The rules of dreaming
Are simple and few:
True is false, and false is true;
Forgotten fire lights
Each moment’s seeming,
And all that happens
Happens to you.
The End
Author’s Note and Acknowledgements
I’ve dreamed of writing about The Tales of Hoffmann ever since I watched the Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger film starring Moira Shearer and Robert Rounseville (the first of many performances I’ve seen of this beautiful work). My interest in the opera led to a study of E.T.A. Hoffmann, a writer known in the English-speaking world almost entirely through derivative works (The Tales of Hoffmann, The Nutcracker, Kreisleriana, Coppélia, Freud’s essay on “The Uncanny”) and the stream of influence that traces back to him (Schumann, Poe, Baudelaire, Dumas, Offenbach, Dostoevsky). Unconsciously standing knee-deep in that stream of influence, I recalled an image (Hoffmannesque, without my knowing it) which had occurred to me as an idea for a story: a patient in a mental hospital who sits down and flawlessly plays a difficult piece on the piano (it would have to be Kreisleriana), without the benefit of any musical training or experience. Where did that music come from? Where does any music come from? Does it come from a higher, spiritual world (as Hoffmann and his Romantic contemporaries might have asked in the early nineteenth century)? Or from deep in the unconscious (as Freud and other realists might have asked fifty years later)?
Such were the speculations that led me to The Rules of Dreaming. I got off to a bad start by reading Hoffmann’s amazing but flawed novel, Die Elixiere des Teufels (translated as The Devil’s Elixirs by Ronald Taylor and recently reissued by OneWorld Classics; also available in a translation by Ian Sumter published by Grosvenor House and in an old and not very accurate translation entitled The Devil’s Elixir republished by BiblioBazaar), with its incoherent plot involving madness, murder and multiple identities. Better to stick with the Offenbach opera, with its incoherent plot involving—madness, murder and multiple identities! From there it was a small step to psychiatry, blackmail, puppetry, sexual obsession, past life regression, and the nature of evil.
Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann has a fascinating history, much of which has come to light in recent years as new manuscripts have been discovered and published, by Michael Kaye, Fritz Oeser and others, resulting in innovative interpretations and a good deal of controversy.
A DVD recording of the Powell/Pressburger movie is available with an intriguing commentary by Martin Scorsese, whose film making has been influenced by a lifelong fascination with the opera and this film. Also well worth watching is the 1995 Opéra de Lyon production/adaptation based on the Michael Kaye edition, conducted by Kent Nagano and released on DVD under the title Des Contes d’Hoffmann. In this version, Hoffmann is an inmate in an insane asylum.
I am greatly indebted to Heather Hadlock’s outstanding monograph, Mad Loves: Women and Music in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (Princeton University Press, 2000), which contains a wealth of information and insights about the opera and its history.
Many of Hoffmann’s most characteristic stories are included in The Best Tales of Hoffmann, edited with an excellent introduction by E. F. Bleiler (Dover Publications, 1967). Another collection in English is Tales of Hoffmann, selected and translated with an introduction by R.J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1982).
Freud’s classic essay, “The Uncanny,” is included in the collection entitled The Uncanny, translated by David McLintock (Penguin Books, 2003).
Bruce Hartman lives with his wife in Philadelphia. His previous novel, Perfectly Healthy Man Drops Dead, was published by Salvo Press in 2008. Special thanks to Martha, Jack, Tom, Kelly and Isabel for helping pull this project through.
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