Notes

1. Horet ihr Herren and lasset's Euch sagen: Listen, gentlemen, and let it
be told you.

2. Professor Teufelsdrockh of Weirsnichtav: Professor Devil's-excrement
of Know-not-where

3. von Diog. . . . Weissnichtwo, 1833: by Diogenes Teufelsdrocidi, Juris
Utriusque Doctor, etc., Silence and Co., Know-not-where, 1833

4. Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger: Weissnichtwo Advertiser

5. Mochte es...auch im Brittischen Boden gedezhen: May it also thrive on British soil

6. Hofrath Heuschrecke: Councillor Grasshopper

7. With us even he still communicates in some sort of mask, or muffler;
and, we have reason to think, under a feigned name!--O. Y.

8. Amicus Plato, magis amica veritas: Plato is a friend, but truth is a greater friend

9. Gukguk is unhappily only an academical-beer

10. Zum Griinen Ganse: The Green Goose

11. Bleibt Bch ein echter Spass- and Galgen-vogel: He will always be a true joker
and a gallows-bird

12. Wo steckt der Schalk?: Where is the rascal hiding?

13. Sanculottism: philosophical radicalism; lit. 'without knee breeches'
(trousers being a sign of social equality during the French Revolution

14. Allgemeine Zeitung: Universal Gazette

15. Wahngasse: Fantasy lane

16. Orte . . Airts: points of the compass

17. Schlosskirche: Castle church

18. Ach, mein Lieber: Ah, my dear sir

19. Rabenstein: raven's stone; the gallows

20. mein Werther: my good friend

21. Erdbebungen: lit. earth vibrations

22. Das glaub' ich: I believe that

23. Esprit des Lois .. . Esprit de Coutumes .. Esprit de Costumes: Spirit of the
Laws . . . Spirit of Customs .. . Spirit of Costumes

24. Orbis Pictus: The World in Pictures; Orbis Vesritus: The World in Clothes

25. The number of British Members of Parliament in 1838

26. Satan's Invisible World Displayed is actually a 16th century history of
witchcraft and witch-finding: thus Carlyle hints that British newspapers
also deal in malign illusions

27. infandund infandum!: unspeakable, unspeakable

28. in partibus infidelium: in the country of the unbelievers

29. Armer Teufel: Poor devil

30. verehrtester Herr Herausgeber most esteemed Mr. Editor

37. Zahdarm: Tough-gut

38. Frisch zu, Bruder!: Get on with it, brother!

40. Herr Teufelsdrockh...eingeladen: Mr. Teufelsdrockh is cordially invited by
the Countess on Thursday to an aesthetic tea.

41. Relatio ex Actis: official reports

43. Du Himmel!: Good Heavens

44. sparrow on the housetop: Compare Psalms 102:7: "I watch, and am as
a sparrow alone upon the house top."

45. darling, man: Compare Wilhelm Meister 1:106, where "nature, not in-
clined to let her darling [Wilhelm] perish utterly, visited him with sickness,
to make an outlet for him on the other side."

46. Amur: A river on the border between China and Russia.

47. Paris Estrapades: Paris riding schools, or the Place de Estrapade near
the Pantheon in Paris.

48. Vienna Malzkins: Vienna "malthouses," or perhaps Matzlein, a poor
district of Vienna. Compare Richter's "Schmelzle's Journey to Flatz,"
German Romance 2:142.

49. suicide: In a Journal entry, December 23, 1823, Two Note Books,
55-60, Carlyle records that he has been suffering "the pangs of To-
phet almost daily, grown sicker and sicker, alienated by my misery
certain of my friends, and worn out from my own mind a certain few
remaining capabilities of enjoyment, reduced my world a little nearer
the condition of a bare haggard desart, where peace and rest for me
is [sic] none." He then discusses the possibility of suicide, but con-
cludes there will be plenty of time to consider that when "I have lost
the game, which I am as yet but losing. You observe Sir I have still a
glimmering of hopc. . . . I do not design to be a suicide: God in Heaven
forbid!" It was during this period that Carlyle was suffering from recu-
rring bouts of dyspepsia, a condition usually treated with laudanum
(tincture of opium), which in turn could cause mood fluctuations.

51. Doctor Graham's Celestial-Bed: James Graham (1745-1794), a quack doc-
tor, gained a wide reputation for his medicinal bed which, when a patient
lay on it, allegedly cured sterility. Sarcastically referred to in Johann
August Muszus, "Melechsala," German Romance 1:200, where for "fifty
guineas" one might have "the costly pleasure of resting a night in Doc-
tor Graham's Celestial Bed at London."

52. Pillar of Cloud . . . Pillar of Fire: From Exodus 13:21-22: "And the
Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the
way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and
night: He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of
fire by night, from before the people." Compare also Exodus 14:24;
Nehemiah 9:19; and 170.17 below.

53. Siecle de Louis Quinze: "Century of Louis XV" (1710-1774),
King of France (1715-1774) during the so-called Age of Reason, of
Rationalism, of Science, of the Enclyclopaedists. Compare Voltaire's
Histoire du siecle de Louis XV (1770). In "Voltaire" (1829), Essays
1:465, Carlyle says that the age of Louis XV was "an age without
nobleness, without high virtue or high manifestations of talent;
an age of shallow clearness, of polish, self-conceit, scepticism
and all forms of Persiflage"; in "Diderot" (1833), Essays 3:180,
he secs it as a "torch-and-crowbar period, of quick rushing-down
and conflagra-tion, . . . the Social System having all fallen into
rottenness, rain-holes and noisome decay." Yet from this social
chaos "traces of new foun-dation, of new building-up, may now also,
to the eye of Hope, dis-close themselves."

54. Unprofitable Servants: Matthew 25:30: "And cast ye the unprof-
itable servant into outer darkness"; and Luke 17:10, where Jesus
recounts the parable of "unprofitable servants" who seek re-ward
for obedience rather than seeing it as "the duty to do."

55. Servant of God: Compare 1 Chronicles 6:49; 2 Chronicles 24:9;
Nehemiah 10:29; Daniel 6:20; 9:11; Titus 1:1; James 1:1; 1 Peter
2:16; Revelation 7:3; 15:3. Most commonly an epithet of Moses,
which strengthens Teufelsdrockh's association with the legend of
Moses implicit throughout Sartor Resartus.

56. bate no jot: Compare "To Mr. Cyriack Skinner upon his Blind-
ness" (1655), a sonnet in which Milton says of his blindness, "Yet
I argue not / Against heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot / Of
heart or hope; but still bear up and steer / Right onward."
57. Handwriting on the wall: A reference to the story told in Daniel
5, where at King Belshazzar's feast "came forth fingers of a man's
hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the
wall of the king's palace" (5:5). Daniel then interprets the message
on the wall as a judgment on the king for failing to humble his heart
or to glorify God. Compare 137.23 and 144.25 below.

58. without God in the world: Ephesians 2:12, where the Gentiles are
"without Christ, being aliens ... , having no hope, and without God in
the world."

59. in my heart He was present: Compare Proverbs 7:3, where the son is
reminded to keep the commandments: "Bind them upon thy fingers, write
them upon the table of thine heart."

60. to be weak is the true misery: From Paradise Lost, 1.157-58, where
Satan says, "Fall'n Cherube, to be weak is miser-able."

61. Faust's Deathsong: Goethe's Faust, 1.1572-78:

    Mephistopheles: And yet Death never is a wholly welcome guest.
    Faust: Happy the victor on whose brow
    Death binds the blood-flecked wreath of laurel!
    And happy he who, after the mad dance,
    is found by Death in love's embrace!
    What ecstasy to feel that lofty spirit's might--
    if only, then, my soul had left this body.

Compare also Carlyle's translation of Faust's response (lines 1583-
1606) to Mephistopheles' teasing jibe that Faust could not bring him-
self to suicide, entitled "Faust's Curse" (1822), Collected Poems, 80.
Faust defiantly curses the world's vanities, and concludes: "A curse
on hoping, on believing! / And patience more than all be curs'd." In
Sartor Resartus it is this defiance that keeps TeufelsdrOcIdi from
suicide.

62. Destiny . . . die . . . no Hope: Compare Dante, Inferno, Canto 3,
lines 40-45, where The Opportunists (Know Thyself) are condemned to
wander forever:

    "Master, what gnaws at them so hideously
    their lamentation stuns the very air?"
    "They have no hope of death," he answered me,
    "and in their blind and unattaining state
    their miserable lives have sunk so low
    that they must envy every other fate."

Compare also Paradise Lost, 10.769-70, where Adam confronts his fate:
"Be it so, for I submit, his doom is fair, / That dust I am, and shall
to dust returne." See On Heroes 81.26-27 and 81.29-30.

63. Fear . . . of Man or of Devil: Compare Faust, line 369, where Faust
boasts that he "fear[s] neither hell nor its devils."

64. Heavens above and the Earth beneath: Exodus 20:4: "Thou shalt not
make unto thee any graven image . . . of any thing that is in heaven
above, or that is in the earth beneath."

65. Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer: Teufelsdrockh's experience on the
Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer is based on Thomas Carlyle's own experi-
ence in Leith Walk, Edinburgh (see "Everlasting No"), Carlyle's "Hell
Street" is named after an actual street in Paris, the Rue d'Enfer
which is mentioned incidentally in 'The Diamond Necklace" (Works.
28:334). Moncure Conway reports that Carlyle did not hear the story
of how the Rue d'Enfer got its name until long after Sartor was com-
pleted (Conway, 45). The "Saint-Thomas" in the street's name refers
both to the biblical doubting Thomas and to Carlyle himself, who
elswhere identifies himself "Thomas the Double?' (Reminiscences, 88).

70. south of Spain: A reference to the Peninsular War (1808-14), fought
against Napoleon by the British under the com-mand of Arthur Wellesley,
later Duke of Wellington.

71. Kings . . . Greeks . . . pay the piper: A loose adaptation of Horace, Epis-
tles 1.2, where the "passions of foolish kings and peoples" led to the
Trojan War and thus, "Whatever folly the kings commit, the Achaeans
pay the penalty" (lines 8, 14).

72. English Smollett: Referring to Tobias Smollett (1721—1771 ), The
Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753), 2:41.23-24, where it
is proposed that the combatants "retire into a corner, and funk one
another with brimstone, till one of us should give out. Accordingly
we crammed half a dozen tobacco pipes with sulphur, and, setting foot
to foot, began to smoke, and kept up a constant fire, until Macmorris
dropped down; then I threw away my pipc. . .."

73. Samarcand: Or Samarkand, one of the oldest cities in the world and
the oldest in central Asia, which when conquered by Alexander the Great
(329 B.c.) was the meeting point of Chinese and Western culture. In
the fourteenth century under Tamerlane it reached its full splendor.

74.
pair of Compasses: I.e., his legs; compare Alexander Pope,
Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, 1.2.101, where Cornelius declares that
his son shall "perambulate this terraqueous Globe ; the son of Corne-
lius shall make his own legs his Compasses; with those he shall measure
Continents, Islands, Capes, Bays, Straights [sic] and Isthmus's."

75.
Vaucluse: A city (also a province) in southeast France near
Avignon, once the home of Petrarch.

76.
Tadmor: Palmyra, a city in Syria, built by Solomon and des-
troyed by the Romans in A.D. 273. It is called Tadmor in II Chronicles
8:4, and Tamar in Ezekiel 47:19.

77.
Babylon: A city in ancient Mesopotamia, destroyed c. 689 a.c.
by the Assyrians. It was rebuilt and became legendary for its gardens
and sensual living a century later under Nebuchadnezzar, who held the
Hebrews in their Babylonian captivity.

78.
ausgemergelt: "Emaciated."

79.
Customhouse-officers: In 1806, in an attempt to destroy British
commerce, Napoleon issued the Berlin and Milan Decrees which or-
dered the seizure of all goods and vessels that touched ports in Great
Britain.

80.
World well won ... World well lost: Compare Dryden's All for Love;
or, The World Well Lost (1677), a retelling of the Antony and
Cleopatra story.

81.
All kindreds: Compare Revelation 13:7, where the beast is
given power "over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations."

82.
birth-pangs of Democracy: An allusion to the American and French
Revolutions, or more immediately to the so-called Three Days War,
July 27-29, 1830, a riot in Paris which led to the over-throw of the
plutocratic Charles X and to the seating of the libertine Louis Phil-
ippe, whose fall in 1848 occasioned a biting attack by Carlyle on the
excesses of "Sham-King" Philippe in the Examiner (March 4, 1848), 145-
46. The rioting and unrest in France during the late 1820s was mir-
rored in England. Agricultural protests in the South and industrial
agitation in the North reached their zenith during 1830-1831 and led
to the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832.

83.
great Men: Carlyle is formulating here his theory of heroes. Com-
pare On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841), where
he develops the German Romantic belief, particularly that of Novalis
and Fichte, that all great men are heroes, ordained to rise and to
lead in all vocations of life from government to the arts.

84.
Tree at Treisnitz: Trcisnitz, a village near Jena, where, as Carlyle
reports in The Life of Friedrich Schiller (1825), 124, Goethe and Schil-
ler often met "beneath the shade of a spreading tree."

85.
Pope Pius: Pius VII (1740-1823), pope (1800-1823) who worked to bring
stability to the church during Napoleon's reign.

86.
Emperor Tarakwang: Tao-kuang (1782-1850), emperor of China (1821-
1850), sixth of the Ch'ing dynasty.

87.
White Water-roses: The White Lotus Society, founded for philanthropic
purposes, became a secret revolutionary sect. Their revolt in 1774 was
not fully suppressed until 1804.

88.
Carbonari: Literally "charcoal burners," in the early nine-teenth
century a secret revolutionary society in Italy, France, and Spain, pos-
sibly with origins in Freemasonry, which advocated political freedom.

90. Duels: Carlyle found duels fascinating; compare, for example, his
"Two Hundred and Fifty Years Ago," Leigh Hunt's Journal, nos. 1, 3 (Dec-
ember, 7-21, 1850), 6-7, 37-38.

91.
Hugo von Trimberg: German minnesinger, moralist, and bibliophile
(1260-1309), discussed by Carlyle in "Early German Lit-erature" (1831),
Essays 2:287-95.

92.
Legion: From Mark 5:9, where the "unclean spirit" possess-ing the
Gadarene man answered Jesus' demand for his name, "My name is Legion:
for we arc many"; compare Lukc 8:30, where the demon is called Legion
"because many devils were entered into him."

93.
caput-mortuum: Literally, "dead head" or skull; in alchemy the
worthless residue left after distillation or sublimation.

94.
Boy Alexander: Compare Samuel Butler, Hudibras, 1.3.89: "The whole
world was not half so wide / To Alexander, when he cri'd / Because he
had but one to subdue, / As was a paultrie narrow tub to / Diogenes
. . . / Because h' had ne're another Tub."

95.
when I gazed into these Stars: Compare "Wotton Reinfred," Last
Words, 9: "He stood gazing out upon the starry night. . they not look
down on us as if with pity from their serene spaces . like eyes glis-
tening with heavenly tears over the poor perplexities of man?' ...
Thousands of human generations all as noisy as our own have been en-
gulphed in the abyss of time, and there is no wreck of them seen any
more; and Arcturus and Orion and the Pleiades are still shining in
their courses, clear and young as when the shepherd first noted them
on the plain of Shinar."

96.
Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades: Arcturus: the brightest
star in the constellation of Bootes, often referred to as the "Guar-
dian of the Bear"; Orion: constellation in the Celestial Equator, in
Greek myth the giant hunter, the pursuer of the Pleiades
and lover of Eos; Sirius: star in the constellation Canis Major, the
and lover of Eos; Sirius: star in the constellation Canis Major, the
brightest star in the sky, also known as the "Dog-Star" because it
rises and sets with the sun during the hot months of July—September;
the Pleiades: an open star cluster in the constellation of Taurus,
in Greek myth the seven daughters of Atlas. Compare Job 9:9, where
God's strength "maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the cham-
bers of the south."

97.
Shinar: A country on the lower courses of the Tigris and Euphra-
tes Rivers. The reference is to Genesis 11:1-9, where the Tower of
Babel was built on "a plain in the land of Shinar."

98.
Dog-cage: "A wheel-like cage in which a dog was placed to turn
the jack of a turnspit, and so roast the meat. The term here suggests
the aimless and mechanical nature of the world when seen without the
eyes of faith" (Harrold ed., Sartor Resartus, 182n).

99.
dissevered limb: During the Hoddam Hill period Carlyle writes
of his "Centre of Indifference" in his Journal, September 21, 1825,
"At present I am but an abgerissenes Glied, a limb torn off from
the family of Man, excluded from activity, with Pain for my compan-
ion, and Hope that comes to all rarely visiting me, and what is
stranger rarely desired with vehemence!"; in March of 1830, he re-
peats, "I am a 'dismembered limb'; and feel it again too deeply. Was
I ever other? Stand to it tightly, man; and do thy utmost. Thou hast
little or no hold on the world; . . . but hast thou not still a hold on
Thyself?" (Two Note Books, 65, 149). Compare On Heroes 94.18. The
source of the expression is Horace, Satires 1.4.62: "Invenias etiam
disiecti membra poetae" (even when he is dismembered you would find
the limbs of a poet).

100.
hurl the burden: Possibly an allusion to John Bunyan, Pilgrim's
Progress, 38, where when the allegorical sinner Christian came before
the Cross, "his burden loosed from his Shoulders, and fell from off
his back."

101.
Shinar: A country on the lower courses of the Tigris and Euphra-
tes Rivers. The reference is to Genesis 11:1-9, where the Tower of
Babel was built on "a plain in the land of Shinar."

102.
TEMPTATIONS in the Wilderness: Compare Matthew 4:1: "Then was
Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the de-
vil"; also Mark 1:12-13 and Luke 4:1-2.

103.
old Adam: See I Corinthians 15:21-22: "For since by man came
death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam
all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive"; also Ephesians
4:22 and Colossians 3:9.

104.
Work thou in Welldoing: See II Thessalonians 3:13, where the
good workers are exhorted to "be not weary in well doing." Compare
also Romans 2:7; Galatians 6:9; I Peter 2:15, 3:17, 4:19.

105.
leaves us no rest: Compare Wilhelm Meister 1:444, where Nec-
essity (Life without) is the fountain from which Freedom (Creativity
within) springs: "Life lies before us, as a huge quarry lies before
an architect. . . . All things without us, nay, I may add, all things
on us, are mere elements: but deep within us lies the creative force,
which out of these can produce what they were meant to be; and which
leaves us neither sleep nor rest, till in one way or another, without
us or on us, that same have been produced."

106.
carried of the spirit: Matthew 4:1: "Then was Jesus led up of the
spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil" for forty days
and forty nights; also Luke 4:1-2.

107.
enchanted forests: Compare Torquato Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered
(1575), Cantos 13, 18.

108.
Mountain: An allusion perhaps to Dante's Purgatorio. In On He-
roes (1841), 81.39-82.16, Carlyle says, "It is a noble thing that
Purgatorio, 'Mountain of Purification;'" where to those seeking re-
pentance "Hope has now dawned; never-dying Hope, if in company still
with heavy sorrow. The obscure sojourn of daimons and repro-bate is
under foot" until "they shall have reached the top, which is Heaven's
gate. . ."

109.
Apage, Satana: From the Vulgate (Latin) translation of Matthew
4:8-10, where Jesus rejects Satan's offer of "all the king-doms of
the world, and the glory of them" with the remonstrance: "Get thee
hence, Satan." Compare also Matthew 16:23; Mark 8:33; and Luke 4:8.

110.
Holy-of-Holies: See 77.3 and note above; compare Book III, Chap-
ter III, 161-66 below, where Carlyle develops this theory of silence.
Also see Wilhelm Meister 2:76, "Words are good, but they are not the
best. The best is not to be explained by words. The spirit in which
we act is the highest matter." The same point is made in Keats's
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1820), lines 10-14: "Heard melo-dies are
sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes,
play on; / Not to the sensual ear, but, more endcar'd, / Pipe to
the spirit ditties of no tone."

111.
omission ... commission: An allusion to the Catholic doctrine
of sins of omission (venial sins) and commission (cardinal sins).

112.
Harmattan-wind: A dry, dusty wind that blows a red dust cloud
from the Sahara onto the western coast of Africa. In "Goethe" (1828),
Essays 1:216, Carlyle secs Voltaire as the source for the wide-spread
loss of faith in Europe: "Whatever belonged to the finer nature of
man had withered under the Harmattan breath of Doubt."