The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  ‘There was a painter at our court called Ettlinger. My father and mother thought very highly of him, since his talent might be described as wonderful. You will see many fine paintings by his hand in the picture gallery, and my mother the Princess appears in all of them, as this or that character in an historical group. The most beautiful of these paintings, however, the one that arouses the greatest admiration in all connoisseurs, hangs in my father the Prince’s cabinet. It is the portrait Ettlinger painted of my mother in the very bloom of youth, although she had never sat for him, and was so good a likeness that he might have stolen it from her mirror. Leonhard, for such was the painter’s first name, by which he was known at court, must have been a good, kind man. I lavished on him all the love of which my infant breast was capable, being perhaps not yet quite three years old. I wished that he would never leave me. And he would play with me too, untiringly, be painted me pretty little pictures, carved me all kinds of figures. Then suddenly, after about a year, he disappeared. The woman to whom my early upbringing was entrusted told me, with tears in her eyes, that Herr Leonhard was dead. I was inconsolable; I did not like being in the room where Leonhard used to play with me. Whenever I could, I escaped from my governess and the ladies-in-waiting and ran all over the castle calling Leonhard’s name aloud! For I still didn’t believe he was dead; I thought he was hidden somewhere in the castle.

  ‘And so it was that one evening, when my governess had left me alone just for a moment, I slipped out again to go and look for the Princess my mother. I was going to make her tell me where Herr Leonhard was and get him back for me. The doors of the corridor were open, so I actually reached the main staircase. I ran up it, and at the top of the stairs I entered the first unlocked room I came to, at random. As I was looking around me, about to knock on the door which I thought must lead to the Princess’s apartments, it was pushed violently open, and in ran a man in torn clothing, with tangled hair. It was Leonhard. He stared at me with eyes flashing dreadfully. His face was pale as death, haggard, scarcely recognizable. “Oh, Herr Leonhard,” I cried, “how terrible you look! Why are you so pale? Why do your eyes burn like that; why do you stare at me so? I feel frightened of you! Oh, do be nice again – paint me some more pretty coloured pictures!”

  ‘At this Leonhard ran towards me with a peal of wild laughter – a chain that seemed to be fastened to his waist clinked as he moved – crouched down on the ground and said hoarsely: “Ha, ha, little Princess – coloured pictures? Oh yes, I can really paint now, I can paint – I’ll paint you a picture, and your lovely mother – for you have a lovely mother, don’t you? Well, ask her not to turn me into my old form – I don’t want to be that poor wretch Leonhard Ettlinger – he died long ago. I am the red vulture; I can paint when I’ve swallowed rays of colour! Oh yes, I can paint if I have hot blood for varnish – and it’s your heart’s blood I need, little Princess.”

  ‘So saying, he caught hold of me, clutched me to him, bared my throat, and I thought I saw a little knife glint in his hand. The piercing scream of terror I uttered brought servants running in to tackle the madman. However, he knocked them to the ground with a giant’s strength. But at that moment there was a clattering, clanking noise coming up the stairs, and a big, strong man raced in, crying in a loud voice, “Oh Jesus, he got away from me! Oh Jesus, what a terrible thing! You wait, you devil, you wait!” As soon as the madman caught sight of this fellow, all his strength suddenly seemed to desert him. He fell to the floor, howling. They put him in the chains the man had brought with him and led him away uttering dreadful sounds, like a captive wild beast.

  ‘You may imagine the distressing effect this dreadful scene was bound to have on a child of four. They tried to comfort me, to make me understand what madness meant. Without entirely comprehending it. I felt a deep, nameless horror go through me, a horror that still returns when I see a madman, when I merely think of that frightful condition, a condition comparable to a state of constant, never-ending mortal agony. Kreisler, you are as like that unhappy man as if you were his brother. Your expression in particular, an expression I might often call strange, reminds me only too vividly of Leonhard, and that is what so discomposed me when I first set eyes on you, that is what still disturbs me – alarms me – in your presence!’

  Kreisler stood there shaken to his depths, unable to utter a word. He had always been obsessed with the idea that madness lay in wait for him46 like a wild beast slavering for prey, and one day would suddenly tear him to pieces; he was now trembling with the same horror that had seized upon Princess Hedwiga at the sight of him, a horror of himself, and was wrestling with the dreadful notion that it had been he who tried to murder her in a frenzied fit.

  After a few moments’ silence, the Princess continued: ‘The unfortunate Leonhard secredy loved my mother, and in die end this love, which was madness in itself, broke out in furious frenzy.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Kreisler very quietly and gently, as was his wont when a storm within him had died down, ‘in that case it was not an artist’s love that had awoken in Leonhard’s breast.’

  ‘What do you mean, Kreisler?’ asked the Princess as she swiftly wheeled round.

  ‘Once,’ replied Kreisler, smiling slightly, ‘once when I was watching a tolerably amusing play47 and heard a wag of a servant in it address the players with the sweet salutation: “Good folk and bad music-makers!”, I immediately, like the judge on the Last Day, divided all humanity into two different kinds. On the one hand were the good folk who are bad music-makers, or rather who aren’t music-makers at all, and the true music-makers stood on the other hand. But none of them was to be damned; they were all to be blessed, if in different ways. Good folk easily fall in love with a pair of beautiful eyes, reach their arms out to the charming person from whose countenance the aforesaid eyes shine, hold the fair one in a closer and closer embrace which finally shrinks to the compass of the wedding ring placed upon the beloved’s finger, representing pars pro toto,48 – you know some Latin, madam – representing pars pro toto, I repeat, a link in the chain by which they lead the captive of love home to the prison of marriage. As they do all this, they cry at the tops of their voices, “O God!”, or, “O Heaven!”, or if they are given to astronomy, “O ye stars!”, or again, if their taste is for pagan beliefs. “O all ye gods, she is mine, the loveliest of women, all my yearning hopes are granted!” In making such a noise, the good folk think they imitate the music-makers, but in vain, since their love acts in quite another way. It can happen that invisible hands suddenly tear away the veil from before the eyes of those music-makers, and they see, walking upon the earth, the angelic image that dwelt silently in their breasts, a sweet uncharted mystery. And now, in pure heavenly fire that gives only light and warmth, and does not destroy with fierce flames, there blazes up all the delight, all the ineffable joy of the higher life springing from deep within, and the spirit puts out a thousand antennae in ardent yearning, casting a net around the one it has seen, and has her yet never has her, since the longing lives on, ever thirsting! And it is she, she herself, the wondrous one who, an idea given form and life, shines out of the artist’s soul as song – picture – poem! Ah, your Highness, believe me, let me persuade you, those genuine artists who use their physical arms and the hands at the ends of them for nothing but making music tolerably well – whether with pen, paint-brush or some other instrument – reach out, in fact, to their true loves only with their spiritual antennae, having neither hands nor fingers able to hold a wedding ring with suitable delicacy and place it on the adored one’s little finger. Consequently, no base misalliances need be feared, and it is all one whether the beloved who lives in the artist’s heart be a princess or a baker’s daughter, so long as the latter isn’t an owl.49 And when the aforesaid music-makers are in love, they create wonderful works with the inspiration of Heaven, neither dying miserably of consumption nor running mad. So I hold Herr Leonhard Ettlinger much to blame for falling into a frenzy; he could have loved her Ser
ene Highness the Princess your mother as much as he liked in the manner of a true music-maker, and suffered no ill-effects at all!’

  The Princess’s ear failed to catch the humorous tone the Kapellmeister had adopted; it went unnoticed, or was drowned out by the echo of the string he had touched, a string sure to be stretched tauter and vibrate more powerfully than any other in a woman’s breast.

  ‘The artist’s love,’ she said, sinking into an armchair and resting her head on her hand as if in thought, ‘the artist’s love! Ah, to be loved thus! What a beautiful, wonderful dream of Heaven – but only a dream, an empty dream!’

  ‘You don’t seem,’ continued Kreisler, ‘you don’t seem to think much of dreams, madam, and yet it is only in dreams that our butterfly wings really grow, allowing us to escape the most confined, most secure of dungeons and rise aloft, gleaming brightly, into the highest air. After all, everyone has a natural propensity for flying, and I have known grave, sober folk fill themselves up in the evening with nothing but champagne, as a serviceable gas to help them rise aloft in the night, both air balloon and the balloon’s passenger.’

  ‘To know oneself thus loved!’ repeated the Princess, with even more emotion than before.

  ‘And as for the artist’s love,’ Kreisler went on when Princess Hedwiga fell silent, ‘as for the artist’s love as I’ve endeavoured to describe it, madam, you have the bad example before you of Herr Leonhard Ettlinger, who was a music-maker but wanted to love as the good folk do, which might indeed overset his sanity to some degree, and for that very reason I say Herr Leonhard was no true music-maker. For a true music-maker carries the lady of his choice in his heart, desiring nothing but to sing, write or paint in her honour, and may be compared to the chivalrous knights of old in their exquisite courtesy – indeed, he is to be preferred to them in point of innocence of mind, since he does not conduct himself like those knights who, in their bloodthirsty manner, would strike down the most admirable folk in homage to the ladies of their hearts if there were no convenient giants or dragons to hand.’

  ‘No,’ cried the Princess, as if waking from a dream, ‘no, it is impossible for such a pure vestal fire50 to be kindled in the breast of a man! What is a man’s love but the treacherous weapon he uses to win a victory that will destroy the woman without making him happy?’

  Kreisler was about to express his great surprise at finding such unusual ideas in a Princess only seventeen or eighteen years old, when the door opened and Prince Ignatius came in.

  The Kapellmeister was glad to end a conversation which he thought very like one of those well-arranged duets where each voice must remain true to its own character. While the Princess, he considered, persisted in a melancholy adagio, with only an occasional lower or upper mordent, he himself came in parlando51 with a whole legion of short notes, figuring as an outstanding buffo and supremely comic chanteur, so that the whole thing might be described at a veritable masterpiece of composition and execution, and he could have wished for nothing better than to be able to listen to the Princess and himself from some box or fashionable seat in the stalls.

  Well, so in came Prince Ignatius with a broken cup in his hand, sobbing and weeping.

  It must be said here that the Prince, although well into his twenties, could not yet bring himself to give up his favourite childhood games. He especially loved pretty cups, and could play with them for hours on end, setting them out in rows on the table in front of him and rearranging the rows again and again, so that first the yellow cup must stand next to the red cup, then the green cup next to the red cup, and so on. He took as sincere and heartfelt a delight in these games as a happy, contented child.

  The misfortune which he was now lamenting consisted in the fact that the little pug had unexpectedly jumped up on his table and knocked the prettiest of the cups off.

  Princess Hedwiga promised to make sure that he got a cup in the latest style from Paris. He was satisfied with that, and smiled broadly. Only now did he seem to notice the Kapellmeister. He turned to him, asking whether he had a great many pretty cups too. Kreisler knew what to reply to that, having been told by Master Abraham, and he assured the Prince that he certainly did not have such fine cups as his Highness, nor could he afford to spend as much money on them as his Highness did.

  ‘Well,’ replied Ignatius, much pleased, ‘you see, I’m a prince, so I can have all the pretty cups I like, and you can’t because you aren’t a prince, but seeing that I certainly am a prince, pretty cups are –’ Cups and princes, princes and cups got all muddled up in this speech, which became increasingly confused, while Ignatius laughed and hopped about and clapped his hands in high delight!

  Hedwiga, blushing, cast her eyes down, ashamed of her feeble-minded brother and afraid of Kreisler’s mockery – unnecessarily, for in his present mood the Prince’s foolishness, being a state of genuine madness, aroused nothing but compassion in him, not that such compassion could do any good, but instead was bound to increase the tension of the moment. Simply to distract the poor creature from his wretched cups, Princess Hedwiga asked him to put the little reference library arranged in a pretty bookcase on the wall in order. Delighted and laughing happily, the Prince immediately began taking out the handsomely bound books, sorting them carefully by size, and placing them so that the gilt-edged cut pages faced forwards and formed a shining row which pleased him immeasurably.

  Then Fräulein Nannette ran in, crying out loud: ‘His Highness, his Highness is coming with the Prince!’

  ‘Oh, heavens!’ said the Princess. ‘My toilette! Dear me, Kreisler, we have been chattering the time away without a thought for that! I have quite forgotten myself! Myself and his Highness and the Prince!’

  She disappeared into the next room with Nannette, while Prince Ignatius went on with what he was doing, not in the least disturbed.

  The Prince’s state coach was already rolling up as Kreisler reached the foot of the main staircase, and the two footmen in state livery were just climbing down from the sausage-cart52 – a circumstance which requires further explanation.

  Prince Irenaeus kept up the old customs, and so at a time when fleet-footed fellows in brightly coloured jackets were no longer required to run ahead of the horses like hunted animals, amidst a numerous and heavily armed retinue, he still kept two footmen. They were sedate, handsome, well-fed fellows somewhat advanced in years, who only occasionally suffered from abdominal disturbances because of their sedentary way of life. The Prince was far too kindly a man to expect any of his servants to turn on occasion into greyhounds, or dogs of any other kind, but so that the proper etiquette might be observed when he drove out in state, the two footmen had to ride ahead on a good enough sort of sausage-cart, moving their legs a little at appropriate places, for instance where a few onlookers had gathered, to suggest that they were really running. It was a pretty sight.

  Well – so the footmen had just climbed down, the chamberlains were stepping in through the entrance, and they were followed by Prince Irenaeus, beside whom walked a young man of handsome appearance in the rich uniform of the Neapolitan Guards, with stars and crosses on his chest.

  ‘Je vous salue Monsieur de Krösel,’ said the Prince, catching sight of Kreisler. He was in the habit of saying Krösel instead of Kreisler when, on festive and ceremonial occasions, he spoke French and couldn’t remember German names properly.

  The princely stranger – for it was obviously this handsome young man Fräulein Nannette had meant when she cried out that his Highness was coming with the Prince – the princely stranger nodded his head briefly to Kreisler in passing, a form of greeting which Kreisler could not endure even from persons of the most distinguished rank. Consequently he bowed low to the ground in so burlesque a manner that the fat Lord Marshal, who regarded Kreisler as an incorrigible jester anyway and took everything he did and said for a joke, couldn’t help chuckling slightly. The young Prince cast Kreisler a burning glance from his dark eyes, muttered ‘Fool!’ between his teeth, and then str
ode swiftly after Prince Irenaeus, who was looking around for him with mild gravity.

  ‘For an Italian guardsman,’ said Kreisler to the Lord Marshal, laughing aloud, ‘his Serene Highness speaks tolerable German, so pray tell him, your Excellency, that I’ll pay him back in the best Neapolitan and no nice Romanic,53 least of all will I chatter in vile Venetian like one of Gozzi’s masqueraders,54 in short, I won’t put X before U. Tell him, your Excellency –’

  But his Excellency was already climbing the stairs, shoulders hunched as a bulwark and rampart to protect his ears.

  The princely carriage in which Kreisler usually came to Sieghartshof drew up, the driver, an old huntsman, opened its door and asked if he would be pleased to get in. Just then, however, a kitchen boy ran past crying and screeching, ‘Oh, what a terrible misfortune – oh, what a disaster!’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Kreisler called after him.

  ‘Oh, what a misfortune!’ replied the kitchen boy, weeping harder than ever. ‘Head Cook be in despair indoors there, fair raving he be, fit to stab himself with the steak knife55 on account of his Highness have ordered supper all of a sudden, and he ain’t got no mussels for to make Italian salad. He be bent on going to town himself, but Head Groom won’t harness up no hosses seeing as his Highness ain’t given no orders.’

  ‘Well, we can do something about that,’ said Kreisler. ‘Let the Head Cook get into this carriage and provide himself with the finest mussels to be had in Sieghartsweiler, while I walk to the same town on foot.’ And with these words he strode off into the park.

  ‘Great soul – noble heart – what a charming gentleman!’ the old huntsman called after him, tears springing to his eyes.

  The distant mountains stood in the flames of sunset, and their glowing, golden reflection played over the meadows, gliding through the trees and bushes as if carried by the rustling evening breeze that had risen.