The Ingredients of Literary Majesty

In the very first sentence of "Spiegel, das Kätzchen" (1855), Gottfried Keller delineates what this story is about: economy, language, and psychology. The artistic tradition has endowed mirrors with the power to speak the truth and to reveal what otherwise falls in the blind spot of reason. Cats, on the other hand, with their experience as witches' sidekicks, decorated with boots and golden chains, are dressed to narrate and to represent obscure regions of knowledge. From the folk tales collections of Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, Ludwig Tieck's Gestiefelter Kater (1797) brings the puss in boots onto the Romantic stage. In 1820 Alexander Pushkin's Ruslan and Ludmila and E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr (Die Lebensansichten des Katers Murr) add narration to the job description of the felis domesticus. Published in 1856 as part of the first volume of The People from Seldwyla cycle (often regarded as Keller's digression from Realism), "Spiegel, das Kätzchen," on the one hand, continues that tradition. On the other hand, however, Keller's work unfolds as a response to and a critique of Romantic narrative style and techniques as well as a satirical reflection on the concept of poetic enchantment. Whereas Hoffmann uses fantasy mainly in order to figuratively present and interpret psychological reality, Keller's task appears to be the opposite. His engagement with the magical has disenchantment as its goal. However, it surpasses a sheer rejection of Romanticism as it ascribes the enchantment effect of language to its materiality. Keller recognizes three realities, psychological, economic, and linguistic, and the argument of this chapter proceeds in three steps that address their significance and interdependency in Keller's work.