The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr
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44. the best of possible worlds: Hoffmann refers to the idea best known through Voltaire’s mockery of it in Candide (1759); it actually originated half a century earlier in the optimistic theories of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz (1646–1716), philosopher, mathematician and rival of Isaac Newton. Leibnitz held that although the world was imperfect, it was still the best possible world because only God is perfect, and a good God could not make any world but the least imperfect possible. Voltaire holds the notion up to ridicule in Candide, where the central characters suffer misfortune after misfortune, but still insist with foolish optimism that all must be for the best.
45. the advantage: i.e. of having been the first to say something so insulting as to require a challenge to a duel in answer. Even into the 20th century, duelling on points of honour was a tradition of the student fraternities of German universities.
46. an obvious imitation of Touchstone’s lie seven times removed: See Shakespeare’s As You Like It (V.iv).
47. not even a rencontre: By the standards of the student fraternities, a rencontre (literally, ‘meeting’) was a less formal and honourable affair than a duel proper. The latter followed strict rules, was fought with an agreed choice of weapons (see the cats’ choice of biting or scratching), and was divided into rounds (Murr and his opponent fight in ‘jumps’ instead). A rencontre was more of an ordinary brawl, conducted non-stop and without any special regulations.
48. Theden’s Arquebusade: A lotion for dressing wounds invented by Johann Christian Anton Theden (1714–97). The medical cat has of course been spraying urine on the patient.
49. ‘Chi no se ajuta, se nega,’ says Brighella in Gozzi’s Fortunate Beggars: Literally, ‘He who does not help himself denies himself’, i.e., ‘Fortune helps those who help themselves’. The character Brighella is a figure in a play called I pitocchi fortunati (‘The Fortunate Beggars’), by Carlo Gozzi (see Part II, note 54).
50. Benedictus qui venit in nomine domini: Latin, ‘Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord.’
51. the Palladian style: The neo-classical style of the famous Renaissance architect Andrea di Pietro, known as Palladio (1508–80).
52. the Propaganda in Rome: In full, the congregatio de propaganda fide, ‘the Congregation for Propagating the Faith’, a Roman Catholic committee of cardinals with responsibility for foreign missions, founded by Pope Gregory XV in 1622.
53. Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier: The footnote giving the title of this collection is Hoffmann’s own. The book, first published in 1814, includes his series of essays entitled Kreisleriana, about his invented character the musician Kreisler and music in general. The passage to which he refers is in his introduction to the essays: ‘Thus it was that his friends could not induce him to write a composition down, or if he did write it down to leave it intact.’
54. the Agnus Dei: In his partial identification with Kreisler, Hoffmann may be referring to the Agnus Dei from his own Mass in D of 1805.
55. amoroso: Italian and Spanish, ‘a lover, a gallant’.
56. Pistofolus the notary: The male lead in Paisiello’s opera La Molinara (see Part II, note 31).
57. a hopping dance: In the German, a Hopswalzer, a dance of the period in two-four time.
58. Raja torpedo: See Part II, note 65.
59. Prince Hamlet: Hamlet (III, ii). See also Part II, note 21, referring to the same passage in which Hamlet points out, in musical metaphors, that he is not willing to let Rosencrantz and Guildenstern manipulate him.
60. Our wicked enemy, destroyer of all feline comfort: The episode here in which Achilles the dog attacks the feline fraternity is a reference to the action taken by the authorities to suppress the national body of Burschenschaften in 1819, after the assassination for political reasons of the playwright August von Kotzebue (see Part II, note 80) by a Burschenschaft member, a student called Karl Ludwig Stand.
61. the fateful word Monsieur: The Burschenschaften originally grew out of student opposition to reactionary and in some cases pro-French attitudes on the part of the authorities during the Napoleonic Wars. They favoured the political unity of Germany and already had some nationalistic leanings, which became much more pronounced in the later 19th century. See also Part III, note 8.
62. pereats: Latin, ‘let him perish’, or ‘down with so-and-so’, student fraternity slang of the period.
63. Baron von Gemmingen’s German paterfamilias: Hoffmann alludes to a play by Baron Otto Heinrich von Gemmingen-Hornberg (1755–1836), whose play of 1780, called Der deutsche Hausvater and modelled on Diderot’s Le Père de famille, was extremely popular. The central character, Wodmar, influences the lives of his sons and daughter for the better.
64. Laissons cela: French, ‘never mind that’.
65. Ah, le coquin!: French, ‘Oh, the rascal!’
66. Mi lagnerò tacendo: See Part I, note 10.
67. the hand that wields the broom of a weekday… : A free allusion to a passage in Goethe’s Faust, Part I. ‘The hand that wields the broom on a Saturday will caress you best on a Sunday.’
68. Hinzmann: Various associations combine in the name of this eloquent cat, who may well be related to Tieck’s cat Hinze in his play Puss in Boots (see Part I, note 56), while Hinzmann was also a name for a kind of beer popular with students.
69. where be now your merry gambols?: Hoffmann alludes to Hamlet’s speech to the skull of Yorick the jester (Hamlet, V.i). In the original German, the wording echoes the famous Schlegel translation of Shakespeare’s plays (see Part II, note 39), as indeed do Hoffmann’s other Shakespearian quotations.
70. Professor poeseos et eloquentiae: Dog Latin, ‘Professor of Poetry and Eloquence’.
71. days in Aranjuez: A quotation from Schiller’s play Don Carlos. Die schönen Tage in Aranjuez sind nun zu Ende (‘Those fair days in Aranjuez now are over’).
72. they say he wished to die: A quotation in the original (man sagt, er wollte sterben!) from Schiller, Wallensteins Tod (see Part II, note 43). Hinzmann is drawing heavily on the canon of the major tragic playwrights admired in Germany, Shakespeare included.
73. a special appetite: For the belief that tomcats would eat their own kittens, see Part I, note 34.
74. the usual De or Ex profundis: The opening, in the Latin version, of Psalm 130, a psalm of penitence often sung at funerals. ‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.’
75. O Tannenbaum! O Tannenbaum!: Originally an adaptation of a folk-song to a student song by J. A. Zarnack (1777–1822), the song was further adapted for its familiar use as a carol in 1824. In the English-speaking countries, it is also the tune to which the socialist anthem The Red Flag is sung.
76. traditio brevi manu: Latin, ‘surrender without formalities’, literally ‘transfer with the short hand’.
77. Frailty, thy name is Cat!: Hoffmann uses this parody of a line from Hamlet (I.ii) for the second time.
78. the wondrous tale of Peter Schlemihl: Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte, a fantastic tale by Adelbert von Chamisso (1781–1838), soldier, scientist and writer. The story Hoffmann mentions was published in 1814.
79. similia: Latin, ‘similar things’.
80. Domine, domine Kapellmeister, paucis te volo!: ‘Master Kapellmeister, just a few words!’
81. Kreislere… video mysterium… in camera et faciemus bonum cherubim: Father Hilarius adds a Latin vocative ‘e’ ending to Kreisler’s name, and then falls into more dog Latin, ‘I see a secret… [let’s break our fast] in the cell and make good cheer’ (literally, ‘make the cherub well-disposed’, a piece of student slang).
82. Domine dilectissime!: ‘Most excellent master!’
83. nunc probo: ‘Now I tell you’.
84. Pope Marcellus the Second: Marcello Cervini (1501–55), a leading member of the humanist movement in the Church in Italy. He became a cardinal in 1539 and was librarian of the Vatican. He strongly opposed polyphonic church music, in particular at the Council of Trent. He was Pope for less tha
n a month, from 10 April 1555 until his death on 1 May of the same year.
PART IV: BENEFICIAL CONSEQUENCES OF A SUPERIOR EDUCATION
1. another tragic inspiration of the same kind: This passage is thought to allude to similar ironic remarks in the satirical works of Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabener (1714–71).
2. Rinaldo: A hero of medieval legend, first mentioned in the Charlemagne tales (as Renaud), subsequently featuring in the epic poems of Ariosto and Tasso. His name is used here to characterize a lover lured into captivity by an enchantress, as Armida lured Rinaldo in the legend, which also became the subject of Handel’s opera Armida.
3. some very nice books…: The work on talismans, written in Latin by Peter Friedrich Arpe (1682–1740), a philologist and lawyer, first appeared in 1717, and was translated into German in 1792. Hoffmann was reading the book in the autumn of 1821. Becker’s Enchanted World was published in Dutch as De betoverde weereld in 1691. Its author Balthasar Bekker, a Dutch preacher, used rationalist arguments to oppose the belief in magic and witchcraft widely current at the time. Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304–74), the famous Renaissance Italian poet and humanist, wrote a treatise Rerum memorandum libri, published in a German translation in 1541; it is a collection of character sketches of historical figures.
4. au fond: French, ‘at bottom, at heart’.
5. The wise man: The reference is to Diderot’s novel Le Neveu de Rameau, translated into German by Goethe, whose version appeared in 1805.
6. a nearby pleasure garden: Such places of open-air amusement were popular in early 19th-century Europe, and contained cafés, bandstands for musical performances, pleasant walks, places where informal parties, fireworks displays, etc., might be held, and so forth. In London, Ranelagh and Vauxhall Gardens were places of public amusement similar to the pleasure garden Ponto describes here.
7. Jacques le fataliste: A novel by Denis Diderot (1713 – 84), published posthumously, in which the eponymous central character claims that ‘if it is written in the stars that you are to be cuckolded… then cuckolded you will be’.
8. A brief account of our way of life: The following account of a day in the life of a man about town at this period is modelled, with comic exaggerations, on a passage in a letter to his wife from Prince Pückler-Muskau, the early 19th-century European traveller and fortune-hunter.
9. that opera by Herr Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro: With reference to the famous scene in Act 2 where the page Cherubino eludes the angry Count by jumping out of the window, and the drunken gardener Antonio complains furiously of the damage to his flowers.
10. that king in the tragedy by a German poet: Prince Irenaeus cites (not quite word for word) from Schiller’s Die Jungfrau von Orleans (‘The Maid of Orleans’, I.iv).
11. Che dolce più… detta gelosia: These eight lines of Italian ottava rima are the first stanza of Canto 31 of the famous epic Orlando Furioso, by Ariosto (see Part I, note 25). The translation given here is that of W. S. Rose, published in 1823–31.
12. eau de Luce: A solution of alkaline smelling-salts, called after the apothecary who first made it.
13. Macbeth when Banquo’s dreadful, bloody ghost: Macbeth, IV.i.
14. Knigge: See Part I, note 23.
15. Picard: Louis-Benoît Oucard (1769–1828), a French playwright who was best known in Germany through Schiller’s adaptation of two of his plays.
16. Jean-Jacques Rousseau… Confessions: The incident occurs at the end of Book 2 of the Confessions. However, Hoffmann has remembered it inaccurately, since the girl was actually released without punishment.
17. Tasso: See Part I, note 25. The poet’s love for Leonore d’Este is described in Goethe’s verse play Torquato Tasso.
18. the man of La Mancha adored his Dulcinea: Don Quixote, in Cervantes’ famous novel of that name; in his deranged imagination, the hero takes the peasant girl Dulcinea for a noblewoman to whom he is chivalrously devoted.
19. Domine – libera nos de hoc monacho!: Latin, ‘Lord, save us from this monk!’
20. Monachus in claustro… bene valet triginta: ‘A monk in his cell is not worth two eggs, but outside it he is worth a good thirty.’
21. Palestrina: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525–94), the famous composer of sacred music, whose influence succeeded in persuading the Council of Trent (see Part III, note 84) to allow the further practice of polyphonic church music.
22. sbirri: Italian, somewhat derogatory term for the police.
23. Your Cecilia: The Abbot equates Julia, as Kreisler’s inspiration, with the patron saint of music. The real Julia Marc, Hoffmann’s former pupil with whom he had been in love, and on whom Julia Benzon is modelled, also appears under the name of Cecilia in Nachricht von den neuesten Schicksalen des Hundes Berganza (1814).
24. Antonio’s likeness: Antonio was clearly the name of Brother Cyprian before he became a monk, when in the usual fashion of those entering the religious life he took a new name, that of a saint or a virtue.
∗ In the original first German edition, a list of misprints followed.
∗ The abbë Gattoni of Milan had fifteen iron strings slung from one tower to another, tuned to produce the diatonic scale. At any change in the atmosphere these strings sounded more or less strongly depending on the extent of that change. This large-scale Aeolian harp was known as a Giant Harp or Weather Harp.
∗ Murr means Shakespeare’s As You Like It (III.ii). Ed.
∗ Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier, Part I.53
∗ Joseph Haydn.
† The Creation.
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright Page
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
FURTHER READING
NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF THE TOMCAT MURR
VOLUME ONE
EDITOR’S FOREWORD
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
FOREWORD
PART I: SENSATIONS OF EXISTENCE
My Months of Youth
PART II: MY YOUTHFUL EXPERIENCES
I Too was in Arcadia
VOLUME TWO
PART III: MY APPRENTICE MONTHS
The Whimsical Play of Chance
PART IV: BENEFICIAL CONSEQUENCES OF A SUPERIOR EDUCATION
My Months of Greater Maturity
EDITOR’S POSTSCRIPT
NOTES
Footnotes
EDITOR’S FOREWORD
Page 4
Part 1
Page 125
Page 137
Part 3
Page 214
Page 314