I.—Notes on the Influence of E. T. A. Hoffmann Upon Edgar Allan Poe

Gustav Gruener

doi:10.2307/456463

I.—Notes on the Influence of E. T. A. Hoffmann Upon Edgar Allan Poe

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020

Gustav Gruener

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In his Preface to The Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque Poe, while discussing the character and style of these tales, says: “I am led to think it is this prevalence of the ‘Arabesque’ in my serious tales, which has induced one or two critics to tax me, in all friendliness, with what they have been pleased to term ‘Germanism’ and gloom. The charge is in bad taste, and the grounds of accusation have not been sufficiently considered. Let us admit for a moment that the ‘phantasy-pieces’ now given are ‘Germanic’ or what not…. But the truth is that, with a single exception, there is no one of these stories in which the scholar should recognize the distinctive features of that species of pseudo-horror which we are taught to call Germanic, for no better reason than that some of the secondary names of German literature have become identified with its folly. If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul.” In this passage, though himself possessed with almost a monomania for discovering ‘plagiarism’ in other writers, (nowadays we should rather speak of 'influences'), Poe practically denies similar charges brought against him. And, in this denial, he takes occasion to lunge a side thrust at Hoffmann in his reference to 'phantasypieces' and ‘some secondary names of German literature‘—as will be seen later.

Type: Research Article
Information: PMLA , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , 1904 , pp. 1 - 25

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/456463 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1904

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^{page 1 note 1} Cf. the letter of Jas. E. Heath (September 12, 1839) in The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by James A. Harrison, New York, 1902 (cited hereafter as Works), xvii, 47.

^{page 2 note 1} Works, i, 150–51.

^{page 2 note 2} Works, xii, 112, Charges against Hawthorne for plagiarizing his own story William Wilson. Also xii, 41, “The Longfellow War;” xiii, 144, et passim.

^{page 2 note 3} The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, London, 1884, i, p. xiv.

^{page 2 note 4} Edgar Allan Poe, Boston, 1881, p. 63.

^{page 2 note 5} The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry, Chicago, 1894–95. i, 96.

^{page 3 note 1} Edgar Allan Poe, by George E. Woodberry, Boston, 1885.

^{page 3 note 2} Cf. p. 65; also p. 85.

^{page 3 note 3} Works, i, 153–154.

^{page 4 note 1} Revue des Deux Mondes of July 15, 1897 (vol. 142), pp. 336–374, and 552–592.—Die Zukunft (Berlin) of August 1st, 1903 (vol. 11, No. 44), pp. 181–190.

^{page 4 note 2} Cf. p. 72.

^{page 4 note 3} Cf. pp. 181–182.

^{page 4 note 4} Cf. p. 189.

^{page 5 note 1} Cf. Stedman: Edgar Allan Poe, p. 86.

^{page 5 note 2} Some of the most striking examples, taken at random, follow: So magst du bedenken, dass das, was sich wirklich begibt, beinahe immer das Unwahrscheinlichste ist (Werke, ed. Grisebach, Leipzig, 1900, vi, 52).

Man war darüber einig, dass die wirklichen Erscheinungen im Leben oft viel wunderbarer sich gestalteten, als alles, was die regste Fantasie zu erfinden trachte (iii, 133).

Vielleicht wirst du, O mein Leser, dann glauben, dass nichts wunderlicher und toller sei, als das wirkliche Leben (iii, 20).

Or, in Das Fraulein von Scudéri (viii, 190), where Hoffmann quotes Boileau (L'Art Poétique, iii, 43): Le vrai peut quelque fois n'êtrepas vraisemblable.

^{page 6 note 1} The translations have been taken from the Catalogue of the British Museum and corroborated, where it was possible, from the catalogues of some of the leading libraries in this country.

^{page 6 note 2} Die Elixiere des Teufels is a rambling, long drawn-out story of a Satanic elixir, which prolongs life but debases the purest character into one of utter depravity and wickedness. The germ is there of Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (cf. Jahresbericht für Neuere Deutsche Litteratur, 1895, iv, 4, 151).

^{page 7 note 1} Thomas Carlyle: German Romance, Edinburgh, 1827.

^{page 7 note 2} Published in The Foreign Quarterly Review, Vol. i, No. 1, pp. 60—99 (July, 1827). The article is based upon a review of (1) Hoffmanns Leben und Nachlass (by his friend Hitzig), Berlin, 1823; (2) Hoffmann's Serapionsbrüder, 6 vols., 1819–1823; (3) Hoffmann's Nachtstücke, 2 vols., 1816.

^{page 7 note 3} Cf. Gustav Thurau: E. T. A. Hoffmanns Erzählungen in Frankreich. Festschrift zum siebzigsten Geburtstage Oskar Schade dargebracht von seinen Schülern und Verehrern. Konigsberg i. Pr. 1896, pp. 239–289.

^{page 7 note 4} Champfleury, quoted by Thurau, p. 245.

^{page 7 note 5} Quoted by Thurau, p. 241.

^{page 7 note 6} Cf. Thurau, p. 241.

^{page 8 note 1} Cf. Dr. Th. Süpfle: Geschichte des deutschen Kultureinflusses auf Frankreich, Gotha, 1880—90, vol. 2, pp. 154 f.

^{page 8 note 2} Professor Wm. Lyon Phelps kindly compared the articles at the National Library in Paris, and furnished these data.

^{page 8 note 3} Loevè-Veimars was a well-known critic and translator, who had made a good name for himself by translations of Heine and Schiller, and his articles on general German literature.

^{page 8 note 4} Cf. Stedman (Poe's Complete Works, i, 96–97): “Among authors of the penumbral cast .... the temperaments and lives, even the features of Hoffmann and Poe seem to be most nearly of the same type.” “Still, while Hoffmann was wholly of the Vaterland and Poe a misfitted American, if the one had died before the other's birth instead of thirteen yearn later, there would be a chance for a pretty fancy in behalf of the doctrine of metempsychosis, which both these writers utilized.”

^{page 9 note 1} Works, i, 150.

^{page 9 note 2} Works, xvii, 179.

^{page 9 note 3} Cf. Critical and Miscellaneous Essays; collected and republished (first time, 1839; final, 1869) by Thomas Carlyle, London, 1869, vol. i, pp. 314, 349, 350.

^{page 10 note 1} Cf. Works, ii, Introduction, xxxvii ff.

^{page 11 note 1} Hoffmann's Werke (Grisebach), vii, 145.

^{page 11 note 2} Werke, vi; Vorwort, p. 7: Eben diese Form wird—muss an Ludwig Tiecks Phantasus erinnern.

^{page 12 note 1} Works, i, 150.

^{page 12 note 2} Henry Marvin Belden, Poe's Criticism of Hawthorne, in Anglia, xxiii (pp. 376–404), p. 389.

^{page 13 note 1} “In which,” he goes on to say (p. 72), “the most wild and unbounded license is given to an irregular fancy.” “It has no restraint save that which it may ultimately find in the exhausted imagination of the author.”

^{page 13 note 2} P. 98. The concluding words run: His “works as they now exist ought to be considered less as models for imitation than as affording a warning how the most fertile fancy may be exhausted by the lavish prodigality of its possessor.”

^{page 13 note 3} Cf. Kurschner's Deutsche Nationallitteratur, vol. 113, p. 266.

^{page 14 note 1} Works, xvii, 161. Letter to Lowell. Cf. also Lowell's reply, p. 181.

^{page 14 note 2} Cf. p. 81.

^{page 14 note 3} The italics are not in the original.

^{page 15 note 1} Particularly as it proceeds to condemn Hoffmann for his wasted life and just such extravagances of conduct as Poe himself was charged with.

^{page 15 note 2} Cf. p. 93.

^{page 16 note 1} Complete Works, i, 97.

^{page 17 note 1} For. Quar. Rev., i, 84. The italics are not in the original.

This description is not by any means exactly the same as that given in Hoffmann. Three important features, that of silence, so impressive a feature in Poe's House of Usher; that of the huge chasm from top to bottom; and that of the castle overhanging the Baltic are not so distinctly stated in the German. The castle is described only as “being not far from the Baltic Sea.” Hoffmann tries to heighten the desolation by laying special stress on the croaking of the ravens, the cries of the wheeling gulls, the howling of the wind and the soughing of the pines. The deep chasm is only remotely suggested by Hoffmann.

^{page 17 note 2} Works, iii, 227.

^{page 17 note 3} Letter from Philip Pendleton Cook, xvii, 264.

^{page 18 note 1} The Assignation, ii, 114.

^{page 18 note 2} The Assignation. ii, 118.

^{page 18 note 3} A Tale of Jerusalem. ii, 218.

^{page 18 note 4} The Assignation, ii, 117.

^{page 18 note 5} Loss of Breath. iii 152.

^{page 18 note 6} Bon-Bon. ii, 127.

^{page 19 note 1} The Assignation, ii, 114.

^{page 19 note 2} The Fall of the House of Usher, iii, 273.

^{page 19 note 3} The Assignation, ii, 119.

^{page 19 note 4} Bon-Bon. ii, 140.

^{page 19 note 5} MS. found in a Bottle. ii, 7.

^{page 19 note 6} Morelia, ii, 30.

^{page 19 note 7} Professors Lounsbury, Beers, and Cross, as well as others who were appealed to, were unable to recall any other English writer who shows this peculiarity to anywhere near such an extent, if at all. An examination of tales appearing in Blackwood's Magazine from 1825 to 1833 revealed that there were numerous tales of the “Grotesque and Arabesque,” but none which possessed this peculiarity.

^{page 20 note 1} Cf. Professor Charles W. Kent's Introduction to Poe's Poems. Works, vii, p. xxvi.

^{page 20 note 2} Works, ii, 118.

^{page 20 note 3} Works, viii, 163. Reminiscences of an Intercourse with Mr. Niebuhr, the Historian, ○., &c., by Francis Lieber.

^{page 21 note 1} Works, vii, xi-xii.

^{page 21 note 2} Works, xvi, 188 and 191: “Do you know, my dear friend,” says the writer, addressing no doubt a contemporary—“Do you know that, etc.”—P. 191: “Than the persons”—the letter goes on to say—“than the persons, etc.”

^{page 21 note 3} Works, vi, 64: “And then,” said a cadaverous looking personage, etc.—“and then.”—P. 65: “And then,” said somebody else, “then there was,” etc.—Later: “And then,” said some other of the party, “then there was,” etc.—P. 69: “To be sure,” said I, “to be sure.”—P. 70: “To be sure,” said I. “To be sure” occurs three times on this one page.

^{page 22 note 1} E. T. A. Hoffmann, Sein Leben und seine Werke, by Georg Ellinger, Hamburg and Leipzig, 1894, p. 175.

^{page 22 note 2} The italics are not in the original.

^{page 22 note 3} They are so felt by translators. In the popular French translation by Marnier they are cut out. Also in an English edition of Die Serapionsbrüder by Ewing.

^{page 23 note 1} These examples are taken from Doge und Dogaressa (Werke, iii, 101 ff.), which Stedman thinks suggested to Poe features of The Assignation.

^{page 23 note 2} Das Fräulein von Scuderi. Werke, viii, 139 f.

^{page 23 note 3} Das Öde Haus. Werke, iii, 133 f.

^{page 24 note 1} Doge und Dogaressa. V. supra.

^{page 24 note 2} Complete Works, i, 98.

^{page 25 note 1} Works, xv, 63.

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I.—Notes on the Influence of E. T. A. Hoffmann Upon Edgar Allan Poe

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