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I clearly remember that when I had to read E.T.A. Hoffmann’s fairy tales for a course on German Romanticism I was taking during my undergraduate degree (in 1986, at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick) how strangely surprised I was at just how creepily uncanny and also how generally quite majorly different his 1816 Nußknacker und Mausekönig is from the main storyline of The Nutcracker ballet so universally well known and beloved on a global basis. And yes, our professor then told us that Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet is in fact based on a loose French adaptation of Nußknacker und Mausekönig by Alexandre Dumas père (his 1844 Histoire d’un casse-noisette), a story which is of course still vaguely similar to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s original theme and content wise, but leaves out all of the psychological questions, the possibility that Marie is actually emotionally afflicted and “seeing things�� and equally has a standard fairy tale ending for Clara (not Marie) and her princely suitor that is pure and sweet fantasy and not the vacillation between fairy tale and reality found in Nußknacker und Mausekönig and where readers themselves are not even really all that sure exactly what is fantasy and what are Marie’s fever dreams and visions.

Now while in 1986, I was actually a bit disappointed that Nußknacker und Mausekönig was so very different from The Nutcracker ballet storyline, over the years and after multiple rereads, I have come to absolutely and totally adore E.T.A. Hoffmann’s poetic vision and in particular that there are no easy answers with regard to Marie and what she sees and experiences. And yes indeed, the entire not knowing what is reality and what is fantasy, including the battle of the Nutcracker with the Mouse King, I do consider this absolutely readable and most delightful as an adult reader. But honestly, if I had read, if I had encountered Nußknacker und Mausekönig as a child, much of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s presented text would definitely have massively freaked me out, and I do thus also totally understand why Alexandre Dumas père did such a very much less Hoffmannesque and more standardly traditional fairy tale adaptation of Nußknacker und Mausekönig and why Tchaikovsky then also used the Dumas adaptation as the basis for his ballet.