Conic Sections of the Bodies of Eminent Persons.--Birthday-Drama.--
Rendezvous (or, as Campe Expresses it, "Make Your Appearance") in
the Looking-glass.
In the causeway to the new palace Beata feared she should find there
her Gustavus; in the palace itself she wished the contrary, so soon as
she heard he was in the Place of Rest. Her mother, while with her
assistance she partly cut down, partly over-completed regiments of
robes, mantles, etc., had meantime proved to her this much, that Beata
was deceived by her _own_ feelings and that the paradise of her most
innocent love was, according to her _maternal_ feeling, desperately
bad, and, in fact, a Pontine marsh--the blossoming trees thereon were
upas trees--the flower-carpet consisted partly of poisonous copper,
partly of false porcelain flowers--on the grass banks therein one
caught cold by sitting, and the gentle rocking of the enchanted ground
was an earthquake. This forewarning against the oath _after_ the oath
of love might yet be heard; but when she went on to object Beata's
youth--the most common, most simple, most ineffectual, and most
exasperating objection to a live feeling--this began to weaken the
slight impression of her week-day sermon, which the _practical
application_ entirely washed away; namely, that her father had already
half and half chosen for her the object of her affections.... My
manor-lady was very clever; but when she undertook to please my
manor-lord, she was also very stupid.
Beata therefore brought with her over the causeway to Gustavus a heart
which this dissection had made extremely soft and tender, and he, too,
came with one of those wounded ones, on which not a trace of a callus
longer remains. Ottomar's sermons-of-Solomon upon and against life had
filled his veins and arteries with an infinite longing to love poor
perishable human beings, and with his two arms, before they fell to the
earth, to draw and press the fairest heart to his bosom, ere it sank
under the earthly clods. Love fastens its parasitical roots to all
other feelings.
It was time they came, on account of Herr von Oefel. For at Court one
missed them, and in fact anyone, very little. A Russian Prince
von * * *--a mestizzo and deponent between courtier and beast, whose
visible extremes ended in the invisible extremes of culture and
savageness--had been there, together with a herd of Frenchmen and
Italians, who as a body had, like their head-master, the common-place
singularity of the great world, that they--were not _whole_; for a man
of the world now-a-days nothing is harder than not to make of his
person what I properly make in my biography--a sector or section. In
fact, this fragmentary division looked like a phalanx of cripples on
their journey to a wonder-worker. Of the principal members which we do
not recover at the resurrection, _e. g_., hair, stomach, flesh,
etc.,[82]--whence, of course, the great Connor can easily demonstrate
that a risen Christian will turn out no longer than a gad-fly--of such
members the amputated Junta had already before the resurrection wholly,
or in great part, relieved themselves.
I have often reflected upon the question, why the great folks do this
and make them in a physical sense the small; but I was too ignorant to
guess any other reasons than the following: The seat of anger (which,
according to Winckelmann, the Greeks held to be the nose), cannot decay
soon enough, because neither a courtier nor a Christian should show
anger. Secondly, diminutive bodies are little different from crooked
ones, even in size; but the latter, as we see in Esop, Pope, Scarron,
Lichtenberg and Mendelssohn, have much wit. Now the man of the world
ingeniously draws off the _spirit_ out of the strong vessels of our
progenitors into little corporeal bottles, and such sections and
optical abridgements and _electorates_ of the body make it impossible
to be otherwise than witty, or at most stupid; so a flute which has
become _cracked_, can give out no other tones but _fine_ and _high_
ones. But in the great world wit is notoriously prized, if not more,
certainly not less than immorality. Thirdly, as the old patriarchs
received a _long_ life in order that they might people the earth, so
with the same design have these cosmopolites proposed to themselves a
_short_ one, and cheerfully purchased the life of other beings by a
Curtius'-leap into the fatal abyss. But it may still be questioned
whether I am right. The fourth reason I learn from certain secret and
mystic societies, whence these very segments of humanity have
themselves derived it. Now-a-days every soul of rank must be
_disorganized_ and _disembodied_. For this now there are only two
entirely different operations. The shortest and worst, in my opinion,
is for a man--to hang himself, and for the soul thus to separate the
body from itself like a wen. I should not blame any great man for this,
did I not know that he has in view the far better and easier operation,
whereby he can detach his body, as if it were the mould wherein the
spiritual statue is cast, piece by piece. I will not fall here into the
fault of brevity, but rather into the opposite. Thus, the body is,
according to philosophers, who have also a soul, merely an instrument
for developing their own and ours, and accustoming them to the
renunciation of this instrument. The soul must gradually nibble off all
the threads that bind it to the clod. This is to the soul what the cork
cuirass[83] is to children learning to swim: it must seek daily to
lessen this cuirass and finally to swim without it. The philosophic man
of the world and the fellow of secret _deorganizing societies_ at first
therefore puts off of this swimming-panoply only the flesh on his legs
and cheek-bones. Thus far little is done. Thereupon he burns away in a
_furnace-fire_ nerves and other stuff, because they have withstood the
_kitchen-fire_. The hair or human fur every one gets rid of without
difficulty. The most important step in this cuirass-reduction is this,
that one can without Origen's razor effect as much as he did--only more
gently. When this is done, one is not far from that perfect extinction,
in which the whole cuirass is clean gone and the soul has learned at
last to swim in the sea of existence, without the necessity of having
on even so much of the swimming dress as one needs to cork a bottle.
After that one is buried. Thus at least they set forth in secret
societies of _ton_ the process of human disembodiment.
This broken society covered our and every court as beautifully as
broken porcelain vessels do Dutch garden beds; secondly, it had the
politest way in the world of being coarse. If a certain _je ne sais
quoi_ did not constitute the difference in this gentry between humor
and coarseness, between politeness and impudence, then there was none
at all.
I said above that it was time our couple arrived, on Herr von Oefel's
account. For the birthday _fete_ of the Lady Resident was drawing near,
and yet not a soul had memorized a page of his part. The reader, too,
has quite as little of the birthday drama in his head as the players;
therefore a thin decoction of this plant of Oefel's shall be set before
him.
* * * * *
_Decoction from the Birthday Drama_.
"In a French village were two sisters, so good that each deserved to be
the Rose-girl, and so disinterested that each wished the other to be.
The day before the distribution of the prize-medal of roses they
contended together who should--reject it; for they knew from good
authority that to one of them alone the rose-crown would fall.
Jeanne--played by the Minister's Lady--slipped away from under
the leafy crown by the pretty conceit that she had her lover,
_Perrin_--represented by Oefel--too often and too openly about her to
entitle her to be a rose-competitor. Marie (Beata's part) could not
therefore, it seemed, avert the crown from her head; however she begged
her brother Henri (that was Gustavus) who was particularly fond of her,
and who since his childhood had been away from their home on his
travels,--she begged him to get her the victory in this disinterested
rivalry. He sought to persuade her to the opposite victory; but at
last, seeing the inexorableness of her sisterly love so decided, he
promised, for a proper reward,--to spare her own feelings. 'But thou
must have still greater love for me,' he said;--'a sister's,' said
she;--'a still stronger,' said he;--'the most friendly affection,' said
she;--'a far stronger yet,' said he;--'there cannot be a greater,' said
she;--'O surely! I am not really thy brother,' said he, and with
love-intoxicated eyes fell flown before her and gave her a paper, which
relieved her of her former error and plunged her instead into a little
swoon of joy. They all four appeared before the lord of the manor and
crown-bestower (the Prince played this part even on the--boards) and
each anticipated his choice by a petition and eulogy for her sister,
and by neat invectives upon herself. The coquettish wight, Perrin,
inquired: Could love need other roses than her own?--Marie gave a
flying delineation of the merits to which such a coronation belonged,
and which were in fact fine traits from the image of the Bouse. His
Lordship said: 'This sisterly impartiality, which is as much to be
admired as the merits which it seeks to reward, deserved two
rose-crowns, one to receive, and one to confer, as a reward;' (no one,
remarked Oefel seemingly in flattery of the ladies, but really of the
Prince, more fitly distributes crowns than he who himself wears them
and they would be distinguished from him in nothing but _impartiality_
and beauty, if they in his place should happily choose as he would,
upon whom the rose-wreath, ere the butterfly flew from it)--(one
of the brilliants had been stuck with an egrette into the largest
rose)--should be placed.... 'Upon our Rose Queen!' cried the sisters,
and presented the crown to the lady Resident."
So far the Drama. To Oefel nothing was more agreeable and felicitous
than the foil afforded by flattery bestowed on another. For the rest
his piece looked like an idyl of Fontanelle's. The fancy that is to
please people ground thin by culture must sparkle, but not burn; must
tickle, but not move the heart; the boughs of such a fancy are not
bowed down by the heavy mass of _fruits_, but by the weight of _snow_.
In such court-poets and in _earwigs_ the wings are, one may say,
invisible and minute, but both find more easily the way to the ear. In
German poems there is nothing; on the contrary most of the French smell
not of the study lamp and economical light, but rather of perfumed
garters, gloves, etc., and the less they have in them that interests
man, so much the more they have that charms the man of the world,
because they no longer depict Nature and Heaven and Hell, but one or
two salons, and so not without ingenuity draw themselves back into
narrower and narrower windings of the snail-house.
Oefel was at once theatre-poet, player and writer of the parts. He gave
prominence in the drama to the role of Beata, which he had, with the
most delicate allusions to their mutual understanding (he thought), or
to his individual understanding (I think), set forth to the world. The
most delicate hints he had disguised in those passages where he and
Beata played together. He drew, therefore, in the transcribing, under
many a fine declaration of love, or kindred sentiment, an exegetic
line, and figured intelligently his thoroughbass. "The cunning jade
will read this over a thousand times," he said to himself.
Thereupon, soon after her arrival he handed her her part, with far more
respectful shyness than he was himself aware. Unfortunately for our
good dramatizing poltroon, Beata fell into two faults at once, for a
reason. The reason simply was, that Cupid had set up in her heart his
laboratory and put in his chemical stoves and all; hence must needs
arise her first fault, that she looked more beautiful than formerly
without this glow; for every emotion and every inner conflict assumed
on her face the form of a charm. From love came also her second
mistake, that she demeaned herself to-day towards Oefel far more
familiarly and frankly than usual; for a maiden who is in love has, in
regard to other objects (_i. e_., from her own feelings in regard to
them) nothing more to fear. But Herr von Oefel figured out on his
parchment a quite different result; he took all as a sign of joy, that
he was now again--to be had. He went on accordingly with a heart which
Cupid had shot as full with his Lilliputian arrows as a pin-cushion
with needles.
He said that very day: "When once the heart of a woman is so wide open,
one has nothing to do, but just let her do." That was a charming thing
for him; for it saved him--what might cause him some scruples--the
trouble of inveigling her. As often as he read Lovelace's or the
Chevalier's[84] letters, he wished his simple conscience would allow
him to lead away a perfectly innocent and resisting maiden after a fine
plan. But his conscience would hear no reason, and he was obliged to
confine his piratical or privateering pleasures to the beguiling of
such innocent persons as he caused to act in his head or in his
romance; to such a degree, in weak people, does feeling prevail over
the decisions of reason, even in philosophical women. Consequently
Oefel's knowledge of women left him only the power of laying snares,
not for innocence, but for guilt, and the only thing in which he could
labor with renown was to be the seducer of seductresses.
Allow me to make a shrewd observation. The distinction between
_Lovelace_ and the _Chevalier_ is the moral difference between their
nations and decades. The Chevalier is a devil with such a philosophic
coldness that he is to be ranked among those devils of Klopstock's, who
cannot be converted. Lovelace, on the contrary, is a quite different
man, a mere vain Alcibiades, whom a position in the State or a nuptial
one might half amend. Even then, when his inexorableness to imploring,
wrestling, weeping, kneeling innocence seems to give him a nearer
likeness to models from hell, he softened his hypocritical blackness by
a stroke of art which does some credit to his own conscience and the
greatest honor to the genius of the poet, namely, that by way of
beautifying his inexorableness, he regards the actual object of
compassion, the kneeling, etc., Clarissa, as a theatrical, picturesque
work of art, and in order not to be affected will not observe the
bitterness of her tears, but only her beauty; not the distress, but
only the picturesqueness of her attitude. In this way one can take
pleasure in hardening himself against anything; hence _beaux esprits_,
painters and their connoisseurs often have no tears or too many for
_actual_ misery, for the mere reason that they regard it as _artistic_.
But I must hasten on more speedily to the festal day of the Resident
Lady, whose web touches and entangles our Gustavus with so many kinds
of threads.
He committed to memory with great delight his part in the Drama, of
which much will yet have to be said, and wished nothing, except that he
did not yet know it by heart. Beata had the same feeling about hers:
the reason was, that their parts on the stage were directed to each
other, consequently their thoughts, now, were so, too; and for the shy
Beata it was especially delicious, that she could with good conscience
memorize tender thoughts of love for him, which she hardly dared to
have, not to say express. In order not to be always thinking of him,
she often diverted her mind by the labor of learning by heart the
aforesaid part. Good soul! try always to deceive thyself; it is better
to will it, than not to care about it at all! Her adoptive brother had
hitherto been utterly unable to devise any way of meeting her; the
Resident Lady had forgotten him and thereby the means of bringing it
about, in her attention to the Russian section and torso; he himself
had not persistency enough, still less the dignity which would make it
piquant and charming--till Herr von Oefel said to him with a
significant expression of countenance, that the Lady Resident wished to
have him see some pictures which Knaese had left there. "Yes, I have
been wanting this long time to begin copying in the cabinet," said he,
and deceived hardly anyone except himself. Noticing his blush of
confusion, Oefel said to himself: "I know all, my dear man!"
At last a fine forenoon brought the two souls, that could more easily
find each other than their bodies could, together at the Lady
Resident's. The light of day, their previous separation, the new
situation, and love, made all the charms of both new, all their
features fairer, and their heaven greater than their expectations--but
do not look at each other too much, nor yet too little, for they are
glancing at your glances! Well, do it as much as you like; thou canst
not hide it from a Bouse, Gustavus, that thine eye which is not
contracted by penetration, but opened wide with love, always detains
itself among objects in the neighborhood of one at whom it would fain
steal side glances;--nor does it help thee, Beata, that thou avoidest
more than usual standing near him or giving him occasion for his voice
and cheeks to be his traitors! It availed thee, naught, as thou thyself
sawest, to seek to escape the repetition of the _idolo del mio_ at his
arrival; for did not the Lady Resident beg him to glide after thy voice
with his fingers on the harpsichord, and to publish his inner storm of
joy by the gleam of the eye and the pressure of the keys and the sins
against time? Those of my readers who have frizzled or served or spoken
with the Resident Lady, or actually loved her, can testify for me
against other readers, that among other mantel-ornaments of her
toilette-chamber--inasmuch as the grandees like nothing but finery to
eat, occupy, wear, sit on and sleep on--there were also Swiss scenes,
and among these a tragacanth copy of the hermitage-mountain; this
Olympus of joy, before the eyes of Gustavus, Beata's could no longer
climb, often as they had formerly shone upon this very mountain--at
last the eyes of both grew moist, when the name of Amandus rang through
both of them, with a sweeter and livelier emotion than one feels for a
departed soul. In short, like all lovers, they would have betrayed
themselves less, if they had concealed themselves less. The Lady
Resident seemed to-day, what she always seemed; she had in her power a
still, thoughtful, not impassioned dissimulation, and one saw not on
her face the false looks chase away the true ones. The finest picture
in the collection left by the Russian was not at home, but under the
copying-paper of the Prince.
So dumb and yet so near was Gustavus compelled to remain _vis-a-vis_
with his beloved; with only three words, with only a passing pressure
of the hand; oh, if he only knew how to discharge his soul electrified
with emotions!--Why do we long to transfer all our feelings from our
own hearts into another's?--And why has the dictionary of sorrow so
many quires, and that of rapture and of love so few leaves?--Only a
tear, a pressure of the hand and a singing voice the genius of the
universe gave to love and to rapture and said: "Speak with these!"--But
had Gustavus's love a tongue, when (during a seven seconds' turning
aside of the Resident Lady) in the looking-glass, to which he sat
opposite at the harpsichord, with his thirsting eyes he kissed the
hovering image of his dear songstress--and when the image looked upon
him--and when the shy image under the fire-stream of his eyes shut its
eyelids--and when he suddenly wheeled round toward the near original of
the colored shadow that was looking away again, and as he sat there
penetrated with his love into the drooping eye of his friend standing
by him, and when in a moment which languages cannot paint, he dared not
pour himself out in _one_, not so much as in one sound?--For there are
moments when the treasure upraised, out of the depths of another's soul
sinks back again, and disappears in the innermost recesses, if one
speaks--nay, in which the tender, tremulous, swimming, burning picture
of the whole soul can hardly protect itself _in_ or _beneath_ the
transparent eye, as the fading pastel-form does under the glass....
For this reason he did just right in my view, to sit down at home and
compose his love-letter forthwith. By such an insurance-policy of the
heart the biographer has always in a proper sense deeded his love. But
when Gustavus had finished it, he knew not how he should insinuate it,
by what penny-post. He carried it round with him so long that at last
he grew dissatisfied with it--then he wrote a new and better one and
again carried that round until he had written the best one, which I
will insert in the next section. I take this opportunity to announce
to the public for next Easter my "expeditious and always ready
love-letter-writer," which all parents should procure for their
children. Apropos! The fur courier's-boot and the mustard-plaster and
the icy-crown have happily sent the blood into my feet, and left no
more in my head than it needs, in order to draw up agreeable abstracts
or extracts for a German people.