The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

  16. homo sui juris: ‘A man of his own right’, i.e. a man who has come of age and is held responsible for his own actions.

  17. Pulcinella: One of the stock characters of Italian commedia dell’arte of the 16th to 19th centuries. Through the form ‘Punchinello’ the character becomes Mr Punch of the traditional English Punch and Judy puppet show.

  18. Plutarch: (c. AD 46–120) the Greek historian and moral philosopher, author of the famous Lives, biographical accounts of notable figures of classical times.

  19. Cornelius Nepos: (c. 100–c. 25 BC) Roman biographer and poet, who wrote a series of Lives of Famous Men.

  20. Calderón and Shakespeare, Goethe and Schiller: Murr’s list of great dramatic poets includes, besides Shakespeare, the Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681), and the major German dramatists of his own day, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805).

  21. Biographical Entertainments: The German, biographische Belustigungen, probably refers to a work by the novelist Jean Paul (1763–1825), the pseudonym of Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, entitled Biographische Belustigungen unter der Gehirnschale einer Riesin (‘Biographical Entertainments Inside the Brain of a Giantess’), published in 1796.

  22. Basedow… Pestalozzi: Johann Bernhard Basedow (1723–90) and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1747–1827), famous educationalists of the time.

  23. Knigge’s On Human Conduct: Adolf Franz Friedrich, Baron von Knigge, a prominent Freemason, rationalist and member of the Order of Illuminati (a society similar to Freemasonry), who was the author of a number of novels, but in particular of a didactic book entitled Über den Umgang mit Menschen (‘On Human Conduct’), published in 1788 and often, erroneously, mentioned as a guide to etiquette and polite manners.

  24. Hilmar Curas: A teacher and author of the manual Murr mentions, entitled Calligraphia Regia. Königliche Schreibfeder, published in 1741.

  25. Tasso and Ariosto: The two famous Italian epic poets, Torquato Tasso (1544–95) and Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), on whose works Edmund Spenser drew a little later for his allegorical English epic The Faerie Queene.

  26. a good Dollond telescope: The German calls it merely, ‘a good Dollond’s’, from the name of the inventor of this telescope, John Dollond (1706–61).

  27. procul negotiis: ‘Far from worldly affairs’, a quotation from the Odes of Horace, Ode 2.

  28. eligibility for court: The German term, Hoffähigkeit, refers to the social rules of etiquette determining whether a person could or could not appear at court, which were strictly observed in the princely households of many German states of the time.

  29. half-carriage: A two-seated carriage, partly open to the elements.

  30. Haroun Al Rashid: (763–809) Caliph of Baghdad and friendly with his contemporary Charlemagne, who appears as a character in some of the tales of the Thousand and One Nights, and is described as wandering his capital city incognito.

  31. the Invisible Girl: The trick has been described thus by the Hoffmann scholar Ellinger: ‘The Invisible Girl… a magic trick performed in many places from the end of the 18th century onwards… the curious oracle is described as follows. Visitors were taken into a tiny room, one half of it divided from the other half by a grating. In the space thus marked off you saw an empty glass box (later a ball was used) hanging freely in the air. There was a speaking-tube inside the box and protruding from it. If you spoke into the tube you appeared to receive an answer from the box. The explanation of the entire process was frequently discussed at the turn of the century; it was often assumed that voice transmission was by way of the grating. As in Hoffmann, the person giving the answer was believed to be concealed in some hiding place or under the floor… Hoffmann connects the mysterious process directly with somnambulistic conditions; hence the use of the mirror… and the influence of suitable music in inducing such conditions.’ See, in this novel, the account of the Invisible Girl trick on pp. 126–7.

  32. agathodemon: From the Greek agathodaimon, from agathos = ‘good’, and daimon, ‘a spirit’; ‘a benevolent spirit’.

  33. soufflet: French, ‘slap’.

  34. a dreadful appetite…: It was believed in Hoffmann’s time that a tomcat would kill and eat his new-born kittens. In fact it is not unknown, among feral cats (and lions), for a male to kill the kittens or cubs of another male, in order to bring the mother into heat again and mate her, thus increasing the chances of survival of his own genes.

  35. The most cultivated people on earth: The Greeks of antiquity. Murr refers to the myth of the Titan Cronus, father of the Olympian gods, who ate his children at birth because he knew he was fated to be overthrown by one of them. However, when Zeus (Jupiter in the Roman tradition) was born, his mother gave Cronus a stone to swallow instead, and the baby was brought up in hiding.

  36. O Appetite, thy name is Cat!: An allusion to Shakespeare’s ‘Frailty, thy name is woman!’ in Hamlet (I.ii).

  37. like pious Aeneas: In Virgil’s Aeneid the hero Aeneas climbs to the roof of his father’s house and looks down on the burning city of Troy. The epithet ‘pious’ was bestowed on him because of his filial devotion to his father.

  38. equal temperament… enharmonics: ‘Equal temperament’ = the adjustment of the intervals in tuning so that the twelve semitones of the scale are equal intervals; ‘enharmonics’ = notes that differ from each other in name but not in pitch. The ‘unusual way’ in which Kreisler has been tuning his guitar involves very small intervals.

  39. Stefano Pacini, detto il Venetiano: ‘That Venetian Stefano Pacini’, an instrument-maker whose name is not otherwise known. He may have been the maker of Hoffmann’s own guitar.

  40. shawms: The shawm, in Western European music an early form of oboe, is taken here to denote not just a shepherd’s pipe but a musical instrument of loud and raucous tone. Shawms of various kinds, found all over the world, are typical instruments for playing music out of doors because the sound will carry so far.

  41. Emmelines: Emmeline was the name of the heroine in an opera entitled Die Schweizerfamilie (taken from The Swiss Family Robinson) by the Austrian composer Joseph Weigl (1788–1846). The opera had its première in 1809.

  42. Shepherds who sigh ‘like a furnace to their mistress’ eyebrow’: Shakespeare’s As You Like It (II.vii).

  43. the late Hippel: Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel (1741–96), author of a treatise Über die Ehe (‘On Marriage’) in which he says: ‘When I see a man teaching singing I feel as if I were watching him boil eggs.’ Hoffmann is remembering another passage in which Hippel recommends men to play drums and trumpets and leave the ‘gentler’ instruments, keyboard instruments and lute, to women.

  44. fec. Venet. 1532: Latin, ‘made [this] in Venice in 1532’.

  45. cacodemon: Evil spirit (Gr. kakodaimon, ‘evil genius’).

  46. ex abrupto: Latin, ‘abruptly’.

  47. subito… che far, che dir?: Italian, ‘suddenly… what shall I do, what shall I say?’

  48. Ah pietà, pietà, Signora!: ‘Mercy, mercy, madam!’ Kreisler is parodying the opening words of a Miserere by Niccoló Jomelli: Ah pietà, pietà, Signore (1774).

  49. With that poet: Probably referring to Horace and the line from his second Ode already quoted above, Beatus ille qui procul negotiis.

  50. the infernal Barthold: The invention of gunpowder is sometimes ascribed to a 15th-century monk called Berthold, known as Berthold the Black because he practised the art of alchemy. The German proverb quoted here, Er hat das Pulver nicht erfunden, translates literally as ‘He didn’t invent gunpowder’, i.e. has not been very successful in life, ‘is no great shakes’. It will be observed that despite his boasted erudition, Murr has understood this proverbial saying the wrong way round.

  51. royal paper: A size of paper measuring 636 × 480 mm.

  52. a famous human writer: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99), who wrote that ‘To learn to speak a foreign language really well, and speak it properly
in society with the correct accent, one must not only have a good memory and ear, but also, to a certain extent, be something of a jackanapes.’

  53. the speaking of French: It will be noticed that Prince Irenaeus in particular is fond of sprinkling his conversation with French words and phrases.

  54. Acanthus Leaves: Hoffmann is parodying the title of a work called Lotosblätter (‘Lotus Leaves’) by Isidorus Orientalis, the pseudonym of Otto Heinrich, Count von Loeben, published in 1817. Hoffmann wrote his first publisher C. F. Kunz, who also published von Loeben, a letter making fun of the work.

  55. Peruvian mine: Referring to the wealth of the fabled gold and silver mines of Peru.

  56. Puss in Boots: With specific reference to Ludwig Tieck’s fairy-tale drama of that name, published in 1797. The cat in Tieck’s play is called Hinze, Hinz or Hinze being a short form of Heinrich and a traditional German name for a cat. Puss in Boots is raised to the nobility by the king at the end of the play.

  57. the councillor in Tieck’s Bluebeard: A quotation from another fairy-tale play by Tieck, Ritter Blaubart (‘Sir Bluebeard’), also first published in 1797.

  58. Scaramouche: The stock character of the boastful coward from the Italian commedia dell’arte, usually shown as a black-clad Spaniard. In this case, the child Julia obviously had a doll made to resemble Scaramouche.

  59. Le Notre: André Lenôtre (1613–1700), the famous 17th-century French landscape gardener who designed the gardens of Versailles and laid out St James’s Park in London.

  60. that profound poet: Hoffmann is referring to a passage from the introduction to Tieck’s collection of his shorter prose works, Phantasus, published in three volumes in 1812–17: ‘Oh no,’ said Friedrich, ‘believe me, my friends, life is of higher origin, and it is in our power to bring it up and maintain it in a manner worthy of its noble birth, so that dust and destruction can never triumph over it; yes, there is an eternal youth, a longing that lasts for ever because it remains for ever unfulfilled; is neither deceived nor cheated, but merely remains unfulfilled so that it will not die.’

  61. the torments of Tantalus: A figure in Greek mythology condemned to stand for ever up to his neck in water which sank whenever he bent to drink it, and with fruit trees overhead which withdrew their branches whenever he reached out to pick and eat a fruit, so that he could never satisfy his hunger or thirst.

  62. Don Juan and Armida: The operas Don Giovanni and Armida, by Mozart and Gluck respectively.

  63. Haydn’s Seasons: Haydn’s oratorio The Seasons. ‘C’étoit bien ennuyant mon cher maître de chapelle’: ‘That was very boring, my dear Kapellmeister.’

  64. Rossini, Pucitta: Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) and Vincenzo Pucitta (1778–1861), Italian operatic composers. Pucitta’s works have not remained in fashion; Rossini’s entertaining and melodious comic operas, and some of his examples of opera seria, remain popular to the present day. Kreisler’s dismissal of him here is perhaps a little unkind, since no less a composer than Beethoven himself admired his Il barbiere di Siviglia, but he is generally regarded as less sublime than Mozart, a fact implicitly recognized by Thomas Love Peacock, like Hoffmann an enthusiastic Mozartian, who disarmingly compares the comic climax of his Nightmare Abbey, contemporaneous with Murr, to a finale by Rossini rather than anything by his beloved Mozart.

  65. ostracism: Hoffmann here uses the term in a sense very close to its original meaning in classical Greek times, when citizens voted by scratching names on potsherds (ostraka) for the temporary banishment of men who were thought to have become too influential.

  66. Pavesi and Fioravanti: Stefano Pavesi (1778–1850) and Valentino Fioravantini (1768–1837), also Italian operatic composers.

  67. but one product so far in our good German land: Master Abraham and Professor Lothario are referring to Karl Witte (1800–1883), an infant prodigy whose father, a pastor called Karl Heinrich Gottfried Witte (1767–1845), set out his educational theories in a two-volume work entitled Karl Witte oder Erziehung und Bildungsgeschichte derselben (‘Karl Witte, or, The History of His Upbringing and Education’). This book appeared while Hoffmann was working on Murr.

  68. non ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius: ‘A Mercury is not made of every wood’, with reference to the classical god Mercury as being particularly cunning and ingenious.

  69. Gloss: A verse form built on a quatrain, each of its four lines being used in turn as the concluding line of one of the following four verses. In the original German, the quatrain on which Murr has written his poem is a slight misquotation of a verse from Goethe’s Singspiel Claudine von Villa Bella.

  70. Hesper: Hesperus, the personification of the evening star in ancient Greek mythology.

  71. smoke-powder: Perfumed powder to be burnt indoors as a kind of air freshener.

  72. a crown… a shako: Kreisler means the laurel wreath with which a good tragic poet was traditionally crowned in classical antiquity. The shako, on the other hand, the cylindrical military cap still worn by French gendarmes, is the lieutenant’s by right, merely by virtue of his being an army officer.

  73. the day of St John Chrysostom: Hoffmann (who identifies with his character Kreisler to a considerable extent in these biographical passages) was born on 24 January, whereas the feast of St John Chrysostom is actually 27 January. That date also happens to be Mozart’s birthday. By merging the two dates, Hoffmann is probably expressing his admiration for the composer, as he also did in changing his first names from Ernst Theodor Wilhelm to Ernst Theodor Amadeus.

  74. murky: A style of 18th-century keyboard music where the bass consists of alternating octaves, as for instance in the allegro of the first movement of Beethoven’s piano sonata in C minor, op. 13, known as the ‘Pathétique’.

  75. My mother’s younger sister: Hoffmann’s aunt Charlotte Wilhelmine Doerffer, who died of smallpox in 1779 at the age of twenty-three.

  76. yet another aunt of mine: Probably Hoffmann’s elder maternal aunt Johanna Sophie Doerffer (1745–1803).

  77. that curious instrument the trumpet marine: The trumpet marine (in Italian, tromba marina) was a bowed single-string instrument in use from the 15th to the mid-18th century. It was large, some two metres long, and had a vibrating bridge low down on the sound-board, over which the single string passed. Its sound resembled a trumpet, but there is no agreement on the origin of the term ‘marine’; theories that it was used to send signals on shipboard cannot be substantiated. See Hoffmann’s quotation from a musical encyclopaedia of the time in the passage that follows.

  78. Koch’s Musical Encyclopaedia: Heinrich Christoph Koch (1749–1816), a musician working in Rudolstadt, published his Musikalisches Lexikon in 1802.

  79. the flautino or flageolet on the violin: An instruction to a violinist more usually known today as flautando, telling the player to pass the bow lightly over the end of the finger-board so as to produce a flute-like sound.

  80. nail violin: Not a violin or indeed a string instrument at all, but an idiophone, a percussion instrument invented in the middle of the 18th century. It consisted of a semi-circular soundboard with metal rods (the ‘nails’) fixed upright at one end. Some of the rods were bent to produce notes of different pitch. The player held the instrument in the left hand and produced sound by the friction of a stout bow rubbed over the nails.

  81. the musical glass euphony: The German word Euphon in the original describes an instrument similar to the nail violin, but with glass instead of metal rods, and in the usual manner of musical glass instruments played with a wetted finger instead of the nail fiddle’s bow. The instrument was invented in 1790 by a physicist called Chladni.

  82. Gerber: Ernst Ludwig Gerber (1746–1819), court organist in Sondershausen, who wrote a Historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkünstler (‘Historical and Biographical Encyclopaedia of Musicians’), which appeared in two volumes in 1790–92, and in a revised four-volume edition in 1812–14.

  83. the viola d’amore: A type of viola much played in the late 17th
and the 18th centuries. It originally had fourteen strings, seven bowed and seven sympathetic, and derived its name from the sweetness of its tone.

  84. Sir Karl von Esser: Karl Michael, Ritter von Esser (born c. 1746, date of death unknown), a famous virtuoso string instrument player of the period.

  85. another of my relations: Hoffmann’s father, Christoph Ludwig Hoffmann (c. 1736–97). In a letter to his brother Johann written in July 1817, Hoffmann says: ‘As far as I can remember, Papa used to play the viola da gamba, which once, when I was three or four years old, made me break into a terrible fit of weeping, and I could not be comforted except by a nice piece of gingerbread. However, Papa could not keep time, and slanderous tongues said he had once danced a minuet to the music of a polonaise…’

  86. the viola da gamba: A large viol, called ‘viola da gamba’, or leg viol, because it was propped on the ground and held vertically between the player’s legs, like the modern cello. It was slightly smaller than a cello.

  87. the uncle who brought me up: Hoffmann’s maternal uncle Otto Wilhelm Doerffer (1741–1811). Hoffmann’s friend Hippel, in his reminiscences of the writer, described this uncle as a man of little talent who spent his days in a ‘vegetative existence’ of eating, sleeping, and indulging in a little reading and music, and who could not tolerate the outbursts of his nephew’s enthusiastic brilliance. Clearly uncle and nephew were not likely to get on. However, Hippel adds: ‘Hoffmann owed him much. He undertook the burden of the child’s early education, and had been his first music teacher… he had to thank this uncle for his becoming accustomed to constant industry, and for the sense of what is fitting which marked him even in his wildest flights of fancy.’

  88. the spinet: Last in this catalogue of now old-fashioned or defunct instruments played by the family of Hoffmann/Kreisler, the spinet is a small keyboard instrument of the harpsichord type, and in the late 17th century became the most usual keyboard instrument for domestic music-making.