Well, the editor promised to do his best for his literary colleague. It did rather surprise him when his friend confessed that the manuscript was the work of a tomcat called Murr, and contained an account of the cat’s life and opinions; however, he had given his word, and since the style of the opening struck him as quite good he went straight off, with the manuscript in his pocket, to Herr Dümmler1 in Unter den Linden and offered him the right to publish the tomcat’s book.
Herr Dümmler said that although he had never numbered a cat among his authors before, nor did he know that any of his esteemed colleagues had ever taken on a man of that stamp, he was willing to make the attempt.
So printing began, and the editor saw the first clean proofs. Imagine his alarm, however, when he discovered that now and then Murr’s story breaks off, and there are interpolations of a different nature which belong to another book, containing the biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler!
After careful inquiry and investigation, the editor finally established the following facts. When Murr the cat was writing his Life and Opinions, he found a printed book in his master’s study, tore it up without more ado and, thinking no ill, used its pages partly to rest his work on, partly as blotting paper. These pages were left in the manuscript – and were inadvertently printed too, as if they were part of it!
Humbly and ruefully, therefore, the editor must confess that his own carelessness was the sole reason for this jumbled medley of material, since he ought to have gone through the tomcat’s entire manuscript with close attention before sending it to the printer. However, there is some consolation for him.
First, the gentle reader can easily avoid any difficulty if he will be so kind as to note the following indications in brackets: W.P. (Waste Paper) and M. cont. (Murr continues). Then again, it seems extremely likely that the torn-up book never reached the bookshops at all, since nobody knows the slightest thing about it. Consequently, the Kapellmeister’s friends at least will be glad that the cat’s literary vandalism allows them access to some information about the very strange circumstances of the life of Kreisler, in his own way a not unremarkable man.
The editor hopes for your kind indulgence.
Finally, it is a fact that authors often owe their boldest notions and most remarkable turns of phrase to their kind typesetters, who assist the inspiration of their ideas by perpetrating what are called printer’s errors. For instance, on page 326 of Part Two of his own Night Pieces,2 the editor spoke of the spacious groves to be found in a garden. This was not ingenious enough for the typesetter, so instead of the little word groves he printed the little word stoves. Similarly, in the story Das Fräulein von Scuderi,3 the typesetter ingeniously caused that lady to appear not in a black silk gown but in a black silk town, and so forth!
However, credit where credit is due! Neither Murr the cat nor the anonymous biographer of Kapellmeister Kreisler should be decked out in false plumage, and the editor therefore begs his gentle reader, before perusing this little work, to make the following alterations so as not to think either better or worse of the two authors than they deserve.
Only the principal errata are noted; lesser misprints, however, are left to the kind reader’s discretion.
[…]∗
And lastly, the editor can assure his readers that he himself has met Murr the cat and found him a man of mild and amiable manners. His likeness is very well caught on the cover of this book.4
Berlin, November 1819
E. T. A. HOFFMANN
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
Bashfully – with trembling breast – I lay before the world some leaves from my life: its sorrows, its hopes, its yearnings – effusions which flowed from my inmost heart in sweet hours of leisure and poetic rapture.
Shall I, can I, hold my own before the stern tribunal of criticism? Yet it is for you, you feeling souls, you pure childlike minds, you faithful hearts akin to mine, aye, it is for you I write, and a single fair tear in your eye will console me, will heal the wounds inflicted upon me by the cold reproof of insensitive reviewers!
Berlin, May 18—
Murr
(Étudiant en belles lettres)1
FOREWORD
(Suppressed by the author)
With the confidence and peace of mind native to true genius, I lay my life story before the world, so that the reader may learn how to educate himself to be a great tomcat, may recognize the full extent of my excellence, may love, value, honour and admire me – and worship me a little.
Should anyone be audacious enough to think of casting doubt on the sterling worth of this remarkable book, let him reflect that he is dealing with a tomcat possessed of intellect, understanding, and sharp claws.
Berlin, May 18—
Murr
(Homme de lettres très renommè)1
P.S. This is too bad! They’ve printed the author’s foreword as well, the one which was supposed to be suppressed! There’s nothing for it but to beg the kind reader not to think too ill of the literary tomcat for the rather arrogant tone of his foreword, and to recollect that if many another sensitive author’s modest preface were translated into the true language of his inmost thoughts, it might not sound so very different.
The Editor
PART I
SENSATIONS OF EXISTENCE
My Months of Youth
Ah, what a fine, wonderful and elevated thing is life! ‘O thou sweet habit of existence!’ cries that Dutch hero in the tragedy.1 And so do I, although not, like the hero, at the painful moment when he is about to part with that sweet habit – no, at the very point when I am pervaded by the joy of reflecting that I have now entirely acquired it, and have no intention at all of ever losing it again. For I believe that the spiritual power, the unknown force or whatever else we may call the principle governing us, which has, so to speak, forced the aforesaid habit upon me without my consent, cannot possibly be worse disposed than the kindly man with whom I have taken up residence, and who never snatches away the plate of fish he has set before me from under my nose just when I’m really enjoying it.
O Nature, sacred, sublime Nature! How all your joy, all your delight flows through my troubled breast, how your mysteriously murmuring breath wafts around me! The night is rather cool, and I could wish – yet he who is reading this, or isn’t reading it, will never understand my lofty inspiration, being unaware of the high vantage point to which I have soared. Climbed would be more accurate, but a poet doesn’t mention his feet, even if he has four of them like me, only his pinions, though they may not have grown on him but are just devised by some skilful mechanic. Above me arches the wide and starry sky, the full moon casts her sparkling light, and the roofs and turrets around me are bathed in glowing silvery lustre! The noisy tumult in the streets below is gradually dying down, the night is becoming ever more silent – the clouds drift by – a solitary dove flutters round the church tower, cooing plaintive amorous laments! Ah, if the dear little thing were to approach me! I feel a strange stirring within me, a certain impassioned appetite carries me away with irresistible force! Ah, would that sweet and lovely creature but come hither, I would clasp her to my lovesick heart and never let her go – oh, there she goes fluttering into the dovecote, perfidious creature, and leaves me sitting here desolate on the roof! How rare is true sympathy of souls in these sorry, obdurate, loveless times!
Is it such a great thing to walk upright on two feet that the species calling itself Mankind should claim dominion over all of us who go about, better balanced, on four? However, I know men pride themselves enormously on something which is supposed to reside in their heads, and which they call Reason. I’m not sure just what they mean by that, but one thing is certain: if, as I may conclude from certain remarks of my master and benefactor, Reason means nothing but the ability to be conscious of what one is doing and play no silly pranks, I wouldn’t change with any human being alive.
In fact I believe we simply get accustomed to consciousness: we come into life and get through
it somehow, just how we don’t know ourselves. At least, that’s what happened to me, and I suppose there isn’t a human being on earth, either, who knows the How and Where of his birth from personal experience, only by hearsay, and hearsay can often be very unreliable. Cities dispute the birth of a famous man, and so it is that I myself don’t know for certain, and will never be sure, whether I first saw the light of day in the cellar, the attic or the woodshed – or rather didn’t see it, but was merely seen in it by my dear Mama. For as is usual with our kind, my eyes were closed. I have a very dim recollection of certain growling, hissing sounds going on around me, sounds I make myself, almost involuntarily, when overcome by anger. More clearly and almost with full awareness, I remember finding myself imprisoned in a very cramped container with soft walls, scarcely able to draw breath, and setting up a miserable lamentation in my need and fear. I felt something reach down into the container and take hold of my body very ungently, which gave me an opportunity of sensing and employing the first wonderful power that Nature has bestowed on me. I shot the sharp, supple claws out from my well-furred fore-paws and dug them into the thing which had seized me, and which, as I learned later, could be nothing but a human hand. This hand, however, removed me from the container and dropped me, and next moment I felt two violent blows on both sides of the face which today, though I say it myself, is dominated by a fine set of whiskers. I now realize that the hand, injured by the muscular play of my paws, boxed my ears a couple of times; I acquired my first experience of moral cause and effect, and it was a moral instinct that induced me to sheathe my claws again as quickly as I had put them out. Later on, this sheathing of my claws was correctly recognized as an act of the utmost bonhomie and amiability, and described by the term ‘velvet paws’.
As I was saying, the hand dropped me to the ground again. Soon afterwards, however, it took hold of my head once more and pushed it down, so that my little mouth touched a liquid which I began to lap – I myself don’t know what put lapping into my head, so it must have been physical instinct. The liquid gave me a curiously comfortable feeling inside. I now know that it was sweet milk I was enjoying; I had been hungry, and drinking it satisfied me. So after my moral education had begun, my physical education followed.
Once again, but more gently than before, two hands picked me up and laid me on a soft, warm bed. I was feeling better and better, and I began to express my internal well-being by uttering those strange noises peculiar to my species which humans, with some similarity of sound, call purring. I was thus taking giant strides in my worldly education. What an advantage it is, what a precious gift of Heaven, to be able to express one’s inner sense of physical well-being in sound and gesture! First I purred, then I discovered that inimitable talent of waving my tail in the most graceful of coils, and then the wonderful gift of expressing joy, pain, delight and rapture, terror and despair, in short, all feelings and passions in their every nuance with the single little word, ‘Miaow’. What is human speech compared to this simplest of all simple means of making oneself understood? But back to the remarkable and instructive story of my eventful youth!
I awoke from deep sleep, surrounded by a dazzling brightness which alarmed me. The veils were gone from my eyes: I could see!
Before I could get used to the light, and most of all to the motley variety of sights presented to my eyes, I was obliged to sneeze violently several times in succession, but soon I could see very well indeed, as if I had been doing it for quite some time.
Ah, sight! Sight is a wonderful, marvellous habit, a habit without which it would be very difficult to manage in the world at all! Happy are those highly talented persons who find it as easy as I to accustom themselves to seeing
I cannot deny that I did feel some alarm, and set up the same pitiful lament as I had previously uttered in the cramped container. There immediately appeared a small, thin old man whom I will never forget, since despite my extensive circle of acquaintance I have never again seen anyone who could be described as like him, or even similar. It frequently happens that one or other of my own kind has a black and white coat, but you will seldom see a human being with a snow-white head of hair and eyebrows black as jet: such, however, was the case with my tutor. Indoors, he wore a short, bright yellow dressing-gown which terrified me, and consequently I scrambled down from the soft cushion and away as best I could, clumsy as I was at the time. The man bent down to me with a gesture that seemed friendly and instilled confidence in me. He picked me up. I took care not to employ the muscular play of my claws – the ideas of scratching and blows uniting of their own accord – and indeed the man meant me no ill, for he put me down in front of a bowl of sweet milk. I lapped it up greedily, which seemed to please him not a little. He talked to me a great deal, although I didn’t understand what he said, for being an inexperienced youngster of a tom kitten at the time I had not yet gained any understanding of human language. I cannot say much about my benefactor at all, but one thing is certain, he must have had many skills, and have been very well versed in the arts and sciences, since all who visited him – and I noticed folk among them wearing a star or a cross just where Nature has bestowed a yellowish patch on my fur, that is, on my chest – all who visited him treated him with exceptional civility, indeed sometimes with a certain timid awe, as I was to treat Scaramouche the poodle at a later date, and they never addressed him as anything but ‘My most honoured, my dear, my highly esteemed Master Abraham!’ Only two people called him simply ‘My dear fellow’: a tall, thin man in bright green breeches and white silk stockings, and a small, very plump woman with black hair and a quantity of rings on all her fingers. It appears that the gentleman was a prince, while the woman was a Jewish lady.
These distinguished visitors notwithstanding, Master Abraham inhabited a little room high up in the building where his lodgings lay, so that I could very easily take my first promenades through the window, up on the roof and into the attic.
Yes, it cannot be otherwise, I must have been born in an attic! Never mind your cellars and woodsheds – I’ll plump for the attic! Climate, native land, customs and usage – how indelible an impression do they make! Aye, they alone shape the citizen of the world both within and without! Whence comes that elevated feeling into my soul, that irresistible urge towards what is lofty? Whence that wonderfully rare facility in climbing, that enviable mastery of the boldest and most skilful leaps? Ah, what sweet melancholy fills my breast! The longing for my native attic stirs powerfully within me! I consecrate these tears to thee, fair fatherland – to thee do I dedicate this plaintively exultant mew! These leaps and bounds are in thy honour; there is virtue in them and patriotic courage! O native attic, thou grantest me many a little mouse in thy generosity, and what’s more, a person can snatch many a sausage and flitch of bacon out of the chimney, a person can catch many a starling and even a little pigeon now and then. ‘How mighty is my love for thee, O Fatherland!’2
However, I have much more to narrate about my –
W.P. – and your Highness, don’t you recollect the great wind which snatched the hat off the notary’s head and cast it into the Seine as he was crossing the Pont Neuf by night? There’s something similar in Rabelais, although it wasn’t really the wind that robbed the notary of the hat he was holding firmly clapped to his head as he let his cloak fly free in the air, but a grenadier who, running by with a loud cry of ‘There’s a strong wind a-blowing, sir!’, swiftly snatched the fine castor from between the notary’s wig and his hand, nor was it really this castor that was flung into the waters of the Seine, but the stormy wind consigned the soldier’s own shabby felt hat to its watery grave. Now you know, Highness, that as the notary stood there utterly perplexed, a second soldier running past with the same cry of ‘There’s a strong wind a-blowing, sir!’, seized the notary’s cloak by its collar and whisked it off his shoulders, and directly afterwards a third soldier, running by with the self-same cry of ‘There’s a strong wind a-blowing, sir!’, snatched the Spanish cane with
its gold knob out of his hands. The notary shouted at the top of his voice, threw his wig after the last of the scoundrels and then went on bareheaded, without cloak and cane, to take down the most remarkable of all testaments, to have the strangest of all adventures.3 You know all that, your Highness!”
‘ “I know,” replied the Prince, when I had said this, “I know nothing about it at all, and I really don’t understand, Master Abraham, how you can tell me such a confused rigmarole. I do know the Pont Neuf, however; it is in Paris, and although I have never crossed it on foot I have often driven over it, as befits my rank. I never met this notary Rabelais, nor have I ever in my life concerned myself with soldiers’ pranks! In my younger days, when I was still commanding my army, I had all the young noblemen thrashed once a week for the stupid things they had done or might be about to do, but as for flogging the rank and file, that was the business of the lieutenants, who followed my own example and did it weekly, on a Saturday, so that on Sunday there wasn’t a nobleman or a common soldier in the whole army who hadn’t received a sound thrashing. Consequently the troops, besides getting morality whipped into them, became accustomed to being beaten without ever having faced the enemy, and if they did they could do nothing but fight. That will be clear to you, Master Abraham, and now for God’s sake tell me what you are at, with your storm and your notary Rabelais robbed on the Pont Neuf! What’s your excuse for the way the festivities broke up in wild confusion, with a rocket coming down on my toupet, with my dear son ending up in the basin of the fountain, to be drenched by the spray of treacherous dolphins, with my daughter obliged to flee through the park unveiled, like Atalanta,4 her skirts hitched up, with – with – who can count the mishaps of that disastrous night? Well, Master Abraham, what do you say?”
The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr Page 5