Artistic space and time of the fairy tale golden pot. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann The Golden Pot: A Tale from Modern Times. The literature of the era of romanticism, which appreciated, above all, abnormality, freedom of creativity, in fact, still had rules, although,

There are two stages in the history of romanticism: early and late. The division is not only chronological, but based on the philosophical ideas of the era.

The philosophy of early romanticism defines a two-sphere world: the world of "infinite" and "finite" ("become", "inert"). “Infinite” - Cosmos, Being. “Finite” - earthly existence, everyday consciousness, everyday life.

The artistic world of early romanticism embodies the dual world of "infinite" and "finite" through an idea universal synthesis... The dominant attitude of the early romantics is the joyous acceptance of the world. The universe is the kingdom of harmony, and the world chaos is perceived as a light source of energy and metamorphosis, the eternal "stream of life".

The world of late romanticism is also a two-sphere world, but already different, it is a world of absolute double-world. Here the “finite” is an independent substance, the opposite of the “infinite”. The dominant attitude of the late romantics - disharmony, cosmic chaos is perceived as a source of dark, mystical forces.

Hoffmann's aesthetics is created at the intersection of early and late romanticism, their philosophical interpenetration.

In the world of Hoffmann's heroes, there is no single correct space and time; each has its own reality, its own topos and its own time. But the Romantic, describing these worlds, in his own mind unites them into an integral, albeit contradictory world.

Hoffmann's favorite character, Kreisler, in The Musical Suffering of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler, describes a "tea party" to which he was invited as a dancer:

“… I… completely exhausted… Disgusting lost evening! But now I feel good and easy. After all During the game, I took out a pencil and with my right hand jotted down with numbers on page 63 under the last variation a few successful deviations, while my left hand did not stop struggling with the flow of sounds! .. I keep writing on the back blank<…>as a convalescent patient who never ceases to talk about what he endured, I am describing in detail here the hellish torments of this tea evening. " Kreisler, Hoffmann's alter ego, is able to overcome the drama of reality through spiritual being.

In the work of Hoffmann, the structure of each text is created by a “double world”, but it enters through “ romantic irony».

At the center of Hoffmann's universe is a creative person, poet and musician, the main thing for whom is act of creation, in the words of the romantics, - "music, the being of being itself." Aesthetic act and resolves the conflict between "material" and "spiritual", everyday life and being.

A tale from modern times "The Golden Pot" was the focus of the philosophical and aesthetic concept of Hoffmann.

The text of the fairy tale reflects the "extra-textual" and at the same time individual world, which characterizes the personality of Hoffmann. According to Yu.M. Lotman, the text is “ author's model of the world", Through all the structural components of which, the chronotope and heroes, the real world is embodied. The philosophy of romantic duality is determined by the plot and plot of the Fairy Tale, composition and chronotope.

To parse the text, we need theoretical concepts, without which students, as a rule, call Anselm the main character of the Fairy Tale, and two of the artistic spaces are distinguished - the city of Dresden and the magical and mystical world in its two guises - Atlantis (light beginning) and the space of the Old Woman (dark beginning). Thus, the outlined chronotope of the fairy tale cuts off individual parts of the composition, halves the plot, reducing it to the plot of Anselm.

If for actor the characters of this plot Anselm, Veronica, Geerbrand, Paulman, Lindgorst and the old woman Lisa are sufficient for the creative fantasies of the stage embodiment, then for director this compositional deconstruction leads to the loss of the meaning of the Fairy Tale and its protagonist, Romance.

Theoretical concepts become indicators of artistic and worldview meanings.

Chronotope - “... interconnection spatial and temporal relations, artistically mastered in literature ”[p. 234].

The author-creator is a real person, the artist is “distinguishable from the image author, narrator and storyteller. Author-creator = composer both in relation to his work as a whole, and of an individual text as a particle of the whole ”[p. 34].

The author is “the bearer of the intensely active unity of the completed whole, the whole hero and the whole work.<...>The consciousness of the author is the consciousness that encompasses the consciousness of the hero, his world ”[p. 234]. The task of the author is to understand the form of the hero and his world, i.e. aesthetic assessment of someone else's knowledge and deed.

The narrator (narrator, storyteller) - “is created figure that belongs to the whole whole literary work. " This role invented and accepted by the author-creator... "The narrator and characters are paper creatures by their function, author narrative (material) cannot be confused with narrator this story. "

Event. There are two types of Events: an artistic event and a story event:

1) Artistic event - in which the author-creator and the reader take part. So in The Golden Pot we will see several similar Events about which the characters “do not know”: this structural division, the choice of the genre, the creation of a chronotope, according to Tynyanov, such an Event “introduces into the prose not the hero, but the reader”.

2) The story event changes characters, situations, dynamic development of the plot in the space of the entire plot.

The text of the "Golden Pot" is a system of several artistic events fixed in the structure of the composition.

The beginning of these Events is a division into “typed” text and “being written” text.

First Event- this is the text "printed": "The Golden Pot" A Tale from New Times. " It was created by Hoffmann - By the author-creator - and has a common character with the rest of Hoffmann's work - this is Kreisler, the main character of "Kreislerian".

Second Event. Author-Creator to your text introduces another author - The author-narrator. In the literature, such author-narrator always exists as an alter-ego of the real author. But quite often the author-creator endows him with the subjective function of the author-storyteller, who turns out to be a witness or even a participant in the real story about which he is narrating. The "Golden Pot" just has such a subjective author - a romantic writer who writes "his own text" - about Anselm ("the written text").

Third Event- this is the "writing text" about Anselm.

The world of Hoffmann's fairy tale has pronounced signs of a romantic double world, which is embodied in the work in various ways. The romantic double world is realized in the story through the direct explanation of the origin and structure of the world in which they live by the characters.

“There is a local world, earthly, everyday and another world, magical Atlantis, from which man once originated. This is what Serpentina told Anselmu about her father, the archivist Lindhorst, who, as it turned out, is a prehistoric elemental fire spirit Salamander, who lived in the magical land of Atlantis and was exiled to earth by the prince of spirits Phosphorus for his love for the lily's daughter, the serpent. L. "Romantic irony" in the works of E.T.-A. Hoffman // Scientific Notes of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. IN AND. Lenin. - No. 280. - M., 1967. - P.73 ..

This fantastic story is perceived as arbitrary fiction that does not have serious significance for understanding the characters of the story, but it is said that the prince of spirits Phosphorus predicts the future: people will degenerate (namely, they will cease to understand the language of nature), and only longing will vaguely remind of the existence of another of the world (the ancient homeland of man), at this time the Salamander will be reborn and in its development it will reach a man who, having reborn in this way, will begin to perceive nature again - this is already a new anthropodicy, the doctrine of man. Anselm belongs to the people of a new generation, as he is able to see and hear natural miracles and believe in them - after all, he fell in love with a beautiful snake that appeared to him in a blooming elder bush.

Serpentina calls it a "naive poetic soul" possessed by "those young men whom, due to the excessive simplicity of their morals and their complete lack of so-called secular education, the crowd despises and ridicules" Hoffman E.T.-A. "The Golden Pot" and other stories. -M., 1981. - P. 23 .. Man on the verge of two worlds: partly earthly being, partly spiritual. In fact, in all the works of Hoffmann, the world is arranged exactly like this See: Skobelev A.V. Hoffman.-M., 1982. - S. 118 ..

The duality is realized in the character system, namely, in the fact that the characters are clearly distinguished by belonging or inclination to the forces of good and evil. In The Golden Pot, these two forces are represented, for example, by the archivist Lindhorst, his daughter Serpentina from the good side, and the old witch from the evil side. An exception is the main character, who is under the equal influence of both forces, is subject to this changeable and eternal struggle between good and evil.

Anselm's soul is a "battlefield" between these forces, see, for example, how easily Anselm's perception of the world changes, when he looked in Veronica's magic mirror: only yesterday he was madly in love with Serpentine and wrote down the history of the archivist in his house with mysterious signs, and today it seems to him that he was only thinking about Veronica, “that the image that appeared to him yesterday in the blue room was again Veronica and that the fantastic tale about the marriage of the Salamander with the green snake was only written by him, and not told to him in any way ... He himself marveled at his dreams and ascribed them to his exalted state of mind, due to love for Veronica ... ”Hoffman E.T.-A. "The Golden Pot" and other stories. -M. 1981. - P. 42 .. Human consciousness lives with dreams and each of such dreams always, it would seem, finds objective evidence, but, in fact, all these mental states are the result of the impact of the struggling spirits of good and evil. The ultimate antinomy of the world and of man is a characteristic feature of the romantic worldview.

“The duality is realized in the images of mirrors, which are found in large numbers in the story: a smooth metal mirror of an old fortune-teller, a crystal mirror made of beams of light from the ring on the hand of the archivist Lindgorst, Veronica's magic mirror that bewitched Anselm” Chavchanidze D.L. "Romantic irony" in the works of E.T.-A. Hoffman // Scientific Notes of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. IN AND. Lenin. - No. 280. - M., 1967. - S. 84 ..

The color scheme used by Hoffmann in the depiction of objects in the artistic world of the "Golden Pot" betrays the story's belonging to the era of romanticism. These are not just subtle shades of color, but necessarily dynamic, moving colors and whole color scales, often absolutely fantastic: "pike-gray coat" Hoffman E.T.-A. "The Golden Pot" and other stories. -M., 1981. - P.11., "Snakes shining with green gold" Ibid. - S. 15., “Sparkling emeralds fell on him and wrapped around him with sparkling golden threads, fluttering and playing around him with thousands of lights” Ibid. - p.16., “Blood spurted from the veins, penetrating into the transparent body of the snake and staining it red” Ibid. - P.52., “From the precious stone, as from a burning focus, rays came out in all directions, which, joining, made up a brilliant crystal mirror” Ibid. - P.35 ..

The same feature - dynamism, elusive fluidity - is possessed by sounds in the artistic world of Hoffmann's works (the rustle of elderberry leaves gradually turns into ringing of crystal bells, which, in turn, turns out to be a quiet intoxicating whisper, then bells again, and suddenly everything breaks off with a rough dissonance, noise water under the oars of the boat reminds Anselm of a whisper).

Wealth, gold, money, jewelry are presented in the artistic world of Hoffmann's fairy tale as a mystical object, a fantastic magic tool, an object partly from another world. “Specialist thaler every day - it was such a fee that seduced Anselm and helped to overcome fear in order to go to the mysterious archivist, it was this special thaler that turns living people into shackled people, as if they were poured into glass” Hoffman E.T.-A. "The Golden Pot" and other stories. -M., 1981. - P.33 .. Lindhorst's precious ring is capable of charming a person. In her dreams of the future, Veronica imagines her husband, court counselor Anselm, and he has “a gold watch with a rehearsal, and he gives her cute, wonderful earrings of the newest style” Ibid. - P.42 ..

The heroes of the story are distinguished by a clear romantic specificity. Archivist Lindhorst is the keeper of ancient mysterious manuscripts, which apparently contain mystical meanings, in addition, he is still engaged in mysterious chemical experiments and does not let anyone into this laboratory. Anselm is a scribe of manuscripts who is fluent in calligraphic writing. Anselm, Veronica, Kapellmeister Geerbrand have an ear for music, are able to sing and even compose music. In general, everything belongs to the scientific environment, related to the extraction, storage and dissemination of knowledge.

The nationality of the heroes is definitely not said, but it is known that many heroes are not people at all, but magical creatures born of marriage, for example, the feather of a black dragon and beetroot. Nevertheless, the rare nationality of the heroes as an obligatory and familiar element of romantic literature is still present, although in the form of a weak motive: the archivist Lindhorst keeps manuscripts in Arabic and Coptic belonging to any of the known languages ​​”Ibid. - P.36 ..

The style of the "Golden Pot" is distinguished by the use of the grotesque, which is not only an individual peculiarity of Hoffmann, but also of romantic literature in general. “He stopped and looked at a large door knocker attached to a bronze figure. But as soon as he wanted to take up this hammer at the last resounding blow of the tower clock on the Cross Church, suddenly the bronze face twisted and grinned into a disgusting smile and flashed terribly with the rays of metal eyes. Oh! It was an apple trader from the Black Gate ... "Hoffman E.T.-A. "The Golden Pot" and other stories. -M., 1981. - P.13., "The bell cord went down and turned out to be a white transparent gigantic snake ..." Ibid. - P.42., “With these words he turned and left, and then everyone understood that the important man was, in fact, a gray parrot” Ibid. - P.35 ..

Science fiction allows you to create the effect of a romantic double world: there is a local, real world, where ordinary people think about a portion of coffee with rum, double beer, smart girls, etc., but there is a fantastic world. The fiction in Hoffmann's story comes from grotesque imagery: one of the features of an object with the help of the grotesque increases to such an extent that the object seems to be transformed into another, already fantastic. For example, an episode with Anselm moving into a bottle.

The image of a man bound by glass is apparently based on the idea of ​​Hoffmann that people sometimes do not realize their lack of freedom - Anselm, falling into a bottle, notices the same unfortunate people around him, but they are quite satisfied with their position and think that they are free, that they are they even go to taverns, etc., and Anselm went crazy (“imagines that he is sitting in a glass jar, but stands on the Elbe bridge and looks into the water” Ibid. - p. 40).

The author's deviations quite often appear in a relatively small text of the story (in almost each of the 12 vigilies). Obviously, the artistic meaning of these episodes is to clarify the author's position, namely the author's irony. "I have the right to doubt, gracious reader, that you ever happen to be sealed in a glass vessel ..." Ibid. - P.40 .. These explicit author's deviations set the inertia of perception of the rest of the text, which turns out to be all, as it were, permeated with romantic irony See: D. L. Chavchanidze "Romantic irony" in the works of E.T.-A. Hoffman // Scientific Notes of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. V.I. Lenin. - No. 280. - M., 1967. - P.83.

Finally, the author's digressions play another important role: in the last vigil, the author announced that, firstly, he would not tell the reader how he knew this whole secret story, and secondly, that the Salamander Lindhorst himself offered him and helped complete the story of the fate of Anselm, who migrated, as it turned out, together with Serpentine from ordinary earthly life to Atlantis. The very fact of the author's communication with the elemental spirit of the Salamander casts a shadow of madness on the whole story, but the last words of the story answer many questions and doubts of the reader, reveal the meaning of the key allegories: “Anselm's bliss is nothing more than life in poetry, to which the sacred harmony of all that exists reveals itself as the deepest of the secrets of nature! " Hoffman E.T.-A. "The Golden Pot" and other stories. -M., 1981. - P.55 ..

Sometimes two realities, two parts of a romantic double world, intersect and create funny situations. So, for example, the tipsy Anselm begins to talk about the other side of reality known only to him, namely about the true face of the archivist and Serpentine, which looks like delirium, since those around him are not ready to immediately understand that “Mr. the garden of the prince of spirits Phosphorus in the hearts because a green snake flew away from him ”Ibid. - P.45 .. However, one of the participants in this conversation - the registrar Geerbrand - suddenly showed awareness of what was happening in the parallel real world: “This archivist is indeed a damned Salamander; he clicks the fire out with his fingers and burns holes on the coats in the manner of a fiery tube ”Ibid. - P.45 .. Carried away by the conversation, the interlocutors completely stopped reacting to the amazement of those around them and continued to talk about heroes and events that only they could understand, for example, about the old woman - “her father is nothing but a torn wing, her mother is a bad beet” Hoffman E.T.-A. "The Golden Pot" and other stories. -M., 1981. - P.45 ..

The author's irony makes it especially noticeable that the heroes live between two worlds. Here, for example, is the beginning of Veronica's remark, who suddenly entered the conversation: “This is a vile slander,” exclaimed Veronica with eyes sparkling with anger ... ”Ibid. - P.45 .. For a moment it seems to the reader that Veronica, who does not know the whole truth about who an archivist or an old woman is, is outraged by these crazy characteristics of her acquaintances, Mr. Lindhorst and old Lisa, but it turns out that Veronica is also aware of the matter and indignant at something completely different: "... Old Liza is a wise woman, and the black cat is not at all an evil creature, but an educated young man of the most delicate treatment and her cousin germain" Ibid. - P.46 ..

The conversation between the interlocutors takes on absolutely ridiculous forms (Geerbrand, for example, asks the question “can a Salamander eat without burning his beard ...?” Ibid. - p. 46), any serious meaning of it is finally destroyed by irony. However, irony changes our understanding of what happened before: if everyone from Anselm to Gerband and Veronica is familiar with the other side of reality, then this means that in the usual conversations that happened between them before, they hid from each other their knowledge of another reality, or these conversations contained hints, ambiguous words, and so on, imperceptible to the reader, but understandable to the heroes. Irony, as it were, dissipates the holistic perception of a thing (person, event), instills a vague feeling of understatement and "misunderstanding" of the surrounding world See: A.V. Skobelev. On the problem of the relationship between romantic irony and satire in the work of Hoffmann // Art world of E.T.-A. Hoffmann. - M., 1982 .-- S. 128.

The listed features of Hoffmann's story "The Golden Pot" unambiguously indicate the presence in this work of elements of a mythological worldview. The author constructs two parallel worlds, each with its own mythology. The ordinary world with its Christian outlook does not attract close attention of the author as far as mythology is concerned, however, the fantastic world is described not only in vivid details, but for him the author also came up with and described in detail the mythological picture of its structure. That is why Hoffmann's science fiction is not inclined towards the forms of implicit fantasy, but on the contrary it turns out to be explicit, emphasized, magnificently and unrestrainedly developed - this leaves a noticeable imprint on the world order of Hoffmann's romantic fairy tale.

The literature of the era of romanticism, which valued primarily non-normativeness, freedom of creativity, in fact still had rules, although, of course, they never took the form of normative poetic treatises like Boileau's Poetics. The analysis of literary works of the era of Romanism, carried out by literary scholars over two centuries and has already been generalized many times, has shown that romantic writers use a stable set of romantic "rules", which are referred to as features of the construction of the artistic world (dual world, an exalted hero, strange incidents, fantastic images ), as well as the structural features of the work, its poetics (the use of exotic genres, for example, fairy tales; the author's direct intervention in the world of heroes; the use of the grotesque, fantasy, romantic irony, etc.). Without going into a theoretical discussion of the poetics of German romanticism, let us begin to consider the most striking features of Hoffmann's story-tale "The Golden Pot", which betray its belonging to the era of romanticism.

The romantic world in the story "The Golden Pot"

The world of Hoffmann's fairy tale has pronounced signs of a romantic double world, which is embodied in the work in various ways. The romantic double world is realized in the story through the direct explanation of the origin and structure of the world in which they live by the characters. There is a local world, earthly, everyday and another world, some magical Atlantis, from which man once came (94-95, 132-133). This is exactly what Serpentina's story to Anselmu says about her father, the archivist Lindhorst, who, as it turned out, is a prehistoric elemental fire spirit Salamander who lived in the magical land of Atlantis and was exiled to earth by the prince of spirits Phosphorus for his love for the lily's daughter the serpent. This fantastic story is perceived as arbitrary fiction that does not have serious significance for understanding the characters of the story, but it is said that the prince of spirits Phosphorus predicts the future: people will degenerate (namely, they will cease to understand the language of nature) and only longing will vaguely remind of the existence of another world (the ancient homeland of man), at this time the Salamander will be reborn and in its development it will reach a man who, having reborn in this way, will begin to perceive nature again - this is already a new anthropodicy, the doctrine of man. Anselm belongs to the people of a new generation, as he is able to see and hear natural miracles and believe in them - after all, he fell in love with a beautiful snake that appeared to him in a blooming and singing elder bush. Serpentina calls this the "naive poetic soul" (134) possessed by "those young men who, due to their excessive simplicity of manners and their complete lack of so-called secular education, are despised and ridiculed by the crowd" (134). Man on the verge of two worlds: partly earthly being, partly spiritual. In fact, in all of Hoffmann's works, the world is arranged this way. Compare, for example, the interpretation of the music and the musician's creative act in the short story "Cavalier Gluck", music is born as a result of being in the kingdom of dreams, in another world: “I found myself in a luxurious valley and listened to what the flowers were singing to each other. Only the sunflower was silent and sadly bowed down with a closed whisk. An invisible bond drew me to him. He raised his head - the rim opened, and from there an eye shone towards me. And the sounds, like rays of light, stretched from my head to the flowers, and they eagerly absorbed them. The petals of the sunflower opened wider and wider - streams of flame poured out of them, enveloped me, - the eye disappeared, and I found myself in the cup of the flower. " (53)

The duality is realized in the character system, namely, in the fact that the characters are clearly distinguished by belonging or inclination to the forces of good and evil. In The Golden Pot, these two forces are represented, for example, by the archivist Lindhorst, his daughter Serpentine and the old witch, who turns out to be the daughter of a black dragon's feather and beetroot (135). An exception is the main character, who is under the equal influence of both forces, is subject to this changeable and eternal struggle between good and evil. Anselm's soul is a "battlefield" between these forces, see, for example, how easily Anselm's perception of the world changes, when he looked in Veronica's magic mirror: only yesterday he was madly in love with Serpentine and wrote down the history of the archivist in his house with mysterious signs, and today it seems to him that he was only thinking about Veronica, “that the image that appeared to him yesterday in the blue room was again Veronica and that the fantastic tale about the marriage of the Salamander with the green snake was only written by him, and not told to him in any way ... He himself marveled at his dreams and ascribed them to his exalted, due to love for Veronica, state of mind ... ”(p. 138) Human consciousness lives by dreams and each of these dreams always, it would seem, always finds objective evidence, but in fact all these mental states the result of the influence of the struggling spirits of good and evil. The ultimate antinomy of the world and of man is a characteristic feature of the romantic worldview.

The duality is realized in the images of mirrors, which are found in large numbers in the story: a smooth metal mirror of an old fortune-teller (111), a crystal mirror made of rays of light from the ring on the hand of the archivist Lindhorst (110), Veronica's magic mirror, who bewitched Anselm (137-138) ...

The color scheme used by Hoffmann in the depiction of objects in the artistic world of the "Golden Pot" betrays the story's belonging to the era of romanticism. These are not just subtle shades of color, but necessarily dynamic, moving colors and whole color scales, often absolutely fantastic: "pike-gray tailcoat" (82), snakes shining with green gold (85), golden threads, fluttering and playing around him with thousands of lights "(86)," blood spurted from the veins, penetrating into the transparent body of the snake and staining it red "(94), sides of the rays, which, joining, made up a brilliant crystal mirror ”(104).

The same feature - dynamism, elusive fluidity - is possessed by sounds in the artistic world of Hoffmann's work (the rustle of elderberry leaves gradually turns into the ringing of crystal bells, which, in turn, turns out to be a quiet intoxicating whisper, then bells again, and suddenly everything breaks off with a rough dissonance, see 85-86; the sound of the water under the oars of the boat reminds Anselm of a whisper 89).

Wealth, gold, money, jewelry are presented in the artistic world of Hoffmann's fairy tale as a mystical object, a fantastic magic tool, an object partly from another world. Specialist thaler every day - it was such a fee that seduced Anselm and helped to overcome fear in order to go to the mysterious archivist, it was this special thaler that turns living people into shackled, as if poured into glass (see the episode of Anselm's conversation with other scribes of manuscripts, who also ended up in flasks). Lindhorst's precious ring (104) is able to charm a person. In her dreams of the future, Veronica imagines her husband, court counselor Anselm, and he has a "gold watch with a rehearsal", and he gives her the newest style "cute, wonderful earrings" (108)

The heroes of the story are distinguished by a clear romantic specificity.

Profession. The archivist Lindhorst is the keeper of ancient mysterious manuscripts containing, apparently, mystical meanings, in addition, he is still engaged in mysterious chemical experiments and does not let anyone into this laboratory (see 92). Anselm is a scribe of manuscripts who is fluent in calligraphic writing. Anselm, Veronica, Kapellmeister Geerbrand have an ear for music, are able to sing and even compose music. In general, everything belongs to the scientific environment, related to the extraction, storage and dissemination of knowledge.

Disease. Often romantic heroes suffer from an incurable disease, which makes the hero seem to be partially dead (or partially unborn!) And already belonging to another world. In The Golden Pot, none of the heroes is distinguished by ugliness, dwarfism, etc. romantic illnesses, but there is a motive of madness, for example, Anselm is often mistaken for his strange behavior by those around him: “Yes,” he added [Conrector Paulman], “there are frequent examples that certain fantasies appear to a person and bother and torment him a lot; but this is a bodily illness, and leeches are very helpful against it, which should be placed, if I may say so, in the rear, as proved by one famous already deceased scientist "(91), he himself compares the swoon that happened to Anselm at the door of Lindhorst's house with madness (see 98), the statement of the tipsy Anselm "after all, you too, Mr. Konrector, are no more than a bird owl curling tupi" (140) immediately aroused the suspicion that Anselm had gone mad.

Nationality. The nationality of the heroes is definitely not said, but it is known that many heroes are not people at all, but magical creatures born from marriage, for example, the feather of a black dragon and beetroot. Nevertheless, a rare nationality of heroes as an obligatory and familiar element of romantic literature is still present, albeit in the form of a weak motive: the archivist Lindhorst keeps manuscripts in Arabic and Coptic languages, as well as many books “such that are written in some strange characters that do not belong to none of the known languages ​​”(92).

The everyday habits of the heroes: many of them love tobacco, beer, coffee, that is, ways of bringing themselves out of their usual state into an ecstatic state. Anselm was just smoking a pipe full of "good tobacco" when he had a wonderful encounter with an elderberry bush (83); the registrar Geerband “suggested that student Anselm drink a glass of beer every evening in that coffee house, the registrar, and smoke a pipe until he somehow got to know the archivist ... which the student Anselm accepted with gratitude” (98); Geerband told how he once fell into a sleepy state in reality, which was the result of the influence of coffee: “Something similar happened to me once after dinner over coffee ...” (90); Lindhorst has a habit of sniffing tobacco (103); in the house of the conservator Paulman, a punch was prepared from a bottle of arak, and “as soon as the alcoholic vapors rose to the head of student Anselm, all the strangeness and miracles that he had experienced in recent times rose up before him again” (139).

Portrait of heroes. For example, a few fragments of Lindhorst's portrait scattered throughout the text will suffice: he had piercing eyes that sparkled from the deep hollows of his thin wrinkled face as if from a case "(105), he wears gloves, under which a magic ring is hidden (104), he walks in a wide cloak, the floors of which, blown by the wind, resemble the wings of a large bird (105), at home Lindhorst walks "in a damask dressing gown that sparkled like phosphorus" (139).

Romantic features in the poetics of the "golden pot"

The stylistics of the story is distinguished by the use of the grotesque, which is not only the individual originality of Hoffmann, but also of romantic literature in general. “He stopped and looked at a large door knocker attached to a bronze figure. But as soon as he wanted to take up this hammer at the last resounding blow of the tower clock on the Cross Church, suddenly the bronze face twisted and grinned into a disgusting smile and flashed terribly with the rays of metal eyes. Oh! It was an apple trader from the Black Gate ... "(93)," the bell cord went down and turned out to be a white transparent gigantic snake ... "(94)," with these words he turned and left, and then everyone understood that an important man was, in fact , gray parrot "(141).

Science fiction allows you to create the effect of a romantic double world: there is a local, real world, where ordinary people think about a portion of coffee with rum, double beer, smart girls, etc. with a thousand multi-colored rays, and fought with the dragon, which hit its shell with its black wings ... ”(96). The fiction in Hoffmann's story comes from grotesque imagery: one of the features of an object with the help of the grotesque increases to such an extent that the object seems to be transformed into another, already fantastic. See, for example, the episode with Anselm being moved into a flask. The image of a man bound by glass is apparently based on the idea of ​​Hoffmann that people sometimes do not realize their lack of freedom - Anselm, falling into a bottle, notices the same unfortunate people around him, but they are quite satisfied with their position and think that they are free, that they are they even go to taverns, etc., and Anselm went crazy (“imagines that he is sitting in a glass jar, but stands on the Elbe bridge and looks into the water”, 146).

The author's deviations quite often appear in a relatively small text of the story (in almost each of the 12 vigilies). Obviously, the artistic meaning of these episodes is to clarify the author's position, namely the author's irony. "I have the right to doubt, gracious reader, that you ever happen to be sealed in a glass vessel ..." (144). These explicit author's deviations set the inertia of perception of the rest of the text, which turns out to be all permeated, as it were, with romantic irony (see below about this). Finally, the author's deviations fulfill another important role: in the last vigil, the author announced that, firstly, he would not tell the reader how he knew this whole secret story, and secondly, that the Salamander Lindhorst himself offered him and helped him complete the story of the fate of Anselm, who, as it turned out, overpowered, together with Serpentine, from ordinary earthly life to Atlantis. The very fact of the author's communication with the elemental spirit of the Salamander casts a shadow of madness on the whole story, but the last words of the story answer many questions and doubts of the reader, reveal the meaning of the key allegories: “Anselm's bliss is nothing more than life in poetry, to which the sacred harmony of all that exists reveals itself as the deepest of the secrets of nature! " (160)

Irony. Sometimes two realities, two parts of a romantic double world, intersect and create funny situations. So, for example, the tipsy Anselm begins to talk about the other side of reality known only to him, namely about the true face of the archivist and Serpentine, which looks like delirium, since those around him are not ready to immediately understand that “Mr. the garden of the prince of spirits Phosphorus is in their hearts because a green snake flew away from him ”(139). However, one of the participants in this conversation - the registrar Geerbrand - suddenly showed awareness of what was happening in the parallel real world: “This archivist is indeed a damned Salamander; he snaps the fire out with his fingers and burns holes in the coats in the manner of a fiery tube ”(140). Carried away by the conversation, the interlocutors completely stopped reacting to the amazement of those around them and continued to talk about heroes and events that only they could understand, for example, about the old woman - “her father is nothing but a torn wing, her mother is a bad beet” (140). The author's irony makes it especially noticeable that the heroes live between two worlds. Here, for example, is the beginning of Veronica's remark, who suddenly entered the conversation: “This is a vile slander,” exclaimed Veronica with eyes sparkling with anger.<…>"(140). For a moment it seems to the reader that Veronica, who does not know the whole truth about who the archivist or the old woman is, is outraged by these crazy characteristics of her acquaintances, Mr. Lindhorst and old Lisa, but it turns out that Veronica is also aware of the matter and is outraged by something completely different: “<…>Old Liza is a wise woman, and the black cat is not at all an evil creature, but an educated young man of the most subtle treatment and her cousin germain ”(140). The conversation between the interlocutors takes on completely ridiculous forms (Geerbrand, for example, asks the question “can a Salamander eat without burning his beard ...?”, 140), any serious meaning of it is finally destroyed by irony. However, irony changes our understanding of what happened before: if everyone from Anselm to Geerband and Veronica is familiar with the other side of reality, then this means that in ordinary conversations that happened between them before, they hid from each other their knowledge of another reality, or these conversations contained hints, ambiguous words, etc., imperceptible to the reader, but understandable to the characters. Irony, as it were, scatters the holistic perception of a thing (person, event), instills a vague feeling of understatement and "misunderstanding" of the surrounding world.

On the feast of the Ascension, about three in the afternoon, a young man, a student named Anselm, was rapidly walking through the Black Gate in Dresden. By chance, he overturned a huge basket of apples and pies that the ugly old woman was selling. He gave the old woman his skinny wallet. The merchant hastily grabbed him and burst out in terrible curses and threats. "You will get under the glass, under the glass!" she shouted. Accompanied by malevolent laughter and sympathetic glances, Anselm turned onto a secluded road along the Elbe. He began to complain loudly about his worthless life.

Anselm's monologue was interrupted by a strange rustle coming from the elderberry bush. There were sounds like the ringing of crystal bells. Looking up, Anselm saw three lovely golden-green snakes entwined around the branches. One of the three snakes stretched out its head towards him and looked at him with tenderness with wonderful dark blue eyes. Anselm was seized with a feeling of the highest bliss and the deepest sorrow. Suddenly there was a rough, thick voice, the snakes rushed into the Elbe and disappeared as suddenly as they appeared.

Anselm in anguish embraced the trunk of an elderberry, frightening with his appearance and wild speeches of the townspeople walking in the park. Hearing unforeseen remarks about himself, Anselm woke up and started to run. Suddenly he was called. It turned out to be his friends - the registrar Geerbrand and the con-rector Paulman with his daughters. The Conrector invited Anselm to take a boat ride on the Elbe with them and end the evening with dinner at his house. Anselm now clearly understood that the golden snakes were just a reflection of fireworks in the foliage. Nevertheless, that same unknown feeling, bliss or sorrow, squeezed his chest again.

During the walk, Anselm nearly overturned the boat, shouting strange talk about golden snakes. Everyone agreed that the young man was clearly not himself, and the reason for this was his poverty and bad luck. Geerbrand offered him to hire a scribe for the archivist Lindgorst for decent money - he was just looking for a talented calligrapher and draftsman to copy manuscripts from his library. The student was sincerely pleased with this proposal because his passion was to copy difficult calligraphic works.

The next morning, Anselm dressed up and went to Lindhorst. He was just about to take the knocker on the door of the archivist's house, when suddenly the bronze face twisted and turned into an old woman, whose apples Anselm scattered at the Black Gate. Anselm staggered back in horror and grabbed the cord of the bell. In his ringing, the student heard ominous words: "You should be in glass, in crystal." The bell cord went down and turned out to be a white transparent gigantic snake. She twisted and squeezed him, so that blood spurted from the veins, penetrating into the snake's body and staining it red. The snake raised its head and laid its tongue of red-hot iron on Anselm's chest. From the sharp pain he fainted. The student woke up in his poor bed, and the Conrector Paulman was standing over him.

After this incident, Anselm did not dare to approach the archivist's house again. No convictions of friends led to anything, the student was considered really mentally ill, and, according to the registrar Geerbrand, the best remedy for this was working with an archivist. In order to introduce Anselm and Lindhorst better, the receptionist arranged a meeting for them in a coffee shop one evening.

That evening, the archivist told a strange story about a fire lily, which was born in a pristine valley, and about the young man Phosphorus, for whom the lily was kindled with love. The phosphorus kissed the lily, it burst out in a bright flame, a new creature emerged from it and flew away, not caring about the young man in love. Phosphorus began to mourn the lost girlfriend. A black dragon flew out of the rock, caught this creature, embraced it with its wings, and it again turned into a lily, but her love for Phosphorus became an acute pain, from which everything around faded and faded. Phosphorus fought the dragon and freed the lily, which became the queen of the valley. “I come from that valley, and the fire lily was my great-great-great-great-grandmother, so I myself am a prince,” Lindhorst concluded. These words of the archivist caused a thrill in the soul of the student.

Every evening the student came to the same elderberry bush, hugged it and exclaimed sadly: “Ah! I love you, snake, and I will die of sorrow if you don’t come back! ”. On one of these evenings, the archivist Lindhorst approached him. Anselm told him about all the extraordinary incidents that happened to him recently. The archivist told Anselm that the three snakes were his daughters, and he was in love with the youngest, Serpentine. Lindhorst invited the young man to his place and gave him a magic liquid - protection from the old witch woman. After that, the archivist turned into a kite and flew away.

The daughter of the conservator Paulman Veronica, having accidentally heard that Anselm could become a court counselor, began to dream of the role of a court counselor and his wife. In the midst of her dreams, she heard an unknown and terrible creaky voice, which said: "He will not be your husband!"

Hearing from a friend that an old fortune teller Frau Rauerin lives in Dresden, Veronica decided to turn to her for advice. “Leave Anselm,” the witch told the girl. “He’s a bad man. He contacted my enemy, an evil old man. He is in love with his daughter, the green snake. He will never be a court counselor. " Dissatisfied with the words of the fortune-teller, Veronica wanted to leave, but then the fortune-teller turned into the girl's old nanny, Lisa. To detain Veronica, the nanny said that she would try to heal Anselm from the sorcerer's spell. For this, the girl must come to her at night, in the future equinox. Hope woke up in Veronica's soul again.

In the meantime, Anselm started working for the archivist. Lindhorst gave the student some kind of black mass instead of ink, strangely colored pens, unusually white and smooth paper, and ordered to copy the Arabic manuscript. Anselm's courage grew with every word, and with it his skill. It seemed to the young man that the serpentine was helping him. The archivist read his secret thoughts and said that this work is a test that will lead him to happiness.

On the cold and windy night of the equinox, the fortune-teller led Veronica into the field. She lit a fire under the cauldron and threw into it those strange bodies that she brought with her in the basket. Following them, a curl from Veronica's head and her ring flew into the cauldron. The witch told the girl to stare into the boiling brew without stopping. Suddenly Anselm came out of the depths of the cauldron and held out his hand to Veronica. The old woman turned on the tap by the boiler, and molten metal flowed into the substituted mold. At the same moment, a thunderous voice rang out over her head: "Get out, hurry!" The old woman fell to the ground with a howl, and Veronica fainted. Having come to herself at home, on her couch, she found in the pocket of her soaked raincoat a silver mirror, which had been cast by a fortune teller last night. From the mirror, as from a boiling cauldron at night, her lover was looking at the girl.

Student Anselm has been working for an archivist for many days. The cheating went fast. It seemed to Anselm that the lines he was copying had long been known to him. He always felt Serpentine next to him, sometimes her light breath touched him. Soon, Serpentina appeared to the student and told that her father actually came from the Salamander tribe. He fell in love with the green snake, the daughter of a lily that grew in the garden of the prince of the spirits of Phosphorus. The salamander hugged the snake, it disintegrated into ash, a winged creature was born from it and flew away.

Desperate, the Salamander ran through the garden, devastating it with fire. Phosphorus, the prince of the country of Atlantis, got angry, put out the flame of the Salamander, doomed him to life in the form of a man, but left him a magical gift. Only then will the Salamander throw off this heavy burden when there are young men who will hear the singing of his three daughters and fall in love with them. They will receive a Golden Pot as a dowry. In the minute of the betrothal, a fire lily will grow from the pot, the young man will understand its language, comprehend everything that is open to disembodied spirits, and with his beloved he will begin to live in Atlantis. The Salamanders who have finally received the forgiveness will return there. The old witch aspires to the possession of the golden pot. Serpentina warned Anselm: "Beware of the old woman, she is hostile to you, since your childishly pure disposition has already destroyed many of her evil spells." The final kiss burned Anselm's lips. When he woke up, the student found that Serpentina's story was captured on his copy of a mysterious manuscript.

Although Anselm's soul was turned to dear Serpentine, he sometimes involuntarily thought about Veronica. Soon Veronica begins to appear to him in a dream and gradually takes possession of his thoughts. One morning, instead of going to the archivist, he went to visit Paulman, where he spent the whole day. There he accidentally saw a magic mirror, into which he began to look with Veronica. A struggle began in Anselm, and then it became clear to him that he had always thought only of Veronica. The hot kiss made the student's feeling even stronger. Anselm promised Veronica to marry her.

After dinner the receptionist Geerbrand showed up with everything he needed to make the punch. With the first sip of the drink, the strangeness and miracles of the last weeks rebelled against Anselm. He began to dream aloud of the Serpentine. Suddenly, after him, the owner and Geerbrand began to shout and roar, like possessed people: “Long live the Salamanders! Let the old woman perish! " Veronica tried in vain to convince them that old Liza would certainly defeat the sorcerer. In insane terror, Anselm fled to his little room and fell asleep. Waking up, he again began to dream about his marriage to Veronica. Now neither the archivist's garden nor Lindhorst himself seemed so magical to him.

The next day, the student continued his work with the archivist, but now it seemed to him that the parchment of the manuscript was covered not with letters, but with intricate squiggles. Trying to copy the letter, Anselm dropped ink on the manuscript. Blue lightning flew out of the spot, an archivist appeared in the thick fog and severely punished the student for his mistake. Lindhorst imprisoned Anselm in one of those crystal jars that stood on the table in the archivist's office. Next to him stood five more flasks, in which the young man saw three schoolboys and two scribes, who had once also worked for the archivist. They began to mock Anselm: "The madman imagines that he is sitting in a bottle, and he himself stands on the bridge and looks at his reflection in the river!" They also laughed at the crazy old man who showered them with gold for drawing scribbles for him. Anselm turned away from his frivolous comrades in misfortune and directed all thoughts and feelings to dear Serpentine, who still loved him and tried as best she could to alleviate Anselm's situation.

Suddenly Anselm heard a dull grunt and recognized the witch in the old coffee pot opposite. She promised him salvation if he marries Veronica. Anselm proudly refused. Then the old woman grabbed a golden pot and tried to hide, but the archivist overtook her. In the next moment, the student saw a mortal battle between the sorcerer and the old woman, from which the Salamander emerged victorious, and the witch turned into an ugly beet. At this moment of triumph, Serpentina appeared before Anselm, announcing to him the granted forgiveness. The glass cracked, and he fell into the arms of the lovely Serpentine.

The next day, the registrar Geerbrand and the director Paulman could not understand in any way how an ordinary punch had brought them to such excesses. Finally, they decided that the damned student was to blame for everything, who infected them with his madness. Many months have passed. On the day of Veronica's name day, the newly-made court councilor Geerbrand came to Paulman's house and offered the girl his hand and heart. She agreed and told her future husband about her love for Anselm and about the witch. A few weeks later, Madame Court Counselor Geerbrand took up residence in a beautiful house in the New Market.

The author received a letter from the archivist Lindhorst with permission to publicize the story of the strange fate of his son-in-law, a former student, and now the poet Anselm, and with an invitation to complete the story of the Golden Pot in the very hall of his house where the renowned student Anselm worked. Anselm himself became engaged to Serpentine in a beautiful temple, breathed in the scent of a lily that grew from a golden pot, and found eternal bliss in Atlantis.

Retold

The misadventures of the student Anselm. - Conservator Paulman's favored tobacco and golden-green snakes.

On the day of the ascension, about three in the afternoon, a young man was rapidly walking through the Black Gate in Dresden and just got into a basket with apples and pies that an old, ugly woman was selling - and got so well that part of the contents of the basket was crushed, and everything that safely escaped this fate scattered in all directions, and the street boys happily rushed to the prey that the clever young man brought them! At the cries of the old woman, her companions left their tables, at which they sold pies and vodka, surrounded the young man and began to scold him so rudely and furiously that he, numb with frustration and shame, could only take out his small and not particularly full wallet, which the old woman grabbed it eagerly and quickly hid it. Then the tight circle of tradeswomen parted; but when the young man jumped out of him, the old woman shouted after him: “Run away, you damn son, so that you will be blown up; you will get under glass, under glass! ... ”There was something terrible in the harsh, piercing voice of this woman, so that the walkers stopped in surprise, and the laughter that had been heard at first fell silent at once. The student Anselm (the young man was just him), although he did not at all understand the strange words of the old woman, felt an involuntary shudder and even more accelerated his steps in order to avoid the gaze of the curious crowd directed at him. Now, making his way through the stream of well-dressed townspeople, he heard everywhere the saying: “Ah, poor young man! Oh, she's a damn woman! " In a strange way, the mysterious words of the old woman gave the ridiculous adventure a certain tragic turn, so that everyone looked with sympathy at a man whom they had not noticed at all before. Due to the high stature of the young man and his handsome face, the expressiveness of which was intensified by hidden anger, the females willingly excused his awkwardness, as well as his costume, which was very far from any fashion, namely: his pike-gray tailcoat was cut in such a way as if The tailor who worked for him knew only by hearsay about modern styles, and black satin, well-preserved trousers gave the whole figure some kind of master's style, which was completely inconsistent with gait and posture.