Sartor Resartus

**Sartor Resartus**
	Title page of the first American edition (1836)
Author	Thomas Carlyle
Country	Great Britain
Language	English
Genre	Comic novel, sui generis
Publisher	Fraser's Magazine
Publication date	1833–1834

Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh in Three Books is an 1831 novel by the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, first published as a serial in Fraser's Magazine in November 1833 – August 1834. The novel purports to be a commentary on the thought and early life of a German philosopher called Diogenes Teufelsdröckh (which translates as 'Zeus-born Devil's-dung' [the referenced quotation has Diogenes as 'God-born', but that is not strictly accurate),^[1] author of a tome entitled Clothes: Their Origin and Influence. Teufelsdröckh's Transcendentalist musings are mulled over by a sceptical English Reviewer (referred to as Editor) who also provides fragmentary biographical material on the philosopher. The work is, in part, a parody of Hegel, and of German Idealism more generally.

^ "The full name, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, God-born Devil's Dung, indicates the combination in one person of the half malicious Swiftian satire with the ethereal idealism of a Fichte or a Goethe. Carlyle calls attention to this twofold nature of his hero in numerous places. In the chapter on Reminiscences the editor remembers seeing in his eyes 'gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic fire'; in the chapter on Characteristics we are told that his voice screws itself aloft 'as into the song of spirits, or else the shrill mockery of fiends,' that at times we distinguish 'gleams of an ethereal love, 'soft wailings of infinite pity,' and at others "some half invisible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humor" so that 'you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles.' His eyes again are described as sparkling with lights, which 'may indeed be reflexes of the heavenly stars, but perhaps also gleams from the region of Nether Fire'." — Johnson, William Savage (1911). "Sartor Resartus." In: Thomas Carlyle: A Study of his Literary Apprenticeship, 1814-1831. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 113–114.

[1] "The full name, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, God-born Devil's Dung, indicates the combination in one person of the half malicious Swiftian satire with the ethereal idealism of a Fichte or a Goethe. Carlyle calls attention to this twofold nature of his hero in numerous places. In the chapter on Reminiscences the editor remembers seeing in his eyes 'gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic fire'; in the chapter on Characteristics we are told that his voice screws itself aloft 'as into the song of spirits, or else the shrill mockery of fiends,' that at times we distinguish 'gleams of an ethereal love, 'soft wailings of infinite pity,' and at others "some half invisible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humor" so that 'you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles.' His eyes again are described as sparkling with lights, which 'may indeed be reflexes of the heavenly stars, but perhaps also gleams from the region of Nether Fire'." — Johnson, William Savage (1911). "Sartor Resartus." In: Thomas Carlyle: A Study of his Literary Apprenticeship, 1814-1831. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 113–114.

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