The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  In the distance I heard the singing of a powerful male voice. It was coming closer and closer. Soon I saw a Benedictine monk making his way down the footpath, singing a Latin hymn. He stopped not far from me, ceased singing, and looked around, taking off his broad-brimmed travelling hat and mopping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. Then he disappeared into the bushes. I felt inclined to join him. The man was more than well-nourished, the sun was burning more and more strongly, and I could well imagine that he would have sought out some resting place in the shade. Nor was I wrong, for making my way into the bushes I saw the reverend gentleman, who had seated himself on a rock thickly overgrown with moss. A taller rock beside it served him as a table upon which he had spread a white cloth, and he was just taking bread and roast fowl out of his travelling bag. He set about them with a hearty appetite. ‘Sed praeter omnia bibendum quid,’27 said he to himself, pouring wine from a wicker-covered flask into the small silver beaker he had taken out of his pocket.

  He was about to drink when I approached him with a ‘Praise be to Jesus Christ!’ He looked up, the beaker to his lips, and I immediately recognized my jovial old friend from the Benedictine abbey at Kanzheim, honest Father Hilarius the choirmaster.

  ‘For ever and ever, amen!’ stammered Father Hilarius, staring at me wide-eyed.

  I instantly thought of my head-dress, which might make me look strange, and began, ‘My very dear, good friend Hilarius, pray don’t take me for some vagabond Hindu gone astray, or a local rustic who has fallen on his head, since I am none other, and never will be, than your close friend Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler!’

  ‘By St Benedict,’ cried Father Hilarius happily, ‘I recognized you at once, excellent composer and good friend that you are, but tell me per diem28 where have you come from and what has happened to you, when I thought you were in floribus29 at the Grand Duke’s court?’

  I did not hesitate to give the Father a brief account of all that had happened to me, how I had been obliged to run my blade into the body of a man who thought it good to take pot shots at me as if I were a target, and how the aforesaid marksman had probably been an Italian prince called Hector, a name given to many a good deerhound. ‘So now what am I to do? Go back to Sieghartsweiler, or – pray advise me, Father Hilarius!’

  I concluded my story with these words. Father Hilarius, who had interjected many a ‘Hm! Well, well! My word! Holy St Benedict!’ now looked down, murmured, ‘Bibamus!’30 and emptied his silver beaker at a draught.

  Then he said, laughing, ‘The fact is, Kapellmeister, the best advice I can give you for a start is to make yourself comfortable here beside me and share my breakfast. I can recommend these partridges; our reverend Brother Macarius shot them only yesterday. As I am sure you remember, he can hit anything except the right note in the responsories, and if the aromatic vinegar with which the fowls are dressed is to your liking, you have to thank the pains taken by Brother Eusebius, who roasted them for me himself. As for the wine, it’s good enough to moisten the tongue of a fugitive Kapellmeister. Real Franconian wine, carrissime Johannes, real Franconian wine from the St Johannis Hospital at Würzburg, and we unworthy servants of the Lord get the best quality. Ergo bibamus!’

  So saying, he filled the beaker and handed it to me. I did not need to be asked twice, but ate and drank like a man in need of such restoratives.

  Father Hilarius had chosen the most delightful place to break his fast. A thick birch grove shaded the flowery turf below, and the crystal clear woodland stream splashing over the stones of its bed increased the sense of refreshing coolness. The secluded secrecy of the place filled me with peace and well-being, and while Father Hilarius told me all that had happened since I was at the Abbey, not forgetting to interject his usual jests and his nice turn for dog Latin, I listened to the voices of the forest and the water, which spoke to me in comforting melodies.

  Father Hilarius was inclined to put my silence down to the bitter grief that recent events had caused me.

  ‘Be of good cheer,’ he began, handing me the freshly filled beaker again, ‘be of good cheer, Kapellmeister! You’ve shed blood, it’s true, and shedding blood is a sin, but distinguendum est inter et inter31 – everyone loves his life better than anything; he has but one. You have defended yours, which the Church does not by any means forbid, as may be abundantly shown, and neither our reverend Lord Abbot nor any other servant of the Lord will deny you absolution, even should you have driven your blade unexpectedly into princely entrails. Ergo bibamus! Vir sapiens non te abhorrebit Domine!32 But my dear Kreisler, if you go back to Sieghartsweiler they will interrogate you horribly about the cur, quomodo, quando, ubi,33 and if you accuse the Prince of that murderous attack, will they believe you? Ibi jacet lepus in pipere!34 But you see, Kapellmeister – bibendum quid –’ He emptied the full beaker and then continued. ‘You see, Kapellmeister, wine brings good counsel! You must know that I was on my way to the monastery of All Saints to get music from the choirmaster there for the forthcoming feast days. I’ve been through our box of music two or three times already; it’s all old and stale, and as for the music you composed for us while you were staying in the Abbey, why, that is very fine and modern, but – pray don’t take this ill, Kapellmeister, it’s set in such a curious way that one daren’t look away from the score. And if a man wants just to take a squint through the grating at some pretty girl or other down in the nave, he’s sure to miss a rest or some such thing, lose the beat and upset everything, and – oops! there we go, with Brother Jakob going di – di – doodle deedle on the organ keys, ad patibulum cum illis35 – so I was to – but bibamus!’

  After we had both drunk, the flow of his discourse continued: ‘Desunt36 those who aren’t present, and those who aren’t present can’t be questioned, so I was thinking you might come straight back to the Abbey with me. If we go the direct way it’s scarcely two hours from here. In the Abbey you’ll be safe from all persecutions, contra hostium insidias.37 I’ll take you there as a piece of living music, and you can stay as long as you like or as long as you think advisable. The reverend Lord Abbot will provide you with all you need. You can wear the finest underclothes and the Benedictine habit over them; it will suit you very well. On our way, to keep you from looking like the injured victim in the parable of the Good Samaritan, you can put on my travelling hat and I’ll pull my cowl over my bald pate. Bibendum quid, my dear fellow!’

  So saying he emptied the beaker again, rinsed it out in the nearby woodland stream, packed everything quickly away in his travelling bag, pressed his hat down on my brow and cried merrily, ‘Kapellmeister, we have only to put one foot in front of another, taking it slowly and easily, and we’ll arrive just as they are ringing ad conventum conventuales,38 that is, when the reverend Lord Abbot is sitting down to dinner.’

  You may well imagine, dear Master, that I had not the least objection to jovial Father Hilarius’s suggestion, and indeed the idea of going to a place which could be a beneficent asylum to me in so many ways was very welcome.

  We walked on at our ease, discussing all manner of things, and reached the Abbey, as Father Hilarius intended, just as the bell was ringing for dinner.

  With a view to anticipating any questions, Father Hilarius told the Abbot that, having learnt by chance of my presence in Sieghartsweiler, he had thought it better to bring back a composer with a truly inexhaustible store of music inside him than fetch music from the monastery of All Saints.

  Abbot Chrysostom (I have a notion I’ve already told you a good deal about him) received me with that genial delight characteristic only of the truly well-disposed, and applauded Father Hilarius’s decision.

  So you now see me, Master Abraham, transformed into a passable Benedictine monk, sitting in a tall, roomy chamber in the main building of the Abbey, working industriously away on Vespers and hymns, aye, and now and then noting down ideas for a solemn High Mass, while those of the brothers who sing and play assemble, with the choirboys, and I assiduously hold r
ehearsals, and conduct the music behind the choir screen! In fact I feel so immersed in this solitary life that I might compare myself with Tartini39 who, fearing the vengeance of Cardinal Cornaro, fled to the Minorite monastery of Assisi, where he was discovered at last years later by a Paduan who happened to be in church, and saw his lost friend in the choir when a gust of wind briefly lifted the curtain concealing the orchestra. It might have been with you and me, Master, as it was with that Paduan, and yet I had to let you know where I was, or you might have thought God knows what had become of me. I wonder whether they have found my hat, and were surprised to find no head inside it? Master, a special and beneficent kind of peace has entered my heart; can I perhaps have reached my true anchorage? The other day, when I was walking by the little lake in the middle of the Abbey’s extensive grounds and saw my reflection walking beside me in the water, I said: ‘The man down there, walking by my side, is a peaceful, circumspect man, no longer tossing wildly in vague, unbounded space, a man who keeps to the way he has found, and I am glad that man is none other than myself.’ A dreadful doppelgänger once looked up at me from another lake – but hush – no more of that. Master, name me no names –tell me nothing – not even who it was I stabbed. But pray write and tell me all about yourself. Here come the brothers for rehearsal; I will close my chapter of history and with it my letter. Farewell, my dear Master, and think of me! Yours etc., etc., etc., etc.

  Walking by himself in the distant, wildly overgrown avenues of the park, Master Abraham thought of his dear friend’s fate, and how he had hardly got him back before losing him again. He saw the boy Johannes, he saw himself in Göniönesmühl at the old uncle’s instrument; he saw the child hammering out Sebastian Bach’s most difficult sonatas with a proud air and an almost adult touch, whereupon he rewarded him with a bag of sweets slipped into his pocket on the sly. It was as if this were only a few days ago, and he could not but marvel that the boy was none other than Kreisler, who now seemed entangled in a strange, wayward series of mysterious events. But with the thought of that past time and the ominous present, the image of his own life rose before him.

  His father, a stern and self-willed man, had almost forced him into the art of organ-building, which the father practised as an ordinary, down-to-earth craft. He would allow no one but the organ-builder himself to touch his work, so his apprentices had to be skilled carpenters, tinsmiths and so on before they ever came to the internal mechanism. The old man was concerned solely with the instrument’s precision, durability and good touch; he had no sense of its soul, its tone, and oddly enough that showed in the organs he built, which were justly criticized for their harsh, sharp sound. Next to them, the mind of Abraham’s father was entirely devoted to the naïve artifices of past times. For instance, he had fitted figures of King David and King Solomon to one organ, turning their heads as if in admiration as it was played; not one of his creations lacked its angels beating drums, blowing trumpets and keeping time, its cockerels flapping their wings and crowing, and so forth. Often Abraham’s only way to escape a beating, whether deserved or not, and extract an expression of paternal pleasure from the old man, was to come up with some new device by virtue of his own gift for ingenuity: a shriller cock-a-doodle-do for the cockerel on the next organ, perhaps. Abraham had looked forward, with apprehensive longing, to the time when he would go on his travels in accordance with the custom of the trade. That time came at last, and Abraham left his father’s house, never to return.

  On those travels in the company of other journeymen, most of them wild, rough fellows, he once visited the Abbey of St Blaise in the Black Forest, and heard the famous organ built by old Johann Andreas Silbermann.40 Hearing the full, magnificent tones of this instrument, he felt the magic of music stir within him for the first time; it was as if he were transported to another world, and from then on he loved the craft he had previously practised with reluctance. But now his whole life, and the circumstances in which he had hitherto led it, seemed so worthless that he summoned up all his strength to raise himself from the mire into which he thought he had sunk. His natural understanding and gift of perception helped him to make great strides in his scientific education – yet he often felt the leaden weight of his earlier upbringing and his failure then to rise above the mean and low. Chiara and his union with that strange, mysterious creature brought a second ray of light into his life, and so the two together – that awakening of music and Chiara’s love – brought about a dualism in his poetic existence which influenced his rugged but powerful nature for the better. Scarcely had he escaped from the inns and taverns, where bawdy songs were sung amidst thick clouds of tobacco smoke, when chance, or rather his skill in the mechanical devices to which he could lend a touch of mystery (as the gentle reader has already learnt), brought young Abraham into surroundings that must seem like a new world to him, and where, always a stranger, he could maintain himself only by asserting the forthright character with which his nature had endowed him. That forthright character became ever more forthright with time, and as it was by no means the character of a simple boor but arose from a clear, sound human understanding, a proper view of life, and the accurately aimed irony to which those qualities gave rise, it was inevitable that, where the youth had merely held his ground and been tolerated, the grown man inspired great respect, as one to be feared. Nothing is easier than to impress certain persons of high rank who are far below what might be expected of them. Master Abraham was thinking of this just now, as he returned to the fisherman’s cottage from his walk, and he broke into a loud, hearty peal of laughter which relieved the oppression of his breast.

  For the vivid memory of that moment in the church of the Abbey of St Blaise, and of his lost Chiara, had plunged the Master into a mood of deep melancholy not usually typical of him. ‘Why,’ he asked himself, ‘why do the wounds I thought long ago covered by scar tissue bleed so frequently these days, why do I indulge in empty dreams when I feel as if I ought to intervene actively in the machinery that an evil spirit seems to be driving the wrong way?’ The Master felt alarmed by the thought of being imperilled in his most characteristic thoughts and deeds, even he knew not how, until (as mentioned already) he fell into that train of thought which brought him to the persons of rank, whereupon he laughed, and immediately felt considerably better.

  So he went into the fisherman’s cottage to read Kreisler’s letter.

  A remarkable thing had happened in the princely castle. ‘Amazing!’ said the physician. ‘Outside all medical practice and experience!’

  Said Princess Maria: ‘It couldn’t be helped, and Princess Hedwiga is all right!’

  Said Prince Irenaeus: ‘Didn’t I expressly forbid it – but those asinine riff-raff our servants never listen – well, the Head Forester must make sure the Prince can’t lay hands on any more gunpowder!’

  Said Madame Benzon: ‘Thank Heaven she is safe!’

  Meanwhile, Princess Hedwiga looked out of the window of her bedchamber, occasionally plucking broken chords on the same guitar Kreisler had flung away in disgust and received back sanctified, as he put it, from Julia’s hands.

  Prince Ignatius sat on the sofa weeping and complaining, ‘It hurts, it hurts!’ while Julia, standing in front of him, was busy with a little silver basin – in which she was peeling raw potatoes.

  All this related to an event the physician was quite right to call amazing, and outside all medical practice. Prince Ignatius, as the gentle reader has been told several times before, retained the innocently sportive mind and happy candour of a six-year-old boy, and consequently liked to play like one. Among his other toys he had a small cannon cast in metal which he used in his favourite game, although it was a game he could very seldom enjoy, since it involved many items not readily available, to wit, several grains of gunpowder, a fair amount of birdshot and a small bird. If he had all those things he would parade his troops, court-martial the little bird for inciting rebellion in his princely papa’s lost land, load the cannon and shoot the bi
rd, which he had bound to a candlestick with a black heart on its breast. Sometimes he killed it outright but sometimes he didn’t, and then he had to use his penknife to carry out his just sentence on the traitor.