preface
Fairy tales are a genre that comes from the folk, and the folk generation has given this genre vigorous and long-lasting. However, before the beginning of the romantic trend, fairy tales have always existed as folk literature and have rarely been noticed by mainstream writers and critics. After the rise of the Romantic movement, many romantic writers became very interested in folk songs, fairy tales, and legends, some of them were collectors of folk literature, and more people were processors of folk literature, who used ancient themes to recreate and inject new blood into fairy tales.
Although Tick, who had great achievements in creating fairy tales in the German Romantics, and the Grimm brothers, who specialized in collecting and processing folk fairy tales, were representatives of the Middle Romantics, the promotion of the Schlegel brothers also played a huge role. Different from folk fairy tales, art fairy tales are often consciously created by writers, and they clearly place their life pursuit in art fairy tales. Hoffmann is the pinnacle of German artistic fairy tale creation, his fairy tales have the usual fantasy and mystery of the German Romantics, and he integrates his life experience into it, criticizing and satirizing the reality and society of the time. In addition, Hoffman was also deeply influenced by the literary theory of the Romantics, adding ironic elements to his artistic fairy tales.
The German romantic tradition of fairy tale creation
The political turmoil and territorial fragmentation in Germany created an aversion of the German civic class and literary scholars to foreign rulers, and also made them even more disgusted with the dark and corrupt society and utilitarian market atmosphere under French rule. German romantic writers began to be keen to describe nature, with the beauty of nature to set off the ugliness of reality, coupled with the rise of folk literature, romantic writers in the comparison of ugly reality combined utopian ideal world and folk literature, put forward an idealized fantasy world, this fantasy world is full of romanticism, even full of illusory imagination, so the genre of art fairy tales is in full swing in German romantics.
Before the rise of the Romantic movement, fairy tales had always been a marginalized literary genre, there were very few writers who created fairy tales, and the folk have always been the main position for fairy tale creation, and fairy tales were mostly passed on by word of mouth spontaneously by the people without a very systematic and complete process of recreation and collection. It was not until the Romantics adopted fairy tales as the main form of expressing their yearning for nature that this ancient genre gradually entered the field of mainstream literary creation.
Liu Wenjie defines "artistic fairy tales" as fairy tale works consciously created by writers, expressed in written language, and with clear artistic pursuits." Among the early Romantics, A. Schlegel included Novalis's theory in the Critique of the Enlightenment: "The fairy tale is the model of poetry, and everything poetic must be a fairy tale, and the poet worships this contingency." Romantic writers took the ideal "passionate person" as the protagonist of an artistic fairy tale, using the experience of the protagonist and the fantasy world in the fairy tale to pin their ideals, which in their pen are full of poetry in addition to utilitarianism and reality.
The early German Romantics have long regarded the idealistic theory of Kant, Fichte and Schelling as the philosophical basis of creation, Kant's subjective idealism philosophy takes self and subjectivity as the starting point, and believes that subjective imagination and re-creation can enable the author to obtain results beyond nature and reality in artistic creation, such philosophical theory coincides with the German Romantics' emphasis on subjectivity and self, advocating free-spirited genius fantasy.
In addition to novels, fairy tales are the most suitable literary genre for romantic writers to express such theoretical claims, fairy tales need writers to inject a lot of fantasy, symbolic creative techniques, Heidelberg Romantics as one of the romantics in the middle of Germany, on the basis of the theory of early romantics, more enriched their theory, they advocated sorting out Germany's literary heritage, in order to revive medieval German literature.
Therefore, starting from the early Jena Romantics, to the Heidelberg Romantics and the Berlin Romantics, there were writers whose main work was to organize the creation of fairy tales. As the main general of the Jena Romantics, Tik's main artistic achievement lies in his artistic fairy tale creation, he has successively created fairy tales and fairy tales such as "The Golden-Haired Ecbelt" and "The Puss in Boots", "The Golden-Haired Ecbelt" is the first artistic fairy tale of German Romanticism, in addition to publishing "Folk Fairy Tales", which not only compiles fairy tales adapted from ancient German folk tales, but also his own fairy tales.
In addition, the Brothers Grimm collected and sorted out the German folk fairy tales and legends from the Middle Ages and gathered them into a volume, the main results are "German Legends" and "Children's and Family Fairy Tales", "Grimm's Fairy Tales" is different from other Romantic writers in the compilation, and the Brothers Grimm made the content and language of fairy tales as faithful as possible to oral transmission in the process of collecting and writing.
A fantasy world in Hoffman's art fairy tales
Hoffmann is a prolific author of the genre of artistic fairy tales, mainly the fairy tale and short story collection "The Sherapion Brothers", including the fairy tale "Campbell Bottle One - A Modern Fairy Tale". As in Tomcat Moore's View of Life, the contradiction between artists and people with the spirit of artistry and real society is a common theme in Hoffman's literature, not only in novels, but also in his artistic fairy tales.
The story content of "Campbellum" is the contrast between the two lives most often described by Hoffman, and the protagonist Anzelmus's ease in the fantasy world and the emotion of the real world from yearning to disgust all show Hoffman's disgust and disdain for vulgar social reality, and he is good at using contrasting techniques.
Whether it is the comparison of the fate and attitude of Tomcat Moore and Kreisler in "Tomcat Moore's View of Life", or the contrast between fantasy and reality in "Jinbao Bottle". The contrast between the ideological and emotional changes before and after Anzelmus, and the contrast between his attitude and the other people in the crystal bottle, etc., are all in the service of Hoffmann's expression of vulgar dislike of reality and citizens, he believes that living in such a real society, people are in pursuit of fame and fortune, and the constraints of money, status, power and other realities make the situation of art more embarrassing, and the representatives of such people are Vice Principal Paul and his daughter Veronica in "The Golden Bottle".
Hoffman contrasts with such people with the "childish poet" he proposes in the words of Director Lindhorst: "He often told me that the psychological temperament that the demon king Phosphorus proposed as a condition for marriage with our sisters was now tried to be summed up in one sentence, but this sentence was often inappropriately abused. This phrase is: childlike poetic temperament. These temperaments are often found in young people of simple and upright moral character.
However, such people will be ridiculed by ordinary citizens because they do not have the so-called experience of dealing with the world. In "The Golden Bottle", Cepetina's father, Director Lindhorst, made this request to those who want to become his son-in-law most intuitively expresses Hoffmann's praise and yearning for the poet and artist's "naked heart", and also reveals that such sincere artists are incompatible with the ugly reality of the time, they are "simple and upright in character", but they are unwilling to associate with the hypocritical and secular Veronica and the like, not understood by the worldly people, and even "ridiculed" by the "vulgar" citizens.
Therefore, these vulgar people, such as the daughter of Vice Principal Paulman, who adored the vain Veronica, could not get the ultimate happiness, and only those who got rid of the pursuit of worldly nothingness and had a "childish poetic temperament" and "simple and upright" could reap perfect love and ultimate true happiness.
An element of irony in Hoffman's artistic fairy tales
Another aesthetic principle that cannot be ignored by the German Romantics is their element of irony, which is a kind of "romantic irony", its essence is a phenomenon between art and philosophy, it is a literary style and writing style, rather than a linguistic expression that uses counter-words to express irony. Regarding romantic irony, Schlegel mentions it in some fragments, arguing that "irony is the form of paradox" and that it is "progressive all-encompassing poetry".
"Some ancient and modern poems are full of ironic divinity. These poems are alive with a truly transcendent witty. Within them there is the emotion of ignoring everything and infinitely transcending all finite things, such as transcending one's own art, virtue and talent: outside them, in the midst of expression, there is the exaggerated expression of the usual Italian parlesque. It can be seen from this fragment that the irony emphasized by the romantics should be a constant denial and transcendence of the self, and only by surpassing oneself can we achieve true infinity.
In addition, Schlegel said, "In irony, there should be both wit and seriousness, everything is confessed, and everything is deeply disguised." The irony comes from the combination of the artistic sense of life and the spirit of science, and from the convergence of perfect natural science and a complete philosophy of art. It contains and inspires a conflict between the finite and the infinite, a complete conveyance of the sense of necessity and impurity. This fragment illustrates another view of the Romantics, irony is a dialectical contradiction, and writers should maintain humor when creating, that is, they must objectively look at the illusory world they write, and always maintain a witty and humorous distance. This requires the author to maintain a state of sobriety and alienation during the creative process.
epilogue
Hoffmann's art fairy tales often have a "binary opposition" structure, the opposition between fantasy and reality, the opposition between artists and secular people, this opposition is full of the idealized style of German Romantics, compared with Tick and other romantic writers, Hoffmann's life experience determines that his artistic fairy tales are often full of poetic artistic atmosphere. The protagonists of his artistic fairy tales are like microcosms of his life, so Hoffman's artistic fairy tales have a stronger realistic critique than other writers.