Sartor Resartus

If for a speculative man, ‘whose seedfield,’ in the sublime words of the Poet, ‘is Time,’ no conquest is important but that of new ideas, then might the arrival of Professor Teufelsdrockh’s Book be marked with chalk in the Editor’s calendar. It is indeed an ‘extensive Volume,’ of boundless, almost formless contents, a very Sea of Thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will; yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but with true orients.

Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1836), chapter two.

Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh, is an imaginary autobiography and philosophical discourse on clothes (the title translates as ‘the tailor re-patched’) based on the supposed thoughts of Teufelsdrockh. The quotations comes from chapter two, ‘Editorial Difficulties’.

Seashore

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.

They build their houses with sand and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.

They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. they seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.

The sea surges up with laughter and pale gleams the smile of the sea beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby’s cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea beach.

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships get wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.

Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Seashore’, from Gitanjali (1913)

Gitanjali (’Handful of Songs’) is a Tagore’s free verse interpretations of medieval Bengali devotional lyrics. Its publication in English in 1913 (translated by the author) led to his being awarded the Nobel prize for literature that year.

The Education of Henry Adams

Possibly the modern legislator or magistrate might no longer know enough to treat as the Church did the man who denied unity, unless the denial took the form of a bomb; but no teacher would know how to explain what he thought he meant by denying unity. Society would certainly punish the denial if ever any one learned enough to understand it. Philosophers, as a rule, cared little what principles society affirmed or denied, since the philosopher commonly held that though he might sometimes be right by good luck on some one point, no complex of individual opinions could possibly be anything but wrong; yet, supposing society to be ignored, the philosopher was no further forward. Nihilism had no bottom. For thousands of years every philosopher had stood on the shore of this sunless sea, diving for pearls and never finding them. All had seen that, since they could not find bottom, they must assume it. The Church claimed to have found it, but, since 1450, motives for agreeing on some new assumption of Unity, broader and deeper than that of the Church, had doubled in force until even the universities and schools, like the Church and State, seemed about to be driven into an attempt to educate, though specially forbidden to do it.

Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), chapter XXIX, ‘The Abyss of Ignorance’.

Adams was a historian and the grandson and great-grandson of American presidents. The Education of Henry Adams in his autobiography, in which he describes himself in the third person.

Men who gather pearls

Sea waves – no bottom – and the pearls sunk in the sea;
And men who gather pearls – doomed to death by gathering.
Of a myriad men doomed to death – one finds a pearl;
A bushel measure will buy a slave girl – but where is the man?
Year after year they gather pearls, but the pearls have fled from men;
This year the gathering of pearls is left to the god of the sea.
The sea god gathered pearls until every pearl is dead;
Dead and gone the shining pearls, empty the waters of the sea.
Pearls are creatures of the sea, and the sea is subject to the god;
The god now freely gathers them – but how many more men!

Yuan Zhen, ‘Men who gather pearls’ (9th century AD), translated by Edward Schaefer.

Yuan Zhen (779-831) was a poet of the middle T’ang dynasty. His poem describes the hard lot of Chinese pearl divers at a time when pearl oyster stocks were low. The translation comes from Edward H. Schaefer, The Vermilion Bird: T’ang Images of the South (1967).

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Proteus: Then let her alone.

Valentine: Not for the world: why, man, she is mine own,
And I as rich in having such a jewel
As twenty seas, if all their sand were
The water nectar and the rocks pure gold.
Forgive me that I do not dream on thee,
Because thou see’st me dote upon my
My foolish rival, that her father likes
Only for his possessions are so huge,
Is gone with her along, and I must after,
For love, thou know’st, is full of jealousy.

William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1592-93), Act II Scene iv

La fille aux yeux d’or

In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.

Honoré de Balzac, ‘La fille aux yeux d’or (The Girl with the Golden Eyes)’ (1834-35)

Troilus and Cressida

Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl:
Between our Ilium and where she resides,
Let it be call’d the wild and wandering flood,
Ourself the merchant, and this sailing Pandar
Our doubtful hope, our convoy and our bark.

William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act I Scene i.

The words are spoken by Troilus.

The sea has its pearls

The sea has its pearls,
The heaven its stars,
But my heart, my heart,
My heart has its love.

Great are the sea and the heavens,
But greater is my heart.
And fairer than pearls of stars
Glistens the glows my love.

Then little, youthful maiden,
Come unto my might heart.
My hear, and the sea, and the heavens
And melting away with love.

Das Meer hat seine Perlen,
Der Himmel hat seine Sterne,
Aber mein Herz, mein Herz,
Mein Herz hat seine Liebe.

Groß ist das Meer und der Himmel,
Doch größer ist mein Herz,
Und schöner als Perlen und Sterne
Leuchtet und strahlt meine Liebe.

Du kleines, junges Mädchen,
Komm an mein großes Herz;
Mein Herz und das Meer und der Himmel
Vergehn vor lauter Liebe.

Heinrich Heine, ‘The sea has its pearls’ (Das Meer hat seine Perlen) (1826), first stanza

Double Ballade on the Nothingness of Things

The Fates are subtle girls!
They give us chaff for grain.
And Time, the Thunderer, hurls,
Like bolted death, disdain
At all that heart and brain
Conceive, or great or small,
Upon this earthly ball.
Would you be knight and dame?
Or woo the sweet humanities?
Or illustrate a name?
O Vanity of Vanities!

We sound the sea for pearls,
Or drown them in a drain;
We flute it with the merles,
Or tug and sweat and strain;
We grovel, or we reign;
We saunter, or we brawl;
We search the stars for Fame,
Or sink her subterranities;
The legend’s still the same:-
“O Vanity of Vanities!”

William Ernest Henley, ‘Double Ballade on the Nothingness of Things’ (188?) [extract]