SOURCE: Jones, Michael T. “Hoffmann and the Problem of Social Reality: A Study of Kater Murr.” Monatshefte: A Journal Devoted to the Study of German Language and Literature 69, no. 1 (spring 1977): 45-57.

[In the following essay, Jones demonstrates tensions between artistic representation and the social world in E. T. A. Hoffmann's novel Lebensansichten des Katers Murr.]

E. T. A. Hoffmann's Lebensansichten des Katers Murr is known superficially to Germanists as a unique and humorous experiment in novelistic form, containing a double narrative and told from the perspective of a lively and endearing cat. Critics who have dealt with the novel, however, have concerned themselves primarily with the figure of Johannes Kreisler, and condescending commentary on the largely unknown Murr section—usually regarding the parallel structures of the two narratives—has often seemed perfunctory. The cat's autobiography presents a difficult problem indeed to tradition-minded scholars who approach Hoffmann's novel nourished on German Classicism and Romanticism as insuperable models of literary creation, for Murr's immersion in and perversion of various aspects of this tradition are occasions for inexhaustible humor and satire. The difficulty is already unmistakable in Murr's preface, in which he appeals in the language of Empfindsamkeit to the responses of kindred spirits and beautiful souls as consolation for the cold rebuffs of insensitive reviewers. Hoffmann's magnum opus varies widely from—indeed parodies—the Bildungsroman scheme of a dreamy-eyed Franz Sternbald wandering through an idyllic German landscape, chasing a “schöne Unbekannte” on his way to a mythical, paradisaic Italy. Here, Nürnberg and Rome are replaced by Göniönesmühl and Sieghartsweiler, and idealization of geographic localities which were previously mere ciphers is abandoned in favor of savage satire of isolated German provincial reality.

Faced with such departure from romantic tradition, Hoffmann scholarship has in general contented itself with long journeys into the labyrinths of plot and character, into the “buntscheckige Welttändelei”¹ of his multi-faceted world. As the foundation of this world, it has uncritically accepted Hoffmann's own view of an irreparable, unbridgable dualism between the “higher realm” of art and a bourgeois existence essentially hostile to art and to those who devote themselves to it. From this unhistorical perspective, interpretations of Kater Murr, if they do not exhaust themselves in plot summaries,² usually center on the artist figure and his encounters with an unfavorable environment, on the situation of “the” artist in “the” world. Peter von Matt, for example, describes the dichotomy as follows: “Für Hoffmann gibt es keine Analogie mehr zwischen Natur- und Kunstprodukt,—nicht weil er das künstlerische Tun gegenüber der fraglosen Vollendung alles Gewachsenen als nichtig empfände, sondern umgekehrt: auf Grund einer scharfen Verneinung alles Natürlichen im Sinne des Vegetativ-Organischen. Nur im Innern des Einzelnen befindet sich das Absolute, das Göttliche …”.³ The critic borrows imagery from Romanticism to refer ostensibly to nature but actually to the social world rejected by Hoffmann: “das Vegetativ-Organische” is a vague, hypothetical construct of the early nineteenth century which is not only—correctly enough—attributed to Hoffmann but also uncritically accepted by the critic himself, who ignores the essential insight of the social sciences into the dialectical tension between productive individual subjectivity and socio-cultural life-world; it is a static, mechanistic, ahistorical category which he hypostatizes and reifies.

In contrast to simple acceptance of romantic and neo-romantic conceptions of art as somehow necessary, inevitable, even mystical and of a higher ontological order, Hans Mayer, in an influential essay, first interpreted the radical dualism of Hoffmann's world as an “Ausdruck ungelöster deutscher Gesellschaftsverhältnisse.”⁴ Building on this foundation, Charles Hayes recognizes in a recent essay the primarily social nature of the conflicts portrayed in Hoffmann's work and asserts that the reality seen as universal by Hoffmann is actually bourgeois reality.⁵ Most recently, Diana Stone Peters has endeavored to show by means of his metaphor of the heavenly ladder that Hoffmann conceived of art as firmly rooted in everyday life, that the dualistic opposition of artist and philistine actually involves mutual interaction and relativization, that the fact that Hoffmann “examines the artist as well as the philistine from a critical point of view reveals the essentially constructive and conciliatory intention of his satire.”⁶ While accepting the centrality of the problematic relationship of art and social reality in Hoffmann's work, the following reading of Kater Murr, with greater emphasis than is customary on Murr's role as foil for Kreisler, will take issue with Peters' thesis of conciliation and will rather be concerned to show Hoffmann's increasing awareness of the hopeless omnipresence of social sanctions and strictures and of the deceptive nature of the haven apparently offered by the “other realm” of art.

I

A mechanistic Marxist analysis of class determination of ideology cannot do justice to Hoffmann, since Peters is certainly correct that Hoffmann directs his satire specifically against the philistine, who can be found among either bourgeoisie or nobility, so that “court and bourgeoisie can be treated as one entity”.⁷ Refinement of traditional Marxist categories is available in the theoretical treatise of Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, who delineate a general phenomenological theory of the sociology of knowledge which emphasizes knowledge of everyday, routinized life.⁸ Knowledge consists of common-sense definitions of reality; these include institutionalized, socially-patterned modes of behavior, activity, feeling, or experience. Such social constructs—in our context, for example, knowledge of what constitutes appropriate sexual or occupational roles—are experienced as external, objective, given, and autonomous; the internalization of these social expectations and standards constitutes their “reification” (Verdinglichung), which is defined as the “apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly super-human terms.”⁹ In actual fact, however, the institutions of society, as well as the processes of legitimation which support them, are historical products of the activity of men. Berger and Luckmann's philosophical anthropology of the self recognizes man's primordial capacity for externalization of his own potentiality, which can be congealed and objectified in products. These products are not only economic in nature but also include the patterns of the socio-cultural life-world. Thus, the fundamental dialectic of social life is that social institutions and meaning systems (including intellectual products), while humanly produced, yet obtain massive objective facticity. They may exert a compelling force which can transcend their class origins.

In his somewhat reluctant conversation with the Geheimrat, Kreisler reveals the massiveness of the socially-produced meaning system which he confronts from earliest childhood. “So ist es auch gewiß, daß es nicht Erziehungszwang, nicht besonderer Eigensinn des Schicksals, nein, daß es der gewöhnlichste Lauf der Dinge war, der mich fortschob, so daß ich unwillkürlich dort hinkam, wo ich eben nicht hin wollte” (381). The ominous phrase “der gewöhnlichste Lauf der Dinge” designates the pervasive social reality with which Johannes comes into conflict in his youthful choice—or lack of choice—of a future vocation. Despite the family's extensive and apparently rather successful musical activity, its most respected member succeeded in life by rejecting the musical proclivities of the family and beginning a career as Beamter, in which he made rapid progress and thus became the family's model of achievement. Under the influence of the formulative force of “primary socialization” occurring during childhood, young Johannes naturally desired to emulate his successful relative and therefore rejected the musical career for which he was obviously suited: “Daß die Kunst, welche mein Inneres erfüllte, mein eigentliches Streben, die wahre einzige Tendenz meines Lebens sein dürfe, fiel mir um so weniger ein, als ich gewohnt war, von Musik, Malerei, Poesie, nicht anders reden zu hören, als von ganz angenehmen Dingen, die zur Erheiterung und Belustigung dienen könnten.” (382). Even a musically active family uncritically accepts the socially normative view of art as merely a pleasant pastime but as certainly no way to get ahead on the social scale, and this is, after all, one's goal in life. Documented in great detail in the Kreisleriana is the misery of providing music for people who consider it either as part of the education of daughters from better families or as a pleasant background for card games, as part, in other words, of what “one does.” Kreisler cannot accept such degradation of the art he loves and flees it again and again.

Such social norms, although humanly produced, attain not only normative but also cognitive status, so that they are experienced as eternal, objective givens which, although “known,” must be constantly reaffirmed. The process of legitimation ascribes cognitive dignity to objectivated norms, thereby justifying the existing institutional order. Accepted norms of social behavior and their legitimation are a recurrent theme of Kater Murr and are always the object of satire. These “konventionelle(n) Verhältnisse, wie sie nun einmal bestehen” (351), as Benzon calls them, are unmercifully ridiculed in the description of Irenäus' pseudo-court. Although the actual business of governing the minute area had been taken over by the duke, Irenäus, as heir to a small fortune, insists despite his true status as a private citizen on playing prince in a royal court. Hoffmann never tires of poking fun at everyday life in the Irenäus court: the competition among scheming advisers for the ear of the prince, his excessive concern with matters of royal dignity, his fear of assassination, his playing political games with the marriages of his children, his princely fear of conspiracy among rebellious vassals, and finally his insistence on the use of French for festive occasions. This creates problems for the rather obese Hofmarschall: “‘Erzeigen Sie,’ sprach Meister Abraham, ‘erzeigen Sie mir die Güte, beste Exzellenz, und beobachten Sie sich selbst. Hat Ihnen der Himmel nicht ein schönes volltönendes Stimmorgan verliehen, und wenn Ihnen das Französische ankommt, da beginnen Sie plötzlich zu zischen, zu lispeln, zu schnarren, und dabei verzerren sich Dero angenehme Gesichtszüge ganz erschrecklich, und selbst der hübsche, feste, ernste Anstand, dessen Dieselben sonst mächtig, wird verstört durch allerlei seltsame Konvulsionen.’” (349). The novel is a veritable treasure-house of such gems. Behind the biting humor, of course, lies Hoffmann's contempt for the political system of small, territorial courts and their endless pomposity and intrigues.

The process of legitimation of socially-accepted norms of behavior is far from foolproof; there always exists the possibility of rebellion, and with the position of choir master begins Kreisler's rebellion. To hinder the possibility of rejection of social norms, conceptual mechanisms for the maintenance of universes of meaning can be called into play when the ruling reality definition is threatened. Since the rise in economic significance of the middle class had not been accompanied by corresponding political influence, the new “bourgeois” values had assumed a distinctly “escapist” appearance. In his cultural history of the phenomenon of melancholy, Wolf Lepenies has analyzed the values codified in Werther—love of nature and “freedom,” lonely “Schwärmen,” inwardness, depth of feeling etc.—as manifestations of “bourgeois escapism”; however, they were labeled in the “Eigenschaftspsychologie” of the late eighteenth century as “melancholy” in accordance with an old tradition.¹⁰ Such values were experienced as threatening as soon as their attraction began to spread to larger groups: “In that case …, the deviant version congeals into a reality in its own right, which, by its existence within the society, challenges the reality status of the symbolic universe as originally constituted. The group that has objectivated this deviant reality becomes the carrier of an alternative definition of reality.”¹¹ The passage in which Kreisler relates of his conflicts with the institutional order in his position as choir master is an example of such deviance in choosing among competing reality definitions. The danger for society of such deviance is not altered by the vague, amorphous, undefined character of the alternative: indeed, because of its obscurity and formlessness, it may be perceived as even more attractive and thus more threatening.

Information regarding this previous conflict is revealed in Johannes' conversation with Benzon. Although they had been intimate friends in the past and she had encouraged him to continue his musical endeavors (397), he now finds his friend greatly changed. Having attempted to describe his inner unrest and deep depression, for which there exists only the remedy of music, he only meets with her rebuke: “… immer habe ich gedacht, daß die Musik auf Sie zu stark, mithin verderblich wirke … (356). Benzon, having established herself as an important personage in Sieghartshof and now plotting courtly intrigues to further her own ends, has obviously “copped out” to a social system she had previously disdained. Kreisler reacts in the characteristic manner: “… indem er, so ernst und tiefbewegt er zuvor gesprochen, plötzlich den besonderen Ton der Ironie wieder aufnahm, der ihm eigen …” (356). Irony is a defense mechanism he employs when confronted with lack of comprehension in the philistine world, and ironic is his tone as he continues his account of life as a choir director. Having suffered repeated indignities, he at last has learned to respect the “Verhältnisse, wie sie nun einmal bestehen,” or so he says, and is ready to admit how artists really should live, that it cannot be otherwise: “Ja Verehrte, Sie glauben nicht, was ich während meiner Kapellmeisterschaft profitiert, vorzüglich aber die schöne Überzeugung, wie gut es ist, wenn Künstler förmlich in Dienst treten, der Teufel und seine Großmutter könnte es sonst mit dem stolzen übermütigen Volke aushalten. Laßt den braven Komponisten Kapellmeister oder Musikdirektor werden, den Dichter Hofpoet, den Maler Hofporträtisten, den Bildhauer Hofporträtmeißler und Ihr habt bald keine unnütze Fantasten mehr im Lande, vielmehr lauter nützliche Bürger von guter Erziehung und milden Sitten.” (357). Such terms as “Erziehung” and “Sitte,” as well as “Ordnung” and “Verhältnisse,” signify throughout the novel ruling social norms and values which, having achieved cognitive status, are beyond any possible doubt. Kreisler's obvious contempt for the artist who sells himself out to some prince and becomes a “nützlicher Bürger” solidifies his own position as a social outsider, for only in a recognized and paid position does he become a recognized and accepted member of the social structure. The conflict finds its inevitable culmination in the mutual rejection of court and musician when Kreisler refuses to succumb to the pressures put upon him: “… da ich mich schon durch einen geheimen Ostrazismus verbannt sah …”, Kreisler—echoes of Werther—“… lief hinaus ins Freie, unaufhaltsam fort, immer weiter fort!” (358).

These brief remarks on some aspects of Kreisler's life can serve to illuminate both his subjective state as advocate of a deviant reality definition and his resulting objective position as an unsuccessfully socialized individual, as an outsider in the social structure. From this perspective, Abraham's angry question to Benzon shows profound insight: “… was habt ihr alle gegen diesen Johannes, was hat er euch Böses getan? … wißt ihr's nicht?—Nun so will ich es euch sagen.—Seht, der Kreisler, trägt nicht eure Farben, er versteht nicht eure Redensarten … Er will die Ewigkeit der Verträge die ihr über die Gestaltung des Lebens geschlossen, nicht anerkennen …” (499). Unable to accept as eternal these social “contracts,” Kreisler's tenuous position is analogous to that of the intellectual as described by Berger and Luckmann: because of his social marginality and lack of theoretical integration, he appears as a “counter-expert” in reality definition. (Abraham: “… ja er meint, daß ein arger Wahn, von dem ihr befangen, euch gar nicht das eigentliche Leben erschauen lasse …”). Although he has vague notions of an alternative plan for society, it conflicts with institutional order and thus vegetates in an institutional vacuum. For a musician in Hoffmann's Germany, the only existing institutional niche is that of choir director, and that experience had been a disastrous one indeed. In dealing with such a deviant, society must categorize him, must label him in some fashion according to a recognizable and pre-defined type; as a result of such typification, any contrary self-identification will lack all social plausibility. Thus Kreisler becomes known as a “melancholic” in the tradition of the Jacques of As You Like It, an identification which he also subjectively accepts (353). The essentially social nature of this category—in contrast to a notion of melancholy as a fixed essence or Wesen—must be emphasized.

The function in Kreisler's life of vacational role expectation has been discussed, but the second example—sexual norms and challenges to them—occupy the center of attention after his arrival at Sieghartshof. During his meeting with Hedwiga and Julia in the park, Hedwiga is disturbed by her improper erotic feelings. She also fears Kreisler's irony and disdain for her royal person and for the order she accepts as natural. By contrast, Julia is pure, innocent, unsuspecting, and passive. As a girl of bourgeois birth (as far as anyone knows), her attraction for Kreisler can assume somewhat more suitable social form and is certainly clear enough. For the widow Benzon, instructed fully as to what has transpired in the park, he represents a definite threat. His deviant conduct “challenges societal reality as such, putting into question its taken-for-granted cognitive and normative operating procedures.”¹² The danger is that Kreisler may not recognize as valid the accepted “cognitive and normative operating procedures” regarding the right of a parent to choose the mate of a child and may run away with Julia. This threat to accepted social norms and its concomitant implication that the prevalent, ruling conceptual universe is less than inevitable—this is the answer to Abraham's question. In the constellation of Kater Murr, even the problem of romantic love, despite its apparent individuality, is basically a social one, to say nothing of marriage. Social sanctions permeate all human relationships, are omnipresent, cannot be avoided or fled.

This principle is brought home most forcefully later in the novel. Kreisler, forced to flee, seeks asylum for a time in the protective arms of cloister and church, an alternative with at first seems attractive: “Kreisler konnte nicht anders als dies zugeben und überdies versichern, daß die Abtei sich ihm aufgetan wie ein Asyl, in das er geflüchtet …” (539). But Hoffmann's description of the abbot, with whom this conversation occurs, is already cause for suspicion; he is described as a “Zögling der Propaganda in Rom.—Selbst gar nicht geneigt, den Ansprüchen des Lebens zu entsagen, insofern sie mit geistlicher Sitte und Ordnung verträglich …” (535). Those insidious demons “Stand,” “Sitte,” and “Ordnung” have not been left behind at all in this superficially protective haven for the surrender of life to art. The abbot's goal in this exchange has indeed little to do with art: Benzon has enlisted his aid in removing Johannes from Sieghartshof to the cloister, so that she can proceed unhindered to marry Julia off to Ignaz. So the abbot speaks eloquently enough of the “wirres Treiben” of the world and of the higher existence for which Johannes was born; Benzon has tutored him well as to how Johannes can be most deeply touched and which means of persuasion should best be employed. Johannes is momentarily deceived. He agrees yet admits his distrust of “Entsagung,” a point the abbot seizes upon to his misfortune, for the exhortation of sexual abstinence causes the reversal now familiar: “Da begann aber auf Kreislers Antlitz jenes seltsame Muskelspiel, das den Geist der Ironie zu verkünden pflegte, der seiner mächtig worden.” (542). In the speech that follows, Kreisler, as a reaction to the abbot's mention of social sanctions which could ruin him, pours out his bitterness at the games played and power struggles fought around the phenomenon of romantic love and marriage: the pretty speeches and downcast eyes of the lovelies, the fathers' eagerness to shed their daughters on such respectable persons as an “Exkapellmeister,” alternative possibilities of romantic idylls with the daughter of a butcher or a miller. He expresses his deep resentment at a social system which accomplishes the total perversion of romantic love and employs marriageable daughters as pawns. In Kater Murr, beginnings of possibly genuine, authentic romantic relationships are smothered by the ever-scheming Benzon, just as the romance of Chiara and Abraham is thwarted by the prince, always, that is, by means of an all-powerful system of social sanctions. Thus, when Peters asserts that Kreisler leaves the monastery when he “fully realizes the dangers of creation in ‘splendid isolation’”¹³ in order to “compose in a manner which directly effects his fellow man's communion with God,”¹⁴ she misinterprets the passage and misses the point. It is rather when the abbot at last shows himself to be an agent of the machinations of courtly intrigue that Kreisler understands that the temptation of the superficially safe retreat of a life spent in a cloister and in dedication to art is nothing more than a trick, a trap to eliminate him for evil ends. It has become clear in this central scene of the Kreisler narrative that there is no haven, no refuge from the brutal world of Irenäus and Benzon, that the vision of bourgeois escapism even into the realm of art is a cruel delusion, a form of quiescent passivity which only reinforces the despised social order.

By means of the socially distributed knowledge of accepted, routinized, and habitualized roles regarding vocational endeavor and sexual behavior, some of the prime points of conflict with society in Kreisler's life have been summarized which resulted in his unsuccessful social integration and consequent typification as a bizarre, unconventional, melancholic individual. But the title hero and his relationship to the whole can no longer be ignored.

II

Hoffmann's critics have, understandably enough, been somewhat unwilling to consider the force and function of the devastating satire so unconsciously offered by the irrepressible Murr. Understandably, because Hoffmann is not only content to parody the literary genre begun by Wilhelm Meister; but rather, as Herbert Singer has remarked in a fine essay, “… er unternimmt nichts Geringeres, als das Gesamtphänomen von Kultur und Gesellschaft der glanzvollsten Epoche der deutschen Geistesgeschichte, der Goethezeit, planvoll zu negieren und zu zerstören.”¹⁵ To destroy everything, in other words, dear to the hearts of tradition-minded critics. Whereas the Enlightenment receives a few sideswipes, the harder blows are saved for “Empfindsamkeit” and “Geniekult.” Neither is Romanticism itself spared: Singer notes that Murr once actually refers to himself as a “Romantiker” and that particularly Murr's poems must be considered “Parodien romantischer Poesie.”¹⁶ Murr's poetic theory is clear enough in its “justification” of Romantic poetic practice: “Verse sollen in dem in Prosa geschriebenen Buche das leisten was der. Speck in der Wurst, nämlich hin und wieder in kleinen Stückchen eingestreut …” (638). And in another splendid passage, Murr offers the results of his linguistic studies: “Vorzüglich faßte ich den Charakter der Sprache auf, und bewies, daß da Sprache überhaupt nur symbolische Darstellung des Naturprinzips in der Gestaltung des Lauts sei, mithin es nur eine Sprache geben könne, auch das Kätzische und Hündische in der besondern Formung des Pudelischen, Zweige eines Baums wären, von höherem Geist inspirierte Kater und Pudel sich daher verstünden. Um meinen Satz ganz ins klare zu stellen, führte ich mehrere Beispiele aus beiden Sprachen an und machte auf die gleichen Stammwurzeln aufmerksam, von: Bau-Bau-Mau-Miau-Blaf-blaf-Auvau-Korr-Kurr-Ptsi-Pschrzi u.s.w.” (348). A more marvelous rendition of the Romantic philosophy of and preoccupation with language can scarcely be imagined.

But even in the midst of his smiles, the reader is justified in becoming somewhat puzzled. What is the function of such satire of the ideal of Bildung and of an entire intellectual tradition? Singer quotes Jean Paul—that the task of humor is to reveal “Thorheit und eine tolle Welt”—and adds: “Die ‘tolle Welt’ ist aber die, welche die unsterblichen Meisterwerke deutscher Dichtung und Musik ermöglicht hat und in die hineingeboren zu sein ein Dichter und Musiker wie Hoffmann, so sollten wir glauben, als höchstes Glück empfinden müßte.”¹⁷ Then why not? Although Singer does not pose it (and this is a major weakness of his essay), the question seems unavoidable and leads once again directly to the problem of social reality.

Murr's first moments of consciousness reveal already his decisive trait: “… ich machte die erste Erfahrung von moralischer Ursache und Wirkung und eben ein moralischer Instinkt trieb mich an, die Krallen ebenso schnell wieder einzuziehen, als ich sie hervorgeschleudert.” (305). This action earns Murr the name “Samtpfötchen.” Of course, moral instinct is not at work here at all but rather Murr's first experiences with the sanctions and authority of society—his “primary socialization,” to which he readily acquiesces. Subsequently, the point is made more clearly when Murr describes his education: Abraham had left him complete freedom to educate himself as long as he continued to bow to “gewisse Normalprinzipien” (320), without which no society would be possible. Natural language and behavior (“natürliche Artigkeit”) are stressed in contrast to stiff, formal courtly convention. Despite his “freedom,” Murr cannot avoid the occasional sting of Abraham's birch rod; often forced to renounce his natural instincts, he comes, theoretically at least, to reject them because they “[entstehen] aus einer gewissen abnormen Stimmung des Gemüts.” (321). Only Murr's instinctual inclination toward “higher culture” prevents his running away. Higher culture consists of acquiescence to conventional social sanctions and of the “Drang nach den Wissenschaften und Künsten” (321) personified by Murr. Hayes has seen in this passage a critical view of the typical education of a German Bildungsbürger,¹⁸ and Singer formulates concisely: “Murr ist jederzeit bereit und bestrebt, sich mit allen seinen Talenten in den Dienst der ‘herrschenden Macht’ zu stellen. Die oberste Richtschnur seines Verhaltens ist die Anpassung an die Gesellschaft.”¹⁹

The key aspect of Murr's characterization is precisely “Anpassung.” Such a category is a good deal more discomforting for traditional criticism than “philistine,” the notion borrowed from Muzius to describe ahistorically an “ideal type” of “Spießbürger” insensitive to art. (“Philistine” carries with it, as did “melancholic,” connotations of a particular fixed essence, eternal and unchanging.) Murr shares the stage in his autobiography with other figures who are manifestations of other kinds of accommodation to the exigencies of the middle-class world: Hoffmann offers in the Murr sections a number of contrasts which illustrate various developments and possibilities of the middle class. Whereas the bourgeoisie is, with the problematic exceptions of Kreisler and Abraham, virtually absent in the Kreisler story, it is to be found in Murr in all its “buntscheckige Welttändelei”; yet such figures as Muzius and Ponto have received little critical comment.

The character of Murr is a splendid parody of the dilettant artist and the pedantic scholar. The first book he reads is Knigge—a marvelous touch on Hoffmann's part—, and he finds in this Emily Post of the German bourgeoisie important insights for cats who want to succeed in human society. Meanwhile, his diverse literary efforts are crowned with a tragedy; Knigge and high tragedy, social convention and pedantry, and self-glorification are fused in the character of this unforgettable cat. With his first painful experiences of the outside world, however, Murr begins to realize that there is much of the world he does not yet understand. Thus, he is susceptible to the elucidations of his friend Muzius concerning the nature of the philistine, the first of Hoffmann's several contrasts. Muzius' solution is the “Burschentum,” and he explains “… daß der Katzbursch offen, ehrlich, uneigenützig, herzhaft, stets bereit dem Freunde zu helfen” (503). Murr joins the fraternity amid great rejoicing, but the further course of events reveals the hollowness of these values, their status as “bürgerliche Klischees.”²⁰ Neither the institution of “Burschentum” itself nor its subsequent persecution and illegality—a clear contemporary reference—finds any favor with Hoffmann, and both alternatives of the contrast prove fallacious.

Hoffmann takes much greater pains, particularly in volume two of Kater Murr, to develop a second false contrast personified by the poodle Ponto. Ponto demonstrates his worldly savoir faire in the episode with the little girl and the sausage, then goes to great length to prove his worldly wisdom with a long narrative of the friends Walter and Formosus, calculated to unmask realistically the true sentiments behind their public display of affection. His views gain in plausibility for Murr with his account of a life of indolence and ease under the Baron von Wipp. Murr objects to such “Knechterei” and insists upon his own “Freiheitssinn” (615) but to no avail; Ponto's jesting, condescending reply indicates sympathy for his ignorant, theoretically radical, freedom-loving friend and sounds remarkably like Benzon: “… du redest, guter Murr, wie du es verstehst, oder vielmehr wie es dir deine gänzliche Unerfahrenheit in den höheren Verhältnissen des Lebens erscheinen läßt …” (615). After expending considerable meditative effort on the matter, Murr surrenders at last to Ponto's version of high society and agrees to accompany the poodle to sweet Badine, center of the finer canine social world. His preparations for the adventure are splendid details which, through the explicit mention of French, provide a parallel to Sieghartshof: “Ich putzte mich heraus so gut ich es vermochte, las noch etwas im Knigge und durchlief auch ein paar ganz neue Lustspiele von Picard um nötigenfalls auch mich im Französischen geübt zu zeigen …” (642). Despite the instructions from Knigge, Murr behaves most ungallantly, but more interesting than his adventures is his theoretical self-justification. Torn between Ponto's elegance and frivolity and his own philosophical and moral principles, Murr struggles to convince himself once more that his view is correct: “Mit aller Gewalt wollte ich mich selbst überreden, daß ich bei meiner wissenschaftlichen Bildung, bei meinem Ernst in allem Tun und Treiben auf einer viel höheren Stufe stehe als der unwissende Ponto, der nur hier und da etwas von den Wissenschaften aufgeschnappt. Ein gewisses gar nicht zu unterdrückendes Gefühl sagte mir aber ganz unverhohlen, daß Ponto überall mich in den Schatten stellen würde; ich fühlte mich gedrungen einen vornehmern Stand anzuerkennen und den Pudel Ponto zu diesem Stande zu rechnen.” (638-639).

We have now arrived at a crucial point for an understanding of the entire novel. For the third contrast, and not a false one, developed by Hoffmann is the most important of all: the polar opposition throughout the entire work of Johannes Kreisler and Murr, who functions in the novel as his continual foil. Many details delineate their opposing views and opinions. As a man familiar with the true nature of art, for example, Kreisler composes from inner necessity and often suffers for it, whereas Murr sees only its utilitarian and therapeutic value—it creates a warm inner feeling which can overcome all human suffering, even hunger and toothaches (597). Yet such details come into focus only when the question of contrasting attitudes toward social reality—far from any reifying typifications concerning “the” artist or “the” philistine—is at last squarely faced. In the preceding elucidations, Kreisler was interpreted as a deviant, an outsider, as a proponent of an alternate reality definition which, in revealing the less than inevitable status of the ruling conceptual universe, is perceived as threatening and thereby evokes repressive measures of legitimation. Murr, in the passage just quoted, is wrestling with precisely the same problem, with the undeniable incongruence of two world views whose conflicting claims about goals, values, and the nature of man cannot be reconciled. Kreisler held to his views and consequently was chased from pillar to post, from court to cloister and back again, stigmatized as deviant by an uncomprehending world. How does friend Murr deal with this, the fundamental problem of the novel?

Murr rationalizes:

Der gute Ton besteht aber so wie der gute Geschmack in der Unterlassung alles Ungehörigen. Nun meine ich ferner, daß der Unmut, der sich aus dem widersprechenden Gefühl der Überlegenheit und der ungehörigen Erscheinung bildet, den in dieser sozialen Welt unerfahrnen Dichter oder Philosophen hindert, das Ganze zu erkennen und darüber zu schweben. Es ist nötig, daß er in dem Augenblick seine innere geistige Überlegenheit nicht zu hoch anschlage und unterläßt er dies, so wird er auch die sogenannte höhere gesellschaftliche Kultur, die auf nichts anders hinausläuft als auf das Bemühen, alle Ecken, Spitzen wegzuhobeln, alle Physiognomien zu einer einzigen zu gestalten die eben deshalb aufhört eine zu sein, nicht zu hoch anschlagen. Dann wird er, verlassen von jenem Unmut, unbefangen, das innerste Wesen dieser Kultur und die armseligen Prämissen, worauf sie beruhet, leicht erkennen und schon durch die Erkenntnis sich einbürgern in die seltsame Welt, welche eben diese Kultur als unerläßlich fordert.

(639-640)

Singer's comment is pertinent: “Was Murr hier fordert und zu leisten bereit ist, ist nichts weniger als die Kapitulation des Geistes vor der Gesellschaft.”²¹ Capitulation, resignation, eventual integration, and theoretical justification by the intelligentsia of the “armseligen Prämissen” of a social reality apprehended as irrational, cruel, destructive, and evil on the one hand, resistance and rebellion against this reality sustained by romantic and even utopian visions of genuine art and a better mankind on the other: this is the alternative posed by Kater Murr. The obscurantist profundity of German Idealism is satirized in the character of Murr, who, crawling back under his oven to his scholarship and pedantry while rationalizing a system concerned with the “Bemühen, alle Ecken, Spitzen wegzuhobeln,” epitomizes the social impotence of the German intelligentsia.

III

In contrast to an impression of Hoffmann's “artist's increasing tendency to recognize the necessity of living in the social world and the inefficacy of creating in splendid isolation,”²² which is essentially what Murr does, Kater Murr reveals the absolute irreconcilability of the two realms, not only in its content but also in its form. In the simultaneity and polar opposition of the two narratives, the sympathy of the author is clearly with Kreisler, and negative aspects of the artist figure are missing; his irony or “melancholy” is socially determined and an understandable defense mechanism against the world. Foregoing analysis has shown Hoffmann's deadly serious intention of portraying the incongruity between the compensatory, overblown sentiments of German philosophy and poetry and the prevailing conditions of social misery in post-Napoleonic Germany. In this late, most extensive portrait of “Kleinstaaterei,” Hoffmann, hardly conciliatory, recognizes more clearly than before that social norms and sanctions had pervaded and corrupted every aspect of life, including his beloved music. Creation in splendid isolation offers a kind of “inner emigration” rejected by Kreisler and by Hoffmann. “Necessity of living in the social world” indeed: there is no escape from it.

The point is brought home even more forcefully diachronically than synchronically: the episode of the birthday party, which occurs after Johannes' departure from the monastery and therefore chronologically occurs last, is narrated first and only understood by the reader when he has reached the end. Kreisler is simply left stranded in no-man's-land. (It is useless to speculate on the novel's continuation.) Along with double narration, then, circularity of narration in Kater Murr is Hoffmann's contribution in form which reinforces the impression of futility and hopelessness in the face of a system here subjected to the most pointed social satire of German Romanticism.

Notes

1. E. T. A. Hoffmann, Elixiere des Teufels and Lebensansichten des Katers Murr, ed. Walter Müller-Seidel (Darmstadt, 1971). All page references to Kater Murr are to this edition; quote p. 541.

2. Such is unfortunately the case with Robert S. Rosen, E. T. A. Hoffmanns “Kater Murr”: Aufbauformen und Erzählsituation (Bonn, 1970).

3. Peter von Matt, Die Augen des Automaten, E. T. A. Hoffmanns Imaginationslehre als Prinzip seiner Erzählkunst (Tübingen, 1971), p. 38. Matt offers a convincing analysis of the role of Meister Abraham in the novel, a problem with which this essay does not deal; but his interpretation suffers from his neglect of Murr, who receives only one condescending footnote (p. 111).

4. Hans Mayer, “Die Wirklichkeit E. T. A. Hoffmanns,” Von Lessing bis Thomas Mann (Pfullingen, 1959), p. 211.

5. Charles Hayes, “Phantasie und Wirklichkeit im Werke E. T. A. Hoffmanns, mit einer Interpretation der Erzählung ‘Der Sandmann’,” in Ideologiekritische Studien zur Literatur: Essays I, Volkmar Sander, ed. (Frankfurt, 1970), p. 184.

6. Diana Stone Peters, “E. T. A. Hoffmann: The Conciliatory Satirist,” Monatshefte, 66 (1974), 56.

7. Peters, p. 58.

8. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, N.Y., 1967).

9. Berger and Luckmann, p. 89.

10. Wolf Lepenies, Melancholie und Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1972), pp. 76-114.

11. Berger and Luckmann, pp. 106-107.

12. Berger and Luckmann, p. 113.

13. Peters, p. 57.

14. Peters, p. 58.

15. Herbert Singer, “Hoffmann: Kater Murr,” in Der Deutsche Roman I, Benno von Wiese, ed. (Düsseldorf, 1963), p. 305.

16. Singer, p. 307.

17. Singer, p. 306.

18. Hayes, pp. 212ff.

19. Singer, p. 308.

20. Singer, p. 308.

21. Singer, p. 309.

22. Peters, p. 72.