I’ve read it thrice and every time it filled me with wonder and every time I discovered some new nuances and hues.Įventually magical love wins and sweethearts reside in poesy ever after… Heavier and heavier the mountainous burden lies on you more and more every breath exhausts the tiny bit of air that still plays up and down in the tight space around you your pulse throbs madly and cut through with horrid anguish, every nerve is quivering and bleeding in your dead agony. You are swimming, but you are powerless and cannot move, as if you were imbedded in a firmly congealed ether which squeezes you so tightly that it is in vain that your spirit commands your dead and stiffened body. You are drowned in dazzling splendour everything around you appears illuminated and begirt with beaming rainbow hues: in the sheen everything seems to quiver and waver and clang and drone.

If you have had such dreams, you will understand the Student Anselmus's woe and will feel it keenly enough but if you have not, then your flying imagination, for the sake of Anselmus and me, will have to be obliging enough to enclose itself for a few moments in the crystal. I am probably right in doubting, gracious reader, that you were ever sealed up in a glass bottle, or even that you have ever been oppressed with such sorcery in your most vivid dreams.

Magic and love combine and love becomes magical. The Golden Pot is one of the best surreal tales ever written.

And as he looked, and still looked, full of warm desire, into those kind eyes, the crystal bells sounded louder in harmonious accord, and the glittering emeralds fell down and encircled him, flickering round him in a thousand sparkles and sporting in resplendent threads of gold. Through all his limbs there went a shock like electricity he quivered in his inmost heart: he kept gazing up, and a pair of glorious dark-blue eyes were looking at him with unspeakable longing and an unknown feeling of highest blessedness and deepest sorrow nearly rent his heart asunder. Hoffmann wrote surrealistic stories long before the term surrealism was coined.Īnselmus observed that one snake held out its little head to him.

The golden pot eta hoffmann