This recording includes both volumes of E. T. A. Hoffmann's Weird Tales, a collection of gothic novellas set in Germany, Italy, and some of the wilder parts of Europe. What there is of the supernatural in these tales is introduced with great subtlety if at all; most of the stories draw their "weirdness" from extraordinary characters, circumstances, or coincidences rather than from the paranormal, working out dark passions in dark settings. There are two themes dominating almost every one of these stories: not only the passion of young tragic love, but also a passion for Art in its every manifestation. With an almost religious fervor, Hoffmann builds each of his stories on a veneration for poetry, painting, craftsmanship, music. It is perhaps this passion for Art for Art's sake that made the stories of Hoffmann so profoundly influential on later writers, from the Bronte sisters of England to the Serapion Brethren and Marina Tsvetaeva of revolutionary Russia
last glass and rose to go too, "For the life of
me, I can't understand what the old gentleman meant by his talk, and
why he should have got testy about it at last." "My good friend Master
Martin," began Paumgartner, "you are a good and honest man; and a man
has verily a right to set store by the handiwork he loves and which
brings him wealth and honour; but he ought not to show it in boastful
pride, that's against all right Christian feeling. And in our guild-
meeting to-day you did not act altogether right in putting yourself
before all the other masters. It may true that you understand more
about your craft than all the rest; but that you go and cast it in
their teeth can only provoke ill-humour and black looks. And then you
must go and do it again this evening! You could not surely be so
infatuated as to look for anything else in Spangenberg's talk beyond a
jesting attempt to see to what lengths you would go in your obstinate
pride. No wonder the worthy gentleman felt greatly annoyed when you
told him you should only see common covetousness in any Junker's wooing
of your daughter. But all would have been well if, when Spangenberg
began to speak of his son, you had interposed--if you had said, 'Marry,
my good and honoured sir, if you yourself came along with your son to
sue for my daughter--why, i' faith, that would be far too high an
honour for me, and I should then have wavered in my firmest
principles.' Now, if you had spoken to him like that, what else could
old Spangenberg have done but forget his former resentment, and smile
cheerfully and in good humour as he had done before?" "Ay, scold me,"
said Master Martin, "scold me right well, I have well deserved it; but
when the old gentleman would keep talking such stupid nonsense I felt
as if I were choking, I could not make any other answer." "And then,"
went on Paumgartner, "what a ridiculous resolve to give your daught
