Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces Part 9

The author's strings only vibrate in unison with the reader's octaves, fifths, fourths, and thirds--not with his seconds or sevenths.

Unsympathetic readers do not become sympathetic ones; it is only the cognate, or congruent, sort which rise to the author's level or pa.s.s beyond it.

And with this stands or falls my fourth postulate. The iron shoe of Pegasus is the armature of the magnet of truth, increasing its power of attraction; yet we are hungry birds, and fly at the poet's grapes as though they were real ones, thinking the _boy_ a painted one, when we really ought to be frightened at _him_.

The transition from this to the fifth postulate is a self-evident matter. Man has such a high opinion of everything in the shape of antiquity, that he prolongs it, and keeps it alive, and lives according to it, though it be but the cover and the mask of the very poison which will destroy itself. There are two proofs of this proposition which I leave aside, of set purpose; the first is, Religion, which is all gnawed to worm dust; the second, Freedom, which is quite as much crumbled to powder as the other. In my capacity of a member of the Lutheran Church, I merely glance at the subject of relics (in support of the proposition)--relics, in the case of which, as Vasquez the Jesuit informs us, if they chance to be entirely eaten up of worms, we must continue to wors.h.i.+p what remains--that is to say, the worms which have eaten them. Wherefore, meddle not with that nest of worms, the time in which thou livest, or it will eat thee up; a million of worms are quite equal to one dragon.

This must be admitted and a.s.sumed, at least if my sixth postulate is to have any sense in it which is,--that no man is wholly indifferent to, and unaffected by, _every_ kind of truth; indeed even if it be only to poetical _reflections_ (illusions) that he swears allegiance--inasmuch as he does even _that_ he thereby does homage to truth; for in all poetry it is but the part which is _true_ which goes to the heart (or head), just as in our pa.s.sions and emotions nothing but the Moral produces effect. A reflection which should be nothing whatever _but_ a reflection would necessarily, for that very reason, not _be_ a reflection. Every _semblance_ (meaning every thing which we _see_, or suppose we _see_) presupposes the existence of _light_ somewhere, and _is_ itself light, only in an enfeebled or reflected condition. Only, most people in our, not so much _enlightened_ as _enlightening_ times, are like nocturnal insects who avoid, or are pained by, the light of day, but, in the night, fly to every _nocturnal_ light, every phosph.o.r.escent surface.

The graves of the best men are like those of the Moravians, level and flat, and this earthly sphere of ours is a Westminster Abbey of such levellings and flattenings--ah! what innumerable drops of tears as well as blood (which are what the three grand trees of this world--the trees of Life, of Knowledge, and Liberty--are watered with) have been shed, but never counted. History, in painting the human race, does not follow the example of that painter who, making a portrait of a one-eyed king, drew only his seeing profile; what history paints is the blind side, and it needs some grand calamity to bring great men to light--as comets are seen during total eclipses of the sun. Not upon the battle-field only--upon the holy ground of virtue also, and upon the cla.s.sic soil of truth--the pedestal whereon history raises on high some _single_ hero whose name rings in all men's ears has to be composed and built up of thousands of _other_ heroes who have fought and fallen, nameless and unknown. The n.o.blest deeds of heroism are done within four walls, not before the public gaze,--and as history keeps record only of the _men_ sacrificed, and, on the whole, writes only in spilt blood, doubtless our annals are grander and more beautiful in the eyes of the all-pervading spirit of the universe than in those of the history-writer; the great scenes of history are estimated according to the numbers of angels or devils on the stage, the _men_ not being taken into account.

These are the grounds on which I rely when I a.s.sert with a good deal of boldness that when we inhale the perfume of the full-blown blossoms of joy with too deep and strong an inhalation, without having first given them a good shake, we run the risk of snuffing up some tormenting insect (before we know what we are about) through the ethmoid into the brain;[34] and _who_--tell me if you can--is to get it out again?

Whereas little or nothing of a risky sort can be snuffed up out of _Flower-pieces_, and their painted calices, since painted worms remain where they are.

This, then, is what _I_ have to postulate by means of similes. What the _public_ postulates, or demands, is my opinion of these Flower-pieces.

The author is a promising youth of five years of age;[35] he and I have been friends since childhood, and, I think, can a.s.sert that we have but one soul between us, as Aristotle says should be the case with friends.

He gets me to read over everything he thinks of publis.h.i.+ng, and to give him my opinion and advice. And, as I returned these Flower-pieces to him with the warmest (and, at the same time, sincerest) expression of my approval, he has requested me to make my verdict somewhat more widely known, believing as he does (rather too flatteringly perhaps) that it may carry a certain amount of weight with it, more especially as it is an impartial verdict, and, as such, one which can be placed in the hands of the critics as a species of ruler wherewith to draw the lines upon which _their_ verdicts may be written.

In this, however, he goes a little too far. All I can say is that the work is written quite as if I had done it myself. There is no greater amount of dynamic ornamentation in it than is usual in books, and, happy as the author would have been to have thundered, stormed, and poured in it, there was of course no room in a parish advocate's lodgings for Rhine cataracts, thunderstorms, tropical hurricanes (of tropes) or waterspouts, and he has had to reserve his more terrific tornadoes for a future work. I have his permission to mention the name of this future work; it is the 't.i.tan.' In this work he means to be an absolute Hecla, and shatter the ice of his country (and himself into the bargain) to pieces; like the volcanoes in Iceland, he will spout up a column of boiling water four feet in diameter to a height of eighty-nine or ninety feet in the air, and that at such a temperature that when this wet fire pillar falls down again and flows into the book shops, it will still be warm enough to boil eggs hard or their mother soft. "Then" (he always says--very sadly however--because he sees what a hard matter it is to distinguish between full half of our battling and harrying here below and a Jack Pudding farce and piece of utter buffoonery and nonsense,--also, that the cradle of this life _rocks_ us, and _stills_ us indeed, but carries us not a step on our way)--"then may the _Arbor Toxicaria Maca.s.sariensis_[36] of the Ideal, beneath which I have lost a little hair already, go on poisoning me, and dispatch me to the Land of the Ideal. At all events, I have knelt down and prayed under the solemnising soul-elevating sighing roar of its death-dealing branches. And why should there be a hut made ready for the traveller beside the eternal well of truth, marked with the t.i.tle 'Travellers' REST,' if no one ever enters it?" He wants, by way of broad "flies" for his life stage on earth, merely a regular, downright, _rainy year_ or two (two will suffice); for a broad, bright, open sky overpowers us, and weakens the hand's pen power by making the eyes over full. And here the book-maker differs markedly from his provision-contractor, the papermaker, who shuts _his_ mill up precisely when the weather is _wet_.

I should also be glad if readers would have the goodness to go once more through the few chapters composing the first book--that they may see what they really lack; and indeed a book which is not worth reading twice is not worth reading once.

In conclusion, I (albeit the most inconsiderable clubbist and vote-possessor of all the public) would fain incite the author to the production of other seedlings, suckers, and infantas of the same stamp, trusting that the reading world may form its opinion on his work with the same careful favour and indulgent approval as I have formed mine.

JEAN PAUL FR. RICHTER.

Hof in Voigtland, _June 5th_, 1796.

Thus far my friend's preface. Utterly absurd as it is, my own preface, you see, has got to be concluded too, and at the end of it I can but sign myself as my aforesaid man Friday and namesake does, videlicet,

JEAN PAUL FR. RICHTER.

Hof in Voigtland, _June 5th_, 1796.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER V.

THE BROOM AND THE BESOM AS Pa.s.sION IMPLEMENTS--THE IMPORTANCE OF A BOOKWRITER--DIPLOMATIC NEGOTIATIONS AND DISCUSSIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF CANDLE SNUFFING--THE PEWTER CUPBOARD--DOMESTIC HARDs.h.i.+PS AND ENJOYMENTS.

Catholics hold that there were fifteen mysteries in the life of Christ--five of Joy, five of Woe, five of Glory. I have carefully accompanied our hero through the five joyful mysteries of which the Linden honey-month of his marriage has had to tell. I now come with him to the five mysteries of Woe with which the series of the mysteries of most marriages is--concluded. I trust, however, that his may yet be found to contain the five of Glory also.

In my first edition, I began this book of my hero's story in an unconcerned manner, with the above sentence just as if it were literally correct. A second, and carefully revised edition, however, renders it inc.u.mbent upon me to add, as an emendation, that the fifteen mysteries in question do not come one after another, like steps of stairs, or ancestors in a pedigree, but are shuffled up together like good and bad cards in a hand. Yet, in spite of this shuffling, the joy outbalances the sorrow, at any rate in its duration, as has been the case, indeed, with this terrestrial globe, our planet itself, which has survived several last days, and as a consequence still more springs, that is to say, re-creations on a smaller scale. I mention all this to save a number of poor devils of readers from the dreadful thought that they have got to wade through a whole "Book II." full of tears, partly to be read about, partly to be shed out of compa.s.sion. I am not one of those authors who, like very rattlesnakes, can sit and gaze upon thousands of charmed people running up and down, a prey to every kind of agitation, suspense, and anxiety, till his time comes to spring upon them and swallow them up.

When Siebenkaes awoke in the morning, he at once packed the devil of jealousy, the marriage devil, off to the place where all other devils dwell. For a calming sleep lowers the pulse of the soul's fever--the grains thereof are fever-bark for the cold fever of hate, and also for the hot fever of love. Indeed he put down the tracing board, and with a pantograph made a correct, reduced copy of his yesterday's free translation of the Engelkrautian countenance, and blackened it nicely.

When it was done, he said to his wife, for very love of her, "We'll send him the profile this morning, at once. It may be a good long while before he comes to fetch it." "Oh yes! he won't be here till Wednesday, and by that time he'll have forgotten all about it." "But I could bring him here sooner than that," Siebenkaes answered; "I need only send him the Russian Trinity dollar of 1679 to get changed for me; he won't _send_ me a farthing of the money he'll bring it himself as he always has done all through Leibgeber's collection." "Or you might send him the dollar and the picture both," said Lenette, "he would like it better." "Which would he like better?" he asked. She didn't see exactly what answer to make to this ridiculous question (whether she meant the stamped face or the pictured one) sprung upon her like a mine in this sort of way, and got out of her difficulty by saying, "Well, _the things_, of course." He spared her any further catechising.

The Schulrath, however, sent nothing but an answer to the effect that he was beside himself with delight at the charming presents, and would come to express his thanks in person, and to settle up with the advocate, by the end of the following week at latest. The little dash of bitter flavour which was perceptible to the taste in this unexpected answer of the too happy Schulrath, was by no means sweetened away by the arrival at this moment of the messenger of the Inheritance Office, with Heimlicher von Blaise's first proceedings in the matter of the plaint lodged against him, consisting of a pet.i.tion for three weeks'

grace within which to lodge answers, a delay which the Court had readily accorded. Siebenkaes, as his own poor's advocate, lived in the sure and certain hope that the promised land of inheritance, flowing with milk and honey, would be reached by his children, though _he_ would in all probability have long ere that time perched in the wilderness of the law; for justice is given to recompensing the children, and the children's children, for the uprightness of the fathers, and for the goodness of their cause. It was more or less in convenient, at the same time, to have nothing to live upon during one's own lifetime. The Russian Trinity dollar--for which the Schulrath hadn't even paid as yet--couldn't be lived upon, and there were but one or two queue ducats remaining of the treasury chest provided by Leibgeber, for the carrying on of operations against the Heimlicher.

This gold coin and those few silver ones were (although I have said nothing about it till now) the entire money contents remaining in the Leibgeberian saviour's scrip, and indeed none but a true disciple and follower of the Saviour could be expected to hold out upon them. My silence on this matter of the emptying of the coin cabinet may perhaps be accepted in evidence of the fact that I try as much as I can to avoid mentioning anything calculated to give my readers pain.

"Oh! I shall get on somehow or other," said Siebenkaes quite gleefully, as he set to work harder than ever at his writing, with the view of getting a considerable haul of money into the house, at the earliest moment possible, in the shape of payment for his 'Selection from the Devil's Papers.'

But there was a fresh purgatorial fire now being stoked and blown, till it blazed hotter and hotter about him. I have refrained from saying anything about the fire in question till now, though he has been sitting roasting at it since the day before yesterday, Lenette being the cook, and his writing table the larkspit.

During the few days when the wordless quarrel was going on, he had got into a habit of listening with the closest attention to what Lenette was doing, as he sat writing away at his 'Selection from the Devil's Papers'; and this sent his ideas all astray. The softest step, the very slightest shake of anything affected him just as if he had had hydrophobia, or the gout, and put one or two fine young ideas to death, as a louder noise kills young canaries, or silkworms.

He controlled himself very well at first. He pointed out to himself that his wife really could _not_ help moving about, and that as long as she hadn't a spiritual or glorified body and furniture to deal with, she couldn't possibly go about as silently as a sunbeam, or as her invisible good and evil angels behind her. But while he was listening to this _cours de morale_, this _collegium pietatis_ of his own, he lost the run of his satirical conceits and contexts, and his language was deprived of a good deal of its sparkle.

But the morning after the silhouette evening, when their hearts had shaken hands and renewed the old royal alliance of Love, he could go much more openly to work, and so, as soon as he had blackened the profile, and had only his own original creations to go on blackening--_i. e_. when he was going to begin working in his own charcoal burning hut, he said to his wife, as a preliminary--

"If you can help it, Lenette, don't make very much noise to-day. I really can hardly get on with my writing, if you do--you know it's for publication."

She said "I'm sure you can't hear me--I go about so very quietly."

Although a man may be long past the years of his youthful follies, yet in every year of his life there crop up a few weeks and days in which he has fresh follies to commit. It was truly in a moment of one of these days that Siebenkaes made the request above mentioned; for he had now laid upon himself the necessity of lying in wait and watching to see what Lenette would do in consequence of it. She skimmed over the floor, and athwart the various webs of her household labours, with the tread of a spider. Like her s.e.x in general, she had disputed his little point, merely for the sake of disputing it, not of doing what she was asked not to do. Siebenkaes had to keep his ears very much on the alert to hear what little noise she did make, either with her hands or her feet--but he was successful, and did hear the greater part of it.

Unless when we are asleep we are more attentive to a slight noise than to a loud one; and our author listened to her wherever she went, his ear and his attention going about fixed to her like a pedometer wherever she moved. In short he had to break off in the middle of the satire, called "The n.o.bleman with the Ague," and jump up and cry to her (as she went creeping about), "For one whole hour have I been listening and watching that dreadful tripping about on tiptoe. I had much rather you would stamp about in a pair of the iron-soled sandals people used to wear for beating time in.[37] Please go about as you usually do, darling."

She complied, and went about _almost_ as she usually did. He would have very much liked to have prohibited the intermediate style of walking, as he had the light and the heavy; but a husband doesn't care to contradict himself twice in one morning; once is enough. In the evening he asked her if she would mind going about the house in her stockings when he was at work at his writing. She would find it nice and cool for the feet. "In fact," he added, "as I'm working all the forenoon literally for our bread, it would be well if you would do nothing that isn't absolutely necessary while I am at my literary work."

Next morning he sat in judgment (mentally) upon everything that went on behind his back, and challenged it to see if it could produce the free-pa.s.s of necessity--going on with his writing all the time, but doing it worse than usual. This scribbling martyr endured a great many things with as much patience as he could muster, but when Wendeline took to whisking the straw under the green painted marriage TORUS with a long broom, the cross grew too heavy for his shoulder. It happened, moreover, that he had been reading two days before in an old Ephemeris of scientific inquirers, that a clergyman, of the name of Johann Pechmann, couldn't bear the sound of a besom--that it nearly took his breath away, and that he once took to his heels and bolted when a crossing sweeper accidentally ran against him. The effect of his having read this was, that he was involuntarily more observant and intolerant of a cognate discomfort. He called out to the domestic sweeper in the next room, from his chair where he sat--

"Lenette, do _not_ go on scrubbing and switching about with that besom of yours, it drives away the whole of my best ideas out of my head.

There was an old clergyman once of the name of Pechmann, who would rather have been condemned to sweep a crossing in Vienna himself, than to listen to another sweeping it--he would rather have been flogged with a birch-broom, than have heard the infernal sound of it swis.h.i.+ng and whis.h.i.+ng. How is a man to get a coherent idea, fit to go to the printer and publisher, into his head with all this sweeping and scrubbing going on?"

Lenette did what every good wife, and her lap dog, would have done; she left off the noise by degrees. At last she laid down the besom, and merely whisked three straws and a little feather fluff gently with the hair-broom, from under the bed, not making as much noise even as he did with his writing. However the editor of the 'Devil's Papers' managed to hear it, in a manner beyond his fondest hopes. He rose up, went to the bedroom door and called in at the room, "My darling, it's every bit as h.e.l.lish a torment to me if I can hear it _at all_. You may fan those miserable sweepings with a peac.o.c.k's feather, or a holy-water asperger, or you may puff them away with a pair of bellows, but I and my poor book must suffer and pay the piper all the same."

"I'm quite done now, at all events," she said.

He set to work again, and gaily took up the threads of his fourth satire, "Concerning the five Monsters and their receptacles, whereon I at first intended to subsist."

Meanwhile Lenette gently closed the door, so that he was driven to the conclusion that there was something or other going on to annoy him again in his Gehenna and place of penitence. He laid down his pen and cried--

"Lenette, I can't hear very distinctly what it is--but you're up to something or other in there that I can _not_ stand. For G.o.d's dear sake, stop it at once, do put a period to my martyrdom and sorrows of Werther, for this one day--come here, let me see you."

She answered, all out of breath with hard work--

"I'm not doing anything."

He got up and opened the door of his chamber of torture. There was his wife rubbing away with a piece of grey flannel, polis.h.i.+ng up the green rails of the bed. The author of this history once lay sick of smallpox in a bed of this kind, and knows them well. But the reader may not be aware that a green slumber cage of this kind is a good deal like a magnified canaries' breeding cage with its latticed folding doors or portcullises, and that this trellis and hothouse for dreams is, though less handsome in appearance, much better for health than our heavy bastille towers all hung about with curtains which keep away every breath of fresh air. The advocate swallowed about half a pint of bedroom air, and said, in measured accents--