The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  Kreisler stopped in the middle of the bridge that passed over a wide arm of the lake and led to the fisherman’s cottage, and looked down into the water, where the park with its beautiful groups of trees was reflected in magical shimmering light, the Geierstein rising high above them, wearing its shining white ruins like a strange crown on its head. The tame swan who answered to the name of Blanche was swimming on the lake, her beautiful neck proudly arched, her gleaming wings rustling. ‘Blanche, Blanche,’ cried Kreisler aloud, spreading his arms wide, ‘sing your loveliest song, don’t think that means you must die! You need only press close to my breast as you sing. Then your most beautiful notes will become mine, and only I will perish in ardent yearning while you glide in love and life over the caressing waves!’

  Kreisler himself did not know what suddenly moved him so deeply; he leaned on the balustrade, involuntarily closing his eyes. Then he heard Julia’s singing, and a sweet nameless sorrow shook him to the heart.

  Dark clouds were driving up, casting broad shadows like black veils over the mountains and the forest. Hollow thunder rolled in the east, the night wind blew more strongly, the brooks babbled, and now and then single notes from the weather harp56 could be heard like distant organ music; the birds of night rose in alarm and flew through the thickets, uttering their cries.

  Kreisler woke from his dream and saw his dark figure in the water. Then it seemed to him as though Ettlinger, the mad painter, were looking up at him from the depths. ‘Oho,’ he called down, ‘oho, are you there, my dear doppelgänger, my brave companion? Listen, my good fellow, you look tolerably well for a painter who’s gone a little too far, who would have used princely blood for varnish in his overweening pride. I do believe, my dear Ettlinger, you were fooling illustrious families with your deranged conduct! The longer I look at you, the more clearly I perceive the distinction of your manners, and if you like I’ll assure Princess Maria that as for your standing, or rather your lying in the water, you were a man of the highest rank and she can go ahead and love you. However, my friend, if you want the Princess to resemble your picture to this day, then you must imitate the princely dilettante who made his portraits resemble their subjects by skilfully painting over the latter. Well – if they’ve consigned you to the underworld without due cause, I now bring you all manner of news! Know, my esteemed colonist of the madhouse, that the wound you inflicted upon that poor child the fair Princess Hedwiga still hasn’t healed properly, and she sometimes performs strange antics in her pain. Did you pierce her heart so hard, so painfully, that hot blood still spurts when she sees your likeness, as corpses bleed when the murderer comes near them? Don’t blame it on me, my dear fellow, if she takes me for a ghost, and that ghost for yours. However, just as I am entertaining a great desire to show her I’m no dreadful phantom but Kapellmeister Kreisler, in comes Prince Ignatius to thwart me, obviously suffering from a paranoia, a fatuitas, a stoliditas which Kluge describes57 as a very amiable variety of genuine idiocy. Don’t copy every gesture I make, painter, when I speak to you seriously! What, there you go again? If I weren’t afraid of catching a cold I’d jump down and give you a sound thrashing! To the devil with you, you rascally mimic!’

  And Kreisler walked swiftly away.

  It was now quite dark; lightning flashed through the black clouds, thunder rolled, and rain began to fall in huge drops. A bright, dazzling light shone from the fisherman’s cottage, and Kreisler hurried fast towards it.

  Not far from the door, in the full beam of the light, Kreisler saw his likeness, his own Self walking beside him. Seized by the deepest horror, he burst into the cottage and sank into an armchair, breathless and pale as death.

  Master Abraham, who was seated at a little table where an astral lamp58 shone, casting its bright rays around, and was reading a large folio volume, started with alarm, went over to Kreisler and cried, ‘For heaven’s sake, what’s the matter, Johannes? Where have you come from so late in the evening – what has terrified you so?’

  Kreisler pulled himself together with an effort and then said, in a hollow voice, ‘It is so, there are two of us – I mean I and my doppelgänger, who jumped out of the lake and has followed me here. For pity’s sake, Master, draw the dagger from your swordstick and strike the villain down – believe me, he’s raving mad and could destroy us both. He conjured up the storm outside! The spirits are moving through the air, their hymn rends the human breast! Master – Master – lure the swan here to sing – my songs are silent, for my Self has laid its cold, white, deathly hand upon my breast, and must remove it again if the swan sings, and then plunge into the lake once more.’

  Master Abraham would not let Kreisler continue but spoke to him kindly, made him drink several glasses of a fiery Italian wine he happened to have by him, and then gradually got him to describe all that had happened.

  No sooner had Kreisler finished, however, than Master Abraham, laughing out loud, said: ‘Well, here we have an inveterate fantasist, a man fit to see ghosts if ever there was one! As for the organist playing you those dreadful hymns out in the park, it was nothing but the night wind roaring through the air, sounding the strings of the weather harp. You see, Kreisler, you’ve forgotten the weather harp slung between the two pavilions at the end of the park.∗ And as for your doppelganger walking beside you in the light of my astral lamp, I can show you here and now that I have only to step outside the door and my own doppelgänger will appear, in fact everyone who visits me here must put up with such a chevalier d’honneur59 of his Self at his side.’

  Master Abraham stepped outside the door, and immediately there was another Master Abraham standing beside him in the lamplight.

  Kreisler observed the effect of a concealed concave mirror, and felt the vexation of anyone who sees the wonders in which he had believed turn to nothing. Dreadful terrors please a man more than their natural explanation, and when something has appeared to him supernatural he is most unwilling to reconcile himself with this world below, and insists on seeing something from another world which does not need a body to manifest itself to him.

  ‘Really, Master,’ said Kreisler, ‘really, I can’t understand your strange liking for such silly tricks. Like a skilled cook, you concoct wonders from all kinds of spicy ingredients, and you think that people whose fancy has become dulled, like the glutton’s palate, must be stimulated by such practices. Nothing is more absurd than to discover that those accursed tricks which constrict the breast have all happened naturally!’

  ‘Naturally! – naturally!’ said Master Abraham. ‘As a man of some sense, you should see that nothing in the world happens naturally, nothing at all! Do you think, my dear Kapellmeister, that because we can produce a certain effect with the means at our disposal, we have a clear view of the cause of that effect, which proceeds from the mysterious organism? You have usually shown great respect for my tricks, although you never saw the crown of them all.’

  ‘You mean the Invisible Girl,’ said Kreisler.

  ‘However,’ the Master went on, ‘that trick itself – although it is more than a trick – would have shown you that the most ordinary and easily calculable mechanisms are often connected to the most mysterious wonders of nature, and can then produce effects which must remain inexplicable – taking that word itself in its usual sense.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Kreisler, ‘as when you proceeded in accordance with the well-known theory of resonance, cleverly contriving to hide your apparatus, and had a shrewd, skilful creature to hand.’

  ‘Oh, Chiara!’ cried Master Abraham, tears springing to his eyes. ‘Oh Chiara, my dear sweet child!’

  Kreisler had not seen the old man so deeply moved before, for Master Abraham would never indulge in any melancholy emotion, but used to make mock of such things.

  ‘Tell me about Chiara,’ the Kapellmeister asked him.

  ‘Dear me,’ said the Master, smiling, ‘dear me, I must appear a lachrymose old fool to you today, but I see the stars require me to tell you about a period in my l
ife on which I have long kept silent. Come here, Kreisler, and look at this big book; it is the most remarkable thing I possess, the legacy of a magician known as Severino, and here am I sitting just now, reading of great marvels and looking at little Chiara, who is pictured in the book, when in you burst quite beside yourself, scorning my magic at the very moment when I am revelling in the memory of its loveliest marvel, which was mine in my heyday!’

  ‘Well, tell me, then,’ said Kreisler, ‘so that I may fall to weeping with you straight away.’

  ‘It is not,’ began Master Abraham, ‘it is not very remarkable that although I was normally a strong young man of handsome appearance, I had made myself quite ill and exhausted with working on the great organ in the principal church of Göniönesmühl, out of excessive zeal and a great desire for fame. The doctor told me, “Go walking, my dear organ-builder, go walking over hill and dale, out into the world,” and that was what I did, amusing myself everywhere I went by giving myself out as a mechanic, and performing my best tricks to entertain people. They went down very well, and made me a good deal of money, until I met the man Severino, who laughed me and my tricks to scorn, for many of his own might almost have made me believe, as other folk did, that he was in league with the Devil, or at least with spirits of a better sort. The greatest sensation was his female oracle, a trick later known by the name of the Invisible Girl. A globe of the finest, clearest glass hung from the ceiling in the middle of the room, and the answers to questions asked of the invisible being issued, like a soft breath of wind, from this globe. It was not only the apparent incomprehensibility of this phenomenon that brought people flocking to the magician, but also the Invisible Girl’s ghostly voice, which went straight to the heart, moving hearers to their depths, as well as the accuracy of her answers and her genuine gift for soothsaying. I pressed my company upon him, talking a great deal about my mechanical tricks, but he scorned all my knowledge, although not in the same way as you do, Kreisler, and insisted on asking me to build him a water-organ for his domestic use, despite my demonstrating to him that, as the late Privy Councillor Meister of Göttingen60 has also shown in his treatise De veterum Hydraulo, there is nothing special about such an hydraulus, and you save nothing but a few pounds’ weight of air, which thank Heaven can be had everywhere free. In the end Severino told me he needed the gentler tone of such an instrument to accompany the Invisible Girl, and he would tell me his secret if I swore on the sacrament not to make any use of it myself or to disclose it to anyone else, although he thought it wouldn’t be easy to imitate his work of art without – and here he stopped, assuming a curiously sweet expression, such as Cagliostro61 used to wear when he spoke to women of his magical raptures. Full of curiosity to see the Invisible Girl, I promised to build the water-organ as best I could, and now he gave me his confidence – he even came to like me when I willingly assisted him in his work.

  ‘One day, just as I was about to go to Severino’s, I saw people crowding together in the street. They told me a well-dressed man had fallen to the ground, unconscious. I forced my way through the throng and recognized Severino, who was just being lifted and carried into the nearest house. A doctor who happened to be passing by was tending him. After various remedies had been applied, Severino opened his eyes with a deep sigh. The glance he turned on me from beneath his convulsively furrowed brows was a dreadful one; all the terrors of his death throes burned there in a dark fire.’ His lips quivered, he tried to speak and failed. At last he struck his waistcoat pocket hard with his hand, several times. I reached into it and found some keys. “The keys of your house?” I asked, and he nodded. “This one,” I continued, holding one of the keys before his eyes, “this one is the key of the cabinet you would never let me enter?” He nodded again. But as I was about to ask more questions he began to moan and groan as if in dreadful anguish, cold drops of sweat stood out on his forehead, he spread his arms wide and then brought them together in a circle, as if embracing something, and pointed to me. “He wants you,” said the doctor, “to take his things, his apparatus, to safety; perhaps he wants you to keep them if he should die?” Severino nodded his head more vehemently, at last cried out, “Corre!”62 and then fell back unconscious again.

  ‘I made haste to Severino’s house, trembling with curiosity and expectation, opened the cabinet in which the mysterious Invisible Girl must be locked, and was not a little surprised to find it perfectly empty. The one window was thickly curtained, so that only a faint glimmer of light could come in, and a large mirror hung on the wall opposite the door of the room. The moment I chanced to step in front of this mirror, and saw my own form in the dim light, a strange feeling flowed through me, as though I were on the insulating plate of an electrical machine.63 At that same moment the voice of the Invisible Girl spoke, saying in Italian, “Spare me just for today, Father! Don’t scourge me so cruelly. After all, you are dead now!”

  ‘I quickly opened the door of the room so that full daylight could pour in, but I could not see a living soul.

  ‘ “I’m glad, Father,” said the voice, “I’m glad you have sent Herr Liscov, and he won’t let you scourge me any more, he’ll break the magnet, and try as you may, you can’t rise from the grave where he will have you buried, for now you are dead and gone, no longer of this world.”

  ‘You may well imagine, Kreisler, that profound terrors shook me, since I could see no one, and yet the voice sounded close to my ears. “What the devil!” said I aloud, to encourage myself, “if I could only see a wretched little bottle somewhere I’d smash it, and see the diable boîteux64 in person, escaped from his dungeon, standing before me, but as things are –”

  ‘And now it suddenly seemed to me as if the gentle sighs wafting their way through the cabinet came from a box standing in the corner. I thought it was far too small to hold a human being, but I went over to it and slid its catch open. Curled up inside like a worm lay a girl, who stared at me with large and miraculously beautiful eyes, and when I cried, “Come out, my little lamb, come out, my little Invisible Girl!” she finally reached out her arm to me.

  ‘At last I took the hand she was holding out, and an electric shock passed through all my limbs –’

  ‘Wait,’ cried Kreisler. ‘Wait, Master Abraham, what’s this? Just the same thing happened to me when I first chanced to touch Princess Hedwiga’s hand, and I still feel similar effects, although not so strongly, when she graciously gives me her hand.’

  ‘Aha,’ replied Master Abraham, ‘aha, perhaps our little Princess is a kind of Gymnotus electricus or Raja torpedo or Trichiurus indicus,65 as in a certain way my sweet Chiara was, or perhaps just a frisky mouse like the one who gave the worthy Signor Cotugno66 a good box on the ears when he picked it up by its back to dissect it, which I’m sure you could not have meant to do to the Princess! But let us speak of the Princess another time, and remain with my Invisible Girl for the moment.

  ‘When I recoiled, alarmed by the unexpected shock the little torpedo had delivered, the girl said in German, in a wonderfully charming voice, “Oh, pray don’t take it ill, Herr Liscov, but I can’t help it; the pain is just too much.” Wasting no more time with my astonishment, I took the little creature gently by the shoulders, drew her out of her dreadful prison, and saw before me a delicately built, pretty little thing the size of a girl of twelve, to judge by her physical development, but at least sixteen years old. Look there, in the book; the picture is a good likeness, and you must confess that there could be no prettier, more expressive countenance, although you must also remember that no portrait can do justice to the wonderful fire of those beautiful black eyes, which inflamed the beholder to the core. Every man whose heart is not set on a snow-white skin and flaxen hair must acknowledge that little face to be utterly beautiful – for it is true that my Chiara’s skin was a little too brown, and her hair shone glossy black. Chiara – for you know already that such was the little Invisible Girl’s name – Chiara fell down before me, all grief and melancholy, a flood of tea
rs poured from her eyes, and she said, with an expression I cannot describe: “Je suis sauvée!”67 I felt full of the deepest pity; I suspected dreadful things!

  ‘They now brought in Severino’s corpse; a second stroke had carried him off directly after I left him. As soon as Chiara set eyes on the body her tears dried up; she looked gravely at the dead Severino, and withdrew when the people who had come with him gazed at her curiously and commented, amidst laughter, that this must be the Invisible Girl of the cabinet.

  ‘I felt it impossible to leave the girl alone with the corpse. The kindly landlord of the house and his wife said they were prepared to take her in. But when everyone had gone away, and I entered the cabinet, I found Chiara sitting in front of the mirror in a very strange state. Her eyes intent on the mirror, she seemed to notice nothing, like a woman moonstruck. She was whispering words I could not make out, but they became clearer and clearer, until I heard her speaking, in a medley of German, French, Italian and Spanish, of matters that seemed to concern persons very far away. I realized, not a little to my surprise, that this was the very time of day when Severino used to make his female oracle speak.

  ‘At last Chiara closed her eyes, and appeared to fall into a deep sleep. I picked the poor child up in my arms and carried her down to the landlord and his family. Next morning I found the little creature calm and cheerful: only now did she seem to realize fully that she was free, and she told me all I wished to know.

  ‘Although you usually set some store on good birth, Kreisler, you will not mind hearing that my little Chiara was only a gypsy girl who had been in the market-place of some great city with a whole band of dirty gypsy folk, under the guard of police officers, and was letting the sun beat down on her as Severino happened to pass by. “Fair brother, shall I tell your fortune?” the eight-year-old girl called out to him. Severino looked long into the little girl’s eyes, and then he did indeed have the lines on the palm of his hand read, and expressed great surprise. He must have seen something very unusual in the girl, for he immediately went up to the lieutenant of police who was taking the band of gypsies away under arrest, and offered the man some trifle if he would let Severino take the gypsy girl with him.