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Melissa
Lowery
EG730
Victorian Fiction
September
7, 2000
Carlyle and Two Treatments of War
Thomas Carlyle began publishing Sartor Resartus in serialized form in
the English periodical Fraser’s in
1833. This period in Great Britain was
a turbulent one – riots broke out in response to legislation and the kingdom at
large was experiencing the growing pains of the Industrial Revolution. The Arts and Sciences were also exhibiting
growing pains. The Romantic sentiments
on Nature in the 18th century were falling short of the needs of
modern man and urbanized society.
Arriving in the midst of such upheaval, Sartor defies categorization.
It is both Romantic with its search for individual knowledge and concern
with Nature, and it concerns itself with social consciousness, one element that
defines Victorianism. This dichotomy is
evidenced in the few paragraphs Carlyle devotes to discussion of war.
Certainly Carlyle is not the first to denounce war, but in sampling these brief passages the reader can clearly see both Romantic and Victorian attitudes at work. The at once epic and personal account of war between Germany and its foes through five hundred years harkens back to the Romantic tradition. Carlyle focuses on individual plights (Konig Ottokar, Rodolf, Kaiser Franz) and bemoans the effect of war on Nature (174). Nature did not intend, he notes, for her meadows to become battlefields or her hills to become strongholds for would-be conquerors (173-174). Yet, for all that men misuse her, Nature takes the carnage and offal of war and turns it into nourishment to replenish herself eventually covering up all traces of violence while man continues to destroy man (174). It is after this almost idyllic passage, written in flowing style, that the reader is hit with blunt social consciousness.
Sartor
is a convoluted, layered web of a book, so the next paragraph is striking in
its lucidity and logic. Clearly Carlyle
wishes for all readers to understand his message. It is Carlyle’s voice that is heard in this passage, although
Teufelsdrockh is still being quoted as he was above. Carlyle begins by telling readers, perhaps mired in the metaphors
and artful prose of previous paragraphs, his intent: “What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net-purport
and upshot of war?” (174). He drops his
German affectations and elaborate style and proceeds to speak plainly in that
“unofficial language.”
Carlyle’s first comment is on the
intelligence of those who fight, those villagers from “Dumdrudge” (174). Coining words is not new to Carlyle; Sartor is rife with words never before
seen in print or heard in speech. In
this case, the reference is obvious:
those sent forth to fight are of questionable intelligence (“dum”) and
are not considered valuable for anything other than foot soldiering by their
government (“drudge”). Nevertheless,
these individuals are valuable to the village that has “at her own expense,. .
. suckled and nursed them” (174). This
social commentary is timely, coming as it does during labor riots and attempts
to unionize in Industrial Britain. A
government who cares not for its people until such time as they are needed for
war is not a kind or even efficient government. Efficiency is another of Carlyle’s methods for stating his case,
perhaps hoping government will understand if he uses terms familiar to
Parliaments and financial committees everywhere.
To take these draftees from their
village that has thus far cared for them, then ship them, “at the public
charges,” to a base where they must be fed and clothed at government expense is
inefficient, Carlyle implies (174-175).
Grosser still is the inefficiency of the battlefield. These men are sent to a location where they
meet their counterparts – equal but for nationality and having no quarrel with
each other – to promptly kill and be killed.
If the loss of human life alone is not enough to cause government to
blanch, the inefficiency of such Carlyle hopes will make government pause. For now “. . . in place of sixty brisk
useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses” (175). He then satirizes this practice of war by
predicting future disagreements shall be settled more efficiently by the offended
parties seeing who can outlast the other in the matter of inhaling secondhand
smoke (175). A social wake up call.
Critics and scholars have struggled
to categorize Carlyle for decades, but he refuses to fit neatly in any one (or
even two) category. He freely moves
from Romantic to Victorian, as seen in his diatribe on war. By beginning with the Romantic focus on
Nature and how war affects her, Carlyle can sharply contrast the newer social
element of Victorianism. The Romantic
tendency to concern itself with things of Nature rather than Man seems almost
ridiculous as Carlyle bluntly criticizes governments sending men out to be
slaughtered over a falling out. This
passage is just two paragraphs, but the dichotomy of style and philosophy is
stronger for its lack of length.
Carlyle, Thomas. Sartor Resartus. Ed. Charles Frederick Harrold. New York:
The Odyssey Press: 1937.