Sartor Resartus - Thomas Carlyle (week 2)

Sartor Resartus ("The Tailor Retailored," 1834) is Thomas Carlyle's satirical novel purporting to be a commentary on the life and strange thought of the Diogenes Teufelsdröckh: German philosopher and Professor of Things in General, author of the mock-magnum opus, Clothes: Their Origin and Influence.

The fictional work explores the historical, cultural, and mystical significance of a "clothing philosophy" in which the true essence of things is disguised by a world of ever-shifting fashions, beliefs, and power structures. It is proffered by a fictional editor, whose mediating influence conceals just as much as it reveals--inadvertently demonstrating the "clothing philosophy" of which he is skeptical.

Sartor Resartus satirizes silver fork novels, Hegel, and German Idealism more generally. Yet Carlyle's satire permits him to explore serious concerns about reason, knowledge, morality, materialism, and faith. The end result is an amalgamation of essay, polemic, social commentary, fantasy, fiction, pseudo-scholarship, metaphysics, and comic absurdity.

In the United States, the novel was a formative influence on the Transcendentalist Movement, being admired for its originality, humor, and spiritual insight. According to Rodger L. Tarr, its impact "upon American Literature is so vast, so pervasive, that it is difficult to overstate," noting its appreciation by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Margaret Fuller, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, and Herman Melville.

Melville's admiration for Carlyle was such that he attempted (unsuccessfully) to arrange a meeting with the author during his 1849 trip to England. A contemporary review of Mardi claimed that Melville had been "drinking at the well of the 'English bewitched' of which Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Emerson are the priests"; and Pierre was accused of "the same German English--the same transcendental flights of fancy--the same abrupt starts--the same incoherent ravings, and unearthly visions" as Sartor Resartus.

A passage in Sartor Resartus that "All visible things are emblems" has a well-noted affinity to Ahab's speech in Moby-Dick that "All visible objects...are but as pasteboard masks." Less obvious (but perhaps even more significant) is Ishmael's yearning for an invisible "wonder world," ala Sartor Resartus' dictum that "It is in and through Symbols that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being."

Week 1: Book I - Book II, Chapter V
Week 2: Book II, Chapter VI - Book III

Sartor Resartus:

• Kindle
• Google Play
• Gutenberg

Extracts:

• "For man, like God, abides the same / Always, through all variety / Of woven garments to the frame." (Clarel, 4.21)

This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.