author - "Thomas Carlyle"
Description
Sartor Resartus was a strange and new book when it was first published in 1833, and in many ways it remains a strange and new book today. The bulk of the novel takes the form of the a commentary on the life and works of the fictional Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, a sort of renaissance-man German philosopher who develops a “Philosophy of Clothes.” The commentary is composed by a fictional English commentator, known only as the “Editor”; the Editor claims to have translated many of Teufelsdröckh’s ideas and quotes from German. As the commentary progresses, the Editor receives a bag of paper scraps on which are written various autobiographical fragments from Teufelsdröckh’s life. The Editor’s attempts to organize and interpret these scraps forms the second part of the novel.
The work is multi-faceted: sometimes a parody, sometimes a comedy, sometimes a satire, and sometimes seriously philosophical. Some critics consider it an early existentialist text. At the very least its unique structure and use of meta-narrative is hugely influential to modern literature; Borges was said to have memorized entire pages, and modern texts like Nabokov’s Pale Fire borrow liberally from the concept of a meta-narrative organized on scraps of paper.
to the luxuriant beauty that had no equal in his day, brought home his Gyda, and made her the brightest queen in all the north. He had after her, in succession, or perhaps even simultaneously in some cases, at least six other wives; and by Gyda herself one daughter and four sons.
Harald was not to be considered a strict-living man, and he had a great deal of trouble, as we shall see, with the tumultuous ambition of his sons; but he managed his government, aided by Jarl Rognwald and others, in a large, quietly potent, and successful manner; and it lasted in this royal form till his death, after sixty years of it.
These were the times of Norse colonization; proud Norsemen flying into other lands, to freer scenes,--to Iceland, to the Faroe Islands, which were hitherto quite vacant (tenanted only by some mournful hermit, Irish Christian fakir, or so); still more copiously to the Orkney and Shetland Isles, the Hebrides and other countries where Norse squatters and settlers already were. Sett
cruelest uncertainty:' courier after courier may dash off for Versailles; but will bring back no answer, can hardly bring himself back. For the roads are all blocked with batteries and pickets, with floods of carriages arrested for examination: such was Broglie's one sole order; the Oeil-de- Boeuf, hearing in the distance such mad din, which sounded almost like invasion, will before all things keep its own head whole. A new Ministry, with, as it were, but one foot in the stirrup, cannot take leaps. Mad Paris is abandoned altogether to itself.
What a Paris, when the darkness fell! A European metropolitan City hurled suddenly forth from its old combinations and arrangements; to crash tumultuously together, seeking new. Use and wont will now no longer direct any man; each man, with what of originality he has, must begin thinking; or following those that think. Seven hundred thousand individuals, on the sudden, find all their old paths, old ways of acting and deciding, vanish from under their feet. And so there go they, with clangour and terror, they know not as yet whether running, swimming or flying,--headlong into the New Era. With clangour and terror: from above, Broglie the war-god impends, preternatural, with his redhot cannon-balls; and from below, a preternatural Brigand-world menaces with dirk and firebrand: madness rules the hour.
Happily, in place of the submerged Twenty-six, the Electoral Club is gathering; has declared itself a 'Provisional Municipality.' On the morrow it will get Provost Flesselles, with an Echevin or two, to give help in many things. For the present it decrees one most essential thing: that forthwith a 'Par
Description
Sartor Resartus was a strange and new book when it was first published in 1833, and in many ways it remains a strange and new book today. The bulk of the novel takes the form of the a commentary on the life and works of the fictional Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, a sort of renaissance-man German philosopher who develops a “Philosophy of Clothes.” The commentary is composed by a fictional English commentator, known only as the “Editor”; the Editor claims to have translated many of Teufelsdröckh’s ideas and quotes from German. As the commentary progresses, the Editor receives a bag of paper scraps on which are written various autobiographical fragments from Teufelsdröckh’s life. The Editor’s attempts to organize and interpret these scraps forms the second part of the novel.
The work is multi-faceted: sometimes a parody, sometimes a comedy, sometimes a satire, and sometimes seriously philosophical. Some critics consider it an early existentialist text. At the very least its unique structure and use of meta-narrative is hugely influential to modern literature; Borges was said to have memorized entire pages, and modern texts like Nabokov’s Pale Fire borrow liberally from the concept of a meta-narrative organized on scraps of paper.
to the luxuriant beauty that had no equal in his day, brought home his Gyda, and made her the brightest queen in all the north. He had after her, in succession, or perhaps even simultaneously in some cases, at least six other wives; and by Gyda herself one daughter and four sons.
Harald was not to be considered a strict-living man, and he had a great deal of trouble, as we shall see, with the tumultuous ambition of his sons; but he managed his government, aided by Jarl Rognwald and others, in a large, quietly potent, and successful manner; and it lasted in this royal form till his death, after sixty years of it.
These were the times of Norse colonization; proud Norsemen flying into other lands, to freer scenes,--to Iceland, to the Faroe Islands, which were hitherto quite vacant (tenanted only by some mournful hermit, Irish Christian fakir, or so); still more copiously to the Orkney and Shetland Isles, the Hebrides and other countries where Norse squatters and settlers already were. Sett
cruelest uncertainty:' courier after courier may dash off for Versailles; but will bring back no answer, can hardly bring himself back. For the roads are all blocked with batteries and pickets, with floods of carriages arrested for examination: such was Broglie's one sole order; the Oeil-de- Boeuf, hearing in the distance such mad din, which sounded almost like invasion, will before all things keep its own head whole. A new Ministry, with, as it were, but one foot in the stirrup, cannot take leaps. Mad Paris is abandoned altogether to itself.
What a Paris, when the darkness fell! A European metropolitan City hurled suddenly forth from its old combinations and arrangements; to crash tumultuously together, seeking new. Use and wont will now no longer direct any man; each man, with what of originality he has, must begin thinking; or following those that think. Seven hundred thousand individuals, on the sudden, find all their old paths, old ways of acting and deciding, vanish from under their feet. And so there go they, with clangour and terror, they know not as yet whether running, swimming or flying,--headlong into the New Era. With clangour and terror: from above, Broglie the war-god impends, preternatural, with his redhot cannon-balls; and from below, a preternatural Brigand-world menaces with dirk and firebrand: madness rules the hour.
Happily, in place of the submerged Twenty-six, the Electoral Club is gathering; has declared itself a 'Provisional Municipality.' On the morrow it will get Provost Flesselles, with an Echevin or two, to give help in many things. For the present it decrees one most essential thing: that forthwith a 'Par