The Serapion Brethren, Vol. II

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

"The very best thing we could do," said Lothair.

"And yet," Cyprian said, "I must take up the cudgels for my friend. Of course you will say that I am to some extent mixed up in the matter--that Ottmar has taken a good many of the germs of the story from me, and on this occasion has been cooking in my kitchen, so that you won't be disposed to allow me to be a judge in the case. Yet, unless you mean to condemn everything without the slightest remorse, like so many Rhadamanthuses--you must admit, yourselves, that there is much in Ottmar's story which must be allowed to pass as genuinely Serapiontic; the beginning, for instance."

"Quite right," said Theodore; "the party round the tea-table may pass as from the life, as well as many other points during the course of the tale. But, to speak candidly, we have had a very large assortment of spectral characters such as the stranger Count, and it will soon be a difficult matter to go on giving them novelty and originality. He is too much like Alban in 'The Magnetizer.' You know the tale I mean, and indeed that story and Ottmar's have both the same motif. Wherefore I wish I might beg our Ottmar and you, Cyprian, to leave monsters of that sort out of the game in future. For Ottmar this will be possible, but for you, Cyprian, I am not so sure that it will. So that we shall have to allow you to serve us up a 'Spook' of the kind now and then, I suppose, only stipulating that it shall be truly Serapiontic, i.e. come out of the very inmost depths of your imagination. Moreover 'The Magnetizer' seems rhapsodical, but the 'Uncanny Guest' is rhapsodical in very truth."

"I must take up the cudgels for my friend in this respect too," said Cyprian, "and tell you that, in the very neighbourhood of this place where we are at this moment, there actually happened an event, not very long ago, by no means unlike the incidents of this story. Into a quiet happy group of friends, just when supernatural matters were forming the subject of conversation, there suddenly came a stranger, who struck every one as being uncanny and terrifying, notwithstanding his apparent everydayness, and seeming belonging to the common level. By his arrival this stranger not only spoiled the enjoyment of the evening in question, but subsequently destroyed the peace and happiness of the family for a long period. Even at this day deadly shudders seize a happy wife when she thinks of the crafty wickedness with which this person tried to entangle her in his nets. I told this at the time to Ottmar, and nothing made a greater impression on him than the moment when the stranger made his spectral entry, and the sense of the propinquity of the hostile Spiritual Principle seized upon every one present with a sudden terror. This moment came vividly to Ottmar's mind, and formed the groundwork of his tale."

"But," said Ottmar, "as a single incident is far from being a complete story--which ought to spring perfect and complete from its author's brain, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter--my tale is of course not worth much as a whole, and it is little to my credit, I suppose, that I took advantage of two or three incidents which really happened, weaving them--not without some little success perhaps--into a network of the imaginary."

"Yes," said Lothair, "you are right, my friend. A single striking incident is far from being a tale, just as one well-imagined theatrical situation is a long way from constituting a play. This reminds me of the way in which a certain playwright (who no longer walks this world, and whose terrible death certainly atoned for any shortcomings of his during his life, and reconciled his worst enemies to him) used to construct his pieces. In a company where I was present, he said, without any concealment, that he selected some one's good dramatic situation which occurred to him, and then, solely for the sake of that, hung a canvas round it and painted away upon it 'just whatever came in his head,' or 'as best he could,' to use his own expressions. This gave me a complete explanation of, and threw a dazzling flood of light upon, the whole character and inner being of that writer's pieces, particularly those of his later period. None of them is without some very happily devised central situation, but all round this the scenes, which he made up out of commonplace material, are woven like a loosely knitted web, although the hand of that weaver, skilled as it is in technique, is never to be mistaken."

"Never, say you?" remarked Theodore. "I have been always waiting and looking out for the points where that writer would abandon his commonplaces, and rise into the region of romance and true poetry. The most striking and melancholy instance of what I mean is the so-called Romantic Drama, 'Deodata'; a strange nondescript production, on which a clever composer ought not to have wasted capital music. There can be no more striking proof of the utter want of infelt poetry, of any conception of the higher dramatic life, than where the author of 'Deodata,' in his preface, finds fault with Opera because it is unnatural that people should sing on the stage, and next goes on to explain that he has been at pains to introduce the singing, which is incidental to it, always in a natural manner."

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum," said Cyprian, "let the dead repose in peace."

"And all the more," said Lothair, "that I see midnight is close at hand, and he might avail himself of that circumstance to give us a box or two on the ear (as he is said to have done to his critics in life) with his invisible fist."

Just then the carriage which Lothair had sent for on account of Theodore's still invalid condition, came rolling up, and the friends went back in it to town.