Hoffmann traditions in V. Lee’s short story “Prince Alberic and the snake lady”

The article examines the influence of German Romanticism on English Aestheticism by analyzing the refraction of the traditions of the German romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann in the short story by V. Lee “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady”. The features of Hoffmann’s poetics are considered in the form of an ideological and thematic complex (Hoffmann complex) and are expressed in a reinterpretation of the romantic duality, which in Lee’s story is represented by a division into the world of the false (inanimate, puppet, grotesque - The Red Palace) and the authentic (ideal, alive, where harmony of man and nature reigns - The Castle of Sparkling Waters) art; in the use of romantic oppositions (real - unreal, alive - inanimate, beautiful - ugly, young - old); in the problem of mechanization of man and society associated with the idea of initiation of the romantic hero, who, having overcome the influence of the inanimate, artificial world, must come to find creative harmony in the mythological world together with the Snake Lady embodying the idea of Eternal Femininity (“The Golden Pot”); in the problem of duality which is manifested in the idea of metempsychosis (“Elixirs of the Devil”), as well as in the Hoffmann type of hero: Alberic (Anselm), Lady Oriana (Serpentina) and Hoffmann’s style: romantic irony and grotesque. In conclusion, the article shows that some romantic traditions dating back to Hoffmann are refracted in Lee’s short story, and the tragic ending of the story demonstrates the impossibility in the modern world of finding spiritual harmony, achieving an ideal world and returning to the Golden Age that romantics dreamed of.