Kater Murr by E. T. A. Hoffmann. Short summary

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Murr the Cat writes about his life from birth to the present. Between the lines you can read the biography of the second character, Kapellmeister Kreisler.

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The novel consists of two very different biographies: the cat Murr and the Kapellmeister Kreisler.

The cat acts as first-person narrator and autobiographer, whose chronological description from his birth to the time of his writing contains numerous comments and reflections on the «education of the reader.» The motifs and classic elements of the educational novel are parodied: Murr experiences a childhood friendship, a love that «forms a personality,» tries his hand at drinking and duelling.

From the preface to the fragments of the already printed biography of the composer Johannes Kreisler, the reader can see that the clumsy Murr dismembered the original and used its sheets as a basis or draft, and then left them in manuscript. In these fragments, the musician’s fate is revealed as a social failure. Kreisler finds himself between two women who, on the one hand, represent true love and, on the other, flaming passion. However, he fails not so much because of this inseparable antinomy as because of social constraints.