Introduction
Romanticism in Germany
Biography of Ernst Theodor Amadeus (Wilhelm) Hoffmann
Laughter culture and grotesque in the works of Hoffmann.
Conclusion.
Introduction
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann ... There is something magical in this name. It is always pronounced in full, and it is as if surrounded by a dark ruffled collar with fiery reflections.
However, it should be so, because in fact Hoffmann was a magician. Yes, yes, not just a storyteller, like the brothers Grimm or Perrault, but a real magician. After all, only a true magician can create miracles and fairy tales ... out of nothing. From a bronze doorknob with a grinning face, from nutcrackers and a hoarse chime of an old clock; from the noise of the wind in the foliage and the night singing of cats on the roof. True, Hoffmann did not wear a black robe with mysterious signs, but walked in a worn brown tailcoat and used a goose feather instead of a magic wand.
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann was one of the most prominent figures of late German Romanticism. Writer, composer, artist, theater director - everything, it was harmoniously intertwined in one person, in a great creator. He was a writer of European scale, his work resonated in the souls of not only compatriots, but also outside the homeland. Especially in Russia.
Russia, agitated by unrest, the war with Napoleon, the uprising of the Decembrists, was the best soil for the ironic, sometimes comical creations of Hoffmann. Hoffmann's work influenced the works of many Russian writers. Here you can name Pushkin ("The Undertaker" and "The Queen of Spades"), and Lermontov ("Shtoss"). It had the deepest impact on Gogol ("The Nose", "Portrait", "Notes of a Madman") and Dostoevsky ("Double"). Here is what Belinsky wrote, comparing Hoffmann with Jean Paul Richter: "Hoffmann's humor is much more vital and burning than Jean Paul's humor - and German corrugators, philistines and pedants must feel to their bones the power of Hoffmann's humorous scourge."
My first acquaintance with the work of E.T.A. Hoffmann happened in childhood, even then I was struck by the scale and multi-layeredness of his fairy tales and short stories. Little Tsakhes, The Nutcracker, The Golden Pot, and many other tales of this writer filled my childhood, and, for sure, influenced my worldview. I have always been struck by the multidimensionality of his views on the world, the magic that permeates each work and the tragic sense of the duality of being.
The problems that Hoffmann raised in his works have not lost their relevance to this day. The posthumous fame of this remarkable writer outlived him for a long time. And today, 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 republished. romanticism grotex hoffmann carnivalization In my work, I would like to consider such techniques and principles of Hoffmann's creativity as carnivalization, grotesque, duality. I would like to consider the features of German romanticism and the biography of the writer, as well as on the example of several works, to consider the features of Hoffmann's work and his author's techniques. Romanticism in Germany
Romanticism is a spiritual movement in all areas of culture, primarily in literature, music, philosophy, historical sciences, and so on. Romanticism (from the French word romantique, which denoted something mysterious, strange, unreal), which constituted an entire era in the history of philosophy (late 18th - early 19th centuries), unfortunately, is often considered only as a literary and artistic trend. German romanticism was one of the most extensive, grandiose experiments in the criticism of bourgeois culture. The peculiarity of the romantic worldview is such that it manifested itself most fully in art, due to the fact that it is intuitively fuller, more integral and earlier than other forms of knowledge it grasps and comprehends the essential aspects of the era. Considering art to be synthetic in its essence, the Romantics called for music to be able to draw, to tell the content of the novel and tragedy, so that poetry would approach the art of sound in its musicality, so that painting would strive to convey the images of literature, etc. Even before the French Revolution, the culture of Europe - in particular, the literature of Germany - drew attention to the tension of the aggravated social contradictions, the contradictions between the individual and society. The revolution completed the formation of those impulses for freedom, which from now on became the enduring personal orientations of young philosophers. In 1806-1815, Germany experienced, perhaps, one of the most dynamic and controversial eras in its history. The occupation, the presence of Napoleonic troops created a contradictory situation in the country: on the one hand, the conquerors pushed Germany to follow the more advanced French state. Under these conditions, the long overdue, but carried out under very diverse social influences major government reforms. On the other hand, patriotic feelings and anti-French sentiments awakened among the people, especially towards the end of this period, and resistance to foreign invasion began. First decades of the 19th century - the heyday of German classical philosophy, represented primarily by the works of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, but also by German romantics. Somewhat apart is the work of A. Schopenhauer, who in 1818 created his main work, The World as Will and Representation. Later, in the 20s - 40s years XIX century, when Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer "compete" in Germany, when, after the death of Hegel, right and left Hegelians and, above all, L. Feuerbach, begin to enter the arena of thought, when the first works of K. Marx and F. Engels appear - in culture and philosophy of other countries, new socio-political currents arise: socialism, positivism, anarchism. Romantics were able to capture the deepest, archetypal states of culture: life and death, eternity, time, space, the organic principles of the world, suffering as a common feeling for all living things. Not "I think - therefore I exist" - the statement of an intellectual, but "I suffer - therefore I exist" - a deep (unconscious, instinctive) certainty of all living things in nature. Thus, on the more ancient, archetypal basis of the "I" is not the mind, but the feeling - suffering, as one of the most elementary and primary feelings, close to all living things in nature. In literature, a special form of thinking is introduced - a fragment. I must say that as a genre it is accepted almost axiomatically. Its development, not without reason, is associated with the work of the Jensen, and primarily F. Schlegel. Each fragment of F. Schlegel or Novalis is a clot of thought, monologue in form and dialogic in content. Many fragments seem to suggest an opponent; in their intonation they are affirmative and interrogative at the same time, often having the character of reflections. They have no beginning and no end and are "fragments" of some unfinished conceptual book, a chain of unrealized ideas, i.e. retain their ancestral essence. A fragment is a picture of the birth and extinction of a beginningless and endless thought. It exists on its own, has its own internal structure, is attached to the whole by the will of the author, "built into" the structure of this whole. The fragment, on the one hand, works to destroy classical genres, on the other hand, it returns literature to its original forms, to artistic syncretism, when the work begins to imitate nature, its forms, and is not constructed according to the rules of poetics. Known, for example, is the interest of romantics in the arabesque, which F. Schlegel considered "a completely definite and essential form, or way of expressing poetry" and at the same time considered it not a work of art, but a work of nature, a "natural creation." At one time, Goethe expressed an idea that makes it possible to understand not only the development literary genres in Germany of the period under study, but some features artistic thinking generally. “Literature,” he wrote, “from the very beginning of its existence, is fragmentary. Romantic poets were predominantly lyricists and poets of nature. They wrote about what they saw directly - in themselves and around. Goethe said, for example, that he did not have a line that was not inspired by his own experience. The imagination of romantics was excited by the mystery of ancient castles, Gothic cathedrals, ruins, knights dressed in steel armor. Along with the romance of the Middle Ages, medieval fantasy also resurrected. It was an era when it was believed that ghosts roam the ruins of castles, a ghostly ship rushes through the seas that does not find a home for itself, at night ghouls, ghouls and vampires appear from graves. The fantasy novels and short stories of the German writer Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann embodied the spirit of German romanticism. Already at an early age, he discovered the talents of a musician and draftsman. Hoffmann took up literature late. Among the most famous stories of Hoffmann are the fairy tale "The Golden Pot", the Gothic story "Majorat", "Mademoiselle de Scudery", "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". Brilliant fantasy, combined with a strict and transparent style, provided Hoffmann with a special place in German literature. The action of his works almost never took place in distant lands - as a rule, he placed his incredible heroes in an everyday setting. It is because of this that he is sometimes called a romantic realist. In his own way, he put the views of the romantics into practice. The feeling of the duality of being, the painful discord between the ideal and reality permeates all of his work, however, unlike most of his brothers, he never loses sight of earthly reality and, probably, could say about himself in the words of the early romantic Wackenroder: "despite what efforts of our spiritual wings it is impossible to break 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 contradictions of his time and captured them in the enduring creations of his imagination. With the era of romanticism, not only the formation of a new worldview began, but, accordingly, the disintegration of the old, obsolete artistic forms that had been formed in previous centuries began. And if romanticism was preceded by styles in art, then romanticism is not a style, "romanticism is loneliness, rebellious or reconciled anyway; romanticism is the loss of style!" He singles out the following features of the artistic situation that developed in the era of romanticism: the loss of style is the irrational basis of artistic creativity, the growing feeling of abandonment, loneliness of the creative soul throughout the 19th century. Weidle believes that gradually, with the loss of style, the impotence of various arts came: first in architecture and applied arts, then in music, painting, poetry and the art of the word, etc. Weidle considers romanticism as a will to art, as an awareness of the need for art against the background of its loss , therefore, romanticism is a disease, Weidle believes. But, he admits, great souls, geniuses suffered from this disease. In romanticism, new ideas were embodied not only regarding the nature of art, the characteristics of artistic creativity, the relationship between philosophy and art, the cognitive capabilities of the latter, but the problem of forming a holistic worldview that overcomes the gap between separate areas of knowledge was posed, which was further developed in subsequent theoretical thought and artistic practice. Biography of Ernst Theodor Amadeus (Wilhelm) Hoffmann
Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann was born on January 1776. But already in 1779 the marriage of his parents broke up, and, dividing the children among themselves, they parted. Karl, the eldest son, went to his father, and Ernst, apparently due to his young age (three years), remained with his mother. Ernst never saw his father again. Mother with little Ernst moves to his father's house. The boy finds himself in a large Derffer family, where grandmother Louise Sophia Derffer, two unmarried aunts and an uncle, Otto Wilhelm Derffer, live. "Worldly views of the cat Murr" immerse at this time. This is typical for the writer - almost all experiences from childhood are picked up later in his works. Hoffmann lived in this house until the age of 20. The mother was sick all the time, and mental anguish completely turned her away from this world, therefore, she did not take part in raising her son at all. It turned out that Hoffmann grew up almost an orphan. Uncle Otto, however, considered it his civic duty to give the boy a strict and pious upbringing, in addition, he did not have his own family, so all the energy of the educator was directed to young Ernst. From the age of six (from 1782 to 1792) Ernst Theodor attended a Protestant school in Koenigsberg, "Burg-shul". IN educational institution the orthodox ideas of John Calvin penetrated, in general, the students were brought up in the spirit of strict pietism. In "Burgshul" Ernst met a classmate Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel, and from that time their close friendship began. Gippel became a true friend and "big brother" for Hoffmann - many years later, friends maintained relationships through correspondence. Together they read chivalric novels of that time, discussed Rousseau's Confessions. His father, Theodor von Gippel, burgomaster of Koenigsberg, as many biographers of Hoffmann suggest, served as the prototype for Uncle Drosselmeyer in The Nutcracker - a very contradictory, somewhat mysterious, but ultimately positive nature. In 1792, Hoffmann graduated from school. He cannot decide on one thing: to become an artist or a musician? But the family nevertheless convinces him of the need for a legal education, which will always provide him with a sure piece of bread, and he begins studying law at the Albertina University of Koenigsberg. Perhaps the fact that friend Gippel began his studies at the same university played a role here. Here, Ernst surprisingly continues to study well, and despite the fact that at the same time he composes music, draws, writes and makes music. In addition to having some money, he gives music lessons. His student is the married Dora (Cora) Hutt. Hoffmann falls passionately in love, and his chosen one reciprocates. Among the Albertina professors was Immanuel Kant himself. Some researchers of Hoffmann claim that he had a significant influence on the writer. Meanwhile, friend Gippel finishes studying law and in 1794 leaves Koenigsberg. From now on, a correspondence is tied up between friends, stretching for years. No matter how Hoffmann and Dora Hutt hid their love, rumors about their "scandalous" relationship spread through the homes of Derffer acquaintances and after some time became the subject of wide discussion among the Königsberg townsfolk. On July 22, 1795, he passes the first exam in jurisprudence, successfully graduates from the university and becomes an investigator for the Königsberg district administration. Thus, he becomes financially independent from the Derfer family. And now his double game begins again: during the day he leads the life of a conscientious German worker, and devotes his nights and weekends to his beloved work - to his various musical, artistic, literary interests. This discord in the needs of the soul and the material need for the reliable work of a lawyer will become a tragedy in Hoffmann's life and will be reflected in his creations. March Hoffmann's mother dies. Over the years, she became more and more withdrawn into herself and slowly grew old. Hoffmann writes to Hippel: "Death paid us such a terrible visit that I shuddered to feel the horror of her despotic greatness. This morning we found our good mother dead. She fell out of bed - a sudden apoplexy killed her at night ..." And in June 1796, Hoffmann went to Glogau: leaving Königsberg, he hopes that he will definitely return here, because the world will change ... for the better. In May, E. Hoffmann travels to Konigsberg, lives there until June, and then sees Dora Hutt for the last time. It is not known exactly what happened, but it happened that with the willing help of relatives, Hoffmann became engaged to his cousin, her full name was Sophie Wilhelmina Konstantin ("Minna"), this happened in 1798. In 1800, after brilliantly passing the State exams, he was appointed to the ancient Polish city of Poznan to the post of assessor at the Supreme Court. In March 1802, he broke off the engagement, especially since, as he learned, marriage would make unhappy not only him, but also his cousin. February 1802 Hoffmann married Mikhalina. To do this, he had to accept Catholicism (previously he belonged to the Protestants). All his life Misha (as he affectionately called her) will help him - simply, dispassionately, unromanticly, and always forgive his talented Ernst for his misadventures, and will not leave even in the most difficult time. She was a wonderful hostess and faithful companion of the writer. Hoffman lived with her for 20 years, and thanks to her support, he found great stability in life, although she was not able to completely calm her husband's demons and distract him from alcohol addiction. A new turn in the fate of the composer (not yet a writer), and not for the better, was the carnival masquerade of 1802, at which disguised personalities suddenly began to flicker among the guests, distributing some caricatures. The drawings depicted influential persons, from among the local Prussian nobility, who were present here, and their characteristic funny sides were noticed with amazing accuracy. The general joy lasted only until the cartoons fell into the hands of those very famous personalities, such as major generals, officers and members of the nobility, who immediately recognized themselves. That same night, a detailed report was sent to Berlin, simply speaking, a denunciation, and an investigation began. The distributors of the cartoons were not caught, but the talented hand was immediately recognized. The authorities quickly figured out that all this was a group of young government officials, to which Hoffmann belonged, and he also made available his talent as an artist for this unheard-of action. This ball, which lasted three days, cost Hoffmann dearly. From day to day, he expected to be promoted and transferred to a more western city, and, most likely, it was supposed to be Berlin, but in the end they got rid of him, sending him even further east - to the city of Plock. True, he nevertheless received a promotion - now he is a state adviser, but the already signed document on obtaining the degree of candidate of sciences by Hoffmann was canceled. In the same year, the city recognized Hoffmann the writer: the Berlin "Nezavisimaya" newspaper publishes his essay "Letter from a monk to his metropolitan friend." In the same year, he is published as a music critic, and is a success. In particular, one of the topics of the articles was the relationship between singing and recitation in Schiller's drama "The Bride of Messina". He will return to the theme of the synthesis of arts more than once. In a certain literary competition, he takes second place. At the end of 1803, Aunt Johanna died. Approximately January 13-18, 1804, Ernst Theodor receives a long-awaited will, most likely he hopes with his help to somehow improve his financial situation. Without Aunt Johanna, Uncle Otto's house has become completely unfriendly, and Ernst Theodor visits the theater every evening. He watches performances and operas by V. Muller, K. Dittersdorf, E.N. Megul, arias from operas by Mozart, F. Schiller and A. Kotzebue. In February 1804, Ernst Theodor left the city of childhood, never to return here again. On February 28, 1804, he received an appointment to transfer him to Warsaw as a state adviser to the Prussian Supreme Court. In the spring we move to Warsaw. The years spent in the Polish capital became very important for Hoffmann: here he improved as a composer and achieved some (albeit very local) fame, he wrote his first musical criticisms. And in the July (1805) issue of "Collection beautiful compositions Polish Composers", which was compiled by Elsner, the A-major piano sonata is published. This is the only sonata published during Hoffmann's lifetime. It is known that there were many more, but no one knows the exact number. Interestingly, the work does not suffer from Hoffmann's studies. various arts. He always has commendable reviews and receives a quite acceptable (albeit small) salary and, among other things, studies the Italian language - after all, all his conscious life, Hoffmann dreamed of traveling to Italy to see with his own eyes masterpieces of fine (and not only) art. Hoffmann also met the romantic Zakhary Werner (1768-1823(8). Inspired by his drama "The Cross on the Baltic Sea", he processed the melody of the Polish folk song "Don't Go to the Town"). In July 1805, Hoffmann's daughter Cecilia was born. The Warsaw years played a huge role in Hoffmann's life. Here his singspiel are staged, he conducts his own works, designs stage scenery, his major work has been published - a piano sonata played in the Maltese Palace. And he begins to think about how to leave the hated jurisprudence and make a living with music. But one day it all ended. In the vicinity of Jena and Auerstent, a battle takes place with the Napoleonic troops, who are victorious, and in November 1806 Warsaw is occupied by the French. According to some sources, Hoffmann is accused of spying for the Prussian king. Soon the family is left without an apartment, Hoffmann and his family and 12-year-old niece huddle in the attic of the Musical Assembly. In January, Mikhalina and Cecilia leave for Poznan, to her relatives, and Hoffmann is going to go to Vienna, but the new government refuses to issue a passport. During one of Mikhalina's journeys with her daughter to another city, a mail carriage overturned and little Cecilia died. Mikhalina received a serious head wound, because of which she suffered for a long time. In July 1807, he decided to leave the city that had become his home. And here he is in Berlin. Ernst Theodor is only 30 years old, but his health is broken by diseases, he is constantly worried about the liver, stomach, cough and nausea. He settles on the second floor of Friedrichstrasse 179, where he occupies two rooms. In his portfolio - the scores of several operas, and he is determined to devote himself entirely to art. Hoffmann goes to music publishing houses, offers his works in theaters, but all to no avail. Also, no one is interested in him either as a music teacher or as a conductor. Those were months of complete desperation. Only three of his cantatas are published in Berlin, for two and three voices (with Italian and German texts) (1808), singspiel "Love and Jealousy". (1807). At the beginning of 1813, things went a little better for Hoffmann - he receives a small inheritance, and on March 18 he signs an agreement under which he is a bandmaster in the opera troupe of Joseph Zekondas (Sekonda, Joseph Secondas). At the end of April, he and his wife move to Dresden. His financial situation is improving. For two years (1813-1814) he toured with the troupe in Dresden and Leipzig, mostly conducting. In addition, he composes and writes a lot, serves in the Leipzig theater. In the newspaper "Zeitung fur die elegante Welt", an essay appears entitled "Beethoven's Instrumental Music" ("Beethovens Instrumental-Musik"). The essay "Jacques Callot" was written. Dresden has become another source of inspiration for Hoffmann, he admires its architecture and art galleries. Meanwhile, the fire of the Napoleonic War is reaching the city, on August 27 and 28, 1813, battles are going on near Dresden. Hoffmann survived all the horrors of the war, did not try to somehow protect his life, and several times got into deadly situations. Finally, his worst enemy Napoleon is defeated. "Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!" he writes triumphantly in his diary. Until the end of 1813, he was busy as a conductor in the Zekondas troupe; in addition, he continued to compose and write: in November, The Sandman, The Hypnotist, News of further destinies dogs of Berganets". Then he prepares all the stories for printing, compiling a kind of collection called "Fantasy in the manner of Callot" (Phantasiestucke in Callot "s Manier. Blatter aus dem Tagebuche eines reisenden Enthusiasten), which included all the stories and short stories he wrote. Fees for books and articles bring a meager income, and severe need makes him turn to Gippel for help. Gippel is busy with a vacancy in Berlin and at the end of September 1814 the writer and his wife leave for the capital. On September 26, he signs an agreement under which he assumes the position of a lawyer at the Royal Berlin Court of Appeal with the note "previously without salary." He expresses his thoughts on this as follows: "I am returning to the state stall." Only a few months later he begins to receive a salary. From now on, a double life begins - an official and an artist, as in his youth. April 1816, not without the help of a faithful friend Gippel, Hoffmann was appointed counselor of the Berlin Court of Appeal. If he devoted himself only to gray clerical work and strove, like his colleagues, to secure a position for himself, then, no doubt, he would very quickly reach great heights. But Gippel did it for him. His financial position was strengthened, especially in comparison with the Leipzig times. Now, it would seem, he could lead a more peaceful life and meet in the evenings with officials of his rank for a cup of tea. But Hoffmann still prefers a wild tavern life. Coming home after another meeting with friends, he suffers from insomnia and sits down to write. Sometimes his imagination, warmed up by wine, gave rise to such nightmares that he woke up his wife, and she sat down beside him with knitting. Stories flowed from his pen one after another. So there were things that were included in the future in a separate collection, rightly called by him "Night stories" ("Night stories", "Nachtstucke"). The book includes gloomy short stories "Mayorat" and "Sandman". In May, the second volume of "Elixirs" comes out. August at the Berlin Royal Theater (8/93 Burgomistra Street) staged the first romantic opera in three acts - "Ondine", on which Hoffmann has been working for the past two years. In the title role - Johanna Evnike, who became the last passion of the forty-year-old writer-musician. The opera is very popular and runs for twenty performances. After the success of Ondine, society, as usual, begins to show interest in his other composing efforts, and his other opera, Mermaid (1809), also has some success with critics and the general public. In the autumn of the same year, he wrote a fairy tale for children - "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King", which later appeared in a collection of children's fairy tales, where, in addition to Hoffmann, Fouquet, Watt Eontessa and others were present. In the meantime, the Berlin publishing house is publishing "Night Stories" and the fairy tale "Someone else's child", published in the second volume of the "children's" collection. In Leipzig, "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" and "Festival in honor of the memory of King Arthur" are printed. The edition comes out in a special "pocket format" intended for ladies. In the same "ladies'" version in 1818 in Nuremberg, the story "Counsellor Krespel" ("Rat Krespel") was published. In addition, in 1818 they published: the short story "Doge and Dogaresse" ("Doge und Dogaresse"), Madame de Scuderi", which is very popular with the public, and "An Excerpt from the Life of Three Friends" is published in Frankfurt. So, he continues to lead a crazy, from the point of view of the layman, life. During the day - work in court, requiring the concentration of thought, in the evening - meetings with people of art in a wine cellar, at night - a presentation on paper of daytime thoughts, the embodiment of images heated by wine. His body for a long time forgave him such a way of life, but in the spring of 1818 he passed - the writer develops a disease of the spinal cord. Since that time, his condition has been deteriorating more and more. In the summer, friends give the writer a tabby kitten, whom he names Murr. Hoffmann is working on his next major work - "Little Tsakhes, (Little Tsakhes) called Zinnober", and his cat is napping quietly on his desk. One day the writer saw that his pupil was opening a desk drawer with his paw and was going to sleep on manuscripts. In letters to friends, the writer talks about Murr's extraordinary intelligence and hints that, perhaps, in the absence of the owner, the cat reads his manuscripts and writes his own. On November 14, Hoffmann and his associates, namely J. Gitzig, Contessa, F de la Motte Fouquet, A. von Chamisso, D.F. Koreff (Koreff) form a community - now they call themselves "Serapion brothers". The circle is named after the clairvoyant hermit Serapion. Their charter states: "Freedom of inspiration and imagination and the right of everyone to be himself." From the endless discussions of friends about art and philosophy, the book "The Serapion Brothers" would later arise. (In 1921, Russian writers such as M. Zoshchenko, Lev Lunts, Vsevolod Ivanov, Veniamin Kaverin will create their own "Serapion Brotherhood" in honor of Hoffmann). In January (according to other sources - in February) 1819, the Berlin publishing house Reimer published the first volume of The Serapion Brothers. rejoice creative success the writer is hampered by a serious illness. In the same 1819, "Little Tsakhes, nicknamed Zinnober" ("Klein Zaches genannt Zinnober") is published. People of sharp mind enthusiastically accepted this work, and Hoffmann's friend, Peter Chamisso, called him "our undeniably first humorist." From mid-July to early September, the writer is in the mountains of Silesia and Prague to rest and improve his health. However, he spends all the time during the treatment period on manuscripts. Already in December 1819, the country, or at least Berlin, read the first volume of "The Worldly Views of Cat Murr". The very double form in which the novel is written seems unheard of to the general public. Under cats and dogs, certain sections of society are immediately recognized, and government bodies are already beginning to show interest in the writer's politically inappropriate jokes. At the end of 1819, the first of the four-volume Serapion Brothers was published, which, among other things, included The Extraordinary Sufferings of the Theater Director (based on facts from Holbein's biography). In October 1821, Hoffmann was transferred to the Supreme Appellate Senate, and in early November he sent the first manuscripts of The Lord of the Fleas (The Master Flea) to a publisher in Frankfurt am Main. Around January 18, 1822, the last, most difficult period of the writer's illness begins, he developed something like a tabes corsalis ("tabes corsalis"). For several months, paralysis will gradually take over his body. Right now, when death is near, he writes: "to live, only to live - no matter what it costs!". He wants to come to terms with paralysis, he is ready to work with the help of a secretary - just to have time to write down everything that he has in mind. In the first half of April, the writer dictates the story "The Corner Window", which became the founder of a special genre in literature and was immediately published. In May, his condition worsened completely - the doctor is doing everything that medicine could do at that time: red-hot iron strips are applied to his spine to wake up the body. June, waking up, Hoffmann suddenly felt that he was completely healthy, because he did not feel pain anywhere else, he did not understand that the paralysis had already reached the neck. He died June 25 at 11 ½ hours of the morning. Death finds him while working on the novel "The Enemy". Faithful friend Gippel, who was sitting at his deathbed, writes that he and Hoffmann dreamed of someday settling in the neighborhood, instead of engaging in correspondence, but it turned out that only a friend's fatal illness hastened their meeting. THIS. Hoffmann was buried on June 28 at the third cemetery of the Church of John of Jerusalem. The tombstone was installed at the expense of the judicial department, so hated by Hoffmann. The inscription on it reads: The Councilor of the Court of Appeal distinguished himself as a lawyer, as a poet, as a composer, as an artist. From his friends. Instead of the pseudonym "Amadeus", the name "Wilhelm" given to him at birth was indicated on the monument. In 1823 Gitzig wrote an excellent biography of his friend (Aus Hoffmann s Leben and Nachlass), and the newspaper "Der Zuschauer" will publish his "Corner Window". A few years later, The Last Stories will be published, and much later, in 1847, Mikhalina presented the Prussian king with Hoffmann's scores, consisting of 19 originals of his musical works, including Ondines. He gave them to the Royal Library, where they are kept from now on. Laughter culture and the grotesque in the works of Hoffmann
Even during the life of Hoffmann, his work aroused interest. But even the recognition of his skill did not bring satisfaction to the writer. As a born critic of reality, Hoffmann put all human flaws on public display, which, as a rule, people do not like. But the champions of justice saw their own in Hoffmann and recognized it. Thus, two camps of criticism were formed: opponents and admirers. Opponents accused Hoffmann of insanity and even schizophrenia. The theme of dual worlds and twins in his works suggested the idea of a split personality. This was used by his opponents - it is much easier to impose on society the opinion that it is not worth reading the works of a madman. Each writer, artist, creator embodies his time and the position of man in his time. And everything that he says is expressed in a special language. This is not just the language of art, "figurative" language; its terms also include the artistic language of time, and the individual artistic language of the given creator. The time in which the artistic language of Hoffmann was formed is romanticism. In its richest grammar, the main rule and the initial law is the inflexibility of the spirit, its independence from the course of things. From this law, the demand for absolute freedom of the earthly bearer of this spirit is also derived - a creative, inspired person, for whom the Latin borrowing "genius" is willingly used in the romantic language, and the Greek "enthusiast" ("God-inspired") is also used in Hoffmann's language. Hoffmann's incarnations of such divine inspiration are, first of all, musicians: both the "cavalier Gluck", and the creator of "Don Juan", and the bandmaster Kreisler created by Hoffmann himself - the double of the author and the collective image of the artist in general. French bourgeois revolution late XVIII century - the font of all European romanticism. She laid the gene of freedom in a romantic nature. But already by the most real practice of imposing "freedom, equality, fraternity", especially at the last stage - by the fierce mutual extermination of parties and factions in the struggle for power. Before our eyes, the freedom gained in the revolution resulted in an egoistic struggle for a place under the sun; the liberated bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, plebeian elements, the masses, seduced by the specter of power, but in fact manipulated from above and demonstrating this power where it can only: in an envious and malicious intolerance towards everything extraordinary, to dissent, to independence of opinion and spirit. It is also important that during this period there was a sharp increase in the possibilities of mass production of artistic products, its general availability increased, as well as general awareness and erudition. Modern researchers point out that by 1800 already a quarter of the German population was literate - every fourth German became a potential reader. Accordingly, if in 1750 28 new novels were published in Germany, then 2500 of them appeared in the decade from 1790 to 1800. These fruits of the Enlightenment era were also not unambiguously good for the romantics; for them, the irreversible losses included in the price of "wide success" became ever clearer: the subordination of art to market conditions, its openness to anyone, including arrogantly ignorant judgment, increased dependence on the demands of the public. The ministers and bearers of spirituality increasingly felt themselves in a hopeless and oppressed minority, in constant danger and siege. Thus arose the romantic cult of genius and poetic liberty; it merged the original revolutionary temptation of freedom and an almost reflex reaction of self-defence against the triumph of the masses, against the threat of oppression, no longer class, not social, but spiritual. The loneliness and defenselessness of a man of spirit in the prosaic world of calculation and usefulness is the initial situation of romanticism. As if to compensate for this sense of social discomfort, the early German romantics sought to stimulate their sense of belonging to the mysteries of spirit, nature, and art. Romantic genius, in their opinion, initially contains the entire universe; even setting out to learn the outside world, their hero eventually discovers that all the secrets of this world worthy of knowledge are already resolved in his own soul and, it turns out, it was not worth traveling that far. Such romantics as - Tieck, Friedrich Schlegel, Brentano - took up arms primarily against modern philistinism. There were those who wanted to look deeper and wider. Kleist suspected tragic breaks in the original structure of both the world and man. Doubts arose and intensified in the very extraterritorial status of the romantic genius: whether behind his sublime renunciation of the world is arrogant - and then sinful! - individualism and egoism? One of the first to feel this was Hölderlin, who once exclaimed in contrition: "Let no one justify himself by the fact that the world has ruined him! Man is ruining himself! In any case!" These sentiments grew and very soon took shape among the romantics in a specific complex of patriarchal populism and religious renunciation. This is the other pole of early romanticism: the individual has just been lifted up to heaven, placed above the whole world - now he is cast into dust, dissolved in the nameless stream of people. romantic castles in the air were erected and collapsed, one utopia was replaced by another, sometimes opposite, thought feverishly rushed from one extreme to another, recipes for the rejuvenation of mankind crossed out each other. It was into this atmosphere of ferment and confusion that Hoffmann came. He, as already mentioned, was in no hurry to build a universal philosophy capable of once and for all explaining the mystery of being and embracing all its contradictions with a higher law. But he also dreamed of harmony, of synthesis; only he saw his way to a possible synthesis not in the fiercely utopian extremes into which romantic philosophy was poured again and again, but in something else: he could not imagine this way for himself without a courageous immersion in the "continuous vanity" of life, in the zone of those real contradictions of it. that so tormented other romantics, but only selectively and reluctantly let themselves into the pages of their works and were comprehended as abstractly as possible. Therefore, Hoffmann, like Kleist before him, first of all posed questions, and did not give ready-made answers. And that is why he, who idolized harmony in music so much, embodied dissonance in literature. Every now and then, fireworks of fantasy explode on the pages of Hoffmann's fairy tales, but the brilliance of amusing lights, no, no, and even illuminates either a deaf city lane where villainy ripens, or a dark nook of the soul, where destructive passion seethes. "Kreisleriana" - and nearby "Devil's Elixirs": the shadow of Medardus's criminal passion suddenly falls on Kreisler's sublime love. "Cavalier Gluck" - and "Mademoiselle de Scuderi": the inspired enthusiasm of the cavalier Gluck is suddenly overshadowed by the maniacal fanaticism of the jeweler Cardillac. Good sorcerers endow the heroes with the fulfillment of dreams - but nearby demonic magnetizers take their souls to the full. Now we have before us cheerful actors of the comedy of masks, then creepy werewolves - the whirlwind of the carnival is spinning over the abyss. All these models of artistic structure are collected, as if in focus, in the final work of Hoffmann - the novel "Everyday Views of the Cat Murr". It is not without reason that it opens with a vast picture of fireworks that ended in fire and confusion; and it is not for nothing that the romantic sufferings of the brilliant bandmaster are interrupted and drowned out by the prosaic revelations of the learned cat with inexorable methodicalness. No one before Hoffmann embodied the unsteadiness, anxiety, "reversal" of the era in such an impressively figurative, symbolic expression. Again: philosophers from romanticism, Hoffmann's predecessors and contemporaries, talked a lot and willingly about the symbol, about the myth; for them, it is even the very essence of genuine - and above all romantic - art. But when they created artistic images in support of their theories, they shifted symbolism into them to such an extent that ethereal phantoms, mouthpieces of ideas, and ideas of very general and vague ideas, appeared quite often. Hoffmann - not a philosopher, but just a novelist - takes up the matter from the other end; its source material is modern man in the flesh, not "general", but "individual"; and in this individual, he suddenly grabs with his tenacious gaze something that blows up the framework of individuality, expanding the image to the volume of a symbol. A blood child of the romantic era, by no means alien to its fantastic and mystical trends, he nevertheless firmly adhered to the principle formulated by him in one of the theatrical reviews: "do not neglect the evidence of the senses in the symbolic depiction of the supersensible." Of course, he neglected these evidence even less when depicting the actual "sensuous", the real. This is what allowed Hoffmann, with all his penchant for symbolism, fantasy, grotesque exaggerations and sharpenings, to impressively recreate not only the general existential situation of a contemporary person, but also his mental constitution. Hoffmann's romantic grotesque is a very significant and influential phenomenon in world literature. To a certain extent, it was a reaction to those elements of classicism and the Enlightenment that gave rise to the limitations and one-sided seriousness of these currents: to narrow rational rationalism, to state and formal-logical authoritarianism, to the desire for readiness, completeness and unambiguity, to the didacticism and utilitarianism of the Enlightenment, to naive or bureaucratic optimism, etc. Rejecting all this, Hoffmann relied on the traditions of the Renaissance, especially on Shakespeare and Cervantes, which at that time were rediscovered and in the light of which the medieval grotesque was also interpreted. Also, Stern, who in a certain sense can even be considered its founder, had a significant influence on the romantic grotesque in general. As for the direct influence of living (but already very impoverished) folk-spectacular carnival forms, it, apparently, was not significant. Predominated purely literary traditions. However, it should be noted the rather significant influence of the folk theater (especially puppet theater) and some types of farce comedians. Unlike medieval and renaissance grotesque, which was directly connected with folk culture and had a public and popular character, Hoffmann's romantic grotesque becomes chamber: it is, as it were, a carnival experienced alone with a keen awareness of this isolation. The carnival worldview is, as it were, translated into the language of subjectively idealistic philosophical thought and ceases to be that concretely experienced (one might even say bodily experienced) feeling of the unity and inexhaustibility of being, as it was in the medieval and Renaissance grotesque. The most significant transformation in the romantic grotesque was the beginning of laughter. Laughter, of course, remained: after all, in conditions of monolithic seriousness, no - even the most timid - grotesque is impossible. But laughter in the romantic grotesque was reduced and took the form of humor, irony, sarcasm. It ceases to be joyful and jubilant laughter. The positive resurrecting moment of the laughter principle is weakened to a minimum. In Hoffmann's grotesque, the images of material and bodily life - food, drink, feces, copulation, childbirth - almost completely lose their reviving significance and turn into "low life". The images of the romantic grotesque are an expression of fear of the world and tend to instill this fear in readers ("scare"). The grotesque images of folk culture are absolutely fearless and involve everyone with their fearlessness. This fearlessness is also characteristic of greatest works Renaissance literature. But the pinnacle in this respect is the novel by Rabelais: here fear is destroyed in the bud and everything turns into fun. This is the most fearless work of world literature. Other features of the romantic grotesque are also connected with the weakening of the resurrecting moment in laughter. The motive of madness, for example, is very characteristic of any grotesque, because it allows you to look at the world with different eyes, unclouded by "normal", that is, generally accepted, ideas and assessments. But in the popular grotesque, madness is a cheerful parody of the official mind, of the one-sided seriousness of the official "truth." This is holiday madness. In the romantic grotesque, madness takes on the gloomy, tragic tone of individual isolation. Even more important is the motif of the mask. This is the most complex and most significant motif of folk culture. The mask is associated with the joy of change and reincarnation, with cheerful relativity, with the cheerful denial of identity and uniqueness, with the denial of stupid coincidence with oneself; the mask is associated with transitions, metamorphoses, violations of natural boundaries, with ridicule, with a nickname (instead of a name); The mask embodies the playful beginning of life; it is based on a very special relationship between reality and image, characteristic of the most ancient ritual and spectacular forms. It is, of course, impossible to exhaust the polysyllabic and polysemantic symbolism of the mask. It should be noted that such phenomena as parody, caricature, grimace, antics, antics, etc., are essentially derivatives of the mask. The very essence of the grotesque is very clearly revealed in the mask. In the romantic grotesque, the mask, cut off from the unity of the folk-carnival worldview, becomes impoverished and acquires a number of new meanings that are alien to its original nature: the mask hides something, hides something, deceives, etc. Such meanings are, of course, quite impossible when the mask functions in the organic whole of popular culture. In romanticism, the mask almost completely loses its regenerating and renewing moment and acquires a gloomy shade. Behind the mask is often a terrible emptiness, "Nothing" (this motif is very strongly developed in Bonaventure's "Night Watch"). Meanwhile, in the folk grotesque behind the mask is always the inexhaustibility and diversity of life. But even in the romantic grotesque, the mask retains something of its folk-carnival nature; this nature is indestructible in it. Indeed, even in the conditions of ordinary modern life, the mask is always shrouded in some special atmosphere, it is perceived as a particle of some other world. A mask can never become just a thing among other things. Hoffmann also plays a large role in the motif of a puppet, a doll. This motive is not alien, of course, to the folk grotesque. But for romanticism, this motive brings to the fore the idea of an alien, inhuman force that controls people and turns them into puppets, an idea that is completely uncharacteristic of folk laughter culture. Only romanticism is characterized by a peculiar grotesque motif of the tragedy of the doll. In the grotesque, from my point of view, the objective and the subjective are indivisible. The objective is the redistribution within all living things of the relationship between human, plant and animal on the basis of the common and equal belonging of all three principles and their carriers to the personified earth. The subjective in the grotesque is, apparently, the modality of presenting the corresponding image by the author. The grotesque modality always combines laughter and horror, which is connected with the main motivation for the very creation of the grotesque image. It stems from man's latent attraction to his subhuman unity with plant and animal elements on the basis of the fusion of his body with the earthy - maternal. However, the attraction to this state (embodied in various orgy cults and all kinds of centaurs) over the course of socio-historical time is increasingly intertwined with horror - both about such an interweaving, and about one's own attraction and inability to resist it. At the same time, with the growth of "positive" knowledge, centauristics becomes a fantasy. Therefore, the artistic simulation of "centauristics" turns out to be inseparable from: a) horror from it and oneself striving for it; b) laughter as overcoming horror for the sake of a new "development" of one's prehuman past; c) laughter as an awareness of the conditionality of one's return to this past. Therefore, the grotesque is not reducible to horror, fantasy, magic and comedy isolated from each other - but always represents their functional fusion. Hoffmann's stories are grotesque in the sense that in them the existence of a person is determined by the connections of his nature with various pre-human principles of animated nature. Hoffmann's poetics is practically not connected with the archaic, in contrast, for example, with Gogol. His poetic outlook was nourished by an interest in alchemy, Rosicrucianism, cabalism, Leibniz's monadology and other religious and natural-philosophical teachings, in which the world and man are equally formed by the combination and play of various spiritualized principles of nature. Moreover, the moment of the game is fundamental and determines a kind of poetic image of the universe, embodied in music. In Hoffmann, the human, social world is not opposed to the magical, and is its continuation. There is Hoffmann's "evil principle" ("Boese Prinzip"). Its essence is the same unlimited distribution of plant and animal principles. It appears to be the result of a certain failure in the connection of a person with the spiritualized, "magical" nature, a violation of the magical recipe. Hoffmann usually finds the restoration of this connection in the realm of carnival and opera, which carry the playful gene of man's relationship with his prototype and nature as a whole. For the writer, the redistribution of relations "human / vegetable / animal / earthy" connects fear and laughter. But if fear is of a general nature (infantile and uterine, "prenatal" fear of the earth and one's attraction to it) The fundamental situation for the grotesque is the symbolic marriage with the personified earth, which is constantly present in various mysteries. Ruling equally over the entire animal and human world as its vegetable extensions, the personified earth periodically returns its subjects to its bosom in the form of marriage with them. It is this exchange that underlies the equal presence in one object or subject of human, animal and plant features, which is the basis for "grotesque experience". In Hoffmann, this logic is highlighted in "The Royal Bride" ("Die Koenigsbraut", 1821). In the story, the earthly lord seeks to return the human "subject" (mediated relatives) under his power, marrying his "deputy" or himself. In The Royal Bride, the king of vegetables, Daukus Korota, seeking marriage with the young mistress of the garden Anna von Zabeltau, combines the groom and his patron. At the climax of the marriage union (or on the eve of it), an earthen abyss opens up, full of magical or "natural" evil spirits. In principle, this echoes the archaic symbolism of the Egyptian Isis as a "green field" (or the Greek Demeter - a "bread field"), hiding under its cover the disgusting processes of death and birth. The laughter shell of sleep exposes fear and at the same time constantly accompanies it. The danger of marriage with the personified earth in its masculine modality gives rise to the fundamental motif for both writers of fear of women, which is realized as infantilism. In Hoffmann, the same conflict unfolds in the fairy tale "Lord of the Fleas" ("Meister Floh", 1821). The fear of women and the unwillingness to grow up of Peregrinus Tis in "Lord of the Fleas" are associated with a complex of guilt before the abandoned and deceased parents. Being immersed in the fabulous and magical from childhood, he embarks on many years of wandering in search of miracles, and when he returns, he learns that the parents left by him died in his absence. The magical becomes terrible for Peregrinus, because it is associated with inexcusable sin. Thus, in Hoffmann, the feminine principle is not equal to the magical, but the magical is evil. At the same time, nature - like - culture in "Lord of the Fleas", in contrast to "The Royal Bride", is not always equal to the human as good, positive. In Hoffmann's story "Little Tsakhes, nicknamed Zinnober" ("Klein Zaches, zinnober genannt", 1822), one sees an echo with the motif of "disorder of nature" as a result of the disappearance of evil spirits. Such a disappearance leads to the growth of the carnal (earthly) beginning in people from generation to generation and one day leads to the closing of this beginning in the last representative of the genus. In "... Tsakhes ..." for main character- the carrier of the carnal decline of mankind as a result of the removal of magic from the world. Once upon a time, Prince Pafnuty, on the advice of his servant, expelled witches and fairies not only from his principality, but also from the physical world in general, to the fabulous country of Dzhinnistan - and this affirms "enlightenment". The magical beginning, however, served as a catharsis of the physiological existence of people. Deprived of this catharsis, people are unable to resist the growth of carnal sin in their nature from generation to generation. Each following is more and more dependent on its bodily component. The human world is weakening, becoming more and more insignificant and, as a result, "closes" its insignificance in the figure of little Tsakhes. The growing ambitions of Tsakhes reveal the operation of the "evil principle": the bodily principle invades the social and spiritual realms. In the narrative, the birth of Tsakhes immediately follows the expulsion of the fairies; according to the plot, however, one is separated from the other by a gigantic temporal abyss. Therefore, his birth acts as a kind of "fulfillment of terms." Tsakhes looks like a collective carnal twin of the genus (a combination of carnal outgrowths of all those who lived and still live). Tsakhes, meanwhile, is born powerless, personifying the bodily decline of the "demagicated" world. The miraculous elevation of the freak is the work of the exiled fairies themselves: in retaliation for the expulsion of the comrades, the Rosabelverde fairy implants three hairs in Tsakhes. Having cast blindness on people and forcing them to attribute other people's merits to Tsakhes, the fairy makes the latter not only a universal substitute, but also a mirror: by elevating him, people deify not the defenseless and humiliated, but the bodily and sinful, trivial and predatory in themselves. In "...Tsakhes..." the world of magic and sorcery is divided into two parts. The magician Prosper Alpanus, opposing the fairy Rosabelverde and helping the hero to remove the spell from Tsakhes, combines magic and science on the basis of scientific magic, esotericism. Thus, science itself (the synthesis human world culture) does not frontally oppose chthonics, but helps people on behalf of the latter. Fairies not only nourish humanity with natural power, but spiritualize its culture. One of the fundamental manifestations of the "evil principle" and "disorder of nature" is the false humanization of the animal - dogs, cats, monkeys, etc. Such are Hoffmann's short story-feuilleton "Report on an educated young man" ("Nachricht von einem gebildeten jungen Mann" 1813 ), the novel "Worldly views of the cat Murr" ("Lebensansichten des Katers Murr", 1821). (cf. W. Gauff's story "A Monkey as a Man" ("Affe als Mensch", 1826), as well as "Report on the latest fate of the dog Bergansa" ("Nachricht von den neuesten Schicksalen des hundes Berganza", 1813). Hoffmann in "... Bergans" tells about the most tragic episode of his hopeless love for Yulchen Mark. He witnessed how the fiancé Yulchen, forced on her by her mother, tried to forcefully take possession of her in a drunken state; Hoffmann stood up for the girl and, as a result of the ensuing scandal, was forever expelled from Mark's house. Bergansa, acting as the second "I" of Hoffmann himself, in a famous scene stands up for his mistress and, having bitten the groom from the world of the "evil principle", is expelled from the house, like Hoffmann himself. (Note that Yulchen herself certainly does not belong to the world of the "evil principle"). Unlike Bergansa, Poprishchin's Meji appears both as Poprishchin's inner voice and as an adept of the "evil world" opposing him (as well as the general's daughter who owns her, whom the dog symbolically "protects" from the stranger Poprishchin). That is: Poprishchin, rejected by the Petersburg world, is internally similar to him, aspires to him, through the “prophetic” dog he composed. She ceases to be a connecting figure when Poprishchin pronounces a sentence on herself through her "prophetic" lips and "learns" about the betrothal of his lady of the heart: his consciousness splits into two. Bergansa, on the other hand, certainly carrying the symbolism of witchcraft and primary chaos, does not at all embody the "disorder of nature", but, on the contrary, opposes it and, being expelled, confirms, like her counterpart - Hoffmann, the meaning of "rejection", but as a result of dog "selflessness". That is, the original mythological chaos, also symbolized by the humanized dog, is by no means identical to the "evil principle" and "disorder of nature", but serves to overcome them. The "life-giving", "scientific" and "socializing" meaning of magic in Hoffmann is affirmed by his work "The Golden Pot" ("Der goldene Topf", 1813). In the story, an outsider of the physically real, but flawed social world, the petty official Anselm, is absolutely not adapted to this world and constantly gets into ridiculous situations, causing general laughter. But thanks to the magical, or "as if magical" calligraphy, he is included in the hierarchy of another, better and magical world. In addition, he enters into a magical marriage, his bride is the daughter of the wizard Salamander snake Serpentina. In The Golden Pot, the magical and profane worlds are not only polarized, but brought together. The hierarch of the first, the magician of the Salamanders, is equally an adept ordinary world in the form of archivist Lindhorst. Therefore, for Anselm, the comprehension of magical calligraphy under the guidance of Lindhorst is not only possible and introduces Magic world(which culminates in a meeting with the daughter of the archivist-wizard Serpentina), but also contributes to social elevation in the ordinary world. He, as in "... Tsakhes ...", is associated with magic. Anselm's "two-way" growth (an alternative to enlightenment "education of the senses") serves to return the world to its magical origins and replenish its vitality. Thus, Hoffmann's magical and profane worlds are equally valuable, comprehensible and passable, and the hero's "childhood" serves not their immovable balance, but elevation in both worlds and their interpenetration. Hoffmann transformed the archaic mother earth into a spiritualized pantheistic Nature, immersion in which does not decompose human self-identity, but nourishes it. Each principle of Nature and the corresponding part of human nature and their connections appear dialectically. This removes the grotesque fusion of laughter and horror experienced by a person (author and hero) about the connection of human nature with nature and his own attraction to it. Conclusion
Hoffmann's artistic talent, his sharp satire, subtle irony, his cute eccentric heroes, enthusiasts inspired by a passion for art, won him the lasting sympathy of the modern reader. Irony was one of the essential components of Hoffmann's work, as well as of the early romantics. Moreover, in Hoffmann's irony as a creative technique, which is based on a certain philosophical, aesthetic, worldview position, two main functions can be clearly distinguished. In one of them he solves purely aesthetic problems. Romantic irony in these works of Hoffmann receives a satirical sound, and this satire does not have a social, public orientation. The second function is that Hoffmann saturates irony with a tragic sound, in which it contains a combination of the tragic and the comic. In my work, I tried to consider these functions of Hoffmann's irony, and the comic culture of his immortal works on the example of the fairy tales "Little Tsakhes" and "The Golden Pot", as well as several short stories and short stories. The creative path of E.T.A. Hoffman's bright star drew a dazzling trail in the sky of the geniuses of literature, it was short, but unforgettable. It is difficult to overestimate the influence of Hoffmann on world literature, and especially on Russian writers. Until now, his work excites the minds and souls, forcing them to re-evaluate the world of internal and external. Hoffmann's works are an immense field for research - each time, re-reading the same thing, you open up new horizons of the author's thoughts and fantasies. And, probably, one of the most remarkable properties of the works of this romantic is that they "heal" the soul, allowing you to notice the vices in yourself and correct them. They open their eyes to the diversity of the world, showing the way to the possession of the wealth of the universe. List of used literature
1.
"Romanticism as a cultural-historical type". Stepanova N.N. 2.
"Gogol and Hoffmann: the grotesque and its overcoming". A.I. Ivanitsky, 2007 3.
"The work of Francois Rabelais and the culture of laughter". MM. Bakhtin 4.
"Romanticism in Germany" N.Ya. Berkovsky. 6.
"Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann". A. Karelsky. 7.
http://etagofman.narod.ru/glavnaya.html.
E. T. A. HOFFMANN
Among the writers of late German romanticism, one of the most prominent figures was Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann(1776-1822). Hoffmann is a writer of European scale, whose work outside his homeland received a particularly wide response in Russia.
He was born into the family of a Prussian royal lawyer. Already from his youth, Hoffmann awakens a rich creative talent. He discovers considerable talent as a painter. But his main passion, to which he remains faithful throughout his life, is music. Playing many instruments, he thoroughly studied the theory of composition and became not only a talented performer and conductor, but also the author of a number of musical works.
Despite his diverse interests in the field of art, at the university Hoffmann was forced, for practical reasons, to study law and choose a profession that was traditional in his family. He diligently and with great success studies law. Having become an official of the legal department, he shows outstanding professional training, earning a reputation as a diligent and capable lawyer.
After graduating from the university in 1798, there come the agonizing years of service as an official of the judicial department in various cities of Prussia, years filled with a passionate dream of devoting oneself to art and a painful consciousness of the impossibility of realizing this dream.
In 1806, after the defeat of Prussia, Hoffmann was deprived of his office, and with it his livelihood. After Berlin, Bamberg, Leipzig, Dresden - these are the milestones of that thorny path, along which, accompanied by various everyday misfortunes and rare glimpses of good luck, Hoffmann walked, working as a theater conductor, decorator, teacher of singing and playing the piano.
And only in 1814, when Napoleon was expelled from Germany, did the years of joyless wanderings end for Hoffmann. His hopes of obtaining a well-paid position in Berlin, in which he could apply his knowledge and talent in the field of music or painting, did not materialize. A hopeless financial situation forces him to accept a place in the Ministry of Justice in the Prussian capital that was secured by a close friend Gippel, which for Hoffmann was tantamount, as he himself wrote about it, to "returning to prison." However, he performs his official duties impeccably, and in 1818 he was appointed to a responsible post. But not success in the service, but the lively artistic and literary life of Berlin are primarily of interest to Hoffmann. In literary and musical Berlin, Hoffmann is a recognized figure.
At this time, there are changes in his public positions. In connection with the revival of the opposition movement, mainly among students, Hoffmann in 1820 was appointed a member of the commission to investigate political crimes. Very skeptical and mocking of the nationalist student unions, Hoffmann, however, as a lawyer and as a citizen, is imbued with the spirit of those new advanced norms of bourgeois law and political ideas brought to Prussia from across the Rhine, which, overcoming the stubborn resistance of the old social and legal institutions, gradually curtailed police arbitrariness and limited personal royal intervention in judicial procedure and court decisions. Being extremely dissatisfied with his new appointment, with which he associated "disgusting arbitrariness, cynical disrespect for all laws," the writer demonstrated considerable civic courage, openly protesting in his appeals to the Minister of Justice against the lawlessness committed by the commission. And his persistent demarches were not unsuccessful. But when it became known that in his fantastic novel The Lord of the Fleas, under the name of a certain chisel-maker Knarrpanti, Hoffmann ridiculed the chairman of the Kamptz commission, a prosecution was initiated against him under the obviously far-fetched pretext of disclosing judicial secrets, threatening the person under investigation with heavy punishment. And only agitated public opinion and the active efforts of friends helped to stop the case against the writer, provided that he removed the criminal passage from the novel. Meanwhile, a rapidly developing serious illness - progressive paralysis - deprived him of the ability to move independently. Hoffmann died on January 25, 1822.
Entering literature at a time when the Jena and Heidelberg romantics had already formulated and developed the basic principles of German romanticism, Hoffmann was a romantic artist. The nature of the conflicts underlying his works, their problems and the system of images, the artistic vision of the world itself remain within the framework of romanticism. Like the Jensen, most of Hoffmann's works are based on the artist's conflict with society. The original romantic antithesis of the artist and society is at the heart of the writer's attitude. Following the Jenians, Hoffmann considers the creative person to be the highest embodiment of the human "I". - an artist, an “enthusiast”, in his terminology, who has access to the world of art, the world of fairy-tale fantasy, those are the only areas where he can fully realize himself and find refuge from real philistine everyday life.
But the embodiment and resolution of the romantic conflict in Hoffmann are different than in the early romantics. Through the denial of reality, through the artist's conflict with it, the Jensen rose to the highest level of their worldview - aesthetic monism, when the whole world became for them the sphere of poetic utopia, fairy tale, the sphere of harmony in which the artist comprehends himself and the Universe. The romantic hero of Hoffmann lives in the real world (beginning with Gluck's gentleman and ending with Kreisler). With all his attempts to break out of it into the world of art, into the fantastic fairy-tale realm of Jinnistan, he remains surrounded by real, concrete historical reality. Neither a fairy tale nor art can bring him harmony in this real world, which ultimately subjugates them. Hence the constant tragic contradiction between the hero and his ideals, on the one hand, and reality, on the other. Hence the dualism from which Hoffmann's heroes suffer, the two worlds in his works, the insolubility of the conflict between the hero and the outside world in most of them, the characteristic duality of the writer's creative manner.
One of the essential components of Hoffmann's poetics, as well as the early romantics, is irony. Moreover, in Hoffmann's irony as a creative technique, which is based on a certain philosophical, aesthetic, worldview position, we can clearly distinguish two main functions. In one of them, he appears as a direct follower of the Yenese. We are talking about those of his works in which purely aesthetic problems are solved and where the role of romantic irony is close to that which it performs in the Jena romantics. Romantic irony in these works of Hoffmann receives a satirical sound, but this satire does not have a social, public orientation. An example of the manifestation of such a function of irony is the short story "Princess Brambilla" - brilliant in its artistic performance and typically Hoffmann in demonstrating the duality of his creative method. Following the Jenians, the author of the short story "Princess Brambilla" believes that irony should express a "philosophical outlook on life", that is, be the basis of a person's attitude to life. In accordance with this, as with the Jenese, irony is a means of resolving all conflicts and contradictions, a means of overcoming that “chronic dualism” from which the main character of this short story, the actor Giglio Fava, suffers.
In line with this main trend, another and more essential function of his irony is revealed. If among the Yenese irony as an expression of a universal attitude to the world became at the same time an expression of skepticism and refusal to resolve the contradictions of reality, then Hoffmann saturates irony with a tragic sound, for him it contains a combination of the tragic and the comic. The main bearer of Hoffmann's ironic attitude to life is Kreisler, whose "chronic dualism" is tragic, in contrast to the comical "chronic dualism" of Giglio Fava. The satirical beginning of Hoffmann's irony in this function has a specific social address, significant social content, and therefore this function of romantic irony allows him, a romantic writer, to reflect some typical phenomena of reality (“Golden Pot”, “Little Tsakhes”, “Worldly Views of the Cat Murra" - works that most characteristically reflect this function of Hoffmann's irony).
Hoffmann's creative individuality in many characteristic features is already defined in his first book, Fantasies in the Manner of Callot, which includes works written from 1808 to 1814. significant aspects of his worldview and creative manner. The short story develops one of the main, if not the main idea of the writer's work - the insolubility of the conflict between the artist and society. This idea is revealed through that artistic device that will become dominant in all subsequent work of the writer - the two-dimensionality of the narrative.
The subtitle of the short story "Recollection of 1809" has a very clear purpose in this regard. It reminds the reader that the image famous composer Gluck, the main and, in essence, the only hero of the story, is fantastic, unreal, because Gluck died long before the date indicated in the subtitle, in 1787. And at the same time, this strange and mysterious old man is placed in the atmosphere of real Berlin, in the description of which one can catch specific historical signs of the continental blockade: the disputes of the townsfolk about the war, carrot coffee, steaming on cafe tables.
All people are divided for Hoffmann into two groups: artists in the broadest sense, people who are poetically gifted, and people who are absolutely devoid of a poetic perception of the world. “I, as the supreme judge,” says the alter ego of the author Kreisler, “divided the entire human race into two unequal parts: one consists only of good people, but bad or not musicians at all, the other of true musicians.” Hoffmann sees the worst representatives of the category of "non-musicians" in the philistines.
And this opposition of the artist to the philistines is especially widely revealed in the example of the image of the musician and composer Johann Kreisler. The mythical unreal Gluck is replaced by the very real Kreisler, a contemporary of Hoffmann, an artist who, unlike most of the same type of heroes of the early romantics, lives not in the world of poetic dreams, but in real provincial philistine Germany and wanders from city to city, from one princely court to another, persecuted by no means a romantic yearning for the infinite, not in search of the "blue flower", but in search of the most prosaic daily bread.
As a romantic artist, Hoffmann considers music to be the highest, most romantic form of art, “because it has only the infinite as its subject; mysterious, expressed in sounds by the proto-language of nature, filling the human soul with endless languor; only thanks to her ... a person comprehends the song of the song of trees, flowers, animals, stones and waters. Therefore, Hoffmann makes the musician Kreisler his main positive hero.
Hoffmann sees the highest incarnation of art in music primarily because music can be the least connected with life, with reality. As a true romantic, while revising the aesthetics of the Enlightenment, he renounces one of its main provisions - about the civil, public purpose of art: "... art allows a person to feel his highest purpose and from the vulgar fuss Everyday life leads him to the temple of Isis, where nature speaks to him in sublime, never heard, but nevertheless understandable sounds.
For Hoffmann, the superiority of the poetic world over the world of real everyday life is undeniable. And he sings of this world of a fabulous dream, giving it preference over the real, prosaic world.
But Hoffmann would not have been an artist with such a contradictory and, in many respects, tragic worldview, if such a fairy tale short story had determined the general direction of his work, and did not demonstrate only one of its sides. At its core, however, the writer's artistic worldview does not at all proclaim the complete victory of the poetic world over the real. Only madmen like Serapion or philistines believe in the existence of only one of these worlds. This principle of duality is reflected in a number of works by Hoffmann, perhaps the most striking in their artistic quality and most fully embodied the contradictions of his worldview. Such, first of all, is the fairy-tale short story The Golden Pot (1814), the title of which is accompanied by the eloquent subtitle A Tale from Modern Times. The meaning of this subtitle lies in the fact that the characters in this tale are contemporaries of Hoffmann, and the action takes place in the real Dresden at the beginning of the 19th century. This is how Hoffmann rethinks the Jena tradition of the fairy tale genre - the writer includes a plan of real everyday life in its ideological and artistic structure. The hero of the novel, student Anselm, is an eccentric loser, endowed with a "naive poetic soul”, and this makes the world of the fabulous and wonderful accessible to him. Faced with him, Anselm begins to lead a dual existence, falling from his prosaic existence into the realm of a fairy tale, adjacent to ordinary real life. In accordance with this, the short story is compositionally built on the interweaving and interpenetration of the fabulous-fantastic plan with the real. Romantic fairy-tale fantasy in its subtle poetry and elegance finds here in Hoffmann one of its best exponents. At the same time, the real plan is clearly outlined in the novel. Not without reason, some researchers of Hoffmann believed that this novel could be used to successfully reconstruct the topography of the streets of Dresden at the beginning of the last century. A significant role in the characterization of the characters is played by a realistic detail.
A widely and vividly developed fairy-tale plan with many bizarre episodes, so unexpectedly and seemingly randomly invading the story of real everyday life, is subject to a clear, logical ideological and artistic structure of the short story, in contrast to the deliberate fragmentation and inconsistency in the narrative manner of most early romantics. The two-dimensional nature of Hoffmann's creative method, the two-world nature in his worldview, were reflected in the opposition of the real and the fantastic world and in the corresponding division of the characters into two groups. Konrektor Paulman, his daughter Veronika, registrar Geerbrand - prosaically thinking Dresden townsfolk, which can be attributed, in the author's own terminology, to good people, devoid of any poetic flair. They are opposed by the archivist Lindhorst with his daughter Serpentina, who came to this philistine world from a fantastic fairy tale, and the dear eccentric Anselm, whose poetic soul opened the fairy-tale world of the archivist.
In the happy ending of the novel, which ends with two weddings, it receives a full interpretation of ideological concept. The court adviser becomes the registrar Geerbrand, to whom Veronika gives her hand without hesitation, having abandoned her passion for Anselm. Her dream comes true - “she lives in a beautiful house in the New Market”, she has “a hat of the latest style, a new Turkish shawl”, and, having breakfast in an elegant negligee by the window, she gives orders to the servants. Anselm marries Serpentina and, having become a poet, settles with her in fabulous Atlantis. At the same time, he receives as a dowry a “pretty estate” and a golden pot, which he saw in the archivist’s house. The golden pot - this peculiar ironic transformation of the "blue flower" of Novalis - retains the original function of this romantic symbol. It can hardly be considered that the completion of the Anselm-Serpentina storyline is a parallel to the philistine ideal embodied in the union of Veronica and Geerbrand, and the golden pot is a symbol of philistine happiness. After all, Anselm does not give up his poetic dream, he only finds its realization.
The philosophical idea of the short story about the incarnation, the realm of poetic fantasy in the world of art, in the world of poetry, is affirmed in the last paragraph of the short story. Its author, who suffers from the thought that he has to leave the fabulous Atlantis and return to the miserable squalor of his attic, hears the encouraging words of Lindhorst: “Weren’t you yourself just in Atlantis and don’t you own at least a decent manor there as poetic property your mind? Is Anselm's bliss nothing else than life in poetry, which reveals the sacred harmony of all that exists as the deepest of the mysteries of nature!
Not always, however, Hoffmann's fantasy has such a bright and joyful flavor, as in the short story considered or in the fairy tales The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (1816), Alien Child (1817), Lord of the Fleas (1820), Princess Brambilla » (1821). The writer created works very different in their worldview and in the artistic means used in them. Gloomy nightmarish fantasy, reflecting one of the sides of the writer's worldview, dominates the novel The Devil's Elixir (1815-1816) and Night Tales. Most of the "Night stories", such as "The Sandman", "Mayorat", "Mademoiselle de Scuderi", which, unlike the novel "Devil's Elixir", are not burdened with religious and moral issues, win in comparison with it in artistic terms, perhaps , primarily because they do not have such a deliberate injection of complex plot intrigue.
The collection of short stories "The Serapion Brothers", four volumes of which appeared in print in 1819-1821, contains works that are unequal in their artistic level. There are stories here that are purely entertaining, plot-driven (Signor Formica), Interdependence of Events, Visions, Doge and Dogaressa, and others, banal and edifying (Player's Happiness). But still, the value of this collection is determined by such stories as "The Royal Bride", "The Nutcracker", "Artus Hall", "Falun Mines", "Mademoiselle de Scudery", testifying to the progressive development of the writer's talent and containing, with a high perfection of artistic form significant philosophical ideas.
The name of the hermit Serapion, a Catholic saint, calls itself a small circle of interlocutors, periodically arranging literary evenings, where they read their stories to each other, from which the collection is compiled. Sharing subjective positions on the issue of the relationship between the artist and reality, Hoffmann, however, through the mouth of one of the members of the Serapion Brotherhood, declares the absolute denial of reality unlawful, arguing that our earthly existence is determined by both the internal and external world. Far from rejecting the need for the artist to turn to what he himself saw in reality, the author strongly insists that the fictional world be depicted as clearly and clearly as if it appeared before the artist's gaze as the real world. This principle of the plausibility of the imaginary and the fantastic is consistently realized by Hoffmann in those stories in the collection, the plots of which are drawn by the author not from his own observations, but from works of painting.
The "Serapion principle" is also interpreted in the sense that the artist must isolate himself from the social life of the present and serve only art. The latter, in turn, is a self-sufficient world, rising above life, standing apart from the political struggle. With the undoubted fruitfulness of this aesthetic thesis for many of Hoffmann's works, one cannot but emphasize that his work itself, in certain strengths, by no means always fully corresponded to these aesthetic principles, as evidenced by a number of his works of the last years of his life, in particular the fairy tale "Little Tsakhes nicknamed Zinnober ”(1819), noted by the attention of K. Marx. By the end of the 10s, new significant trends emerged in the writer's work, expressed in the strengthening of social satire in his works, the appeal to the phenomena of modern social and political life (“Little Tsakhes.” “Everyday views of Cat Murr”), from which he continues in principle fence off in their aesthetic declarations, as we saw in the case of the Serapion Brothers. At the same time, one can also state more definite exits of the writer in his creative method towards realism (“Master Martin-bochar and his apprentices”, 1817; “Master Johann Wacht”, 1822; “Corner Window”, 1822). At the same time, it would hardly be correct to raise the question of a new period in Hoffmann's work, because simultaneously with social satirical works, in accordance with his former aesthetic positions, he writes a number of short stories and fairy tales that are far from social trends (“Princess Brambilla”, 1821 ; "Marquise de La Pivardiere", 1822; "Mistakes", 1822). If we talk about the creative method of the writer, it should be noted that, despite the significant inclination in the works noted above to a realistic manner, Hoffman and in last years of his work continues to create in a characteristically romantic way (“Little Tsakhes”, “Princess Brambilla”, “Royal Bride” from the Serapion cycle; the romantic plan clearly prevails in the novel about Cat Murr).
V. G. Belinsky highly appreciated Hoffmann's satirical talent, noting that he was able to "depict reality in all its truth and execute philistinism ... his compatriots with poisonous sarcasm."
These observations of the remarkable Russian critic can be fully attributed to the fairy tale short story "Little Tsakhes". IN new fairy tale Hoffmann's two worlds are fully preserved in the perception of reality, which is again reflected in the two-dimensional composition of the novel, in the characters' characters and their arrangement. Many of the main characters of the story-tale
"Little Tsakhes" have their literary prototypes in the short story "The Golden Pot": student Balthazar - Anselma, Prosper Alpanus - Lindhorst, Candida - Veronica.
The duality of the novel is revealed in the opposition of the world of poetic dreams, the fabulous country of Dzhinnistan, the world of real everyday life, the principality of Prince Barsanuf, in which the action of the novel takes place. Some characters and things lead a dual existence here, as they combine their fairy-tale magical existence with existence in the real world. Fairy Rosabelverde, she is also the Canoness of the Rosenshen Orphanage for Noble Maidens, patronizes the disgusting little Tsakhes, rewarding him with three magical golden hairs.
In the same dual capacity as the fairy Rosabelverde, she is also Canoness Rosenshen, the good wizard Alpanus also acts, surrounding himself with various fabulous miracles that the poet and dreamer student Baltazar well sees. In his ordinary incarnation, only accessible to philistines and sober-minded rationalists, Alpanus is just a doctor, prone, however, to very intricate quirks.
The artistic plans of the compared short stories are compatible, if not completely, then very closely. In terms of ideological sound, for all their similarity, the novellas are quite different. If in the fairy tale "The Golden Pot", which ridicules the attitude of the bourgeoisie, satire has a moral and ethical character, then in "Little Tsakhes" it becomes more acute and receives a social sound. It is no coincidence that Belinsky noted that this short story was banned by the tsarist censorship for the reason that it contains "a lot of ridicule of stars and officials."
It is in connection with the expansion of the address of satire, with its strengthening in the short story, that one significant moment in its artistic structure also changes - the main character becomes not a positive hero, a typical Hoffmann eccentric, a poet-dreamer (Anselm in the short story "The Golden Pot"), but a negative hero - the vile freak Tsakhes, a character, in a deeply symbolic combination of his external features and internal content, first appears on the pages of Hoffmann's works. “Little Tsakhes” is even more of a “tale from new times” than “The Golden Pot”. Tsakhes - a complete nonentity, devoid of even the gift of intelligible articulate speech, but with an exorbitantly swollen swaggering pride, disgustingly ugly in appearance - due to the magical gift of the Rosabelverde fairy, in the eyes of those around him, he looks not only a stately handsome man, but also a person endowed with outstanding talents, bright and clear mind. IN a short time he makes a brilliant administrative career: without completing a law course at the university, he becomes important official and, finally, the all-powerful first minister in the principality. Such a career is only possible due to the fact that Tsakhes appropriates other people's labors and talents - the mysterious power of the three golden hairs makes blinded people attribute to him everything significant and talented done by others.
Thus, within the framework of the romantic worldview and the artistic means of the romantic method, one of the great evils of modern art is depicted. public system. However, the unfair distribution of spiritual and material wealth seemed fatal to the writer, arising under the influence of irrational fantastic forces in this society, where power and wealth are endowed with insignificant people, and their insignificance, in turn, by the power of power and gold turns into an imaginary brilliance of mind and talents. The debunking and overthrow of these false idols, in accordance with the nature of the writer's worldview, comes from outside, thanks to the intervention of the same irrational fairy-tale-magical forces (the sorcerer Prosper Alpanus, in his confrontation with the fairy Rosabelverde, patronizing Balthazar), which, according to Hoffmann, gave rise to this ugly social phenomenon. The scene of indignation of the crowd bursting into the house of the all-powerful minister Zinnober after he lost his magical charm, of course, should not be taken as an attempt by the author to seek a radical means of eliminating the social evil that is symbolized in the fantastically fabulous image of the freak Tsakhes. This is just one of the minor details of the plot, which by no means has a programmatic character. The people are not rebelling against the evil temporary minister, but only mocking the disgusting freak, whose appearance finally appeared before them in its true form. Grotesque within the framework of the fairy-tale plan of the novel, and not socially symbolic, is the death of Tsakhes, who, fleeing the raging crowd, drowns in a silver chamber pot.
Hoffmann's positive program is completely different, traditional for him - the triumph of the poetic world of Balthazar and Prosper Alpanus not only over evil in the person of Tsakhes, but also over the ordinary, prosaic world in general. Like the fairy tale "The Golden Pot", "Little Tsakhes" ends with a happy ending - a combination of a loving couple, Balthazar and Candida. But now this plot finale and the embodiment of Hoffmann's positive program in it reflect the deepening of the writer's contradictions, his growing conviction in the illusory nature of the aesthetic ideal that he opposes to reality. In this regard, the ironic intonation intensifies and deepens in the short story.
A great social generalization in the image of Tsakhes, an insignificant temporary worker ruling the whole country, a poisonous irreverent mockery of the crowned and high-ranking persons, "mockery at the stars and ranks", over the narrow-mindedness of the German philistine are added in this fantastic tale into a vivid satirical picture of the phenomena of the socio-political structure of modern Hoffmann of Germany.
If the short story "Little Tsakhes" is already marked by a clear shift in emphasis from the fantasy world to the real world, then this trend was even more pronounced in the novel "The Worldly Views of Cat Murr, coupled with fragments of the biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler, accidentally surviving in waste paper" (1819- 1821). Illness and death prevented Hoffmann from writing the last, third volume of this novel. But even in its unfinished form, it is one of the most significant works of the writer, representing in the most perfect artistic expression almost all the main motives of his work and artistic manner.
The dualism of Hoffmann's worldview remains and even deepens in the novel. But it is expressed not through the opposition of the fairy-tale world and the real world, but through the disclosure of the real conflicts of the latter, through the general theme of the writer's work - the conflict between the artist and reality. The world of magical fantasy completely disappears from the pages of the novel, with the exception of some minor details associated with the image of Meister Abraham, and all the author's attention is focused on the real world, on the conflicts taking place in contemporary Germany, and their artistic comprehension is freed from the fabulous-fantastic shell. This does not mean, however, that Hoffmann becomes a realist, standing on the position of the determinism of characters and the development of the plot. The principle of romantic convention, the introduction of conflict from the outside, still determines these main components. In addition, it is enhanced by a number of other details: this is the story of Meister Abraham and the "invisible girl" Chiara with a touch of romantic mystery, and the line of Prince Hector - monk Cyprian - Angela - Abbot Chrysostom with extraordinary adventures, sinister murders, fatal recognitions, as it were moved here from the novel The Devil's Elixir.
The composition of the novel is peculiar and unusual, based on the principle of two-dimensionality, the opposition of two antithetical principles, which in their development are skillfully combined by the writer into a single line of narration. A purely formal technique becomes the main ideological and artistic principle of the embodiment of the author's idea, philosophical understanding of moral and ethical and social categories. The autobiographical narrative of a certain scientist cat Murr is interspersed with excerpts from the life of the composer Johannes Kreisler.
Already in the combination of these two ideological and plot plans, not only by their mechanical combination in one book, but also by the plot detail that the owner of the cat Murra, Meister Abraham is one of the main characters in Kreisler's biography, a deep ironic parodic meaning is laid. The dramatic fate of a genuine artist, musician, tormented in an atmosphere of petty intrigues, surrounded by high-born nonentities of the chimerical Principality of Sighartsweiler, is opposed by the life of the “enlightened” philistine Murr. Moreover, such an opposition is given in a simultaneous comparison, because Murr is not only the antipode of Kreisler, but also his parodic double, a parody of a romantic hero.
Irony in this novel acquires a comprehensive meaning, it penetrates into all lines of the narrative, determines the characteristics of most of the characters in the novel, acts in an organic combination of its various functions - both an artistic device and a means of sharp satire aimed at various phenomena of social life.
The entire cat-and-dog world in the novel is a satirical parody of the estate society of the German states: the “enlightened” philistine burghers, the student unions - burschenschafts, the police (yard dog Achilles), the bureaucratic nobility (spitz), the highest aristocracy (poodle Scaramouche , Salon of the Italian Greyhound Badina).
Murr is, as it were, the quintessence of philistinism. He fancies himself outstanding personality, scientist, poet, philosopher, and therefore he keeps the chronicle of his life "for the edification of budding feline youth." But in reality, Murr is an example of that "harmonic vulgarity" that was so hated by the romantics.
But Hoffmann's satire becomes even more acute when he chooses the nobility as its object, encroaching on its upper strata and on those state-political institutions that are associated with this class. Leaving the ducal residence, where he was the court bandmaster, Kreisler ends up with Prince Iriney, his imaginary court. The fact is that once the prince “really ruled over a picturesque owner near Sighartsweiler. From the belvedere of his palace, with the help of a spyglass, he could survey his entire state from edge to edge ... At any moment it was easy for him to check whether Peter’s wheat was born in the most remote corner of the country, and with the same success to see how carefully they processed their vineyards of Hans and Kunz. The Napoleonic Wars deprived Prince Irenaeus of his possessions: he "dropped his toy state out of his pocket during a short promenade to a neighboring country." But Prince Irenaeus decided to preserve his small court, “turning life into a sweet dream in which he and his retinue stayed,” and the good-natured burghers pretended that the false brilliance of this ghostly courtyard brought them glory and honor.
Prince Irenaeus, in his spiritual poverty, is not an exclusive representative for Hoffmann; of his class. The entire princely house, starting with the illustrious father Irenaeus, are stupid, flawed people. And what is especially important in the eyes of Hoffmann, the high-ranking nobility, no less than the enlightened philistines from the burgher class, is hopelessly far from art: “It may well be that the love of the greats of this world for the arts and sciences is only an integral part of court life. The position obliges to have pictures and listen to music.
In the arrangement of characters, the scheme of opposing the world of poetry and the world of everyday prose, characteristic of Hoffmann's two-dimensionality, is preserved. The main character of the novel is Johannes Kreisler. In the writer's work, he is the most complete embodiment of the image of the artist, the "wandering enthusiast." It is no coincidence that Hoffmann gives Kreisler many autobiographical features in the novel. Kreisler, Meister Abraham and the daughter of Benzon's adviser Yulia make up a group of "true musicians" in the work who oppose the court of Prince Iriney.
In the old organ master Abraham Liskov, who once taught music to the boy Kreisler, we encounter a remarkable transformation of the image of the good magician in Hoffmann's work. A friend and patron of his former student, he, like Kreisler, is involved in the world of genuine art. Unlike his literary prototypes of the archivist Lindhorst and Prosper Alpanus, Maester Abraham performs his entertaining and mysterious tricks on the very real basis of the laws of optics and mechanics. He himself does not experience any magical transformations. This is a wise and kind person who has gone through a difficult life path.
Notable in this novel is Hoffmann's attempt to imagine the ideal of a harmonious social order, which is based on a general admiration for art. This is Kanzheim Abbey, where Kreisler seeks shelter. It bears little resemblance to a real monastery and rather resembles the Thelemic monastery of Rabelais. However, Hoffmann himself is aware of the unrealistic utopian nature of this idyll.
Although the novel is not completed, the reader becomes clear about the hopelessness and tragedy of the fate of the Kapellmeister, in whose image Hoffmann reflected the irreconcilable conflict of a true artist with the existing social order.
Hoffmann's artistic talent, his sharp satire, subtle irony, his cute eccentric heroes, enthusiasts inspired by a passion for art, won him the lasting sympathy of the modern reader.
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Satire(lat. satira) is a manifestation of the comic in art, which is a poetic humiliating denunciation of phenomena using various comic means: sarcasm, irony, hyperbole, grotesque, allegory, parody, etc.
Humor in satire is used to dilute direct criticism, otherwise the satire may look like a sermon. This is already characteristic of the first satirical works.
But can Hoffmann be attributed the justification of earthly existence? Is it to him, who, like no other, has created a murderous freak show of philistine insignificance?
However, here everything is not so clear. It would be the greatest injustice to Hoffmann to suspect him of elitist arrogance. Artists are born, but philistines are made. And he, the most sophisticated mocker, punishes vices not congenital, but acquired. A person may or may not devote himself to serving the Muses - but he should not devote himself to serving Mammon, he should not extinguish the "divine spark" in himself. It is then that an irreversible perversion of humanity takes place in him.
In The Sandman, the already mentioned story of how, in a "well-meaning society," a mechanical doll became the legislator of the halls, is described by a brilliant humorist. What are Hoffmann’s summary remarks about the atmosphere established in this society among the “highly respected gentlemen” after the discovery of a deception with a mannequin worth only: to make sure that they were not captivated by a wooden doll, demanded from their beloved that they slightly out of tune in singing and dancing out of time ... and most of all, that they not only listened, but sometimes spoke themselves, so much so that their speeches and indeed expressed thoughts and feelings. love affairs strengthened and became sincere, others, on the contrary, calmly dispersed. "This is all, of course, very funny, but in an ironic and satirical arrangement, a very serious social problem appears here: the mechanization and automation of social consciousness.
In "Little Tsakhes" the story of a vile freak is also ridiculous, who, with the help of magical spells received from a fairy, bewitched an entire state and became the first minister in it - but the idea that formed its basis is rather terrible, a nonentity seizes power by appropriating (alienating!) merit, not belonging to him, but a blinded, stupefied society that has lost all value criteria, no longer simply takes "an icicle, a rag for an important person", but also, in some kind of perverted self-beating, out of a half-wit creates an idol.
Hoffmann's panopticon, on closer examination, is a sick social organism; the magnifying glass of satire and grotesque highlights the affected places in it, and what at first seemed a stunning ugliness and a challenge to common sense, the next moment is realized as the inexorability of the law. The irony and satire of Hoffmann in such passages are, of course, deadly, but it is a strange thing: at the same time there is not the slightest note of squeamish contempt in them, no gloating - but the pain that sounded later in Gogol's famous exclamation is constantly heard and felt: "And a man could descend to such insignificance, pettiness, vileness! could change like that!" Moreover: Hoffmann is really not happy with this gift of his to see everything as if through a magnifying glass, and he left unambiguous evidence of this.
Hoffmann's entire worldview, his poetics and the nature of his romantic irony were largely influenced by both the time in which he wrote and his social status a representative of the burgher intelligentsia of Germany, that social stratum, the best representatives of which, painfully trying to escape from the stuffy atmosphere of their philistine existence, did not know and were afraid of the people, could not overcome the loyal attitude of their environment to the privileged ruling classes. Hence, along with the intense tragedy and social satire of a number of Hoffmann’s works, the writer’s attempts to resolve the conflict by the victory of the world of magical fiction over the real, prosaic world are so frequent (“The Unknown Child”, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”, “Lord of the Fleas”, “Little Tsakhes”, “ Princess Brambilla).
Composition
The heroes of Hoffmann are most often people of art and by profession they are musicians or painters, singers or actors. But with the words\"musician\",\"artist\", \"artist\" Hoffmann defines not a profession, but a romantic personality, a person who is able to guess unusual behind the dull gray appearance of everyday things bright world. His hero is certainly a dreamer and dreamer, he is stuffy and painful in a society where only what can be bought and sold is valued, and only the power of love and creative fantasy helps him rise above an environment that is alien to his spirit.
We also meet such a hero in the story\"Golden Pot\", which the author called\"a fairy tale from modern times\".
The hero of the story, student Anselm, is the subject of universal ridicule. He irritates the townsfolk among whom he lives with his ability to daydream, his inability to calculate every step, the ease with which he gives his last pennies. He lives, as it were, in two worlds: inside. world of their experiences and in the world of everyday reality. The conflict between dreams and reality takes on a grotesque-comic character. But the author loves his hero precisely for this inability to live, for the fact that he is out of tune with the world. material assets.
The work embodies one of the basic principles of romanticism - duality. Two worlds - real and unreal (Atlantis), good and evil, etc. The dual world is realized in the images of a mirror, which are found in large numbers in the story: a smooth metal mirror of an old fortune teller, a crystal mirror made of rays of light from a ring on the hand of archivist Lindhorst, Veronica's magic mirror that bewitched Anselm. It is no coincidence that one of the misadventures of Anselm, who accidentally overturned the basket of a street vendor, turns out to be the beginning of miraculous incidents, as a result of which an extraordinary fate awaits him.
The young man is not at all indifferent to the simple blessings of life, but he truly strives only for the world of miracles, and this world readily reveals its secrets to him. Calculation reigns in the philistine environment where Hoffmann's heroes live. It leaves an imprint on both fantasy and love - on that ideal world of a person that the romantics opposed to reality.
Hoffmann understood that this reality is strong, that the ideal under its influence gradually fades and takes on its coloring.
The whole story "The Golden Pot" seems to be permeated with a soft golden light, softening the ridiculous, unattractive figures of the townsfolk. Reality does not yet evoke bitter feelings in Hoffmann.
After all, the true "enthusiast" Anselm managed to resist her cheap bait. He managed to believe in the incredible so much that it became a reality for him, he overcame the attraction of dull worldly prose and escaped from its circle. \"You proved your loyalty, be free and happy\", - says Hoffmann to his hero.
The writer is sure that a miracle can happen to anyone, you just need to be worthy of it. This idea resounds in all Hoffmann's works. The fairy tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King", published in 1816, was also written about this.
With joy, the writer plunges into the wonderful country of childhood - the country of intricate toys, intricate gingerbread and sweets, amazing and fascinating stories. There are many bright colors and movement in \"The Nutcracker\"; carefully, as if on a wide canvas, a variety of products of skillful German masters, dolls dressed in costumes of different peoples are painted. The author's story seems to be accompanied by music, it seems that the rhythm of the dance is felt in it.
Many years later, after the death of Hoffmann, a ballet was created based on the "Nutcracker", the music for which was written by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
In this children's tale, as in the greatest and most significant works of the writer, a romantic personality stands out clearly against the general background. Little Marie differs from everyone else in that her inner life goes beyond the narrow framework of the surrounding life. Like Anselm, she sees a world invisible to others. Simple explanations for all miracles lead her to despair, and the girl rejects them - otherwise all the beauty of life will disappear for her. It is uninteresting and impossible for her to live without faith in the unexpected, fantastically beautiful.
Both the modest, compliant Anselm and the affectionate obedient Marie reveal unshakable perseverance when they try to take away their dream, encroach on the ideal that beckons them. That is why they achieve their dreams.
Creating a fairy-tale world, Hoffmann seems to place a person in a special environment in which not only contrasting faces of Good and Evil are exposed in him, but subtle transitions from one to another. And in the fairy tale, Hoffman, on the one hand, in masks and through the masks of Good and Evil, revives the polar principles in a person, but on the other hand, the development of the narrative removes this polarization clearly indicated at the beginning of the fairy tale.
A. Karelsky. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann.
The text is taken from the Philology.ru portal, reproduced from the publication: Hoffman E. T. A. Collected Works. In 6 volumes - T. 1. - M., 1991.
"...I must consult with you, with you, the beautiful, divine mystery of my life! all the love that we call the World Spirit from eternity burned on me, its spark smoldered in my chest until the breath of your being fanned it into a bright joyful flame.
... The old man suddenly woke up from his sublime oblivion, and his face, which had not happened to him for a long time, grinned in that strangely amiable smile, or smirk, which was in striking contradiction with the primordial innocence of his creatures and gave his whole appearance a trait of some even sinister caricature.
E.-T.-A. Hoffmann. Worldly views of the cat Murr.
Hoffmann is one of those writers whose posthumous fame is not limited to the ranks of collected works, standing row after row from century to century and turning bookshelves into silent, but formidable shelves; it does not settle down with pyramids of fundamental research - monuments of the stubborn overcoming of these regiments; She doesn't even depend on any of this.
She is rather light and winged. Like a strange spicy fragrance, it is poured into the spiritual atmosphere that surrounds you. You may not read the "fairy tales of Hoffmann" - sooner or later they will tell you or point to them. If in childhood you were bypassed by the Nutcracker and Master Coppelius, they will still remind you of themselves later - in the theater at the ballets of Tchaikovsky or Delibes, and if not in the theater, then at least on the theater poster or on the television screen. The shadow of Hoffmann constantly and beneficially overshadowed Russian culture in the 19th century; in the 20th century, it suddenly fell on her like an eclipse, a materialized burden of tragic grotesque - let us recall, for example, the fate of Zoshchenko, in which his belonging to a group with the Hoffmannian name "Serapion Brothers" played the role of an aggravating circumstance. Hoffmann was under suspicion of unreliability, he himself was now also published sparingly and fragmentarily - but from this he did not cease to be present around, in literature and, most importantly, in life - only his name has now become more a sign and symbol of atmospheric trouble (" Hoffmannian"!), competing here only with the name of Kafka; but Kafka owes much to the same Hoffmann.
(Suspicion of unreliability, excitement of persecution and the syndrome of investigation ... Hoffmann already knew the mechanics of these processes. In his story "Lord of the Fleas" a case is fabricated against an innocent person, and the investigative method is described, in particular, : "The astute Knarrpanty had at least a hundred questions at the ready, with which he attacked Peregrinus ... They were mainly aimed at finding out what Peregrinus was thinking about both in general all his life, and, in particular, under certain circumstances, for example when writing suspicious thoughts in his diary. Thinking, Knarrpanty believed, in itself, as such, is a dangerous operation, and the thinking of dangerous people is all the more dangerous. "And further:" ... I will present our young man in such an ambiguous light, that everyone will only open their mouths. And from here a spirit of hatred will rise, which will bring all sorts of troubles on his head and turn against him even such impartial, calm people as this Mr. Deputy.")
Today it is finally time to present to our readers the worthy Collected Works of Hoffmann; as for his literary and artistic works, it is almost complete. Hoffmann is honored for the first time with the honor of a classic, and readers themselves will now be able to judge what this writer was thinking about "both throughout his life, and in particular, under certain circumstances."
* * *
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822) entered the literary path late: thirty-three years old, if the countdown is from the magazine publication of the short story "Cavalier Gluck" in 1809; thirty-eight years old, if we keep in mind the first major publication that brought him fame - a collection of short stories "Fantasy in the manner of Callot", the first three volumes of which appeared in 1814.
Contemporaries met the new writer with confusion and wariness. His fantasies were immediately identified as romantic, in the spirit of the then popular mood, but what did such belatedness mean? Romanticism was associated primarily with the generation of the young, infected with the French revolutionary virus, those who sneered at the "reasoner" Schiller and, like Kleist, were eager to "pull the wreath from Goethe's brow." Germany managed to get used to the fact that its brilliant romantic poets began early in the morning, flared up with fireworks and meteors, others died out quite early, like Novalis and Wackenroder - having blinded and faded away, they turned into legends; youth were attributed and many of their oddities were attributed to youth.
And how would you like to understand the fireworks, suddenly arranged by a gentleman in years without a certain social position? He was a judicial official somewhere on the outskirts, in Poland, then a bandmaster in Bamberg, Leipzig and Dresden, now he is interrupted by an official in the Ministry of Justice in Berlin, without salary; they say that he is quarrelsome and strange, he was expelled from Posen to Plock for caricatures of his superiors; looks like he's still drinking. In any case, in the fairy tale "The Golden Pot" Anselm's romantic-fantastic love dreams of the beautiful green snake are too frankly warmed up by a bowl of punch, and only his dreams would be good: after the mentioned bowl, such respectable, sedate people as the co-rector become romantic dreamers. Paulman and registrar Geerbrand. What a strange, suspiciously frivolous transvaluation of values? Romantic dreams are supposed to be of a purely spiritual, unearthly origin, they ignite in the soul with a spark of heaven, and here their source is so simple in the kitchen, and the recipe is attached: "a bottle of arak, a few lemons and sugar."
Eight years after the release of "Fantasy" Hoffmann died. He was already dying as a writer, not exactly famous (this epithet is more suitable for an impeccable classic or an undeniable genius), but very - let's put it in a modern way - popular. He managed to write surprisingly much in eight years - the novels "Devil's Elixirs" (1816) and "Everyday Views of Cat Murr" (1821), a huge number of novels, short stories and fairy tales, partly combined into the cycles "Night Studies" (1816-1817) to "The Serapion Brothers" (1819-1821). Hoffmann was eagerly read, and after the publication of his story "Little Tsakhes, nicknamed Zinnober" (1819), the romantic writer Shamisso called him "our undoubtedly first humorist."
But throughout the 19th century, Germany still kept it in the second category: it did not fit into the "high" tradition. First of all, humor in this tradition was not particularly honored - it was allowed there, if possible, in befitting metaphysical attire: at least Jean-Paul's ponderously ornate humor or the theoretically calculated humor of the early romantics (so solidly and comprehensively philosophically justified that about laughter with you already forget it, God forbid to understand the depths). In Hoffmann, at first you laugh, but then you catch on about the depths - and, as we shall see, they are revealed.
By the very freedom and recklessness of his laughter, Hoffmann aroused suspicion: this is quite simple, this is "for the poor", this is a mass laugher. Irony, satire? The attitude towards them was about the same - this was also confirmed by the fate of Heine in Germany. As for Hoffmann's "serious" problems - the collision of poetry and prose, the artistic ideal and reality - by that time it was perceived as deja vu, again thanks to the early romantics. It turned out that Hoffmann only coarsened everything, lowered the spirit from the empyrean to the market square. He himself frankly confessed this at the close of the curtain: in the short story "The Corner Window" written before his death, he left his poetic heirs a covenant not to neglect the market square and "its incessant bustle."
In the 20th century, Germany became more attentive to Hoffmann. But benevolent readers and interpreters also developed their own system of clichés. Hoffmann's name was associated primarily with the famous principle of "two worlds" - a romantically pointed expression eternal problem art, the contradiction between the ideal and reality, "essentiality", as the Russian romantics used to say. "Essentiality" is prosaic, that is, petty and miserable, this life is inauthentic, improper; the ideal is beautiful and poetic, it is true life, but it lives only in the chest of the artist, the "enthusiast", but he is persecuted by reality and unattainable in it. The artist is doomed to live in the world of his own fantasies, fenced off from the outside world with a protective shaft of contempt or bristling against him with a prickly armor of irony, mockery, satire. And in fact, it’s as if Hoffmann is in “Cavalier Gluck”, and in “Golden Pot”, and in “Dog Berganets”, and in “Little Tsakhes”, and in “Lord of the Fleas”, and in “Murre the Cat” .
There is another image of Hoffmann: under the guise of a eccentric comedian hides a tragic singer of duality and alienation human soul(not excluding the artistic soul), the gloomy bandmaster of night fantasies, the organizer of a round dance of doubles, werewolves, automatons, maniacs, rapists of body and spirit. And it is also easy to find grounds for this image: in The Sandman, Majorat, Elixirs of the Devil, Magnetizer, Mademoiselle de Scuderi, The Gambler's Happiness.
These two images, shimmering, shimmering, appear to us, so to speak, at the forefront of Hoffmann's world theater. But in the depths, closer to the wings, other images loom, now outlining, now blurring: a cheerful and kind storyteller - the author of the famous "The Nutcracker"; singer of ancient crafts and patriarchal foundations - author of "Master Martin the Cooper" and "Master Johannes Watch"; selfless priest of Music - the author of "Kreisleriana"; secret admirer Life is the author of The Corner Window.
Hoffmann in his civilian existence was, depending on the twists of fate, alternately a judicial officer and bandmaster, he saw his true vocation in music, he gained fame for himself by writing. The existence of Proteus. Many interpreters tend to believe that his original element is still music: not only was he himself a composer (in particular, the author of the opera "Ondine" based on the plot of Fouquet's romance, known to us from Zhukovsky's translation), music permeates all of his prose not only as a theme, but also as a style. In fact, the soul of Hoffmann, the soul of his art is wider than music and literature: it is a theater. In this theater there is, as expected, music, drama, comedy, and tragedy. Only genera and species are not separated: connect the image of Hoffmann as an actor (and director) with one, momentary hypostasis - in the next second, having stunned you with a somersault, he will appear completely different. Hoffmann arranges this theater and exists in it; he himself is a werewolf, a hypocrite, a histrion to the tips of his nails.
For example, to describe your hero, to give his portrait - this is most often boring for him, if he does it, then in passing, without being embarrassed by patterns; as in the theater: stage directions are ballast. But on the other hand, he will willingly show it, show it in action, facial expressions, gestures - and the more grotesque, the more willingly. The hero of the fairy tale "The Golden Pot" flies to its pages, immediately ending up in a basket of apples and pies; apples are rolling in all directions, the merchants are scolding, the boys are enjoying their lives - the scene is staged, but the image is also created!
Hoffmann is not in a hurry to sculpt and mint out a phrase, not to build an openwork or monumental building of a philosophical system, but to release a living, seething, pushing life onto the stage. Of course, against the backdrop of detachedly philosophizing romantic whirlwinds, dreamlike confidently and fearlessly marching through the empyrean spirit over its abysses, the stumbling, balancing Hoffmann looks like an amateur, a joker - a child of a square and a booth. But, by the way, the square with the booth, let's not forget, also has its own philosophy; only it is not built, but revealed. They are also a manifestation of life, one of its sides. And as we shall see, this is precisely the side from which Hoffmann, with all his undoubted attraction to the empyrean spirit, is unable to tear himself away.
It would seem - what kind of life is that? Is this dance of fantasies and phantoms life? Half-real, half-ghostly - operatic - Donna Anna in "Don Juan", green snakes with their father, the prince of spirits Salamander in the "Golden Pot", the mechanical doll Olympia and the half-man, half-werewolf Coppola in "The Sandman", the fantastic freak Tsakhes with his magical benefactors and adversaries, ghosts and maniacs of bygone times in "Majorat", "Bride's Choice", "Mademoiselle de Scudery" ... What does this have to do with life?
Not direct, no. But a lot.
* * *
Every true artist - both as a person and as a creator - embodies his time and the situation of a person in his time. But what he tells us about them is expressed in a special language. This is not just the language of art, "figurative" language; its terms also include the artistic language of time, and the individual artistic language of the given creator.
Artistic language Hoffmann's time - romanticism. In its richest grammar, the main rule and the initial law is the inflexibility of the spirit, its independence from the course of things. From this law, the demand for absolute freedom of the earthly bearer of this spirit is also derived - a creative, inspired person, for whom the Latin borrowing "genius" is willingly used in the romantic language, and the Greek "enthusiast" ("God-inspired") is also used in Hoffmann's language. Hoffmann's incarnations of such divine inspiration are, first of all, musicians: both the "cavalier Gluck", and the creator of "Don Juan", and the bandmaster Kreisler created by Hoffmann himself - the double of the author and the collective image of the artist in general.
Why did the Romantics raise the issue of the freedom of a genius as acutely as never before? This is also dictated by time. The French bourgeois revolution of the late 18th century is the font of all European romanticism. She laid the gene of freedom in a romantic nature. But already by the very real practice of planting "freedom, equality, fraternity", especially at the last stage - the fierce mutual extermination of parties and factions in the struggle for power, the appeal to the instincts of the crowd, rampant mass denunciation and mass ritual massacres - the revolution pretty much shook romantic souls. And the post-revolutionary development of Europe gave the romantics a clear lesson that the expansion of the range of personal freedom brought by the bourgeois revolution is not an absolute good, but a very relative one. Before their eyes, the freedom gained in the revolution resulted in an egoistic struggle for a place under the sun; before their eyes, the liberated bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, plebeian elements were overflowing their banks, seduced by the specter of power, but in fact manipulated from above and demonstrating this power where it can only: in envious and malicious intolerance towards everything extraordinary, towards dissent, to independence of mind and spirit.
It is also important to take into account that it was at this time that there was a sharp expansion of the possibilities of mass production of artistic products, the growth of its general accessibility, as well as general awareness and erudition. Modern researchers point out that by 1800 already a quarter of the German population was literate - every fourth German became a potential reader. Accordingly, if in 1750 28 new novels were published in Germany, then 2500 of them appeared in the decade from 1790 to 1800. These fruits of the Enlightenment era were also not unambiguously good for the romantics; for them, the irreversible losses included in the price of "wide success" became ever clearer: the subordination of art to market conditions, its openness to anyone, including arrogantly ignorant judgment, increased dependence on the demands of the public.
Servants and bearers of spirituality increasingly felt themselves in a hopeless and suppressed minority, in constant danger and siege. Thus arose the romantic cult of genius and poetic liberty; it merged the original revolutionary temptation of freedom and an almost reflex reaction of self-defence against the triumph of the masses, against the threat of oppression, no longer class, not social, but spiritual.
The loneliness and defenselessness of the human spirit in the prosaic world of calculation and usefulness is the initial situation of romanticism. As if to compensate for this sense of social discomfort, the early German romantics sought to stimulate their sense of belonging to the mysteries of spirit, nature, and art. Romantic genius, in their opinion, initially contains the entire universe; even setting out to learn the outside world, their hero eventually discovers that all the secrets of this world worthy of knowledge are already resolved in his own soul and, it turns out, it was not worth traveling that far. "Everything brings me to myself" - the famous formula of Novalis. It is as if one could do without the external world; he is already all in your "I" - as "infinity in a single handful", as "the sky in a cup of a flower" (this is the formula of another early romantic, the Englishman Blake).
But, of course, you can do without the world only in theory. The moment of such freedom is elusively short, it is only a lofty philosophical construction, a speculative dream. Wake up from it - and all around is the same life and the same damned questions. One of the first: who is to blame?
The good dreamer Novalis avoided this question, did not descend to earth and, in fact, did not blame anyone - except perhaps the Enlightenment philosophers with their rationalism and utilitarianism. Other romantics - Tieck, Friedrich Schlegel, Brentano - took up arms primarily against modern philistinism. There were those who wanted to look deeper and wider. Kleist suspected tragic breaks in the original structure of both the world and man. Doubts arose and intensified in the very extraterritorial status of the romantic genius: whether behind his sublime renunciation of the world is arrogant - and then sinful! - individualism and egoism? One of the first to feel this was Hölderlin, who once exclaimed in contrition: "Let no one justify himself by the fact that the world has ruined him! Man is ruining himself! In any case!" Growing up, such moods very soon took shape among the romantics in a specific complex of patriarchal populism and religious renunciation. This is the other pole of early romanticism: the individual has just been lifted up to heaven, placed above the whole world - now he is cast into dust, dissolved in the nameless stream of people.
Romantic castles in the air were erected and collapsed, one utopia was replaced by another, sometimes opposite, thought feverishly rushed from one extreme to another, recipes for the rejuvenation of mankind crossed out each other.
Hoffmann came into this atmosphere of ferment and confusion. He, as already mentioned, was in no hurry to build a universal philosophy capable of once and for all explaining the mystery of being and embracing all its contradictions with a higher law. But he also dreamed of harmony, of synthesis; only he saw his way to a possible synthesis not in the fiercely utopian extremes into which romantic philosophy was poured again and again, but in something else: he could not imagine this way for himself without a courageous immersion in the "continuous vanity" of life, in the zone of those real contradictions of it. that so tormented other romantics, but only selectively and reluctantly let themselves into the pages of their works and were comprehended as abstractly as possible.
Because Hoffmann, like Kleist before him, first of all posed questions, and did not give ready-made answers. And that is why he, who idolized harmony in music so much, embodied dissonance in literature.
Every now and then fireworks of fantasy explode on the pages of Hoffmann's fairy tales, but the brilliance of amusing lights, no, no, yes, and it will illuminate either a deaf city lane, where villainy ripens, or a dark nook of the soul, where destructive passion seethes. "Kreisleriana" - and nearby "Devil's Elixirs": the shadow of Medardus's criminal passion suddenly falls on Kreisler's sublime love. "Cavalier Gluck" - and "Mademoiselle de Scuderi": the inspired enthusiasm of the cavalier Gluck is suddenly overshadowed by the maniacal fanaticism of the jeweler Cardillac. Good sorcerers endow the heroes with the fulfillment of dreams - but nearby demonic magnetizers take their souls to the full. Now we have before us cheerful actors of the comedy of masks, then creepy werewolves - the whirlwind of the carnival is spinning over the abyss. All these models of artistic structure are collected, as if in focus, in the final work of Hoffmann - the novel "Everyday Views of the Cat Murr". It is not without reason that it opens with a vast picture of fireworks that ended in fire and confusion; and it is not for nothing that the romantic sufferings of the brilliant bandmaster are interrupted and drowned out by the prosaic revelations of the learned cat with inexorable methodicalness.
The unsteadiness, anxiety, "reversal" of the epoch has never been embodied by anyone before Hoffmann in such an impressively figurative, symbolic expression. Again: philosophers from romanticism, Hoffmann's predecessors and contemporaries, talked a lot and willingly about the symbol, about the myth; for them, it is even the very essence of genuine - and above all romantic - art. But when they created artistic images in support of their theories, they shifted symbolism into them to such an extent that ethereal phantoms, mouthpieces of ideas, and very general and vague ideas, arose quite often.
Hoffmann - not a philosopher, but just a novelist - takes up the matter from the other end; its source material is modern man in the flesh, not "general", but "individual"; and in this individual, he suddenly grabs with his tenacious gaze something that blows up the framework of individuality, expanding the image to the volume of a symbol. A blood child of the romantic era, by no means alien to its fantastic and mystical trends, he nevertheless firmly adhered to the principle formulated by him in one of the theatrical reviews: "do not neglect the evidence of the senses in the symbolic depiction of the supersensible." Of course, he neglected these evidence even less when depicting the actual "sensuous", the real.
This is what allowed Hoffmann, with all his penchant for symbolism, fantasy, grotesque exaggerations and sharpenings, to impressively recreate not only the general existential situation of a contemporary person, but also his mental constitution.
* * *
Of course, any romantic writer, in whatever historical or mythological distance he placed his hero, he kept in his mind exactly the situation contemporary to him. The medieval knightly poet Heinrich von Ofterdingen at Novalis, the ancient Hellenic philosopher Empedocles at Hölderlin, the mythical queen of the Amazons Penthesilea at Kleist - quite modern hearts beat, languish, suffer under the archaic clothes of these heroes. In some short stories and in the novel Elixirs of the Devil, Hoffmann also pushes his hero to a greater or lesser historical distance (in the novel it is quite small - within half a century). But on the whole, he makes a radical shift in the angle of view in romantic literature: his inspired hero, the “enthusiast,” is secularized, placed in the midst of modern everyday reality. The place of action in most of his works is not the idealized Middle Ages, as in Novalis, not the romanticized Hellas, as in Hölderlin, but modern Germany, perhaps romantically ironically or satirically caricatured - like, say, Gogol's contemporary Little Russia and Russia in Mirgorod and Petersburg stories. The most unimaginable fantastic adventures and misadventures take place right there with the heroes of Hoffmann - fairy-tale princes and wizards jostle between Dresden or Berlin students, musicians and officials.
Let's leave the officials for now, but let's take a closer look at wizards, musicians and students. These are, as a rule, characters marked by the undoubted sympathy of the author; they make up a circle of predominantly "positive" heroes. But here, too, there are significant gradations.
Hoffmann's students, all these romantically enthusiastic young men (Anselm in The Golden Pot, Nathanael in The Sandman, Balthazar in Little Tsakhes), are beginner enthusiasts, dilettantes; they are inexperienced and naive, they often get into trouble, and they must be watched endlessly. This is the responsibility of wizards and musicians - they are older and more experienced, they endow young enthusiasts with their vigilant care (Lindhorst-Salamander in The Golden Pot, Prosper Alpanus in Little Tsakhes, Maestro Abraham in Murre the Cat).
One of the most touching features of Hoffmann is his constant focus on the problem of education, protection - one would like to say in a modern way: the protection of youth. Considering that Hoffmann's "teachers-wizards" are endowed in abundance with his own characteristic features, it is not difficult to guess that all these students for him are hypostases of their former self. Here the wisdom of age stands face to face with the ignorance of youth.
Ignorance is blissful, but wisdom is bitter. The success of Anselm or Balthazar can - at least in the plot - be helped by grace-filled sorcery; but those who have already experienced the dawn of a misty youth know perfectly well the price of these miracles. Re-read carefully at the end of "Little Tsakhes" the enchanting scene of the exposure of the evil dwarf. The triumphant victory of the "enthusiasts" over the "philistines" takes shape here in an emphatically theatrical way, with a mass of auxiliary stage effects. The author - or rather, the director - throws on the battlefield a whole machine of miracles, dizzying transformations and tricks. In this next Hoffmann's fireworks, deliberate overkill is clearly felt: the author is playing a fairy tale, and all this poetic pyrotechnics is called upon to form a smoke screen, so that the victory of good appears behind it all the more convincingly "for youth". Here, the same thing happens as in Hoffmann's "fairy tales proper", which were already created directly for children (whom he himself loved so much and his characters love so much, understanding them from a half-word).
Hoffmann's wizards and maestro themselves stand face to face with the real world and are not protected by anything from it. It is in the fates of the mature heroes of Hoffmann that the real drama of human existence in the modern world is played out.
In all these heroes, one feature is striking first of all: a sharp change of mood, sudden - and discouraging others - transitions from "normal", calm behavior to eccentric, defiant, shocking. The most condescending reaction of others to this is "eccentrics"; but not far from it is another, more severe, - "madmen". Meanwhile, if you carefully analyze each such moment of a turning point, you will find that it does not at all express an unmotivated reaction. A "strangely kindly smile, or smirk" appears on the face of Hoffmann's hero every time when the outside world, voluntarily or involuntarily, violates the conditional "consensus" established between him and the hero over time, an unstable balance - when the world suddenly finds itself in a well-acquired an accidental gap in the armor and no longer affects the armor, but the soul. As it is said in "Majorat" about one of the heroes, he "was afraid of battle, believing that any wound was fatal to him, for he was all of one heart."
The point here, therefore, is not just some innate Hoffmannian propensity for acting and buffoonery. It is no accident that this buffoonery is for Hoffmann the lot of the wisest, artistically organized and poetically minded - "thin-skinned", as he says elsewhere. This is their, defenseless, defensive reaction against the alien and hostile world surrounding them. In any case, they react to any attack, even if made by chance, due to tactlessness, and sometimes due to the simplicity of their soul, with lightning speed - only not with a retaliatory strike, but with an almost childishly impulsive and, what can I say, powerless demonstration of their contempt for the norm. , a splash of his originality. These are convulsions of individuality in a close and ever narrowing ring of vulgarity, mass, thick skin.
But this is only one - and undisguisedly romantic - layer of Hoffmann's characterology. Hoffman goes even deeper.
In the striking etude "Counsellor Crespel" from "The Serapion Brothers", perhaps the most masterly development of this psychological - however, social too - problematics is given. It says about the title character: "There are people whom nature or merciless fate have deprived of a cover, under the cover of which we, the rest of mortals, imperceptibly to the eyes of others, proceed in our follies ... Everything that remains a thought in Crespel is immediately transformed The bitter mockery, which, one must suppose, is constantly concealed on its lips by the spirit languishing in us, squeezed in the grip of an insignificant earthly vanity, Crespel shows us with his own eyes in his extravagant antics and antics. But this is his lightning rod. Everything rising up in us from the earth he returns to the earth - but he keeps the divine spark sacred; so that his inner consciousness, I believe, is quite healthy, despite all the seeming - even eye-catching - folly.
This is a completely different twist. As it is easy to see, we are not talking about a romantic individual only, but about human nature in general. Crespel is characterized by one of the "other mortals" and all the time he says "we", "in us". In the depths of the souls, it turns out that we are all equal, we all "come out in our madness", and the dividing line, the notorious "two worlds" begins not at the level of the inner, spiritual structure, but at the level of only its external expression. What "other mortals" reliably hide under a protective cover (everything "earthly"), in Crespel, directly in a Freudian way, is not pushed deep into, but, on the contrary, is released outside, "returns to the earth" (the psychologists of the Freudian circle will call it that "catharsis" - by analogy with Aristotle's "purification of the soul").
But Crespel - and here he again returns to the romantic chosen circle - sacredly keeps the "divine spark". And it is possible - and quite often - also when neither morality nor consciousness are able to overcome "everything that rises up in us from the earth." Hoffmann fearlessly enters this sphere as well. His novel "Devil's Elixirs" at a superficial glance may now appear to be just a mixture of a horror novel and a detective story; in fact, the story of the unrestrained moral sacrilege and criminal offenses of the monk Medardus is a parable and a warning. That which, in relation to Crespel, is softened and philosophically abstractly designated as "everything rising up in us from the earth", is here called much sharper and harsher - we are talking about the "blind beast raging in man." And here not only the uncontrolled power of the subconscious, "repressed" rages - here also the dark force of blood, bad heredity, presses.
Hoffmann's man is thus oppressed not only from the outside, but also from the inside. His "extraordinary antics and grimaces", it turns out, is not only a sign of dissimilarity, individuality; they are also Cain's seal of the race. The "cleansing" of the soul from the "earthly", its splash outward can give rise to the innocent eccentricities of Crespel and Kreisler, and maybe the criminal unbridledness of Medardus. Pressed from two sides, torn apart by two impulses, a person balances on the verge of a break, a split - and then already genuine madness. Carnival over the abyss...
* * *
But this means that the romantic Hoffmann commits a crushing sabotage in the camp of romantic warriors of the spirit: he destroys the very core, the core of their system - their reckless faith in the omnipotence of genius.
Other romantics felt a lot of what Hoffmann felt, and often expressed it (especially Hölderlin and Kleist). Romanticism is full of prophetic anticipations, sometimes stunning for our time - it is not without reason that it peers into the era of romanticism with such attention. But still, most of Hoffmann's romantic brothers, "neglecting the evidence of the senses", tried to "remove" the contradictions of human existence that had been revealed to them purely philosophically, to overcome them in the spheres of the spirit, with the help of ideal speculative constructions. Hoffmann rejected all these theoretical seductions - or gave them the status that is uniquely attached to them: the status of a fairy tale, an illusion, a comforting dream. Intoxicated with fantasies, Hoffmann is, in fact, almost discouragingly sober.
Novalis earnestly and tirelessly proved that a particle of genius lies in each of us, it seems to be dormant for the time being in our soul, only buried under the layers of the epochs of "civilization". Hoffmann earnestly and tirelessly probed this soul, peered intently into it - and found there, instead of the original harmony, a fatal split, instead of a solid core, a shaky, changeable contour; if the secrets of the universe are hidden in these depths, then not only the good ones - there are mixed zones of light and darkness, good and evil.
In Novalis, the hero of his novel "Heinrich von Ofterdingen", a young man preparing for the calling of a poet, meets in his wanderings with a certain hermit (both, of course, the predecessors of Hoffmann's heroes - both his young enthusiasts and his hermit Serapion); leafing through one of the ancient history books in the hermit's cave, Heinrich discovers his own image in her pictures with amazement. This, of course, is a symbol, an allegory: the figurative expression "the poet lives for centuries" Novalis materializes, suggests taking it literally; he not only expresses here the popular among romantics general idea"pre-existence" of the personality, but also applies it to the personality, first of all, of the poet. "I am omnipresent, I am immortal, I only change hypostases" - this is the Novalisian meaning of the idea of preexistence and transformation.
In Hoffmann we encounter transformations at every step; in fairy tales proper, this may look quite harmless, such is the law of the genre, but when the round dance of doubles and werewolves swirls more and more irrepressibly, capturing story after story and sometimes becoming truly terrible, as in "Devil's Elixirs" or in "Sandman", the picture is decisive changes, irrevocably clouded. "I'm falling apart, I'm losing the sense of my wholeness, I don't know who I am and what I am - a divine spark or a raging beast" - this is Hoffmann's turn of the theme.
And this, we recall, applies not only to the souls of "other mortals" - the souls of Medardus or the owner of the marjoram, Cardillac or the player - this, alas, applies to "enthusiasts" and geniuses too! Together with other romantics, rejecting the enlightenment image of a "reasonable", rational and calculated person - as already untenable and not justified himself, Hoffmann at the same time strongly doubts the romantic stake on uninhibited feeling, on the whim of poetic fantasy; according to Hoffmann's verdict, they also do not provide solid support.
Should Hoffmann be attributed doubts in artists, in "enthusiasts"? Is it to him, who glorified music, art, the very "soul of the artist" on so many pages?
After all, in the end, it can be objected to the previous reasoning that Hoffmann, having looked into the abyss of human nature, still did not bring his beloved heroes to a moral fall. Moreover, he even made Medardus finally repent of his crimes; and shortly before this end, he forced him to listen to the following teaching of the Pope: "The eternal spirit created a giant who has the power to suppress and keep in check the blind beast raging in man. This giant is consciousness ... The victory of the giant is virtue, the victory of the beast is sin " .
But the mind is the whole snag. When Hoffmann directs his tenacious, drilling gaze directly at the consciousness of the "enthusiast", when he not only recklessly idealizes this consciousness, but also soberly analyzes it, the result is far from unambiguous. Here it turns out that Hoffmann's attitude towards artists is not only unconditional acceptance and glorification.
It would seem that everything is simple: Hoffmann's dual world is the sublime world of poetry and the vulgar world of worldly prose, and if geniuses suffer, then the philistines are to blame for everything. In fact, Hoffmann is not so simple. This typical original logic of romantic consciousness - Hoffmann knows it thoroughly, he has experienced it for himself - in his writings is given at the mercy of just these naive young men of his. The greatness of Hoffmann himself lies in the fact that, having suffered all this, he managed to rise above the seductive simplicity of such an explanation, he was able to understand that the tragedy of an artist who is not understood by the crowd can turn out to be a beautiful self-deception and even a beautiful banality - if this idea is allowed to freeze, to ossify turn into an indisputable dogma. And Hoffmann is also at war with this dogma of romantic narcissism - in any case, he devoutly, fearlessly analyzes it, even if he has to, as they say, cut him to the quick.
His young heroes are, of course, all romantic dreamers and admirers. But all of them are initially immersed in the element of that dazzling and ubiquitous irony, of which Hoffmann was an unsurpassed master. When in "Little Tsakhes" the enamored Balthazar reads his poems to the sorcerer Alpanus ("about the nightingale's love for the scarlet rose"), he qualifies this poetic opus with hilarious authority as "an experience in a historical kind", as some kind of documentary evidence, written besides " with pragmatic breadth and thoroughness. The irony here is as thin as a blade, and its subject is romantic poetry and pose. Truly, one whistling consonant separates the cosmic side of things from the comic side, as Nabokov aptly puns later.
Irony pursues Hoffmann's heroes like Nemesis to the very end, even to a happy ending. In the same "Little Tsakhes" Alpanus, having arranged a safe reunion of Balthazar with his beloved Candida ("simple-hearted"!), gives them a wedding gift - a "country house", on the backyard of which grows "excellent cabbage, and all sorts of other good-quality vegetables" ; in the magic kitchen of the house "the pots never boil over", in the dining room porcelain does not break, in the living room the carpets and chair covers do not get dirty ... the hero fled; this is after the nightingales, after the scarlet rose - the ideal cuisine and excellent cabbage! Other romantics - the same Novalis - the heroes found their love (together with the secret of the universe) at least in the sanctuary of Isis or in a blue flower. And here, please, in the story "The Golden Pot" it is this "title" vessel that appears as a symbol of a fulfilled romantic aspiration; again kitchen paraphernalia - like the already mentioned "bottle of arak, a few lemons and sugar" Enthusiasts are invited to cook either romantic punch or soup in the pot they have found in short supply.
True, here the "sins" of Hoffmann's heroes are still small, and such ridicule does not make these dreamers any less sympathetic to us; in the end, all these author's tricks can also be perceived as ironic symbolism of the impregnability of the earthly limit: the characters are weighed down by the chains of the prosaic world of "essentiality", but they are not given the opportunity to throw them off, even with the help of magic. However, the problem here is not only in the earthly limit: Hoffmann aims precisely at the romantic consciousness itself, and in other cases the matter takes a much more serious, fatal turn.
In the story "The Sandman" (created, by the way, right after "Devil's Elixirs"), her hero Nathanael - another young representative of the "enthusiast" clan - is obsessed with a panic fear of the outside world, and this fear of the world gradually becomes painful, essentially clinical. Nathanael's fiancee Clara is trying to reason with him: "... I think that all that terrible and terrible thing you are talking about happened only in your soul, and the real outside world has very little to do with it ... If there is a dark force that hostilely and treacherously throws a noose into our soul ... then it must take on our own image, become our "I", for only in this case we will believe in it and give it a place in our soul, which it needs for its mysterious work.
Do not give dark forces a place in your soul - this is the problem that worries Hoffmann, and he increasingly suspects that it is the romantically exalted consciousness that is especially prone to this weakness. Clara, a simple and reasonable girl, tries to heal Nathanael in her own way: as soon as he starts reading his poems to her with their "gloomy, boring mysticism", she knocks down his exaltation with a sly reminder that coffee can run out of her. But precisely because of this, she is not a decree for him: she, it turns out, is a miserable petty-bourgeois woman! But the clockwork doll Olympia, who knows how to sigh languidly and periodically emits "Ah!" when listening to his poems, turns out to be preferable to Nathanael, seems to him a "soul mate", and he falls in love with her, not seeing, not understanding that this is just an ingenious mechanism , automatic
This attack, how easy it is to feel, is much more deadly than mockery of the youthful quixoticism of Anselm or Balthasar. Hoffmann, of course, does not judge entirely from the "sober" positions of the outside world, he did not go over to the camp of philistines; this story contains brilliant satirical pages that tell how the "well-meaning" inhabitants of a provincial town not only accept a doll into their society, but are themselves ready to turn into automata. But it was the romantic hero who first began to worship her, and it is no coincidence that this grotesque story ends in his true madness. Moreover, this time the logic of the “dark force” in charge leads already to a criminal line: only by force is the distraught Nathanael kept from killing Clara.
This is, of course, a "case history"; the consciousness described here is incapable of a true, identical perception of the world, for it, to put it in a modern way, is romantically insecure. At one time, the Hoffmannian turn of the problem was very correctly described by our Belinsky, who highly appreciated the German writer: “In Hoffmann, a person is often a victim of his own imagination, a toy of his own ghosts, a martyr of an unfortunate temperament, an unhappy structure of the brain.”
For orthodox romantics, genius is something self-sufficient, requiring no substantiation or justification. Hoffmann, on the other hand, does not so much oppose creative life to prosaic life as compares them, analyzes artistic consciousness in indispensable correlation with life. This, by the way, is the essence of the tense aesthetic discussion, which forms lengthy intermediate "joints" in the cycle of short stories "The Serapion Brothers".
And this is the deep meaning of Hoffmann's last major work, the famous novel about Kapellmeister Kreisler and the cat Murr.
The phantom of bifurcation, which haunted his soul and occupied his mind all his life, Hoffmann embodied this time in an unheard of bold art form, not only placing two different biographies under one cover, but also defiantly mixing them. For all that, both biographies reflect the same epochal problems, the history of Hoffmann's time and generation, that is, one subject is given in two different illuminations, interpretations. Hoffmann sums up here; the outcome is ambiguous.
The confession of the novel is emphasized primarily by the fact that the same Kreisler appears in it. Hoffmann began with the image of this literary double of his - "Kreislerian" in the cycle of the first "Fantasy" - and ends with it.
At the same time, Kreisler is by no means a hero in this novel.
As the publisher immediately warns (fictitious, of course), the proposed book is precisely the confession of the learned cat Murr; and the author and the hero - he. But when the book was being prepared for publication, it is ruefully explained further, there was an embarrassment: when the proof sheets began to arrive at the publisher, he was horrified to find that the notes of the cat Murr were constantly interrupted by fragments of some completely different text! As it turned out, the author (that is, the cat), expounding his worldly views, along the way, tore apart the first book that fell into his paws from the owner's library in order to use the torn pages "part for laying, part for drying." The book, cut up in such a barbaric way, turned out to be a biography of Kreisler; due to the negligence of typesetters, these pages were also printed.
The life story of a brilliant composer is like waste paper in a cat's biography! It was necessary to have a truly Hoffmannian fantasy in order to give such a form to bitter self-irony. Who needs Kreisler's life, his joys and sorrows, what are they good for? Is that to dry the graphomaniac exercises of a learned cat!
However, with graphomaniac exercises, everything is not so simple. As we read Murr's autobiography itself, we are convinced that the cat, too, is not born with a bast and by no means without reason claims to be leading role in the novel - the role of the romantic "son of the century". Here he is, now wiser with both worldly experience and literary and philosophical studies, reasoning at the beginning of his biography: “How rare, however, is the true affinity of souls in our miserable, inert, selfish age! .. My writings will undoubtedly ignite in the chest not one young, gifted with reason and heart cat, the high flame of poetry ... but another noble cat-youth will be completely imbued with the lofty ideals of the book that I now hold in my paws, and will exclaim in an enthusiastic impulse: "Oh Murr, divine Murr, the greatest genius of our glorious feline family! Only to you I owe everything, only your example made me great!" Remove the specifically feline realities in this passage - and you will have a completely romantic style, lexicon, pathos.
To portray a romantic genius in the image of an imposingly sloppy cat is already a very funny idea in itself, and Hoffmann makes full use of its comic possibilities. Of course, the reader is quickly convinced that by nature Murr is a typical philistine, he just learned the fashionable romantic jargon. However, it is not so indifferent that he dresses up as romance with success, with an outstanding sense of style! Hoffmann could not but know that such a masquerade risks compromising romanticism itself; it's a calculated risk.
Here we are reading "waste sheets" - with all the "Hoffmannian" reigning here, the sad story of the life of Kapellmeister Kreisler, a lonely, little-understood genius; inspired sometimes romantic, sometimes ironic tirades explode, fiery exclamations sound, fiery eyes blaze - and suddenly the narration breaks off, sometimes literally in mid-sentence (the torn page ends), and the same romantic tirades rapturously mumble the learned cat: "... I know for sure : my homeland is an attic! The climate of the motherland, its customs, how inextinguishable these impressions... Why do I have such an exalted way of thinking, such an irresistible desire for higher spheres? the most ingenious jumps? Oh, sweet longing fills my chest! Longing for my native attic rises in me with a powerful wave! I dedicate these tears to you, oh beautiful homeland ... "
For the German reader of that time, this one passage was a short course in the history of modern literature and social thought; striving for higher spheres as for one's homeland - these are the Jena romantic empyreans ("If your gaze is inseparably fixed on the sky, you will never go astray to your homeland," the hermit Heinrich von Ofterdingen admonished); the idealization of a native attic is already Heidelberg Germanophilism.
At first, this hierarchy of irony can make you dizzy. But the demonstrative, almost literal fragmentation of the novel, its outward narrative confusion (again: either the extravaganza of fireworks, or the whirlwind of the carnival) is compositionally soldered tightly, with ingenious calculation, and it must be realized.
At first glance, it may seem that the parallel biographies of Kreisler and Murr are new version traditional Hoffmannian dual world: the sphere of "enthusiasts" (Kreisler) and the sphere of "philistines" (Murr). But already a second glance complicates this arithmetic: after all, in each of these biographies, in turn, the world is also divided in half, and each has its own sphere of enthusiasts (Kreisler and Murr) and philistines (environment of Kreisler and Murr). The world no longer doubles, but quadruples - the score here is "twice two"!
And this changes the whole picture very significantly. We isolate the experiment for the sake of Kreisler's line - before us will be another "classical" Hoffmann's story with all its characteristic attributes; if we single out Murr's line, there will be a "hoffmanized" version of the satirical allegory, the "animal epic" genre, which is very common in world literature, or a fable with a self-revealing meaning (say, like "the wise scribbler"). But Hoffmann mixes them up, pushes them together, and they must certainly be perceived only in mutual relation.
These are not just parallel lines - they are parallel mirrors. One of them - Murrovsky - is placed in front of the former Hoffmannian romantic structure, reflects and repeats it again and again. Thus, this mirror inevitably removes absoluteness from the history and figure of Kreisler, gives it a shimmering ambiguity. The mirror turns out to be a parody, "worldly views of the cat Murr" - an ironic paraphrase of "the musical suffering of Kapellmeister Kreisler".
The novel about Murr and Kreisler is a grandiose monument of partial, blood calculation with romanticism and its belief in the omnipotence of poetic genius. One of the most ardent apologists for art, Hoffmann, at the same time, is not satisfied with the romantic thesis that art is a panacea for all ills. His artists are unhappy not only because the philistine world does not understand and accept them, but also because they themselves cannot find an "adequate consciousness", a natural and beneficial connection with the real world. The world artificially constructed by art is also no way out for the soul, wounded by the disorder of human existence.
* * *
But can Hoffmann be credited with the justification of earthly existence? Is it to him, who, like no other, has created a murderous freak show of philistine insignificance?
However, everything is not so simple here either. It would be the greatest injustice to Hoffmann to suspect him of elitist arrogance. Artists are born, but philistines are made. And he, the most sophisticated mocker, punishes vices not congenital, but acquired. A person may or may not devote himself to serving the Muses - but he should not devote himself to serving Mammon, he should not extinguish the "divine spark" in himself. It is then that an irreversible perversion of humanity takes place in him.
In "The Sandman" the already mentioned story about how a mechanical doll became the legislator of the halls in a "well-meaning society" is described by a brilliant humorist. What are Hoffmann’s summary remarks about the atmosphere established in this society among the “highly respected gentlemen” after the discovery of a deception with a mannequin worth only: to make sure that they were not captivated by a wooden doll, demanded from their beloved that they slightly out of tune in singing and dancing out of time ... and most of all, that they not only listened, but sometimes spoke themselves, so much so that their speeches and really expressed thoughts and feelings. For many, love ties have strengthened and become sincere, while others, on the contrary, calmly dispersed. " All this, of course, is very funny, but in an ironic and satirical arrangement, a very serious social problem appears here: the mechanization and automation of social consciousness.
In Little Tsakhes, the story of a vile freak is also funny, who, with the help of magic spells received from a fairy, bewitched the whole state and became the first minister in it - but the idea that formed its basis is rather terrible: nothingness seizes power by appropriation ( alienation!) of merits that do not belong to him, and a blinded, stupefied society that has lost all value criteria no longer simply takes "an icicle, a rag for an important person", but also, in some kind of perverted self-beating, creates an idol out of a half-wit.
Hoffmann's panopticon upon closer examination is a sick social organism; the magnifying glass of satire and grotesque highlights the affected places in it, and what at first seemed a stunning ugliness and a challenge to common sense, the next moment is realized as the inexorability of the law.
The irony and satire of Hoffmann in such passages are, of course, deadly, but it is a strange thing: at the same time they do not contain the slightest note of squeamish contempt, there is no gloating - but the pain that sounded later in Gogol's famous exclamation: "And a person could descend to such insignificance, pettiness, disgust! He could change like that!"
Moreover: Hoffmann is really not happy with this gift of his to see everything as if through a magnifying glass, and he left unambiguous evidence of this.
In the late story "Lord of the Fleas" (where, as we remember, a serious social problem is also revealed by means of the grotesque - the abuse of law and order by official representatives of the law), its hero, Peregrinus Tees, receives from "his" magician a wonderful magnifying glass, allowing him to read people's minds. And he does not take advantage of the opportunity to "see through" for long - he cannot stand it: "... I take the unfortunate glass - and gloomy distrust fills my soul; in unjust anger, in insane blindness, I push away my true friend, and deeper and deeper poisonous doubt undermines the very roots of life and brings discord into my earthly existence, alienates me from myself No!.. Away, away this unfortunate gift!
Peregrinus renounces the magic glass - because, as he immediately says, it is able to destroy in the soul all traces of "a truly human principle, expressed in cordial gullibility, meekness and good nature." Hoffmann does not renounce his gift; simultaneously with "Lord of the Fleas" he is working on the second volume of "Cat Murr". We have seen what kind of glass is directed at Kapellmeister Kreisler's soul: it does not destroy the "human element" in it, but truthfully captures its undesirable distortions. The same glass is directed at Kreisler's antagonists - the society at the court of Prince Irenaeus: it truthfully captures unwanted distortions of the human element in them, but does not exterminate it.
Advisor Benzon in the novel is a court intriguer who dreams of giving her daughter Julia, Kreisler's love and dream, as a wife to the heir to the dwarf Irineev throne, Prince Ignatius; the prince is weak-minded - according to Hoffmann's delicately sympathetic formula, "doomed to eternal childhood" (and this delicacy, we note in passing, is not only irony - Hoffmann actually sympathizes with the prince, entrusting "according to the plot" this sympathetic attitude precisely to Julia, his "positive" heroine). So, maestro Abraham, defending his ward and favorite Kreisler, reproaches Mrs. Benzon, not without reason, that she has "a heart frozen forever, where a spark has never glimmered." "You can't stand Kreisler," he continues, "because you don't like his superiority over you ... you shun him as a man whose thoughts are directed to higher things than is customary in your little world."
We're back where we started. Dvoemirie: enthusiast - philistines. Let's listen now to Mrs. Benzon's answer.
& nbsp & nbsp & nbsp & nbsp “maestro,” Benzon said muffledly ... “You say my heart was icing? Do you know if it has ever heard a friendly voice of love and did I find comfort and peace only in those conventions that is that I so despised the unbridled Kreisler? And don't you think, old man, who also experienced a lot of suffering, that the desire to rise above these conventions and join the world spirit, deceiving yourself - dangerous game? I know that Kreisler scolds me with cold and soulless prose in the flesh, and you only repeat his thoughts, calling me frozen; but have you ever penetrated this ice, which has long become a protective shell for me?
The Maestro won't let go, he won't blunder, he will defend Kreisler and his common position with him with new arguments, but that doesn't matter anymore. The important thing is that the other side of the dual world, it turns out, also has its own rightness! Some are "enthusiasts", others are "philistines", but all are human beings; Even the "protective shell" has returned - it is a privilege (or fate?) Not only for "enthusiasts".
It was Hoffman who most poignantly embodied words in the art of "The Two Worlds"; it is his identification mark. But Hoffmann is neither a fanatic nor a dogmatist of dual worlds; he is his analyst and dialectician.
* * *
We have come to Hoffmann's most intimate and most simple secret. It was not for nothing that he was haunted by the image of a double. He loved his Music to self-forgetfulness, to madness, loved Poetry, loved Fantasy, loved the Game - and he continually cheated on them with Life, with its many faces, with its bitter and joyful prose. Back in 1807, he wrote to his friend Gippel - as if justifying himself to himself for having chosen not a poetic, but a legal field as his main field: “And most importantly, I believe that, due to the need to send, in addition to serving art, and civil service, I acquired a broader view of things and largely escaped the selfishness, by virtue of which professional artists, so to speak, are so inedible.
( civil service, helping to avoid selfishness ... The legal theme of "Lord of the Fleas" arose from a real situation: while serving in Berlin as an adviser to the court of appeal and being in 1819 appointed a member of the "highest commission of inquiry to identify anti-state groups and other dangerous intrigues", Hoffmann acted courageously human rights activist in a fight with high-ranking lawbreakers. The struggle continued with the publication of Lord of the Fleas - this time also with censorship.)
Hoffmann's "wider view of things" turns out to be extremely simple. Friends-narrators in The Serapion Brothers, having practiced in the most diverse manners of narration, in the end express distrust of any excess, unbridled, "excited" imagination. And here's why: "The foundation of the heavenly ladder, along which we want to ascend to the mountainous spheres, must be strengthened in life, so that everyone can climb after us. Climbing higher and higher and finally finding ourselves in a fantastic magical kingdom, we can then believe, that this kingdom is also a part of our life - in essence, it is nothing but its inseparable, marvelously beautiful part.
The director's concept of Hoffmann's world theater is described here. And here is her "super task" - in the last lines of the "Serapion Brothers": "The most important condition for any creativity and skill is that kind unpretentiousness, which is the only thing capable of warming the heart and giving a beneficial impulse to the spirit."
"Warm the heart"... Probably, the German writer Willibald Alexis later thought about these lines when he wrote about Hoffmann: "Had he lived longer, his subjective flame would have turned into the warmth of objectivity."
Hoffmann did not have time to live longer - but he managed to express everything he wanted to. In the already mentioned short story "The Corner Window", its dying hero - "a writer ... distinguished by a special liveliness of fantasy," says to his cousin, who had hoped that the patient would still recover: "You, what good, think that I am already getting better or even completely recovered from my ailments? By no means ... But this window is a consolation for me: here life again appeared to me in all its diversity, and I feel how close its never-ending bustle is close to me. Come, brother, look out out the window!"
This is how Hoffmann called us before his departure. But, before you begin to get acquainted with his worldly and other views, before opening the window to this world, take a look, reader, once again at the epigraph from Hoffmann that opens the article - and in order to completely get used to this bizarre language, keep in mind that Hoffmann's quoted text also contains the following words:
"- Yes, let me hear your voice, and with the speed of a youth I will run to its sweet sound until I find you, and we will again live together and in a magical community we will do higher magic, to which, willy-nilly, everyone approaches, even ordinary people, not believing in it at all ...
Having said this, the maestro jumped around the room with youthful speed and vivacity, started the cars, installed magic mirrors. And in every corner everything came to life and moved: the mannequins walked and turned their heads, and the mechanical rooster flapped its wings and crowed, and the parrots chattered piercingly ... "
Now, read Hoffmann.
