"Little Tsahes, nicknamed Zinnober": a summary, an analysis of the work

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

The genius of German Romanticism

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

Many of the images created by Hoffmann became a household name. Among them is the hero of the fairy tale novel "Tiny Tsaches, nicknamed Zinnober." Here the author showed such remarkable wit, the depth of imagination and the power of artistic generalization, that the fairy tale itself and the images recreated in it look extremely relevant today. Then in politics, then in art, then in the media there's no-no, so this sinister dwarf flashes - Little Tsaches.

Brief tale of the fairy tale

From the picture of a hot day and the grievous mourning of a tired peasant woman, a narrative begins. We learn that wealth, despite hard work, does not go into the hands of this mendicant family. In addition, a rare freak was born in it, the body of which the author comparatively expresses with a forked radish, then with an apple planted on a fork, on which he drew an absurd mug, then with a strange stump of a clumsy tree. Two and a half years have passed since the birth of the little Tsachev, but no one saw any kind of human manifestation in him. He still could not walk and talk, but only made meowing sounds. And it was necessary to happen that, at that time, a real fairy passed by, which, however, had to disguise himself under the canoness (a privileged nun) of a shelter for noble maidens, since the fairies in that principality were under the greatest ban.

Fairy Rosabelverde was imbued with keen compassion for the miserable family and rewarded the tiny freak with an extraordinary magical power that did not slow to manifest before the peasant woman returned home. The pastor, past whose house she passed, stopped the woman and, forgetting about her adorable three-year-old son, suddenly began to admire the monstrous dwarf clinging to her mother's skirt. The Holy Father was terribly surprised that his mother could not appreciate the marvelous beauty of a beautiful child, and asked to take the baby to her.

A note on spiritual qualities

The next meeting of the reader with the one called the baby Tsachez took place many years later, when he grew up and became a student. The first to meet in the woods on the way to the Kerepes of the evil dwarf were noble young people - Fabio and Balthazar. And if the first had a mocking and sharp mind, the second was distinguished by thoughtfulness and romantic aspirations. The look and mannerisms of the ugly stranger, the most miserably rolled out of the saddle at the feet of the young men, caused a laugh at Fabio, and Balthasar - sympathy and pity. Balthazar was a poet whose inspiration was reinforced by his passionate love for Candida, the pretty daughter of a professor, whose young man listened to a course of lectures on natural science.

Sorcery Power

The appearance of a nasty dwarf caused in the city is not the reaction that Fabian expected, anticipating universal fun. Suddenly, for some reason, all the residents started talking about an ugly freak as a handsome and handsome young man with many virtues. Even more, the city went crazy, calling the little monster "graceful, smart and handsome young man", when the little Tsachez visited the literary tea party of Professor Mosh Terpin, whose daughter Bantazar was in love with. Here the young man read his delightful and refined poem about the love of the nightingale to a rose, in which he expressed the heat of his own feelings. What happened after that was fantastic! Conquered by the poem, listeners vied with each other to praise ... the little Tsahes, addressing him respectfully "Mr. Zinnober". It turned out that he was not just "intelligent and skilful", but "wonderful, divine." Then Professor Mosh Terpin showed amazing experiences, but he won not the glory, but the same little Tsaches. It is he, due to the inexplicable magical aura in the presence of talented and intelligent people, was instantly called perfection. Whether the concert will be played by a gifted musician - admiring gazes will be directed towards Tsaches, a great singer will sing the great soprano - and an enthusiastic whisper is heard that in the whole world there is no such singer as Zinnober. And now the blue-eyed Candida without memory is in love with the little Tsahes. He makes a stunning career, becoming first a secret adviser, and then a minister of the principality. Getting very important and becoming demanding of honors, as he ironically characterizes Hoffmann, the little Tsaches.

Summary of the culmination of the novel

Everything that someone will do with him or say something remarkable, is immediately attributed to Tsachesu. And vice versa, all the ugly and ridiculous antics of a freak (when he sits, croaks, clowns and bears nonsense) in the eyes of society are imputed to the real creator. That is, there is a kind of diabolical substitution, throwing into despair those who deserved success, but doomed to shame because of the damned monster. Infernal force, abducting hopes, calls Balthazar the sorcerous gift of the evil dwarf. But there must be some remedy against this insanity! Witchcraft can be resisted, if "with firmness to resist him", where there is courage, there victory is inevitable. This conclusion comes positive heroes of the fairy tale - Balthasar, Fabian and a young referendum, who labeled Pulcher, the Minister of Foreign Affairs (whose merit and position was abducted by Tsaches). Friends learn about the amazing fact: every nine days the fairy flies into the garden to Tsachesu to comb his curls and renew the magical power. And then they begin to look for ways to cope with the charms.

Evil can be defeated

After that, another character appears in the fairy tale - the wizard Prosper Alpanus. After studying books about gnomes and alrauns, he comes to the conclusion that the little Tsahes is an ordinary person, not endowed with a miraculous gift. In the magical battle of Alpinus and Rosabelverde, a more powerful magician deprives the fairy of the opportunity to help his ward: the crest that she combed the hair of a small monster crashed. And Balthazar the wizard told that the secret of Zinnober's lies in three faint hairs on the one's head. They must be pulled out and immediately burned, then everyone will see Tsaches as he really is.

From the philosophical point of view, the conflict of the plot lies in the fact that due to incomprehensible elemental interference, injustice triumphs, but the truth suffers defeat. With the support of the majority, evil becomes legitimate and begins to rule reality. And then a strong-willed impulse, resistance to mass hypnosis is needed to change the situation. As soon as this occurs in the minds and deeds of some, albeit small, people acting together, the situation changes.

The young man successfully copes with his mission: people are convinced of the true state of affairs, the little Tsachez is drowning in his own pot of soil with his own sewage. The heroes are justified, Candida admits she always loved Balthazar, the young marry, having inherited the magical garden and Alpunus' house.

Fantasy is the reverse side of reality

Being an apologist for the ideas of the Yen romanticists, Hoffmann was convinced that art is the only source of the transformation of life. The narrative involves only strong emotions - laughter and fear, worship and disgust, despair and hope. In the tale of Tsakesh's little one, as in other of his works, the writer creates a half-real, half-mythical world in which, according to the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, a fantastic image exists somewhere beyond reality, is another side of our reality. Hoffmann uses the motif of magic in order to demonstrate more clearly and clearly what the reality is. And to throw off her fetters, he resorts to a sharp and subtle irony.

Artistic receptions

In the fabric of the narrative, the well-known folkloric motifs, meaning sorcery, are elegantly weaved and peculiarly played out. The magical hairs that the fairy supplied to her pet, the knob of the magic cane, emitting rays in which the whole falsity turns into what does not seem to be, but is in fact a golden comb capable of turning the ugly into the beautiful. He uses Hoffmann and the famous fairy-tale theme of clothes, filling it with topical not only for his contemporaries, but also for us and your content. Remember the sleeves and the coats of Fabian's frock coat, the length of which immediately became the reason for hanging on its owner evil and stupid labels.

Irony of Hoffmann

The writer laughs at absurd innovations in bureaucratic apparatuses. The satirical image of a bureaucratic uniform with diamond buttons, the number of which denotes the degree of merit before the fatherland (in ordinary people there were two or three of them, in Zinnober as many as twenty), the author also plays with exquisite artistic meaning. If an honorable ministerial ribbon was kept on an ordinary human figure, then on Tsatsh's torso - a short stump with "spider legs" - it could only be held by means of two dozen buttons. But after all, the "venerable Mister Zinnober" was, of course, worthy of such high honors.

Finally, a glimpse of the outcome of the dishonest life of the ugly impostor is seen: he died of fear of dying - this diagnosis is made by the doctor, having examined the body of the deceased.

We have something to think about

Hoffmann wittily shows us a portrait of society, the mirror of which was the ill-fated little Tsaches. An analysis of the problem leads us to the conclusion that it is very easy and hopeless to become sobered in this way. If you yourself are ready to substitute the truth with lies for mercenary motives, if you are not alien to the tendency to ascribe others' merits to yourself, if at last, you are not driven by bold and free ideas in life, but narrow-minded conformism, sooner or later you will raise on a pedestal the Tsachez Called Zinnober.