794 E.T.A. Hoffmann (with Ritchie Robertson) | My Last Book with Gerri Kimber

Summary

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The History of Literature – Episode 794

Main Theme:
This episode, hosted by Jacke Wilson, explores the life, work, and legacy of E.T.A. Hoffmann with scholar Ritchie Robertson, dives into Anton Chekhov’s philosophy of short story writing, and ends with biographer Gerri Kimber discussing the enduring power of Katherine Mansfield’s fiction.

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Chekhov on Writing: The Art of the Short Story

[01:48 - 13:38]

• Chekhov’s Letter to Leontev: Jacke Wilson reads and discusses a letter from Anton Chekhov critiquing his friend’s short story "Mignon", highlighting both technical advice and Chekhov's humility as a critic.
  • Chekhov points out the danger of "thoroughly detailed description" in short stories, cautioning against overwriting and pacing missteps.
  • Notable Quote:

    “In short stories, it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because. Because I don't know why. At all events, remember that your failings are considered flaws only by myself... and I am very often mistaken.”
    – Anton Chekhov, as read by Jacke Wilson [12:57]

  • Chekhov’s “praise sandwich” differs from modern models. He blends honesty with humility:

    “I have held other opinions than those I have just expressed. On occasion, my criticism has proved worthless.”
    – Chekhov [13:14]

• Jacke’s Reflection: He marvels at Chekhov’s acceptance of contradictions and the idea that artistic truths aren’t always easily explainable.
  • "Give people less and it's better than giving them more." [13:30]

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E.T.A. Hoffmann: The Demonic Genius

Guest: Ritchie Robertson, literary scholar and Hoffmann biographer
[13:38 - 53:00]

Hoffmann’s Myth: Romantically Wild, Actually Disciplined

[13:40 - 16:55]

• Hoffmann is often misrepresented, notably in Offenbach's “The Tales of Hoffmann,” as a brilliant drunkard.
  • Robertson corrects this, noting Hoffmann’s “Bezollanite” (rational control) – "He wrote with inspiration, but he was always able to discipline his imagination and write in a thoroughly precise manner." [14:40]
• Hoffmann’s success as a lawyer is underscored, showing a life of capability and duality.

Early Life and Formation

[16:55 - 21:01]

• Hoffmann’s childhood in Königsberg was “rather miserable”:
  • Parents divorced when he was two; father and brother left; mother fell into depression.
  • Raised by aunts and a strict uncle who, despite discipline, instilled study habits.
  • Music was central to the household, and Hoffmann became a multi-instrumentalist and early composer.

Law, Music, and the Tumult of Napoleonic Europe

[21:01 - 23:01]

• Hoffmann lost his legal post after refusing to swear allegiance to Napoleon. A period of poverty forced him to pursue music and theater, often precariously.
  • Dramatic anecdote: Hoffmann surviving a Dresden bombardment, showing both bravado and the dangers of his time.

Music Criticism: Revolutionizing Aesthetics

[23:01 - 26:29]

• Hoffmann wrote influential criticism, especially on Beethoven. He redefined music as the "quintessential romantic art," offering access to “the infinite.”
  • Contrasts with Kant, who viewed music as low due to its lack of intellectual content; Hoffmann valued precisely that non-verbal, infinite quality.
  • Notable Quote:

    “Its lack of intellectual content, for Hoffman, is precisely what opens it up to the infinite.”
    – Ritchie Robertson [24:28]

• Hoffmann’s reviews were based on reading scores, not live performances, underscoring his remarkable musical imagination.

Context: German Romantic Fiction of Hoffmann’s Time

[28:58 - 31:48]

• Significant contemporaries: Goethe, Kleist, Hölderlin (less acknowledged then).
• The “Bildungsroman” (novel of education) was dominant, as in Goethe’s "Wilhelm Meister." Hoffmann parodies this in "Tomcat Murr," a dual narrative blending a cat’s autobiography and a fragmentary composer’s life.

Hoffmann the Fiction Writer: Motivation and Themes

[32:21 - 34:15]

• Began writing to make money, starting with "The Devil’s Elixir" (proto-horror/crime).
• "The Golden Pot" recognized as a masterpiece; publishers clamoured for his work.
• Rich context of early 19th-century scientific theories: galvanism, hypnotism, magnetism, all feeding into Hoffmann’s fascination with the “night side” of nature and emerging psychological themes.

The Sandman: Trauma, Science, and Mystery

[36:35 - 41:39]

• "The Sandman" explores automatons, trauma, childhood fears, and blurred boundaries between reality and evil.
  • “The hero Nathaniel ends in madness and he does so because he falls in love... with the automaton Clara, made by Spallanzani and his accomplice Coppelius.” [38:42]
  • Freud later interpreted the story through psychoanalysis; interpretations continue to challenge and expand on Freud’s.
  • “The events themselves are sinister enough. Nathaniel is convinced that there is a sinister other world which has evil designs on us.” [40:30]

Crime Genre Pioneer: Mademoiselle de Scuderi

[42:07 - 44:53]

• Sometimes called the first detective story, predating Poe.
• Features a psychological complexity:
  • Protagonist’s motivations and guilt linked to traumatic “maternal impressions” (then-popular pseudo-scientific theory). “He grows up to be first, a jeweler of extraordinary talent, but also with a hatred for lovers and for sex... this will give you an example of the complexity and the depth of Hoffman's best stories.” [44:36]

The Nutcracker and Children's Stories

[45:13 - 46:38]

• “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” (source for Tchaikovsky’s ballet) demonstrates Hoffmann’s willingness to confront dark themes in children’s literature, moving near “the edge” of what might frighten a child.
  • “He goes very near the edge, including frightening material. The Mouse King is evil. He threatens the little girl, the protagonist of the story, Marie...” – Robertson [45:28]

Reputation, Reception, and Legacy

[46:38 - 49:56]

• Goethe and Walter Scott’s dismissive critiques damaged Hoffmann’s standing in Germany and the English-speaking world, labeling his work as “sick” or unserious.
• In contrast, French and Russian authors, notably Baudelaire and Dostoevsky, valued his psychological insight and inventiveness.
  • “So much the worse for the categories. Hoffman is a major writer and one who didn’t fit the conventional categories.” – Robertson [49:56]

Final Years and Enduring Influence

[49:56 - 53:00]

• Burned out by multiple demands—writing, legal troubles, and drinking—Hoffmann died at 46.
  • Lawsuit against Prussian authorities (triggered by caricature) further pressured him at the end.

Recommendations for New Readers

[52:01 - 52:44]

• Ritchie Robertson suggests:
  1. The Golden Pot
  2. The Sandman
  3. The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr
  • “Tomcat Murr... is riotously funny, but also is a serious portrait of the doomed romantic artist.” [52:29]

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My Last Book: Gerri Kimber on Katherine Mansfield

[55:48 - 64:19]

• The Question: If you could read one final book, what would it be?
  • Gerri Kimber chooses The Complete Works of Katherine Mansfield:

    “She has been my life for 40 years, I find something new to admire. I genuinely do. And reading her brings me a very special kind of joy and so much pleasure.” [55:53]

• Why Mansfield’s Fiction Endures:
  • Offers new meaning at every reread; deceptively simple, but “layers of meaning and symbolism... seem endless.”
  • “As you get older, things resonate more, and you go back and see things that your life experience has now enabled you with a fresh pair of eyes to see in a different light.” [58:25]
• Intimations of Mortality in Mansfield’s Late Work:
  • Stories like “The Canary” and “The Fly” reflect Mansfield’s keen awareness of death and loss following her brother’s passing and her own illness.
  • “The Fly... was written from a place of bitterness... but by the same token... the symbolism is so obvious...” [60:16]
  • Mansfield’s writing displays not only darkness but great humour, often overlooked by critics, according to Kimber.

    “Leonard Woolf so famously said, ‘No one made me laugh more than she did in those days.’” [63:19]

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “Hoffman wrote with inspiration, but he was always able to discipline his imagination and write in a thoroughly precise manner...” – Ritchie Robertson [14:24]
• “In short stories, it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because. Because I don't know why.” – Chekhov, via Jacke Wilson [12:05]
• “I call classical language healthy. I call it romantic, that which is sick.” – Goethe, as described by Ritchie Robertson [47:14]
• “No one made me laugh more than she did in those days.” – Leonard Woolf, on Katherine Mansfield [63:19]

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Episode Structure and Tone

The episode interweaves intellectual discussion, literary anecdote, and vibrant personalities. Jacke Wilson’s tone is enthusiastic, self-deprecating, and irreverently warm—a passionate guide in the world of literature.

Listeners Will Learn:

• The true complexity and control behind Hoffmann’s “demonic” genius.
• Why Chekhov counseled brevity and mystery in the short story.
• The importance of openness and humility in criticism.
• How Mansfield’s fiction offers fresh revelation at every life stage, blending light and shadow, wit and wisdom.

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Recommended Listening Segments:

• Chekhov’s Wisdom on Short Stories: [01:48 - 13:38]
• Hoffmann’s Life and Artistic Philosophy: [13:38 - 28:58]
• Hoffmann’s Supernatural Fiction and Legacy: [28:58 - 53:00]
• The Timelessness of Mansfield: [55:48 - 64:19]

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This rich episode stands as a celebration of literary imagination, technique, and the perpetual relevance of writers who blur boundaries between the rational and the fantastical, the humorous and the profound.

Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio.

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[Jack Wilson]

Hello. The 19th century German Romantic author Ernst Theodore Amadeus Hoffman wrote pioneering works of crime and horror fiction, including the Sandman and Mademoiselle de Scuderi. His novella the Nutcracker and the Mouse King was used by Tchaikovsky in the famous ballet. Hoffman was also a transformative music critic and an accomplished lawyer. Today on the podcast, Oxford's Richie Robertson, a biographer of Hoffman, will tell us all about this amazing person and his works. Plus, we'll hear from Chekhov on the secret to writing great short stories. And Jerry Kimber, a world expert in Kathryn Mansfield will join us to discuss her choice for the last book she will ever read. That's all coming up today on the history of literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. Oh, I love this one, people. I absolutely love this one. The last time we checked in with Chekhov. Checked in with Chekhov. Oh boy, you know I can't resist it. Try Jack Forza. Forza. No, I'm too weak. The last time we checked on Chekhov, we heard his advice to a writer about jealousy. See yourself objectively, he said. You will be Happier. Get out of this petty mindset that writers and humans often have, carping about this prize or that review. Good advice for all of us. In this one, Chekhov is writing to that same writer friend of his. His friend has written a story called Mignon, and he's asked Chekhov to point out the flaws. Well, let's back up. Why would you make that request? Well, it's because Chekhov mentioned the flaws first. Here's his letter of January 10, 1888, to Leontev. He says, you don't so much need to be praised for writing well as to be scolded and vilified for how little you write. In Mignon, which was nice. Nice? In Mignon, which was nice, I found several blunders that I explained to myself only by your writing too little ignite yourself. After all, you take fire so easily. Writing too little is as dangerous for one who writes as the absence of practice is for a man of medicine. Socrates, chapter 10, verse 5. Now, end quote. Bob Blaisdell, who edited this book, that we're drawing these letters from Chekhov. On writing, Bob Blaisdell tells us in a note that the reference to Socrates is Chekhov's joke. Of course, we know that Socrates never wrote anything. He'd left that all up to Plato. Okay, back to the letter. Ignite yourself. Chekhov says he's giving this writer friend of his some wonderful praise. He says, write more. You're good. You should write more. But there's a little bit of a dig in there, too. He says, I found some blunders, which I'm chalking up to the idea that you just need more practice. This is very uncharacteristic of Chekhov to be like this. Usually he is effusive in his praise, overly generous, if anything, but here he is telling him, I noticed some blunders, but you know what? That's just because you need to write more. So apparently, Leontev writes back and says, wtf, Chekhov? We don't actually have this letter, at least not in this volume, but I'm assuming he says, in effect, wtf, Chekhov? What do you mean, blunders? And Chekhov goes back to his usual avuncular mode, in which he will point them out, but do it in the nicest and humblest way possible. And for us, the readers, who don't care all that much about Leontev, but care a lot about Chekhov the person and even more about Chekhov the writer, in Chekhov's response letter, we get some insight into his Views on short stories and the secrets behind their success explained as best as Chekhov can. Can muster up as best as he can glean. You'll understand what I mean when you hear it. Okay, here we go. Oh, you of little faith. You are interested to know what flaws I found in your Mignon Before I point them out, I warn you that they have a technical rather than a critico literary interest. Only a writer can appreciate them, but a reader not at all. They, I think that you, an author, scrupulous and untrusting, afraid that your characters will not stand out clearly enough, are too much given to thoroughly detailed description. The result is an overwrought, motley ness of effect that impairs the general impression. In order to show you how powerfully music can affect one at times, but distrustful of the reader's ability to understand you readily, you zealously set forth the psychology of your pheodric. The psychology is successful. But then the interval between two such moments as Amare Moreire in Italian Love die and the pistol shot is dragged out unduly. And the reader, before he reaches the suicide scene, has had time to recover from the pain of Amare Morire. But you must give the reader no chance to recover. He must always be kept in suspense. These remarks would not apply if Mignon were a novel. Long, detailed works have their own peculiar aims, which require a most careful execution, regardless of the total impression. But in short stories, it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because. Because I don't know why. At all events, remember that your failings are considered flaws only by myself. Altogether unimportant flaws, and I am very often mistaken. Perhaps you are right and not I. It happens that I have been mistaken quite often, and I have held other opinions than those I have just expressed. On occasion, my criticism has proved worthless. End quote. Oh, boy, I love the last paragraph of that, where he says, hey, what do I know? I've been wrong a lot. They say that you should deliver hard truths in a sandwich of praise. A praise sandwich. Have you heard that? I think that's probably more effective than what Chekhov is doing here. You want to say, you know, to say you suck, but what do I know? That's Chekhov's approach here I found some big flaws, but, hey, what do I know? I'm wrong a lot. That's not quite as good as effective as saying, let me tell you what's amazing about this, and let me tell you where you could maybe do a little better. But let's not forget how amazing you are at this and this other thing. As a listener, as a recipient of criticism, I think I'd rather have the sandwich than someone to say, you're horrible. But what do I know? I would think, well, you know a lot. You're Chekhov. But I do like how Chekhov doesn't just say, listen to me. There's a reason why I'm famous and my stories are better than yours. I know what I'm talking about, so don't doubt me, just listen. I like that Chekhov's character is such that something in him, within him, compels him to say, hey. I know sometimes I say this thing here that I contradict elsewhere, and I'm not always right. On occasion, I've been really wrong. Chekhov gets it. He knows, hey, I'll tell you this, but on a different day, I might say something else. But what I really, really love about this letter is that Chekhov, who has known as much about short story writing as anyone who has ever lived, is trying to explain something about them. And he's reduced to saying, because. Because, I don't know, we can guess. We can try to fill in the gaps of what he's trying to get at. We could say, well, when a reader sits down with a short story, he or she expects a certain brevity. And so a slower pace tests the. The reader, in a way, tries the patience in a way that a 500 page book does not. It's all about expectations, right? The reader with the sitting down with a big tome, expects a certain pace. You don't plan to sprint a marathon, just like you don't plan to jog a 40 meter dash. If you get on a bicycle and it suddenly goes 60 miles an hour, that would not be good. If you get in a car and you take it on the highway and it only gets up to 10 miles an hour, that also would not be good. We expect different things from our bike and our car. I have no idea why I didn't say motorcycle instead of car. That probably would have been even better, but my first thought actually was horse. Not sure how fast they go, if they even go much faster than a bike. Who knows? Well, I'm sure a lot of people know, but I don't. So be glad I used car. It's better than horse, if not quite as good as motorcycle, because. Because I don't know, exclamation mark. And with that, Chekhov does exactly what he's praising short stories for doing so well. Give people less and it's better than giving them more. If he explained himself for another six paragraphs or something, trying to make his point, it wouldn't be as effective. Him acknowledging that there might not be a reason for this, but it's real and it's true, even if it can't be explained, is much more effective. We don't need to quarrel about the reasons underneath the phenomenon. We only need to agree, and I think we do, that Chekhov is right about the phenomenon itself. Speaking of phenomena, the writer E.T.A. hoffman was a great writer of them. One hardly dares breathe when reading Hoffman, end quote. That was composer Robert Schumann. French poet Baudelaire referred to Hoffman as the divine Hoffman. Ritchie Robertson helped me understand more about the life and works of of this demonic genius. Okay. Joining me now is Richie Robertson, who is a fellow of the Queen's College Oxford and the emeritus Schwartz Taylor professor of German at the University of Oxford. His books include German Political Tragedy, the Machiavellian Plot and the Necessary Crime. He's been on this program before to discuss Nietzsche in episode 463 and Goethe in in episode 480. He's here today to discuss his book ETA Hoffman, which is part of the Critical Live series published by Reaction Books. Richie Robertson, welcome back to the History of Literature.

[Richie Robertson]

Glad to be here.

[Jack Wilson]

So your book begins with an impression of Hoffman that comes from Offenbach's famous opera, the Tales of Hoffman, in which Hoffman himself is a character. And the portrait of Hoffman that emerges, I think will be familiar to at least some listeners. But there is some misleading qualities about it. What's the portrait that they portray in that opera and what in particular do you find misleading?

[Richie Robertson]

Well, Hoffman is portrayed essentially as a drunk who by some chance happens to be a novelist and story writer of genius. Yeah, but the real Hoffman was quite different from that. He was a genius, certainly, and he drank heavily. I don't think it's safe or fair to call him a drunk. And what strikes me in his writings and from thinking about them is he has the quality which he called Bezollanite, which you might translate as some rational control. That is, he wrote with inspiration, but he was always able to discipline his imagination and write in a thoroughly precise manner and produce well crafted and extremely complex works of fiction.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. The Offenbach portrayal seems like a very romantic notion, romantic even with a capital R. That it sort of this he's a victim of dark forces, that he can't control his drinking, but it inspires him to these great greater heights. Almost as if it's kind of a Jekyll and Hyde kind of portrait of him. But he actually, he was also, for example, an outstanding lawyer.

[Richie Robertson]

He was extremely capable and extremely successful. He graduated in law with a very good degree. And he was employed in the. In the Prussian legal system. Employed by the state, that is, not in private practice until 1806. What happened then was Hoffman was based in the part of Poland occupied by Prussia. He was in Warsaw. And after the Battle of jena in autumn 1806, Napoleon invaded Prussia, including Prussian possessions further east. And all the state employees were required either to transfer their loyalty to Napoleon or else to leave their jobs. They didn't hesitate and resigned to their jobs. But that meant that Hoffman was in a very difficult position. For a year or so he nearly starved. He sent his wife to live with her family. He was married to a Polish woman and straight from living as best he could until he managed to use his. One of his many talents for music and became director of an opera company based in. First in Bamberg in central Germany, then in Dresden in Saxony, further south.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. He does. I mean, music almost seems like his first love. But maybe let's talk a little bit about his background so we can get a better handle on all of these different places he lived and what that meant. He was born in, I guess, 1776. What kind of childhood did he have? And was there any stability there or was he already moving around?

[Richie Robertson]

Rather a miserable childhood. He was born in Konigsberg, which nowadays is Russian territory. And we renamed Kaliningrad after an early Bolshevik. But in Hoffman's day, it was an important port. A town of about 50,000 inhabitants, situated on the Baltic coast with a lot of shipping. And it had an important university.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, including a real star.

[Richie Robertson]

A real star. Immanuel Kant.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Richie Robertson]

Whether Hoffman attended Kant's lectures is not known, but he was certainly aware of him. But earlier, young Hoffman was brought up practically as an orphan. His parents divorced when he was 2. No fault. Divorce was possible and even quite common in German states at that time. His father moved away along with Hoffman's brother. And Hoffman had practically no contact with either of them throughout his life. He stayed with his mother and her family. His mother fell into a depression and stayed mostly in bed. He was brought up by his aunts, kindly women, not all that old. And by an uncle who Hoffman's mixed feelings about. He referred to him as the OV uncle. The, oh dear uncle. The uncle was a bit of a disciplinarian, but that was also good for Hoffman because he trained the boy in habits of study and Hoffman was very good at working hard, absorbing a lot of material and making use of it. Above all, perhaps the family were highly musical. Young Hoffman learned the piano. Later he learned to play the violin and the harp. As he was a restless, energetic, creative character. He began composing and writing at an

[Jack Wilson]

early age and just to kind of flesh that out a little bit, his music, this was. He was influenced, I guess by Mozart and this was sort of that era. He was composing symphonies or. What type of. What do we mean when we say he was a composer?

[Richie Robertson]

Well, Mozart was his favorite composer and Don Giovanni, his favorite work by Mozart. He composed not symphonies but short pieces in a variety of musical genres. It's difficult to say how important he is as a composer. Music is not my strong suit, but I've consulted people who are better judges than I am and we think his musical pieces are worthy but rather tame. The exception to that though is opera Undine, composed in his late 30s, which I've seen on the stage, which is a very fine piece. I don't know if you want to talk of that now. We're jumping ahead or come to it in due course.

[Jack Wilson]

Let's save that until we get there, I guess. I'm wondering. He became a lawyer and he was successful and a good one, but did he ever want to do that or was that just what he had to do for money?

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And.

[Jack Wilson]

And he was trying to pursue music or literature, but especially music. Was he trying to, you know, was his law career the way that he paid the bills or did he like something about the law as well?

[Richie Robertson]

Well, it was more the way he paid the bills. I think he probably felt some relief as well as dismay when he was dismissed from his post by the advent of Napoleon. He tried for some eight years to make a success of directing theater but in the end it wasn't feasible. You've got to remember that in all that time, we're talking the period from 1806 to 1814. Germany was the theatre of the Napoleonic Wars. Brought to a kind of conclusion at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. Hoffman was in Dresden, for example. The Battle of Dresden was fought just outside it. The town was bombarded. There's a well attested story of Hoffman breaking with a friend, an actor, in a room overlooking the marketplace in Dresden with some cannonballs plunging in. He actually saw a man cut in half by a cannonball. The actor who drinking with was shocked and dropped his glass. But Hoffman said with bravado, what is life? What a fragile thing life is. Let's have Another drink. But anyway, all this didn't exactly make for a secure atmosphere. He really was obliged against his will to return to the law in Berlin.

[Jack Wilson]

I was quite surprised to read that a lot of his musical compositions have been lost, that they haven't survived. And I was surprised by that because he was so famous as a writer. But I guess that just sort of emphasizes that the musical work just was not succeeding. On the other hand, he seems to have had great success as a music critic. So what were his contributions there?

[Richie Robertson]

His main contribution was an essay on Beethoven's instrumental music and marks a landmark in music history because in praising Beethoven for his instrumental music, he was turning his back on the familiar combinations of music and the human voice in song and opera.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Richie Robertson]

And inaugurating the popularity of instrumental music, including large scale forms like the symphony, throughout the 19th century.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Richie Robertson]

And he also, in this essay, formulates an aesthetics of music. For him, music is the quintessential romantic art. And romantic is a word with a number of meanings. It had a number of meanings in Hoffman's time. Difficult to distinguish. But the key idea for Hoffman is that the romantic opens up a space outside our ordinary experience and gives us access to the infinite.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Richie Robertson]

And in his view, only music can do this. Now that was quite a change, quite a revolution in aesthetics because only 30 years earlier or less, Kant published his work on aesthetics, the Critique of Judgment, in which he rates music as the lowest of the arts because it has no intellectual content. Its lack of intellectual content, for Hoffman, is precisely what opens it up to the infinite.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. So the idea that, like you were saying, he wrote about instrumental music. So instead of seeing a work that doesn't have a libretto and words attached to it, instead of seeing that as an absence or a lack, he's saying that's actually a strength because it's.

[Richie Robertson]

That's something positive.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Richie Robertson]

That's the way music should be going. Besides some Beethoven, he hugely admired Mozart and Haydn. He describes them as romantic composers in different ways. He was also very keen on Christophe Wilbert Gluck indeed wrote a story about him called Ritter Gluck, the Chevalier Gluck. In fact, Hoffman wrote two stories about music. That one and one about a performance of Don Giovanni, which were published in the main music journal in Germany, the Allgemeine Musikahische Zeitung. The AMZ didn't normally publish fiction, but the editor made an exception for Hoffman. These stories were so exceptional. And presently he invited Hoffman to be the lead music critic for the journal. And that meant being the leading music critic in Germany. There's quite a body of music criticism, all of it, I think, now available in English. Hoffman rarely attended performances because he didn't often get the chance. What happened was that he was sent scores and he had a powerful musical imagination and was able to imagine the work from reading the score. I was able to comment on it in great detail.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Richie Robertson]

I think you would say he was actually more important by some way as a music critic than as a composer, with the partial exception of Udine.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Okay, well, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and we'll start talking about Hoffman's fiction, which is what we know him best for today. Hey folks, launching a business is fun, but there's so much to do and so much risk. What if I put out a podcast and nobody listens? What if nobody buys my products? That's why it's great to have one. Go to Partner on your side Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. From household names like Heinz and Mattel to brands just getting started like Gymshark and Death Wish Coffee. Choose one of Shopify's hundreds of ready to use templates to build a beautiful store that matches your brand and benefit from all of Shopify's behind the scenes tools like campaigns, inventory, shipping, payments, analytics and more. If you get stuck, Shopify is there to help with their award winning 24. 7 customer support. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com literature go to shopify.com literature that's shopify.com literature literature

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[Jack Wilson]

Okay, we're back. So I want to make sure before we start talking about Hoffman's fiction that we kind of have some context around German literature or European literature at the time we're in the Romantic period chronologically. What was happening in fiction and who were the major figures that Hoffman had around him and what were they writing about?

[Richie Robertson]

You'd have to see that the picture is rather complex. The always major figures that come to mind are Goethe and Kleist. But that's looking back to a present day vantage point. Hodelin, now seen the greatest German poet after Goethe, was barely known. Kleist wrote to the theater with indifferent success and he wrote short stories which which in some ways are very similar to Hoffman's. Of Goethe. The work that is perhaps most relevant is his novel Wilhelm's Leo Jahre. Wilhelm's Apprenticeship, which came out in 1795 and 76 and was widely read, enjoyed great prestige. It helped to found the fashion for what in retrospect are called bildungs Romade novels of education. Novels will follow a young man. It is normally a young man through the early and important part of his life and follows the choices he makes, the mistakes he makes. And to see how he adjusts or fails to adjust into adult life often himself wrote A kind of building for man, but only as a parody. One of his best works is the fictional biography of a cat, the Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Moor in which the slurry of the cat is interwoven with the story of a Kreisler, a Kreisler, a composer who is partly based on Hoffman himself. The joke is that the cat sets to work to write his autobiography and it uses sheets of paper which it is torn from the real autobiography of the musician Kreisler. So we have the cat's autobiography complete and Kreisler's autobiography only in fragments.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Richie Robertson]

And that is how things are in Hoffman's view. The self satisfied philistine was more considered himself a hand distinguished man of letters enjoys more credit than the genius, the real composer, whose work survives, if at all only in fragments. So you can see that the survival of the works is concerned for Hoffman here as well.

[Jack Wilson]

Right?

[Richie Robertson]

The mole story is very funny, but the really engaging story is that of Kreisler, an artist unhappy in the real world, only at home in the world of the imagination. But the catch there is that the world with imagination puts you in touch with the infinite, that is with something unattainable. The artist can never be happy in this world and has no access to the higher world of art.

[Jack Wilson]

Now he did succeed as a fiction writer. He seems like his stories were better appreciated than his musical compositions. But what motivated him to start writing these? Was this another way of making money? Or did he view himself as an important literary figure, or did he just have things that he wanted to say and this was a vehicle for saying them?

[Richie Robertson]

Well, he certainly had to make money. And one of the first attempts to do so was his other novel. It was called the Devil's Elixir. And that's a horror story. Supernatural horror stories were just immensely popular in Germany to some extent in Britain also. Well, I won't summarize the plot because it is immensely complicated, but I will say simply, it's a very exciting, fast moving story of a man who gets involved in crime and who is haunted by his double. He also wrote at the same time the story Golden Pot, which he himself recognized as a masterpiece. He said, I will never write another golden pot that was much read. And very soon Hoffman was in great demand to supply stories for magazines. A lot of stories were published in magazines in Germany at that time. And later, in particular, what were called almanacks came out at Christmas, containing stories which would last readers for several months. And Hoffman was beleaguered by publishers wanting his stories. Yeah, in one of his letters, in fact, he says he's writing an episode of the Sandman, one of the most famous stories. He's actually, actually in court, sitting beside the presiding judge before she screened by a pile of legal documents. Right.

[Jack Wilson]

And this I found something very helpful in your book that kind of set the tone for this era. I jotted down a list here of some of the medical and psychological theories that were swirling around. This was an era where they were excited about galvanism and telepathy and sleepwalking and the unconscious and animal magnetism and hypnotism. And so he's kind of. He's kind of tapping into these things. But he's not just writing what seems like for shock value, but he's exploring what this means for us psychologically. Or, you know, he's kind of diving into trying to find an understanding of the human mind or human behavior, as well as just writing for stories that go boo and make people's skin crawl and so on.

[Richie Robertson]

That's exactly right beside the things you mentioned. People were fascinated by electricity, which at that time wasn't yet understood. Magnetism, galvanism, the magnetic sleep into which hypnotists could cast people were all associated. And Hofland has many, many concerns. First of all, these phenomena may give us access to what was sometimes called the night side of the natural sciences, part of nature which we don't yet understand and which exists both outside us and inside us in what later came to be called the Unconscious. But he was also interested in the power which a hypnotist or somebody with unusual and occult abilities could exercise and even abuse. One of the earlier stories called the Magnetizer, in which a hypnotist called Alban used his powers eventually to devastate an entire family, often is the is among the originators of the fictional figure of the mad scientist. And you find that in several stories above all in the Sandman.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, right, let's talk about that, because that's one of a handful of stories that seem like were recognized at the time as being his greatest works. And certainly they're the ones that we know him best for today. So what is the Sand Sandman about and what is he accomplishing there? It's quite involved.

[Richie Robertson]

Well, I should say to begin with that the Sandman is the mirror image of the earlier story, the Golden Pot. In the Golden Pot, you have a kindly magician who's also a supernatural being, condemned for his misdemeanors to live on Earth. In the Sandman, you have a a mad scientist called Spallanzani, who's found out how to make an automaton which is lifelike enough to be almost completely convincing. But while in the Golden Pot, the hero falls in love with the magician's daughter, eventually admitted with her to the magic land of Atlantis and lives there happily ever after. In the Sandman, the hero Nathaniel ends in madness and he does so because he falls in love. He's manipulated to make him fall in love with the automaton Clara, made by Spallansani and his accomplice Coppelius. This Coppelius is a lawyer known to the the hero's family, who is a very nasty man, likes to terrify the children, for example, running his great hairy hands over their food, naturally don't want to eat. It's about childhood trauma. The child Daniel creeps downstairs and finds his father and Coppelius engaging some pursuit. He can't quite make out what it is. Coppelius discovers the child spying on them, seizes him and in the child's account twists off his arms and legs and tries to fit them in other places, but finally says it's no good, leave him as he was. It doesn't work. The old man knew what he was doing. I think this to mean that the old man referred to as God. And what Coppelius and the child's father are trying to do is imitate God by making a human being an automaton. And what they can do is they can't get the eyes. Right. They can make an automaton with eyes and seem to express intelligence. Now, 20 years later, Nathaniel is introduced by Spallanzani to Olympia, the automaton who purports to be his daughter. And she distracts from Clara, his human fiance, and in fact comes to obsess him. He discovers, however, that Clara is an automaton constructed by Spallansani and Coppelius for an undisclosed purpose. But they do seem intent on entrapping Nathaniel and driving him into insanity, which eventually happens. You have the hero between two women, the human Clara and the supernatural, or in this case, mechanical woman, Olympia. Now, it's impossible to put together a complete interpretation of the story. What are Spallan, Stanley and Compilius up to? Why do they have it in for Nathaniel, but that in the end doesn't matter. And what is really going on? We're not told. The events themselves are sinister enough. Nathaniel is convinced that there is a sinister other world which has evil designs on us. Clara assures him that this other world, or dark power, is effective only so long as you believe in it and you can escape from it. Now, is it because the dark power is real? Is it because Nathaniel doesn't have the strength of mind to resist it? That again is an unsolved mystery. And as these unsolved questions combined with a fascinating and swiftly moving plot, they give the stories lasting fascination. Yeah, and it was of course a story discussed by Freud. Freud had a rather far fetched explanation involving the castration complex, which you can take or leave. I would leave it, but interpretations of the Sandman since then have largely been arguments with Freud.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, right.

[Richie Robertson]

Well, that simply testifies to Hoffman's lasting reputation as a writer of supernatural fantasies.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, and he was decades ahead of Freud.

[Richie Robertson]

A century ahead of Freud.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, right. Speaking of being ahead of things, his short novel, I guess it is Mademoiselle di Scuderi that was quite ahead of its time in terms of crime fiction.

[Richie Robertson]

It's simply been claimed as the first detective story a crime is solved. Not though, by a detective. Scudery is not a detective. She's not really an ancestor of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin, but rather, by her diplomatic efforts, she brings the mystery to light. But the mystery is an extraordinary one in itself. The story centers on another madman, a goldsmith in 17th century Paris called Cardiac, who not only makes highly valued gold ornaments, but is suspected, it turns out rightly, of being behind a number of mysterious murders that terrify Paris. Cardiac confesses his story to a young man who is as it happens. The son of Scudery's old nurse, the young man appeals to Scudery for help and she manages to intercede with the king to explain that he is innocent. And the real murder is Cardiac. But the real mystery in the story is not who committed the murders, we're told, but why. And Cardiac is a very extraordinary psychological case. One of many curious phenomena people interested in. Hofmann's tea is what were called maternal impressions. It was thought that a strong shock experienced by a pregnant woman would have an effect on her child. There's later a story by Arthur Schnitzer, for example, which a woman gives birth to a black child. And this is ascribed to her fright at seeing black Africans on display in Vienna. Anyway, the idea is all that goes back to Greek antiquity. And it seems that while she was pregnant, Claudia's mother was assaulted by a richly dressed cavalier. As he pressed her to the ground, she clutched at the jewels around his neck as he was lying on top of her. He died of a heart attack. And all this made an impression on the child in the womb, who grows up to be first, a jeweler of extraordinary talent, but also with a hatred for lovers and for sex. The people he murders are all young men carrying jewels as presents to their lovers. This is not explicit in the story, but very astute 20th century critics have worked it out. That will give you an example of the complexity and the depth of Hoffman's best stories.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. There is a third work I wanted to make sure that we mentioned, which is incredibly famous, although I don't know if we often attribute it to Hoffman. And that is the Nutcracker and the Mouse King. Oh, yes, which I know people who go to see that every. Every December.

[Richie Robertson]

Well, yes. In my family we read a Christmas story aloud to each other every winter. And a couple of years ago it was the Nutcracker. Hoffman wrote two stories for children. The Nutcracker. Well, actually his title is the Nutcracker and the Mouse King. The other is called the Strange Child. And what I find striking about his children's stories is that he goes very near the edge, including frightening material. Yeah, the Mouse King is evil. He threatens the little girl. The protagonist of the story, Marie and the Nutcracker, has to defend her. But it's a very, very close run thing. And in his other story for children, a strange child, the children meet not only a strange, an angelic child, but they also have a tutor called Meister Tinte Master Inc. Who is revealed to be an insect, a blue bottle in disguise. The tutor does a great deal of harm. The family is reduced to poverty, but thanks to the good influence of the estranged child, they maintain their confidence and eventually are taken in by kindly relatives, become prosperous and live happily ever after. So in both these stories you have the presence of evil. Almost more, one would think, than a child could stand.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. So we began the conversation talking about a misconception of Hoffman that came out of the Tales of Hoffman by Offenbach. But I understand that he was also misunderstood for quite a while, based on some things that Sir Walter Scott and Goethe had had said about his work. And for a while he was better regarded in Russia and France than he was in Germany and Britain. So what exactly were they saying about his stories? And what did they get? Did they get anything right? And what would you say they got wrong?

[Richie Robertson]

Okay, well, Goethe once said later in life, I call classical language healthy. I call it romantic, that which is sick. And the late, highly conservative Goethe turned very much against Hoffman and Hoffman's popularity, which he thought totally unhealthy. Scott reviewed some stories about Hoffman in translation and condemned them very strongly along similar lines. Yeah, and Goethe includes in Germany and Scott's influence in the English speaking world ruined Hoffman's reputation for a long time. But on the other hand, he was very popular in France. He's translated several times. He's read particularly enthusiastically by Baudelaire, and in Russia he's read by Dostoevsky.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Richie Robertson]

And Dostoevsky, like Hoffman, very keen writing about doubles.

[Jack Wilson]

So the criticism, I guess, was basically these aren't serious. They're more like feverish dreams or they're not real literature, they're just in the realm of work, of imagination and shouldn't be taken as seriously as we would take. Things that deal with reality and the everyday.

[Richie Robertson]

Not only that, they're supposed to be potentially harmful.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, right.

[Richie Robertson]

Husband fit into neat categories of high and low literature. The supernatural, what we might nowadays call gothic elements in his fiction were very popular in Germany, and you find them in quotes, serious writers. Schiller wrote a supernatural story called the Ghosts here. Kleist, who I mentioned, has remarkable supernatural motifs in his stories, which again, he wrote for money. And the division between what the Germans called trivial literature and high literature just can't be sustained. The one overflows into the other. And it's the stories with a gothic or supernatural element the reading public loved and that have in many cases survived to the present day. And of course we have their counterparts in Britain in Frankenstein, which is set in Germany, and several decades later in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Richie Robertson]

So Hoffman is a major writer and one who didn't fit the conventional categories. So much the worse for the categories.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Right. So Hoffman died fairly young. I think he was 46. And you say that he was kind of burnt out by the time he died. Was it all just trying to juggle his various careers and pursuits that had burned him out or was it his personal life that had been taking its toll?

[Richie Robertson]

Partly demanding career. The pressure on him to write. Also, I'm afraid, hard drinking. He's very convivial. He used to meet with friends. Not every night, nobody could have stood that. But several times a week in the Berlin wine cellar. That's what Ostenbach places him in, the opera. He was a very lively companion, like to dominate the conversation with an endless flow of witty remarks and stories. And that couldn't last indefinitely.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Richie Robertson]

Also, shortly before the end of his life, he got into serious trouble by caricaturing the Prussian security apparatus in a story the authorities were worried of what they called demagogues, student radicals. Hoffman didn't think much of student radical himself. He thought they were just silly young men and the wrong to institute court proceedings against them. If he'd left it there, that might have been okay. But he caricatured the prosecutor who pursued these young men in his story Master Flea. And of course this was discovered. It considered a serious insult to the dignity of the judicial system. And if Hoffman had not fallen dangerously ill at that time, we're talking about 1822, he would have very least been dismissed from his post. But fortunately and unfortunately his illness came rapidly to an end.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, so for listeners who might be new to Hoffman, where would you recommend that they start? Is the Sandman the. The best entree into his works?

[Richie Robertson]

And start with the golden pot.

[Jack Wilson]

Oh, the golden pot, yeah.

[Richie Robertson]

Yes, that has certainly some terrifying evil beings, but by and large is a happy story that ends well. It's a funny story. Then you must read the Sandman.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Richie Robertson]

And third, I would say read the Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Moore, which is riotously funny, but also is a serious portrait of the doomed romantic artist.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Okay. Well, that's three good recommendations. This has been wonderful. I've learned a lot from you and from your book, which is called ETA Hoffman. It's part of the Critical Live series published by Reaction Books. Richie Robertson, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.

[Richie Robertson]

You're more than welcome.

[Jack Wilson]

Where is Jared Alpha? A minor? Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again.

[Richie Robertson]

So what's next?

[Jack Wilson]

I feel liberated. We're gonna take this city back over

[Richie Robertson]

medicated in an all new season.

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[Jack Wilson]

I can work with them. This should be tons of fun. Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again now streaming only on Disney plus. Hello. Do you ever wish you could step away from the noise of the world for a little while? Stories from the village of Nothing Much takes you there. Each episode invites you into the village, a soothing place where life moves gently. From the inn on the lake to the downtown bookshop, from the farmer's market to a cabin in the woods. You'll hear warm, family friendly stories designed to help you slow down, breathe easier and feel at home. It's a bit like a grown up version of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. Gentle, thoughtful, and full of everyday magic. From the creator of the internationally beloved podcast, Nothing Much Happens. This series expands the village into a rich, ongoing world. It's not about falling asleep. It's about comfort, calm, and the joy of a good story. If you're new, try episode 84, all animal edition. It's a delightful introduction to the village's gentle pace and whimsy. You can listen to stories from the village of Nothing Much wherever you get your pod. And finally, today, we mix things up with New Zealand writer Kathryn Mansfield and her biographer, our former guest, Jerry Kimber. After Jerry and I discussed Mansfield's childhood and her trip to meet her heroes in London and the wild times that ensued in and out and around the Bloomsbury Group, I asked Jerry a special question. Okay. We're joined now by Jerry Kimber, author of Kathryn A Hidden Life. Jerry, this question comes from a listener who asks, what do you want your last book to be? This will be the last book you will ever read. You can either choose one that exists or describe one that has not yet been written.

[Jerry Kimber]

Well, I think it would honestly have to be the complete works of Kathryn Mansfield or the complete fiction, because every time I read them and bearing in mind, I mean, she has been my life for 40 years, I find something new to admire. I genuinely do. And reading her brings me a very special kind of joy and so much pleasure. So she, for me, she has been absolutely worth the lifetime's obsession and I cannot think of any. And I. I mean, there are so many writers that I do admire and books that I am obsessed with, but if I only had one before I died that I could read fully before I died. It would have. I would have to say Katherine Mansfield and just dwell in the genius of her writing and immerse myself in all of that for one last time.

[Jack Wilson]

Now, there's a couple of different paradigms, I would say, for someone who can go back and reread things and find new things in it. And one might be if you read a book like Ulysses by James Joyce, there's so many details that it's hard to take it all in. And you would find fresh things every time just because you're. You're noticing different things and so on. And then there's the model where the book kind of grows with you. And as you change and you reach different stages in your life or have different revelations or understandings about how to interact with other human beings, and you sort of go through different emotional stages yourself, then you start to notice different things because you see that someone has already had an insight into that or can reflect things that you're, you know, the way that you're aging and feeling differently as you grow older. Would you say that it's one of those two things or something else that you're. That make these so fresh for you when you return to them?

[Jerry Kimber]

I think definitely every time I read them, I pick up on something new. And bearing in mind, I first started reading Mansfield when I was 15 and picked up a cheap secondhand edition of her work. And just like, there was a photograph of her on the COVID I thought she looks interesting read. It was absolutely hooked. But what I. Mansfield's stories are deceptively easy to read, to the point that some people think she just wrote children's stories. Well, she didn't. But they are so deceptively easy to read. It's only if you, as you read them and reread them, and as you've just so perceptively said, as you get older, the things resonate more and things mean more, and you go back and see things that your life experience has now enabled you with a fresh pair of eyes to see in a different light. That is so true of Mansfield, and it certainly is true of my reading of Mansfield over, well, many, many years, is that I see things in a different way. And when a character speaks, speaks, or when she describes something and something that 20 years previously I had glossed over, I now think, oh, my goodness, that's what she meant because my life experience has changed and that the layers of Mansfield's meaning and symbolism to me seem endless. And that is another mark, I think, of her extraordinary genius.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Now she was a little Bit like Keats in the sense of being very young when she got a diagnosis that essentially is almost like a death sentence at that time. As her writing from those years between the ages of 29 and her death at age 34, do you see intimate, what's the right word? Intimations of mortality. Do you see that starting to express itself in her work?

[Jerry Kimber]

I think so. Certainly in that last year, that last complete story, the Canary, about that little bird shut up in that cage, which she wrote in Switzerland, I think is very moving. And also the Fly, that visceral, awful story of the death of a fly, where a man, obviously based on her own father, is thinking about the death of his son at the front during World War I, which obviously, as we all know, is what happened to Mansfield's beloved only brother. So it's very much a personal story, but so. Well, I mean, the way that the man, the boss, as he's called, tortures that fly, so in the end he can't breathe because he just keeps giving him ink, putting ink on top, that in the end the fly can no longer breathe. And in a way that almost resonates with the fact that Mansfield's lungs, as we know, were filling up with blood and that eventually her lungs would give in and she would not be able to breathe. It's a horrific story. It's not one of my favourites, it's one of the crazy critics favourite. I think more has been written on the Fly than almost any of her other stories, and I kind of understand it, but by the same token, I think it was written from a place of bitterness and I definitely do not think it's Mansfield's best work. And yet, for some reason, because the symbolism is so obvious, I think it's one that critics perhaps like to concentrate on.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, right. It reminds me a little bit of a Stephen King story where he was writing, you know, a bunch of his stories, actually, where he would have a. Like a book like Cujo, where there's a dog, he's trapped inside a car and a dog is trying to get in the car. And then he would later say, well, actually, you know, in retrospect, I was writing about my own addiction to cocaine, and it kind of makes what would otherwise be just a fairly routine story for Stephen King and turn it into something that is pretty gripping and interesting. Once you know of that connection and you start to draw the parallels of something he's able to express through a story that doesn't seem to be anything about cocaine, is suddenly like, you know, this is a pretty interesting symbol for what he was going through.

[Richie Robertson]

Yeah.

[Jerry Kimber]

That's amazing. Obviously, I didn't know that story, but I absolutely can appreciate that. And I do think that the Fly was Mansfield's sort of bitter response to her own situation and obviously to the death of her brother, who she had truly worshipped. But it is such a dark, dark story, and Mansfield so rarely wrote about the dark side. There are a few stories that deal with the darker side of life, but on the whole, I think she did try very hard in spite of everything that was happening to her. The misery of her relationship and then marriage to Murray, the difficulties of being so ill for so long. In spite of all of that, she tried so hard to see the positives in life and wrote some fantastically funny characters and funny situations. Never, ever forget how humorous Mansfield could be. As Leonard Woolf so famously said, no one made me laugh more than she did in those days. Mansfield was a comedic genius, and that comedic genius comes out in so many of her stories, even the slightly. There's no comedy in the Fly, but in so many of the stories, other stories which have a serious purpose, there is still comedy. And I would say to any reader coming to Mansfield is look out for that humour because it is present. And she was so brilliant at creating humour in situations and making us laugh.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah. Well, the good thing is, since you've chosen the collected works of Kathryn Mansfield, you can choose which stories to read and in which order. So you will be all set. Jerry Kimber, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.

[Jerry Kimber]

It's been such a pleasure. Thank you.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, there we go. My goodness, I am so lucky to be helped along by so many smart people like Richie Robertson and Jerry Kimber. My thanks to both of them for joining me today. And my thanks to you, dear listeners. I could not keep this up without your generous support. If you'd like to toss a few coins in the coffers or sustain us with something a little more than that, you can Visit [e-mail] Literature which will also give you access to the episodes without all the ads. A lot fewer ads we give to our Patreon members. We truly do appreciate your support. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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