The Golden Flower Pot

About This Book

First published in 1814 and revised by the author in 1819, The Golden Flower Pot (German: Der goldne Topf. Ein Märchen aus der neuen Zeit) is a novella by E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) that the author himself considered his finest work. Subtitled A Modern Fairy Tale, it is set in contemporary Dresden yet infused with magic, hallucination, and mythological wonder.

The story follows Anselmus, a clumsy and dreamy university student who stumbles into a collision with an old apple-seller at the Black Gate and is cursed for his trouble. He soon discovers that the three golden-green snakes he glimpsed in an elder tree are daughters of a fire-spirit from Atlantis, and falls in love with one of them — the enchanting Serpentina. As Anselmus is drawn deeper into this hidden world of salamanders, sorcery, and ancient manuscripts, he must choose between a comfortable bourgeois life and the transcendent realm of art and imagination.

Hoffmann deliberately created a new literary form with this story: the modern fairy tale, in which the fantastic irrupts into an everyday urban setting rather than a distant once-upon-a-time kingdom. The Golden Flower Pot profoundly influenced later writers from Hans Christian Andersen to the Surrealists. The work is in the public domain.

Excerpt

On Ascension Day, about three o clock in the afternoon, a young man in Dresden was running through the Black Gate, and accidentally ran against a basket of apples and cakes which an old and ugly woman had there exposed for sale.— Opening of The Golden Flower Pot

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