Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle

First published: 1833-1834, serial; 1836, book

Type of work: Philosophy

The Work:

Many scholars of Thomas Carlyle refer to Sartor Resartus as fiction, but readers who think of the nineteenth century novel when they think of fiction would hardly agree. Although Sartor Resartus does have a putative hero, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, whose life and opinions become the substance of the book, he is only the mouthpiece through whom Carlyle unleashes a torrent of criticism about the materialism and philosophical rationalism of his age. Writing about the German humorist Jean Paul Richter, Carlyle observes that “every work, be it fiction or serious treatise, is embaled in some fantastic wrappage,” and he refers to Richter’s “perfect Indian jungle” of a style. This precisely describes Carlyle’s prose as well.

Sartor Resartus is divided into three books of eleven, ten, and twelve chapters, respectively. The title means, literally, “the Tailor Retailored,” and the whole work elaborates a long metaphor suggested by Jonathan Swift’s question in the second book of A Tale of a Tub (1704): “What is Man himself but a Micro-Coat, or rather a compleat Suit of Cloaths with all its Trimmings?” In Carlyle’s view, civilization—that is, religion, government, and all the other institutional garments that human beings weave to clothe themselves—is frayed and shabby and needs retailoring. For the transcendentalist Carlyle, clothes also become the shroud of matter by which all spirit makes its appearance in this world of sensible experience.

Carlyle adopts the conventional apprenticeship novel to his own purposes in Sartor Resartus. His chosen hero, the young man who goes out into the world and meets its challenges, has the fantastic name of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, or Born-of-God Devil’s-Dung. This improbably named character becomes professor of Allerley-Wissenschaft at the University of Weissnichtwo, or Professor of Things in General at the University of Know-Not-Where.

Carlyle’s complicated narrative begins with praise for “deep-thinking Germany” and its Idealist tradition in philosophy, its expounding of a transcendental supersensible realm closed off from the five senses. This admiration for German thought permeates Sartor Resartus, appearing not only in Teufelsdröckh’s nationality but also in the repeated German phrases and in the penchant for beginning nouns with capital letters. Given this predilection, the narrator responds eagerly to the arrival of Professor Teufelsdröckh’s new book on the origin and influence of clothes.

After months of perusing Teufelsdröckh’s opus, the narrator unexpectedly receives a letter from Teufelsdröckh’s associate, Herr Hofrath Heuschrecke (Mr. Councilor Grasshopper), announcing that he is sending materials for a “Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh.” Before these materials arrive, however, the narrator muses on the character of Teufelsdröckh and on passages from the volume on clothes. In book 1, chapter 5, for instance, Carlyle attacks one of his favorite targets, Enlightenment rationalism, when his narrator quotes Teufelsdröckh’s sneer at the Cause-and-Effect Philosopher.

The chapter “The World out of Clothes” stresses the inadequacy of rational systems, praising Teufelsdröckh’s broad, intuitive approach to understanding the spiritual basis of nature, an infinitely complex system, but one that faith convinces readers reveals a plan. Humans live as in a dream, perceiving only in “rare half-waking moments” the spiritual reality behind the mask of matter in the creation.

This same theme is pursued in a chapter that renounces “vulgar Logic” in favor of “Pure Reason”; that is, logic views the human being simply as an “omnivorous Biped that wears Breeches,” whereas Pure Reason, or direct, unmediated intuition, apprehends in humans “A Soul, a Spirit, and divine Apparition.” Matter, however, should not be denigrated, for it is everywhere the manifestation of Spirit. Science threatens the reverence for Spirit, however, because its curiosity about matter dampens the sense of wonder at the mystery of existence.

Book 1 ends with the narrator’s receipt of six large paper bags stuffed with Teufelsdröckh’s manuscripts. The narrator’s subsequent absorption in the story of the philosopher’s life and opinions will form the substance of book 2, told mostly in long passages quoted from Teufelsdröckh’s papers.

The hero’s origins in the village of Entepfuhl (Duck Pond) are mysterious; an enigmatic stranger brings the infant in a basket to a childless, aging couple, Andreas and Gretchen Futteral. The young Diogenes’ childhood is idyllic, his intellectual development prodigious. In his adolescence, he loses both Andreas and Gretchen, but in learning the puzzle of his birth, he miraculously discovers his individuality: “I was like no other,” he exults. His university experience disillusions him, and the narrator digresses to blister one of Carlyle’s favorite targets, the barrenness of rationalism. However, Teufelsdröckh’s youthful skepticism is a natural rite of passage, for

first must the dead Letter of Religion own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the living Spirit of Religion, freed from this its charnelhouse, is to arise on us, newborn of Heaven, and with new healing under its wings.

This passage well illustrates Carlyle’s unrelieved practice of narrating by metaphor.

After the young Teufelsdröckh leaves the university, he follows a ragged course. He flounders in a legal career before suffering through his first great love interest, the collapse of which turns him into a Byronic pilgrim wandering in the mountains. At this point in book 2, Carlyle subjects his hero to an ordeal of religious despair through which the hero fights his way. Chapter 7, “The Everlasting No,” finds Teufelsdröckh mired in spiritual sloth but still clinging to his belief in a transcendent Truth and the demands of duty. Finally, he rouses himself and looks outward at the world, the “Not-me,” finding great relief in this escape from the burden of solipsism, or absorption in self.

In chapter 8, “Centre of Indifference,” the revitalized Teufelsdröckh plunges into the give-and-take of great events and great scenes, and Carlyle expands on one of his favorite themes, the importance of the great person in shaping history. This was a topic on which Carlyle was to write at length in On Heroes and Hero-Worship (1841). By chapter’s end, Teufelsdröckh has banished spiritual pride and can ask himself, “Pshaw! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth; what art thou that sittest whining there?”

Chapter 10, “The Everlasting Yea,” relates Teufelsdröckh’s emergence whole on the far side of the slough of despond. He reports that “Annihilation of Self . . . had been happily accomplished; and my mind’s eyes were now unsealed, and its hands ungyved.” He suddenly enjoys knowledge of a living universe full of the immanent God, a nature he calls the Living Garment of God. This mystical breakthrough inspires in him infinite love and pity for his fellow human beings, and it frees him from Calvinist fretting about Original Sin. The insight he achieves owes a debt to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust (part 1, 1808): People’s unhappiness derives from the source of their greatness, their finite soul’s striving for the infinite. Once they overcome their preoccupation with happiness and turn their attention to God, they shall achieve peace. Carlyle’s famous command is “Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe.” In an apostrophe to Voltaire, Teufelsdröckh tells Voltaire that his work is over; Christian superstition is dead. These three chapters are the centerpiece of Sartor Resartus, and they conclude resoundingly: “Work while it is called To-day, for the Night cometh wherein no man can work.”

The remaining chapters return to the same ideas, fashioning them in different metaphors. “Incident in Modern History” celebrates the life of George Fox (1624-1691), founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers). “Church Clothes” elaborates on a conceit in which government appears as the outer skin of society, and religion becomes “the inmost Pericardial and Nervous Tissue, which ministers Life and warm Circulation to the whole.” Utilitarians, or “Motive-Millwrights,” take a couple of punches in “Symbols,” a chapter that also lauds as the highest of all symbols the artist or poet who emerges as a prophet in whom “all men can recognise a present God.” Jesus is cited as “our divinest Symbol.” Clearly, Carlyle aspired to be the artist-prophet of his age.

Liberal, rationalist contempt for the Church and its hierarchical authority is condemned in “The Phoenix,” which predicts that a saving remnant will revitalize the institution. This revitalization is enabled by the “organic filaments” that connect the dying elements of the old generation to the elements being born in the new generation. Humankind is a unity that gives sequence and continuity to life. The new age will need new titles, but kings will remain kings. The true basis for organizing society will always be hero worship, which elevates great individuals to their proper positions. Even with the old religion in retreat, there remain “Fragments of a genuine Church-Homiletic” scattered amid “this immeasurable froth ocean we name Literature.” Paramount among the prophets of literature is Goethe.

One of Carlyle’s longest chapters is “Natural Supernaturalism,” in which he sneers at science as petty in the face of the miracles witnessed daily: “the true inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this,” he insists, “that I can stretch forth my hand at all.” God’s presence shines through the universe, and each person lives as a ghost, “a shadow-system gathered round our Me.” Humans come into this world and take a bodily shape before disappearing again, “through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God.”

A chapter entitled “Circumspective” expounds a semiotics of spirit, and “The Dandiacal Body” contrasts, rather meanly, the sect of self-absorbed dandies whose “Fashionable Novels” constitute their sacred books, with the “Poor-Slaves,” that is “Rhizophagous,” or potato-eating, Irish-Catholic peasantry. Two final chapters, repeating the same metaphors, conclude the hyperbolic musings of Carlyle’s modern Diogenes.

Two years after Carlyle published Sartor Resartus, the American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson published his famous meditation Nature (1836), in which he announces his own version of the Idealism that Carlyle celebrated; in “Self-Reliance” (1841), Emerson gives his most eloquent testimony in support of Carlyle’s hero-worship. In their fierce defense of a supersensible realm of Spirit, their condemnation of the positivism of their times, and their proclamation of the individual’s freedom to achieve greatness through efforts of the will, these two sages contributed greatly to nineteenth century intellectual history.

Bibliography

Carlyle, Thomas. Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh in Three Books. Introduction and notes by Rodger L. Tarr. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. This edition uses all extant versions to create an authentic text. It also includes a helpful introduction that discusses the work and places it in its historical context. Also includes extensive textual annotations.

Kaplan, Fred. Thomas Carlyle: A Biography. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983. Comprehensive biography. Presents Carlyle’s circumstances while writing Sartor Resartus and his dealings with publishers. Vividly depicts Carlyle’s relations with notable figures, such as Harriet Martineau and John Stuart Mill, and shows clear affinities with American readers. Includes many illustrations.

LaValley, Albert J. Carlyle and the Idea of the Modern. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968. Studies Carlyle’s prophetic writings in relation to William Blake and other prophets of his day, including Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx. Argues that Sartor Resartus presents Christianity as exhausted and asserts that the self will be the new basis of religion.

Levine, George. The Boundaries of Fiction: Carlyle, Macaulay, Newman. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968. Pointing to the use in Sartor Resartus of symbols and images, and to its satire and didacticism, Levine treats it not as a novel but as a “confession-anatomy-romance” in Northrop Frye’s system of classification.

Morrow, John. Thomas Carlyle. New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2006. This updated biography chronicles Carlyle’s personal life and intellectual career and discusses his works.

Seigel, Jules Paul, ed. Thomas Carlyle: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971. A collection of contemporary reviews. John Sterling praises the “genius and moral energy” of Sartor Resartus, Alexander Hill Everett calls the book a “philosophical romance,” and Nathaniel Frothingham admires its “humane cast of thought.”

Tennyson, G. B. Sartor Called Resartus. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965. Invaluable study of Sartor Resartus. Includes chapters on the book’s German background and on its composition, structure, texture, and style. The final chapter illustrates the book’s philosophy in the context of the period. Appendix includes a chronology of the composition of Carlyle’s works.

Trela, D. J., and Rodger L. Tarr, eds. The Critical Response to Thomas Carlyle’s Major Works. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997. Collection of reviews and essays about Sartor Resartus and Carlyle’s other major works that date from their initial publication through the twentieth century. The introduction discusses how Carlyle responded to his critics.