so have we endeavored, from the enormous, amorphous plum-pudding, more like a scottish haggis, which herr teufelsdrockh had kneaded for his fellow-mortals, to pick out the choicest plums, and present them separately on a cover of our own. a laborious, perhaps a thankless enterprise; in which, however, something of hope has occasionally cheered us, and of which we can now wash our hands not altogether without satisfaction. if hereby, though in barbaric wise, some morsel of spiritual nourishment have been added to the scanty ration of our beloved british world, what nobler recompense could the editor desire? if it prove otherwise, why should he murmur? was not this a task which destiny, in any case, had appointed him; which having now done with, he sees his general day’s-work so much the lighter, so much the shorter?
of professor teufelsdrockh, it seems impossible to take leave without a mingled feeling of astonishment, gratitude, and disapproval. who will not regret that talents, which might have profited in the higher walks of philosophy, or in art itself, have been so much devoted to a rummaging among lumber-rooms; nay too often to a scraping in kennels, where lost rings and diamond-necklaces are nowise the sole conquests? regret is unavoidable; yet censure were loss of time. to cure him of his mad humors british criticism would essay in vain: enough for her if she can, by vigilance, prevent the spreading of such among ourselves. what a result, should this piebald, entangled, hyper-metaphorical style of writing, not to say of thinking, become general among our literary men! as it might so easily do. thus has not the editor himself, working over teufelsdrockh’s german, lost much of his own english purity? even as the smaller whirlpool is sucked into the larger, and made to whirl along with it, so has the lesser mind, in this instance, been forced to become portion of the greater, and, like it, see all things figuratively: which habit time and assiduous effort will be needed to eradicate.
nevertheless, wayward as our professor shows himself, is there any reader that can part with him in declared enmity? let us confess, there is that in the wild, much-suffering, much-inflicting man, which almost attaches us. his attitude, we will hope and believe, is that of a man who had said to cant, begone; and to dilettantism, here thou canst not be; and to truth, be thou in place of all to me: a man who had manfully defied the “time–prince,” or devil, to his face; nay perhaps, hannibal-like, was mysteriously consecrated from birth to that warfare, and now stood minded to wage the same, by all weapons, in all places, at all times. in such a cause, any soldier, were he but a polack scythe-man, shall be welcome.
still the question returns on us: how could a man occasionally of keen insight, not without keen sense of propriety, who had real thoughts to communicate, resolve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on the absurd? which question he were wiser than the present editor who should satisfactorily answer. our conjecture has sometimes been, that perhaps necessity as well as choice was concerned in it. seems it not conceivable that, in a life like our professor’s, where so much bountifully given by nature had in practice failed and misgone, literature also would never rightly prosper: that striving with his characteristic vehemence to paint this and the other picture, and ever without success, he at last desperately dashes his sponge, full of all colors, against the canvas, to try whether it will paint foam? with all his stillness, there were perhaps in teufelsdrockh desperation enough for this.
a second conjecture we hazard with even less warranty. it is, that teufelsdrockh, is not without some touch of the universal feeling, a wish to proselytize. how often already have we paused, uncertain whether the basis of this so enigmatic nature were really stoicism and despair, or love and hope only seared into the figure of these! remarkable, moreover, is this saying of his: “how were friendship possible? in mutual devotedness to the good and true: otherwise impossible; except as armed neutrality, or hollow commercial league. a man, be the heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. infinite is the help man can yield to man.” and now in conjunction therewith consider this other: “it is the night of the world, and still long till it be day: we wander amid the glimmer of smoking ruins, and the sun and the stars of heaven are as if blotted out for a season; and two immeasurable phantoms, hypocrisy and atheism, with the ghoul, sensuality, stalk abroad over the earth, and call it theirs: well at ease are the sleepers for whom existence is a shallow dream.”
but what of the awe-struck wakeful who find it a reality? should not these unite; since even an authentic spectre is not visible to two? — in which case were this enormous clothes–volume properly an enormous pitch-pan, which our teufelsdrockh in his lone watch-tower had kindled, that it might flame far and wide through the night, and many a disconsolately wandering spirit be guided thither to a brother’s bosom! — we say as before, with all his malign indifference, who knows what mad hopes this man may harbor?
meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here, which harmonizes ill with such conjecture; and, indeed, were teufelsdrockh made like other men, might as good as altogether subvert it. namely, that while the beacon-fire blazed its brightest, the watchman had quitted it; that no pilgrim could now ask him: watchman, what of the night? professor teufelsdrockh, be it known, is no longer visibly present at weissnichtwo, but again to all appearance lost in space! some time ago, the hofrath heuschrecke was pleased to favor us with another copious epistle; wherein much is said about the “population–institute;” much repeated in praise of the paper-bag documents, the hieroglyphic nature of which our hofrath still seems not to have surmised; and, lastly, the strangest occurrence communicated, to us for the first time, in the following paragraph:—
“ew. wohlgeboren will have seen from the public prints, with what affectionate and hitherto fruitless solicitude weissnichtwo regards the disappearance of her sage. might but the united voice of germany prevail on him to return; nay could we but so much as elucidate for ourselves by what mystery he went away! but, alas, old lieschen experiences or affects the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance: in the wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up; the privy council itself can hitherto elicit no answer.
“it had been remarked that while the agitating news of those parisian three days flew from mouth to month, and dinned every ear in weissnichtwo, herr teufelsdrockh was not known, at the gans or elsewhere, to have spoken, for a whole week, any syllable except once these three: es geht an (it is beginning). shortly after, as ew. wohlgeboren knows, was the public tranquillity here, as in berlin, threatened by a sedition of the tailors. nor did there want evil-wishers, or perhaps mere desperate alarmists, who asserted that the closing chapter of the clothes–volume was to blame. in this appalling crisis, the serenity of our philosopher was indescribable: nay, perhaps through one humble individual, something thereof might pass into the rath (council) itself, and so contribute to the country’s deliverance. the tailors are now entirely pacificated. —
“to neither of these two incidents can i attribute our loss: yet still comes there the shadow of a suspicion out of paris and its politics. for example, when the saint–simonian society transmitted its propositions hither, and the whole gans was one vast cackle of laughter, lamentation and astonishment, our sage sat mute; and at the end of the third evening said merely: ‘here also are men who have discovered, not without amazement, that man is still man; of which high, long-forgotten truth you already see them make a false application.’ since then, as has been ascertained by examination of the post–director, there passed at least one letter with its answer between the messieurs bazard–enfantin and our professor himself; of what tenor can now only be conjectured. on the fifth night following, he was seen for the last time!
“has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of the hostile sects that convulse our era, been spirited away by certain of their emissaries; or did he go forth voluntarily to their head-quarters to confer with them, and confront them? reason we have, at least of a negative sort, to believe the lost still living; our widowed heart also whispers that ere long he will himself give a sign. otherwise, indeed, his archives must, one day, be opened by authority; where much, perhaps the palingenesie itself, is thought to be reposited.”
thus far the hofrath; who vanishes, as is his wont, too like an ignis fatuus, leaving the dark still darker.
so that teufelsdrockh’s public history were not done, then, or reduced to an even, unromantic tenor; nay, perhaps the better part thereof were only beginning? we stand in a region of conjectures, where substance has melted into shadow, and one cannot be distinguished from the other. may time, which solves or suppresses all problems, throw glad light on this also! our own private conjecture, now amounting almost to certainty, is that, safe-moored in some stillest obscurity, not to lie always still, teufelsdrockh, is actually in london!
here, however, can the present editor, with an ambrosial joy as of over-weariness falling into sleep, lay down his pen. well does he know, if human testimony be worth aught, that to innumerable british readers likewise, this is a satisfying consummation; that innumerable british readers consider him, during these current months, but as an uneasy interruption to their ways of thought and digestion; and indicate so much, not without a certain irritancy and even spoken invective. for which, as for other mercies, ought not he to thank the upper powers? to one and all of you, o irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and open heart, will wave a kind farewell. thou too, miraculous entity, who namest thyself yorke and oliver, and with thy vivacities and genialities, with thy all too irish mirth and madness, and odor of palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell; long as thou canst, fare-well! have we not, in the course of eternity, travelled some months of our life-journey in partial sight of one another; have we not existed together, though in a state of quarrel?
