The Pictures; The Betrothing: Novels

by Ludwig Tieck

"Oh! how true!" sighed the bookseller, letting his tears flow without restraint. "Words," said the Puritan, "which the common herd would call golden."

"Were not drinking," proceeded Eulenböck, "an art and a science, there would only need to be a single beverage on earth, as the innocent element, water, already plays that part. But the spirit of nature, shifting and sporting with a lovely grace, infuses itself here and there into the vine, and amidst wondrous struggles lets itself be strained and refined, in order to descend along the magic channel of the palate into our inmost recesses, and there to rouse all our noblest energies out of the torpor and lethargy of their primitive chaos. 'See, there goes the sot!' Oh! my friends, such too were the railings and jeers of those who had not been initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries. With this golden and purple tide there rolls and spreads within us a sea of harmony, and the rising dawn draws a melody from the old statue of Memnon, which till then had stood voiceless in the gloom of night. Through blood and brain courses and speeds exultingly the gentle call: 'the spring is come!' Then all the little spirits feel the sweet waves, and creep with laughing eyes out of their dark corners; they stretch their delicate little crystal limbs, and plunge to bathe in the wine-flood, and plash and shoot, and rise quivering out again, and shake their sparkling spirits' wings, that, as they rustle, the clear drops fall from the little plumes. They run about and meet each other, and kiss a joyous life one from the other's lips. Still closer, still brighter grows the throng, more and more melodious their lispings; then with garlands and solemn triumph they lead the Genius along, who with his dark eyes can hardly peep through his luxuriant flower-wreaths. Now the man is conscious of infinity, immortality; he sees and feels the myriads of spirits within him, and takes pleasure in their frolics. What is one to say then of the vulgar souls, who cry after a man: 'look, the fellow is drunk.' What thinkest thou, honest Crocodile?"

The pale man of tears stretched forth his hand to him, and said; "Ah! my dear friend, the folks are right, and you are right, and the whole world is right. What you have rolled along in such a prophetic strain surpasses my comprehension, but I am blest in my deep emotion. When people go to the play, to weep for their money, it seems to me quite absurd; let others feel elevated by lofty sentiments and actions, I do not understand it; yet, when such good wine goes into me, it operates wonderfully, so that every thing, every thing, let men say what they will, keep silence or laugh, resolves itself with me into the sweetest emotion. My heart, see you, is ready to break with pleasure; I could fold all things, were it even your lame poodle, in my arms. But my eyes suffer under it, and the doctor wanted on that account to forbid me drinking. But this very thought is the most affecting of all ideas to me; I could weep over it for days together: and so he was obliged to recall this direction."

"The more I drink," said the Puritan, "the more I hate the stuff which you have been palavering there, Eulenböck, and the more senseless it appears to me. Lies and tricks! It is almost as silly as to sing over one's liquor the songs that are made for the purpose. Every word in them is a falsehood. When a man begins to compare one object with another, he lies directly. 'The dawn strews roses.' Can there be any thing more silly? 'The sun sinks into the sea.' Stuff! 'The wine glows with purple hue.' Foolery! 'The morning wakes.' There is no morning, how can it sleep? It is nothing but the hour when the sun rises. Plague! The sun does not rise, that too is nonsense and poetry. Oh! if I had but my will with language, and might properly scour and sweep it! O damnation! Sweep! In this lying world, one cannot help talking nonsense!"

"Do not be put out, honest man," said Eulenböck: "your virtue means well, and if you take a different view of the matter from mine, you at least drink the same wine, and almost as much as I do myself. Practice unites us, if theory separates us. Who understands himself nowadays? That is no longer the question even. I would only add one remark, though it be not connected with what I was saying before, that the mode in which men and physicians consider the process of nutrition and assimilation, as it is called, appears to me extremely silly. The oak grows out of its acorn, and the fig produces the fig-tree; and though they require air, water and earth, yet these are not properly the elements out of which they grow. In like manner nourishment only awakens in us our powers and our growth, but does not produce them; it gives the possibility, but not the thing, and man sprouts out of himself like a plant. It is a stupid notion to believe that wine produces immediately of itself all the operations which we ascribe to it; no, as I was saying, its scent and breath only awaken the qualities which are dormant in us. Now rush forth powers, feelings and transports, when they are steeped in its waves. Do you suppose then that throughout the whole range of art and science the case is otherwise? I need not propound anew the old Platonic idea. Raphael and Correggio and Titian do but rouse my own self that slumbers in forgetfulness, and though the greatest genius, the deepest feeling of art, cannot, with all their imagination, invent the images which are presented to them by the great masters, yet these works themselves do but awaken old reminiscences. Hence too the thirst after new intellectual enjoyments, which else would not be commendable; hence the wish to discover the unknown, to produce the original, which otherwise were senseless. For we have a presentiment of the infinity of knowledge within us, that prophetic mirror of eternity, and of what this eternity may become to us, an incessant increase of knowledge, that collects itself in the centre of a celestial tranquillity, and hence extends to new regions. And for this very reason, my dear brother topers, there must be a multitude and a variety of wines."

"And which do you prefer?" asked Dietrich. "Is there not in this as in other things, the classical and perfect, the modern and trivial, the mannered and affected, the lovely old and simply plain, the hearty and the emptily bombastic?"

"Youngster," said the old man, "this question is too complicated: it pre-supposes immense experience, historical survey, rejection of prejudice, and a taste matured in all directions, one that can only be fixed and freed by length of years, continued labour and indefatigable study, as well as the instruments required for them, which are not in every man's hands. A few encyclopedical remarks will suffice. Almost every wine has its good qualities, almost all deserve to be known. If in our country the Neckar exists scarcely for any purpose but to quench the thirst, the Würzburger now rises to the character of a generous wine, and the various superior sorts of Rhenish do not admit of being hastily characterized. You have had them before you, and tasted them. Duly to celebrate these noble streams, from the light Laubenheimer to the strong Nierensteiner, the mighty Rüdesheimer and the profound Hochheimer, with all their kindred floods, is a task to which there belongs more than the tongue of a Redi, who in his Tuscan Dithyrambic has raved but indifferently. These spirits pass down the palate pure and clear, refreshing the sense and refining the faculties. If I should illustrate them, it would be by the calm maturity of first-rate writers,--warmth and richness, without extravagance of fancy and dreaming allegory. What is the hotter Burgundy to him who can bear it? It descends into us like immediate inspiration; heavy, sanguine and violent, it rouses our spirits. The wine of Bourdeaux, on the other hand, is cheerful, loquacious; enlivens, but does not inspire. More luxuriant and quaint are the creations of Provence and the poetical Languedoc. Then comes hot Spain, with its Sherries and right Malaga, and the glowing wines of Valencia. Here the wine-stream, as we taste it, transforms itself upon our palate into a globular shape, which rounds and widens more and more, and in Tokay and St. Georgen-Ausbruch it assumes this appearance still more substantially and emphatically. How are mouth and palate and the whole sense of pleasure filled by a single drop of the most generous Cape wine! These wines the connoisseur must only sip and palate, and not drink like our noble Rhenish. What am I to say of you, ye sweetest growths of Italy, and particularly of Tuscany, thou most spirited Monte-Fiascone, thou truly melting Monte-Pulciano? Well, taste then, my friends, and understand me! But thee I could not produce, thee, king of all wines, thee, roseate Aleatico, flower and essence of all the spirit of wine, milk and wine, bloom and sweetness, fire and softness together! This curiosity is not to be drunk, tasted, sipped, or palated; but the man who is blest with it unfolds a new organ, which may not be described to the ignorant and sober."--Here he broke off with emotion, and dried his eyes.

"So then my presentiment was right," cried Dietrich with enthusiasm: "this is in the realm of wine, what old Eyck or Hemling, perhaps too brother Giovanni di Fiesole, are among painters. Such is the relish of that sweetly moving and deep colouring, which without shade is still so true, without white so dazzling and thrilling. So does the purple of their drapery satiate and intoxicate, and so is its fire allayed and softened by the mild blue, the fancy breeding violet. All is one, and harmonizes in our souls."

"Except Eulenböck's nose," cried the librarian, quite drunk: "that has no touch of scarlet, no transitions in its tones, to blend it with the face; the dark red purple roasts in its magic kitchen, as the beet-root waxes red under ground in the realms of damp night, though quite secluded from the sun. Can this excrescence belong to the life? Can the god of wine so have pampered it? Never! It is a clumsy shell, an ugly case for malice and lies."

"Puffy emptiness," cried the Bookseller, "brittle splendour, frail mortality! And there it stands, curved and tottering on the undermined face, so that with its bulk it may soon press down the whole man in ruins. Man! whence didst get this unconscionably wry nose?"