BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
GENESIS.
In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable whether from
birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinized soever, much insight is to be
gained. Nevertheless, as in every phenomenon the Beginning remains always
the most notable moment; so, with regard to any great man, we rest not
till, for our scientific profit or not, the whole circumstances of his
first appearance in this Planet, and what manner of Public Entry he made,
are with utmost completeness rendered manifest. To the Genesis of our
Clothes-Philosopher, then, be this First Chapter consecrated. Unhappily,
indeed, he seems to be of quite obscure extraction; uncertain, we might
almost say, whether of any: so that this Genesis of his can properly be
nothing but an Exodus (or transit out of Invisibility into Visibility);
whereof the preliminary portion is nowhere forthcoming.
"In the village of Entepfuhl," thus writes he, in the Bag _Libra_, on
various Papers, which we arrange with difficulty, "dwelt Andreas Futteral
and his wife; childless, in still seclusion, and cheerful though now
verging towards old age. Andreas had been grenadier Sergeant, and even
regimental Schoolmaster under Frederick the Great; but now, quitting the
halbert and ferule for the spade and pruning-hook, cultivated a little
Orchard, on the produce of which he, Cincinnatus-like, lived not without
dignity. Fruits, the peach, the apple, the grape, with other varieties
came in their season; all which Andreas knew how to sell: on evenings he
smoked largely, or read (as beseemed a regimental Schoolmaster), and talked
to neighbors that would listen about the Victory of Rossbach; and how Fritz
the Only (_der Einzige_) had once with his own royal lips spoken to him,
had been pleased to say, when Andreas as camp-sentinel demanded the
pass-word, '_Schweig Hund_ (Peace, hound)!' before any of his
staff-adjutants could answer. '_Das nenn' ich mir einen Konig_, There is
what I call a King,' would Andreas exclaim: 'but the smoke of Kunersdorf
was still smarting his eyes.'
"Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by the deeds rather than the
looks of her now veteran Othello, lived not in altogether military
subordination; for, as Andreas said, 'the womankind will not drill (_wer
kann die Weiberchen dressiren_):' nevertheless she at heart loved him both
for valor and wisdom; to her a Prussian grenadier Sergeant and Regiment's
Schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero and Cid: what you see, yet
cannot see over, is as good as infinite. Nay, was not Andreas in very deed
a man of order, courage, downrightness (_Geradheit_); that understood
Busching's _Geography_, had been in the victory of Rossbach, and left for
dead in the camisade of Hochkirch? The good Gretchen, for all her
fretting, watched over him and hovered round him as only a true
house-mother can: assiduously she cooked and sewed and scoured for him; so
that not only his old regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but the whole
habitation and environment, where on pegs of honor they hung, looked ever
trim and gay: a roomy painted Cottage, embowered in fruit-trees and
forest-trees, evergreens and honeysuckles; rising many-colored from amid
shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling in through the very windows; under
its long projecting eaves nothing but garden-tools in methodic piles (to
screen them from rain), and seats where, especially on summer nights, a
King might have wished to sit and smoke, and call it his. Such a Bauergut
(Copyhold) had Gretchen given her veteran; whose sinewy arms, and
long-disused gardening talent, had made it what you saw.
"Into this umbrageous Man's-nest, one meek yellow evening or dusk, when the
Sun, hidden indeed from terrestrial Entepfuhl, did nevertheless journey
visible and radiant along the celestial Balance (_Libra_), it was that a
Stranger of reverend aspect entered; and, with grave salutation, stood
before the two rather astonished housemates. He was close-muffled in a
wide mantle; which without farther parley unfolding, he deposited therefrom
what seemed some Basket, overhung with green Persian silk; saying only:
_Ihr lieben Leute, hier bringe ein unschatzbares Verleihen; nehmt es in
aller Acht, sorgfaltigst benutzt es: mit hohem Lohn, oder wohl mit
schweren Zinsen, wird's einst zuruckgefordert_. 'Good Christian people,
here lies for you an invaluable Loan; take all heed thereof, in all
carefulness employ it: with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty,
will it one day be required back.' Uttering which singular words, in a
clear, bell-like, forever memorable tone, the Stranger gracefully withdrew;
and before Andreas or his wife, gazing in expectant wonder, had time to
fashion either question or answer, was clean gone. Neither out of doors
could aught of him be seen or heard; he had vanished in the thickets, in
the dusk; the Orchard-gate stood quietly closed: the Stranger was gone
once and always. So sudden had the whole transaction been, in the autumn
stillness and twilight, so gentle, noiseless, that the Futterals could have
fancied it all a trick of Imagination, or some visit from an authentic
Spirit. Only that the green-silk Basket, such as neither Imagination nor
authentic Spirits are wont to carry, still stood visible and tangible on
their little parlor-table. Towards this the astonished couple, now with
lit candle, hastily turned their attention. Lifting the green veil, to see
what invaluable it hid, they descried there, amid down and rich white
wrappages, no Pitt Diamond or Hapsburg Regalia, but, in the softest sleep,
a little red-colored Infant! Beside it, lay a roll of gold Friedrichs, the
exact amount of which was never publicly known; also a _Taufschein_
(baptismal certificate), wherein unfortunately nothing but the Name was
decipherable, other document or indication none whatever.
"To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and always thenceforth.
Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire of
any such figure as the Stranger; nor could the Traveller, who had passed
through the neighboring Town in coach-and-four, be connected with this
Apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise. Meanwhile, for
Andreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was: What to do with
this little sleeping red-colored Infant? Amid amazements and curiosities,
which had to die away without external satisfying, they resolved, as in
such circumstances charitable prudent people needs must, on nursing it,
though with spoon-meat, into whiteness, and if possible into manhood. The
Heavens smiled on their endeavor: thus has that same mysterious Individual
ever since had a status for himself in this visible Universe, some modicum
of victual and lodging and parade-ground; and now expanded in bulk, faculty
and knowledge of good and evil, he, as HERR DIOGENES TEUFELSDROCKH,
professes or is ready to profess, perhaps not altogether without effect, in
the new University of Weissnichtwo, the new Science of Things in General."
Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think he well might,
that these facts, first communicated, by the good Gretchen Futteral, In his
twelfth year, "produced on the boyish heart and fancy a quite indelible
impression. Who this reverend Personage," he says, "that glided into the
Orchard Cottage when the Sun was in Libra, and then, as on spirit's wings,
glided out again, might be? An inexpressible desire, full of love and of
sadness, has often since struggled within me to shape an answer. Ever, in
my distresses and my loneliness, has Fantasy turned, full of longing
(_sehnsuchtsvoll_), to that unknown Father, who perhaps far from me,
perhaps near, either way invisible, might have taken me to his paternal
bosom, there to lie screened from many a woe. Thou beloved Father, dost
thou still, shut out from me only by thin penetrable curtains of earthly
Space, wend to and fro among the crowd of the living? Or art thou hidden
by those far thicker curtains of the Everlasting Night, or rather of the
Everlasting Day, through which my mortal eye and outstretched arms need not
strive to reach? Alas, I know not, and in vain vex myself to know. More
than once, heart-deluded, have I taken for thee this and the other
noble-looking Stranger; and approached him wistfully, with infinite regard;
but he too had to repel me, he too was not thou.
"And yet, O Man born of Woman," cries the Autobiographer, with one of his
sudden whirls, "wherein is my case peculiar? Hadst thou, any more than I,
a Father whom thou knowest? The Andreas and Gretchen, or the Adam and Eve,
who led thee into Life, and for a time suckled and pap-fed thee there, whom
thou namest Father and Mother; these were, like mine, but thy
nursing-father and nursing-mother: thy true Beginning and Father is in
Heaven, whom with the bodily eye thou shalt never behold, but only with the
spiritual....
"The little green veil," adds he, among much similar moralizing, and
embroiled discoursing, "I yet keep; still more inseparably the Name,
Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. From the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece of
now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands of others. On the Name I have
many times meditated and conjectured; but neither in this lay there any
clew. That it was my unknown Father's name I must hesitate to believe. To
no purpose have I searched through all the Herald's Books, in and without
the German Empire, and through all manner of Subscriber-Lists
(_Pranumeranten_), Militia-Rolls, and other Name-catalogues; extraordinary
names as we have in Germany, the name Teufelsdrockh, except as appended to
my own person, nowhere occurs. Again, what may the unchristian rather than
Christian 'Diogenes' mean? Did that reverend Basket-bearer intend, by such
designation, to shadow forth my future destiny, or his own present malign
humor? Perhaps the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred Parent, who
like an Ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred offspring to be hatched into
self-support by the mere sky-influences of Chance, can thy pilgrimage have
been a smooth one? Beset by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been; or indeed
by the worst figure of Misfortune, by Misconduct. Often have I fancied
how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at, and slung at, wounded,
hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and bedevilled by the Time-Spirit
(_Zeitgeist_) in thyself and others, till the good soul first given thee
was seered into grim rage, and thou hadst nothing for it but to leave in me
an indignant appeal to the Future, and living speaking Protest against the
Devil, as that same Spirit not of the Time only, but of Time itself, is
well named! Which Appeal and Protest, may I now modestly add, was not
perhaps quite lost in air.
"For indeed, as Walter Shandy often insisted, there is much, nay almost
all, in Names. The Name is the earliest Garment you wrap round the
earth-visiting ME; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously (for
there are Names that have lasted nigh thirty centuries) than the very skin.
And now from without, what mystic influences does it not send inwards, even
to the centre; especially in those plastic first-times, when the whole soul
is yet infantine, soft, and the invisible seedgrain will grow to be an all
overshadowing tree! Names? Could I unfold the influence of Names, which
are the most important of all Clothings, I were a second greater
Trismegistus. Not only all common Speech, but Science, Poetry itself is no
other, if thou consider it, than a right _Naming_. Adam's first task was
giving names to natural Appearances: what is ours still but a continuation
of the same; be the Appearances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars,
or starry movements (as in Science); or (as in Poetry) passions, virtues,
calamities, God-attributes, Gods?--In a very plain sense the Proverb says,
_Call one a thief, and he will steal_; in an almost similar sense may we
not perhaps say, _Call one Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, and he will open the
Philosophy of Clothes_?"
"Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all ignorant of his Why,
his How or Whereabout, was opening his eyes to the kind Light; sprawling
out his ten fingers and toes; listening, tasting, feeling; in a word, by
all his Five Senses, still more by his Sixth Sense of Hunger, and a whole
infinitude of inward, spiritual, half-awakened Senses, endeavoring daily to
acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange Universe where he had
arrived, be his task therein what it might. Infinite was his progress;
thus in some fifteen months, he could perform the miracle of--Speech! To
breed a fresh Soul, is it not like brooding a fresh (celestial) Egg;
wherein as yet all is formless, powerless; yet by degrees organic elements
and fibres shoot through the watery albumen; and out of vague Sensation
grows Thought, grows Fantasy and Force, and we have Philosophies,
Dynasties, nay Poetries and Religions!
"Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by such diminutive had they
in their fondness named him, travelled forward to those high consummations,
by quick yet easy stages. The Futterals, to avoid vain talk, and moreover
keep the roll of gold Friedrichs safe, gave out that he was a grandnephew;
the orphan of some sister's daughter, suddenly deceased, in Andreas's
distant Prussian birthland; of whom, as of her indigent sorrowing widower,
little enough was known at Entepfuhl. Heedless of all which, the Nursling
took to his spoon-meat, and throve. I have heard him noted as a still
infant, that kept his mind much to himself; above all, that seldom or never
cried. He already felt that time was precious; that he had other work cut
out for him than whimpering."
Such, after utmost painful search and collation among these miscellaneous
Paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of Herr Teufelsdrockh's
genealogy. More imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem to few readers than
to us. The Professor, in whom truly we more and more discern a certain
satirical turn, and deep under-currents of roguish whim, for the present
stands pledged in honor, so we will not doubt him: but seems it not
conceivable that, by the "good Gretchen Futteral," or some other perhaps
interested party, he has himself been deceived? Should these sheets,
translated or not, ever reach the Entepfuhl Circulating Library, some
cultivated native of that district might feel called to afford explanation.
Nay, since Books, like invisible scouts, permeate the whole habitable
globe, and Timbuctoo itself is not safe from British Literature, may not
some Copy find out even the mysterious basket-bearing Stranger, who in a
state of extreme senility perhaps still exists; and gently force even him
to disclose himself; to claim openly a son, in whom any father may feel
pride?