The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  My master was right: I had reached that terrible awkward age and had to get through it, following the bad example of mankind who, as I was saying, first introduced this unhappy state, being naturally conditioned to it. They also describe this period as ‘the years of adolescence’, although many a man never emerges from it all his life. I and my kind can speak only of weeks of adolescence, and for my part, I was jolted out of it all of a sudden by a shock which might have cost me a leg or a couple of ribs. In fact I jumped out of the awkward age in a very impetuous fashion.

  I must tell you how this occurred:

  There was a very lavishly upholstered machine on four wheels standing in the yard of the house where my master lived. I learned later that it was an English half-carriage. In my state of mind at that time, nothing was more natural than for me to feel impelled to make the difficult ascent and climb into this machine. I thought the cushions inside it so comfortable and tempting that I took to spending most of my time asleep and dreaming on the comfortable upholstery of the carriage.

  A violent jolt, followed by a confused clattering, clinking, rushing noise, woke me just as delightful pictures of roast hare and such-like were passing before my mind’s eye. Who can describe my sudden alarm when I realized that the whole machine was moving off with a deafening roar, flinging me to and fro on my cushions? My ever-increasing fear turned to desperation; I ventured a death-defying leap out of the machine, I heard the whinnying, scornful laughter of demons from Hell, I heard their barbaric voices shouting ‘Shoo, cat, shoo!’ after me, and I ran blindly full speed ahead and away from there, stones flying after me, until finally I reached a gloomy vault, where I sank down senseless.

  At last I thought I heard someone walking up and down overhead, and from the echo of the footsteps (since I had heard something similar before) I concluded that I must be underneath a staircase. Such was indeed the case!

  But when I crept out, oh heavens! Endless streets stretched before me, and a crowd of people were surging by. I didn’t know a single one of them. And since there were also carriages rattling along, dogs barking loudly, and finally a whole troop of soldiers thronging into the street, their weapons glittering in the sun, while all of a sudden someone beat a big drum right beside me, so terrifyingly that I involuntarily jumped several feet into the air – well, how could strange fears not fill my breast? I now perceived that I was out in the world – a world I had seen only from afar, up on my roof-top, and often not without yearning and curiosity. So now I was in the middle of that world, an inexperienced stranger. I prowled cautiously along the street, keeping close to the buildings, and finally I met a couple of young fellows of my own kind. I stopped and tried to strike up a conversation with them, but they would only glare at me, their eyes flashing, and then leaped on. ‘Light-minded youth!’ thought I, ‘you know not who has crossed your path! Thus do great minds pass through the world, unrecognized and disregarded. Such is the lot of mortal wisdom!’

  Expecting more sympathy from human beings, I jumped up on a basement stairway projecting into the street and uttered many a cheerful and, as I thought, alluring ‘Miaow!’, but they all passed coldly by without taking any interest, scarcely sparing me a glance. At last I saw a pretty, fair-haired little boy who looked at me in a friendly fashion and finally, snapping his fingers, called: ‘Puss, puss!’

  ‘Good soul, you understand me!’ I thought, jumping down, and I approached him with a friendly purr. He began stroking me, but just as I thought I could entrust myself entirely to this kindly-disposed child, he pinched my tail so hard that I cried out in dreadful pain. This seemed to give the naughty boy great pleasure, for he laughed aloud, clutched me tight, and tried to perform the infernal operation again. Overcome by the deepest rage and inflamed by ideas of revenge, I dug my claws hard into his hands and face, so that he screeched and let me go.

  Just then, however, I also heard calls of ‘Tyras, Cartridge – get him!’. And two dogs began chasing me, barking out loud. I ran until I was out of breath, but they were close on my heels; there was no escape. Blind with terror, I jumped through a ground-floor window, rattling the panes, and a couple of flower-pots standing on the window-sill fell into the room with a crash. A woman sitting working at a table started up in alarm, cried, ‘Oh, the horrid beast!’, picked up a cudgel and made for me. But my eyes, glowing with rage, my unsheathed claws and the howl of desperation I uttered deterred her, so that the cudgel raised to strike seemed, as it says in that tragedy,2 i’th’ air to stick, and so, as a painted tyrant, she stood, and like a neutral to her will and matter, did nothing. Just then the door opened. Coming to a swift decision, I slipped between the legs of the man who was coming in, and was fortunate enough to find my way out of the building and into the street.

  All weak and exhausted, I finally came to a lonely spot where I could lie down for a while. But then the most ravenous hunger began to torment me, and only now, with deep sorrow, did I remember good Master Abraham, whom a harsh fate had parted from me. How could I find him again? I looked around me gloomily, and when I saw no possibility of discovering the way back bright tears sprang to my eyes.

  But new hope leaped up in me when I saw an amiable young girl at the street corner, sitting at a little stall with the most delicious rolls and sausages on it. I slowly approached, she smiled at me, and wishing to introduce myself directly as a youth of good education and gallant manners, I arched my back higher and more beautifully than I had ever done before. Her smile turned to loud laughter. ‘At last I have found a fine soul, a feeling heart! Ah, Heaven, what good that does my wounded breast!’ I thought, angling down one of the sausages off her stall, but at that the girl gave a loud cry, and if the blow she aimed at me with a stout wooden stick had struck home I would never have been able to enjoy the sausage I had taken while believing in the girl’s steadfastness and philanthropic virtue, or any other sausage either. I put the last of my strength into escaping from the fiendish female who was chasing me. I succeeded, and finally reached a place where I could eat my sausage in peace.

  After my frugal meal I felt very cheerful, and since the sun was shining down warmly on my fur, I felt a lively sense that it was good to be on this earth after all. However, when chill, damp night fell, when I found no such soft bed as I had with my good master, when I woke next morning stiff with cold and plagued by hunger once again, I was overcome by hopelessness verging on despair.

  ‘So this,’ said I, breaking into loud lamentations, ‘so this is the world you longed to know from your roof-top at home? The world where you hoped to find virtue, wisdom and the morals instilled by higher education! Oh, these heartless barbarians! Wherein does their strength lie but in blows? Wherein their understanding but in scornful mockery? Wherein their entire conduct but in the malicious persecution of feeling minds? Away, away with this world of dissembling and deceit! Take me to thy cool shade, sweet cellar of home! O attic! – stove! – oh delightful solitude, how painfully my heart yearns for you!’

  Quite overcome by the thought of my misery and my hopeless condition, I half-closed my eyes and wept bitterly.

  Familiar tones reached my ear. ‘Murr, Murr! My dear fellow, however did you get here? What’s happened to you?’

  I opened my eyes and saw young Ponto standing before me!

  Much as Ponto’s conduct had injured me, his unhoped-for appearance was a comfort. I forgot the wrong he had done me, told him everything that had happened to me, described my sad and helpless situation, shedding many tears, and concluded by complaining that I was starving.

  Instead of showing the sympathy I expected, young Ponto burst out laughing. ‘What a silly, foolish fellow you are, dear Murr!’ he said. ‘First this idiot gets into a half-carriage where he has no business to be, falls asleep, is alarmed to find himself being driven away, leaps out into the world, is astonished to find that no one knows him, when he’s hardly so much as put his nose out of doors before, and that his silly pranks do him no good anywhere – and then he’s
so simple that he can’t even find the way back to his master! Well, friend Murr, you’ve always boasted of your knowledge and education, you’ve always been very high and mighty to me, and now here you sit abandoned and hopeless, with all the great qualities of your mind insufficient to tell you how to satisfy your hunger and find your way home to your master! And if the poodle you think so far below you doesn’t take you in paw, you’ll die a miserable death in the end, and not a mortal soul will care a bit for your learning and your gifts, nor will any of the poets you thought your friends place a friendly Hie jacet!3 on the spot where you perished of sheer short-sightedness! I’ve been to school too, you see, and can lard my own conversation with scraps of Latin, so there! But you’re hungry, my poor cat, and we must satisfy that hunger of yours first of all. You come with me.’

  Young Ponto ran briskly on ahead, and I followed gloomily, crushed by his remarks, which in my hungry frame of mind I felt had much truth in them. How alarmed I was, however, when –

  W.P. – the most welcome thing in the world, to the editor of these pages, to have the whole of Kreisler’s remarkable conversation with the little Privy Councillor reported directly. This at least enabled him to show you, dear reader, a few images from the early youth of that strange man whose biography he has been as it were obliged to write, and he believes that in outline and colouring these images may be regarded as characteristic and significant enough. At least there can be no doubt, from Kreisler’s account of his Aunt Tootsie and her lute, that music with all its wonderful melancholy, all its heavenly delights, took root in the boy’s breast, putting out a thousand branching veins, and so it is not surprising to find that this same breast, if only slightly wounded, immediately gushes hot blood. The aforesaid editor was particularly curious about two incidents in the life of his beloved Kapellmeister – was indeed, as they say, quite obsessed by them: to wit, how Master Abraham came into the family and brought his influence to bear on little Johannes, and what catastrophe ejected the good Kreisler from the princely residence and made him the Kapellmeister he should have been all along, although the Eternal Power may be trusted to put everyone in the right place at the right time. And much information on these points has been provided, as you, gentle reader, shall immediately learn!

  First of all, there is no doubt whatsoever that in Göniönesmühl, where Johannes Kreisler was born and bred, there was a man whose whole nature and every action seemed strange and singular. The little town of Göniönesmühl has always been a veritable paradise for eccentrics anyway, and Kreisler grew up surrounded by the oddest of characters. The impression they made on him was bound to be all the stronger in that he did not mix with people of his own age, at least not during his boyhood. The man in question shared his name with a well-known humorist,4 for he was called Abraham Liscov and was an organ-builder, a profession for which he sometimes evinced deep contempt while at other times lauding it to the skies, so that you never knew what he really meant.

  Kreisler tells us that Herr Liscov was always spoken of with great admiration in his family circle. He was described as the most skilful of artists, and the only difficulty was that his mad fancies and wild ideas kept him apart from everyone. A man would boast that Herr Liscov had actually been to fit new quills to his spinet and tune it, as if this were a notable piece of good luck. And there was much talk of Liscov’s fantastical pranks, which made a tremendous impression on little Johannes, so that he formed a very distinct idea of the man without knowing him, longed to meet him, and when his uncle said that Herr Liscov might come to repair their own defective spinet he asked every morning if Herr Liscov was coming today. However, the boy’s interest in the unknown Herr Liscov grew to the utmost awe and admiration when he first heard the mighty tones of the beautiful organ in the town’s principal church, which his uncle did not usually attend, and his uncle told him that none other than Herr Liscov had built this splendid instrument. From then on the picture Johannes had formed of Herr Liscov disappeared, and was replaced by a very different one. The boy thought Herr Liscov must surely be a tall, handsome man of stately appearance who spoke in a clear, strong voice, and most important of all, he must wear a plum-coloured coat with broad gold braid, like his godfather the Commercial Councillor, who went about thus attired and for whose rich clothing little Johannes felt the utmost respect.

  One day, when Johannes and his uncle were standing at an open window, a thin little man came hurrying down the street in a roquelaure5 of bright green wool, its wide sleeve-flaps fluttering up and down in the wind in a curious manner. He also wore a small three-cornered hat set at a martial angle on his powdered white hair, and his pigtail, which was too long, wound its way down his back. He trod with a firm step, making the paving stones ring, and at every other step he took he struck the ground hard with the long Spanish cane he was carrying. As the man passed the window he cast the boy’s uncle a keen glance from his flashing, coal-black eyes, but did not return his greeting. A cold shiver passed through all little Johannes’s limbs. At the same time he felt as if he would have to burst out laughing at the man, and the only reason he couldn’t was because of the constriction of his chest.

  ‘That was Herr Liscov,’ said his uncle.

  ‘I knew it was,’ replied Johannes, and he may have been right. Herr Liscov was neither a tall, stately man, nor did he wear a plum-coloured coat with gold braid like the Commercial Councillor, but strangely and indeed miraculously enough Herr Liscov happened to look just as the boy had imagined him earlier, before he heard the organ. Johannes had still not got over his emotion, which was like that of an abrupt shock, when Herr Liscov suddenly stopped, turned, hurried back down the street to the window, made the boy’s uncle a low bow, and hastened away laughing out loud.

  ‘Really!’ said Johannes’s uncle. ‘Is that any way for a sober citizen to behave – a man of some learning, a man who, as a licensed organ-builder, may be counted an artist, and whom the laws of the land permit to carry a dagger?6 One would think that he had looked upon the wine when it was red, first thing in the morning at that, or escaped from the madhouse! But now I know he’ll come and put our instrument right.’

  Johannes’s uncle was right. Herr Liscov turned up the very next day, but instead of setting to work repairing the spinet he insisted on hearing little Johannes play. The boy was ensconced on the music stool, which was packed up high with books, with Herr Liscov opposite him at the narrow end of the instrument, leaning both arms on it and staring into the boy’s face. This so confused him that he stumbled clumsily through the minuets and airs he was playing out of old books of music. Herr Liscov remained grave, but suddenly the boy slipped down and disappeared beneath the frame of the instrument, whereupon the organ-builder, who had suddenly kicked the footstool away from under his feet, burst into roars of laughter. Humiliated, the boy scrambled out, but Herr Liscov was already seated at the spinet and had taken out a hammer, with which he hammered away on the poor instrument as mercilessly as if he meant to break it into a thousand pieces.

  ‘Herr Liscov, are you out of your mind?’ cried Johannes’s uncle, but the boy, horrified and quite beside himself at the organ-builder’s conduct, pushed down on the lid of the instrument with all his might, so that it closed with a loud bang, and Herr Liscov had to withdraw his head in a hurry to avoid being hit.

  ‘Oh, Uncle dear,’ cried Johannes, ‘this isn’t the skilful artist who built the lovely organs, he can’t be. This is a silly person acting like a naughty boy!’

  His uncle was amazed at the boy’s boldness, but Herr Liscov stared at him for some time, said, ‘Well, here’s a funny little gentleman!’, then opened the spinet quietly and carefully, took out his tools and set to work. He was finished within a few hours, and never said a single word.

  After that the organ-builder showed a marked liking for the boy. He visited the house almost daily, and soon won the child over entirely by showing him a whole new, colourful world in which his lively mind could move more freely and boldly. It w
as not very commendable of Liscov to encourage the boy in the most outrageous tricks, particularly when Johannes was rather older, tricks which were often played on his uncle, although the latter, being of limited intelligence and full of the most ridiculous foibles, certainly provided plenty of occasion for them. However, it is a fact that when Kreisler complains of the sad loneliness of his boyhood years, holding that period to blame for the disruption of temper that often disturbed his inmost mind, we may put it down to his relationship with his uncle. He could feel no respect for the man who was required to take his father’s place, but whose whole nature and conduct must appear to him ludicrous.

  Liscov wanted to gain the entire devotion of Johannes, and he would have succeeded had not the boy’s better nature striven against him. Penetrating reason, a profound mind, unusual intellectual sensitivity: all these were the organ-builder’s acknowledged merits. However, what people liked to call his humour was not that rare and wonderful frame of mind which derives from a deep experience of life in its every aspect, from the conflict of the most hostile principles, but was merely a decided instinct for the unseemly, coupled with a talent for bringing it into being and the imperative of his own bizarre appearance. Such were the foundations of the universal contemptuous mockery to which Liscov gave vent, the malicious glee with which he constantly pursued all that is recognized as unseemly into every secret nook and corner. This malicious mockery wounded the boy’s tender mind, and was a barrier to the relationship that his paternal friend would really, in his heart of hearts, have liked to create. Yet it cannot be denied that the strange organ-builder was very well fitted to nurture and encourage the germ of a deeper kind of humour in the boy’s mind, and it grew and flourished abundantly.