Famous Contemporaries original: "Знаменитые современники" ¹).

HOFFMANN.

I.

. . . . The artists and the robbers, that
Is a type of people. Both avoid
The wide, dusty road of everyday life;

Oehlenschläger, Correggio.

Every single day, late in the evening, a certain man would appear in a wine cellar in Berlin; he would drink one bottle after another and sit until dawn. But do not imagine an ordinary drunkard; no! The more he drank, the higher his imagination soared, the brighter and more ardently his humor poured out upon everything around him, the more abundantly his witticisms flared up. His eccentricities, the constancy of his visits, and his literary and musical fame attracted a whole circle of admirers to the tavern, and when a foreigner arrived in Berlin, they would lead him to Lutter and Wegner, point to the permanent member, and say: "Here is our eccentric Hoffmann." Let us look at this life, which ends in a tavern. The life of a writer is a precious commentary on his works, but not the life of a German author; for them, the wicked Heine invented an algebraic formula: "born of poor parents, studied theology, but felt a different calling, diligently studied ancient languages, wrote, was poor, lived by giving lessons, and before death received a position in such-and-such a gymnasium or such-and-such a university." But "there are people like money, on which the same image is minted; others are like medals struck for a private occasion" ²); and it is to the latter that Hoffmann, who spoke these words, belonged. His life was not at all...

¹) Teleskop Telescope (journal) XXXIII.
²) Hoffmann's Lebensansichten des Kater Murr The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr.

A. I. Herzen, Vol. IV.