value is _Labour_. This fact, at least in regard to spiritual and
poetical value, we Germans had discovered before Smith; and to my
knowledge we have always preferred the learned poet to the poet of
genius, and the heavy book full of labour to the light one full of
sport.]
I could scarcely lay aside this indignant mood, so sweet was it to me,
and so much did I feel refreshed by the fire of rage, and quickened in
my breast as by a benignant stimulant. It belongs certainly to the class
of Unrecognised Mercies (on which, in ancient times, special sermons
were preached), that one is never more completely in his Heaven and
_Monplaisir_ (a pleasure-palace) than while in the midst of right hearty
storming and indignation. Heavens! what might not a man of weight
accomplish in this new walk of charity! The gall-bladder is for us the
chief swimming-bladder and Montgolfier; and the filling of it costs us
nothing but a contumelious word or two from some bystander. And does not
the whirlwind Luther, with whom I nowise compare myself, confess, in his
_Table-talk_, that he never preached, sung, or prayed so well, as while
in a rage? Truly, he was a man sufficient of himself to rouse many
others into rage.
The whole morning till noon now passed in viewing sights, and
trafficking for wares; and indeed, for the greatest part, in the broad
street of our Hotel. Berga needed but to press along with me into the
market throng; needed but to look, and see that she was decorated more
according to the fashion than hundreds like her. But soon, in her care
for household gear, she forgot that of dress, and in the potter-market
the toilette-table faded from her thoughts.
I, for my share, full of true tedium, while gliding after her through
her various marts, with their long cheapenings and chafferings, merely
acted the Philosopher hid within me: I weighed this empty Life, and the
heavy value which is put upon it, and the daily anxiety of man lest it,
this lightest down-feather of the Earth, fly off, and feather him, and
take him with it. These thoughts, perhaps, I owe to the street-fry of
boys, who were turning their market-freedom to account, by throwing
stones at one another all round me: for, in the midst of this tumult, I
vividly figured myself to be a man who had never seen war; and who,
therefore, never having experienced, that often of a thousand bullets
not one will hit, feels apprehensive of these few silly stones lest they
beat-in his nose and eyes. O! it is the battle-field alone that sows,
manures and nourishes true courage, courage even for daily, domestic and
smallest perils. For not till he comes from the battle-field can a man
both sing and cannonade; like the canary-bird, which, though so
melodious, so timid, so small, so tender, so solitary, so
soft-feathered, can yet be trained to fire off cannon, though cannon of
smaller calibre.
[Note 4: The Hypocrite does not imitate the old practice, of
cutting fruit by a knife poisoned only on the one side, and giving the
poisoned side to the victim, the cutter eating the sound side himself;
on the contrary, he so disinterestedly inverts this practice, that to
others he shows and gives the sound moral half, or side, and retains for
himself the poisoned one. Heavens! compared with such a man, how wicked
does the Devil seem!]
After dinner (in our room), we issued from the Purgatory of the
market-tumult,--where Berga, at every booth, had something to order, and
load her attendant maid with,--into Heaven, into the Dog Inn, as the
best Flaetz public and pleasure-house without the gates is named, where,
in market-time, hundreds turn in, and see thousands going by. On the way
thither, my little wife, my elbow-tendril, as it were, had extracted
from me such a measure of courage, that, while going through the Gate
(where I, aware of the military order that you must not pass _near_ the
sentry, threw myself over to the other side), she quietly glided on,
close by the very guns and fixed bayonets of the City Guard. Outside the
wall, I could direct her with my finger, to the bechained, begrated,
gigantic Schabacker-Palace, mounting up even externally on stairs, where
I last night had called and (it may be) stormed: "I had rather take a
peep at the Giant," said she, "and the Dwarf: why else are we under one
roof with them?"
In the pleasure-house itself we found sufficient pleasure; encircled, as
we were, with blooming faces and meadows. In my secret heart, I all
along kept looking down, with success, on Schabacker's refusal; and till
midnight made myself a happy day of it: I had deserved it, Berga still
more. Nevertheless, about one in the morning, I was destined to find a
windmill to tilt with; a windmill, which truly lays about it with
somewhat longer, stronger and more numerous arms than a giant, for which
Don Quixote might readily enough have taken it. On the market-place, for
reasons more easily fancied than specified in words, I let Berga go
along some twenty paces before me; and I myself, for these foresaid
reasons, retire without malice behind a covered booth, the tent most
probably of some rude trader; and linger there a moment according to
circumstances: lo! steering hither with dart and spear, comes the
Booth-watcher, and coins and stamps me, on the spot, into a filcher and
housebreaker of his Booth-street; though the simpleton sees nothing but
that I am standing in the corner, and doing anything but--taking. A
sense of honour without callosity is never blunted for such attacks. But
how in the dead of night was a man of this kind, who had nothing in his
head--at the utmost beer, instead of brains--to be enlightened on the
truth of the matter?
[Note 67: Individual Minds, nay Political Bodies, are like organic
bodies: extract the _interior_ air from them, the atmosphere crushes
them together; pump off under the bell the _exterior_ resisting air, the
interior inflates and bursts them. Therefore, let every State keep up
its internal and its external resistance both at once.]
I shall not conceal my perilous resource: I seized the fox by the tail,
as we say; in other words, I made as if I had been muddled, and knew not
rightly, in my liquor, what I was about: I therefore mimicked everything
I was master of in this department; staggered hither and thither;
splayed out my feet like a dancing-master; got into zigzag in spite of
all efforts at the straight line; nay, I knocked my good head (perhaps
one of the clearest and emptiest of the night), like a full one, against
real posts.
However, the Booth-bailiff, who probably had been oftener drunk than I,
and knew the symptoms better, or even felt them in himself at this
moment, looked upon the whole exhibition as mere craft, and shouted
dreadfully: "Stop, rascal; thou art no more drunk than I! I know thee of
old. Stand, I say, till I speak to thee! Wouldst have thy long finger in
the market, too? Stand, dog, or I'll make thee!"
You see the whole _nodus_ of the matter: I whisked away zigzag among the
booths as fast as possible, from the claws of this rude Tosspot; yet he
still hobbled after me. But my Teutoberga, who had heard somewhat of it,
came running back; clutched the tipsy market-warder by the collar, and
said (shrieking, it is true, in village-wise): "Stupid sot, go sleep the
drink out of thy head, or I'll teach thee! Dost know, then, whom thou
art speaking to? My husband, Army-chaplain Schmelzle under General and
Minister von Schabacker at Pimpelstadt, thou blockhead!--Fye! Take
shame, fellow!" The watchman mumbled: "Meant no harm," and reeled about
his business. "O thou Lioness!" said I, in the transport of love, "why
hast thou never been in any deadly peril, that I might show thee the
Lion in thy husband?"
[Note 8: In great Saloons, the real stove is masked into a pretty
ornamented sham stove; so likewise, it is fit and pretty that a virgin
_Love_ should always hide itself in an interesting virgin _Friendship_.]
[Note 12: Nations--unlike rivers, which precipitate their
impurities in level places and when at rest--drop their baseness just
whilst in the most violent motion; and become the dirtier the farther
they flow along through lazy flats.]
Thus lovingly we both reached home; and perhaps in the sequel of this
Fair day might still have enjoyed a glorious after-midnight, had not the
Devil led my eye to the ninth volume of Lichtenberg's Works, and the
206th page, where this passage occurs: "It is not impossible that at a
future period, our Chemists may light on some means of suddenly
decomposing the Atmosphere by a sort of Ferment. In this way the world
may be destroyed." Ah! true indeed! Since the Earth-ball is lapped up in
the larger Atmospheric ball, let but any chemical scoundrel, in the
remotest scoundrel-island, say in New Holland, devise some decomposing
substance for the Atmosphere, like what a spark of fire would be for a
powder-wagon: in a few seconds, the monstrous devouring world-storm
catches me and you in Flaetz by the throat; my breathing, and the like,
in this choke-air is over, and the whole game ended! The Earth becomes a
boundless gallows, where the very cattle are hanged: worm-powder, and
bug-liquor, Bradly ant-ploughs, and rat-poison, and wolf-traps are, in
this universal world-trap and world-poison, no longer specially needful;
and the Devil takes the whole, in the Bartholomew-night, when this
cursed "Ferment" is invented.
From the true soul, however, I concealed these deadly Night Thoughts;
seeing she would either painfully have sympathised in them, or else
mirthfully laughed at them. I merely gave orders that next morning
(Saturday) she was to be standing booted and ready, at the outset of the
returning coach; if so were she would have me speedily fulfil her wishes
in regard to that stock of Rathships which lay so near her heart. She
rejoiced in my purpose, gladly surrendering the market for such
prospects. I too slept sound, my great toe tied to her finger, the whole
night through.
[Note 28: When Nature takes the huge old Earth-round, the
Earth-loaf, and kneads it up again, for the purpose of introducing under
this pie-crust new stuffing and Dwarfs,--she then, for most part, as a
mother when baking will do to her daughters, gives in jest a little
fraction of the dough (two or three thousand square leagues of such
dough are enough for a child) to some Poetical or Philosophical, or
Legislative polisher, that so the little elf may have something to be
shaping and manufacturing beside its mother. And when the other young
ones get a taste of sisterkin's baking, they all clap hands, and cry:
"Aha, Mother! canst; bake, like _Suky_ here?"]
The Dragoon, next morning, twitched me by the ear, and secretly
whispered into it that he had a pleasant fairing to give his sister; and
so would ride off somewhat early, on the nag he had yesterday purchased
of the horse-dealer. I thanked him beforehand.
At the appointed hour, all gaily started from the Staple, I excepted;
for I still retained, even in the fairest daylight, that nocturnal
Devil's-Ferment and Decomposition (of my cerebral globe as well as of
the Earth-globe) fermenting in my head; a proof that the night had not
affected me, or exaggerated my fear. The Blind Passenger, whom I liked
so ill, also mounted along with us, and looked at me as usual, but
without effect; for on this occasion, when the destruction not of myself
only, but of worlds, was occupying my thoughts, the Passenger was
nothing to me but a joke and a show: as a man, while his leg is being
sawed off, does not feel the throbbing of his heart; or amid the humming
of cannon, does not guard himself from that of wasps; so to me any
Passenger, with all the fire-brands he might throw into my near or
distant Future, could appear but ludicrous, at a time when I was
reflecting that the "Ferment" might, even in my journey between Flaetz
and Neusattel, be, by some American or European man of science, quite
guiltlessly experimenting and decomposing, hit upon by accident and let
loose. The question, nay prize-question now, however, were this: "In how
far, since Lichtenberg's threatening, it may not appear world-murderous
and self-murderous, if enlightened Potentates of chemical nations do not
enjoin it on their chemical subjects, who in their decompositions and
separations may so easily separate the soul from their body, and unite
Heaven with Earth,--not in future to make any other chemical experiments
than those already made, which hitherto have profited the State rather
than harmed it?"
Unfortunately, I continued sunk in this Domsday of the Ferment with all
my thoughts and meditations, without, in the whole course of our return
from Flaetz to Neusattel, suffering or observing anything, except that I
actually arrived there, and at the same time saw the Blind Passenger
once more go his ways.
My Bergelchen alone had I constantly looked at by the road, partly that
I might still see her, so long as life and eyes endured; partly that,
even at the smallest danger to her, be it a great, or even
all-over-sweeping Deluge and World's-doom, I might die, if not _for_
her, at least _by_ her, and so united with that stanch true heart, cast
away a plagued and plaguing life, in which, at any rate, not half of my
wishes for her have been fulfilled.
So then were my Journey over,--crowned with some _Historiolae_; and in
time coming, perhaps, still more rewarded through you, ye Friends about
Flaetz, if in these pages you shall find any well-ground pruning-knives,
whereby you may more readily out-root the weedy tangle of Lies, which
for the present excludes me from the gallant Schabacker:--Only this
cursed Ferment still sits in my head. Farewell then, so long as there
are Atmospheres left us to breathe. I wish I had that Ferment out of my
head.
Yours always,
ATTILA SCHMELZLE.
P.S.--My Brother-in-law has kept his promise well, and Berga is dancing.
Particulars in my next!
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN,
DOWN TO OUR OWN TIMES;
EXTRACTED FROM
FIFTEEN LETTER-BOXES BY JEAN PAUL.
LETTER TO MY FRIENDS,
INSTEAD OF PREFACE.
Merchants, Authors, young Ladies and Quakers, call all persons, with
whom they have any business, Friends; and my readers accordingly are my
table and college Friends. Now, at this time, I am about presenting so
many hundred Friends with just as many hundred gratis copies; and my
Bookseller has orders to supply each on request, after the Fair, with
his copy--in return for a trifling consideration and _don gratuit_ to
printers, pressmen and other such persons. But as I could not, like the
French authors, send the whole Edition to the binder, the blank leaf in
front was necessarily wanting; and thus to write a complimentary word or
two upon it was out of my power. I have therefore caused a few white
leaves to be inserted directly after the title-page: on these we are now
printing.
My Book contains the Life of a Schoolmaster, extracted and compiled from
various public and private documents. With this Biography, dear Friends,
it is the purpose of the Author not so much to procure you a pleasure,
as to teach you how to enjoy one. In truth, King Xerxes should have
offered his prize-medals not for the invention of new pleasures, but for
a good methodology and directory to use the old ones.
Of ways for becoming happier (not happy) I could never inquire out more
than three. The first, rather an elevated road, is this: To soar away so
far above the clouds of life, that you see the whole external world,
with its wolf-dens, charnel-houses and thunder-rods, lying far down
beneath you, shrunk into a little child's garden. The second is: Simply
to sink down into this little garden; and there to nestle yourself so
snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, that in looking out from your warm
lark-nest, you likewise can discern no wolf-dens, charnel-houses or
thunder-rods, but only blades and ears, every one of which, for the
nest-bird, is a tree, and a sun-screen, and rain-screen. The third,
finally, which I look upon as the hardest and cunningest, is that of
alternating between the other two.
This I shall now satisfactorily expound to men at large.
The Hero, the Reformer, your Brutus, your Howard, your Republican, he
whom civic storm, or genius, poetic storm, impels; in short, every
mortal with a great Purpose, or even a perennial Passion (were it but
that of writing the largest folios), all these men fence themselves in
by their internal world against the frosts and heats of the external, as
the madman in a worse sense does: every _fixed_ idea, such as rules
every genius, every enthusiast, at least periodically, separates and
elevates a man above the bed and board of this Earth, above its
Dog's-grottoes, buckthorns and Devil's-walls; like the Bird of Paradise,
he slumbers flying; and on his outspread pinions, oversleeps
unconsciously the earthquakes and conflagrations of Life, in his long
fair dream of his ideal Motherland,--Alas! to few is this dream granted;
and these few are so often awakened by Flying Dogs![30]
[30] So are the Vampires called.
This skyward track, however, is fit only for the winged portion of the
human species, for the smallest. What can it profit poor quill-driving
brethren, whose souls have not even wing-shells, to say nothing of
wings? Or these tethered persons with the best back, breast and neck
fins, who float motionless in the wicker Fish-box of the State, and are
not allowed to swim, because the Box or State, long ago tied to the
shore, itself swims in the name of the Fishes? To the whole standing and
writing host of heavy-laden State-domestics, Purveyors, Clerks of all
departments, and all the lobsters packed together heels over head into
the Lobster-basket of the Government office-rooms, and for refreshment,
sprinkled over with a few nettles; to these persons, what way of
becoming happy _here_, can I possibly point out?
My _second_ merely; and that is as follows: To take a compound
microscope, and with it to discover, and convince themselves, that their
drop of Burgundy is properly a Red Sea, that butterfly-dust is
peacock-feathers, mouldiness a flowery-field, and sand a heap of jewels.
These microscopic recreations are more lasting than all costly
watering-place recreations.--But I must explain these metaphors by new
ones. The purpose, for which I have sent _Fixleins Life_ into the
Messrs. Luebeks' Warehouse, is simply that in this same
_Life_,--therefore in this Preface it is less needful,--I may show to
the whole Earth that we ought to value little joys more than great ones,
the nightgown more than the dresscoat; that Plutus' heaps are worth less
than his handfuls, the plum than the penny for a rainy day; and that not
great, but little good-haps can make us happy.--Can I accomplish this, I
shall, through means of my Book, bring up for Posterity, a race of men
finding refreshment in all things; in the warmth of their rooms and of
their nightcaps; in their pillows; in the three High Festivals; in mere
Apostles' days; in the Evening Moral Tales of their wives, when these
gentle persons have been forth as ambassadresses visiting some Dowager
Residence, whither the husband could not be persuaded; in the
bloodletting-day of these their news-bringers; in the day of
slaughtering, salting, potting against the rigour of grim winter; and in
all such days. You perceive, my drift is that man must become a little
Tailor-bird, which, not amid the crashing boughs of the storm-tost,
roaring, immeasurable tree of Life, but on one of its leaves, sews
itself a nest together, and there lies snug. The most essential sermon
one could preach to our century, were a sermon on the duty of staying at
home.
The _third_ skyward road is the alternation between the other two. The
foregoing _second_ way is not good enough for man, who here on Earth
should take into his hand not the Sickle only, but also the Plough. The
_first_ is too good for him. He has not always the force, like Rugendas,
in the midst of the Battle to compose Battle-pieces; and, like
Backhuysen in the Shipwreck, to clutch at no board but the drawing-board
to paint it on. And then his _pains_ are not less lasting than his
_fatigues_. Still oftener is Strength denied its Arena: it is but the
smallest portion of life that, to a working soul, offers Alps,
Revolutions, Rhine-falls, Worms Diets, and Wars with Xerxes; and for the
whole it is better so: the longer portion of life is a field beaten flat
as a threshing-floor, without lofty Gothard Mountains; often it is a
tedious ice-field, without a single glacier tinged with dawn.
But even by walking, a man rests and recovers himself for climbing; by
little joys and duties, for great. The victorious Dictator must contrive
to plough down his battle Mars-field into a flax and carrot field; to
transform his theatre of war into a parlour theatre, on which his
children may enact some good pieces from the _Children's Friend_. Can he
accomplish this, can he turn so softly from the path of poetical
happiness into that of household happiness,--then is he little different
from myself, who even now, though modesty might forbid me to disclose
it--who even now, I say, amid the creation of this Letter, have been
enabled to reflect, that when it is done, so also will the Roses and
Elder-berries of pastry be done, which a sure hand is seething in butter
for the Author of this Work.
As I purpose appending to this Letter a Postscript (at the end of the
Book), I reserve somewhat which I had to say about the Third[31]
half-satirical half-philosophical part of the Work, till that
opportunity.
Here, out of respect for the rights of a Letter, the Author drops his
half anonymity,[32] and for the first time subscribes himself with his
_whole_ true name,
JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.
_Hof in Voigtland, 29th June 1795._
[31] _Fixlein_ stands in the middle of the volume; preceded by
_Einer Mustheil fuer Madchen_ (A Jelly-course for Young Ladies); and
followed by _Some_ JUS DE TABLETTE _for Men_. A small portion of
the Preface relating to the first I have already omitted. Neither
of the two has the smallest relation to _Fixlein_.--ED.
[32] _J. P. H., Jean Paul_ HASUS, _Jean Paul_, &c. have in
succession been Richter's signatures. At present even, his German
designation, either in writing or speech, is never _Richter_, but
_Jean Paul_.--ED.
LIFE OF QUINTUS FIXLEIN.
FIRST LETTER-BOX.
_Dog-days Vacation. Visits. An Indigent of Quality_.
Egidius Zebedaeus Fixlein had just for eight days been Quintus,[33] and
fairly commenced his teaching duties, when Fortune tabled out for him
four refreshing courses and collations, besprinkled with flowers and
sugar. These were the four canicular weeks. I could find in my heart, at
this hour, to pat the cranium of that good-man who invented the Dog-days
Vacation: I never go to walk in that season, without thinking how a
thousand down-pressed pedagogic persons are now erecting themselves in
the open air; and the stiff knapsack is lying unbuckled at their feet,
and they can seek whatsoever their soul desires; butterflies,--or roots
of numbers,--or roots of words,--or herbs,--or their native villages.
[33] For understanding many little hints which occur in this _Life
of Fixlein_, it will be necessary to bear in mind the following
particulars: A German _Gymnasium_, in its complete state, appears
to include eight Masters; Rector, Conrector, Subrector, Quintus,
Quartus, Tertius, &c., to the _first_ or lowest. The _forms_, or
classes, again, are arranged in an inverse order; the _Primaner_
(boys of the _Prima_, or first form) being the most advanced, and
taught by the Rector; the _Secundaner_, by the Conrector, &c., and
therefore the _Quartaner_ by the Quintus. In many cases, it would
seem, the number of Teachers is only six; but, in this
Flachsenfingen Gymnasium, we have express evidence that there was
no curtailment.--ED.
The last did our Fixlein. He moved not, however, till Sunday,--for you
like to know how holidays taste in the city; and then, in company with
his Shock and a Quintaner, or Fifth-Form boy, who carried his Green
nightgown, he issued through the gate in the morning. The dew was still
lying; and as he reached the back of the gardens, the children of the
Orphan Hospital were uplifting with clear voices their morning hymn. The
city was Flachsenfingen, the village Hukelum, the dog Schil, and the
year of Grace 1791.