masks, of fragments and unsettling inconsistencies. It would be trendy to speak of him as postmodern, but it's obvious that the kind of all-embracing unity that a Goethe managed to effect was denied him.
Whether it was fate, his unconscious, immaturity, or Poe's `imp of the perverse', throughout his life, Hoffmann seemed to create a crisis whenever things ran too smoothly for him, and the claims of routine and normality threatened to submerge too deeply the longings for the other world. As Government Assessor in Posen, he jeopardized a comfortable position by drawing caricatures of local dignitaries; his excellent graphic work had him exiled to Plock, an unspeakably dull provincial town, where he had little to do but regret his rashness. Years later, in Berlin, the pattern was repeated when he satirized the Director of the Police Commission in his last novel, Master Flea. Hoffmann spoke of his intentions, and word of his acid wit got around; proceedings were begun against him. The book was eventually published with the offending parts excised.
In between these two incidents, which were simply the most prominent, Hoffmann carried on a dizzying career. His own life displays the same crowded backdrop and rapidity of change common to his stories, and throughout it Hoffmann showed a profound disregard for whatever physical effects this might entail. In a way it isn't surprising that he should die, paralyzed and in poverty, at the age of 46 - yet still dictating his last works - shattered by the accumulated buffetings of alcoholic excess, liver degeneration and a nervous disorder, locomotor ataxia.
Yet Hoffmann's life was an embodiment of his central themes: the uncertainty of identity and the conflict between the `two worlds'. Occult and paranormal ideas run throughout his stories. Mesmerism, hypnotism, somnambulism, multiple selves, the world of sylphs and salamanders, the perpetual battle between the dark and the light: these are the basic elements of his tales. But the recurring myth is the contrast and tension between the everyday world and that of magic. Nowhere did Hoffmann depict this with greater conviction that in The Golden Flower Pot (1814), which is generally considered his greatest work. Like Goethe and Novalis, Hoffmann used the Marchen, but with an important variation. Unlike Goethe and Novalis, Hoffmann sets his initiation story in the context of the everyday world, and brings magic down to earth. He is, as Jeremy Adler suggests, one of the first writers of the city, before Baudelaire and Poe."' Where Goethe's Fairy Tale has the odd, unfixed quality of a dream, Hoffmann's Dresden is immediately recognizable. His stories get their effect from the convincing depiction of the magical world invading the everyday. This is Hoffmann's `serapiontic principle', first proposed in his The Serapion Brotherhood (1819). The book is about a group of poets and artists who take their name from a mad nobleman who believes he is a monk martyred during the reign of Emperor Decius. When his followers point out that the towers they see are of those of Bamberg, Serapion denies this, and says they are indeed those of Alexandria in the Second Century AD. When they point out that this is madness, he reminds them that they forget that the world they see is within their minds. Reality is within, not out there: the central Romantic theme. Yet, Hoffmann recognizes that this can lead to a dead end, both in life and in art. Novalis' hermetic Mdrehen depicts another reality, but one too detached from this one to be convincing. The `serapiontic principle' argues that in order for magic to be effective, it has to be made convincing, which means that it has to be rooted somehow in this world. "There is an inner world," Hoffmann wrote, "and a spiritual faculty for discerning it with absolute clearness - yes, with the most minute and brilliant distinctness. But it is part of our earthly lot that it is the outer world, in which we are entrapped, that
Whether it was fate, his unconscious, immaturity, or Poe's `imp of the perverse', throughout his life, Hoffmann seemed to create a crisis whenever things ran too smoothly for him, and the claims of routine and normality threatened to submerge too deeply the longings for the other world. As Government Assessor in Posen, he jeopardized a comfortable position by drawing caricatures of local dignitaries; his excellent graphic work had him exiled to Plock, an unspeakably dull provincial town, where he had little to do but regret his rashness. Years later, in Berlin, the pattern was repeated when he satirized the Director of the Police Commission in his last novel, Master Flea. Hoffmann spoke of his intentions, and word of his acid wit got around; proceedings were begun against him. The book was eventually published with the offending parts excised.
In between these two incidents, which were simply the most prominent, Hoffmann carried on a dizzying career. His own life displays the same crowded backdrop and rapidity of change common to his stories, and throughout it Hoffmann showed a profound disregard for whatever physical effects this might entail. In a way it isn't surprising that he should die, paralyzed and in poverty, at the age of 46 - yet still dictating his last works - shattered by the accumulated buffetings of alcoholic excess, liver degeneration and a nervous disorder, locomotor ataxia.
Yet Hoffmann's life was an embodiment of his central themes: the uncertainty of identity and the conflict between the `two worlds'. Occult and paranormal ideas run throughout his stories. Mesmerism, hypnotism, somnambulism, multiple selves, the world of sylphs and salamanders, the perpetual battle between the dark and the light: these are the basic elements of his tales. But the recurring myth is the contrast and tension between the everyday world and that of magic. Nowhere did Hoffmann depict this with greater conviction that in The Golden Flower Pot (1814), which is generally considered his greatest work. Like Goethe and Novalis, Hoffmann used the Marchen, but with an important variation. Unlike Goethe and Novalis, Hoffmann sets his initiation story in the context of the everyday world, and brings magic down to earth. He is, as Jeremy Adler suggests, one of the first writers of the city, before Baudelaire and Poe."' Where Goethe's Fairy Tale has the odd, unfixed quality of a dream, Hoffmann's Dresden is immediately recognizable. His stories get their effect from the convincing depiction of the magical world invading the everyday. This is Hoffmann's `serapiontic principle', first proposed in his The Serapion Brotherhood (1819). The book is about a group of poets and artists who take their name from a mad nobleman who believes he is a monk martyred during the reign of Emperor Decius. When his followers point out that the towers they see are of those of Bamberg, Serapion denies this, and says they are indeed those of Alexandria in the Second Century AD. When they point out that this is madness, he reminds them that they forget that the world they see is within their minds. Reality is within, not out there: the central Romantic theme. Yet, Hoffmann recognizes that this can lead to a dead end, both in life and in art. Novalis' hermetic Mdrehen depicts another reality, but one too detached from this one to be convincing. The `serapiontic principle' argues that in order for magic to be effective, it has to be made convincing, which means that it has to be rooted somehow in this world. "There is an inner world," Hoffmann wrote, "and a spiritual faculty for discerning it with absolute clearness - yes, with the most minute and brilliant distinctness. But it is part of our earthly lot that it is the outer world, in which we are entrapped, that
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