"Pot of Gold"

The title of this fairy-tale short story is accompanied by the eloquent subtitle “A Tale from New Times.” The meaning of this subtitle is that the characters in this tale are contemporaries of Hoffmann, and the action takes place in real Dresden at the beginning of the 19th century. This is how Hoffmann reinterprets the Jena tradition of the fairy tale genre - the writer includes the plan of real everyday life into its ideological and artistic structure.

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 dual worlds are realized in the story through the characters’ direct explanation of the origin and structure of the world in which they live. There is this world, the earthly world, the everyday world, and another world, some magical Atlantis, from which man once originated. This is exactly what Serpentina tells Anselm about her father, the archivist Lindgorst, who, as it turns out, is the prehistoric elemental spirit of fire Salamander, who lived in the magical land of Atlantis and was exiled to earth by the prince of spirits Phosphorus for his love for his daughter Lily the snake.

The hero of the novel, student Anselm, is an eccentric loser endowed with a “naive poetic soul,” and this makes the world of the fabulous and wonderful accessible to him. A man is on the verge of two worlds: partly an earthly being, partly a spiritual one. Faced with the magical world, Anselm begins to lead a dual existence, falling from his prosaic existence into the realm of fairy tales, adjacent to ordinary real life. In accordance with this, the short story is compositionally built on the interweaving and interpenetration of the fairy-tale-fantastic plan with the real. Romantic fairy-tale fiction in its subtle poetry and grace finds here in Hoffmann one of its best exponents. At the same time, the story clearly outlines the real plan. The widely and vividly developed fairy-tale plan with many bizarre episodes, so unexpectedly and seemingly randomly intruding into the story of real everyday life, is subject to a clear, logical ideological and artistic structure. The two-dimensionality of Hoffman's creative method and the two-worldness in his worldview were reflected in the opposition of the real and fantastic worlds.

Duality is realized in the character system, namely in the fact that the characters clearly differ in their affiliation 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 the old witch, who turns out to be the daughter of a black dragon feather and a beetroot. The exception is the main character, who finds himself under the equal influence of one and the other force, and is subject to this changeable and eternal struggle between good and evil. Anselm's soul is a “battlefield” between these forces. For example, how easily Anselm’s worldview changes when he looks into Veronica’s magic mirror: just 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 was only thinking about Veronica.

The dual world is realized in the images of a mirror, which are found in large numbers in the story: the smooth metal mirror of the old fortune teller, the crystal mirror made of rays of light from the ring on the hand of the archivist Lindgorst, the magic mirror of Veronica that bewitched Anselm. Mirrors are a famous magical tool that has always been popular with all mystics. It is believed that a person endowed with spiritual vision is able to easily see the invisible world with the help of a mirror and act through it, as through a kind of portal.

Salamander's duality lies in the fact that he is forced to hide his true nature from people and pretend to be a secret archivist. But he allows his essence to manifest itself for those whose gaze is open to the invisible world, the world of higher poetry. And then those who could saw his transformation into a kite, his regal appearance, his paradise gardens at home, his duel. Anselm discovers the wisdom of Salamander, incomprehensible signs in manuscripts and the joy of communicating with the inhabitants of the invisible world, including Serpentina, become accessible. Another inhabitant of the invisible is the old woman with apples - the fruit of the union of a dragon's feather with a beet. But she is a representative of the dark forces and is trying in every possible way to prevent the implementation of Salamander’s plans. Her worldly counterpart is the old woman Lisa, a witch and sorceress who led Veronica astray.

Gofrat Geerbrand is a double of Gofrat Anselm. In the role of groom or husband, each of them duplicates the other. A marriage with one gofrat is a copy of a marriage with another, even in details, even in the earrings that they bring as a gift to their bride or wife. For Hoffmann, the word “double” is not entirely accurate: Veronica could have exchanged Anselm not only for Heerbrand, but for hundreds, for a great many of them.

In The Golden Pot it is not only Anselm who has a double in this sense. Veronica also has a double - Serpentina. True, Veronica herself does not suspect this. When Anselm slips on the way to his beloved Serpentina and loses faith in his dream, Veronica, as a social double, comes to him. And Anselm is consoled by a social, general detail - “blue eyes” and a sweet appearance. Replaces Serpentina on the same grounds on which Veronica replaced Anselm with Gofrat Heerbrand

A double is the greatest insult that can be inflicted on a human person. If a double is created, then the person as a person ceases. Double - individuality is lost in individuality, life and Soul are lost in the living.

There are two stages in the history of romanticism: early and late. The division is not only chronological, but based on the philosophical ideas of the era.

The philosophy of early romanticism defines a two-sphere world: the world of “infinite” and “finite” (“become”, “inert”). “Infinite” - Cosmos, Genesis. “Finite” - earthly existence, everyday consciousness, everyday life.

The artistic world of early romanticism embodies the dual world of “infinite” and “finite” through the idea universal synthesis. The dominant attitude of the early romantics was a joyful acceptance of the world. The universe is a kingdom of harmony, and world chaos is perceived as a bright source of energy and metamorphosis, the eternal “flow of life.”

The world of late romanticism is also a two-sphere world, but already different, it is a world of absolute two-worldness. Here the “finite” is an independent substance, opposite to the “infinite”. The dominant attitude of the late romantics is disharmony, cosmic chaos is perceived as a source of dark, mystical forces.

Hoffmann's aesthetics are created at the intersection of early and late romanticism, their philosophical interpenetration.

In the world of Hoffmann’s heroes, there is no single correct space and time; each has its own reality, its own topos and its own time. But the Romantic, describing these worlds, in his own mind connects them into a holistic, albeit contradictory, world.

Hoffmann's favorite character, Kreisler, in The Musical Sorrows of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler, describes a “tea evening” to which he was invited as a pianist playing at a dance:

“...I... am completely exhausted... A disgusting lost evening! But now I feel good and easy. After all During the game, I took out a pencil and with my right hand I sketched in numbers on page 63 under the last variation several successful deviations, while my left hand did not stop struggling with the flow of sounds!.. I keep writing on the back blank side<…>As a recovering patient who never ceases to talk about what he suffered, I describe in detail here the hellish torment of today’s tea evening.” Kreisler, Hoffmann's alter ego, is able to overcome the drama of reality through spiritual existence.

In Hoffmann’s work, the structure of each text is created by “two worlds,” but it enters through “ romantic irony».

At the center of Hoffmann’s universe is a creative personality, poet and musician, the main thing for whom is act of creation, according to the romantics, is “music, the being of being itself.” Aesthetic act and resolves the conflict between the “material” and the “spiritual”, life and existence.

A fairy tale from modern times “The Golden Pot” was the focus of Hoffmann's philosophical and aesthetic concept.

The text of the fairy tale reflects the “extra-textual” world and at the same time the individual character that characterizes Hoffmann’s personality. According to Yu. M. Lotman, the text is “ author's model of the world", through all the structural components of which, the chronotope and heroes, the real world is embodied. The philosophy of romantic dual worlds determines the plot and plot of the tale, composition and chronotope.

To parse the text we need theoretical concepts, without which students, as a rule, call Anselm the main character of the Fairy Tale, and from the artistic spaces they distinguish two - the city of Dresden and the magical and mystical world in its two forms - Atlantis (the bright beginning) and the space of the Old Woman (the dark beginning). Thus delineated chronotope of the tale cuts off individual parts of the composition, reduces the plot by half, reducing it to the plot about Anselm.

If for actor the characters of this plot Anselm, Veronica, Geerbrand, Paulman, Lindgorst and the old woman Lisa are sufficient for the creative fantasies of stage embodiment, then for director this compositional deconstruction leads to the loss of the meaning of the Fairy Tale and its main character - Romance.

Theoretical concepts become indicators of artistic and ideological meanings.

Chronotope - “... relationship spatial and temporal relations, artistically mastered in literature" [p. 234].

The author-creator is a real person, the artist is “distinguishable from the image” author, narrator and narrator. Author-creator = composer both in relation to the work as a whole, and to a separate text as a particle of the whole” [p. 34].

The author is “the bearer of the intensely active unity of the completed whole, the whole hero and the whole work.<...>The author’s consciousness is the consciousness that embraces the consciousness of the hero, his world” [p. 234]. The author’s task is to understand the form of the hero and his world, i.e. aesthetic assessment of someone else's knowledge and action.

Narrator (narrator, narrator) - “this created figure, which belongs to the entire literary work." This role invented and adopted by the author-creator. “The narrator and characters, by their function, are “paper creatures”, Author story (material) cannot be confused with narrator this story."

Event. There are two types of Events: an artistic event and a story event:

1) An artistic event - in which the author-creator and the reader take part. So in “The Golden Pot” we will see several similar Events, about which the characters “do not know”: this structural division, the choice of genre, the creation of a chronotope, as Tynyanov notes, such an Event “introduces not the hero, but the reader into prose.”

2) The plot event changes the characters, situations, dynamic deployment of the plot in the space of the entire plot.

The text of the “Golden Pot” is a system of several artistic events, fixed in the structure of the composition.

The beginning of these Events is the division into “printed” text and “written” text.

First Event- this is the text “printed”: “The Golden Pot” A fairy tale from modern times.” It was created by Hoffmann - Author-creator - and has a common character with the rest of Hoffmann’s work - this is Kreisler, the main character of “Kreisleriana”.

Second Event. Author-Creator to your text introduces another author - Author-narrator. In the literature such author-narrator always exists as an alter ego of the real author. But often the author-creator endows him with the subjective function of an author-storyteller, who turns out to be a witness or even a participant in the real story about which he narrates. “The Pot of Gold” has just such a subjectified author - a romantic writer who writes “his own text” - about Anselm (“the text being written”).

Third Event- this is the “written text” about Anselm.

I event

Let's turn to First art event: creation by the Author-Creator of the “Golden Pot”.

The “printed” text is the result of the work of the Author-Creator - E. T. A. Hoffman.

He gives the title to the work (the semantics of which the reader still has to think about), defines the genre ( A tale from new times), plot, compositional structure, including such a compositional element as division into chapters, in this case “ vigilia" It is through this title of the chapter of the vigil that the Author-Creator defines the space of the narrator - the Author-Romantic and conveys the “word” to him. It is he who romantic narrator, firstly, shows the reader the process of writing history, how and where it happens (place and time) and, secondly, presents what he created ( by the author) text about Anselm.

firstly, he structures his text “The Golden Pot”;

secondly, it includes two more Events:

Text of Romance (the story of Anselm).

In addition, by introducing the name of Kreisler, the hero of his other text, the author-creator integrates the text about Anselm and the “Golden Pot” as a whole into the artistic holistic system of his work.

At the same time, Hoffman includes “The Golden Pot” in the cultural series. The title of the fairy tale “The Golden Pot” refers to the Novalis fairy tale “Heinrich von Ofterdingen”. In it, the main character dreams of a blue flower, and the entire novel is illuminated by the sign of the color blue. The symbolism of the blue flower, like the color itself (blue, blue) is a sign of world synthesis, the unity of the finite and the infinite, as well as the journey of human discovery through self-knowledge.

E. T. A. Hoffmann also offers his hero a certain goal - a golden pot. But the symbolism of the “golden pot” is bourgeois gilded happiness, which profanes the romantic sign. “The Golden Pot” in the context of the works of E. T. A. Hoffmann receives a meaning, which in turn refers the reader to another sign. In Hoffmann's fairy tale "Little Tsakhes" the hero ingloriously drowns in night potty Thus, the sign of the “golden pot” is even more profaned by the definition of “night”. It turns out that the author-creator begins a dialogue with the reader already with the title of the fairy tale.

First event, dispersing space and time, assigning them to different authors and characters, introduces a philosophical motive search for truth: what really exists or does everything depend on our perception?

Immediately after the name and definition of the genre, the reader is “slipped” into a temporal and spatial marker of the transition to “ test of another author." This is the title of the first “chapter” (and there are 12 of them in the fairy tale) - Vigilia .

Vigilia (lat. vigil a) - night guard in ancient Rome; here - in the sense of “night vigil”.

Night a very important time of day for the aesthetics of romanticism: “Night is the guardian. This image belongs to the spirit,” wrote Hegel.

According to romantics, it is at night that the human soul comes into intimate contact with the spiritual content of the world, feelings come to life and awaken in it, drowned out during the day by the external (often imaginary) surface of life. A significant role in this process, as studies by psychologists have shown, is played by brain patterns and different functions of the right and left hemispheres. The left (“day”) hemisphere is responsible for mental operations, the right (“night”) is responsible for the creative abilities of the individual. Night - and not only among romantics - is a time of activity of the right hemisphere and productive creative work.

Through artistic marker - “vigilia” and the first time and space are set in the “Golden Pot”: the personified figure of the narrator, invented by the Author-Creator, is introduced - new Author- romance.

one - demonstration history creation process about Anselm,

second - herself Anselm's story.

Second And third Events

occur at different times and at different levels of the text of “The Golden Pot”: plot and plot.

Fabula is “a vector-time and logically determined sequence of life facts, chosen or fictitious by the artist” [P. 17].

Plot is “a sequence of actions in a work, artistically organized through space-time relationships and organizing a system of images; the totality and interaction of a series of events at the level of the author and characters” [Ibid., p. 17].

Considering the space and time of “The Golden Pot” as plot and plot, we will use these definitions.

Story space- “multidimensional, multifaceted, mobile, changeable. Fabulous space exists in the real dimensions of reality, it is one-dimensional, constant, attached to certain parameters and in this sense static.”

Fabulous time -"time of occurrence of the event." Story time- “the time of telling about an event. Plot time, unlike plot time, can slow down and speed up, move zigzag and intermittently. Fable time exists not outside, but inside plot time” [P. 16].

Second Event- the creative process experienced by the Romantic, the creation of his own Text. In the structure of the entire fairy tale, it organizes plot space and time. The main task of the Event is to create a “story of Anselm”, which has its own time and place.

Twelve vigils, twelve nights the Author writes - this is what it is story time. We become witnesses to the creative process: a story about Anselm is being written in our presence and “for some reason” the 12th Vigil does not work out. All the Author’s activity is aimed, first of all, at composing the composition of his work: he selects heroes, places them in a certain time and place, connects them with plot situations, i.e. forms the plot of “Anselm’s story.” As an author, he is free to do whatever he wants with his text. Thus, before the reader’s eyes, he performs the function of the “Author of the Creator” of the text where Anselm is the main character.

A subjective narrator and at the same time a character in the tale from modern times “The Golden Pot”, the romantic artist creates a text about an unusual man Anselm, whose individuality does not fit into the society of Dresden, which brings him into the world of Lindhorst, a magician and master of the kingdom of Atlantis.

This magician and sorcerer Lindgorst, in turn, turns out to be familiar with the musician, bandmaster Kreisler, the hero of “another text” - “Kreisleriana”, owned by the Author-Creator - Hoffmann. Mention of Kreisler as Romantic's beloved friend, i.e. the author of the text about Anselm, connects fictional worlds (from different texts by Hoffman) and the real world in which Hoffman creates.

It is in this connection, and not in the story of Anselm, that the romantic idea of ​​Hoffmann himself is embodied - the indissolubility of two worlds, the synthesis of the “infinite” and the “finite”. But Hoffman connects these worlds through the artistic device of romantic irony. “Irony is a clear consciousness of eternal liveliness, chaos in its endless wealth,” according to F. Schelling. The entirety of world life in irony and through irony holds its judgment against flawed phenomena that claim independence. Hoffmann's romantic irony chooses collisions that pit the whole against the whole, the world of romanticism against the bourgeois world, the world of creativity against the mediocre, being against everyday life. And only in this opposition and indissolubility does the fullness of life appear.

So, romantic Artist in the “Golden Pot”, performs 3 functions:

2) He is the same a character in his own story about Anselm, which we discover in the 12th vigil (his acquaintance with the character he himself invented - Lindgorst).

3) He is the same "romantic artist" breaking the boundaries of the “story of Anselm” he invented. The introduction into his story of the figure of Kreisler, the hero of the “other text”, belonging only to the Author-Creator, thereby allows the Romantic, the author about Anselm, enter Hoffmann's world as his second self - alter ego.

Plot topos of the second Event constitute the own space of the Romantic author and the text he created. His home is a “closet on the fifth floor” in the city of Dresden. Of all the attributes that belong to him, the reader sees a table, a lamp and a bed. Here they bring him a note from Lindgorst (a character in the text he wrote as the author). The Lindhorst character offers help to his creator: “... if you want to write the twelfth vigil<...>come to me" [p. 108]. From their meeting in Lindgorst's house (the plot topos text about Anselm and the plot topos of “The Golden Pot”) we learn that the Author’s best friend is the bandmaster Johann Kreisler (a very significant character who is a true enthusiast for Hoffmann himself; it is through this image that the “Golden Pot” is united with other works of Hoffmann).

We also learn about the author’s presence of “a decent manor as a poetic property...” in Atlantis (the invisible space of the Romantic author). But in the plot topos this space poetic manor performs the role of connection, identification of the Author and the Author-Creator, the creator of the “Kreisleriana”.

firstly, he lives in the city of Dresden,

secondly, in Atlantis he has a manor or estate,

thirdly, he writes “the story of Anselm”,

fourthly, he meets the hero of his own work (Lindhorst),

and finally, fifthly, he learns about the visit of Kreisler, the hero of another text by Hoffmann.

Author's materialized space(his home) subjective space (Manor, readers), finally, fictional space- a text about Anselm, and the process of writing it - all this elements of space II Events.

The development of the “story of Anselm”, its chronotope - plot space and time.

But since this is the story of the spiritual state of the Romantic author, its “materialization” simultaneously becomes the plot of the Second Event, forming a text within a text. The Romantic Author occupies a certain spatial position in the “Golden Pot” along with the Text he created.

Time, during which the Text is written (12 nights), “outgrows” the plot (vector) dimension and turns out to be plot time. Because this is not only perceptual time, calculated in 12 days (or nights), but also subjective, conceptual time. Before the reader’s eyes, linear time turns into timelessness, through the world of the created text it enters the spiritual world of poetry - into eternity.

Time and space lose their plot meaning through playing with “story plots” in the plot, lose their formal characteristics and become spiritual substances.

Third Art Event- this is a text by the Romantic Author, a story dedicated to the “quest” of a young man named Anselm.

Fabulous space of history: Dresden and the mystical world - the kingdom of Atlantis and the Witches. All these spaces exist autonomously, changing the overall configuration due to the movements of the characters.

In parallel to the “material” Dresden, two opposing forces secretly rule: the prince of good spirits of the kingdom of Atlantis, Salamander, and the evil Witch. While clarifying their relationship, they at the same time try to win Anselm over to their side.

All events begin with an everyday incident: Anselm turns over a basket of apples at the market and immediately receives a curse: “You will fall under glass,” which fable immediately determines the presence of another space - the mystical world.

The story of Anselm mostly takes place in Dresden, an ordinary provincial German town in Hoffmann's time. Its historical, “temporary” parameters: the city market, the embankment - a place for evening walks of townspeople, the bourgeois house of the official Paulman, the office of the archivist Lindhorst. This city has its own laws and its own philosophy of life. We learn about all this from the characters, that is, the residents of Dresden. Thus, rank, profession, and budget are valued above all else; they are the ones who determine what a person can do and what he cannot. The higher the rank, the better; for young people this means being in the position of gofrat. And the ultimate dream of the young heroine Veronica is to marry a gofrat. Thus, Dresden is a burgher-bureaucratic city. Everything is immersed in everyday life, in the vanity of vanities, in the game of limited interests. Dresden, from the point of view of the opposition of spiritual and material values, within the framework of space-time oppositions acts as a closed, “finite” place.

At the same time, Dresden is under the sign of old Lisa, who embodies the devilish, witchy beginning of the universe, and under the sign of Lindhorst and his bright, magical Atlantis.

Third event Anselm’s story is quite easily read by students, and is perceived as the direct content of the fairy tale “The Golden Pot” and, when independently analyzing the text, most often remains the only story of the entire plot...

...And only deep analysis, knowledge of theoretical concepts and knowledge of artistic laws help to see and understand the holistic picture of the text, to maximally expand the field of meaning and one’s own imagination.

“The Closed Trading State” (1800) is the name of the treatise by the German philosopher I. G. Fichte (1762-1814), which caused great controversy.

"Fanchon" is an opera by the German composer F. Gimmel (1765-1814).

General Bass - doctrine of harmony.

Iphigenia- in Greek mythology, the daughter of the leader of the Greeks, King Agamemnon, who in Aulis sacrificed her to the goddess of hunting Artemis, and the goddess transferred her to Tauris and made her her priestess.

Tutti(Italian) - simultaneous play of all musical instruments.

Alcina Castle- The castle of the sorceress Alcina in the poem by the Italian poet L. Ariosto (1474-1533) “The Furious Roland” (1516) was guarded by monsters.

Euphon (Greek) - euphony; here: the creative power of a musician.

Orc Spirits- in the Greek myth of Orpheus, the spirits of the underworld, where the singer Orpheus descends to bring out his dead wife Eurydice.

"Don Juan"(1787) - opera by the great Austrian composer W.A. Mozart (1756-1791).

Armida- a sorceress from the poem by the famous Italian poet T. Tasso (1544-1595) “Jerusalem Liberated” (1580).

Alceste- in Greek mythology, the wife of the hero Admetus, who sacrificed her life to save her husband and was freed from the underworld by Hercules.

Tempo di Marcia (Italian)- March

Modulation- changes in tonality, transitions from one musical system to another.

Melism (Italian)- melodic decoration in music.

Lib.ru/GOFMAN/gorshok.txt copy on the website Translation from German by Vl. Solovyova. Moscow, "Soviet Russia", 1991. OCR: Michael Seregin. This is where V. S. Solovyov’s translation ends. The final paragraphs were translated by A. V. Fedorov. - Ed.

“The Musical Sufferings of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler” // Hoffmann Kreislerian (From the first part of “Fantasies in the Manner of Callot”). - THIS. Hoffmann Kreisleriana. Everyday views of the cat Murra. Diaries. – M.: USSR Academy of Sciences Literary monuments, 1972. - P. 27-28.

Bakhtin M.M. Questions of literature and aesthetics: – M.: 1975, p. 234

Ibid., 34.

Think about these concepts again; in a specific analysis of the text, they will help you understand the meaning of the entire text.

See 4 and 12 vigils of the Golden Pot.

Egorov B.F., Zaretsky V.A. and others. Plot and plot // In the collection: Questions of plot composition. - Riga, 1978. P. 17.

Tsilevich L.M. Dialectics of plot and plot // In the collection: Questions of plot composition. - Riga, 1972. P.16.

...But Hoffmann would not have been an artist with such a contradictory and largely tragic worldview if this kind of fairy-tale short story had determined the general direction of his work, and not demonstrated only one of its sides. At its core, the writer’s artistic perception of the world 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 dual worlds is reflected in a number of works by Hoffmann, perhaps the most striking in their artistic quality and the most fully embodied the contradictions of his worldview. This is, first of all, the fairy-tale short story “The Golden Pot” (1814), the title of which is accompanied by the eloquent subtitle “A Tale from New Times.” Its meaning is revealed in the fact that the characters in this tale are contemporaries of Hoffmann, and the action takes place in real Dresden at the beginning of the 19th century. This is how Hoffmann reconsiders the Jena tradition of the fairy tale genre - in its ideological and artistic structure he includes the plan of real everyday life, with which the narrative in the short story begins. Its hero is student Anselm, an eccentric loser whose sandwich always falls on the greasy side, and a nasty greasy stain inevitably appears on his new frock 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 him, the hero of the 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 the fairy-tale-fantastic plan with the real. Romantic fairy-tale fiction in its subtle poetry and grace finds here in Hoffmann one of its best exponents. At the same time, the story clearly outlines the real plan. Not without reason, some Hoffmann researchers believed that using this novella it was possible to successfully reconstruct the topography of the streets of Dresden at the beginning of the last century. Realistic detail plays a significant role in characterizing the characters. For example, poor Anselm’s costume, mentioned more than once, was a pike-gray tailcoat, the cut of which was very far from modern fashion, and black satin trousers, which gave his whole figure a kind of magisterial style, which did not correspond to the gait and posture of a student. These details reflect some social touches of the character and some aspects of his individual appearance.
The widely and vividly developed fairy-tale plan with many bizarre episodes, so unexpectedly and seemingly randomly intruding into 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-dimensionality of Hoffman's creative method and the two-worldness in his worldview were reflected in the opposition of the real and fantastic worlds and in the corresponding division of characters into two groups. Conrector Paulmann, his daughter Veronica, registrar Geerbrand are prosaically thinking Dresden inhabitants, who can precisely be classified, according to the author’s own terminology, as good people, but bad musicians or non-musicians at all, that is, people devoid of any poetic flair. They are contrasted with the archivist Lindhorst with his daughter Serpentina, who came to this philistine world from a fantastic fairy tale, and the sweet eccentric Anselm, to whose poetic soul the fairy-tale world of the archivist was revealed. In his everyday life, it seems to Anselm that he is in love with young Veronica, and she, in turn, sees in him a future court adviser and her husband, with whom she dreams of realizing her ideal of philistine happiness and prosperity. But now involved in a fairy-tale poetic world in which he fell in love with a wonderful golden snake - blue-eyed Serpentine, poor Anselm cannot decide to whom his heart is really given. Other forces enter into the struggle for Anselm against Lindhorst, who patronizes him, also magical, but evil, embodying the dark sides of life, supporting the prosaic philistine world - this is the sorceress-trader, whose basket Anselm overturned.
The two-dimensionality of the novella is realized both in Anselm’s duality and in the duality of the existence of other characters. The secret archivist Lindhorst, well known to everyone in the city, is an old eccentric who lives alone with his three daughters in a remote old house, and at the same time a powerful wizard Salamander from the fabulous country 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 witch who transforms into various evil spirits. Through Anselm, Veronica comes into contact with the kingdom of spirits for some time, and even the rationalistic pedant Heerbrand is close to this.
A dual existence (and here Hoffman uses the traditional canons of a fairy tale) is led by nature and the material world of the short story. 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 powers of the magical kingdom. In Hoffmann's poetic system, nature in the spirit of romantic Rousseauism is generally an integral part of this kingdom. That’s why Anselm “was best when he could wander alone through the meadows and groves and, as if breaking away from everything that chained him to a miserable life, could find himself in the contemplation of those images that rose from his inner depths.”
The beautiful door knocker, which Anselm took up when preparing 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, filled with ordinary potted plants, becomes for Anselm a wonderful tropical garden when he thinks not about Veronica, but about the Serpentine. Many other things in the novel experience similar transformations.
In the happy ending of the story, which ends with two weddings, its ideological plan receives a full interpretation. Registrar Geerbrand becomes the court councilor, to whom Veronica gives her hand without hesitation, having abandoned her passion for Anselm. Her dream comes true - “she lives in a beautiful house on 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 Serpentine and, becoming a poet, settles with her in the fabulous Atlantis. At the same time, he receives as a dowry a “nice estate” and a gold 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, realizing 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-Serpentine storyline is a parallel to the philistine ideal embodied in the union of Veronica and Heerbrand, and the golden pot is a symbol of bourgeois happiness. After all, Anselm does not at all give up his poetic dream, he only finds its fulfillment. And the fact that Hoffmann, dedicating one of his friends to the original concept of the tale, wrote that Anselm “receives as a dowry a golden chamber pot decorated with precious stones,” but did not include this reducing motive in the completed version, testifies to the writer’s deliberate reluctance to destroy the philosophical idea of ​​the short story about the embodiment of the kingdom of poetic fantasy in the world of art, in the world of poetry. It is this idea that the last paragraph of the novella affirms. Its author, suffering from the thought that he has to leave the fabulous Atlantis and return to the pitiful squalor of his attic, hears the encouraging words of Lindhorst: “Have you not just been in Atlantis and don’t you at least own a decent manor there as a poetic property?” your mind? Is Anselm’s bliss nothing other than life in poetry, through which the sacred harmony of all things is revealed as the deepest of nature’s secrets!”
At the same time, both the philosophical idea and the subtle grace of the entire artistic manner of the short story are fully comprehended only in its ironic intonation, which is organically included in its entire ideological and artistic structure. The entire fantastic plan of the fairy tale is revealed through a certain ironic distance of the author in relation to him, so that the reader has no confidence at all in the author’s real conviction in the existence of the fantastic Atlantis. Moreover, Lindhorst’s words concluding the novel affirm that the only reality is our this-worldly earthly existence, and the fairy-tale kingdom is just life in poetry. The author's position is also ironic in relation to Anselm, ironic passages are also directed at the reader, and the author is ironic in relation to himself. The irony in the short story, which in many ways has the character of an artistic device and does not yet have that sharply dramatic sound as in “The Everyday Views of Moore the Cat,” already receives philosophical richness when Hoffman, through it, debunks his own illusion regarding fairy-tale fiction as a means of overcoming the philistine squalor of modern life. Germany. A moral and ethical emphasis is characteristic of irony where it is aimed at ridiculing German philistines.

On the Feast of the Ascension, around three in the afternoon, a young man, a student named Anselm, was rapidly walking through the Black Gate in Dresden. He accidentally knocked over a huge basket of apples and pies that an ugly old woman was selling. He gave the old woman his skinny wallet. The merchant hastily grabbed him and burst out with terrible curses and threats. “You’ll end up under glass, under glass!” - she shouted. Accompanied by malicious laughter and sympathetic glances, Anselm turned onto a secluded road along the Elbe. He began to complain loudly about his worthless life.

Anselm's monologue was interrupted by a strange rustling sound coming from the elderberry bush. There were sounds similar to the ringing of crystal bells. Looking up, Anselm saw three lovely golden-green snakes entwined around the branches. One of the three snakes extended its head towards him and looked at him with tenderness with its wonderful dark blue eyes. Anselm was overcome with a feeling of the highest bliss and deepest sorrow. Suddenly a rough, thick voice was heard, the snakes rushed into the Elbe and disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared.

Anselm, in anguish, hugged the trunk of an elder tree, frightening the townspeople walking in the park with his appearance and wild speeches. Hearing unkind remarks about himself, Anselm woke up and started running. Suddenly they called out to him. It turned out to be his friends - registrar Geerbrand and rector Paulman and their daughters. Conrector invited Anselm to take a boat ride with them on the Elbe and end the evening with dinner at his house. Now Anselm clearly understood that the golden snakes were just a reflection of the fireworks in the foliage. However, that same unknown feeling, bliss or sorrow, again squeezed his chest.

During the walk, Anselm almost capsized the boat, shouting strange speeches about golden snakes. Everyone agreed that the young man was clearly not himself, and that this was due to his poverty and bad luck. Geerbrand offered him a job as a scribe for the archivist Lindgorst for decent money - he was just looking for a talented calligrapher and draftsman to copy manuscripts from his library. The student was sincerely happy about this offer, because his passion was to copy difficult calligraphic works.

The next morning, Anselm dressed up and went to Lindhorst. Just as he was about to take hold of the knocker on the door of the archivist’s house, suddenly the bronze face twisted and turned into an old woman, whose apples Anselm scattered at the Black Gate. Anselm recoiled in horror and grabbed the bell cord. In its ringing, the student heard the ominous words: “You will already be in glass, in crystal.” The bell cord went down and turned out to be a white, transparent, gigantic snake. She wrapped herself around him and squeezed him, so that blood sprayed from the veins, penetrating the snake’s body and coloring it red. The snake raised its head and laid its tongue of red-hot iron on Anselm's chest. He lost consciousness from the sharp pain. The student woke up in his poor bed, and Principal Paulman stood over him.

After this incident, Anselm did not dare to approach the archivist’s house again. No amount of persuasion from his friends led to anything; the student was considered to be truly mentally ill, and, in the opinion of Registrar Geerbrand, the best remedy for this was to work for an archivist. In order to get to know Anselm and Lindhorst better, the registrar arranged a meeting for them one evening in a coffee shop.

That evening the archivist told a strange story about a fiery lily that was born in a primeval valley, and about the young man Phosphorus, for whom the lily was inflamed with love. Phosphorus kissed the lily, it burst into flames, a new creature came out of it and flew away, not caring about the young man in love. Phosphorus began to mourn his lost friend. A black dragon flew out of the rock, caught this creature, hugged it with its wings, and it again turned into a lily, but her love for Phosphorus became a sharp pain, from which everything around her faded and withered. Phosphorus fought the dragon and freed the lily, who became the queen of the valley. “I come from exactly that valley, and the fire lily was my great-great-great-great-grandmother, so I myself am a prince,” Lindgorst concluded. These words of the archivist caused trembling in the student’s soul.

Every evening the student came to that same elderberry bush, hugged it and sadly exclaimed: “Ah! I love you, snake, and I will die of sadness if you don’t come back!” On one of these evenings, archivist Lindgorst approached him. Anselm told him about all the extraordinary events that had happened to him recently. The archivist told Anselm that the three snakes were his daughters, and he was in love with the youngest, Serpentina. Lindgorst invited the young man to his place and gave him a magical liquid - protection from the old witch. After this, the archivist turned into a kite and flew away.

The daughter of the director Paulman, Veronica, having accidentally heard that Anselm could become a court councilor, began to dream of the role of a court councilor and his wife. In the midst of her dreams, she heard an unknown and terrible creaking voice that said: “He will not be your husband!”

Having heard from a friend that an old fortune teller, Frau Rauerin, lived in Dresden, Veronica decided to turn to her for advice. “Leave Anselm,” the witch told the girl. - He's a bad person. He contacted my enemy, the evil old man. He is in love with his daughter, the green snake. He will never be a court councilor.” Dissatisfied with the fortune teller's words, Veronica wanted to leave, but then the fortune teller turned into the girl's old nanny, Lisa. To detain Veronica, the nanny said that she would try to heal Anselm from the sorcerer’s spell. To do this, the girl must come to her at night, on the future equinox. Hope woke up again in Veronica's soul.

Meanwhile, Anselm began working for the archivist. Lindhorst gave the student some kind of black mass instead of ink, strangely colored pens, unusually white and smooth paper and ordered him to copy an Arabic manuscript. With every word Anselm's courage increased, and with it his skill. It seemed to the young man that the serpentine was helping him. The archivist read his secret thoughts and said that this work is a test that will lead him to happiness.

On the cold and windy night of the equinox, the fortune teller led Veronica to the field. She lit a fire under the cauldron and threw into it those strange bodies that she had brought with her in a basket. Following them, a curl from Veronica’s head and her ring flew into the cauldron. The witch told the girl to stare into the boiling brew without stopping. Suddenly Anselm came out from the depths of the cauldron and extended his hand to Veronica. The old woman opened the tap near the boiler, and molten metal flowed into the mold. At that same moment a thunderous voice was heard above her head: “Get away, quickly!” The old woman fell to the ground screaming, and Veronica fainted. Coming to her senses at home, on her couch, she discovered in the pocket of her soaked raincoat a silver mirror that had been cast by a fortune teller the previous night. From the mirror, as if from a boiling cauldron at night, her lover looked at the girl.

Student Anselm had been working for the archivist for many days. The write-off went quickly. It seemed to Anselm that the lines he was copying had already been known to him for a long time. He felt Serpentina next to him all the time, sometimes her light breath touched him. Soon Serpentina appeared to the student and told him that her father actually came from the Salamander tribe. He fell in love with a green snake, the daughter of a lily, who grew in the garden of the prince of spirits, Phosphorus. The salamander embraced the snake, it disintegrated into ashes, a winged creature was born from it and flew away.

In desperation, Salamander ran through the garden, devastating it with fire. Phosphorus, the prince of the country of Atlantis, became angry, extinguished the flame of Salamander, doomed him to life in the form of a man, but left him a magical gift. Only then will Salamander throw off this heavy burden, when there are young men who will hear the singing of his three daughters and love them. They will receive a Golden Pot as a dowry. At the moment of betrothal, a fiery lily will grow from the pot, the young man will understand its language, comprehend everything that is open to disembodied spirits, and begin to live with his beloved in Atlantis. The Salamanders, who have finally received forgiveness, will return there. The old witch strives to own a golden pot. Serpentina warned Anselm: “Beware of the old woman, she is hostile to you, since your childish pure character has already destroyed many of her evil spells.” In conclusion, the kiss burned Anselm's lips. When the student woke up, he discovered that Serpentina’s story was captured on his copy of the mysterious manuscript.

Although Anselm's soul was turned to dear Serpentine, he sometimes involuntarily thought about Veronica. Soon Veronica begins to appear to him in his dreams and gradually takes over his thoughts. One morning, instead of going to the archivist, he went to visit Paulman, where he spent the whole day. There he accidentally saw a magic mirror, into which he began to look together with Veronica. A struggle began in Anselm, and then it became clear to him that he had always thought only about Veronica. A hot kiss made the student’s feeling even stronger. Anselm promised Veronica to marry her.

After lunch, Registrar Geerbrand arrived with everything needed to prepare the punch. With the first sip of the drink, the strangeness and wonder of the past weeks rose again before Anselm. He began to dream aloud about the Serpentine. Suddenly, after him, the owner and Geerbrand begin to scream and roar, as if possessed: “Long live Salamander! Let the old woman perish!” Veronica tried in vain to convince them that old Lisa would certainly defeat the sorcerer. In insane horror, Anselm ran into his closet and fell asleep. When he woke up, he again began to dream about his marriage to Veronica. Now neither the archivist's garden nor Lindhorst himself seemed so magical to him.

The next day, the student continued his work with the archivist, but now it seemed to him that the parchment of the manuscript was covered not with letters, but with tangled squiggles. Trying to copy the letter, Anselm dripped ink onto the manuscript. Blue lightning flew out of the spot, the archivist appeared in the thick fog and severely punished the student for his mistake. Lindhorst imprisoned Anselm in one of those crystal jars that stood on the table in the archivist's office. Next to him stood five more bottles, in which the young man saw three students and two scribes, who had also once worked for the archivist. They began to mock Anselm: “The madman imagines that he is sitting in a bottle, while he himself stands on the bridge and looks at his reflection in the river!” They also laughed at the crazy old man who showered them with gold because they were drawing doodles for him. Anselm turned away from his frivolous comrades in misfortune and directed all his thoughts and feelings to dear Serpentine, who still loved him and tried as best she could to alleviate Anselm’s situation.

Suddenly Anselm heard a dull grumbling and recognized the witch in the old coffee pot standing opposite. She promised him salvation if he married Veronica. Anselm proudly refused. Then the old woman grabbed the golden pot and tried to hide, but the archivist overtook her. The next moment, the student saw a mortal battle between a sorcerer and an old woman, from which Salamander emerged victorious, and the witch turned into a nasty beetroot. At this moment of triumph, Serpentina appeared before Anselm, announcing to him the forgiveness granted. The glass cracked and he fell into the arms of the lovely Serpentina.

The next day, Registrar Geerbrand and Registrar Paulman could not understand how an ordinary punch had brought them to such excesses. Finally, they decided that the cursed student was to blame for everything, who infected them with his madness. Many months have passed. On Veronica’s name day, the newly appointed court councilor Geerbrand came to Paulman’s house and proposed marriage to the girl. She agreed and told her future husband about her love for Anselm and about the witch. A few weeks later, Madam Court Counselor Geerbrand settled into a beautiful house in the New Market.

The author received a letter from the archivist Lindhorst with permission to make public the story of the strange fate of his son-in-law, a former student, and currently the poet Anselm, and with an invitation to complete the story of the Golden Pot in the very hall of his house where the illustrious student Anselm worked. Anselm himself became engaged to Serpentina in a beautiful temple, inhaled the aroma of a lily that grew from a golden pot, and found eternal bliss in Atlantis.

Retold

Subject.Hoffmann "The Golden Pot".

Target: introduce students to the work of one of the outstanding romanticists of Europe; show the features of Hoffmann's romantic concept; learning to analyze a romantic work; strengthening questioning skills; practicing the skills of a coherent answer to a question.

Equipment: portrait of the writer, filmstrip on the biography and creative path of the writer; book exhibition of works by Hoffmann, a selection of illustrations for the “Golden Pot” by various artists.

Epigraph: Just a minute, I wanted to ask:

Is it easy for Hoffmann to have three names?

Oh, to grieve and get tired for three people

To the one who is Ernst, and Theodore, and Amadeus.

A. Kushner

During the classes

1. Checking homework on the writer’s biography .

W/D - Group 3 (reproducing level) – answer the quiz questions.

Quiz questions

1. Where and when was E. born? (January 24, 1776 in Konigsberg)

2. What is the tragedy of the Hoffmann family? (In 1778, my parents divorced, I stayed with my mother)

3. Name the people whose friendship the writer treasured throughout his life. (Theodor Hippel, Eduard Gitzig)

4. What was Hoffmann's reading range in his youth? (“The Sorrows of Young Werther” by Goethe, “Confession” by Rousseau, Shakespeare, Stern, Jean-Paul)

5. Yours Hoffmann replaced the third name “Wilhelm” with “Amadeus”. What was the reason for this replacement? (Love of Mozart's music - took Mozart's name)

6. What kind of education did Hoffman receive and what did he do after graduation? (Legal, efficient judicial officer)

7. Why was he exiled to Plock and then often persecuted, even before his death? (For caricatures of the authorities and for the fact that the authorities recognized themselves in his heroes)

8. How did creative recognition begin? (From the production of “Merry Musicians” at the musical theater)

9. What role did Julia Mark play in Hoffmann’s life? (Tragic love)

10. Who did Hoffmann perform as in the Bamberg musical theater? (Composer, stage director, decorator, librettist, critic)

11. Name the work that brought Hoffmann the greatest fame. (Ondine" libretto by Fouquet)

12. Name the most famous prose works of Hoffmann, written over the last 9 years of his life. (“Callo’s Fantasies”, “Kreisleriana”, “Serapion Brothers”, “Elixirs of the Devil”, “Worldly Views of Murr the Cat”, “Golden Pot”, “Nutcracker”, “Corner Window”, etc.)

13. Give the date of the writer’s death. (June 25, 1822 – 46 years old)

W/D - For the 1st group (creative level) and 2nd (constructive level) - a business game: “Editor of the publishing house ZhZL.”

- You are the editor of the ZhZL publishing house, you need to prove the legality of publishing the volume “E. "The Life of a Remarkable Man." Give arguments from the writer’s biography, formulate it in the form of an oral presentation to members of the editorial board. Convince your colleagues.

Oral presentations by students of these groups are heard, the best are noted.

Self-testing of quiz answers by group 3..

2.Analysis of the fairy tale “The Golden Pot”. Form - round table conversation.

Even before the discussion begins, students take their seats so that they sit facing each other so that they can see each other clearly. The atmosphere should be relaxed. Students ask questions prepared at home about the content of this work. Questions can be asked not only to a specific student who must answer this question, but questions can be directed to the teacher. When asking a question, the student says to whom he is asking the question.

Approximate range of questions for discussion

· What is the genre of this work? (Fairy tale)

· Is this tale folklore? (No, it’s a literary fairy tale, the so-called fairy tale from modern times)

· What can you say about the main character of the work? (A student, poor, unlucky, sometimes a funny loser - that is, endowed with individual traits, not always positive)

· What attracts the reader to this character? (Enthusiast, imaginative poet)

· What is the conflict of the tale? (Conflict – a collision of the real world with the dream world: he pushed a basket of apples from an evil old woman)

· How is the clash of Hoffmann's two worlds reflected in the depiction of the love line of the plot? (Serpentina – Veronica)

· What are Serpentina and Veronica like? (Both are attractive in their own way: Veronica represents the sphere of everyday life, dreams of achieving everything in real life: dreams of being a court councilor. Serpentina is the embodiment of a high spirit)

· How is the world of everyday life reflected through a symbol in a fairy tale? (The witch is an everyday force, terrible, but also attractive, attractive)

· What is philistinism and how does it affect a person as depicted by Hoffmann? (It deprives a person of high aspirations)

· How does Hoffman depict the triumph of things over man? (Things live human lives)

· What is Hoffmann’s contrast to this terrible world of materialism? (Dream World)

· Which of the fairy tale characters belongs to the dream world? (Fairy-tale characters: the prince of spirits, Soloman, his daughters - three green snakes)

· What is the world like in which these characters live? (Objects in it lose their material omnipotence: music, colors, poetry, the high world of dreams)

· Is this world open to everyone? (For enthusiasts only)

· How does the main character behave? Which world does he choose? (Anselm now rushes into the world of poetry, now into everyday life - to Veronica)

· What role does the feeling of being in a closed glass vessel play in Anselm’s choice? (In this way he understands even more clearly his loneliness in the world of materialism, the vacuum of spiritual life, emotional poverty)

· What choice does the hero make? (After he shakes off everyday life, marries Serpentine, they move to the fairy-tale kingdom of Atlantis)

· Why is the ending riddled with irony? (Atlantis is a dream, but not a reality. Hoffmann questions the romantic dream itself. He feels fear of the phenomena of life in their irrationality)

· What is Hoffmann’s aesthetic ideal? (Creative world, dream world)

Salary – Name the features of Hoffmann's romanticism in the fairy tale “The Golden Pot”. Write them down in your notebooks.

Features of romanticism in the fairy tale “The Golden Pot”

1. Subjectivism.

2. The connection between romanticism and folklore.

3. the position of a “natural” person.

4. Combination of reality and fiction.

5. Showing the complexity and contradictions of human character.

6. Synthesis of arts (literature, music, fine arts, light music).

7. Use of symbolism.

8. Grotesque.

Conclusion: The main conflict of the work is between dream and reality, which is reflected in the construction of the work - in the romantic dual world. Hoffmann's aesthetic ideal is a creative world, a world of dreams and beauty. The combination of reality and fantasy in the story further emphasizes the incompatibility of these two worlds. Synthesis of arts

Music and poetry are ideal forms of expressing a romantic idea of ​​the world and man, the author’s “I”. The fairy tale is dominated by subjectivism as the leading principle in the approach to the world and man in romantic art. Fantasy and imagination play a big role. With irony, Goffman destroys normative aesthetics. "Fairy tale" as a "canon of poetry" (Novalis). Grotesque, the connection between romanticism and folklore is not only at the genre level. Poeticization of the “natural” person as a bearer of the individual, unique. Goffman develops an idea of ​​the complexity and contradictoriness of human nature.

3. Lesson summary.

4. Homework.