Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

achieved a serenity that we could call “classical.” Carlyle wrote about Goethe for magazines in London. This was very moving for Goethe, for although Germany had achieved full intellectual development, politically it was still not unified. (The unification of Germany would take place in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian War.) That is, to the world, Germany was a heterogeneous collection of small principalities, dukedoms, a bit provincial, and for Goethe, that people in England admired him would be like, for a South American, being known in Paris or London.
    Then Carlyle published a series of translations of Goethe. He translated both parts of
Wilhelm Meister
:
Meister’s Apprenticeship
and
Wilhelm Meister’s Travels
. 7 He translated other German romantics, including the amazing [E.T.A.]Hoffman. Then he published
Sartor Resartus
. 8 Then he devoted himself to history, and wrote essays about the famous affair of the diamond necklace—the story of a poor Frenchman who was made to believe that Marie Antoinette had accepted a gift of his (the essay was taken from Count Cagliostro)—and a wide range of other subjects. 9 Among these essays, we find one about Dr.Francia, tyrant of Paraguay, an essay that includes—and this is typical of Carlyle—a vindication of Dr. Francia. 10 Then Carlyle writes a book titled
The Letters and Speeches of OliverCromwell.
11 It is natural that he would admire Cromwell. Cromwell, in the middle of the seventeenth century, made it so that the king of England was tried and condemned to death by Parliament. This scandalized the world, as would, later, theFrench Revolution, and much later, the Russian Revolution.
    Finally, Carlyle settles in London and there publishes
The French Revolution
, his most famous work. 12 Carlyle lent the manuscript to a friend, the author of a famous treatise on logic, [John] StuartMill. 13 Mill’s cook used the manuscript to light the stove in the kitchen. Thus, his work of years was destroyed. But Mill convinced Carlyle to accept a monthly stipend while he rewrote his work. This book is one of Carlyle’s most vivid; however, it does not have the vividness of reality, but rather the vividness of a visionary book, the vividness of a nightmare. I remember that when I read that chapter where Carlyle describes the flight and capture of Louis XVI, I remembered reading something similar: I was thinking of the famous description of the death of Facundo Quiroga, in one of the final chapters of
Facundo
by Sarmiento. 14 Carlyle describes the king’s flight in the chapter “The Night of Spurs.” He describes how the king stops at a tavern and a boy recognizes him. He recognizes him because an image of the king is engraved on the back of a coin, and this gives him away. Then they arrest him, and in the end take him to the guillotine.
    Carlyle’s wife, Jane Welsh, was his social superior, a very intelligent woman whose letters are considered among the best of English correspondence. 15 Carlyle lived for his work, his lectures, his labors, and this was somewhat prophetic; Carlyle neglected his wife, but after her death, he wrote little of any importance. Before, he had spent fourteen years writing
History ofFriedrich II of Prussia, called Frederik the Great
, a difficult book to read. 16 There was a great difference between Carlyle the man, with his religious and pious atheism, and Frederik, who was a skeptical atheist and had no moral scruples. After the death of his wife, Carlyle wrote the history of the first kings of Norway, based on the
Heimskringla
by the Icelandic historianSnorri Sturluson, from the thirteenth century, but this book does not have the passion of his first works. 17
    Now we will look at Carlyle’s philosophy, or at a few features of this philosophy. In the previous class, I said that for Blake the world was essentially hallucinatory. The world was an hallucination perceived through the five deceptive senses we were given by the inferior God who made this Earth, Jehovah. Now, this corresponds to the philosophy of idealism, and Carlyle was one of the first proponents of German idealism in England. Idealism already existed in England through the work of the Irish bishopBerkeley. But Carlyle preferred to seek it out in the work of Schelling andKant. For those philosophers, and for Berkeley, idealism has a metaphysical meaning. It tells us that what we
believe
to be reality—let us say, what can be seen, touched, tasted—cannot be reality: it is