The Carlylean Weltbild: Natural Supernaturalism

Abstract

Carlyle has many things to say about German philosophy, literature, and culture, and in his letters and writings one can trace his growing interest in and complete commitment to them. He often speaks of the effect that the German writers had on him, and it soon becomes clear that he found in their writings something that was, indeed, not doctrinal; it was something that simply struck a responsive chord in his own troubled soul. In his case, however, it provided the necessary, final link in that chain of ideas to which he had been exposed. His straightforward account is in some ways more moving than that in Sartor because it is litotic rather than hyperbolic:

As to their particular doctrines, there is nothing definite or precise to be said. … To explain them best, I can only think of the revelation, for I call it no other, that these men made to me. It was to me like the rising of a light in the darkness which lay around and threatened to swallow me up. I was then in the very midst of Wertherism, the blackness and darkness of death. (Lectures, pp. 201–2)

This, of course, is not helpful to one wanting to know exactly what these German writers said or did, especially since Carlyle goes on to emphasise Goethe’s ‘Worship of Sorrow’ and his wise silences.