Did not your heart grieve at the sight of how a man unworthy and insignificant was surrounded by honors, gifted with all kinds of blessings and looked around with a swaggering arrogance? The great romance of Ernest Theodore Amadeus Hoffmann, who turned his smart and accurate pen against the stupidity, vanity, injustice, which there are so many in our world, overcame the same sadness.
The genius of German romanticism
Hoffmann was a truly universal personality in culture - a writer, thinker, artist, composer and lawyer. Having lived a short life (only 46 years old), he managed to create works that became an event not only in the global art, but also in the personal cultural space of every person who touched the work of this genius.
Many of the images created by Hoffmann became common nouns. Among them is the hero of the fairy tale short story "Baby Tsahes, nicknamed Zinnober." Here the author showed such remarkable wit, depth of imagination and the power of artistic generalization that the fairy tale and the images recreated in it look extremely relevant today. Now in politics, then in art, then in the media, no, no, but this ominous dwarf will flash - Little Tsakhes.
Summary of the Conception of the Tale
From the picture of a sultry day and the sad lamentations of a tired peasant woman, the narrative begins. We learn that wealth, despite hard work, does not go into the hands of this mendicant family. In addition, a rare freak was born in it, the body of which the author very expressively compares with a forked radish, now with an apple planted on a fork, on which they painted a ridiculous face, or with a strange stump of a clumsy tree. Two and a half years have passed since the baby Tsahes was born, but no one saw in him any human manifestations. He still did not know how to walk and talk, but made only some meowing sounds. And it was necessary for this to happen that at that time a real fairy passed by, who, however, had to disguise herself as a canonis (privileged nun) of a shelter for noble maidens, since fairies in that principality were under the greatest ban.
Fairy Rosabelverde was imbued with keen compassion for a miserable family and rewarded the tiny freak with extraordinary magical power, which was not slow to manifest before the peasant woman returned home. The pastor, by whose house she was passing, stopped the woman and, forgetting about his lovely three-year-old son, suddenly began to admire the monstrous dwarf clinging to his mother's skirt. The Holy Father was terribly surprised that the mother could not appreciate the wonderful beauty of a beautiful child, and asked to take the baby to her.
A note on spiritual qualities
The reader’s next meeting with someone called Baby Zahes took place many years later when he grew up and became a student. The first to meet the evil dwarf on the road to Kerepes in the forest were noble young people - Fabio and Balthazar. And if the first had a mocking and sharp mind, the second was distinguished by thoughtfulness and romantic aspirations. The appearance and manners of the ugly stranger, who rolled out in the most miserable way from the saddle under the feet of the young men, caused laughter in Fabio, and in Balthazar - sympathy and pity. Balthazar was a poet whose inspiration was reinforced by a passionate love for Candida, a pretty daughter of a professor whose young man was listening to a course of lectures on natural sciences.
Witchcraft Strength
The appearance of the vile dwarf caused in the city not at all the reaction that Fabian was expecting, anticipating universal fun. Suddenly, for some reason, all the inhabitants started talking about a plain ugly freak as a handsome and handsome young man with many virtues. Even more, the city went crazy, calling the little monster “an elegant, handsome and skilful young man” when baby Zahez attended a literary tea party by Professor Mosh Terpin, whose daughter Balthazar was in love with. Here the young man read his delightful and refined poem about the nightingale's love for the rose, in which he expressed the heat of his own feelings. What happened after that was fantastic!
Conquered by the poem, the listeners vied with each other to praise ... the little Tsakhes, addressing him respectfully "Mr. Zinnober." It turned out that he was not just “smart and skillful”, but “marvelous, divine”. Then, Professor Mosh Terpin showed amazing experiments, but not he gained fame, but the very same baby Tsahes. Because of the inexplicable witchcraft aura in the presence of talented and intelligent people, he was instantly called perfection. Whether the talented musician will play the concert - admiring gaze is directed towards Tsahes, whether the great artist will sing a magnificent soprano - and an enthusiastic whisper is heard that there is no way to find such a singer like Zinnober around the world. And now the blue-eyed Candida is unconditionally in love with the baby Tsaheza. He makes a stunning career, becoming first a Privy Councilor and then Minister of the Principality. Imbued with great importance and became demanding of honors, as he is ironically characterized by Hoffmann, baby Tsahes.
Summary of the climax of the novel
Everything that anyone does with him or says something wonderful is immediately attributed to Tsahes. And vice versa, all the ugly and ridiculous antics of a freak (when he hoarsens, croaks, clowns and carries a nonsense) in the eyes of society are charged with a real creator. That is, there is a kind of diabolical substitution that plunges into despair those who deserve success, but are doomed to shame because of the damned freak. The infernal force, stealing hopes, calls Balthazar a witchcraft gift of the evil dwarf.
But there must be some means against this madness! Witchcraft can be resisted if “with firmness to resist it”, where there is courage, there victory is inevitable. The positive
heroes of the tale come to this conclusion - Balthazar, Fabian, and the young referendum, who marked Pulcher on the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs (whose merits and position were stolen by Tsahes). Friends learn about an amazing circumstance: every nine days a fairy flies into the garden to Tsahes to comb his curls and renew his magical power. And then they begin to look for ways to control the spell.
Evil Can Be Defeated
After that, another character appears in the fairy tale - the wizard Prosper Alpanus. After studying books about gnomes and alrauns, he comes to the conclusion that baby Tsahes is an ordinary person, endowed not worthy of a wonderful gift. In the magical battle between Alpanus and Rosabelverde, the more powerful magician deprives the fairy of the opportunity to help her ward: the comb with which she combed the hair of the little monster broke. But the wizard told Balthazar that Zinnober’s secret was three fiery hairs on the crown of his head. They must be pulled out and burned immediately, then everyone will see Tsahes as he really is.
From a philosophical point of view, the plot conflict is that, due to an incomprehensible spontaneous intervention, injustice triumphs, and the truth is defeated. Thanks to the support of the majority, evil becomes legitimate and begins to rule over reality. And then a volitional impulse is needed, resistance to mass hypnosis in order to change position. As soon as this happens in the minds and deeds of some, albeit a small part, of people acting together, the situation changes.
The young man successfully copes with his mission: people are convinced of the true state of affairs, they are drowning in the night pot with their own sewage baby Tsahes. The heroes are justified, Candida admits that she always loved Balthazar, the young marry, having inherited a magical garden and a house of Alpanus.
Fiction is the flip side of reality
As an apologist for the ideas of Jena's romantics, Hoffmann was convinced that art was the only source of the transformation of life. Only strong emotions are involved in the story - laughter and fear, worship and disgust, despair and hope. In the fairy tale about baby Tsahes, as in his other works, the writer creates a half-real, half-mythical world in which, according to the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, a fantastic image does not exist somewhere outside of reality, is another side of our reality. Hoffmann uses the motive of magic in order to more clearly and clearly demonstrate what reality is. And in order to cast off her fetters, he resorts to sharp and subtle irony.
Art techniques
Famous folklore motifs, meaning sorcery, are gracefully woven into the fabric of the narrative and peculiarly played up by everyone. The magic hairs that the fairy supplied her pet, the knob of the magic cane, exuding rays in which all the falsity turns into what does not seem, but in fact, is a golden comb that can turn the ugly into the beautiful. Hoffman also uses the famous fairy-tale theme of clothing, filling it with topical not only for his contemporaries, but also for you and me content. Let us recall the sleeves and tails of the Fabian's frock coat, the length of which immediately became the reason for hanging evil and stupid labels on its owner.
The irony of Hoffmann
The writer laughs at the ridiculous innovations in the bureaucratic apparatus. The satirical image of a bureaucratic uniform with diamond buttons, the number of which indicates the degree of merit to the fatherland (ordinary people had two or three, as many as Zinnober, as much as twenty), the author also beats with an exquisite artistic sense. If on an ordinary human figure the honorary ministerial ribbon was held so perfectly, then on the torso of Tsahes - a short stump “with spider legs” - she could only stay with two dozen buttons. But the “Honorable Mr. Zinnober” was, of course, worthy of such high honor.
Finally, the statement of the result of the dishonest life of the ugly impostor seems brilliant: he died from a fear of dying - such a diagnosis is made by the doctor after examining the body of the deceased.
We have something to think about.
Hoffmann wittily shows us a portrait of society, the mirror of which became the unfortunate baby Tsahes. An analysis of the problem leads us to the conclusion that distraught in this way can be very easy and hopeless. If you yourself are ready to replace the truth with lies out of mercenary motives, if you are not alien to the tendency to ascribe other people's merits to yourself, if, finally, you are not driven by bold and free ideas in life, but by narrow-minded conformism, sooner or later you will put Tsahez’s baby on the pedestal nicknamed Zinnober.