The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  ‘You are talking nonsense!’ said Kreisler. ‘You’re talking nonsense, Master Abraham! You know I don’t particularly like cats, and much prefer the dog family.’

  ‘Now, please,’ replied Master Abraham, ‘please, my dear Johannes, I do beg you most earnestly to take in my promising tomcat Murr, at least until I’m back from my journey. Indeed, I’ve brought him with me for that purpose. He’s outside, waiting for a kind answer. Do at least look at him!’

  So saying, Master Abraham opened the door. There on the straw mat, curled up asleep, lay a tomcat who might really in his way have been called a miracle of beauty. The grey and black stripes of his back came together on top of his head, between the ears, forming the most decorative hieroglyphics on his brow. His magnificent and unusually long, thick tail bore similar markings. And the cat’s tabby coat shone and gleamed in the sunlight, so that you could make out narrow golden stripes among the black and grey.

  ‘Murr! Murr!’ cried Master Abraham.

  ‘Purr – purr!’ replied the tomcat, quite distinctly. He stretched, rose, arched his back in the most spectacular way, and opened a pair of grass-green eyes which flashed the fire of intellect and understanding. Or so Master Abraham said, anyway, and even Kreisler had to allow that there was something singular and unusual about the tomcat’s countenance, that he had a head big enough to get a grasp of the sciences, and even in youth his whiskers were sufficiently long and white to give him, by chance, the authoritative look of a Greek philosopher.

  ‘How can you fall asleep wherever you are?’ Master Abraham asked the tomcat. ‘You’ll sleep all your liveliness away and be a sourpuss before your time. Wash yourself nicely, Murr!’

  The cat immediately sat up, passed his velvet paws delicately over his forehead and cheeks, and then uttered a clear and happy ‘Miaow!’.

  ‘This,’ Master Abraham went on, ‘this is Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler, whose service you are about to enter.’

  The tomcat stared at the Kapellmeister with his large, sparkling eyes, began to purr, jumped up on the table beside Kreisler and then straight up on his shoulder, as if to whisper something in his ear. Then he jumped down to the floor again, and walked round his new master in circles, purring and waving his tail, as if he wanted to get properly acquainted with him.

  ‘God forgive me,’ cried Kreisler, ‘but I do believe that little grey fellow has a mind of his own and comes of the illustrious family of Puss in Boots!’

  ‘Well, one thing is certain,’ replied Master Abraham, ‘Murr the cat is the drollest creature in the world, a true Pulcinella,17 yet good and well-behaved, not importunate or presumptuous, as dogs can sometimes be when they encumber us with their clumsy caresses.’

  ‘Looking at this clever tomcat,’ said Kreisler, ‘I sadly recognize once more the narrow confines of our knowledge. Who can tell, who can even guess, how far the intellectual capabilities of animals may extend? If some part of Nature, or rather every part of Nature, remains beyond our ken, yet we are still ready and eager to give it a name, priding ourselves on our foolish book-learning, which doesn’t go much further than the ends of our noses. And so we’ve dismissed the entire intellectual capacity of the animal kingdom, which is often expressed in the most remarkable manner, by calling it instinct. I’d like to know the answer to just one question: can the idea of instinct as a blind, involuntary urge be reconciled with the ability to dream? For everyone who has watched a sleeping hound go hunting in his dreams knows that dogs, for instance, can dream most vividly. The hound seeks, he sniffs, he moves his paws as if in hot pursuit, he pants – but as for dreaming tomcats, I don’t know anything about them yet.’

  ‘Murr the cat,’ Master Abraham interrupted his friend, ‘not only has very vivid dreams, but as you can clearly see, he also frequently drops into those gentle reveries, that dreamy brooding state, that somnambulistic delirium – in short, that strange condition between sleeping and waking which poetic minds regard as the time when brilliant ideas arrive. Of late he’s been moaning and groaning most uncommonly while in that state, and I can’t help thinking he is either in love, or working on a tragedy.’

  Kreisler laughed out loud and said, ‘Well, come along then, you clever, good, witty and poetic tomcat Murr, let us –

  M. cont. – early education and my months of youth.

  For it is a most remarkable and instructive thing to see how a great mind, when writing his autobiography, enlarges in detail upon everything that happened to him in his youth, however insignificant it may seem. Yet can anything of insignificance ever befall a great genius? All that he did or omitted to do as a boy is of the utmost importance, and casts a bright light on the deeper meaning, the real purport of his immortal works. The spirits of the aspiring youth tormented by doubts of the adequacy of his inner strength are raised when he reads of a great man who also played soldiers as a child, ate too many sweets, and sometimes got a thrashing or so for being lazy, impertinent or silly. ‘Just like me,’ cries the youth in high delight, ‘just like me!’ And he no longer doubts that he too is a great genius, like the idol he reveres.

  Many a man has read Plutarch,18 or even merely Cornelius Nepos,19 and has become a great hero; many a man has read the tragic poets of the ancient world in translation, as well as Calderón and Shakespeare, Goethe and Schiller,20 and has become if not a great poet at least a pleasant little versifier of the sort people like just as well. Thus will my own works surely kindle the sublime, vital spark of poetry in the breast of many a brilliant, intellectually gifted young tomcat, and if that noble feline youth gets down to my Biographical Entertainments21 on the roof-top, if he enters wholly into the elevated ideas of the book I have in paw at this moment, then he will exclaim in transports of enthusiasm, ‘Murr, divine Murr, greatest of your kind, I owe it all to you, to you alone! Only your example makes me great!’

  It is to Master Abraham’s credit that in rearing me he followed neither the methods of the forgotten Basedow, nor those of Pestalozzi,22 but gave me unlimited freedom to educate myself, just so long as I observed certain basic principles which he considered absolutely essential in the society that has acquired dominion over this earth, principles without which all would be blind, mad confusion, people would be constantly giving one another nasty digs in the ribs and unpleasant bruises, and indeed no kind of society would be conceivable. My master described the quintessence of these principles as natural courtesy, in contrast to the conventional sort which obliges you to say, ‘I do most humbly beg your pardon!’ when some lout has collided with you or trodden on your toes. Though such courtesy may be necessary to mankind, yet I cannot see how my own freeborn race could conform to it, and since the chief agent my master employed in teaching me those standard principles was a certain very ominous birch, I may complain with some justification of harshness on my tutor’s part. I would have run away had not my native love of the higher culture bound me to my master. The more culture the less freedom, runs the saying, and very true it is. With culture our needs increase, and with our needs – well, the very first thing my master taught me to abjure entirely by means of the dreadful birch was the instant satisfaction of many a natural need regardless of time and place. Then we came to the appetites which, as I later decided, arise solely from a certain abnormal attitude of mind. That same strange attitude, perhaps engendered by my psychic organism itself, impelled me to ignore the milk and even the meat my master put down for me, to jump up on the table and steal titbits from his own plate. I felt the force of the birch, and desisted.

  I can see that my master was right to divert my mind from such habits, for I am aware that they have led several of my good feline friends, less well-educated and well-bred than I, into the most dreadful vexations and the most unfortunate situations throughout their lives. For instance, I have heard of a hopeful young tomcat who was unable to exert the intrinsic strength of mind to resist his desire to lap from a pan of milk, paid for it with the loss of his tail, and had to retire into seclusion, amid
st mockery and derision. So my master was right to wean me from such urges, but what I cannot forgive him is his opposing my aspiration to the arts and sciences.

  Nothing in Master Abraham’s room attracted me more than the writing-desk, which was covered with books, papers and all manner of strange instruments. I may call this desk a magic circle which held me spellbound, and yet I felt a certain holy awe which kept me from abandoning myself entirely to my instincts. At last, one day when the Master was out, I overcame my fear and jumped up on the desk. With what voluptuous pleasure did I sit among the books and papers, burrowing about in them! It was not mischief, no, it was pure desire, it was scholarly voracity that led me to catch up a manuscript in my paws and buffet it this way and that until it lay before me torn to bits.

  Coming in, the Master saw what had happened, fell upon me with the injurious exclamation of ‘That confounded brute!’, and thrashed me with the birch so soundly that I crept under the stove, mewing with pain, and wasn’t to be enticed out again by any kind words all day. Who might not have been deterred for ever by this experience from following the path ordained for him by Nature? But I had hardly recovered fully from my pain when, obeying my irresistible urge, I was jumping up on the desk once more. To be sure, a single yell from my master, a disjointed remark such as ‘Would you, though!’, was enough to send me scuttling down again, so that I never managed to study anything; however, I waited patiently for a chance to embark upon my studies, and one soon came my way.

  One day my master was preparing to go out, and I immediately hid myself in the room so well that he couldn’t find me when, mindful of that torn manuscript, he wanted to put me out. No sooner was he gone than, with one bound, I jumped up on the desk and lay down in the midst of the papers, which caused me a sensation of indescribable delight. With my paw I skilfully opened a rather thick book lying in front of me, and tried to see if I could understand the characters in it. At first, indeed, I could make nothing at all of them; but I did not give up. Instead, I went on staring at the book, waiting for some very singular spirit to come over me and teach me to read. My master surprised me thus, deep in thought. With a loud cry of ‘Just look at that curst brute!’ he made for me. It was too late to save myself; I flattened my ears and ducked as best I could, already feeling the rod on my back. But my master suddenly stayed his hand, already raised to strike, burst out laughing and cried, ‘My dear good tomcat, are you reading? Well, I can’t and won’t forbid you to do that! Why, what an inborn thirst for knowledge you have!’

  He pulled the book out from under my paws, glanced at it, and laughed even more heartily than before. ‘Upon my word,’ said he, ‘I do believe you’ve been selecting a little reference library for yourself. I can’t think how else this book comes to be on my desk. Read away, then – study hard, my good cat, and you may mark the important passages in the book with light scratches; I’ve no objection to that!’

  So saying, he pushed the open book back to me. As I later discovered, it was Knigge’s On Human Conduct,23 and I derived much worldly wisdom from this wonderful work. It expresses my own feelings precisely, and is uncommonly useful to tomcats who want to make their way in human society themselves. This aspect of the book, so far as I’m aware, has hitherto been overlooked, so that it has sometimes and erroneously been held that he who would stick close to those rules it propounds must infallibly figure everywhere as a rigid, unfeeling pedant.

  After this my master not only allowed me on his desk, he was even pleased if, when he himself was working, I jumped up and settled down among the papers before him.

  Master Abraham was in the habit of reading aloud a great deal, and frequently. At such times I did not fail to place myself so that I could look at his book, something I was able to do without seeming to get in his way, thanks to the keen eyes bestowed upon me by Nature. By comparing the written signs with the words he spoke, I very soon learned to read, and anyone who may think this a trifle unlikely has no notion of the extraordinary ingenuity with which Nature has endowed me. Persons of genius who understand and appreciate me will entertain no doubts about a kind of education which may perhaps resemble their own. Nor must I omit to impart the remarkable observation I have made regarding the perfect understanding of human language: I have observed, and am well aware of the fact, that I have no idea at all how I came to understand it. Such is said to be the case with human beings themselves, but that doesn’t surprise me, since their species is considerably clumsier and more stupid than ours in childhood. As a very small kitten, I never happened to put my paw in my own eyes, or into the fire or the flame of a lamp, or eat boot-polish instead of cherry jam, as babies quite commonly do.

  Now that I could read fluently, and was daily cramming myself with more and more new notions, I felt the most irresistible urge to wrest my own ideas from oblivion, born of my native genius as they were! Yet to do so called for the art of writing, which is admittedly very difficult. However carefully I might watch my master’s hand as he wrote, I just could not manage to pick up the actual mechanics of the thing from him. I studied old Hilmar Curas,24 the one manual of calligraphy that my master possessed, and almost reached the conclusion that the mysterious difficulty of writing could be removed only by wearing the large cuff seen on the diagram of the writing hand depicted in that book, and that it was due only to the special facility my master had acquired that he wrote without a cuff, just as an expert tightrope walker can eventually do without his balancing pole. I kept a keen eye open for cuffs, and was on the point of tearing up the old housekeeper’s nightcap and adapting it for my right paw when, in a flash of inspiration such as persons of genius are wont to have, the brilliant idea which solved everything occurred to me. For I surmised that the impossibility of my holding a pen or pencil as my master did might lie in the different structure of our hands, and in that surmise I was correct! I had to devise another way of writing, suited to the build of my little right paw, and as you might expect, devise it I did. Thus do whole new systems arise from the particular organic structure of the individual!

  Another difficult problem was dipping my pen in the ink-well, for as I dipped it I couldn’t contrive to keep my paw clean; it kept getting into the ink too, so the first few characters, written more with the paw than the pen, were bound to be rather big and broad. Consequently, the ignorant might take my first manuscripts for little more than paper splashed with ink. Men of genius, however, will easily discern the tomcat of genius in his early works, and will be amazed by the exuberance of his intellect as it first sprang from an inexhaustible source. In fact they will be quite carried away by it. To save the world future controversy concerning the chronological order of my immortal works, I will say here that the first was my philosophical and didactic novel of sentiment, Thought and Intuition, or, Cat and Dog. That work alone might well have been a great sensation. Next, being able to turn my paw to anything, I wrote a political work entitled Mousetraps and their Influence on the Character and Achievement of the Feline Race, whereafter I felt inspired to write the tragedy Cawdallor, King of Rats. This tragedy too could have been performed to tumultuous applause on any stage in the world. Let these creations of my aspiring mind serve as introduction to the whole series of my collected works. I will enlarge upon the occasion for their composition at the appropriate place.

  In fact when I had learnt to hold the pen better and my paw remained clean of ink, my style itself became lighter, more graceful, more pleasing. I curled up for preference on almanacs of collected poetry, I wrote various pleasant works, and altogether I very soon became the engaging, easy-going fellow I am today. At this period I almost composed an heroic epic in twenty-four cantos, but the finished product turned out to be not quite in that line, and Tasso and Ariosto25 may thank Heaven for it from their graves. For if my paws actually had penned an epic, no one would ever have read either of them any more.

  I now come to the –

  W.P. – will be necessary for your better understanding, gentle reader, t
o give a plain, clear account of the entire situation.

  Anyone who ever put up at the inn in the charming little country town of Sieghartsweiler, if only once, immediately heard tell of Prince Irenaeus. If you so much as ordered the landlord to bring you a dish of trout, which are excellent in those parts, mine host would be sure to reply, ‘You’re quite right there, sir. Our gracious prince is uncommonly fond of trout himself, and I can prepare those delicious fish just as they’re usually eaten at court.’ Now the well-informed traveller would have gathered, from the latest geographical works, maps and political information, that the little town of Sieghartsweiler, together with the Geierstein and the entire surrounding area, had long since been incorporated into the Grand Duchy through which he had just passed, so he would be not a little surprised to discover a gracious prince and a court here. However, it came about like this. Prince Irenaeus really did once rule a pretty little state not far from Sieghartsweiler, and as, with the aid of a good Dollond telescope,26 he could survey his entire domain from the belvedere of his castle in the little market town which was his capital, he could not fail to keep the welfare of his land and the happiness of his beloved subjects constantly in view. At any given moment he knew exactly how Peter’s wheat was doing in the most remote corner of the realm, and he could see, equally well, whether Hans and Kunz were hard at work tending their vineyards. They say Prince Irenaeus lost his little state out of his pocket one day when he went for a walk over the border, but so much at least is certain: the Prince’s state was duly entered and bound up in a new edition of the Grand Duchy furnished with several addenda. He was relieved of the trouble of ruling, while financial provision of quite a generous nature was made for him from the revenues of the land he once possessed, to be spent in the delightful little town of Sieghartsweiler.