After reading the work "The Golden Pot" by Hoffmann, we see the first thing that relates to the features of romanticism - this is the use of the grotesque. The whole work is built on a bizarre interweaving of the real and the fantastic. With the help of fiction, Hoffman creates the effect of two worlds. In the work of Hoffmann there are metamorphoses, i.e. transformations, an example of such a transformation can be a green snake that turned into a girl. There are many digressions in the work, in which the author explains the author's position, namely the author's irony. Irony is also inherent in this work, the interweaving of two worlds leads to an ironic situation when Anselm is considered crazy after his stories about the other side of reality. Fantasy and fabulousness are manifested throughout the work, the magical world, witchcraft, metamorphoses, fantastic heroes of the work, etc. Hoffmann's fantasy in The Golden Pot is not hidden, but on the contrary, it is explicit. Also, the features of romanticism in Hoffmann's work "The Golden Pot" include such features as unity with nature, this can be seen in the episode when Anselm sees three green snakes wrapped around elderberry branches, after they disappeared Anselm remained standing, hugging a bush elderberries. As for Anselm, he is a romantic hero in this work, he does not betray his dreams. Despite the events taking place, even once in a flask, he does not succumb to the entreaties of the sorceress.
As you know, we associate romanticism with all the brightest, sweetest, with flowers and elegant gifts. It turns out that in our time you can be a romantic. For me, for example, it was a discovery of a bouquet of sweets as an original gift to a loved one. It is very original, pleasant and romantic.
In E. Hoffmann's fairy tale "The Golden Pot" (1814), as in the short story "Cavalier Gluck", in the heavenly, higher, metaphysical space, the "kingdom of dreams" and the "kingdom of night" collide; the earthly dual world is raised to the superreal, becomes a variant reflection of the “archetypal” dual world.
The kingdom of the night is embodied in the old witch, the apple merchant Lisa Rauerin. The witch theme transforms the philistine Dresden - the residence of the witch Lisa - into a super-real diaboliad. Dresden is opposed by Atlantis - the "realm of dreams", the residence of Lindhorst. Witch Lisa and Lindhorst are fighting for the souls of people, for Anselm.
Anselm's throwing between Veronica and Serpentina is determined by variable success in the struggle of higher powers. The finale depicts the victory of Lindhorst, as a result of which Anselm is freed from the power of Dresden and moves to Atlantis. The fight between Lindgorst and the witch Lisa is elevated to the fight between higher cosmic forces – the Prince of Spirits Phosphorus and the Black Dragon.
The characters in The Golden Pot are symmetrical and oppose each other. "Each hierarchical level of the world space is represented by characters connected to each other by similar functions, but pursuing opposite goals". On the highest cosmic level, Phosphorus is opposed by the Black Dragon; their representatives, Lindgorst and the witch Lisa, acting on the earthly and heavenly levels, are also opposed to each other; on the earthly level, Lindhorst, Serpentina and Aselm are opposed to the philistine world in the person of Paulmann, Veronica and Geerbrandt.
In The Golden Pot, E. Hoffmann creates his own mythologized heroes and "reconstructs" images associated with the mythology of different countries and the widest cultural and historical tradition.
E. Hoffmann's image of Lindhorst-Salamander is not accidental. Salamander is a cross between a water dragon and a water snake, an animal that can live in fire without burning, the substance of fire. In medieval magic, the Salamander was considered the spirit of fire, the embodiment of fire and the symbol of the philosopher's stone, the mystical mind; in iconography, the Salamander symbolized the righteous, who kept peace of mind and faith amid the vicissitudes and horrors of the world. Translated from German, "Lindgorst" means a refuge, a nest of relief, calm. Lindhorst's attributes are Water, Fire, Spirit. The personification of this row is Mercury. The task of Mercury is not only to ensure trading profit, but also to indicate the buried treasure, reveal the secrets of art, be the god of knowledge, patron of the arts, an expert on the secrets of magic and astronomy, "knowing", "wise". Lindhorst, who opens the inspired world of poetry to Anselm, is associated with Mercury and symbolizes the introduction to the mystery of spiritual life.
Anselm falls in love with Lindhorst's daughter, Serpentina, begins to comprehend the world of "proper". The very semantics of the name "Serpentina" (snake) contains identification with the savior, the deliverer. Lindgorst and Serpentina open the inspired world of poetry to Anselm, take him away from the banal, vulgar reality into the beautiful realm of the spirit, help him find harmony and bliss.
The story about the lily told by Lindgorst is "predetermined" by Hindu philosophy, where the lily is associated with the female deity Lakshmi - the goddess of love, fertility, wealth, beauty, wisdom.
The “increment” of meaning, embedded in the semantics of the mythological images of the “Golden Pot”, places philosophical, mythological and logical accents in the perception of the characters and the plot of the novel; the struggle of the heroes of the novel turns out to be a projection of the universal struggle between good and evil, which is permanently going on in space.
In the "Golden Pot" Anselm is obstructed by an old witch - "a woman with a bronze face." V. Gilmanov makes an assumption that E. Hoffman took into account the statement of the 16th century English poet Sidney, who wrote: "The natural world is bronze, only poets make it golden."
I.V. Mirimsky believes that the golden pot, received by Anselm as a wedding gift, is an ironic symbol of the petty-bourgeois happiness found by Anselm in reconciliation with life, at the cost of abandoning groundless dreams.
V. Gilmanov offers a different explanation of the meaning of this image. The philosophers-alchemists characterized people of true spirituality as "children of the golden head." The head is a symbol of oracle revelation, the discovery of truth. In German, the words "head" (kopf) and "pot" (topf) differ only in the first letter. E. Hoffmann, creating his ever-changing, "flowing" into each other world of artistic images, turned to the symbolic play of meanings, to lexical metamorphoses and consonances. In medieval literature, a story about the search for a vessel of the Holy Grail by wandering knights is widespread. The Holy Grail was the cup that was at the Last Supper of Christ, as well as the cup in which Joseph collected the blood flowing from Christ. The Holy Grail symbolizes man's eternal search for the ideal, holy harmony, the fullness of existence. This gives V. Gilmanov reason to interpret the golden pot in a fairy tale.
ke E. Hoffmann as an intermediary that removes the opposition "spirit - matter" by integrating poetry into reality
The Golden Pot is built on the principles of musical composition. Speaking about the composition of the "Golden Pot", I.V. Mirimsky confines himself to pointing out randomness, capriciousness, "an abundance of romantic scenes that sound more like music than verbal narration." ON THE. The basket proposes to consider the composition of The Golden Pot as a kind of illustration of the sonata allegro form.
Sonata form consists of exposition, development (the dramatic center of the sonata form) and reprise (denouement of the action). In the exposition, the action begins, the main and side parts and the final part (transition to development) are outlined. Usually the main part has an objective, dynamic, decisive character, while the lyrical side part has a more contemplative character. In development, the themes presented in the exposition collide and develop widely. The reprise partly modifies and repeats the exposition. The sonant form is characterized by recurring, connecting themes, the cyclical development of the image.
Exposition, elaboration and reprise are present in The Golden Pot, where prose and poetic themes are given in collision and are presented in a similar way to the development of the themes in the form of a sonata allegro. A prosaic theme sounds - the everyday world of philistines is depicted, well-fed, self-satisfied, prosperous. Prudent inhabitants lead a solid, measured life, drink coffee, beer, play cards, serve, have fun. In parallel, a poetic theme begins to sound - the romantic country of Lindhorst is opposed to the everyday life of the director Paulmann, the registrar Geerbrandt and Veronica.
The chapters are called "vigils", that is, night guards (although not all episodes take place at night): they mean the "night vigils" of the artist himself (Hoffmann worked at night), the "night side of nature", the magical nature of the creative process. The concepts of "sleep", "dreams", "visions", hallucinations, imagination games are inseparable from the events of the novel.
The exposition (the first vigil) begins with a prose theme. Anselm, filled with prosaic dreams of beer and coffee, is upset at the loss of the money he expected to spend the holiday. The awkwardly absurd Anselm ends up in a basket with apples of the ugly Lisa, a witch who personifies the evil forces of profit and philistinism. The cry of the old woman: “You will fall under the glass, under the glass!” - becomes fatal and pursues Anselm on the way to Atlantis. Obstacles to Anselm are created by real characters (Veronica, Paulman, etc.) and fantastic ones (witch Lisa, black cat, parrot).
Under the elderberry bush, Anselm heard "some whisper and babble, and the flowers seemed to ring, like crystal bells." The second "musical" theme enters - the world of poetry. To the chime of crystal bells, three golden-green snakes appeared, which in the fairy tale became a symbol of the wondrous world of poetry. Anselm hears the whisper of the bushes, the rustle of grass, the breeze, sees the radiance of the sun's rays. Anselm has a feeling of the mysterious movement of nature. An ideal beautiful love is born in his soul, but the feeling is still unclear, it cannot be defined in one word. From this moment on, the world of poetry will constantly be accompanied by its “leitmotifs” - “three snakes shining with gold”, “two wonderful dark blue eyes” of Serpentina, and whenever Anselm enters the magical kingdom of an archivist, he will hear “the ringing of clear crystal bells."
In the elaboration (Vigil II - Eleventh), the themes of prose and poetry develop and are in close interaction. The miraculous always reminds Anselm of itself. During the fireworks at the Antonovsky Garden, “it seemed to him that he saw three green-fiery stripes in the reflection. But when he then peered longingly into the water, whether lovely eyes would look out from there, he was convinced that this radiance comes only from the illuminated windows of nearby houses. The world around Anselm changes colors depending on the poetic or prosaic mood of the hero's soul. During the evening playing music, Anselm again hears crystal bells, and he does not want to compare their sound with the singing of the prosaic Veronica: “Well, that's not it! - the student Anselm suddenly burst out, he himself did not know how, and everyone looked at him in amazement and embarrassment. “Crystal bells ring in the elder trees amazing, amazing!” . The kingdom of Lindhorst has its own color scheme (azure blue, golden bronze, emerald), which seems to Anselm the most delightful and attractive in the world.
When Anselm is almost completely imbued with the poetic spirit of this realm of dreams, Veronica, not wanting to part with the dream of Anselm's court adviser, resorts to the charms of the sorceress Lisa. Poetic and prose themes begin to fancifully intertwine, double, replace each other in a strange way (such a development is the main feature of the development of sonata allegro themes). Anselm, experiencing the power of the evil spells of the sorceress Lisa Rauerin, gradually forgets the miracles of Lindhorst, replaces the green snake Serpentina with Veronica. The theme of the Serpentina is transformed into the theme of Veronica, there is a temporary victory of the philistine forces over the forces of beauty. For betrayal, Anselm was punished by imprisonment in glass. The prediction of the sinister Liza came true. In the tenth vigil, dark and poetic magical forces are fighting for Anselm.
In The Golden Pot, fantastic and real elements interpenetrate each other. The poetic, the higher materialized world of poetry is being transformed before our eyes into the prosaic world of vulgar everyday life. Under the influence of the sorcery of the witch, Anselm, who had just seen Atlantis as a "realm of dreams", perceives it as Dresden, the realm of everyday life. Deprived of love and poetry, falling into the power of reality, Anselm temporarily plunges into the subject-sensory sphere and betrays the Serpentina and the kingdom of the spirit. When love and poetry take over, then in Dresden Anselm again sees the beyond, hears the echoes of the heavenly harmony of the spheres. E. Hoffmann demonstrates the world simultaneously from the point of view of an artist and a philistine, mounts different visions of the world, depicts the poetic and the prosaic on the same plane.
The final twelfth vigil is a “reprise”, where “restoration of balance, return to a more stable balance of power, need for peace, unification” characteristic of the reprise of the sonata allegro take place. The twelfth Vigil consists of three parts. In the first part, the poetic and the prose merge into each other, sound in the same key. It turns out that Lindgorst did not quite disinterestedly fight for Anselm's soul: the archivist had to marry his youngest daughter. Anselm leads a happy life in Atlantis, on a pretty estate he owns. E. Hoffmann does not remove the high halo from the world of beauty and sings a hymn to it in the twelfth vigil, and yet the second meaning is a comparison and a certain mutual continuation of poetic and prosaic
go - does not leave the work.
In the second part of the twelfth vigil, the poetic world is glorified in a complex dynamic form. The second part of the finale - "reprise" - brings together all the images of Lindhorst. It is built not only as a repetition of the images of the first vigil, but also according to a musical principle common to it: a verse-chorus (or refrain). ON THE. Basket notes that the "song" in the first vigil and the "song" in the twelfth vigil create a compositional ring. The third part of the twelfth vigil - "code" - finally sums up, evaluates the previous part as "life in poetry, to which the sacred harmony of all things is revealed as the deepest of the mysteries of nature" .
In the exposition, all the forces of nature inspired by poetry strive to communicate and unite with Anselm. In the reprise, the anthem of love to the creative forces of nature is almost literally repeated. But, as N.A. The basket, in the vigil, was the first to use syntactic constructions with the particle "not", as if indicating the incompleteness, imperfection of Anselm's poetic feeling; in the twelfth vigil, such constructions are completely replaced by affirmative ones, for the understanding of the essence of nature and all living things is finally achieved by Anselm through love and poetry, which for Hoffmann is one and the same. The final hymn to the forces of nature that completes the fairy tale is itself a closed construction, where each "verse" is connected with the next repeating "refrain motif".
In The Golden Pot, music plays a big role in recreating the romantic ideal, which has its own arrangement: the sounds of bells, aeolian harps, the harmonic chords of heavenly music. The liberation and complete victory of poetry in Anselm's soul come with the ringing of bells: “Lightning passed inside Anselm, the triad of crystal bells resounded stronger and more powerful than ever; his fibers and nerves shuddered, but the chord rumbled more and more fully around the room - the glass in which Anselm was imprisoned cracked, and he fell into the arms of sweet, charming Serpentina.
The world of “proper” is recreated by E. Hoffmann with the help of synthetic images: the musical image is in close association with smells, color and light: “Flowers were fragrant all around, and their aroma was like the wonderful singing of a thousand flutes, and golden evening clouds, passing, carried take the echoes of this singing with you to distant lands. Hoffmann compares the musical sound with a sunbeam, thereby giving visibility, “tangibility” to the musical image: “But suddenly the rays of light cut through the darkness of the night, and these rays were sounds that enveloped me in a captivating radiance.”
Creating images, E. Hoffman draws on unexpected, unusual comparisons, uses painting techniques (portrait of Lisa).
In The Golden Pot, the characters often behave like theatrical actors: Anselm runs onto the stage in a theatrical way, exclaims, gesticulates, overturns baskets of apples, almost falls out of the boat into the water, etc. “Through the theatrical behavior of enthusiasts, the author shows their internal incompatibility with the real world and, as a consequence of this incompatibility, the emergence and development of their connection with the magical world, the bifurcation of heroes between the two worlds and the struggle for them of good and evil forces.
One of the manifestations of romantic irony and theatrical
ti - the embodiment in Lindgorst of two different and at the same time non-antagonistic hypostases of one person (the fiery Salamander and the venerable archivist).
Theatrical features in the behavior of the characters are combined with individual elements of the buff opera. A significant place in the "Golden Pot" is occupied by episodes of duels (the buffoon duel is a purely theatrical device). The duel of the great elemental spirit Salamander with the old merchant woman is cruel, terrible and the most spectacular, it ironically combines the great with the small. Thunder rumbles, lightning flashes, fiery lilies fly from Lindhorst's embroidered dressing gown, fiery blood flows. The finale of the battle is presented in a deliberately reduced tone: the old woman turns into a beetroot under Lindhorst's dressing gown thrown over her, and she is carried away in her beak by a gray parrot, to whom the archivist promises to give six coconuts and new glasses as a gift.
Weapons Salamander - fire, lightning, fiery lilies; the witch throws sheets of parchment from the folios in the archivist's library at Lindhorst. “On the one hand, the educational rationality and, as its symbol, books and manuscripts, the evil spells of the magical world are fighting; on the other hand, living feelings, forces of nature, good spirits and magicians. The forces of good win in Hoffmann's fairy tales. In this, Hoffmann exactly follows the pattern of folk tales.
The category of theatricality determines the style features of the "Golden Pot". Wonderful episodes are described in a restrained style, in a deliberately simple, everyday language, and real-world events are often presented in fantastic lighting, while the colors thicken, the tone of the story becomes tense.
Questions and suggestions
for self-test
1. Mythological thinking in E. Hoffmann's fairy tale "The Golden Pot". The element of world life and the burgher world of the inhabitants of Dresden.
2. Anselm - Hoffmann's romantic hero.
3. The originality of the composition of the fairy tale by E. Hoffmann "The Golden Pot".
4. What is the synthesis of arts in the "Golden Pot"
1813 Better known at that time as a musician and composer than as a writer, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann becomes director of the Sekonda Opera Company and moves with her to Dresden. In the besieged city, which Napoleon presses on, he conducts the opera. And at the same time, he conceived the brightest of his early works - a phantasmogorical story-tale "Golden Pot".
“On the day of the Ascension, about three o'clock in the afternoon, a young man was rapidly walking through the Black Gate in Dresden and just got into a basket of apples and pies that an old, ugly woman was selling - and he hit so well that part of the contents of the basket was crushed, and everything that had safely escaped this fate scattered in all directions, and the street boys joyfully rushed to the prey that the dexterous young man brought them!
Isn't it true that the first phrase is addictive, like a witch's spell? Does it lure you with its playful rhythm and beauty of the syllable? Let's write this off as a wonderful translation by Vladimir Solovyov, but it's not Solovyov who is the culprit of the fact that Russian classics rely on Hoffmann's shoulders from Gogol to Dostoevsky, capturing, however, the twentieth century. Dostoevsky, by the way, read all of Hoffmann in translation and in the original. Not bad for an author!
However, back to the "Golden Pot". The text of the story is magical, bewitching. Mysticism permeates the entire content of the story-fairy tale, tightly intertwined with the form. The rhythm itself is musical, charming. And the images are fabulous, colorful, bright.
“Here the monologue of the student Anselm was interrupted by a strange rustling and rustling, which rose quite close to him in the grass, but soon crawled onto the branches and leaves of the elderberry, spread over his head. It seemed that it was the evening wind stirring the sheets; the fact that it is birds fluttering back and forth in the branches, touching them with their wings. Suddenly there was some whispering and babbling, and the flowers seemed to tinkle like crystal bells. Anselm listened and listened. And now - he himself did not know how this rustle, and whisper, and ringing turned into quiet, barely audible words:
"Here and there, between the branches, along the flowers, we wind, intertwine, whirl, sway. Sister, sister! Swing in the radiance! Hurry, hurry up and down, - the evening sun shoots rays, the breeze rustles, moves the leaves, subsides dew, flowers sing, we move our tongues, we sing with flowers, with branches, the stars will soon sparkle, it's time for us to go down here and there, we wind, intertwine, spin, sway; sisters, hurry!
And then the intoxicating speech flowed.
The protagonist of the fairy tale story is the student Anselm, a romantic and clumsy young man, whose hand is harassed by the girl Veronica, and he himself is in love with the beautiful golden-green snake Serpentina. Helping him in his adventures is a mystical hero - Serpentina's father, the archivist Lindgorst, and in fact the mythical character of the Salamanders. And the evil witch, the daughter of a black dragon feather and beetroot, is building intrigues (pigs were fed beetroot in Germany). And Anselm's goal is to overcome the obstacles in the form of dark forces that have taken up arms against him and unite with Serpentina in the distant and beautiful Atlantis.
The meaning of the story lies in irony, reflecting Hoffmann's credo. Ernst Theodor Amadeus is the worst enemy of philistinism, everything philistine, tasteless, mundane. Two worlds coexist in his romantic mind, and the one that inspires the author has nothing to do with the philistine dream of well-being.
A certain plot feature attracted attention - the moment when student Anselm is under glass. It reminded me of the main idea of the famous movie "Matrix" when the reality of some people is just a simulation for the chosen hero.
“Then Anselm saw that next to him, on the same table, there were five more bottles, in which he saw three students of the Cross School and two scribes.
“Ah, merciful sovereigns, comrades of my misfortune,” he exclaimed, “how can you remain so careless, even contented, as I see it from your faces? After all, you, like me, are sitting corked in flasks and cannot move and move, you cannot even think anything sensible without a deafening noise and ringing rising up, so that your head will crackle and buzz. But you probably don't believe in the Salamander and the green snake?
“You are delirious, Mr. Studious,” objected one of the students. - We have never felt better than now, because the spicestalers that we get from the crazy archivist for all sorts of meaningless copies are good for us; we no longer need to learn Italian choirs; we now go every day to Josef or other taverns, enjoy strong beer, stare at the girls, sing, like real students, "Gaudeamus igitur ..." - and complacency.
Hoffmann also displayed his own image, divided in two, in The Golden Pot. As you know, he wrote music under a pseudonym Johannes Kreisler.
Archivist Lindgorst disappeared, but immediately reappeared, holding in his hand a beautiful golden goblet, from which a crackling blue flame rose high.
“Here you are,” he said, “the favorite drink of your friend Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler. This is a lighted arak, into which I threw a little sugar. Taste a little, and I will now throw off my dressing gown, and while you sit and look and write, I, for my own pleasure and at the same time to enjoy your dear company, will rise and fall in a glass.
“As you wish, venerable archivist,” I objected, “but only if you want me to drink from this glass, please don’t ...”
- Do not worry, my dear! - exclaimed the archivist, quickly threw off his dressing gown and, to my considerable surprise, entered the glass and disappeared into the flames. Lightly blowing out the flame, I tasted the drink - it was excellent!
Magical, isn't it? After the creation of The Golden Pot, Hoffmann's reputation as a writer began to grow stronger and stronger. Well, in the meantime, Seconda dismissed him from the post of director of the opera company, accusing him of dilettantism ...
… But Hoffmann would not have been an artist with such a contradictory and in many ways tragic worldview, if this kind of fairy tale short story determined the general direction of his work, and did not demonstrate only one of its sides. At its core, however, the writer's artistic worldview does not at all proclaim 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 duality is reflected in a number of Hoffmann's works, perhaps the most striking and in their artistic quality and most fully embodied the contradictions of his worldview. Such, first of all, is the fairy-tale short story "The Golden Pot" (1814), the title of which is accompanied by the eloquent subtitle "A Tale from Modern Times". Its meaning is revealed in the fact that the characters in this tale are contemporaries of Hoffmann, and the action takes place in the real Dresden at the beginning of the 19th century. This is how Hoffmann rethinks the Jena tradition of the fairy tale genre - in its ideological and artistic structure, he includes a plan of real everyday life, from which the story begins in the short story. Her hero is the student Anselm, an eccentric loser whose sandwich always falls on the oily side, and a nasty greasy stain invariably appears on a new coat. Passing through the city gates, he trips over a basket of apples and pies. The dreamer Anselm is endowed with a "naive poetic soul", and this makes the world of the fabulous and wonderful accessible to him. Faced with it, the hero of the short story begins to lead a dual existence, falling from his prosaic existence into the realm of a fairy tale, adjacent to ordinary real life. In accordance with this, and compositionally, the short story is built on the interweaving and interpenetration of a fabulous-fantastic plan with a real one. Romantic fairy-tale fantasy in its subtle poetry and elegance finds here in Hoffmann one of its best exponents. At the same time, the real plan is clearly outlined in the novel. 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. A significant role in the characterization of the characters is played by a realistic detail. For example, the costume of poor Anselm, mentioned more than once, is a pike-gray tailcoat, the cut of which was very far from modern fashion, and black satin trousers, which gave his whole figure some kind of master's style, so inconsistent with the gait and posture of a student. These details reflect some social touches of the character and some moments of his individual appearance.
A widely and vividly developed fairy-tale plan with many bizarre episodes, so unexpectedly and seemingly randomly invading the story of real everyday life, is subject to a clear logical ideological and artistic structure of the short story, in contrast to the deliberate fragmentation and inconsistency in the narrative manner of most early romantics. The two-dimensional nature of Hoffmann's creative method, the two-world nature in his worldview, were reflected in the opposition of the real and the fantastic world and in the corresponding division of the characters into two groups. Konrektor Paulman, his daughter Veronika, registrar Geerbrand are prosaic-minded Dresden townsfolk, who, in the author’s own terminology, can be classified as good people, but bad musicians or non-musicians at all, that is, people devoid of any poetic flair. They are opposed by the archivist Lindhorst with his daughter Serpentina, 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. It seems to Anselm in his daily life that he is in love with young Veronica, and she, in turn, sees in him the future court adviser and her husband, with whom she dreams of fulfilling her ideal of philistine happiness and prosperity. But now involved in the fabulous poetic world, in which he fell in love with the wonderful golden snake - the blue-eyed Serpentine, poor Anselm cannot decide to whom his heart is really given. Other forces, also magical, but evil, embodying the dark sides of life, supporting the prosaic philistine world, enter the struggle for Anselm against Lindhorst, who patronizes him, - this is the sorceress-merchant, in which Anselm overturned the basket.
The duality of the novel is realized both in the splitting of Anselm and in the duality of the existence of other characters. The secret archivist Lindhorst, known to everyone in the city, is an old eccentric who lives alone with his three daughters in a remote old house, at the same time a powerful wizard Salamander from the fabulous land of Atlantis, ruled by the prince of spirits Phosphorus. And his daughters are not only ordinary girls, but also wonderful golden-green snakes. An old merchant at the city gates, once Veronica's nanny, Lisa is an evil sorceress who transforms into various evil spirits. Through Anselm, Veronica also comes into contact with the realm of spirits for some time, and even the rationalistic pedant Geerbrand is close to this.
The dual existence (and here Hoffmann uses the traditional canons of a fairy tale) is led by nature and the material world of the novel. An ordinary elderberry bush, under which Anselm sat down to rest on a summer day, the evening breeze, the sun's rays speak to him, inspired by the fabulous forces of the magical kingdom. In the poetic system of Hoffmann, nature, in the spirit of romantic Rousseauism, is generally an integral part of this realm. Therefore, Anselm “was best when he could wander alone through meadows and groves and, as if detached from everything that riveted him to a miserable life, could find himself in contemplation of those images that rose from his inner depths.”
The beautiful doorknocker, which Anselm took to enter Lindhorst's house, suddenly turns into the disgusting face of an evil witch, and the bell cord becomes a gigantic white snake that strangles the unfortunate student. A room in the archivist's house, lined with ordinary potted plants, becomes for Anselm a wonderful tropical garden when he thinks not of Veronica, but of Serpentine. Similar transformations are experienced by many other things in the novel.
In the happy ending of the novel, which ends with two weddings, its ideological intent is fully interpreted. The court adviser becomes the registrar Geerbrand, to whom Veronika gives her hand without hesitation, having abandoned her passion for Anselm. Her dream comes true - “she lives in a beautiful house in the New Market”, she has “a hat of the latest style, a new Turkish shawl”, and, having breakfast in an elegant negligee by the window, she gives the necessary orders to the cook. Anselm marries Serpentina and, having become a poet, settles with her in fabulous Atlantis. At the same time, he receives as a dowry a “pretty estate” and a golden pot, which he saw in the archivist’s house. The golden pot - this peculiarly ironic transformation of Novalis's "blue flower" - still retains the original function of this romantic symbol, carrying out the synthesis of the poetic and the real in the highest ideal of poetry. It can hardly be considered that the completion of the Anselm-Serpentina storyline is a parallel to the philistine ideal embodied in the union of Veronica and Geerbrand, and the golden pot is a symbol of philistine happiness. Anselm, after all, by no means renounces his poetic dream, he only finds its realization. And the fact that Hoffmann, initiating one of his friends into the original idea of the tale, wrote that Anselm “receives as a dowry a golden chamber pot adorned with precious stones,” but did not include this reducing motif in the completed version, testifies to the writer’s intentional unwillingness to destroy the philosophical idea of the short story about the embodiment of the realm of poetic fantasy in the world of art, in the world of poetry. It is this idea that the last paragraph of the novel asserts. Its author, who suffers from the thought that he has to leave the fabulous Atlantis and return to the miserable squalor of his attic, hears the encouraging words of Lindhorst: “Weren’t you yourself just in Atlantis and don’t you own at least a decent manor there as poetic property your mind? Is Anselm's bliss nothing else than life in poetry, which reveals the sacred harmony of all that exists as the deepest of the mysteries of nature!
At the same time, both the philosophical idea and the subtle elegance of the whole artistic manner of the short story are fully comprehended only in its ironic intonation, which organically enters into its entire ideological and artistic structure. The whole fantastic plan of the tale is revealed through a certain ironic distance of the author in relation to it, so that the reader has no confidence at all in the author's real conviction in the existence of the fantastic Atlantis. Moreover, the words of Lindhorst concluding the novel assert that the only reality is our this-worldly earthly existence, and the fairy-tale kingdom is just life in poetry. The position of the author is also ironic in relation to Anselm, ironic passages are directed to the reader, the author is also ironic in relation to himself. The irony in the short story, which in many respects has the character of an artistic device and does not yet have that sharply dramatic sound, as in the “Worldly Views of Moore the Cat”, already acquires philosophical richness when Hoffmann, through it, debunks his own illusion regarding fairy-tale fantasy as a means of overcoming the philistine squalor of modern Germany. The moral and ethical emphasis is characteristic of irony where it is aimed at ridiculing the German philistines.
The literature of the era of romanticism, which valued primarily non-normativeness, freedom of creativity, in fact, still had rules, although, of course, they never took the form of normative poetic treatises like Boileau's Poetics. An analysis of the literary works of the Romanist era, done by literary scholars over two centuries and already generalized many times, showed that romantic writers use a stable set of romantic “rules”, which are referred to as features of the construction of the artistic world (two worlds, an exalted hero, strange incidents, fantastic images ), as well as the features of the structure of the work, its poetics (the use of exotic genres, for example, fairy tales; the author's direct intervention in the world of heroes; the use of grotesque, fantasy, romantic irony, etc.). Without going into a theoretical discussion of the poetics of German romanticism, let's proceed to consider the most striking features of Hoffmann's story-fairy tale "The Golden Pot", betraying its belonging to the era of romanticism.
Romantic world in the story "The Golden Pot"
The world of Hoffmann's fairy tale has pronounced signs of a romantic dual world, which is embodied in the work in various ways. Romantic duality is realized in the story through a direct explanation by the characters of the origin and structure of the world in which they live. There is a local, earthly, everyday world and another world, some kind of magical Atlantis, from which man once originated (94-95, 132-133). This is exactly what Serpentina tells Anselm about her father, the archivist Lindgorst, who, as it turned out, is the prehistoric elemental fire spirit Salamander, who lived in the magical land of Atlantis and was exiled to earth by the prince of spirits Phosphorus for his love for the daughter of a lily snake. This fantastic story is perceived as an arbitrary fiction that is not of serious importance for understanding the characters of the story, but it is said that Phosphorus, the prince of spirits, predicts the future: people will degenerate (namely, they will no longer understand the language of nature) and only longing will vaguely remind of the existence of another world (the ancient homeland of man), at this time the Salamander will be reborn and in its development it will reach a person who, having been reborn in this way, will begin to perceive nature again - this is already a new anthropodicy, the doctrine of man. Anselm belongs to the people of the new generation, as he is able to see and hear natural miracles and believe in them - after all, he fell in love with a beautiful snake that appeared to him in a flowering and singing elderberry bush. Serpentina calls this "a naive poetic soul" (134), which is possessed by "those youths whom, because of the excessive simplicity of their manners and their complete lack of so-called secular education, the crowd scorns and ridicules" (134). Man is on the verge of two worlds: partly earthly being, partly spiritual. In fact, in all the works of Hoffmann, the world is arranged in this way. Compare, for example, the interpretation of the music and the creative act of the musician in the short story “Cavalier Glitch”, music is born as a result of being in the realm of dreams, in another world: “I found myself in a luxurious valley and listened to what flowers sing to each other. Only the sunflower was silent and mournfully bowed down to the valley with a closed corolla. Invisible ties drew me to him. He raised his head - the rim opened, and from there an eye shone towards me. And the sounds, like rays of light, stretched from my head to the flowers, and they greedily absorbed them. The sunflower petals opened wider and wider - streams of flame poured out of them, engulfed me - the eye disappeared, and I found myself in the cup of the flower. (53)
The duality is realized in the system of characters, namely, in the fact that the characters are clearly distinguished by belonging or inclination to the forces of good and evil. In The Golden Pot, these two forces are represented, for example, by the archivist Lindgorst, his daughter Serpentina, and an old witch who turns out to be the daughter of a black dragon's feather and a beetroot (135) . An exception is the protagonist, who is under the equal influence of both forces, is subject to this changeable and eternal struggle between good and evil. Anselm’s soul is a “battlefield” between these forces, see, for example, how easily Anselm’s worldview changes when he looks into Veronica’s magic mirror: only yesterday he was madly in love with Serpentina and wrote down the history of the archivist in his house with mysterious signs, and today it seems to him that he only thought about Veronica, “that the image that appeared to him yesterday in the blue room was again Veronica and that the fantastic tale of the marriage of Salamander with a green snake was only written by him, and not told to him in any way . He himself marveled at his dreams and attributed them to his exalted, due to love for Veronica, state of mind ... ”(P. 138) The human consciousness lives in dreams, and each of these dreams always, it would seem, finds objective evidence, but in fact all these states of mind the result of the influence of the fighting spirits of good and evil. The extreme antinomy of the world and man is a characteristic feature of the romantic worldview.
The double world is realized in the images of a mirror, which are found in large numbers in the story: a smooth metal mirror of an old fortune-teller (111), a crystal mirror made of rays of light from a ring on the hand of the archivist Lindhorst (110), Veronica's magic mirror that enchanted Anselm (137-138) .
The color scheme used by Hoffmann in the depiction of objects from the artistic world of the "Golden Pot" betrays that the story belongs to the era of romanticism. These are not just subtle shades of color, but necessarily dynamic, moving colors and whole color schemes, often completely fantastic: “pike-gray tailcoat” (82), snakes shining with green gold (85), “sparkling emeralds fell on him and wrapped around him with sparkling golden threads, fluttering and playing around it with thousands of lights" (86), "blood spattered from the veins, penetrating into the transparent body of the snake and coloring it red" (94), "out of the precious stone, as from a burning focus, came out into all beams from the sides, which, when combined, made up a brilliant crystal mirror” (104).
The same feature - dynamism, elusive fluidity - have sounds in the artistic world of Hoffmann's works (the rustle of elderberry leaves gradually turns into the ringing of crystal bells, which, in turn, turns out to be a quiet intoxicating whisper, then bells again, and suddenly everything breaks off in rude dissonance, see 85-86; the sound of the water under the oars of the boat reminds Anselm of a whisper 89).
Wealth, gold, money, jewelry are presented in the artistic world of Hoffmann's tale as a mystical object, a fantastic magic tool, an object partly from another world. Spice taler every day - it was this payment that seduced Anselm and helped him overcome his fear to go to the mysterious archivist, it is this spice taler that turns living people into chained, as if poured into glass (see the episode of Anselm's conversation with other scribes of manuscripts, who also ended up in bottles). A precious ring from Lindhorst (104) is able to charm a person. In dreams of the future, Veronika imagines her husband, the court councilor Anselm, and he has a “golden watch with a rehearsal”, and he gives her the latest style “nice, wonderful earrings” (108)
The heroes of the story are distinguished by a clear romantic specificity.
Profession. Archivist Lindhorst is the keeper of ancient mysterious manuscripts, containing, apparently, mystical meanings, in addition, he is also engaged in mysterious chemical experiments and does not let anyone into this laboratory (see 92). Anselm is a copyist of manuscripts, who is fluent in calligraphic writing. Anselm, Veronica, Kapellmeister Geerbrand have an ear for music, are able to sing and even compose music. In general, all belong to the scientific community, are associated with the extraction, storage and dissemination of knowledge.
Disease. Often, romantic heroes suffer from an incurable disease, which makes the hero seem to be partially dead (or partially unborn!) And already belonging to another world. In The Golden Pot, none of the characters are distinguished by ugliness, dwarfism, etc. romantic illnesses, but there is a motif of insanity, for example, Anselm is often mistaken for a madman for his strange behavior: “Yes,” he added [Contractor Paulman], “there are frequent examples that certain fantasies appear to a person and disturb and torment him a lot; but this is a bodily disease, and leeches are very helpful against it, which should be put, so to speak, to the backside, as proved by one famous scientist who has already died ”(91), he himself compares the fainting that happened to Anselm at the door of Lindhorst’s house with madness (see 98), the drunken Anselm's statement "after all, you, Mr. Conrector, are nothing more than an eagle owl curling its toupee" (140) immediately aroused the suspicion that Anselm had gone mad.
Nationality. The nationality of the heroes is definitely not mentioned, but it is known that many heroes are not people at all, but magical creatures born from marriage, for example, a black dragon's feather and beetroot. Nevertheless, the rare nationality of the heroes as an obligatory and habitual element of romantic literature is still present, although in the form of a weak motive: the archivist Lindgorst keeps manuscripts in Arabic and Coptic, as well as many books “such that are written in some strange signs that do not belong to none of the known languages" (92).
Household habits of heroes: many of them love tobacco, beer, coffee, that is, ways to bring themselves out of their normal state into an ecstatic one. Anselm was just smoking a pipe filled with "useful tobacco" when his miraculous encounter with an elder bush took place (83); the registrar Geerband “offered the student Anselm to drink a glass of beer every evening in that coffee house on his account, the registrar, and smoke a pipe until he somehow got to know the archivist ... which student Anselm accepted with gratitude” (98); Geerband told about how one day he fell into a waking state of sleep, which was the result of exposure to coffee: “Something similar happened to me once after dinner over coffee ...” (90); Lindhorst has a habit of sniffing tobacco (103); in the house of the rector Paulman, a punch was made from a bottle of arak, and “as soon as the alcoholic vapors rose into the head of the student Anselm, all the strangeness and wonders he had experienced lately again rose before him” (139).
Portrait of heroes. For example, a few fragments of a portrait of Lindhorst scattered throughout the text will suffice: he had a piercing gaze of eyes that sparkled from the deep depressions of a thin, wrinkled face as if from a case ”(105), he wears gloves, under which a magic ring is hidden (104), he walks in a wide cloak, the skirts of which, inflated by the wind, resemble the wings of a large bird (105), at home Lindhorst walks “in a damask dressing gown that sparkled like phosphorus” (139).
Romantic features in the poetics of the "golden pot"
The style of the story is distinguished by the use of the grotesque, which is not only the individual identity of Hoffmann, but also of romantic literature in general. “He stopped and examined a large knocker attached to a bronze figure. But as soon as he wanted to take up this hammer at the last resounding strike of the tower clock on the Cross Church, when suddenly the bronze face twisted and grinned into a disgusting smile and terribly flashed with rays of metal eyes. Oh! It was an apple vendor from the Black Gate…” (93), “the cord of the bell went down and turned out to be a gigantic white transparent snake…” (94), “with these words he turned and went out, and then everyone realized that the important little man was, in fact, , gray parrot "(141).
Fiction allows you to create the effect of a romantic dual world: there is a local, real world, where ordinary people think about a portion of coffee with rum, double beer, smart girls, etc. with a thousand multi-colored rays, and fought with the dragon, which struck the shell with its black wings ... ”(96). Fantasy in Hoffmann's story comes from grotesque imagery: one of the signs of an object with the help of the grotesque is increased to such an extent that the object, as it were, turns into another, already fantastic. See, for example, the episode with Anselm moving into a flask. The image of a man bound by glass, apparently, is based on Hoffmann's idea that people sometimes do not realize their lack of freedom - Anselm, having got into a bottle, notices the same unfortunate people around him, but they are quite satisfied with their position and think that they are free, that they they even go to taverns, etc., and Anselm has gone mad (“imagines that he is sitting in a glass jar, but is standing on the Elbe bridge and looking into the water”, 146).
The author's digressions quite often appear in the relatively small text of the story (almost in each of the 12 vigils). Obviously, the artistic meaning of these episodes is to clarify the author's position, namely the author's irony. “I have the right to doubt, kind reader, that you ever happened to be corked in a glass vessel…” (144). These obvious authorial digressions set the inertia for the perception of the rest of the text, which turns out to be all permeated with romantic irony (see below). Finally, the author's digressions play another important role: in the last vigil, the author announced that, firstly, he would not tell the reader how he got to know all this secret history, and secondly, that Salamander Lindhorst himself suggested to him and helped him complete a story about the fate of Anselm, who, as it turned out, had moved from ordinary earthly life to Atlantis along with Serpentina. The very fact of the author’s communication with the elemental spirit Salamander casts a shadow of madness over the entire narrative, but the last words of the story answer many questions and doubts of the reader, reveal the meaning of the key allegories: “Anselm’s bliss is nothing but life in poetry, which is the sacred harmony of all things reveals itself as the deepest of the mysteries of nature!” (160)
Irony. Sometimes two realities, two parts of the romantic dual world intersect and give rise to funny situations. So, for example, drunken Anselm begins to talk about the other side of reality known only to him, namely, about the true face of the archivist and Serpentina, which looks like nonsense, since those around are not ready to immediately understand that “Mr. the garden of the prince of spirits Phosphorus in hearts because a green snake flew away from him ”(139). However, one of the participants in this conversation - the registrar Geerbrand - suddenly showed awareness of what was happening in the parallel real world: “This archivist is indeed a damned Salamander; he flicks fire with his fingers and burns holes in frock coats in the manner of a fiery pipe” (140). Carried away by the conversation, the interlocutors completely stopped responding to the amazement of those around them and continued to talk about heroes and events understandable only to them, for example, about the old woman - “her dad is nothing but a ragged wing, her mother is a bad beet” (140). The author's irony makes it especially noticeable that the characters live between two worlds. Here, for example, is the beginning of Veronica’s remark, who suddenly entered into a conversation: “This is a vile slander,” Veronica exclaimed with eyes sparkling with anger<…>» (140). For a moment, it seems to the reader that Veronika, who does not know the whole truth about who an archivist or an old woman is, is outraged by these crazy characteristics of Mr. Lindhorst and old Lisa, whom she knows, but it turns out that Veronika is also aware of the matter and is outraged by something completely different: “<…>Old Lisa is a wise woman, and the black cat is not at all a vicious creature, but an educated young man of the most subtle manner and her cousin germain" (140). The conversation of the interlocutors takes absolutely ridiculous forms (Geerbrand, for example, asks the question “can the Salamander eat without burning his beard ..?”, 140), any serious meaning of it is finally destroyed by irony. However, irony changes our understanding of what happened before: if everyone from Anselm to Geerband and Veronica is familiar with the other side of reality, then this means that in the usual conversations that happened between them before, they withheld their knowledge of a different reality from each other, or these conversations contained hints that are invisible to the reader, but understandable to the characters, ambiguous words, etc. Irony, as it were, dispels a holistic perception of a thing (a person, an event), settles a vague feeling of understatement and "misunderstanding" of the world around.
