E.T.A. Hoffmann: The Nutcracker (Hutchinson 2017)
Although Hoffmann was a lawyer and worked as a judge and councilor, he considered himself primarily a musician. He was also an excellent painter and graphic, but he was also acknowledged as a poet and writer. His exceptional imagination cast even the most ordinary situations in an absurd light. His best-known work is The Golden Flower Pot, but he also wrote a Christmas story: The Nutcracker, which is usually known from adaptations.
Hoffmann’s tale has been adapted several times. The version from Dumas was rethought by the Russian composer Tchaikovsky in his last ballet. The plot of the tale has also been adapted, so today we are more likely to identify it with the story told in the ballet performance, accompanied by its beautiful and characteristic music.
The original story balances on the border between dreaming and awakness, and like other works by the author, here we also cannot be sure whether what we see is real or from our imagination.
