The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. Hoffman E.T.A.

The collection of works by the famous German prose writer Ernst Theodore Amadeus Hoffmann included his most famous tales (“Golden Pot”, “The Nutcracker and Mouse King”, “Troshka TsACES, nicknamed Qinnobert”) and novels (“Adventures on New Year's Eve”, “Sanding man”, “Choice of the bride”), who became a kind of visiting cards of the writer and eventually were recognized as masterpieces of European romantic prose. Behind the whimsical series of strange, outlandish characters, behind the clashes of passions, for incredible vicissitudes of fate invisibly, and sometimes there is clearly present the author - the original mythologist - mystic, the singer of the “spontaneous spirits” and the creator of “combined realities”, under the pen of which Dresden of the 19th century may turn out utopian Atlantis, and the children's room decorated with Christmas is a marvelous magic country; Visioner artist, obsessed with nightmares, strange illusions, sinister substitutions and dizzying phantasmagorias; a stinging satirist, vigilantly noting the social and moral flaws of his era; The crafty parodist-mocking, artistically and selflessly “playing in literature” and creating virtuoso reflection of life and art.