The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

Christmas Stories 2024 -
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King

Availability - University of Pennsylvania: https://web.english.upenn.edu/~cavitc...

General Overview
"The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (German: Nussknacker und Mausekönig) is a novella-fairy tale written in 1816 by Prussian author E.T.A. Hoffmann, in which young Marie Stahlbaum's favorite Christmas toy, the Nutcracker, comes alive and, after defeating the evil Mouse King in battle, whisks her away to a magical kingdom populated by dolls. The story was originally published in Berlin in German as part of the collection Kinder-Märchen, Children's Stories, by In der Realschulbuchhandlung. In 1892, the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov turned Alexandre Dumas' adaptation of the story into the ballet The Nutcracker.

Major Themes
Good Versus Evil
The story is structured around the conflict between good and evil, and the difference between how people idealize life and how they actually live.

Childhood
The story explores the desire of children to play with toys that come to life, and the wish for parents to believe them.

Appreciating People for their Character
The story's moral is that people should value others for their character, not their appearance or power.

The Magic of Imagination
The story is a timeless tale of magic, mystery, and childhood adventure that can be enjoyed by readers of all ages.

The Gap between Classicism and Romanticism
Hoffmann's fairy tales are considered to mark a key shift between classicism and romanticism in literature.

Publication History
The story was first published in 1816 in German in Berlin by In der Realschulbuchhandlung in a volume entitled Kinder-Mährchen, Children’s Stories, which also included tales by Carl Wilhelm Contessa and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué. The story was republished in the first volume of Hoffmann’s short story collection, Die Serapionsbrüder, The Serapion Brethren, (1819-20). The Serapion Brethren was the name of a literary club that Hoffmann formed in 1818.

The short story was published in 1853 in the U.S. in a translation by Mrs. St. Simon in New York by D. Appleton and Company with illustrations by Albert H. Jocelyn.

A new English version was published in 1886 in a translation of the first volume of Die Serapionsbrüder by Alexander Ewing. The preface to this translation states that the already well-known story was only familiar to English readers at the time indirectly, through a secondary translation of an earlier French edition.

In 1930, a new edition of "The Nutcracker and the Mouse-King" was published by Albert Whitman and Company in Chicago in a translation by Louise F. Encking with illustrations by Emma L. Brock.

Ewing's translation was included in the 1967 collection The Best Tales of Hoffman released by Dover Publications. In 1996, Dover published a new version of the translation, abridged by Bob Blaisdell with illustrations by Thea Kliros, as The Story of the Nutcracker.

There will not be a separate thread posted for the discussion of the book, please discuss below.

Penguin Classics has a collection of Hoffmann’s story and Dumas’ adaptation, both translated by Joachim Neugroschel, with a very good biographical introduction by Jack Zipes, an authority on nineteenth century folktale collections and literary fairy tales.

There is a version with illustrations by Maurice Sendak, which are delightful.

The Sendak illustrations accompany an English version translated by Ralph Manheim. I have not seen it, but Manheim had an excellent reputation for rendering highly personal styles, like Hoffman’s, into English. However, Amazon rates the book as from 10 up, so some of the more adult subtext may have been sacrificed. Or maybe not: Amazon may just have looked at the pretty pictures.

I have seen the ballet many times and really enjoyed reading the original story. Hoffman had a beautiful way of describing childish fears and wonder.