"Little Tsakhes, nicknamed Zinnober": summary, analysis of the work

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Did not your heart grieve at the sight of how an unworthy and insignificant person was surrounded by honors, endowed with all kinds of blessings and looked around with swaggering arrogance? The same sadness overcame the great romantic Ernest Theodore Amadeus Hoffmann, who turned his clever and precise pen as a weapon against stupidity, vanity, injustice, of which there are so many in our world.

Genius of German Romanticism

Hoffmann was a truly universal personality in culture - a writer, thinker, artist, composer and lawyer. Having lived a short life (only 46 years old), he managed to create works that became an event not only in global art, but also in the personal cultural space of every person who touched the work of this genius.

Many of the images created by Hoffmann have become household names. The hero is one of them.fairy tale "Little Tsakhes, nicknamed Zinnober". Here the author showed such remarkable wit, depth of imagination and the power of artistic generalization that the tale itself and the images recreated in it look extremely relevant today. Either in politics, or in art, or in the media, no, no, yes, this sinister dwarf will flash - Little Tsakhes.

Summary of the beginning of the tale

The story begins with a picture of a hot day and the sad lamentations of a tired peasant woman. We learn that we alth, despite hard work, does not go into the hands of this mendicant family. In addition, a rare freak was born in her, the body of which the author very expressively compares either with a forked radish, or with an apple planted on a fork, on which an absurd face was drawn, or with an outlandish stump of a gnarled tree. Two and a half years have passed since the baby Tsakhes was born, but no one saw any human manifestations in him. He still could not walk and talk, and made only some meowing sounds. And it must have happened that at that time a real fairy passed by, who, however, had to disguise herself as a canoness (privileged nun) of an orphanage for noble maidens, since fairies in that principality were under the greatest ban.

The Rosabelverde Fairy was imbued with keen compassion for the miserable family and rewarded the tiny freak with extraordinary magical powers, which were not slow to manifest before the peasant woman returned home. The pastor, whose house she passed, stopped the woman and, forgetting about his lovely three-year-old son, suddenly began to admire the monstrous dwarf clutching his mother's skirt. The holy father was terribly surprised that the mother could not appreciate the wondrous beauty of the beautiful child, and asked to take the baby to her.

A note on mental qualities

The reader's next meeting with the one called little Tsakhes took place many years later, when he grew up and became a student. The first who met the evil dwarf in the forest on the way to Kerepes were noble young people - Fabio and B althazar. And if the first had a mocking and sharp mind, then the second was distinguished by thoughtfulness and romantic aspirations. The look and manner of the ugly stranger, who most pitifully rolled out of the saddle at the feet of the young men, aroused peals of laughter in Fabio, and sympathy and pity in B althazar. B althazar was a poet whose inspiration was fueled by a passionate love for Candida, the pretty daughter of a professor whose young man was taking a course of lectures on natural science.

Witch Power

The appearance of the vile dwarf did not cause the reaction in the city that Fabian expected, anticipating the general fun. Suddenly, for some reason, all the inhabitants started talking about the unsightly freak as a stately and handsome young man with many virtues. Even more, the city went crazy, calling the little monster "a graceful, handsome and skillful young man," when little Tsakhes attended the literary tea party of Professor Mosh Terpin, whose daughter wasin love with B althazar. Here the young man read his delightful and refined poem about the love of a nightingale for a rose, in which he expressed the heat of his own feelings. What happened after that was fantastic!

Conquered by the poem, the listeners vied with each other to praise little Tsakhes, referring to him respectfully as "Mr. Zinnober". It turned out that he was not just "intelligent and skillful", but "wonderful, divine." Then Professor Mosh Terpin showed amazing experiments, but it was not he who won fame, but the same little Tsakhes. It was he who, due to an inexplicable witching aura, was instantly called perfection in the presence of talented and intelligent people. Whether a gifted musician plays a concert - admiring glances are directed towards Tsakhes, whether a great artist sings with a magnificent soprano - and an enthusiastic whisper is heard that such a singer as Zinnober cannot be found all over the world. And now the blue-eyed Candida is madly in love with little Tsakhes. He makes a stunning career, becoming first a privy councilor, and then a minister of the principality. Imbued with great importance and became demanding of honors, as Hoffmann, little Tsakhes, ironically characterizes him.

Summary of the climax of the novel

Everything that someone does or says something wonderful in his presence is immediately attributed to Tsakhes. And vice versa, all the vile and ridiculous antics of a freak (when he hoots, croaks, clows and talks nonsense) in the eyes of society are imputed to a real creator. That is, a certain diabolical substitution is taking place, plunging into despair those who deserve it.success, but doomed to disgrace because of the damned freak. B althasar calls the magical gift of an evil dwarf an infernal force that steals hopes.

But there must be some remedy for this madness! Witchcraft can be resisted if "with firmness to resist it," where there is courage, victory is inevitable. The positive heroes of the fairy tale come to this conclusion - B althazar, Fabian and the young referendary, who was aiming for the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs Pulcher (whose merits and position were stolen by Tsakhes). Friends learn about an amazing circumstance: every nine days, a fairy flies into the garden to Tsakhes to comb his curls and renew his magical power. And then they start looking for ways to overcome the spell.

Evil can be defeated

After that, another character appears in the fairy tale - the magician Prosper Alpanus. After studying books about gnomes and alrauns, he comes to the conclusion that little Tsakhes is an ordinary person, endowed with a wonderful gift beyond his merit. In the magical battle between Alpanus and Rosabelverde, a more powerful magician deprives the fairy of the opportunity to help her ward: the comb with which she combed the hair of a small monster broke. And the magician told B althazar that the secret of Zinnober lies in the three fiery hairs on the top of his head. They must be pulled out and immediately burned, then everyone will see Tsakhes as he really is.

From a philosophical point of view, the conflict of the plot lies in the fact that due to incomprehensible spontaneous interferenceinjustice triumphs, but truth is defeated. Thanks to the support of the majority, evil becomes legitimate and begins to rule reality. And then you need a strong-willed impulse, resistance to mass hypnosis, in order to change the situation. As soon as this happens in the minds and deeds of some, albeit a small part, of people acting together, the situation changes.

The young man successfully copes with his mission: people are convinced of the true state of affairs, little Tsakhes is drowning in a chamber pot with his own sewage. The heroes are justified, Candida confesses that she has always loved B althazar, the young people get married, inheriting a magical garden and Alpanus' house.

Fiction is the other side of reality

As an apologist for the ideas of the Jena romantics, Hoffmann was convinced that art is the only source of life transformation. Only strong emotions are involved in the narrative - laughter and fear, worship and disgust, despair and hope. In the fairy tale about little Tsakhes, as in his other works, the writer creates a half real, half mythical world in which, according to the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, a fantastic image does not exist somewhere outside of reality, it is the other side of our reality. Hoffmann uses the motif of magic in order to more vividly and clearly demonstrate what reality is. And to throw off her shackles, he resorts to sharp and subtle irony.

Artistic techniques

The fabric of the story is gracefully woven and played out in a peculiar waywell-known folklore motifs, meaning sorcery. Magic hairs that the fairy provided her pet, the head of a magic cane that emits rays in which all falsehood turns into something that does not seem to be, but is in fact, a golden comb that can turn the ugly into the beautiful. Hoffmann also uses the famous fairy-tale theme of clothing, filling it with topical content not only for his contemporaries, but also for you and me. Let's remember the sleeves and tails of Fabian's frock coat, the length of which immediately became a reason to hang evil and stupid labels on its owner.

Hoffmann's Irony

The writer laughs at the ridiculous innovations in the bureaucracy. The satirical image of a bureaucratic uniform with diamond buttons, the number of which indicates the degree of merit to the fatherland (ordinary people had two or three of them, Zinnober had as many as twenty), the author also beats with exquisite artistic meaning. If an honorary ministerial ribbon was already perfectly held on an ordinary human figure, then on the torso of Tsakhes - a short stump "with spider legs" - it could only be held by means of two dozen buttons. But the "honorable Mr. Zinnober" was, of course, worthy of such a high honor.

Finally, the statement of the result of the dishonorable life of the ugly impostor seems brilliant: he died from fear of dying - such a diagnosis is made by the doctor after examining the body of the deceased.

We have something to think about

Hoffmann wittily shows us a portrait of society, of which he became a mirrorill-fated little Tsakhes. The analysis of the problem leads us to the conclusion that it is very easy and hopeless to become mad in this way. If you yourself are ready to replace the truth with a lie out of selfish motives, if you are not alien to the tendency to ascribe other people's merits to yourself, if, finally, you are driven in life not by bold and free ideas, but by narrow-minded conformism, sooner or later you will put little Tsakhes on a pedestal. nicknamed Zinnober.