The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

Life - views of the cat Murr together with fragmentary biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler in random Makulaturblättern is a satirical novel by ETA Hoffmann, who appeared in two volumes in 1819 and 1821. He remained a fragment - a third volume was planned.

• 3.1 Satire
• 3.2 irony
• 3.3 parody

Action

The novel consists of two initially separated completely translucent biographies: of the cat Murr and the Kapellmeister Kreisler.

The like a person speaking, thinking and educated hangover acts as narrator and autobiographer whose chronological account of his experiences from his birth to the time of writing many detailed comments and reflections on the " education of the reader " contains. By Murr provides a supposedly functioning recipe for " how to fancy up the big hangover ," the novel begins a critical look at the contemporary trivialization of the idea of ​​education. Motifs and classic elements of the Bildungsroman be parodied: Murr experienced a " instructive " youth friendship (for poodle Ponto ), a " personality -shaping " Love ( for cat Mies Mies ), dabbles in drinking bouts and honor duels as " efficient Katz lad " and in the " higher culture and the world "( the dog ) as a fine partner. Finally, it is formed from self-taught to " homme de lettres ". Hoffmann uses it to numerous swipes at various cultural trends and literary phenomena of his time.

The preface to the fragments of an already printed biography of the composer Johannes Kreisler may refer the reader that the clumsy Tomcat Murr dismembered that original, its leaves used as a backing or blotting paper and then even Reserve left in manuscript. The fictional " editor " of the book was so careless to let the translator also print these messages accidentally. In these " beigebundenen fragments " is revealed the fate of the musician as a social failure. At the court of petty princes, who appears as the protagonist as a broken figure, since it only maintains his court and his appanage in appearance, Kreisler is caught between two women - the true love, on the other hand, represent the one hand, the straw fire -like, glowing passion. However, he fails less at this irresolvable antinomy as to the social constraints.

Figures

Kater Murr

Smug Murr announces his goal in the foreword to: " With the security and tranquility that innate true genius, I give the world my biography, so that they learn how to fancy up the big hangover ." Unlike Kreisler Murr has bourgeois complacency and vanity, just missing the true genius loud Hoffmann. In richer fussiness he presented - as a parody of the demonstrated in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister enrichment of the subject with experience of the world - his life as a constantly -increasing process in the formation of " a kind of soul-spiritual Feistigkeit " device, appropriate to the head of its owner from which Kreisler claims that " he was sufficiently thick to grasp the science."

With its writer ends as a man speaking and agierendem hangover Hoffmann continues the tradition of animal poetry, as it was him since the Fables of Aesop and the medieval tierbîspeln to La Fontaine known. Murr himself calls the fairy-tale character Puss in Boots to his literary ancestors, which was familiar to contemporaries by the eponymous play (1797 ) by Ludwig Tieck and the 1812 published Puss in Boots of the Brothers Grimm. Gottfried Keller will continue with mirror, the kitten, Walter Moers with echo, the Krätzchen the series of speaking cats. The figure of the Tomcat Murr, incidentally, next to the literary precursors also a real person: Hoffmann's own hangover same name. When he died (after completion of the second Murr- band ) on November 30, 1821 Hoffmann wrote for him a private funeral display, which is still observed today.

Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler

Unlike Murr Kreisler embodies the really brilliant artists. As a musician, he represents the realitätsfernste all the arts that most closely corresponds to his demand for creative autonomy and according to the " pure expression of the Interior ." Since it is only logical that that music which he can apply alone as an expression of infinity, religious music is and he can merge as a typical romantic art and religion. So fragmentary records of him, torn and tossed about are his character and his life, characteristically allow no separate closed autobiography, but at best a fragmented, traditional in just randomly thrown together Makulaturblättern Publisher biography. " The enthusiasm the idealistic pursuit, the suffering of reality, just the unconditioned and the eccentric artist's existence is the opposite principle that pedantic themselves bespiegelnden order sense [ Murr ], which goes so far to the fiction of autobiographical continuity of Hoffmann. "

Hoffmann had the name first used as a pseudonym. He wrote musical reviews in the Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung, for which he has worked since 1809, with Johannes Kreisler, Kapellmeister. Hoffmann's literary readers was the figure already from the thirteen stories of Kreisleriana known, published 1814/15 as part of the Fantasy Pieces in Callot's Manner. However, the conductor became famous only with Tomcat Murr.

The Hoffmann's Kreisler in 1838 then title donors Kreisleriana, a cycle of eight piano records that, by Robert Schumann ( Op. 16) Composed, became a key work of romantic piano music. You describe in their dance of recurring themes and motifs created by the behavior of the Hoffmann whimsical Kauzes.

By ". Kreisler jun " finally signed and the 20 -year-old Johannes Brahms his first published work of chamber music, the B major Trio, Op 8 He shows in this homage to Clara Schumann 's less typical side: that of the enthusiastic youth - by type of Hoffmann's fictional character.

The " publisher " E.T.A. Hoffmann

The novel begins with a publisher fiction that takes up this romantic form and expanded. The literary technique of the author to imagine in his novel only as editor of texts, earlier epochs was already known, but widespread especially during the Romantic period: We find, among other things For example, in Laurence Sterne's Sentimental Journey, or Brentano's Godwi. While one has to do it in most cases with a plausible fiction, so often real editors were considered by contemporary critics as the actual authors ( Wieland for Sophie von La Roche's story of Miss Sternheim or flail for Dorothea Veit's Florentin ), records the Murr'sche Publisher fiction especially their absurd wit and credibility from: not only that the author should be an animal here, he will yet again soon by malicious - characterizes public insults - by mistake with reprinted. The publisher E.T.A. Hoffmann is therefore by no means be equated with the author of the same name, as it exists in the same fictional world in which there is also a hangover, " the spirit, mind, owns and sharp claws ."

Form

Almost all of Hoffmann's works live on the contrast between artistic subjectivity and objective reality. The one hand, ingenious, anderserseits demonic inwardness of creative people leads his characters sometimes have problems and ends in suffering, destruction, madness. Especially it but draws its creative imagination its innovative quality. This is also reflected in the form of the novel.

The title refers to the arabesque intricacy of the two life stories and their complex entanglement in the form of numerous covers of content as a constitutive principle of construction of the novel. The representation of Murr's autobiography, which will be fully informed, in chronological order and in logically consecutive episodes, is contrary to the portrayal of the romantic artist biography that is mediated temporally disorganized and incomplete. Differences also exist regarding the extent occupied by the two unequal biographies within the novel: While Murr's story just takes up one third of the space, the extremely intricate fate of Kapellmeister is extended to the remaining two-thirds. Nevertheless, the torn character Kreisler remains largely opaque, while the bursting of hubris " views of life ," the cat in its sometimes reaching up to the banality simplicity are presented relatively consistent.

In construction Kater Murr resembles Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, but Nicolai's life and opinions of Herr Magister Sebald Nothanker and Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy.

The novel works with numerous literary allusions as both Murr and Kreisler like to be recorded as highly educated people strive in their records. The advocated by some researchers view, one could separate from its two protagonists look at those literary and philosophical quotes, but leaves the specific character drawing aside. In particular, the ironic, sometimes sarcastic exaggeration of the cat as a very vain and smug hornworm, it is ignored: Although he knows many poets verses, but this is extremely awkward just so that its negative sides are illuminated. Amusing for the reader, Murr effortlessly combines the comfort on herring pots with lyrical profundity. Hoffmann's concern and art, it is to show that excessive enthusiasm unfortunately, makes no artist - a central issue that has already been dealt with The Sandman in 1816 in his narrative of the author.

Kater Murr is in the tradition of comic novels. It is thus essentially characterized by satire, irony and parody.

Satire

The satire predominates in the Murr- passages: digs at the art world, academia, civil society up to the current policy characterize these stories. Already in the preface of the novel Hoffmann leads itself as a publisher who wants to have " the Tomcat Murr met in person and in him a man of pleasant, mild manners " found. Even here - it is followed by a double " Foreword" of the cat, the once a postscript by the editor is attached - featuring Hoffmann the then following as satire: not only that the records of a hangover are present and also find a publisher, the cat is on top of everything as "man" and also as a humanized with " mild manners " about the expected addition.

Irony

Add to Kreisler passages also find satirical attacks on society. The practices at the court of petty princes Irenaeus described here are directed primarily against the aristocratic manners of his time. Your irony is the means by which Kreisler, an artist who suffers a large extent on the profanity of the bourgeois world and its so-called Philistines tries to guard against the perceived him as unbearably large gap between reality and ideal of the artist. " To the onslaught of reality at all withstand ", the author 's fantasy to go to the limits of the surreal and break there " painfully ironic " than absurd.

Although the Tomcat Murr appeared only in the twenties of the 19th century, he is the novel theory of the early Romantic committed to rezipierte Hoffmann eagerly. Accordingly, it is usefully interpreted with Schlegel's theory of the novel ( universal poetry ), in the category of irony plays a crucial role.

Parody

Hoffmann's novel parodies both the artist as well as the development of novel, but beyond the limits of these forms and thus becomes a diverse society fractured novel. Other researchers argue that, at most, the biography of the cat is treated as a satire of the bourgeois idea of ​​education and the genius idea of ​​classical convincingly the importance of the artist novel by Kreisler but comes up short.

Comments

Expenditure

• Life - views of the cat Murr together with fragmentary biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler in random Makulaturblättern. 2 vols. Dümmler, Berlin 1820-1822 [ recte 1819-1821 ]
• Life - views of the cat Murr. In: Carl Georg von Maassen ( ed.): The Complete Works. (10 volumes) Volume 9/10. G. Müller, Munich 1928
• Life and Opinions of Kater Murr. In: Poetic works. ( 12 volumes ) Volume 9 de Gruyter, Berlin, 1960
• Kater Murr. Master Flea. Latest stories. In: Hanns Ludwig Geiger ( ed. ): All poetic works. German Book Association, Berlin / Darmstadt / Vienna 1963
• Life and Opinions of Kater Murr. In: Collected Works in single issues. Volume 6 Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1981
• Life - views of the cat Murr. In: Hartmut Stein corner (Ed.): The Complete Works. (6 volumes) Volume 5 German classic Verlag, Frankfurt 1992, ISBN 3618608950
• Life - views of the cat Murr. Novel. Artemis and Winkler, Dusseldorf 2006, ISBN 978-3-538-06315-0