The main element of the artistic world of Hoffmann. Hoffmann's aesthetic ideas. The theme of art and the image of the artist in the work of Hoffmann. Musical creativity of Hoffmann

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Entering literature at a time when the Jena and Heidelberg romantics had already formulated and developed the basic principles of German romanticism, Hoffmann was a romantic artist. The nature of the conflicts underlying his works, their problems and the system of images, the very artistic vision of the world remain with him within the framework of romanticism. Like the Jena, most of Hoffmann's works are based on the artist's conflict with society. The original romantic antithesis of the artist and society is at the heart of the writer's worldview. Following the Jena, the highest embodiment of the human "I" Hoffmann considers a creative person. - an artist, an "enthusiast", in his terminology, who has access to the world of art, the world of fairy-tale fantasy, those only spheres where he can fully realize himself and find refuge from the real philistine everyday life.
But the embodiment and resolution of the romantic conflict in Hoffmann is different from that of the early romantics. Through the denial of reality, through the conflict between the artist and her, the Yenians rose to the highest level of their perception of the world - aesthetic monism, when the whole world became for them a sphere of poetic utopia, a fairy tale, a sphere of harmony in which the artist comprehends himself and the Universe. The romantic hero of Hoffmann lives in the real world (starting with the gentleman Gluck and ending with Kreisler). For all his attempts to break out of its limits into the world of art, into the fantastic fairy kingdom of Jinnistan, he remains surrounded by real concrete historical reality. Neither a fairy tale nor art can bring him harmony to this real world, which ultimately subjugates them. Hence the constant tragic contradiction between the hero and his ideals, on the one hand, and reality, on the other. Hence the dualism, from which Hoffmann's heroes suffer, the dualism in his works, the insolubility of the conflict between the hero and the outside world in most of them, the characteristic two-pronged nature of the writer's creative manner.
One of the essential components of Hoffmann's poetics, like that of the early romantics, is irony. Moreover, in Hoffmann's irony as a creative technique, which is based on a certain philosophical, aesthetic, worldview position, we can clearly distinguish between two main functions. In one of them, he appears as a direct follower of the Yenians. We are talking about those of his works in which purely aesthetic problems are solved and where the role of romantic irony is close to that which it plays among the Jena romantics. The romantic irony in these works of Hoffmann gets a satirical sound, but this satire has no social, social orientation. An example of the manifestation of such a function of irony is the short story "Princess Brambilla" - brilliant in its artistic performance and typically Hoffmann's in demonstrating the duality of his creative method. Following the Yenians, the author of the novel "Princess Brambilla" believes that irony should express a "philosophical outlook on life", that is, it should be the basis of a person's attitude to life. In accordance with this, like the Jena, irony is a means of resolving all conflicts and contradictions, a means of overcoming the “chronic dualism” from which the protagonist of this novel, actor Giglio Fava, suffers.
In line with this basic tendency, another and more essential function of his irony is revealed. If among the Jena, irony as an expression of a universal attitude to the world became at the same time an expression of skepticism and refusal to resolve the contradictions of reality, then Hoffmann saturates irony with a tragic sound, for him it contains a combination of the tragic and the comic. The main carrier of Hoffmann's ironic attitude to life is Kreisler, whose “chronic dualism” is tragic, in contrast to the comical “chronic dualism” of Giglio Fava. The satirical beginning of Hoffmann's irony in this function has a specific social address, significant social content, and therefore this function of romantic irony allows him, a romantic writer, to reflect some typical phenomena of reality ("The Golden Pot", "Little Tsakhes", "The Cat's Worldly Views Murrah "- works that most characteristically reflect this function of Hoffmann's irony).
Hoffmann's creative individuality in many characteristic features is already determined in his first book "Fantasies in the manner of Callot", which included works written from 1808 to 1814. Novella "Cavalier Gluck" (1808), the first of Hoffmann's published works, outlines the most essential aspects of his worldview and creative manner. The novel develops one of the main, if not the main idea of the writer's work - the insolubility of the conflict between the artist and society. This idea is revealed through that artistic device that will become dominant in all subsequent work of the writer - the two-dimensional narrative.
The subtitle of the short story "Remembrance of 1809" has a very clear purpose in this regard. He reminds the reader that the image of the famous composer Gluck, the main and, in fact, the only hero of the story, is fantastic, unreal, because Gluck died long before the date indicated in the subtitle, in 1787. And at the same time, this strange and mysterious old man was placed in the setting real Berlin, in the description of which one can catch the concrete historical signs of the continental blockade: the disputes of the inhabitants about the war, carrot coffee steaming on the tables of the cafe.
For Hoffmann, all people are divided into two groups: artists in the broadest sense, people who are poetically gifted, and people who are absolutely devoid of poetic perception of the world. "I, as the supreme judge," says the author's alter ego, Kreisler, "divided the entire human race into two unequal parts: one consists only of good people, but bad or non-musicians at all, while the other consists of true musicians." The worst representatives of the category of "non-musicians" Hoffmann sees in the philistines.
And this opposition of the artist to the philistines is especially widely revealed by the example of the image of the musician and composer Johann Kreisler. The mythical unreal Gluck is replaced by a completely real Kreisler, a contemporary of Hoffmann, an artist who, unlike most of the same type of heroes of the early romantics, lives not in a world of poetic dreams, but in a real provincial philistine Germany and wanders from city to city, from one princely court to another, driven by no means a romantic yearning for the endless, not in search of a "blue flower", but in search of the most prosaic daily bread.
As a romantic artist, Hoffmann considers music to be the highest, the most romantic kind of art, “since it has only the infinite as its subject; mysterious, expressed in sounds, the proto-language of nature, filling the human soul with endless longing; only thanks to her ... man comprehends the song of songs of trees, flowers, animals, stones and waters. " Therefore, Hoffmann makes the musician Kreisler his main positive hero.
Hoffmann sees the highest embodiment of art in music primarily because music can be least of all connected with life, with reality. As a true romantic, revising the aesthetics of the Enlightenment, he refuses one of its main provisions - about the civil, social purpose of art: “... art allows a person to feel his higher purpose and from the vulgar vanity of everyday life leads him to the temple of Isis, where nature speaks to him in sublime, never heard, but nevertheless understandable sounds. "
For Hoffmann, the superiority of the poetic world over the world of real everyday life is undoubted. And he sings this world of a fairytale dream, giving it preference over the real, prosaic world.
But Hoffmann would not have been an artist with such a contradictory and in many respects tragic outlook, if such a fairy tale novel determined the general direction of his work, and did not demonstrate only one of its sides. Basically, however, the writer's artistic outlook by no means proclaims the complete victory of the poetic world over the real. Only madmen like Serapion or philistines believe in the existence of only one of these worlds. This principle of a double world is reflected in a number of Hoffmann's works, perhaps the most striking in their artistic quality and most fully embodying the contradictions of his worldview. This is, first of all, the fairy tale "The Golden Pot" (1814), the title of which is accompanied by the eloquent subtitle "A Tale from New Times". The meaning of this subtitle is that the characters in this tale are Hoffmann's contemporaries, and the action takes place in the real Dresden of the early 19th century. This is how Hoffmann reinterprets the Jena tradition of the fairy tale genre - the writer includes the plan of real everyday life in its ideological and artistic structure. The hero of the novel, student Anselm, is an eccentric loser, endowed with a "naive poetic soul", and this makes the world of the fabulous and wonderful available to him. Faced with him, Anselm begins to lead a dual existence, getting from his prosaic existence into the kingdom of a fairy tale, adjacent to ordinary real life. In accordance with this, the novel is also compositionally built on the interweaving and interpenetration of the fantastic-fantastic plan with the real one. Romantic fairy-tale fantasy in its subtle poetry and grace finds here in Hoffmann one of its best exponents. At the same time, the real plan is clearly outlined in the short story. Not without reason, some researchers of Hoffmann believed that this novel could be used to successfully reconstruct the topography of the streets of Dresden at the beginning of the last century. Realistic detail plays a significant role in characterizing the characters.
A wide and brightly developed fairy tale plan with many bizarre episodes, so unexpectedly and seemingly randomly intruding into the story of real everyday life, is subordinated to the clear, logical ideological and artistic structure of the novel, in contrast to the deliberate fragmentariness and inconsistency in the narrative manner of most early romantics. The duality of Hoffmann's creative method, the duality of his worldview, manifested itself in the opposition of the real and the fantastic and in the corresponding division of the characters into two groups. Conrector Paulman, his daughter Veronica, registrar Geerbrand are prosaic-minded inhabitants of Dresden, who, according to the author's own terminology, can be classified as good people, devoid of any poetic flair. They are opposed by the archivist Lindhorst with his daughter Serpentine, who came to this philistine world from a fantastic fairy tale, and the dear eccentric Anselm, whose poetic soul opened the fairy-tale world of the archivist.
In the happy ending of the novel, which ends with two weddings, her ideological concept is fully interpreted. The registrar Geerbrand becomes the court advisor, to whom Veronica gives her hand without hesitation, having renounced her passion for Anselm. Her dream is coming true - “she lives in a beautiful house on the New Market”, she has “a new-style hat, a new Turkish shawl,” and while having breakfast in an elegant negligee by the window, she gives orders to the servants. Anselm marries Serpentine and, becoming a poet, settles with her in the fabulous Atlantis. At the same time, he receives as a dowry "a pretty estate" and a gold pot, which he saw in the archivist's house. The golden pot - this kind of ironic transformation of Novalis's "blue flower" - retains the original function of this romantic symbol. It can hardly be considered that the end of the Anselm-Serpentine storyline is a parallel to the philistine ideal embodied in the alliance of Veronica and Geerbrand, and the golden pot is a symbol of philistine happiness. After all, Anselm does not abandon his poetic dream, he only finds its fulfillment.
The philosophical idea of the novella about the embodiment, the kingdom of poetic fiction in the world of art, in the world of poetry, is affirmed in the last paragraph of the novella. Its author, suffering from the thought that he has to leave the fabulous Atlantis and return to the miserable squalor of his attic, hears Lindhorst's words of encouragement: “Haven't you yourself just been to Atlantis and don’t you own there at least a decent manor as a poetic property your mind? Is it possible that Anselm's bliss is nothing more than life in poetry, which reveals the sacred harmony of all that exists as the deepest of the secrets of nature! "
However, Hoffmann's fiction does not always have such a bright and joyful flavor as in the novel under consideration or in the fairy tales The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (1816), Alien Child (1817), Lord of the Fleas (1820), Princess Brambilla "(1821). The writer created works that are very different in their outlook and artistic means used in them. Gloomy nightmare fantasy, reflecting one of the sides of the writer's worldview, dominates in the novel Elixir of the Devil (1815-1816) and in Night Tales. Most of the "Night Tales", such as "The Sandman", "Mayorat", "Mademoiselle de Scuderi", which, unlike the novel "Elixir of the Devil", are not burdened with religious and moral issues, compare with it and in an artistic sense, perhaps , first of all, because they do not have such a deliberate whipping up of a complex plot intrigue.
The collection of stories "The Serapion Brothers", four volumes of which appeared in print in 1819-1821, contains works of unequal artistic level. There are purely entertaining, plot stories ("Signor Formica)," The Interdependence of Events "," Visions "," Doge and Dogaress ", etc.), corny edifying (" The Player's Happiness "). Nevertheless, the value of this collection is determined by such stories as "The Royal Bride", "The Nutcracker", "Artus' Hall", "Falun Mines", "Mademoiselle de Scuderi" forms significant philosophical ideas.
The name of the hermit Serapion, a Catholic saint, calls itself a small circle of interlocutors who periodically organize literary evenings, where they read their stories to each other, from which the collection is compiled. Sharing subjective positions on the issue of the relationship between the artist and reality, Hoffmann, however, through the mouth of one of the members of the Serapion Brotherhood, declares the absolute denial of reality illegal, arguing that our earthly existence is determined by both the inner and the outer world. Far from rejecting the need for the artist to turn to what he himself saw in reality, the author resolutely insists that the fictional world be depicted as clearly and clearly as if it appeared before the artist's gaze as the real world. This principle of the likelihood of the imaginary and the fantastic is consistently implemented by Hoffmann in those stories of the collection, the plots of which are drawn by the author not from his own observations, but from the works of painting.
"Serapion's principle" is also interpreted in the sense that the artist must isolate himself from the social life of our time and serve only art. The latter, in turn, is a self-sufficient world that rises above life, standing apart from the political struggle. With the undoubted fruitfulness of this aesthetic thesis for many of Hoffmann's works, one cannot but emphasize that his work itself, in certain strengths, did not always fully comply with these aesthetic principles, as evidenced by a number of his works in the last years of his life, in particular the fairy tale “Little Tsakhes by nickname Zinnober "(1819), noted by the attention of K. Marx. By the end of the 10s, new significant trends were outlined in the writer's work, expressed in the strengthening of social satire in his works, an appeal to the phenomena of modern social and political life ("Little Tsakhes." fenced off in their aesthetic declarations, as we saw in the example of the Serapion Brothers. At the same time, one can state more definite exits of the writer in his creative method to realism (Master Martin the Bochard and his apprentices, 1817; Master Johann Vakht, 1822; Corner Window, 1822). At the same time, it would hardly be correct to raise the question of a new period in the work of Hoffmann, because simultaneously with social satirical works, in accordance with his previous aesthetic positions, he writes a number of short stories and fairy tales that are far from social trends (Princess Brambilla, 1821 ; "Marquise de La Pivardier", 1822; "Errors", 1822). If we talk about the writer's creative method, it should be noted that, despite the significant gravitation in the above-mentioned works towards a realistic manner, Hoffmann, in the last years of his work, continues to create in a characteristically romantic way ("Little Tsakhes", "Princess Brambilla", "Royal bride "from the Serapion cycle; the romantic plan clearly prevails in the novel about Cat Murr).
VG Belinsky highly appreciated Hoffmann's satirical talent, noting that he was able to "portray reality in all its truth and execute philistinism ... of his compatriots with poisonous sarcasm."
These observations of the remarkable Russian critic can be fully attributed to the fairy tale "Little Tsakhes". In the new fairy tale, Hoffmann's double world in the perception of reality is fully preserved, which is again reflected in the two-dimensional composition of the novel, in the characters of the characters and in their arrangement. Many of the main characters in the fairy tale novel
"Little Tsakhes" have their literary prototypes in the short story "The Golden Pot": student Baltazar - Anselma, Prosper Alpanus - Lindhorsta, Candida - Veronica.
The two-pronged nature of the novel is revealed in the opposition of the world of poetic dreams, the fabulous country of Jinnistan, the world of real everyday life, that principality of Prince Barsanuf, in which the action of the novel takes place. Some characters and things lead a dual existence here, since they combine their fabulous magical existence with existence in the real world. Fairy Rosabelverde, she is the canoness of the shelter for noble maidens Rosenshen, patronizes the disgusting little Tsakhes, rewarding him with three magical golden hairs.
In the same ambiguous capacity as the fairy Rosabelverde, she is the Canoness Rosenshen, the good wizard Alpanus also appears, surrounding himself with various fairy-tale wonders, which the poet and dreamer student Baltazar sees well. In his ordinary hypostasis, only accessible to philistines and sober rationalists, Alpanus is just a doctor, inclined, however, to very intricate quirks.
The artistic plans of the novels being compared are compatible, if not completely, then very closely. In their ideological sound, for all their similarity, the novellas are quite different. If in the fairy tale "The Golden Pot", which ridicules the world outlook of the philistine, satire has a moral and ethical character, then in "Little Tsakhes" it becomes sharper and gets a social sound. It is no coincidence that Belinsky noted that this short story was banned by the tsarist censorship for the reason that it contains "a lot of ridicule at the stars and officials."
It is in connection with the expansion of the address of satire, with its strengthening in the novel, that one essential moment in its artistic structure changes - the main character becomes not the positive hero, the characteristic Hoffmannian eccentric, the poet-dreamer (Anselm in the short story "The Golden Pot"), but the negative hero - the disgusting freak Tsakhes, a character who, in a deeply symbolic combination of his external features and internal content, first appears on the pages of Hoffmann's works. "Little Tsakhes" is even more a "fairy tale from new times" than "The Golden Pot". Tsakhes is a complete insignificance, devoid of even the gift of intelligible articulate speech, but with an excessively inflated arrogant pride, disgustingly ugly outwardly, due to the magical gift of the fairy Rosabelverde looks in the eyes of those around him not only a stately handsome man, but also a person endowed with outstanding talents, bright and clear mind. In a short time, he makes a brilliant administrative career: without completing a law course at the university, he becomes an important official and, finally, the all-powerful first minister in the principality. Such a career is possible only due to the fact that Tsakhes appropriates other people's works and talents - the mysterious power of three golden hairs makes blinded people ascribe to him everything significant and talented done by others.
So within the limits of the romantic worldview and the artistic means of the romantic method, one of the great evils of the modern social system is depicted. However, the unfair distribution of spiritual and material wealth seemed to the writer fatal, arising under the influence of irrational fantastic forces in this society, where power and wealth are endowed with insignificant people, and their insignificance, in turn, with the power of power and gold turns into an imaginary brilliance of mind and talents. The debunking and overthrowing of these false idols in accordance with the nature of the writer's worldview comes from outside, thanks to the intervention of the same irrational fairy-magical forces (the sorcerer Prosper Alpanus, in his confrontation with the fairy Rosabelverde, patronizing Balthazar), which, according to Hoffmann, gave rise to this ugly social phenomenon. The scene of the indignation of the crowd bursting into the house of the almighty minister Zinnober after he lost his magical charm, of course, should not be taken as an attempt by the author to seek a radical means of eliminating that social evil, which is symbolized in the fantastic and fairy-tale image of the freak Tsakhes. This is just one of the minor details of the plot, by no means having a programmatic character. The people are not rebelling against an evil temporary minister, but only mocking the disgusting monster, whose appearance has finally appeared before them in its original form. The death of Tsakhes, who, fleeing from the raging crowd, is drowning in a silver chamber pot, is grotesque within the framework of the fairy tale plan of the novel, and not socially symbolic.
Hoffmann's positive program is completely different, traditional for him - the triumph of the poetic world of Balthazar and Prosper Alpanus not only over evil in the person of Tsakhes, but in general over the ordinary, prosaic world. Like the fairy tale "The Golden Pot", "Little Tsakhes" ends with a happy ending - a combination of a loving couple, Balthazar and Candida. But now this plot finale and the embodiment of Hoffmann's positive program in it reflect the deepening contradictions of the writer, his growing conviction of the illusory nature of the aesthetic ideal that he opposes to reality. In this regard, the ironic intonation is strengthened and deepened in the story.
A great social generalization in the image of Tsakhes, an insignificant temporary leader who rules the entire country, a venomous irreverent mockery of crowned and high-ranking persons, "mockery of the stars and ranks", of the narrowness of the German philistine, are added in this fantastic tale into a vivid satirical picture of the phenomena of the socio-political structure of the modern Hoffmann of Germany.
If the short story "Little Tsakhes" has already been marked by a clear shift in emphasis from the world of the fantastic to the world of the real, then to an even greater extent this tendency manifested itself in the novel "The Worldly Views of the Cat Murr, coupled with fragments of the biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler, which accidentally survived in junk sheets" (1819 1821). Illness and death prevented Hoffmann from writing the last, third volume of this novel. But even in its unfinished form, it is one of the most significant works of the writer, representing in the most perfect artistic embodiment almost all the main motives of his work and artistic manner.
The dualism of Hoffmann's worldview remains and even deepens in the novel. But it is expressed not through the opposition of the world of the fabulous and the real world, but through the disclosure of the real conflicts of the latter, through the general theme of the writer's work - the conflict between the artist and reality. The world of magical fiction completely disappears from the pages of the novel, with the exception of some minor details associated with the image of Maester Abraham, and all the author's attention is focused on the real world, on the conflicts taking place in contemporary Germany, and their artistic interpretation is freed from the fabulous shell. This does not mean, however, that Hoffmann becomes a realist who takes the position of the determinism of characters and the development of the plot. The principle of romantic convention, the introduction of conflict from the outside, still determines these basic components. In addition, it is reinforced by a number of other details: this is the story of Maester Abraham and the "invisible girl" Chiara with a touch of romantic mystery, and the line of Prince Hector - the monk Cyprian - Angela - Abbot Chrysostomus with extraordinary adventures, sinister murders, fatal recognitions, as it were moved here from Elixir of the Devil.
The composition of the novel is peculiar and unusual, based on the principle of two planes, the opposition of two antithetical principles, which in their development are skillfully combined by the writer into a single line of narration. A purely formal technique becomes the main ideological and artistic principle of the embodiment of the author's idea, philosophical understanding of moral, ethical and social categories. The autobiographical narrative of a certain learned cat Murr is interspersed with excerpts from the biography of the composer Johannes Kreisler.
Already in the combination of these two ideological plot plans, not only by their mechanical connection in one book, but also by the plot detail that the owner of the Murra cat, Maester Abraham, is one of the main characters in Kreisler's life, a deep ironic parodic meaning is laid. The life of the "enlightened" philistine Murr is opposed to the dramatic fate of a true artist, musician, tormented in an atmosphere of petty intrigue, surrounded by the high-born nonentities of the chimerical principality of Sieghartsweiler. Moreover, such an opposition is given in a simultaneous comparison, for Murr is not only Kreisler's antipode, but also his parody double, a parody of the romantic hero.
Irony in this novel acquires an all-encompassing meaning, it penetrates into all lines of the narrative, defines the characteristics of most of the characters in the novel, appears in an organic combination of its various functions - both an artistic device and a means of sharp satire aimed at various phenomena of social life.
The entire feline and canine world in the novel is a satirical parody of the estate society of the German states: the "enlightened" philistine burghers, student unions - Burshenschafts, the police (the courtyard dog Achilles), the bureaucratic nobility (Spitz), the highest aristocracy (the Scaramouche poodle , Salon of the Greyhound Badina).
Murr is, as it were, the quintessence of philistinism. He considers himself to be an outstanding personality, scientist, poet, philosopher, and therefore he leads the chronicle of his life "for the edification of promising feline youth." But in reality, Murr is an example of that "harmonic vulgarity", which was so hated by the romantics.
But the satire of Hoffmann becomes even more acute when he chooses the nobility as its object, encroaching on its upper strata and on those state and political institutions that are associated with this class. Leaving the ducal residence, where he was the court kapellmeister, Kreisler goes to Prince Irenaeus, to his imaginary court. The fact is that once the prince “really ruled a picturesque mistress near Sieghartsweiler. From the belvedere of his palace, he could, with the help of a telescope, survey his entire state from end to end ... At any moment it was easy for him to check whether Peter's wheat was harvested in the most remote corner of the country, and with the same success to see how carefully they cultivated their vineyards Hans and Kunz ". The Napoleonic wars deprived Prince Irenaeus of his possessions: he "dropped his toy state from his pocket during a small promenade to a neighboring country." But Prince Irenaeus decided to preserve his small court, "turning life into a sweet dream in which he and his retinue were," and good-natured burghers pretended that the fake glitter of this ghostly court brought them glory and honor.
Prince Irenaeus, in his spiritual squalor, is not an exclusive representative for Hoffmann; its class. The entire princely house, starting with the radiant dad Irenaeus, are poor-minded and flawed people. And what is especially important in the eyes of Hoffmann, the high-ranking nobility, no less than the enlightened philistines from the burgher class, is hopelessly far from art: “It may well be that the love of the greats of this world for the arts and sciences is only an integral part of court life. The regulation obliges to have pictures and listen to music. "
In the arrangement of the characters, the scheme of contrasting the world of poetic and the world of everyday prose, characteristic of Hoffmann's two-planarity, is preserved. The main character of the novel is Johannes Kreisler. In the writer's work, he is the most complete embodiment of the image of an artist, a "wandering enthusiast". It is no coincidence that Hoffmann gives Kreisler many autobiographical features in the novel. Kreisler, Maester Abraham and the daughter of counselor Bentson Julia make up a group of "true musicians" in the work, opposing the court of Prince Irenaeus.
In the old organ maker Abraham Liskov, who once taught music to the boy Kreisler, we are faced with a remarkable transformation of the image of the good wizard in the work of Hoffmann. A friend and patron of his former student, he, like Kreisler, is involved in the world of genuine art. Unlike his literary prototypes the archivist Lindhorst and Prosper Alpanus, Maester Abraham does his entertaining and mysterious tricks on the very real basis of the laws of optics and mechanics. He himself does not experience any magical transformations. This is a wise and kind person who has gone through a difficult life path.
Notable in this novel is also Hoffmann's attempt to imagine the ideal of a harmonious social order, which is based on a general admiration for art. This is Kanzheim Abbey, where Kreisler is seeking refuge. It bears little resemblance to a real monastery and rather resembles the Telem monastery of Rabelais. However, Hoffmann himself is aware of the unrealistic utopian character of this idyll.
Although the novel is not completed, the reader becomes clear about the hopelessness and tragedy of the conductor's fate, in the image of which Hoffmann reflected the irreconcilable conflict of a true artist with the existing social order.
Hoffmann's artistic talent, his sharp satire, subtle irony, his lovely eccentric characters, enthusiasts inspired by a passion for art have won him strong sympathy for the modern reader.

Question 20. Hoffmann's work is a general characteristic.

Hoffman (1776 Königsberg - 1822 Berlin), German romantic writer, composer, music critic, conductor, decorator. He combined subtle philosophical irony and bizarre fantasy, reaching the mystical grotesque, with a critical perception of reality, satire on German philistinism and feudal absolutism. Brilliant fantasy combined with a strict and transparent style gave Hoffmann a special place in German literature. The action of his works almost never took place in distant lands - as a rule, he placed his incredible characters in everyday situations. One of the founders of romantic musical aesthetics and criticism, author of one of the first romantic operas "Ondine" (1814). Hoffmann's poetic images were embodied in his works (The Nutcracker). The son of an official. At the University of Konigsberg he studied law. In Berlin, he was in the civil service as an adviser of justice. Hoffmann's novellas Kavalier Gluck (1809), The Musical Suffering of Johann Kreisler, Kapellmeister (1810), Don Juan (1813) were later included in the collection Fantasies in the Spirit of Callot. In the story "The Golden Pot" (1814), the world is presented as if in two planes: real and fantastic. In the novel "Elixir of the Devil" (1815-1816), reality appears as an element of dark, supernatural forces. The Amazing Suffering of a Theater Director (1819) depicts theatrical manners. His symbolic-fantastic story-fairy tale "Little Tsakhes nicknamed Zinnober" (1819) has a brightly satirical character. In Night Tales (parts 1–2, 1817), in the collection The Serapion Brothers, in The Last Tales (1825), Hoffmann sometimes satirically or tragically depicts the conflicts of life, romantically interpreting them as the eternal struggle of light and dark forces. The unfinished novel The Worldly Views of Murr the Cat (1820–1822) is a satire on German philistinism and the feudal absolutist order. The novel Lord of the Fleas (1822) contains bold attacks on the police regime in Prussia. A vivid expression of Hoffmann's aesthetic views are his short stories "Cavalier Gluck", "Don Juan", the dialogue "Poet and Composer" (1813). In the short stories, as well as in the "Fragments of the Biography of Johannes Kreisler," introduced into the novel "Worldly Views of the Cat Murr," Hoffmann created the tragic image of the inspired musician Kreisler, rebelling against philistinism and doomed to suffering. Acquaintance with Hoffmann in Russia began in the 1920s. 19th century Hoffmann studied music with his uncle, then with the organist Chr. Podbelsky, later took composition lessons from. Hoffmann organized the Philharmonic Society, a symphony orchestra in Warsaw, where he served as a state councilor. In 1807-1813 he worked as a conductor, composer and decorator in theaters in Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden. One of the founders of romantic musical aesthetics and criticism, Hoffmann, at an early stage in the development of romanticism in music, formulated its essential tendencies and showed the tragic position of the romantic musician in society. He imagined music as a special world ("unknown kingdom"), capable of revealing to a person the meaning of his feelings and passions, the nature of the mysterious and inexpressible. Hoffmann wrote about the essence of music, about musical compositions, composers, performers. Hoffmann is the author of the first German. romantic opera "Ondine" (1813), opera "Aurora" (1812), symphonies, choirs, chamber works.

Hoffmann, a sharp satirist-realist, opposes feudal reaction, bourgeois narrow-mindedness, stupidity and self-righteousness of the German bourgeoisie. It is this quality that Heine highly appreciated in his work. Hoffmann's heroes are modest and poor workers, most of all intellectuals, commoners, suffering from stupidity, ignorance and cruelty of the environment.

Question 21. The form and content of the double world in Hoffmann's short story "Don Juan".

Question 22. Romantic irony as the basis for the vision of the world and the creation of the main symbol in "Little Tsakhes" by Hoffmann.

Fairy tale " Golden pot "(1814), the title of which is accompanied by the eloquent subtitle" A Tale from New Times ". The meaning of this subtitle is that the characters in this tale are Hoffmann's contemporaries, and the action takes place in the real Dresden of the early 19th century. This is how Hoffmann reinterprets the Jena tradition of the fairy tale genre - the writer includes the plan of real everyday life in its ideological and artistic structure. The hero of the novel, student Anselm, is an eccentric loser, endowed with a "naive poetic soul", and this makes the world of the fabulous and wonderful available to him. Faced with him, Anselm begins to lead a dual existence, getting from his prosaic existence into the kingdom of a fairy tale, adjacent to ordinary real life. In accordance with this, the novel is also compositionally built on the interweaving and interpenetration of the fantastic-fantastic plan with the real one. Romantic fairy-tale fantasy in its subtle poetry and grace finds here in Hoffmann one of its best exponents. At the same time, the real plan is clearly outlined in the short story. Not without reason, some researchers of Hoffmann believed that this novel could be used to successfully reconstruct the topography of the streets of Dresden at the beginning of the last century. Realistic detail plays a significant role in characterizing the characters. A wide and brightly developed fairy tale plan with many bizarre episodes, so unexpectedly and seemingly randomly intruding into the story of real everyday life, is subordinated to the clear, logical ideological and artistic structure of the novel, in contrast to the deliberate fragmentariness and inconsistency in the narrative manner of most early romantics. The duality of Hoffmann's creative method, the duality of his worldview, manifested itself in the opposition of the real and the fantastic and in the corresponding division of the characters into two groups. Conrector Paulman, his daughter Veronica, registrar Geerbrand are prosaic-minded inhabitants of Dresden, who, according to the author's own terminology, can be classified as good people, devoid of any poetic flair. They are opposed by the archivist Lindhorst with his daughter Serpentine, who came to this philistine world from a fantastic fairy tale, and the dear eccentric Anselm, whose poetic soul opened the fairy-tale world of the archivist. In the happy ending of the novel, which ends with two weddings, her ideological concept is fully interpreted. The registrar Geerbrand becomes the court advisor, to whom Veronica gives her hand without hesitation, having renounced her passion for Anselm. Her dream is coming true - “she lives in a beautiful house on the New Market”, she has “a new-style hat, a new Turkish shawl,” and while having breakfast in an elegant negligee by the window, she gives orders to the servants. Anselm marries Serpentine and, becoming a poet, settles with her in the fabulous Atlantis. At the same time, he receives as a dowry "a pretty estate" and a gold pot, which he saw in the archivist's house. The golden pot - this kind of ironic transformation of Novalis's "blue flower" - retains the original function of this romantic symbol. It can hardly be considered that the end of the Anselm-Serpentine storyline is a parallel to the philistine ideal embodied in the alliance of Veronica and Geerbrand, and the golden pot is a symbol of philistine happiness. After all, Anselm does not abandon his poetic dream, he only finds its fulfillment. The philosophical idea of the novella about the embodiment, the kingdom of poetic fiction in the world of art, in the world of poetry, is affirmed in the last paragraph of the novella. Its author, suffering from the thought that he has to leave the fabulous Atlantis and return to the miserable squalor of his attic, hears Lindhorst's words of encouragement: the poetic property of your mind? Is it possible that Anselm's bliss is nothing more than life in poetry, which reveals the sacred harmony of all that exists as the deepest of the secrets of nature! " highly appreciated the satirical talent of Hoffmann, noting that he was able to "portray reality in all its truth and execute the philistinism ... of his compatriots with poisonous sarcasm."

Question 23. Romantic. grotesque as the basis for the vision of the world and the creation of the main symbol in "Little Tsakhes".

The years 1815-1830 in Germany, as well as throughout Europe, are a dead time for the regime of the Holy Alliance. In German romanticism during this period, complex processes take place that significantly change its character. In particular, the features of tragedy are strengthened, as evidenced by the work of Hoffmann (1776-1822). The relatively short creative path of the writer - 1808-1822. - covers mainly the time of the post-Napoleonic reaction in Germany. As an artist and thinker, Hoffmann is closely related to the Jena school. He develops many of the ideas of F. Schlegel and Novalis, for example, the doctrine of universal poetry, the concept of romantic irony and the synthesis of arts. A musician and composer, author of the first romantic opera (Ondine, 1814), decorator and master of graphic design, Hoffmann, like no one else, was close to not only comprehending, but also practically realizing the idea of synthesis. The fairy tale "Little Tsakhes, nicknamed Zinnober" (1819), like "The Golden Pot", stuns with its bizarre fantasy. The programmatic Hoffmann's hero Balthazar belongs to a romantic tribe of enthusiastic artists, he has the ability to penetrate into the essence of phenomena, secrets inaccessible to the mind of ordinary people are revealed to him. At the same time, the career of Tsakhes - Zinnober, who became a minister and knight of the Order of the Green-Spotted Tiger with twenty buttons at the prince's court, is grotesquely presented here. The satire is socially concrete: Hoffmann denounces the mechanism of power in the feudal principalities, and the social psychology generated by autocratic power, and the squalor of the townsfolk, and, finally, the dogmatism of university science. At the same time, he is not limited to exposing specific carriers of social evil. The reader is invited to reflect on the nature of power, on how public opinion is formed, political myths are created. The tale of the three golden hairs of Tsakhes acquires an ominous generalizing meaning, becoming the story of how the alienation of the results of human labor is brought to the point of absurdity. Before the power of the three golden hairs, talents, knowledge, moral qualities lose their significance, even love is wrecked. And although the tale has a happy ending, it, like in The Golden Pot, is quite ironic. One of the great evils of the modern social system is portrayed within the limits of the romantic worldview and the artistic means of the romantic method. However, the unfair distribution of spiritual and material wealth seemed to the writer fatal, arising under the influence of irrational fantastic forces in this society, where power and wealth are endowed with insignificant people, and their insignificance, in turn, with the power of power and gold turns into an imaginary brilliance of mind and talents. The debunking and overthrowing of these false idols in accordance with the nature of the writer's worldview comes from outside, thanks to the intervention of the same irrational fairy-magical forces (the sorcerer Prosper Alpanus, in his confrontation with the fairy Rosabelverde, patronizing Balthazar), which, according to Hoffmann, gave rise to this ugly social phenomenon. The scene of the indignation of the crowd bursting into the house of the almighty minister Zinnober after he lost his magical charm, of course, should not be taken as an attempt by the author to seek a radical means of eliminating that social evil, which is symbolized in the fantastic and fairy-tale image of the freak Tsakhes. This is just one of the minor details of the plot, by no means having a programmatic character. The people are not rebelling against an evil temporary minister, but only mocking the disgusting monster, whose appearance has finally appeared before them in its original form. The death of Tsakhes, who, fleeing from the raging crowd, is drowning in a silver chamber pot, is grotesque within the framework of the fairy tale plan of the novel, and not socially symbolic.

Question 24. The originality of the composition in "Cat Murre" by Hoffmann.

The satirical plan of the novel is extensive: court morals are subjected to critical ridicule - intrigue, hypocrisy, a constant desire to hide behind the magnificent conventions of etiquette and feigned politeness, mental poverty and moral uncleanliness, the psychology of a German philistine, at the same time a philistine with pretensions. At the same time, this is a kind of parody of the romantic fad, when romanticism becomes a fashion or rather a pose behind which vulgarity and spiritual poverty are hidden. We can say that along with the romantic hero, Hoffmann also has a kind of romantic “antihero”. All the more significant against this background is the image of the program hero - Johannes Kreisler. It is Kreisler who in this world personifies conscience and the highest truth. The bearer of the idea of justice, he is more discerning than others and sees what others do not notice. Illness and death prevented Hoffmann from writing the last, third volume of this novel. But even in its unfinished form, it is one of the most significant works of the writer, representing in the most perfect artistic embodiment almost all the main motives of his work and artistic manner. The composition of the novel is peculiar and unusual, based on the principle of two planes, the opposition of two antithetical principles, which in their development are skillfully combined by the writer into a single narrative line. A purely formal technique becomes the main ideological and artistic principle of the embodiment of the author's idea, philosophical understanding of moral, ethical and social categories. The autobiographical narrative of a certain learned cat Murr is interspersed with excerpts from the biography of the composer Johannes Kreisler. Already in the combination of these two ideological plot plans, not only by their mechanical connection in one book, but also by the plot detail that the owner of the Murra cat, Maester Abraham, is one of the main characters in Kreisler's life, a deep ironic parodic meaning is laid. The life of the "enlightened" philistine Murr is contrasted with the dramatic fate of a true artist, musician, tormented in an atmosphere of petty intrigue, surrounded by the high-born nonentities of the chimerical principality of Sieghartsweiler. Moreover, such an opposition is given in a simultaneous comparison, for Murr is not only Kreisler's antipode.

The entire feline and canine world in the novel is a satirical parody of the estate society of the German states: the "enlightened" philistine burghers, student unions - Burshenschafts, the police (the courtyard dog Achilles), the bureaucratic nobility (Spitz), the highest aristocracy (the Scaramouche poodle , Salon of the Greyhound Badina).

Question 25. The originality of the company "Serapion brothers" and the principle of Serapion.

The Serapion Brothers (vols. 1-2 - 1819, v. 3 - 1820, v. 4 - 1821) is a collection of novellas of very different genre, united by a framing novella, in which a circle of four friends appears, taking turns reading their works and representing, in fact, different aesthetic positions. The story told here about how a person created his imaginary world in the middle of the real world, retiring to live in the forest and imagining himself as a hermitage Serapion, represents a whole aesthetic concept: an illusion must be recognized as reality. However, in the disputes of literary friends, the opposite principle is also indicated: real life must certainly serve as the basis for any fantasy. The frame of the "Serapion Brothers" is rather arbitrary: Hoffmann included stories from different years, and there is no direct connection between them. Among them are short stories on a historical theme ("Doge and Dogaress"), and a number of short stories about musicians and artists ("Fermata", "Artus' Hall"), and a radiant festive fairy tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". "Serapion's principle" is also interpreted in the sense that the artist must isolate himself from the social life of our time and serve only art. The latter, in turn, is a self-sufficient world that rises above life, standing apart from the political struggle. With the undoubted fruitfulness of this aesthetic thesis for many of Hoffmann's works, one cannot but emphasize that his work itself, in certain strengths, did not always fully correspond to these aesthetic principles, as evidenced by a number of his works in the last years of his life, in particular the fairy tale “Little Tsakhes by nicknamed Zinnober "(1819).

Question 26. Creator and works of Is-va in Hoffmann's novellas.

The years 1815-1830 in Germany, as well as throughout Europe, are a dead time for the regime of the Holy Alliance. In German romanticism during this period, complex processes take place that significantly change its character. In particular, the features of tragedy are strengthened, as evidenced by the work of Hoffmann (1776-1822). The relatively short creative path of the writer - 1808-1822. - covers mainly the time of the post-Napoleonic reaction in Germany. As an artist and thinker, Hoffmann is closely related to the Jena school. He develops many of the ideas of F. Schlegel and Novalis, for example, the doctrine of universal poetry, the concept of romantic irony and the synthesis of arts. A musician and composer, author of the first romantic opera (Ondine, 1814), decorator and master of graphic design, Hoffmann, like no one else, was close to not only comprehending, but also practically realizing the idea of synthesis. The fate of the human person remains, as for other romantics, central to Hoffmann. Developing the ideas of Wackenroder, Novalis and other Jenes, Hoffmann focuses especially close attention on the personality of the artist, in which, in his opinion, all the best that is inherent in a person and is not spoiled by selfish motives and petty worries is most completely revealed. The short stories "Cavalier Gluck" and "Don Juan" not only provide a brilliant example of poetic reproduction of musical images - the collisions presented there reveal the most important theme of Hoffmann: the clash between the artist and his vulgar environment. These short stories were included in the book “Fantasies in the manner of Callot. Leaves from the diary of a wandering enthusiast "(1814-1815). This theme runs through many works: the artist is forced to serve those who, with all their outlook, interests, tastes, are deeply alien to real art. For Hoffmann, an artist is not a profession, but a vocation. It can be a person who is not engaged in this or that art, but gifted with the ability to see and feel. Such is Anselm from the story "The Golden Pot" (1814). The story has a subtitle: "A Tale from New Times." This is one of those genre transformations that literature owes to the German romantics. Like the Jena, most of Hoffmann's works are based on the artist's conflict with society. The original romantic antithesis of the artist and society is at the heart of the writer's worldview. Following the Jena, the highest embodiment of the human "I" Hoffmann considers a creative person. - an artist, an "enthusiast", in his terminology, who has access to the world of art, the world of fairy-tale fantasy, those only spheres where he can fully realize himself and find refuge from the real philistine everyday life. But the embodiment and resolution of the romantic conflict in Hoffmann is different from that of the early romantics. Through the denial of reality, through the conflict between the artist and her, the Yenians rose to the highest level of their perception of the world - aesthetic monism, when the whole world became for them a sphere of poetic utopia, a fairy tale, a sphere of harmony in which the artist comprehends himself and the Universe. The romantic hero of Hoffmann lives in the real world (starting with the gentleman Gluck and ending with Kreisler). For all his attempts to break out of its limits into the world of art, into the fantastic fairy kingdom of Jinnistan, he remains surrounded by real concrete historical reality. Neither a fairy tale nor art can bring him harmony to this real world, which ultimately subjugates them. Hence the constant tragic contradiction between the hero and his ideals, on the one hand, and reality, on the other. Hence the dualism, from which Hoffmann's heroes suffer, the dualism in his works, the insolubility of the conflict between the hero and the outside world in most of them, the characteristic two-pronged nature of the writer's creative manner.

Question 27. English romanticism: general characteristics.

England can be considered, to a certain extent, the ancestral home of romanticism. The early bourgeois development there also gave rise to the first anti-bourgeois aspirations, which later became characteristic of all romantics. The very concept of "romantic" arose in English literature as early as the 17th century, during the era of the bourgeois revolution. Throughout the XVIII century. in England, many essential features of the romantic world outlook were outlined - ironic self-esteem, anti-rationalism, the idea of \ u200b \ u200bthe "original", "extraordinary", "inexplicable", a craving for antiquity. Critical philosophy, the ethics of rebellious individualism, and the principles of historicism, including the idea of "nationality" and "popular", developed over time precisely from English sources, but already in other countries, primarily in Germany and France. So the initial romantic impulses that arose in England returned to their native soil in a roundabout way. The decisive impetus that crystallized romanticism as a spiritual direction came to the British from outside. This was the impact of the French Revolution. In England, at the same time, the so-called "quiet", although in reality not at all quiet and very painful, revolution was taking place - an industrial one; Its consequences were not only the replacement of the spinning wheel with a loom, and muscle power with a steam engine, but also profound social changes: the peasantry disappeared, the proletariat, rural and urban, was born and grew, the position of "master of life" was finally conquered by the middle class, the bourgeoisie. The chronological framework of English romanticism almost coincides with that of German (1790-1820). The British, in comparison with the Germans, are characterized by a less inclination to theorizing and a greater orientation towards poetic genres. Exemplary German romanticism is associated with prose (although almost all of its adepts wrote poetry), English with poetry (although novels and essays were also popular). English romanticism focuses on the problems of the development of society and humanity as a whole. The English romantics have a sense of the catastrophic nature of the historical process. The poets of the "lake school" (W. Wordsworth, R. Southey) idealize antiquity, praise patriarchal attitudes, nature, simple, natural feelings. The creativity of the poets of the "lake school" is imbued with Christian humility, they are characterized by an appeal to the subconscious in man. Romantic poems on medieval plots and historical novels by W. Scott are distinguished by an interest in native antiquity, in oral folk poetry.
The main theme of the work of J. Keats, a member of the group of "London romantics", which in addition to him included C. Lam, W. Hazlitt, Lee Hunt, is the beauty of the world and human nature. The greatest poets of English romanticism - Byron and Shelley, poets of the "storm", carried away by the ideas of struggle. Their element is political pathos, sympathy for the oppressed and disadvantaged, protection of individual freedom. Until the end of his life, Byron remained faithful to his poetic ideals, death found him in the midst of the "romantic" events of the war for the independence of Greece. The images of rebel heroes, individualists with a sense of tragic doom, for a long time retained their influence on all European literature, and adherence to the Byronic ideal was called "Byronism."
Poetry Blake contains all the basic ideas that will become basic for romanticism, although in its contrasts one can still feel the echo of the rationalism of the previous era. Blake perceived the world as eternal renewal and movement, which makes his philosophy similar to the ideas of German philosophers of the Romantic period. At the same time, he was able to see only what his imagination opened up to him. Blake wrote: "The world is an endless vision of Fantasy or Imagination." These words define the foundations of his work: Democracy and Humanism.

Question 28. Images and ideas of W. Blake.

The work of William Blake (1757-1827) turned out to be an early, bright and at the same time insufficiently recognized phenomenon of English romanticism. He was the son of a middle-class London merchant, his haberdashery father, noticing his son's ability to draw early, assigned him first to an art school and then an apprentice to an engraver. In London, Blake spent his entire life and became, to a certain extent, the poet of this city, although his imagination was torn upward, into transcendental spheres. In drawings and poems, which he did not print, but, like drawings, engraved, Blake created his own special world. These are, as it were, daydreams, and in life, Blake told from an early age that he saw miracles in broad daylight, golden birds in the trees, and in later years he said that he had talked with Dante, Christ and Socrates. Although the professional environment did not accept him, Blake found loyal friends who helped him financially under the guise of "orders"; at the end of his life, which nevertheless turned out to be very difficult (especially in 1810-1819), a kind of friendly cult developed around him, as if as a reward. Blake was buried in the center of the City of London, next to Defoe, in the old Puritan cemetery, where preachers, propagandists and generals of the 17th century revolution had previously found rest. As Blake made homemade engraved books, so he also created an original homemade mythology, the components of which he took in heaven and in the underworld, in the Christian and pagan religions, from old and new mystics. The task of this special, rationalized religion is universal synthesis. Combining extremes, combining them through struggle - this is the principle of building Blake's world. Blake seeks to bring heaven to earth, or rather to reunite them, the crown of his faith is the deified man. Blake created his main works in the 18th century. These are "Songs of Innocence" (1789) and "Songs of Experience" (1794), "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (1790), "The Book of Urizen" (1794). In the XIX century. he wrote "Milton" (1804), "Jerusalem, or the Incarnation of the Giant Albion" (1804), "The Ghost of Abel" (1821). In genre and form, Blake's poetry is also a picture of contrasts. Sometimes these are lyrical sketches, short poems that capture a street scene or movement of feeling; sometimes these are poems, grandiose in scope, dramatic dialogues, illustrated with equally large-scale author's drawings, in which there are giants, gods, powerful human figures symbolizing Love, Knowledge, Happiness, or unconventional, symbolic creatures invented by Blake himself, like Urizen and Los, personifying the forces of knowledge and creativity, or, for example, Theotormon - embodied weakness and doubt. Blake's bizarre gods are called upon to fill the gaps in already known mythology. These are symbols of those forces that are not indicated either in ancient or in biblical myths, but which, according to the poet, are in the world and determine the fate of man. Everywhere and in everything, Blake strove to look deeper, further than was customary. “To see eternity and the sky in the cup of a flower in an instant” is Blake's central principle. We are talking about internal vision - not external. In every grain of sand, Blake strove to see a reflection of the spiritual essence. Blake's poetry and all his activities are a protest against the leading tradition of British thinking, empiricism. The notes left by Blake in the margins of the writings of Bacon, "the father of modern science," really show how alienated Blake was from this fundamental principle of modern thinking. For him, Bacon's "certainty" is the worst lie, just as Newton appears in Blake's pantheon as a symbol of evil and deception. Poetry Blake contains all the basic ideas that will become basic for romanticism, although in its contrasts one can still feel the echo of the rationalism of the previous era.

Blake perceived the world as eternal renewal and movement, which makes his philosophy similar to the ideas of German philosophers of the Romantic period. At the same time, he was able to see only what his imagination opened up to him. Blake wrote: "The world is an endless vision of Fantasy or Imagination." These words define the foundations of his work: Democracy and Humanism. Beautiful and bright images appear in the first cycle (Songs of Innocence), they are overshadowed by the image of Jesus Christ. In the introduction to the second cycle, one can feel the tension and uncertainty that have arisen during this period in the world, the author sets a different task, and among his poems is "Tiger". The first two lines create a contrasting image of the Lamb (lamb). For Blake, the world is one, although it consists of opposites. This idea will become fundamental to romanticism.

As a revolutionary romantic, Blake consistently rejects the gospel's central message of humility and obedience. Blake firmly believed that the people would ultimately triumph, that Jerusalem would be “erected” on the green earth of England — a just classless society of the future.

Question 29. Poetry of leukists: main themes and genres.

From the English. Lake is a lake. LAKE SCHOOL poets, a group of English, romantic poets con. 18 - early. 19th centuries, who lived in the north of England, in the so-called. the edge of lakes (Westmoreland and Cumberland counties). Poets "O. sh." W. Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge and R. Southey also known under the name "leikists" (from the English, lake-lake). By contrasting their creativity with the classicist and enlighten. traditions of the 18th century, they realized the romantic. reform in eng. poetry. At first, the Great Franz, who warmly greeted. revolution, poets "O. sh." subsequently recoiled from her, not accepting the Jacobin terror; politician the views of the "Leukists" became more and more reactionary over time. Rejecting the rationalistic. ideals of the Enlightenment, poets "O. sh." opposed them to the belief in the irrational, in the tradition. christ. values, in the idealized Middle-century. past. Over the years, there has been a decline in the poetry itself. the creativity of the "leikists". However, their earliest, best productions. are still the pride of English, poetry. "O. sh." had a great influence on English, romantic poets of the younger generation (J. G. Byron, J. Keats). The poets of the "lake school" (W. Wordsworth, R. Southey) idealize antiquity, praise patriarchal attitudes, nature, simple, natural feelings. The creativity of the poets of the "lake school" is imbued with Christian humility, they are characterized by an appeal to the subconscious in man. Romantic poems on medieval plots and historical novels by W. Scott are distinguished by an interest in native antiquity, in oral folk poetry. Wordsworth's legacy, corresponding to its long life, is vast. These are lyric poems, ballads, poems, of which The Promenade (1814), Peter Bell (1819), The Charioteer (1805-1819), Prelude (1805-1850) are the most famous, representing the poet's spiritual autobiography ... In addition, he left several volumes of correspondence, a lengthy description of the lake region and a number of articles, among which a special place is occupied by the preface to the second edition (1800) of Lyric Ballads, which played such a significant role in English literature that it is called the Preface ": This is a kind of" introduction "to a whole poetic era.

A prominent prose writer, Hoffmann opened a new page in the history of German romantic literature. His role is also great in the field of music as the pioneer of the genre of romantic opera and especially as a thinker who for the first time expounded the musical and aesthetic principles of romanticism. As a publicist and critic, Hoffmann created a new artistic form of musical criticism, which was later developed by many major romantics (Weber, Berlioz and others). The pseudonym as a composer is Johann Chrysler.

The life of Hoffmann, his career, is the tragic story of an outstanding, versatile gifted artist who was not understood by his contemporaries.

Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822) was born in Königsberg, the son of a QC. After the death of his father, Hoffmann, who was then only 4 years old, was brought up in his uncle's family. Already in childhood, Hoffmann's love for music and painting was manifested.
THIS. Hoffmann - a lawyer who dreamed of music and became famous as a writer

During his time at the gymnasium, he made significant progress in playing the piano and drawing. In 1792-1796, Hoffmann completed a course of science at the law faculty of the University of Königsberg. At the age of 18, he began giving music lessons. Hoffmann dreamed of musical creativity.

"Ah, if I could act according to the inclinations of my nature, I would certainly become a composer," he wrote to one of his friends.

After graduating from university, Hoffmann holds minor judicial positions in the small town of Glogau. Wherever Hoffmann lived, he continued to study music and painting.

The most important event in Hoffmann's life was his visits to Berlin and Dresden in 1798. The artistic treasures of the Dresden Picture Gallery, as well as the various impressions of the concert and theatrical life of Berlin, made a huge impression on him.
Hoffmann, riding the cat Murre, battles the Prussian bureaucracy

In 1802, for one of his evil cartoons of the higher authorities, Hoffmann was removed from his post in Poznan and sent to Plock (a remote Prussian province), where he was essentially in exile. In Plock, dreaming of a trip to Italy, Hoffman studied Italian, studied music, painting, and caricature.

The appearance of his first major musical works dates back to this time (1800-1804). Two piano sonatas (in f minor and F major), a quintet in c minor for two violins, viola, cello and harp, a four-part mass in d minor (accompanied by an orchestra) and other works were written in Plock. In Plock, the first critical article on the use of the chorus in contemporary drama was written (in connection with Schiller's "Messina Bride", published in 1803 in a Berlin newspaper).

The beginning of a creative career

In early 1804, Hoffmann was assigned to Warsaw

The provincial atmosphere of Plock oppressed Hoffmann. He complained to friends and tried to get out of the "vile place." In early 1804, Hoffmann was assigned to Warsaw.

In a large cultural center of that time, Hoffmann's creative activity took on a more intense character. Music, painting, literature take possession of him more and more. The first musical and dramatic works of Hoffmann were written in Warsaw. These are the singspiel to the text by K. Brentano "Merry Musicians", music to the drama by E. Werner "The Cross on the Baltic Sea", the one-act singspiel "Uninvited Guests, or the Canon of Milan", the opera in three acts "Love and Jealousy" on the plot of P. Calderon , as well as a symphony Es-dur for large orchestra, two piano sonatas and many other works.

Heading the Warsaw Philharmonic Society, Hoffmann conducted symphony concerts in 1804-1806 and lectured on music. At the same time, he painted the Society's premises.

In Warsaw, Hoffmann got acquainted with the works of German romantics, major writers and poets: Aug. Schlegel, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), V.G. Wackenroder, L. Tieck, K. Brentano, who had a great influence on his aesthetic views.

Hoffmann and theater

Hoffmann's intensive activities were interrupted in 1806 by the invasion of Warsaw by Napoleon's troops, who destroyed the Prussian army and dissolved all Prussian institutions. Hoffmann was left without a livelihood. In the summer of 1807, with the help of friends, he moved to Berlin, and then to Bamberg, where he lived until 1813. In Berlin, Hoffmann found no use for his versatile abilities. According to an advertisement in the newspaper, he learned about the place of conductor in the city theater in Bamberg, where he moved at the end of 1808. But without working there for a year, Hoffmann left the theater, not wanting to put up with routine and please the backward tastes of the public. As a composer, Hoffmann took on a pseudonym - Johann Chrysler

In search of a job in 1809, he turned to the famous music critic J. F. Rokhlitz - editor of the "Universal Musical Gazette" in Leipzig - with a proposal to write a number of reviews and short stories on musical themes. Rokhlitz offered Hoffmann as a theme the story of a brilliant musician who reached complete poverty. This is how the brilliant Kreisleriana - a series of essays about the conductor Johannes Kreisler, the musical short stories Kavalier Gluck, Don Juan and the first musical critical articles - emerged.

In 1810, when an old friend of the composer Franz Holbein became the head of the Bamberg theater, Hoffmann returned to the theater, but now as a composer, decorator and even an architect. Under the influence of Hoffmann, the theater's repertoire included works by Calderon in translations of Aug. Schlegel (shortly before this first published in Germany).

Musical creativity of Hoffmann

In the years 1808-1813, many pieces of music were created:

romantic opera in four acts "Drink of Immortality"
music to the drama "Julius Sabin" by Soden
operas "Aurora", "Dirna"
one-act ballet "Harlequin"
piano trio E-dur
string quartet, motets
four-part choirs a cappella
Miserere with orchestra
many works for voice and orchestra
vocal ensembles (duets, quartet for soprano, two tenors and bass, and others)
in Bamberg, Hoffmann began work on his best work - the opera "Ondine"

When F. Holbein left the theater in 1812, Hoffmann's position worsened, and he was forced to look for a position again. Lack of livelihood forced Hoffmann to return to legal service. In the fall of 1814, he moved to Berlin, where from that time he held various positions in the Ministry of Justice. However, the soul of Hoffmann still belonged to literature, music, painting ... He moves in the literary circles of Berlin, meets L. Tieck, K. Brentano, A. Chamisso, F. Fouquet, G. Heine.
The best work of Hoffmann was and remains the opera "Ondine"

At the same time, the popularity of Hoffmann as a musician is growing. In 1815, his music for Fouquet's solemn prologue was performed at the Royal Theater in Berlin. A year later, in August 1816, the premiere of "Ondine" took place in the same theater. The production of the opera was remarkable for its extraordinary splendor and was greeted by the audience and musicians very warmly.

"Ondine" was the last major piece of music by the composer and at the same time a piece that opened a new era in the history of the romantic opera house in Europe. The further creative path of Hoffmann is mainly associated with literary activity, with his most significant works:

"Elixir of the Devil" (novel)
"The Golden Pot" (fairy tale)
"The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (fairy tale)
"Someone else's child" (fairy tale)
"Princess Brambilla" (fairy tale)
"Little Tsakhes nicknamed Zinnober" (fairy tale)
"Major" (story)
four volumes of stories "The Serapion brothers" and others ...

Statue depicting Hoffmann with his cat Murr

Hoffmann's literary work culminated in the creation of the novel The Worldly Views of Murr the Cat, coupled with fragments of the biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler, which accidentally survived in the scrapbooks (1819-1821).

Plan

Introduction

The creative path of E.T.A. Hoffmann

Hoffmann's "double world"

Conclusion

Introduction

Hoffmann belongs to those writers whose posthumous fame is not limited to numerous editions of collected works.

His glory is rather light and winged; it is poured into the spiritual atmosphere that surrounds us. Who has not read "Hoffmann's fairy tales" - sooner or later he will hear them, or see them, but will not pass by! Let us recall, for example, The Nutcracker ... in the theater at the ballets of Tchaikovsky or Delibes, and if not in the theater, then at least on the theatrical billboard or on the television screen. The invisible shadow of Hoffmann constantly and beneficially overshadowed Russian culture in the 19th, and in the 20th, and in the present, 21st century ...

This work examines the life and creative paths of the writer, analyzes the main motives of Hoffmann's work, his place in contemporary literature. . Also discussed are issues related to Hoffmann's double world.

The creative path of E.T.A. Hoffmann

Hoffmann took up literature late - at the age of thirty-three. Contemporaries greeted the new writer with wariness, his fantasies were immediately recognized as romantic, in the spirit of the mood still popular at that time, and after all, Romanticism was associated, first of all, with the generation of young people infected with the French revolutionary virus.

But the embodiment and resolution of the romantic conflict in Hoffmann is different from that of the early romantics. Through the denial of reality, through the conflict between the artist and her, the Yenians rose to the highest level of their perception of the world - aesthetic monism, when the whole world became for them a sphere of poetic utopia, a fairy tale, a sphere of harmony in which the artist comprehends himself and the Universe. The romantic hero of Hoffmann lives in the real world (starting with the gentleman Gluck and ending with Kreisler). For all his attempts to break out of its limits into the world of art, into the fantastic fairy kingdom of Jinnistan, he remains surrounded by real concrete historical reality. Neither a fairy tale nor art can bring him harmony to this real world, which ultimately subjugates them. Hence the constant tragic contradiction between the hero and his ideals, on the one hand, and reality, on the other. Hence the dualism, from which Hoffmann's heroes suffer, the dualism in his works, the insolubility of the conflict between the hero and the outside world in most of them, the characteristic two-pronged nature of the writer's creative manner.

Hoffmann's creative individuality in many characteristic features is already determined in his first book "Fantasies in the manner of Callot", which included works written from 1808 to 1814. Novella "Cavalier Gluck" (1808), the first of Hoffmann's published works, outlines the most essential aspects of his worldview and creative manner. The novel develops one of the main, if not the main idea of the writer's work - the insolubility of the conflict between the artist and society. This idea is revealed through that artistic device that will become dominant in all subsequent work of the writer - the two-dimensional narrative.

The most significant are the collections of stories "Fantasies in the manner of Callot" (1814-1815), "Night stories in the manner of Callot" (1816-1817) and the Serapion brothers (1819-1821); dialogue on the problems of theatrical affairs "The Unusual Suffering of a Director of Theaters" (1818); a story in the spirit of the fairy tale "Little Tsakhes nicknamed Zinnober" (1819); and two novels - "Elixir of the Devil" - about the irrationality of the everyday (1816), a brilliant study of the problem of duality, and "Everyday views of the cat Murr" - a satire on German philistinism (1819 - 1821), partly autobiographical work, full of wit and wisdom. Among the most famous stories of Hoffmann, included in the above-mentioned collections, are the fairy tale "The Golden Pot", the Gothic tale "Mayorat", a realistic psychological story about a jeweler who is unable to part with his creations, "Mademoiselle de Scuderi", and some other.

Eight years after the release of Fantasias, Hoffmann was gone. He was already dying as a writer, not only glorified, but very popular. During these eight years, he managed to write a surprising amount, as evidenced by the above list of just a few of the most significant works.

Brilliant fantasy combined with a strict and transparent style gave Hoffmann a special place in German literature. Germany appreciated this much later, already in the 20th century ...

Hoffmann's "double world"

In the XX century, and in our days, the reader's name was and is associated with Hoffmann, first of all, with the famous principle of “double world” - a romantically sharpened expression of the eternal problem of art, the contradiction between ideal and reality, “materiality,” as Russian romantics used to say. “Substantiality” is prosaic, that is, shallow and wretched, it is an inauthentic life, inappropriate; the ideal is beautiful and poetic, it is a genuine life, but it lives only in the chest of an artist, an “enthusiast,” while in reality it is persecuted and unattainable in it. The artist is doomed to live in the world of his own fantasies, fencing off from the outside world with a protective shaft of contempt or bristling against it with the barbed armor of irony, mockery, and satire. And in fact, - Hoffman is like that in "Cavalier Gluck", and in "Golden Pot", and in "Dog of Berganz", and in "Little Tsakhes", and in "Lord of the Fleas", and in "Cat Murr".

These two images, shimmering, shimmering, are the main ones in the work of Hoffmann, but there are also others: a cheerful and kind storyteller - the author of the famous Nutcracker; singer of ancient crafts and patriarchal foundations - the author of "Master Martin-Bochard" and "Master Johannes Watch"; the selfless priest of Music - the author of "Kreisleriana"; the secret admirer of Life is the author of The Corner Window.

In the striking study “Counselor Crespel” from “The Serapion Brothers”, perhaps the most virtuoso elaboration of psychological - by the way, social too - problematics is given. It says about the title character: “There are people whom nature or merciless fate has deprived of the cover, under whose cover we, the rest of the mortals, imperceptibly for the eyes of others, proceed in our follies ... Everything that remains in our minds is immediately transformed by Crespel into action. The bitter mockery, which, one must suppose, constantly conceals on its lips the spirit languishing in us, gripped in the grip of an insignificant earthly vanity, Crespel shows us personally in his extravagant antics and antics. But this is his lightning rod. He returns everything that rises in us from the earth to the earth - but he keeps the divine spark holy; so that his inner consciousness, I believe, is quite healthy, despite all the seeming - even striking - extravagance. "

This is a significantly different turn. As you can easily see, we are not talking about the romantic individual only, but about human nature in general. Crespel is characterized by one of the "other mortals" and all the time he says "we", "in us." In the depths of our souls, we all “proceed in our follies,” and the dividing line, the notorious “double world” begins not at the level of the internal, mental structure, but at the level of only its external expression. What "the rest of the mortals" reliably hide under a protective cover (everything "earthly"), with Crespel, is not pushed into the depths. On the contrary, it is released outside, "returns to the earth" (psychologists of the Freudian circle will call it "catharsis" - by analogy with Aristotelian "cleansing of the soul").

But Crespel - and here he again returns to the romantic chosen circle - sacredly keeps the "divine spark". And perhaps - and all the time - there is also such a thing when neither morality nor consciousness is able to overcome "everything that rises in us from the earth." Hoffmann fearlessly enters this sphere as well. On a superficial glance, his novel Elixirs of the Devil may seem now to be just a cocky mixture of a horror novel and a detective story; in fact, the story of the unbridled moral sacrilege and criminal crimes of the monk Medardus is a parable and a warning. What, in relation to Crespel, is softened and philosophically abstractly designated as "everything that rises in us from the earth" is called here much more sharply and harshly - we are talking about "a blind beast raging in man." And here, not only is the uncontrolled power of the subconscious, "repressed" raging - here the dark force of blood, bad heredity is also pressing.

Thus, in Hoffmann's work, man is squeezed not only from the outside, but also from the inside. His "extravagant antics and antics", it turns out, is not only a sign of dissimilarity, individuality; they are also the seal of the Cain family. "Cleansing" the soul from the "earthly", splashing it out can give rise to the innocent eccentricities of Krespel and Kreisler, and maybe the criminal licentiousness of Medardus. Pressed from two sides, torn apart by two impulses, a person balances on the brink of rupture, splitting - and then real madness.

The phantom of bifurcation, which haunted his soul and occupied his mind all his life, Hoffmann embodied this time in an unheard-of daring art form, not only placing two different biographies under one cover, but also demonstratively mixing them. It is about the novel "Worldviews of Murr the Cat". It is interesting that both biographies reflect the same epochal issues, the history of Hoffmann's time and generation, that is, one subject is given in two different lightings, interpretations. Hoffman sums it up here; the result is ambiguous.

The confessionality of the novel is emphasized primarily by the fact that the same Kreisler appears in it. With the image of this literary double, Hoffmann began - "Kreislerian" in the cycle of the first "Fantasies" - and ends with it.

At the same time, Kreisler in this novel is by no means a hero. As the publisher immediately warns (fictitious, of course), the proposed book is precisely the confession of the learned cat Murr; he is both the author and the hero. But during the preparation of the book for publication, it is explained further, an embarrassment occurred: when proof sheets began to arrive at the publisher, he was horrified to discover that the notes of Murr the cat were constantly interrupted by scraps of some completely different text! As it turned out, the author (that is, the cat), expounding his worldly views, in the process tore apart the first book he got in his paws from the owner's library in order to use the torn pages "partly for laying, partly for drying." Carved in such a barbaric manner, the book turned out to be the life of Kreisler; through the carelessness of the typesetters, these pages were also printed.

The biography of the brilliant composer is like scrapbooks in a cat's biography! One had to possess a truly Hoffmannian fantasy in order to give such a form to bitter self-irony. Who needs Kreisler's life, his joys and sorrows, what are they good for? Is that to dry out the graphomaniac exercises of the learned cat!

However, with graphomaniac exercises, everything is not so simple. As we read Murr's autobiography itself, we are convinced that the cat is also not so simple, and not without reason claims the main role in the novel - the role of the romantic "son of the century." Here he, now sophisticated both in everyday experience and in literary and philosophical studies, argues at the beginning of his life story: “How rare, however, is there a true affinity of souls in our wretched, inert, selfish age! .. My writings will undoubtedly be kindled in my chest not one young cat, gifted with mind and heart, the high flame of poetry ... but another noble youthful cat will completely imbued with the lofty ideals of the book, which I am now holding in my paws, and exclaim in an enthusiastic impulse: Oh Murr, divine Murr, the greatest genius of our illustrious feline family! Only to you I owe everything, only your example made me great! »Take away the specific feline realities in this passage - and you will have a completely romantic style, vocabulary, pathos.

To portray a romantic genius in the image of an imposingly soft-faced cat is already a very funny idea in itself, and Hoffmann makes full use of its comic potential. Of course, the reader quickly becomes convinced that, by nature, Murr simply learned fashionable romantic jargon. However, it is not so indifferent that he "works" for romance with success, with an extraordinary sense of style! Hoffmann could not help but know that romanticism itself could be compromised by such a masquerade; this is a calculated risk.

Here are the "junk sheets" - with all the "Hoffmanians" reigning here, too, the sad story of the life of Kapellmeister Kreisler, a lonely genius, little understood by anyone; sometimes inspired romantic, then ironic tirades explode, fiery exclamations sound, fiery gazes blaze - and suddenly the narration breaks off, sometimes literally in mid-sentence (the torn page has ended), and the same romantic tirades are ecstatically mumbled by the learned cat: “... I know for sure : my homeland is the attic! The climate of the motherland, its manners, customs - how inextinguishable are these impressions ... Why is there such a lofty way of thinking in me, such an irresistible striving to higher spheres? Where does such a rare gift to soar up in an instant, such brave, brilliant jumps worthy of envy, come from? Oh, sweet longing fills my chest! Longing for my own attic rises in me in a powerful wave! I dedicate these tears to you, oh beautiful homeland ... "

The demonstrative, almost literal discontinuity of the novel, its external narrative confusion (again: either an extravaganza of fireworks, or a whirlwind of carnival) are compositionally welded tightly, with ingenious calculation, and it must be realized.

At first glance, it might seem that the parallel biographies of Kreisler and Murr are a new version of the traditional Hoffmannian double world: the sphere of “enthusiasts” (Kreisler) and the sphere of “philistines” (Murr). But even the second glance complicates this arithmetic: after all, in each of these biographies, in turn, the world is also divided in half, and each has its own sphere of enthusiasts (Kreisler and Murr) and philistines (the entourage of Kreisler and Murr). The world no longer doubles, but quadruples - the score here is "twice two"!

And this changes the whole picture very significantly. We will isolate the experiment for the sake of Kreisler's line — we will have yet another "classical" Hoffmann story with all its characteristic attributes; if we isolate Murr's line, there will be a "hoffmanized" version of the satirical allegory, "animal epic" genre, which is very widespread in world literature, or a fable with a self-revealing meaning. But Hoffmann confuses them, confronts them, and they must certainly be perceived only in mutual relation.

These are not just parallel lines - they are parallel mirrors. One of them - Murrov's - is placed before the old Hoffmann's romantic structure, and again and again reflects and repeats it. Thus, it, this mirror, inevitably removes the absoluteness from the history and figure of Kreisler, gives it a shimmering ambiguity. The mirror turns out to be a parody, "the worldly views of Murr the cat" - an ironic paraphrase of "the musical suffering of Kapellmeister Kreisler."

One of the essential components of Hoffmann's poetics, like that of the early romantics, is irony. Moreover, in Hoffmann's irony as a creative technique, which is based on a certain philosophical, aesthetic, worldview position, we can clearly distinguish between two main functions. In one of them, he appears as a direct follower of the Yenians. We are talking about those of his works in which purely aesthetic problems are solved and where the role of romantic irony is close to that which it plays among the Jena romantics. The romantic irony in these works of Hoffmann gets a satirical sound, but this satire has no social, social orientation. An example of the manifestation of such a function of irony is the short story "Princess Brambilla" - brilliant in its artistic performance and typically Hoffmann's in demonstrating the duality of his creative method. Following the Yenians, the author of the novel "Princess Brambilla" believes that irony should express a "philosophical outlook on life", that is, it should be the basis of a person's attitude to life. In accordance with this, like the Jena, irony is a means of resolving all conflicts and contradictions, a means of overcoming the “chronic dualism” from which the protagonist of this novel, actor Giglio Fava, suffers.

In line with this basic tendency, another and more essential function of his irony is revealed. If among the Jena, irony as an expression of a universal attitude to the world became at the same time an expression of skepticism and refusal to resolve the contradictions of reality, then Hoffmann saturates irony with a tragic sound, for him it contains a combination of the tragic and the comic. The main carrier of Hoffmann's ironic attitude to life is Kreisler, whose “chronic dualism” is tragic, in contrast to the comical “chronic dualism” of Giglio Fava. The satirical beginning of Hoffmann's irony in this function has a specific social address, significant social content, and therefore this function of romantic irony allows him, a romantic writer, to reflect some typical phenomena of reality ("The Golden Pot", "Little Tsakhes", "The Cat's Worldly Views Murrah "- works that most characteristically reflect this function of Hoffmann's irony).

For Hoffmann, the superiority of the poetic world over the world of real everyday life is undoubted. And he sings this world of a fairytale dream, giving it preference over the real, prosaic world.

But Hoffmann would not have been an artist with such a contradictory and in many respects tragic outlook, if such a fairy tale novel determined the general direction of his work, and did not demonstrate only one of its sides. Basically, however, the writer's artistic outlook by no means proclaims the complete victory of the poetic world over the real. Only madmen like Serapion or philistines believe in the existence of only one of these worlds. This principle of a double world is reflected in a number of Hoffmann's works, perhaps the most striking in their artistic quality and most fully embodying the contradictions of his worldview. This is, first of all, the fairy tale "The Golden Pot" (1814), the title of which is accompanied by the eloquent subtitle "A Tale from New Times". The meaning of this subtitle is that the characters in this tale are Hoffmann's contemporaries, and the action takes place in the real Dresden of the early 19th century. This is how Hoffmann reinterprets the Jena tradition of the fairy tale genre - the writer includes the plan of real everyday life in its ideological and artistic structure. The hero of the novel, student Anselm, is an eccentric loser, endowed with a "naive poetic soul", and this makes the world of the fabulous and wonderful available to him. Faced with him, Anselm begins to lead a dual existence, getting from his prosaic existence into the kingdom of a fairy tale, adjacent to ordinary real life. In accordance with this, the novel is also compositionally built on the interweaving and interpenetration of the fantastic-fantastic plan with the real one. Romantic fairy-tale fantasy in its subtle poetry and grace finds here in Hoffmann one of its best exponents. At the same time, the real plan is clearly outlined in the short story. Not without reason, some researchers of Hoffmann believed that this novel could be used to successfully reconstruct the topography of the streets of Dresden at the beginning of the last century. Realistic detail plays a significant role in characterizing the characters.

In the happy ending of the novel, which ends with two weddings, her ideological concept is fully interpreted. The registrar Geerbrand becomes the court advisor, to whom Veronica gives her hand without hesitation, having renounced her passion for Anselm. Her dream is coming true - “she lives in a beautiful house on the New Market”, she has “a new-style hat, a new Turkish shawl,” and while having breakfast in an elegant negligee by the window, she gives orders to the servants. Anselm marries Serpentine and, becoming a poet, settles with her in the fabulous Atlantis. At the same time, he receives as a dowry "a pretty estate" and a gold pot, which he saw in the archivist's house. The golden pot - this kind of ironic transformation of Novalis's "blue flower" - retains the original function of this romantic symbol. It can hardly be considered that the end of the Anselm-Serpentine storyline is a parallel to the philistine ideal embodied in the alliance of Veronica and Geerbrand, and the golden pot is a symbol of philistine happiness. After all, Anselm does not abandon his poetic dream, he only finds its fulfillment.

The philosophical idea of the novella about the embodiment, the kingdom of poetic fiction in the world of art, in the world of poetry, is affirmed in the last paragraph of the novella. Its author, suffering from the thought that he has to leave the fabulous Atlantis and return to the miserable squalor of his attic, hears Lindhorst's words of encouragement: “Haven't you yourself just been to Atlantis and don’t you own there at least a decent manor as a poetic property your mind? Is it possible that Anselm's bliss is nothing more than life in poetry, which reveals the sacred harmony of all that exists as the deepest of the secrets of nature! "

VG Belinsky highly appreciated Hoffmann's satirical talent, noting that he was able to "portray reality in all its truth and execute philistinism ... of his compatriots with poisonous sarcasm."

These observations of the remarkable Russian critic can be fully attributed to the fairy tale "Little Tsakhes". In the new fairy tale, Hoffmann's double world in the perception of reality is fully preserved, which is again reflected in the two-dimensional composition of the novel, in the characters of the characters and in their arrangement. Many of the main characters in the novel are fairy tales.

"Little Tsakhes" have their literary prototypes in the short story "The Golden Pot": student Baltazar - Anselma, Prosper Alpanus - Lindhorsta, Candida - Veronica.

The two-pronged nature of the novel is revealed in the opposition of the world of poetic dreams, the fabulous country of Jinnistan, the world of real everyday life, that principality of Prince Barsanuf, in which the action of the novel takes place. Some characters and things lead a dual existence here, since they combine their fabulous magical existence with existence in the real world. Fairy Rosabelverde, she is the canoness of the shelter for noble maidens Rosenshen, patronizes the disgusting little Tsakhes, rewarding him with three magical golden hairs.

In the same ambiguous capacity as the fairy Rosabelverde, she is the Canoness Rosenshen, the good wizard Alpanus also appears, surrounding himself with various fairy-tale wonders, which the poet and dreamer student Baltazar sees well. In his ordinary hypostasis, only accessible to philistines and sober rationalists, Alpanus is just a doctor, inclined, however, to very intricate quirks.

The artistic plans of the novels being compared are compatible, if not completely, then very closely. In their ideological sound, for all their similarity, the novellas are quite different. If in the fairy tale "The Golden Pot", which ridicules the world outlook of the philistine, satire has a moral and ethical character, then in "Little Tsakhes" it becomes sharper and gets a social sound. It is no coincidence that Belinsky noted that this short story was banned by the tsarist censorship for the reason that it contains "a lot of ridicule at the stars and officials."

It is in connection with the expansion of the address of satire, with its strengthening in the novel, that one essential moment in its artistic structure changes - the main character becomes not the positive hero, the characteristic Hoffmannian eccentric, the poet-dreamer (Anselm in the short story "The Golden Pot"), but the negative hero - the disgusting freak Tsakhes, a character who, in a deeply symbolic combination of his external features and internal content, first appears on the pages of Hoffmann's works. "Little Tsakhes" is even more a "fairy tale from new times" than "The Golden Pot". Tsakhes is a complete insignificance, devoid of even the gift of intelligible articulate speech, but with an excessively inflated arrogant pride, disgustingly ugly outwardly, due to the magical gift of the fairy Rosabelverde looks in the eyes of those around him not only a stately handsome man, but also a person endowed with outstanding talents, bright and clear mind. In a short time, he makes a brilliant administrative career: without completing a law course at the university, he becomes an important official and, finally, the all-powerful first minister in the principality. Such a career is possible only due to the fact that Tsakhes appropriates other people's works and talents - the mysterious power of three golden hairs makes blinded people ascribe to him everything significant and talented done by others.

So within the limits of the romantic worldview and the artistic means of the romantic method, one of the great evils of the modern social system is depicted. However, the unfair distribution of spiritual and material wealth seemed to the writer fatal, arising under the influence of irrational fantastic forces in this society, where power and wealth are endowed with insignificant people, and their insignificance, in turn, with the power of power and gold turns into an imaginary brilliance of mind and talents. The debunking and overthrowing of these false idols in accordance with the nature of the writer's worldview comes from outside, thanks to the intervention of the same irrational fairy-magical forces (the sorcerer Prosper Alpanus, in his confrontation with the fairy Rosabelverde, patronizing Balthazar), which, according to Hoffmann, gave rise to this ugly social phenomenon. The scene of the indignation of the crowd bursting into the house of the almighty minister Zinnober after he lost his magical charm, of course, should not be taken as an attempt by the author to seek a radical means of eliminating that social evil, which is symbolized in the fantastic and fairy-tale image of the freak Tsakhes. This is just one of the minor details of the plot, by no means having a programmatic character. The people are not rebelling against an evil temporary minister, but only mocking the disgusting monster, whose appearance has finally appeared before them in its original form. The death of Tsakhes, who, fleeing from the raging crowd, is drowning in a silver chamber pot, is grotesque within the framework of the fairy tale plan of the novel, and not socially symbolic.

Hoffmann creativity writer duality

Conclusion

It was Hoffmann who embodied the "double world" most penetratingly in the art of words; it is his identification mark. But Hoffmann is neither a fanatic nor a dogmatist of the double world; he is his analyst and dialectician ...

... Since those holes, many wonderful masters have come into the world, somewhat similar and completely unlike Hoffmann. And the world itself has changed beyond recognition. But Hoffmann continues to live in world art. Much was revealed for the first time to the intent and kind gaze of this artist, and therefore his name often sounds like a symbol of humanity and spirituality. For the great romantics, among whom Hoffmann occupies one of the most honorable places, the contradictions of life that hurt them painfully remained a mystery. But they were the first to talk about these contradictions, that the fight against them - the fight for the ideal - is the happiest lot of man ...

List of used literature

Belinsky V.G. Full composition of writings. T. 4. - L., 1954 .-- P. 98
Berkovsky N.Ya. Romanticism in Germany. SPb., 2002.S. 463-537.
Braudo E.M. THIS. Hoffman. - Pgd., 1922 .-- S. 20
A.I. Herzen Collected works in 30 volumes. V. 1. Hoffman. - M., 1954 .-- S. 54-56.
Zhirmunsky V.M. German romanticism and modern mysticism. M., 1997.
Foreign literature of the 19th century. Romanticism. Reader of historical and literary materials. Compiled by A.S.Dmitriev et al. M., 1990.
Selected Prose of German Romantics. M., 1979. T. 1-2.
History of foreign literature of the 19th century. Ed. A.S. Dmitrieva. M., 1971. 4.1.
History of foreign literature of the 19th century. Ed. Ya.N. Zasursky, S.V. Turaev. M., 1982.
History of foreign literature of the 19th century. Ed. N.P. Mikhalskaya. M., 1991.4.1.

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