THE DEEP ONES: "The Mines of Falun" by E. T. A. Hoffmann
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1semdetenebre
"The Mines of Falun" by E. T. A. Hoffmann
Discussion begins April 6, 2022.
First published in The Serapion Brethren, Volume I (1886).
Statue of "E. T. A. Hoffmann and his cat" in Bamberg.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2492248
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
Dreams and Wonders: Stories from the Dawn of Modern Fantasy
Spells of Enchantment: The Wondrous Fairy Tales of Western Culture
Tales of Hoffmann
The Sand-Man and Other Night Pieces
ONLINE VERSIONS
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31820/31820-h/31820-h.htm#div1_mines
ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS
No online audio versions found to date.
MISCELLANY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._T._A._Hoffmann
https://suomenwagnerseura.org/k10/30.pdf
https://www.oldstyletales.com/single-post/2019/01/25/7-best-creepy-stories-by-e-...
https://tinyurl.com/2s462jpn
Discussion begins April 6, 2022.
First published in The Serapion Brethren, Volume I (1886).
Statue of "E. T. A. Hoffmann and his cat" in Bamberg.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2492248
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
Dreams and Wonders: Stories from the Dawn of Modern Fantasy
Spells of Enchantment: The Wondrous Fairy Tales of Western Culture
Tales of Hoffmann
The Sand-Man and Other Night Pieces
ONLINE VERSIONS
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31820/31820-h/31820-h.htm#div1_mines
ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS
No online audio versions found to date.
MISCELLANY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._T._A._Hoffmann
https://suomenwagnerseura.org/k10/30.pdf
https://www.oldstyletales.com/single-post/2019/01/25/7-best-creepy-stories-by-e-...
https://tinyurl.com/2s462jpn
2housefulofpaper
I've started reading the 1943 Limited Edition Club The Tales of Hoffmann. "The Mines of Falun" is included (translated here by E. N. Bennett).
3paradoxosalpha
The introduction by E. F. Bleiler to my copy of The Best Tales of Hoffmann emphasizes the themes of spirituality and creative insight in this story, but I think I favor the reading summarized in the Old Style Tales Press Classic Horror Blog (linked in OP). The whole thing seems to be about sex, including the mines themselves. I was more than a little reminded of certain passages from the work of Gustav Meyrink (who may well have read and liked this story), although Hoffmann here certainly has a more stilted 19th-century feel--although that may have been partly a function of the translation by Major Alexander Ewing.
At points, the nautical and mining jargon seemed to be almost excessive.
At points, the nautical and mining jargon seemed to be almost excessive.
4RandyStafford
This story combines Romantic emphasis on emotion, elements of a fairy tale, and obsession, and I liked it. I didn't find the mining jargon obsessive, but then I grew up around a mining town.
I also appreciated the ambiguity. Toborn, even in his spectral, post-cave-in death, seems to give legitimate information except when he tells Elis of a rich vein. So is every appearance of Toborn to Elis "real"? Or some the result of Elis' obsession? (I suppose you could see Elis as the poster child for not maintaining a "work-life balance".)
And why is Toborn solicitous of Ulla?
I would say Toborn seems to worship the queen, but there is nothing like a rite or ceremony of worship. It seems more like a political allegiance that he speaks of to Elis.
John Clute's entry on Hoffmann in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy sums up the story as featuring "a personality split between two worlds, and follows him downwards into the mine where his artistic (and perhaps insane) Perception gives him what turns out in the end to be a fatal Vision."
I also appreciated the ambiguity. Toborn, even in his spectral, post-cave-in death, seems to give legitimate information except when he tells Elis of a rich vein. So is every appearance of Toborn to Elis "real"? Or some the result of Elis' obsession? (I suppose you could see Elis as the poster child for not maintaining a "work-life balance".)
And why is Toborn solicitous of Ulla?
I would say Toborn seems to worship the queen, but there is nothing like a rite or ceremony of worship. It seems more like a political allegiance that he speaks of to Elis.
John Clute's entry on Hoffmann in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy sums up the story as featuring "a personality split between two worlds, and follows him downwards into the mine where his artistic (and perhaps insane) Perception gives him what turns out in the end to be a fatal Vision."
5AndreasJ
I took it as about the tension between human concerns like love (filial or sexual) and devotion to higher (or lower) ideals.
The greatest interest, though, I found in Hoffmann's portrait of Sweden, which varies from the accurate to the ridiculous. The names are mostly plausible (tho no-one would have the patronymic Pehrson as their given name), the grasp of geography vague (going from Gothenburg to Falun via Gefle makes no sense). "Nerica" is a weird anglicization of a province known in Swedish as Närke or, archaically, Nerike, in Latin as Nericia. "Aehl" is apparently a bizarre anglicization of öl, which is simply the Swedish word for beer or ale. I wonder if the same form was used in German?
The story is based on the fate of "Fat" Mats Israelsson, whose body was found in the mine in 1719, remarkably well-preserved after his disappearance 42 years earlier, and recognized by his fiancée.
The greatest interest, though, I found in Hoffmann's portrait of Sweden, which varies from the accurate to the ridiculous. The names are mostly plausible (tho no-one would have the patronymic Pehrson as their given name), the grasp of geography vague (going from Gothenburg to Falun via Gefle makes no sense). "Nerica" is a weird anglicization of a province known in Swedish as Närke or, archaically, Nerike, in Latin as Nericia. "Aehl" is apparently a bizarre anglicization of öl, which is simply the Swedish word for beer or ale. I wonder if the same form was used in German?
The story is based on the fate of "Fat" Mats Israelsson, whose body was found in the mine in 1719, remarkably well-preserved after his disappearance 42 years earlier, and recognized by his fiancée.
6housefulofpaper
I took the selection of this story as the prompt to read the LEC The Tales of Hoffmann, a copy of which I was fortunate enough to acquire a couple of months ago. The Mines of Falun is the second story in the book, after "The Sand-man", and reading them in quick succession certainly highlights the parallels between them. In fact I think going back to our 2014 discussion of "The Sand-man" offers useful insights into this story too.
(The translation of "The Mines of Falun" in this book is credited to E.N. Bennett, incidentally).
Back in 2014 I quoted Ritchie Robertson in his introduction to The Golden Pot & Other Tales where he compares "The Sand-man" and the title story of the collection he edited (pointing up the fact that Hoffmann is a writer who comes back to the same themes over and over again).
Robertson suggests that the trials that the protagonist of "The Golden Pot" goes through (both physical and spiritual, a little like those in Mozart's The Magic Flute, which Hoffmann conducted) test his ability and willingness to see reality in a particular way, concluding that his success leads him to: "{...}insight (Erkenntnis), an active, dynamic awareness of the harmony of being."
By contrast, Nathanael in "The Sandman" is a poor poet and often unperceptive (or rather gauche, awkward, the Romantic hero - as often in the everyday world - making a fool of himself.) Robertson points out that Nathanael's poetic powers are sufficient to let him sense the dark forces that swirl around him, "but not to master them". Rather, he fails the test and is overwhelmed.
Nathanael's loyalties were divided between Clara, Olimpia, and Poetry. Or rather his poetic powers lead him astray, projecting onto Clara (who is not, actually, a good match for him: "Nathanael, with his tempest-tossed soul, would never have been able to give her that quiet domestic happiness which her cheerful blithesome character required" - to rearrange the end of J. T. Bealby's translation) and onto Olimpia (who of course is only an automation) his image of the Ideal love (of course it's ambiguous how much blame should also be allotted to Coppola's spyglass; uncertainty, indeterminacy, is also a big part of Hoffmann's art).
Turning back to the story under consideration there's the similar dynamic - domestic happiness with Ulla or uncompromised dedication to an Art (mining, in this case rather than "Art" or "Poetry", but still I think the parallel holds, not least because of all the magic and superstition that traditionally surrounded both mining and the underworld generally, and metalworking). Plus the Art here also has a romantic (in that modern sense) focus in the Queen, who becomes, apparently, a jealous rival to Ulla (if one takes the narrative at face value of course - that ambiguity at work again).
I didn't know, until reading the Wikipedia entry for Fet-Mats Israelsson, that Richard Wagner had written an opera libretto based on Hoffmann's story (specifically Hoffmann's story, not the real-life details, or other fictionalisations of it). It was never carried forward to a completed opera and as Wagner always (I think I remember reading) wrote the words first, there's no surviving music.
(I'm posting this now in case LibraryThing swallows it; I may have more to say).
(The translation of "The Mines of Falun" in this book is credited to E.N. Bennett, incidentally).
Back in 2014 I quoted Ritchie Robertson in his introduction to The Golden Pot & Other Tales where he compares "The Sand-man" and the title story of the collection he edited (pointing up the fact that Hoffmann is a writer who comes back to the same themes over and over again).
Robertson suggests that the trials that the protagonist of "The Golden Pot" goes through (both physical and spiritual, a little like those in Mozart's The Magic Flute, which Hoffmann conducted) test his ability and willingness to see reality in a particular way, concluding that his success leads him to: "{...}insight (Erkenntnis), an active, dynamic awareness of the harmony of being."
By contrast, Nathanael in "The Sandman" is a poor poet and often unperceptive (or rather gauche, awkward, the Romantic hero - as often in the everyday world - making a fool of himself.) Robertson points out that Nathanael's poetic powers are sufficient to let him sense the dark forces that swirl around him, "but not to master them". Rather, he fails the test and is overwhelmed.
Nathanael's loyalties were divided between Clara, Olimpia, and Poetry. Or rather his poetic powers lead him astray, projecting onto Clara (who is not, actually, a good match for him: "Nathanael, with his tempest-tossed soul, would never have been able to give her that quiet domestic happiness which her cheerful blithesome character required" - to rearrange the end of J. T. Bealby's translation) and onto Olimpia (who of course is only an automation) his image of the Ideal love (of course it's ambiguous how much blame should also be allotted to Coppola's spyglass; uncertainty, indeterminacy, is also a big part of Hoffmann's art).
Turning back to the story under consideration there's the similar dynamic - domestic happiness with Ulla or uncompromised dedication to an Art (mining, in this case rather than "Art" or "Poetry", but still I think the parallel holds, not least because of all the magic and superstition that traditionally surrounded both mining and the underworld generally, and metalworking). Plus the Art here also has a romantic (in that modern sense) focus in the Queen, who becomes, apparently, a jealous rival to Ulla (if one takes the narrative at face value of course - that ambiguity at work again).
I didn't know, until reading the Wikipedia entry for Fet-Mats Israelsson, that Richard Wagner had written an opera libretto based on Hoffmann's story (specifically Hoffmann's story, not the real-life details, or other fictionalisations of it). It was never carried forward to a completed opera and as Wagner always (I think I remember reading) wrote the words first, there's no surviving music.
(I'm posting this now in case LibraryThing swallows it; I may have more to say).
7housefulofpaper
I didn't find M. Grant Kellermeyer's Freudian interpretation (link in >1 semdetenebre:) persuasive. Certainly in the translation I read the description of the mine doesn't emphasise any "womblike" aspects. And I would read the death of Elis' mother asa plot device to get the story going, rather than giving the thing a Norman Bates tone (I suppose the Queen is to be read as a possessive mother figure).
Not to suggest that Hoffmann was some etherial sexless figure. The bigraphical sketches in the various collections I have mention a that he was head-over-heels in (unrequited) love with a teenaged music student, for example. And Wikipedia and a few other sources give syphilis as his cause of death.
Not to suggest that Hoffmann was some etherial sexless figure. The bigraphical sketches in the various collections I have mention a that he was head-over-heels in (unrequited) love with a teenaged music student, for example. And Wikipedia and a few other sources give syphilis as his cause of death.
8AndreasJ
I did look up the German edition at Gutenberg, and turns out "Aehl" is indeed Hoffmann's work, not the translator's. Even stranger, near the beginning he does use the proper Swedish Öl, but without any explanation or indication that it's a foreign word - undoubtedly to the befuddlement of German readers to whom the word means "oil".
I missed "The Sandman" back in 2014, which I should perhaps rectify. Probably not very soon, though, as reading time has been sparse of late.
I missed "The Sandman" back in 2014, which I should perhaps rectify. Probably not very soon, though, as reading time has been sparse of late.
9paradoxosalpha
>8 AndreasJ: undoubtedly to the befuddlement of German readers to whom the word means "oil"
My German is rusty, but that befuddled even me for a moment.
My German is rusty, but that befuddled even me for a moment.
10elenchus
I read this in a couple sessions (using the online version linked above), and was a bit torn out of my reveries by the framing tale which I hadn't recalled from the beginning. Looking back, I see this edition, at least, puts the frame at the end of the preceding story, so indeed I had not forgotten it, but simply not read it.
I thought Hoffman's description of dream logic and the visualisation of the subterranean landscape (not the mines so much as the veins of metal and crystals) to be cinematic and arresting. I didn't think he pulled off the competing allure of life working the mines and a domestic life above ground, it came across to me as haphazard when one would prove stronger for the moment, as opposed to tapping into an inevitable pull from one or the other.
The imagery and some of the prose worked for me, but as a central tale of power or Weird it didn't quite succeed. I did recently purchase a collection of Hoffman in the original German, so despite that I'll be reading him again soon-ish. Perhaps I'll start with this story, as an aid to my rusty German.
I thought Hoffman's description of dream logic and the visualisation of the subterranean landscape (not the mines so much as the veins of metal and crystals) to be cinematic and arresting. I didn't think he pulled off the competing allure of life working the mines and a domestic life above ground, it came across to me as haphazard when one would prove stronger for the moment, as opposed to tapping into an inevitable pull from one or the other.
The imagery and some of the prose worked for me, but as a central tale of power or Weird it didn't quite succeed. I did recently purchase a collection of Hoffman in the original German, so despite that I'll be reading him again soon-ish. Perhaps I'll start with this story, as an aid to my rusty German.
