Preface to The Invisible Lodge by Jean Paul Richter
But every first feeling is a morning star that, without setting, soon loses its enchanted shimmer and moves on, veiled by the blue of the day...
The equinox has come, and in city parks and city boulevards along the Eastern Seaboard, the trees are beginning to flower, cherry and magnolia, vegetation awaking, leafing out, but still with a sharp note in the air, traces of frost or scattered snow, to intermix and then evaporate, traceless, in the sunshine. It’s fitting then to celebrate the German Enlightenment writer Jean Paul Richter, born on this day, March 21st, in 1763. His work is filled with romantic episodes and lush horticultural imagery, but even so he’s a strange and difficult writer, the strangest and most difficult I’ve ever had to translate, a title that he will keep for the foreseeable future.
A few years ago, while I was living on the other side of the continent, I was commissioned to translate the preface to the second edition of The Invisible Lodge, part of Empyrean Edition’s anthology of prefaces by Jean Paul, an odd project but fitting for such digressive and metafictional writer. He once lamented that he was “obliged to append a book” to any introductory materials. The Invisible Lodge was first rendered into English back in 1883 by Charles T. Brooks, a frequent translator of Jean Paul, though the preface in question was omitted, as well as the novella, The Life the Merry Little Schoolmaster Maria Wutz, which Jean Paul added to give the book a more optimistic tone. The novel was a success for him, and the preface to it has the wistful, easygoing manner of an established artist relating their breakthrough.
Have I read The Invisible Lodge? No, at least not in full. From what I can tell, it concerns the fortunes of Gustav von Falkenberg, a young man who was conceived because of a carefully rigged chess match; his father, an otherwise terrible player, wins his mother’s hand in marriage through the game. More strange conditions follow: the maternal grandmother demands the child be reared underground, in a cellar, isolated from the rest of humanity and educated along the strict moral principles of the Moravian Church.
Jean Paul frequently interrupts the narrative with asides about himself, frequently complaining about his boredom and impatience at having to finish the novel. The action (eventually) moves to the princely court of Scheerau, where von Falkenberg pursues Beata von Röper, a beautiful and chaste girl also raised by the Moravian Church. Through various courtly machinations and misunderstandings, the pair do not consummate their love but nevertheless end up together in the East Indies, where von Falkenberg is imprisoned and the main narrative abruptly ends.
The novella added to the end of the book, Maria Wutz follows the life of an impoverished but enterprising schoolteacher and bibliophile, a minor character in the preceding novel. To fill the gaps in his reading, Wutz composes his own original versions of works by Goethe, Schiller, and Kant, elaborating on details he learns through seasonal book catalogs. Unlike the novel it appends, I have actually read Maria Wutz and multiple times at that. It’s become a great comfort read. At around 80 pages in my edition, the book can be digested a lot more easily than Jean Paul’s other works, though the density of the writing more than makes up for the brevity.
This preface to The Invisible Lodge, despite remaining untranslated for two centuries, is a key to understanding Jean Paul as a writer. Prior to writing the novel, he was, like Wutz, an impoverished provincial school teacher. But unlike his gentle hero, Jean Paul did not bear lack of success with calm fatalism. It had precipitated, to use modern verbiage, a mental and creative crisis. His solution was to leave the “vinegar factory” of his cynical youth and embrace a more optimistic view on life, though still shot with an appreciation for the grotesque.
This characteristic mix of obscurity and sentimentalism made Jean Paul a very popular writer (though divisive on) throughout the 19th century, not just in the German-speaking world but throughout Europe and North America as well. Thomas Carlyle was among the first to admire and translate him into English. The crank philosopher Herr Teufelsdröckh in Sartor Resartus is largely based Jean Paul, though the mental portrait is more a reflection of Carlyle’s flinty conservatism than any beliefs his deutsche Meister might have held. The latter, quite unlike the former, did not propound or proselytize for any definite program. His influence rests with the style and structure of his work. When Herman Melville’s novel Pierre or the Ambiguities was first published in 1852, reviewers (not altogether kindly) found strong parallels between Melville’s digressions and ecstatic prose and that of J.P., as my fellow translators and I call him. It’s as good a legacy as any writer could hope for.
Preface to the Second Edition
Anyone who takes a benevolent part in the trifling parlor room, yea, in the trifling study hall festivities of writers: certainly they will scribble out second edition prefaces with gusto and speed; since with them they celebrate a book jubilee and speak of nothing but the most cordial of subjects, namely themselves. If the writer, in his sample edition, must needs have a dull and shy comportment, and make public display (concerning his gifts) of exaggerated yet nevertheless requisite doubt and care: then all the more unbounded and cheerful, conversely, is the jubilant author's transformation from church militant, in the first preface, to church triumphant in the second, the jubilarian himself singing his own serenades and vivat and vivam.
The present author is, on this page, ready to celebrate and jubilate a family holiday with one of his dearest children—the present book, his romantic first fruits—speaking here of the second edition.
—But in the midst of these festivities, he will perhaps consider that an author such as himself might end up, in this way, writing more prefaces than books—e.g., the thrice-arisen Hesperus thrice donning a preface—and consequently there is almost as much talking as there is of doing. Old age speaks readily of itself; but unfavorably enough, new editions multiply over the years and prefaces along with them, in which all sorts of things are said about oneself.
The little that I have to say about myself is limited to the usual self-praise, with the mirror foil of self-criticism beneath it.
Standing improvements to my editions have also remained, in the citation or expulsion of mutterings or stutterings or daylong dawdlings, in the extirpation of false coinages and attributions. —Furthermore, on all pages, wherever necessary, color and light and shadow have been elevated or deepened, but only slightly; most often in the comedic passages. For if I had—to continue with the praise—wanted to strengthen or alter the serious ones, which portray nature and love and the great within us and above us: I would have not been able to do so in my later years, since I must already thank God for having written those passages in the first place. This lack—so much that I could, after the four times printed Flegeljahre, bring out as many new editions as I have years within me— will show itself all the more that, when I must complete the third or final volume of the Lodge, I sincerely wish an imitator of mine, other than myself, would take up the burden.
My reasons I lay out here. The author of these sketches, written at 19 years of age, kept and reworked them for nine more years at his satirical vinegar factory (rose and honey vinegar he selected from Selections from the Devil’s Papers) until December 1790, with the somewhat honey-sour Life of Schoolmaster Maria Wutz: for that long then, an entire Horatian nine-year stint, was his youthful heart locked up by satire, closed to all that was blessed and beat within him, all that swayed and loved and swooned. When, in my 28th year, my heart was finally allowed to open and aerate: it burst forth light and mild like a sunshower—I needed only to yield and watch the downpour—and no thought came naked, but each brought its own word and stood in its correct growth, without the pruning shears of art. It is precisely a long squeezed, overfull heart that preserves, in its floodtide, more of what is right and moderate than one always open, emptying itself at its ebb, to make waves at the next bookseller’s fair. Oh! All that is best in life, especially that of sentiment, should only once be uttered! Flowers blooming on the tree of vitality are meager and have but two simple colors, white and red, that of innocence and shame; whereas flowers on thinner stalks are more general and adorn themselves in blazing color. —But every first feeling is a morning star that, without setting, soon loses its enchanted shimmer and moves on, veiled by the blue of the day...
Here I nearly fall into the same florid mess by talking thusly; but again for the reason given, since in my prefaces I have often and especially spoken of the virginal beauty and power with which fresh feelings initially speak (in this I am referring to the second edition of Mummies in the new double-edition of The Greenland Litigations); and thus the sentence is upheld by its very pronouncement.
Perhaps the author will be forgiven for writing his first novel two years premature, namely at the age of 28; but on the whole, as he readily admits, one should not write novels before the year in which his own plays out, when life for an old German is transformed by the marriage plot, namely at the age of 30. In Richardson, Rousseau, and Goethe (not the lyrical Werther, but the romantic Meister), in Fielding and many others, the sentence is upheld by its very pronouncement. The author of The Invisible Lodge had read in Lichtenberg so many strong penitential sermons against the anthropological unreasonings of German novelists and poets, against their vast ignorance both public and private, that he had not the courage to attempt this daring feat himself, at least not until his 28th year. He always feared that a poet should know a thing as well as a builder or a painter, if only in part; yea, he must even (to exaggerate the matter further) understand something of the neighboring disciplines (for indeed, all sciences discipline poetry) as the painter must understand anatomy, chemistry, and theology among other things. —And certainly, no one has established himself so well as Goethe—who of all known poets integrates within himself the most foundational knowledge, from imperial praxis to legal practice, on through the comprehensive study of the arts, into geology, botany, and every natural science—a firm and graceful pillar of the principle that only a poet who brings light to one thing or another can himself be heard, so it is the same with poetry as it is with plants, which, despite all nourishment from air, heat, and moisture, produce fruit without taste or nourishment if sunlight fails them.
Fortunately, a great deal has changed since then—since Lichtenberg and the other prose writers took up their preaching ministry—and indeed, to the clear advantage of poets. Idealized portraits by connoisseurs and bibliophiles have eagerly been commissioned, all the more since the Romantic mode is expected and demanded. Therefore, so-called characters—such as those found in Goethe, or even in Shakespeare, yea, as only in Lessing—are precisely what characterizes the newer dramatists and novelists the least, and it is enough for them—so long as the requisite romance is on hand—when characters only somewhat half-and-half represent something and mean nothing on the whole. These characters or human concoctions are fine confections and, like all candy or marzipan men, quite dissimilar, indeed disfigured, but all the sweeter for it, melting gently on the tongue. Their impressed heads are, so to speak, watermarks of a more elevated paper mill and require no greater resemblance than Prussian or Saxon heads of state to their likenesses on Prussian or Saxon draft documents, their dissimilarity only visible when the paper is held up to the light. Considering how difficult it is to create characters, and how seldom they are created, when one is not on the level of Shakespeare, it is, on the other hand, quite easy to tell new stories, whose arbitrary end-rhymes, compositionally prescribed, organic globules or frog eggs resemble: thus through his stock cloud-characters, which under examination condense, evaporate, and take full- and half-measures, the poet is spared unbelievable time and effort, used more fruitfully on events, in writing his compositions, and he can appear at every book fair with a fresh supply of new stories and old characters; he is the cook Andhrimmer (in Norse mythology) with his cauldron Eldhrimmer, where he cooks the pig Sährimmer, which revives every night to feed the heroes of Valhalla every day.
In novels and tragedies, this romantic spirit has now reached a height and perfection beyond which it can hardly go without hexing itself, and which one can safely call madness or lunacy in pure plain words if not in high speech also. From the tragedies of the none-too-sensible Werner to the Yngurd of the all-too-sensible Müller, a rare airy madness, uncalled for by the stage, rules the characters and even, in part, the plots, the staging of which is an actual infinitude, for shifty and shiftable characters shift and motivate the action at will. Even in the greatest geniuses of other peoples and earlier times, one seeks artistic insanities and anagrams and anamorphoses of the mind, like a hypothetical proselyte of Luther or Attila, in vain. Even Sophocles, accused of dotage by his inheritance-hungry children, had wit enough to floor them with such an intelligent tragedy as Oedipus; but in our time, a German Sophocles would likely prove his mental fitness with nothing more than a poem filled with characters borrowed from the playwright.
Fortunately, this romantic madness induces not only tears but laughter, which is called humor or caprice. For the sake of brevity, I refer here only to the artful Friedrich Hoffmann, whose Callotesque fantasies I earlier praised and recommended in a special preface, when he was of a much lower standing and stood closer to me. More recently, however, he has driven these humorous characters to such romantic heights—especially in the unhinged fellowship of his morning, midday, afternoon and night spirits, which no longer partake of solid ground or pure daylight—that his humor really does border on real madness; something Aristophanes and Shakespeare, and Rabelais, never sought to achieve. In his early work, the cheerful Tieck made a few mad leaps at these humorous nightshade berries, but as a fox let them hang, keeping to the Bacchus berry vintage of delight — —
This much should demonstrate how willingly and joyfully the author accepts the highflying vantage of contemporary literature. Indisputably, belladonna (as the deadly nightshade is called) has become our muse, our prima donna and madonna, and we live in a poetical nightshade sabbath. It is all the more gratifying, then, that the reading public also favors this poetical transport through its sympathy and, like the Orient, honors the insane as saints, considering what they say inspired. I wish them a fine laurel and cherry laurel season! — —
With every new second edition, the author, who would like so much to correct them, finds it painful again that none of his writings ever achieved an all-encompassing and encroaching verdict on history, character, and language. General praise to the point of exaggeration, and similar censure to an even greater degree, is of no use and utility to a righteous artist. Naturally, his second editions are examined and judged even less than the first editions, and every evening the author searches in vain for praise of his severity against himself. But how much he likes to correct and delete—even more than a Viennese director of drama, who merely dismembers foreign plays—and how diligently he sucks the nectar of self-improvement from every thorned or barbed piece of criticism, be that a rose or a wasp, and this a critic could achieve much without reading more books than two, namely the second edition together with the first; yea, he could parse out everything he needed by asking the gentleman publisher to kindly show him the old exemplar, with its wise wrinkles and its print and inkblots: the man would be surprised at the improvements lying there across from him at the bookshop.
But unfortunately, as I have already mentioned, very little fiction is being reviewed in Germany at the moment, with pocket calendars perhaps being the only exception that matters here, namely their various little essays and the various little judgments withal.
It is quite late, after 28 years, for me to first say what I intended with both titles of the book. An “Invisible Lodge” should refer to something like a secret society, which of course will remain hidden until I bring to light or bring into the world the third or final volume. The second title, “Mummies”, can be explained even more clearly, as it indicates my mood better than the plot. For everywhere in the work images of mortal flight and decay, such as Egyptian mummies and Greek skeletal automata, are set among the feasting and festivities. Yet poetry should show more of the coming than of the going, paint life on death, rather than death on life. The Mountain of Muses, as the highest peak, surpassing all clouds, which allows us to see both heaven and earth more clearly, which brings us nearer the stars and nearer the flowering valley floor, this is to be the Ararat of our shipwrecked and water-treading humanity; how in the myth Deucalion and Pyrrha saved themselves from the deluge on Parnassus; so demanded our Goethe and wrote accordingly; poetry should only brighten and cheer, not darken and cloud. —And this I believe too; yea, without an inborn instinctive faculty—what one calls memory and hope—no reality could be endured, least of all enjoyed. —
But it is just as certain that youth, this living poetry, in the midst of its blossoming branches (which already bear fruit) and its warm sunny hills, loves nothing better than to read and write nocturnal mediations; and not only for the lovesick maiden, but also for the lovestruck young man—who await their slaughter with far more enthusiasm than old men—does the churchyard impend like a hanging garden in the air, and they long to be transported upward. Youth knows only green flowered barrows, but old age opens graves lined without verdure.
This youthful view now benefits the author, who wrote this work at a tender age, with its all too frequent burials and meditations on transience. —However, a not too timorous justification is needed here; for we swim in ever all-annihilating and all-destroying time, and we descend by the lesser grave of every minute into the greater one of the last hour: so here not the shy sideward glance of poetry—concerning evils that touch but a few and but rarely—rather a brave upward gaze can become poetical and vivifying. Poetry not only boldly opens up our earthly tombs, but shows how art lies between realms and how we oscillate between entombed and exhumed. –And if we only sun ourselves as merrymaking mayflies, actual midday mayflies, in the rays of the setting sun and then sink: not only do the flies but the sun sinks also; but in the wide-open spaces of creation, where no earthly power intervenes, sun and spirit have no setting and no grave.
And so may these two Mummies, not so much embalmed with new spices as here and there rewrapped in symbolic bandages, enjoy timely invitation and entrance to readers' banquets! The third or final Mummy is to be sent off—as the third Fate in the beautiful Greek sense—unless fate first makes the Father of the Mummy himself the Great Mummy. So in one sense or another, there cannot be a lack of a third Mummy in the end.
Bayreuth
24 June 1821