The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  The monks stopped, and the lights they carried fell full on a tall, sturdy fellow of about eighteen or twenty years old. His face, which could only be described as ugly, wore an expression of the most savage defiance; his black hair hung shaggily round his head, his torn jerkin of striped linen scarcely covered his nakedness, and sailor’s breeches of the same material reached only to his calves, so that the Herculean build of his body was fully visible.

  ‘You damned scoundrel, who told you to murder my brother?’ cried the fellow wildly, in a voice that echoed through the church, and he leaped on Kreisler like a tiger, taking him by the throat in a murderous grip.

  However, before Kreisler, utterly horrified by this unexpected attack, could even think of defending himself, Father Cyprian was beside him, speaking in a strong, commanding voice. ‘Giuseppo, you infamous and sinful man, what are you doing here? Where have you left the old woman? Be off with you at once! Most reverend Father Abbot, have the servants called to throw this murderous rogue out of the Abbey!’

  As soon as he found himself facing Cyprian, the fellow had let go of Kreisler. ‘Well, well, Sir Saint!’ said he, sullenly, ‘you needn’t make such an almighty fuss about a man claiming his rights! I’m going of my own accord, no need to set any servants on me.’ And so saying he leaped quickly away through a door they had forgotten to shut, and through which he had probably stolen into the church. The Abbey servants arrived, but there seemed no occasion to pursue the audacious man further into the dark night.

  It was in Kreisler’s nature for the excitement of anything unusual and mysterious to have a beneficial effect on his mind as soon as he had overcome the turmoil of the moment that threatened to destroy him. Consequently, the Abbot could not but think Kreisler’s calm curious and surprising when the latter stood before him next day, speaking of the shattering impression made on him by the sight, in such strange circumstances, of the body of the man who had tried to murder him and whom he had struck down in legitimate self-defence.

  ‘My dear Johannes,’ said the Abbot, ‘neither the Church nor the secular law can hold you in any way criminally guilty of that sinful man’s death. But it will be long before you can overcome the reproaches of an inner voice telling you it would have been better to die yourself than kill your opponent, which proves that the Eternal Power is better pleased by the sacrifice of a man’s own life than by its preservation, if it can be preserved only by a swift and bloody deed. But let us speak no more of this just now, for I have other, more immediate matters to discuss with you.

  ‘What mortal man can judge how the next moment may alter the course of events? It is not long since I was firmly convinced that nothing could be better for the welfare of your soul than to renounce the world and enter our Order. I have changed my mind now, and would advise you, dear and precious as you have become to me, to leave the Abbey very soon. Do not lose faith in me, dear Johannes! Do not ask me why, contrary to my own character, I submit to the will of another, a man who threatens to overturn all I have laboured to create. You would have to be deeply initiated into the mysteries of the Church to understand me, even if I wished to tell you the reasons for my course of action. Yet I can speak more freely to you than to anyone else. Know, then, that very shortly residence at the Abbey will no longer ensure you beneficial peace, as hitherto, indeed that a deadly blow will be dealt to your heartfelt aspirations, and the Abbey will seem to you a bleak, cheerless dungeon. The whole way of life in this house is changing: that freedom which can accompany devout morality will be no more, and the dark spirit of fanatical monasticism will soon rule within these walls with implacable severity. Ah, my dear Johannes, your wonderful hymns will no longer raise our spirits to the heights of devotion, the choir will be dissolved, and soon nothing will be heard here but monotonous responsories muttered painfully in hoarse, untuneful voices by the oldest brethren.’

  ‘And is all this,’ asked Kreisler, ‘to be by order of the strange monk Cyprian?’

  ‘It is so,’ replied the Abbot in almost melancholy tones, casting down his eyes, ‘it is so, my dear Johannes, and it is none of my doing that it can’t be otherwise. And yet,’ he added solemnly after a short silence, raising his voice, ‘and yet all that can promote the firm foundation and the glory of the Church must come to pass, and no sacrifice is too great!’

  ‘So who,’ asked Kreisler, displeased, ‘who is this great and mighty saint who has power over you, and whose word alone was enough to make that murderous fellow let me go?’

  ‘My dear Johannes,’ replied the Abbot, ‘you are entangled in a mystery which you do not fully understand as yet. But soon you will learn more, perhaps more than I know myself, and you will learn it from Master Abraham. Cyprian, whom we still call our brother, is one of the Elect. Direct contact with the Eternal Powers of Heaven was vouchsafed him, and we must already venerate him as a saint. As for that bold fellow who stole into the church during the funeral service and made a murderous attack on you, he is a half-crazy scoundrel of a gypsy vagabond whom our bailiff has had soundly whipped several times for stealing fat chickens from the villagers’ hen-houses. It did not take any special miracle to drive him away.’

  As the Abbot spoke these last words, a slight, ironic smile hovered around the corners of his mouth, disappearing as quickly as it had come.

  Kreisler was filled by the deepest, most bitter vexation; he could see that for all his superior mind and understanding, the Abbot was involved in falsehood and deceit, and all the reasons he had formerly employed to persuade him, Kreisler, to join the Order had served only as the pretext for some secret design, just like the reasons he was now putting forward to the contrary. Kreisler made up his mind to leave the Abbey, freeing himself entirely of all the ominous secrets which, if he were to stay longer, might yet entangle him in a web he could not then escape. But now, thinking of going straight back to Master Abraham in Sieghartshof, of seeing her again, hearing her, her of whom alone he thought, he felt in his heart that sweet anguish in which the most ardent, amorous longing is revealed.

  Deep in thought, Kreisler was walking along the main avenue through the grounds when Father Hilarius came hurrying towards him, and immediately began, ‘You’ve been with the Abbot, Kreisler. He told you everything! So was I right? We’re all done for! When that clerical play-actor – well, the word’s out, but we’re on our own – when he – you know who it is I mean – went to Rome in his habit, his Holiness the Pope gave him audience at once. He fell on his knee and kissed the papal slipper. But his Holiness the Pope let him lie there for a full hour without signing to him to get up. “Let that be your first ecclesiastical penance,” said His Holiness, when he was at last allowed to rise, and preached a long sermon on the sinful errors into which Cyprian had fallen. Thereafter Cyprian received long instruction in certain secret chambers, and then he went away. It’s a long time since there’s been a new saint! The miracle – well, you saw the picture, Kreisler – the miracle, I say, appeared in its true light only in Rome. I’m just an honest Benedictine monk, a good praefectus chori, you’ll allow, and I like to drink a little glass of Niersteiner or Franconian wine to the honour of the one true Church, but, but… My comfort is that he won’t stay here long. He must be always on the move. Monachus in claustro non valet ova duo: sed quando est extra bene valet triginta.20 I expect he’ll work more miracles too. Look, Kreisler, look, here he comes down this path. He’s seen us, and knows how he must act.’

  Kreisler saw the monk Cyprian coming along the leafy walk at a slow and solemn pace, his glance fixed on Heaven, his hands folded as if in pious ecstasy.

  Hilarius made quickly off, but Kreisler remained lost in contemplation of the monk; there was something strange and outlandish about his countenance and his whole bearing which seemed to mark him out from all other men. A great disaster, one out of the common way, leaves distinct marks behind it, and so it might also have been that a wonderful fate had shaped the monk’s outward appearance into what it now was.

&nbs
p; In his exaltation, the monk was going to walk past without taking any notice of Kreisler, who, however, felt impelled to bar the way of this stern envoy of the Head of the Church, this sworn enemy of the finest art.

  He did so by saying, ‘Allow me to thank you, reverend sir. The force of your words freed me just in time from the hands of that coarse lout of a gypsy boy who would have throttled me like a stolen chicken!’

  The monk seemed to wake from a dream. Passing his hand over his brow, he looked fixedly at Kreisler for a long time, as if trying to remember him. Then his expression changed to one of terrible, penetrating gravity, and he cried in a loud voice, his eyes burning with anger: ‘Audacious, impious man, you would have deserved it had I let you die with your sins upon your head! Are you not he who profanes the holy worship of the Church, the greatest prop and stay of religion, with secular tinklings? Are you not he whose vain works of art captivated the most pious minds here, so that they turned away from holy things and indulged in worldly pleasure with opulent songs?’

  Kreisler felt both injured by these deranged reproaches and elated by the stupid arrogance of the fanatical monk, who could be routed with such light weapons.

  ‘If it is sinful,’ said Kreisler very calmly, looking the monk straight in the eye, ‘if it is sinful to praise the Eternal Power in the language that Power itself has given us, so that this gift of Heaven may arouse in our breasts the enthusiasm of the most ardent devotion, and indeed a perception of the world beyond, if it is sinful to rise on the seraph wings of song above all that is earthly, aspiring to what is highest in devout love and longing, then you are right, reverend sir, and I am a wicked sinner. But permit me to say that I don’t share your opinion, and firmly believe that the worship of the Church would lack the true glory of sacred enthusiasm if there were no more singing.’

  ‘Then pray,’ replied the monk in stern, cold tones, ‘pray to Our Lady to remove the veil from your eyes, and show you your damnable error.’

  ‘There was a composer,’∗ said Kreisler, with a slight smile, ‘who was asked by someone how he managed to get his sacred compositions to breathe such pious inspiration. The devout master, in childlike innocence, replied: “When my composing is not going well, I walk up and down the room saying several Aves, and then my ideas flow again.” The same master said of another great sacred work:† ‘It was not until I was half-way through the composition that I realized it was successful, nor was I ever so devout as during the time I was working on it. I fell on my knees daily, praying God to lend me the strength to bring the work to a happy conclusion.” And it seems to me, reverend sir, that neither this master nor old Palestrina21 was labouring to create something sinful, and only a heart frozen in ascetic obduracy can fail to be aroused to the utmost piety by sacred song.’

  ‘Little fellow,’ cried the monk angrily, ‘who are you that I should dispute with you, when you ought to prostrate yourself in the dust? Begone from the Abbey, and disturb what is holy no longer!’

  Deeply angered by the monk’s commanding tone, Kreisler cried vehemently, ‘And who are you, deluded monk, to raise yourself above all humanity? Were you born free from sin? Have you never entertained thoughts of Hell? Did you never go astray on the slippery path you trod? And if Our Lady truly snatched you in her mercy from the death some terrible deed may have earned you, then it was so that you might humbly acknowledge and expiate your sin, not boast with impious arrogance of Heaven’s mercy and even of the holy crown you will never win.’

  The monk stared at Kreisler with a glance that flashed death and destruction, muttering incoherent words.

  ‘And, proud monk,’ continued Kreisler, his emotion rising, ‘and when you still wore this coat –’

  So saying, Kreisler held the picture Master Abraham had given him before the monk’s eyes. But as soon as Cyprian saw it he struck his brow with both hands in a gesture of wild despair, and uttered a heart-rending cry of pain as if dealt a mortal blow.

  ‘Begone with you,’ cried Kreisler, ‘begone from the Abbey, wicked monk! Oh yes, my good saint, and if you should chance upon that chicken thief who kept you company, tell him that you couldn’t and indeed wouldn’t protect me another time, but let him take care to stay away from me, or I’d skewer him like a lark, or like his brother, for when it comes to skewering folk –’ But here Kreisler became horrified by what he himself had done; the monk stood before him rigid and motionless, both fists still pressed to his brow, incapable of uttering a word or making any sound. Kreisler thought he heard a rustling in the bushes nearby, as if the savage Giuseppo would fall upon him any moment. He strode away; the monks were just singing the evening office in the choir, and Kreisler went into the church, hoping to calm his deeply agitated, deeply wounded mind there.

  The office was over, the monks left the choir, the lights were extinguished. Kreisler’s mind had turned to those devout old masters whom he had mentioned while arguing with the monk. Music – the spirit of sacred music had risen within him, Julia had sung, the storm no longer raged in his heart. He decided to leave through a side chapel, the door of which opened into the long corridor leading to a staircase and up to his room.

  When Kreisler entered the chapel, a monk rose with difficulty from the floor where he had been lying prostrate before the miraculous image of the Virgin which was placed there. In the light of the lamp where the eternal flame burned, Kreisler recognized the monk Cyprian, but looking weary and wretched, as if he had only just recovered from a fainting fit. Kreisler offered him a helping hand. At that the monk said, in a low, whimpering voice: ‘I know you – you are Kreisler! Have mercy, don’t leave me, help me over to those steps. I will sit down there, and do you sit with me, close beside me, for only Our Blessed Lady must hear us. Have pity,’ the monk continued, when they were both sitting on the steps of the altar, ‘have pity on me, have mercy, tell me whether you had that fatal portrait from old Severino, whether you know everything, the whole terrible secret?’

  Kreisler said frankly and openly that Master Abraham Liscov had given him the portrait, and told the full tale of all that had happened in Sieghartshof, saying he merely deduced, from certain circumstances, that some dreadful deed had been committed, and the portrait aroused a lively memory of it as well as the fear of revelation. The monk, who had seemed deeply shaken at certain points in Kreisler’s tale, now remained silent for a little while. Then he took courage and began, in a firmer voice, ‘Kreisler, you know too much not to hear it all. I must tell you, Kreisler, that same Prince Hector who pursued you with murderous intent is my younger brother. We are the sons of a princely father whose throne I would have inherited, had not the turmoil of the time overthrown him. As the war had just broken out, we both took service in the army, and it was military service which brought first me and then my brother to Naples. At that period I had abandoned myself to all the wicked pleasures of the world, and in particular I was entirely given up to a mad passion for women. My mistress was a dancer as lovely as she was notorious, and I ran after loose women wherever I found them.

  ‘So it came about that one day, when twilight was already falling on the quayside, I was pursuing a pair of creatures of that kind. I had almost caught up with them when a voice called out close beside me, “See the little prince – what a shocking waster! There he goes, chasing common whores, when he could lie in the arms of the loveliest princess!” My glance fell on a ragged old gypsy woman. A few days earlier, in Toledo Street, I had seen the sbirri22 take her away for knocking a water-seller to the ground with her stick in an argument, strong as he seemed.

  ‘ “What do you want of me, old witch?” I asked the woman, but at that moment she began heaping such an abundance of the most dreadful, vulgar insults on me that idle bystanders soon assembled round us, roaring with wild laughter at my embarrassment. I tried to walk away, but the woman, without rising from the ground, clung to my clothing and, suddenly ceasing her insults and distorting her ugly face into a grimace of a smile, said softly, “What, my swe
et princeling, don’t you want to stay with me? Don’t you want to hear about the lovely, angelic child who is madly in love with you?”

  ‘So saying, the woman rose with difficulty, clutching my arm, and whispered something into my ear about a young girl as beautiful and charming as the day, and still innocent. I took the woman for a common bawd, and since I was not minded to begin a new adventure I tried to get rid of her with a few ducats. However, she would not take the money, and when I walked away she called after me, laughing aloud, “Go along, go along, my fine gentleman; you will soon be seeking me out with great grief and woe in your heart!”

  ‘Some time had passed, and I thought no more of the gypsy woman, when one day, on the promenade called the Villa Reale, I saw a lady walking ahead of me. Her person seemed to me wonderfully charming, lovelier than anything I had seen before. I hurried to overtake her, and when I saw her face I felt as if the bright heaven of all beauty were opening up. I thought so then, when I was a sinful man, and my repetition of that impious idea may serve you instead of any description of those charms apt to inspire love which the Eternal Power had bestowed upon the lovely Angela, especially as it is not fitting for me to dilate upon earthly beauty now, and perhaps I could not either. Beside this lady there walked or rather limped, leaning on a stick, a very old, respectably dressed woman, striking only because of her unusual size and curious clumsiness. Despite the complete change in her attire, despite the deep hood which concealed a part of her face, I recognized this old lady at once as the gypsy woman from the quay. Her grotesque smile and a slight nod of her head told me I was not wrong.

  ‘I could not take my gaze from the charming wonder before me; the lovely girl cast her eyes down, and her fan fell from her hand. I quickly picked it up; as she took it I touched her fingers; they were trembling, and at that the fire of my accursed passion blazed up in me. I did not guess that this was the first moment of those terrible trials Heaven had ordained for me. I stood there utterly dazed, wholly confused in my mind, and scarcely noticed the lady and her old companion getting into a coach that had stopped at the end of the street. Only when the carriage drove away did I come to my senses, running after it like a madman. I was just in time to see the vehicle stop outside a house in the short, narrow street leading to the great square called the Largo delle Piane. Both the lady and her companion got out, and since the carriage drove away as soon as they were inside the house, I had good reason to suppose that they lived there.