Gert Hofmann’s Balzac’s Horse and Other Stories was originally published in 1981 as Gespräch über Balzacs Pferd: Vier Novellen (A Conversation About Balzac’s Horse: Four Novellas) appearing in English in 1989 with the addition of five shorter stories, largely translated by Christopher Middleton, but with two stories translated by Michael Hofmann. While the extra stories are welcome, they do alter the unity of the original volume in which all four novellas focus on writers of various types: Balzac, Casanova, Robert Walser and Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. In each of them, Hofmann uses dialogue (sometimes one-sided) to explore the character of the writer and the nature of art.
This is obviously made explicit in the title of ‘A Conversation About Balzac’s Horse’ in which the ageing author is pictured in an empty theatre waiting for the curtain to rise on a new play he has written in discussion with a Mr Brissot, inspector of the cloacas (sewers) of Paris. He is planning his next work in which he intends to bring “the cloacas of Paris onto the stage” and is quizzing Brissot regarding the setting. Balzac’s certainty in his craft diminishes as the conversation progresses. Initially he tells Brissot that he is neither nervous nor excited as “everything has been planned to perfection” though this is put in doubt as he frequently asks Brissot if he can see or hear anything below. He also discourses on the difficulties of writing for the theatre, having to please the actors and director, claiming to have rewritten the final act seventy-two times. The turning point occurs as he declines a visit to the cloacas at the best time (according to Brissot) – midnight – as that is when he writes, only to learn of other famous, indeed titled, visitors. Hofmann gradually turns the conversation from being largely provided by Balzac until Brissot is the main contributor, describing the ‘entertainment’ these visitors experience. Then more Brissot describes, the less confident Balzac becomes:
“The spectators I’ve invited…the ladies with the bouquets, the director’s friends, the critics stuffed with food! they’re not coming, they’re not coming!”
At the heart of the story is the question: what is art? and this is also examined in ‘Casanova and the Extra’. Late in Casanova’s life, he finds himself reduced to a genteel poverty, often living in his carriage and with few possessions:
“His only belongings at that time: two coats, the better of which he is wearing… In addition, some linen, much mended, not that one would see, five books, three attacking Voltaire, three snuffboxes, the aforementioned cane, a chain with a watch…”
In the early part of the story Hofmann establishes Casanova’s separation, and then he engineers an “uncanny encounter” with his mother – uncanny because he believes his mother to be dead (a “conversation, which did perhaps occur, or could have occurred…”). His mother challenges him as to what he has achieved with his life, Casanova at first claiming that he is a poet, and then:
“At least, I live poetically.”
In keeping with the supernatural atmosphere of the encounter, his mother refers to his actions as if she had been there, observing. Casanova is made to face his own essential selfishness – the ending demonstrating that he has not, perhaps cannot, change.
In a similar vein to the previous two stories, ‘The Resignation of the Writer Robert Walser from the Literary Society’ is also about failure and mortality. In the story, Walser has been invited to speak at a Literary Society in Bern and is spending the time before the event with the Society’s chairman, Gissenger. Again, the story takes place late in Walser’s life when he has all but stopped writing and can no longer get published. Gissenger is a businessman with his own worries who grows increasingly resentful of Walser and is embarrassed to be seen with him:
“I am forced to the conclusion… that R. W. has no narrative gift, and is quite incapable of amusing or distracting me.”
As with the previous stories, Walser is faced with someone who causes him to doubt his art. In the final novella, Lenz, the least well-known of the characters, returns home after many years away having become estranged from his father. The story mainly consists of Lenz pleading with his father to support him, but the other side of the conversation is silence.
While the other stories collected here are also very fine, particularly ‘Tolstoy’s Head’ in which Tolstoy’s son fonds employment in American impersonating his father, the four novellas are excellent both in their insight into the psychology of the artist and in their dialectic form. Out of print like most (but not all) of Hofmann’s work, it is a collection well worth seeking out.