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| (1795–1881) |
Yet, when Carlyle finally gets to the fictional work itself, an air of depth and seriousness appears. He does make mockery of a scholarly tendency to get bogged down in insignificant details in his description of the historical-descriptive part of the work, where Teufelsdröckh, among other things, spends a whole chapter on the topic of aprons. But the tone of the work changes, when Carlyle turns to the second, philosophical-speculative part of Clothes-philosophy.
Clearly influenced by Kantian thinkers, Teufelsdröckh begins by rejecting the absoluteness of time and space and comes to a conclusion reminiscent of Fichte – there’s nothing as real to be discovered in the world as me. Yet, he immediately continues, it is not as obvious what this me is. His first suggestion is to note that underneath all the clothing, we humans are nothing more than naked animals. Still, Teufelsdröckh at once adds, humans are also spiritual beings, and this especially through their clothes: a judge radiates a certain authority just because of certain clothing. Indeed, without clothes, civilisation as we know it would be quite impossible: for instance, where to carry one’s purse, if not in one’s pockets?
Clothing, Teufelsdröckh says, is something through which a spirit converses with other spirits. In a mystical fashion, he suggests looking through all these raiments of clothing, into the innermost essence of human beings. Here is revealed a mythical conclusion that the whole material universe can be seen as clothing for eternal.
Carlyle interjects at this point a fragmentary biography of Teufelsdröckh, supposedly composed from a collection of his random notes. This biography has its share of fantastical elements – Teufelsdröckh being supposedly a foundling with a possible noble heritage, raised by a pair of commoners as their own. Still, for the most part, the beginning of the story is a quite realistic, if somewhat parodied tale of a German would-be-scholar trying to make a living by finding a patronage for himself.
The biography takes again a more fabulous turn, after Teufelsdröckh experiences a failed romance and starts to travel, apparently meeting world historic individuals, like Napoleon. Yet, Carlyle leaves these external details mostly untold and concentrates on the spiritual development of Teufelsdröckh, who begins from a state of scepticism and desperation (everlasting no), but finds inner strength to resist the fear of a world without meaning. Then, after renouncing himself, Teufelsdröckh discovers the divine or the everlasting yea in the world and has now a purpose for which to produce things.
Returning to the Clothes Philosophy, Carlyle shows Teufelsdröckh praising the simple, self-made leather clothing of Quaker George Fox as the most important point in modern history. In comparison, the official church seems to Teufelsdröckh full of sham priests, whose clothes have become shallow masks with no spirit within. This does not mean that Teufelsdröckh would disregard all religious symbolism in favour of simple adornments. Quite the contrary, he praises symbols in general, which at the same time stay silent or conceal and speak or reveal things, and especially religious symbols, in which the artist behind the symbol has also become a prophet. These religious symbols just need to have behind them the divine or infinite, which uses the symbols as signifying some deep truths.
Two kinds of persons Teufelsdröckh is said to honour: an honest worker, toiling for their daily bread, and a spiritual worker, toiling for the Bread of Life. Best it is, he says, when both are combined in the form of a peasant saint. Although this admission might seem like a praise of a worker, it has its darker side: Teufelsdröckh does not take seriously the Malthusian idea that workers could starve to death if overpopulation continues. Instead, he is more worried that in the current time, when even priests are mere empty cloaks, workers will not be able to find their spiritual bread. The result of this non-existence of religion, Teufelsdröckh says, is that everyone will turn against everyone else, caring for nothing but their own independence, poor perishing from hunger and overwork, and rich perishing from satiety and idleness.
Teufelsdröckh is still optimistic. Even if the dying society is empty like disregarded clothes, at least clothes will carry the memory of the person who used to wear them. He also hopes that the society will at some point be reborn like phoenix, although it is now burning itself up. Indeed, he even suggests that like a snake is already growing itself a new skin, when it discards its old one, something new is already building up in our society - radicals of today already carry the seeds for the rebuilders of tomorrow.
From the current politics, Teufelsdröckh returns to the metaphysical, or as Carlyle says, transcendental level. Teufelsdröckh begins by comparing the notions of miraculous and lawlike. At first noting that science has progressed away from finding divine in miracles and searching it in the regularity of the cosmos and its laws, he continues by insisting that science has still only penetrated a small portion of the infinity of nature. Furthermore, he suggests, if nature is nothing but clothing for the divine - or to take another simile, a book written by God - why should it be just a cookbook full of recipes (i.e. laws of nature) and nothing more significant? Instead of regularities, Teufelsdröckh again wants us to return to appreciating the miraculous in our study of nature. Isn’t a miracle still a miracle, if it appears regularly? And isn't a miracle still a miracle, even if it is caused by internal workings of our mind (e.g. when we appear to see devils and witches)?
Teufelsdröckh goes even so far in his disdain of regularities that he, taking a cue from Kant, denies the validity of space and time, when it comes to metaphysics. Space and time may have to be taken for granted in our every-day life, but when it comes to the divine and even to the capacities of the mind, he insists, space and time are of no relevance: indeed, we can instantly think of things far from us or past or future. While living in this spatio-temporal world, he concludes, we are like ghosts appearing in a physical form, and after our seeming death, we return to the eternal from which we arrived.
Carlyle ends his summarisation of Teufelsdröckh with the consideration of two classes peculiarly engaged with clothes: dandies and tailors. Dandies, he defines, are people whose lives are dedicated to clothing and who thus, in a sense, have an inborn understanding of the philosophy of clothes: a poet making a work of art of themselves. In fact, dandies form, Teufelsdröch suggests, a religious cult with their own dogmas of what to wear and especially what not to wear: a new form of the old superstition of self-worship. As a contrast to dandies, Teufelsdröckh points out the so-called poor-slaves or drudges, whom he somewhat ironically describes as resembling monastic orders in having taken an oath of poverty. If the dandies worshipped themselves, he adds, the drudges worship earth, since all they think is where to get the next round of potatoes. In fact, these two so-called sects are nothing but the two classes of rich and poor, whom Teufelsdröckh earlier envisioned as tearing down the civilisation in their quarrel with one another.
The very last fragment Carlyle has selected to introduce from Teufelsdröckh’s work – before announcing that Teufelsdröckh has vanished from the face of the earth – is reminiscent of the earlier fragment about George Fox as a producer of his own leather outfits. Here Teufelsdröckh consequently praises tailors as sub-creators. Indeed, he suggests, aren’t all creative people in some sense tailors of their own kind?
