The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  ‘Really, my dear Johannes,’ said the little Privy Councillor, ‘really, I can’t make you out at all today, so extraordinarily good-tempered as you are! How could you possibly listen to such stuff so calmly, so attentively? I was cast into great alarm when the lieutenant tackled us, off our guard as we were and expecting no danger, and entangled us so hopelessly in the thousand convolutions of his endless verses! I thought you would cut him short at any moment, as you usually do upon slighter provocation, but no: you remain calm, your gaze even expresses pleasure, and at the end, when I for my part was feeling quite weak and wretched, you dispatch the unfortunate fellow with an irony he can’t even understand, and don’t at least warn him, for future eventualities, that the whole thing was far too long and required much amputation.’

  ‘Oh,’ replied Kreisler, ‘what good would such pitiful advice have done? Can a pithy poet like our good lieutenant usefully perform any kind of amputation on his verses? Don’t they grow of themselves in his hands? And don’t you know that the verses of our young poets have the reproductive capacity of lizards anyway? Cut their tails off at the roots and they cheerfully grow more. However, if you think I listened to the lieutenant’s perorations calmly, you are very much mistaken! The storm was over, all the grasses and flowers in the little garden were raising their bent heads, greedily drinking in the heavenly nectar that fell in single drops from the veils of cloud. I placed myself under the tall, blossoming apple tree and listened to the voice of the thunder dying away in the distant mountains, re-echoing in my soul like a prophecy of something ineffable, and I looked up at the blue of the sky, peering through the fleeing clouds here and there, as if with shining eyes! But then my uncle called: I must go indoors like a good boy, and not spoil my new flowered dressing-gown with the nasty damp or catch a cold in the wet grass. And then it wasn’t my uncle speaking, but some silly parrot or starling, behind the bushes or in the bushes or God knows where, indulging in the pointless amusement of teasing me by uttering all manner of delightful ideas from Shakespeare in its own manner. So there I was, back with the lieutenant and his tragedy! Be so kind, Privy Councillor, as to note that it was a boyhood memory which enticed me away from you and the lieutenant. I really was standing there in my uncle’s little garden, a boy of twelve at most, wearing the most handsome chintz dressing-gown ever devised by calico printer’s soul, and you’ve squandered your fine smoke-powder71 in vain today, Privy Councillor, for I was aware of nothing but the fragrance of my apple tree in bloom; I didn’t even smell the versifier’s pomade, with which he anoints the head he can never protect from wind and weather with a crown, and indeed may not put anything on it but felt and leather made into a shako72 in accordance with regulations. But enough, my dear fellow! Of the three of us, you were the only sacrificial lamb offering yourself up to the poetic hero’s infernal tragic knife. For while I, carefully drawing in my horns, had pupated into that little dressing-gown and leaped into the garden I’ve mentioned several times already, with the ease of a twelve-year-old lad, Master Abraham, as you see, was cutting three or four sheets of the finest notepaper into all manner of delightful, fantastical shapes, and so he too got clean away from the lieutenant!’

  Kreisler was right. Master Abraham could cut sheets of fine card so that although you might not be able to see anything clearly in the tangle of holes he had cut, if a light was held behind the sheet the strangest figures were visible in all kinds of groups in the shadows cast on the wall. Since Master Abraham had a natural dislike of all reading aloud in principle, and was particularly averse, from the bottom of his heart, to the lieutenant’s versifying, it was inevitable that as soon as the lieutenant had begun he would reach eagerly for the stiff notepaper which happened to be lying on the Privy Councillor’s desk, take a small pair of scissors out of his pocket, and begin employing himself in a way that took his mind right off the Lieutenant’s assault on it.

  ‘Listen,’ the Privy Councillor began, ‘listen, Kreisler – now then, it was a boyhood memory that came into your mind, and your mild, pleasant temper today may well be ascribed to that memory – so listen, my very dear friend! It vexes me, as it vexes all who love and respect you, that I know nothing at all about your earlier life, that you avoid the slightest question about it so brusquely, and indeed you intentionally cast a veil over the past, although the veil is sometimes too transparent not to let all manner of images come shimmering through in strangely distorted form, arousing our curiosity. Now do be frank with those to whom, after all, you gave your trust.’

  Kreisler looked at the Privy Councillor wide-eyed and full of amazement, like a man waking from deep sleep who sees the figure of an unknown stranger before him, and then began, very gravely:

  ‘On the day of St John Chrysostom,73 that is, on the twenty-fourth of January in the year one thousand seven hundred and some years more, around midday, a boy was born with a face, and hands, and feet. His father was eating pea soup at the time, and in his delight spilled a whole spoonful over his beard, at which the newly delivered mother laughed so hard, although she hadn’t seen it, that the tremor broke every string of the instrument in the hands of the lutenist playing the baby the latest murky,74 who swore by his granny’s satin nightcap that little Johnny Milksop there would be an ignoramus in musical matters for ever and always. At that, however, the baby’s father wiped his chin clean and said with feeling, “He will certainly be called Johannes, but he’ll be no milksop.” Then the lutenist –’

  ‘Oh, pray!’ the little Privy Councillor interrupted the Kapellmeister, ‘pray, Kreisler, don’t lapse into that infernal sort of humour which, I can tell you, leaves me breathless! Am I asking you for a pragmatical autobiography? Do I want more than to be granted a few glimpses of your life before I knew you? You really can’t blame me for a curiosity that has no other source than a most fervent, heartfelt liking for you. And what’s more, since you figure as such an oddity now, you must put up with it if people think that only the most colourful life, and a series of the most amazing experiences, could shape and form such a character as yours.’

  ‘Oh, what a terrible mistake!’ said Kreisler, sighing deeply. ‘What a terrible mistake! My youth resembles a dry desert without flowers or blossom, mind and spirit languishing in bleak monotony!’

  ‘Nonsense!’ cried the Privy Councillor. ‘No such thing! I do at least know of a pretty little garden in that desert, with an apple tree in blossom, its fragrance drowning out my finest smoke-powder. Very well, then! I suggest, Johannes, that you come out with that memory of your early youth which, as you were saying just now, is so much on your mind today.’

  ‘And I too,’ said Master Abraham, as he cut a tonsure for the Capuchin friar he had just completed, ‘I too, Kreisler, would suppose that in your present tolerably good mood you couldn’t do better than open up your heart or your mind, or whatever you like to call that little treasure chest inside you, and fish this or that item out of it. I mean, since you’ve told us you went out into the rain against the will of your uncle, who was concerned for you, and listened superstitiously to the prophecies of the thunder as it died away, you might as well tell us more about what went on at the time. But no lies, Johannes, for you know I can check them, at least so far as the time when you first wore breeches and had your hair braided into its first pigtail is concerned.’

  Kreisler was about to make some reply, but Master Abraham turned swiftly to the little Privy Councillor, saying, ‘You wouldn’t believe, my dear sir, how entirely our friend Johannes will abandon himself to the wicked spirit of falsehood when he speaks of his early youth, seldom as that happens. At an age when children are still babbling “da, da” and “ma, ma”, and putting their fingers into the candle flame, at that very age he claims to have noticed everything and to have seen deeply into the human heart.’

  ‘You do me wrong,’ said Kreisler, smiling mildly, in a soft voice, ‘you do me great wrong, Master! Could I possibly try fooling you with tales of precocious intellectual capacity, a
s some vain popinjays will? And let me ask you, Privy Councillor, don’t you too find that moments often appear clearly before the mind’s eye, incidents from a period that many remarkably clever folk call merely vegetative, allowing it no merit on the grounds that it is simply instinct, and we must leave the higher excellence of intellect to the animal world? I think there is something particular about this. Our first awakening to clear consciousness remains for ever impenetrable to us! If it were possible for that awakening to occur suddenly, I believe the shock of it would kill us. Who has not felt fear in the first moments of waking from a deep dream, from unconscious sleep, when he has had to feel himself and remember who he is? Yet not to stray too far from the point, I think every strong psychic impression at that period of development must leave behind a seed-corn which thrives with the sprouting of intellectual capacity, and so all the pain and pleasure of those hours of morning twilight live on in us, and the sweet, wistful voices of our loved ones, which we seemed to hear only in our dreams when they woke us from sleep, were real indeed, and still echo within us! However, I know what Master Abraham means: he is referring to none other than the tale of my late aunt, which he means to deny me and which, just to vex him horribly, I will tell you, Privy Councillor, although only if you promise to make allowances for a little childish nonsense. As I was saying, about the pea soup and the lutenist –’

  ‘Oh, hush!’ the Privy Councillor interrupted the Kapellmeister. ‘Do be quiet! I can see quite plainly now that you mean to fool me, contrary to all order and decorum.’

  ‘By no means,’ continued Kreisler, ‘by no means, dear heart! But I have to begin with the lutenist, as the most natural introduction to the lute whose heavenly notes lulled the child sweetly asleep. My mother’s younger sister75 was a virtuoso upon that instrument, consigned at the time as it was to the musical lumber room. Sober, serious men who can read and write and do more besides have shed tears in my presence just remembering the way the late Mamsell Sophie played the lute, so you mustn’t take it ill if I, a greedy child not yet in control of myself, still lacking the emergence of consciousness in word and speech, drank avid draughts of all the melancholy in the wonderful magic of the music that flowed from her inmost heart. However, the lutenist by the cradle was the dead woman’s teacher. He was small in stature, with rather crooked legs, his name was Monsieur Turtel, he wore a very clean white wig with a broad hair-bag, and also a red cloak. I tell you this just to prove how clearly the figures of that time appear to me, and to keep Master Abraham or anyone else from doubting me when I claim that I find myself, a child not yet three years old, on the lap of a girl whose mild gaze shines right into my soul, that I can still hear the sweet voice in which she spoke and sang to me, that I remember very well how I bestowed all my love and affection on her charming person. This was my Aunt Sophie, known by a curious distortion of her name as “Tootsie”. One day I complained bitterly that I hadn’t seen Aunt Tootsie. The nurse took me into a room where Aunt Tootsie lay in bed, but an old man sitting beside her quickly jumped up, vehemently scolding the nurse who had me in her arms and leading her out. Soon afterwards they dressed me, wrapped me in thick shawls, and took me right away, to another house and other people, who all claimed to be my aunts and uncles and who told me Aunt Tootsie was very ill, and I would have been just as ill too had I stayed with her. A few weeks later I was taken back to my old home. I wept and shouted and demanded to see Aunt Tootsie. As soon as I managed to get into her room I tottered over to the bed where I had seen Aunt Tootsie lying and drew back its curtains. The bed was empty, and a lady who was yet another aunt of mine76 said, tears flowing from her eyes, “You won’t see her again, Johannes; she’s dead and buried underground.”

  ‘I know I couldn’t understand what the words meant, but when I remember that moment I still tremble with the nameless emotion that seized upon me at the time. Death himself forced me into his armour of ice, his terrors made their way into my heart, and all the pleasures of the early years of childhood froze before them. I don’t remember now what I did, and perhaps I never really did remember, but I’ve been told often enough that I slowly let go of the curtains, stood there for a few minutes, very grave and quiet, and then sat down on a little wicker chair nearby, as if retreating into myself and thinking of what I’d just been told. People added that there was something extraordinarily moving about this silent mourning from a child usually given to the liveliest of outbursts, and they even feared a lasting effect on my mind, since I remained in the same condition for several weeks, neither weeping nor laughing, disinclined to play any games, never saying a friendly word, and ignoring everything around me.’

  At this point Master Abraham picked up a sheet of paper curiously and intricately cut out, and held it in front of the lighted candles. A whole choir of nuns playing strange instruments was reflected on the wall.

  ‘Oho!’ cried Kreisler, looking at this prettily arranged group of sisters. ‘I know what you want to remind me of, Master! And I’ll still make so bold as to say you did wrong to scold me, calling me a stubborn, irrational boy who could set a whole convent of singing, playing nuns out of tune and off the beat with the dissonant voice of his folly. At the time when you took me to the Poor Clares’ convent some twenty or thirty miles from my native town, to hear real Catholic church music for the first time, hadn’t I the most legitimate of claims to the most strikingly loutish behaviour, being in the very middle of those years when lads do behave like louts? And was it not all the more to my credit that the pain of the three-year-old boy, long since overcome, reawakened with new force, engendering an illusion that filled my breast with all the violent delight of the most heart-rending melancholy? Must I not inevitably claim, sticking to my assertion despite all persuasion, that only Aunt Tootsie could be playing that curious instrument the trumpet marine,77 even though she had died long ago? Why did you prevent me from forcing my way into the choir, where I had found her again in her green dress with the pink ribbons?’

  At this point Kreisler stared at the wall, and said in an emotional, trembling voice, ‘Yes, indeed: I see Aunt Tootsie standing out above the nuns! She has stepped up on a footstool, to handle her awkward instrument the better.’

  However, the Privy Councillor moved in front of him, blocking his view of the shadow picture, took him by the shoulders and said: ‘Really, Johannes, you had better not give way to your strange dreams and talk about wholly non-existent instruments, for I never heard of a trumpet marine in my life!’

  ‘Oh,’ said Master Abraham, laughing, as he caused the entire convent of nuns along with the imaginary Aunt Tootsie and her trumpet marine to disappear swiftly by casting the sheet of paper under the desk, ‘oh, my dear Privy Councillor, our friend the Kapellmeister is proving himself a calm and reasonable man, as usual, and not the fantasist or joker many would like to make him out. Isn’t it possible that the lady lutenist, having passed away, successfully took up that wonderful instrument, which you may perhaps still hear and marvel at in convents of nuns now and then? And as for saying the trumpet marine doesn’t exist, be so good as to look it up in Koch’s Musical Encyclopaedia,78 a work you own yourself.’

  The Privy Councillor did so on the spot, and read aloud:

  ‘This old and very simple bowed string instrument consists of three thin boards, seven feet in length and six to seven inches wide at the base, where the instrument stands on the floor, but scarcely two inches wide at the top. They are glued together in triangular shape, so that the body, which has a kind of pegbox at the top, tapers upwards. One of these three boards is the instrument’s resonator: it has several sound-holes and is fitted with a single rather strong gut string. The instrument is played at a slanting angle, its upper part resting against the player’s chest. The instrumentalist touches the string very lightly with his left thumb at the points where the notes to be produced are found (this is rather like the flautino or flageolet on the violin79), while the string is played with the bow held in the right hand. The cur
ious tone of this instrument, similar to the sound of a muted trumpet, is produced by the special nature of the bridge upon which the string rests near the base of the resonating board. This bridge is shaped almost like a little shoe, very low and narrow in front but higher and wider behind. The string lies on the back part of the bridge, and when it is bowed its vibrations cause the slighter, front part of the bridge to move up and down on the sound-board, thus producing the growling tone which resembles a muted trumpet.’

  ‘Make me such an instrument!’ cried the Privy Councillor, his eyes alight. ‘Make me such an instrument, Master Abraham, and I’ll cast aside my nail violin,80 I’ll never touch the musical glass euphony81 again, I’ll play the most delightful tunes upon the trumpet marine, to the astonishment of court and city!’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ replied Master Abraham, ‘and may the spirit of Aunt Tootsie in her green taffeta dress come upon you, my dear Privy Councillor, and inspire you to a very spirited performance!’

  The delighted Privy Councillor embraced the Master, but Kreisler came between the two of them, saying almost crossly, ‘Well, I call the pair of you worse jokers than I ever was, and hard on the man you profess to love into the bargain! Pray content yourselves with having cast cold water on my heated brow, with that account of an instrument whose tone resounded through my heart, and keep quiet about my aunt the lutenist! Now then, Privy Councillor: you wanted me to tell you about my youth, and since the Master was cutting out shadow pictures befitting incidents of the time, you might have been content with that handsome edition of my biographical sketches, illustrated with engravings. However, when you read out the entry from Koch, I thought of his colleague in lexicography Gerber82 and saw myself a corpse, lying on the table ready for biographical dissection. The demonstrator might say: “It is not surprising that pure musical blood runs through a thousand veins and arteries in this young man’s body, for such was the case with many of his blood relations, and for that very reason he is their blood relation.” What I mean is that most of my aunts and uncles, of whom I had not a few, as the Master knows and you have just heard, most of them were musical and, moreover, played instruments which were very rare even in those days and some of which are played no more, so only in dreams do I now hear those wonderfully melodious concerts I enjoyed until I was about ten or eleven. It may be that this is why my musical talent, even when it first dawned, took the direction manifested in my own style of instrumentation, which is criticized for being over-fantastic. If you, Privy Councillor, can refrain from tears when you hear fine playing on that archaic instrument the viola d’amore,83 then give thanks to the Creator for your robust constitution; for my part, I wept copiously when I heard Sir Karl von Esser84 playing it, and I wept even more at an earlier date, when a tall, handsome man whose clerical clothing suited him uncommonly well and who was yet another of my uncles played the instrument to me. Similarly, it was very pleasing and alluring to hear another of my relations85 play the viola da gamba,86 although the uncle who brought me up,87 or rather didn’t bring me up, and who could play the spinet88 with barbaric virtuosity, was right to criticize him for not keeping time. And the poor fellow earned no little contempt from the entire family when they discovered that he had cheerfully danced a minuet à la Pompadour to the music of a sarabande. I could tell you a great deal about the musical diversions of my family, often enough singular in their way, but there’d be many touches of the grotesque in my tale which would make you laugh, and respectus parentelae89 prevents my exposing my worthy relations to your mirth.’