The lash terminates in a bifurcated flap of leather four inches long: the scorpion. He had never been able to understand what attracted women to a manthey seemed to go pop-eyed over the most ordinary looking fellowsbut he knew he was no beauty, no matter what tylin said. The kicksey-winsey, needing to expand, had leveled and built over them, thus destroying much of the existing housing of the gegs.
His other objection is interesting in the light of the theme of nineteenth-century taste in the arts that was raised above. However, to my mind the key argument to support the thesis that Hoffmann is attempting to draw music into the theory of the Serapiontic is to be found in the frame discussion that precedes the discussion on church music. What Serapion lacks is the ability, or rather, in his post-martyr state, the willingness, to suspend disbelief and to accept that this imaginative realm is only part of a larger totality, the dualistically constructed state of being that defines all human life: This view has recently been challenged by Lothar Pikulik, E. But as is often the case with Hoffmann the fictional is never entirely detached from the nonfictional. U of North Carolina P, Above all it charts areas that display human beings in vulnerable situations and open to forces beyond their control; it considers the possibility that they may be guided or manipulated by other, often unscrupulous, human agencies or by higher powers, and in general leaves ambiguous any definitive view of whether the destructive elements derive from within or without.