The Golden Pot and Other Tales of the Uncanny

by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Peter Wortsman (Translator)

Macabre and fantastical, Hoffmann’s wildly imaginative tales offer an unflinching view of human nature and sing clearer than ever in a masterful new translation

Whether a surrealist exploration of the anxieties surrounding automation, or a mystery concerning a goldsmith, missing jewels, and a spate of murders, each tale in this collection reveals the complexities of human desire and fear.

Hoffman, whose most famous work is “The Nutcracker,” is often compared to Edgar Allan Poe. Hoffman’s massive influence qualifies him as the godfather of the German Romantic Movement which led to the horror genre.

The macabre, fantastical nature of his subject matter inspired a broad swath of culture, with two of the longer stories in this collection “The Sandman” and “The Automaton” influencing Philip K. Dick’s original inspiration for Blade Runner. The murder mystery “Mademoiselle de Scudéry” is perhaps one of the earliest prototypes of the detective genre story.

Music and madness flow through E.T.A. Hoffmann’s phantasmagoric stories. The ringing of crystal bells heralds the arrival of a beguiling snake, and a student’s descent into lunacy; a young man abandons his betrothed for a woman who plays the piano skillfully but seems worryingly wooden; a counselor’s daughter must choose between singing and her life.

Peter Wortsman’s masterful new translation allows Hoffmann’s distinct and influential style to shine, while breathing new life into stories that seem both familiar and uncanny.

Genres: Fiction, Horror, Short Stories, Fantasy, Classics, Gothic, Fairy Tales

425 pages, Paperback

First published October 24, 2023

About the author

Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann, better known by his pen name E. T. A. Hoffmann (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann), was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. His stories form the basis of Jacques Offenbach's famous opera The Tales of Hoffmann, in which Hoffman appears (heavily fictionalized) as the hero. He is also the author of the novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, on which the famous ballet The Nutcracker is based. The ballet Coppélia is based on two other stories that Hoffmann wrote, while Schumann's Kreisleriana is based on Hoffmann's character Johannes Kreisler.

Hoffmann's stories were very influential during the 19th century, and he is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement.

Reviews

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this translation so much. I've bought this edition of Hoffman's tales just to have the pleasure of holding it in my hands as I read. That I loved it this much is quite a tribute to Peter Wortsman's meticulous translation, especially because I first fell in love with E.T.A. Hoffmann in my German classes, reading these stories in the original language, and then I fell in love with them again when I read Ritchie Robertson's translations from the early 1990's, the way Robertson nudged or manhandled some of the literal meanings entirely forgiven by me because of the way he made everything rhyme, and dance--and I need to admit that I did miss the way the old woman in Robertson's version shouts after Anselmus, so eerily and so threateningly, INTO GLASS YOU SHALL PASS!!!--even though the German has no such rhyme in it, and even if Wortsman's translation of "Krystal" as 'crystal ball' is much closer to the original meaning than "glass" is...so yes, read this, read it with delight, and give thanks that this new version is here of these amazing vivid stories that still make me laugh, and sometimes shiver.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Firstly thank you Netgalley for allowing me to read this book.

The Golden Pot is a translated short story collection from the writer and composer E.T.A Hoffmann. Each story threads together the themes of murder, magic, madness and music. Told through beautiful prose and imagery which gives it an almost fever dream quality.

As with all collections some stories resonate more. His most famous The Golden Pot and The sandman are prime examples of his work and his exploration of madness and magic and how music can play its parts. But my personal favourite was Mademoiselle De Scudery a murder mystery possibly one of the 1st of its kinds. It has jewellery thefts, possible spirits,secrets and royalty.

I would recommend this book to anybody who wants to dip.in to the classics or who love character driven stories.

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kudos to translator Peter Wortsman! My experience with college German was necessarily relatively brief and therefore basically functional. I had no clue that the creative arts, fantasy, and romance could be so exquisitely rendered in German. The translation was so seamless that only the occasional use of modern vernacular gave it away as being a translation.

Hoffmann was an administrative lawyer by day. But his creative genius was ‘on’ 24 hours a day. He was a composing musician and music critic, a prolific author, and an artist. His imagination was astounding, probably enhanced by a stressful childhood. Think about the dream sequences that Clara had in The Nutcracker. Now multiply that by 2 or 3, and you get some phantasmagorical scenes in some of these tales. In the eponymous The Golden Pot, I felt like I was in some mashup of the Brothers Grimm, Alice in Wonderland, and Harry Potter. I had no idea which side I was rooting for in a climatic fight episode.

There were several stories where cerebral discussion of music was the theme. Even with my background and interest in music, I found myself slogging a bit, the way I did with the movie My Dinner With Andre. One odd trait was that he used musical terms or words in bizarre fashion, e.g., “Softly, Lauretta sang a note, which she held for a long fortissimo and then quickly broke out in a lively, ruffled figure which she held for one and a half octaves.” Or this one: “Nightingale twitters swelled and receded - notes held - then bright, ruffled roulades, followed by a burst of solfeggio!” (For those unfamiliar with musical terminology, softly and fortissimo are at opposite ends of decibel readings; an octave and a half is a 12-note range, not a measurement of time; and solfège is the use of ‘do re mi’ etc instead of real words to match the sung notes, with specific corresponding hand signals for each note instead of reading a musical score.)

Hoffman also had strong views about automatons, I think pretty much all negative. I’m with him on this one. Back in the early 19th century, they already had these talking moving robots. Not being human, he felt they were inferior because they lacked depth, passion, and spontaneity. I can only imagine what he would say today about our development of AI.

Reading just this handful of stories it’s easy to see his influence on Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, Fran’s Kafka, Robert Schumann, Oscar Wilde, and even on Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. I found myself going down various rabbit holes as I followed up on allusions to historical figures. For instance, The Fermata was based on an Hummel painting ‘Company in an Italian Locanda’. I viewed the painting online, then discovered that Hummel the painter was not Hummel the composer. The first was Johann Erdmann, the second was Johann Nepomuk. Then I discovered that the popular Hummel figurines was first created by Maria Innocentia Hummel. A creative clan, those Hummels, although they may not be related … I drew the line at that point in my burrowing. I’ll spare you the dynastic research on the Bourbon royals I did after I read Mademoiselle de Scudery, but suffice it to say I might be rereading The Three Musketeers and its sequel Twenty Years After sometime this year.

I wish that I had known more about Hoffman at the time that my chorus sang some choruses from Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman. I also wish I had known earlier that Schumann’s Kreisleriana was inspired by Hoffman (Kreisler was Hoffman’s alter ego in a tale). We’re all familiar with Tchaikovsky’s music from The Nutcracker Suite and the ballet itself that San Francisco Ballet first performed. After reading these Hoffman tales I think that he would have been amused by Mark Morris’s production of The Hard Nut, a parody of the traditional ballet.

[Will Fassler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the golden pot basically all in one sitting and I enjoyed! I read on someones blog post online that the Witch is definitively evil and the Archivarius is definitively good and I must disagree. Teeming with serpents (literally the most classic evil symbol), manipulating reality, and putting voices in other's heads, I was not convinced of the "goodness" of Atlantis or the Archivarius. Why did he lock up all of those other men in bottles if he wasn't some sort of evil? He only let Anselmus out because he could manipulate him totally and completely once doing away with the witch (but thats just my interpretation).
The overall message I took away is a warning of falling too deep into artistic endeavors. Anselmus was never seen again, and although basically in heaven, he could never return to the real world as dreary as it may be. I loved the scenes with the witch, especially the ritual, and it felt like the world was really alive. It reminded me of the detail in studio ghibli films. I even liked when he mentioned unidentifiable things strewn on the floor (to me this didn't seem unspecific, it felt more like an invitation to imagination). It is so crazy this written in the early 1800s! Overall, I loved all of the imagery and I thought the asides from narrator to reader were silly.

ALSO, I read from someone else's blog post that this story was one of the major influences of Joseph Smith in writing the Book of Mormon and.... I just have to laugh. I want to read some more analyses on this story.

I read the first two stories, and although they were interesting, I am not going to read the rest in this collection.
okay now some quotes or parts I liked...

- "'Just one more time, whirl and wisp and wind yourself in the branches... just once more cast your lovely eyes on me."
I liked this part because the futility of the desperation in "just one more time."

-"...I've still got my precious Serpentina under my skin, and I'd rather go under than give up on her affection..."
The words "under my skin" felt so weird in context of someone you are supposed to love, and "go under" made it clear (to me at least) that the manipulation of Archivarius to Anselmus was basically complete.

- "Don't you know that insanity is infectious? One fool makes many, as the preacher says"

- "Fire is desire, but hope is our clear shadow"

[Theediscerning · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boy, these were hard work. The music-oriented shorter pieces went right over my head, the title story was a perfect storm of risible plot (according to wikipedia, anyway) and antique style, and even 'The Automaton', which I might have encountered in the past, and which should have been a great look at a psychic kind of robot, bogged itself down in talk of player pianos and music box-styled robotic musician constructions. Certainly there is more to 'The Sandman', where again a robotic figure plays a part – this is much more to my taste at least. But the first detective novel (even before the one almost everyone calls the first) put me off by yacking on about French Revolutionary times, and I found little here to make me want to revisit this author. No bad on the part of the translator and those busy presenting this to us, but I just wanted too much of it to be over already. One and a half stars.

[Ghada ツ]

A captivating collection that seamlessly combined everyday mundanity with otherworldly surrealism to yield a whimsical and rather dark fairy-tale-like portrait that might just barely offer a peak into Hoffman's apparently complex psyche. Personally, I always struggle with reviewing collections and this one was particularly difficult: while some of the stories were truly delightful (the eponymous piece, the golden pot, and Ritter Gluck mainly), others were tedious and a struggle to get through, while the rest were frankly forgettable and did not merit much of an opinion; for that, I shall refrain from posting a rating that might discourage or mislead future readers. As for the translation itself, it was easy to follow and further offered footnotes that helpfully provided context.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Michael Berens · Rating 3 out of 5]

While there's no denying Hoffman's place in the development of European Romanticism and his influence on Offenbach and Tchaikovsky, for me the tales do not hold up well two centuries later. The devices have been used by so many subsequent writers, filmmakers and others that their novelty has worn off. Each of the tales is set a such a high emotional pitch with characters constantly ranting, yelling, moaning, wailing, fretting, etc. that they can be exhausting to read. Some of the tales seem to drag on way too long with long stretches where the plot just seems to be circling around the same material without going anywhere. These are all traits that are understandable when the stories are set in their historical context, but now, to me, felt outmoded and tedious.

[Gustavo Araújo · Rating 5 out of 5]

E. T. A. Hoffmann, in "The Golden Pot and Other Tales of the Uncanny," offers a fascinating collection of stories that delve into the supernatural and the fantastic. With rich and imaginative narrative, Hoffmann explores the boundaries between reality and fantasy, creating tales that are both disturbing and enchanting. The author's skill in combining grotesque elements with poetic beauty makes this work essential reading for lovers of Gothic literature and German Romanticism. The collection captures the essence of the "uncanny" in an unparalleled way, leaving a lasting impression on the reader.

[Petra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps it wasn’t ideal to make my first encounter with Hoffmann during a heavy bout of flu. These stories merged into my fever dreams leaving me much disoriented after reading.
Or maybe it was perfect timing as it echoed my sense of confusion and delirious-ness perfectly.
The writing (and translation) was impeccable and undoubtedly beautiful. But every character was just so… extra! I felt quite emotionally and mentally drained reading this.
I think I would like to read more Hoffmann in the future but there’s definitely a time and place and I’ll need to consider that next time.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/4 stars

[Chris Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the automaton stuff does hit different in 2025, I'll be honest

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

it is full of interesting perception of mystical