The Invisible Lodge. Jean Paul

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

       Table of Contents

      This work was the forerunner (and, according to its Author's nephew and biographer, the cradle), of some of his principal subsequent Romances, especially Hesperus and Titan. "The Invisible Lodge," says Spazier, "is, in more than one sense, the Genesis of Jean Paul's poetic world and its inhabitants--the birth history of his first Romances." It is peculiarly interesting as containing, both in spirit and in incident, a good deal of Richter's own biography. It was written in 1792, when the Author was 29 years old, and is the work which decided, if not his reputation, at least his determination to make his countrymen appreciate his work and his worth. It was the first of his productions which, he felt, was somewhat munificently paid for, as it gave him the joy of bursting in upon his poor old mother and pouring some 250 dollars into her lap.

      The date of this work is the transition period in the Author's life, when (in his own words) he came out of the "vinegar manufactory," where he had concocted his "Greenland Law-suits," and "Papers of the Devil," and passed through the "honey-sour" interval which gave birth to the Idyl of the "Contented Little Schoolmaster, Wutz," into the happier and more harmonious period which began with the "Invisible Lodge."

      In this Romance, says Mrs. Lee, "the different epochs in the history of his soul are embodied." "To Ottomar he has given his dreams and aspirations; to Fenk his satire and comic humor; and in Gustavus the events of his autobiography are clothed in a poetic garment."

      A few weeks before his death, which took place in November 1825, (and of which he seems to have had a singular presentiment not long before this book was written), referring to its abrupt ending he says: "What life in the world do we see that is not interrupted and incomplete? And if we complain that a Romance is left unfinished--that it does not even inform us what came of Kunz's second courtship and Elsie's despair on the occasion--how Hans escaped the claws of the sheriff, and Faust those of Mephistopheles--still let us console ourselves with the reflection that man, in his present existence, sees nothing on any side but knots, that only beyond his grave lie the solutions, and that all History is to him an unfinished Romance.

      "Baireuth, Oct. 1825."

      On the 14th of the month following, the hand that penned these lines was cold in death. C. T. B.

      Newport, Oct. 1882.