OBERMANN
VOLUME II
LO HERMANN
SELECTIONS FROM
LETTERS TO A FRIEND
BY
ETIENNE PIVERT DE SENANCOUR
Cfiosen and translated with an Introductory
Essay and Notes by JESSIE PEABODY
FROTHINGHAM, Translator of the
Journal of Maurice de Guerin
VOLUME TWO
Tbe RIVERSIDE PRESS, Cambridge
1901
Copyright, 1901
By Jessie Peabody Frothingbam
All rights reserved
OBERMANN
LETTERS
TO A
FRIEND
LETTER XXXVII
Lyons, May 2d, 6th year.
•& $• $• ^ $F all the vague and fleet-
^ *SL
/^V * ing moments when I be-
^ V-/ ^ lieved, in my simplicity,
•& ^ ^ ^ ^ that we were upon the earth
in order to live, none have left mem-
ories so deep as those twenty days of
forgetfulness and hope, when, towards
the close of March, near the torrent,
beside the rocks, among the happy
hyacinth and the simple violet, I had
the illusion that it would be given me
to love.
I touched what I was destined never
4 OBERMANN
to grasp. Without tastes, without hope,
I might have existed weary but tran-
quil ; instinctively I could picture to
myself human energy, but in my
shadowed life I was content to endure
my apathy. What sinister power has
opened the gates of the world before
me, and swept away the consolations of
the nothing ?
Carried along by a wide activity, —
eager to love everything, to support
everything, to console everything, for-
ever torn between the desire to see so
many wrongs redressed and the convic-
tion that they never will be redressed,
— I am weary of the evils of life, and
still more indignant against the perfi-
dious seduction of pleasures, my gaze
being ever fixed upon the vast mass of
hate, iniquity, shame, and misery of
this misguided earth.
And I ! twenty-seven years have
come and gone ; the beautiful days
have passed away, and I have not even
OBERMANN 5
seen them. Unhappy in the years of
joy, what can I expect from future
years ? I have spent in weariness and
emptiness the glad season of confidence
and hope. On all sides repressed, suf-
fering, my heart empty and wounded,
I knew while still young the regrets
of old age. Accustomed to seeing all
the flowers of life wither beneath my
blighting steps, I am like those old
men from whom all things have taken
flight ; but more unfortunate than they,
I have lost everything long before I
have myself reached the consummation
of life. With an eager soul, I cannot
rest in this silence of death.
Memory of years long passed away,
of things that have forever perished, of
places never to be seen again, of men
who are wholly changed ! sentiment
of the life that is lost !
What scenes were ever for me what
they are for other men ? What seasons
were ever endurable, and under what
6 OBERMANN
sky have I found peace of the soul ?
I have seen the stir of the cities, the
void of the plains, the austerity of the
mountains ; I have seen the coarseness
of ignorance, and the travail of the
arts ; I have seen useless, paltry success,
and all the good lost in all the evil ;
I have seen men and fate in unequal
strife, and always deceived ; and, in the
unbridled struggle of the passions, the
odious victor receiving, as the price of
his triumph, the heaviest link in the
chain of evils which he has forged.
Were man planned for misfortune
I should pity him less ; and in view of
his fleeting span of years I should de-
spise, for him as for me, the afflictions
of a day. But all good things surround
him, all his faculties summon him to
enjoy, all say to him, " Be happy ; "
and man has answered, " Happiness
shall be for the brute ; art, science,
glory, greatness, shall be for me." His
mortality, his sorrows, his very crimes,
7
are but the smallest part of his mis-
ery. I mourn over the things that he
has lost : peace, choice, unity, tranquil
possession. I lament a hundred years
which millions of sentient beings waste
in anxieties and in restraint, in the
midst of what goes to make security,
liberty, and joy ; living in bitterness on
a delectable earth, because they have
desired a mythical good, and special
blessings.
But all this is of small account ; fifty
years ago I did not realize it, and fifty
years hence I shall realize it no more.
I said to myself: If it has not been
given me to lead back to primitive
ways even a narrow and isolated land,
if I must strive to forget the world,
and believe that I am sufficiently happy
when I can attain endurable days upon
this misguided earth, then I claim only
one boon, one vision in this dream from
which I long never to awake. There
remains upon the earth, as it now is,
8 OBERMANN
one illusion which can still beguile me ;
it is the only one, and I shall have the
wisdom to be deceived by it ; nothing
else is worth the effort. So said I to
myself. But chance alone could grant
me this priceless delusion. Chance is
slow and uncertain ; life is swift and
irrevocable ; its springtime passes, and
this disappointed longing, by complet-
ing the ruin of my life, must at last
alienate my heart and change my na-
ture. I already feel, at times, that I am
growing bitter, exasperated, and that
my affections are contracting ; des-
peration gives me fierce resolve, and
disdain urges me on to great and au-
stere designs. But this bitterness does
not endure in all its strength ; I soon
grow disheartened, as though I realized
that careless men, and uncertain things,
and my fleeting life^ were not worth
the anxiety of a day, and that a stern
awakening is useless when we must so
soon fall asleep forever.
«
*•
* .
OBERMANN o
' Tb" * •
, • ,*: rr > ^£g* ".•.
THIRD FRAGMENT
. * V '
On Romantic Expression and the
Ranz des V aches %*
* « A '«
A rich and vivid fancy is charmed
* • '-'"••; ' * •* '
by romance; but a great soul and true •» '
feeling are alone satisfied by the ro-
mantic.1 Nature is full of romantic
effects in primitive regions ; persistent
cultivation has destroyed these effects
in overworked lands, especially on the
plains, which are readily made subject. •»
to man.
Romantic effects are the accents of
• w . • • •
a language which all men do not un-
derstand, and which in many places is-
becoming a foreign tongue. We soon
cease to hear these accents when we no
longer live among them ; and still it
is this romantic harmony which alone
keeps fresh in our hearts the bloom of
* • *C" ^ * '-*r * * *s* *
youth and the springtime of life. The
man of the world no longer feels these
o * n» * » t ^*. ftt. *c
!^*il-»*:* \ : •;* : :'3£&-
*
«^ ^-SSa?-' *
jr»
A,
* • k * '"
10 OBERMANN
• ' V ^ *
effects, for they are too far removed
from his usual habits of thought, and
he ends by saying : " What do I care ? "
He is like those temperaments worn
out by the parching heat of a slow
and constant poison ; he has grown old
in the years of his strength, and the
springs of his inner life are unstrung,
even though he still bears the outward
semblance of a man.
But you, whom ordinary men be-
lieve to be made of the same stuff
as themselves, because forsooth your
ways are simple, because you have gen-
ius without pretension, or else merely
•f«"** because you live, and like them you
eat and, sleep — you, primitive jnerf,
. • scattered here and there over the fruit-
less centuries to perpetuate the type
of natural things, you, recognize one
another, you understand one another
in a tongue unknown to 'the common
herd, when the October sun shines
through the mist on the golden woods ;
.. " *•
** *•! •• ' • -
v ;t * *
\ , « .1 •••
• . >
"** '
•'* «
. '< '
OBERMANN n
when the rippling brook flows through
a meadow encircled by trees, at the
waning of the moon ; when under
the summer sky, on a cloudless day, a
woman's voice sings in the distance, . .
among the walls and the roofs of a
great city.
Picture to yourself an expanse of
water, limpid and white. It is vast,
but not boundless ; its curved and
oblong shape stretches out toward the
winter sunset. High peaks, majestic
mountain-chains, inclose it on three
sides. You are seated on the slope
of the mountain, above the northern
strand, where the waves ebb and flow. , • •• «
Steep rocks rise behind you ; they lift
their heights to the region of the
clouds ; the melancholy wind of the
north has never swept across this happy
shore. On your left, the mountains part,
a quiet valley lies amid their depths, a *
torrent leaps down from the snowy
summits which inclose it ; and when
»**' **-.!' *. **;*' *J
* •* \\ *•>„ ' -.-.*•:•
•:
12 OBERMANN
the morning sun rises between the ice-
. clad pinnacles, above the mists, when
the voices of the mountains tell of hid-
• * *
den chalets, above the meadows still in
*•
shadow, it is the awakening of a prim-
itive earth, it is a record of our unreal-
•• *•
ized destinies.
• *
And here come the heralds of the
* *
night ; the hour of rest and of sublime
melancholy. The valley is flooded with
• «
vapor ; darkness steals over it. At noon
it is still night upon the lake ; the en-
circling rocks form a belt of darkness,
beneath the ice-clad dome which lifts
its height above, and seems to hold the
light of day in its white frost. Then
the dying rays gild the chestnut groves
on the wild clifFs, steal in long, slant-
ing beams beneath the tall spires of
the Alpine fir, darken the mountains,
kindle the snows, illumine the air ;
, * ' and the waveless water, shining with
light and mingled with the sky, has
OBERMANN 13
and purer, more ethereal, more beauti-
ful still. Its peace is bewildering, its
clearness is deceptive, the aerial splen-
dor reflected upon its surface seems to
increase its depth ; and beneath those
heights, divided from the earth and
suspended in space, you see at your
feet the void of the heavens and the
immensity of the world.
Such moments are filled with magic
and forgetfulness. Where is the sky,
where are the mountains, on what do
we stand ? There is no level, no ho-
rizon ; thoughts are new, feelings are
strange ; we are above the life we know.
And when darkness covers this val-
ley of water, when the eye can dis-
cern neither object nor space, when the
wind of the evening ruffles the waves,
then, toward the west, the farthest end
of the lake alone glimmers in the pale
light ; but all within the encircling
rocks is a mysterious gulf, and, in the
midst of the darkness and the silence,
* 9
r<
14 OBERMANN
you hear, a thousand feet below, the
stir of the ever-moving waves which
rise and fall and never cease, which
tremble on the beach in measured ca-
dence, plunge among the rocks, dash
against the shore, and echo with a
lengthened murmur through the dark
abyss.
It is to sound that nature has given
the strongest expression of the roman-
tic character ; it is above all through
the sense of hearing that we can shape,
in bold, simple outlines, a picture of
striking scenes and things. Odors pro-
duce swift and broad but indefinite
perceptions ; sight seems to awaken
perceptions which belong more to the
mind than to the heart ; we admire
what we see, but we feel what we hear.
The voice of a beloved woman is more
beautiful than her features ; the sounds
that are associated with sublime scenes
produce a deeper and more lasting im-
pression than their forms. I have never
OBERMANN 15
seen a painting of the Alps that could
bring them as distinctly before my eyes
as can a truly Alpine melody.
The Ranz des Caches 2 does not sim-
ply renew memories ; it delineates. . . .
If it is rendered in a way more charac-
teristic than technical, and with true
depth of feeling, the first notes carry
us to the high valleys, near the bare,
russet-gray rocks, under the cold sky,
beneath the burning sun. We are on
the brow of the rolling mountain-tops,
where the pastures lie. We are filled
with a sense of the slowness of things
and the grandeur of nature ; we see the
tranquil pace of the cows, and the mea-
sured swing of their great bells, near to
the clouds, on the gently falling ground
between the crest of imperishable gran-
ite and the shattered rocks in the snow
ravines. The winds rustle harshly in
the distant larches ; we hear the rush-
ing of the torrent, hidden among the
steep crags, which, century by century,
16 OBERMANN
have been hollowed out by the wa-
ters.
Then, close upon these lonely sounds,
there come through the air the hurried
and heavy accents of the Kuheren^ the
nomadic expression of a mirthless plea-
sure, of a mountain joy. The songs
cease ; the man is lost in the distance ;
the bells have passed beyond the larches;
there is no sound save the noise of the
rolling pebbles, and, now and again,
the plunge of the trees, swept down
by the torrent to the valleys beyond.
These Alpine sounds swell and wane on
the wind ; and when they fade away, all
things seem cold, motionless, and dead.
It is the abode of impassive man. He
comes from under the low, wide roof,
which heavy stones protect from the
ravages of the storms. The sun may
send down its scorching heat, the wind
may sweep across the pastures, the thun-
der may roll beneath his feet, but he
is alike unconscious. He goes to the
OBERMANN 17
wonted pasture of the cows, and they
are there ; he calls them, they gather
from all sides, they draw near, one by
one ; and then he retraces his steps as
slowly as he came, carrying the milk
which is to be sent to those plains that
he will never see. The cows linger
and ruminate ; there is no visible stir,
there is no sign of man. The air is
cold, the wind has fallen with the even-
ing light ; nothing is left but the gleam
of the timeless snows, and the dash of
the waters, whose wild roar, rising from
the abyss, seems to add to the silent per-
manence of the high peaks, the glaciers,
and the night.
LETTER XXXIX
Lyons, May nth, 6th year.
I HAVE seen the valley flooded with
a soft radiance in the shadow, un-
der the veil of haze, the misty charm of
i8 OBERMANN
the morning ; and it was full of beauty.
I have seen it change and fade ; the con-
suming planet had passed over it ; he
had scorched and wearied it with light ;
he had left it dry, old, and pitifully
barren. Even thus the happy veil of
our days has slowly lifted and has faded
away. No longer do I see those half-
shadows, those hidden places, so de-
lightful to explore ; nor can my eyes
again find rest in that vague, transpar-
ent light. All is sterile and wearisome,
like the burning sands under the skies
of the Sahara ; all the things of life,
stripped of this disguise, show with
repulsive truth the unadorned and mel-
ancholy mechanism of their denuded
skeletons. Their ceaseless, inevitable,
resistless movements drag me along
without interesting me, and make me
move without making me live.
OBERMANN 19
LETTER XL
Lyons, May ifth, 6th year.
1WAS near the Saone, behind the
long wall where we walked to-
gether in old times, when we were boys,
and talked of Tinian,4 and aspired to
happiness, and were filled with the high
resolve to live. I looked upon that river
which still flowed onward as before,
and at the autumn sky, as tranquil and
as beautiful as in those far distant years
that have forever gone. A carriage ap-
proached ; unconsciously I turned aside,
and, as I walked, kept my eyes fixed
upon the yellowed leaves which the
wind chased over the dry grass and the
dusty road. The carriage stopped ; Ma-
dame Del was alone with her lit-
tle girl of six. As you know, Madame
Del is only twenty-five, and she
has greatly changed; but she speaks
20 OBERMANN
with the same simple and perfect grace ;
her eyes have a more melancholy, but a
no less beautiful expression. We did not
refer to her husband ; you may remem-
ber that he is thirty years her senior,
and that he is a financier, very wise on
the subject of money, but wholly ig-
norant of everything else. Unfortunate
woman ! Hers is a wasted life ; yet
destiny seemed to have given her the
promise of so much happiness ! What
did she lack to merit joy, and to make
the happiness of another? What a
mind ! What a soul ! What purity of
intention ! All this is useless.
It was almost five years since I had
seen her. . . .
Her image, though weakened by
discouragement, by time, and by the
waning even of my trust in such use-
less or deceptive affections — her im-
age was linked to the very conscious-
ness of my existence and of my life
in the midst of the world. I saw her
OBERMANN 21
within me, but like the indelible mem-
ory of a dream that has faded away,
like those ideals of happiness the im-
pression of which we cherish, but which
belong to our past. . . .
An all-winning grace, an eloquence
sweet and deep, an expression ampler
than the things expressed, a harmony
which is the universal bond, all this
lies revealed in the eye of a woman.
All this, and more still, dwells in the
fathomless voice of the woman who
feels.
LETTER XLI
Lyons , May i8thy 6th year.
IT would seem as though fate were
determined to lead man back under
the yoke which he had striven to shake
off in defiance of that very fate. Of
what avail has it been to me to have
renounced my former ways, and to have
22 OBERMANN
gone out in search of a freer life ? If I
have seen things that were in harmony
with my nature, I was given a glimpse
of them only as I passed along the
road of life, and they brought me no
enjoyment, but served merely to in-
crease twofold my feverish longing to
possess them.
I am not the slave of passion ; I am
still more unfortunate, for its vanity
does not deceive me. But, after all,
must not life be filled by something ?
When existence is empty can it be
satisfying ? If the life of the heart is
nothing but a restless void, would it
not be better to leave it for a more tran-
quil void ? It seems to me that intelli-
gence looks for a result, and I should
like to be told the result of my life.
I long for something that will blind-
fold my days, and carry them swiftly
onward. It is intolerable to feel them
rolling perpetually over my head, slug-
gish, slow, and solitary, without aspi-
OBERMANN 23
rations, without illusions, without aim.
If I am to know only the miseries of
life, is it good to have been given life ;
is it wise to preserve it ? s
You do not believe that, too weak
to stand steadfast against the ills of hu-
manity, I dare not even endure the fear
of them. You know me better. Not
in misfortune would I think of throw-
ing away my life. Resistance awakens
the soul and lends it a prouder bearing.
When we are called upon to battle with
great sorrows, we are finally worthy of
ourselves ; we take delight in our en-
ergy, we have at least something to do.
But it is the perplexity, the tedium,
the restraint, the insipidity of life that
dishearten and repel me. The passion-
ate man can be resigned to suffer, since
he claims some day to enjoy ; but what
thought can sustain the man who ex-
pects nothing ? I am weary of leading
so empty a life. It is true that I might
still find it in my heart to be patient ;
24 OBERMANN
but my days are passing without a
useful act, without enjoyment, without
hope, and without peace. Think you
that with an indomitable soul all this
can endure through long years ? . . .
Again I see rising before me the
sad memory of the long, wasted years.
I see how the ever - seductive future
changes and diminishes as we approach
it. Struck by the breath of death,
under the lurid light of the present's
funeral torch, that future fades at the
very moment when we think to enjoy
it ; throwing off the seductions which
disguised it, and the spell which has
already grown old, it moves onward,
solitary and abandoned ; and bears with
stolidity and inertness its hideous and
worn-out sceptre, as though mocking
at the baleful clanking of its eternal
chain and the weariness of it all.
When I foresee the disenchanted
void through which the ruins of my
youth and my life are to be dragged,
OBERMANN 25
when my thought strives to follow in
advance the uniform slope down which
everything flows and is lost, what think
you that I can expect at its close, and
who can hide from me the abyss in
which all this is to end ? Is it not meet
that, dejected and disheartened, when
I feel certain that I am capable of no-
thing, I shall at least seek rest ? And
when an inexorable force weighs un-
ceasingly upon me, how can I rest
except by hurrying myself onward to
my release ?
All things must have an end in
harmony with their nature. Since my
relative life is cut off from the course
of the world, why should I vegetate
through a long future, useless to the
others, and tiresome to myself? To sat-
isfy the mere love of life ! to breathe
and grow old ! to awake in bitterness
when all is at rest, and to grope in
darkness when the earth is in bloom ;
to possess only the need of aspirations,
26 OBERMANN
and to know only the dream of life ;
to be forever isolated and out of place
on the stage of human afflictions, while
through me no one is made happy, and
I am vouchsafed only the conception
of a man's part ; to cling to a wasted
life, cowardly slave ! whom life rejects,
and who still pursues life's shadow,
eager for existence, as though real ex-
istence had been granted it, and who
lives in misery, for want of the courage
not to live at all !
Of what avail to me is the sophis-
try of a soft and flattering philosophy,
hollow disguise of a dastard instinct,
empty wisdom of patient souls who per-
petuate the evils they endure so well,
and who justify our servitude by an
imaginary law of necessity ?
" Wait," they will say to me, "moral
evil exhausts itself by its very continu-
ity. Wait, times will change, and you
will be satisfied ; or if times remain the
same, you will yourself change. By
OBERMANN 27
making use of the present such as it
is, you will weaken the too vivid con-
sciousness of a better future ; and when
you tolerate life, then life will be good
to your more tranquil heart."
A passion dies, a loss is forgotten, a
wrong may be redressed ; but I have
neither passions, nor losses, nor wrongs,
nothing that can die, or be forgotten,
or redressed. A fresh passion has the
power to bring solace for the loss of
the old ; but what will give life to my
heart when it shall have lost the thirst
that consumes it ? It desires everything,
claims everything, contains everything.
What will take the place of the bound-
less which my thought requires ? Af-
flictions are forgotten ; fresh benefits
wipe them away. But what benefits
can assuage universal grief ? . . . Know
you of any good that brings consola-
tion for world-sorrow ? If my suffer-
ing has its source in the nothingness
of my life, will time allay evils which
28 OBERMANN
time increases, and can I hope that they
will die, when it is by their very con-
tinuance that they are intolerable ?
" Wait, for better times may bear
the fruits which fate seems to withhold
from you to-day."
Men of a day, who scheme as you
grow old, and argue for a distant future
when death walks in your footsteps,
will you never realize the swift current
of time, while you are lost in dreams
of consoling illusions amid the insta-
bility of mortal things ? Will you never
see that your life falls asleep as it sways
to and fro, and that the very changes
which give courage to your deluded
heart stir it only in order to quench its
life with a last, swift blow ?
Were man's life unending, or were
it longer and changeless until near its
last hour, then hope might seduce me,
and I might perhaps wait for what
would be at least a possibility. But is
there any permanence in life? Can
OBERMANN 29
the future have the needs of the pre-
sent ? And what was meet yesterday,
will it be good to-morrow ? Our heart
changes more swiftly than the seasons
of the year ; their variations are at least
fraught with some degree of constancy,
since they repeat themselves through-
out the course of the centuries. But
our days, never to be renewed, have
not two hours that are alike; our sea-
sons, which are never retrieved, have
each their individual needs. If one age
loses its peculiar rights, it has lost them
without return, and no other age can
attain to what the age of strength has
missed. . . .
But I am calmer now, and am be-
ginning to be tired of my very impa-
tience. Thoughts sombre, yet tranquil,
are becoming more familiar to me.
My mind willingly reverts to those
who in the morning of their lives have
found their eternal night ; this feeling
rests and consoles me ; it is the instinct
30 OBERMANN
of evening. But why this need of dark-
ness ? why is light painful to me ?
They will know one day, when they
will have changed, when I shall no
longer be.
" When you will no longer be ! . . .
Do you meditate a crime ?"
If, weary of the ills of life, but espe-
cially disillusioned of its benefits, al-
ready suspended over the abyss, set apart
for the supreme moment, held back by
a friend, accused by the moralist, con-
demned by my country, culpable in the
eyes of social man, I were called upon
to reply to his reproaches and his exer-
tions in my behalf, this, it seems to me,
is what I might say : —
I have searched everything, known
everything, and if I have not expe-
rienced, I have at least foreseen every-
thing. Your sorrows have withered my
soul ; they are intolerable because they
are aimless. Your pleasures are illusive,
evanescent ; one day suffices to know
OBERMANN 31
them and renounce them. I sought hap-
piness within myself, but not blindly,
and I found that joy was not made for
isolated man. I proffered it to those
around me, but they had no leisure to
give it thought. I questioned the mul-
titude blighted by misery, and the elect
oppressed by tedium ; they answered,
" We suffer to-day, but to-morrow we
shall enjoy." As for myself, I know
that the day that is to come will walk
in the footprints of the waning day.
Live on, you who can still be duped
by the magic of happy illusions ; but
tired of what may lead hope astray,
expecting nothing, and wellnigh de-
siring nothing, I must no longer live.
I judge of life like the man who goes
to his grave ; may that grave open for
me also. Ought I to delay the end
when it has already been reached ? Na-
ture offers illusions to be believed in
and loved ; she lifts the veil only at
the hour marked for death. She has
32 OBERMANN
not raised it for you — live on. She
has lifted it for me — my life has
already passed. . . .
Without aspirations what can one
do with life ? Vegetate stupidly ; drag
one's self over the lifeless tracks of cares
and concerns ; crawl impotently in the
abasement of the slave, or the nullity of
the multitude ; think, without serving
universal order ; feel, without living.
Thus, the pitiable plaything of an in-
scrutable destiny, man abandons his life
to the chances of times and things. . . .
It is true, I leave behind me friends
whom I shall grieve, my country whose
benefits I have not sufficiently repaid,
all men whom I ought to serve ; for
this I feel, not remorse, but regret.
Who, more than I, could realize the
value of union, the authority of duty,
the happiness of a useful life ? I had
hoped to do some good ; it was the
most pleasing, the most foolish of my
dreams.
OBERMANN 33
Amid the ceaseless uncertainty of
an existence forever troubled, fleeting,
servile, you all follow, in your blindness
and docility, the beaten track of estab-
lished order; and thus give up your
life to your habits, wasting it as heed-
lessly as you would waste a day. I
might, if I were likewise carried away
by this general aberration, leave behind
me a few benefits along these paths of
error ; but this good, easy to all, will
be done without me by virtuous men.
There are such men ; may they live,
and, useful in some way, may they be
happy. As for me, I confess that I
should not be consoled if, in this abyss
of evils, I could not do more. The bur-
den of one unfortunate man near me
might perhaps be lightened, but the
groans of a hundred thousand would
still strike upon my ear, and, powerless
in their midst, I should see the bitter
fruits of human error always attributed
to the nature of things, and I should
34 OBERMANN
watch the perpetuation of those miser-
ies which are looked upon as the inev-
itable work of necessity, but in which
I trace the accidental caprice of an ex-
periment in perfection. I ought to be
severely condemned if I should refuse
to sacrifice a happy life for the general
good ; but since I am doomed to remain
useless, I feel only regrets, and not re-
morse, when I claim a rest too long
delayed. . . .
If it were a clearly defined duty to
allow the life that has been given me
to run its full course, I should, doubt-
less, face its miseries ; time would soon
carry them along on its swift current.
However harassed may be our days,
they are endurable since they are lim-
ited. Death and life are in my power ;
I neither cling to one, nor desire the
other. Let reason decide whether I
have the right to choose between
them. . . .
The Eternal has given me life, you
OBERMANN 35
say, and has intrusted me with my part
in the harmony of his works ; I must
fill it to the end, and I have not the
right to flee from his sovereignty. —
You forget too quickly the soul
which you have given me. This earthly
body is only dust, do you no longer re-
member ? But my intelligence, imper-
ishable breath which emanated from
universal intelligence, can never escape
from its law. How can I flee beyond
the dominion of the Lord of all things ?
It is merely a change of place, and
places are as nought to Him who holds
and governs all things. . . .
Nature watches over my preserva-
tion ; I must also preserve myself in
order to obey her laws, and since she
has given me the fear of death, she for-
bids me to seek death. —
This is a fine phrase. But nature pre-
serves or sacrifices me at will ; there is,
at least, in the natural course of things,
no known law on this point. When I
36 OBERMANN
desire to live, a gulf opens to swallow
me up, the lightning falls from heaven
to consume me. If nature takes away
the life which she has made me love, I
take it away when I no longer love it.
If she wrests from me a good, I throw
away an evil. If she surrenders my ex-
istence to the arbitrary course of events,
I leave it or preserve it according to my
choice. Since she has given me the
faculty of willing and choosing, I use
it under circumstances when I am led
to decide between the greatest interests ;
and I cannot comprehend that by using
the liberty she has given me, in choos-
ing a course inspired by her, I am
by this very act outraging her. I, the
work of nature, study her laws, and
find in them my liberty. . . .
OBERMANN 37
LETTER XLII
Lyons, May 2gth, 6th year.
1HAVE read over your entire letter
several times. It was dictated by
too keen an interest. I respect the
friendship which deceives you, and
realize that I was not as solitary as I
had claimed to be. You are clever in
laying stress upon most praiseworthy
motives ; but, believe me, while a great
deal may be said to the passionate man
who is carried away by despair, there
is not a single valid word in answer to
the man who quietly reasons out his
own death.
Not that I have decided on anything.
Despondency overwhelms me, disgust
crushes me. I know that this evil takes
its spring from within. Why can I not
be content to eat and to sleep — for I
do eat and sleep. The life that I drag
38 OBERMANN
along is not so very wretched after all.
Each separate day is endurable, but
their whole overpowers me. An organ-
ized being must act, and act in har-
mony with his nature. Can it satisfy
him to be well sheltered, to sleep in
warmth and ease, to be fed on delicate
fruits, to be surrounded by the murmur
of the waters and the fragrance of the
flowers ? You keep him stagnant ; this
indolence wearies him, these scents
annoy him, this delicate food fails to
nourish him. Take back your gifts
and your fetters. Let him act ; let him
suffer, even. Let him act, for to act is
to enjoy and to live.
But apathy has become natural to
me, as it were ; the thought of an ac-
tive life alarms or surprises me. Small
things offend me, but I cling to them
as to a habit. Great things will always
attract me, but my sloth fears them. I
do not know what I am, what I love,
what I desire ; I groan without reason,
OBERMANN 39
I yearn without object, and the only
thing I realize is that I am not in my
right place.
Man's moral sense, his enthusiasm,
the restlessness of his desires, his con-
stant need of development, all seem to
indicate that his existence does not end
with this passing life ; that his activity
is not limited to visible illusions ; that
his thought must deal with inevitable
and eternal concepts ; that his vocation
is to work for the betterment or the
reformation of the world ; that his
destiny is, in a measure, to perfect, to
deepen, to organize, to give to matter
more energy, to beings greater power,
to faculties fuller perfection, to germs
ampler fruitfulness, to the relations of
things completer equity, to order a
wider dominion.
He is looked upon as the instrument
of nature, employed by her to complete
and perfect her work ; to make use of
the brute matter that comes within his
4o OBERMANN
reach; to bring formless compounds
into subjection to the laws of harmony ;
to refine the metals, beautify the plants ;
to separate or combine elements ; to
transform gross into volatile substances,
and inert into active matter ; to uplift
less developed beings, and to himself
progress and mount upward to the uni-
versal principle of fire, light, order,
harmony, and energy.
Starting with this hypothesis, the
man who is worthy of so high a min-
istry, a conqueror of obstacles and dis-
couragements, will stand at his post
until the last. I respect this constancy.
. . . The upright man will undoubt-
edly not renounce his life as long as he
can be useful ; to be useful and to be
happy are for him synonymous. If he
suffers, but at the same time does great
good, he is more satisfied than discon-
tented. But when the evil he expe-
riences is greater than the good he
can accomplish, then he may abandon
everything. . . .
OBERMANN 41
LETTER X LI II
Lyons, May joth, 6th year.
WISE men, it is said, live with-
out passion, without impa-
tience, and as they look at all things
from the same point of view, they find
in their quietude the peace and the dig-
nity of life. . . .
The wise man of Epicurus must have
neither wife nor children ; but even that
is not enough. As soon as the interests
of another depend upon our prudence,
trifling and vexing cares destroy our
peace, harass our soul, and often quench
our very genius. . . .
One must be neither father nor hus-
band, if one wishes to live independ-
ently, and one ought, perhaps, not
even to have friends ; but a life so lonely
would be sad and useless. A man who
rules the destiny of a people, who
42 OBERMANN
meditates and does great things, may
be bound to no particular individual ;
the people are his friends, and, a bene-
factor of men, he may be exempt from
being the benefactor of one man. But
to me it seems as if those who live in
obscurity ought to at least find some
one toward whom they have duties to
fulfill. . . .
It would be terrible to end one's
days in saying : " Through me no
heart has been made happy ; no joy of
man has been my work ; I have passed
through life impassive and null, like
the glacier, which, in the mountain
fastnesses, has resisted the noonday sun
and has never flowed downward to the
valley below, to redeem with its waters
the pastures which lay parched in the
burning heat." . . .
OBERMANN 43
LETTER XLV
Chessely July 2fth, 6th year.
THE multitude of living men is
sacrificed to the prosperity of
the few, even as the majority of chil-
dren die and are sacrificed to the exist-
ence of those who remain, as millions
of acorns are sacrificed to the beauty of
the great oaks which spread out their
wide branches, free and unhampered.
And the lamentable part of it is, that
in this throng which fate abandons and
thrusts back into the miry morass of
life, there are men who struggle against
their lot, and whose impotent energy
becomes exasperated even while it is
being consumed.
General laws are very beautiful, and
I would willingly sacrifice to them
one, two, even ten years of my life ; but
all my being, that is too much ! It is
44 OBERMANN
nothing to nature, but everything to
me. . . . These laws for the whole,
this heed for species, this scorn of indi-
viduals, this onward march of beings,
is hard for us who are individuals. I
reverence a Providence that carves out
everything in broad masses, but how
man is tossed among the shavings ! and
how amusing it is for him to think
himself something ! . . .
Man, counting for so little in nature,
and for so much to himself, ought to
be concerned somewhat less with the
laws of the world, and somewhat more
with his own laws ; ought to set aside,
perhaps, those of transcendental science
which have never dried a solitary tear
in hamlet or attic ; set aside, perhaps,
certain admirable but useless arts, he-
roic and evil passions ; and seek, if
possible, to form institutions which
shall hold man in check and cease to
brutalize him, to have less science and
less ignorance ; and admit that if man
OBERMANN 45
is not a blind energy to be abandoned
to the forces of fate, if his acts have in
them something spontaneous, morality
is the only science which man is per-
mitted to frame.
LETTER XL VI
Lyons y August 2d, 6th year.
WHEN the day first dawns, I
am- downcast, I feel sad and
troubled ; I take no interest in things,
and it seems impossible to fill the long
hours. When the day is in its full
strength, it overwhelms me, and I flee
from its dazzling brightness. But when
the light is softened, and I feel around
me that charm of happy evenings so
long alien to my heart, then I drain
the cup of misery and abandon myself
to grief.
In this my life of ease more sorrows
crowd upon me than upon the man
who is pursued by misfortune.
46 OBERMANN
I have been told : " You are tranquil
now." The paralytic is tranquil on his
bed of pain. What a lot, to consume
the days of our strength, even as the old
man passes the days of repose ! For-
ever waiting, without hope ; restless,
without aspiration ; disquieted, without
cause ; hours ever empty ; talk always
superficial ; . . . friends, without inti-
macy ; pleasures, for the sake of appear-
ances ; laughter, to satisfy those who
are as bored as one's self; and not one
feeling of joy in two years ! The body
always inactive, the mind tormented,
the soul unhappy, and not even in sleep
to escape from this sense of bitterness,
of restraint, of restless tedium — this is
the slow agony of the heart. It is not
thus that man should live.
August 3d.
. . . Resignation is often good for
individuals ; it can only be fatal to the
race.
OBERMANN 47
Will it be said that one must not
insist on imaginary beauty, on absolute
happiness, but rather on the details of
direct usefulness in the actual order of
things ? and that, as perfection is not
possible to man, and especially to men,
it is both useless and romantic to talk
to them about it ? But nature herself
always sows much to reap little. Of a
thousand seeds only one will germi-
nate. We must keep our eyes fixed
upon the greatest good, not because we
hope to reach it, but because we shall
come nearer to it than if we were to
elect the possible as the goal of our
efforts. . . .
You alone know how to fill your
lives, — men simple and just, — full of
confidence and broad affections, of sen-
timent, and of repose, who experience
your existence to the full, and who will
reap the results of your work ! You
find your joy in domestic order and
tranquillity, on the brow of a friend, on
48 OBERMANN
the happy lips of a wife. Come not
to our cities to be a slave to wretched
mediocrity, to proud weariness. . . .
Forget not the things of nature. . . .
I say again, time flies ever more
swiftly as the seasons of man come and
go. My lost days are heaped up be-
hind me ; they fill the indefinite space
with their colorless shadows ; they hud-
dle together their wasted skeletons —
it is the shadowy phantom of a fu-
nerary monument. And if my restless
gaze turns away and seeks rest on the
once happier chain of future days, it
finds that their full forms and brilliant
images have paled. Their colors fade.
That softened distance, which, by the
magic of uncertainty, once clothed them
with a celestial grace, now strips to the
bone their lifeless and mournful phan-
toms. By the austere light which be-
trays them in the eternal night, I can
already see the last day advancing alone
across the abyss, and between it and me
there is nought.
OBERMANN 49
Do you remember our vain aspira-
tions, the projects of our childhood ?
The joy of a beautiful sky, the forget-
fulness of the world, and the freedom
of the lonely wilds !
Youthful enchantment of a heart
that believes in happiness, wants to
satisfy its desires, and is ignorant of life!
Simplicity of hope, where hast thou
flown ? The silence of the forests, the
limpidness of the waters, the wild fruits,
the intimacy of comradeship, these were
sufficient for us. The real world holds
nothing that can replace these desires
of a true heart, of an untaught mind,
the early dream of our early years.
But when a happier hour crowns
our brow with unwonted serenity, with
a fleeting shadow of peace and well-
being, the following hour is quick to
draw across it deep lines of sorrow and
fatigue, furrows steeped in bitterness,
which stamp out forever its early inno-
cence.
50 OBERMANN
I am not suffering, impatient, irri-
tated ; I am downcast and weary ; I
am overwhelmed with despondency.
Now and again, it is true, I fling
myself by an unexpected impulse be-
yond the narrow limits of the sphere in
which I was compressed. This move-
ment is so swift that it comes upon
me with unforeseen strength, and I am
filled and carried away by it before I
remember the vanity of my impulse. I
lose in this way the reasoned repose
which perpetuates our ills, and calcu-
lates our miseries with its impassive
compass, according to its wise and soul-
destroying formulas.
In that hour ... I see only, on
the one side, my soul with its powers
and its aspirations, like a limited but
independent agent, which nothing can
hinder from destroying itself at its
allotted time, and which nothing can
prevent from living in harmony with
its own nature ; and, on the other side,
OBERMANN 51
I see the whole earth as the necessary
domain of my soul, as the means of
its activity, as the materials of its life.
I scorn that inert and spiritless prudence
which forgets the power of genius,
quenches the fire of the heart, and loses
for all time what constitutes life, that
it may fashion playthings and set up
puerile shadows.
I ask myself what I am doing ; why
I do not begin to live ; what force
enthralls me, when I am free ; what
weakness holds me back, when I feel an
energy that consumes me in the very
effort to repress it ; what I look forward
to, when I hope for nothing ; what I
seek here, when here I love nothing,
desire nothing ; what fatality forces me
to act in opposition to my wishes, when
it is incomprehensible how this fatal-
ity should have the power to control
me? .
52 OBERMANN
LETTER XLVIII
Meterville, September 1st, 6th year.
THOUGH we drag along our
years in indifference, we still
may chance to see the sky on a cloud-
less night. We see the vast planets ;
they are not delusions of the fancy,
they are real before our eyes ; we see
the yet vaster space, and the suns that
give light to other worlds, where be-
ings different from ourselves are born,
feel, and die.
The trunk of the young fir stands
near me, straight and firm ; it rises
into the air, and seems to have neither
life nor motion ; but it exists, and if it
knows itself, its secret and the spring
of its life are within. It grows unseen.
It is the same by night and by day ; the
same under the cold snow, and under
the summer sun. It turns with the
OBERMANN 53
earth ; motionless it turns among all
these worlds. The grasshopper is alert
while man is at rest ; it will die, the fir
will fall, the worlds will change.
In that day where will our books be,
our fame, our fears, our prudence, and
the house we were to have built, and
the grain which the hail had spared ?
For what season do you harvest ? In
what age do you place your hope ? One
more revolution of a planet, one more
hour of its span, and all that is you will
no longer be. . . .
Intelligence of the worlds ! how vain
are the cares of man ! What laughable
solicitude for the incidents of an hour !
What senseless torments to arrange the
details of this life which a breath of
time will destroy !
54 OBERMANN
L ETTER L I
Paris, September 2d, fth year.
OF what avail to my happiness is
a fame which during my life is
still in its bud, and will bloom forth
only after my death ? It is pride that
makes the living utter with such deep
respect the great names of the dead. I
do not see that it is any great benefit
to us to minister, a thousand years
from now, to the passions of different
parties, or the whims of public opinion.
I am content if honest men cannot cast
a slur upon my memory ; the rest is
vanity. Chance holds too often the
casting vote, and oftener still the means
repel me ; I should not wish to be
either a Charles XII., or a Pacomus.6
To seek glory and not attain it is hu-
miliating ; to be worthy of it, and yet
lose it, is melancholy perhaps, but, after
OBERMANN 55
all, to gain it is not the chief end of
man.
Tell me whether the greatest names
are those of just men ? When we can
do good deeds let us do them for their
own sakes, and if our destiny leads us far
away from great things, let us at least
not neglect those which glory does not
reward ; let us put aside uncertainties,
and be good in obscurity. Some men,
seeking fame for fame's sake, may pos-
sibly give a needed impetus to public
enterprise in great states; but, as for
ourselves, let us strive to do only those
things which ought to bring glory, and
be indifferent to the whims of fate that
often grant it to happiness, sometimes
deny it to heroism, and rarely accord
it to purity of intention.
I have felt for some days a great
longing for simple things, . . . violets
which we find with so much pleasure,
and seek with so much interest ! ber-
ries, nuts, strawberries ; wild pears, and
56 OBERMANN
fallen chestnuts ; fir cones for the au-
tumn hearth — gentle ways of a more
natural life ! Joy of simple men ; sim-
plicity of happy lands ! . . .
LETTER LII
Paris, October Qth, fth year.
1AM delighted with your young
friend. . . . He seems to justify
all the interest you take in him ; were
he your son, I should congratulate you.
Yours would have been of his age ; and
he has no father ! Your son and his
mother were destined to die early. I
do not avoid speaking of this. Old sor-
rows sadden, but do not torture us ; that
deep bitterness, softened and made en-
durable by time, becomes to us a ne-
cessity ; it brings back to us the charm
of the ways of old ; it stirs our hearts
eager for emotion, and seeking the
boundless even in their regrets. . . .
OBERMANN 57
To return to my protege; I wrote
you that we were to make a long trip
through the neighborhood of Paris.
. . . We started on the I4th of Sep-
tember ; and throughout almost our
entire trip we had beautiful autumn
weather — a peaceful sky, a gentle and
half-veiled sun, misty mornings, beau-
tiful evenings, wet earth and good roads,
and everywhere abundant fruit. We
were well, and in good spirits ; he,
keen to see and ready to admire ; I,
content to roam. . . .
Of the little that I know of France,
Chessel 7 and Fontainebleau are the
only places where I should willingly
consent to stay, and Chessel the only
one where I should wish to live. You
will soon see me there.
I have already told you that the as-
pens and the birches of Chessel are not
like other aspens and other birches ; the
chestnuts, and the ponds, and the boat,
are not the same as those elsewhere.
58 OBERMANN
There, the autumn sky is like the sky
of one's native land. Those muscatel
grapes, those pale starworts which you
used not to love but which now we
love together, and the fragrance of the
Chessel hay in that great barn where
we played when I was still a child !
What hay ! What delicious fresh cheese
and cream ! What beautiful heifers !
And what a pleasant sound the chest-
nuts made as they were emptied out of
the bag and rolled over the floor above
my room.
My friend, happiness has fled. You
have your cares and your profession ;
your mind has matured ; your heart
has not changed, but mine has con-
tracted. You no longer have time to
put the chestnuts under the ashes, they
have to be prepared for you ; what have
you done with our pleasures ?
OBERJVJANN 59
LETTER LV
Fribourg, March joth, 8th year.
I AM still able to judge as before of
the beauty of a picturesque land-
scape ; but I feel it less, or else the
way in which I feel it has no longer
the power to satisfy me. I might say,
" I remember that this is beautiful."
When in other days I turned away
from beautiful places, it was with the
impatience of desire, with the restless-
ness born of lonely and incomplete en-
joyment. To-day I again leave them ;
but now from weariness at their silence.
The language they speak is not exalted
enough for me ; I do not hear, I do
not see, what I desire to see, what I
desire to hear, and I feel that by no
longer finding myself in the world of
things, I now fail to find myself in the
life within.
60 OBERMANN
I am beginning to look at physical
beauties as I do at moral illusions ;
everything fades imperceptibly and in-
evitably. The sense of outward con-
gruity is merely the indirect perception
of intellectual harmony. How can I
expect to find in things a life, an activ-
ity, which are no longer in my own
heart, an eloquence of the passions
which I do not possess, and the silent
sounds, the flights of hope, the voices
of a joyful nature — magic of a world
already left far behind.
LETTER L VI I
Bains du Schwartz-s'ee? May 6th> 8th year.
THE snow melted early on the
lower slopes of the mountains.
The valley is level, the mountains rise
cragged from their base ; there are only
pastures, firs, and water. It is a soli-
tude after my heart, and the weather
is good, but the days are long.
OBERMANN 61
LETTER LIX
Chateau de Chupru, May 22dy 8th year.
AT two o'clock we were already
in the woods looking for straw-
berries. They covered the southern
slopes ; some were only just beginning
to form, but many already had the
color and fragrance of maturity. The
strawberry is one of the loveliest of
nature's products ; it is among fruits
what the violet is among flowers, sweet,
fair, and simple. Its scent is wafted on
the light breath of the air, as, now and
again, it steals beneath the arches of
the woods and softly stirs the thorny
thickets and the bindweed which
climbs over the tall trunks. It is car-
ried into the deepest shadows by the
warm breath of the earth, which lies
uncovered where the strawberries ripen;
it mingles with the fresh moisture, and
62 OBERMANN
seems to exhale from the mosses and
the brambles. Wild harmonies! you
are formed of these contrasts.
While we scarcely felt the stir of
the air in the cool and gloomy solitude,
a fierce wind swept over the tops of
the fir-trees ; their branches moaned
with a strange sound as they bent
to meet the buffets of their fellows.
Sometimes the high boughs swayed
apart, as they were swept to and fro,
and we could see their pointed crests
illumined by the full light of day, and
burned by the sun's hot rays, high
above the shades of that silent earth
where their roots found refreshment.
When our baskets were filled, we
left the woods, some of us gay, others
full of content. We took our way
through narrow lanes, across fields shut
in by hedges and lined with great trees
of the wild cherry and wild pear. A
land still patriarchal, while the men
no longer are ! . . .
OBERMANN 63
A deep ravine borders the woods of
the chateau ; on each side rise steep
rocks, cragged and wild. On their
crest, at the further end of the wood,
are the ruins of an old quarry ; the
sharp edges left by the blasting had
been rounded off by time, and a rude
in closure had been formed, large enough
to seat six or eight persons with ease.
After leveling off the bottom of the
stones, and finishing the rock shelf
which was to serve as a sideboard, we
made a circular bench of heavy branches
covered with leaves. The table was a
plank laid upon blocks of wood left by
some workmen who had been cutting
down several acres of beech-trees in
the neighborhood.
All this was made ready in the morn-
ing, and the secret carefully kept.
Then we led our guests, all laden with
strawberries, to this wild retreat, which
was to them a complete surprise. Pine
branches were lighted in an angle of
64 OBERMANN
the rock overhanging the precipice,
which was made less terrifying by the
outspreading branches of the beech-
trees. Wooden spoons, made after the
pattern of the Koukisberg, dainty cups,
and baskets of wild cherries were placed
here and there along the stone shelf,
together with platefuls of thick moun-
tain cream, and bowls filled with the
second skimming, which is used for
the coffee, and is flavored with a deli-
cate almond perfume, known only in
the region of the Alps. Small jugs con-
tained the sweetened water prepared
for the strawberries.
Everything had been arranged and
thought out beforehand, but when the
time came to make the coffee, we
found that the simplest thing was want-
ing ; there was no water. We then tied
together some ends of rope and lowered
several jugs over the side of the preci-
pice ; and after breaking a number of
them against the rocks, we finally sue-
OBERMANN 65
ceeded in filling two with the ice-cold
water of the torrent, three hundred feet
below us.
The gathering was friendly, the
laugh sincere. The weather was fine ;
the wind moaned through the gloomy
depths of the long gully, where the
torrent, white with foam, dashed be-
tween the jagged rocks. The song of
the " K-hou-hou " was heard in the
woods, and its harsh notes were re-
echoed by the higher forests ; from the
far distance came the sound of the great
clanging bells, as the cows climbed
slowly to the Kousin-berg. The pun-
gent odor of the burning fir was min-
gled with these mountain sounds ; and
in the midst of wild fruits, in a solitary
spot, a party of friends sat around the
table on which stood the smoking cof-
fee-pot.
But the only ones among us who
enjoyed that moment were those who
did not feel its moral harmony. As for
66 OBERMANN
me, I turned to dreams rather than to
enjoyment. I need very little, but that
little must be harmonious ; the most
seductive pleasures would not attract
me if I were to discover in them a dis-
cord, and the most trifling, but unsul-
lied joy fully satisfies my longings.
This is what makes simplicity essential
to my nature ; for simplicity alone is
harmonious. To-day the scene was
too beautiful. Our picturesque hall,
our rustic hearth, a lunch of fruit and
cream, our intimacy born of the
moment, the song of the birds, and
the wind which every moment tossed
the fir-needles into our cups — this
was enough. But the torrent in the
shadows, and the distant sounds of the
mountain — this was far too much. I
was the only one who heard them.
OBERMANN 67
LETTER LX
Villeneuve, June idth, 8th year.
I HAVE just returned from a visit to
all the inhabited valleys between
Charney, Thun, Sion, Saint-Maurice,
and Vevay. I did not go with hope-
fulness, to admire or to enjoy. I have
once again seen the mountains that I
saw almost seven years ago. I did
not bring to them that exuberance of
youth which sought with avidity their
savage beauties. The ancient names
were there, but I, too, bear the same
name as of old ! I rested on the strand
near Chillon. I had once understood
the voices of the waves, and yet again
I strove to comprehend them.
That spot where I had stood in days
gone by, that strand so beautiful in my
memory, those waves that France can
never know, and the high peaks, and
68 OBERMANN
Chillon, and Lake Leman — all these
did not fill me with wonder, nor did
they satisfy me. I felt there even as I
would have felt elsewhere. The scenes
I found again, but the years I cannot
call back. . . .
I have searched through all the val-
leys for an isolated, but accessible up-
land, with a mild climate, a good situ-
ation, crossed by a stream, and in the
distance the sound of a falling torrent,
or the lapping of the waves on the
shores of a lake. What I now want is
a large tract of land, but one of no
great value, and different from what is
found in the Rhone valley. I also want
to build a frame house, an easier task
here than in the Bas-Valais.
Hantz, who speaks Romance,9 and
is also somewhat familiar with the
Oberland German, followed the valleys
and highways, and made inquiries in
the villages. I, meanwhile, climbed
from chalet to chalet, across the moun-
OBERMANN 69
tains, and through places where he
would not have dared to go, even
though he is more athletic than I, and
more familiar with the Alps — places,
indeed, through which I should not
have had the nerve to pass had I not
been alone.
I have ended by finding a piece of
land which I like extremely, but
which I am not sure of being able to
purchase.
LETTER LXI
Saint-Saphorin™ June i6th, 8 thy ear.
1AM not sorry that I engaged Hantz
and brought him with me. Tell
Madame T that I thank her for
having given him to me. He seems
frank, affectionate, and intelligent ; and
he plays the horn with more taste than
I should have expected. He is a truly
good man, and I must keep him, since
70 OBERMANN
he seems to like being in my service.
He tells me that his mind is now at
ease, and that he hopes he may stay
with me. He is right. Why should I
throw away the only good I possess,
a contented man ? . . .
The lake is fair when the moon
silvers our sails ; when the echoes of
Chillon repeat the notes of the horn,
and the great wall of Meillerie looms
in deep shadow against the soft, trans-
parent sky, and forms a dark back-
ground to the shimmering lights on the
water ; when the waves break around
our floating boats, and in the distance we
hear the surf washing over the countless
pebbles, swept down by the Vevayse
from the mountain-sides. . . .
I find that in a few days I can secure
the land about which I told you ; and
I shall start work at once, for the sea-
son is advancing.
OBERMANN 71
LETTE R LXII I
July, 8th year.
IT was midnight ; the moon had set ;
the lake was troubled, the sky
limpid, the night deep and beautiful.
There was restlessness upon the earth.
I could hear the birches tremble, and
the leaves fall from the poplar-trees.
The pines gave angry moans ; roman-
tic sounds came from the mountain-
side ; high waves swept over the strand.
Then the osprey wailed within the
rocky caverns ; and when his lamenta-
tions ceased, the waves had fallen, and
an austere silence reigned.
Ever and anon, the nightingale sent
forth into the restless hush his lonely
note, unrivaled and oft repeated, that
song of happy nights, the sublime
expression of a primitive melody ;
ineffable outburst of love and sorrow ;
72 OBERMANN
rapturous as the longing that consumes
me ; simple, mysterious, boundless as
the heart that loves. «
Yielding myself with an almost
deathlike repose to the measured ca-
dence of the pale, silent, ever-moving
waves, I was filled with their slow and
changeless motion, with the enduring
peace, with the sounds which came
now and again amid the long silence.
Nature seemed to me too beautiful ;
and the waters, and the earth, and the
night too languid, too happy. The
peaceful harmony of things was pain-
ful to my troubled heart.
I thought of the springtime of per-
ishable earth, and of the springtime of
my life. I saw the years, melancholy
and fruitless, as they move on from
future eternity into the vast unknown.
I saw the present, ever profitless and
unblest, loose its misty chain from the
indefinite future ; I saw it, as in a vi-
sion, approach my death, which was at
ft;
OBERMANN 73
last made manifest, and trail my phan-
tom days through the darkness, con-
sume them, and lay them waste ; then
it reached the only remaining phan-
tom, devoured even that last day as
relentlessly as the others, and closed
the silent abyss.
As though all men had not passed
away, and all had not passed in vain !
As though life were real, and essen-
tially existent ! As though the concep-
tion of the universe were the idea of
a positive being, and the ego of man
other than the accidental expression of
an ephemeral alloy ! What do I de-
sire ? What am I ? What shall I ask
of nature ? Is there a universal system,
is there a fitness, are there laws to meet
our needs ? Does intelligence direct the
results that my intellect wishes to at-
tain ?
The cause of things is unseen, the
end of things is delusive ; forms change,
life is wasted ; and the torment of an
74 OBERMANN
insatiable heart is like the blind im-
petus of a meteor rushing aimlessly
through the void in which it is soon
to be lost. Fulfillment never equals
anticipation. We cannot know things
as they exist. We see relationships, not
essences ; we deal not with things, but
with their images. And this nature,
which we strive to see outside of us,
and which is inscrutable within us, is
everywhere shrouded in darkness. " I
feel " is the only reality left to the man
in search of truth. And that which
makes the certainty of my being is also
its torment. I feel, I exist, merely to
be consumed with ungovernable desires,
satiated with the seductions of a fan-
tastic world, and oppressed by its capti-
vating illusions. . . .
Man loves himself, he loves man, he
loves all animate existences. This love
seems necessary to an organized being ;
it is the motive power of its preserv-
ing forces. Man loves himself; without
OBERMANN 75
this animating principle, what spring
of action would he have, how could he
subsist ? Man loves other men, because
he feels as they feel, because he is linked
to them in the order of the world;
without this relationship, what would
his life be?
Man loves all animate beings. If he
ceased to suffer at sight of suffering,
if he ceased to feel in unison with all
creatures who have sensations like his
own, he would no longer be interested
in what was outside of himself, he might
even cease to love himself. There is
surely no love limited to the individual
since there is no being essentially iso-
lated.
If man feels in unison with all ani-
mate beings, the joys and misfortunes
of his fellows are, to him, as real as his
personal affections. The happiness of
those around him is necessary to his
own happiness; he is linked to every-
thing that feels, he lives in the organ-
ized world.
76 OBERMANN
The chain of relationships of which
he is the centre, and which cannot
be wholly severed excepting when all
things come to an end, makes him a
part of this universe, a numerical unity
in the number of nature. The bond
formed by these personal links consti-
tutes the order of the world ; and the
force which perpetuates its harmony is
natural law. . . .
An isolated being is never perfect.
His existence is incomplete ; he is nei-
ther truly good nor truly happy. The
complement of each thing has been
placed outside of itself, but the rela-
tionship must be reciprocal. There is
an end and a fulfillment for all natural
beings. It is reciprocity that leads to
productiveness ; it is a feeling mutually
shared that leads to happiness. In this
harmony all existence is completed, all
animate beings find rest and enjoy-
ment. . . .
Every possession which we do not
OBERMANN 77
share with another increases our long-
ings, but does not satisfy our hearts ; it
does not nourish them, but saps their
strength, and exhausts their life. . . .
Love must govern the earth which
ambition exhausts. Love is that fire,
calm and productive, that celestial
warmth, which animates and renews,
gives birth and bloom, sheds color,
grace, hope, and life. Ambition is the
sterile fire which burns beneath the ice,
consumes but does not animate. It
rends deep chasms and the earth trem-
bles at its voice, and on the very verge
of the abyss it has opened, it bursts
asunder and carries death and desola-
tion over the land that had been daz-
zled by its passing glare.
All is sorrow, void, despair, when
love departs ; all is joy, hope, felicity,
when love comes near. A distant voice,
a sound on the air, the stir of the
branches, the tremor of the waters, all
declare it, all express it, all echo its
78 OBERMANN
accents and add to our longing. The
grace of nature is in the movement of
an arm ; the law of the world is in the
expression of a glance.
It is for love that the light of the
morning wakens the creatures, and
colors the skies ; it is for him that the
heat of the noon warms the moist earth
under the moss of the woods ; it is for
him that the evening light sends forth
the sweet melancholy of its mysterious
rays. Silence watches over the dreams
of love. The stir of the waters fills him
with its sweet unrest ; the fury of the
waves inspires him with its fierce tur-
moil ; and all things wait on his plea-
sure when the night is soft, when the
moon shines in the midnight sky, when
enchantment is in the shadows and the
light, in the solitude, the air, and the
waters, and the night.
Happy delirium ! sole moment left
to man. That flower rare, solitary,
ephemeral under a leaden sky, unshel-
OBERMANN 79
tered, beaten by the winds, and wearied
with the storms, languishes and dies
before it blooms ; a cold blast, a pass-
ing vapor, a breath — and hope fades
in its withered bud. Again we press
onward, we are" filled with hope, we
hasten our steps, and, yonder, growing
as before in sterile ground, we see
other flowers precarious, uncertain, tran-
sient as the first — flowers which will
also prove vain, and will also perish.
Happy is he who possesses what man
must seek, and who enjoys the frui-
tion of all things that man must feel !
Happy also, it is said, is he who seeks
nothing, feels nothing, has need of
nothing, and for whom to exist is to
live. . . .
It is a sign of greatness to be stronger
than one's passions, but it is a sign of
stupidity to commend the silence of the
senses and of the heart. . . .
A true man knows how to love love,
while remembering always that love is
So- OBERMANN
merely an accident of life. When these
illusions come to him, he will enjoy the
possession of them, but he will not for-
get that the sternest truths are still
greater than the happiest illusions. A
true man knows how to choose and how
to wait with patience, how to love with
constancy, and how to give himself
wholly but without weakness. The in-
tensity of a deep passion is to him the
spirit of good, the fire of genius ; he
finds in love the ardent zeal, the virile
enjoyment of a heart, just, sensitive, and
great; he meets with happiness, and
knows how to make it a part of him-
self.
That mutual delight, that gradual
growth of trust and confidence, that
happiness which is a hope fulfilled, that
ardent faith which inspires us to expect
all things from the beloved heart, that
still greater rapture of giving joy to the
one we love, and of being all-sufficient
and necessary each to the other — all
OBERMANN 81
this fullness of sentiment and of hope
enlarges the soul and makes it long
to live. Ineffable abandonment ! The
man who has known it need never
blush ; and he who is not capable of
feeling it was not born to judge of love.
I do not condemn the man who
has not loved, but only he who cannot
love. Circumstances determine our
affections ; but warmth of sentiment is
natural to the man whose moral organ-
ization is perfect. He who is incapable
of love is also incapable of a magnan-
imous sentiment, of a sublime affection.
He may be honest, good, industrious,
prudent ; he may possess gentle quali-
ties, and even reflected virtues. But he
is not a man, he has neither soul nor
genius. I should like to know him, he
would have my confidence and even
my esteem, but he could never be my
friend.
But, oh, ye hearts of true sensibility !
repressed in the springtime of your
82 OBERMANN
youth by a sinister fate, who will blame
you for not having loved ? Every gen-
erous sentiment was natural to you, and
all the fire of passion lay smouldering
within your virile instinct. Love was
your birthright ; love would have de-
veloped you, and fitted you for great
achievements. But all things were with-
held from you; the voice of love was
silent, and, in that day, there opened
at your feet the void in which your
life is finally to be extinguished.
The sense of what is honest and just,
the need of order and of moral fitness,
lead necessarily to the need of love.
Beauty is the object of love; harmony
is its principle and its aim ; all perfec-
tion, all excellence, seem to belong to
it, gentle graces attract it, and a broad
and virtuous morality holds it steadfast.
Love does not truly exist without the
magic of personal beauty, but it de-
pends still more on intellectual har-
mony, on graces of thought, on depth
of sentiment.
*•
» < • •
•
OBERMANN 83
Harmony, hope, admiration, charm,
grow ever stronger till the perfect
union is reached. . . . The man who
loves does not change ; the more deeply
he is loved, the stronger becomes his
love ; the more fully he possesses what
he desired, the more tenderly he cher-
ishes what he has won.
LETTER LXIV
Saint-Saphorin, July loth, 8th year.
IT is generally said that it is harder
to endure prosperity than adversity.
But for a man who is not led by strong
passions, who likes to do well what-
ever he has to do, whose chief need
is' order, and who looks rather at the
whole of things than at their details —
for him it is more difficult to endure
adversity than prosperity.
Adversity suits a man of strength
and enthusiasm, whose soul is intent
84 OBERMANN
upon stern virtues, and whose mind,
happily, is blind to their uncertainty.
But adversity is sad and discouraging
for the man with whose nature it is
not in accord. He wants to do good,
but for this he must have the power to
act ; he wants to be of use, but a man
under a cloud of misfortune finds lit-
tle opportunity to succor others. He
knows how to resist calamity, but not
being upheld by the noble fanaticism
of Epictetus, he is not proof against an
unhappy life ; in the end it disheartens
him, for he feels that it is destroying
his very being.
The religious man, and especially
one who believes in a rewarding God,
has a great advantage ; it is easy to
endure affliction when affliction is the
greatest good that one can have. I con-
fess I can see nothing surprising in the
virtue of a man who struggles under
the eye of his God, and who renounces
the whims of an hour for a felicity with-
OBERMANN 85
out limit and without end. A man of
firm faith could not do otherwise, ex-
cepting in a moment of delirium. It
seems to me evident that he who yields
to terrestrial passions has no faith ; he
must have a clear view of nothing but
the earth. Were he to see, with the
same distinctness, the heaven and the
hell which, at times, he remembers,
were they always as present in his
thoughts as are the things of this earth,
it would be impossible for him ever to
fall.
LETTER LXV
Sain f -Sap horin, July ifth, 8th year.
NO, I shall never forget that, in
money, man holds one of the
strongest instruments for good or evil,
and that by its use he betrays his true
character. The way of ways most pro-
fitable and wise is rarely ours to choose.
86
We can scarcely ever do good under
all its aspects, for so many things
which are in themselves opposed are
both fit and expedient. I believe it
is one of the essentials of life to live
with a certain degree of form, and to
regulate one's household in an attrac-
tive and orderly way. Beyond this, a
reasonable man can find no excuse for
wasting in superfluities what might be
the means of doing so many things of
better value. Where is the man who
takes account of the fruitfulness of
money ? Men waste it as they squan-
der their powers, their health, their
years. It is so easy to hoard or to lavish
it ; so difficult to use it wisely.
I know a priest, near Fribourg, who
is badly clothed, poorly fed, and who
does not spend a farthing needlessly ;
he gives away everything, and gives it
intelligently. Yet one of his parish-
ioners referred, in my hearing, to his
avarice ; but what a noble avarice !
OBERMANN 87
How many wrongs might be pre-
vented or redressed, what pleasure, what
consolation might be given ! and in a
purse of gold this power for good lies
hidden, like secret and forgotten germs,
waiting for the workings of a gentle
heart, to bring forth their fruits of ten-
derness and sympathy.
A whole country is wretched and
degraded ; need, anxiety, disorder, have
blighted every heart ; all suffer, and
chafe. The discontent, discord, sick-
ness, the bad food, brutal education,
and unfortunate habits — all these may
be changed. Harmony, order, peace,
confidence may be restored ; and even
hope, and happy ways ! Fruitfulness
of money !
OBERMANN
LETTER LXVII
Imensfrdm," July 2 1st, 8 thy ear.
AT last I am at home, and my
home is in the Alps. . . .
My solitary house is never lighted
by the early dawn, and only in winter-
time can I see the setting of the sun.
Toward the summer solstice, he is hid
from view at eventide, and at his ris-
ing does not come in sight for three
hours after he has crossed the horizon
line. Then he mounts between the
straight branches of the firs, and flings
his rays high above to illumine the bare
summit of a rocky cliff which stands
outlined against the sky ; he seems to
be borne upon the waters of the tor-
rent before it takes its mighty spring ;
his dazzling rays pierce every corner of
the black and gloomy forest ; and, for
one moment, his resplendent disk rests
OBERMANN 89
upon the crest of the wild and wooded
mountain whose body still lies deep
in shadow ; it is the flashing eye of a
dark colossus.
At the coming of the equinox the
evenings will be fair, and worthy of a
younger head than mine. The gorge
of Imenstr6m falls away and opens to
the winter sunset ; its northern sweep
will be in shadow, but the slope on
which my dwelling stands, looking
toward the south, will be lighted by
all the splendor of the sunset, and I
shall see the sun drop into the broad
lake aflame with his last rays. My
deep valley will be a tempered and
genial resting-place, hidden between
the burning plain wearied with heat,
and the cold snows of the mountain-
peaks, which inclose it on the east.
I have seventy acres of very fair
meadow land ; twenty acres of fine
woodland ; and about thirty-five acres
of rough ground covered with rocks,
9o OBERMANN
with damp and shady bogs, sparse
woods, and forests tangled with un-
derbrush — a sterile and unproductive
tract, but pleasant to own.
What I like about the property,
besides its situation, is that all the
different parts are connected and can
be united within one large inclosure ;
and, besides, there are neither fields nor
vineyards. The grape might be culti-
vated successfully in certain exposures,
and was, in fact, at one time ; but the
vines have now been replaced by chest-
nut-trees, which I greatly prefer. . . .
Grass, woods, and fruit are all that
I desire, especially in this region. Un-
fortunately, there is not much fruit at
Imenstrdm ; . . . but this fall and next
spring I shall plant a great many apple
and cherry trees, and some pears and
plums. . . .
OBERMANN 91
LETTER LXVIII
Imenstrom, July 2jd, 8th year.
THIS beautiful eastern basin of
Lake Leman, broad and roman-
tic, and bordered by shores strangely
picturesque ; the scattered houses and
chalets; the cows swinging their moun-
tain bells as they come and go ; the
, nearness of the plains, .and of the high
mountain-peaks ; a singular harmony
rare in Catholic countries ; the sweet-
ness of a land which sees the sunset —
the distant sunset of the north ; the
long, curved sweep of water stretching
its undefined length into the distance ;
the far-off haze, rising under the rays
of the noonday sun, or glowing and
aflame under his evening beams ; and,
through the still night, the sound of
the waves as they rise, sweep onward,
surge and swell, and die out on the
•
4 *
•
*
*
92 OBERMANN
shore at our feet — all these hold sweet
converse with man in the midst of
scenes so rare to find.
LETTER LXIX
Imenstrom, July 2fthy 8th year.
I AM delighted to know that M. de
Fonsalbe has returned from Saint
Domingo, but I hear that he has lost
his fortune, and, what is more, that he
is married. I am also told that he has
business which will soon take him to
Zurich. Do ask him to pass through
Imenstr6m ; he will be most welcome.
He must be warned, however, that he
will be far from comfortable if he does
come, but I hardly think he will ob-
ject. If he has not greatly changed, he
has a good heart ; and does a true heart
ever change ?
Were he alone, I should pity him
but little for having had his house de-
OBERMANN 93
molished by a cyclone, and his hopes
destroyed. But since he is married, I
pity him greatly. If he has a true wife,
it will be painful for him not to see her
happy ; if he has merely a woman who
bears his name, he will be overcome
by an antipathy which he might have
borne only by a life of ease. Make him
promise to pass through Vevey, and to
stop here for several days.
The brother of Madame Dellemar
is perhaps destined to be my friend. —
A new hope is born within me. Tell
me something about him, you who
know him so much better than I. Con-
gratulate his sister on his escape from
the dangers of the voyage. No, say
nothing to her from me ; let the past
be buried.
94 OBERMANN
LETTER LXX
Imenstrdmy July 2Qth, 8th year.
THE snow covers the mountains,
the clouds hang low, a cold rain
floods the valleys. It is bleak, even on
the shores of the lake. I do not dis-
like these short winters in the midst
\
of summer. . . . Such changes, more
sudden and more severe than on the
plains, make the rugged climate of the
mountains even more interesting, in a
way. . . . Changeable, stormy, uncer-
tain days are necessary to our restless-
ness; a more even and a milder cli-
mate, while it may content us, leaves
us indifferent.
It may be that unvarying days, cloud-
less skies, and perpetual summer in-
spire the common throng with a more
fervid imagination ; . . . but scenes full
of strong contrasts, of beauty and of
OBERMANN 95
horror, where we experience opposite
sentiments and swift changes of feel-
ing, such places exalt the imagination
of certain men toward the romantic,
the mysterious, the ideal.
Temperate plains may breed men of
deep learning ; burning sands may de-
velop gymnosophists and ascetics ; but
Greece, the land of mountains, Greece
both cold and mild, now stern now
radiant, covered here with snow and
there with olive-groves, Greece gave
birth to Orpheus, to Homer, and to
Epimenides ; while Caledonia of the
north, more rigid, more changeable,
less joyous, produced Ossian.
When the trees, the waters, and the
clouds are peopled by the souls of an-
cestors, by the spirits of heroes, by
dryads and divinities ; when invisible
beings are chained in caverns, or carried
on the wings of the wind, when they
wander among the silent tombs, and
the sound of their wailings is wafted
96 OBERMANN
through the air, on a dark and sombre
night — what a land for the heart of
man ! what a world for eloquence ! —
Under a changeless sky, on an illim-
itable plain, straight palm-trees shade
the banks of a broad and silent river ;
a mussulman sits at his ease, and smokes
throughout the long hours of the day,
while the sweep of fans stirs the air
around him. —
The scene has changed : moss-clad
rocks reach out over an abyss of dash-
ing waves ; through the long winter, a
dense fog has separated them from the
world. Now the sky is brilliant, violets
are in flower and strawberries ripen fast,
the days bloom forth, the forests take
on life. On the tranquil ocean the
daughters of warriors sing of the bat-
tles and the hopes of their nation.
Then clouds surge in the heavens, the
sea is unchained, lightning blasts the
giant oaks, ships are swallowed up in
the seething waters, snow covers the
OBERMANN 97
mountain-tops, rushing torrents sweep
over the land and hollow out deep
ravines. The wind changes ; the sky
is clear and cold. By the light of the
stars, we can see a wreck floating on
the raging sea ; the warriors' daughters
are no more.
Then the voices of the winds are
silent ; all is at peace. And from the
crags above is heard the sound of hu-
man voices, and cold drops fall from the
cavern's roof. The Caledonian flies to
arms, he sets forth in the night, he
hurries onward over mountain and tor-
rent, he rushes to Fingal, and cries :
" Slisama I2 is dead, but she spoke, and
I heard her ; she will not leave us
desolate ; she told the names of your
friends ; she commanded us to win."
It is to the lands of the north that
belong the heroism born of enthusiasm,
and the titanic dreams bred of sublime
melancholy. To the lands of the south
belong austere conceptions, mystic rev-
98 OBERMANN
cries, inscrutable dogmas, secret, magic,
and cabalistic sciences, and the inflexi-
ble endurance of the recluse. . . .
Even if it were possible for the total
yearly heat to be equal both in Nor-
way and in the Hedjas, the difference
between the two countries would still
be very marked, and it would be al-
most as great between the peoples them-
selves. The Arab is familiar with no-
thing but undeviating nature, uniform
days, unbroken seasons, and the burn-
ing monotony of an arid earth. The
Norwegian, after long months when
dark and gloomy fogs cover the land,
when the earth is frozen, the waters are
motionless, and the sky is convulsed by
the winds, will at last see the coming
of a new season which will illumine
the skies, give life to the waters, and
fertilize the earth, now decked with
flowers and robed in all the beauty of
harmonious colors and romantic sounds.
There are, in the springtime, hours of
OBERMANN 99
inexpressible beauty ; there are autumn
days made still more alluring by that
melancholy which fills the soul, but
does not lead it astray, which fails to
excite it with delusive pleasures, but
inspires and sustains it with a rapture
full of mystery, of grandeur, and of
lassitude.
It may be that the changes of the
earth and sky, the permanence or the
mobility of natural phenomena, leave
their impress only on men of high
organization, and not on the multitude
who seem limited, either from impo-
tence or from misery, to the experi-
ences of mere animal instinct. But the
men who possess broad faculties are
those who guide their country, who, by
means of institutions, example, open or
hidden forces, become the leaders of
men ; and the multitude unconsciously
obey their compelling power. . . .
ioo OBERMANN
LETTER LXXII
Imenstrom, August 6th, 8th year.
1AM not in the least surprised that
your friends censure me for having
hidden myself in a remote and lonely
spot. ... It is not that I like one
kind of life better than another, but
rather the life which seems nearest to
perfection in its own sphere, the one
which best fulfills its own nature.
I should prefer the life of a wretched
Finlander amid his ice-clad steeps, to
that of countless little commoners in
small towns, who, wrapped in their
daily habits, pale with vexation, and
immersed in stupidities, think them-
selves superior to the heedless and stal-
wart beings who vegetate in the coun-
try, and are merry every Sunday. . . .
OBERMANN 101
LETTER LXXIV
Imenstrom, June i6thy gth year.
WHEN I remember that your
life is full and calm, that you
work with interest and take delight in
restful pleasures, I find myself on the
verge of censuring my own independ-
ence, which is, nevertheless, very dear
to me ! It is undeniable that man has
need of an object to charm him, a
thralldom to allure him and rule over
him. Yet it is a delight to be free, to
select what is best suited to one's na-
ture, and not to be as a slave forever
toiling for a master. But when I am
filled with a sense of all the uselessness\
all the vanity of what I do, I realize
that my days are too empty. This
passionless estimate of the true value
of things is near akin to antipathy for
everything.
• *
• *
102 OBERMANN
You are to sell Chessel, and buy pro-
perty near Bordeaux. Shall we never
meet again ? You were so delightfully
settled ! But the destiny of every one
must be fulfilled. It is not enough to
seem contented ; I, too, appear to be,
yet I am not happy. . . . But you will
be happy, you whose heart is obedient
to reason, who are both good and wise,
whom I admire but cannot imitate.
You know how to make use of life ; I
still stand in waiting. I am ever search-
ing in the beyond, as though my hours
were not wasted, and eternal death
nearer than my dreams.
LETTER LXXV
Imenstrom, June 28thy gth year.
1 SHALL no longer look for better
days. The months pass, the years
come and go. All things are renewed
in vain : I am ever the same. In the
OBERMANN 103
midst of what I so ardently desired, I
am destitute of all things. I have found
nothing, I possess nothing ; weariness
consumes my years in unending silence.
Whether the futile solicitudes of life
blot out the remembrance of natural
things, whether the unprofitable long-
ing for enjoyment lures me back to
their faint images, I am forever encom-
passed by an empty void, which, as the
seasons pass in long procession by,
spreads in ever-widening circles round
me. No intimate companionship has
given solace to my weariness through
the long days of winter mists. Spring-
time came for nature ; for me it came
not. The days that brought the vital
spark of life awakened every being ;
yet their unquenchable fire did not
revive me, but filled me with lassitude.
I was an alien in the world of gladness.
And now the flowers have fallen, the
lily is withered ; the heat is gaining
strength, the days grow long, the nights
104 OBERMANN
more fair. Season of joy ! For me the
beautiful days are profitless, the soft
nights are full of gall. Peace of the
shadows ! dash of the waves ! silence !
moon ! birds that sang in the night !
sentiment of youth ! whence — whence
have ye flown !
Their ghosts are here. They steal
before me ; they pass and pass again,
and fade away, like an ever-changing
cloud in countless pale and giant shapes.
Vainly I strive to enter with calmness
the long night of the grave ; my eyes
do not close. These phantoms of life
appear without surcease, and hold their
silent wantonings ; they steal nigh, and
flee away, they vanish and reappear. I
see them all, but I hear nothing ; like
wreaths of smoke, I chase them and
they are gone. I listen, I call, my very
voice I cannot hear; an insufferable void
surrounds me, and I am alone, lost,
perplexed, stifling with disquietude and
wonder, in the midst of the wander-
OBERMANN 105
ing shadows, in intangible and voiceless
space.
Inscrutable nature ! Thy splendor
crushes me, and thy favors consume
me. What are thy unending days to
me ? Their dawn too soon dispels the
shadows ; their burning noon-day dis-
arms and deadens me ; and the heart-
breaking harmony of their heavenly
evenings exhausts the ashes of my heart ;
the spirit which slept beneath its ruins
shudders at the stir of life.
The snows are melting on the moun-
tain peaks ; storm clouds roll over the
valley. Miserable man that I am ! The
heavens are on fire, the earth brings
forth fruit, but the waste of winter still
keeps its watch within me. Soft beams
of the waning sunset ! vast shadows of
the enduring snows ! And shall man
feel nought but the rapture of bitter-
ness, when the torrent rolls afar its
rushing waters in the universal silence,
when the peace of the night closes
106 OBERMANN
upon the threshold of the mountain
chalets, when the moon rises above the
Velan ?
When I left behind me that oft re-
gretted childhood, my imagination and
my sensibility pictured to themselves
a life of reality ; but I found only fan-
tastic impressions. I had conjured up
beings, I met phantoms. I longed for
harmony, I detected dissonance. Then
I grew sombre ; the void entered my
heart. Boundless cravings consumed me
amid the silence ; and a sense of the
weariness of life was the sole feeling
left to me on the very threshold of ex-
perience. All things spoke to me of
that full, universal happiness whose ideal
image is in the heart of man, while its
real manifestation seems effaced from
nature. I was proving as yet only un-
known sorrows. But when I saw the
Alps, the shore-bound lakes, the silent
chalets, the permanence, the regular-
ity of times and things, I recognized
OBERMANN 107
in them a few solitary phases of that
preconceived nature. . . .
Then I came back to earth again,
and I saw vanishing into the far dis-
tance that blind faith in the real exist-
ence of beings, that chimera of homo-
geneous relations, of perfection, and
true joy — that brilliant assumption,
which is the toy of an unformed heart,
but which brings a smile of melan-
choly to the lips of him whose soul
has been cooled by depth of experi-
ence, or ripened by time.
Unending transmutations, aimless
activity, universal obscurity : this is all
we know of the world in which we
reign supreme.
An invincible destiny destroys our
dreams ; and how does she repeople a
void which must be filled ? Power is
wearisome ; pleasure is illusive ; glory
is for our ashes ; religion is for the
unhappy ; love once had the colors
of life, but darkness comes, the rose
io8 OBERMANN
withers and falls, and eternal night
closes upon us. ...
I see without regret the giant tree,
which has been nourished by two hun-
dred springs, now lying prostrate upon
the earth, and struck with death. It
has fed and sheltered thousands of ani-
mate beings ; it has drunk of the waters
of the air, and has stood firm against
the tempest winds ; now it lies dead
among trees born of its seed. Its des-
tiny is fulfilled ; it has received the
promise ; and though it is no more, it
has been.
But the fir which has, by chance,
taken root on the margin of the swamp,
grows wild, strong, and proud, like a
son of the deep forests ; fruitless en-
ergy ! Its roots drink of fetid water,
they strike down into the foul mire ;
its trunk becomes weak and exhausted ;
its topmost branches, blown over by
the heavy, moist winds, bow their
heads with discouragement; its seed,
OBERMANN 109
scarce and feeble, useless and unpro-
ductive, falls into the mire and is lost.
Languishing, formless, yellowed, old
before its time, and already bending
limply over the morass, it seems to
crave the storm which is to fell it to
the earth. Its life has ceased long be-
fore its fall.
LETTER LXXVIII
Imenstrom, July i6thy yth year.
1 AGREE with you entirely. There
is something which sustains the
soul in this communion with the
thinking beings of other centuries.
The thought that some day we may
stand beside Pythagoras, Plutarch, or
Ossian, on the bookshelves of a future
L , is an inspiring illusion, and one
of the noblest pleasures of man. . . .
But he who has seen bitter tears mois-
tening the cheek of the unhappy,
*
no OBERMANN
dreams of a yet more captivating fan-
tasy. He believes that he can tell
the man of melancholy disposition the
price of another's joy ; that he can
lighten the burden of the sufferer whom
the world has forgotten ; that he can
awaken the wounded heart to new life
by recalling those images, full of grand-
eur and consolation, which to some
are a Fata Morgana, and to others a
sustaining power.
He believes that our ills are built
upon the sands, and that man holds
moral good in the palm of his hand.
He follows out theoretic consequences
which lead to the idea of universal
happiness ; he loses sight of the secret
force which keeps the human race in
a state of perpetual confusion and thus
achieves its destruction. He says to
himself : " I shall combat errors, I
shall study the results of natural prin-
ciples, and shall formulate ideas that
are, or may become, helpful to the
OBERMANN in
human race." Thus he feels himself
to be less useless, less hopeless upon the
earth. He unites the dream of great
things to the peace of obscurity, he
enjoys ideal life, and enjoys it truly,
because he feels that he is making it
useful.
The order of ideal things is like a
new world, as yet unrealized, but still
within the limits of the possible. The
spirit of man journeys thither in search
of a harmony adapted to our needs,
and brings back to earth timely changes,
drawn from this supernatural type.
The unremitting versatility of man
is a proof that he is skillful in adapting
himself to opposite habits. One might,
by collecting the mental product of
different times and places, shape a
working system less irksome to the
heart of man than all that has been,
thus far, offered to him. This shall
be my mission.
It is only by working at some self-
ii2 OBERMANN
appointed task, even though its results
may be fruitless, that we can press on-
ward, still unwearied, to the close of
day. I shall journey towards the even-
ing of life, illusioned, if possible, and
upheld by the hope of adding some-
thing to the resources that have been
given to man. Illusions are needful to
my heart, too large not to crave them,
and too weak to live without them.
As the sentiment of happiness is our
chief need, what is left for man when
he neither expects it in the present,
nor dares hope for it in the future ?
Must he not look for its expression in
the eye of a friend, or on the brow of
his fellow-beings ? He can but be eager
for the joy of other men ; his sole de-
light must be to shed happiness around
him. Unless he can awaken in another
the consciousness of life, unless he can
make others glad, he feels that the cold-
ness of death has entered into his de-
spised and rejected heart ; and the only
,« - •
• ••?>
-r
OBERMANN 113
end reserved for him is in the darkness
of the nothing.
We hear of men who are sufficient
unto themselves, and live upon their
own wisdom. If they have eternity
before them, I admire and envy them ;
if not, I do not understand them.
As for me, I not only am not, and
never shall be happy, but if the plau-
sible assumptions I might make were
ever to be realized, even then I should
not be happy. The affections of man
are a gulf of avidity, of regrets, and of
errors.
I do not tell you what I feel, what I
want, what I am ; I no longer see my
own needs, I scarcely know my desires.
If you think 'to understand my tastes,
you are mistaken. ... I have greatly
changed. I remember that once I was
impatient of life, and endured it as an
evil that was to last only a few months
longer. But this memory now seems to
me a thing foreign to my nature, and
• %
I • • •
.v • • *» *
]3$'-\-«<\
,..'•'•' -v . ••*.•'•,
ii4 OBERMANN
would even surprise me, if it were pos-
sible for the fickleness of my feelings
to astonish me. . . .
Life both wearies and amuses me.
To come into the world, to rise above
one's fellows, become famous, be in-
terested in many things, measure the
orbit of comets, and then, after a few
days, to lie under the sod — this strikes
me as enough of a burlesque to be
watched to the end.
But why pretend that it is from a
habit of discontent, or from the misfor-
tune of a gloomy disposition, that our
desires are unsettled, our views confused,
and our very life changed to accord
with this sense of the decadence and
vanity of the days of man ? A melan-
choly temper ought not to give the
coloring to life. Ask not of the son
of the Incas chained in the mines that
supplied the gold for the palace of his
ancestors and the temples of the sun,
or of the hard-working and blameless
OBERMANN 115
commoner, who, infirm and despised
in his old age, is compelled to beg his
bread — ask not of the countless un-
fortunates the value of human hopes
and human prosperity. Ask not of
Heraclitus the significance of the things
we project, or of Hegesias I3 the worth
of the life we lead.
It is Voltaire laden with success, the
favorite of courts, and the admiration
of all Europe, Voltaire famous, clever,
witty, and generous ; it is Seneca, stand-
ing beside the throne of the Caesars
and not far from mounting it himself,
Seneca filled with wisdom, beguiled by
honors, and laden with riches — it is
Seneca, useful to men, and Voltaire,
mocking at their fantasies, who will
tell you of the soul's joy and the heart's
repose, who will disclose the value and
length of our life upon the earth.
My friend ! I shall linger yet a few
hours in the world. We are poor, fool-
ish creatures when we live ; but we are
such ciphers if we do not live !
•
116* OBERMANN
i
LETTER LXXIX
•*•» * • **,
July 77 'thy $th year.
F I were to tell you that the possi-
bility of future fame has no power
to gratify me, you would, for the first
time, not believe me ; you would think
that I was at least deceiving myself,
and you would not be far wrong. It
• is almost impossible that the need of
self-esteem should be entirely separated
from the no less natural pleasure of
being esteemed by *a few other men
and knowing that they say of you : he
is onie of us.
. But the desire for peace, and a cer-
tain natural indolence of the soul which
* ft
has been increased by a constant sense
.
of life-weariness, might well make me
forget this alluring thought, as they
have made me forget so many others.
I have need of being held in check
• * • * * •
• • • •
. ^ ' * I %
O B E R M A N N« . 117,
% a • *^ • ^p
and stimulated by the fear of that self-
reproach which I should surely feel, / t .
if I were to make but clumsy use of t ,
things as they are, without any attempt t
to better them, and thus neglect the •
**•••'
only field for activity which is in har-
mony with the obscurity of my life.
Must not man be something, and
must he not express himself, either in
one way or in another ? He will, other-
*
wise, become depressed, and will lose ^ t
the dignity of his being ; either he will'
fail to recognize his own abilities, or
if he does appreciate them, this very , *
consciousness will become the torment . *
of his repressed and struggling soul. He
ft A 9
will have no listeners, no following, no
consideration. He will no longer have
the power to produce that small amount • •*•
of good which may be the fruit of the
most insignificant life. Simplicity is a
beautiful and useful precept ; but it has
been greatly misunderstood. The mind
•
• »
»*
•
•
-
•
u8 OBERMANN
^ «
g question perverts the best maxims, de-
grades and dishonors frisdom Ijerself
by depriving her' of her resources, de-
spoiling her*o/ her «iches, and bringing
upon* her the degeneracy which must
* surely follow. /. . «
Every man who^ is right-minded and
wishes to be useful, were it only in his
private life, every man, in^act$ who is
worthy of respect, seeks that respect.
He acts so as to win it, even about
things in which the opinion ,of other
men is in itself of rib value, unless this
solicitude should demand something in
. opposition to his duties and to the essen-
tial development* of his character. ,, If
there exist one rule without exception,
I believe it must be this : it is always
from some vice of the heart or 01 the
mind that a- man disdains, or affects to
disdain, public esteem, whenever justice
does not demand the sacrifice of that
esteem. * •
* £ ' • •
A man may win respect in the most
* .
«
* »-
& •• • •
t • * ; «
O B E R M A N N fio • ,««•
? * *•'
ofcscure life* if he bring order and dig- .
nity into his ways of living. He may
command it even in poverty, if he is
greater than his destiny. , ^
t , <:-##*»
? • « * «>. « : • *
A man of noble character is never
lost in the throng. »
• «^J% »* «f
•<• . V»»- • '
A^ense of natural fitness leads every
man to assume his right place in the
world. *
ledge it.
«
world. *and to make others ac*know-
'
» . »
"*• m '9
• *M
* •»
*. . •;
A great rftan Tears dishonor, but is
' W J^ , • •
ft ^undismayed a^% obscurity, -k does not * '
trouble him that he has»not been given »^
a high mission, but that he has* been
giveri one antipathetic to nis nature.
&&& * * ***'**•
' * '«**^
It is both absurd and repellent that
an author should ^vejiture to fcalk to *. '• •
• 9 *"
• man about his duties, when he is^not
* . "•*» • *» V' -* v
• * * * • * • ',*
^ * •• *• * i . ** •
<**.'*± ;^' *'v,
t * **
• ^
* • * *
• • • •••. ..*-.>...
_ * * * • .
•••' * • « *«
•
no OBERMANN
/ < himself an upright man. But if a false
• B mdralist" win only contempt, an ob-
scure moralist remains entirely useless.
. . . All that should be held most sa-
cred among men loses its power when
>»• immortal pages and books of wisdom
are hawked in the market-place, or
given over to the most contemptible
*m / mses of trade.
f *«., Recognition and renown, vain in
themselves, must be neither despised •
••** * -i *
, , nor neglected, since they are some of
the* chief means towards the most
praiseworthy and important ends. It
% is extravagant both to do nothing for
their sake and to do everything for their
4 saKe. The great things that we accom-
plish are made beautiful by their own
»'t grandeua, and need no display or em-
•^» 4 phasis ; it is the game with our.thdughts.
/• He whb steadfastly meets death*at%the
bottom of the sea sets a useless ex-
* *• *
' • t ample. In the ' same* way, the truest
it i • i *
thought and wisest conception are lost
•'•**.** . »'
.**•'. » % • v r * -
f; :. *.-:>.;• '..*.••-
=? f .. > ? ..* ' ' •• ' *
»•••••• •
. • . •* •
•
OBERMANN 121
unless they are given to the world ;
their usefulness depends on their being
expressed ; their renown makes them
productive.
Philosophic writings ought, possibly,
to be always preceded by a well-written
book of a more attractive character,
* *
which will be widely disseminated, read,
and enjoyed. The author who has a
name speaks with greater confidence ;
he accomplishes more, and does it bet-
ter, because he hopes that he has not
worked in vain. But it is not every one,
unfortunately, who has either the cour-
age or the resources to follow such de-
vices. Writings, like many other things
in life, are the slave of opportunity, and
even of unrecognized opportunity; they
are determined by an impulse which
is often foreign to our* plans and our *
projects.
To write a book merely for the pur-
pose of winning a name,*is a task ; there
is something in it which is repugnant
*
» • . " . ,
•« . •'
• •
*• *•
* » m
* * •*
132 • OB E*R MANN
and servile, and although I see reasons
that^ urge- me to do it, I have not the
coflrage to undertake, such It task, and
shall abandon the idea.
*t Still, I do not want to begin with
my projected work. It is too impor-
tant and too difficult ever to be com-
pleted. I shall consider it a great step
in aovance, if one day I see an approach
* <ctwards the ideal conception that I have
« 4jformed o£, it in my nynd.14 But this
disfent perspective would not sustain
me. I think it is well that I should
become an %authof, so as to have the
courage to persevere in being one. It
will be the fulfillment of my destiny.
I
LETTER LXXX
I ** ' • vf '•'
41 August 2dy gth year.
BELIEVE, a? you do, that it ought
to be a refinance, a true romance
*^such as has, now a'nd then, been wrjt- »
/ * * * •
•*'••• « *
»»
* • •
* •
• ' v *„ * * • «<•
X • •* -* ..» -• »
••'••• t ••.
•
O B E R M A NN 123
f *
ten ; but this would bj a gjeat under-
taking and would require a long time.
In many ways I •fcholild be little fitted
for the work, ^ntf. thg cjesign c£ it
would have to come as an inspiration.
I think I shall wrhe a book of travels.
. . . The landscape of life has many
beauties. One ought to assume to-
wards it the attitude of £ spectator, and
'be interested without illusions, or pas-
sions, but also without indifference, as
. . v *
one is interested in the vicissitudes, the
passions, the dangers in a story.. ...
The course of the world is a drama
of sufficient homogeneity to be absorb-
ing, of sufficient variety to excite inter-
est, of sufficient defmiteness, symmetry,
and system to satisfy and please the rea-
son, of sufficient uncertainty to awaken
desire and nourish passion. . . .
What manner shall I adopt ? None.
I shall write as we> talk, without re-
flection ; if it were necessa/y to do
otherwise I should not write. ...
-
, • _•,-„/, •• •
124 OBERMANN
In ancient times, poets and philo-
sophers read their books before the
assembly of the people. . . . The art
of reading is like that of writing. The
grace and truth of expression in read-
ing are as varied as the modulations of
thought. It is scarcely conceivable to
me that a man who reads poorly could
wield a happy pen, or have a broad and
just mind. To feel with intensity and
be incapable of expression seems as in-
congruous as to express with force what
one does not feel. «
Whatever point of view be taken, as
to whether everything has or has not
been said on the subject of ethics, it
would be impossible to conclude that
there remains nothing to be done for
this science, the only science of man.
It is not enough that a thing has been
said ; it must bfe published, proved, gen-
erally accepted, and universally recog-
nized. Nothing has been accomplished
so long as actual law is not made sub-
"*• •
>'.? . •
;.'.:;•;•.•-.>.••:•/.'. ,
'* ** '
. . • *?
OBERMANN 125
ject to moral law, so long as current
opinion does not see things in their
true relations.
We must rise against disorder so long
as disorder exists. Do we not see, every
day, acts that are mistakes of judg-
ment rather than sins of passion, acts
that are characterized more by error
than by perversity, and are less the
crimes of an individual than the almost
inevitable results of the heedlessness or
folly of the public ?
Is there no further need of saying to
the rich : " By what fatality do you live
in greater poverty and anxiety than the
day-laborers who till your ground ? "
Or of saying to children whose eyes
are still blind to the baseness of their
deceit : " You are veritable thieves, and
thieves whom the law ought to punish
with greater severity than he who robs
a stranger. To the manifest theft, you
add the most odious perfidy." The
servant who steals from his master is
126 OBERMANN
punished more rigorously than a stran-
ger, because he abuses the confidence
which has been placed in him, and also
because it is imperative that one should
enjoy security, at least in one's own
house. These reasons, which are just
when applied to a hireling, are they
not far more potent when applied to
the son of the house ? Who could de-
ceive with greater impunity ? What
more sacred duties could be neglected ?
To whom could it be sadder not to give
one's confidence ?
And is there no need of saying to
women, full of sensibility, purity of
intention, youth, and candor: "Why
throw away on the first impostor all
these priceless gifts? . . . The very
name ' woman ' is to man a word full
of nobility when his soul is pure. The
name ' man,' apparently, can also hold
sway over young hearts, but however
sweet such illusions may be, do not
be deceived by them. If man is the
OBERMANN 127
natural friend of woman, he may also
be one of her worst enemies. All men
have the instincts of their sex, but wait
for him who has the soul of his sex."
LETTER LXXXI
August $th, gth year.
YOU admit that moral philosophy
is the only subject which ought to
seriously occupy the mind of a writer
who wishes to devote himself to a
great and useful object. But you seem
to think that certain opinions on the
nature of beings, towards which I have,
thus far, had a leaning, are not in ac-
cord with the study of moral law and
of the basis of duty.
I should not want to contradict my-
self, and shall strive not to do so ; but
I cannot attribute to weakness changes
caused by uncertainty. I have exam-
ined myself with thorough impartiality
128 OBERMANN
and even with severity, and fail to find
any real contradictions. Various things
that I have said might have seemed con-
tradictory, had any one taken them as
positive assertions, or as different parts
of one system, one body of principles
laid down as certain, joined to and
deduced from one another. But iso-
lated thoughts, doubts on impenetrable
things, can vary without being contra-
dictory. ... I even acknowledge that
a conjecture on the course of nature
which at times appears to me very prob-
able, seems, at other times, far less so,
according to the way in which my im-
agination contemplates it.
Sometimes I think that all things
are the result of necessity, and that if
the world cannot be explained by this
principle, it would be impossible to
account for it by any other. And then,
on the other hand, I sometimes feel
that as so many things are the work of
intelligence, it is evident that many
OBERMANN 129
other things must also be its product.
Perhaps intelligence chooses among
the possibilities that are the result of
the necessary essence of things ; and the
nature of these possibilities, which are
contained within a limited sphere, is
such, that although the world cannot
exist excepting in accordance with cer-
tain definite modes, each thing is nev-
ertheless susceptible of different modi-
fications. Intelligence does not hold
sovereign power over matter, but makes
use of it. Intelligence can neither cre-
ate, nor destroy matter, neither can it
pervert or change its laws ; but it can
energize, work, and fashion it. Intel-
ligence is not omnipotent ; it is a vast
industrial force, but is limited by the
necessary laws of the essence of beings.
It is a sublime alchemy, which man
calls supernatural because he cannot
conceive it.
You will say that these are two
contrary systems, which cannot both
»
t
>
130 OBERMANN
receive credence at the same time. I
acknowledge this, but still it is not a
contradiction. I state these systems
merely as hypotheses. Not only I do
not admit that both are true, but I do
not positively admit that either one is
true, and I do not pretend to know
about things that man cannot compre-
hend.
Every general system on the nature
of being and the laws of the world is
never more than a hazarded idea. . . .
But it is entirely different when,
abandoning these obscure researches,
we devote ourselves to the only human
science, that of ethics. The eye of
man, which is blind when contemplat-
ing the essence of being, can see with
full and undimmed power when study-
ing human relationships. Here we find
a light tempered to our powers of vi-
sion ; here we can discover, reason,
affirm. Here we are responsible for our
ideas, their succession, their harmony,
OBERMANN 131
their truth. It is here that we must
look for definite principles, and that
contradictory deductions would be in-
excusable.
Only one objection can be raised
against the study of ethics ; it is un-
questionably a strong one, but ought
not to hold us back. If all things are
the result of necessity, what will be the
fruit of our researches, our precepts, our
virtues ? But the necessity of all things
has not yet been proved ; the opposite
conviction is the guide of man, and
it is enough if in all the acts of life
he believes himself to be a free agent.
The stoic had faith in virtue, in spite
of destiny, and Orientals who hold the
dogma of fatality act, fear, and desire,
like other men. Even if I were to
consider the universal law of necessity
as probable, it would not prevent me
from studying the principles of the best
human institutions. . . .
I understand nothing of the subtle-
132 OBERMANN
ties by which it is supposed that one
can acknowledge both free will and
predestination, the choice of man and
the absolute power of God ; that one
can harmonize the infinite abhorrence
which the author of all justice must
necessarily feel toward sin, and the
inscrutable means he has employed for
its prevention and redemption, with
the continual sway of injustice, and our
power to commit as many crimes as
we will. I find it difficult to reconcile
the infinite goodness which voluntarily
created man, and the absolute know-
• lede of what would result from this
* '£• leage or wnat wouia result rrom tnis
creation, with the eternity of fearful
p torment reserved for ninety-nine hun-
dredths of these well-beloved creatures.
I . ".'•Jr* V *« i
I might, like any other, talk wisely,
• * " • * ' V
cleverly, and at length, upon these
incomprehensible questions ; but if I
should ever write, I should choose to
devote myself to what concerns man,
in his temporal life, and as a social
•' • v.- •-.-.'•
>.*%
OBERMANN 133
being, because it seems to me that by
observing merely phenomena for which
we have definite data, I might think
true thoughts and say useful things.
I can learn something about man,
but I cannot divine nature. I find it
impossible to understand two contrary
principles, coeternally doing and undo-
ing. I cannot comprehend a universe,
created so late, where before there had
been nothing, subsisting only for a time,
and thus severing into three parts indi-
visible eternity. I do not like to speak
seriously of things about which I am
ignorant ; animalis homo non percipit ea
qua sunt spiritus Dei.ls . . .
But there is a still more serious
objection. Since there exist religions
established from early times, since they
form part of human institutions, seem
essential to our weakness, and are the
curb or the consolation of many, it is
well to practice and uphold the religion
of the country in which we live. If
i34 O 3 E R M A'N N
we allow ourselves not to believe in it,
we • must, at least, as authors, say no-
thing o£ our unbelief, and must not
strive to wean men from a faith which
they love. This is your advice ; and
now I shall tell you why I cannot fol-
low it.
I should not attempt to weaken
religious faith in the valleys of the
Cevennes or the Apennines, or even
among my own surroundings, in the
Maurienne or the Schweitzerland ; but
when one speaks of morality, how is
it possible to say nothing of religion ?
Such an omission would be a misplaced
affectation ; it would deceive no one ;
it would merely hamper what I should
wish to say, and deprive it of its unity,
which alone could make it useful. ' *
• » '
It is said that one must respect opin-
ions on which are founded the hope
of "many, and the entire morality of
others. • I believe this reservation to be
wise and suitable for those who treat
OBERMANN 135
merely incidentally of moral questions,
or who write .with other ends in view
than those that must necessarily be
mine. But if, in writing of human in-
stitutions, I should refrain from speak-
ing of religious systems, the world would
see, in this forbearance, nothing more
than a desire to curry favor with some
powerful party. It would be a blame-
worthy weakness. In daring to assume
such an obligation, I must, above all,
impose upon myself certain duties. I
cannot answer for my resources, and
they will be more or less inadequate ;
but my intentions depend upon myself;
if they are not invariably pure and
strong, I shall be unworthy of so great
a ministry.
I shall have no personal enemy in
literature any more than I have in my
private life ; but when it is a question
of telling men what I consider to be
the truth, I must not fear the displeasure
of any sect or party. I have nothing
• •' . •'*'
o ; •„•••.
»*•-••
136 OBERMANN
against them, but I do not acknow-
ledge their laws. I shall attack things
and not men. . . .
In writing of the affections of man,
and of the general system of ethics, I
shall therefore speak of religion ; and
surely, in speaking of it, I cannot say
other than what I believe. . . .
I should not wish to increase the
emptyheadedness of those who say :
" If there were no hell, it would not
pay to be virtuous." It may happen
that I shall be read by one of these
men. I do not flatter myself that no
harm will come from what I shall say
in the hope of doing good ; but pos-
sibly I may also diminish the number
of these good souls, who believe in
duty only because they believe in
hell.
OBERMANN 137
LETTER LXXXIII
September 24th, gth year.
I HAVE been impatiently waiting for
you to return from your travels ; I
have some new things to tell you.
M. de Fonsalbe has arrived. He has
been here for five weeks, and will re-
main ; his wife has been here also.
Although he has spent years on the sea,
he is a man of a calm and even disposi-
tion. He neither plays, nor hunts, nor
smokes ; he does not drink, has never
danced, and never sings. He is not sad,
but I think he has been profoundly so
in the past. His face unites the happy
lines traced by peace of the soul, and
the deep furrows drawn by sorrow.
His eye, which usually expresses only
repose and melancholy, has the power
of expressing all things. The shape of
his head is remarkable, and if, in the
138 OBERMANN
midst of his habitual calm, a great idea,
a stirring sentiment comes to awaken
him, he takes unconsciously the silent
attitude of command. I have seen an
actor applauded for his fine rendering
of Nero's16 " "Je le veux,je Vordonne ; "
but Fonsalbe could do it better.
I am impartial. Fonsalbe is not as
calm internally as he is externally ; but
if he has the misfortune or the fault
not to be able to be happy, he has too
much sense to be discontented. He it
is who will effectually cure me of my
impatience. He has shaped his own
course, and has, moreover, proved to
me conclusively that I ought to shape
mine. He declares that when a man in
good health leads an independent life
and nothing more, he must be a fool
to be happy, or a madman to be un-
happy. After this remark, there was
nothing left for me to say, as you can
fancy, excepting that I was neither
happy nor unhappy. I said it ; and now
OBERMANN 139
it remains for me to show that I told
the truth.
But I am beginning to find some-
thing more than health and an inde-
pendent life. Fonsalbe will be a friend,
and a friend 'in my solitude. I do not
say a friend such as we dreamed of in
other days. We live* no longer in an
heroic age. * My aim is to assure the
peaceful flow of my days ; great things
do not concern me. I am intent upon
seeing good in all that my destiny sends
me. What a way for its accomplish-
ment to dream of the friendship of
the ancients ! Let us leave the friend-
ship of antiquity, and the friendship
of modern social life. Picture to your-
self a middle course. What does that
amount to ? you will ask. And I tell
you that it means a great deal. . . .
140 OBERMANN
LETTER LXXXIV
Saint-Maurice, October yth, gth year.
AN American friend of Fonsalbe
has just been here on his way to
Italy. They went together as far as
Saint-Branchier, at the foot of the
mountains. I accompanied them, and
expected to stop at Saint-Maurice, but
went on to the falls of Pissevache,
which are between Saint-Maurice and
Martigni, and which I had seen before
only from the road.
There I waited for the return of the
carriage. The weather was pleasant ;
the air calm and soft. The great vol-
ume of water fell from a height of
about three hundred feet. I crept as
close to it as possible, and in a moment
was drenched as though I had been
plunged into water.
But I felt a return of my early emo-
OBERMANN 141
tions, as I was bathed in the leaping
spray which flings its foam toward the
clouds, as I heard the raging howl of
the cataract whose waters have their
birth in the silent ice, flow unceasingly
from a moveless element, are lost, and
unendingly lost, with tumultuous roar.
They plunge into chasms of their own
hewing, and are forever falling in their
eternal fall. Even such is the down-
ward flow of the years and the centu-
ries of man. Our days glide out of
silentness, fate guides them, and they
pass into oblivion. The course of their
hurried phantoms rolls onward with
unchanging clamor, and is lost in end-
less sequence. In its train there ever
floats a vapor which lifts and falls in
circling eddies, and whose shadows,
already gone before, have enwrapped
that unfathomable and unavailing chain
of days — the perpetual emblem of
invisible force, the singular and myste-
rious expression of world-energy.
i42 OBERMANN
I confess that Imenstrom, and my
memories, my habits, my childish pro-
jects, my trees, my study, all the things
that had provided amusement for my
affections, seemed at that moment piti-
fully small and miserable in my eyes.
That water, restless, all-invading, filled
with the spirit of motion, that majestic
tumult of a leaping torrent, that mist
forever flinging its billows into the air,
swept away the forgetf ulness into which
years of stress and struggle had plunged
me.
Separated from the world by the
encompassing waters and the chainless
turmoil, I saw all places pass before my
eyes, yet I was nowhere. Although I
was fixed and motionless, my very be-
ing was stirred with unwonted activity.
Secure in the midst of menacing ruin,
I seemed engulfed by the waters and
living in the abyss. I had left the earth ;
I looked back upon my life and it
seemed ridiculous in my eyes ; it filled
OBERMANN 143
me with pity. A vision turned those
paltry days into days of productiveness.
I saw more clearly than I had ever seen
before, those happy and far-distant pages
of the book of time. A Moses, a Ly-
curgus proved to the world their latent
possibilities ; but their future existence
was proved to me among the Alps.
In times when originality was not
made the butt of ridicule, men sought
the seclusion of deep solitude, or re-
treated for a time into mountain fast-
nesses, not merely in order to meditate
over the framing of new laws — men
can think at home, and silence may be
found even in the heart of cities. Nei-
ther was it merely to gain influence
over the people — a simple wonder of
magic would have accomplished this
more easily, and have held no less sway
over the imagination. But even the
soul that is held least in bondage can-
not wholly escape from the control of
habit ; for the conclusions drawn from
\. ,
144 OBERMANN
habit have always had great persuasive
power for the multitude, and specious
force for genius itself; and the argu-
ments based on custom, on the most
ordinary condition of man, seem to
hold an obvious proof of man's limited
sphere of action. Separation from all
human surroundings is necessary, not
so as to be given the power to see that
reforms might be made, but rather to
find the courage to think them possible.
This isolation is not needed in order
to conceive the required means, but to
hope for their success. When men
retire from the world and live in soli-
tude, the force of habit is weakened,
and the unusual, no longer clothed in
the garb of romance, is viewed and
judged with impartiality ; men believe
in it, return to the world, and succeed.
I went back to the road before the
return of Fonsalbe . . . and led him
to the spot where I had been sitting ;
but we lingered only for a moment.
OBERMANN 145
I tried in vain to make myself under-
stood excepting by signs, but when we
reached a distance of several yards I
asked him, while he was yet filled with
wonder, what became, among such
surroundings, of the habits of man, or
even of his strongest affections, and
the passions which he believes to be
indomitable.
We walked to and fro between
the cataract and the road. We agreed
that a man of strong organization may
have no actual passion, although he is
susceptible of all passions, and that
men thus organized have often existed,
sometimes among rulers of the people,
or among magi and gymnosophists,
sometimes among true and faithful
believers in certain religions, such as
Christianity, Islamism, and Buddhism.
A great man possesses all the facul-
ties that belong to man, and is capable
of experiencing all human affections,
but he limits himself to the highest
146 OBERMANN
among the gifts of destiny. He who
renounces his noblest thoughts for triv-
ial or selfish views, who is moved by
petty affections and paltry interests, is
not a great man.
A great man always looks beyond
the horizon of his actual existence,
9
beyond what he is and what he does ;
he does not loiter behind his destiny,
but rather outstrips the bounds which
destiny has marked out for him, and
this natural onward impulse of his soul
is not the passion for power or glory.
He is above glory and power. He loves
what is noble, just, and useful ; he loves
what is beautiful. He accepts power
because it is needful in the reestablish-
ment of the useful and the beautiful ;
but he would love a simple life, be-
cause a simple life can be pure and
beautiful. His deeds are sometimes like
those that are born of passion, but it is
essentially impossible that he should act
at the dictates of passion. A great man
OBERMANN 147
not only has not a passion for women,
for play, for wine, but I hold that he
is not even ambitious. His motives are
not those that govern the multitude
born to wonder at such men as he,
even when his acts resemble theirs.
He is neither distrustful nor confident,
neither dissembling nor frank, neither
grateful nor ingrate ; he has no quali-
ties of this nature. His heart waits, his
intelligence leads. When at his post he
presses forward to the end he has in
view, which is far-reaching order, and
the bettering of the condition of men.
He sees, he wills, he acts. A man of
whom it can be said that he has a cer-
tain weakness, or a certain propensity,
is a man like any other. But the man
born to govern is just and supreme.
Disillusioned, he would be something
still higher ; he would not be sover-
eign, he would not be a ruler ; he would
become a sage.
148 OBERMANN
LETTER LXXXV
Imenstrom, October I2thy gth year.
LIKE you, I feared the result. It
was natural to suppose that this
kind of indolence, into which I have
been plunged by melancholy, would
soon become a habit almost beyond
control ; but . . . the way in which
I am vegetating amid my present sur-
roundings will have no influence over
my manner of life in case circum-
stances should require of me as much
activity as they now demand apathy.
Of what avail would it be to remain
standing at the hour of rest or to be
alive within my tomb ? Must a laborer,
who does not wish to lose the day, re-
fuse, for that reason, to sleep at night ?
My night is long indeed ; but is it my
fault if the days were short, if the nights
were dark at the season of my birth ?
OBERMANN 149
Like others, I desire to leave my retreat
at the coming of summer ; meanwhile
I dream beside the fire during the days
of frost. . . .
In the early morning, when I am
not asleep, nor yet awake, I dream in
peace. In those moments of calm, I
like to look at life ; I seem a stranger
to it then, and have no part to play.
What my mind especially dwells upon
in these days is the din of the machin-
ery, and the nullity of the products
— the vast labor of human beings,
and the doubtful, fruitless, perhaps
inconsistent aim, or, rather, vain and
opposite aims. The moss flowers on
the rock beaten by the waves ; but its
blossom will perish. The violet wastes
its bloom in the hidden covers of the
desert. Even thus man desires, and
dies. He is born by chance, he gropes
his way without aim, struggles without
object, feels and thinks in vain, perishes
before he has lived, and even if to live
150 OBERMANN
has been vouchsafed him, he must like-
wise pass away. Caesar won fifty battles,
he conquered the West ; he is dead.
Mahomet, Pythagoras are dead. The
cedar-tree, which gave shade to the
flocks and the herds, has perished even
as the grass on which they trod.
The more clearly we strive to see,
the more deeply we are plunged in
darkness. All things work for self-
preservation and self-reproduction ; the
aim of their travail is manifest ; how
is it that the end of their being is im-
penetrable ? The animal possesses the
organs, the powers, the energy to sub-
sist and perpetuate itself. He struggles
to- exist, and he exists ; he labors to
reproduce himself, and he is self-repro-
ductive. But wherefore live ? Why per-
petuate himself? All this is a mystery.
I have replaced De I* Esprit des
C hoses11 on my table, and have read
almost the whole of one volume.
I confess that this theory of the re-
OBERMANN 151
demption of the world does not antag-
onize me. It is not new, but this fact
gives it all the greater authority. It is
broad and credible. ... I would will-
ingly believe that this hypothesis of a
fortuitous degradation, and a gradual
regeneration ; of a force which vivifies,
uplifts, refines, and another which cor-
rupts and degrades, is not the least plau-
sible of our conjectures on the nature
of things. I only wish that we could
be told how this revolution took place,
or, at least, how it must have taken
place ; how the world thus escaped
from the control of the Eternal ; how
it was that the Eternal should have
allowed it, or could not have prevented
it ; and what force, alien to universal
power, has produced the universal cat-
aclysm ? This theory explains every-
thing excepting the chief difficulty ;
but the Oriental dogma of two princi-
ples was more comprehensible.
Whatever may be said on a question
i52 OBERMANN
which is undoubtedly little suited to
a dweller upon the earth, I know of
nothing which accounts for the perpet-
ual phenomena, all the evils of which
overwhelm our intelligence and baffle
our eager curiosity. We see individ-
uals congregate and propagate accord-
ing to their kind, and press onward
with uninterrupted and ever-increasing
force toward I know not what goal,
from which they are perpetually re-
pelled. A celestial industry produces
without ceasing and by infinite means.
A principle of inertia, a lifeless force
stands in unrelenting opposition ; it
exterminates and destroys all things in
one dead, immeasurable mass. All the
individual agents are passive ; but they
drift willingly onward to an end which
they cannot divine, and the goal of this
general tendency, unknown to them,
seems to be also unrevealed to all things
that exist. Not only does the entire
order of beings appear to be full of
OBERMANN 153
contrasts in its mechanism, and of op-
position in its products ; but the force
which moves it seems indeterminate,
apprehensive, and paralyzed, or coun-
terbalanced by another mysterious force.
Nature seems hindered in her progress,
baffled and perplexed.
We shall think to discern a gleam in
the abyss, if we preconceive the worlds
as spheres of activity, as workshops of
regeneration, in which matter, gradu-
ally worked and refined by a principle
of life, will pass from its passive and
crude state to that point of advance-
ment and of rarefaction when it will
at last be susceptible of being impreg-
nated by fire and infused with light. It
will be used by intelligence, no longer
as formless material, but as a perfected
instrument ; later as a direct agent ; and
finally as an essential part of the one
being, which will then become truly
universal and truly one.
The ox is strong and powerful ; he
154 OBERMANN
does not even know it. He eats vora-
ciously, he devours a whole field. What
will he gain by it ? He ruminates, he
vegetates dully in a barn into which
he has been led by a man sad, dull, and
useless like himself. The man will slay
and eat him ; but he will be none the
better for it. And after the ox has died,
the man will die. What will remain
of them both ? A little something to
fertilize and produce fresh grass, and a
little grass to nourish new flesh. What
vain and mute vicissitudes of life and
death ! What a relentless universe !
And how is it good that it is, rather
than that it is not ?
But if this silent and terrible fer-
mentation, which seems to produce
only to immolate, to create only for the
sake of having been, to develop germs
simply to scatter them to the winds,
or grant the sentiment of life merely
to give the shudder of death ; if this
force which moves eternal matter in
OBERMANN 155
the darkness, sheds a few rays to try
the light ; if this power which battles
against repose and promises life, crushes
and pulverizes its work so as to prepare
it for a great purpose ; if this world in
which we figure is only the experiment
of a world ; if what is, merely fore-
shadows what is to be ; would not the
wonder which visible evil excites in us
be answered ?
The present labors for the future,
and the scheme of the universe is that
the actual world shall be consumed ;
this great sacrifice was necessary, and
is great only in our eyes. We shall
perish in the hour of the catastrophe ;
but it had to be, and the history of the
beings of to-day is all contained in
the words : they have lived. Fruitful and
changeless order will be the product of
the laborious crisis which will annihi-
late us. The work has already begun,
and centuries of life will subsist when
we, our lamentations, our hopes, and
156 OBERMANN
our systems shall have forever passed
away.
LETTER LXXXVII
November 2Othy Qth year.
WHAT a tangled skein is life !
How difficult is the art of
conduct ! How many afflictions walk
jn the train of right-doing ! What con-
fusion follows in the wake of a whole-
souled sacrifice to order ! How many
misunderstandings are the result of a
desire to regulate all the circumstances
of life, when our destiny did not ask
for rules !
This preamble is probably a mystery
to you. But, filled as my mind is with
Fonsalbe,18 with the thought of his
despondency, with what has come to
him, what must necessarily have come
to him, and knowing what I know,
what he has told me, I see a whole
OBERMANN 157
abyss of injustice, antipathy, and regret.
And, most lamentable of all, in this
long chain of wretchedness, I see no-
thing surprising or unusual, nothing
which is limited to him alone.
If all the shrouded secrets were un-
veiled, if we could look into the hidden
places of the heart and see the bitter-
ness to which it is a prey, then all these
contented men, these pleasant homes,
these mirthful gatherings, would be-
come a host of miserable human be-
ings gnawing at the curb which holds
them, and devouring the thick dregs
in the cup of sorrow, the bottom of
which they will never reach. They
cloak their sufferings, they call up false
joys, and wave them aloft that they
may glitter and shine before the jeal-
ous and watchful eyes of other men.
They stand in the fairest light so that
the tear which glistens in their eye
may shed a seeming lustre and be
envied from afar as a signal of delight.
158 OBERMANN
Social vanity consists in appearing
happy. . . . This vain display, this
mania for appearances, is ignored only
by fools, and yet almost all men are
its dupes. — " Others have a thousand
things to enjoy," you say. — Have you
not those same things to delight you,
and many more, perhaps ? — " They
seem to give me pleasure, but . . ."
— Deluded man, these huts, are they
not also for thy fellows ? All these
happy men show themselves with their
holiday faces, even as people walk out
with their Sunday clothes. Sorrow
stays behind in the garret and the
drawing-room. Joy or patience are
upon the lips that we see; discourage-
ment, grief, the frenzy of passion or
despondency, are in the depths of the
cankered heart. In this great multi-
tude of people, the outside is carefully
apparelled ; it is either dazzling or
bearable, but the inside is ghastly. On
these conditions has it been given us
OBERMANN 159
to hope. Did we not believe that
others were happier than ourselves, and
that therefore we might ourselves be
happier, who of us would drag out to
the end our imbecile days ?
Full of an interesting, rational,
though somewhat romantic project,
Fonsalbe started for Spanish America.
He was detained at Martinique by a
rather singular incident, which pro-
mised to be of short duration, but
which had a long sequel. Forced at
last to renounce his scheme, he was on
the point of recrossing the ocean, and
was only waiting for an opportunity,
when the relative with whom he had
been living during his entire stay at
the Antilles fell ill and died at the end
of a few days. Before dying, he told
Fonsalbe that his sole consolation would
be to leave him his daughter, feeling
that in so doing he would assure her
happiness. Fonsalbe, who had never
even thought of her in the light of
160 OBERMANN
marriage, objected that, as they had
lived for more than six months in the
same house and had not formed any
special attachment, they were and
doubtless would remain indifferent to
each other. The father insisted, de-
claring that his daughter loved Fon-
salbe, and had confessed her love for
him when refusing to contract another
marriage.
Fonsalbe now made no further ob-
jection, but still he hesitated. In place
of his ruined plans, he pictured himself
as filling with gentleness and fidelity
the part of an obscure life, making one
woman happy, and having, while still
young, children whom he could form
and develop. He reflected that the
faults of the woman whom it was pro-
posed that he should marry were those
of education and environment, and that
she possessed simple and natural quali-
ties of the heart. He chose his course,
and gave his promise. The father died;
OBERMANN 161
several months passed, and the son and
daughter made arrangements to divide
his property between them. But it so
happened that their island was, at that
time, at war with a foreign power ; the
enemy's ships hove suddenly in sight,
and prepared to disembark troops.
Under pretext of danger, the future
brother-in-law of Fonsalbe disposed of
all the salable property, so that he and
his sister might take flight at short no-
tice and seek refuge in a place of safety.
But, under cover of the night, he made
his own escape to the enemy's fleet,
carrying with him all their available
possessions, besides every negro on the
plantation. It was afterwards known
that he established himself on one of
the islands under British rule, where his
life was not a happy one.
The sister, thus left penniless, seemed
to fear that Fonsalbe would now desert
her, in spite of his promise. This led
him to hasten his marriage, which he
162 OBERMANN
had thus far delayed only that he might
receive the consent of his family. These
hurried preparations for the wedding
were, in fact, the only answer he
deigned to make to the girl's surmise,
— a suspicion which was not likely to
increase his esteem for a woman for
whom he felt no attachment other than
that of the most ordinary friendship,
and of whom he had formed no par-
ticular opinion, either good or bad.
A loveless union may often be happy.
But in this case the characters of hus-
band and wife were little suited to each
other. Still, in some ways they were
congenial, and it is precisely under such
circumstances that love seems to me a
necessity, in order to cement a perfect
union. . . .
Nj,We live only once. ... I do not
know whether you look at things in
the same way that I do ; but I feel that
Fonsalbe did right. He has been pun-
ished, and he ought to have been ; but
« *
OBERMANN 163
is that any reason for saying that he
acted wrongly ? We live only once. . . .
Fonsalbe has not neglected the laws
of true duty, of final consolation to a
dying soul, of holy morality, of the
wisdom that is hid in the heart of man.
He sacrificed the plans of the moment,
he forgot our petty rules of life. The
professional lounger, the ward law-
giver would have condemned him. But
the men of olden time, venerated for
thirty centuries, great men and just,
would have acted, and did act, as
Fonsalbe has done. . . .
The better I know Fonsalbe, the
more I am convinced that we shall
always live together. We have already
decided on this, and the nature of
things had predetermined it. He will
fill your place in so far as a new friend
can fill the place of a friend of twenty
years' standing, and as I can find in my
allotted life a faint shadow of our early
dreams.
164 OBERMANN
The intimacy between Fonsalbe and
myself outstrips the course of time, and
already possesses the venerable quality
of antiquity. His confidence has no
limits ; and, as he is a man of great
natural discretion and reserve, you can
understand how deeply I value its
worth. I owe much to him ; my life is
a little less useless, and will grow to be
tranquil in spite of that internal weight
which at times he can help me to for-
get, but which he can never lift. He
has reclothed my desert places with
something of their happy beauty, and
with the romanticness of their Alpine
scenery ; I, a man of misfortune and
his friend, have found in their midst
hours filled with a sweetness which I
had not known before. We walk, we
talk, we wander at random ; we are
satisfied when we are together. Each
day I realize more clearly what noble
hearts may, through adverse destiny, be
doomed to live solitary and unknown
OBERMANN 165
to one another, lost in the throng, and
so out of touch with the surrounding
world that nature ought to have linked
them closely together.
Fonsalbe has lived sadly amid end-
less vexations, and without enjoyment.
He is two or three years older than I,
and he feels that his life is gradually
gliding away. I say to him : " Our
past is more alien to us than the life of
a stranger ; it has no touch of reality.
The memories it leaves behind are too
vain to be accounted good or evil by a
wise man. On what ground can rest
our lamentations, or our regrets for
what has passed away? Because you
were once the happiest of men, would
the present, for that reason, be any more
endurable ? Because you once suffered
terrible wrongs ..." Fonsalbe had
allowed me to talk on, but of my own
accord I stopped. I felt that as ten
years passed in a dungeon would leave
its impress on the body, even so moral
i66 OBERMANN
suffering must leave deep imprints on
the heart ; and when a reasonable man
complains of misfortunes which he
seems^no longer to suffer, it is their
results and their effects that he mourns.
When we have voluntarily allowed
an opportunity for well-doing to escape
our grasp, that opportunity is usually
forever lost ; this is the punishment
for neglect in those whose nature it is
to do good, but who are held back by
considerations of the moment, or by
interests of passion. There are those
who unite to this natural disposition a
rational willingness to follow it, and a
habit of silencing every contrary pas-
sion. Their sole purpose, their chief
desire, is to fill nobly, in every way, the
part of a man, and to carry out what
their judgment tells them is good. Can
such men see without regret the van-
ishing of every possibility to dp well
those things which, though they be-
long only to private life, are important
O B E R M A N N« 167
because very few men really think of
doing them well?
It is not such a very narrow and sec-
ondary part in life, to do for one's wife,
not only what duty prescribes, but what
an enlightened mind counsels, and even
all that it may allow. Many men who
fill with honor great public offices, do
not know how to conduct themselves
in their own homes, as Fonsalbe would
have known had he been given a wife
who was right-minded and trustworthy.
The delights of confidence and in-
timacy between friends are intense ;
but quickened and increased by all the
little trifles born of the sentiment of
love between man and woman, these
exquisite delights become immeasur-
able. Can anything be sweeter in the
wonted domestic life than to be good
and upright in the eyes of a well-be-
loved wife ; to do everything for her
and require nothing in return ; to ex-
pect from her whatsoever is natural
•
i68 X) B E R M A N N
and seemly, and to claim nothing that
is exceptional ; to make her above re-
proach, and leave her unfettered ; to
sustain, counsel, and protect her, but
neither rule nor compel her ; to make
of her a friend who conceals nothing
and has nothing to conceal ; who needs
not to be denied things that by this
very openness become insignificant, but
when done by stealth must be forbid-
den ; to make her as perfect, but as
free, as possible ; to have over her every
right, in order to give her every liberty
that an upright soul can accept ; and
thus to make, at least in the obscurity
of private life, the happiness of one
human being who is worthy of receiv-
ing joy without corrupting it, and free-
dom of mind without being corrupted
by it?
OBERMANN 169
LETTER LXXXIX
Imenstrom, December 6th> ^th year.
LET us confess that it is well with
us in this world when we have
power and knowledge. Power without
knowledge is dangerous ; knowledge
without power is melancholy and use-
less.
As for myself who do not pretend to
live, but merely to contemplate life, it
would be well for me to at least con-
ceive the part that a man ought to play
in the world. I intend to spend four
hours every day in my study. This I
should call work ; but apparently it is
not work, for while it is accounted
wrong to forge a lock or hem a hand-
kerchief on the day of rest, one is free
to write a chapter of the Monde primitif.
Since I have determined to write, it
would be unpardonable were I not to
170 OBERMANN
begin now. I am surrounded by every-
thing needful : leisure, quiet, a small
but adequate library, and, in place of
a secretary, a friend who will urge me
on, and who believes that by writing
one can, sooner or later, accomplish
some good.
But before taking up the weaknesses
of men, I must, for the last time, speak
to you of my own. Fonsalbe, from
whom I shall conceal nothing else, but
who does not suspect this secret, makes
me realize every day by his presence,
and by our talks in which the name of
his sister constantly recurs, how far dis-
tant I am from that forgetfulness which
had grown to be my only refuge.
In his letters to Madame Del ,
he has spoken of me, and has appeared
to do so at my instigation. I did not
know how to prevent this, as I could
give Fonsalbe no reason for my objec-
tion. But I regretted it all the more that
she must have thought it contradictory
OBERMANN 171
in me not to have followed out the
course that I had laid down for myself.
Do not think it strange that I seek
bitterness in these memories, and use a
thousand subterfuges to keep them far
from me, as though I were uncertain
of myself. I am neither fanatical nor
vacillating in my rectitude. My inten-
tions are under my control, but my
thoughts are not ; and while I possess
all the assurance of a man who desires
what his duty dictates, I have all the
weakness of one whom nothing has as
yet anchored. Still, I am not in love ;
I am too unhappy for that. How is it
then ? . . . You would not understand
me when I do not understand myself.
Many years have passed since I saw
her, but as my destiny was to grant me
only a dream of my life, the solitary
thing that was left to me was her mem-
ory, linked to my very being as long as
life was to endure. This much for the
times that are forever lost.
172 OBERMANN
The need of loving had become life
itself, and the whole consciousness of
existence was limited to the anticipa-
tion and the foreshadowing of that
hour which heralds the dawn of life.
But while, in the savorless course of
my days, there flashed one moment that
seemed to promise to my heart the only
good which it was then in nature's
power to give me, her memory had
apparently been sent to keep that good
afar. Although I had not loved, I found
myself thenceforth powerless to love,
like those men in whom a deep passion
has destroyed the power to love anew.
This memory was not love, since I
found in it neither food nor consola-
tion. It left me in the void, and held
me there ; it gave me nothing, and pre-
vented me from receiving anything.
Thus I lived, possessing neither the
happy intoxication which is fed by love,
nor the bitter and rapturous melan-
choly by which our hearts, still rilled
\ ( •
t.
OBERMANN 173
with an unhappy passion, delight to be
consumed.
I do not wish to recount to you the
tiresome history of my sorrows. I have
hidden my untoward fate in these my
desert places ; it would drag down in its
wake whatsoever surrounded it, and it
well-nigh submerged you. You wanted
to abandon everything in life in order
to become sad and useless like myself,
but I forced you to return to your plea-
sures. You even believed that I too had
found diversion, and I gently fostered
your mistake. You came to know that
my calm was like the smile of despair,
but I wish that you had been longer
deceived. When I wrote you, I chose
the moment when a laugh was on my
lips . . . when I laughed with pity at
myself, at my destiny, at all the many
things that men lament while they are
continually saying to themselves that
these things will one day cease.
I am telling you too much ; but the
• *
* . 9
• *
t « •
-, .••*•;
i74 OBERMANN
consciousness of my destiny exalts and
overpowers me. I cannot look within,
without seeing the spectre of what will
never be granted me.
It is inevitable that in speaking to
you of her I should be wholly myself.
I cannot comprehend what reserve I
could enforce upon myself. She felt as
I did ; we both spoke the same lan-
guage. Are there many who thus un-
derstand each other ? But I did not
indulge in such illusions. I repeat it, I
do not wish to dwell upon those days
which forgetfulness ought to efface, and
which are already lost in the abyss ;
my dream of happiness has passed away
with the shadows of those days, even as
men and the ages perish.
Why these memories which rise like
vapor from a lingering death ? They
come to enshroud the living remains
of man in the bitterness of the uni-
versal grave to which he will descend.
I seek not to justify this broken heart
OBERMANN 175
which you know too well, and which
holds within its ruins only the restless-
ness of life. You alone know its lost
hopes, its unfathomable desires, its im-
measurable needs. Do not excuse it,
but rather sustain it, and raise its wrecks
from destruction ; give back to it, if
within your power, the fire of life,
and the calm of reason, the activity
of genius, and the impassiveness of the
sage. I do not wish to make you pity
its deep follies.
At last the most unexpected chance
led me to meet her near the Sa6ne,19
on a day of sadness. ... It was sweet
to see her now and again. A soul ar-
dent, tranquil, weary, disillusioned,
great, would have the power to still
the restlessness and the unceasing tor-
ture of my heart. That grace of her
entire being, that indescribable per-
fection of every movement, of her
voice ! . . .
But my sadness became more con-
176 OBERMANN
stant, more bitter. Had Madame
Del been free, I should have found
pleasure in at last being unhappy in
my own way ; but she was not, and I
left, before it had become impossible
for me to endure elsewhere the burden
of time. All things discouraged me
then, but now I look at all things with
indifference. It even chances that at
times I am amused ; and thus it has
become possible for me to speak to you
of all this. I am no longer capable of
loving ; I am benumbed. . . . How
the affections change, how the heart
decays, how life passes away, before it
is ended ! # f
I was telling you that it was my joy
to be in full accord with her in her
aversion to all the things that make up
the pleasures of life ; and I took de-
light still more in the quiet evenings.
This could riot last.
It has at times, though rarely, been
given me to forget that I am like a
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OBERMANN 177
wandering shadow upon the earth,
which sees life but. cannot grasp it.
This is the law of my existence. When "^
I have wished to escape from it, I have
been punished. If an illusion comes to
me, my misfortunes increase. I felt
that happiness was near me, and I was * '
terrified. The ashes that I believed to
^
be dead, would they, perhaps, be called
to life again ? It was time to flee. •
Now I am in a sequestered valley. I
strive to forget life. ... I build, I
cultivate, I amuse myself with all these
things. ... I devour my impassive « «
days, and am eager to see them lost in
the past. *
Fonsalbe is her brother. We speak
of her ; I cannot prevent it, for he
truly loves her. He will be my friend.
I desire it because he is solitary, and
also for my own sake ; without him
what would become of me ? But he
will never know how the image of his
sister is ever present in these solitudes.
••••••••••.
.•
*
• t* • •
'.•V •; ••
• •* » ••
1 78
These sombre gorges, these romantic
waters ! they were voiceless, they will
be forever mute! Her image does not
bring the peace given by forgetfulness
of the world, but rather the peace born
of the abandonment of the desert. One
evening we were under the pines ; their
topmost branches, restless in the wind,
were filled with the sounds of the
mountain. We talked together, he
wept for her. A brother has tears.
I take no oaths, I make no vows.
» I despise these vain protestations, this
eternity with which man thinks to
lengthen out the passions of a day. I
promise nothing ; I know nothing. All
things pass, all men change ; but unless
I am greatly deceived, I shall never
love. When a devout man has dreamed
of his future blessedness, he no longer
seeks happiness in earthly life ; and if
ever his beatic illusion fades away, he
finds no charm in things that are too
far beneath his early dreams.
And she will drag along the fetters
,*V
OBERMANN 179
of her days with that disillusioned
strength, with that sorrowful calm,
which become her so well. Some of
us would perhaps lose our rightful
place in the world if happiness were
not withheld from us. A life passed in
indifference and in despondency amid
all the fascinations of the world, and
1 «
in the bloom and vigor of health ; a
discontent free from capriciousness, a
melancholy untouched by bitterness, a » *
smile born of secret grief, a simplicity
of heart which renounces all things,
while all things might be rightly
claimed, regrets that are never voiced,
a passive resignation, a discouragement
felt but scorned ; so many riches neg-
lected, so many losses forgotten, so
many faculties with no desire to use
them — all this is in exquisite har-
mony, and belongs to her and to her
alone. Had she been contented, happy,
possessing all that seemed to be her due,
she might have been less herself. Ad-
versity is good for those who bear it as
**
% *,* . >**
^ V •
180 OBERMANN
she does ; and if happiness were to
come to her now, of what avail would
* it be ? It is too late.
What is left to her ? What will be
left to us in that relinquishment of life,
• • the only destiny which is common to
us all ? When all has fled, to the very
dreams of our desires ; when even the
vision of loveliness pales in our unset-
^ tied thoughts ; when harmony, clothed
in her ideal grace, descends from the
celestial spheres, approaches the earth,
and finds herself enveloped in darkness
and mist; when nothing: remains of
«• ' &.
•• • * our needs, of our affections, of our
hopes; when we ourselves pass away
with the unalterable flight of things,
and in the inevitable mutability of the
world ! niy friends, my only friends,
^ . V** 4 she whom I have lost, you who live
J % far from me, you who alone still fill
r • • • • ' » ' .
me with the consciousness of life !
J*.^*%» what will be left to us, and what are
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II »^ *i • * . • .« *_ % *^P»« • ^ A fc.« ^ ™ * » ^ *
SUPPLEMENT
LETTER XG
Imenstrom, June 28thy loth year.™
THE sister of Fonsajoe is here.
She came unexpectedly, and in-
tended to stay only a few days with hen
brother.
You would find 4ier4 now as charm*
ing, as rare as she ever was, and per-
haps even more rare and charming than
before. This unlooked-for arrival, the
changes in life and things, memories
never to be effaced, the place^the time,
all these seemed to be in perfect accord.
And I must acknowledge that while
there may exist a more faultless beauty
in the eyes of an artist, no one else
unites more completely all that to me
forms the charm of woman. . •« •*•***
»
*
«.
*f *^* ^ ^
••• **•••««"'
" *'.! •..••' •>'•"'' VV-'-VH.'!'''
••:•'; •••'?.A^?^A|
< •• -•• \- : •'•'••&$&• K-:^&
•• • • •••• ••'•?'"^'»-j-i-;---:;*'*'
* » • •-*'-•»•• '•« *• . *!>•.».: /T j.
182 OBERMANN
We were not able to receive her here
as you would have done at Bordeaux ;
at the foot of our mountains, all we
could do was to adapt ourselves to cir-
cumstances. Late that evening, and at
early dawn on the following morning,
two of our meadows were to be mowed,
so as to escape the heat of the day, and
I had already planned a little fete for
my workmen, on this occasion. Some
musicians from Vevay had been en-
gaged ; and a rustic breakfast, or supper
if you prefer to call it so, beginning
at midnight and suited to the tastes of
the hay-makers, was to fill the interval
between the evening and the morning
work.
It chanced that toward the close of
day I passed before a low flight of steps.
She was standing above ; she spoke my
name. It was her voice, but with an
unexpected, unfamiliar, inimitable ac-
cent. I looked at her without answer-
ing, without knowing that I did not
OBERMANN 183
answer. A mystic half-light, an ethe-
real veil, a mist enwrapped her, and in
this shadowy haze her form grew vague
and undefined. She seemed a fragrance
of ideal beauty, a rapturous illusion,
stamped for a moment with inconceiv-
able reality. So this was the end of my
delusion, now at last made clear. It
is then true, I said to myself, that this
attachment was of the nature of love.
Its fetters had been upon me. Out of
this weakness had arisen other doubts.
Those years are irrevocable ; but to-
day is free, to-day is still mine.
I wandered towards the upper end
of the valley, walking noiselessly in my
intent abstraction. I had been given a
sharp warning, but the spell followed
me, and the power of the past seemed
invincible. My soul was overflowing
with thoughts of love, of companion-
ship, in the tranquil shadows of those
solitary places. There was one moment
when I could have exclaimed, like those
184 O BE KM AN N
whose weakness I have more than
once condemned : " To possess her and
die!"
But when, amid the silence, we
remember that to-morrow all things
may cease upon the earth, we see with
clearer vision what we have done and
what we ought to do with the gifts of
life. What I have done ! Still young,
I now stay myself at the fatal mo-
ment. She and solitude would be the
triumph of the heart. No ; forgetful-
ness of the world without her, this is
my law. Austere work, and the future !
I had reached the bend in the valley,
and stood midway between the leaping
torrent whose waters swept from the
rocks above, and the songs of the coun-
try ftte which came to me from afar.
Those distant sounds of merry-making,
wafted on the moving airs, were caught
up and scattered, ever and anon, by
swift eddies of the wind, and I knew
the appointed hour when they would
OBERMANN 185
cease and be heard no more. But the
torrent endured in its full strength,
flowing, and forever flowing, even as
the centuries pass away. The current
of the waters is like the flight of our
years. Many times has this been said,
but in a thousand years it will be said
again. The course of the waters will
always be for us the most striking im-
age of the inexorable flow of time.
Voice of the torrent amid the darkness,
thy voice alone is solemn under the
peace of the heavens, and to thy voice
alone ought we to listen !
Nothing is serious if it be not last-
ing. Looked at from a higher plane,
what are the things from which our last
breath will separate us ? Shall I hesi-
tate between a meeting which was born
of chance, and the true ends of my
destiny ; between a seductive phantasy,
and the just, the generous use of the
powers of the mind ? I should be yield-
ing to the thought of an imperfect tie,
186 OBERMANN
of an aimless love, of a blind passion !
Do I not know the promise which she
made to her family when she became
a widow ? Thus the complete union
is forbidden ; the question is a simple
one, and ought no longer to interest
me. Can the deceptive allurement of
a fruitless love be worthy of man ? By
devoting the faculties of our being to
pleasure alone, we abandon ourselves
to eternal death. However weak these
faculties may be, I am responsible for
them ; they must bear their fruit. I
shall cherish and honor these gifts of
life. . . . Profundity of space, shall it be
in vain that we have been given eyes
to behold thee ? The majesty of night
repeats from age to age : " Woe to every
soul who takes delight in servitude ! "
Are we made to enjoy in this life
the allurements of our passions ? After
the gratification of our desires what
boast could we make of the pleasures
of a day ? If that is life, then life is
OBERMANN 187
nought. One year, ten years of indul-
gence is a profitless amusement, and a
too swift-coming bitterness. What will
remain of these desires, when genera-
tions of suffering or of madly heedless
humanity shall have passed over our
ashes ? Let us value lightly that which
perishes quickly. In the midst of the
great drama of the world, let us strive
to play a different part. It is the fruit
of our strong resolves that will perhaps
live through the future. — Man perish-
eth. — That may be, but let us strug-
gle even though we perish ; and if the
nothing is to be our portion, let it not
come to us as a just reward.
# # #
Let us not descend below the level
of our souls.
# # #
June 3Oth.
Nothing occupies me, nothing inter-
ests me; I still feel as though I were
suspended in the void. I need one more
i88 OBERMANN
day, I think ; but only one. Then all
this will end, since I have resolved that
it shall ; but now all things seem to me
clothed in melancholy. I am not un-
decided, but moved to the point of
stupor, as it were, and of exhaustion. I
continue my letter so as to lean on you
for support.
* * •
I was alone for some time longer,
and already felt less alien to the tran-
quil harmony of nature. But while the
supper was still in progress, and before
the songs had ceased, I returned.
Henceforth do not expect from me
either unpardonable sloth or the old
irresoluteness. Health and ease are gifts
that cannot always be combined. I
possess them now, and shall make use
of them. May this resolve be hence-
forth my rule of life. If I speak to
men of their willful weaknesses, is it
not meet that I should deny such weak-
nesses to myself?
OBERMANN 189
I firmly believe that my only sphere
is that of an author. — On what sub-
jects shall I write ? — You already
know approximately what they will
be. — But based on what model ? —
Surely, I shall imitate no one, unless it
were by caprice, and in a short passage.
It seems to me entirely incongruous to
assume the manner of another writer
if one can have a manner of one's own.
As for the author who has no individ-
ual manner, who is never carried away,
never inspired, of what use is it for him
to write ? — But what will your style
be ? — Neither rigorously classic nor
heedlessly free. In order to make our-
selves worthy of being read we must
recognize the true fitness of things. —
But who will be judge of this? — My-
self, apparently. Have I not read au-
thors who were cautious in their work,
as well as those who wrote with greater
independence ? It is for me to choose,
according to my abilities, a form of ex-
i9o OBERMANN
pression that will suit, on the one hand,
my subject or my century, and, on
the other hand, my character, without
willfully neglecting any acknowledged
rules, but without expressly studying
them. — What will be your guaranty
of success ? — The only natural one.
If it is not sufficient to say things that
are true, and to strive to express them
in persuasive language, I shall not have
success ; that is the whole question. I
do not consider it imperative to win
approbation during one's lifetime, un-
less one is doomed to the misfortune
of earning one's living by the pen.
Pass on before, you who clamor for
the glory of the drawing-room. Pass
on, men of the world, men of eminence
where all things are dependent upon
personal influence, you who are fertile
in ideas of the day, in books of the
party, in expedients to produce an
effect, and who, even after having
adopted everything, renounced every-
OBERMANN 191
thing, returned to everything, used
everything, are still able to dash off a
few irresolute pamphlets, in order that
it may be said : " Here he comes with
his expressive words, cleverly put to-
gether, but beaten out rather thin ! "
Pass on before, men seductive and
seduced ; for in any case you will pass
quickly, and it is well that you should
have your day. So display yourselves
now, in all your cleverness and pro-
sperity.
Is not an author almost sure of mak-
ing his work useful, without degrading
it by intrigues which have no other pur-
pose than to hasten his own celebrity ?
It matters not, therefore, whether he
bury himself as a recluse or whether he
live quietly in the city, for his name is,
after all, not unknown, and his book
sells. ... It is probable that his work
will, sooner or later, take its right place
in literature with as much certainty as
though he had begged for approbation.
i92 OBERMANN
Thus my task is clearly marked out.
It only remains for me to carry it into
execution, if not happily and brilliantly,
at least with a certain degree of zeal
and dignity.21 I renounce many things,
limiting myself almost entirely to the
avoidance of sorrow. Am I to be
pitied in my retreat when I possess
activity, hope, and friendship ? To be
occupied, without being hard-worked,
contributes essentially to the peace of
the soul, which is the least deceptive
of any good. We no longer have need
of pleasures when the simplest gifts
bring us enjoyment. Who does not
see that hope is better than memories ?
In our life, which moves onward in a
ceaseless current, the future alone is
important. The past vanishes, and even
the present escapes our grasp, unless we
use it as a means to an end. Pleasant
memories of days that are gone, are not,
in my eyes, a boon to be desired, ex-
cepting by those whose imaginations
OBERMANN 193
are weak, and although once vivid, have
become impotent. Such men, having
pictured things in other than the garb
of reality, become enthusiastic, but the
test of experience disillusions them ;
and having forfeited their exaggerated
conceits, their imagination becomes
powerless. True fiction, so to speak,
being denied them, they have need of
cheering memories, for otherwise no
thought delights them. But the man
of strong and sound imagination can
always form an adequately clear picture
of life's different gifts, at least when his
lot in the world grants him sufficient
calmness of spirit ; he is not of those
who, in this regard, win knowledge
from experience.
For the daily sweetness of life, I shall
have our correspondence, and Fonsalbe ;
these two ties will satisfy me.
& # #
How many unhappy men have said,
from century to century, that the flow-
i94 OBERMANN
ers have been given us to adorn our
fetters, to delude us at the beginning
of life, and even to aid in keeping us
enthralled until the end ! But they do
still more, and perhaps as vainly. They
seem to typify a mystery which the
mind of man will never fathom.
If flowers were only beautiful to our
eyes, they would still have the power
to charm us ; but, ever and anon, their
fragrance stirs our soul as though we
had beheld a vision of a happier world,
had heard an unexpected voice, or had
found again the way to the hidden life.
Whether I seek this mystic breath, or
whether it steals upon me swiftly and
unforeseen, I accept it as the strong
but evanescent expression of a thought
whose secret the material world holds
concealed.
Colors must also have their elo-
quence ; all things may be symbols.
But perfumes are more penetrating be-
cause they are more mysterious, and
OBERMANN 195
while in our daily experience we re-
quire tangible truths, the great activi-
ties of the soul are based on a different
order of truth, on essential truth, which
in our faltering course is far beyond our
grasp.
Jonquil, violet, tuberose ! you bloom
but for a few fleeting moments, so that
you may not overwhelm our weakness,
or perhaps so as to leave us in the doubt
wherein our souls, now exalted, now
discouraged, are tossed about. . . -.V.M;
What is it I desire ? To hope, and
then to hope no more, is to be, or not
to be : such is man. But how is it that
after the accents of a soul - stirring
voice, after the fragrance of the flow- ,
ers, and the whispers of the imagina-
tion, and the soarings of thought, we
must die ? . . .
There are two flowers, silent per-
haps, and almost scentless, but which,
by their enduring character, appeal to
me in a way I cannot express. The
196 OBERMANN
memories they bring up carry me for-
cibly into the past as though these links
of time prophesied of happy days.
These simple flowers are the corn-
flower of the fields and the early Easter
daisy — the meadow marguerite.
The corn flower is the flower of
rural life. It ought to be seen amid
the freedom of natural ways, hidden
among the grain, surrounded by the
echoes of the farm, the crowing of the
cocks, in the footsteps of the aged hus-
bandmen ; and I cannot answer that
such a sight would not lead to tears.
The violet and the meadow-daisy
are rivals. They have the same bloom-
ing time, the same simplicity. The vio-
let holds us captive at first sight ; the
daisy claims our love from year to year.
They are to each other what a painted
portrait is to a marble bust. The violet
tells of the purest sentiment of love ;
this is the language she speaks to up-
right hearts. But this very love, so
OBERMANN 197
sweet, so persuasive, is only a beautiful
accident of life. It vanishes, while the
peace that is in the fields is ours until
our last hour. The daisy is the patri-
archal symbol of this gentle rest.
If I attain to old age, if one day
still full of thoughts, but speaking no
more to men, I have a friend beside
me to receive my last farewell upon
the earth, let my chair be placed upon
the grass of the fields, beneath the sun,
under the vast sky, and may the tran-
quil daisies bloom around me, so that
as I leave the life that passes, I may
behold a vision of the infinite illusion.
NOTES
NOTE i, Page 9
TN drawing this contrast between vivid imagi-
•*• nations and true sensibility, Senancour makes
use of the words romanesque and romantique, which
seem to have had at that time a more distinctive
meaning than they have to-day. The adjective
romantique as applied simply to scenery and effects
of nature was, in fact, created by Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, and was probably used in that restricted
sense by his successors of the romantic school.
Although the common use of the words is more
intermingled at the present day, their definitions
seem to imply a certain distinction. They read
as follows : " Romanesque : qui tient du roman,
qui est merveilleux, incroyable, passionne. . . .
Romantique : qui a dans sa nature . . . quelque
chose de poetique qui 1'eleve au-dessus ou le met
en dehors de la realite prosaique."
NOTE 2, Page 15
The Ranz des Vacbes, the pastoral air or cattle-
call which has been termed the cattle-Marseillaise,
is played and sung by the Swiss herdsmen while
200 NOTES
leading the cows to the high-mountain pastures.
The instrument used is, according to some, a
bagpipe ; according to others, an Alpine horn ;
while still another authority asserts that the herds-
men play on long reeds made of the bark of the
alder, birch, or willow. The melody usually opens
with a sad and plaintive adagio, followed by an
allegro, and closes with an adagio. When this
familiar rustic air was played in the Swiss regi-
ments of France, the first intense feeling of de-
light among the troops was followed by a deep
melancholy and homesickness as the sounds died
away ; for this reason the playing of it was finally
forbidden in the French army. Not only does
each canton have its own ranz, with its distinctive
music and words, but even the many patois in
every canton have their separate ranz. The most
celebrated ranz are those of Appenzell and Siben-
thal. That of Appenzell was transcribed by
Meyerbeer ; and Rossini, in the first act of William
Tell, has introduced the characteristic phrase of the
ranz of Sibenthal : "Sibenthal ! Sibenthal ! oui,
tes Sommets, tes vallons."
It is probable that the ranz heard most fre-
quently by Senancour was sung in the romance
patois of la Gruyere of the canton of Fribourg.
The opening words were : —
NOTES 201
" Le z'armailli dei Columbette
De bon matin se san leha.
Ha ha ! Ha ha !
Liauba ! Liauba ! por aria ! "
Fenimore Cooper has translated this call :
" The cowherds of Columbette arise at an early
hour. Ha ha ! Ha ha ! Liauba ! Liauba ! in order
to milk ! Come all of you, Black and white, Red
and mottled, Young and old ; Beneath this oak I
am about to milk you, Beneath this poplar I am
about to press. Liauba ! Liauba ! in order to
milk ! "
NOTE 3, Page 16
The following note is translated from the
French edition : —
" Kuher in German, Armailli in Romance, is
the herdsman who leads the cows to the moun-
tains, spends the entire season in the high pas-
tures, and makes cheese. Usually the Armaillis
stay for four or five months among the high
Alps, completely separated from the women, and
often even from other men."
NOTE 4, Page 19
Tinian is one of the Ladrone islands in the
Pacific, formerly celebrated for its wonderful fer-
tility.
202 NOTES
NOTE 5, Page 23
Letter XLI, in which Senancour argues in
favor of suicide, and the following letters up to
LI, mark the crisis in his inward struggle. Later
we shall see a gradual decrease of his discdntent
and irresolution, and a stronger control over
himself.
NOTE 6, Page 54
St. Pacomus, who together with St. Anthony
was the founder of monastic life in the Thebaid,
was born in 292 A. D., of pagan parents, and was
a soldier under Constantine during the early years
of his life. He then became a monk, and prac-
ticed in solitude the most austere and rigid disci-
pline. " During fifteen years he never lay down,
and slept only standing, supported against a wall,
or half-seated upon a stone bench, after days of
the hardest labor, as a carpenter, a mason, or a
cleanser of pits." — Montalembert, The Monks of
the West.
St. Anthony had been the founder of cenobitic
life, or life in common as distinguished from the
isolated life of the anchorites ; but he had gov-
erned the cenobites merely by oral instruction and
example. St. Pacomus was the first to give them
for their guidance a minute and complete written
rule. He also established the first monastery,
or group of eight monasteries, on the Nile, at
NOTES 203
Tabenne, where he united five thousand monks
under his rule. He died of the plague in 348.
NOTE 7, Page 57
Chessel was the country-seat of Senancour*s
friend to whom these letters were addressed.
NOTE 8, Page 60
The Schwartz-see or lake of Omeinez lies on
a secluded route from Thun to Gruyere.
NOTE 9, Page 68
By Roman Senancour doubtless means one of
the numerous Romance dialects now spoken in
western Europe, in Italy, Spain, France, Switzer-
land, and the Tyrol. It is possible that he re-
ferred particularly to the Romance dialect used in
the Gruyere district known as the " Gruerien."
NOTE 10, Page 69
Saint-Saphorin is situated on the margin of
lake Leman between Vevey and Cully.
NOTE n, Page 88
I have not been able to find Imenstrom on any
of the maps of Switzerland, but from Senancour's
description it would seem to lie in the canton
of Fribourg, near the frontier line of the Vaud,
and not far from the Dent de Jaman. Senancour
speaks of the valley and gorge of Imenstrom as
204 NOTES
a secluded spot hidden among the lower moun-
tains, and within sight of the eastern end of lake
Leman, but he makes no mention of any village
by that name.
NOTE 12, Page 97
Slisama, or Slissama, was the daughter of Semo
and the sister of the famous Cuthullin. In several
places in Ossian's poems occur the words, " like
a dropping rock in the desert," and, " like cold-
dropping rocks ; " and in The Songs of Selma^ " the
son of the rock" is mentioned, meaning, as is
explained in a note, the echoing back of the
human voice from a rock. This entire descrip-
tion of Ossian's Caledonia by Senancour seems
to be founded on Macpherson's poems without
being an exact reproduction or containing any
literal quotation. But what is clear is that Senan-
cour was profoundly impressed by the poems of
Ossian, and seems not to have doubted their
authenticity.
NOTE 13, Page 115
Hegesias was a noted philosopher of the Cyre-
naic School at Alexandria, under the Ptolemies
(about 260 B. c.). He taught the most complete
selfishness, the impossibility of happiness, and that
the chief good consists in being free from all trou-
ble and pain. He advocated indifference to death,
and his teaching drove many persons to suicide ;
NOTES 205
he was therefore forbidden by Ptolemy to teach,
and was surnamed HfuriOa.va.Tos (literally, " death-
persuading " ).
NOTE 14, Page 122
Senancour projected an extensive work, la
Raison des Chases humaines^ the complete plan of
which he never carried out. The Reveries were
to have formed the introduction, and his other
books were merely parts, so to speak, of the whole
work.
NOTE 15, Page 133
This quotation which ought to read, " Animalh
out em homo non percipit ea, qua sunt spiritus Dei"
is the first half of the Vulgate version of I. Corin-
thians^ 2 : 14. The rest of the verse reads, Stul-
titia enim est ////', et non potest intelligere : quia
tpiritualiter examinatur. " But the sensual man
perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of
God : for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot
understand : because it is spiritually examined "
(Douay Version).
NOTE 1 6, Page 138
Britannicus by Racine, second act, first scene.
Nero speaking to his governor Burrhus : —
" N'en doutez point, Burrhus : malgre ses injustices ;
C'est ma mere, et je veux ignorer ses caprices.
Mais je ne pretends plus ignorer ni souffrir
Le ministre insolent qui les ose nourrir.
206 NOTES
Pallas de ses conseils cmpoisonne ma mere ;
II seduit, chaque jour, Britannicus mon frere ;
Us 1'ecoutent lui seul : et qui suivrait leurs pas
Les trouverait peut-etre assembles chez Pallas.
C'en est trop. De tous deux il faut que je 1'ecarte.
Pour la derniere fois, qu'il s'eloigne, qu'il parte :
Je le veux, je 1'ordonne ; et que la fin du jour
Ne le retrouve plus dans Rome ou dans ma cour.
Allez : cet ordre importe au salut de 1* empire."
NOTE 17, Page 150
The work referred to is probably that of
Saint-Martin, French mystic and theosophist, and
follower of Jakob Boehme, who wrote at the close
of the eighteenth century, and the beginning of
the nineteenth, — De I 'Esprit des Chases, Coup eTaeil
philosophique sur la nature des etres et sur Tobjet de
leur existence . . . par le philosopbe inconnu (Louis-
Claude de Saint-Martin), Paris, 1800.
NOTE 1 8, Page 156
The story of Fonsalbe is based upon Senan-
cour*s own unhappy marriage, which like that of
Fonsalbe was entered into, not from affection, but
from a feeling of obligation and a strong sense of
honor.
NOTE 19, Page 175
Senancour's first meeting with Madame
Del was probably on that day in March to
which he refers at the close of Letter XI.
NOTES 207
NOTE 20, Page 181
The letters in the Supplement, from XC to
the end, were not included in the first edition of
Obermann. They were collected later, in about
1833 or after, and were added to the edition of
1865, for which George Sand wrote the preface.
The second edition of 1833 na<^ been brought out
with a preface by Sainte-Beuve.
NOTE 21, Page 192
Not long after this, and many years before
writing the Meditations, Senancour returned to
Paris and threw himself into an active but obscure
literary life. While he remained unknown to the
general public and lived in almost complete seclu-
sion, he gathered around him a small group of
friends among whom were men well known in
literature. Since his death, one of his most
enthusiastic admirers, M. Arthur Boisseau, of the
Paris Opera and the Societe des Concerts^ has writ-
ten a symphony on Obermann.
/HpHIS is No. J5~ of an edition
of 300 copies, printed at The
Riverside Press, Cambridge, by
H. O. Houghton & Company,
and published by Houghton,
Mifflin & Company, of Boston
and New York.
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