Jean Paul

Before I dedicated Titan to the Privy-Legation's-Counsellor and Feudal Provost of Flachsenfingen, Mr. Von Hafenreffer, I first requested permission from him in the following terms:—

"Since you have assisted far more in this history than the Russian Court did in Voltaire's Genesis-History of Peter the Great, you cannot confer any handsomer favor upon a heart longing to thank you, than the permission to offer and dedicate to you, as to a Jew's God, what you have created."

But he wrote me back on the spot:—

"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 assaf[oe]tida 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 Ph[oe]bus,—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!