"The Golden Pot," the borderline between fantasy and reality is defined by the student Anselm's dual attraction to the Veronica (who lives in reality) and Serpentina (who turns out to be a snake woman whose existence derives from a netherworld). Much of the story is told from the point of view of Anselm, who experiences visions of beautiful, lustful eyes upon him, only to have the visions disappear as he shakes himself back into reality. But Hoffmann achieves a disjointed narrative effect by opening certain scenes in the middle of an episode or conversation, then backtracking by means of narrative explanation or additional dialogue in order to explain the preceding action. For example, after Anselm collapses at Lindhorst's door when a vision warns him away from the archivist, the following scene does not open with an explanation of what happened to Anselm next but with a spirit story that turns out to be one told by Lindhorst during Anselm's job interview. The effect is that the reader begins to suspect, with Anselm, that he is in for an extraordinary encounter with the spirit world: "Anselmus was growing very uneasy, and he could hardly look into Archivarius Lindhorst's fixed and serious eyes without shuddering internally in a way he himself could not comprehend."4 Hoffmann's technique serves to emphasize the uncanny nature of Anselm's pending adventure.
Nor is this Hoffmann's only technique for heightening the experience of fantasy. Having abruptly introduced Lindhorst in one episode, he follows with an episode in which he addresses the reader directly, asking whether the reader has not encountered "a vague feeling [that] suffused your mind that you had more lofty desires that must be attained, desires that transcended the immediate pleasures of this world but were yet desires which your spirit, like a strictly brought up, frightened child, dared not even express" (19). The fight between reality and fantasy is joined, and Hof...