Hoffman: works, a complete list, analysis and analysis of books, a brief biography of the writer and interesting life facts. Hoffmann - scary tales under a colored lampshade What did this hoffman write
Hoffmann Ernst Theodor Amadeus(1776-1822) - German writer, composer and artist of a romantic direction, who gained fame thanks to fairy tales that combine mysticism with reality and reflect the grotesque and tragic sides of human nature. The most famous fairy tales of Hoffmann:, and many other fairy tales for children.
Biography of Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann
Hoffmann Ernst Theodor Amadeus(1776-1822) - - German writer, composer and artist of the romantic direction, who gained fame thanks to stories that combine mysticism with reality and reflect the grotesque and tragic sides of human nature.
One of the brightest talents of the 19th century, a romantic of the second stage, which influenced the writers of subsequent literary eras up to the present.
The future writer was born on January 24, 1776 in Königsberg in the family of a lawyer, studied law and worked in various institutions, but did not make a career: the world of officials and activities related to writing papers could not attract an intelligent, ironic and widely gifted person.
The beginning of Hoffmann's independent life coincided with the Napoleonic wars and the occupation of Germany. While working in Warsaw, he witnessed her capture by the French. Their own material disorder was superimposed on the tragedy of the entire state, which gave rise to a split and a tragic-ironic perception of the world.
Discord with his wife and hopeless love for his student, who was younger than him - a married man - by 20 years, increased the feeling of alienation in the world of philistines. Feeling for Julia Mark, that was the name of the girl he loved, formed the basis of the most exalted female images of his works.
Hoffmann's circle of acquaintances included the romantic writers Fouquet, Chamisso, Brentano, and the famous actor L. Devrient. Hoffmann owns several operas and ballets, the most significant of which are "Ondine", written on the plot of "Ondine" by Fouquet, and musical accompaniment to the grotesque "Merry Musicians" by Brentano.
The beginning of Hoffmann's literary activity falls on 1808-1813. - the period of his life in Bamberg, where he was a conductor at the local theater and gave music lessons. The first short story-tale "Cavalier Gluck" is dedicated to the personality of the composer who is especially revered by him, the name of the artist is included in the title of the first collection - "Fantasy in the manner of Callot" (1814-1815).
Among the most famous works of Hoffmann are the short story "The Golden Pot", the fairy tale "Little Tsakhes, nicknamed Zinnober", the collections "Night Stories", "The Serapion Brothers", the novels "Worldly Views of the Cat Murr", "Devil's Elixir".
S. Shlapoberskaya.
Tale and life in E.-T. -BUT. Hoffmann
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann. Novels
Moscow "Fiction", 1983
http://gofman.krossw.ru/html/shlapoberskaya-skazka-ls_1.html
The literary life of Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann was short: in 1814, the first book of his stories, “Fantasy in the manner of Callot”, was published enthusiastically by the German reading public, and in 1822 the writer, who had long suffered from a serious illness, died. By this time, Hoffmann was read and revered not only in Germany; in the 1920s and 1930s his short stories, fairy tales, and novels were translated in France and England; in 1822, the journal Library for Reading published Hoffmann's short story The Scuderi Maiden in Russian. The posthumous fame of this remarkable writer outlived him for a long time, and although there were periods of decline in it (especially in Hoffmann's homeland, in Germany), today, one hundred and sixty years after his death, a wave of interest in Hoffmann has risen again, he has again become one of the most widely read German authors of the 19th century, his works are published and reprinted, and the scientific Hoffmannian is replenished with new works. None of the German romantic writers, among whom Hoffmann belonged, received such truly world recognition.
Romanticism originated in Germany at the end of the 18th century as a literary and philosophical movement and gradually embraced other areas of spiritual life - painting, music, and even science. At an early stage of the movement, its initiators - the brothers Schlegel, Schelling, Tiek, Novalis - were filled with enthusiasm caused by the revolutionary events in France, the hope for a radical renewal of the world. This enthusiasm and this hope gave birth to Schelling's dialectical natural philosophy - the doctrine of living, ever-changing nature, and the romantics' faith in the infinite possibilities of man, and the call for the destruction of canons and conventions that restrict his personal and creative freedom. However, over the years, in the works of romantic writers and thinkers, the motives of the impracticability of the ideal, the desire to escape from reality, from the present into the realm of dreams and fantasy, into the world of the irretrievable past, sound more and more strongly. Romantics yearn for the lost golden age of humanity, for the broken harmony between man and nature. The collapse of the illusions associated with the French Revolution, the failed reign of reason and justice are tragically perceived by them as the victory of world evil in its eternal struggle with good. German romanticism of the first quarter of the 19th century is a complex and contradictory phenomenon, and yet one can single out a common feature in it - the rejection of the new, bourgeois world order, new forms of slavery and humiliation of the individual. The conditions of Germany at that time, with its petty-princely absolutism and the atmosphere of social stagnation, where these new forms ugly side by side with the old ones, arouse in romantics an aversion to reality and to any social practice. In contrast to a wretched and inert life, they create in their works a special poetic world that has a true “inner” reality for them, while the external reality appears to them as dark chaos, the arbitrariness of incomprehensible fatal forces. The abyss between the two worlds - ideal and real - is insurmountable for a romantic, only irony - a free game of the mind, a prism through which everything that exists is seen by the artist in any refraction he pleases, is able to throw a bridge from one side to the other. The German “philistine” layman standing on this side of the abyss is the object of their contempt and ridicule; To his selfishness and lack of spirituality, to his petty-bourgeois morality, they oppose selfless service to art, the cult of nature, beauty and love. The hero of romantic literature becomes a poet, musician, artist, "wandering enthusiast" with a childishly naive soul, rushing around the world in search of an ideal.
Hoffmann is sometimes called a romantic realist. Having appeared in literature later than both the older - "Jenian" and younger - "Heidelberg" romantics, he in his own way translated their views on the world and their artistic experience. The feeling of the duality of being, the painful discord between the ideal and reality pervades all his work, however, unlike most of his fellows, he never loses sight of earthly reality and, probably, could say about himself in the words of the early romantic Wackenroder: “... in spite of all the efforts of our spiritual wings, it is impossible to tear ourselves away from the earth: it forcibly draws us to itself, and we again plop down into the most vulgar human thicket. "The vulgar thick of people" Hoffmann watched very closely; not speculatively, but from his own bitter experience, he comprehended the full depth of the conflict between art and life, which especially worried the romantics. A multi-talented artist, with rare insight, he caught the real vices and contradictions of his time and captured them in the enduring creations of his imagination.
The story of Hoffmann's life is the story of an unceasing struggle for a piece of bread, for finding himself in art, for his dignity as a person and an artist. Echoes of this struggle are full of his works.
Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann, who later changed his third name to Amadeus, in honor of Mozart's favorite composer, was born in 1776 in Königsberg, the son of a lawyer. His parents separated when he was in his third year. Hoffmann grew up in his mother's family, guarded by his uncle, Otto Wilhelm Dörfer, also a lawyer. In the Dörfer house, everyone gradually played music, Hoffmann also began to teach music, for which they invited the cathedral organist Podbelsky. The boy showed extraordinary abilities and soon began to compose small pieces of music; He also studied drawing, and also not without success. However, with the obvious inclination of the young Hoffmann to art, the family, where all the men were lawyers, chose the same profession for him in advance. At school, and then at the university, where Hoffmann entered in 1792, he became friends with Theodor Gippel, the nephew of the then famous humorist Theodor Gottlieb Gippel - communication with him did not go unnoticed for Hoffmann. After graduating from the university and after a short practice in the court of the city of Glogau (Glogow), Hoffmann travels to Berlin, where he successfully passes the exam for the rank of assessor and is assigned to Poznan. Subsequently, he will prove himself as an excellent musician - composer, conductor, singer, as a talented artist - draftsman and decorator, as an outstanding writer; but he was also a knowledgeable and efficient lawyer. Possessing a great capacity for work, this amazing person did not treat any of his activities carelessly and did nothing half-heartedly. In 1802, a scandal erupted in Poznan: Hoffmann drew a caricature of a Prussian general, a rude martinet who despised civilians; he complained to the king. Hoffmann was transferred, or rather exiled, to Plock, a small Polish town, which in 1793 went to Prussia. Shortly before his departure, he married Michalina Tshtsinskaya-Rorer, who was to share with him all the hardships of his unsettled, wandering life. The monotonous existence in Plock, a remote province far from art, oppresses Hoffmann. He writes in his diary: “The Muse disappeared. Archival dust obscures before me any prospect of the future. And yet the years spent in Plock are not wasted: Hoffmann reads a lot - his cousin sends him magazines and books from Berlin; Wigleb's book, The Teaching of Natural Magic and All Kinds of Entertaining and Useful Tricks, which was popular in those years, falls into his hands, from which he will draw some ideas for his future stories; his first literary experiments also belong to this time.
In 1804, Hoffmann managed to transfer to Warsaw. Here he devotes all his leisure time to music, draws closer to the theater, achieves the staging of several of his musical stage works, paints the concert hall with frescoes. The beginning of his friendship with Julius Eduard Gitzig, a lawyer and lover of literature, dates back to the Warsaw period of Hoffmann's life. Gitzig, the future biographer of Hoffmann, introduces him to the works of the Romantics, to their aesthetic theories. November 28, 1806 Warsaw is occupied by Napoleonic troops, the Prussian administration is dissolved - Hoffmann is free and can devote himself to art, but is deprived of a livelihood. He is forced to send his wife and one-year-old daughter to Poznan, to relatives, because he has nothing to support them. He himself goes to Berlin, but even there he survives only by odd jobs, until he receives an offer to take the place of bandmaster at the Bamberg Theater.
The years spent by Hoffmann in the ancient Bavarian city of Bamberg (1808 - 1813) are the heyday of his musical and creative and musical and pedagogical activity. At this time, his collaboration with the Leipzig "General Musical Gazette" begins, where he publishes articles on music and publishes his first "musical novel" "Cavalier Gluck" (1809). Staying in Bamberg is marked by one of the most profound and tragic experiences of Hoffmann - a hopeless love for his young student Julia Mark. Julia was pretty, artistic and had a charming voice. In the images of the singers that Hoffmann will create later, her features will be visible. The prudent consul Mark married off her daughter to a wealthy Hamburg businessman. Julia's marriage and her departure from Bamberg were a heavy blow for Hoffmann. In a few years he will write the novel Elixirs of the Devil; the scene where the sinful monk Medard unexpectedly witnesses the tonsure of his passionately beloved Aurelius, the description of his torments at the thought that his beloved is being separated from him forever, will remain one of the most penetrating and tragic pages of world literature. In the difficult days of parting with Julia, the novel "Don Juan" poured out from the pen of Hoffmann. The image of the “mad musician”, bandmaster and composer Johannes Kreisler, the second “I” of Hoffmann himself, the confidant of his dearest thoughts and feelings, an image that will accompany Hoffmann throughout his entire literary career, was also born in Bamberg, where Hoffmann knew all the bitterness of the fate of the artist, forced to serve the tribal and monetary nobility. He conceives a book of short stories, "Fantasy in the manner of Callot", which Kunz, a Bamberg wine and bookseller, volunteered to publish. An outstanding draftsman himself, Hoffmann highly appreciated the caustic and elegant drawings - “capriccio” of the 17th-century French graphic artist Jacques Callot, and since his own stories were also very caustic and bizarre, he was attracted by the idea of likening them to the creations of the French master.
The next stations on Hoffmann's life path are Dresden, Leipzig and again Berlin. He accepts the offer of the impresario of the Seconda Opera House, whose troupe played alternately in Leipzig and Dresden, to take the place of conductor, and in the spring of 1813 he leaves Bamberg. Now Hoffmann devotes more and more time and energy to literature. In a letter to Kunz dated August 19, 1813, he writes: “It is not surprising that in our gloomy, unfortunate time, when a person barely survives from day to day and still has to rejoice in it, writing has so fascinated me - it seems to me that a wonderful kingdom that is born from my inner world and, taking on flesh, separates me from the outer world.
In the outer world, which closely surrounded Hoffmann, the war was still raging at that time: the remnants of the Napoleonic army defeated in Russia fought fiercely in Saxony. “Hoffmann witnessed the bloody battles on the banks of the Elbe and the siege of Dresden. He leaves for Leipzig and, trying to get rid of difficult impressions, writes "The Golden Pot - a fairy tale from modern times." Work with Seconda did not go smoothly, once Hoffmann quarreled with him during the performance and was refused a place. He asks Gippel, who has become a major Prussian official, to get him a position in the Ministry of Justice, and in the fall of 1814 he moves to Berlin. In the Prussian capital, Hoffmann spends the last years of his life, unusually fruitful for his literary work. Here he formed a circle of friends and like-minded people, among them writers - Friedrich de la Motte Fouquet, Adelbert Chamisso, actor Ludwig Devrient. One after another, his books are published: the novel "Devil's Elixirs" (1816), the collection "Night Stories" (1817), the fairy tale story "Little Tsakhes, nicknamed Zinnober" (1819), "The Serapion Brothers" - a cycle of stories, combined, like the Decameron by Boccaccio, with a plot frame (1819-1821), the unfinished novel The Worldly Views of the Cat Murr, coupled with fragments of the biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler, accidentally surviving in waste paper sheets (1819-1821), the fairy tale story The Lord of the Fleas (1822 ).
The political reaction that reigned in Europe after 1814 overshadowed the last years of the writer's life. Appointed to a special commission investigating the cases of the so-called demagogues - students involved in political unrest, and other opposition-minded individuals, Hoffmann could not come to terms with the "impudent violation of the laws" that took place during the investigation. He had a skirmish with the police director Kampts, and he was removed from the commission. Hoffmann settled accounts with Kampz in his own way: he immortalized him in the story "Lord of the Fleas" in the caricature image of the Privy Councilor Knarrpanty. Having learned in what form Hoffmann portrayed him, Kampts tried to prevent the publication of the story. Moreover: Hoffmann was brought to trial for insulting a commission appointed by the king. Only the testimony of a doctor, certifying that Hoffmann was seriously ill, suspended further persecution.
Hoffmann was really seriously ill. Damage to the spinal cord led to a rapidly developing paralysis. In one of the last stories - "Corner Window" - in the face of a cousin who "lost the use of his legs" and was only able to observe life through the window, Hoffmann described himself. On June 24, 1822, he died.
The German romantics strove for a synthesis of all the arts, for the creation of a universal art in which poetry, music, and painting would merge. Hoffmann, who combined in his person a musician, writer, painter, like no one else was called upon to implement this point in the aesthetic program of the romantics. A professional musician, he not only felt the magic of music, but also knew how it was created, and, perhaps, that is why he was able to capture the charm of sounds in the word, to convey the impact of one art by means of another.
In his first book, Fantasies in the manner of Callot, the element of music dominates. Through the mouth of Kapellmeister Kreisler (“Kreislerian”), Hoffmann calls music “the most romantic of all arts, for it has only the infinite as its subject; mysterious, expressed in sounds by the proto-language of nature. "Don Giovanni", included by the author in the first volume of "Fantasy", is not just a "novella", that is, a story about an extraordinary incident, but also a deep analysis of Mozart's opera. Hoffmann gives his own, original interpretation of the work of the great master. Mozart's Don Juan is not a traditional "mischievous" - "a reveler, committed to wine and women", but "a beloved child of nature, she endowed him with everything that ... elevates him above mediocrity, above factory products that are produced in batches from the workshop ...". Don Juan is an exceptional nature, a romantic hero who opposes himself to the vulgar crowd with its petty-bourgeois morality and with the help of love tries to bridge the gap of the world whole, to reunite the ideal with the real. To match him and Donna Anna. She is also generously gifted by nature, she is a "divine woman", and the tragedy of Don Juan lies in the fact that he met her too late, when, having despaired of finding what he was looking for, he was already "impiously mocking nature and the creator." The actress playing the role of Donna Anna leaves the role in Hoffmann's short story. She comes to the box where the narrator is sitting to reveal to him how spiritually close they are, how correctly she understood the idea of the opera composed by him, the narrator (Hoffmann means his romantic opera Ondine). In itself, this technique was not new; the actors freely communicated with the audience in the theater of Carlo Gozzi, beloved by the romantics; in the stage tales of Ludwig Tieck, the audience actively comment on everything that happens on the stage. And yet, in this relatively early work of Hoffmann, his unique style is already clearly visible. How could a singer be on stage and in a box at the same time? But at the same time, a miracle is not a miracle: the “enthusiast” is so excited by what he hears that all this could well have only seemed to him. Such a hoax is common for Hoffmann, who often leaves the reader wondering whether his hero really visited the magical kingdom, or whether he only dreamed of it.
In the fairy tale "The Golden Pot" the extraordinary ability of Hoffmann to turn dull everyday life into a fabulous extravaganza, household items into magical accessories, ordinary people into magicians and magicians with one wave has already been fully revealed. The hero of the "Golden Pot", student Anselm, exists as if in two worlds - ordinary-real and fabulous-ideal. Unfortunate and a loser in real life, he is rewarded a hundredfold for all his ordeals in the magical kingdom, which opens to him only because he is pure in soul and endowed with imagination. With caustic irony, truly in the manner of Callot, Hoffmann draws a stuffy petty-bourgeois little world, where leeches are used to treat poetic follies and "fantasies". Anselm suffocates in this little world, and when he finds himself imprisoned in a glass jar, this is nothing more than a metaphor for the unbearability of his real existence - Anselm's comrades in misfortune, sitting in neighboring jars, feel great. In the class-bureaucratic society where Anselm lives, a person is constrained in his development, alienated from his own kind. The double world of Hoffmann is also manifested here in the fact that the main characters of the tale seem to be doubled. The archivist Lindgorst is at the same time the prince of the spirits of the Salamanders, the old fortuneteller Rauerin is a powerful sorceress; Con-Rector Paulmann's daughter, the blue-eyed Veronica, is the earthly hypostasis of the golden-green snake Serpentina, and the registrar Geerbrand is a vulgar prose copy of Anselm himself. At the end of the fairy tale, Anselm happily unites with his beloved Serpentina and finds happiness in the fabulous Atlantis. However, this fantastic situation is almost nullified by the smile of the author: “Isn’t Anselm’s bliss nothing but life in poetry, to which the sacred harmony of all that exists is revealed as the deepest of the mysteries of nature!” “The Bliss of Anselm” is his inner poetic world, — Hoffmann instantly returns the reader from heaven to earth: there is no Atlantis, there is only a passionate dream that ennobles vulgar everyday life. Hoffmann's smile is also the golden pot, Serpentina's dowry, a real symbol of newfound happiness. Hoffmann hates things, household items that take power over a person; they embody petty-bourgeois contentment, immobility and inertia of life. It is not for nothing that his heroes, poets and enthusiasts like Anselm, are primordially hostile to things and cannot cope with them.
Romantics showed a special interest in the "night sides of nature" - in terrible and mysterious phenomena that confuse a person, and saw in them the play of unknown, mystical forces. Hoffmann was one of the first in world literature to explore the "night sides" of the soul; he not only and not so much frightened the reader with nightmares and ghosts, as he searched for the causes of their occurrence in the depths of the human psyche, in the influence of external circumstances. The splitting of one's own "I", hallucinations, visions of twins - these and similar fractures of consciousness Hoffman assigns a lot of space in his stories and novels. But they are not of interest to him in themselves: Hoffmann's madmen are poetic natures, especially sensitive and vulnerable, their main feature is absolute incompatibility with certain factors of social life. In this sense, one of Hoffmann's best "night stories" - "The Sandman" - is indicative. His hero is the student and poet Nathanael, a nervous and impressionable person, in childhood he experienced a severe shock that left an indelible mark on him. With special acuteness, with truly romantic maximalism, he perceives phenomena and events that ordinary, “normal” people do not care about at all and can only occupy their thoughts for a while. The beautiful Olympia, whom Professor Spalanzani passes off as his daughter, inspires no one with such delight and such love as Nathanael embraces. Olympia is an automaton, a clockwork doll, taken by Nathanael for a living girl; it is made very skillfully and has a perfection of form, unusual for a living being.
In The Sandman, the theme of automata and mechanical puppets is being developed; Hoffmann dedicated to her the previously written story "Automata", and a number of episodes in other works. Automata depicting people and animals were extremely fashionable in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1795, according to contemporaries, the Frenchman Pierre Dumolin showed in Moscow “curious self-acting machines”, including “moving images of road people and carts and many working people who are controlled in various things so naturally, as if alive ... Chinese, which is so well made that you can not imagine that it was a car.
Hoffmann's doll Olympia has all the habits of a well-bred bourgeois young lady: she plays the piano, sings, dances, responds to Nathanael's love outpourings with languid sighs. In The Sandman, there is also a doubling of characters: the lawyer Coppelius turns into the seller of barometers Coppola, and the sweet girl Clara, the bride of Nathanael, at times suspiciously looks like a doll: many "reproached her for being cold, insensitive and prosaic", Nathanael himself once had an attack anger shouts to her: "You soulless, damned automaton!" For Hoffmann, the automaton is not a “curious” toy, but an ominous symbol: the depersonalization of a person in the bourgeois world, the loss of his individuality, turns him into a puppet, driven by the hidden mechanism of life itself. Doll people are little different from each other; the possibility of substitution, mistaking one for the other creates a feeling of unsteadiness, unreliability of existence, a terrible and absurd phantasmagoria.
However, the significance of the theme of automata does not end there. The creators of Olympia, the mechanic Coppola and Professor Spalanzani, are representatives of that type of scientists hated by Hoffmann who use science for evil. The power over nature that the acquired knowledge gives them, they use for their own benefit and to satisfy their own vanity. Nathanael dies, drawn by Coppola - Coppelius (the embodiment of the evil principle) into the circle of his inhuman experiments: first, these are alchemical experiments, from which Nathanael's father dies, then glasses and spyglasses, representing the world in a false light, and, finally, the Olympia doll is an evil parody per person. Nathanael's madness is predetermined not only by his personal qualities, but also by cruel reality. Even at the beginning of the story, intending to tell the story of Nathanael, the author declares "that there is nothing more amazing and crazy than real life itself ...".
The tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" differs from "The Sandman" and other "Night Tales" in its bright, major tone and shines with all the colors of Hoffmann's inexhaustible fantasy. But although Hoffmann composed The Nutcracker for the children of his friend Gitzig, he touched upon in this tale by no means children's topics. Again, albeit muffled, the motif of the mechanization of life, the motif of automata, resounds here. Godfather Drosselmeyer gives the children of Stahlbaum, medical adviser, a wonderful castle with moving figures of gentlemen and ladies for Christmas. The children are delighted with the gift, but the monotony of what is happening in the castle soon bothers them. They ask the godfather to make the little men enter and move in some other way. “This is absolutely impossible,” the godfather objects, “the mechanism is made once and for all, you can’t remake it.” To the living perception of a child - and it is akin to the perception of a poet, an artist - the world is open in all its diverse possibilities, while for "serious", adult people it is "done once and for all" and they, in the words of little Fritz, are "locked in the house (as Anselm was bottled up in a jar). Romantic Hoffmann sees real life as a prison, a prison, from which there is only a way out into poetry, into music, into a fairy tale, or into madness and death, as in the case of Nathanael.
Godfather Drosselmeyer from The Nutcracker, "a little scrawny man with a wrinkled face," is one of those eccentrics and miracle workers, outwardly similar to Hoffmann himself, that many of his works inhabit. Hoffmann gives some of his features to the adviser Crespel in the short story of the same name. But, unlike Drosselmeyer, Crespel is a tragicomic figure. A strange man who builds a house that does not fit with anything, laughs when he should cry, and amuses society with all sorts of grimaces and antics, he belongs to the breed of people who hide their deep sufferings under a buffoon's mask. At the same time, Crespel is a competent lawyer, he plays the violin excellently, and he makes violins, which are also excellent. He is attracted by the instruments of the old Italian masters, he buys them and takes them apart, looking for the secret of their wonderful sound, but it does not come into his hands. “Is it enough to know exactly how Raphael conceived and created his paintings in order to become Raphael himself?” says Kapellmeister Kreisler (Kreisleriana). The secret of a great work of art lies in the soul of its creator, the artist, and Crespel is not an artist, he only stands on the edge that separates genuine art from everyday burgher life. But his daughter Antonia was truly born for music, for singing.
In the image of Antonia, a beautiful and gifted girl dying from singing, Hoffmann put both his longing for unfulfilled happiness with Julia, and grief for his own daughter, who he named Cecilia in honor of the patron saint of music and who lived a little more than two years. Antonia's illness puts her before a choice - art or life. In fact, neither Anthony, nor even more so Crespel, can make any choice: art, if it is a vocation, does not let go of a person. The novella, like an opera, ends with a jubilantly mournful final ensemble. Whether awake or in a dream - the reader is free to understand it as they please - Antonia unites with her beloved, sings for the last time and dies, as the singer died in Don Juan, burned in the all-devouring flame of art.
The fairy tale "The Nutcracker", the short stories "The Counselor Crespel" and "Mademoiselle de Scudery" were included by Hoffmann in the four-volume cycle of stories "The Serapion Brothers", which opens with the story of a madman who imagines himself to be the holy hermit Serapion and recreates the world of the distant past with the power of his imagination. In the center of the book are the problems of artistic creativity, the relationship between art and life.
The hero of the last of these short stories, the Parisian jeweler of the time of Louis XIV, René Cardillac, is one of those ancient masters who achieved true art in the craft. But the need to part with his creation, to give it to the customer, becomes a tragedy for him. The venerable master, respected by his fellow citizens for his honesty and diligence, becomes a thief and a murderer.
"Mademoiselle de Scudery" is the first work of the detective genre in world literature. Hoffman, a lawyer and investigator, with great knowledge of the case describes all the vicissitudes of the search and investigation and skillfully tells the story, gradually increasing the tension. The crimes of Cardillac are revealed when he is no longer alive - the author saves him from exposure and earthly punishment. Cardillac is guilty and innocent at the same time, for he is unable to resist his manic passion. And although Hoffmann gives this passion a half-real, half-fantastic explanation, Cardillac's tragedy objectively reflects the process that is natural for bourgeois society: a work of art is alienated from its creator, becomes an object of sale. The short story is called "Mademoiselle de Scudery" because all the threads of action in it converge on the figure of this famous French writer. Madeleine de Scudery is kind and noble, she protects the offended and the weak, and, as a true servant of the muses, she is distinguished by a disinterestedness rare for her circle.
Hoffmann expressed all his hatred for the kingdom of the purest, for the degenerate aristocracy and its servile servants in the story-tale “Little Tsakhes, nicknamed Zinnober”. The irony and grotesque that the romantics so willingly used are condensed here to the point of mercilessly accusatory satire. Hoffman uses folklore themes, for example, the fairy tale motif of appropriating a feat and rewarding a hero to a miserable, insignificant coward. An imbecile freak, little Tsakhes, thanks to the magical three hairs, acquires the ability to ascribe to himself all the best that is created and done by others. This is how the image of an upstart adventurer arises, who, no one knows how, has taken someone else's place and appropriated power. The brilliance of his false glory, unrighteous wealth blind the titled and untitled inhabitants, Tsakhes becomes the subject of hysterical worship. Only the youth Balthazar, a disinterested poet and enthusiast, discovers all the insignificance of Tsakhes and all the madness of those around him. However, under the influence of the magical power of Zinnober, people no longer understand the true meaning of what is happening: in their eyes, Balthazar himself is insane, and he is threatened with cruel reprisal. Only the intervention of the magician and sorcerer Prosper Alpanus breaks the spell, saves the young man and returns his beloved Candida to him. But the happy ending of the tale is transparent, riddled with irony: Balthazar's happiness and well-being - don't they look too much like the contentment of a philistine?
In "Little Tsakhes" Hoffmann created an evil caricature of the dwarf principality typical of contemporary Germany, ruled by a self-intoxicated stupid prince and his equally stupid ministers. Here we also get the dry rationality of the German enlightenment, which was ridiculed even by the early romantics (the forced “enlightenment” of Prince Pafnutius); and official science, bred in the person of Professor Mosh Terpin, a glutton and drunkard, who produces his scientific "studies" in the prince's wine cellar.
Hoffmann's last tale is The Lord of the Fleas. He wrote it without interrupting his work on the novel "Worldly Views of Cat Murr", in which domestic animals - cats, dogs - parody human mores and relationships. In Lord of the Fleas, trained fleas also create a parodic model of human society, where everyone must "become something, or at least represent something." The hero of this tale, Peregrinus Tees, the son of a wealthy Frankfurt merchant, resolutely does not want to "become something" and take his rightful place in society. "Big money bags and account books" disgust him from his youth. He lives in the power of his dreams and fantasies and is only interested in what affects his inner world, his soul. But no matter how Peregrinus Tees flees from real life, she powerfully declares herself when he is unexpectedly taken under arrest, although he does not know any guilt behind him. And there is no need for guilt: the Privy Councilor Knarrpanty, who demanded the arrest of Peregrinus, it is important first of all "to find the villain, and the villainy will be revealed by itself." The episode with Knarrpanty - a scathing criticism of Prussian legal proceedings - led to the fact that The Lord of the Fleas was published with significant censorship exceptions, and only many years after Hoffmann's death, in 1908, the fairy tale was published in full.
Like many other works of Hoffmann ("The Golden Pot", "Princess Brambilla"), "Lord of the Fleas" is permeated with mythopoetic symbolism. In a dream, the hero discovers that in some mythical times, in another existence, he was a powerful king and owned a wonderful carbuncle, fraught with the power of pure fiery love. Such love comes to Peregrinus in life as well - in "Lord of the Fleas" the real, earthly beloved triumphs over the ideal.
Aspiration to the high spheres of the spirit, attraction to everything wonderful and mysterious that a person can meet or dream of, did not prevent Hoffmann from seeing without embellishment the reality of his time and reflecting its deep processes by means of fantasy and the grotesque. The ideal of “poetic humanity” that inspired him, the writer’s rare sensitivity to the diseases and deformities of social life, to their imprint in the human soul attracted the close attention of such great masters of literature as Dickens and Balzac, Gogol and Dostoevsky. The best creations of Hoffmann are forever guaranteed a place in the golden fund of world classics.
“I must tell you, favorable reader, that I ... more than once
it was possible to catch and clothe fabulous images in a chased form ...
That's where I get the courage to continue to make property
publicity, so pleasant to me communication with all kinds of fantastic
figures and creatures incomprehensible to the mind, and even invite the most
serious people to join their whimsically motley society.
But I think you will not take this courage for insolence and consider
quite excusable on my part for the desire to lure you out of the narrow
circle of everyday life and in a very special way to amuse, leading into someone else's
you an area that is ultimately closely intertwined with that kingdom,
where the human spirit voluntarily rules over real life and being.
(E.T.A. Hoffman)
At least once a year, or rather at the end of the year, everyone remembers Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann in one way or another. It is hard to imagine the New Year and Christmas holidays without a wide variety of performances of The Nutcracker - from classical ballet to ice shows.
This fact is both pleasing and saddening at the same time, because the significance of Hoffmann is far from exhausted by writing the famous fairy tale about the puppet freak. His influence on Russian literature is truly enormous. Pushkin's The Queen of Spades, Gogol's Petersburg Stories and The Nose, Dostoevsky's The Double, Bulgakov's The Devil and The Master and Margarita - behind all these works the shadow of the great German writer hovers invisibly. The literary circle formed by M. Zoshchenko, L. Lunts, V. Kaverin and others was called "The Serapion Brothers", like the collection of Hoffmann's stories. Gleb Samoilov, the author of many ironic horror stories of the AGATA CHRISTIE group, also confesses his love for Hoffmann.
Therefore, before moving directly to the iconic Nutcracker, we will have to tell a lot more interesting things ...
Legal suffering Kapellmeister Hoffmann
"He who cherished a heavenly dream is forever doomed to suffer earthly torment."
(E.T.A. Hoffmann "In the Jesuit Church in G.")
Hoffmann's hometown is today part of the Russian Federation. This is Kaliningrad, the former Koenigsberg, where on January 24, 1776, a little boy was born with the triple name Ernst Theodor Wilhelm, characteristic of the Germans. I don’t confuse anything - the third name was exactly Wilhelm, but our hero from childhood became so attached to music that already in adulthood he changed it to Amadeus, in honor of you-know-who.
The main life tragedy of Hoffmann is not at all new for a creative person. It was an eternal conflict between desire and possibility, the world of dreams and the vulgarity of reality, between what should be and what is. On Hoffmann's grave it is written: "He was equally good as a lawyer, as a writer, as a musician, as a painter". Everything written is true. And yet, a few days after the funeral, his property goes under the hammer to settle debts with creditors.
Hoffmann's grave.
Even posthumous fame did not come to Hoffmann the way it should. From early childhood until his death, our hero considered only music to be his real vocation. She was everything to him - God, miracle, love, the most romantic of all arts ...
THIS. Hoffmann "Worldly views of the cat Murr":
“-… There is only one angel of light, capable of overpowering the demon of evil. This is a bright angel - the spirit of music, which often and victoriously rose from my soul, at the sound of his powerful voice, all earthly sorrows become numb.
- I always, - the adviser began, - I always believed that music affects you too strongly, moreover, almost perniciously, because during the performance of some wonderful creation it seemed that your whole being was permeated with music, even your features were distorted. faces. You turned pale, you were unable to utter a word, you only sighed and shed tears and then attacked, armed with the bitterest mockery, deeply stung irony, on anyone who wanted to say a word about the creation of the master ... "“Since I write music, I manage to forget all my worries, the whole world. Because the world that arises from a thousand sounds in my room, under my fingers, is incompatible with anything that is outside it.
At the age of 12, Hoffmann already played the organ, violin, harp and guitar. He also became the author of the first romantic opera "Ondine". Even Hoffmann's first literary work, The Cavalier Gluck, was about music and a musician. And this man, as if created for the world of art, had to work almost all his life as a lawyer, and in the memory of his descendants to remain primarily a writer, on whose works other composers “made a career”. In addition to Pyotr Ilyich with his The Nutcracker, one can name R. Schumann (Kreislerian), R. Wagner (The Flying Dutchman), A. Sh. Adam (Giselle), J. Offenbach (The Tales of Hoffmann) , P. Khandemita ("Cardillac").
Rice. E. T. A. Hoffmann.
Hoffmann frankly hated his work as a lawyer, compared it with the rock of Prometheus, called it a “state stall”, although this did not prevent him from being a responsible and conscientious official. He passed all the advanced training exams with excellent marks, and, apparently, no one had any complaints about his work. However, Hoffmann's career as a lawyer was not entirely successful either, due to his impulsive and sarcastic nature. Either he falls in love with his students (Hoffmann worked as a music tutor), or he draws caricatures of respected people, or he generally depicts the police chief Kampts in an extremely unsightly image of adviser Knarrpanty in his story “Lord of the Fleas”.
THIS. Hoffmann "Lord of the Fleas":
“In response to the indication that a criminal can be identified only if the very fact of the crime is established, Knarrpanty expressed the opinion that it is important first of all to find the villain, and the committed crime will already be revealed by itself.
...Thinking, Knarrpanty believed, in itself, as such, is a dangerous operation, and the thinking of dangerous people is all the more dangerous.
Portrait of Hoffmann.
Hoffmann did not get away with such mockery. A lawsuit was filed against him for insulting an official. Only the state of health (Hoffmann was already almost completely paralyzed by that time) did not allow the writer to be brought to trial. The story "Lord of the Fleas" came out severely crippled by censorship and was fully published only in 1908 ...
Hoffmann's intransigence led to the fact that he was constantly transferred - either to Poznan, then to Plock, then to Warsaw ... Do not forget that at that time a significant part of Poland belonged to Prussia. By the way, Hoffmann's wife also became a Pole - Michalina Tshtsinskaya (the writer affectionately called her "Mishka"). Mikhalina turned out to be a wonderful wife who steadfastly endured all the hardships of life with her restless husband - supported him in difficult times, provided comfort, forgave all his betrayals and hard drinking, as well as constant lack of money.
The writer A. Gints-Godin recalled Hoffmann as “a little man who always walked around in the same worn, albeit well-cut, brown-chestnut tailcoat, rarely parted even on the street with a short pipe, from which he let out thick clouds of smoke who lived in a tiny room and had such a sarcastic humor at the same time.
But still, the greatest shocks to the Hoffmann couple were brought by the outbreak of war with Napoleon, whom our hero later began to perceive almost as a personal enemy (even the tale about little Tsakhes seemed to many then a satire on Napoleon). When the French troops entered Warsaw, Hoffmann immediately lost his job, his daughter died, and his sick wife had to be sent to her parents. For our hero comes a time of deprivation and wandering. He moves to Berlin and tries to make music, but to no avail. Hoffmann survives by drawing and selling caricatures of Napoleon. And most importantly, the second “guardian angel” constantly helps him with money - his friend from the University of Koenigsberg, and now Baron Theodor Gottlieb von Gippel.
Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel.
Finally, Hoffmann's dreams seem to be coming true - he gets a job as a bandmaster in a small theater in the town of Bamberg. Work in the provincial theater did not bring much money, but our hero is happy in his own way - he took up the desired art. In the theatre, Hoffmann is "both a squire and a reaper" - a composer, director, decorator, conductor, author of the libretto... During the tour of the theater troupe in Dresden, he finds himself in the midst of battles with the already retreating Napoleon, and even from afar sees the most hated emperor. Walter Scott will later complain for a long time that Hoffmann, they say, fell into the thick of the most important historical events, and instead of fixing them, he sprinkled his strange tales.
Hoffmann's theatrical life did not last long. After people who, according to him, did not understand anything in art, began to manage the theater, it became impossible to work.
Gippel's friend came to the rescue again. With his direct participation, Hoffmann got a job as an adviser to the Berlin Court of Appeal. There were funds for life, but the career of a musician had to be forgotten.
From the diary of E. T. A. Hoffmann, 1803:
“Oh, pain, I am becoming more and more a state councilor! Who would have thought of this three years ago! The muse is running away, the future looks dark and gloomy through the archival dust… Where are my intentions, where are my beautiful plans for art?”
Hoffmann's self-portrait.
But then, quite unexpectedly for Hoffmann, he begins to gain fame as a writer.
It cannot be said that Hoffmann became a writer quite by accident. Like any versatile person, from his youth he wrote poems and stories, but he never perceived them as his main life purpose.
From a letter from E.T.A. Hoffman T.G. Hippel, February 1804:
“Something great is about to happen - some work of art is about to come out of the chaos. Whether it will be a book, an opera or a picture - quod diis placebit (“whatever the gods will”). What do you think, shouldn’t I once again ask the Great Chancellor (i.e. God - S.K.) once again whether I was created by an artist or a musician? .. "
However, the first published works were not fairy tales, but critical articles about music. They were published in the Leipzig General Musical Gazette, where the editor was a good friend of Hoffmann, Johann Friedrich Rochlitz.
In 1809, Hoffmann's short story "Cavalier Gluck" was published in the newspaper. And although he began to write it as a kind of critical essay, the result was a full-fledged literary work, where, among reflections on music, a mysterious double plot, characteristic of Hoffmann, appears. Gradually, writing captivates Hoffmann for real. In 1813-14, when the surroundings of Dresden were shuddering from shells, our hero, instead of describing the history that was happening next to him, enthusiastically wrote the fairy tale "The Golden Pot".
From Hoffmann's letter to Kunz, 1813:
“It is not surprising that in our gloomy, ill-fated time, when a person barely survives from day to day and still has to rejoice in it, writing has fascinated me so much - it seems to me that a wonderful kingdom has opened before me, which is born from my inner world and, acquiring flesh separates me from the outer world.
Hoffmann's amazing performance is especially striking. It's no secret that the writer was a passionate lover of "studying wines" in a variety of eateries. Having pretty much gathered in the evening after work, Hoffmann would come home and, tormented by insomnia, began to write. It is said that when terrible fantasies began to get out of control, he woke up his wife and continued to write in her presence. Perhaps, it is precisely from here that excessive and whimsical plot twists are often found in Hoffmann's fairy tales.
The next morning, Hoffmann was already sitting at his workplace and diligently engaged in hateful legal duties. An unhealthy lifestyle, apparently, brought the writer to the grave. He developed a disease of the spinal cord, and he spent the last days of his life completely paralyzed, contemplating the world only through an open window. The dying Hoffmann was only 46 years old.
THIS. Hoffmann "Corner Window":
“- ... I remind myself of an old crazy painter that he sat for days in front of a primed canvas inserted into a frame and praised the diverse beauties of a luxurious, magnificent picture that he had just completed to everyone who came to him. I must renounce that active creative life, the source of which is in myself, which, embodied in new forms, is related to the whole world. My spirit must hide in my cell... this window is a consolation for me: here again life appeared to me in all its diversity, and I feel how close its never-ending fuss is to me. Come, brother, look out the window!
The double bottom of Hoffmann's fairy tales
“He may have been the first to depict doubles, the horror of this situation is before Edgar
By. He rejected the influence of Hoffmann on him, saying that he was not from German romance,
and from his own soul, the horror that he sees is born ... Maybe
Perhaps the difference between them lies precisely in the fact that Edgar Allan Poe is sober and Hoffmann is drunk.
Hoffmann is multicolored, kaleidoscopic, Edgar in two or three colors, in one frame.
(Yu. Olesha)
In the literary world, Hoffmann is usually referred to as a romantic. I think that Hoffmann himself would not argue with such a classification, although among the representatives of classical romanticism he looks in many ways a black sheep. The early romantics like Tieck, Novalis, Wackenroder were too far away... not only from the people... but from life in general. They resolved the conflict between the high aspirations of the spirit and the vulgar prose of being by isolating from this being, by escaping to such mountainous heights of their dreams and dreams that there are few modern readers who would not frankly miss the pages of the "secret mysteries of the soul."
“Before, he was especially good at composing cheerful, lively stories that Clara listened to with unfeigned pleasure; now his creations had become gloomy, unintelligible, shapeless, and although Clara, sparing him, did not speak of this, he still easily guessed how little they pleased her. ... Nathanael's writings were indeed remarkably boring. His annoyance at Clara's cold, prosaic disposition grew daily; Clara also could not overcome her displeasure at the dark, gloomy, dull mysticism of Nathanael, and thus, imperceptibly to themselves, their hearts were more and more divided.
Hoffmann managed to stand on the thin line between romanticism and realism (later on this line a whole series of classics will plow a real furrow). Of course, he was not alien to the high aspirations of the romantics, their thoughts about creative freedom, about the restlessness of the creator in this world. But Hoffmann did not want to sit both in the solitary cell of his reflective "I", and in the gray cage of everyday life. He said: “Writers should not retire, but, on the contrary, live among people, observe life in all its manifestations”.
“And most importantly, I believe that, thanks to the need to send, in addition to serving art, also the civil service, I acquired a broader view of things and largely avoided the egoism, due to which professional artists, so to speak, are so inedible.”
In his fairy tales, Hoffmann confronted the most recognizable reality with the most incredible fantasy. As a result, a fairy tale became life, and life became a fairy tale. Hoffmann's world is a colorful carnival, where a mask hides behind a mask, where the apple seller may turn out to be a witch, the archivist Lindgorst - a powerful Salamander, the ruler of Atlantis ("Golden Pot"), the canoness from the orphanage of noble maidens - a fairy ("Little Tsakhes ..."), Peregrinus Tik as King Sekakis, and his friend Pepush as the thistle Czeherit ("Lord of the Fleas"). Almost all characters have a double bottom, they exist, as it were, in two worlds at the same time. The author knew firsthand the possibility of such an existence ...
Peregrine's meeting with Master Flea. Rice. Natalia Shalina.
At the Hoffmann masquerade, it is sometimes impossible to understand where the game ends and life begins. A stranger who has met can come out in an old camisole and say: “I am a gentleman Glitch,” and let the reader puzzle himself: who is this crazy man playing the role of a great composer, or the composer himself, who came from the past. Yes, and the vision of Anselm in the elderberry bushes of golden snakes can be attributed to the “useful tobacco” he consumes (presumably, opium, which was very common at that time).
No matter how bizarre the tales of Hoffmann may seem, they are inextricably linked with the reality around us. Here is little Tsakhes - a vile and vicious freak. But he only causes admiration among those around him, because he has a wonderful gift, “by virtue of which everything wonderful that anyone else thinks, says or does in his presence will be attributed to him, and he, in the company of beautiful, reasonable and intelligent people, will recognized as beautiful, reasonable and intelligent. Is it really such a fairy tale? And is it really such a miracle that the thoughts of the people that Peregrinus reads with the help of a magic glass diverge from their words.
E.T.A. Hoffmann "Lord of the Fleas":
“One can only say one thing, that many sayings with thoughts related to them have become stereotyped. So, for example, the phrase: “Do not refuse me your advice” corresponded to the thought: “He is stupid enough, thinking that I really need his advice in a matter that I have already decided, but this flatters him!”; "I'm totally relying on you!" - "I have known for a long time that you are a scoundrel," etc. Finally, it must also be noted that many, during his microscopic observations, plunged Peregrinus into considerable difficulty. These were, for example, young people who from everything came to the greatest enthusiasm and overflowed with a seething stream of the most magnificent eloquence. Among them, the youngest poets expressed themselves most beautifully and most wisely, full of fantasy and genius and adored mainly by ladies. In the same row with them stood women writers who, as they say, were in charge, as if at home, in the most profound depths of being, in all the subtlest philosophical problems and relationships of social life ... he was also struck by what was revealed to him in the brains of these people. He also saw a strange intertwining of veins and nerves in them, but immediately noticed that just during their most eloquent rantings about art, science, and in general about the higher questions of life, these nerve threads not only did not penetrate into the depths of the brain, but, on the contrary, developed in the opposite direction, so that there could be no question of a clear recognition of their thoughts.
As for the notorious irresolvable conflict between spirit and matter, Hoffmann most often copes with it, like most people, with the help of irony. The writer said that "the greatest tragedy must appear through a special kind of joke."
"-" Yes, - said the adviser Benzon, - it is this humor, this particular foundling, born into the world of depraved and capricious fantasy, this humor, about which you, cruel men, you yourself do not know who you should pass him off as - to be maybe for an influential and noble person, full of all kinds of virtues; So, it is precisely this humor that you willingly seek to slip us as something great, beautiful, at the very moment when everything that is dear and dear to us, you strive to destroy with a stinging mockery!
The German romantic Chamisso even called Hoffmann "our indisputably first humorist." Irony was strangely inseparable from the romantic features of the writer's work. I was always amazed at how purely romantic pieces of text, written by Hoffmann clearly from the heart, he immediately subjected to ridicule in the paragraph below - more often, however, without malice. His romantic heroes are all around now dreamy losers, like the student Anselm, now eccentrics, like Peregrinus, riding a wooden horse, now deep melancholics, suffering like Balthazar from love in all sorts of groves and bushes. Even the golden pot from the fairy tale of the same name was first conceived as ... a well-known toilet item.
From a letter from E.T.A. Hoffman T.G. Hippel:
“I thought of writing a fairy tale about how a certain student falls in love with a green snake suffering under the yoke of a cruel archivist. And as a dowry for her, she receives a golden pot, for the first time urinating in which she turns into a monkey.THIS. Hoffmann "Lord of the Fleas":
“According to the old, traditional custom, the hero of the story, in case of strong emotional excitement, must flee to the forest, or at least to a secluded grove. ...Furthermore, in no grove of a romantic story should there be a lack of rustling leaves, or the sighs and whispers of the evening breeze, or the babbling of a stream, etc., and therefore, it goes without saying, Peregrinus found all this in his refuge ... "
“... It is quite natural that Mr. Peregrinus Tees, instead of going to bed, leaned out the open window and, as befits lovers, began, looking at the moon, to indulge in thoughts of his beloved. But even though this hurt Mr. Peregrinus Thisus in the opinion of a sympathetic reader, and especially in the opinion of a sympathetic reader, justice requires it to be said that Mr. Peregrinus, in spite of all his blissful condition, yawned so well twice that some tipsy clerk, passing, staggering, under his window, loudly shouted to him: “Hey, you are there, white cap! don't swallow me!" This was cause enough for Mr. Peregrinus Teese, in his annoyance, to slam the window so hard that the panes rattled. It is even alleged that during this act he exclaimed rather loudly: "Rude!" But one cannot vouch for the authenticity of this, for such an exclamation seems to be completely contrary to both the quiet disposition of Peregrinus and the state of mind in which he was that night.
THIS. Hoffmann "Little Tsakhes":
“... Only now did he feel how indescribably he loves the beautiful Candida and at the same time how fancifully the purest, most intimate love takes on a somewhat clownish appearance in external life, which must be attributed to the deep irony inherent in nature itself in all human actions.”
If the positive characters of Hoffmann make us smile, then what can we say about the negative ones, on which the author simply sprinkles sarcasm. What is the “Order of the Green-spotted tiger with twenty buttons” worth, or the exclamation of Mosh Terpin: “Children, do whatever you want! Marry, love each other, starve together, because I won’t give a penny to Candida’s dowry!”. And the chamber pot mentioned above was also not in vain - the author drowned the vile little Tsakhes in it.
THIS. Hoffmann "Little Tsakhes ...":
“My merciful lord! If I had to be content with only the visible surface of phenomena, then I could say that the minister died from a complete lack of breath, and this lack of breath came from the impossibility of breathing, which impossibility, in turn, is produced by the elements, humor, that liquid in which the minister fell. I could say that thus the minister died a humorous death.”
Rice. S. Alimov to "Little Tsakhes".
It should also not be forgotten that in the time of Hoffmann, romantic tricks were already a commonplace, the images became emasculated, became banal and vulgar, they were adopted by philistines and mediocrity. They were ridiculed most caustically in the image of the cat Murr, who describes the prosaic feline everyday life in such a narcissistic sublime language that it is impossible not to laugh. By the way, the very idea of the book came about when Hoffmann noticed that his cat liked to sleep in a drawer where papers were kept. “Maybe this smart cat, while no one sees, writes works himself?” the writer smiled.
Illustration for the "Worldly views of the cat Murr". 1840
THIS. Hoffmann "Worldly views of cat Moore":
“What is there a cellar, what is there a woodshed - I strongly speak out in favor of the attic! - Climate, fatherland, mores, customs - how indelible their influence; yes, don't they have a decisive influence on the internal and external formation of a true cosmopolitan, a true citizen of the world! Whence comes to me this astonishing feeling of the sublime, this irresistible longing for the sublime! Where does this admirable, amazing, rare dexterity in climbing come from, this enviable skill displayed by me in the most risky, in the most daring and most ingenious jumps? - Ah! Sweet longing fills my chest! Longing for the father's attic, an inexplicable earthly feeling, rises powerfully in me! I dedicate these tears to you, O my beautiful homeland, - to you these heartbreaking, passionate meows! In your honor, I make these jumps, these jumps and pirouettes, full of virtue and patriotic spirit! ... ".
But Hoffmann portrayed the darkest consequences of romantic egoism in the fairy tale "The Sandman". It was written in the same year as Mary Shelley's famous Frankenstein. If the wife of the English poet depicted an artificial male monster, then in Hoffmann his place is taken by the mechanical doll Olympia. The unsuspecting romantic hero falls head over heels in love with her. Still would! - She is beautiful, well-built, docile and silent. Olympia can listen for hours to the outpourings of her admirer's feelings (oh, yes! - she understands him that way, not like the former - living - beloved).
Rice. Mario Laboccetta.
THIS. Hoffmann "Sandman":
“Poems, fantasies, visions, novels, stories multiplied day by day, and all this, mixed with all sorts of chaotic sonnets, stanzas and canzones, he tirelessly read Olympia for hours. But on the other hand, he had never had such a diligent listener. She didn’t knit or embroider, she didn’t look out the window, she didn’t feed the birds, she didn’t play with a lap dog, with her beloved cat, she didn’t fiddle with a piece of paper or anything else, she didn’t try to hide her yawn with a quiet fake cough - in a word, whole for hours, without moving from her place, without moving, she looked into the eyes of her beloved, without taking her motionless gaze from him, and this gaze became more and more fiery, more and more alive. Only when Nathanael finally got up from his seat and kissed her hand, and sometimes on the lips, did she sigh: "Ax-ax!" - and added: - Good night, my dear!
- O beautiful, inexpressible soul! - exclaimed Nathanael, return to your room, - only you, only you alone deeply understand me!
The explanation of why Nathanael fell in love with Olympia (she stole his eyes) is also deeply symbolic. It is clear that he does not love the doll, but only his far-fetched idea of her, his dream. And a long narcissism and a closed stay in the world of one's dreams and visions makes a person blind and deaf to the surrounding reality. The visions get out of control, lead to madness, and eventually destroy the hero. The Sandman is one of the rare Hoffmann tales with a sad, hopeless end, and the image of Nathanael is probably the most caustic reproach to rabid romanticism.
Rice. A. Kostina.
Hoffmann does not hide his dislike for the other extreme - an attempt to enclose all the diversity of the world and the freedom of the spirit in rigid monotonous schemes. The idea of life as a rigidly determined mechanical system, where everything can be sorted out, is deeply disgusting to the writer. Children in The Nutcracker immediately lose interest in a mechanical lock when they learn that the figures in it only move in a certain way and nothing else. Hence the unpleasant images of scientists (like Mosh Tepin or Leeuwenhoek) who think that they are the masters of nature and invade the innermost fabric of being with rude, insensitive hands.
Hoffmann also hates the philistine philistines who think they are free, while they themselves are imprisoned in the narrow banks of their limited little world and scant self-satisfaction.
THIS. Hoffmann "Golden Pot":
“You are delirious, Mr. Studious,” objected one of the students. - We have never felt better than now, because the spicestalers that we get from the crazy archivist for all sorts of meaningless copies are good for us; we no longer need to learn Italian choirs; we now go every day to Joseph or other taverns, enjoy strong beer, stare at the girls, sing, like real students, "Gaudeamus igitur ..." - and complacency.
“But, dearest gentlemen,” said the student Anselm, “don’t you notice that all of you, and each one in particular, are sitting in glass jars and cannot move and move, much less walk?
Then the students and scribes raised a loud laugh and shouted: “The student has gone crazy: he imagines that he is sitting in a glass jar, but he is standing on the Elbe bridge and looking into the water. Let's move on!"
Rice. Nicky Golts.
Readers may note that there is a good deal of occult and alchemical symbolism in Hoffmann's books. There is nothing strange here, because such esotericism was in vogue in those days, and its terminology was quite familiar. But Hoffmann did not profess any secret teachings. For him, all these symbols are filled not with philosophical, but with artistic meaning. And Atlantis in The Golden Pot is no more serious than Djinnistan from Tsakhes's Baby or Gingerbread City from The Nutcracker.
The Nutcracker - book, theatrical and cartoon
“... the clock wheezed louder and louder, and Marie clearly heard:
- Tick and Tick, Tick and Tick! Don't whine so loud! Hears everything the king
mouse. Trick and truck, boom boom! Well, the clock, an old chant! Trick and
truck, boom boom! Well, strike, strike, call: the time is coming for the king!
(E.T.A. Hoffmann "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King")
Hoffmann's "calling card" for the general public, apparently, will remain exactly "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". What is so special about this tale? Firstly, it is Christmas, secondly, it is very bright, and, thirdly, it is the most childish of all Hoffmann's fairy tales.
Rice. Libico Maraja.
Children are also the main characters of The Nutcracker. It is believed that this tale was born during the communication of the writer with the children of his friend Yu.E.G. Hitzig - Marie and Fritz. Like Drosselmeyer, Hoffmann made a wide variety of toys for them for Christmas. I don’t know if he gave the Nutcracker to children, but at that time such toys really existed.
In direct translation, the German word Nubknacker means "nut cracker". In the first Russian translations of the tale, it sounds even more ridiculous - “The Rodent of Nuts and the King of Mice” or even worse - “The History of Nutcrackers”, although it is clear that Hoffmann clearly does not describe any tongs. The Nutcracker was a mechanical doll popular in those days - a soldier with a large mouth, a curled beard and a pigtail at the back. A nut was put into the mouth, a pigtail twitched, the jaws closed - crack! - and the nut is split. Dolls like the Nutcracker were made in German Thuringia in the 17th and 18th centuries and then brought to Nuremberg for sale.
Mouse, or rather, are also found in nature. This is the name of rodents, which, from a long stay in cramped conditions, grow together with their tails. Of course, in nature they are more like cripples than kings...
In The Nutcracker it is not difficult to find many characteristic features of Hoffmann's work. You can believe in the wonderful events that take place in a fairy tale, or you can easily attribute them to the fantasy of a girl who has played too much, which, in general, is what all adult characters in a fairy tale do.
“Marie ran to the Other Room, quickly took out the seven crowns of the mouse king from her casket and gave them to her mother with the words:
“Here, mother, look: here are the seven crowns of the mouse king, which young Mr. Drosselmeyer presented to me last night as a sign of his victory!”
... The senior adviser of the court, as soon as he saw them, laughed and exclaimed:
Stupid ideas, stupid ideas! Why, these are the crowns that I once wore on a watch chain, and then gave Marihen on her birthday, when she was two years old! Have you forgotten?
... When Marie was convinced that the faces of her parents again became affectionate, she jumped up to her godfather and exclaimed:
- Godfather, you know everything! Tell me that my Nutcracker is your nephew, young Herr Drosselmeyer of Nuremberg, and that he gave me these tiny crowns.
The godfather frowned and muttered:
- Stupid inventions!
Only the godfather of the heroes - the one-eyed Drosselmeyer - is not a simple adult. He is a figure at the same time cute, and mysterious, and frightening. Drosselmeyer, like many of Hoffmann's heroes, has two guises. In our world, this is a senior court adviser, a serious and a little grumbling master of toys. In a fairy-tale space, he is an active character, a kind of demiurge and conductor of this fantastic story.
They write that the uncle of Gippel, already mentioned by us, served as the prototype of Drosselmeyer, who worked as the burgomaster of Koenigsberg, and in his spare time wrote caustic feuilletons about the local nobility under a pseudonym. When the secret of the "double" was revealed, the uncle was naturally removed from the post of burgomaster.
Julius Eduard Hitzig.
Those who know The Nutcracker only from cartoons and theatrical productions will probably be surprised if I say that in the original version this is a very funny and ironic fairy tale. Only a child can perceive the battle of the Nutcracker with a mouse army as a dramatic action. In fact, it is more like a puppet buffoonery, where mice are shot with dragees and gingerbread, and in response they shower the enemy with "stinking nuclei" of a completely unambiguous origin.
THIS. Hoffmann "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King"
“- Really I will die in the color of years, really I will die, such a beautiful doll! yelled Clerchen.
- Not for the same I am so well preserved, to die here, within the four walls! Trudchen wailed.
Then they fell into each other's arms and roared so loudly that even the furious roar of battle could not drown them out ...
... In the heat of battle, detachments of mouse cavalry quietly stepped out from under the chest of drawers and with a disgusting squeak furiously attacked the left flank of the Nutcracker army; but what resistance did they meet! Slowly, as far as the uneven terrain allowed, because it was necessary to get over the edge of the cabinet, a corpus of pupae with surprises led by two Chinese emperors stepped out and formed up in a square. These brave, very colorful and elegant regiments, made up of gardeners, Tyroleans, Tungus, hairdressers, harlequins, cupids, lions, tigers, monkeys and monkeys, fought with composure, courage and endurance. With courage worthy of the Spartans, this select battalion would have wrested victory from the hands of the enemy, if some brave enemy captain had not broken through with insane courage to one of the Chinese emperors and had not bitten off his head, and when he fell, he had not crushed two Tungus and a monkey.
And the very reason for the enmity with mice is more comical than tragic. In fact, it arose because of ... fat, which the mustachioed army ate while the queen (yes, the queen) was cooking liver kobas.
E.T.A. Hoffmann "The Nutcracker":
“Already when the liver sausages were served, the guests noticed how the king turned more and more pale, how he raised his eyes to the sky. Quiet sighs escaped his chest; a great sorrow seemed to take possession of his soul. But when the black pudding was served, he leaned back in his chair with loud sobs and groans, covering his face with both hands. ... He murmured barely audible: - Too little fat!
Rice. L. Gladneva to the filmstrip "The Nutcracker" in 1969.
The angry king declares war on the mice and puts mousetraps on them. Then the mouse queen turns his daughter, Princess Pirlipat, into an ugly creature. A young nephew of Drosselmeyer comes to the rescue, who famously gnaws the magic nut Krakatuk and restores her beauty to the princess. But he cannot complete the magical rite and, retreating the prescribed seven steps, he accidentally steps on the mouse queen and stumbles. As a result, Drosselmeyer Jr. turns into an ugly Nutcracker, the princess loses all interest in him, and the dying Myshilda declares a real vendetta to the Nutcracker. Her seven-headed heir must avenge her mother. If you look at all this with a cold, serious look, you can see that the actions of the mice are completely justified, and the Nutcracker is just an unfortunate victim of circumstances.
Hoffmann's tales can easily be funny and scary, bright and frightening, but the fantastic in them always arises unexpectedly, from the simplest things. This was the main secret, which Ernst Hoffmann was the first to guess.
You will discover a vibrant world by reading Hoffmann's fairy tales. How charming are these stories! How strikingly different are the tales of Hoffmann from the majority that we have read so far!
The fantastic world under the pen of Hoffmann arises from simple things and events. That is why the entire list of Hoffmann's fairy tales opens up a completely different, even more interesting world for us - the world of human feelings and dreams. At first glance, it seems that the action in fairy tales takes place, as happens in a fairy tale, “in a certain state,” but in fact everything that Hoffmann writes about can be traced back to that disturbing time, of which the writer was a contemporary. On our site you can read Hoffmann's tales online without any restrictions.
VIGILE ONE The misadventures of the student Anselm... - Beneficial tobacco of the director Paulmann and golden-green snakes. On Ascension Day, about three o'clock in the afternoon, a young man was rapidly walking through the Black Gate in Dresden and just got into a basket of apples and pies that an old, ugly woman was selling - and he hit so well that ...
Publisher's Preface The Wandering Enthusiast 1 - and from his diary we borrow another fantastic play in the manner of Callot - apparently separates his inner world from the outer world 2 so little that the very border between them is hardly distinguishable. However, precisely due to the fact that you, the benevolent reader, cannot clearly see this ...
Tales of Hoffmann and his best work - The Nutcracker. Mysterious and unusual, with the deepest meaning and reflection of reality. Hoffmann's tales are advised to read by the golden fund of world literature.
Tales of Hoffmann read
- Name
Brief biography of Hoffmann
Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann, now known as Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, was born in Königsberg in 1776. Hoffmann changed his name already in adulthood, adding to it Amadeus in honor of Mozart, the composer whose work he admired. And it was this name that became a symbol of a new generation of fairy tales from Hoffmann, which both adults and children began to read with rapture.
The future famous writer and composer Hoffmann was born in the family of a lawyer, but his father divorced his mother when the boy was still very young. Ernst was raised by his grandmother and uncle, who, by the way, also practiced as a lawyer. It was he who brought up a creative personality in the boy and drew attention to his penchant for music and drawing, although he insisted that Hoffmann receive a law degree and work in law to ensure an acceptable standard of living. Ernst was grateful to him for the rest of his life, because it was not always possible to earn a living with the help of art, and it happened that he had to starve.
In 1813, Hoffmann received an inheritance, although it was small, it nevertheless allowed him to get on his feet. Just at that time, he had already got a job in Berlin, which came in very handy, by the way, because there was still time to devote himself to art. It was then that Hoffmann first thought about the fabulous ideas that hovered in his head.
The hatred of all social gatherings and parties led to the fact that Hoffmann began to drink alone and write his first works at night, which were so terrible that they led him to despair. However, even then he wrote several works worthy of attention, but even those were not recognized, as they contained unambiguous satire and at that time did not appeal to critics. The writer became much more popular outside his homeland. To our great regret, Hoffmann finally exhausted his body with an unhealthy lifestyle and died at the age of 46, and Hoffmann's fairy tales, as he dreamed, became immortal.
Few writers have received such attention to their own lives, but based on the biography of Hoffmann and his works, the poem Night of Hoffmann and the opera Tales of Hoffmann were created.
Creativity Hoffmann
Hoffmann's creative life was short. He released the first collection in 1814, and after 8 years he was gone.
If we wanted to somehow characterize in what direction Hoffmann wrote, we would call him a romantic realist. What is the most important thing in Hoffmann's work? One line through all his works is the awareness of the deep difference between reality and the ideal and the understanding that it is impossible to get off the ground, as he himself said.
Hoffmann's whole life is a continuous struggle. For bread, for the opportunity to create, for respect for yourself and your works. Hoffmann's fairy tales, which both children and their parents are advised to read, will show this struggle, the strength to make difficult decisions and even greater strength not to give up in case of failure.
The first tale of Hoffmann was the tale of the Golden Pot. Already from it it became clear that a writer from ordinary everyday life is able to create a fabulous miracle. There, people and objects are real magic. Like all the romantics of that time, Hoffmann is fond of everything mystical, everything that usually happens at night. One of the best works was the Sandman. Continuing the theme of mechanisms coming to life, the author created a real masterpiece - the fairy tale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (some sources also call it The Nutcracker and the Rat King). Hoffmann's fairy tales are written for children, but the topics and problems that they touch on are not entirely childish.
