Part 15 (1/2)

The book is opened by a would-be whimsical note, the guessing about the name of the book. The dependence upon Sterne, suggested by the motto, is clinched by reference to this quotation in the section ”Apologie,” and by the following chapter, which is ent.i.tled ”Yorick.” The latter is the most unequivocal and, withal, the most successful imitation of Yorick's manner which the volume offers. The author is sitting on a sofa reading the Sentimental Journey, and the idea of such a trip is awakened in him.

Someone knocks and the door is opened by the postman, as the narrator is opening his ”Lorenzodose,” and the story of the poor monk is touching his heart now for the twentieth time as strongly as ever. The postman asks postage on the letter as well as his own trivial fee. The author counts over money, miscounts it, then in counting forgets all about it, puts the money away and continues the reading of Yorick. The postman interrupts him; the author grows impatient and says, ”You want four groschen?” and is inexplicably vexed at the honesty of the man who says it is only three pfennigs for himself and the four groschen for the post. Here is a direct following of the Lorenzo episode; caprice rules his behavior toward an inferior, who is modest in his request. After the incident, his spite, his head and his heart and his ”ich” converse in true Sterne fas.h.i.+on as to the advisability of his beginning to read Yorick again. He reasons with himself concerning his conduct toward the postman, then in an apostrophe to Yorick he condemns himself for failing in this little test. This conversation occupies so much time that he cannot run after the postman, but he resolves that nothing, not even the fly that lights on his nose, shall bring him so far as to forget wherefore his friend J . . . . sent him a ”Lorenzodose.” And at the end of the section there is a picture of the snuff-box with the lid open, disclosing the letters of the word ”Yorick.” The ”Lorenzodose” is mentioned later, and later still the author calms his indignation by opening the box; he fortifies himself also by a look at the treasure.[66]

Following this picture of the snuff-box is an open letter to ”My dear J . . . ,” who, at the author's request, had sent him on June 29th a ”Lorenzodose.” Jacobi's accompanying words are given. The author acknowledges the difficulty with which sometimes the self-conquest demanded by allegiance to the sentimental symbol has been won.

Yet, compared with some other imitations of the good Yorick, the volume contains but a moderate amount of lavish sentiment. The servant Pumper is a man of feeling, who grieves that the horses trod the dewdrops from the blades of gra.s.s. Cast in the real Yorick mould is the scene in which Pumper kills a marmot (Hamster); upon his master's expostulation that G.o.d created the little beast also, Pumper is touched, wipes the blood off with his cuff and buries the animal with tenderness, indulging in a pathetic soliloquy; the whole being a variant of Yorick's a.s.s episode.

Marked with a similar vein of sentimentality is the narrator's conduct toward the poor wanderer with his heavy burden: the author a.s.serts that he has never eaten a roll, put on a white s.h.i.+rt, traveled in a comfortable carriage, or been borne by a strong horse, without bemoaning those who were less fortunately circ.u.mstanced. A similar and truly Sterne-like triumph of feeling over convention is the traveler's insistence that Pumper shall ride with him inside the coach; seemingly a point derived from Jacobi's failure to be equally democratic.[67]

Sterne's emphasis upon the machinery of his story-telling, especially his distraught pretense at logical sequence in the ordering of his material is here imitated. For example: near the close of a chapter the author summons his servant Pumper, but since the chapter bore the t.i.tle ”Der Brief” and the servant can neither read nor write a letter, he says the latter has nothing to do in that chapter, but he is to be introduced in the following one. Yet with Yorick's inconsequence, the narrator is led aside and exclaims at the end of this chapter, ”But where is Pumper?” with the answer, ”Heaven and my readers know, it was to no purpose that this chapter was so named (and perhaps this is not the last one to which the t.i.tle will be just as appropriate)”, and the next chapter pursues the whimsical attempt, beginning ”As to whether Pumper will appear in this chapter, about that, dear reader, I am not really sure myself.”

The whimsical, unconventional interposition of the reader, and the author's reasoning with him, a Sterne device, is employed so constantly in the book as to become a wearying mannerism. Examples have already been cited, additional ones are numerous: the fifth section is devoted to such conversation with the reader concerning the work; later the reader objects to the narrator's drinking coffee without giving a chapter about it; the reader is allowed to express his wonder as to what the chapter is going to be because of the author's leap; the reader guesses where the author can be, when he begins to describe conditions in the moon. The chapter ”Der Einwurf” is occupied entirely with the reader's protest, and the last two sections are largely the record of fancied conversations with various readers concerning the nature of the book; here the author discloses himself.[68] Sterne-like whim is found in the chapter ”Die Nacht,” which consists of a single sentence: ”Ich schenke Ihnen diesen ganzen Zeitraum, denn ich habe ihn ruhig verschlafen.” Similar Shandean eccentricity is ill.u.s.trated by the chapter ent.i.tled ”Der Monolog,” which consists of four lines of dots, and the question, ”Didn't you think all this too, my readers?”

Typographical eccentricity is observed also in the arrangement of the conversation of the ladies A., B., C., D., etc., in the last chapter.

Like Sterne, our author makes lists of things; probably inspired by Yorick's apostrophe to the ”Sensorium” is our traveler's appeal to the spring of joy. The description of the fas.h.i.+on of walking observed in the maid in the moon is reminiscent of a similar pa.s.sage in Schummel's journey.

Gochhausen's own work, untrammeled by outside influence, is considerable, largely a genial satire on critics and philosophers; his stay in the moon is a kind of Utopian fancy.

The literary journals accepted Gochhausen's work as a Yorick imitation, condemned it as such apologetically, but found much in the book worthy of their praise.[69]

Probably the best known novel which adopts in considerable measure the style of Tristram Shandy is Wezel's once famous ”Tobias Knaut,” the ”Lebensgeschichte Tobias Knauts des Weisen sonst Stammler genannt, aus Familiennachrichten gesammelt.”[70] In this work the influence of Fielding is felt parallel to that of Sterne. The historians of literature all accord the book a high place among humorous efforts of the period, crediting the author with wit, narrative ability, knowledge of human nature and full consciousness of plan and purpose.[71] They unite also in the opinion that ”Tobias Knaut” places Wezel in the ranks of Sterne imitators, but this can be accepted only guardedly, for in part the novel must be regarded as a satire on ”Empfindsamkeit” and hence in some measure be cla.s.sified as an opposing force to Sterne's dominion, especially to the distinctively German Sterne. That this impulse, which later became the guiding principle of ”Wilhelmine Arend,”

was already strong in ”Tobias Knaut” is hinted at by Gervinus, but pa.s.sed over in silence by other writers. Kurz, following Wieland, who reviewed the novel in his _Merkur_, finds that the influence of Sterne was baneful. Other contemporary reviews deplored the imitation as obscuring and stultifying the undeniable and genuinely original talents of the author.[72]

A brief investigation of Wezel's novel will easily demonstrate his indebtedness to Sterne. Yet Wezel in his preface, antic.i.p.ating the charge of imitation, a.s.serts that he had not read Shandy when ”Tobias”

was begun. Possibly he intends this a.s.sertion as a whim, for he quotes Tristram at some length.[73] This inconsistency is occasion for censure on the part of the reviewers.

Wezel's story begins, like Shandy, ”ab ovo,” and, in resemblance to Sterne's masterpiece, the connection between the condition of the child before its birth and its subsequent life and character is insisted upon.

A reference is later made to this. The work is episodical and digressive, but in a more extensive way than Shandy; the episodes in Sterne's novel are yet part and parcel of the story, infused with the personality of the writer, and linked indissolubly to the little family of originals whose sayings and doings are immortalized by Sterne. This is not true of Wezel: his episodes and digressions are much more purely extraneous in event, and nature of interest. The story of the new-found son, which fills sixty-four pages, is like a story within a story, for its connection with the Knaut family is very remote. This very story, interpolated as it is, is itself again interrupted by a seven-page digression concerning Tyrus, Alexander, Pipin and Charlemagne, which the author states is taken from the one hundred and twenty-first chapter of his ”Lateinische Pneumatologie,”--a genuine Sternian pretense, reminding one of the ”Tristrapaedia.” Whimsicality of manner distinctly reminiscent of Sterne is found in his mock-scientific catalogues or lists of things, as in Chapter III, ”Deduktionen, Dissertationen, Argumentationen a priori und a posteriori,” and so on; plainly adapted from Sterne's idiosyncrasy of form is the advertis.e.m.e.nt which in large red letters occupies the middle of a page in the twenty-first chapter of the second volume, which reads as follows: ”Dienst-freundliche Anzeige.

Jedermann, der an ernsten Gesprachen keinen Gefallen findet, wird freundschaftlich ersucht alle folgende Blatter, deren Inhalt einem Gesprache ahnlich sieht, wohlbedachtig zu uberschlagen, d.h. von dieser Anzeige an gerechnet. Darauf denke ich, soll jedermanniglich vom 22.

Absatze fahren konnen,--Cuique Suum.” The following page is blank: this is closely akin to Sterne's vagaries. Like Sterne, he makes promise of chapter-subject.[74] Similarly dependent on Sterne's example, is the Fragment in Chapter VIII, Volume III, which breaks off suddenly under the plea that the rest could not be found. Like Sterne, our author satirizes detailed description in the excessive account of the infinitesimals of personal discomfort after a carouse.[75] He makes also obscure whimsical allusions, accompanied by typographical eccentricities (I, p. 153). To be connected with the story of the Abbess of Andouillets is the humor ”Man leuterirte, appelirte--irte,--irte,--irte.”

The author's perplexities in managing the composition of the book are sketched in a way undoubtedly derived from Sterne,--for example, the beginning of Chapter IX in Volume III is a lament over the difficulties of chronicling what has happened during the preceding learned disquisition. When Tobias in anger begins to beat his horse, this is accompanied by the sighs of the author, a really audible one being put in a footnote, the whole forming a whimsy of narrative style for which Sterne must be held responsible. Similar to this is the author's statement (Chap. XXV, Vol. II), that Lucian, Swift, Pope, Wieland and all the rest could not unite the characteristics which had just been predicated of Selmann. Like Sterne, Wezel converses with the reader about the way of telling the story, indulging[76] in a mock-serious line of reasoning with meaningless Sternesque dashes. Further conversation with the reader is found at the beginning of Chapter III in Volume I, and in Chapter VIII of the first volume, he cries, ”Wake up, ladies and gentlemen,” and continues at some length a conversation with these fancied personages about the progress of the book. Wezel in a few cases adopted the worst feature of Sterne's work and was guilty of bad taste in precisely Yorick's style: Tobias's adventure with the so-called soldier's wife, after he has run away from home, is a case in point, but the following adventure with the two maidens while Tobias is bathing in the pool is distinctly suggestive of Fielding. Sterne's indecent suggestion is also followed in the hints at the possible occasion of the Original's aversion to women. A similar censure could be spoken regarding the adventure in the tavern,[77] where the author hesitates on the edge of grossness.

Wezel joined other imitators of Yorick in using as a motif the accidental interest of lost doc.u.ments, or papers: here the poems of the ”Original,” left behind in the hotel, played their role in the tale.

The treatment of the wandering boy by the kindly peasant is clearly an imitation of Yorick's famous visit in the rural cottage. A parallel to Walter Shandy's theory of the dependence of great events on trifles is found in the story of the volume of Tacitus, which by chance suggested the sleeping potion for Frau v. L., or that Tobias's inability to take off his hat with his right hand was influential on the boy's future life. This is a reminder of Tristram's obliquity in his manner of setting up his top. As in Shandy, there is a discussion about the location of the soul. The character of Selmann is a compound of Yorick and the elder Shandy, with a tinge of satiric exaggeration, meant to chastise the thirst for ”originals” and overwrought sentimentalism. His generosity and sensitiveness to human pain is like Yorick. As a boy he would empty his purse into the bosom of a poor man; but his daily life was one round of Shandean speculation, largely about the relations.h.i.+ps of trivial things: for example, his yearly periods of investigating his motives in inviting his neighbors Herr v. ** and Herr v. *** every July to his home.

Wezel's satire on the craze for originality is exemplified in the account of the ”Original” (Chap. XXII, Vol. II), who was cold when others were hot, complained of not liking his soup because the plate was not full, but who threw the contents of his coffee cup at the host because it was filled to the brim, and trembled at the approach of a woman. Selmann longs to meet such an original. Selmann also thinks he has found an original in the inn-keeper who answers everything with ”Nein,” greatly to his own disadvantage, though it turns out later that this was only a device planned by another character to gain advantage over Selmann himself. So also, in the third volume, Selmann and Tobias ride off in pursuit of a sentimental adventure, but the latter proves to be merely a jest of the Captain at the expense of his sentimental friend. Satire on sentimentalism is further unmistakable in the two maidens, Adelheid and Kunigunde, who weep over a dead b.u.t.terfly, and write a lament over its demise. In jest, too, it is said that the Captain made a ”sentimental journey through the stables.” The author converses with Ermindus, who seems to be a kind of Eugenius, a convenient figure for reference, apostrophe, and appeal. The novelist makes also, like Sterne, mock-pedantic allusions, once indeed making a long citation from a learned Chinese book. An expression suggesting Sterne is the oath taken ”bey den Nachthemden aller Musen,”[78] and an intentional inconsequence of narration, giving occasion to conversation regarding the author's control of his work, is the sudden pa.s.sing over of the six years which Tobias spent in Selmann's house.[79]

In connection with Wezel's occupation with Sterne and Sterne products in Germany, it is interesting to consider his poem: ”Die unvermuthete Nachbarschaft. Ein Gesprach,” which was the second in a volume of three poems ent.i.tled ”Epistel an die deutschen Dichter,” the name of the first poem, and published in Leipzig in 1775. This slight work is written for the most part in couplets and covers twenty-three pages. Wezel represents Doktor Young, the author of the gloomy ”Night Thoughts” and ”Der gute Lacher,--Lorenz Sterne” as occupying positions side by side in his book-case. This proximity gives rise to a conversation between the two antipodal British authors: Sterne says:

”Wir brauchen beide vielen Raum, Your Reverence viel zum Handeringen, Und meine Wenigkeit, zum Pfeifen, Tanzen, Singen.”

and later,

. . . ”Und will von Herzen gern der Thor der Th.o.r.en seyn; Jungst that ich ernst: gleich hielt die Narrheit mich beym Rocke.

Wo, rief sie, willst du hin,--Du! weisst du unsern Bund.

Ist das der Dank? Du lachtest dich gesund.”

To Sterne's further enunciation of this joyous theory of life, Young naturally replies in characteristic terms, emphasizing life's evanescence and joy's certain blight. But Sterne, though acknowledging the transitoriness of life's pleasures, denies Young's deductions.

Yorick's conception of death is quite in contrast to Young's picture and one must admit that it has no justification in Sterne's writings. On the contrary, Yorick's life was one long flight from the grim enemy. The idea of death cherished by Asmus in his ”Freund Hein,” the welcome guest, seems rather the conception which Wezel thrusts on Sterne. Death comes to Yorick in full dress, a youth, a Mercury: