# Pasticcio en littérature?

TINA HARTMANN

Musical terms hold a great attraction for literary discourses as they seem to provide modes of description for something ‘beyond’ the textual meaning. But, sadly, the closer the terms are examined the more their magic tends to disintegrate, like the musty mush-rooms of Chandos.<fnref n="1" /> Probably the most prominent example is the term “counterpoint”, which was, and still is, applied to the writings of various authors from E.T.A. Hoffmann to Ingeborg Bachmann to describe parallel structures in their texts. As I have mentioned before,<fnref n="2" /> counterpoint can only be applied to text in a metaphorical sense, as it is, in essence, a way of organizing the sound of two or more simultaneous voices. Since the invention of polyphony one of the main characteristics of the European musical tradition is the simultaneous presence of two or more voices. But a text is in essence a linear phenomenon. It is simply impossible to read two lines of text at the same time. And it is impossible to listen to two different lines of spoken text at the same time. ‘Real’ counterpoint in literature is therefore only an option for performance, and one which comes at the price of sacrificing the meaning of the text for the sake of sound, as can be perceived in the audiobook version of Arno Schmidt’s *Zettels Traum* read by Joachim Kersten, Bernd Rauschenbach and Jan Philipp Reemtsma.<fnref n="3" /> Ingeborg Bachman describes the libretto (although without using the term itself) as the only possible literary genre for counterpoint,<fnref n="4" /> even if the effect is rather confusing and clearly the opposite of

<footnote n="1">1 HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL’S *Ein Brief* (also: *Brief des Lord Chandos an Francis Bacon* or *Chandos-Brief*) was published 18 and 19 October 1902 in two parts in the Berlin newspaper *Der Tag*.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2 HARTMANN, 2013, p. 47.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3 SCHMIDT, 2008.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4 “What is fascinating to me and most difficult about writing for opera is the overlapping of texts, the similarity of contradictory or identical passages. That characters often talk not past each other, but together, against each other, in parallel is special to opera and exciting to the writer. An abstrusity and artificiality at first glance, but in fact is the source of the superiority of the lyrical theater. Because in everyday life, as on the theater stage,</footnote>
the harmony caused by musical counterpoint. So, there are good reasons for a critical
examination of the musical term “pasticcio” in its musical sense as a tool for textual
analysis. My article will therefore focus on the question of whether the musico-literary
‘technique’ of the dual-medium (music and text) opera pasticcio can serve as a blueprint
for the mono-medium of literary texts and, if so, what could be described as the charac-
teristics of the pasticcio en littérature?

What is a pasticcio?

A general understanding of the term pasticcio in opera and music of the 18th century is that of a practice rather than that of a genre. It may use contemporary or older parts (mainly arias) by other composers, or older compositions by the same composer, and integrate them into a new arrangement containing newly composed material to different extents. Aria texts can be kept (as quotes) or altered (in parody technique) as long as they fit into a clear narration. The line I would like to draw is that between a ‘concert pasticcio’ with arias threaded into a rather loose line without original material, and a dramaturgically reworked piece. The quality of an opera should therefore not be judged by the general use of pasticcio technique, but by the way pasticcio technique contributes to the quality of the work.

Regarding the relationship between word and music, the latter tends to be the more
stable element in the opera pasticcio, which can be broadly described as a parody tech-
nique or contrafacture, when a new text is fitted to pre-existing music. It is therefore hard
to find a direct equivalent in literature. The clearest case for a literary parody technique
which puts the text into the more stable position might be religious song texts such as the

people are prevented from following their most basic needs of expression, and no inner
monologue can substitute this loss, as when they interrupt each other they are truer than
in any well-behaved waiting, in rebellion, in consent. This is much more an artificial state
and in a most artistic way opera restitutes the natural.” [transl. TH] (“Das Faszinierende
und zugleich Schwerste beim Schreiben für die Oper sind für mich die Überlappungen von
Texten, und der gleichzeitige Ablauf von kontradiktorischen, variierten oder zur Deckung
kommenden Textstellen. Dass die Personen so oft, vom Duett bis zum Ensemble, nicht
nacheinander, sondern miteinander, gegeneinander und nebeneinander zu Wort kommen,
ist eine den Schreibenden erregende Besonderheit der Oper. Was scheinbar eine Abstru-
sität und voller Künstlichkeit ist, macht aber die Überlegenheit des lyrischen Theaters
aus. Denn im Leben und auf dem Prosatheater sind Menschen nur verhindert, einem ihrer
elementarsten Ausdrucksbedürfnisse nachzugeben, und kein innerer Monolog kann ihnen
ersetzen, woran man sie hindert, und wenn sie sich ‘ins Wort’ fallen, werden sie ihrem Zu-
stand gerechter als durch das anerzogene Abwarten, im Aufbegehren, im Einverständnis.
Dies vielmehr ist ein künstlicher Zustand, und die Oper setzt auf eine äußerst kunstvolle
Weise den natürlichen wieder ins Recht.”) Notizen zum Libretto, in: BACHMANN, 1993,
pp. 434f.
Latin *Stabat Mater*, the Latin Mass, and certain poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe such as Gretchen’s songs, *Das Veilchen* and *Erlkönig*, or the *Chansons* by Paul Verlaine that have been and continue to be set by various composers. New settings of pre-existing librettos such as the various settings of the librettos by Pietro Metastasio differ in so far as the text tends to be cut and adapted to new settings and theatrical contexts.

Apart from that, in literary studies, the term pastiche is used more often than the term pasticcio. “The term *pastiche* appeared in France at the end of the eighteenth century in the terminology of painting. It was a transfer of the Italian word *pasticcio*; the term literally meant ‘paste’ and designated first a mixture of diverse imitations, then a particular imitation.”<fnref n="5" /> Contrary to Gérard Genette’s definition of the pastiche, the opera pasticcio is not so much of an imitation, but more of a quote. But Genette’s shift from direct to (mainly textually) adapted quotation is significant for the use of pastiche in written literature, as it is mainly associated with the sphere of parody and travesty.<fnref n="6" /> The easy and clear cases are the comic pastiche, where the repetition of style points out or overstretches the main characteristics to poke fun, even taking into account, as every comedian knows, that one has to take parody very seriously to make it funny. A case of special interest along those lines are the Heinrich Heine imitations by the poet Peter Rühmkorf, which – as Theodor Verweyen has shown –<fnref n="7" /> instead of pointing critically to Heine, address the German attitude of Heine’s reception.<fnref n="8" /> One of the most interesting cases of pastiche are writings by one author which imitate the style of a certain period like, for example, Thomas Mann in *Der Erwählte*, or that of one author, or several distinct author(s), like Marcel Proust writing on *l’affaire Lemoine* in the style of nine different authors (including Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Henri de Régnier und Ernest Renan).<fnref n="9" /> Proust stressed pastiche technique as a mode of an artist’s development, altering between the deliberate pastiche – as is nowadays also used in creative writing courses – and the ‘involuntary pastiche’.<fnref n="10" />

The establishment of a clear frame is highly important for any form of pastiche or pasticcio to separate it from plagiarism. Taking into account the idea of *Genieästhetik* – dominant at least since 1800 – this seems to be highly plausible: any form of repetition, reuse or gluing of existing pieces into a new piece of literature becomes suspect when both texts are available to a broader public at the same time. Here lies one of the principal differences between the opera and any textual pasticcio, leaving aside the many cases in which the larger part of the audience will not know or recognize the reused parts of an opera as, for example, in the case of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s or George Frideric Handel’s recycling of their best arias, or on the other hand Claudio Monteverdi’s highlighting of a distinct quote in “Pur ti miro” in *L’incoronazione di Poppea*. This

<footnote n="5">5 GENETTE, 1997, p. 89.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">6 KARRER, 1977.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">7 See VERWEYEN, 1973, pp. 86-91.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">8 See KARRER, p. 47.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">9 PROUST, 1937, pp. 11-87.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">10 GENETTE, 1997, p. 119.</footnote>
is even true for the famous London pasticcio of Artaserse for Farinelli (Carlo Broschi) containing arias by various composers, some of which members of the audience might have heard before – but most of them will have not! More likely they may have known that the arias were famous. Previous to the technique of sound and video recording the reproduction of an aria or larger musical part needed the contextual frame of the theater or performance. In music and opera, pasticcio and original therefore share the situation of performance as a vital part of the work of art which forms a different piece at any repetition. Direct comparison of two different performance frames was limited to those few individuals able to travel widely, and even then, it was a matter of comparing not the performance but the memory of a performance. But for any intended broader public it was more or less impossible to compare different performances. As a result, there are always good reasons to reproduce a good aria again on stage. Spoken drama<fnref n="11" /> developed a different strategy, as Bernhard Jahn closely examines (see pp. 103-116). Even Goethe and Schiller never called into question the need for stage adaptations of their plays. But it caused them to develop a dual strategy by fixing their version in a canonical sense in ‘last hand’ (Fassungen letzter Hand) editions, which had often been reworked years after the first publication and were distinctively designed as versions for reading, but which also opened the possibility for even more radical stage adaptations. Our double standard for spoken drama and opera is rooted in this tradition, as no one would criticize, for example, the fact that Goethe’s Faust is reduced to a performance time of two hours – unthinkable for Richard Wagner’s Parsifal.

The situation for printed texts is quite contrary to that of the opera pasticcio performance: there have to be very good reasons to reproduce a printed reading text in another printed reading text as not only can they be easily accessed and placed next to each other, but can also be fully reproduced by any reader – just by reading.

Additionally, at all times the very process of canonization derived from the delicate relationship between the imitation of canonized works – soon classified as genre –<fnref n="12" /> and their subtle transformation into new, original works, which subsequently develop into a future canon. As literary repetition needs careful contextualization, framing becomes the heart of literary pasticcio technique.

## From pastiche to pasticcio

While pastiche, parody, travesty and palimpsest are clearly defined types, the term pasticcio is rare in literary scholarship. Apart from his contribution to this volume on pa-

<footnote n="11">11 Regarding spoken drama, one has to take into account that until the 19th century there was (at least on the German and English stage) no such thing as purely spoken theater. It was always mixed with music such as overtures, interludes, songs etc.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">12 One of the main reasons why for centuries female writers were hardly able to produce canonizable texts is the following: as they did not learn Greek and Latin, they depended on the imitation of modern male authors.</footnote>
sticcio technique in spoken theater of 18th-century Germany, in 2008 Bernhard Jahn had already transferred the term from the main notion of imitation (of a certain style) to that of recombination. His study *Der Bauer als Pasticcio* examines recombination and shifts in the characterization of peasants and lower-class people in 16th- and 17th-century German comedy. Certain characteristics of the category “peasant”, developed to legitimate the maintenance of their position as the lowest rank in society, such as dullness, drunkenness, egoism and quarrelsomeness, can also partially shift to figures of other rank, such as the monk and even the courtier, leaving space for the emergence of positive characteristics such as sophistication and modesty.<fnref n="13" /> Jahn’s definition recalls techniques of the 18th-century aria whose catalogue of affects shaped the opera characters in the sense of a mosaic, in which every aria adds another shade of emotional color. Cuts and additions therefore change the character, but do not destroy its coherence, as it would if applied to the later 18th- and 19th-century characters modelled on later ideas of psychology and linear processual character development.

## Pasticcio and music

In his analysis of Ingeborg Bachmann’s late poems as “pasticcio and »utopia of language«” (“Pasticcio und »Utopia der Sprache«”)<fnref n="14" /> Sebastian Kiefer starts off with Bachmann calling her poem *Enigma* a “Collage” and using and transforming a whole set of distinctively musical quotes. *Enigma*, dedicated to the composer Hans Werner Henze, quotes lyrics from Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3: “Du sollst ja nicht weinen, / sagt eine Musik.”<fnref n="15" /> and Alban Berg’s op. 4: “Nichts wird kommen für meine Seele”,<fnref n="16" /> shortening the latter to “Nichts wird mehr kommen”,<fnref n="17" /> and leaving the term “soul” – a word unspeakable for 1960s poetry – to the music remembered in and echoed by the words.<fnref n="18" /> Thus, by the way, 18th-century music theory’s *dictum* of music as ‘the language of the soul’ is recalled. The music or rather libretto quotes make clear that the way from words to music – Joseph von Eichendorff’s idea of the “magic word” (“Zauberwort”) that will cause the world to sound (“Und die Welt hebt an zu singen”) –<fnref n="19" /> is blocked by modernity.<fnref n="20" /> One has to add: a modernity that has seen the Holocaust. Bachmann’s inclination to “ventriloquize stylistically”<fnref n="21" /> therefore derives from her quest for a new

<footnote n="13">13 See JAHN, 2008, pp. 369-389.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">14 See KIEFER, 2004, pp. 69-131.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">15 See BACHMANN, 1993, p. 171. In his study Kiefer mixes up Symphonies No. 3 and 5. See KIEFER, 2004, p. 69.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">16 See KIEFER, 2004, p. 73.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">17 See BACHMANN, 1993, p. 171.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">18 See KIEFER, 2004, p. 73.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">19 *Die Wünschelrute*, in: EICHENDORFF, vol. I,1, 1993, p. 121.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">20 See KIEFER, 2004, p. 75.</footnote>

<footnote n="21">21 “Bachmanns Trieb zum stilistischen Bauchreden...” See IBID., p. 86.</footnote>
pathos and a new utopia which literature cannot achieve anymore and which in essence
is bound to the figure of a negative utopia, as in Paul Celan's poetry and Theodor W.
Adorno's writing.<fnref n="22" /> Similar to her use of voice in the context of gender in *Malina*, the
libretto quotations in *Enigma* do not evoke music directly, but they bring with them the
remembrance, the longing, dialectically tied to the notion that they fall silent, as soon as
they are cast in literature.

Both Jahn and Kiefer use the term pasticcio in a rather symbolical way and more in
terms of headlines without a closer examination whether, and to what extent, the term
can provide an analytical tool for scholarly literary analysis. But in comparison with the
term pastiche their focus on quotation and recombination can serve as a starting point.

Quotation vs. originality

Pasticcio works have long been neglected because of their supposed lack of originality.
It is amusing that this romantic perception of an ‘original’ clearly deriving from the idea
of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and later Ludwig van Beethoven (through Wagner) as be-
ing the ‘*Originalgenie*’, was applied even to Baroque opera. One of the many treasures
still more or less buried under this paradigm is the opera *Die getreue Alceste* by Georg
Caspar Schürmann and his librettist Ulrich von König, given in Brunswick and Ham-
burg in 1719. As most of his supposedly 108 operas including 50 pasticcios performed
at Brunswick and Hamburg between 1700 and 1736²³ are lost, Schürmann is unknown
even to experts of 18th-century opera. Apart from being the most important composer
of the Hamburg Gänsemarkt theater between Reinhard Keiser and Georg Philipp Tele-
mann, Schürmann was nothing less than Johann Adolf Hasse’s first and, as George J.
Buelow points out convincingly, very influential teacher.<fnref n="24" /> Furthermore he was amongst
the many German composers who were opera singers themselves, like, again, Hasse
and Carl Heinrich Graun (another famous Schürmann pupil), who performed as tenors
together with Schürmann at Brunswick. As Schürmann used to write the *primo uomo* in
his operas for his own voice, at least *Die getreue Alceste* gives a clear testimony of the
vocal abilities of what was long said to be non-existent: a Baroque opera countertenor,
who easily reached the skills of his friend, the Italian castrato Campioli<fnref n="25" /> who took over
Schürmann’s part for the Hamburg performances.<fnref n="26" /> Why was *Die getreue Alceste*, of
which the Brunswick version is lost, but the Hamburg manuscript kept at the Preußische
Staatsbibliothek in Berlin<fnref n="27" /> never performed until 2017 when the Hamburg University

<footnote n="22">22 See SCHMAUS, 2013, pp. 220-222.</footnote>

<footnote n="23">23 SCHMIDT, 1933.</footnote>

<footnote n="24">24 See BUELOW, 1980, p. 821.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">25 Antonio Gualandi, himself nothing less than the singing teacher for the Dresden castratos.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">26 For a full discussion of the opera, its transformation and special dramaturgy see: HARTMANN, 2017, pp. 217-279.</footnote>

<footnote n="27">27 D-B, Mus.ms.20360.</footnote>
Library hosted a heavily cut student's performance?<fnref n="28" /> The question is solved by a glance into *Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG)*,<fnref n="29" /> which lists the surviving manuscript score as a pasticcio. In fact, the Hamburg version contains 14 Italian arias of which five can be identified.<fnref n="30" /> But as Schürmann adapted Italian operas for the Brunswick stage regularly, it is not unlikely that music and even words of some of the Italian arias might have come from his own hand. Even as both von König and Schürmann did not appreciate the specific Hamburg habit of mingling German opera with Italian arias, in comparison to the Brunswick libretto the Hamburg version displays a clear shift of dramaturgy, turning King Admetus from the royal and stoic ideal of Philippe Quinault's version towards a more bourgeois and sentimental ideal. It reduces the choir parts and *tableaux*, introduces careful reedits and shortens the recitatives, and uses the Italian aria as a mode of intimacy between the bridal couple in a way the Brunswick version had not known. Appreciated or not, the Italian aria appears as a stepping stone towards a new and, compared to the Brunswick version, far more modern approach to German opera, which turns this pasticcio from a supposedly mediocre work into a milestone in German opera development. In the way it carefully and even poetologically adapts the inserted material to a musico-literary process, *Die getreue Alceste* displays a common rather than exceptional pasticcio practice. But is it possible to transfer this technique to purely literary production?

I will try to offer one example from the literary period most unlikely to appreciate the aesthetics of secondary use, a period which would value originality above all else – the German romantic period. Nevertheless, an inclination to quote is obvious, at least for Jean Paul and E.T.A. Hoffmann. Whereas Jean Paul's strategy of literary adaptation as a means to mark literary worlds as clearly made of words and paper – in a straight line of descent from Laurence Sterne – seemed always clear and satisfactory, Hoffmann's manner of quotation caused trouble to many scholars over the centuries.

The text in which the issue is most evident has the rather Baroque title *Lebens-Ansichten des Katers Murr nebst fragmentarischer Biographie des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler in zufälligen Makulaturblättern (The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr Together with a Fragmentary Biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper)*.

Tomcat Murr is not only of the same pack as Hoffmann's other animals from Dog Berganza to Master Flea and a close relative of Ludwig Tieck's *Der Gestiefelte Kater*, but clearly also a twin to Sterne's *Tristram Shandy*.<fnref n="31" /> But Sterne's strategy of writing a whole novel in digressions and turning the principle of narration upside down by making the main line of narration become completely random results in the emergence of a narration in fragments. In the novel, the Tomcat Murr gets the printed biography

<footnote n="28">28 CD with extracts: Georg Caspar Schürmann, *Die getreue Alceste*, Barockwerk Hamburg, Ira Hochman (cond.), CPO 2016.</footnote>

<footnote n="29">29 CROLL/WACZKAT, 2006, col. 350.</footnote>

<footnote n="30">30 See HARTMANN, 2017, pp. 235-238.</footnote>

<footnote n="31">31 *The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman*.</footnote>
of Johannes Kreisler, the romantic musician and *alter ego* of the young Hoffmann, into his paws, as he (the cat!) is about to write his own autobiography. The cat tears out pages from the printed book and ‘ab-’uses them as blotting paper. By accident the pages remain in the manuscript and both biographies get printed and bound into the same volume. Early scholarship highly valued the romantic Kreisler fragments. But it often read the cat’s biography as it’s counterpoint in the sense that it furnishes an easily dispensable frame of parody on the typical bourgeois philistine, quoting Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller and many others purely in the sense of a collection of superficial idioms for cozy living.<fnref n="32" />

In 1967 Hermann Meyer analyzed these quotes in detail to see how many of them appear in both the Kreisler and the Tomcat part. But to him, this quite remarkable bridging of the gap only shows that: “The letter kills. For a mind like Murr’s, literature is a poisoned gift, a curse rather than a blessing. [...] Conversely, Murr represents a type spoiled by literature. His example shows how the poet gets terribly banalized.”<fnref n="33" /> Meyer still belongs to the line of German scholarship which regards Hoffmann as the ‘Gespensterhoffmann’ (‘ghost-story Hoffmann’), an author of occasional genius with a fatal inclination towards the trivial, writing in his spare time under the influence of strong liquids with a light and sometimes fleeting feather. It needed the French school of Jacques Derrida and especially Sarah Kofman’s brilliant study *Autobiogriffure: Du Chat Murr d’Hoffmann*<fnref n="34" /> to prove the perfect contrast, and to show how Hoffmann’s *Tomcat Murr* (next to his late play *Prinzessin Brambilla*) develops intertextuality (*avant la lettre*) as a mode of writing, and to draw attention to the brilliant lawyer, Hoffmann’s stunning precision of writing, aligning him with Franz Kafka. As I have shown some time ago,<fnref n="35" /> to follow that line of deconstruction leads to the rather stunning conclusion that with Kreisler and Murr two incarnations of the author’s self are tied together by the rather physical thread of a book’s binding, and that it is only the cat itself which, thanks to its animal instincts, can tie the romantic artist to the world.<fnref n="36" />

<footnote n="32">32 See MEYER, 1967, pp. 130-132.</footnote>

<footnote n="33">33 “Der Buchstabe tötet. Für einen Geist wie Murr ist die Literatur ein Danaergeschenk, eher ein Fluch als sein Segen. [...] Und umgekehrt ist Murr der Repräsentant eines Typus, welcher der Literatur zum Unsegen gereicht. Was in seiner Gestalt sichtbar wird, ist die entsetzliche Banalisierung des Dichterwortes.” IBID., p. 130 (English transl. TH). Six years after Meyer had described this textual practice Harald Bloom’s *The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry* (New York 1973) would use it as a blueprint for authorship’s general struggle between intertextuality and originality.</footnote>

<footnote n="34">34 KOFMAN, 1984.</footnote>

<footnote n="35">35 See HARTMANN, 2013, pp. 42-54.</footnote>

<footnote n="36">36 In fact, Hoffmann owned a tomcat called “Murr” while he wrote the novel. The cat died as he was about to finish the second part and Hoffmann not only inserted the obituary notice he sent to friends, without the real cat he was not able to finish the last part of the novel, which remained a fragment.</footnote>
As, in my understanding, the opera pasticcio technique is closer to the literary quota-
tion than to matters of pastiche and parody, I wonder if it might open the way to a better
understanding of Hoffmann’s ways of double quotation and self-quotation in *Tomcat
Murr*. It could be understood as a technique which connects the dual parts (Cat and
Composer) rather than one to contrast them as opposites, as Murr and Kreisler not only
share quotes, but also frequently use the same words.<fnref n="37" />

One of the most interesting quotations is the small one-part aria from Goethe’s li-
bretto *Claudine von Villa Bella* in the second version of 1788. Murr uses it as upbeat to
his own lengthy poem, a “Sonett”, which is usually regarded as the most sophisticated
genre of poetry. Murr uses the even more difficult type of the “Glosse”. In the original
the heroine Claudine reflects on her love to Rugantino – a shadowy figure who in the end
turns out to be a kind of Robin Hood:

Liebe schwärmt auf allen Wegen;
Treue wohnt für sich allein.
Liebe kommt euch rasch entgegen;
Aufgesucht will Treue sein.<fnref n="38" />

As Murr addresses the poem to the poodle Ponto<fnref n="39" /> he makes some alterations, substitut-
ing faith (“Treue”) with friendship (“Freundschaft”).

Liebe schwärmt auf allen Wegen,
Freundschaft bleibt für sich allein,
Liebe kommt uns rasch entgegen,
Aufgesucht will Freundschaft sein.<fnref n="40" />

There are two main interpretations of the passage. One regards it as a straightforward
parody, showing that even Goethe wrote bad verse. Comparing the two versions, Meyer
takes a different approach: he assumed that Hoffmann would not deliberately poke fun
at the poem but that he just quoted the passage from his unreliable memory.<fnref n="41" /> Both read-
ings turn out to be extremely unlikely. Contrary to the prominent quote from Goethe’s
*Egmont* by Murr right on the first page,<fnref n="42" /> *Claudine von Villa Bella* was rather a text to
be known by insiders and opera lovers. It was composed by Johann Friedrich Reichardt
in 1789 as a *Singspiel* (with spoken dialogue) contrary to its structure as an *opera buf-
*fa* with sung recitatives. Hoffmann did not appreciate the Reichardt version (nor did

<footnote n="37">37 See in detail MEYER, 1967, pp. 115f.</footnote>

<footnote n="38">38 GOETHE, 1988, vol. 5, p. 675. “Love flatters on every path / Truthfulness stays by its own. / Love will fly to you / Truthfulness needs to be searched for.” (English transl. TH).</footnote>

<footnote n="39">39 By the way a reminiscence to Jean Paul who owned a dog of that name.</footnote>

<footnote n="40">40 HOFFMANN, 1992, p. 91.</footnote>

<footnote n="41">41 See MEYER, 1967, pp. 126f.</footnote>

<footnote n="42">42 HOFFMANN, 1992, p. 18.</footnote>
Goethe) and set off in 1795 to create his own version, being his first attempt to compose an opera. To his friend Theodor Gottfried von Hippel he writes: "You will not believe how the furies of composition in music and novel writing etc. grab hold of me."<sup>43</sup> Interestingly enough, music and novel become connected even at this early stage, when Hoffmann still regarded himself mainly as a composer. As for him, for Murr the passage marks an early stage of his artistic development.<sup>44</sup> Even though the composition was never completed (but Hoffmann was later to compose another Goethe libretto: *Scherz, List und Rache*, which is lost), in his review of *Egmont* Hoffmann described *Claudine* as a libretto "rightly worked into any composers hand".<sup>45</sup>

The pasticcio mode here uses words of the aria. It is therefore not an adaptation of a certain style of writing like the pastiche or parody, but merely a quote. But like in Bachmann's poems, it does not quote the whole text. This technique is dominant throughout Hoffmann's novel, as one of modified quotes which get adapted to the context by subtly but significantly shifting their meaning towards a new expression. As Murr applies the love aria to a song of friendship, his altering "wohnt..." into "bleibt für sich allein" is not at all "shallow", as Meyer complains,<sup>46</sup> but necessary to transform the singular mode of a heroine dwelling on her own (in her chamber) into the dual mode of two friends, separating from the crowd (under the oven).

Another passage in the pasticcio mode is a longer prose section adapting the chapter "A fragment" from Sterne's *A Sentimental Journey* where the narrator reads a newspaper fragment used as wrapping paper. But in *Tomcat Murr*, unexpectedly, the passage is not a quote but a close paraphrase in quotation marks and, as the first inserted Kreisler fragment, it functions as an upbeat to the principle of fragmentary narration. Again, shifts are significant and appear on the level of minute changes: Sterne's soldiers collaborate in their robbery with a boatman who down on the water catches the items that the soldiers had thrown into the river Seine. Their cries "Tis an ill wind"<sup>47</sup> are directly quoted by Hoffmann's soldiers "Es weht ein großer Wind"<sup>48</sup> but get clearly rhetorical as they run off with the notary's wig, hat and coat, only ascribing their robbery to nature's powers. This turn of the screw is worthy of the lawyer Hoffmann, as here Master Abraham quotes Sterne's soldiers to shield himself from his sovereign's (Fürst Irenäus/Knight Madman) blame for spoiling a royal feast by accusing nature's thunderstorm

<footnote n="43">43 "Du glaubst überhaupt gar nicht, wie mich jetzt die Furie der Komposition in Musik – Romanschreiberey pp anpackt." To Hippel 26 October 1795. HOFFMANN, 2003, p. 39 (English transl. TH).</footnote>

<footnote n="44">44 See STREITENBERG, 1989, p. 39.</footnote>

<footnote n="45">45 "dem Komponisten recht in die Hand gearbeiteten"; HOFFMANN, 2003, p. 741 (English transl. TH).</footnote>

<footnote n="46">46 See MAYER, 1967, p. 127.</footnote>

<footnote n="47">47 STERNE, 1995, p. 81.</footnote>

<footnote n="48">48 HOFFMANN, 1992, p. 24. Meyer's observation, Hoffmann would quote "freely" by turning the subjunctive into direct speech is wrong. See: MEYER, 1967, p. 133.</footnote>
which he, in fact, is likely to have roused deliberately.<fnref n="49" /> Abraham is not only another
Hoffmann *alter ego* in the novel and as teacher to Kreisler as well as to Murr, he is a
magician, *magnétiseur*, a Baroque master of machines and one who is likely to govern
the elements at least sometimes. He is, in short, the power of fragmentary narration.

Conclusion

In literature, the pasticcio turns from a technique into a mode. Fragment, quote and pas-
ticcio form a line which is completely different from the mode of pastiche, parody and
*travestie*. The basis of the literary pasticcio is not the adaptation of a full style, but a (re-)
contextualization and an integration of meaning. Aesthetic judgement is fundamental to
the mode of pastiche, which is in essence a mode of parody. But for the pasticcio mode
the *void* of aesthetic judgement – or at least a sense of aesthetic ambivalence – is just as
fundamental. It frees the quote or textual material from its context. With this tendency
it might even help to bridge the gap between the rather pessimistic notion of modernity
struggling for any form of originality – a struggle clearly inherited from the early ro-
mantic period – and postmodern celebration of intertextuality. My non-representative
selection of authors with a strong musical background indicates a third direction, as
their use of the pasticcio mode brings with it musico-theoretical discourses with notions
of sound. In a quite utopian manner, it may set textual parts free, regardless of or even
especially through their status as a transformed quote or material. Further examination
of the pasticcio mode in literature has to prove whether it can help to understand further
distinct questions like, for example, the technique of montage or modes of self-quotation. Topics could be the reappearance of characters in works by Balzac or in works by the passionate Jazz lover and former Jazz musician Günter Grass, or the music quotes in the genre of Pop literature of the 1980s.

Sources

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GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG VON, Sämtliche Werke. Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche. 40 in 45 Bänden in 2 Abteilungen, ed. by HENDRIK BIRUS et al., 1. Abteilung: Sämtliche Werke, vol. 5: Dramen 1776-1790, Frankfurt am Main1988.

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<footnote n="49">49 To spoil an intrigue by which – supposedly – Kreisler’s beloved Julia was supposed to be married to the mad prince.</footnote>
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## Literature

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