Upholsterer is no
Pontiff, neither is any Drawing-room a Temple, were it never so begilt and
overhung: "a whole immensity of Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and
ormolu," as he himself expresses it, "cannot hide from me that such
Drawing-room is simply a section of Infinite Space, where so many
God-created Souls do for the time meet together." To Teufelsdrockh the
highest Duchess is respectable, is venerable; but nowise for her pearl
bracelets and Malines laces: in his eyes, the star of a Lord is little
less and little more than the broad button of Birmingham spelter in a
Clown's smock; "each is an implement," he says, "in its kind; a tag for
_hooking-together_; and, for the rest, was dug from the earth, and hammered
on a stithy before smith's fingers." Thus does the Professor look in men's
faces with a strange impartiality, a strange scientific freedom; like a man
unversed in the higher circles, like a man dropped thither from the Moon.
Rightly considered, it is in this peculiarity, running through his whole
system of thought, that all these shortcomings, over-shootings, and
multiform perversities, take rise: if indeed they have not a second
source, also natural enough, in his Transcendental Philosophies, and humor
of looking at all Matter and Material things as Spirit; whereby truly his
case were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable.
To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of which class it is firmly
believed there are individuals yet extant, we can safely recommend the
Work: nay, who knows but among the fashionable ranks too, if it be true,
as Teufelsdrockh maintains, that "within the most starched cravat there
passes a windpipe and weasand, and under the thickliest embroidered
waistcoat beats a heart,"--the force of that rapt earnestness may be felt,
and here and there an arrow of the soul pierce through? In our wild Seer,
shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist living on locusts and wild honey, there is
an untutored energy, a silent, as it were unconscious, strength, which,
except in the higher walks of Literature, must be rare. Many a deep
glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast into mysterious
Nature, and the still more mysterious Life of Man. Wonderful it is with
what cutting words, now and then, he severs asunder the confusion; sheers
down, were it furlongs deep; into the true centre of the matter; and there
not only hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home,
and buries it.--On the other hand, let us be free to admit, he is the most
unequal writer breathing. Often after some such feat, he will play truant
for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and mumbling and maundering
the merest commonplaces, as if he were asleep with eyes open, which indeed
he is.
Of his boundless Learning, and how all reading and literature in most known
tongues, from _Sanchoniathon_ to _Dr. Lingard_, from your Oriental
_Shasters_, and _Talmuds_, and _Korans_, with Cassini's _Siamese fables_,
and Laplace's _Mecanique Celeste_, down to _Robinson Crusoe_ and the
_Belfast Town and Country Almanack_, are familiar to him,--we shall say
nothing: for unexampled as it is with us, to the Germans such universality
of study passes without wonder, as a thing commendable, indeed, but
natural, indispensable, and there of course. A man that devotes his life
to learning, shall he not be learned?
In respect of style our Author manifests the same genial capability, marred
too often by the same rudeness, inequality, and apparent want of
intercourse with the higher classes. Occasionally, as above hinted, we
find consummate vigor, a true inspiration; his burning thoughts step forth
in fit burning words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame
and splendor from Jove's head; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque
allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; all the graces
and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded to the clearest Intellect,
alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer sleeping and
soporific passages; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure
doting jargon, so often intervene! On the whole, Professor Teufelsdrockh,
is not a cultivated writer. Of his sentences perhaps not more than
nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite
angular attitudes, buttressed up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and
ever with this or the other tagrag hanging from them; a few even sprawl out
helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered.
Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies in him a singular
attraction. A wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its
keynote and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of
Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of Fiends; now sinking in cadences, not
without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the
common pitch, when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the
true character is extremely difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have
never fully satisfied ourselves whether it is a tone and hum of real Humor,
which we reckon among the very highest qualities of genius, or some echo of
mere Insanity and Inanity, which doubtless ranks below the very lowest.
Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse, do we
still lie with regard to the Professor's moral feeling. Gleams of an
ethereal love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite pity; he
could clasp the whole Universe into his bosom, and keep it warm; it seems
as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then again he is
so sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine; shows such indifference,
malign coolness towards all that men strive after; and ever with some
half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humor, if indeed it be not mere
stolid callousness,--that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some
incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial
Round, after all, were but some huge foolish Whirligig, where kings and
beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were
chaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest. His look,
as we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever seen: yet it is not of that
cast-iron gravity frequent enough among our own Chancery suitors; but
rather the gravity as of some silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps
the crater of an extinct volcano; into whose black deeps you fear to gaze:
those eyes, those lights that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the
heavenly Stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of Nether Fire.
Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigmatic nature, this
of Teufelsdrockh! Here, however, we gladly recall to mind that once we saw
him _laugh_; once only, perhaps it was the first and last time in his life;
but then such a peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the Seven
Sleepers! It was of Jean Paul's doing: some single billow in that vast
World-Mahlstrom of Humor, with its heaven-kissing coruscations, which is
now, alas, all congealed in the frost of death! The large-bodied Poet and
the small, both large enough in soul, sat talking miscellaneously together,
the present Editor being privileged to listen; and now Paul, in his serious
way, was giving one of those inimitable "Extra-Harangues;" and, as it
chanced, On the Proposal for a _Cast-metal King_: gradually a light
kindled in our Professor's eyes and face, a beaming, mantling, loveliest
light; through those murky features, a radiant ever-young Apollo looked;
and he burst forth like the neighing of all Tattersall's,--tears streaming
down his cheeks, pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air,--loud,
long-continuing, uncontrollable; a laugh not of the face and diaphragm
only, but of the whole man from head to heel. The present Editor, who
laughed indeed, yet with measure, began to fear all was not right:
however, Teufelsdrockh, composed himself, and sank into his old stillness;
on his inscrutable countenance there was, if anything, a slight look of
shame; and Richter himself could not rouse him again. Readers who have any
tincture of Psychology know how much is to be inferred from this; and that
no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether
irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith
we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in
the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to
laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger
from the throat outwards; or at best, produce some whiffling husky
cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool: of none such comes
good. The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems,
and spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.
Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdrockh has one scarcely pardonable
fault, doubtless his worst: an almost total want of arrangement. In this
remarkable Volume, it is true, his adherence to the mere course of Time
produces, through the Narrative portions, a certain show of outward method;
but of true logical method and sequence there is too little. Apart from
its multifarious sections and subdivisions, the Work naturally falls into
two Parts; a Historical-Descriptive, and a Philosophical-Speculative: but
falls, unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation; in that labyrinthic
combination, each Part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs quite through
the other. Many sections are of a debatable rubric, or even quite
nondescript and unnamable; whereby the Book not only loses in
accessibility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet, wherein
all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and solid,
oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and French mustard, were hurled into one
huge tureen or trough, and the hungry Public invited to help itself. To
bring what order we can out of this Chaos shall be part of our endeavor.