"For the same reason, you might still better, in imitation
of Sonnenfels, dedicate the work to yourself, and, in a more
just sense than others, combine in one person author and
patron. I beg you then (were it only on Mr. Von **'s and
Mrs. Von **'s account) to leave me out of the play, and
confine yourself to the most indispensable notices, which
you may be pleased to give the public, of the very
mechanical interest which I have in your beautiful work; but
for the gods' sake, hic hæc hoc hujus huic hunc hanc hoc hoc
hac hoc.
"VON HAFENREFFER."
The Latin line is a cipher, and shall remain dark to the public.
What the same public has to demand in the way of Introductory
Programme consists of four explanations of title, and one of
fact.
The first nominal explanation, which relates to the _Jubilee Period_, I
get from the founder of the Period, the Rector Franke, who explains it
to be an Era or space of time, invented by him, of one hundred and
fifty-two Cycles, each of which contains in itself its good forty-nine
tropical Lunar-Solar years. The word _Jubilee_ is prefixed by the Rector
for this reason, that in every seventh year a lesser, and in every seven
times seventh, or forty-ninth, a greater, Jubilee-, Intercalary-,
Indulgence-, Sabbath-, or Trumpet-year occurred, in which one lived
without debts, without sowing and laboring, and without slavery. I make
a sufficiently happy application, as it seems to me, of this title,
Jubilee, to my historical chapters, which conduct the business-man and
the business-woman round and round in an easy cycle or circle full of
free Sabbath-, Indulgence-, Trumpet-, and Jubilee-hours, in which both
have neither to sow nor to pay, but only to reap and to rest; for I am
the only one who, like the bowed and crooked-up drudge of a ploughman,
stand at my writing-table, and see sowing-machines, and debts of honor,
and manacles, before and on me. The seven thousand four hundred and
forty-eight tropical Lunar-Solar years which one of Franke's Jubilee
periods includes are also found with me, but only dramatically, because
in every chapter just that number of ideas--and ideas are, indeed, the
long and cubic measure of time--will be presented by me to the reader,
till the short time has become as long to him as the chapter required.
A Cycle, which is the subject of my second nominal definition, needs by
this time no definition at all.
The third nominal definition has to describe the _obligato-leaves_,
which I edit in loose sheets in every Jubilee period. The
obligato-leaves admit absolutely none but pure contemporaneous facts,
less immediately connected with my hero, concerning persons, however,
the more immediately connected with him; in the obligato-leaves,
moreover, not the smallest satirical extravasate of digression, no, not
of the size of a blister, is perceptible; but the happy reader journeys
on with his dear ones, free and wide awake, right through the ample
court-residence and riding-ground and landscape of a whole, long volume,
amidst purely historical figures, surrounded on all sides by busy
mining-companies and Jews'-congregations, advancing columns on the
march, mounted hordes, and companies of strolling players,--and his eye
cannot be satisfied with seeing.
But when the Tome is ended, then begins--this is the last nominal
definition--a small one, in which I give just what I choose (only no
narrative), and in which I flit to and fro so joyously, with my long
bee's-sting, from one blossom-nectary and honey-cell to another, that I
name the little sub-volume, made up as it is merely for the private
gratification of my own extravagance, very fitly my _honey-moons_,
because I make less honey therein than I eat, busily employed, not as a
working-bee to supply the hive, but as a bee-master to take up the comb.
Until now I had surely supposed that every reader would readily
distinguish the transits of my satirical trailing-comets from the
undisturbed march of my historical planetary system, and I had asked
myself: "Is it, in a monthly journal, any sacrifice of historical unity
to break off one essay, and follow it up with a new one; and have the
readers complained at all, if e. g. in the annual sets of the 'Horen,'
Cellini's history, as is sometimes the case, breaks off abruptly, and a
wholly different paper is foisted in?" But what actually happened?
As in the year 1795 a medical society in Brussels made the
_contrat-social_ among themselves, that every one should pay a fine of a
crown, who, during a meeting, should give utterance to any other sound
than a medical one; so, as is well known, has a similar edict, under
date of July 9th, been issued to all biographers, that we shall always
stick to the subject-matter,--which is the history,--because otherwise
people will begin to talk with us. The intention of the mandate is this,
that when a biographer, in a Universal History of the World, of twenty
volumes, or even a longer one,--as in this, for instance,--thinks or
laughs once or twice, i. e. digresses, the culprit shall stand out in
the critical pillory as his own Pasquino and Marforio,--which sentence
has been already executed on me more than once.
Now, however, I put an entirely new face upon matters, inasmuch as, in
the first place, I draw a marked line in this work between history and
digression, a few cases of dispensation excepted; secondly, inasmuch as
the liberties which I had taken in my former works are in the present
reduced to a prescriptive right and confirmed into a servitude, the
reader surrenders at once when he knows, that, after a volume full of
Jubilee-periods, one is to follow which is entirely full of nothing but
honey-months. I take shame to myself, when I remember how I once, in
former works, stood with the beggar's staff before the reader, and
begged for the privilege of digression, when I might, after all,--as I
do here,--have extorted the loan, as one has to demand of women, as a
matter of course, not only the _tribute_ as _alms_, but also the _don
gratuit_ as _quarterly assessment_. So does not merely the cultivated
Regent at the Diet, but even the rude Arab, who extorts from the
traveller, besides the cash, a deed of gift for the same.
I come now to the Privy-Legation's-Counsellor, Von Hafenreffer, who is
the subject of my promised _exposé of fact_.
It must have been formerly learned from the 45th Dog-Post-Day, who
governs Flachsenfingen, namely, my revered father. This striking
promotion of mine was, at the bottom, more a step than a spring; for I
was, previously, no less than a Jurist, consequently the germ or bud of
an embryo Doctor _utriusque_, and consequently a nobleman, since in the
Doctor the whole spawn and yolk of the Knight lies; therefore the
former, as well as the latter, when anything chances by, lives upon his
saddle or stirrup, although less in a robber's castle than in a robber's
chamber; I have, therefore, since the preferment, changed less myself
than my castle of residence;--the paternal seat in Flachsenfingen is at
present my own.
I care not now to eat my sugar-cake at court with sin,--although one
earns sugar-cake and manna more comfortably than ship-bread,--but I
represent, in order to make a profit upon my adventure, the whole
Flachsenfingen Department of Foreign Affairs at home here in the castle,
together with the requisite deciphering chancery. This, then, is what we
shall do: we have a Procurator in Vienna, two Residents in five Imperial
cities, a Secretary of the Comitia in Ratisbon under the
Cross-Bench,[21] three Chancery-clerks of the circle, and an
Envoyé-Plenipotentiary at a well-known and considerable court not far
from Hohenfliess, who is no other than the aforementioned Mr. Feudal
Provost Von Hafenreffer. To the latter my father has even advanced a
complete silver-service, which we lend him, till he shall have received
his recall, because it is for our own interest that a Flachsenfingen
ambassador should, while abroad, do extraordinary honor, by his
extravagance, to the princely hat or coronet of Flachsenfingen.
Now it is no joke to stand on such a post as this of mine; the whole
legation-writing-and-reading company write to me under frank, the
_chiffre banal_ and the _chiffre déchiffrant_ are in my hands, and I
understand, as it seems to me, the whole mess. It is unutterable, all
that I thus learn: it could not be read by men nor drawn by horses, if I
were disposed to hatch, biographically, and feed and reel off the whole
silk-worm seed of novels, which the corps of ambassadors send me every
post-day in closely-sealed packages. Yes (to use another metaphor), the
biographical timber which my float-inspection launches for me from up
above,--now into the Elbe, now into the Saale, now into the
Danube,--stands already so high before me in the ship-yard, that I could
not use it up, supposing I drove on the æsthetical building of my
biographical fools'-ships, masquerade-balls, and enchanted castles, day
and night, year out and year in, and never danced, nor rode, nor spoke,
nor sneezed again in my life....
Verily, whenever (as I often do) I weigh my ovary as an author against
many another spawn, I ask out-right, with a certain chagrin, why a man
should come to bear so great a one, who cannot give it forth from
himself for want of time and place, while another hardly lays and
hatches a wind-egg. If I could despatch a picket from my
legation-division to knightly book-makers with its official reports,
would they not gladly exchange ruins for castles, and subterranean
cloister-passages for corridors, and spirits for bodies? whereas, now,
for want of the official reports of a picket, wenches must represent
women of the world, veimers[22] ministers of justice, as well as jesters
pages, castle-chaplains court-preachers, and robber-barons the
Pointeurs.[23]
I come back to my ambassador, Von Hafenreffer. At the above-mentioned
distinguished court sits this excellent gentleman, and supplies
me--without neglecting other duties--from month to month with as many
personalities of my Hohenfliess hero as he can, by means of his
legation-soothsayers or clairvoyants, ferret out;--the smallest trifles
are with him weighty enough for a despatch. Certainly a quite different
way of thinking from that of other ambassadors, who in their reports
make room only for events which afterwards are to make their entrance
into the Universal History! Hafenreffer has in every _cul de sac_,
servant's chamber and attic, in every chimney and tavern, his
opera-glass of a spy, who often, in order to discover one of my hero's
virtues, takes upon himself ten sins. Of course, with such a
hand-and-horse service of good luck, no one of us can wonder,--that is,
I mean, with such a cistern-wheel turned for me by Fortune herself,--with
such thieves' thumbs affixed to my own writing-fingers,--with
such silhouetteurs of a hero, who make everything except color,--in
short, with such an extraordinary concatenation of circumstances, or
Montgolfiers,[24]--it cannot of course be anything but just what is
expected, if the man who is lifted by them should, on his mountain
height up there, bring together and afterward send down a work which
will be freely translated after the last day (for it deserves as much)
on the Sun, on Uranus and Sirius, and for which even the lucky
quill-scraper who nibbed the pens for it, and the compositor who prints
the errata, will take more airs upon themselves than the author himself,
and upon which neither the swift scythe nor the tardy _tooth_ of
time,--especially since the latter can, if requisite, be cut in two by
the tooth-saw of the critical file,--shall be able to make any
impression. And when to such eminent advantages the author adds that of
humility, then there is no longer any one to be compared with him; but
unhappily every nature holds itself,--as Dr. Crusius does the
world,--not for the best, indeed, but still as very good.
The present _Titan_ enjoys, besides, the further advantage that I at
this moment inhabit and grace the paternal court, and accordingly, as
draughtsman, have certain sins near and bright before my eyes in a
position most favorable for observation, of which at least Vanity,
Libertinism, and Idleness will stay and sit for their likeness; for fate
has sowed these mushrooms and mosses as high as possible among the upper
classes, because in the lower and broader they would have spread too
much, and sucked them dry,--which seems to be the pattern of that same
foresight by which ships always have their assafœtida which they
bring from Persia hanging overhead on the mast, in order that its stench
may not contaminate the freight on deck. Moreover, I have up here in the
court all the new fashions already around me for my observation and
contempt, before they have been, down below there, only traduced, not to
say commended,--e. g. the fine fashion of the Parisians, that women
shall by a slight tuck in their dress show their calves, which they do
in Paris, in order to let it be seen that they are not gentlemen, who,
as is well known, walk on wooden legs,--this fashion will to-morrow or
day after to-morrow (for it has arrived on an individual lady) be
certainly introduced. But the females of Flachsenfingen imitate this
fashion on quite another ground,--for gentlemen among us have no
defect,--and that is, as a way of proving that they are human beings,
and not apes (to say nothing less), since, according to Camper and
others, man alone has calves. The same proof was adduced ten years ago,
only on higher grounds. For since, according to Haller, man is
distinguished from monkey in no other respect than by the possession of
a posterior, the female officers of the crown, the dressing-maids,
sought as much as possible to magnify in the persons of their mistresses
this characteristic of their sex by art,--by the so-called _cul de
Paris_; and, with such a penultimate of the ultimate, it became then a
jest and an amusement to distinguish at a distance of two hundred paces
a woman of the world from her female ape,--a thing which now many who
know their Buffon by heart will venture to do, when they are no nearer
to her than too near.
Similar biographical Denunciantes and Familiars I maintain in several
of the German cities;--my honored father pays for them;--in most places
one, but in Leipsic two, in Dresden three, in Berlin six, in Vienna as
many in every quarter of the city. Machines of such a nature, so much
like perspective-glasses, whereby one can survey from his bed all that
is going on in the street below, of course make it easy for an author,
from behind his inkstand, to see clear down into dark household
operations going on in some by-lane, hidden among buildings twenty miles
distant. Therefore, the singular case may happen to me every week, that
a staid, quiet man, whom nobody knows but his barber, and whose course
of life is like a dark, unfrequented _cul de sac_, but whom one of my
envoys and spies secretly follows, with a biographical concave mirror,
which casts an image of the man, waistcoat, breeches, walk, and all,
into my study, situated at a distance of thirty miles,--the case may
occur to me, I say, that such a secluded man shall accidentally step up
to the counter of the bookseller, and in my work, which lies there
smoking hot from the oven, shall find himself, with all his hair,
buttons, buckles, and warts, as clearly pictured out on the three
hundred and seventy-first page, as the impressions of _Indian_ plants
which are found on rocks in France. That, however, is no matter.
People, on the other hand, who live at the same place with me, as the
people of Hof formerly did, come off well; for I keep no ambassadors
near me.
But this very advantage of getting my anecdotes, not out of my head, but
from despatches, obliges me to take more pains in putting them into
cipher, than others would have in dressing them up or thinking them out.
No less a miracle than that which bars up and hides the masonic mystery,
and the invisible church, and the invisible lodge, has seemed thus far
to avert the discovery of the _true_ names of my histories, and, indeed,
with such success, that of all the manuscripts which have hitherto been
despatched to the publishers, filled with conjectures on the subject,
not one has smelt the mouse,--and truly fortunate for the world; for so
soon, e. g., as one person shall have nosed out the names of the first
volumes of Titan, disguised as they have been in the best hieroglyphic
chancery offices, that moment I upset my inkstand, and publish no more.
Nothing is to be inferred from the names which I use, for I press into
the service God-parents for my heroes in the most singular ways. Have I
not, e. g., often of an evening, during the marching and countermarching
of the German armies, who made their crusades to the holy sepulchre of
freedom, gone up and down through the lanes of the camp, with my
writing-tablets in my hands, and caught and entered the names of the
privates,--which, just before bedtime, were called out aloud, like the
names of saints,--just as they fell, in order to distribute them again
among my biographical people? And has not merit been promoted thereby,
and many a common soldier risen to be a nobleman fit for table and
tournament, and have not provost-marshals been raised to ministers of
justice, and red-cloaks to _patribus purpuratis_? And did ever a cock
crow in all the army after this corps of observation slinking round
mobilized on two legs?
For authors who wish at the same time to narrate and disguise true
anecdotes, I am, perhaps, on the whole, a model and file-leader. I have
studied and imitated longer than other historical inquirers those little
innocent stretching and wrenching processes which can make a history
unrecognizable to the very hero of the same, and I fancy I know how one
is to make good biographies of princes, protocols of high traitors,
legends of saints, and auto-biographies; no stronger touches decide the
matter than those slight ones, by which Peter of Cortona (or Beretino)
in the presence of Ferdinand of Tuscany transformed a weeping child into
a laughing one, and the reverse.
Voltaire demands more than once, as he always does,--for he gave
mankind, like an army, every order of march three times, and repeated
himself and everything else most indefatigably,--that the historian
shall arrange his history after the law-table of the drama, to a
dramatic focal point. It is, however, one of the first dramatic rules
which Lessing, Aristotle, and the Greek models give us, that the
dramatic poet must lend to every historical circumstance which he treats
all that is favorable to the poetic illusion, as well as keep clear of
everything opposite, and that he must never sacrifice beauty to truth,
but the reverse. Voltaire gave, as is well known, not only the easy
rule, but the hard model also; and this great theatre poet of the
world's theatre, in his _benefit_ dramas of Peter and Charles, never
stuck to the truth where he was sure he could attain sooner to illusion.
And that is properly the genuine romantic history corresponding to the
historical romance. It is not for me, but for others,--namely, the
Provost and the Secretaries of Legation,--to decide how far I have
treated a true history illusorily. It is a misfortune that the true
history of my hero can hardly ever see the light; otherwise the justice
might be done me that connoisseurs would confront my poetical deviations
with the truth, and thereafter give each of us more easily his own, as
well the truth as myself. But this reward is what all royal
historiographers and scandalous chroniclers must resign _nolens volens_,
because the true history never appears in conjunction with their works.
But in the composition of a history an author must also keep a sharp
look-out upon this point, that it shall not only hit and betray no real
persons, but also no false ones, and in fact nobody at all. Before I, e.
g., choose a name for a bad prince, I must look through the genealogical
index of all governing and governed families, in order not to use a name
which some person or other already bears; thus, in Otaheite, even the
words which sound like the name of the king are abolished after his
coronation, and supplied by others. Now, as I was formerly acquainted
with no living courts at all, I was not in a situation, when preparing
the battle-pieces and night-pieces which I painted of the Cabals, the
Egoism, and the Libertinism of biographical courts, to succeed in
skilfully avoiding every resemblance to real ones; yes, for such an
idiot as I, it was a miserable help, even, to be often laying
Machiavelli open before me, in order, with the assistance of the French
history, by painting from the two, to turn off the edge of the
application at least upon countries in which no Frenchman or Italian
ever had the influence that is generally attributed to both of them upon
other Germans; just as Herder, in opposition to those naturalists who
derive certain misshapen tribes of men from a half-parentage of apes,
makes the very good remark that most of the resemblances to apes--the
retreating skull of the Calmucks, the prominent ears of the Pevas, the
slender hands in Carolina--appear just in those countries where there
are no apes at all. Formerly, then, as was said, striking unlikenesses I
could not succeed in hitting; now, on the contrary, every court around
which my legation-flotilla coasts is well known to me, and therefore
secure from accidental resemblances, particularly every one which I
describe,--that of Flachsenfingen, that of Hohenfliess, &c. The
theatrical mask which I have on in my works is not the mask of the Greek
comedian, which was embossed after the face of the individual
satirized,[25] but the mask of Nero, which, when he acted a goddess on
the stage, looked like his mistress,[26] and when he acted a god, like
himself.
Enough! This digressive introductory programme has been somewhat long,
but the Jubilee-period was so, too: the longer the St. John's day of a
country, the longer its St. Thomas's night. And now let us dance along
together into the book,--into this free ball of the world,--I first as
leader in the dance, and then the readers as hop-dancers after me; so
that, amidst the sounding baptismal and funeral bells in the Chinese
house of this world-building,--welcomed by the singing-school of the
muses,--serenaded from on high by the guitar of Phœbus,--we may dance
gayly from Tome to Tome, from Cycle to Cycle, from one digression to
another, from one dash to another,--till either the work comes to an
end, or the workman, or everybody!