HOFFMANN, E(rnst) T(heodore) A(madeus)

Nationality: German. Born: Ernst Theodore Wilhelm Hoffmann in Königsberg, 24 January 1776. Education: Burgschule, Königsberg, 1782-92; studied law at University of Königsberg, 1792-95. Family: Married Maria Thekla Michalina Rorer-Trzynska in 1802; one daughter. Career: In legal civil service: posts in Glogau, 1796-98, Berlin, 1798-1800, Posen, 1800-02, Plozk, 1802-04, Warsaw, 1804-08, and, after Napoleon's defeat, Berlin, 1814-22. Also a composer: Kappellmeister, 1808-09, house composer and designer, 1810-12, Bamberg Theatre, and conductor for Sekonda Company, Leipzig and Dresden, 1813-14; composer of operas, and editor of musical works by Beethoven, Mozart, Gluck, and others, 1809-21. Died: 25 June 1822.

Publications

Collections

Werke, edited by Georg Ellinger. 15 vols., 1927.

Sämtliche Werke, edited by Walter Müller-Seidel and others. 5 vols., 1960-65.

Gesammelte Werke, edited by Rudolf Mingau and Hans-JoachimKruse. 1976—.

Sämtliche Werke, edited by Wulf Segebrecht, Hartmut Steinecke, and others. 1985—.

Short Stories

Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier. 4 vols., 1814-15.

Nachtstücke. 2 vols., 1816-17.

Seltsame Leiden eines Theater-Direktors. 1819.

Klein Zaches genannt Zinnober. 1819.

Die Serapions-Brüder: Gesammelte Erzählungen und Märchen. 4 vols., 1819-21; as The Serapion Brethren, 1886-92.

Meister Floh. 1822; as Master Flea, in Specimens of German Romance, vol. 2, 1826.

Die letzten Erzählungen. 2 vols., 1825.

Tales, edited by Christopher Lazare. 1959.

The Tales of Hoffmann. 1963.

Tales. 1966.

The Best Tales, edited by E.F. Bleiler. 1967.

Tales, edited by R.J. Hollingdale. 1982.

Tales, edited by Victor Lange. 1982.

The Golden Pot and Other Stories, edited by Ritchie Robertson. 1992.

The Nutcracker; and, The Golden Pot. 1993.

Novels

Die Elixiere des Teufels. 1815-16; as The Devil's Elixir, 1824; asThe Devil's Elixirs, 1963.

Lebens-ansichten des Katers Murr. 1820-22.

Prinzessen Brambilla. 1821.

Play

Die Maske, edited by Friedrich Schnapp. 1923.

Poetry

Poetische Werke, edited by Gerhard Seidel. 6 vols., 1958.

Other

Die Vision auf dem Schlachtfelde bei Dresden. 1814.

Briefwechsel, edited by Hans von Müller and Friedrich Schnapp. 3 vols, 1967-69.

Selected Writings, edited by Leonard J. Kent and Elizabeth C. Knight. 2 vols., 1969.

Tagebücher, edited by Friedrich Schnapp. 1971.

Juristische Arbeiten, edited by Friedrich Schnapp. 1973.

Selected Letters of Hoffmann, edited by Johanna C. Sahlin. 1977.

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Critical Studies:

Hoffmann, Author of the Tales by H. Hewett-Taylor, 1948; Hoffmann by Ronald Taylor, 1963; Hoffmann's Other World: The Romantic Author and His "New Mythology" by Kenneth Negus, 1965; Music: The Medium of the Metaphysical in Hoffmann by Pauline Watts, 1972; The Shattered Self: Hoffmann's Tragic Vision by Horst S. Daemmrich, 1973; Hoffmann and the Rhetoric of Terror by Elizabeth Wright, 1978; Spellbound: Studies on Mesmerism and Literature by Maria M. Tatar, 1978; Mysticism and Sexuality: Hoffmann by James M. McGlathery, 2 vols., 1981-85; Hoffmann's Musical Writings: Kreisleriana, The Poet and Composer, Musical Criticism by David Charlton, 1989; Reading the Book of Nature in E. T. A. Hoffmann, Herman Melville and Mary Shelly by David Vandenberg, 1994; Authorship as Alchemy: Subversive Writing in Pushkin, Scott, Hoffmann by David Glenn Kropf, 1994; E. T. A. Hoffmann by James M. McGlathery, 1997.

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Within five years of his death in 1822 several of E. T. A. Hoffmann's short stories had been published in English, and translations of his work (albeit variable in quality) have been continuously available since. Yet today, to English speakers at least, his writings are probably more familiar in their musical adaptations than their original form: Tchaikovskii's Nutcracker ballet, Delibes's Coppélia, and of course Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann are all taken from Hoffmann stories, whilst twentieth-century composers from Busoni to Hindemith have also based operas upon his work. His comparative neglect as a writer, however, is regrettable not just because of the influence he exerted on others (Edgar Allan Poe and Dostoevskii were among writers who acknowledged their debt to him) but above all because, with their depth of psychological insight and their exotic mix of the realistic and the bizarre, his stories have lost none of their power to enthral. Not that these qualities have always met with uncritical approval. Sir Walter Scott, for instance, writing in 1827, talked of Hoffmann's "singularly wild and inflated fancy," and Thomas Carlyle, who translated the story "The Golden Flower Pot" into English that same year, could still refer to Hoffmann's work as a "bright extravagance" that "less resembles the creation of a poet, than the dreams of an opium-eater." Hoffmann's writings are indeed often fanciful and flamboyant. His stories enter strange and mysterious realms peopled by ghosts and weird apparitions, and the supernatural lurks around every corner. In addition, his heroes are not solid citizens with their lives under control (such are usually presented as bourgeois philistines), but rather they are the odd and the eccentric, the mentally disturbed whose personalities are fragmenting, and sometimes even the downright mad. But none of this is gratuitous or merely whimsical. Like all the romantics, and the German romantics more than most, Hoffmann was aware of a duality underlying human experience: the opposition of finite and infinite, the conflict between ideal and real, and the gulf separating aspiration and achievement, this last dilemma embodying itself for the artist in particular in the painful deficiency of his aesthetic expression when compared with the vision that had inspired it. In addition, at a time when Franz Mesmer's experiments in hypnotism (or "mesmerism") had caught the imagination of Europe and demonstrated the precariousness of personal identity, Hoffmann was gripped by the possibility that our destinies are governed, and our desires so often thwarted, by unseen powers from another realm, whether located in the depths of the unconscious or within the elemental forces of nature.

"The Golden Flower Pot" contains many elements typical of Hoffmann's stories. Subtitled "A Fairy-tale from Modern Times," it is set in contemporary (1815) Dresden and paints a witty satirical portrait of bourgeois life and ambitions. Among the narrow worldlings, however, though quite unseen by them, there exists a very different realm, one involving magical creatures and supernatural encounters. Straddling these two worlds is a student, Anselmus, who is suffering the recurrent Hoffmannesque condition of being torn apart by conflicting impulses. In this case it is his love for the self-seeking Veronika, who is the embodiment of earthly values, and his simultaneous attraction to a little green snake named Serpentina, who is the daughter of a fire spirit banished to earth. She entrances him with her blue eyes and bell-like voice and has about her the aura of poetry, yet she may be no more than a product of his fancy. He must therefore decide whether the realm of creative imagination is sufficiently real to merit his devotion or whether the prosaic and the everyday will prevail instead. On one level the conflict is played out within the mind of Anselmus, but on another it reflects the wider hostility of the material and the spiritual, a clash that in this story culminates in a spectacular battle between benign and demonic spirit-forces. The former are victorious, and Anselmus too opts for life with Serpentina in the poetic kingdom of Atlantis. Yet the story finishes, not with this picture of idyll, but with the wistful musings of the narrator in his lonely Dresden garret. An alcohol-induced trance has enabled him to glimpse, and to describe, Anselmus's bliss, but participation in it for himself is impossible. Artistic fulfillment in this life, it seems, must remain at best a dream.

Plagued by this tantalizing vision of an unreachable ideal, many of Hoffmann's heroes hide behind a facade of idiosyncrasy. Councillor Krespel, in the story of that name, is one such, the talk of the town for his scurrilous behavior. This has been brought on by the state of his daughter, who possesses a supremely beautiful voice but who is constitutionally so weak that to indulge her music might kill her. Caught in the tension between the expression of art and the maintenance of life, Krespel opts to preserve his daughter at all costs, becoming obsessive and tyrannical in the process. But the matter is taken out of his hands when, in a vision one night, he hears her singing and rushes in to find her lying quiet and peaceful, but dead. A dream has this time become spine-chilling reality.

Hoffmann is a past-master at creating an air of mystery, and few of his stories lend themselves to clear-cut interpretation. Whether, for instance, one attributes the conflicts of his heroes to their personal inadequacy or to the machinations of occult forces, both readings can usually be sustained and are equally feasible. The ambiguity is further heightened by the frequent irony of the narrative voice, a playful undertone that prefers hints to explanation and rejoices in the arcane and elusive. At the same time there is sufficient realism to prevent mere allegorizing and a sardonic note to lend bite to the text. Acute observation rubs shoulders with soaring fancy, humor exists alongside menace: it is a compelling mix.

—Peter J. Graves

See the essay on "The Sand-Man."