in a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable whether from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinized soever, much insight is to be gained. nevertheless, as in every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment; so, with regard to any great man, we rest not till, for our scientific profit or not, the whole circumstances of his first appearance in this planet, and what manner of public entry he made, are with utmost completeness rendered manifest. to the genesis of our clothes–philosopher, then, be this first chapter consecrated. unhappily, indeed, he seems to be of quite obscure extraction; uncertain, we might almost say, whether of any: so that this genesis of his can properly be nothing but an exodus (or transit out of invisibility into visibility); whereof the preliminary portion is nowhere forthcoming.
“in the village of entepfuhl,” thus writes he, in the bag libra, on various papers, which we arrange with difficulty, “dwelt andreas futteral and his wife; childless, in still seclusion, and cheerful though now verging towards old age. andreas had been grenadier sergeant, and even regimental schoolmaster under frederick the great; but now, quitting the halbert and ferule for the spade and pruning-hook, cultivated a little orchard, on the produce of which he, cincinnatus-like, lived not without dignity. fruits, the peach, the apple, the grape, with other varieties came in their season; all which andreas knew how to sell: on evenings he smoked largely, or read (as beseemed a regimental schoolmaster), and talked to neighbors that would listen about the victory of rossbach; and how fritz the only (der einzige) had once with his own royal lips spoken to him, had been pleased to say, when andreas as camp-sentinel demanded the pass-word, ‘schweig hund (peace, hound)!’ before any of his staff-adjutants could answer. ‘das nenn’ ich mir einen konig, there is what i call a king,’ would andreas exclaim: ‘but the smoke of kunersdorf was still smarting his eyes.’
“gretchen, the housewife, won like desdemona by the deeds rather than the looks of her now veteran othello, lived not in altogether military subordination; for, as andreas said, ‘the womankind will not drill (wer kann die weiberchen dressiren):’ nevertheless she at heart loved him both for valor and wisdom; to her a prussian grenadier sergeant and regiment’s schoolmaster was little other than a cicero and cid: what you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite. nay, was not andreas in very deed a man of order, courage, downrightness (geradheit); that understood busching’s geography, had been in the victory of rossbach, and left for dead in the camisade of hochkirch? the good gretchen, for all her fretting, watched over him and hovered round him as only a true house-mother can: assiduously she cooked and sewed and scoured for him; so that not only his old regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but the whole habitation and environment, where on pegs of honor they hung, looked ever trim and gay: a roomy painted cottage, embowered in fruit-trees and forest-trees, evergreens and honeysuckles; rising many-colored from amid shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling in through the very windows; under its long projecting eaves nothing but garden-tools in methodic piles (to screen them from rain), and seats where, especially on summer nights, a king might have wished to sit and smoke, and call it his. such a bauergut (copyhold) had gretchen given her veteran; whose sinewy arms, and long-disused gardening talent, had made it what you saw.
“into this umbrageous man’s-nest, one meek yellow evening or dusk, when the sun, hidden indeed from terrestrial entepfuhl, did nevertheless journey visible and radiant along the celestial balance (libra), it was that a stranger of reverend aspect entered; and, with grave salutation, stood before the two rather astonished housemates. he was close-muffled in a wide mantle; which without farther parley unfolding, he deposited therefrom what seemed some basket, overhung with green persian silk; saying only: ihr lieben leute, hier bringe ein unschatzbares verleihen; nehmt es in aller acht, sorgfaltigst benutzt es: mit hohem lohn, oder wohl mit schweren zinsen, wird’s einst zuruckgefordert. ‘good christian people, here lies for you an invaluable loan; take all heed thereof, in all carefulness employ it: with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be required back.’ uttering which singular words, in a clear, bell-like, forever memorable tone, the stranger gracefully withdrew; and before andreas or his wife, gazing in expectant wonder, had time to fashion either question or answer, was clean gone. neither out of doors could aught of him be seen or heard; he had vanished in the thickets, in the dusk; the orchard-gate stood quietly closed: the stranger was gone once and always. so sudden had the whole transaction been, in the autumn stillness and twilight, so gentle, noiseless, that the futterals could have fancied it all a trick of imagination, or some visit from an authentic spirit. only that the green-silk basket, such as neither imagination nor authentic spirits are wont to carry, still stood visible and tangible on their little parlor-table. towards this the astonished couple, now with lit candle, hastily turned their attention. lifting the green veil, to see what invaluable it hid, they descried there, amid down and rich white wrappages, no pitt diamond or hapsburg regalia, but, in the softest sleep, a little red-colored infant! beside it, lay a roll of gold friedrichs, the exact amount of which was never publicly known; also a taufschein (baptismal certificate), wherein unfortunately nothing but the name was decipherable, other document or indication none whatever.
“to wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and always thenceforth. nowhere in entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire of any such figure as the stranger; nor could the traveller, who had passed through the neighboring town in coach-and-four, be connected with this apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise. meanwhile, for andreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was: what to do with this little sleeping red-colored infant? amid amazements and curiosities, which had to die away without external satisfying, they resolved, as in such circumstances charitable prudent people needs must, on nursing it, though with spoon-meat, into whiteness, and if possible into manhood. the heavens smiled on their endeavor: thus has that same mysterious individual ever since had a status for himself in this visible universe, some modicum of victual and lodging and parade-ground; and now expanded in bulk, faculty and knowledge of good and evil, he, as herr diogenes teufelsdrockh, professes or is ready to profess, perhaps not altogether without effect, in the new university of weissnichtwo, the new science of things in general.”
our philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think he well might, that these facts, first communicated, by the good gretchen futteral, in his twelfth year, “produced on the boyish heart and fancy a quite indelible impression. who this reverend personage,” he says, “that glided into the orchard cottage when the sun was in libra, and then, as on spirit’s wings, glided out again, might be? an inexpressible desire, full of love and of sadness, has often since struggled within me to shape an answer. ever, in my distresses and my loneliness, has fantasy turned, full of longing (sehnsuchtsvoll), to that unknown father, who perhaps far from me, perhaps near, either way invisible, might have taken me to his paternal bosom, there to lie screened from many a woe. thou beloved father, dost thou still, shut out from me only by thin penetrable curtains of earthly space, wend to and fro among the crowd of the living? or art thou hidden by those far thicker curtains of the everlasting night, or rather of the everlasting day, through which my mortal eye and outstretched arms need not strive to reach? alas, i know not, and in vain vex myself to know. more than once, heart-deluded, have i taken for thee this and the other noble-looking stranger; and approached him wistfully, with infinite regard; but he too had to repel me, he too was not thou.
“and yet, o man born of woman,” cries the autobiographer, with one of his sudden whirls, “wherein is my case peculiar? hadst thou, any more than i, a father whom thou knowest? the andreas and gretchen, or the adam and eve, who led thee into life, and for a time suckled and pap-fed thee there, whom thou namest father and mother; these were, like mine, but thy nursing-father and nursing-mother: thy true beginning and father is in heaven, whom with the bodily eye thou shalt never behold, but only with the spiritual. . . .
“the little green veil,” adds he, among much similar moralizing, and embroiled discoursing, “i yet keep; still more inseparably the name, diogenes teufelsdrockh. from the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece of now quite faded persian silk, like thousands of others. on the name i have many times meditated and conjectured; but neither in this lay there any clew. that it was my unknown father’s name i must hesitate to believe. to no purpose have i searched through all the herald’s books, in and without the german empire, and through all manner of subscriber–lists (pranumeranten), militia–rolls, and other name-catalogues; extraordinary names as we have in germany, the name teufelsdrockh, except as appended to my own person, nowhere occurs. again, what may the unchristian rather than christian ‘diogenes’ mean? did that reverend basket-bearer intend, by such designation, to shadow forth my future destiny, or his own present malign humor? perhaps the latter, perhaps both. thou ill-starred parent, who like an ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred offspring to be hatched into self-support by the mere sky-influences of chance, can thy pilgrimage have been a smooth one? beset by misfortune thou doubtless hast been; or indeed by the worst figure of misfortune, by misconduct. often have i fancied how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at, and slung at, wounded, hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and bedevilled by the time–spirit (zeitgeist) in thyself and others, till the good soul first given thee was seered into grim rage, and thou hadst nothing for it but to leave in me an indignant appeal to the future, and living speaking protest against the devil, as that same spirit not of the time only, but of time itself, is well named! which appeal and protest, may i now modestly add, was not perhaps quite lost in air.
“for indeed, as walter shandy often insisted, there is much, nay almost all, in names. the name is the earliest garment you wrap round the earth-visiting me; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously (for there are names that have lasted nigh thirty centuries) than the very skin. and now from without, what mystic influences does it not send inwards, even to the centre; especially in those plastic first-times, when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the invisible seedgrain will grow to be an all overshadowing tree! names? could i unfold the influence of names, which are the most important of all clothings, i were a second greater trismegistus. not only all common speech, but science, poetry itself is no other, if thou consider it, than a right naming. adam’s first task was giving names to natural appearances: what is ours still but a continuation of the same; be the appearances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars, or starry movements (as in science); or (as in poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, god-attributes, gods? — in a very plain sense the proverb says, call one a thief, and he will steal; in an almost similar sense may we not perhaps say, call one diogenes teufelsdrockh, and he will open the philosophy of clothes?”
“meanwhile the incipient diogenes, like others, all ignorant of his why, his how or whereabout, was opening his eyes to the kind light; sprawling out his ten fingers and toes; listening, tasting, feeling; in a word, by all his five senses, still more by his sixth sense of hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, spiritual, half-awakened senses, endeavoring daily to acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange universe where he had arrived, be his task therein what it might. infinite was his progress; thus in some fifteen months, he could perform the miracle of — speech! to breed a fresh soul, is it not like brooding a fresh (celestial) egg; wherein as yet all is formless, powerless; yet by degrees organic elements and fibres shoot through the watery albumen; and out of vague sensation grows thought, grows fantasy and force, and we have philosophies, dynasties, nay poetries and religions!
“young diogenes, or rather young gneschen, for by such diminutive had they in their fondness named him, travelled forward to those high consummations, by quick yet easy stages. the futterals, to avoid vain talk, and moreover keep the roll of gold friedrichs safe, gave out that he was a grandnephew; the orphan of some sister’s daughter, suddenly deceased, in andreas’s distant prussian birthland; of whom, as of her indigent sorrowing widower, little enough was known at entepfuhl. heedless of all which, the nursling took to his spoon-meat, and throve. i have heard him noted as a still infant, that kept his mind much to himself; above all, that seldom or never cried. he already felt that time was precious; that he had other work cut out for him than whimpering.”
such, after utmost painful search and collation among these miscellaneous paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of herr teufelsdrockh’s genealogy. more imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem to few readers than to us. the professor, in whom truly we more and more discern a certain satirical turn, and deep under-currents of roguish whim, for the present stands pledged in honor, so we will not doubt him: but seems it not conceivable that, by the “good gretchen futteral,” or some other perhaps interested party, he has himself been deceived? should these sheets, translated or not, ever reach the entepfuhl circulating library, some cultivated native of that district might feel called to afford explanation. nay, since books, like invisible scouts, permeate the whole habitable globe, and timbuctoo itself is not safe from british literature, may not some copy find out even the mysterious basket-bearing stranger, who in a state of extreme senility perhaps still exists; and gently force even him to disclose himself; to claim openly a son, in whom any father may feel pride?