SARTOR RESARTUS

This entry is devoted to Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), who certainly deserves one. And, yes, the title Sartor Resartus (Tailor Retailored) is the title of Carlyle’s autobiographical masterpiece, but being applicable to Carlyle himself, it is an apt introduction for him in this entry.

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There is a lot to be said for counting only the original, newly-minted linguistic coins, as metaphors. But it may not be very practical, as the metaphoric prototype may not be easily distinguished from the early mint by anyone who is unfamiliar with the exact parameters and copyright characteristics of the prototype, and will undoubtedly treat much later specimens as prototypes. Even better, most people, consciously using an existing colorful expression, will undoubtedly refer to it as a metaphor, even if it has been in circulation as long as a century or more!

Incidentally, this splendidly insightful comparison of a metaphor to a coin belongs, again, to the genius of Nietzsche, in the following quotation from his unpublished Über Warheit Und Lüge Im Außermoralischen Sinn (1873):

“What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms,¾ in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to people: truths are illusions, about which one has forgotten that this is what they are, metaphors, which are worn out, and without sensuous power; coins, which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins…”

Ironically, thirty-seven years prior to Nietzsche, a very similar thought was expressed by the Scottish Sage of Chelsea Thomas Carlyle, in his autobiographical masterpiece Sartor Resartus (The Tailor Retailored):

“Examine language-- what, if you except some few primitive elements (of natural sounds), what is it all but metaphors, whether recognized as such or no longer recognized; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colorless?” (Thomas Carlyle: Sartor Resartus, I, 1836.)

Could Nietzsche have been influenced by this? Doubly ironically, he well could have been, as he was very familiar with Carlyle, whom he most unkindly called the insipid muddlehead, semi-actor and rhetorician, and even a counterfeiter. (I suspect, however, that Nietzsche’s prejudice against Carlyle, shared by quite a few others, can be traced to the latter’s angry Reminiscences, written in a state of deep mental depression, and rather recklessly published posthumously in 1881 by his friend and literary executor James Froude.) It is well worth also quoting the following characterization of Carlyle by Nietzsche, in Götzen-Dämmerung:

[Skirmishes #12]: “I have been reading the life of Thomas Carlyle, this unconscious and involuntary farce, this heroic-moralistic interpretation of dyspeptic states. Carlyle: a man of strong words and attitudes, a rhetor from need, constantly lured by the craving for a strong faith and the feeling of his incapacity for it (in this respect, a typical romantic!). The craving for a strong faith is no proof of a strong faith, but quite the contrary. If one has such a faith, then one can afford the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is sure enough, firm enough, has ties enough for that. Carlyle drugs something in himself with the fortissimo of his veneration of men of strong faith and with his rage against the less simple-minded: he requires noise. A constant passionate dishonesty against himself --- that is his proprium; in this respect, he is, and remains, interesting. Of course, in England he is admired precisely for his honesty... Well, that is English; and in view of the fact that the English are the people of consummate cant, it is even as it should be, and not just comprehensible. At bottom, Carlyle is an English atheist ,who makes it a point of honor not to be one.”

Nietzsche, however, ought not have been too critical of Carlyle, as he may have been himself influenced by him, and as his views and those of Carlyle have actually so much in common.

Bertrand Russell has no special chapter for Carlyle in his History of Western Philosophy, but references to Carlyle are fairly numerous there. Talking about the romantic-nationalist movement arising in opposition to philosophical liberalism in the nineteenth-century Europe, he observes that “the cult of hero, as developed by Carlyle and Nietzsche, is typical of this philosophy… Byron was the poet of this movement, and Fichte, Carlyle, and Nietzsche were its philosophers.” Elsewhere, Russell somewhat contradicts the last statement, by saying that Carlyle was not a philosopher in the technical sense. He also mentions Carlyle being under the influence of Kant, and notes that Engels’ praise for Carlyle was a result of Engels’s misunderstanding of him: Carlyle never wanted wage-earners to be emancipated, but only resubjected to the kind of musters they had in the Middle Ages.

My personal opinion of Carlyle is positive (perhaps, because I have not read his Reminiscences?). I believe that his analysis of metaphors as the starting point of language is a stroke of genius, and a writer who can boast of a single paragraph, or even a single sentence of such profundity, deserves an undying respect in all eternity. But there are many more strikingly sharp observations to his credit, which are so numerous that I am not going to quote even my favorite ones, forcefully limiting myself to just three at random:

A person who is gifted sees the essential point, and leaves the rest as surplus. This has been my principle in all reading and learning since childhood; this trait of mine has been lavishly praised by Grigori Permyakov, who loved it when I dismissed all his proud technicalities of structural paroemiology as inessential… Thus Carlyle strikes an exquisitely harmonious chord in my psyche with this aphorism of his.

A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope. This is nice and therapeutic for me: no matter what happened in the course of my life, at least I have a strong mind, according to Carlyle. (Should I note, for the record, that my comment here was tongue-in cheek?)

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask for no other blessedness. A very comforting thought for me too, to stick to!

Postscript: Yes, I do love Thomas Carlyle, and not only for the fact that he was Scottish. Perhaps, when this material undergoes its long-promised grand revision, I ought to give him far more attention than what so far has been the case!