Life views of the cat Murr

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Envelope with a 'portrait' of the cat, probably based on Hoffmann's own drawing

Views of the life of the cat Murr along with a fragmentary biography of the conductor Johannes Kreisler in random waste sheets is a satirical novel by ETA Hoffmann . The two volumes appeared in 1819 and 1821; a third volume was being planned.

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Murr and Miesmies (Hoffmann)

The novel consists of two seemingly completely separate biographies : that of the cat Murr and that of the conductor Kreisler.

The tomcat, who speaks, thinks and educated like a human, functions as a first-person narrator and autobiographer , whose chronological description of his experiences from his birth to the time of writing contains numerous detailed comments and reflections on the “education of the reader”. While Murr provides an allegedly working recipe for “how to develop into a big hangover”, the novel takes a critical look at the contemporary trivialization of the educational idea. Motifs and classic elements of the educational novel are parodied: Murr experiences an “instructive” childhood friendship (with the poodle Ponto), a “personality- shaping ” love (with the cat Miesmies), tries his hand at drinking bouts and duels as a “capable cat boy ” and in “higher culture” and world ”(the dogs) as a fine companion. Finally, he is self-taught to become a “ homme de lettres ”. Hoffmann uses this for numerous swipes at various cultural currents and literary phenomena of his time.

The foreword to the fragments of an already printed biography of the composer Johannes Kreisler can be seen by the reader that the clumsy tomcat Murr cut up that original, used its sheets as a base or blotting paper and then left them in the manuscript. The fictional “editor” of the book was so careless as to let the typesetter inadvertently also print these passages of text. In these “bound fragments” the musician's fate is revealed as a social failure. At the court of a Duodec prince , who, like the protagonist, appears as a broken figure, since he only maintains his court and his apanage in appearance, Kreisler gets caught between two women - who on the one hand represent true love, on the other hand the straw-like, glowing passion. However, it fails less because of this indissoluble antinomy than because of social constraints.

characters

Cat Murr

Cat Murr. Hand drawing by King Ferdinand of Portugal, 1859.

Murr smugly announces his goal in the foreword: "With the security and calm inherent in true genius, I hand over my biography to the world so that it can learn how to develop into a big hangover". In contrast to Kreisler, Murr possesses the bourgeois sluggishness and vanity that, according to Hoffmann, true genius lacks. He presents his life as a constantly increasing process, in which education "turns into a kind of mental and spiritual fulness", appropriate to the head of its owner, with full fussiness - as a parody of the enrichment of the subject with world experience presented in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister , of which Kreisler claims, "he is thick enough to hold the sciences".

With his tomcat, who writes, speaks and acts like a human being, Hoffmann continues the tradition of animal poetry, as it was known to him from the fables of Aesop and the medieval animal parlors to La Fontaine . Murr himself calls the fairy tale figure Puss in Boots his literary ancestors, who were familiar to contemporaries through the play of the same name (1797) by Ludwig Tieck and the Puss in Boots by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 . Gottfried Keller will continue the series of talking cats with Spiegel, the kitten , Walter Moers with Echo, the kitten .
Incidentally, the figure of the cat Murr also has a real role model in addition to its literary predecessors: Hoffmann's own cat of the same name. When he died on November 30, 1821 (after completing the second Murr volume), Hoffmann wrote a private obituary notice for him, which has been handed down to this day.

Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler

Unlike Murr, Kreisler embodies the really brilliant artist. As a musician, he represents the most realistic of all arts, which most closely corresponds to his demand for creative autonomy and for the “pure expression of the inside”. So it is only logical that the music that he considers alone to be an expression of infinity is religious music and, as a typical romantic, he allows art and religion to merge.
As fragmentary as the records about him are, so torn and drifting around are his character and his life, which tellingly do not allow their own self-contained autobiography, but at best a fragmented editor's biography handed down in mere randomly thrown waste sheets. "The enthusiasm, the idealistic striving, the suffering from reality, in short the unconditional and eccentric of the artist's existence is for Hoffmann the counter-principle of that pedantically self-mirroring sense of order [Murrs], which becomes the fiction of an autobiographical continuity."

Hoffmann had initially used the name as a pseudonym. He signed musical reviews in the Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung , for which he had worked since 1809, with Johannes Kreisler, Kapellmeister . Hoffmann's literary readers were already familiar with the figure from the thirteen stories in the Kreisleriana , which appeared in Callot's manner as part of the Fantasy Pieces in 1814/15 . The Kapellmeister only became famous with the cat Murr .

In 1838, Hoffmann's Kreisler became the title giver of the Kreisleriana , a cycle of eight piano movements that, composed by Robert Schumann (Op. 16), became a key work of romantic piano music. In their round of recurring themes and motifs, they characterize the behavior of the strange owl created by Hoffmann.

With “Kreisler jun.” The 20-year-old Johannes Brahms signed his first published chamber music work, the B major trio op. 8. In this homage to Clara Schumann he shows his less typical side: that of the enthusiastic youth - according to Art of Hoffmann's fictional character.

The street from the Französische Straße to the square of the castle church in Königsberg was named after "Kreisler" .

The "publisher" ETA Hoffmann

The novel begins with an editor's fiction that takes up and extends this romantic form. The author's literary technique of only introducing himself as the editor of the texts in his novel was already known in earlier epochs, but it spread particularly during the Romantic era. a. for example in Laurence Sternes Sentimental Journey or in Brentano's Godwi . While in most cases one is dealing with a plausible fiction, so that the actual editors were often viewed by contemporary critics as the actual authors (e.g. Wieland for Sophie von La Roche's story of Fraulein von Sternheim or Schlegel for Dorothea Veits Florentin ) , Murr's fiction as an editor is characterized above all by its absurd wit and its unbelievability: not only is the author supposed to be an animal here, he is also soon characterized by malicious public abuse - accidentally printed with it. The publisher ETA Hoffmann is by no means to be equated with the author of the same name, since he exists in the same fictional world in which there is also a tomcat, "who has a spirit, intellect, and sharp claws".

shape

Almost all of Hoffmann's works thrive on the contrast between artistic subjectivity and objective reality. The on the one hand ingenious, on the other hand demonic inwardness of the creative human being leads to problems with his characters and ends in suffering, destruction, even madness. But it is precisely from this that their creative imagination draws its innovative quality. This is also reflected in the form of the novel.

The title already indicates the arabesque interweaving of the two life stories and their complex interweaving in the form of numerous contextual references as a constitutive building principle of the novel. The presentation of Murr's autobiography, which is presented in full, in chronological order and in logically successive episodes, contrasts with the description of the romantic artist biography , which is conveyed in a disordered manner and with gaps.
There are also differences in the extent to which the two dissimilar biographies take up within the novel: while Murr's story takes up just a third of the space, the very complicated fate of the conductor extends to the remaining two thirds. Nonetheless, Kreisler's torn character remains largely opaque, while the cat's "life views" , which are bursting with hubris , are presented relatively consistently in their simplicity, which sometimes reaches banality.

The structure of Kater Murr is similar to Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship , but also to Friedrich Nicolai's The Life and Opinions of Magister Sebaldus Nothanker and Laurence Stern's Tristram Shandy .

The novel works with numerous literary allusions, since both Murr and Kreisler try to identify themselves as highly educated people in their notes. The view held by some researchers that one can view those literary and philosophical quotations detached from their two protagonists, however, disregards their specific characterization. In particular, the ironic, sometimes sarcastic exaggeration of the cat as a highly vain and self-satisfied fanatic, is not taken into account: he knows many poets' verses, but uses them extremely ineptly to illuminate his negative sides. Amusing for the reader, Murr effortlessly combines the comfort of herring pots with lyrical profundity. Hoffmann's concern and art is to show that exaggerated enthusiasm is a long way from creating an artist - a central topic that the author already dealt with in his story The Sandman from 1816.

Kater Murr stands in the tradition of humorous novels. It is thus essentially shaped by satire , irony and parody .

satire

The satire predominates in the Murr-Passagen: swipes at the art world, science, civil society and current politics characterize these sections of the text. In the foreword of the novel, Hoffmann introduces himself as the editor who “got to know the cat Murr personally and found in him a man of pleasantly mild morals”. Even here - followed by a double "foreword" by the tomcat, to which the publisher's postscript is appended - Hoffmann characterizes the following as satire: Not only are the records of a tomcat available and also find an editor, the tomcat becomes on top of that humanized as a "man" and also as one with "mild morals" beyond what is to be expected.

irony

There are also satirical attacks on society in the Kreisler Passages. The customs described here at the court of Duodec Prince Irenaeus are primarily directed against the noble customs of his time. Their irony is the means by which Kreisler, an artist who suffers to a great extent from the profanity of the bourgeois world and its so-called philistines , tries to arm himself against the gap between reality and the artist ideal, which he regards as unbearably large. “In order to withstand the onslaught of reality at all,” the author allows his fantasy to go to the limits of the surreal, where it breaks “in painful irony” as absurd.

Although the cat Murr first appeared in the 1820s, he is committed to the romantic theory of early romanticism , which Hoffmann eagerly received. Accordingly, it is meaningfully interpreted with Schlegel's theory of romance ( universal poetry ), in which the category of irony plays a decisive role.

parody

Hoffmann's novel parodies both the artist and the novel of development , but breaks the boundaries of these forms and thus becomes a society novel with multiple fractures . Other researchers are of the opinion that at best the biography of the cat is convincingly prepared as a satire of the bourgeois educational idea and the genius idea of ​​the classical period, but that the meaning of the artist novel about Kreisler is neglected.

Autobiography

It was claimed that the "Kater Murr" had strong autobiographical traits. History suggests that Hoffmann belonged to a student corporation while studying at the Albertus University in Königsberg and fought at least one duel on shock (in the Murr novella "auf Biss").

Tradition line

Hoffmann drew from a rich history of tradition that also used animals as main actors, better known as fable . He also went back to Tieck's " Puss in Boots ", which itself was based on the fairy tale of the same name. Hoffmann's "Murr" drew a number of other hangover figures. In the reclamation edition of "Kater Murr" the following continuations either of the figure of the speaking cat or Murr himself are mentioned: Scheffel's " Hidigeigei ", Keller's " Spiegel das Kitten " or, more recently, Christa Wolf's "New Views of a Katers".

expenditure

  • Views of the life of the cat Murr along with a fragmentary biography of the conductor Johannes Kreisler in random waste sheets. 2 volumes. Dümmler, Berlin 1820–1822 [recte 1819–1821]
  • Life views of the cat Murr. In: Carl Georg von Maassen (ed.): Complete works. (10 volumes) Volume 9/10. G. Müller, Munich 1928.
  • Life views of the cat Murr. In: Poetic Works. (12 volumes) Volume 9. de Gruyter, Berlin, 1960.
  • Cat Murr. Master Flea. Last stories. In: Hannsludwig Geiger (Hrsg.): Complete poetic works. German Book Association, Berlin / Darmstadt / Vienna 1963.
  • Life views of the cat Murr. In: Collected works in separate editions. Volume 6. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1981.
  • Life views of the cat Murr. In: Hartmut Steinecke (ed.): Complete works. (6 volumes) Volume 5. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, Frankfurt 1992, ISBN 3-618-60895-0 .
  • Life views of the cat Murr. Novel. Artemis and Winkler, Düsseldorf 2006, ISBN 978-3-538-06315-0 .
  • Life views of the cat Murr. Ebook at Projekt Gutenberg .

literature

  • Horst S. Daemmrich: ETA Hoffmann: Kater Murr. In: Novels of the 19th Century. Reclam, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-15-008418-0 .
  • Stefan Diebitz: Attempt on the integral unity of the life views of the cat Murr. In: Messages from the ETA Hoffmann Society. 31 (1985), pp. 30-39.
  • Lutz Hermann Görgens : The Kapellmeister's pets. Investigation of the fantastic in ETA Hoffmann's literary work. Dissertation at the University of Tübingen . 1985 (especially pp. 73-130)
  • Werner Keil : Narrative tricks in ETA Hoffmann's novel Life Views of the Kater Murr. In: Messages from the ETA Hoffmann Society. 31, pp. 40-52 (1985).
  • Sarah Kofman : Autobiogriffures. 1976.
  • Heinz Loevenich: Unity and symbolism of the cat Murr. As an introduction to Hoffmann's novel. In: German lessons. 16: 72-86 (1964).
  • Hans von Müller: The origin of the Murr-Kreisler work taking into account the other literary production of Hoffmann in the years 1818-1822. In: Collected essays about ETA Hoffmann. Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 1974, ISBN 3-8067-0437-6 , pp. 331-380.
  • Dietrich Raff: Ego-consciousness and perception of reality at ETA Hoffmann. An examination of the "elixirs of the devil" and the "cat Murr". Emmanuel-Verlag, Rottweil 1971 (dissertation at the University of Tübingen)
  • Robert S. Rosen: ETA Hoffmann's »Kater Murr«. Structural forms and narrative situations. Bouvier, Bonn 1970, ISBN 3-416-00630-5 .
  • Steven Paul Scher: "Kater Murr" and "Tristram Shandy". Narrative affinities in Hoffmann and Sterne. In: ZfdPh. 94: 24-42 (1976).
  • Jochen Schmidt: ETA Hoffmann: Splendor and misery of the romantic-genial imagination. In: JS, The History of the Genius Thought in German Literature, Philosophy and Politics 1750–1945 . Darmstadt (1985), Volume 2, pp. 1-39.
  • Ute Späth: Broken Identity. Stylistic investigations on the parallelism in ETA Hoffmann's life views of the cat Murr. Kümmerle, Göppingen 1970, ISBN 3-87452-024-2 .
  • Hartmut Steinecke: Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann. Life views of the cat Murr. In: Frank Rainer Max & Christine Ruhrberg (eds.): Reclams Romanlexikon. Volume 2. From Romanticism to Naturalism. Reclam, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-15-018002-3 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Jochen Schmidt: "ETA Hoffmann: Splendor and misery of the romantic-genial imagination". In: JS, The History of the Genius Thought in German Literature, Philosophy and Politics 1750–1945 . Darmstadt (1985), volume 2, p. 3 u. 5.
  2. ↑ Jochen Schmidt: "ETA Hoffmann: Splendor and misery of the romantic-genial imagination". In: JS, The History of the Genius Thought in German Literature, Philosophy and Politics 1750–1945 . Darmstadt (1985), Volume 2, pp. 6f.
  3. ^ Robert Albinus: Königsberg Lexicon . Wurzburg 2002
  4. ↑ Jochen Schmidt: "ETA Hoffmann: Splendor and misery of the romantic-genial imagination". In: JS, The History of the Genius Thought in German Literature, Philosophy and Politics 1750–1945 . Darmstadt (1985), Volume 2, p. 2.
  5. ^ Hermann Leupold: ETA Hoffmann ... as a student in Königsberg from 1792 to 1795 . Einst und Jetzt , Vol. 36 (1991), pp. 9-79.
  6. ^ ETA Hoffmann: Views of the life of the cat Murr together with a fragmentary biography of the conductor Johannes Kreisler in random waste sheets . Ed .: Hartmut Steinecke. Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-15-000153-0 , p. 485-486 .