Nussknacker und Mausekönig: Aus: Die Serapionsbrüder (Deutsche Klassiker) (German Edition)

Pate Drosselmeier is a highly placed lawyer, as Hoffmann also was. But he is described in terms that transmute him into an ambiguous, grotesque figure. For the children he is the year-by-year giver of extraordinary gifts, which are usually taken away from them, but he is also unreliable, surprising in what he says and does, puzzling and even a little sinister:. He had a big black patch over his right eye and no hair, for which reason he wore a very beautiful white wig, which was made of glass and very skilfully made.

Godfather Drosselmeier was altogether a very skilful man himself and even knew about clocks and had made some himself. Cleverly, Hoffmann does not make the links too explicit. Like Drosselmeier himself, the Nutcracker is shrouded in mystery. He is the last of the Christmas gifts that the children discover, and it is nowhere stated who has given him to the children.

This comparison is taken up again at the end of the chapter, after Fritz and Marie have fallen out on account of the Nutcracker and Marie has taken him under her wing. She cannot bear the fact that Drosselmeier is laughing at her actions and gives voice to her thoughts:. When he responds with a rhyming account of the battle, Marie thinks he looks much uglier than usual and is waving his right arm about like a marionette.

Fritz tells him he is too ridiculous and acting like his Hampelmann jumping jack , which he threw behind the stove a long time ago. He thus can see only with his left eye, and there are several more things in the story that link up with this: One critic has suggestively interpreted the symbolism of left and right in Jungian terms with the left being associated with the unconscious and the right with the conscious and reason. Hoffmann thus makes use of the fairytale parallel, but adapts it skilfully to his own ends. Hoffmann himself was fascinated by movable toys and automata, and the figure of Olimpia, the life-size mechanical doll with which Nathanael in Der Sandmann The Sand-man falls disastrously in love, is his most enduring creation in this respect.

This range of mechanical toys, stretching from the very simple to the very complicated and ingenious, reflects the achievements of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, building on traditions of clock- and toy-making that go back to the late Middle Ages. The more complex devices, involving perhaps years of skilled work, were made for kings and princes and were presented by them as gifts to other rulers. It would have been comparable to, say, the performing circus engineered by the Tyrolean Christian Tschuggmall , who toured with it as far afield as Poland and Russia.

Both Marie and Fritz have expectations related to their old toys. His wish is fully granted. The two girls have new frocks. The fir-tree was a particularly German manifestation of Christmas and was only adopted in Britain after Prince Albert introduced it to the Royal Family. Germany, of course, has far more forests than England, and conifers are much more familiar than is the case here. Among the Christmas goodies there are also gingerbread men and women from Thorn, now the Polish city of Torun, but then part of the Prussian dominions.

Nonetheless, he entrusts the Nutcracker especially to Marie to look after and protect, and the remainder of the story focusses on their relationship. When Fritz is tired of playing with his soldiers, he wants to use the Nutcracker too to crack nuts, and because he gives the Nutcracker the biggest and hardest nuts, three of his teeth drop out and his lower jaw becomes loose. However, Father comes to her aid and scolds Fritz for wanting to use the Nutcracker again after he has been broken, and reproaches him with transgressing proper military procedures.

Although it is nowhere indicated who produced the Nutcracker as a Christmas gift, it is Drosselmeier who mends his jaw while Marie is ill in bed. He replaces the teeth and resets the jaw. That is some measure of their preciousness. Such books had been produced in Germany since the middle of the eighteenth century, the period in which children were first separately targeted as readers in a more concerted way. Picture books, especially hand-coloured ones, would have been expensive, but certainly within the purchasing power of a medical councillor or lawyer.

She has just completed the story of Prince Facardin. This story is one that Hoffmann frequently refers to. It was published posthumously in Full of the most bizarre adventures located as far apart as Mount Atlas, the Red Sea and Trebizond, it purports to tell the history of four heroes, each of whom bears the extraordinary name of Facardin.

However, after some pages the story breaks off with the statement: By this time Hamilton has introduced his readers to only three of the Facardins and given little hint as to how the threads of the story might satisfactorily be tied together. One editor has suggested that the tale was intended as a satire on the absurdities of the French literary fairytale, much as Cervantes mocked the customs of chivalry in Don Quixote ; but it does not have the flair and humour of Cervantes.

Not only would its complicated plot be difficult for a child of that age to follow, but it also contains a number of primly erotic episodes that would baffle a child.

Moreover, its exaggerations of traditional fairytale motifs and amazing long-windedness seem calculatedly artificial rather than organic. Perhaps the first thing to note is the fact that both authors make play with characters bearing the same name. Hamilton has his four Facardins, Hoffmann his uncle and nephew Drosselmeier and the Nutcracker that is mysteriously aligned with each of them, but in different ways.

E. T. A. Hoffmann - Alemannische Wikipedia

Then there is the fact that Fritz and Marie Stahlbaum have their counterparts in the Fritz and Marie that the narrator constantly appeals to in his telling of the story. The structure of the Nutcracker suggests a sense of multiple identities. The children in their playing with dolls and soldiers adopt identities relevant to their play, as well as having well-defined family and social relationships with their parents and godfather.

Marie adds a further dimension to this through the extended nocturnal dream world, which constitutes a greater reality to her than the events within the family. But these worlds are not separate from each other: When this is done the two stories become intertwined. There is no traditional happy ending: With Hamilton this centres on the sultan and female storyteller that he envisages as the listeners to the story of the four Facardins, patterning himself on the Arabian Nights. With Hoffmann it is the more closely involved Stahlbaum family. Despite the many differences between Hamilton and Hoffmann in terms of length, artifice and, above all, tone, Hoffmann was obviously stimulated by the French author and adapted some of his ideas and techniques to suit his own purposes.

Although Marie is explicitly stated not to have a natural aversion to mice, her initial reaction to them as ridiculous rapidly turns into fear and dread. Hoffmann cleverly draws his audience into the emotions he is evoking by suggesting that Fritz, whom he addresses by name, would have run away, jumped into bed and pulled the bedclothes over his head. The Mouse King, emerging from sand, mortar and crumbling brick or stone, is as though driven by a subterranean power.

Here, as in other instances, Hoffmann has made a gender change in the fairytale figure, though the role in the story remains the same. This metamorphosis applies also to Princess Pirlipat, the heroine of the fairytale, who, in a trait that immediately associates her with the Nutcracker, is born with two rows of pearly teeth. The preparation of the royal sausage feast that opens the fairytale parallels the Christmas preparations with which the Nutcracker begins. When he learns what has happened he vows vengeance on Frau Mauserinks and her seven sons.

At this point Pate Drosselmeier breaks off his narrative, promising to take it up the next evening. Marie asks him whether he really is the inventor of mousetraps. For her the world of the fairytale and that of everyday reality are not separate. All the blame for this is placed on Drosselmeier just as Marie has accused her godfather of failing to look after the Nutcracker and of causing her own injury and illness , and the King demands that he shall find a cure for Pirlipat within four weeks or face execution. On the Wednesday of the fourth week Drosselmeier realizes that Pirlipat, with all the sharp teeth she has, is fond of eating nuts.

This nut has to be bitten open by a man who has never shaved or worn boots and then given to the princess with closed eyes, after which he must retreat seven steps and then open them. This cure is announced to the court on Saturday lunchtime, but the nut has still to be found. Drosselmeier and the astronomer are charged with finding it, and advertisements are placed in all the newspapers, including the foreign ones, looking for the man to bite the nut. Again at a critical point in the narrative Pate Drosselmeier breaks off.

But he now only requires a robust wooden pigtail connected to his lower jaw to become the proper Nutcracker to bite the nut for the princess. In fulfilling this task, he restores Pirlipat to her former beauty. However, in stepping back the prescribed seven steps, he treads on Frau Mauserinks, who has just appeared on the scene, and kills her, though not before she has turned him into an ugly misshapen creature and vowed revenge through her seven-headed son. At this point the embedded fairytale ends.

Marie thinks Pirlipat ungrateful, while Fritz is sure that the Nutcracker can deal with the Mouse King and regain his former shape. In this way a link is made between the inner and outer stories. They are not separate, but intertwined. Two themes weave particularly strong threads through them — physical appearances and food. Is anything just what it seems? Pate Drosselmeier is both grotesque and kind, acting in ways that sometimes seem cruel or unfeeling, sometimes helpful and amusing. He too belongs to both the inner and the outer stories.

Similarly, the Nutcracker is both victim and saviour, derided as completely ugly by Drosselmeier, but fallen in love with at first sight by Marie. None of it is true, he says, but it is not reason that tells him this: The next day the family see how they have been nibbled at by mice. He tells her that all he needs is a sword. Fritz, shocked that his hussars acquitted themselves so badly in the fight, gives them a dressing-down and takes a sabre from a pensioned-off colonel. When they come to the Lake of Roses, Marie is delighted at the silver-white swans and the lake that she was expecting Pate Drosselmeier to make for her, but the Nutcracker tells her in an unusual fit of scorn: The city that they reach is Konfektburg, the Town of Sweets, where there are handsomely dressed ladies and gentlemen, Armenians and Greeks, Jews and Tyroleans, officers, soldiers, clergymen, shepherds and clowns and every kind of people in the world.

Marie may have known them in toy form, but in specifically naming the Armenians, Greeks, Jews and Tyroleans Hoffmann is adverting to contemporary troubles. But Marie is dreaming of a peaceable kingdom that exists only in fairytales or the realms of utopian desire. The end of the story is a wish-fulfilment, but linked as before with a loss of consciousness. This time Marie simply faints while Pate Drosselmeier is mending a clock.

There will be many other poet and artist figures in the subsequent tales, some of whom may approach the mad or the eccentric, like Rat Krespel, but there are none who attain the exemplary status of the hermit, which is set up in the frame dialogue. Other angles on the issue are already suggested within the exemplary tale Der Einsiedler by the introduction of a different kind of poet as sparring partner, here the doubly fictionalized Ariosto — and are further reinforced by the ambiguous reaction over time to Serapion of his fellow artist and our narrator-figure, Cyprian, who is skeptical, but increasingly sympathetic towards the hermit; other members of the Bund will, of course, persist in regarding him as negatively mad.

This is attested by his ability to tell tales the excellence of which Cyprian as listener is at a loss to describe in words other than by a series of superlatives and which Hoffmann himself, as author, leaves to the imagination of his readers. The nature of the reception process and the criteria that are here carefully relayed by Cyprian will be important for the future discussions of the principle. Coleridge at roughly the same period: When applied to the creative act and its reception, this magical power dissolves all barriers between the empirical and the imaginative worlds.

It also suggests that the concepts of space and time are still important to Serapion in theory, even though in practice he is fictionalizing and manipulating them, living out his inner life in terms of the alternative reality that he has created for himself. By focusing on such an extreme figure and by allying the theme of madness to that of art Hoffmann has greatly added to the problem of interpretation; this can easily be demonstrated by reviewing the secondary literature on the topic of the Serapiontic Principle, much of which focuses on the theme of madness.

As was already pointed out, Hoffmann, adopts an installment system in his exposition of the Serapiontic Principle. Before members of the group can make further progress towards a narrative theory to guide their own efforts, another story, Rat Krespel, is inserted. The central figure, Krespel, shares with the hermit an oddness and singularity but would certainly not rate so highly on the scale of madness. His background, though, is not completely dissimilar to Graf P. He could be described as a sensitive soul who has little defense against the wiles of his fellow humans, especially those close to him, other than by creating a hard, misanthropic shell and keeping them at bay: For the narrator, Theodor, Rat Krespel must be regarded as a transitional tale in terms of its presentation of the theme of madness.

Nevertheless, it is clear to the reader that a strategic element is involved in the arrangement of the tales, both in terms of the development of themes and, more generally, in their overall arrangement within particular books. Krespel is not opting out of social life like the hermit; he continues painfully to live it out as one personal disaster after another befalls him. We learn much later of the causes for such suffering: After this brilliant, disturbing, and unresolved tale Theodor carries forward the narrative scheme he had announced by lightening the atmosphere in Die Fermate, deliberately eradicating all reference to madness.

This delightful tale is linked to Rat Krespel by the theme of music and the figure of the prima donna. While the first reactions to Der Einsiedler Serapion had been based on the controversial figure of the hermit and the theme of madness, the more obviously artful narrative qualities in the two subsequent tales and the absence in them of any theorizing or reflection on the topic of madness give the reader scope to view and enjoy them in terms of fiction rather than as programmatic utterances. It would appear that the exercise of comparing and contrasting the two tales Der Einsiedler Serapion and Rat Krespel — a basic but nevertheless fruitful tool in all literary criticism and pedagogy — promotes these new insights.

Lothar, more than the others, it seems, is able to appreciate the Classical resonances of this vision of the Golden Age, which had inspired generations of poets from antiquity through to the Renaissance for example, Ariosto and Tasso and beyond. Lothar is also mindful now of the qualities that single Serapion out as a potential model and guide for budding poets and artists.

Even his madness, when viewed alongside the disturbing, unbalanced example of Krespel, seems less offensive and is now used metaphorically as a defining quality associated with the great artist: Intensity and communicability of the inner vision is paramount, as is the sense that what the poet communicates is based on personal involvement with his material, and that his transformation of this results in an enhancement or intensification of what has been observed or perceived and raises the work above the ordinary level, giving it lasting appeal: In practice, however, this will rarely be the case: To this program can be added some additional points supplied by Lothar.

Here Hoffmann is promoting one of his most insistent credos, namely, the idea that art is meant to convey the whole gamut of human emotions; further, that these should be expressed as feelings that are both extreme and strongly contrastive, that is, as emotions such as pleasure and pain, and in all their variations: These seemingly incompatible forms of literary reception may coexist within a single work Rat Krespel with its bitter-sweet quality could be cited , or may be presented through the particular organization of an entire set of narratives for example, the arrangement of the tales within the respective books , or, as in Kater Murr by means of a daring attempt to achieve simultaneity in the presentation of the comic and the tragic, in which the two narratives are constantly juxtaposed.

What Serapion lacks is the ability, or rather, in his post-martyr state, the willingness, to suspend disbelief and to accept that this imaginative realm is only part of a larger totality, the dualistically constructed state of being that defines all human life: He refuses, in other words, to accept the fact that the mind is governed by the physical constraints placed upon it by virtue of its dependence on sense perceptions, and that it is subject to the limits set by time and space.

We can thus see how Hoffmann reveals his philosophical credentials which would have been immediately identifiable by his contemporary readers to provide a suitable conceptual framework in which to place his theory of the Serapiontic Principle. But the general terms of reference have been set out clearly and will provide the basis for all future discussions. Pater Leonardus expounds the positive principle as follows: Dieses positive Princip ist die erste Kraft der Natur. Schubert, Die Symbolik des Traums Bamberg: The excitement of the French Revolution was still in the air. Oxford UP, , 54— See Karl Otto Conrady, Goethe: Leben und Werk, vol.

U of North Carolina P, Wirklichkeitsbegriff und Wahnsinn bei E. Vietta Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, , — Coleridge, Biographia Literaria Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling Oxford: Oxford UP, , Niemeyer, , Later, however, he displays more sociable tendencies. It is invoked by many Romantics, most notably by the painter Caspar David Friedrich: Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft, ], The contrast forms a structural principle on which the entire work is based.

It is even possible that some commentators have been misled into building up theories on the basis of the metaphorical implications of one or the other term. I am grateful to Prof. Wulf Segebrecht Bamberg for his valuable comments on this textual problem. Penguin, , xix.

See also the discussion of Prinzessin Brambilla in chapter 5 in this volume. Der Dichter und Der Komponist: It was in fact an issue that so preoccupied Hoffmann that he had been planning to write an essay on the topic from as early as his Bamberg period , when he was regularly producing and conducting operas at the theater. This foundation in the practical, analytical, and creative aspects of opera writing gave him an unusually authoritative perspective among his contemporaries, providing a firm basis for theoretical speculations about the problem of the relationship of text to music, and promoting access to broader interdisciplinary issues and the creative process in general, which was clearly a topic that fascinated him.

I shall suggest he had good underlying reasons for so doing. The theme of the relationship of words and music is then followed through and consolidated further in volume 2 with the dialogue Alte und neue Kirchenmusik. This reinforces the important part played by spiritual and religious forces in the creative and reception process and their problematic status in early nineteenth-century church music. The original Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung form of Der Dichter und der Komponist exists simply as a free-standing dialogue between the two friends, Ferdinand, a poet, and Ludwig, a composer.

Their exchanges are well documented and are revealing about the respective attitudes of the two partners in the enterprise. For one thing, when it came to delicate matters, the negotiations were often transacted through an intermediary, their mutual friend, Julius Hitzig, the publisher, who acted as a kind of broker.

That in itself does not point to an ideally frank and open relationship between Dichter und Komponist. Hoffmann reports that he is proceeding to the business of composition, which is being done after he has finished his working day, that is, from seven until ten thirty P. Thereafter at home, and with the aid of a piano, he can continue composing, and only after that proceed to write down the music in score.

As will be seen, these link up with the theoretical principles that he had been formulating in connection with literature, mainly narrative, and the visual arts Jacques Callot and that he now wished to extend into the field of music. Briefly, the dialogue in Der Dichter und der Komponist deals with the notorious difficulties experienced by any composer who harbors ambitions to write operas. How can such a composer procure a suitable text? Since selections of such texts have to be made, then cast into regular meter and rhyme, in theory as many as three separate persons could be involved in what can then become a three-stage process.

In his early, less ambitious operatic works, Hoffmann himself did what seems to be regarded by his fictitious character, the soldier-poet Ferdinand, as the hack work; in others, such as Undine, he demurred. He too has his amour propre16 one notes that the assumption is made here that the contemporary writer or poet is being required to do both the writing and the adaptation or possibly plunging straight into a libretto?

In this dialogue Ludwig, the musician, is the partner who has an idealistic vision of the great power that words and music can wield jointly through the hybrid form of opera. It would appear that in his estimation opera is not worth the effort, although he starts to move his position in the face of the powerful rhetoric used by Ludwig to convey the sublime and otherworldly effect that is evoked when the two parts of the enterprise, music and words, interact at the deepest level, each enhancing the other.

This invocation of the sublime is the climax and turning point of the dialogue. Rather it is a full-blooded new program for opera, in which the constituent parts merge and interact at a profound level, creating something that transcends those constituents. With high pathos Ludwig enjoins Ferdinand to rise to the new challenge now confronting the Dichter: Ferdinand, it would appear, is gradually coming round to admitting that the gap between Dichter and Komponist is narrowing and to warming to the notion that there is a socio-religious aspect in such collaboration: By joining such a community the Dichter is subscribing to artistic values that will consolidate and strengthen the new Romantic program for opera.

The skeptical Ferdinand has to admit: Das ist der Nachbar, mit dem ich alle Tage gesprochen. It seems, then, that when the two disputants had been discussing the technical problems associated with collaboration they were at loggerheads. At the end of the debate only one sticking point seems to remain: The danger inherent in too vague a response, that is, where the music alone is left to carry the meaning, must be counterbalanced by a libretto that focuses concisely on essentials and eschews all that is irrelevant, such as Metastasian metaphors; these essentials focus on the emotions that are conveyed by the particular dramatic situation: No verbal reflections on the matter are relevant or interesting.

It is for the composer to draw on his rich reservoir of melody and harmony by means of which the full range and depths of emotion appropriate to such a situation can be explored. In view of all these points there is really no way that Ludwig can sidestep the disparity that has been opened up in terms of the respective contributions of Dichter and Komponist: And that in turn requires us to consider the reactions of the members of the Bund in the overarching frame that surrounds the inner dialogue. That tense period —14 , in which the inner dialogue is set and when the future was still hanging in the balance, has now by long since passed into history, but it is still close enough for the members of the Bund to recall and relive in their imaginations the sense of heightened intensity so typical during a time of war.

The theme of war in fact itself acts, in Chinese box fashion, as a frame to the dialogue itself. The unusual circumstances of the meeting of Ludwig and Ferdinand form a brilliant vignette that depicts the reactions and behavior of a group of civilians under bombardment. In turn, the soldier Ferdinand contrasts sharply with the stay-athome composer, Ludwig, who continued albeit with an uneasy conscience throughout the war to devote his energies to his art, music, existing in a kind of ivory tower.

Here, as so often in the case of these exegeses, we have to bear in mind the fictional dimension of the frame, and the continuity and cross-referencing of the topics under discussion. At that point he was careful to emphasize the importance in creative work of striking a balance between the extremes of poetic fancy and the more controlled, detached, sober procedures that contribute to the production of great works of art. At the end of a session or volume, as here , earnest attempts are made to conclude on a note of reconciliation and harmony among the members of the group.

But as we have seen, there is no clear resolution either in the inner frame dialogue or in the narrative frame. He has certainly raised some pretty intractable practical problems about collaboration, which Ludwig has blithely ignored. But that implies a compromise. He rightly draws attention to the contemporary debates regarding the respective merits of the dual or single identity of an opera composer and librettist. As Ludwig sees it, musical composition draws on a general inspiration on the part of the composer, which may be triggered by the possibilities of a particular text not of his own making Hoffmann uses the image of a surging torrent to suggest the powerful flow of melodic inspiration: He is clear that such a flow of musical inspiration could be completely destroyed by the need to wrestle with words and the particularities of the text at the same time: He would even feel happier about coming up with the basic ideas for a text than he is with the business of tailoring it to the demands of the musical score, though that does not seem to be a serious option.

It would seem, paradoxically, that the two doubly fictitious characters, Ludwig and Ferdinand, are eventually of one mind, in visionary rather than in practical terms, whereas, even after Theodor has finished his narration which had been intended as a means of illustrating and clarifying the issues , unanimity has receded even further among the members of the group.

However, Hoffmann has a final card up his sleeve. If verbal means of resolution cannot be achieved, music itself can prove its superiority. The final traces of discord among the members of the group are completely resolved by Cyprian and Theodor, who invoke the muse of music itself and suggest an extempore performance. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book. Bilder und Dokumente seiner Zeit Kassel, Reflections on a Theme in the Works of E.

See John Warrack, ed. Nothing came of the venture. Carl Dahlhaus, however, contextualizes them in an illuminating way; see C. Laaber, , 98— See discussion above, Der Einsiedler Serapion. Rexroth Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, , Macmillan, , They have their moment of glory, the moment in which they suggest to him a certain melody; once that is over, they are as expendable as infantry to a Chinese general: Hoffmann has moved on from the literary aspects to a consideration of two major ways in which music can achieve its potential as the most expressive of all art forms: Both forms, significantly, involve the interdependence of music and words or texts.

In this, the second of the two pieces dealing with the question of the relationship between words and music, the hybrid form in question — church music — proves in one sense to be less problematic than opera, in that the need to fashion a fresh text on each separate occasion, with all the related difficulty of deciding whether this should involve one or two separate artists, has been eliminated. Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei, an analysis that sums up their underlying purpose and effect: Their choice is identical to the title that belongs strictly to the much longer and more detailed essay on the topic of church music, commissioned by Rochlitz, the editor of the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, that appeared in that journal in This has led to confusion, since readers have not always been aware that there are substantial differences between the two versions.

First, there is a huge difference in scale: Clearly the latter is aimed at a less specialist audience. And the ratio of musical analysis to more discursive material is greatly altered. Finally, while the original version is presented from the perspective of one uniform authorial voice, the later one separates out into two distinct voices, a feature that is matched by a two-part presentation of the external frame characters, Cyprian and Theodor.

This could be seen as an extension of the more secular processes described in the earlier companion piece on opera. But this issue is shown to be controversial, since, as it turns out, there is an absence of consensus among the members of the group as to whether, in the chosen contemporary example of church music, the Beethoven Mass, the composer has actually succeeded in scaling the expected heights in his handling of the words and music.

The problem of old and new emerges in two main forms in the debate in the final version, which is shared almost but not quite entirely between the two musical frame characters, Theodor and Cyprian: As mentioned above, it is a greatly compressed version of the original essay,9 but is now mainly concentrated on Palestrina and one or two other composers for example, Caldara and Allegri.

One line of argument addresses the past, present, and future of church music. The Beethoven Mass, a brand new work by an already famous composer, far from being greeted with enthusiasm by all members of the group, evokes reservations for its allegedly uninspiring musical treatment of the form. Even Theodor, who as a composer himself is the major spokesman for music, seems slightly ambivalent: Letter from Ludwig van Beethoven to Hoffmann, 23 March Beethoven is not being accused, as most of them are, of mixing the sacred with the secular, or for introducing frivolous operatic devices into the musical score.

The main problem with most modern settings of the Mass in his view lies in a lack of genuine religious commitment and the consequent inability of composers to rise to true spiritual heights. His historical argument traces a rising trend in musical spirituality forwards from antiquity to the Middle Ages and one backwards from the present, both of which meet in a peak in the world of Renaissance music and Palestrina.

The first line of approach necessarily tends to be orientated around the reception process; the second focuses more on the musical language itself and identifies more precisely the methods of composition. The treatment of the theme of the special status of music among the other art forms is a case in point. This idea receives further elaboration: According to a much quoted but not wholly authenticated anecdote,19 Palestrina, the icon of Renaissance church music, responded to the threat of an interdict, pronounced by the Pope at the Council of Trent, on the further performance of polyphonic music in the Sistine Chapel.

The reason behind this interdict was that settings of the words of the Mass had now reached a level of unintelligibility that could no longer be tolerated. Elaborate, distracting modulations and extended melismas that is, groups of several notes, sung to a single syllable all contributed, it was contended, to distract attention from the deeper liturgical meanings, so that the intonation of the Mass had come to represent a purely secular experience and was not conducive to the reinforcement of belief.

The Mass in six parts that Palestrina composed, as some historians would have it, to correct this impression and restore the confidence of the Papacy in the important liturgical role of music, was dubbed Missa Papae Marcelli. However, Hoffmann does not intend to obfuscate this issue by giving an impression that the means by which music is able to achieve the transcendental and inexpressible is entirely shrouded in mystery. The various associations that accumulate around this one technical feature, the triad, are truly remarkable: At the same time something closely akin to a musical equivalent of the community of saints is being suggested: They serve as a perpetual reminder to each new generation of the heights to which art and religion, in close alliance, can rise: The note of high pathos struck by Cyprian is unmistakable.

Great art — particularly music — outlives human transience, an idea already to be found in the Classical world compare Horace: I have built a monument more durable than bronze. In articulating this idea Hoffmann is thus placing himself in a long-established Western cultural tradition. But now it receives added spiritual significance and status through the associations with the Christian liturgy that Hoffmann weaves into it. It may be useful at this point to summarize the most obviously controversial points.

These are, first, the apparent contradiction in an approach that tries to combine normative and historical criteria. It is argued26 that the essay operates with value judgments that do not blend happily with a strictly chronological survey of the development of church music within its long and illustrious tradition in Western music.

Matthew Passion in Berlin in More often than not the technically sophisticated mechanisms of woodwind and brass instruments, as Hoffmann saw it, had seduced composers of church music into exploiting their new-found brilliance of timbre and greater freedom in modulation, thus interfering drastically with the vocal line. This had had the effect of moving church music further away from its roots. As has been pointed out, the language of music, its entire melodic and harmonic system, could never have developed in the kind of segregated environment he seems to be suggesting.

His two advocates, Cyprian and Theodor, are basically of one mind though Cyprian is the more hard-line, Theodor more open to new possibilities. He reserves his wit and ire for the more common, run-of-the-mill examples, full of empty passage-work with intricate but non-essential, restless modulations. In particular, he is concerned about the effect on good choral singing of fussy writing for the now technically much improved woodwind and brass instruments. There are two immediate points of linkage. As has been already noted, this problem should scarcely ever arise with the texts for church music except in the revealing case of the vernacular version of the Beethoven Mass.

With good reason Hoffmann spends some time in the closing phase of the discussion demonstrating exactly why the vernacular text is deemed unsuitable. According to the analytical though not particularly musical Lothar, however, the Mass in C remains firmly earthbound; his negative view has been much influenced, it seems, by the plodding translation of the Missa into the vernacular, which is now wittily illustrated by members of the group. The set Latin words of the Mass have an endless appeal and carry multifarious associations; they can and have been a source of the most diverse and imaginative musical inspiration over many centuries.

They meet the needs of a composer admirably and do not require any alteration nor, Hoffmann would add, translation. Here it does not express the notation, which was introduced in the Middle Ages, in order to give music permanence on paper, but rather the special expressive qualities underlying the mere notes, qualities that enable music, through performance, to rise to sublime heights. However, to my mind the key argument to support the thesis that Hoffmann is attempting to draw music into the theory of the Serapiontic is to be found in the frame discussion that precedes the discussion on church music.

To clarify further this complex process of interaction Hoffmann now applies a metaphor that he had not used previously, taken from the field of chemistry. Out of this complex brew will emerge such creations as the great figures of world literature, such as Falstaff and Sancho Panza. And as a postscript Cyprian adds to this the final phase in the equation: For these creations of the imagination have their counterparts in everyday life: However, again it is by the association of music with words that the relationship is comparable.

From here we are led back to the Beethoven Mass in C, on which Cyprian and Theodor as well as Sylvester and Lothar immediately take up opposing positions. With this essay Hoffmann has concluded the major exposition of his program, extending the range of reference of the Serapiontic Principle by drawing it into the sphere of hybrid, word-based art forms such as opera and church music.

There will be further references to the principle, but they will be brief, and no new major points will be added after the first two volumes. Having — with the help of his gang of seasoned critics — covered the ground so comprehensively, Hoffmann can proceed to apply his findings to the particular texts that follow — and later in the collection even to the works of some other contemporary writers. The more famous Mass in D, op. Its grandeur and sublimity would have provided an interesting corrective to the lightweight impression of the earlier Mass as articulated by some members of the Bund.

Beethoven was not particular about the quality of the text: Walter Salmen Regensburg, , Having himself been trained in early days, however, in the rigors of counterpoint, he seems a trifle concerned about the lightness of touch with which Beethoven dispatches some of the fugal sections for example, in the Osanna, Perhaps he is concerned about a general lack of rigorous technical training in his own time, which he connects with the decline in the traditional foundations for church music, and disappointed that Beethoven is not upholding this more emphatically.

See Karlheinz Schlager, Kirchenmusik in romantischer Sicht:. Zeugnisse des Musikjournalisten und des Komponisten E. Schlager, Kirchenmusik in romantischer Sicht, 7. Manfred Frank, 6 vols. Suhrkamp, , 2: Eine Untersuchung zur Bedeutung der Musikvorstellung E. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, , 91— Dover, , While noting the external impetus to achieve new heights that Palestrina would have received from his project to reform the Mass, the excellence of the work created to that end, so Jeppersen argues, can be substantiated and appreciated exclusively in musical terms.

Much the same could presumably be said about J. Modern analysts have tended to draw on the mathematical rather than the mystical aspects. Contemporaries of Hoffmann such as J. Minor , 1: Zur Entstehung einer Musikanschauung in der Romantik —92 Pfaffenweiler: Epoche — Werk — Wirkung Munich: Beck, , Musicological opinion is, however, sharply divided on the extent to which Hoffmann can be regarded as a pioneer of the revival of early church music in the nineteenth century. It is common in Romantic writings; see Schelling: Manfred Durner et al.

The tale also enlarges on the topic of allegory, which had only been summarily addressed so far. By a happy coincidence — the presentation to Hoffmann of eight original Callot prints of the Carnival by a friend1 — he had a suitable model on which to expand and develop in more theoretical terms what had become central features of his own narrative technique.

However, such a procedure can be justified on several counts. First, the allegorical element embedded in the elaborate structure of the tale is more fully developed than hitherto and the issue of allegory itself becomes a focus of discussion. Since, however, within the tale itself opinions differ on the interpretation of the term allegory, and it is linked to the concepts of irony and humour, the presentation of this issue becomes one of some complexity.

Second, the subject of the allegory in Prinzessin Brambilla itself relates to aesthetic matters and forms of creativity, and, more narrowly, to theatrical performance. No more than those, I suggest, can they be easily deconstructed. The Callot prints in turn became, in true Serapiontic fashion, the catalyst for his setting in motion a purely fictitious narrative plot, based on the Roman carnival. As was already suggested, this irony would turn out to be an offshoot of the Serapiontic Principle.

The operation of an ironic principle takes various forms in Prinzessin Brambilla; sometimes it is expressed in a discursive, sometimes in an exemplary mode. But Lothar brings a more guarded response to the practical limitations faced by the individual artist. Hoffmann, for his part, is following the trend established by Schlegel, which situates irony firmly in literaryphilosophical territory and away from the rhetorical sphere, which it had occupied almost exclusively since antiquity.

Her contact with the theater world, as a costume maker, starts at a modest level, but she ultimately moves closer to the higher reaches of this art world through her active involvement in the carnival in the metamorphosed form of Prinzessin Brambilla. In Prinzessin Brambilla the reader is offered contrasting readings by the hero Giglio and the masterful Celionati respectively: Mainly through the popularity in the eighteenth century of the fable, a kind of miniature allegory, it was deemed to have become virtually a mechanical device.

Both Schelling17 and Solger18 allow for its having a double significance; in other words the figures and characters take on a fictional identity independently of any meanings or interpretations to which they might be subject, and cannot therefore be reduced to mere chiffres. The situation escalates to the point where their mental paralysis precipitates a universal stagnation throughout the entire kingdom. Hoffmann is presenting two levels of artistic creativity in Prinzessin Brambilla: It offers an interesting twist to the subject of humor by relating it to national differences between the Germans and the Italians.

In this capacity it connects with the principle of irony in its positive form; that is, the ability to draw back even from painful experiences and, in a spirit of amused detachment, to view things without exaggeration or excess. Now the voice of the narrator-author provides a wider frame of reference as he launches into general reflections on creativity and the process by which the creative mind operates. This metaphor of the excavation and recovery of hidden treasures is one of which many creative artists are fond. But soon, in a visionary effusion, the narrator has returned to consider a more interesting aspect, namely the state of mind — a kind of waking dreamstate or reverie — that is most propitious for creative inspiration and that can serve almost as a compensation for all earthly woes: Our understanding of it, I would suggest, is greatly enriched by our awareness of the principles on which his ingenuity and imagination are based and by means of which he is able to achieve his ends.

Metzler, , Cambridge UP, , —53, here BW I, , notes 10 and The exotic Oriental lotus flower may carry sexual overtones and associations with renewal. Gustav von Loeper, Erich Schmidt, et al. For Solger the term has a positive meaning and is seen as a kind of revelation of the Beautiful. Hoffmanns, , however, reads the Fichte reference on a more serious level: Es wird wieder zum absoluten Ich. Hoffmann Frankfurt am Main: Furthermore, the tale itself can be viewed as decidedly Serapiontic in the way in which it utilizes visual perceptions as a lever by means of which to present the reader with a highly poetic, non-material vision of life, albeit one tinged with sadness and regret.

Perhaps he hopes that the latter will one day himself also become a successful writer. This mission has a negative as well as a positive side, however. In effect, the writer is making a virtue of necessity. Serious debilitating illness, involving loss of mobility in both arms and legs, has wreaked havoc with his own ability to practice the art that is the most important thing in his life.

For while he is still able to respond creatively to the external stimulus of his surroundings — as is clearly evident from the brilliant flow of verbal vignettes that he constructs on the basis of his observations at the window — that is where the process abruptly comes to a halt. Whereas the first stage of internalization of images can still be achieved, the ability that he once possessed to recreate and fashion these into a communicable form — which probably calls for greater energy — is no longer possible.

The text is quite specific here: The first stage in the process is still accessible, but the route whereby the initial image or idea can be fashioned and formed and thus delivered to the outside world is cut off by a basic inability to coordinate mind and body: However, the end result, so far as artistic creativity is concerned, is identical, whether the causes of failure derive from mental or from physical sources.

In presenting this situation fictionally in such detail, Hoffmann is rehearsing his own methods and applying the poetological principles on which his own work has been grounded. The more that is known and understood about the creative process, it seems, the more the sense of loss is felt and the deeper the feeling of resignation at no longer being able to participate in it. A succession of individual images, typically, show him once more reaching for models from the visual arts, a technique for which his prior mention of the three famous genre artists has prepared us.

This succession is presented through a dialogue between writer and cousin, which is clearly separated from the frame introduction and conclusion in which the latter alone takes the part of narrator. Such a performance, however, would be lacking in spoken dialogue: There seems to be a deliberate order in the arrangement of the various vignettes: The first of these allows him to play his favorite game of juxtaposing illusion and reality; the second provides an interesting parallel to the physical disablement of the writer, though it is left to the reader to make this connection, and the latter for his part seems unaware of any connection.

That incident produces, retrospectively, a delightful element of humor and self-irony. When he discovers that this is indeed the case, and assuming that any young girl would be thrilled to meet the author of a book she is reading, he reveals himself as such. It is then that an impasse is reached: Ruefully, the author concedes: The situational humor, just before he actually reveals himself as the author, is charming: But this might give an author serious food for thought about the whole reception process and the level of understanding he can expect from his public.

Certainly he can give himself no illusions on this score. This episode, as can be seen, is on an entirely different footing than the other vignettes. It raises fundamental questions about reading itself, about the future destination and reception of a work of art, indeed of the very tale we are reading. The author, with typically idealistic views of the role of literature as a means of education and of opening the eyes of the less privileged members of society, himself has a real shock when his own fantasy comes hard up against the sober reality: It is clear that he now finds revisiting the subject painful: Much speculation focuses in this discourse on the development of other compensatory faculties when a primary sense, such as vision or hearing, is cut off.

This moving incident has another function within the story. It serves as an illustration of humanitarian acts of generosity on the part of the Berlin populace as the writer puts it: This enlightened enthusiasm about the changes in society that have taken place since the war reflects an indomitable optimism on the part of the invalid writer, given that his own personal circumstances and prospects are so dismal. In this respect his sadness at his truncated participation in the creative process is slightly offset by exposure to life itself, warts and all.

For the vignettes of the market place are not idealized: And the tale itself is interwoven with tragedy, renunciation, resignation, as well as joie de vivre, generosity, and good humor. At every point one is tempted to make the connection between this character and Hoffmann himself, while realizing the limitations of such a view. The locality is described in minute detail: His own drawing of the area and its buildings10 contains all the material one could wish to underline the point.

But there the similarities end. For, in a final creative burst that produced this very tale, among a handful of others, Hoffmann was able to dictate to his friend Hitzig the entire work. Some might say that it had never been better exemplified than here: Hoffmann is able to draw on the most unpropitious source material, namely physical debility and failing powers, and, making a virtue of necessity, to shape it into a perfectly composed narrative in which the reader is indeed transposed from a world of sheer physical limitation to the highest realms of the human spirit.

Niemeyer, , 34, n. Schmidt, , Suhrkamp, , — Studien zu Leben, Werk und Wirkung E. Hoffmanns Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, , seems to be in conflict with his earlier view Segebrecht, Autobiographie und Dichtung: Eine Studie zum Werk E. In neither the case of the painter nor that of the composer figure is the comparison apt, in that they have never been successful artists. See August Langen, Anschauungsformen in der deutschen Dichtung des Rahmenschau und Rationalismus Jena: Likewise Hoffmann, now writing at a later phase in the Napoleonic saga, makes several allusions to the recent war and its conclusion his character Cyprian had fought in the campaign and, like Hoffmann himself, had witnessed the bombardment of Dresden , but in these changed circumstances his political stance is distinctly upbeat by comparison.

There are several important references to the final stages of the struggle The Battle of the Nations but also optimism about the new spirit of regeneration in a war-torn land that was now at peace again.

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This glimpse of the genesis of the frame provides insights into the way in which, as a writer, Hoffmann utilizes real and imaginary material. It could almost be described as a practical implementation of the Serapiontic Principle itself: There is a remarkable coincidence between actual and fictionalized — or self-conscious — realization of the creative process itself. But to demonstrate that close relationship between the empirical and fictional levels is a very different thing from establishing a biographical link between author and characters.

Lothar, Cyprian, Theodor, and Ottmar. We shall see in later chapters that the extension of the membership is very likely the result of the perceived need for variety and new perspectives on the business of writing tales: There is also an occasional element of opportunism about these changes. Lothar assumes the role of chairman and chief adjudicator and it appears that, as is appropriate for one who carries extra responsibilities, he is tacitly allowed some leeway since, among the founding members, he contributes the fewest tales that is, four. The newcomers can supply only four between them: Sylvester taking three and the lazy Vincenz a mere one.

Transitions between narrations and the introductions to individual tales are more haphazard and sometimes fairly brief.

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In all these, however, little attention is given to personal or domestic details: That, of course, does not preclude a considerable degree of self-revelation. The abjuring of trivial topics of conversation and the exclusive focus on the essential business of storytelling is an important principle that is laid down at the outset.

This focus on essentials, which derives from the need to relate much of the discussion to the implications and applicability of the Serapiontic Principle, draws the collection of tales together. Another means by which harmony and resolution can be achieved has already been noted: Der Dichter und der Komponist raises issues on which consensus among the group is lacking even after a narrative-debate intended as an illustration and a thorough discussion following it, so it is followed by a musical performance that restores the sense of unity.

On another occasion, however, when there is a debate about the controversial dramatist Zacharias Werner, as if to emphasize that even the powerful medium of music cannot always be expected to perform miracles, the group performance of an extempore piece fails to have a cathartic effect. Other instances where Hoffmann seems to have hoisted himself on his own petard are breaches of the strict observance of the Serapiontic Principle that the group members have bound themselves to follow.

Vincenz is presented as a kind of Mephistophelian clown, who questions the validity of the principle at various points, though instead of managing to dent its importance, like Mephisto he simply reinforces its positive qualities, by stimulating his colleagues to rush to its defense with ever stronger restatements of the program. The Characters The internal dynamics within the group are carefully calibrated. He is a difficult character, who tends initially to adopt a negative position, but can be won round — once he has had the time to consider new evidence — to a new and positive position.

This is especially clear in his approach toward the establishment of the principle. Once he has clear the major issues and set out the literary program, his skepticism about forming a brotherhood disappears; indeed it polarizes into a tenacious belief in its vital importance, as he restates and reformulates it at various subsequent points.

When in the fifth Abschnitt a low point is reached and he fears and anticipates the break-up of the brotherhood, his degree of commitment is reflected in the metaphor he uses to suggest the fundamental importance of the Serapiontic Principle, which he compares to a foundation supporting a building: His vulnerability to the prospect of change and his melancholy vision of a future without this supporting prop that has been so carefully built up points to an insecure and idealistic temperament that will not be able to come to terms easily with the removal of what has clearly become one of the mainstays of his life and something in which he has invested much emotional and mental energy.

Ottmar jollies him along, comparing him to Hamlet and using an amusing image to reinforce the point that one cannot allow oneself to be blown off course when the going gets difficult: Like many convalescents Theodor attributes his recovery to the workings of a higher power — in this case one that operates very much on Schellingian lines: Theodor and Lothar often take different sides on issues and more than any other pair they are sparring partners: The Serapiontic Principle is thereby extended to include in its scope the lofty dimension of the sublime and by implication is also extended to literary forms other than narrative, for example, tragic drama.

The fourth founding member, Ottmar, is perhaps the most shadowy. He is not allocated any of the most famous tales and contributes fewer than his fellow founding members. His claim as guardian of the principle is twofold: Sylvester, who joins at the same time, is contrasted with Vincenz and tends not to play a dominant part in the discussions. But his usefulness, as I see it, is to give completeness to the range of literary forms to which the Serapiontic Principle can be applied. Theodor is a composer of opera and we hear about his achievement indirectly, when it is mentioned that one of his works has been performed and that he is on the look out for a libretto for another.

E. T. A. Hoffmann

Sylvester represents the performing arts specifically through the important genre of drama and theater, which otherwise would not be covered. The successful performance of one of his works on the Berlin stage leads to an animated discussion about the theater among the members, which extends into opera. He also makes an important contribution to the discussion about the most suitable environment and stimulus for creative work, contrasting the urban and rural in their respective roles as triggers for the artist. His ambivalent position as one caught between attraction and repulsion towards the ever-encroaching urbanization of nineteenth-century life reflects the equally ambivalent relationship of many a modern artist and creative individual towards his surroundings: This makes the frame discussion resemble a form of practical criticism, especially in the more highly organized first two volumes.

Typically, there will be a general airing of views, often a clash or collision of viewpoints, interspersed with defense of his position by the author-narrator of the tale, who may develop further points of relevance or refer to other works for comparison, including his own. In all these stages the members are supposed to hold in their minds the agreed criteria of the principle as laid down in the first section, though, unsurprisingly, that in itself is subject to different interpretations and emphasis when the members are faced with the task of matching it against the evidence of a particular tale.

The final stage in what are usually short, concise contributions to the debate will often take the form of a decision or judgment that finds general acceptance. In this process, however, the opinions of all the four or six voices are not always equally apportioned. Lothar — and to a lesser extent Theodor — takes a commanding position I have compared the former to a chairman but if that is apt, then he is one who does not always get his own way. A brief examination of a few key examples will serve to illustrate the dynamic aspect of the frame discussions.

It is the eloquence of his three friends, Theodor, Ottmar, and Cyprian that leads Lothar away from his somber, unreceptive mood, and from his deepseated anxieties about the mutability of all things and the changes that have already overtaken their group after a long period of separation. At this point the tale has been subject to many negative reactions from the receivers: The debate on the relationship between words and music see Der Dichter und der Komponist , for instance, exists within both the narrative and the flanking discussion sections, and no true consensus is reached in either.

The former ends at an unresolved impasse as Ferdinand and Ludwig, after much to-ing and fro-ing beg to differ on which artist in the collaboration should give ground to the other, the scales being weighted more heavily against Ferdinand the writer. Though he finally puts a good face on it and makes a resoundingly patriotic speech, this does nothing to settle the problems raised about which art form should take the leading role.

The outer frame takes up this unresolved problem and at first reinforces it, Lothar and Cyprian, the wordsmiths, both in search of composers of libretti, initially taking up an oppositional stance towards Theodor the musician. This nineteenth-century rendition is in the polyphonic style of Palestrina, in which each of the four singers sings a stanza of equal length, and all four combine in a chorus at the beginning and end of the piece. When words fail and consensus is impossible, it seems, harmony and a quasi-Palestrinian polyphony can serve a restorative function.

The argument ranges over older models such as the Arabian Nights, asking the question whether these can be of use to the modern writer. Applying a major defining feature of the principle, namely, the requirement that the fantastic must always be tethered in the real world, Theodor feels that the Oriental model is too remote in its settings and characters to qualify. This point of view is refuted by Ottmar, who makes the point that these very characters in the Arabian Nights — artisans, tradesmen, tailors, and so on — are often people of modest social status and thence very much accessible to the modern reader.

He thinks that this imparts to the tales a universal quality that can indeed be of value in the present-day world. It seems that the Serapionsbund is breaking down visibly.