ROMANCE.
"For long years," writes Teufelsdrockh, "had the poor Hebrew, in this Egypt
of an Auscultatorship, painfully toiled, baking bricks without stubble,
before ever the question once struck him with entire force: For
what?--_Beym Himmel_! For Food and Warmth! And are Food and Warmth
nowhere else, in the whole wide Universe, discoverable?--Come of it what
might, I resolved to try."
Thus then are we to see him in a new independent capacity, though perhaps
far from an improved one. Teufelsdrockh is now a man without Profession.
Quitting the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers, where indeed his
leeward, laggard condition was painful enough, he desperately steers off,
on a course of his own, by sextant and compass of his own. Unhappy
Teufelsdrockh! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic, nor Commodores pleased
thee, still was it not _a Fleet_, sailing in prescribed track, for fixed
objects; above all, in combination, wherein, by mutual guidance, by all
manner of loans and borrowings, each could manifoldly aid the other? How
wilt thou sail in unknown seas; and for thyself find that shorter Northwest
Passage to thy fair Spice-country of a Nowhere?--A solitary rover, on such
a voyage, with such nautical tactics, will meet with adventures. Nay, as
we forthwith discover, a certain Calypso-Island detains him at the very
outset; and as it were falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning.
"If in youth," writes he once, "the Universe is majestically unveiling, and
everywhere Heaven revealing itself on Earth, nowhere to the Young Man does
this Heaven on Earth so immediately reveal itself as in the Young Maiden.
Strangely enough, in this strange life of ours, it has been so appointed.
On the whole, as I have often said, a Person (_Personlichkeit_) is ever
holy to us; a certain orthodox Anthropomorphism connects my _Me_ with all
_Thees_ in bonds of Love: but it is in this approximation of the Like and
Unlike, that such heavenly attraction, as between Negative and Positive,
first burns out into a flame. Is the pitifullest mortal Person, think you,
indifferent to us? Is it not rather our heartfelt wish to be made one with
him; to unite him to us, by gratitude, by admiration, even by fear; or
failing all these, unite ourselves to him? But how much more, in this case
of the Like-Unlike! Here is conceded us the higher mystic possibility of
such a union, the highest in our Earth; thus, in the conducting medium of
Fantasy, flames forth that fire-development of the universal Spiritual
Electricity, which, as unfolded between man and woman, we first
emphatically denominate LOVE.
"In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjecture, there already blooms
a certain prospective Paradise, cheered by some fairest Eve; nor, in the
stately vistas, and flowerage and foliage of that Garden, is a Tree of
Knowledge, beautiful and awful in the midst thereof, wanting. Perhaps too
the whole is but the lovelier, if Cherubim and a Flaming Sword divide it
from all footsteps of men; and grant him, the imaginative stripling, only
the view, not the entrance. Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is
still an impassable celestial barrier; and the sacred air-cities of Hope
have not shrunk into the mean clay-hamlets of Reality; and man, by his
nature, is yet infinite and free!
"As for our young Forlorn," continues Teufelsdrockh evidently meaning
himself, "in his secluded way of life, and with his glowing Fantasy, the
more fiery that it burnt under cover, as in a reverberating furnace, his
feeling towards the Queens of this Earth was, and indeed is, altogether
unspeakable. A visible Divinity dwelt in them; to our young Friend all
women were holy, were heavenly. As yet he but saw them flitting past, in
their many-colored angel-plumage; or hovering mute and inaccessible on the
outskirts of _AEsthetic Tea_: all of air they were, all Soul and Form; so
lovely, like mysterious priestesses, in whose hand was the invisible
Jacob's-ladder, whereby man might mount into very Heaven. That he, our
poor Friend, should ever win for himself one of these Gracefuls
(_Holden_)--_Ach Gott_! how could he hope it; should he not have died
under it? There was a certain delirious vertigo in the thought.
"Thus was the young man, if all-sceptical of Demons and Angels such as the
vulgar had once believed in, nevertheless not unvisited by hosts of true
Sky-born, who visibly and audibly hovered round him wheresoever he went;
and they had that religious worship in his thought, though as yet it was by
their mere earthly and trivial name that he named them. But now, if on a
soul so circumstanced, some actual Air-maiden, incorporated into
tangibility and reality, should cast any electric glance of kind eyes,
saying thereby, 'Thou too mayest love and be loved;' and so kindle
him,--good Heaven, what a volcanic, earthquake-bringing, all-consuming fire
were probably kindled!"
Such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst forth, with
explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner man of Herr Diogenes; as
indeed how could it fail? A nature, which, in his own figurative style, we
might say, had now not a little carbonized tinder, of Irritability; with so
much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humor enough; the whole lying
in such hot neighborhood, close by "a reverberating furnace of Fantasy:"
have we not here the components of driest Gunpowder, ready, on occasion of
the smallest spark, to blaze up? Neither, in this our Life-element, are
sparks anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some Angel, whereof so many
hovered round, would one day, leaving "the outskirts of _AEsthetic Tea_,"
flit higher; and, by electric Promethean glance, kindle no despicable
firework. Happy, if it indeed proved a Firework, and flamed off
rocket-wise, in successive beautiful bursts of splendor, each growing
naturally from the other, through the several stages of a happy Youthful
Love; till the whole were safely burnt out; and the young soul relieved
with little damage! Happy, if it did not rather prove a Conflagration and
mad Explosion; painfully lacerating the heart itself; nay perhaps bursting
the heart in pieces (which were Death); or at best, bursting the thin walls
of your "reverberating furnace," so that it rage thenceforth all unchecked
among the contiguous combustibles (which were Madness): till of the so
fair and manifold internal world of our Diogenes, there remained Nothing,
or only the "crater of an extinct volcano"!
From multifarious Documents in this Bag _Capricornus_, and in the adjacent
ones on both sides thereof, it becomes manifest that our philosopher, as
stoical and cynical as he now looks, was heartily and even frantically in
Love: here therefore may our old doubts whether his heart were of stone or
of flesh give way. He loved once; not wisely but too well. And once only:
for as your Congreve needs a new case or wrappage for every new rocket, so
each human heart can properly exhibit but one Love, if even one; the "First
Love which is infinite" can be followed by no second like unto it. In more
recent years, accordingly, the Editor of these Sheets was led to regard
Teufelsdrockh as a man not only who would never wed, but who would never
even flirt; whom the grand-climacteric itself, and _St. Martin's Summer_ of
incipient Dotage, would crown with no new myrtle-garland. To the
Professor, women are henceforth Pieces of Art; of Celestial Art, indeed,
which celestial pieces he glories to survey in galleries, but has lost
thought of purchasing.
Psychological readers are not without curiosity to see how Teufelsdrockh in
this for him unexampled predicament, demeans himself; with what specialties
of successive configuration, splendor and color, his Firework blazes off.
Small, as usual, is the satisfaction that such can meet with here. From
amid these confused masses of Eulogy and Elegy, with their mad Petrarchan
and Werterean ware lying madly scattered among all sorts of quite
extraneous matter, not so much as the fair one's name can be deciphered.
For, without doubt, the title _Blumine_, whereby she is here designated,
and which means simply Goddess of Flowers, must be fictitious. Was her
real name Flora, then? But what was her surname, or had she none? Of what
station in Life was she; of what parentage, fortune, aspect? Specially, by
what Pre-established Harmony of occurrences did the Lover and the Loved
meet one another in so wide a world; how did they behave in such meeting?
To all which questions, not unessential in a Biographic work, mere
Conjecture must for most part return answer. "It was appointed," says our
Philosopher, "that the high celestial orbit of Blumine should intersect the
low sublunary one of our Forlorn; that he, looking in her empyrean eyes,
should fancy the upper Sphere of Light was come down into this nether
sphere of Shadows; and finding himself mistaken, make noise enough."
We seem to gather that she was young, hazel-eyed, beautiful, and some one's
Cousin; high-born, and of high spirit; but unhappily dependent and
insolvent; living, perhaps, on the not too gracious bounty of moneyed
relatives. But how came "the Wanderer" into her circle? Was it by the
humid vehicle of _AEsthetic Tea_, or by the arid one of mere Business? Was
it on the hand of Herr Towgood; or of the Gnadige Frau, who, as an
ornamental Artist, might sometimes like to promote flirtation, especially
for young cynical Nondescripts? To all appearance, it was chiefly by
Accident, and the grace of Nature.
"Thou fair Waldschloss," writes our Autobiographer, "what stranger ever saw
thee, were it even an absolved Auscultator, officially bearing in his
pocket the last _Relatio ex Actis_ he would ever write, but must have
paused to wonder! Noble Mansion! There stoodest thou, in deep Mountain
Amphitheatre, on umbrageous lawns, in thy serene solitude; stately,
massive, all of granite; glittering in the western sunbeams, like a palace
of El Dorado, overlaid with precious metal. Beautiful rose up, in wavy
curvature, the slope of thy guardian Hills; of the greenest was their
sward, embossed with its dark-brown frets of crag, or spotted by some
spreading solitary Tree and its shadow. To the unconscious Wayfarer thou
wert also as an Ammon's Temple, in the Libyan Waste; where, for joy and
woe, the tablet of his Destiny lay written. Well might he pause and gaze;
in that glance of his were prophecy and nameless forebodings."
But now let us conjecture that the so presentient Auscultator has handed in
his _Relatio ex Actis_; been invited to a glass of Rhine-wine; and so,
instead of returning dispirited and athirst to his dusty Town-home, is
ushered into the Garden-house, where sit the choicest party of dames and
cavaliers: if not engaged in AEsthetic Tea, yet in trustful evening
conversation, and perhaps Musical Coffee, for we hear of "harps and pure
voices making the stillness live." Scarcely, it would seem, is the
Garden-house inferior in respectability to the noble Mansion itself.
"Embowered amid rich foliage, rose-clusters, and the hues and odors of
thousand flowers, here sat that brave company; in front, from the
wide-opened doors, fair outlook over blossom and bush, over grove and
velvet green, stretching, undulating onwards to the remote Mountain peaks:
so bright, so mild, and everywhere the melody of birds and happy creatures:
it was all as if man had stolen a shelter from the SUIT in the
bosom-vesture of Summer herself. How came it that the Wanderer advanced
thither with such forecasting heart (_ahndungsvoll_), by the side of his
gay host? Did he feel that to these soft influences his hard bosom ought
to be shut; that here, once more, Fate had it in view to try him; to mock
him, and see whether there were Humor in him?
"Next moment he finds himself presented to the party; and especially by
name to--Blumine! Peculiar among all dames and damosels glanced Blumine,
there in her modesty, like a star among earthly lights. Noblest maiden!
whom he bent to, in body and in soul; yet scarcely dared look at, for the
presence filled him with painful yet sweetest embarrassment.
"Blumine's was a name well known to him; far and wide was the fair one
heard of, for her gifts, her graces, her caprices: from all which vague
colorings of Rumor, from the censures no less than from the praises, had
our friend painted for himself a certain imperious Queen of Hearts, and
blooming warm Earth-angel, much more enchanting than your mere white
Heaven-angels of women, in whose placid veins circulates too little
naphtha-fire. Herself also he had seen in public places; that light yet so
stately form; those dark tresses, shading a face where smiles and sunlight
played over earnest deeps: but all this he had seen only as a magic
vision, for him inaccessible, almost without reality. Her sphere was too
far from his; how should she ever think of him; O Heaven! how should they
so much as once meet together? And now that Rose-goddess sits in the same
circle with him; the light of _her_ eyes has smiled on him; if he speak,
she will hear it! Nay, who knows, since the heavenly Sun looks into lowest
valleys, but Blumine herself might have aforetime noted the so unnotable;
perhaps, from his very gainsayers, as he had from hers, gathered wonder,
gathered favor for him? Was the attraction, the agitation mutual, then;
pole and pole trembling towards contact, when once brought into
neighborhood? Say rather, heart swelling in presence of the Queen of
Hearts; like the Sea swelling when once near its Moon! With the Wanderer
it was even so: as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly as at the touch of
a Seraph's wand, his whole soul is roused from its deepest recesses; and
all that was painful and that was blissful there, dim images, vague
feelings of a whole Past and a whole Future, are heaving in unquiet eddies
within him.
"Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still Friend shrunk forcibly
together; and shrouded up his tremors and flutterings, of what sort soever,
in a safe cover of Silence, and perhaps of seeming Stolidity. How was it,
then, that here, when trembling to the core of his heart, he did not sink
into swoons, but rose into strength, into fearlessness and clearness? It
was his guiding Genius (_Damon_) that inspired him; he must go forth and
meet his Destiny. Show thyself now, whispered it, or be forever hid. Thus
sometimes it is even when your anxiety becomes transcendental, that the
soul first feels herself able to transcend it; that she rises above it, in
fiery victory; and borne on new-found wings of victory, moves so calmly,
even because so rapidly, so irresistibly. Always must the Wanderer
remember, with a certain satisfaction and surprise, how in this case he sat
not silent but struck adroitly into the stream of conversation; which
thenceforth, to speak with an apparent not a real vanity, he may say that
he continued to lead. Surely, in those hours, a certain inspiration was
imparted him, such inspiration as is still possible in our late era. The
self-secluded unfolds himself in noble thoughts, in free, glowing words;
his soul is as one sea of light, the peculiar home of Truth and Intellect;
wherein also Fantasy bodies forth form after form, radiant with all
prismatic hues."
It appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there talked one
"Philisitine;" who even now, to the general weariness, was dominantly
pouring forth Philistinism (_Philistriositaten_.); little witting what hero
was here entering to demolish him! We omit the series of Socratic, or
rather Diogenic utterances, not unhappy in their way, whereby the monster,
"persuaded into silence," seems soon after to have withdrawn for the night.
"Of which dialectic marauder," writes our hero, "the discomfiture was
visibly felt as a benefit by most: but what were all applauses to the glad
smile, threatening every moment to become a laugh, wherewith Blumine
herself repaid the victor? He ventured to address her she answered with
attention: nay what if there were a slight tremor in that silver voice;
what if the red glow of evening were hiding a transient blush!
"The conversation took a higher tone, one fine thought called forth
another: it was one of those rare seasons, when the soul expands with full
freedom, and man feels himself brought near to man. Gayly in light,
graceful abandonment, the friendly talk played round that circle; for the
burden was rolled from every heart; the barriers of Ceremony, which are
indeed the laws of polite living, had melted as into vapor; and the poor
claims of _Me_ and _Thee_, no longer parted by rigid fences, now flowed
softly into one another; and Life lay all harmonious, many-tinted, like
some fair royal champaign, the sovereign and owner of which were Love only.
Such music springs from kind hearts, in a kind environment of place and
time. And yet as the light grew more aerial on the mountaintops, and the
shadows fell longer over the valley, some faint tone of sadness may have
breathed through the heart; and, in whispers more or less audible, reminded
every one that as this bright day was drawing towards its close, so
likewise must the Day of Man's Existence decline into dust and darkness;
and with all its sick toilings, and joyful and mournful noises, sink in the
still Eternity.
"To our Friend the hours seemed moments; holy was he and happy: the words
from those sweetest lips came over him like dew on thirsty grass; all
better feelings in his soul seemed to whisper, It is good for us to be
here. At parting, the Blumine's hand was in his: in the balmy twilight,
with the kind stars above them, he spoke something of meeting again, which
was not contradicted; he pressed gently those small soft fingers, and it
seemed as if they were not hastily, not angrily withdrawn."
Poor Teufelsdrockh! it is clear to demonstration thou art smit: the Queen
of Hearts would see a "man of genius" also sigh for her; and there, by
art-magic, in that preternatural hour, has she bound and spell-bound thee.
"Love is not altogether a Delirium," says he elsewhere; "yet has it many
points in common therewith. I call it rather a discerning of the Infinite
in the Finite, of the Idea made Real; which discerning again may be either
true or false, either seraphic or demoniac, Inspiration or Insanity. But
in the former case too, as in common Madness, it is Fantasy that superadds
itself to sight; on the so petty domain of the Actual plants its
Archimedes-lever, whereby to move at will the infinite Spiritual. Fantasy
I might call the true Heaven-gate and Hell-gate of man: his sensuous life
is but the small temporary stage (_Zeitbuhne_), whereon thick-streaming
influences from both these far yet near regions meet visibly, and act
tragedy and melodrama. Sense can support herself handsomely, in most
countries, for some eighteenpence a day; but for Fantasy planets and
solar-systems will not suffice. Witness your Pyrrhus conquering the world,
yet drinking no better red wine than he had before." Alas! witness also
your Diogenes, flame-clad, scaling the upper Heaven, and verging towards
Insanity, for prize of a "high-souled Brunette," as if the Earth held but
one and not several of these!
He says that, in Town, they met again: "day after day, like his heart's
sun, the blooming Blumine shone on him. Ah! a little while ago, and he was
yet in all darkness: him what Graceful (_Holde_) would ever love?
Disbelieving all things, the poor youth had never learned to believe in
himself. Withdrawn, in proud timidity, within his own fastnesses; solitary
from men, yet baited by night-spectres enough, he saw himself, with a sad
indignation, constrained to renounce the fairest hopes of existence. And
now, O now! 'She looks on thee,' cried he: 'she the fairest, noblest; do
not her dark eyes tell thee, thou art not despised? The
Heaven's-Messenger! All Heaven's blessings be hers!' Thus did soft
melodies flow through his heart; tones of an infinite gratitude; sweetest
intimations that he also was a man, that for him also unutterable joys had
been provided.
"In free speech, earnest or gay, amid lambent glances, laughter, tears, and
often with the inarticulate mystic speech of Music: such was the element
they now lived in; in such a many-tinted, radiant Aurora, and by this
fairest of Orient Light-bringers must our Friend be blandished, and the new
Apocalypse of Nature enrolled to him. Fairest Blumine! And, even as a
Star, all Fire and humid Softness, a very Light-ray incarnate! Was there
so much as a fault, a 'caprice,' he could have dispensed with? Was she not
to him in very deed a Morning-star; did not her presence bring with it airs
from Heaven? As from AEolian Harps in the breath of dawn, as from the
Memnon's Statue struck by the rosy finger of Aurora, unearthly music was
around him, and lapped him into untried balmy Rest. Pale Doubt fled away
to the distance; Life bloomed up with happiness and hope. The past, then,
was all a haggard dream; he had been in the Garden of Eden, then, and could
not discern it! But lo now! the black walls of his prison melt away; the
captive is alive, is free. If he loved his Disenchantress? _Ach Gott_!
His whole heart and soul and life were hers, but never had he named it
Love: existence was all a Feeling, not yet shaped into a Thought."
Nevertheless, into a Thought, nay into an Action, it must be shaped; for
neither Disenchanter nor Disenchantress, mere "Children of Time," can abide
by Feeling alone. The Professor knows not, to this day, "how in her soft,
fervid bosom the Lovely found determination, even on hest of Necessity, to
cut asunder these so blissful bonds." He even appears surprised at the
"Duenna Cousin," whoever she may have been, "in whose meagre hunger-bitten
philosophy, the religion of young hearts was, from the first, faintly
approved of." We, even at such distance, can explain it without
necromancy. Let the Philosopher answer this one question: What figure, at
that period, was a Mrs. Teufelsdrockh likely to make in polished society?
Could she have driven so much as a brass-bound Gig, or even a simple
iron-spring one? Thou foolish "absolved Auscultator," before whom lies no
prospect of capital, will any yet known "religion of young hearts" keep the
human kitchen warm? Pshaw! thy divine Blumine, when she "resigned herself
to wed some richer," shows more philosophy, though but "a woman of genius,"
than thou, a pretended man.
Our readers have witnessed the origin of this Love-mania, and with what
royal splendor it waxes, and rises. Let no one ask us to unfold the
glories of its dominant state; much less the horrors of its almost
instantaneous dissolution. How from such inorganic masses, henceforth
madder than ever, as lie in these Bags, can even fragments of a living
delineation be organized? Besides, of what profit were it? We view, with
a lively pleasure, the gay silk Montgolfier start from the ground, and
shoot upwards, cleaving the liquid deeps, till it dwindle to a luminous
star: but what is there to look longer on, when once, by natural
elasticity, or accident of fire, it has exploded? A hapless air-navigator,
plunging, amid torn parachutes, sand-bags, and confused wreck, fast enough
into the jaws of the Devil! Suffice it to know that Teufelsdrockh rose
into the highest regions of the Empyrean, by a natural parabolic track, and
returned thence in a quick perpendicular one. For the rest, let any
feeling reader, who has been unhappy enough to do the like, paint it out
for himself: considering only that if he, for his perhaps comparatively
insignificant mistress, underwent such agonies and frenzies, what must
Teufelsdrockh's have been, with a fire-heart, and for a nonpareil Blumine!
We glance merely at the final scene:--
"One morning, he found his Morning-star all dimmed and dusky-red; the fair
creature was silent, absent, she seemed to have been weeping. Alas, no
longer a Morning-star, but a troublous skyey Portent, announcing that the
Doomsday had dawned! She said, in a tremulous voice, They were to meet no
more." The thunder-struck Air-sailor is not wanting to himself in this
dread hour: but what avails it? We omit the passionate expostulations,
entreaties, indignations, since all was vain, and not even an explanation
was conceded him; and hasten to the catastrophe. "'Farewell, then, Madam!'
said he, not without sternness, for his stung pride helped him. She put
her hand in his, she looked in his face, tears started to her eyes; in wild
audacity he clasped her to his bosom; their lips were joined, their two
souls, like two dew-drops, rushed into one,--for the first time and for the
last!" Thus was Teufelsdrockh made immortal by a kiss. And then? Why,
then--"thick curtains of Night rushed over his soul, as rose the
immeasurable Crash of Doom; and through the ruins as of a shivered Universe
was he falling, falling, towards the Abyss."