CHAPTER I. GENESIS.
In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable whetherfrom birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinized soever, much insightis to be gained. Nevertheless, as in every phenomenon the Beginningremains always the most notable moment; so, with regard to any greatman, we rest not till, for our scientific profit or not, the wholecircumstances of his first appearance in this Planet, and what manner ofPublic Entry he made, are with utmost completeness rendered manifest.To the Genesis of our Clothes-Philosopher, then, be this First Chapterconsecrated. Unhappily, indeed, he seems to be of quite obscureextraction; uncertain, we might almost say, whether of any: so that thisGenesis of his can properly be nothing but an Exodus (or transit outof Invisibility into Visibility); whereof the preliminary portion isnowhere forthcoming.
"In the village of Entepfuhl," thus writes he, in the Bag _Libra_,on various Papers, which we arrange with difficulty, "dwelt AndreasFutteral and his wife; childless, in still seclusion, and cheerfulthough now verging towards old age. Andreas had been grenadier Sergeant,and even regimental Schoolmaster under Frederick the Great; butnow, quitting the halbert and ferule for the spade and pruning-hook,cultivated a little Orchard, on the produce of which he,Cincinnatus-like, lived not without dignity. Fruits, the peach, theapple, the grape, with other varieties came in their season; all whichAndreas knew how to sell: on evenings he smoked largely, or read (asbeseemed a regimental Schoolmaster), and talked to neighbors that wouldlisten about the Victory of Rossbach; and how Fritz the Only (_derEinzige_) had once with his own royal lips spoken to him, had beenpleased to say, when Andreas as camp-sentinel demanded the pass-word,'_Schweig Hund_ (Peace, hound)!' before any of his staff-adjutants couldanswer. '_Das nenn' ich mir einen Konig_, There is what I call a King,'would Andreas exclaim: 'but the smoke of Kunersdorf was still smartinghis eyes.'
"Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by the deeds rather thanthe looks of her now veteran Othello, lived not in altogether militarysubordination; for, as Andreas said, 'the womankind will not drill (_werkann die Weiberchen dressiren_):' nevertheless she at heart loved himboth for valor and wisdom; to her a Prussian grenadier Sergeant andRegiment's Schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero and Cid: what yousee, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite. Nay, was not Andreasin very deed a man of order, courage, downrightness (_Geradheit_); thatunderstood Busching's _Geography_, had been in the victory of Rossbach,and left for dead in the camisade of Hochkirch? The good Gretchen, forall her fretting, watched over him and hovered round him as only a truehouse-mother can: assiduously she cooked and sewed and scoured for him;so that not only his old regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but thewhole habitation and environment, where on pegs of honor they hung,looked ever trim and gay: a roomy painted Cottage, embowered infruit-trees and forest-trees, evergreens and honeysuckles; risingmany-colored from amid shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling inthrough the very windows; under its long projecting eaves nothing butgarden-tools in methodic piles (to screen them from rain), and seatswhere, especially on summer nights, a King might have wished to sit andsmoke, and call it his. Such a Bauergut (Copyhold) had Gretchen givenher veteran; whose sinewy arms, and long-disused gardening talent, hadmade it what you saw.
"Into this umbrageous Man's-nest, one meek yellow evening or dusk, whenthe Sun, hidden indeed from terrestrial Entepfuhl, did neverthelessjourney visible and radiant along the celestial Balance (_Libra_),it was that a Stranger of reverend aspect entered; and, with gravesalutation, stood before the two rather astonished housemates. He wasclose-muffled in a wide mantle; which without farther parley unfolding,he deposited therefrom what seemed some Basket, overhung withgreen Persian silk; saying only: _Ihr lieben Leute, hier bringe einunschatzbares Verleihen; nehmt es in aller Acht, sorgfaltigst benutztes: mit hohem Lohn, oder wohl mit schweren Zinsen, wird's einstzuruckgefordert_. 'Good Christian people, here lies for you aninvaluable Loan; take all heed thereof, in all carefulness employ it:with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day berequired back.' Uttering which singular words, in a clear, bell-like,forever memorable tone, the Stranger gracefully withdrew; and beforeAndreas or his wife, gazing in expectant wonder, had time to fashioneither question or answer, was clean gone. Neither out of doors couldaught of him be seen or heard; he had vanished in the thickets, in thedusk; the Orchard-gate stood quietly closed: the Stranger was gone onceand always. So sudden had the whole transaction been, in the autumnstillness and twilight, so gentle, noiseless, that the Futterals couldhave fancied it all a trick of Imagination, or some visit from anauthentic Spirit. Only that the green-silk Basket, such as neitherImagination nor authentic Spirits are wont to carry, still stood visibleand tangible on their little parlor-table. Towards this the astonishedcouple, now with lit candle, hastily turned their attention. Liftingthe green veil, to see what invaluable it hid, they descried there, amiddown and rich white wrappages, no Pitt Diamond or Hapsburg Regalia, but,in the softest sleep, a little red-colored Infant! Beside it, lay a rollof gold Friedrichs, the exact amount of which was never publicly known;also a _Taufschein_ (baptismal certificate), wherein unfortunatelynothing but the Name was decipherable, other document or indication nonewhatever.
"To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and always thenceforth.Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpireof any such figure as the Stranger; nor could the Traveller, who hadpassed through the neighboring Town in coach-and-four, be connected withthis Apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise. Meanwhile, forAndreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was: What to dowith this little sleeping red-colored Infant? Amid amazements andcuriosities, which had to die away without external satisfying, theyresolved, as in such circumstances charitable prudent people needs must,on nursing it, though with spoon-meat, into whiteness, and if possibleinto manhood. The Heavens smiled on their endeavor: thus has thatsame mysterious Individual ever since had a status for himself in thisvisible Universe, some modicum of victual and lodging and parade-ground;and now expanded in bulk, faculty and knowledge of good and evil, he, asHERR DIOGENES TEUFELSDROCKH, professes or is ready to profess, perhapsnot 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 quiteindelible impression. Who this reverend Personage," he says, "thatglided into the Orchard Cottage when the Sun was in Libra, and then, ason spirit's wings, glided out again, might be? An inexpressible desire,full of love and of sadness, has often since struggled within me toshape an answer. Ever, in my distresses and my loneliness, has Fantasyturned, full of longing (_sehnsuchtsvoll_), to that unknown Father,who perhaps far from me, perhaps near, either way invisible, might havetaken 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 thinpenetrable curtains of earthly Space, wend to and fro among the crowdof the living? Or art thou hidden by those far thicker curtains of theEverlasting Night, or rather of the Everlasting Day, through which mymortal eye and outstretched arms need not strive to reach? Alas, I knownot, and in vain vex myself to know. More than once, heart-deluded,have I taken for thee this and the other noble-looking Stranger; andapproached him wistfully, with infinite regard; but he too had to repelme, he too was not thou.
"And yet, O Man born of Woman," cries the Autobiographer, with one ofhis sudden whirls, "wherein is my case peculiar? Hadst thou, any morethan I, a Father whom thou knowest? The Andreas and Gretchen, or theAdam and Eve, who led thee into Life, and for a time suckled and pap-fedthee there, whom thou namest Father and Mother; these were, like mine,but thy nursing-father and nursing-mother: thy true Beginning and Fatheris in Heaven, whom with the bodily eye thou shalt never behold, but onlywith the spiritual....
"The little green veil," adds he, among much similar moralizing, andem
broiled discoursing, "I yet keep; still more inseparably the Name,Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. From the veil can nothing be inferred: a pieceof now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands of others. On the Name Ihave many times meditated and conjectured; but neither in this laythere any clew. That it was my unknown Father's name I must hesitate tobelieve. To no purpose have I searched through all the Herald'sBooks, in and without the German Empire, and through all mannerof Subscriber-Lists (_Pranumeranten_), Militia-Rolls, and otherName-catalogues; extraordinary names as we have in Germany, the nameTeufelsdrockh, 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 shadowforth my future destiny, or his own present malign humor? Perhaps thelatter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred Parent, who like an Ostrich hadstto leave thy ill-starred offspring to be hatched into self-support bythe mere sky-influences of Chance, can thy pilgrimage have been a smoothone? Beset by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been; or indeed by theworst 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 theewas seered into grim rage, and thou hadst nothing for it but to leavein me an indignant appeal to the Future, and living speaking Protestagainst the Devil, as that same Spirit not of the Time only, but of Timeitself, 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 almostall, in Names. The Name is the earliest Garment you wrap round theearth-visiting ME; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously(for there are Names that have lasted nigh thirty centuries) than thevery skin. And now from without, what mystic influences does it not sendinwards, even to the centre; especially in those plastic first-times,when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the invisible seedgrainwill grow to be an all overshadowing tree! Names? Could I unfold theinfluence of Names, which are the most important of all Clothings, Iwere a second greater Trismegistus. Not only all common Speech, butScience, 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 Appearancesexotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars, or starry movements (asin Science); or (as in Poetry) passions, virtues, calamities,God-attributes, Gods?--In a very plain sense the Proverb says, _Callone a thief, and he will steal_; in an almost similar sense may we notperhaps say, _Call one Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, and he will open thePhilosophy 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; sprawlingout 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 awhole infinitude of inward, spiritual, half-awakened Senses, endeavoringdaily to acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange Universewhere he had arrived, be his task therein what it might. Infinite washis progress; thus in some fifteen months, he could perform the miracleof--Speech! To breed a fresh Soul, is it not like brooding a fresh(celestial) Egg; wherein as yet all is formless, powerless; yet bydegrees organic elements and fibres shoot through the watery albumen;and out of vague Sensation grows Thought, grows Fantasy and Force, andwe have Philosophies, Dynasties, nay Poetries and Religions!
"Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by such diminutivehad they in their fondness named him, travelled forward to those highconsummations, by quick yet easy stages. The Futterals, to avoid vaintalk, and moreover keep the roll of gold Friedrichs safe, gave out thathe was a grandnephew; the orphan of some sister's daughter, suddenlydeceased, in Andreas's distant Prussian birthland; of whom, as ofher 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 tohimself; above all, that seldom or never cried. He already feltthat time was precious; that he had other work cut out for him thanwhimpering."
Such, after utmost painful search and collation among thesemiscellaneous Paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of HerrTeufelsdrockh's genealogy. More imperfect, more enigmatic it can seemto few readers than to us. The Professor, in whom truly we more and morediscern a certain satirical turn, and deep under-currents of roguishwhim, 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 EntepfuhlCirculating Library, some cultivated native of that district might feelcalled to afford explanation. Nay, since Books, like invisible scouts,permeate the whole habitable globe, and Timbuctoo itself is not safefrom British Literature, may not some Copy find out even the mysteriousbasket-bearing Stranger, who in a state of extreme senility perhapsstill exists; and gently force even him to disclose himself; to claimopenly a son, in whom any father may feel pride?
Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh Page 12
