The Invisible Lodge

by Jean Paul

The Dream of Heaven.---Hoppedizel's Letter.

Since I have, beside my biographical business, also driven the trade of a Ladies' Tailor, a wholly new life has grown up in me. Nevertheless the future Shröckh who shall offer to hang me up also in his picture-gallery of famous men, must be advised to be moderate and not deduce everything from my tailoring, but something from my imagination. This latter has during the last winter and autumn so strengthened itself by the painting of so many scenes in nature, that the present spring finds quite other eyes and ears in me than I have ever had before. This is what we all, I and the reader, should have considered before now. If the attraction of certain vices becomes through the daily growing efforts of the imagination, insuperable, why do we not give her irresistible pencil worthy subjects? Why do we not direct her in winter to sketch or rather to create the spring? For one enjoys in nature not what one sees (else the Forester and the Poet would find out of doors the same kind of enjoyment) but what one's poetic sense imparts to the visible, and the feeling for nature is at bottom the fancy for it.

But in no brain did more graceful shades of dream and fancy crystallize than in Gustavus's. His health and his happiness have come back to him; this is shown by his nights, wherein dreams like violets open again their spring-chalices. Such an Eden-fragrance floats around the following dream.

* * * * *

"He died," it seemed to him, "and was to play out the interval before his new incarnation in mere dreams. He sank into a tossing sea of blossoms, which was the conflux of the starry heavens; on the ground of immensity all stars bloomed white and neighborly blossom-leaves tossed against each other. But why did this flower-field growing from the earth up even to heaven intoxicate with the exhaling spirit of a thousand cups all souls that flew over it and sunk down in bewildering ecstasy? Why did a juggling wind mingle souls together with souls and flowers amidst a snow-flurry of sparks and many-colored flakes of fire? Why did so sweet and so sportive a dream envelop deceased men?--O, for this reason; the gnawing wounds of life were to be closed by the balmy breath of this immeasurable spring, and man, still bleeding from the blows of the former earth, was to be healed under the flowers for the future heaven where the greater virtue and knowledge demand a healthy soul. For ah! the soul suffers here indeed, quite too much! When on every snow-field one soul embraced another, then out of love they walked into one glowing dew-drop; then it trembled downward and alighted on a flower, which breathed it up again, rent asunder, as holy incense. High over the blooming field stood God's paradise, out of which the echo of its heavenly tones, in the form of a brook, flowed down to the plain; its melody wandered through all the windings of the lower paradise and the intoxicated souls plunged in their ecstasy from the flowery shore into the stream of flute-music; in the resonance of paradise all their senses expired, and the too finite soul, dissolved into a bright tear or joy, floated on upon the running waves. This flowery field rose and rose incessantly, to meet the uplifted paradise, and the heavenly air, through which it flew, swept from above downward, and its descending undulations unfolded all flowers and did not bend them. But often, in the darkest height, God passed far away above the waving meadows; then when the Infinite One veiled his infinity overhead in two clouds, the one charged with lightning, or the Eternal Truth, and the other a warm one, trickling down on everything and weeping, or the Eternal Love; then they stood arrested, the soaring meadow, the sinking ether, the echoing brook, the quivering leaf of the flower; then God gave the signal that he was passing by, and an immeasurable love constrained all souls in this lofty stillness to embrace each other, and none sank upon one, but all on all--a blissful slumber fell like a dew on the embrace. Then when they awoke out of each other's arms, lightnings flashed out of the whole field of flowers, all blossoms exhaled, all leaves sank under the drops of the warm cloud, all windings of the melodious brook rang in unison, the whole paradise gleamed with heat-lightning above them and nothing was mute but the loving souls which were too blessed...."

Gustavus awoke into a nearer world, which was a beautiful counterpart of his dreamed one; the sun was transformed into a single glowing ray, and this ray also broke off on the earth; the cloud of twilight gathered round, flowers and birds hung their drowsy heads in the dew and only the evening-wind still stirred round in the leaves and stayed up all night....

Thus do our green hours creep through our unvisited vale, they glide with an unheard, butterfly's pinion through our atmosphere, not with the buzzing wing-sheath of a chafer--joy lights upon us softly as an evening-dew and does not rattle down like a rushing rain. Our happy bath-time will refresh our spirits, our powers of work and of endurance, for a long time, forever; the green Lilienbad will remain in our fancy a green oasis, whereon, if ever the years shall have buried in deep snow all Elysian fields, the whole landscape of our joy, under its warm breath all the snow will melt and which will ever look green to us, that we may thereon, as painters do on green cloth, refresh our old eyes.... I wish you, my readers, for your old age very many such places left open, and every sick man his Lilienbad.

Were I not doing it to please the German public, I should hardly for very joy succeed in describing it. And yet I will not begin a new joy-section before Beata's birthday. This is celebrated in the little Molucca, Teidor, whither we are all invited by the Doctor; he has his country-seat on that island; the weather, too, will continue fine. This much I can easily foresee without any great prophetic talent, that the Birthday, or Teidor section, will not so much combine as fully surpass all the fine things that were ever burnt up in the Alexandrian library or mouldered in Imperial ones or have ever been kept in all others.

In the following letter inviting me to the Molucca Island, the Doctor writes me a piece of news which deserves a place here, in so far as there is use for it, and I would gladly have my section full, inasmuch as I merely transcribe.

"Professor Hoppedizel, who, except philosophizing and flogging, loves nothing so much as practical joking, will, so soon as the moon by-and-by rises later, play a new one, namely play the rogue. I found him several days ago with a long beard which he had been stiffening and straightening for himself; moreover he had concealed crowbars and chosen masks. I asked him into what redoubt he was going to steal? He said into that of Maussenbach--in short, he proposes by breaking in with a small band and instead of plundering, turning it into a joke, to drive thy Legal Chief into a theatrical and artificial fright. It were to be wished that this artistic and satirical robber-captain might be taken for a real one, and be bundled into a police-wagon with his burglar's tools and publicly marched in--not that the good Hoppedizel might be injured in the matter, but only that this stoical corsair might be brought to the rack and thereby place three persons at once in full light: first, himself, since he would confess not so much a crime as his stoical principles--secondly, the Pestilentiary or myself, since I, on the rack (as we do in all sufferings) should prescribe regard to his health--thirdly, the justiciary, or thyself, who couldst show that thou hadst thy academical criminal-sheets already--in thy trunk...."