The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  My black and white Mama caressed me tenderly, and then inquired in more detail about the circumstances of my life. I told her everything, not forgetting to mention my high degree of education, and how I came by it.

  Mina seemed less moved by her son’s superior advantages than might have been expected. Indeed, she gave me to understand in no uncertain terms that with all my remarkable intellect and depths of knowledge, I had chosen a path of error which might lead to my ruin. Most of all, however, she warned me not to let Master Abraham discover the knowledge I had acquired, since he would only make use of it to keep me in the most oppressive servitude.

  ‘I may not be able to boast of your education,’ said Mina, ‘but I am not at all short of natural abilities and pleasing talents implanted in me by Nature. Among them, for instance, I may count the power to make crackling sparks leap from my fur when I am stroked. And what trouble hasn’t that talent alone given me! Both children and adults would keep ruffling the fur on my back for the sake of that firework display, greatly to my vexation, and if I crossly jumped aside or showed my claws they called me a timid, savage animal and even hit me. The moment Master Abraham learns that you can write, my dear Murr, he will make you his copying clerk, and demand of you, as your duty, what you now do for pleasure and of your own free will.’

  Mina said a good deal more about my relationship with Master Abraham and my education. Only later did I realize that what I took for an aversion to scholarship was my black and white mother’s genuine worldly wisdom.

  I learned that Mina was living with the old woman next door, in rather reduced circumstances, and it was often hard for her to satisfy her hunger. This moved me deeply. Filial devotion stirred powerfully within my breast; I remembered the fine herring head left over from my dinner yesterday, and decided to present it to the kind mother with whom I had so unexpectedly been reunited.

  Who can measure the inconstancy of heart of those who walk beneath the light of the moon? Why has Fate not locked our breasts against the wild play of unworthy passions? Why must we bow, like a frail reed shaken with the wind, before the storm of life? O hostile Fate! O Appetite, thy name is Cat!36 With the herring head in my mouth I climbed to the roof, like pious Aeneas,37 intending to get in through the attic window. I then fell into a state that, dividing my Self in a curious way from my Self, yet seemed to be my real Self. I believe I have expressed myself clearly and accurately, so that everyone will recognize the student of psychology plumbing intellectual depths in this account of my strange condition. Let me continue!

  That strange feeling, compounded of desire and reluctance, numbed my senses – overpowered me – resistance was useless – I ate the herring head!

  I heard Mina mew anxiously – anxiously I heard her call my name – full of remorse and shame, I ran back to my master’s room and crept under the stove, where I was tormented by the most distressing ideas. I saw Mina my black and white mother, whom I had found again, I saw her desolate, abandoned, hungry for the meal I had promised, near fainting – ah, the wind blowing down the chimney called the name Mina! Mina, Mina, rustled my master’s papers, Mina, creaked the rickety wicker chairs. Mina, Mina, lamented the stove door! Oh, what a bitter, heart-rending pang went through me! I decided to invite the poor creature to share my breakfast milk if possible. At this notion a blessed peace came over me, like cooling, soothing shade. I put back my ears and fell asleep!

  You feeling souls who truly understand me, you will realize – that is, if you aren’t donkeys but good, honest tomcats – I say you will realize that this storm in my breast was bound to brighten the skies of my youthful firmament, just as a hurricane does good, driving dark clouds away and revealing the purest of views. Ah, heavy as that herring head weighed on my mind at first, yet I learned to understand what Appetite means, and see that it is a crime to resist Mother Nature. So let everyone look for his own herring heads and not anticipate the perspicacity of others: guided by a proper appetite, they’ll soon find theirs.

  Thus do I close this episode in my life, which –

  W.P. – nothing more tiresome for an historian or a biographer than when, as if riding a wild colt, he must cavort this way and that, over stocks and stones, up hill and down dale, always searching for trodden paths and never finding them. Such is the case of the man who has undertaken to set down for your benefit, gentle reader, what he knows of the remarkable life of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler. He would happily have begun: Johannes Kreisler first saw the light of day in the little town of N., or B., or K., and did so on Whit Monday, or Easter Day, of this or that year. But such nice chronological order is out of the question, since the unfortunate narrator has at his disposal nothing but oral information imparted bit by bit, which he must set down at once if the whole is not to be lost from his memory. As for just how this information was imparted, gentle reader, that is something you shall learn before the end of the book, when perhaps you will forgive the rhapsodic nature of the whole, and you may perhaps think that, despite its apparent incoherence, it has a firm thread running through it, holding all the parts together.

  Just at this moment there is nothing to be told but that not long after Prince Irenaeus had settled in Sieghartsweiler, Princess Hedwiga and Julia were walking in the pretty park of Sieghartshof one fine summer’s evening. The light of the setting sun lay like a veil of gold over the woods. Not a leaf stirred: trees and bushes awaited the caress of the evening breeze in expectant silence. The deep stillness was broken only by the babbling of the forest stream rushing over white pebbles. Arm in arm and silent, the girls walked along the narrow, flowery avenues, over the bridges that crossed several windings of the brook, until they came to the great lake at the end of the park, with the distant Geierstein and its picturesque ruins reflected in the water.

  ‘How lovely this is!’ cried Julia from her heart.

  ‘Let’s go into the fisherman’s cottage,’ said Hedwiga. ‘The evening sun is dreadfully hot, and the view of the Geierstein from the middle window of the cottage is even better than from here, since the landscape over there is seen as a group, like a real picture and not a panorama.’

  Julia followed the Princess, who had no sooner entered the cottage and was looking out of the window than she wished she had a crayon and paper to draw the view in this light, which she described as singularly intriguing.

  ‘I could almost envy you,’ said Julia, ‘for your ability to draw trees and bushes, mountains and lakes from nature so faithfully. But I know very well that even if I could draw as prettily as you, I would never succeed in depicting a landscape from nature, and the lovelier the view, the less could I do so. I would never get down to work for the sheer delight and pleasure of looking!’

  At these words of Julia’s a certain smile flitted over the Princess’s countenance, a smile that might have been called odd in a girl of sixteen. Master Abraham, who sometimes expressed his ideas rather strangely, said that such a play of the facial muscles was like the eddies on the surface of water when something menacing stirs in the depths below. In short, Princess Hedwiga smiled, but as she opened her rosy lips to say something in reply to the gentle unartistic Julia, they heard the sound of chords very close to them: chords played so powerfully, so wildly, that the instrument hardly seemed to be an ordinary guitar.

  The Princess fell silent, and both she and Julia hurried out of the fisherman’s cottage.

  Now they heard tune after tune, linked by the strangest of transitions, the most outlandish sequences of chords. From time to time a resonant male voice could be heard, now exploring all the sweetness of an Italian song, now suddenly breaking off and falling into grave and gloomy melodies, now singing in recitative style, now speaking firm and forcefully accentuated words to the music.

  The guitar was tuned – there were more chords – they broke off again; more tuning – vehement words spoken as if in anger – then melodies – and then more tuning again.

  Full of curiosity about the strange virtuoso, Hedwiga and
Julia stole closer and closer, until they caught sight of a man dressed in black with his back turned to them, sitting on a rock close by the lake and playing the guitar in this odd manner, sometimes singing, sometimes speaking.

  He had just entirely retuned the guitar in an unusual way and was now trying a few chords, exclaiming from time to time: ‘Wrong again – no purity – now a trifle of a semitone too low, now a trifle of a semitone too high!’

  Then, having slipped the instrument free of the blue ribbon from which it hung around his shoulders, he took it in both hands, held it in front of him, and began: ‘Tell me, you wilful little creature, where’s your melody, in what corner of your being has the pure scale hidden? Or do you mean to rebel against your master and say his ear has been hammered to death in the smithy of equal temperament, and his enharmonics38 are just a childish picture puzzle? I believe you are mocking me, even though I wear my beard much better trimmed than Master Stefano Pacini, detto il Venetiano,39 who laid within you that gift of melody which remains an impenetrable mystery to me. Now let me tell you, dear creature, if you are determined not to allow the concordant dualism of Gs and As or Cs and Ds – or rather, of all the notes – then I will set nine good German masters loose on you, to take you to task and get the better of you with enharmonic remarks. And there’ll be no flinging yourself into the arms of your Stefano Pacini, there’ll be no insisting on having the last word like a shrewish woman. Or are you proud and arrogant enough to think that all the pretty spirits dwelling in you will obey only the mighty magic of enchanters who left this earth long ago, while in the hands of a fool –’

  At this last remark the man suddenly stopped, jumped up, and gazed out at the lake like one lost in deep thought. The girls, intrigued by his strange actions, stood behind the bushes as if rooted to the ground; they scarcely dared to breathe.

  ‘The guitar,’ burst out the man at last, ‘is surely the most miserable and imperfect of all instruments, worthy only to be taken up by lovesick, mooning shepherds who’ve lost the mouthpieces of their shawms,40 for otherwise they’d rather blow a hearty tune, arousing echoes with cowherd’s melodies of the sweetest desire, and sending mournful music in the direction of their Emmelines41 in the far mountains, rounding up their pretty cattle with the merry crack of supple whips! Oh God! Shepherds who sigh “like a furnace to their mistress’ eyebrow”42 – teach them that the triad is just three notes, and may be knocked down when stabbed by a seventh, and put the guitar into their hands! And as for grave fellows with a tolerable amount of education, men of great erudition who occupy their minds with the wisdom of Greece and know what happens at the court of Peking or Nanking, but understand not the least thing about sheep and sheep-breeding, what’s such whining and strumming to them? What are you about, you fool? Remember the late Hippel,43 who tells us that the sight of a man teaching the piano makes him feel as if that teacher were boiling eggs – and now strumming the guitar – shame on you, you fool!’

  With which the man flung the instrument away into the bushes, and strode quickly off without noticing the girls.

  ‘Well,’ cried Julia after a moment, laughing, ‘well, Hedwiga, what do you make of that odd apparition? Where can the strange man come from – a man who first talks so charmingly to his instrument and then casts it contemptuously away like a broken box?’

  ‘It’s not right,’ said Hedwiga, as if in a sudden fit of anger, while her pale cheeks flushed blood-red, ‘it’s not right for the park to be kept unlocked, so that any stranger can get in.’

  ‘What?’ replied Julia. ‘Do you think the Prince should be so petty as to keep the people of Sieghartsweiler out of the most delightful place in the whole district? And not them alone, but anyone who walks this way? You cannot mean it seriously!’

  ‘You forget,’ the Princess continued in even greater agitation, ‘you forget the danger it means to ourselves. Think how often we walk here alone, just as we are now, strolling down the most remote woodland paths, far from all the servants! Suppose one day some ruffian –’

  ‘Why,’ Julia interrupted the Princess, ‘I do believe you fear some hulking great giant of fairy-tale, or a legendary robber knight, might leap out from the nearest bush, abduct us and carry us off to his stronghold! No, no, Heaven would prevent it! But apart from that, I must confess I quite like the idea of some little adventure here in this lonely, romantic forest. I’m thinking of Shakespeare’s As You Like it, which Mother refused to let us have for so long, until at last Lothario read it aloud to us. Wouldn’t you like just a little to play Celia, with me as your faithful Rosalind? Now, what part shall we give our unknown virtuoso?’

  ‘Oh,’ replied the Princess, ‘that stranger – can you believe, Julia, that his form and his strange words struck horror into my mind, a horror I cannot explain? Shudders still run through me; I am almost prostrated by a feeling both strange and terrible, which numbs all my senses. A memory stirs in the darkest depths of my mind, vainly struggling to take distinct shape. I have seen the man before, involved in some dreadful incident which rent my heart – or perhaps it was only the lingering memory of a haunting dream – but no more of that: with his strange conduct and his confused talk, the man struck me as a menacing, uncanny creature. Perhaps he meant to lure us into baleful magic circles.’

  ‘What strange fancies!’ cried Julia. ‘For my part, I see the dark apparition with the guitar as Monsieur Jaques, or honest Touchstone, whose philosophy runs almost like the stranger’s curious remarks. But now, our first task must be to rescue the poor little instrument that barbarian flung so angrily into the bushes.’

  ‘Julia, what are you about? For Heaven’s sake!’ cried the Princess, but Julia, taking no notice of her, disappeared into the undergrowth and came back in triumph a few moments later, carrying the guitar the stranger had cast aside.

  The Princess overcame her alarm, and looked very closely at the instrument, whose strange shape would have shown its great age even had that not been confirmed by the date and the maker’s name, which could clearly be seen on the bottom of the body through the hole in the soundbox, for the words ‘Stefano Pacini fec. Venet. 1532’44 were etched there in black.

  Julia could not resist it: she struck a chord on the delicate instrument, and was almost alarmed at the full, powerful sound that issued from the little thing. ‘Oh, wonderful, wonderful!’ she cried, and went on playing. Soon, however, since she was used to playing the guitar only as accompaniment to her singing, she could not but begin involuntarily to sing as she walked along. The Princess followed her in silence. When Julia stopped, Hedwiga said: ‘Go on, sing, play this magical instrument! Perhaps you will succeed in banishing the evil, hostile spirits that wanted to have power over me, banishing them to the infernal regions.’

  ‘Evil spirits? What do you mean?’ replied Julia. ‘May they be and remain strangers to us both, but I will certainly sing and play, for I don’t know that I have ever found an instrument so apt to my hand or that suited me so well as this one. And I feel as if my voice sounds much better than usual with it.’

  She began a well-known Italian canzonetta, and lost herself in all manner of delicate melismas, daring runs and capriccios, giving free rein to the full richness of the notes dwelling in her breast.

  If the Princess had been alarmed by the sight of the unknown man, then Julia froze to a statue when, just as she was about to turn and go down another path, he suddenly confronted her.

  The stranger, a man about thirty years old, was dressed in black and in the height of fashion. There was nothing at all odd or unusual in his clothing, and yet his appearance did have something singular and eccentric about it. In spite of the cleanliness of his garments, a certain negligence was apparent, seeming to stem less from carelessness than from the fact that the stranger had been obliged to go along a path he had not expected to take, and for which his clothes were ill-suited. There he stood, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his neckcloth only loosely tied, his shoes so thick with dust that their gold buckle
s were barely visible, and his little three-cornered hat, meant only to be carried under the arm, looked rather ridiculous with the back of its brim turned down to protect him from the sun. He must have forced his way through the densest thickets in the park, for his tangled black hair was full of fir needles. He cast a quick look at the Princess and then let the soulful brilliance of his large dark eyes rest on Julia, thereby further increasing her embarrassment, so that tears came to her eyes, as they usually did in such circumstances.

  ‘And do those heavenly notes,’ began the stranger at last, in a low and gentle voice, ‘do those heavenly notes cease at the sight of me and dissolve into tears?’

  The Princess, forcibly overcoming the first impression the stranger had made on her, looked proudly at him and then said, in almost cutting tones: ‘Your sudden appearance, sir, is certainly a surprise to us! One does not expect to meet strangers in the princely park at this hour. I am Princess Hedwiga.’

  As soon as the Princess began to speak, the stranger had turned swiftly towards her and was now looking into her eyes, but his entire countenance seemed altered. Gone was the expression of melancholy longing, gone was every trace of a mind agitated in its inmost depths; a crazily twisted smile exaggerated his expression of bitter irony to the point of drollery or farce. The Princess stopped in mid-speech as if she had felt an electric shock and cast her eyes down, her whole face red as blood.

  It seemed that the stranger was about to say something, but at that moment Julia began: ‘Am I not a silly, foolish creature to take alarm and weep like a little child caught nibbling on the sly? For yes, sir, I was nibbling on the sly, enticing the most exquisite notes from your guitar – it is all the fault of the guitar and our curiosity. We overheard the charming way you addressed the little thing, and then we saw you angrily throw the poor creature away into the bushes, so that it sighed aloud in tones of lamentation. That went to my heart so much that I had to plunge into the undergrowth and retrieve your delightful, pretty instrument. I’m sure you know what girls are like: I strum the guitar a little, and my fingers began to itch – I couldn’t resist it. Forgive me, sir, and take your instrument back.’