A Study of the Major Novellas of E. T. A. Hoffmann (review)

Abstract

256 Reviews the need for the will to re-establish the link between the world of appearances and a lost human capacity to interact with them is seen as an essential further step from the synaesthesia ofthe arts in early Romantic art towards Wagner's use of synthesis. Wagner thus evokes through 'Gesamtkunstwerke' the totality of a universe in rela? tionship to man. This book is useful as a reference short-cut through the often tortuous theories of the early Romantics. It casts light on the role of music as a co-ordinating and intensifyingfactor and will be necessary reading forfuture research, especially on Wagner's use ofthe 'Gesamtkunstwerk'. Mellen University, Iowa Brian Keith-Smith A Study of the Major Novellas of E. T. A. Hoffmann. By Birgit Roder. Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2003. xii+193 pp. ?40; $60. ISBN 1-57113-271-6. Birgit Roder studies a series of Kiinstlernovellen by Hoffmann, discussing the dilemmas and challenges of the artist figurein his relations to his muse and to his bourgeois audience. She aims to elucidate Hoffmann's understanding of Romantic longing for the Ideal and his perception of the necessary links between the aesthetic and social realms. The study focuses both on the disillusionment ofthe artistwho discovers that his female icon is in fact a human being, and on the desperation of the artist forced by a philistine society with a purely superficial interest in art to take up an extreme position. The investigation centres on three key themes of love, madness, and death: the first,like art, brings the individual into contact with the Ideal, the latter two are potential outcomes ifthe artist is thwarted or fails in his quest. Chapter 1 goes over some general background to Romantic aesthetics, emphasizing the central aim in Romantic writing of capturing the Ideal and coming into contact with the Absolute, thus bringing a metaphysical realm within the experience of the individual. As this must remain an aim, or a process, Romantic irony can enable the artist to accept that what he creates will always fall short of the idea that inspired his creation. Roder compares this brieflyto the role of the reader, who, in responding to the text, must recognize that the work of art is a medium representing the Ideal in symbolic form and not itself the Ideal. She takes issue with the view that Hoffmann's texts defy interpretation, but her argument that Hoffmann's intention is to encourage the reader to adopt an active and critical attitude to what has been narrated is not radically differentfrom what previous critics have contended. The novellas Das Fraulein von Scuderi and Der Sandmann are investigated by Roder under the heading of madness. Cardillac in the former is interpreted as an artist who does not feel bound by moral codes, Scuderi as having moral principles but only a superficial understanding of art, and the novella as a whole as suggesting that any society that neglects either will fail its citizens. The foregrounding of the issue of the ownership of the work of art is interesting, but the analysis of the individual characters does not take due account of subtleties already identified in this novella. Der Sandmann is shown to deal with the theme of art and creative activity in general and with the problem of communicating art. According to Roder, Nathanael is made privy as artist and as lover (of Olimpia) to a world that eludes many others, but to arrive at this conclusion she must present the figureof Olimpia and Nathanael's expe? rience with her in a very positive way which understates both the obvious inadequacy of any relationship with an automaton and Hoffmann's humour in presenting the relationship and the reaction of others once the discovery has been made. Roder's conclusion is that a solution is subtly offered by the text, i.e. by Hoffmann, to the Nathanael/Clara dichotomy, namely proper communication between the lovers, just MLRy ioo.i, 2005 257 as this is indispensable between artist and audience as part of a never-ending dia? logue between reason and imagination; but as such communication is not possible within the story since the characters are...