'The pioneer of non-fiction prose as the vehicle for carrying ideas to a mass audience.' - G B Tennyson
In the soundproof study.
For present-day readers, Carlyle's style presents a formidable barrier. It seems mannered, is full of dated allusions, and steeped in Biblical language and scriptural references ill-understood today. His use of German constructions is off-putting, and his whole manner, sometimes hectoring and dogmatic, sometimes wild and extravagant, is an obstacle to the casual reader. Thackeray, reviewing French Revolution on its first appearance, said:
'Never did a man's style so mar his subject and dim his genius. It is stiff, short, rugged, it abounds with Germanisms and Latinisms, strange epithets, and choking double words.' Yet, with perseverance, understanding follows, and things perceived first as faults are seen to be part of his originality, and powerful innovations in English prose.
Despite his criticisms Thackeray was impressed, and Thoreau thought his style stemmed from earlier models:
'If you would know where many of these obnoxious Carlyleisms and Germanisms come from, read the best of Milton's prose, read the speeches of Cromwell......For fluency and skill in the use of the English tongue, he is a master unrivalled.' - Thoreau.
Carlyle himself was well aware of the problems his style caused. He claimed that it came from his father's mode of speech, and this was confirmed by those who had met his father. He defended his methods vigorously when his close friend, Sterling, made criticisms:
'If one has thoughts not hitherto uttered in English books, I see nothing for it but you must use words not found there, must make words, with moderation and discretion of course......... With whole ragged battalions of Scott's novel Scotch, with Irish, German, French, and even newspaper Cockney .... storming in on us, and the whole structure of our Johnsonian English breaking up from its foundations, revolution there is visible as everywhere else'. - Carlyle, letter to Sterling, 1835.
From the beginning, Carlyle's literary style caused controversy. It is seen in extreme form in Sartor and The French Revolution, examples of which are given below, and elsewhere when he is at his most prophetic and sage-like. In his early essays he wrote plainer, almost 18th century prose, and throughout his life his voluminous correspondence, especially to his wife and family, shows that he was capable of straightforward, unadorned writing.
The style is the man, and many remarked during his lifetime that his writings bore a close resemblance to his conversation, to the long monologues that astounded literary London, and to his public lectures. Even the strange, detailed punctuation makes more sense when considered as a guide to reading the text aloud.
But Carlyle was not the only Victorian sage, and John Holloway's The Victorian Sage (1953), gives a detailed and convincing analysis of the methods and language of sages of the period, including, besides Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, Newman, George Eliot, Disraeli, and Thomas Hardy. He shows that their styles have features in common, that the sage's task involves modifying the reader's perception, and that this is accomplished by artistry with words. The sage does not rely on logical argument, but appeals more to the imagination, expressing ideas concretely with specific examples, and using much figurative language, with similes and metaphors. He illustrates this convincingly in Carlyle's case, but believes that 'Carlyle's wild imagery and distorted meanings are less irresponsible than they seem at first reading.' He points out Carlyle's constant dogmatism, his certainty about having answers, the succession of arbitrary and unproved assertions, the sweeping gestures, and the constant uncertainty about meaning, especially in Sartor. As J S Mill pointed out, Carlyle's calls for action, not thought, were emotional and anti-intellectual.
Sample Passages
Carlyle's style is cumulative and does not lend itself to short extracts, but two short passages will illustrate many of the points made below. First, from Sartor Resartus and then from The French Revolution:
'For long years,' writes Teufelsdroeckh, ' had the poor Hebrew, in this Egypt of an Auscultatorship, painfully toiled, baking bricks without stubble, before ever the question once struck him with entire force: For What? - Beym Himmel! For Food and Warmth! And are Food and Warmth nowhere else, in the whole wide Universe, discoverable? - Come of it what might, I resolved to try.'
'Ye have roused her, then, ye Emigrants and Despots of the world; France is roused! Long have ye been lecturing and tutoring this poor Nation, like cruel uncalled-for pedagogues, shaking over her your ferulas of fire and steel: it is long that ye have pricked and filliped and affrighted her, there as she sat helpless in her dead cerements of a Constitution, you gathering in on her from all lands, with your armaments and plots, your invadings and truculent bullyings; - and lo now, ye have pricked her to the quick, and she is up, and her blood is up, the dead cerements are rent into cobwebs, and she fronts you in that terrible strength of Nature, which no man has measured, which goes down to Madness and Tophet: see now how ye will deal with her.'
Carlyle is instantly identifiable by a number of characteristics, and is easy to parody - perhaps the best is by James Joyce in the Oxen of the Sun chapter of Ulysses. These characteristics include:
'Prodigious influence of metaphors! Never saw it until lately!' - Carlyle - Journal.
Carlyle uses metaphor extensively and extendedly as one of his main literary devices. Fire, and the Phoenix rising from its ashes, is a favourite, as are metaphors of water, and of nature.
From the present point of view the frequency of medical and anatomical metaphors, especially relating specifically to the gastro-intestinal system, is interesting, and is common throughout his writing career
As an example, medical metaphors of disease abound in Past and Present. They include 'foul elephantine leprosy', 'social gangrene', 'paralysis of industry', 'social malady', and more extended metaphors such as:
'Fatal paralysis spreads inwards, from the extremities, in St Ives workhouses, in Stockport cellars, through all limbs, as if towards the heart itself'. He castigates the Greatest-Happiness Principle as: 'This is verily the plague-spot; centre of the universal Social Gangrene, threatening all things with frightful death.'
Excretory and Bowel Metaphors.
Writing of the the eighteenth century in his Essay on Scott, an early work, he describes it as: 'the sickliest of recorded ages, when British Literature lay all puking and sprawling in Wertherism, Byronism, and other Sentimentalism tearful or spasmodic (fruit of internal wind).'
And in his journal many years later, while writing Frederick,: '...the problem is to burn away the immense dung heap of the eighteenth century.'
In Sartor eating is frequently used as a symbol for evil, and the stomach as the antithesis of the Soul:
'With Stupidity and sound Digestion man may front much. But what, in these dull unimaginative days, are the terrors of Conscience to the diseases of the Liver! Not on Morality, but on Cookery let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our fryingpan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things which he has provided for the Elect!'
Carlyle even personifies his bowel interests by introducing a character called Count Zaehdarm - Toughgut!
Sartor Resartus is one long metaphor - a clothes philosophy; and the clothes metaphor is applied to every area of human life at length and with great humour and ingenuity. When Carlyle's invented German philosopher, Professor Teufelsdroeckh (Devil's Dung) turns to language, he has this to say:
'Language is called the Garment of Thought; however, it should rather be, Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, of Thought. I said that Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment; and does she not? Metaphors are her stuff: examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognised as such, or no longer recognised; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colourless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-garment, Language, - then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues and living integuments. .......some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others again glow in the flesh of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own case) not without an
apoplectic tendency.'
The passage shows that Carlyle is thoroughly aware of his stylistic innovations, especially his extensive use of metaphor. Apart from its content, it illustrates again most of the style features listed earlier: the
portmanteau words, capitalisation, anatomical and medical metaphors, unusual coinages (eg adust), repetition, and the detailed use of punctuation.
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