Why E.T.A. Hoffman would never be published in 2011

Several years ago, I read an article on reading - how funny. The author described how he used to be able to devour 300 page novels in his younger years without difficulty. But in the past 5 years, he noticed a decline in his ability to focus for even 10-20 pages. He found himself skipping through sentences, not able to fully absorb their content as he once did. His explanation was that we rarely read for pleasure anymore, we skim for information. With the rise of the internet opening the door to millions of literary resources, we simply don't take time to really read something. "Just the facts, m'am" has become a kind of motto for our worker bee society.

Reading the review of E.T.A. Hoffman reminded me of this stark contrast between the poetical, supernatural outlook of many in Hoffman's time to our own empirical, concise, "get to the point" attitude. As I read Hoffman's review of Beethoven and his music, I, like the author above, kept loosing focus. I found myself skimming the flowery language and just looking for "the point". As a busy doctoral student of the 21st century, I find the business-like prose of today much less cumbersome. Don't bother me with talk of the supernatural and the beams of light that burst from Beethoven's 9: get to the point! Wait... the point? What "point" am I looking for? Just the "facts"? What facts? Was I trying to reduce Hoffman to 5 short bullet points that I can shove in my pocket and race on to the next thing in my schedule? In the writing style of Hoffman, I began to see it as a commentary on our approach to music and on society as a whole.

Who would expect to browse though an article published by the American Musicological Society and read this casual sentence about Beethoven: "Burning flashes of light shoot through the deep night of this realm, and we become aware of giant shadows that surge back and fourth, driving us into narrower and narrower confines until they destroy us - but not the pain of that endless longing in which each joy has climbed aloft in jubilant song sinks back and is swallowed up, and it is not only in this pain, which consumes love, hope, and happiness but does not destroy them, which seeks to burst our breasts with a many voiced consonance of all the passions, that we live on, enchanted beholders of the supernatural!" (ONE sentence). Ladies and Gentlemen, we live in an era that has no time for sentences like this, no time for the "supernatural", no time for the "endless longing" Hoffmann describes. The reason why Hoffman would never be published today is because we don't have time for him. We only have time for "the facts".

I say let's make time for writing and thoughts that transcend the earthly, material, and the empirical and risk embracing something that you might not be able to "prove". It's often in the intangible things that true life is found.