The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  Kreisler fell silent. Madame Benzon, listening attentively, was eager to hear what followed. As the Kapellmeister seemed to be lost in silent thought, she inquired with cold civility, ‘So you really find my daughter’s singing pleasing, my dear Johannes?’

  Kreisler gave a violent start, but a sigh from the depths of his heart smothered what he had been about to say.

  ‘Well,’ continued Madame Benzon, ‘I’m glad of that. Julia can learn a great deal from you about true song, my dear Kreisler, for I take it as a settled thing that you will remain here.’

  ‘Dear madam,’ began Kreisler, but at that moment the door opened and Julia came in.

  When she caught sight of the Kapellmeister, a sweet smile illuminated her lovely countenance, and a soft ‘Oh!’ breathed from her lips.

  Madame Benzon rose, took the Kapellmeister’s hand and led him towards Julia, saying, ‘Well, my child, here’s the strange –

  M. cont. – young Ponto made for my latest manuscript, which was lying beside me, snatched it up in his teeth before I could stop him, and ran straight off with it, meanwhile laughing with malicious glee, and this alone should have made me suspect it was not just youthful high spirits that drove him to this dreadful deed, but something more besides. I was soon to receive enlightenment.

  A few days later the man whose service young Ponto had entered came to see my master. I later learned that he was Professor Lothario, teacher of aesthetics at the Sieghartsweiler Grammar School. After the usual greetings, the Professor glanced around the room, and when he set eyes on me said, ‘Would you care to put that little fellow out of the room, dear Master?’

  ‘Why?’ asked my master. ‘Why, Professor? You used to like cats, particularly my pet here, the handsome and intelligent tomcat Murr!’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the Professor, with a derisive laugh, ‘yes, handsome and intelligent, to be sure! But do me the favour of putting your pet out, Master, because I have things to discuss with you which he mustn’t on any account hear.’

  ‘Who mustn’t?’ cried Master Abraham, staring at the Professor.

  ‘Why, your cat,’ the latter continued. ‘Pray don’t ask any more questions, just do as I ask.’

  ‘Well, this is strange,’ said Master Abraham, opening the door of his cabinet and calling me in. I obeyed, but then, without his noticing, slipped back into the room and hid in the bottom of the bookcase, so that I could watch the room unobserved and hear every word they said.

  ‘Now,’ said Master Abraham, sitting down opposite the Professor in his armchair, ‘now do for goodness’ sake tell me this secret which must remain hidden from my honest cat Murr.’

  ‘Tell me first,’ began the Professor, very grave and pensive, ‘tell me, dear Master, what you think of the principle that, only provided he is physically healthy but regardless of native intellectual capacity, talent or genius, any child may be made a hero of scholarship and art within a short time, that is to say while still a boy, by means of a specially regulated education?’

  ‘Why,’ replied the Master, ‘what can I think of the principle except that it is stupid and fatuous? It is possible, indeed quite probable, that you can systematically drum a great quantity of things into a child endowed with a good memory and much the same perceptive faculties as are to be found in apes, and he will trot them out in company, only the child must lack all natural genius, for otherwise his own better nature would resist such a dreadful procedure. Who, however, will call such a simple lad, force-fed to bursting with all the morsels of knowledge he can swallow, who will ever call him a scholar in the true sense of the word?’

  ‘The world!’ cried the Professor vehemently. ‘All the world will do so! Oh, it’s a terrible thing! All belief in the higher, inborn, natural intellectual power which alone makes a scholar or an artist is annihilated by that dreadful, crazy principle!’

  ‘Don’t excite yourself!’ said the Master, smiling. ‘As far as I’m aware, the educational method you mean has delivered but one product so far in our good German land,67 and the world did talk of it for a while, but ceased to do so on observing that the product was not a particularly good one. Moreover, the specimen concerned was at the height of his fame just when infant prodigies were all the rage, showing off their skills for a modest fee, much as laboriously trained dogs and monkeys used to perform.’

  ‘That’s what you say now,’ said the Professor, ‘that’s what you say now, Master Abraham, and I might believe you if I didn’t know the hidden prankster in you, if I wasn’t aware that your whole life represents a series of the strangest experiments. Just admit it, Master Abraham, just admit it: you have been experimenting with that principle on the sly, in total secrecy, but wishing to outdo the man who prepared the specimen we mentioned just now. Once you were quite ready, you planned to come forward with your pupil and cast all the teachers in the world into amazement and despair, you wanted to make total nonsense of that excellent principle which holds that non ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius!68 Well, in short, there’s your quovis – no Mercury, but a tomcat!’

  ‘What on earth are you saying?’ exclaimed the Master, laughing out loud. ‘A tomcat?’

  ‘Don’t deny it,’ continued the Professor, ‘now don’t deny it, you’ve been trying out that theoretical method of education on your little friend in the cabinet there, you’ve taught him to read and write and educated him in the sciences, and now he ventures to turn author and even write verses.’

  ‘Oh, come!’ said Master Abraham. ‘That really is the silliest thing I ever heard! I, educate my cat, teach him the sciences? What fancies have you taken into your head, Professor? I assure you that I know nothing at all about my cat’s education, and indeed I think such a thing quite impossible.’

  ‘Do you, though?’ drawled the Professor. He took from his pocket a notebook which I immediately recognized as the manuscript young Ponto had stolen from me, and read:

  ‘Yearning for Higher Things

  Ah, what a feeling ‘tis that stirs my breast!

  What fitful, strange foreboding do I find

  Urging a bold endeavour on my mind,

  Whose mighty genius will not let it rest?

  What would that mind? What is its inner quest?

  Whither this life, to love so much inclined?

  What ardent aspirations have entwined

  The fearful heart beating within my chest?

  I am transported to enchanted lands.

  No word, no sound, all utterance is smothered;

  A fervent hope wafts like a breeze in spring

  And soon will free me from oppressive bands.

  Ah, dreamed of, sensed, in verdant leaves discovered!

  Up, up, my heart, and catch it on the wing!’

  I hope that all my kind readers will appreciate the excellence of this wonderful sonnet, a model of its kind, an effusion from the deepest depths of my soul, and you will admire me all the more when I tell you it is one of the first I ever wrote! The mean-minded Professor, however, read it so shockingly badly, so totally without expression, that I scarcely recognized my own work, and overcome (as young poets are wont to be) by a sudden fit of rage, I was about to emerge from hiding, spring at the Professor’s face and let him feel my sharp claws. But the prudent realization that I was bound to get the worst of it if both my master and the Professor fell upon me induced me to subdue my anger by main force, although a growl escaped me involuntarily, and would infallibly have betrayed me had not my master, when the Professor had finished the sonnet, roared with laughter once again. His mirth hurt my feelings almost more than the Professor’s unfortunate conduct.

  ‘Ho, ho!’ cried the Master. ‘Yes, a sonnet truly worthy of a tomcat, but I still don’t see the point of your joke, Professor, so pray tell me straight out what you’re getting at!’

  Without replying, the Professor leafed through the manuscript, and read on:

  ‘Gloss69

  Love is found in every byway,

  Friendship is a thing
apart.

  Lovers meet us on the highway,

  Friends are chosen by the heart.

  All around me sounds of sorrow

  Yearn with many a plaintive measure.

  Is the mind disposed to pleasure?

  Is it more inclined to woe?

  Often I would like to know

  Am I waking? Do I dream?

  Come, my heart, speak up in thy way

  Of these longings and their theme:

  In cellars, on the roof, ‘twould seem

  Love is found in every byway!

  Yet in time wounds will find healing:

  Those of love like all the rest.

  Consolation to the breast,

  Over mind and spirit stealing,

  Friendship brings, that sacred feeling!

  As for love and such flapdoodle,

  Cat, dismiss it from thy heart!

  ’Neath the stove do not canoodle,

  Play there with thy friend the poodle.

  Friendship is a thing apart!

  Love, I know, great –’

  ‘No,’ said the Master, interrupting the Professor in his reading at this point, ‘no, really, my friend, you are trying my patience! You have been amusing yourself, or some other wag has been doing so, by writing verses in the spirit of a tomcat whom you claim, of all things, to be my good Murr, and now you are wasting my whole morning with the hoax! Well, it’s not a bad joke, and I’m sure Kreisler in particular will find it very much to his taste. He’d very likely go a-hunting with it, and you yourself might be brought to bay in the end. But now, do drop your ingenious disguise and tell me in sober fact what this odd joke of yours really means!’

  The Professor closed the manuscript, looked my master gravely in the eye, and then said, ‘My poodle Ponto brought me these pages a few days ago. As you’ll be aware, he is on friendly terms with your cat Murr. He was carrying the manuscript in his mouth, to be sure, just as he usually carries everything, but he placed it on my lap perfectly intact, clearly indicating that he had it from none other than his friend Murr. On glancing at it, I was immediately struck by the very singular, peculiar handwriting, and when I had read some of the manuscript I began to entertain – in just what inexplicable way I don’t know – the strange idea that Murr might have written it all himself. However clearly common sense, and indeed a certain experience of life such as none of us can avoid and which, after all, is only common sense – well, however clearly common sense tells me such an idea is nonsense, since cats are incapable of either writing or composing poetry, yet I couldn’t get it out of my head. I decided to observe your cat, and as I knew from Ponto that Murr spends a great deal of time in your attic, I went up to my own attic and removed several tiles from the roof to give me a good view through your skylight. And what do you think I saw? Hear and be amazed! I saw your cat sitting in the farthest corner of the attic! – sitting there upright at a little desk, upon which his pens and paper lay, now rubbing his paw over his forehead, neck and face, now dipping his pen in the ink, writing, ceasing to write, writing once again, reading his work through and purring and purring (I could hear it), purring with sheer pleasure. And around him lay various books which, judging by their bindings, were borrowed from your library.’

  ‘What the devil?’ cried the Master. ‘I’ll just go and see if there are any books missing!’

  So saying, he rose to his feet and went over to the bookcase. On catching sight of me, he took three steps backwards and looked at me in great astonishment. But the Professor cried, ‘There, you see, Master? You think your little friend’s sitting harmlessly in the room where you put him, but he’s stolen into the bookcase to pursue his studies, or even more likely, to eavesdrop on us. Now he’s heard everything we said, and can take the appropriate steps.’

  ‘Cat,’ began my master, his gaze resting upon me in amazement all the time, ‘cat, if I felt sure you were really taking to the composition of such ridiculous verses as the Professor has been reading aloud, wholly against your own honest nature, if I could believe you were really pursuing knowledge rather than mice, I think I might tweak your ears severely or even –’

  Overwhelmed by dreadful anxiety, I closed my eyes and pretended to be fast asleep.

  ‘But no, no,’ my master went on, ‘take a look at this, do, Professor! Look at my good cat sleeping without a care in the world, and tell me if there’s anything in his amiable countenance that could indicate such astonishing, secret pranks as those of which you accuse him. Murr, Murr!’

  When my master called me I made sure to answer, as usual, with a ‘Prr, prr!’, opening my eyes, rising to my paws and arching my back in a most attractive way.

  The Professor furiously flung my manuscript at my head, but I pretended to think he wanted to play with me (my native cunning gave me the idea), and leaping and dancing about I pulled the manuscript this way and that, so that pieces of paper flew everywhere.

  ‘Well,’ said my master, ‘well, now we know that you’re quite wrong, Professor, and Ponto wasn’t being perfectly truthful. See what Murr is doing to those poems – what poet would treat his manuscript like that?’

  ‘I’ve warned you, Master, so please yourself!’ replied the Professor, leaving the room.

  I now thought the storm was over, but how mistaken I was! To my great vexation, Master Abraham had declared himself opposed to my academic education, and although he had not seemed to believe the Professor’s claims, I soon became aware that he was watching everything I did, that he cut off my access to his library by carefully closing the bookcase, and he would no longer allow me to settle down on his desk among the papers as usual.

  Thus did my burgeoning youth know grief and sorrow! What can be more painful to a genius than to see himself misunderstood, indeed mocked? What can embitter a great mind more than to encounter obstacles just where he expected every possible encouragement? But the stronger the pressure, the mightier the force set at liberty by its release; the harder the bow is bent, the more keenly does the arrow fly! If reading was forbidden to me, my own mind worked all the more freely, creating from its own resources.

  Vexed as I was, I spent many days and nights at this period in the cellars of the building, where several mousetraps had been set and where, moreover, a number of tomcats of various ages and ranks used to meet.

  The most complicated interrelationships of life will never elude a bold, philosophical mind, and its possessor will deduce from them how life itself is shaped, in thought and deed. Thus, even in the cellars, I was struck by the interactive relationship of mousetraps and cats. As a tomcat of noble, honest mind I felt quite heated when obliged to observe how the punctilious operation of those lifeless machines caused great apathy in the young toms. I reached for my pen and wrote that immortal work I have already mentioned above, to wit: On Mousetraps and their Influence on the Character and Achievement of the Feline Race. In this little book, I held up a mirror to those effeminate young tomcats in which they might see themselves abdicating all their own power, indolently, lazily, calmly allowing those base mice to run after the bacon! I roused them from their slumbers with thunderous words. Besides the usefulness this little work was bound to have, its writing was advantageous to myself, in that while I was busy with it I couldn’t catch any mice, and I had spoken out so strongly that later on, it could hardly occur to anyone to expect me to give a personal example in action of the heroism I advocated.

  I might close the tale of the first period of my life here, and pass on to the months of my actual youth as I approached the age of maturity, but I cannot deprive my gentle readers of the last two verses of my beautiful ‘Gloss’, the verses my master didn’t want to hear. Here they are:

  Love, I know, great force opposes,

  When the songs of sweet desire

  Set the passionate heart on fire,

  Wafting out of banks of roses.

  Then the lover’s eager nose is

  Hot on the beloved’s scent.

  By the f
lowery paths she’ll lie: say

  She’ll be happy to assent!

  Leaping on you, she’ll consent.

  Lovers meet us on the highway.

  Ah, that longing, ah, that yearning

  O’er the sense a spell can cast.

  Yet how long do such charms last?

  All that ardent, amorous burning?

  No! to Friendship I’ll be turning

  By mild Hesper’s70 tranquil light.

  For him, my friend, my counterpart,

  I’ll exert my utmost might,

  Scaling walls of any height.

  Friends are chosen by the heart!

  W.P. – that very evening in a cheerful, merry mood such as had not been detected in him for some considerable time. And this mood was the cause of an unheard-of event. For without flaring up in a temper and striding away, as he usually did in such cases, he listened calmly and even with a good-natured smile to the long (and even longer-winded) first act of a frightful tragedy written by a hopeful young lieutenant with rosy cheeks and nicely curled hair, who recited it with all the airs of the most felicitous poet. And when the said lieutenant, upon coming to the end, urged him to give his opinion of the composition, he confined himself, his whole face radiating the mildest expression of private delight, to assuring the young hero of war and verse that the first act, that choice morsel offered for the delectation of aesthetic gourmets, certainly contained some fine ideas, their originality and genius being vouched for by the circumstance that poets of acknowledged stature, as for instance Calderón, Shakespeare, and in modern times Schiller, had hit upon them too. The lieutenant embraced him warmly and confided, with an air of secrecy, that he was thinking of entertaining a whole company of the most distinguished young ladies, even including a Countess who read Spanish and painted in oils, with this most excellent of all first acts that very evening. Upon being assured that this was an uncommonly good notion, he went away full of enthusiasm.