E. T. A. Hoffmann - Assessment

Assessment

Hoffmann is one of the best-known representatives of German Romanticism, and a pioneer of the fantasy genre, with a taste for the macabre combined with realism that influenced such authors as Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852), Charles Dickens (1812–1870), Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), George MacDonald (1824–1905), Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), Franz Kafka (1883–1924) and Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980). Hoffmann's story Das Fräulein von Scuderi is sometimes cited as the first detective story and a direct influence on Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue".

The twentieth-century Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin characterised Hoffmann's works as Menippea, essentially satirical and self-parodying in form, thus including him in a tradition that includes Cervantes, Diderot and Voltaire.

Robert Schumann's piano suite Kreisleriana (1838) has its title from one of Hoffmann's books (and according to Charles Rosen's The Romantic Generation, is possibly also inspired by "The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr", in which Kreisler appears). Jacques Offenbach's masterwork, the opera Les contes d'Hoffmann ("The Tales of Hoffmann", 1881), is based on the stories Der Sandmann ("The Sandman", 1816), Rat Krespel ("Councillor Krespel", 1818), and Das verlorene Spiegelbild ("The Lost Reflection") from Die Abenteuer der Silvester-Nacht ("The Adventures of New Year's Eve", 1814). Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker (1892) is based on "Nutcracker and Mouse King".

Hoffmann also influenced 19th century musical opinion directly through his music criticism. His reviews of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 (1808) and other important works set new literary standards for writing about music, and encouraged later writers to consider music as "the most Romantic of all the arts." Hoffmann's reviews were first collected for modern readers by Friedrich Schnapp, ed., in E.T.A. Hoffmann: Schriften zur Musik; Nachlese (1963) and have been made available in an English translation in E.T.A. Hoffmann's Writings on Music, Collected in a Single Volume (2004).

Hoffmann strove for artistic polymathy. He created far more in his works than mere political commentary achieved through satire. His masterpiece novel Lebensansichten des Katers Murr ("The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr", 1819–1821) deals with such issues as the aesthetic status of 'true' artistry and the modes of self-transcendence that accompany any genuine endeavour to create. Hoffmann's portrayal of the character Kreisler (a genius musician) is wittily counterpointed with the character of the tomcat Murr – a virtuoso illustration of artistic pretentiousness that many of Hoffmann's contemporaries found offensive and subversive of Romantic ideals.

Hoffmann's literature indicates the failings of many so-called artists to differentiate between the superficial and the authentic aspects of such Romantic ideals. The self-conscious effort to impress must, according to Hoffmann, be divorced from the self-aware effort to create. This essential duality in Kater Murr is conveyed structurally through a discursive 'splicing together' of two biographical narratives.