We shared the experience of being alive and then we took some tea
My short story "Where the Sky Is Silver and the Earth Is Brass" has been accepted by Machinations and Mesmerism: Tales Inspired by E.T.A. Hoffmann, edited by Farah Rose Smith (Ulthar Press, June 2019).
I am extraordinarily pleased by this development and not just because it continues to start the year off right. It is the one piece of original fiction I finished in 2018. I wrote it at the beginning of December; it was supposed to be seasonal crack for![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selkie, but then history got in the way. It features Jewish queerness and demons. Its protagonist is a partisan after the war. In order not to disappear down my usual rabbit hole, I researched the dates of Hanukkah in 1948—which thanks to the interaction of calendars turned out to be partly the dates of Hanukkah in 1949—and then resolutely stayed away from the internet/books. One name is taken from my family history and everything else is invented, so far as I know. The title comes from misremembering a line in Isaac Bashevis Singer's "The Devil's Trick," translated and collected in Zlateh the Goat (1966): "The devil licked his singed tail and ran off with his wife to the land where no people walk, no cattle tread, where the sky is copper and the earth is iron." Once I'd gotten it wrong, I kept it. I like my version better for its context anyway.
I am also pleased because while I don't talk about him as much as some other authors, Hoffmann is one of my literary influences who is embarrassingly obvious to me. When my first collection Singing Innocence and Experience (2005) was reviewed by Publishers Weekly, it was gently faulted for "the presence of a few too many earnest young student-artists and musicians obsessed with love or knowledge" and it's true that I wrote all of the stories in college or grad school, but it's also true that Romantic literature. Technically I was first exposed at the age of six when my god-aunt took me to the New York City Ballet's The Nutcracker and I imprinted on Drosselmeyer, but I really fell into Hoffmann as a sophomore at Brandeis when the syllabus for Andrew Swensen's "Night, Death, and the Devil" (COML 127a) included, among other forays into the fantastic and the grotesque, "The Golden Pot," and it's not even my favorite of his stories, but it sent me looking for the rest on the spot. I can recognize it now as a commonplace of weird fiction and even of other authors I was reading that semester, but I noticed first with him the idea that sitting down under a tree, glancing up at a window, walking into a bar might take you from the ordinary world into the one where you come out dead or mad or shadowless or married to a beautiful blue-eyed snake and living in the bliss of Atlantis, writing poetry. In the case of the story I placed with this anthology, it's mostly a matter of being around mirrors.
Altogether my reaction to receiving the acceptance was an enthusiastic yell. I'm sure 2019 will contain its share of burning garbage, but I'm really enjoying it so far.
I am extraordinarily pleased by this development and not just because it continues to start the year off right. It is the one piece of original fiction I finished in 2018. I wrote it at the beginning of December; it was supposed to be seasonal crack for
selkie, but then history got in the way. It features Jewish queerness and demons. Its protagonist is a partisan after the war. In order not to disappear down my usual rabbit hole, I researched the dates of Hanukkah in 1948—which thanks to the interaction of calendars turned out to be partly the dates of Hanukkah in 1949—and then resolutely stayed away from the internet/books. One name is taken from my family history and everything else is invented, so far as I know. The title comes from misremembering a line in Isaac Bashevis Singer's "The Devil's Trick," translated and collected in Zlateh the Goat (1966): "The devil licked his singed tail and ran off with his wife to the land where no people walk, no cattle tread, where the sky is copper and the earth is iron." Once I'd gotten it wrong, I kept it. I like my version better for its context anyway.I am also pleased because while I don't talk about him as much as some other authors, Hoffmann is one of my literary influences who is embarrassingly obvious to me. When my first collection Singing Innocence and Experience (2005) was reviewed by Publishers Weekly, it was gently faulted for "the presence of a few too many earnest young student-artists and musicians obsessed with love or knowledge" and it's true that I wrote all of the stories in college or grad school, but it's also true that Romantic literature. Technically I was first exposed at the age of six when my god-aunt took me to the New York City Ballet's The Nutcracker and I imprinted on Drosselmeyer, but I really fell into Hoffmann as a sophomore at Brandeis when the syllabus for Andrew Swensen's "Night, Death, and the Devil" (COML 127a) included, among other forays into the fantastic and the grotesque, "The Golden Pot," and it's not even my favorite of his stories, but it sent me looking for the rest on the spot. I can recognize it now as a commonplace of weird fiction and even of other authors I was reading that semester, but I noticed first with him the idea that sitting down under a tree, glancing up at a window, walking into a bar might take you from the ordinary world into the one where you come out dead or mad or shadowless or married to a beautiful blue-eyed snake and living in the bliss of Atlantis, writing poetry. In the case of the story I placed with this anthology, it's mostly a matter of being around mirrors.
Altogether my reaction to receiving the acceptance was an enthusiastic yell. I'm sure 2019 will contain its share of burning garbage, but I'm really enjoying it so far.
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Mit der Sicherheit und Ruhe, die dem wahren Genie angeboren, übergebe ich der Welt meine Biographie, damit sie lerne, wie man sich zum großen Kater bildet, meine Vortrefflichkeit im ganzen Umfange erkenne, mich liebe, schätze, ehre, bewundere und ein wenig anbete.
Sollte jemand verwegen genug sein, gegen den gediegenen Wert des außerordentlichen Buchs einige Zweifel erheben zu wollen, so mag er bedenken, daß er es mit einem Kater zu tun hat, der Geist, Verstand besitzt und scharfe Krallen.
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Thank you! I will certainly post when it becomes possible.
Last year I had occasion to do a rereading of some Hoffmann canon.
For any particular reason or just for fun?
I think my own favourite of his stories are the Lebensansichten des Katers Murr.
That is in fact my favorite. I read the "Kreisleriana" first and then was delighted to discover a novel, even an incomplete one. It gives such good composer (and such good postmodernism) and such good cat.
so mag er bedenken, daß er es mit einem Kater zu tun hat, der Geist, Verstand besitzt und scharfe Krallen.
Autolycus kneading his own sharp claws on my lap as we speak says he approves.
[edit] Your icon is excellent.
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re: Hoffmann reread - I had to do a speech which required saying some intelligent things about him, and I didn't want to rely solely on memory. This also meant reading a biography, from which my favourite anecdote, not least for its timelessness is this:
Post-Napoleonic wars, writer Helmina von Chezy comes across the catastrophic state of affairs in hospitals full of wounded and crippled soldiers and writes an indignant letter to General von Gneisenau, describing the corruption, neglect etc. in full Detail demanding the Prussian state to do something. This ends not in hospital Reform but in her getting sued for insulting the Prussian army. She's convicted to a year in prison, having to pay for the cost of the trial and to an addditional 500 Reichtstaler. Helmina goes into appeal and thus ends up at the next superior court, which happened to be the one where Hoffmann was Kammergerichtsrat in Berlin. He hears her case, decides she's in the right and reccommends freedom and full restitution of the money. At this point, the Prussian Attorney General intervenes, because Insult to the Prussian Army ZOMG, where is your patriotism? And there's yet another trial for Helmina. Hoffman is told to write a second opinion. Hoffmann's second opinion is the same as his first. And the third time around, Helmina finally wins her case!
The statue of E.T.A. Hoffmann in Bamberg shows him with his cat, fittingly. (He actually did have a tomcat named Murr.) We also have a monument in our town park where it says "Here E.T.A. Hoffmann encountered Berganza the speaking dog".
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I have an incredibly fraying Edward Gorey T-shirt that I wish were somewhat less frayed so that I could wear it more: "Books. Cats. Life is good."
The statue of E.T.A. Hoffmann in Bamberg shows him with his cat, fittingly. (He actually did have a tomcat named Murr.)
I've seen pictures of the statue! Murr hangs on to Hoffmann's shoulder in exactly the same way Autolycus hangs on to mine. I take it as the sign of a Good Cat.
I agree with you about the anecdote.