It was through Kunz's intervention that the Introduction prefixed to the Fantasiestücke was obtained from Jean Paul, and that against Hoffmann's own wish, for all introductions except those which stand as prolegomena before a scientific work he hated--when a well-known writer prefixed an introduction before the work of an unknown as a sort of attestation, it seemed to him like "an incendiary letter which the young author takes into his hand in order to go and beg for applause with it." Another short passage from one of his letters to Kunz of this same summer may here be quoted as illustrating a trait in his character:--
"So far about business; and now the earnest request that you will keep in mind and constantly before your eyes who and what I am, and let our business even be inspired with that spirit of cheerfulness and good- humour which always marked our intercourse with each other, and even in money matters prevented the dead, stiff, frosty mercantile style from coming to the surface. I am sure it was quite foreign to both of us, and could only excite in us such fear as we feel when set upon by an angry 'wauwau,' at which afterwards we can only laugh to each other."
This unwillingness, nay almost repugnance to look at things from their serious side, was quite characteristic of him. "But these are odiosa" was a frequent phrase in his mouth.
On 9th December Seconda and his opera company once more repaired to Leipsic, and Hoffmann of course along with them. There on New Year's Day he was struck down by a severe attack of inflammation in the chest, aggravated by gout, in consequence of a violent cold caught in the theatre; the case was so severe and grave that his life was at times in danger. "Podagrists are generally visited by an especial humour-- brilliant fancies; this comforts me; I experience the truth of it, since often when I feel the sharpest pangs I write con amore," he states in a letter to Kunz (24th March). And during his illness one of his friends "found him in one of the meanest rooms in one of the meanest inns, sitting on a wretched bed, but ill protected against the cold, and with his feet drawn up by gout." A board was lying in front of him, and he appeared to be busy doing something upon it. "God bless me!" exclaimed his friend, "whatever are you doing?" "Making caricatures," replied Hoffmann laughing--"caricatures of the cursed Frenchman; I am inventing them, drawing them, and colouring them." He also wrote about this time the Vision auf dem Schlachtfelde bei Dresden and other pieces, and finished his Undine; further, whilst in this distressing condition, he began the Elixiere des Teufels, the first volume of which was completed in less than a month. This work he intended to be an illustration, or illustrative exposition of his own notions, of "a man who even at his birth was an object of contention between the powers divine and demoniacal, and his tortuous wonderful life was intended to exhibit in a clear and distinct light those secret and mysterious combinations between the human spirit and all those Higher Principles which are concealed in all Nature, and only flash out now and again--and these flashes we call chance." That he succeeded in his purpose cannot be maintained. His own individuality was too strong for him: he failed to handle his subject from a sufficiently independent standpoint. He was not the artist creating a work that was quite outside himself; he was rather the silk-worm spinning his entangling threads round about himself. The book can scarcely be read without shuddering; the dark maze of humane motion and human weakness-- a mingling of poetry, sentimentality, rollicking humour, wild remorse, stern gloom, blind delusion, dark insanity, over all which is thrown a veil steeped in the fantastic and the horrible--all this detracts from the artistic merits of the work, but invests it with a corresponding proportion of interest as a revealer of some of the deepest secrets and hidden phases of the human soul, if one only has the courage to wade through it. The dreamy mystifications and the wild insanity and mystic passion of Brother Medardus are not unrelieved by scenes and characters which bear the stamp of bright poetic beauty and rich comic humour (e.g., the character of the Abbess of the Cistercian convent, the jäger, the description of the monastery, the scenes with Mr. Ewson and Belcampo alias Schönfeld).
For some reason which cannot be quite made out for certain, either in consequence of his continued illness or because of a quarrel with Seconda, Hoffmann found himself once more adrift in the world without an anchor to hold fast by in February, 1814. In striking contrast with his treatment by the Bamberg public, his talents as director whilst with Seconda's company were fully and adequately appreciated, both by the artistes and the orchestra, as well as by the general public. This may have been due to two causes; first, the actors and actresses were not embarrassed by his directing from the pianoforte instead of with the violin as those in Bamberg were, and in the second place his criticisms and essays on musical subjects in Rochlitz's Musicalische Zeitung had gained him a certain reputation as an authority in musical matters. After having refused the offer of a post as music-director in his native city of Königsberg in February (1814), he was agreeably surprised by Hippel's promise to secure his return into official life. Accordingly towards the end of September in that same year he set out for Berlin.
Here ends what may be termed the second act of this very unsettled, eventful life. That this wandering aside from the career he first started upon--viz., that of law and public life to tread the thorny precarious path of art was fraught with greater consequences than can be estimated upon the unfortunate man's character, will be evident from what has been already stated. These dark years were those mainly instrumental in stifling the good germs that had once been in him, and yet more did they result in encouraging and bringing out prominently all his less praiseworthy qualities. As his works and his life are so intimately interwoven, and as his works were nearly all written subsequent to this disastrous period, it seemed desirable to dwell somewhat upon the events and circumstances of the earlier part of his life. With the view of showing that Hoffmann himself fully understood the nature and tendency of his existence in Bamberg, the following passages are quoted from a letter written to Dr. Speyer in that town in July, 1813:--
"I felt in my own mind perfectly convinced that I must get out of Bamberg as soon as possible if I was not to be ruined altogether. Call vividly to mind what my life in Bamberg was from the first moment of my arrival, and you will allow that everything co-operated like an hostile demoniacal power to thrust me forcibly from the path I had chosen, or rather from art, to which I had devoted my entire existence, my very self with all my activities and energies. My position under Cuno, and even all those unbargained-for duties which were thrown upon me by Holbein, notwithstanding their many seductive attractions, but above all those scenes with----which I shall never forget and never overcome, the old man's miserable stupid platitudes, which yet in another respect had a pernicious influence, those wretched, terrible scenes with----and last of all with----, whom I always thought a parvenu ill-bred imp,--in a word, everything that went against all effort and doing and work in the higher life, in which a man raises himself on alert wing above the stinking morass of his miserable crust-begging life, engendered within me an inward dissension--an inward strife, which much sooner than any external commotion around me would have caused me to perish. Every harsh and undeserved indignity I had to suffer only increased my secret rancour, and whilst accustoming myself more and more to wine as a stimulant and so stirring up the fire to make it bum more merrily, I heeded not that this was the only way by which good could come out of the ruinous evil. In these few words, in this brief statement, I hope you will find the key to many things which may have appeared to you contradictory, if not enigmatical But transeant cum ceteris."[22]
Again, it can scarcely be doubted that we have a description of his own state when he writes in the Elixiere (Part II.), "I am what I appear to be, and do not appear as what I really am; to myself an unsolvable riddle, I am at variance with my own self."
The change of residence to Berlin did little to improve Hoffmann's circumstances. During the first ten months he was, according to the conditions imposed, labouring to make himself acquainted with the changes that had taken place in legal procedure, and to fit himself for entering the service of the state again and resuming his interrupted career; but he received no compensation for his pains; he had to support himself as best he could by the fruits of his pen. On July 1, 1815, he was appointed to a clerkship in the department of the Minister of Justice, which post he exchanged on 1st May, 1816, for that of Councillor in the Supreme Court, being also restored to all his rights of seniority as though no break had ever taken place in his official career. The duties attaching to this office he continued to discharge with his accustomed diligence and skill until promoted in the autumn of 1821 to be a member of the Senate of Higher Appeal in the same court. Notwithstanding his sad and disappointing experiences, and the tempestuous times of his "martyr years" at Bamberg, he was not yet disgusted with the life of an artist. His hopes were not yet alienated from the calling that hovered before his mind as an ideal for so many years. Whilst battling, with somewhat less of reckless high spirits and humour, against the embarrassments and pecuniary difficulties which he had to encounter during these ten months, he was also dreaming of an appointment as Kapellmeister (orchestral director) or as musical composer to a theatre. He says upon this point in a letter to Hippel, of date March 12, 1815, "I cannot anyhow cease to interest myself in art; and had I not to care for a dearly beloved wife, and were it not my duty to try and procure her a comfortable life after what she has gone through with me, I would rather become a music schoolmaster again than let myself be stamped in the juristic fulling-mill."[23] After more than one disappointment in his efforts to secure permanent and remunerative employment, in which efforts he was assisted by his influential friend Hippel, he became a clerk, as already stated, in the department of the Minister of Justice.
In his social relations Hoffmann was more fortunate. He now enjoyed the close companionship of Hitzig again, and through Hitzig was introduced into a select circle which counted amongst its members such men as Fouqué (author of Undine), Chamisso (of Peter Schlemihl fame), Contessa, Koreff, Tieck, Bernhardi, Devrient, and others. The harassing tumultuous days he had passed through during the last eight years had now begun to make him gentler and more modest; his character was more tempered, and his behaviour more subdued. His good-nature too took such a prominent place in the qualities he displayed that Hitzig's children were quite delighted with their father's newly arrived friend; for them Hoffmann wrote the pleasant little fairy tale Nussknacker und Mäusekönig (Nutcracker and the King of the Mice). Before the end of 1815 he had finished the second part of the Elixiere des Teufels, to which he himself attached no value, since its connection with the first part was broken; its author's ideas had got into another track; feelings and circumstances were changed. Still less than Schiller with Don Carlos. did Hoffmann succeed in making an artificial junction between the two parts of his work atone for its breach of artistic unity; he even said later of the first part, "I ought not to have had it printed." Besides this second part of the Elixiere, he also wrote the concluding pieces of the Fantasiestücke, namely, Die Abenteuer der Sylvesternacht, which owes its existence to Chamisso's Peter Schlemihl and to Chamisso himself, who is portrayed in the work; and also Die Correspondenz des Kapellmeisters Kreisler mit dem Baron Wallborn, that is Hoffmann himself and Baron von Fouqué. With the latter Hoffmann spent a happy fortnight in 1815 at his seat of Nennhausen near Rathenow; Hitzig was also of the party. In August of the following year the opera Undine was put upon the stage. Though Fouqué's libretto did not pass without some adverse criticism, all voices were unanimous in praise of the music. Von Weber the musician especially expressed himself warmly in admiration of it, affirming that it was "one of the most talented productions of recent times;" and he especially singled out for attention its truth, its smooth-flowing melodies, and its instrumentation; it was "in truth one gush" of music. The opera was repeated more than a score of times, when unfortunately the theatre was burnt down, and Hoffmann, who lived immediately adjoining it, was almost burnt out of house and home at the same time.