The Campaner Thal, and Other Writings. Jean Paul
Читать онлайн книгу.
did not enjoy the Epopee of nature as a man, nor scan it as a naturalist, but like an usher, separated and divided it, for practice in building up again. I said to him: "If we two will be shepherds, representing the old Myrtil and Phylax, it would be interesting. You know best that whims should be ten times less bold before ladies and refined ears than on print, and that for such people it has to be filtered through so many filtering-papers and strainers, that I would not give a proof-sheet for it after the process."
A hired country-house, at the end of the valley, was the architectural Eden with which Wilhelmi intended to surprise and delight his bride in this botanic one. But Nadine alone knew it.
In as many moments as a swan would take to spread his wings and rise, we were all ready. I do not blame man for making preparations for the examination for death, but for no (shorter) journey. The long hunt destroys the game of enjoyment. I, for my part, never think of starting until I am on the road.
Wilhelmi loaded himself with his bride's guitar; Karlson carried a portable ice-cellar. The ladies had their parasols; the Chaplain and I had nothing. I whispered to the shallow Phylax,--so I can now call him, and myself the old Myrtil,--"Sir Chaplain, we rebel against all good manners if we follow empty-handed." He immediately offered himself to Gione, as pack-horse, wagon, and carrier for her--parasol. But clever genius prompted me to return to Karlson's chamber, and bring two cushions from the sofa, and I returned with these twins in my arms; nothing could have been more appropriate, as the ladies sat down a thousand times on the way, and could not have dipped their silken elbows in the juicy paint of the flowers. To his vexation, Phylax was obliged to carry the soft block in his arms; I hung the other one, like a stick, to my thumb. At last we started.
We advanced towards the Pyrenees. Corn-fields, waterfalls, shepherd huts, marble blocks, woods and grottoes, animated by the vascular system of the many-branched Adour, passed beautifully before our eyes, and we were forced to leave them behind, like the bright years of youth changed into dreams by the stern hand of Time.
Ah, Victor, travelling alone is life, as life, on the contrary, is only a journey. And if, like certain shell-fish, I could only push myself on with one foot, or, like sea-nettles and women, I could only progress six lines in a quarter of an hour, or if I lived under Fritz II. or Fritz I. (Lycurgus), who both forbade a long journey, I would make a short one, that I might not perish like the loach, which languishes in every vessel, if not shaken.
How spirited, how poetical, how inventive can we not be while we run onwards. As Montaigne, Rousseau, and the sea-nettle only shine when they move on. By Heaven! it is no wonder that man rises and will go on; for does not the sun follow the pedestrian from tree to tree? does not its reflected likeness swim after him in the water? do not landscapes, mountains, hills, men, rapidly changing, come and go? and does not Freedom's breath blow on the ever-varying Eden, when, released from the neck and heart-breaking chains of narrow circumstances, we fly freely and gladly, as in dreams, over ever-new scenes.
For unfortunately the bell-glass over men and melons, which at first is covered by a broken bottle, must always be raised higher and higher, and at last removed entirely. At first, a man will go into the next town, then to the university, then to an important residency, then--if he has only written twenty lines--to Weimar, and finally, to Italy or to heaven. And if the planets were stringed together on a cord, and near each other, or if the rays of light were roads, and the atoms of light bridges, then surely would post-houses be erected in Uranus, and the insatiable inner man--for the outer one is so very satiable--would go longing and roaming from planet to planet.----
Therefore, my Victor, nothing is confined in so many prison-walls as is this our human self. And our cages are enclosed, onion-like, one in the other. Tour and my self are imprisoned not only on this earth, but in this King's Bench are the town walls; in these our four walls surround us; in the four walls, the arm-chair or the bed; in this again, the shirt or the coat, or both; and lastly, the body. And, to be minute (according to Sömmering), in the brain crevices, the duck's pond.---- Start at the fatal many-sided suite of houses of correction which surround thyself?----
Lampoon on the Chaplain.--Praise of Him.--The Diamond.--Opinions against Immortality.--Eden Jokes.
We two fellow-carriers formed the rear-guard. I wished to enter into discourse, but Phylax had a very poor opinion of me; at most he thought me a fickle sentimentalist who only portrays feelings. Yet feelings are the sponge of atmospheric air, which the poet, on his high Parnassus, as well as the philosophical diver in his depths, must hold in his mouth, and yet poetry has cast an earlier light on many obscure works of nature than philosophy, as the dark new moon borrows light from Venus.
But the philosopher sins against poets more than you sin against the followers of Kant, from whom you seem to expect that they shall write pleasingly. Your arguments are ideas, not reasonings, when you say that philosophy's attendants are like those of Turkish ladies, mute, black, and deformed; that the philosophical market-place is a forium morionum,[9] and that beauty is forbidden to philosophers, as it was to the Helots, who were killed for possessing it. Is it not evident that a certain barbarous, un-German, far-fetched language is more an ornament than a detriment to it. Oracles despise grace, vox dei sol[oe]cismus, i.e. a Kantist cannot be read,--he must be studied. Further, it is not beneath a philosopher to enrich the language instead of the science. For some other may seek the ideas for the terms, and find them, as animals were found for the Ammonites. Therefore the Greeks have the same term for word and knowledge, which combination was at last deified. The philosopher should always write over his door pour l'oudalgie,[10] instead of "here lives a dentist." This is the best reason, except a second one, why the philosopher, especially the Kantist, as I saw in Phylax, needs not books, nor men, nor experience, nor chemistry, botany, the fine arts, nor natural history. He can and must decipher the positive, the material, the given number, the unknown X. He creates the term, and sucks, as children often do,--it may suffocate them,--his own blistered tongue.
I must return to the company! As the Chaplain carried his walking-stick, or rather walking-tree of a cushion, with the greatest indifference towards me, I wished to prejudice him for me by a panegyric at the expense of Kant. I said to him: "It surprised me that the philosophers should have suffered Kant to have made so great a distinction between them and artists, and only allowed the merit of genius to the latter. He says, in § 47 of his 'Kritik der Urtheilkraft,' 'In sciences, the greatest inventor is only distinguished from the most labored imitator and apprentice by gradation; but from, those whom nature has gifted for beautiful nature, he is specifically distinguished.' This is derogatory, Sir Chaplain, and besides, not true. Why can Kant, then, only make Kantists, but no Kants?[11] Are new systems discovered by syllogisms, yet they are proved and tried by them? Can, then, the connection of a new philosophical idea with the old one better explain or facilitate its comprehension than the same connection which each new poetic one must have with old ones, which are the means of its creation. Sir Chaplain, I know not whom Kant has most sinned against, Truth, himself, or his school. Leibnitz's 'Monadology,' harmonia præstabilita, &c., are as much pure, brilliant emanations of genius, as any beaming form in Shakespeare or Homer. Besides, Leibnitz is a genial almighty Demiurg in the philosophical world, its greatest and first circumnavigator, and who, happier than Archimedes, found in his genius the standing-point from which he might move the philosophical universa, and play with worlds. He was an extraordinary spirit, he threw new chains on the earth, but he himself bore none: I think you agree with me, Sir Chaplain!" He replied, He did not, that the critical philosophy knew what to make of Leibnitz's experiments, his immaterial world, the asserted approximation of the definite to the indefinite line, and how to honor genius. In short, I had rather angered than conquered him.
Karlson, whom even Amor's torch could not blind to the philosophical one, took as much interest in our war as could be taken with the ears. Fortunately