Delphi collected works o.., p.159
Delphi Collected Works of E. T. A. Hoffmann (Illustrated), page 159
“I am much obliged to you,” said Theodore, “for having so carefully observed that talent of mine, and given it its due meed of approval.”
The friends laughed again at this.
“There is no doubt,” said Sylvester, “that society talk is, altogether, a rather curious thing. The French say that a certain heaviness in our nature always prevents us from hitting the precise tact and tone necessary for it; and they may be right, to a certain extent, but I must declare that the much-belauded légèreté and lightsomeness of French Society puts me out of temper, and makes me feel stupid and uncomfortable, and that I cannot look upon those bon mots and calembours of theirs, which are continually being fired off in all directions, as coming under the class of that ‘Society wit’ which gives out constantly fresh sparks of new life of conversation. Moreover, that peculiar style of wit to which the genuine French ‘wit’ belongs is, to me, in the highest degree disagreeable.”
“That opinion,” said Cyprian, “comes from the very depths of your quiet, friendly spirit, my dearest Sylvester: but you are forgetting that, besides the (generally utterly empty and insipid) bon mots, the ‘Society wit’ of the French is, in a great degree, founded on a mutual contempt of, and jeering and scoffing at, each other (such as at the present time we call ‘chaff,’ although it is less good-humoured than that), which soon passes the bounds of what we consider courtesy and consideration, and consequently would speedily deprive our intercourse of all pleasure. Then the French have not the very slightest comprehension of that wit whose basis is real humour, and it is almost incomprehensible how often the point of some not very profound, but superficially funny, little story escapes them.”
“Don’t forget,” said Ottmar, “that the point of a story is very often completely untranslatable.”
“Or is badly translated,” said Vincenz. “It so happens that I just think of a very amusing thing which happened quite recently, and which I will tell you, if you care to hear it.”
“Tell us, tell us! delightful fabulist! valued anecdotist!” cried the friends.
“A young man,” related Vincenz, “whom nature had endowed with a splendid bass voice, and who had gone upon the operatic stage, was making his first appearance as Sarastro, in the ‘Magic Flute.’ As he was mounting the car, in which he first comes on, he was seized with such a terrible attack of stage-fright that he trembled and shook — nay, when the car got into motion to come forward, he shrunk into himself, and all the manager’s efforts to induce him to reassure himself, and, at all events, stand upright, were useless. Just then it happened that one of the wheels got entangled in the long mantle which Sarastro wears, so that the further he got on to the stage, the more this mantle dragged him backwards; whilst he, struggling against this, and keeping his feet firm, appeared in the centre of the stage with the nether portion of his body projecting forwards, and his head and shoulders held tremendously far back. The audience were immensely pleased at this most regal attitude and appearance of the inexperienced neophyte, and the manager offered him, and concluded with him, an engagement on very liberal terms. Now, this simple little story was being told, lately, in a company where there was a French lady who did not understand a word of German. When everybody laughed, at the end of the story, she wanted to know what the laughter was about, and our worthy D. (who, when he speaks French, gives a most admirable, and very close, imitation of the tones and actions of French people, but is continually at a loss for the words) undertook to translate the story to her. When he came to the wheel which had got entangled with Sarastro’s cloak, constraining him to his regal attitude, he called it ‘Le rat,’ instead of ‘La roue.’ The French lady’s brow clouded, her eyebrows drew together, and in her face was plainly to be read the terror which the story had produced in her, whereto conduced the circumstance that D. had ‘let on’ upon his face the full power of tragi-comic muscular play which it was capable of. When, at the end, we all laughed more than before at this amusing misunderstanding (which we all took good care not to explain), she murmured to herself, ‘Ah! les barbares!’ The good lady not unnaturally looked upon us as barbarians for thinking it so amusing that an abominable rat should have frightened the poor young man almost to death, at the very commencement of his stage-career, by holding on to his cloak.”
When the friends had done laughing, Vincenz said: “Suppose we now bid adieu to the subject of French conversation, with all its bon mots, calembours, and other ingredients, and come to the conclusion that it really is an immense pleasure when, amongst intellectual Germans, a conversation, inspired by their humour, rushes up skyward like a coruscating firework, in a thousand hissing light-balls, crackling serpents, and lightning-like rockets.”
“But it must be remembered,” said Theodore, “that this pleasure is possible only when the friends in question, besides being intellectual and endowed with humour, possess the talent not only of talking, but of listening, the principal ingredient of real conversation.”
“Of course,” said Lothair; “those people who constitute themselves ‘spokesmen’ destroy all conversation — and so, in a lesser degree, do the ‘witty’ folk, who go from one company to another with anecdotes, crammed full of all sorts of shallow sayings; a kind of self-constituted ‘Society clowns.’ I knew a man who, being clever and witty, and at the same time a terribly talkative fellow, was invited everywhere to amuse the company; so that, the moment he came into a room, everybody looked in his face, waiting till he came out with something witty. The wretch was compelled to put himself to the torture, in order to fulfil the expectations entertained of him as well as he could, so that he could not avoid soon becoming flat and commonplace; and then he was thrown aside by every one, like a used-up utensil. He now creeps about, spiritless and sad, and seems to be like that dandy in Abener’s ‘Dream of Departed Souls,’ who, brilliant as he was in this life, is sorrowful and valueless in the other, because, on his sudden and unexpected departure, he left behind him his snuff-box of Spanish snuff, which was an integral part of him.”
“Then, too,” said Ottmar, “there are certain extraordinary people who, when entertaining company, keep up an unceasing stream of talk; not from conceit in themselves, but from a strange, mistaken well-meaningness, for fear that people shouldn’t be enjoying themselves; and keep asking if people are not ‘finding it dull,’ and so forth, thereby nipping every description of enjoyment in the bud in a moment.”’
“That is the very surest way to weary people,” said Theodore, “and I once saw it employed with the most brilliant success by my old humourist of an uncle, who, I think, from what I have told you of him, you know pretty intimately by this time. An old schoolfellow of his had turned up — a man who was utterly tedious and unendurably wearisome in all his works and ways — and he came to my uncle’s house every forenoon, disturbed him at his work, worried him to death, and then sat down to dinner without being invited. My uncle was grumpy, snappish, silent, giving his visitor most unmistakably to understand that his calls were anything but a pleasure to him; but it was all of no use. Once, when the old gentleman was complaining to me (in strong enough language, as his manner was) on the subject of this schoolfellow, I said I thought he should simply show him the door and have done with it. ‘That wouldn’t do, boy,’ said my uncle, puckering his face into a rather pleased smile. ‘You see, he is an old schoolfellow of mine, after all; but there is another way of getting rid of him which I shall try; and that will do it.’ I was not a little surprised when, the next morning, my uncle received the schoolfellow with open arms and talked to him unceasingly, saying how delighted he was to see him, and go back over the old days with him. All the old school-day stories which the schoolfellow was incessantly in the habit of repeating, and re-repeating, till they became intolerable to listen to, now poured from my uncle’s lips in a resistless cataract, no that the visitor could not escape them. And all the while my uncle kept asking him, ‘What is the matter with you to-day? You don’t seem happy. You are so monosyllabic. Do be jolly! Let us have a regular feast of old stories to-day.’ But the moment the schoolfellow opened his lips to speak my uncle would cut him short with some interminable tale. At last the affair became so unendurable to him that he wanted to cut and run. But my uncle so pressed him to stay to lunch and dinner, that, unable to resist the temptation of the good dishes, and better wine, he did stay. But scarce had he swallowed a mouthful of soup when my uncle, in extreme indignation, cried, ‘What in the devil’s name is this infernal mess? Don’t touch any more of it, brother, I beg you; there’s something better to come. Take those plates away, John!’ Like a flash of lightning the plate was swept away from under the school-friend’s nose. It was the same thing with all the dishes and courses, though they were of a nature sufficiently to excite the appetite, till the ‘something better to come’ resolved itself into Cheshire cheese, which of all cheeses the school-friend hated the most, although he disliked all cheese. From an apparently ardent endeavour to set before him an unusually good dinner he had not been suffered to swallow two mouthfuls; and it was much the same with the wine. Scarce had he put a glass to his lips when my uncle cried, ‘Old fellow, you’re making a wry face. Quite right, that isn’t wine, it’s vinegar. John, a better tap!’ And one kind after another came, French wines, Rhine wines, and still the cry was, ‘You don’t care about that wine,’ &c., till, when the Cheshire cheese put the finishing stroke on things, the school-friend jumped up from his chair in a fury. ‘Dear old friend!’ said my uncle in the kindliest of tones, ‘you are not at all like your usual self. Come, as we are together here, let us crack a bottle of the real old “care-killer.”’ The school-friend plumped into his chair again. The hundred years’ old Rhine wine pearled glorious and clear in the two glasses which my uncle filled to the brim. ‘The devil,’ he cried, holding his glass to the light, ‘this wine has got muddy, on my hands. Don’t you see? No, no; I can’t set that before anybody,’ and he swallowed the contents of both glasses himself, with evident delight. The school-friend popped up again, and plumped into his chair once more on my uncle’s crying, ‘John, Tokay!’ The Tokay was brought, my uncle poured it out, and handed the schoolfellow a glass, saying, ‘There, my boy, you shall be satisfied at last, in good earnest. That is nectar!’ But scarce had the school-friend set the glass to his lips when my uncle cried, ‘Thunder! there’s been a cockroach at this bottle.’ At this the school-friend, in utter fury, dashed the glass into a thousand pieces against the wall, ran out of the house like one possessed, and never showed his face across the threshold again.”
“With all respect for your uncle’s grim humour,” said Sylvester, “I think there was rather a systematic perseverance in the course of mystification involved in such a process of getting rid of a troublesome person. I should have much preferred to show him the door and have done with it; though I admit that it was quite according to your uncle’s peculiar vein of humour to prearrange a theatrical scene of this sort in place of the perhaps troublesome and unpleasant consequences which might have arisen if he had kicked him out. I can vividly picture to myself the old parasite as he suffered the torments of Tantalus, as your uncle kept continually awakening fresh hopes in his mind and instantly dashing them to the ground; and how, at last, utter desperation took possession of him.”
“You can introduce the scene into your next comedy,” said Theodore.
“It reminds me,” said Vincenz, “of that delightful meal in Katzenberger’s Badereise, and of the poor exciseman who has almost to choke himself with the bites of food which are slid to him over the ‘Trumpeter’s muscle,’ the Buccinator, although that scene would not be of much service to Sylvester for a new piece.”
“The great Kazenberger,” said Theodore, “whom women do not like on account of the robustness of his cynicism, I formerly knew very well. He was intimate with my uncle, and I could, at some future time, tell you many delightful things concerning him.”
Cyprian had been sitting in profound thought, and seemed to have been scarcely attending to what the others had been saying. Theodore tried to arouse his attention and direct it to the hot punch which he had brewed as the best corrective of the evil influence of the weather.
“Beyond a doubt,” said Cyprian, “this is the germ of insanity, if it is not actually insanity itself.”
The friends looked questionably at each other.
“Ha!” cried Cyprian, getting up from his chair and looking round him with a smile, “I find I have spoken out, aloud, the conclusion of the mental process which has been going on within me in silence. After I have emptied this glass of punch and duly lauded Theodore’s art of preparing that liquid after its mystic proportions, and due relations of the hot, strong and sweet, I will simply point out that there is a certain amount of insanity, a certain dose of crackiness, so deeply rooted in human nature, that there is no better mode of getting at the knowledge of it than by carefully studying it in those madmen and eccentrics whom we by no means have to go to madhouses to come across, but whom we may meet with every hour of the day in our daily course; and, in fact, best of all in the study of our own selves, in each of whom these is present a sufficient quantum of that ‘precipitate resulting from the chemical process of life.’”
“What has brought you back to the subject of insanity and the insane?” asked Lothair, in a tone of vexation.
“Do not lose your temper, dear Lothair,” said Cyprian, “we were talking on the subject of society conversation; and then I thought of two mutually antagonistic classes of characters which are often fatal to social talking. There are people who find it impossible to get away from ideas which have come to occupy their minds; who go on repeating the same things over and over again, for hours, no matter what turn the conversation may have taken. All efforts to carry them along with the stream of the conversation are vain; when one at last flatters oneself that one has got them into the current of the talk, lo and behold, they return à leurs moutons again, just as before, and consequently dam up the beautiful, rushing stream of conversation. In contradistinction to them are those who forget one second what they said in the immediately preceding one; who ask a question, and, without waiting for an answer, introduce something completely irrelevant and heterogeneous; to whom everything suggests everything else, and consequently nothing which has any connection with the subject of the talk — who, in a few words, throw together a many-tinted lumber of ideas in which nothing that can be called distinct is discoverable. Those latter destroy everything like agreeable conversation and drive us to a state of despair, and the former produce intolerable tedium and annoyance. But, don’t you think there lies in those people the germ of real insanity in the one case, and in the other of folie, whose character is very much, if not exactly, what the psychological doctors term ‘looseness’ or ‘incoherence’ of ideas?”
“There is no doubt,” said Theodore, “that I should like to say a great deal concerning the art of relating in society, for there is much which is mysterious about it, depending, as it does, on place, time, and individual relationships, and difficult to be ranged under special heads. But it seems to me that this matter might carry us too far, and be opposed to the real tendency of the Serapion Club.”
“Most certainly,” said Lothair. “We want to tranquillise ourselves with the thought that we — neither madmen nor fools — are, on the contrary, the most delightful companions to each other; who not only can talk, but can listen; more than that, each of us can listen quite patiently when another reads aloud, and that is saying a good deal. Friend Ottmar told me a day or two ago that he had written a story in which the celebrated poet-painter Salvator Rosa played a leading part. I hope he will read it to us now.”
“I am a little afraid,” said Ottmar, as he took the manuscript from his pocket, “that you won’t think my story Serapiontic. I had it in mind to imitate that ease and genial liberty of breadth which predominates in the ‘Novelli’ of the old Italians, particularly of Boccaccio; and over this endeavour I acknowledge that I have grown prolix. Also you will say, with justice, that it is only here and there that I have hit upon the true ‘Novella’ tone — perhaps only in the headings of the chapters. After this noble and candid confession I am sure you will not deal too hardly with me, but think chiefly of anything which you may find entertaining and lively.”
“What prefaces!” cried Lothair. “An unnecessary Capitatio Benevolentiae; read us your Novella, my good friend Ottmar, and if you succeed in vividly portraying to us your Salvator Rosa in verisimilitude before our eyes, we will recognise you as a true Serapion brother, and leave everything else to the grumbling, fault-finding critics. Shall it not be so, my eminent Serapion Brethren?”
The friends acquiesced, and Ottmar began.
SIGNOR FORMICA.
A NOVELLA.
THE RENOWNED PAINTER, Salvator Rosa, comes to Rome, and is attacked by a dangerous malady. — What happened to him during this malady.
People of renown generally have much evil spoken of them, whether truthfully or otherwise, and this was the case with the doughty painter Salvator Rosa, whose vivid, living pictures you, dear reader, have certainly never looked upon without a most special and heartfelt enjoyment.
When his fame had pervaded and resounded through Rome, Naples, Tuscany, nay, all Italy; when other painters, if they would please, were obliged to imitate his peculiar style — just then, malignant men, envious of him, invented all sorts of wicked reports concerning him, with the view of casting foul spots of shadow upon the shining auriole of his artistic fame. Salvator, they said, had, at an earlier time of his life, belonged to a band of robbers, and it was to his experiences at that time that he was indebted for all the wild, gloomy, strangely-attired figures which he introduced into his pictures, just as he copied into his landscape those darksome deserts, compounded of lonesomeness, mystery, and terror — the Selve Selvagge of Dante — where he had been driven to lurk. The worst accusation brought against him was that he had been involved in that terrible, bloody conspiracy which “Mas’ Aniello” of evil fame had set afoot in Naples. People told all about that, with the minutest details.
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