At the funeral, during the requiem also, the following circumstance occurred. We perceived that the air was strongly perfumed by roses, and on looking round, saw, that to the celebrated picture of St Rosalia’s martyrdom, painted by an old unknown Italian artist, (which was purchased for a large sum by our convent, in Rome,) there was a large garland affixed, of the finest and freshest roses, which at this late season had become very rare. The porter said, that early in the morning a ragged, very miserable-looking beggar, unobserved by any of us, had climbed up to the picture, and hung on it this wreath. The same beggar made his appearance before the funeral was over, and forced his way among the brethren. We intended to order him away; but when Leonardus had sharply looked at, and seemed to recognize him, he was allowed, by the Prior’s order, to remain. He was afterwards, by his earnest entreaty, received as a lay-monk into the convent, by the name of Brother Peter, as he had been in the world called Peter Schönfeld; and we granted him this honoured name so much the more readily, as he was always very quiet and well-behaved, only now and then made strange grimaces, and laughed very absurdly, which, however, as it could not be called sinful, only served for our diversion. The Prior said, that Brother Peter’s intellectual light was quenched and obscured by the vapours of folly, so that nothing in this world appeared to him without being strangely caricatured and metamorphosed. We scarcely understood what the learned Prior meant by these allusions, but perceived that he had known something of the former life of our lay-brother Peter, which induced him charitably to admit the poor man among us.

  Thus to the manuscript, which is said to contain an account of our late brother’s life, (but which I have not read,) I have added, not without labour, and all to the greater glory of God and our religion, this circumstantial history of his death. Peace to the soul of Medardus, and may the Almighty one day call him to a blessed resurrection, and receive him into the choir of the saints, for his death was indeed very pious!

  THE END

  ENDNOTES

  1 This is exemplified in the (old) royal palace at Berlin.

  2 Little brother. One of the German diminutives of familiarity or endearment.

  3 Long black robe.

  4 Beet-roots.

  5 Blockhead.

  6 According to the devil’s assertion, if two individuals should drink out of the same flask, they would henceforth possess a wonderful reciprocity of thoughts and feelings, though mutually and unconsciously acting for the destruction of each other. See Vol. I. pp. 46, 68. — Edit.

  Little Zaches (1819)

  Translated by Michael Haldane, 2005

  This 1819 satiric fairytale novel tells how the good fairy Rosabelverde feels pits for the ugly poor child Zaches, who resembles a mandrake, having an ugly body and evil soul. Therefore, she bewitches him, so that the majority of people (philistines) can no longer see his unsightly form. Now people are drawn to him and whenever a praiseworthy deed is performed in his presence, it is attributed to him. When Zaches does something disgusting or shameful, someone else seems to have performed the abomination — most often the person that has suffered the most from his antics. Due to the gift of the good fairy, Zaches enchants Professor Mosh Terpin (possessed by a peculiar vision of the “German Spirit”) and his daughter Candida. Only the melancholic student Balthazar, who is in love with the beautiful girl, sees the true appearance of the villain. Artists also have this ability (notably the violinist Sbiocca and the singer Bragazzi), as well as foreigners. In time, the poet-student Balthazar enlists the services of the familiar magician Prosper Alpanus and learns from him the secret of Zaches’ power…

  According to Hoffmann’s friend Julius Hitzig, close to the time of writing Little Zaches, he was stimulated by fever visions during a severe liver and nerve ailment. On 24 January 1819, Hoffmann sent Prince Pückler-Muskau an author’s copy corrected by himself; the story, “the birth of a somewhat exuberant ironic fantasy”, was shortly after published by the Berlin publishing house F. Dümmler. The literary response was mixed. Some critics failed to see and appreciate the unique way in which moral and theological reflections were juxtaposed to supernatural themes with an almost carnival-like cheerfulness. The story received recognition in extensive reviews, including the weekly literary newspapers and the Heidelberg yearbooks.

  The magician Prosper Alpanus on a dragonfly. Copper engraving for the cover of the first edition, engraved by Carl Friedrich Thiele and based on a design by Hoffmann

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Last Chapter

  Endnotes.

  Chapter One

  The little changeling – A Priest’s nose in pressing danger – How Fürst 1 Paphnutius established Enlightenment in his realm and the Fairy Rosabelverde entered a convent.

  CLOSE TO THE road, not far from a pleasant village, a poor, ragged peasant woman lay stretched out on the hot earth beneath a blazing sun. Tormented by hunger, panting with thirst, and languishing to the point of death, the unfortunate woman had sunk down beneath the weight of a basket piled high with twigs laboriously picked up from beneath the trees and shrubs of the forest; and because she was scarcely capable of breath, she believed that she was certainly about to die, but her hopeless misery would thus end all at once. Yet she soon summoned sufficient strength to unfasten, with fumbling fingers, the cords fastening the basket of wood to her back and to slowly push herself up onto a grassy spot lying close by. Then she broke out into a loud lament:

  “And must,” she wailed, “and must all the poverty and misery come to me and my poor husband? And aren’t we the only ones in the whole village who, despite all our work, despite all our hard-spilt sweat, stay constantly poor and barely earn enough to satisfy our hunger?

  “Three years ago, when my husband found those pieces of gold, while digging our garden over – yes, then we believed that happiness had finally called on us and good days were coming. But what happened?

  “Thieves stole the money, our house and barn burnt away over our heads, the grain in our fields was crushed by hail, and then, to fill our cup of misery to the point of overflowing, Heaven punished us further with this little changeling, who I bore to the shame and the mockery of the whole village.

  “On St Laurence’s Day 2 the boy was three-and-a-half and he can’t walk, he can’t run on his spidery little legs, and instead of talking, he growls and miaows, like a cat. Yet for all that the deformed wretch eats like the strongest eight-year-old lad, without putting on any weight at all. May God have mercy on him and on us, if we have to raise the boy at our expense and to our greater suffering – for little hop-o’-my-thumb will certainly eat and drink more and more, but never work as long as he lives! No, no, that’s more than a woman can bear on this earth! Oh, why can’t I just die – just die!”

  And the poor woman began to weep and to sob, and at last, overwhelmed by pain, and totally exhausted, she fell asleep.

  The woman had every right to complain about the repulsive changeling whom she had given birth to three-and-a-half years previously. What one at first sight could well have regarded as a small, strangely cartilaginous wooden stick was actually a malformed boy, barely two spans high, who had crawled down from the basket, in which he had been lying crosswise, and was now growling and rolling in the grass. The thing’s head was set deep between its shoulders, it had a pumpkin-like outgrowth in place of a back, and its hazel switch-thin little legs hung down directly beneath its breast, so that the boy resembled a split radish. A dull eye would discover little about the face, but looking more closely, you would become aware of a long, sharp nose jutting out beneath shaggy black hair and a pair of small, darkly flashing eyes that seemed – especially when one considered the otherwise quite old, furrowed facial features – to reveal a small alraun. 3

  Now when, as has been said, the woman’s grief had sunk her into a deep sleep and her little son had rolled up close to her, it happened that the Fräulein von Rosenschön, Lady of the nearby convent, wandered along this way while returning home from a walk. She stopped and, being by nature pious and sympathetic, was greatly moved by the miserable scene that met her eyes.

  “Oh, merciful Heaven,” she began, “but there is so much wretchedness and distress on Earth! The poor, unhappy woman! I know that she is clinging onto dear life, she has been working her body to a stop and has collapsed from hunger and sorrow! Now, for the first time, I really feel how poor and powerless I am! Oh, if I could only help as I want to! Yet that which I have left – the few gifts a hostile fate was not able to rob me of, or destroy, that are still at my command – I shall employ powerfully and faithfully to put a stop to this chagrin. Money – assuming I could offer it – would not help you at all, poor woman, but perhaps even make your condition worse. You and your husband, the two of you are simply not blessed with money, and whoever is not blessed with money finds that pieces of gold disappear from his pocket, without knowing exactly how; he gains nothing but deep frustration and, the more money that pours his way, the poorer and poorer he becomes. But I know that what gnaws at your heart more than all the poverty, more than all the distress, is your having given birth to that little monster who hangs on you like an evil, sinister burden you must carry throughout life. Tall – handsome – strong – intelligent – all these things, the boy simply cannot become; but he can perhaps be helped in another way.”

  And the Fräulein sat down on the grass, taking the little one on her lap. The wicked alraun struggled and kicked out and, growling, tried to bite the Fräulein’s finger; but she merely said, “Easy now, easy, little cockchafer!” and stroked his head with the palm of her hand, lightly and gently, up from the brow and over and down to his neck. Gradually, the little one’s shaggy hair smoothed out beneath these strokes, until it flowed down in soft and handsome curls, brushing the face, onto his high shoulders and his pumpkin-back. The little one had become calmer and calmer, then finally fallen into a deep sleep. So Fräulein Rosenschön laid him carefully down in the grass beside his mother, sprinkled her with some holy water from a smelling bottle she had taken out of her pocket, and walked away with rapid steps.

  And the woman, soon waking, felt miraculously strengthened and refreshed. It seemed to her that she had eaten a hearty meal and drunk a good drop of wine.

  “Hey!” she cried, “how much comfort, how much cheer has come to me in that short sleep! – But the sun will soon be sinking behind the mountains, so away! Homewards!”

  With these words she shaped to hoist up the basket when, looking inside, she missed the little one, who at that very moment sat up in the grass and gave a whining squawk. Now when the mother looked round at him, she clapped her hands in amazement and cried: “Zaches – Little Zaches, and who has been combing your hair so beautifully? Zaches – Little Zaches, how prettily those curls would suit you, if you weren’t such a horribly nasty boy! Now, come on – come! – Into the basket!”

  She reached for him, intending to lay him crosswise over the wood, but Little Zaches thrashed about with his legs, grinned at his mother, and miaowed quite audibly: “I don’t want to!”

  “Zaches – Little Zaches!” the woman shrieked, quite beside herself: “and who has been teaching you to talk? Now then! If you have such beautifully combed hair, if you can talk so civilly, why then you’ll be able to run as well.” The woman loaded the basket on her back, Little Zaches hung from her apron, and in this manner they reached the village.

  Their way took them past the priest’s house, where it so happened that the priest was standing at the front door with his youngest son, a beautiful three-year-old boy with golden curls. Now when the priest saw the woman approaching with her heavy basket of wood and with little Zaches dangling from her apron, he cried to her: “Good evening, Frau Liese, how are you? You have burdened yourself with far too heavy a load; you can hardly take another step, come here, rest a little on this bench before my door, my maid will bring you something fresh to drink!”

  Frau Liese did not need to be told twice, but set down her basket; and she was just opening her mouth to complain about all her misery and distress to the venerable gentleman when little Zaches, losing his balance at his mother’s sudden turn, flew off and landed at the priest’s feet. He quickly bent down and lifted the little one up, saying:

  “Why, Frau Liese, Frau Liese, what a beautiful, delightful boy you have here! The possession of such a wonderfully beautiful child is a true blessing from Heaven.”

  With these words, he took the little one in his arms and caressed him and did not at all seem to notice that the naughty hop-o’-my-thumb was growling and mewling quite nastily and even trying to bite the venerable gentleman’s nose. But Frau Liese stood, totally perplexed, before the priest, and looked at him with wide-open, glassy eyes, not at all knowing what she should think.

  “Oh, dear Father,” she finally began in a whining voice, “a man of God, like you, surely doesn’t make fun of a poor, unhappy woman, who Heaven – it alone may know why – has punished with this repulsive changeling!”

  “What mad nonsense,” the priest replied in a serious tone, “what mad nonsense you’re talking, dear lady! About making fun – changeling – divine punishment – I don’t understand you at all, and all I know is that you must be quite blind if you don’t love your handsome son with all your heart. Kiss me, my clever little man!”

  The priest hugged the little one, but Zaches growled: “I don’t want to!” and snapped anew at the priestly nose. “Just look at the wicked beast!” cried the startled Liese; but at that moment the priest’s son spoke: “Oh, dear father, you’re so good, you’re so nice with children, I think they all must love you with all their hearts!”

  “Oh, just listen,” cried the priest, his eyes beaming with joy, “oh, just listen, Frau Liese, to the handsome, intelligent boy, your dear Zaches, whom you’re so ill-disposed towards. I can see right now that you’ll never be very keen on the boy, no matter how handsome or intelligent he may be. Listen, Frau Liese: leave your promising child to be cared for and brought up by me. With your pressing poverty, the boy is only a burden to you, and it will be a joy to me to bring him up like my own son!”

  Liese was far too amazed to collect her thoughts; again and again she cried, “But dear Father, dear Father, are you really serious about wanting to take the misshapen little creature into your care and bring him up and free me from the troubles the changeling gives me?”

  Yet the more the woman represented her little alraun’s loathsome ugliness to the priest, the more eagerly he claimed that she, in her blind madness, did in no way deserve to be blessed by Heaven with the splendid present of such a wonderboy; and in the end he furiously ran into his house, with Little Zaches on his arm, and closed and bolted the door.

  Now Frau Liese stood as still as a statue before the priest’s front door and had absolutely no idea what she should make of all this.

  “What in the whole, wide world has happened to our worthy Father, that he should be so completely crazy about my Little Zaches and takes the simple squirt for a handsome, intelligent boy? Well! May God help the dear man, he has taken the weight off my shoulders and loaded it onto his own – may he now have a care how he carries it! Hey! How light the basket of wood has become, now Little Zaches is no longer sitting on it, and weighing it down with worry!”

  And with that Frau Liese, the basket of wood on her back, stepped joyfully and in good spirits on her way! - - -

  Even if I wished to remain completely silent at this time, you would nevertheless presumably suspect, gentle reader, that there must be quite an exceptional explanation behind Sister von Rosenschön – or Rosengrünschön, as she sometimes called herself. For the good-natured priest regarding Little Zaches as a beautiful and clever child and immediately receiving him as his own was certainly nothing other than the mysterious effect of her head-stroking and hair-smoothing. However, despite your excellent perspicacity, you could, dear reader, fall into false presumptions, or even turn over many pages – at a great disadvantage to the story – for the sole reason of immediately discovering more about the mystical nun; therefore it is probably better that I tell you everything I myself know about the worthy lady right now.

  Fräulein von Rosenschön had a large build, a noble, majestic stature, and a rather proud, imperious bearing. Her face, which one had at first sight to consider exquisitely beautiful, nonetheless made a strange, almost uncanny impression – especially when, as was her wont, she stared before her with a fixed seriousness – which could primarily be ascribed to a distinctive, strange feature between her eyebrows that left one rather uncertain whether a nun could really have such a feature on her brow. For all that, there was often so much grace and beauty in her expression, especially in clear, lovely weather when roses were blooming, that everyone felt entranced by a sweet and irresistible magic. When I had the pleasure of seeing the gracious lady for the first and last time, she was by all appearances a lady in the fullest flower, on the highest peak of the incline; and I considered myself the recipient of great good fortune to be able to see the lady on this very peak, and to be slightly frightened by her wonderful beauty, which would very soon no longer be possible.