Thomas Carlyle

gigatos | February 9, 2022

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Summary

Thomas Carlyle (b. 4 December 1795 – d. 5 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, satirist and historian whose work was highly regarded in the Victorian era. Born into a strict Calvinist family, Thomas”s parents expected him to become a preacher. However, while at Edinburgh University, he lost his Christian faith; but Calvinist values remained valid for him. This combination of religious temperament and lack of faith in traditional Christianity appealed to many Victorians, who feared that scientific innovation and political change might threaten the traditional social order.

Carlyle was born in Ecclefechan, Dumfries and Galloway, and educated at Annan Academy, Annan. He was strongly influenced by Calvinism. After graduating from Edinburgh University, Carlyle became a teacher of mathematics, first in Annan and then in Kirkcaldy, where he befriended the mystic Edward Irving. Between 1819 and 1921, Carlyle returned to Edinburgh University, where he suffered an intense crisis of faith, the inspiration for Sartor Resartus. He also began to study German literature in depth. Carlyle”s thought was strongly influenced by German transcendentalism, especially the work of Fichte. He earned his reputation as an expert on German literature through a series of essays published in Fraser”s Magazine and by translating the works of German writers, most notably Goethe. His residence for most of his life was a beautiful house in Dumfrieshire (Scotland), where he wrote most of his works. Of his life there he wrote: “It is certain that for living and thinking in I have never since found in the world a place so favourable…. How blessed, might poor mortals be in the straitest circumstances if their wisdom and fidelity to heaven and to one another were adequately great!” (“It is clear that for living and thinking I have never found a more favourable place in all the world… How blessed could poor mortals be even in the most oppressive circumstances, if their wisdom and fidelity to heaven were sufficiently great!”).

Carlyle had several affairs before marrying Jane Welsh. The most important was with Margaret Gordon, a pupil of his friend Edward Irving. Even after meeting Jane, he fell in love with Kitty Kirkpatrick, the daughter of a British officer and an Indian princess. William Dalrymple suggested that the feelings were mutual, but social conditions made marriage impossible because Carlyle was poor at the time. Both Margaret and Kitty have been suggested as the inspiration for Blumine, Teufelsdrökch”s lover in Sartor Resartus.

Carlyle married Jane Welsh in 1826, but the marriage was not a happy one. According to the couple”s letters, quarrels between them were frequent. There was one long-running sexual incident discussed by biographers. Whether it was impotence, or psychosexual neurosis, no one can know for sure, but the couple were apparently celibate.

Carlyle became increasingly estranged from his wife. Although she had been an invalid for some time, her death in 1866 came unexpectedly and plunged him into despair. It was during this period that Carlyle wrote Reminiscences of Jane Welsh Carlyle, a work of a markedly self-critical nature. The work was published after Carlyle”s death by his biographer James Anthony Froude, who made public his belief that the marriage was unfulfilled. This kind of frankness was unheard of among respected biographers of the period. Froude”s view was attacked by Thomas Carlyle”s family, especially his nephew Alexander. However, the biography was consistent with Carlyle”s own belief that the flaws of heroes should be openly discussed without detracting from their merits.

After Jane Carlyle”s death in 1866, Thomas Carlyle partially retired from society. He was appointed Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. His last years were spent at 33 Ampton Street London WC1, but he always wanted to return to Craigenputtock.

After Carlyle”s death on 5 February 1881 in London, it would have been possible to bury him at Westminster Abbey, but his wish to be buried with his parents at Ecclefechan was respected.

First writings

By 1821, Carlyle had already abandoned the priesthood and turned his efforts to earning a living as a writer. His first attempt at writing fiction was Cruthers and Jonson, one of his failed attempts at novel writing. Following his translation of Goethe”s The Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister, Carlyle came to dislike the form of the realist novel and concentrate on developing a new form of fiction. In addition to essays on German literature, he wrote about modern culture in general in his acclaimed essays Signs of the Times and Characteristics.

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Sartor Resartus

His first major work, Sartor Resartus (1832), was written with the intention of being a novelty: at once fact-based and fictional, serious and satirical, speculative and historical. In it the author makes ironic comments on the formal structure of his own book, while forcing the reader to discover what is “true”. It was originally published in Fraser”s between 1833 and 1834. The text presents itself as an anonymous editor”s attempt to introduce Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, a German philosopher of clothes, actually a fictional character created by Carlyle, to the British public. The editor admires the philosopher”s confused work, of which he reproduces only fragments. In order to understand the philosophy, the editor tries to reconstruct the philosopher”s biography, but with limited success. Behind the German philosopher”s seemingly ridiculous statements are biting attacks on utilitarianism and the commercialization of British society. The fragmentary biography of Teufelsdröckh that the editor recovers from a chaotic mass of documents reveals the philosopher”s spiritual journey. He comes to loathe the corrupt condition of modern life and contemplates the ”Eternal No” of refusal, reaches the ”Centre of Indifference” and eventually embraces the ”Eternal Yes”. This journey from refusal to non-participation to volition will later be described as existentialist awakening.

Given the enigmatic nature of “Sartor Resartus”, it is not surprising that it did not enjoy much success at first. Its popularity grew over the next few years, and it was published in book form in Boston in 1836, with a foreword by Ralph Waldo Emerson, influencing the evolution of American transcendentalism. The first English edition was published in 1838.

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The French Revolution

In 1834, Carlyle moved from London to Craigenputtock and began to penetrate select circles. Within the UK his success was ensured by the publication of his three-volume work The French Revolution, A History in 1837. After the manuscript of the first volume was accidentally burned by the housekeeper of the philosopher John Stuart Mill, Carlyle wrote the other volumes before rewriting the first. The result was a work charged with passion and an intensity unparalleled in historical writing. In a politically charged Europe, filled with the tears and fears of revolution, Carlyle”s description of the motivations and desires that inspired the revolution in France seemed particularly relevant. Carlyle”s style emphasised this, always emphasising the immanence of the action, often using the present tense. For Carlyle, chaotic events demanded ”heroes” to take control of the competitive forces erupting in society. While he did not deny the importance of economic and practical explanations of events, he saw the essence of those forces as ”spiritual” – the hopes and aspirations of people taking the form of ideas, which were often ossified into ideologies (”formulas”, ”Isms”, as he called them). In Carlyle”s view, only dynamic individuals can master events and direct spiritual energies effectively. As soon as ideological “formulas” replace heroic human actions, society becomes dehumanized.

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Past and present

This dehumanisation of society was also a theme in later works. In Past and Present (1843), Carlyle wrote in a note of sceptical conservatism that could later be seen in the work of Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin: he compared the life of the dissipated 19th-century man to that of a medieval abbot. For Carlyle, the monastic community was united by spiritual and human values, whereas modern culture deified impersonal economic forces and abstract theories of human ”rights” and natural ”laws”. Communal values were replaced by isolated individualism and ruthless laissez-faire capitalism, justified by what he called the “sinister science” of economics.

Heroes and hero worship

These ideas influenced the development of socialism, although some aspects of Carlyle”s thinking helped shape fascism as an ideology. Carlyle turned to his own late thought in the 1840s, which led to the severing of his friendship with John Stuart Mill, among others, and the cooling of his relationship with Ralph Waldo Emerson. His belief in the importance of heroic leadership took shape in his book On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, in which he compared different types of heroes. As one of the few philosophers who witnessed the industrial revolution but maintained his transcendental, non-materialist worldview, Thomas Carlyle attempted to paint a picture of the development of the human intellect, using historical figures as coordinates, giving the prophet Mohammed a special place in the book in the chapter “Hero as Prophet”. In his work, Carlyle declared his admiration for Muhammad”s passionate leadership as a Hegelian agent of reform, insisting on his sincerity and commenting on “how one man single-handedly, could weld warring tribes and wandering Bedouins into a most powerful and civilized nation in less than two decades”.

The observation about Carlyle”s openness to the “other” puts him in a new category at the time, as an early representative of the attempt to bridge the gap between West and East. For Carlyle the ”hero” was someone similar to the Aristotelian ”magnamine” man – a flourishing person in the fullest sense of the word. However, for Carlyle, unlike Aristotle, the world was full of contradictions, which the hero had to confront. All heroes have flaws. Their heroism lay in their creative energy in the face of these difficulties, not in their moral perfection. To blame such a person for their shortcomings is the philosophy of those who seek comfort in the conventional. Carlyle called this “valourism”, from the expression “no man is a hero to his valet”.

All of these books were particularly influential in their time, especially on writers such as Charles Dickens and John Ruskin. But in the wake of the 1848 Revolution and political upheaval in the UK, Carlyle published a collection of essays entitled ”Latter-Day Pamphlets” (1850), in which he attacked democracy as an absurd social ideal, but also condemned the hereditary aristocracy. The latter was paralysing, the former nonsense: as if one could find out the truth by counting votes. The most capable should govern. But how the most capable can be recognised, and to what extent we should follow them, Carlyle did not say exactly.

In recent writings Carlyle has sought to examine moments of heroic leadership in history. In Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell he presented Cromwell in a favourable light: someone who tried to bring order to the conflicting forces and reform the society of his time. Carlyle sought to bring Cromwell”s words to life on his own terms, quoting him and then commenting on the meaning of the words in the troubled context of his time. The aim was to make the ”past” ”present” for his readers.

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The eternal yes and no

Carlyle”s eternal “yes” is the name for the spirit of faith in God, understood as the clear expression of an attitude of clear, resolute, stable and uncompromising antagonism to the eternal “no”, on the principle that there is no faith in God except in such antagonism against the spirit that opposes God.

The eternal “no” is Carlyle”s name for the spirit of unbelief in God, as manifested in the war waged by Teufelsdröckh against him; the spirit which, as represented in Goethe”s Mephistopheles, is in continual denial of the reality of the divine in the thought, character, and life of mankind, and finds a malicious delight in taking all that is high and noble for hollow and worthless.

In “Sartor Resartus” the narrator goes from the eternal “no” to the eternal “yes”, but only by passing through the “Centre of Indifference”, which is not only an agnostic posture, but also one of detachment. Only after the reduction of desires and security, tending towards a “Buddhist” indifference, can the narrator reach an affirmation. This passage is somewhat similar to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard”s “leap of faith”, a contemporary of Carlyle.

As for the aforementioned “antagonism”, one might recall William Blake”s famous phrase, “without contraries there is no progress”, and Carlyle”s progress from the eternal “no” to the eternal “yes” is found not in the “Centre of Indifference”, but in Natural Supernaturalism, a transcendental philosophy of the divine found in everyday life.

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Worship of silence and bitterness

Drawing on Goethe”s calling Christianity “the worship of bitterness” as well as “our highest religion, for the Son of Man”, Carlyle added, interpreting : “there is no noble crown, well worn or even ill worn, but is a crown of thorns”.

“Silent worship” is Carlyle”s name for the sacred reverence accorded to self-restraint in speech until “thought has ripened into silence… to keep one”s mouth shut until a meaning opens it.” It is a doctrine misunderstood by many, almost intentionally; for Carlyle, silence is the womb from which all great things are born.

Latest works

His last major work was an epic on the life of Frederick II of Prussia (1858-1865). In it Carlyle tried to show how a heroic leader could found a state and help create a new moral culture for a nation. For Carlyle, Frederick was the symbol of the transition from the liberal ideals of the 18th century Enlightenment to a modern culture of spiritual dynamism, represented by Germany through its thinkers and politicians. The book is known primarily for its animated rendering of Frederick”s battles, through which Carlyle sought to convey his vision of almost overwhelming chaos, yet mastered by the command of a genius. However, the effort expended in writing the book caused Carlyle to slip into a deepening depression, probably treated with psychosomatic medication. Her only partial success was one of the reasons for Carlyle”s slowdown.

The later writings are generally short essays, indicating the radicalisation of Carlyle”s political position. In his famous racist essay ”An Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question”, he suggests that slavery should not have been abolished. Slavery, in Carlyle”s view, maintained order and forced those who would otherwise have been lazy and unproductive to work. This essay, and his stated support for Governor Edward Eyre”s repressive measures in Jamaica, alienated Carlyle from his old liberal allies. Governor Eyre had been accused of brutal lynchings in order to put down a rebellion. Carlyle organised a committee to defend Eyre, while Mill organised an impeachment committee.

Thomas Carlyle was noted both for continuing a tradition of 18th-century Tory satirical writing and for founding the critique of progress in the Victorian era. “Sartor Resartus” can be seen both as a continuation of the chaotic and sceptical satires of Jonathan Swift or Laurence Sterne, and as an enunciation of a new view of values. Finding the world empty, Carlyle”s misanthropic professor-narrator discovers the need for a revolution of the spirit. In one sense, this solution is consistent with the Romantic belief in revolution, individualism and passion, but in another sense it is a private and nihilistic solution to the problems of modern life, devoid of the attempt to apply it to a larger community.

Later British critics, such as Matthew Arnold, would in turn denounce naïve claims to progress, while others, such as John Ruskin, would dismiss the period”s move towards intensive industrial production. Few, however, will adopt a solitary solution, and even those who will praise the heroes will not be so merciless to the weak.

Carlyle is also important for his contribution to the familiarisation of German Romantic literature in the UK. Although Samuel Taylor Coleridge had tried to introduce Schiller to British audiences, Carlyle”s efforts with Schiller and Goethe would bear fruit.

Carlyle also left a favorable impression on some slaveholders in the southern United States. His conservatism and criticism of capitalism was often brought into question by those who wanted to defend slavery as an alternative to capitalism, such as George Fitzhugh.

The reputation of Carlyle”s early works remained high throughout the 19th century, but declined in the 20th century. His reputation in Germany was good, due to his promotion of German thought and his biography of Frederick the Great. Friedrich Nietzsche, whose ideas are similar to Thomas Carlyle”s in places, criticised him for his moralism, calling him an “insipid joker” in his book Beyond Good and Evil. Nietzsche regarded Carlyle as a thinker who had failed to free himself from the petty thinking he combated. Carlyle”s distaste for democracy and his belief in charismatic leaders appealed to Adolf Hitler, who was reading Frederic”s biography during his last days in 1945.

The association with fascism did not help Carlyle”s reputation in the post-war years, but recently “Sartor Resartus” has been recognized as a unique masterpiece that anticipated numerous philosophical and cultural trends, from existentialism to postmodernism. It has also been argued about the critique of the ideological formulas of the “French Revolution” that it has well reviewed the ways in which revolutionary cultures can turn into repressive dogmatisms. Essentially a Romantic thinker, Carlyle sought to reconcile the Romantic affirmation of freedom and feeling with respect for historical and political facts. However, he was always drawn to the idea of the heroic struggle itself, rather than to the actual purpose for which it should be fought.

Carlyle formulated some strange definitions, collected in the Nuttall Encyclopedia. Among them are :

Centre of Immensities

an expression which means that wherever one is, one is in touch with the whole universe of being, and as close to one”s heart as one could be anywhere else

Eleutheromania

A mania or fanatical zeal for freedom

Gigman

refers to a man who respects, above all, respectability. It is derived from a definition given by a witness in a court of law, who, after saying a person is respectable, was asked by the judge what he meant by that word; the witness”s answer was: “one that keeps a gig”. Carlyle also uses the term “gigmanity”.

Hallowed Fire

a definition of Christianity, whose “growth and spread” was made by illuminating what was sacred and divine in the soul of man and burning away all that was not

Mights And Rights

Carlyle”s doctrine that rights are nothing until they become powers; only then are they rights

Pig-Philosophy

the name given by Carlyle in the Latter-Day Pamphlets, in the section on Judaism, to a philosophy prevalent in his time, which regarded the human being as a creature of appetite, not of God, a being devoid of soul, and having no nobler idea of well-being than the gratification of desires – this is his heaven and the antinomy of hell

Plugston of Undershot

name for a member of the working class

Present Time

defined by Carlyle as “the youngest child of eternity, child and heir of past times, with their good and evil, and parent of all the future, with new questions and meanings,” on whose right or wrong understanding depend matters of life and death for all the world, the riddle of the sphinx addressed to us all, to answer as if we lived and did not die

Printed Paper

the satirical name given to pre-Revolutionary French literature

Revistele progresului speciei (Progress of the Species Magazines)

the name given to the literature of his time which did nothing to help the said progress, but only boasted of the fact itself, taking all the credit for it, like the fly of the French poet Jean de La Fontaine, who, in the war chariot that carried it, begins a monologue about “How much dust I stir up!”

The Conflux of Eternities

an expressive phrase concerning time, because in every moment of it there is a centre in which, all the forces coming from and moving towards eternity, meet and unite, so that neither in the past nor in the future can we come nearer to Eternity than we already are; the Present Time, the most recently born of Eternity, being the child of the Past, with all its good and evil, and the parent of all the future, towards whose realization (v. Mat. xvi.27 ) it is the first and most sacred duty of all ages to contribute, and especially of the leaders of every age, is the only way in which a connection with Eternity is established

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