Sartor Resartus (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

`Sartor Resartus' was Carlyle's first book, published in 1834, and his only work of fiction. It's actually a pretend critical study of a fake book on clothes by Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, Professor of Allerley-Wissenschaft at Weissnichtwo University in Germany. Teufelsdrockh's ideas are half-mad, half-inspired, and presented in many excerpts from his work. The narrator is a rather obtuse individual, a scholar of German wishing to bring Teufelsdrockh the recogniton he deserves.

The best of the three sections of the book is, in my opinion, the second, which provides a biography of Teufelsdrockh using, supposedly, the Professor's own notes. Teufelsdrockh's life story, his existential angst and spiritual awakening, are actually very close to Carlyle's own, and even though it's often presented semi-comically, there are lots of really memorable passages, particularly on the despair and cosmic loneliness of the Professor's early adulthood, such as:
To me the universe was all void of life, or purpose, of volition, even of hostility: it was one huge, dead immeasurable steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb.
Or:
I lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not what: it seemed as if all things in the Heavens above and the Earth below would hurt me, as if the Heavens and the Earth were but the jaws of a devouring monster, wherein I, palpitating, waited to be devoured.

`Sartor Resartus' was hugely influential in 19th century intellectual circles. The introduction gives a quote from George Eliot: `There is hardly a superior or active mind of this generation that has not been modified by Carlyle's writing... many of the men who have the least agreement with his opinions are those to whom the reading of Sartor Resartus was an epoch in the history of their minds.' It's not really a novel, it's more about ideas, wit, and philosophizing on the human condition than characters or narrative progression. It was ahead of its time, and brings to mind 20th century books like Flann O'Brien's `At Swim-Two-Birds' and Nabokov's `Pale Fire'. It's a deeply intelligent and profoundly serious book, even when it seems to be mocking itself. Not for everyone, but if you like books such as the two above mentioned you'll appreciate this early and somewhat unheralded (nowadays) example of the 'metafiction'.

This Oxford edition also includes an introduction, notes, glossary, and some interesting appendices.

In the final chapter of Sartor Resartus, the anonymous editor asks; "How could a man occasionally of keen insight, not without keen sense of propriety, who had real Thoughts to communicate, resolve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on the absurd?" This is a question which the reader, possibly confounded and stimulated in equal measure, will redirect in reference to the author when, a short while later, he or she finishes this bizarre work.

Sartor Resartus ("the tailor re-tailored") is a Philosophical novel (emphatically obeying this precedence) in which the abovementioned narrator introduces, nominally annotates, and concludes the life and more so the opinions of the singular Diogenes Tuefelsdröckh, university Professor and author of a text concerning the Philosophy of Clothes (both he and his work are fictional, but are presented as reality and offered to English speakers for the first time by the editor). Herr Tuefelsdröckh is a man of unknown genealogy, being deposited at the doorstep of his humble foster parents in a basket carrying his name (the (supposedly anti-) Christian name echoing the Greek tub-dwelling Cynic, the surname translating; "devil's dung"), a man who will cry, laugh, and love but once in his sequestered and thoughtful existence. The great body of the book is composed of quotations from Tuefelsdröckh's magnum opus and elsewhere in his correspondence. We follow him in sorrow and transcendence, through "Baphometic Fire-Baptism" and "Phoenix Death-Birth", and receive his opinions of the slightest and loftiest subjects concerning existence, self and surroundings. As the previous reviewer suggests, the second of the three books which constitute the novel is well located, as it is here that we find the essential chapters (including the famous; Everlasting Yea and Everlasting No) which document our Professor's spiritual agony and rebirth.

I would recommend reading Froude's masterful 'Thomas Carlyle: A History of the First Forty Years of His Life' in order to best appreciate the depth of the mental, physical, and metaphysical turmoil experienced by Carlyle himself as a young man, which culminated in his own highly individual conversion, or throwing of the devil off his back, and dedication to apply the genius he was excessively endowed with. It will further enable you to recognise various other semi-autobiographical depictions in Sartor. It is important to understand that this is the great man prior to his universal acknowledgement as such; a man who has little to show for his talents (a translation, the odd essay and biography), who has wandered and wondered in rags and alone (as he perhaps always would). But an individual who has read (perhaps) more widely than any man of his age in Europe (and I daresay, therefore, the world), and whose genius is already long established as obvious by any who have ever encountered him.

I think, compared to his breathtaking 'French Revolution' (truly among the great histories in the English language), this is unattractive and at times laborious to read. What Carlyle is communicating is demanding, and some will undoubtedly find it dense, which is not surprising bearing in mind the level and strangeness of his intellect. It betrays too vividly the negative features both of his complex, contradictory personality (here, his scorn for mankind is far more evident than his sympathy) and his prose (although he is not yet inventing words, and "Carlylelese" is not yet epitomized) is verbose, if not bombastic. His internal contradiction is somewhat touchable in his writing, and is projected onto his world-view. It is often difficult to tell when Carlyle (via Tuefelsdröckh) is in earnest, and, if he is, some of the ideas expressed are repellent (e.g. the segment on the repression of population, his derisive descriptions of the Irish (sadly, repeated elsewhere in his writings)). Despite these factors, I wholeheartedly believe that this book deserves to be read, and that the fortunes we gain in the reading are likely in accordance to our pains. Most chapters in this book contain at least one shard of startling profundity.

Sartor Resartus is, like its author, detached from any trend, school, or expectation, above both convention and reform. His sardonic assaults on everything from religious delusion to dandyism can be tiresome, but are purposed by a drive for man to commit not only to thinking, but to action. Many eminent Victorian writers regarded reading Sartor as a key moment in their intellectual development, and it is possible you will do the same. You might not enjoy the process of reading the book, but if it compels you to "do the duty which lies nearest thee", and contribute to the exquisite and eternal garment of truth and good, how profited you shall be!