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IS12





A STUDY OF THE ELEMENTS OF MYSTERY AID TERROR
IN THE TALES OF E. T. W. HOFFMANN AND E. A. POE.
Submitted by Edward W. Locher,
University of California.
in Partial Satisfaction of the Requirements
for the Degree of Master of Letters.
May, 1908
IV.


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-


Sdward Nilaiu looke
CA!
PREFACE.
The comparative study of two authors such
as Hoffmann and Poe is by no means a new and unex-
plored field of critical research.
The extent of
the comparative study of two authors, in respect to
their use of the elements of mystery and terror, has
been, however, quite limited and, in the case of the
two writers above-named, little more seems to have
been done than mere suggesstion such as is found in
the "Introduction to the Tales" by E. C. Stedman in
the woodberry-Stedman edition, and the rore recent
article of Mr. Gruener in Volume XIX 0 the "Publi-
cations of the Lodern Language Association".
The present essay aims at two things: first,
to present a discussion of the elements of mystery
and terror, particularly as relates to their use in
I.


literature, and, in the second place, to illustrate
the use of these elements by a study of the tales of
Hoffmann anil Poe.
It does not pretend to have
handled the subject exhaustively, nor even to have
the nerit of scientific accuracy and precision, but
the writer hopes that what he has ione rey encourage
others to carry further the study of this interest-
ing subject ani, perhaps, to awaken ir.creased inter-
est in the two authors under corsileration.
The vriter desires, in this correction,
to express his appreciation of the aid rendered him
by friends and instructors.
In particular, thanks
are due to Professor Eurt for timely suggestions as
to method and sources, as well as for ideas derived
from his "Ballad an] Epic", and from an unpublished
article, "mentative Conslusions based on the Tales of
E. A. Ioe, in Volumes I-III", written in Ioverber,
1699.
To Professor Kurtz thanks are due for sug-
gestions in relation to the treatment of rv'stcry and
II.





-
terror, and for ideas taken from his unpublished
study of "The marvellous"
Special privileges,
accorded by the University of California library,
which have aided greatly ir the work involved in
the preparation of this essay, are gratefully ac-
knowledged the writer.
Berkeley, California.
April 24, 1908.
III.





-


1
THERE
L':'FY
INTRODUCTION.
In the July, 1824, number of Blackwood's
Edinburgh Magazine! 1)
a reviewer, in discussing the re-
cently published translation of Hoffman's "Die Elixire
des Teufels",
(2)
offers the following suggestive discus-
sion of the subject of tales of mystery and terror:
"Nothing that is a part, a real essential part, of
human nature ever can be exhausted, - and the regions of
fear and terror never will be so.
Human flesh will
creep to the end of time at the witches of Macbeth, ex-
actly because to the end of time it will creep in
a mid-
night charnel-vault;-
'So was it when the world began,
So ever it will be.'
(1). Pages 55-67.
(2). The name of the reviewer is not given. The trans-
lation of "Die Elixire des Teufels" appears to have
been anonymous.
- 1 -





"Ghosts, spirits of the elements, intermediate
beings between angels and men, fire and water spirits,
dwarf's of the mines, good and evil attendants on indi-
vidual men
in one word, all sorts of supernatural
appearances, and wonderful interferences of invisible
beings
these, in spite of all that philosophy can
do, have taken such a place in the imaginations, and,
indeed, in the hearts of men, that their total banish-
ment from thence must forever
remain an impossibility.
Every story of that kind, everything that looks like an
anecdote from the world of spirits, and in general,
every attempt to support these fantastic existences, or
to remove the grounds on which reason would shun or re-
ject them, is sure of a favorable reception from the
most part of mankind.
Even the more enlightened
among us, persons who would on no account have it said
of them that they are serious believers in ghost stories.
or in the possibility of the incidents on which such
D)
stories turn, -
even these persons are in common well
- 2 -


. -


pleased with an opportunity of chatting over such things
in a quiet way, by the fireside.
Nay, the philos-
opher himself, who, with all parade of reasoning, con-
tends against the reality of these appearances on which
the ghost-seers rest their faith, feels, at times, his
own fancy getting the better of his judgment, and has
often enough to do to prevent himself from forming the
same wish which others would have no hesitation in ex-
pressing, the wish, namely, that the facts of the
story-teller might be more closely examined.
"A tradition, which is as old as our species, or,
at the least, many centuries older than philosophy, has
produced, in regard to such things, a sort of universal
belief and consent of all nations.
From infancy, in
whatever quarter of the globe we are born, we are sure
to be nourished with the same unvarying provender of
tales, dreams and visions, all connected with this beliel;
and it acquires over us a power too deep ever entirely to
be shaken, at a period when we are not only devoid of any
suspiciousness in regard to others, but unprovided by
- 3





reason with any weapons wherewith to defend ourselves from
the assaults of our own credulous imaginations.
In a
word, as Horace says of nature in general, 'However con-
temptuously we may toss from us feelings which are common
to all men, there are moments in which they creep, unper-
ceived, into our bosoms; so we are sincerely of opinion
that the earth does not at this moment contain one single
individual who never felt a superstitious shudder in pass-
ing a churchyard at midnight.
We are equally of opin-
ion that so long as this feeling, this painful feeling,
as to the reality of such things continues, the human mind
will continue to receive a tragic pleasure from the skil-
ful use made of them in works of imagination.
Who is he that hath not known the delightful horror of
perusing a book full of ghosts and devils at midnight, -
the dear shudder with which one turns over the leal, hall
suspecting its rustle to be the approaching footsteps of
some fearful creature, 'not of the earth earthy'?
If there be any such person, let him congratulate himself
let him hug himself as much and as long as he pleases
we





would not purchase his indifference to the pain by giving
up our own sensibility to it.
We like to be horrified:
we delight in 'Frankenstein'; we delight in 'Grierson of
Lagg'; we delight in 'The Devil's Elixir'."
This is the spirit of Romanticism as opposed
to Classicism. In her thesis on "The Tales of Terror",
(1)
Miss Christabel Forsythe Fiske of Cornell University
has considered this point, and her observations scem well
worthy of note.
Says Miss Fiske:
"Heine speaks some-
where of 'that inexplicable mysterious shudder which
seizes one in reading these apparently harmless tales'.
He questions, 'whence does it arise, if not from some hall
unconscious undercurrent of our being, to which indefinite
element the author has appealed?' Dunlop speaks more
explicitly.
He says, 'There exists in every heart at
all susceptible to the influence of the imagination, a
(1). Published in 1899, in lashington, D. C. "A thesis
submitted to the Columbian University in part satis-
faction of the requirements for the degree of M.A."
Reprinted in "The Conservative Review" of March, 1900.
5 -


C


certain superstitious dread of the world unknown which
easily suggests the ideas of commerce with that world'.
Now we all know how the classicists had laughed to scorn
any tendency toward fanciful superstition.
They
viewed things in clear daylight.
An ingrained ten-
dency of the human soul cannot, however, be eternally
snubbed; and in the general emancipation from the iron
rule of the Classicists, the superstitious soul-fibre,
which the most prosaic of us at times recognize, claimed
its right to stretch itself after its long repression.
But how could a ghost trail its robe through the plain,
matter-of-fact world of Augustan sunshine? Instinct
ively the mind flew back to the dear old days of mediae -
val darkness when churchyards yawned unchallenged, and
an inheritance of phantoms was the proud possession of
any family worth knowing."
Our standard of judgment for such terror
tales as we may deal with is, as Miss Fiske points out,
based on the distinct arreal to the superstitious ele-
ment in our souls, this power to arouse in us that "in-
6 -











and violent men; to which add the dangers and horrors of
adventure, and physical or natural phenomena, which almost
exclude the supernatural.
Much, too, that is seemingly
supernatural, as the appearances in Ann Radcliffe's works,
is explained away on purely natural grounds; yet the mys-
tery and its effect of terror are none the less present.
She makes use of subjective fear and in the use of the
element of physical terror she is among the best writers
in this kind.
Charles Brockden Brown excludes the
supernatural machinery of haunted Gothic halls, ghosts,
devils and superstitions.
In its place he develops the
subjective tendencies that mark Mrs. Radcliff's works.
"Psychical phenomena are his Terror-engine."
But our
nerves are not calmed by this circumstance.
We have
only to read his books to see how effectively such
psychological problems as somnambulism and ventriloquism
are used to produce the horror effects. These uncanny
manifestations are not lost sight of by Hoffmannor Poe.
Mesmerism, with all the eerie mysteries of mental phenom-
ena, strange or abnormal mental and pathological conditions,
- 9 -


and the workings of the occult or antique sciences are
all part of the stock in trade of the terror writer.
Insanity, loathsome disease, unhuman dispositions, are
simply abnormal manifestations of what is basically
natural as opposed to supernatural.
The foregoing pages aim to point out to the
reader something of the nature and scope of the tales
of mystery and terror, and, in a somewhat empirical man-
ner, to explain the nature of their effectiveness on the
reader's mind and the means whereby they are rendered ef-
fective. It has been suggested that in the desire of
the reader for this class of literature, we have the
genuine Romantic feeling.
Dr. Kurtz, in his splendid treatment of the
(1)
subject of the marvellous, has some very interesting
ideas on cases of unusual surprise and certain related
(1). An unpublished, but excellent, scientific study of
the subject of "The Marvellous". That division
which concerns "Wonder and Certain Related States"
has been drawn upon for the purposes of this essay.
))
- 10 -


states of mind.
The present essay will not permit of
the extended notice which this subject really merits,
but some of the ideas are certainly essential to the pres-
ent discussion.
Dr. Kurtz's work serves to show us
wherein literature makes use of mystery,
the strange or
unusual,- and, further, that their accompaniment of pleas-
urable terror is natural.
He discusses belief in its
relation to wonder and shows how the true romantic spirit
arises out of ideal freedom.
All of this will enable
the reader better to see the reason and meaning in what
has already been presented.
Dr. Kurtz has divided surprise into two
classes, sudden and unusual surprise.
It is the un-
This
usual class with which the writer has to deal.
class, as pointed out, manifests itself in cases of mere
rarity, cases of improbability, and cases of impossibil-
ity.
In each case surprise may pass to wonder and as
we pass from the lower stages of mere rarity in surprise
to the higher stages of the impossible, we pass also from
the lower stages of wonder to the higher stages where we
- 11 -


.


more than wonder
we marvel.
Inasmuch as belief,
(even though it be but an implied belief), is essential
to a reader's experiencing of that pleasurable terror
which we have considered as having its origin in mystery
tales, therefore there must not intervene between the
story and the reader anything which will destroy belief.
To achieve this end rests in part with the author, in
part with the reader.
It must be the author's art to
lend verisimilitude to his tale.
He must, moreover,
introduce his unusual surprises
his mystery
into his
writing in a manner which shall be natural and unobtrus-
ive, at least in direct proportion to the rarity, the im-
probability, or the impossibility of his subject matter.
The reader, on the other hand, cannot be the judicial
critic, much less the skeptic or conservative of the
watchdog, Johnsonesque, classic type.
Dr. Kurtz has
pointed out that absolute belief is only less dangerous
than no belief, for, as he puts it, rerity dies with ab-
solute belief, or at least rarity ceases to be felt as
such.
"Belief," he says, "introduces the marvellous
- 12 -





by substituting the ideal standard of possibility.
This throws us into literature.
Belief supports, it-
self with an ideal realm of the possible, a world of the
possible marvellous.
In it there is freedom, an ideal
freedom, which sulfices to explain away impossibility."
Here we have the seemingly illogical and paradoxical idea
of the impossible being possible, but the requirements of
romantic fiction justify and explain this apparent breach
of sense.
Romanticism with its marvels opened to the
German novelists a world of ideal freedom from which they
eagerly drew materials.
In Hoffmann's tales the sym-
bolism itself bore the scent of freedom.
Where meaning
and sense fuse, we have the symbolism which is in fact
romanticism.
This is Professor Gayley's idea of a long-
ing for ideal freedom as the keynote of romanticism.
The present essay does not aim to undertake a
complete discussion of the subject of mystery and terror
In con-
and the use of these elements in literature.
tinuing the discussion of this subject which, as here given,
13 -





is simply introductory to the more intensive study of
the tales, the writer of this essay desires to quote
some passages from his own study and researches
(1)
in
relation to mystery and terror, merely with the end in
view that the reader shall approach the subject with a
somewhat clearer idea of its nature and hence a more
certain sympathy for its treatment.
Oswald, in his Etymological Dictionary, has
defined mystery as some thing carefully concealed and
teat(2)
therefore exciting curiosity and wonder. And Skeat
says it is something kept concealed or very obscure to
the understanding.
These definitions are pregnant
with the meaning which we must attach to this term in
relation to its use in literature.
For, in handling
subject matter which is unusual or strange, the artist
who will achieve an effect of mystery must seek to keep
(1). A preliminary study of the subject of "iystery and
Terror in Literature", made with a view to its use
in the present essay:
(2). "Dictionary of Etymology".
14 -


. .


his machinery hidden or obscure, and the nearer that
the subject matter approaches the commonplace or
tangible, the more will the artist be called upon to
prove his art in gaining this effect of obscurity or
concealment of meaning.
In this connection it is interesting to
note a passage taken from Scott's well-known and ad-
mirable article on "The Supernatural in Fictitious
Composition". (1)
He says:
"The supernatural
in fictitious composition must be managed with con-
siderable delicacy inasmuch as criticism is ever on
the alert.
The interest which it excites is in-
deed a powerful spring, but it is one which is pe-
culiarly subject to be exhausted by coarse handling
and repeated pressure.
It is also of a character
which it is extremely difficult to sustain and of which
a very small proportion may be said to be better than
(l). Published in "The Foreign Quarterly Review," 1824,
Volume I, page 60.
- 15 -


the whole.
The marvellous, more than any other
attribute of fictitious narrative, loses its effect by
being brought much into view.
The imagination of
the reader is to be excited, if possible, without be-
ing gratilied.
If once, we, like Macbeth, "sup
full of horrors", our taste for the banquet is ended,
and the thrill of terror with which we hear or read
of a night-shriek becomes lost in that sated indiffer-
ence with which the tyrant came at length to listen to
the most deep catastrophes that could affect his house.
The incidents of a supernatural character are usually
those of a dark and indefinable nature, to which our
fears attach more consequence, as we cannot tell what
it is we behold or what is to be apprehended from it.
Obscurity, as Burke says, is necessary to
make anything terrible.
In Milton's description of
Death, all is dark, uncertain, confused, terrible and
sublime to the last degree.
This association of the
terrible and sublime in mystery is of interest.
The apparition which appears to Job is cited by Burke,
- 16 -





who concludes by saying: "From these sublime and de-
cisive authorities it is evident that the exhibition
of supernatural appearances in fictitious narrative
ought to be rare, brief and indistinct, and such as may
become a being to us so incomprehensible, and so differ-
ent from ourselves, of whom we cannot justly conjecture
whence he comes or for what purpose, and of whose at-
tributes we can have no regular or distinct perception.
Hence it usually happens that the first touch of the
supernatural is always the rost effective and is rather
/
weakened and defaced, than strengthened, by the subse-
quent recurrence of similar incidents.
Even in Ham-
let, the second entrance of the ghost is not nearly so
impressive as the first; and in many romances the super-
natural being forfeits all claim both to our terror and
our veneration, by condescendins to appear too often;
to mingle too much in the events of the story, and,
above all, to become loquacious or as it is familiarly
called, chatty.
Shakespeare makes his supernatural
beings speak in language befitting them.
In a leaner
- 17 -








1


under the gradually approaching end, a peculiar condition
of rapt suspense.
This is termed Pursuit or Plot
Interest.
Among those elements which increase the
interest of pursuit, by making it more exciting, is that
of uncertainty, and the highest form of uncertainty," says
Bain, "is Mystery, whose charm is due to the ideal chase
that it opens up".
It is this highly
exciting inter-
est which constitutes the most striking effect of mys-
tery in fiction.
"As uncertainty trenches on fear,"
Bain says, "it must not be carried far"
This sug-
gests to us, that in the study of any author's use of
mystery, we must inquire whether he has gone so far as
to produce an effect of terror, both on the personages
of his composition and on his readers.
Has he done
this consciously or unconsciously?
What means has
he used?
Continuing, Bain says:
"Absolute certainty
unluly relaxes the bodily ani mental strain that is
needed for the maximum of gratification.
tie do not
bring forth all our resources of pleasurable conscious-
- 20 -








ག་


Sully, in his "Sensation and Intuition" (1)
refers to the construction of an interesting and absorb-
ing plot.
"The attraction of plot", he says, "in its
narrowest sense, is due, largely, to the play of the in-
tellect and the will in curiosity and imaginative an-
ticipation. Any spectacle which involves great un-
certainty of issue, however little value this issue may
have in itself, may stimulate in a pleasurable manner
the activities of attention and expectation.
The
highest degree of this gratification is obtained when
the event is neither too improbable and unexpected, nor
too certain.
In the former case there may be a
pleasurable shock of surprise, but the impulse to fol-
low out the sequence of events is discouraged, and the
mind is simply bewildered.
On the other hand, if
the issue appears too certain, there is no room for the
excitement of susjense, and consequently the attention
flags.
(1). Sully:- "Sensation and Intuition", pages 298-9.
- 23


"Hence the purest form of this pleasurable
excitement is afforded by a set of circumstances which
opens up a number of possible issues, though we have
not knowledge enough to determine which is the most
probable.
Thus all spectacles of struggle between
pretty equal forces, whether moral or physical, excite
this feeling. In watching a twig moving down a
stream amid a number of eddies, and in viewing a great
battle, the observer derives a like pleasure in trying
to forecast a doubtful result, and in watching the
gradual unfolding of a dimly conjectured event."
(1)
Again, Sully treats of the subject of mys-
tery and what he says is highly pertinent to its use
in fiction.
"Curiosity and tip-toe expectation are
produced by a type of character which impresses us with
the curious feeling of awe and incipient terror.
Evil natures ol great power, and having opportunities of
mischief, stir, in the beholder's mind, vague anticipa-
(1). "Sensation ani Intuition", Page 502.
- 24 -





tions of tragic disaster, which, if not too distinct
are of a pleasurable and stimulating character.
When the presence of such a nature has made itself
felt on us, it begins to exercise a fascinating influ-
ence on our attention.
With something of the men-
tal tension and emotional excitement with which we
watch the play of lightning when it is too ler to
threaten us with immediate injury, we follow all the
movements of a dangerous and volcanic nature in whose
impenetrable recesses lie such possibilities of evil.
Accordingly, such characters are fitted to awaken an
intense degree of that interest in personality on which
the value of dramatic action and poetic narrative so
largely depends."
Sully, in his "Outlines o? Igychology" (?)
elaborates some of the ideas concerning wonder as a
mental state, which Dr. Kurtz has treated in his re-
searches before mentioned.
As the discussion is
(1). Sully: "Outlines of Isychology", Pages 521-3.
- 25





quite apropos to our study in reference to literature,
it seems useful to quote somewhat from it.
"All acquisition and discovery of new know-
ledge," he says, "is fitted to give pleasure, the en-
joyment being greater when the facts or truths con-
trast strikingly with our previous knowledge.
In
this case we experience the pleasurable excitement of
surprise or wonder.
There is a feeling of perplexity
and confusion in view of what is strange and exception-
al.
That is strange, - far removed from the ordinary
level of our experience, may, as just pointed out, give
the mind the pleasurable excitement of wonder.
This
feeling, if excessively indulged in, is antagonistic to
knowledge.
The intense craving for the wonderful,
the love of the marvellous, has something of an intox-
icating effect and paralyzes the impulses of inquiry.
But, in moderate degrees, the emotion of wonder is the
natural stimulus to further inquiry.
Tonder lives
by isolating the new fact or circumstance from the
familiar orier of experience."
This important state-
- 26 -





ment, is, as Dr. Kurtz suggests, the keynote in the
employment of the mysterious or rare in literature.
Sully's succeeding remarks will call to mind some of
the points touched upon earlier in the present essay.
"Such isolation," he says, "becomes disagreeable
through the rise of the intellectual impulse to under-
stand.
When, on a close and prolonged direction of
the mind to a thing, it maintains its isolated and
strange appearance, the mind experiences a feeling of
perplexity." If, in the above, which is an analysis
of the state of mind of wonder in actual experience, we
substitute for "disagreeable" such a formula as "grad-
ually exciting" or "possessed of growing interest", we
have transposed this to an analysis of this state of
mind with reference to the reader of mystery and ter-
ror Piction.
It is the maintaining, by a thing of
wonder, of its isolation or strangeness of appearance,
its baffling of interpretation on the part of the
reader, which holds a continuous and growing interest
in a given literary composition.
In some of Poe's
- 27 -





tales, those of ratiocination, we have the solution
to the mystery, but it is not given until the end.
We are not shocked by the suddenness of the solution; -
it is not absolutely sudden, for, while we do not
really suspect the solution before it is given, we do
feel its gradual approach as our interest grows.
In
some other tales, both of Hoffmann and Poe, the solution
is not given, or perhaps even implied, but may be left
to the reader to work out to his own satisfaction.
(1)
"Wonder", says Sully, his related as a
disturbing shock to the emotion of fear.
What is
wholly strange is apt to give us a sense of insecurity."
This would seem to account for the feeling of fear which
arises in spite of us, when in reading of the strange
or mysterious, we seem to feel
ourselves in its very
presence.
"The fear of the dark which seems to arise
in young children apart from the suggestion of others,
is probably connected with the strangeness and absence
(1). "Outlines of Psychology", Pages 522-3.
- 28 -





It may
of knowledge belonging to the situation."
be added that the exhilarating and depressing effect
of what is new and unfamiliar, varies much with in-
dividual temperament.
Pathological conditions, as
Dr. Kurtz suggests, are also a cause of variation in
the degree of this effect.
The part which belief plays in fiction of
the mystery and terror kind, has been alluded to.
(1)
In this connection MoCosh has some interesting ob-
servations.
"Every one knows that the feelings are
capable of being moved by imaginary as well as real
scenes.
People weep over the distresses of the
heroine of a novel as they do over actual sorrow,-
they glory in the success of a hero on the stage as
they do in the exploits of one who once lived on the
earth.
How are we to account for this?
Do we
believe for the instant that the scenes are real?
The common theory is that we do so.
But is it nec-
(1). McCosh:
"The Emotions", Page 53.
- 29








distracted by the other objects constantly pressing
themselves on the attention.
It is to gratify
the appetences of our nature by means of ideas, call-
ing forth feeling with its excitements and attach-
ments, that tales have been invented; first recited,
then written, and then printed. People at all
ages of life and of all times delight in such crea-
tions."
To Dr. McCosh's view, we may assent with
this modification: namely; that, while there is no act-
ual statement or conscious feeling of belief necessary,
unbelief being absent, yet the very fact that there is
no unbelief implies a belief which in the reader is un-
conscious, yet present. And when we speak of belief
in mystery and terror fiction, it is this unconscious
implied belief which we mean.
We may now conclude the discussion of mys-
tery and terror in literature by quoting briefly from
(1)
Bain, who, in his treatment of terror, has shown
(1). "The Emotions and the Vill", Tages 153-4.
- 31





quite clearly its relation to mystery and its use in
literature.
He says:
"mhe most characteristic
feature in the situation of terror is uncertainty, ig-
norance, darkness.
In the case of a great but cer-
tain and understood evil, the ideal pain may be simply
a measure of the reality of the case.
The irregular,
disproportionate and eccentric courses connected with
terror are brought into relief under future evil of un-
known amount or character.
There being no definite
picture to control or study the movements of the mind,
anything is received that the chance course of the
thoughts may introduce; but as nothing is sure or abid -
ing, the victim is tossed to and fro in distraction.
Under the ordinary laws of thought and feeling, there
would naturally ensue a state of excitement, voluminous
and painful. This is the genuine manifestation of
terror. Such is the case of a susceptible or super-
stitious mind in a haunted castle. Nothing is clear,
definite or certain; there is a great evil possibility,
and yet the person does not know when, where or what.
- 32





Every trifle is suggestive; but all is speculation
and incoherence; the mind shaken from its calm center,
desolate and depressed, anticipates the worst, with-
out knowing what the worst is.
The gloomy excite
ment grows and deepens."
If this be the effect
in actual experience, it becomes the problem of the
writer of fiction, not alone to portray it in his
story, but to instill it in his reader.
As has been
suggested, a clever writer will succeed in this, except
that no writer may hope to bring his reader to that
stage of despair which is the culmination of terror as
depicted in actual experience.
What he succeeds in
àoing is in obtaining in his reader a kind of negative
pleasure which is nothing less than a mild or intoxicat-
ing terror, the pleasure being the result of excited
interest.
"The expression of fear,"
says Bain'?) "makes
a subject for the artist, whether painter or poet.
The
(1)."The Emotions and the "ill", Pages 169-171.
- 3.5 -





actor brings it on the stage, both in tragic and in
comic exhibitions.
Pictures and tales of thrill-
ing interest are sometimes created out of the deepest
horrors that reality or imagination can furnish.
A genuine Pright is, undoubtedly, an experience of real
misery; but a slight fear, with speedy relieł, occur-
ring in times of dullness and stolid composure, acts
like a stimulant on the nervous system.
In the
flush of high bodily vigor, danger only heightens the
interest of action or pursuit.
The hunting of
tigers is the most exciting of srorts.
"But it is in the terror of fiction that the
sting is most effectually extracted and only the pleas-
urable stimulus left behind.
In proportion as the
reality of evil is removed far from ourselves, we are
at liberty to join in the excitement produced by the
expression of fear.
The skillful dramatist is
able to regulate the dose. Some mirds can endure a
large amount of this element, having that robustress
of nerve that can throw off the pain and not be too
- 34 -


-





the emotions. I
But, in the primitive world, people
were uncomplex,
not yet self-conscious, and they
frankly delighted in terror-inspiring tales and re-
ligions.
Is it true that the complex self-con-
scious people of today do not delight in the things
which inspire terror?
Or is it true that they are
ashamed to make known their delight?
What is it
that lures boys to haunted houses after dark, compel-
ling them to fling rocks and run away, with their
hearts going so thunderously pit-a-pat as to drom the
clatter of their flying feet?
What is it that grips
a child, forcing it to listen to ghost stories which
drive it into ecstasies of fear, and yet forces it to
beg for more?
Is it a baleful thing, - a thing his
instinct warns him as unhealthy and evil,-. the while
his heart leaps out to it?
Or, again, what sends
the heart fluttering up and quickens the feet of the
man or woman who goes alone down a long dark hall or
up a winding stair?
Is it a stirring of the savage
in them, - of the savage who has slept, but never died,
37 -





since the time when the river-foll crouched over the
fires of their squatting-places, or the tree-folk
bunched together and chattered in the dark?
What-
ever the thing is, and whether it be good or evil, it
is a thing and it is real.
It is the
thing Doe
rouses in us, scaring us in broad day, and throwing us
into 'admired disorders'.
It is rarely that the
grown person, who is afraid of the dark, will make con-
fession.
It does not seem to them proper to be a-
fraid of the dark ani they are ashamed.
Ferhers
people feel that it is not proper to delight in stor-
ies that arouse fear and terror.
They nay feel in-
stinctively that it is bad and injurious to have such
emotions aroused, and, because of this, they are im-
pelled to say that they do not like such stories while
in actuality they do like them."
The reader must now have a somewhat well-
defined and clear idea of mystery and terror and the
allied states of mind which have been discussed, both
with regard to their function in actual experience and
- 38 -





to their uses and purposes in literary composition.
While it is not the present intention of the writer
to enlarge on the observations heretofore written
down, in connection with the succeeding study of the
tales of Zoe and Hoffman, it will not be amiss to
state that the reader, having in mind the foregoing
treatment of the subject of mystery and terror, will
find himself better enabled to understand a treatment
of tales involving these elements and to understand why
such tales are so effective.
We may pass nor to a
brief discussion of the ideas of Hoffman and Poe, in
regard to literary composition, both as exemplified
in their own written opinions and through the direct
evidence of their compositions.
Ferhaps Hoffman had some definite theory for
the construction of a tale, such as we find in Foe's
critical work, but it is nowhere dwelt upon in his col
lected works.
There are, however, several passages
relative to the use of mystery and terror, found in that
- 39





collection of his works called "Die Serapions
Brüder! 1)
and in this connection they may profitably be considered.
In "Der Dichter und der Componist»(2), he speaks of the
manner in which the Marvellous may enter into a tale
naturally and of necessity. "Ich errinnere mich jetzt
ganz genau des herrlichen phantastischen Stücks, und noch
fühle ich den tiefen Eindruck, den es aúť mich machte.
Du hast Recht, das underbare erscheint hier als notwendig
und ist so poetisch wahr, dasz man willig daran glaubt."
Again, in discussing the writing and character of works
of fancy, in the discussion following, "Nuszknacker und
Lausekönig(3) he says: "Zu keinem Verk, würd' ich
ferner sagen, gehöre mehr ein klares ruhiges Gemüt, als
zú einem solchen, das wie in regelloser spielender
Willkür von allen Seiten ins Blaue hinaus blitzend, doch
einem festen Kern in sich tregen solle und müsse.
(1). In the Berlin edition of "Hoffmann's Werke", pub-
lished by Gustav Hempel. Published about 1882.
(2). Volume I, lages 96-7.
(3). Volume I, lages 290-91.
- 40 -


ܚ ܐ ܝ


Doch bleibt es ein gewagtes Unternehmen, das durchaus
Phantastische ins gewöhnliche Leben hineinzuspielen
und ernsthaften Leuten, Obergerichtsräten, Archivarien
und Studenten tolle Zauberkappen
überzuwerfen, das z
sie wie fabelhafte Spukgeister am hellen lichten Tage
durch die lebhaftesten Straszen der bekanntesten
Städte schleichen und man irre werden kann an jedem
ehrlichen Nachbar.
Wahr ist es, dasz sich daraus
ein gewisser ironisirender Ton von selbst bildet, der
den trägen Geist stachelt oder ihn vielmehr ganz
unvermerkt mit gutmütiger Meine wie ein böser Schalk
hineinverlockt in das fremde Gebiet.
Dieser ironische Ton, möchte die gefährlichste
Ylippe sein, da an ihr sehr leicht die Anmut der Er-
findung und Darstellung, welche wir von jedem lliärchen
verlangen, scheitern, rettungslos zu Grunde gehen kann.
Ist es denn möglich, die Bedingnisse solcher
Dichtungen festzustellen? Tieck, der herrliche tiefe
lleister, der Schöpfer der anmutigsten Märchen, die es
geben mag, hat darüber den Personen die im Phantasus
- 41


auftreten, auch nur einzelne geistreiche und belehrende
Bemerkungen in den Kund gelegt. Nach diesen soll
Bedingnisz des Märchens ein still fortschreitender Ton
der Erzählung eine gewisse Unschuld der Darstellung
sein, die wie san?t phantasirend l'usik ohne Lärm und
Geräusch die Seele Pesselt.
Das Werk der Phantasie
soll keinen bittern Nachgeschmack zurück lassen, aber
doch ein Nachgenieszen, ein lachtönen.
Doch reicht
dies wohl aus, den einzig richtigen Ton dieser Dich-
tungsart anzugeben."
He goes on to condemn
"Nutcracker" for its lack of perfection but says that,
in his opinion, "Der Goldene Top" will meet the ideals
of Tieck.
After the story "Nachricht aus dem Leben
eines bekannten wannegn(i)
the Serapion Brethren discuss
the use op the supernatural and witchcraft in connect-
ion with fantasy and irony.
"Das Unheir liche,
Spukhafte, das sonst dem 'furchtbar verneinenden ?rincip
(1). Volume III, lage 19.
- 42





der Schöpfung' beiwohnt, kann durch den komischen
Contrast, in dem es erscheint, nur jenes seltsame
Gefühl hervorbringen, das, eine eigentümliche
Mischung des Gravenhaften und Ironischen, uns auf gar
nicht unangenehme Weise spannt. Anders verhalt es sich
mit den leidigen Hexengeschichten. Hier tritt das
wirkliche Leben ein mit allen seinen Schrecken.
Mir war's, als ich von der Hinrichtung der Barbara
Roloffin las, als säh' ich noch den Scheiterhaufen auf
dem Neuen Markt dampfen, und alle Greuel der fürchter-
lichen Hexenprozesse traten mir vor die Seele.
Ein paar roth funkelnde Augen, ein struppiges schwarzes
oder graues Haar, ein ausgedörrter Ynochenleib - das
reichte hin, ein altes armes Teib für eine Hexe zu er-
klären, alles Unheil ihren Teufelskünsten zuzuschreiten,
ihr in aller juristischen Form zu Leibe zu gehen und sie
auf den Scheiterhaufen zu bringen.
Die scharfe Frage
(Tortur) bestätigte die unsinnigsten Anklagen und ent-
schied Alles."
- 43
43.2





(1)
In another place
Hoffmann speaks of his adherence
to the principle oi welding the Legendary on to the
every-day life of his time.
He says that the old
supposition was that it was necessary to localize
everything of the legendary kind in the remote East,
taking Scheherezade as the model in so doing.
"In so doing, as soon as the writer touched upon the
manners, the customs, the ways of life of the East, he
got into a world which was apparently hovering adrift
all in a sort of unreality, anchorless, before our eyes,
all on the point of floating away and disappearing.
This is why those tales so often strike coldly on us,
the
and have no power to kindle the inner spirit
fancy.
What I mean, and think, is, that the foot
of the heavenly ladder, which we have got to mount in
order to reach the higher regions, has to be fixed
firmly in every-day life, so that everybody may be
(1). A. Ewing:
"Translation of Hoffmann's Serapion
Brethren", Book II, Volume III. Section V,
Pages 94-5.
- 44 -





able to climb up it along with us.
When people then
find that they have got climbed up higher and higher
into a marvellous magical world, they will feel that
that realm, too, belongs to their ordinary, every-day
life, and is merely the wonderful and most glorious
part thereof.
For them it is the beautiful flower-
garden beyond the city-wall, into which they can go, and
in which they can wander and enjoy themselves, if they
have but made up their minds to quit the gloomy walls
of the city, for a time.
But there are quantities of people who won't
go up the ladder at all, because it isn't "proper" or
"becoming".
Many turn giddy by the time they get to
the third rung of it.
Nany never see it at all,
though it is facing them in the broed, daily path of
their lives and they pass it by every day.
As re-
gards the tales of the 'Thousand and One Nights', it is
remarkable enough that most of those who have tried to
imitate them, have overlooked that which is just what
gives therr. life and reality.
All the cobblers,
tailors, dervishes, merchants, and so forth, who appear
- 45





as the characters in those tales, are people who are
to be met with every day in the streets.
And,
in-
asmuch as life is independent of times and manners,
but is always the same affair in its essential condit-
ions (and always must be so), it follows that we feel
that all those folks upon whom, in the middle of their
every-day lives, such extraordinary and magical adven-
tures came, and such spells wound themselves, are
really the sort of people who are actually walking
about amongst us. Such is the marvellous, mighty
power of description, characterization, and represen-
tation in that immortal book."
In connection with the story of "Der un-
heimliche Gast»(1) Hoffman has a decidedly interest-
ing introductory discussion which shows his full under
standing and appreciation of the subjects of mystery
and terror and the supernatural.
His understanding
of the 1sychological and physical relations of these
elements, both as to their existence in actual exper-
(1). Volume III, Page 107.
- 46 -








And speaking of ghost-stories and their ef-
(1)
fect:
"Wie würden jene Geschichten, die uns als
Kinder doch die allerliebsten waren, so tief und ewig
in unsrer Seele wilerhallen, wenn nicht die wilertönen-
den Saiten in unserm eigenen Innern lägen.
Niclt
wegzuleugnen ist die geheimniszvolle Geisterwelt, die
uns urgiebt, und die oft in seltsamen Ilängen ja, in
wunderbaren Visionen sich uns offenbart. Die Scrauer
der Furcht,'ies Entsetzens mögen nur herrühren von der
Drarge des irdischen Organismus.
Es ist das seh des
eingekerkerten Geistes,
das sich darin ausspricht."
Ho? Prann and poe have loth noted the necessity
for certain artistic bounds in the use of the terrible
or horrible in fiction. In the matter introductory
to his tale, "Vampyrismus
mus (2)
one of the most revolting
and awful of his stories, Hoffmann says of the horrible,
Tarticularly such as is represented in this tale:
"Ein Stoll kann aus dieser Idee hervorgehen, der von einem
(1). Volume III, Tages 107-8.
(2). Volume IV, Tages 207-8.
- 48 -





phantasiereichen Dichter, dem poetischer Tact nicht
fehlt, behandelt, die tiefen Schauer jenes geheimnisz-
vollen Grauens erregt, das in unserer eigenen Brust
wohnt und, berührt von den elektrischen Schlägen einer
dunkeln Geisterwelt, den Sinn erschüttert, ohne ihn zu
verstören.
Eben der richtige poetische Takt des
Dichters wird es hindern, dasz das grauenhalte nicht
aussrte ins "iderwärtige und Ekelhalte, das dann aber
reistentheils zugleich aberwitzis genus erscheint, un
auch die leiseste Wirkung auf unser Gemüt zu verfehlen.
Warurn sollte es dem Dichter nicht vergönnt sein, lie
IIebel der Furcht, les Grauens, des Entsetzens zu be-
wegen?
Etwa weil hie und da ein schwaches Gerüt
dergleichen nicht verträgt?
Soll starke Most par
nicht auſgetragen werden, weil einige am Tische sitzen,
lie schwächlicher latur sind oder sich den l'accn ver-
dorben haben?"
Again, in sieaking of the horrible:
"Wir wissen ja ulle, wie wunderbar die gröszten Dichter
vermöge jener lebel das menschliche Gemüt in seinen tief-
sten Innern zu bewegen wuszten.
Tan darf je nur an
- 49 -





Shakespeare denken.
Und wer verstand sich auch
darauf besser als unser herrlicher Tieck in mancher
seiner Erzählungen?
Ich will nur des 'Lieteszaubers'
erwähnen.
Die Idee dieses lärchens musz in jeder
Trust eiskalte Todesschauer, ja der Schlusz las tiefste
Entsetzen erregen, und noch sini die Farben so glück-
lich gemischt, dasz trotz alles Grauens und Entsetzens
uns der geheimnisvolle Cauberreiz des Tragischen le-
långt, der wir uns willig und gern hingeben. io
wahr ist das, was ricct seinem lanfred in len lund legt,
ur die Einwürfe der Frauen gegen das Schauerliche in
der _oesie zu widerlegen!
Ja, wohl ist das Intsety-
iche, was sich in der alltäglichen Telt begiebt, eis nt-
lich dasjenige, was die Trust rit unverwindlichen Cualen
foltert Berreiszt.
Jä, vohl gebärt die Crausankeit
der Menschen, das leni, es grosze und kleine Cyrannen,
schonungslos mit dem teuflischen Sohn der Hölle scha!?er,
die echten Gespenster εeschichten.
Und ie schön sast
nun ler Dichter:
'In der gleichen marchanlite Erfiring-
en aber kann ja dieses Eleni ter clt nur ie von muntern
- 50 -





Farben gebrochen hineinsiilen, und ich fächte, auch
ein nicht starkes Auge müszte es auſ diese Teise er-
tragen'."
Poe's ideas of the treatment of the horri-
al". (1)
ble are found in the opening lines of his tale "The
Premature Burial".
He says:
"There are certain
themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but
which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of
legitimate fiction.
These the mere romanticist
must eschew, if he do not wish to offend or to dis-
gust.
They are with propriety only handled, when
the severity and majesty of truth sanctify and sus-
tain them.
We thrill, for example, with the most
intense of 'pleasurable pain' over the accounts of the
Passage of the Beresina, of the Earthquake at Lisbon,
of the Flague at London, of the l'assacre of St. Barthol-
omew, or of the stilling op the hundred and twenty-
three frisoners in the Dlack Hole at Calcutta.
But
(1). See Morks.
X
- 51 -





in these accounts, it is the fact
it is the reality
it is the history which excites.
As inventions, we
should regard them with simple abhorrence.
!1)
Scott, in his essay before mentioned, has
some interesting remarks concerning Hoffmann which seem
to be adajted to the conclusion of our introductory
iiscussion of that author.
He says:
"The attachrent
of the Gerrans to the mysterious has invented still
another species of composition, which, perhaps, could
hürily have made its way in any other country or language,
(This article or Scott's ras written before toe began to
work in this class of fiction).
This may le called
the Fantastic role of writine, in vihich the most wild
and unbounded license is given to an irregular fancy
and all si-cite of corbination, however ludicrous or how
ever shocking, are attempted ani executed without scruple.
In the other modes of treating the su erratural, even
that mystic region is subjectel to some laws, owever
(1). "On the Sun ernatural in Fictitivus Como-iliür".
52"





slight, and farcy, in Wandering through it, is reculated
by some probabilities in the wildest flight."
Lote once more thut Scott's essay eiearei bezore lou's
tales ani hear Scott say:
"Our English severity of taste
will not easily adopt this wild ani fantastic tone into
our own literat:re; nay, perhaps will scarce tolerate it
in translations."
Scott mentions the translation of
Foffmann's "Die Elixire des eu els", as having with
Chamisso's "Peter Schlemihl" enl sinilcr Gerran works,
introlucet this style to the English.
TI
The autor
who led the way in this department of literature was
Ernst Theodor Silhelm Hoffmann, the peculiarity of whose
genius, temper ari hatits, littel his to listinguish hir,
sel. where imagination was to be strained to the witch
of oility and bizarrerie.
He apucars to have been a
ran of rare talent, - a poet, an artist and a musician,
but unfortunately of a hypochondriac ani whirsical lis-
position which carried him to extremes in all his under-
takings, so his rusic Lecare capricious, his dravirgs
caricatures anl his tales, as he himself termed them, lur-
63".





tastic extravagur.ces."
T.e may easily compare his
!
intemperate halits, (some recert writers declsre that
Hoffmann was far from being so intemperate as most of
his biographers have ſainte3 nim', with those of loe.
.
It is interesting to note how Hollrann clù vilied his
Terceptions from day to daj, ani lis riorks 403t sure-
ly reflect these moods or kurors.
"The humor of
one day is a deep disposition toverd the romantic and
religious; of a seconi, the perception of the exaltea
or excited humorous; of į tira, that of the satirical
humorous; of a fourth, that of the excited or extrava-
gant musical sense; of a fifth, a romantic mood turned
towards the unpleasing and the horrible; of a sixth,
litterly satirical propensities uicitera to th: riost
romantic, capricious ani exotic degree; of a seventh, a
state of quietism of mind, open to receive the most
beautiful, chaste, i leasing and imaginative impressions
of a poetical character; of an eighth, a mood equally
exciter, lut accessille only to ideas the most unplus-
irg, the most horrilie, this most unrestrained at once
I
54





and most tormenting.
Te have accounts of Joe's
humors which might almost be substituted for some
of the above.
"To such ininds", says Scott, "these
11
r.anifestations become a positive disease."
The tales
of mystery anil terror often reflect these lathological
conditions.
The painful and gloomy mood of mind
was nore common to Hoffmann's mind than that which is
pleasing, genial or delightful.
Fear had
a far less
lirited reign in his bosom than hore.
His imaginaticn
was ill-regulated and had an undue tendency to the hor-
rible and distressing.
Ee was followed, thus, in
his hours of solitude ani study, especially by the ap-
prehension of mysterious Sanger with which he con-
ceivei hirself surrounded, ani to which he felt exposed,
and he conjured up in his own es cited imasirution all
sorts of finciful spectres, - Šoblins of the sort with
which his pages are filled , - phantoms waich he was kim-
self unable to endure in his night-time study."
"Thus", säis Scott, "was the inventor, or,
at least, first distinguished artist who exhibited the
- 55





---


of which man alone, not woman, is capable.
It is
disease, overstraining, delirious, but always manly.
"From the devil down to caricatured child-
ren's puppets
from a discord of life, which rends
the soul, to a discord of music, which only splits
the ear
the boundless kingdom of the ugly, the dis-
gusting, the annoying, was gathered around him, and his
pictures represent with unimitable life and truth, those
tormenting objects, one after another, and the agonies
they prepare for a sensative spirit.
He is himself
that mad musician Kreisler, who, with his acute sen-
sibility to the purest and most sacred tones, is re-
duced to despair by the discords which everywhere malic-
iously strike him as if echoing from hell. But he
carried this acute sensibility not into music alone.
Through all the spheres of life, he finds those ugly
and hostile caricatures, those demoniac powers, corres-
ponding to musical dissonance, which subject the noblest
spirits to the greatest torture."
The flowers which bloom by night are
- 58





lovelier if we do not think of those which bloom by
day.
Hoffmann's was truly the realm of night.
In Poe's essay on "The Philosophy of
(1)
Composition", he gives some of his ideas as to the
He says:
proper method of constructing a tale.
"Nothing is more clear than that every plot worth
the name, must be elaborated to its denouenient before
anything be attempted with the pen.
It is only with
the denouement constantly in view that we can give a
plot its indispensable air of consequence, or crusa-
tion, by making the incidents, and especially the tone
at all points, tend to the development of the intention.
"There is a radical error, I think, in the us-
ual mode of constructing a story. Either history af-
Lords a thesis, or one is suggested by an incident of
the day
- or, at best, the author sets himself to work
in the combination of striking events to form merely
the basis of his narrative
designing, generally, to
fill in with description, dialogue, or autorial com-
ment, whatever crevices of fact or action may, from page
(1). See Works.
- 59





to page render themselves apparent.
I prefer commencing with the consider-
ation of an effect.
Keeping originality always
in view,- for he is false to himself who ventures
to dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable
a source of interest,- I say to myself, in the first
place, 'of the innumerable effects or impressions of
which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally!.
the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the
present occasion, select?'
Having chosen a novel
first, ani secondly, a vivid effect, I consider whether
it can be best wrought by incident or tone, - whether
by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the con-
verse,
or by peculiarity both of incident and tone
afterwards looking about me (or rather within), for
such combinations of events or tone as shall best aid
me in the construction of the effect."
In another
part of this essay Hoe insists that, to be effective,
a tale must be read at one sitting in order to obtain
unity of im; ression; hence the length must not be
- 60 -





ic
great.
There is, he says, a psychal necessity
A
for brevity.
(1)
In his critique of Hawthorne's tales
he again alludes to the construction of the tale.
He says:
"In the brief tale, the author is enabled
to carry out the fulness of his intention, be it what
it may
During the hour of perusal, the soul of X
the reader is at the writer's control.Y
There are
no external or extrinsic influences resulting from
weariness or interruption.
A skillful literary artist has constructed
a tale.
If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts
to accomodate his incidents; but, having conceived,
with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect
to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents, he
then combines such events, as may best aid him in es-
If his very
tablishing this preconceived effect.
initial sentence tend not to the out-bringing of this
effect, then he has failed in his very first step.
In the whole composition there should be no word written
(1). See l.orks.
- 61
61


of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to
the one pre-established design."
So much then for Poe's theory of com-
position.
He has said very little about his own
use of mystery and terror.
His ideas concerning
the use of these elerents may only be gleaned from
a study of the tales wherein he has applied them.
Às introductory to the study of these tales, the fol-
lowing discussion, taken from Professor Hart's study
(1)
of Poe,
will be advantageous. "Phase of life
with Poe is always slight, simple, more or less vague,
ill-defined, shadowy.
He seldom takes the trouble
to name cities or countries except in 'old World
Romance' and local color means nothing to him.
The
time is for the most part vaguely mediaeval, 1?e infer, -
modern American or European life form occasional ex-
ceptions.
In all this a certain apartness, aloof-
(1). See Ireface. "Tentative Conclusions Rased on
Poe's Tale, in Volumes I-III of Doodberry-sted-
man edition", November, 1899. Unpublished.
!
62 -


ness is evident, a lack of the immediate concrete,
accidental, that mark individual time, place and
character. The hero, moreover, we find usually
isolated. He is a recluse, a solitary student,
usually the last of an ancient family, the heir of
all its vices or its weakness, never normal, sane,
well-balanced, a man among men.
The relation of
brother and sister is marked by terror, of husband
and wife by exaggerated and unhealthy passion, fear,
hatred, and the like, - never the domestic aspect.
Poe's characters see nature in abnormal aspects, wild,
mysterious, artificially, theatrically romantic, the
nature of another world, manufactured beneath the study
lamp or by virtue of a theory.
Katherine Lee Bates
is quoted as placing the bulk of Foe's fictions under
the heads of mystery and horror.
"This is certainly
true", says Irofessor Fart, "for the phase of life,
the abnormal, the isolated, the diseased, these are the
relations that Poe chooses.
So in the central
motives, springing from these relations, the passion is
- 63





often fear, dread, horror itself.
If it is love,
it is love, strange, abnormal, diseased, love marked
by horror or by mystery. The passion of reasoning
implies diseased mind.
Even then, the central
motive is the fear concept, it is a concept implying
horror, implying mystery, and if the motive shades of!
into mood, it is the mood of terror, horror, dread.
The central motive, then, is usually a passion; and of
the passions fear or dread is the most common.
"Vagueness in, or lack of clear definition in, a reason
for the revenge motive of 'The Cask of Amontillado' would
seem," says "rofessor Hart, "to make the tale more effect-
ive, (in producing the effect of horror, though not in
arousing the reader's sympathy)".
Professor Hart also notes the mystery of
Poe's settings, the prevalence of the Gothic romantic,
the wild beauty of landscape; and of these the same is
not less true of Hoffmann.
As to accessories, it is
plain that the use of the occult is foreign to neither
author, and marks that peculiar pseudo-science type of
- 64
4 X





| mystery which is found in fiction. Illedicine and
the accompanying science of chemistry offers materials
for these authors.
Electricity is a fertile field
of mystery Even music is used in peculiar connect-
ions. Both Foe and Hoffmann knew and appreciated
the power and beauty of music, the writings of both be-
ing rich in testimony to this fact.
In discussing the technique of Poe, Professor
Hart says:
"The abrupt beginning of many of Poe's tales
is of interest.
Poe is usually effective.
The writer
assumes that the reader must know of the thing, (some dark
This is a
one), which so completely fills his own mind.
hint of the climax of sinister events to come, and this
if often given in another way, by the insistence, namely,
upon some peculiarity, some abnormal trait of character,
which the reader feels vaguely must lead to gone tragedy.
This mastery of suspense is due largely to the fact that
In
Poe invsriably saw the end from the beginning.
this handling of the mysterious, Toe evidenti, kas great-
er power than Ioffran,
though the latter has much to
- 65 -


prove him a master of the art of suspense.
Verisimilitude is spoken of by Professor
Hart.
"Poe has the air of believing his own story
and this (in tales of mystery) goes a long way.
His extremely improbable tales which need more than the
mere horror to hold the reader, find it in scene or
setting and details.
The setting is usually the
romantic isolated worla
that is, no world.
There
te are willing to believe anything may happen; or it is
that romantic Europe, where we know (from other stories!
The details are us-
many strange things do happen.
ually of the precise technical order and so are con-
vincing, or else they convince, by their logical con-
catenation as in the tales of ratiocination."
(1)
In a letter to Dr. Anthon, Toe calls
his tales fantasy pieces, and in another letter, written
(2)
to Lowell he says, in speaking of his life: "I have
(1). See morks.
(2). See works.
- 66





been too deeply conscious of the mutability and
evanescence of temporal things to give any continuous
effort to anything.
My life has been whim, - impulse, -
passion,- a longing for solitude, - a scorn for all
things present, in an earnest desire for the future.
Perhaps no incident of his life is more pathetic, and
more characteristic than his nightly visits to the tomb
of the deceased mother of his friend.
(1)
She had
been his loving, sympathetic confidant.
"The thought
of her sleeping there in her loneliness filled his heart
with a profound incommunicable sorrow.
When the
nights were very dreary and cold, when the autumnal rains
fell and the winds wailed mournfully over the graves, he
lingered longest, and came away most regretfully."
Poe delineates character, moods and the like from him-
(2)
sell. "He is", says Stedman, his own protagonist."
(1). See Stedman's Introluction to the Tales.
(2). Introduction to the Tales.
- 67 -


|


Stedman's estimate of Poe is of interest.(1)
He says:
"Poe is often, and correctly enough, termed a romancer.
Certainly he was a writer of ornate, yet vision-bred
and illusive, legends of some dreamland of his own, and
not a novelist observing our every-ſlay world. His
rarest tales have the quality of pure romance, and,
otherwise his inventive prose is concerned with incident
and adventure rather than with the portrayal of human
character." Some of the concluding words to Wood -
(2)
berry's narrative of Foe's life will serve us here to
conclude this brief estimate of Poe's character and
genius.
"Much as he derived nurture from other sources,
he was the son of Coleridge by the weird touch in his
imagination, by the principles of his analytic criticism,
and speculative bent of his mind.
An artist Frimarily,
whose skill, helped by the finest sensitive and perceptive
(1). Introduction to the Tales.
(2). "Life of Foe", Tage 349.
- 68 -





take a few selected tales of each author, such as may
be said to represent fairly typically the whole series,
and to apply to these the scheme of treatment which may
best illustrate the use of mystery and terror.
It is
the lesign of the writer, where possible, to select
those tales which show similarity by comparison, and
treat them together, in the first place, concluding the
study by some notice of those tales which, for the most
part, are dissimilar.
The scheme used in this study involves, first,
a study of the subject matter, the phases of life,
motives, moods, emotions and the like; and secondly, a
study of the means, the technique, - the plot, characters,
settings, accessories, etc.; with some reference to the
effect of the treatment on the characters, and to the ef-
fect on the reader.
The aim is to show in what connections and in
what manner mystery and terror elements enter into
are
usei in
the tales without regard to other elements
save such as may be tributary to these.
it
- 70 -


A familiarity with the treatrent of
mystery ani terror, anl with the discussion of Hoffman
and joe contained in the foregoing pages, should us-
sist the reader in his perusal of the succeeding dis-
cussion of the tales.
-1 -


A STUDY OF THE ELEMENTS OF LYSTERY AND TERROR
IN THE TALES OF E. T. I. HOFFI'ANIT AID E.
A. POE
If Poe shows the influence of Hoffmann, as is
Grüener (1)
contended by such critics of literature as
ana
(2)
Stedman there is certainly no one of Foe's tales in
which this influence is more notable than in The Fall of
the House of Usher".
This tale, which may be said to
show the culmination of Poe's art, has much in the way of
motive, setting, incident and character, which recalls
to the reader's mind the same elements in that most strik-
ing of Hoffmann's tales, "Das Majorat".
The phase of
life is possessed of that vagueness which Professor Hart
has remarked; we feel the isolation of the settings and
of the characters.
Roderick or Usher is a man whose
(1). Gustav Grüener. "Influence of Hoffmann on Poe".
In "Publications of the Modern Language Association".
Volume 19, Fages 1-25.
(2). Introiuction to the Tales.
- I -








working toward utter ruin, which lends suspense to these
tales, a suspense that is terrifying and uncanny.
In "The Fall of the House of Usher", the lead-
ing motive seems to be dread, even to horror, rendered
even more unearthly and mysterious by the presence of ab-
normal conditions of mind and circumstance. Professor
Hart says that it is not the fear of a sane healthy mind
of a vigorous positive character, but rather the abnormal
passions of the degenerate weakling, possible only in a
mind long turned in upon itself, living in an isolated
mysterious world.
In "Das Majorat", the motive is fear,
sul erstitious and awful, fear of impending doom, of horrors
foreboded.
It is a fear which is felt only in the pres-
ence of the inexplicable mysterious, in which the natural
comes to wear the garb of the supernatural, and the common-
place takes the form of the extraordinary.
Lalignant
destiny, uncompromising, unchangeable. holds out no hope
for ultimate good.
Such a fear must needs Dear the im-
Love enters in
press of the uncanny, the supernatural.
to both these tales, but in both it is a subsidiary motive.
- 4
1





In Usher it is an abnormal love, combining, as Irofessor
Hart says, with a selfish fear.
In "Das Lajorat" it
is an improper, yet natural, love filled with that hope-
lessness which is a part of immutable fate.
Hence it
becomes a source of painful dread, in keeping with the hor-
ror of the principal theme.
e have seen that the characters are patholog-
ical, that is to say, they are the types of diseased mind
or nature.
Thus they contribute a tone of the unusual,
extraordinary, to the tales.
Lady Ladeline inspires a
kind of supernatural horror,- the old steward of Roland-
sitten has also something terrific in his make up.
Both Rodericks are strangely corpounded individuals. al-
though there seems to be more of the vorldly natural in
the Earon than in Usher.
But it is in the use of setting that the raster-
hand of both authors is apparent.
In both we have the
old ancestral house or castle, situated in a remote or
gloony locality, lonely and melancholy.
The castle of
- 5 -


Rolandsitten is near the Baltic Sea and is surrounded by
dreary forests, the trees are gaunt and dark, presenting
a forbidding arpearance.
A dark dank tarn surrounds
the House of Usher and the forests here are dense, dark
and gloomy.
In both, the old castles are partly
ruins or falling to ruins.
Even in the walls the hand
of fate is present.
The barely perceptible fissure in
the wall of the House of Usher is comparable to the rent
let in the wall of Rolandsitten by the falling tover.
Both these ideas haunt the observer.
The interior of both castles is of the gloomy
character of the Gothic, mediaeval type.
The high
vaulted walls, the dark tapestries and draperies, the ob-
scure corners into which the light may scarcely penetrate.
the very light itself is faint and seems to only force its
way into the apartments through high trellised windows.
The Putniture is dark and carved in Gothic designs. The
passages are dark and intricate.
In these antique walls
and decorations there lives a feeling of gloom which per-
vades the souls of the dwellers, and forces itself into the
6


heart of the reader. And in these dismal halls there
are but few inhabitants, and these are of that mysterious
diaeased type already alluded to.
Both the setting and
the characters are in keeping with the motives.
The use of accessory and incident in both tales
contributes to the desired tone,- to the total effect.
The similarity of these two tales has been already re-
marked, and some particular incidents pointed out.
In both stories the narrator plays a part.
He tells the story in the first person.
Subjectivity
is present far more in the narrator of the Poe story than
in the narrator of
Das majorat".
Foe himself seerus
to be telling this story.
His own susceptibility to
the terror of mystery, his own superstitious sensibility,
is found in the narrator.
Throughout all of the narra-
tion this subjective manner is present. In 2012ann's
story we do not feel the narrator to be so thoroughly in
accord with his surroundings.
At times he gives way
to subjective thoughts, but for the most fart he tells his
tale merely objectively.
This is one reason why Poe's
- 7 -





tale works more powerfully upon the imagination of the
reader, who, perforce, must ally himself with the
narrator, must feel himself in hermony with the narrator.
of similar accessory incidents in the two
tales, mention may be made of the use of mysterious
sounds. The scratchings on the walled-up door in "Das
La jorat" have a counterpart in the screaming and grating
sounds heard by the narrator of "The Fall of the house of
Usher".
The reading of ghost or terror stories by the
charo cters is a device which both forfmann and Foe may
have borrowed from lirs. Radcliffe.
The foreseeing of
death is another device.
The old Baron accurately
foretells his doom while Usher forebodes his less accur-
ately, but none the less certainly and terribly.
Whe
strange power of music, its mysterious relation to human
emotions or passions, is not allowed to go untouched by
either topprann or Doe.
and it is always the music o a
wild, weird, mysterious nature that is usei.
It be-
comes a mania to the characters of these stories.





Foe does not often ex lain the supernatural
by the ratural, but in Usher the natural explanation of
the terrible sounds is even more terrific than if re-
garded as purely supernatural.
And it is effect that
Poe desires.
It was part of his art to leave unex-
-
plained that which explanation would kill the effect of.
It is to be regrettea that Mrs. Radcliffe's art iid not
go this far. Hoffmann has also explained the myster
ious scratchings and the night scenes; but his explana- ;
tions are positively necessary to his effect and, more-
over, they are not forced or inadequate.
Both Hoff-
mann and Poe have made full use of the element of sus-
pense in these tales.
Iaturalness and simplicity of
manner hold the reader easily.
His credulity is not
disturbed by jarring inconsistencies or exaggerations
and so he is led easily through the successive incidents
of the story.
At tires Hoffmann borders on complex-
ity, when we are apt to confuse the mystery theme with
the love theme, but we are soon led back to an under-
standing of his purpose and enabled to follow the course
9 -


of events readily.
(1)
E. C. Stedman points out also a similarity
between "Das Majorat" and Foe's "Metzengerstein".
The
ominous conflagration which destroys the palace Metzenger-
stein is much of the same nature as the inevitable ominous
destruction, - the ultimate absolute desolation and ruin of
the castle of Rolandsitten.
Here, also, we have the
weird gloomy effects of the Gothic and antique in decora-
tions and architecture.
(1)
Stedman has also suggested a resemblance be-
tween Hoffmann's "Doge und Dogaresse" and Foe's "The assign-
ation",
There is truly much in the motives, characters
and settings which in the older work point unmistakably to
the more recent one.
Here is the unusual and ever roran-
tic idea of an old man wedded to a young and beautiful
woman possessed of all the charms and all the lassions of
youth.
The young and handsome lover, the impossibility
and desieration of the love, the clandestine meetings, all
(1).
Introduction to the Tales.
- 10





these elements are present in both stories.
The
motive in both is desperate love, ominous, foreboding
disaster.
Even the description of the Dogaresse
Annunziata tallies in most respects with Joe's picture
of the Marchesa Aphrodite. It is true that the old
Doge is pictured in more favorable coloring than is
Lentoni, but, withal, they have much in common. The
young lovers are of different social caste, but they are
of the conventional type of romantic lovers.
The setting in Venice is common to both, -
the romance and the splendor is present in each of these.
The balcony scene is, as Stelman suggests, common to the
two tales and the tableau in which the larchesa meets the
young lover, the aged l'entoni in the background, ray be
sail to be a rost faithful representation of the balcony
Dven the
picture on which thú earlier tale is based.
rescue of the Doge is faintly sugestive of the rescue
of the child, and the accompanying incidents are full of
suecestiveness.
The portrait of Annunziata has a
counterpart in the portrait of the l'archesa.
The night
scenes on the water are very similar, and full of romantic
- 11 -


一
​


meaning.
The nervous, excited manner, the alrost in-
sane character of Poe's lover, is a touch which is
splendidly handled and heightened by the Gothic oriental
splendor and richness of the setting, a setting which
lends a tone of awe and mystery to the tale.
Hoffmann
has not such a perfect power of giving tone to his stor-
ies. It is use of incident rather than setting which
lends tone to his tales.
The finale of both stories,
though more perfectly terrible in "The assignation" than
in Hoffmann's story, is only a portrayal of the same con-
cept, that, namely, in which desperate love may only pur
che se fulfillment in death.
"Stay for me there!
I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale."
There is nothing in Hoffmann to exactly
compare with Foe's tales of ratiocination, and it is
stretching a point too far to say that the letective store
kere Ere.
vroper hal an earlier origin in Lolfrarn.
notwithstanding, certain elements in "Das Fraulein von
Scuiery" which lave something ot! e nature of the con-


uire detective story.
For exarrle, te lind to
mystery of some lark anl awful crir es, ballling the for
ers of the cutlic and the police alike, to understand.
The peculiar nu ture of the crires in Ilo Pfrann's tal-.-
the fact that each murder was ejecuted in the sum ran-
rer Enl that euch was accorpaniei by tie rolling of the
nurdered inlivilual of jovels in his possession, gives
raterial for speculation ind iancy, but it is all in
vain.
So we find in toe the crires, lark, awful,
mysterious, ballling explanation.
but in working out
the mystery of Toe's tales, the rative is purely the las-
sion for reasoning, while with hole ann pe lind really
tro motives, first, the lesire of the police to solve
tliestery and second the love rotive.
In "DES Frau-
lein von Scudery" te linl the use of hyrotheses in which
it is thic aim of one side to prove the innocence can
&ccusel jerson and of the other site to rove kis tuilt.
In the solution of the hystery we have all the terror
and horror of the darkest crires gradually uncov.1.1.
But it is not dve to the reasonins that the mystery is
3 -


ܬܐ ܗ


explained.
In fact the rousoning is only an incient
of the story.
In Toe's stories, on the other hand, it
is the reasoning which leads to the solution.
In fact,
in Hoffmann's tale the reasoning is proven fallacious
while Toe, secins the end iron the first, is ukle to work
backward through the result to the cause ani thus establish
a perfect explanation.
In oe, also, we have account
taken of psycholocical and physical conditions such as
would be certain to arise. Even mathenatics, the laws
of probability and chance, are made use of.
With Roth
authors the element of suspense is made use of, and the
1
reader is held until the final solution.
Iut in Poe
it is the fascination of following from point to moint
a well constructed chain of prolatilities until the final
solution is inevitalle.
In Hoffrrann tiiw Suspense is
sustainel loti rapid change 0 ? incident, t'ie ever-
recurring hints of a mysterious nature, which cause the
railer to Fonder what is cominc nezt.
e Ortet 3
final solution but do not know just exactly what it will
be.
It is fair to say that the average regler will
- 14 -


probably suspect the old jeweller Tene Cardillac of the
murders, before the story is ended, tut, even so, tie
still rey wonder as to his motives.
The reader of either Toe or Hoffmann will CX-
verience the ascinating terror that crises out of un-
explained mystery, throughout the period of his reading
these tales.
Even after the explanation is given, the
flush of horror at the very gruesomeness of it all will
still be present.
These tales, again, seer to justify
the assertion that wo?Pran seems able to obtain effect
far better through concrete incident, while Toe succeeds
in getting a tone to his stories which proiuces the ef-
fect desired.
Character and settire both contribute
to this tone.
The character of Durin, gloors and
loving the lark, with a passion for reasoning, tith a
love of rystery and air ost superhuman poters orind;
such a chiracter is abnormal, irving diseased mind end
strarse terperament.
Naturally, such a character early
gives tiie tone thich proluces an effect oneeriress on the
reader.
The narrator, too, ackno.lelges himsell to
- 15 -


share the temerarent c? Dujin, yet confesses himself
rustified at the strange povers of this man.
The iduâ of the Dorrelyurver has been used
by both Hoffmann and Ioe, more often by the former.
(1)
This idea, as expressed by nir. Erandes, is "the apper
ition of a verson which appears to himself".
In
Hofmann's tale, "Der Doppelganger" the use of this idea
is to obtain the fantastically gruesore effect.
"Through it,
as hr. brandes says, "all sorts of ab-
surd mistakes are rade and the dread of Doppelgangerei
is turned to good account.
In the story of "Die
Elixire des Teufels" we l'ind the sure idea involved.
The monk ledardus is haunted by the visitations of another
self - a double of his own personal & rearance.
Brentara
has used this conception for the humorous, half-iudicrous
effect; Il. arn uses it for serious furuose.
is one
ll. Coorse Trandes: "Lain Currents in Iin teenth Century
Iitorature", "The Iomantic School in Germany."
iuse 162.
(2). See vreceiins note, Carros 166-171.
- 16 -








-


the narrator, the better self of roe, for killian Wilson
is Poe.
Tilliam Wilson's is a mind susceptible to
weird ir.pressions anlal'ictea, as he says, to wildest
caprices, a urey to ungovernable passions.
Sich a
temperar ent would be easily canable of being launted with
visions or a double-coer.
In this character there is
nuch to remind us of Hoffmann's ledardus ant kere, assin,
v.e Pind, in many respects, the author living in the
character which he has producel out o. lis own strange
furcy.
The revenge motive which is raie use of by Poe
in such notalle instances as "ION Frog" and "The Cask of
Amontillado" is, for the most part absent in the tales
of Hoffrann.
It is one of the most powerful of the
motives in use in terror tales and finis its source in
the passion of hate.
Lerhaps, in Hoffmann's tales,
there may be seen some resemblance in the hate motive
present in the story of "Der Kampf der Sanger", but here
Revenge, due to
the revenge or the magician fails.
hate, is not the central motive of this tale, being mere-
- 19 -


-


ly incidental.
The revenge motive also enters into
the tale of "Der Ragnetiseur", though here the victim
is not the person upon whom the revenge is designed.
The cool and calculating manner in which it is executed
is only less effective than that o? Foe's tales.
The supernatural finis its way into many of
the tales of both Poe and Hoffmann.
The use of it by
the latter is far freer and more unrestrained than in
the case oL Poe.
In some of Hoffmann's tales it is
so handled as to produce rather a ludicrous than a ter-
rifying effect.
In Poe, on the other hand, with one
or two exceptions, it is used with a rore care ul regard
for its limitations and necessary bounds.
Ir the use
of the devil, in Toe's tale "Never bet the Devil your
Head", it is purely for an effect of humor, farcical and
This is not tlie us-
with no fretense at seriousness.
ual mooi opoe.
In "Letzengerstein" we have the use
of the supernatural in the transformation of the horse
In William
in the tapestry into the fiery charger.
wilson we may regard the final scene as involving super-
natural manifestations.
In all those tales in which
- 20





In Edward
use of this element, as phase of life.
Yardley's "The Supernatural in Romantic Fiction (1)
interesting reference is made in several places to
Hoffmann's use of the supernatural.
Among other
things, his animated dolls, and narical illusions and
transformations are alluded to.
In the tale, "Nachricht aus dem Leben eines
bekannten Hannes", the devil is introduced and indulges
is any amount of fantastic caprice, causing superhuman
antics aril again dipping into witchcraft and the black
art; in the end turns into a bat, rushing into the flares
in time to save the old woman who is being burned for
witchcraft.
Again in "Die Brautwahl", which Hoffmann des-
ignates as "a story in which many entirely improbable ad-
ventures happen", we have the devil again appearing in
the guise of the goldsmith Leonhard. The magic art is
introduced and enchantments are practiced.
Perhaps the
(1). (fassim).
22 -





best example of Hoffmann's free use of supernatural
mystery is to be found in the tale, "Der goldene Topf".
In this we find a most fanciful use of the supernatural.
It is a strange combination of the natural and super-
natural phases of life, yet it is worked out with a
verisimilitude so striking that the reader does not fail
to fall into the mood of the story.
The settings and
accessories are all of the no-world fanciful type and
one is not shocked or disturbed by the intrusion of in-
cidents which would seem absurd in any other environment.
The mystery in these tales does not lead the reader into
feelings of creepy terror.
It is rather a fascina-
tion mingled with wonder.
In the tale, "Die Bergwerke
zu Falun", there is a more eery species of terror, de-
rived from the mysterious and supernatural alpearances
in the wines, far under the earth.
The strange siirit
of the old miner Torbern, which haunts the nine, avalens
suspenge in the reader, mingled with an uncanny feeling.
Hoffmann here arrroaches nearer to the senius of Poe,
in that he does not explain away the supernatural mystery,
23





but leaves the explanation to the imagination of the
reader.
But here again we have the too close inter-
ningling of natural and supernatural phases of life.
Hoffmann handles the settings well and one may not well
imagine a better place for superstition to thrive than
in the deep dark chasms far below the surface of the
earth.
Still another use is made of "diablerie" in
the story "Der Kampf der Sanger", where the supernatural
element is overcome.
The motive of this tale is
found in the concept of the power of music.
lagic in
this tale is represented as the weapon of the devil and
it is only the power of art, pure and undefiled, which may
conquer this.
One more use of the supernatural in an entire-
ly ludicrous ranner is to be
found in the story of "The
Lost Reflection".
This is an evident atter.pt on the
part of opfmann to initate the tale of Peter Schlemihi,
D
that fantastic, yet weiri, iroduction of Chamisso.
In all ol these examples of the use of the
- 24 -





supernatural, Joffmann fails to reach the power of Toe's
tales, because either of a lack of verisimilitude or
through a too close approach to the ludicrous.
We may now consider the tales involving the
pseudo-sciences, a class common both to Hoffmann and Poe.
l'agnetism seems to be a favorite concept with
Hoffmann.
The tale, "Der magnetiseur", illustrates
this, perhaps better than any other.
he is ower of one
Ferson over the mini of another, with the horrible possi-
biltiies that this opens up, is made full use of in this
connection.
Over all there is a haunting sense of evil
to come, of a terrible conclusion, and the end does not
disappoint the expectations. In this tale, moreover,
Hoffmann has proven his power in the use of the element
of suspense and when one has completed the tale there yet
hangs over one a strangely uncanny feeling.
In this
tale Horimann approaches to something like the effect of
Poe.
Liesmerism is also used as a motive in some of
Hoffmann's stories, but its value as a source of mystery
and terror does not appear to have been fully realized by
- 25 -


* : , ,


this motive, but has some closely related conditions
such as the cataleptic state of the Lady Madeline of
Usher and in the gruesomely horrible tale of "The Pre-
mature Burial". In this latter tale we again find
the striking verisimilitude of Poe.
He uses here
settings perfectly normal and natural and develops the
motivating concept of terror by hints and suggestions
of horrible consequences possible to a cataleptic
state.
He makes his character suffer all the mor-
tal mental terror of these ideas and his conclusion where
the premature burial is actually experienced is a climax
of pure horror. It is not the less fascinatingly ter-
rible for the reader because he discovers that the appar-
ent experience was a dream.
This same idea of pre-
mature burial is the incident which makes possible the
terrible finale of "The Fall of the House of Usher".
HoPhrann uses yet another strange concept,
automatons.
Poe, I think, has not make use of this
idea in his tales. Hoffmann takes advantage of the
eeriness which attaches to anything alperently inex-
- 27 -





plainable and contrives to surround the characters in
his tale, "Die Automaten", with a mysterious, and super-
stitious fear.
The mystery of fortune telling is
made use of in this connection.
The peculiarities of
human nature are also made use of, and the strange power
of music which Hoffmann so well understood how to por-
tray, is also used as an accessory to increase the effect.
In the story "Der Sandmann", Hoffmann introduces the
automaton again.
There is a certain terror found in
this tale but it is derived from the settings and charact-
ers rather than from the mystery of the automaton which is
here used merely to give a ludicrously fantastic effect.
The idea of metempsychosis and palingenisis are
noteworthy. The have already noted hov, in Letzenger-
steir, the soul of the man seems to have passed from the
master into the horse, and the strikingly terrible el-
In the "Tale of the
fects which this gives rise to.
be
Ragsed Mountains", palingenisis is the concept.
"In
tales of Lorella and Ligeia also show this.
- 28 -








mann is so fond of using.
His settings for these
tales are wild and lonely and in all of his accessories
there is a pervading mood of eeriness, mysterious ter-
ror. In Hoffmann's story of "Das öde Haus" he leads
us through a network of mysteries to a conclusion in
which all the horrors of insanity play a part.
Terror
itself seems to be the motive of the tale, but mystery
and insanity are the accessories through which the effect
is realized.
In "Der unheimliche Gast" the concept
of magnetism is used to account for a seemingly stronge
rathological condition, bordering on insanity.
Perhaps Hofnann has given us & no more fright-
fully horrible and gruesome effect than that found in his
tale "Der Vampyrisrus", and in this it is possible to find
ruch of that power of sugcestion which toe uses so effect-
ively in his most horrible tales.
Aurelie is markei
by a singularly ghastly spectral appearance; moreover,
Her rental
her body dis lays the effects of disease.
state is confused, variable,
restless, susresting con-
stant fright and terror.
The Count is susceptible of
51 -





that type of being where fixed idea, - the determination
upon one awful purpose, - has become a mania, with all
of the cold blooded deliberateness so common to madness.
In "The Black Cat", "The Imp of the Perverse" and "The
Tell Tale Heart", the characters are illustrative of
the type of diseased mind which has brooded itself into
madness.
Diseased mind is found in nearly all the
characters of "Ligeia", "Lorella" and "Eleonora".
In Berenice we have another type of fixed idea, a strange
horrible lascination amounting to fanaticism. As
Professor Hart has suggested, the horrible conclusion of
this tale is almost disgusting in its revolting detail.
"The hero", says Wood berry, "is a ran struck with some
secret disease, given to the use 0:drugs and to musing
over old books in an antiquated and gloony chamber, and
reserved for a horrible experience.
In Berenice.
too, are such theres of evil fascination for Ioe's lind
as the epileptic patient and the premature burial; such
marks of his handling as the cousinship of the principal
actors, tho descriction of morbid physical changes, the
- 33





plained.
With a few examples of typical cases found
in the tales of both writers we may well conclude the
present discussion.
In "King Pest" Toe gives us the grotesquely
horrible effect.
Certain features in "A. Gordon Pym"
are introduced for apparently no other purpose than to
arouse horror.
The ship, loaded with the bodies of
those who have died from horrible disease, is å feir ex-
ample of this.
The horrible and loathsome endings of
"The Facts in the case of W. Valdemar", anl the tale of
"Beronice" provide illustrations of the degree of horror
to which Poe's fancy could lend itself. Less loath-
some, yet scarcely less awful, is the description of
the horrible murders of the Rue morgue.
The efect
of terror to be produced in the stories of "The Black
Cat" and "The Tell Tale Heart" is not less studied ani care-
fully worked out than the conscience motive itsel?.
The horror of the final scene of "The Basque of the Reci
Death" is very efectively worked out and the reader is
prepared for the awful climax, by a graiual process of
- 36 -


approach that shows the culnination of Poe's genius
in narration.
How well Poe succeeds in getting his read -
er to "sup full o? horrors(1)
is well expressed in
this quotation taken from the letter of a certain
(2)
Ir. Cooke, addressed to lir. Poe.
111 The Val-
demar Case' I read in a number of your Broadway Journal
last winter, - as I lay in a Turkey blind, muffled to
the eyes in overcoats, etc., and pronounce it, without
hesitation, the most damnable, vraisemblable, horrible,
hair-lifting, shocking, ingenious chapter of fiction
that any brain ever conceived or hands treated.
That
gelatinous, viscous sound of men's voice! there never
was such an idea before.
That story scared me in
broad day, armed with a double-barrel Tyron Tyrkey gun.
What would it have done at midnight,
in some old chostly
country house?
(1). Shakespeare: "Macbeth".
(2). See in
See in Mr. Jack London's article, "The Terrible and
Tragic in Fiction", in "Critic", Number 42, June
1903, lages 539-43.
- 37 -


"I have always found some one remarkable
thing in your stories to haunt me long after reading
them.
The teeth of 'Berenice', the changing eyes
of miorella', that red and glaring crack in the 'House
of Usher', the pores of the deck in the 'W. S.
Found
in a Bottle', the visible drops falling into the goblet
in 'Ligeia', etc., etc., there is always something of
this sort to stick by the mind, - by mine at least."
What a tribute, il so we way call it, to
the potency of moe's artifices and accessories in the
production of suspense and effect!
Hoffmann has given some equally revolting
pictures and effects in his stories.
In the story,
"Spielergluck" we have the terrible notion of the
But we
gambler stakins his om wife and losing her.
are hardly prepared for the terrible catastrophe where
the winner comes to claim his stake and finds that what
he has won is the woman's dead body.
The horrible
conclusion of "Varli yrismus" has been allude i to.
In "Die Serapions-Bruder" occurs a short tale which has
- 38 -





no title.
In it we find insanity mingling with
superstition to form a motive for a series of horrors
that are as awful as any that Hoffmann gives us.
Over this story there seems to hang all the terror of
foreboden death, mysterious and awful. And the re-
sults justify the presentiments for, one by one, the
characters sink through insanity to death, while the
cause of this awful destiny is left undiscovered, leav-
ing the reader to thrill with the horror of it all.
The horrible conception of the Dorpelganger has been
alluded to and through this conception Hoffmann has
güined run of his most uncanny effects.
From the foregoing we have seen that Foe
HOP-
and Hoffmann use much the same phase of life.
mann uses the supernatural more freely than loe, but his
use of "the light that never was on land or sea" is not
kept so well within the bounds of taste as it is with
Poe.
Rarely does Poe indulge in the supernatural
except for serious motives and the verisimilitude which
he calls to his aid is often lacking in the case of Hoff-
- 39
1


The characters of Hoffmann are usually mor-
tal, though colored by all the caprice of Gernan fancy.
E. C. Stedman says of Hoffmann's heroines in comparing
(1)
this author to Toe: "He drew charming mortal her-
oines.
His Seraphinas, Amunciatas and Antonias are the
warm and breathing dames and donnas, while Poe's Eleonor-
as, Ligeias and lorellas are the tapestry figures of man-
sions to which the younger romancer held his title by suc-
cession."
Stedman also remarks:
"While Hoffmann was
wholly of the Vaterland and Foe a misfitted American,
iſ the one had died before the other's birth, instead of
thirteen years later, there would be a chance for a
fretty Pancy in behalf of the doctrine of me tempsychosis,
which both writers utilized."
Poe undoubtedly surpasses Hoffrann in most,
if not all, of the divisions of the tale-writers' art.
but while the world may choose to read his tales, in
(1). In the Introduction to the Tales.
- 41 -





ВІВ
IH
I
HY :
으
​IH
FOR THE STUDY OF MYSTERY AND TERROR.
*(1) Blackwood's Edinburgh Lagazine, July 1824, Vol. 16,
rases 55-67.
"Die Elixire des Teufels."
Fiske, Christabel Forsythe:-
Shesis submitted to the Columbian University
in part satisfaction of the requirements for
the degree of Laster o? Arts. Cornell, 1899.
Published by Tile Teule Co., lashington, D. C.
Kurtz. Dr. B. P.:-
Article on "The Marvellous".
Unpublished.
1907-8.
were used for the
(1). All referer.ces worked with a
study of the tales, also.
1 -





Hart, Rrol. 1. Wi-
"Ballad and Epic"; "A Study in the Develop-
ment of the Narrative Art".
Bostor, 1907.
Ginn & Co., under direction of the modern
Language Departments of harvard University.
Eart, Irof. W. I. : -
"Tentative Conclusions based on the Tales
of Poe, in Volumes I-III of the Woodberry-
Stedran Edition."
Unpublished.
ITovember, 1899.
Locher, E. V.
"Prelimirary Study of mastery and Terror,
Iarticularly as Regards the Use of these mle-
rents in Literature."
Unpublished
march, 1908.
Ostwald, John:-
"An Etymological Dictionary 01 the Inglish
Language."
hiladelphia, 1853.
Tublished
by I. C. and J. Bidale.








*Hoffmann, E. T. W.:-
"Werke"; 6 volumes.
Berlin edition.
Published by Gustav Hempel, about 1882.
*Ewing, Lieutenant-Colonel Alex.i-
"Translation of the Serapion-Brethren" by
E. T. 1. Hoffmann.
2 Volunes.
London and
Iew York, 1866 and 1892.
Published by
George bell & Sons in Bohn's "Standard Library."
Menzel:-
"Specimens of Foreign Literature"
9 Volures.
"German Literature", 3 Volumes, Volume 2.
Translated from the German by C. C. Felton.
Chapter on "Callot-Hoffmann". Boston, 1840.
Hilliard, Gray & Co., Publishers.
*Stedman, Edmund Clarence, and
Woodberry, George Edward:-
"The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Itewly Collected
and Edited, with a Critical Introduction and


Matthews, Brander:-
"The Philosophy of the Short Story".
New York.
London and Bombay, 1901.
Published by
Langmans, Green & Company.
Wilkinson, William Cleaver:-
"Chautauqua Course 1891-'92."
"Classic German
Course in English".
Chapter on "the Romancers
and Romanticists".
Tages 265-297.
Fer York,
1891.
Published by the Chautauqua Press.
Ingram, John H.:-
"The Complete Tales and Coetical works of Edgar
Allan Poe, Including Essays on Poetry, Edited,
Annotated and Arranged, with Memoir.
Date
0. Tublication not given.
New York,
Published by A. L. Burt.
Thitcomb, Selden I.:-
"The Study of a Novel".
Boston, 1905.
D. C. Heath & Co., Fublishers.





"Hoffmann's Strange Stories".
Lublished in translation, Boston, 1855, by
Burnham Brothers.
Bealby, J. T.:-
"Weird Tales".
By E. T. 1. Hoffmann.
A New Translation from the German, with a
Biographical Iiemoir. 2 Volumes. Ier York,
(1)
1896. Charles Scribner's Sons.
; -1
1:iii
-
Lܬ
OF THE
UNIVESITY
CALIFOR
(l). Besides those references given in the above
bibliographical lists, reference was constantly
had to the various encyclopaedias and diction-
aries, ani, in the preliminary study, to a vast
amount of miscellaneous tract and magazine matter.
- 10 -