Tales of Hoffmann by E.T.A Hoffmann book review

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Have you read the Tales of Hoffmann? Oh, what a delight!

In this day of ongoing genocide, I sit in my humble cabin, awaiting Federal Police, reading Hoffmann.

People dying, doctors lying, nobody needs the truth.

Here’s a book perfect for my current circumstance. One to pass the time during the end of it.

My favorite tales being the Doge and Dogaressa, and the frightening Nathaniel from The Sandman, who, not unlike the disagreeable injected people, threw himself and his lover off a bell tower while reciting a horrible incantation to Satan.

Some of my highlights:

Chapter 5: INTRODUCTION
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Chapter progress: 3.54%
Highlight: In September 1819 the government instituted a Commission for the Investigation of Treasonable Organizations and Other Dangerous Activities, and Hoffmann was appointed to it.

Chapter 7: MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDERY
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Chapter progress: 6.75%
Highlight: Only the precaution of arming yourself to the teeth, and having a lantern carried before you, was of any avail at all;

Chapter 7: MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDERY
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Chapter progress: 11.58%
Highlight: indeed, that you should be incapable of grasping the idea of so dreadful a crime.
Notes: Fake pandemic.

Chapter 7: MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDERY
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Chapter progress: 11.9%
Highlight: He obviously belongs to that accursed band which, in mockery of all effort and all investigation by the courts, has known how to pursue its activities with impunity.
Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 7: MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDERY
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Chapter progress: 12.86%
Highlight: What spirit from Hell has involved me in these dreadful events which will cost me my life?
Notes: Pandemic hoax.

Chapter 7: MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDERY
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Chapter progress: 14.47%
Highlight: niches with old, half-disintegrated statues in them.
Notes: Tartarian building.

Chapter 7: MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDERY
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Chapter progress: 15.11%
Highlight: Overnight she has blossomed like a rose and is now waiting for you, beside herself with love and longing.

Chapter 7: MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDERY
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Chapter progress: 16.4%
Highlight: The ghost had disappeared, the voice of Satan was silent. Now I knew what my evil star desired: I had to give in to it or be destroyed!

Notes: Celebrity face mask agents.

Chapter 7: MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDERY
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Chapter progress: 17.36%
Highlight: Now I knew that his errant spirit was again in the grip of the dreadful murderous spectre, that Satan’s voice was again loudly at his ears.
Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 7: MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDERY
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Chapter progress: 19.61%
Highlight: Her cheeks glowed crimson, her eyes sparkled with tears, which now and then fell through the silky lashes on to the lily-white bosom.

Chapter 8: THE SANDMAN
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Chapter progress: 20.9%
Highlight: Dark presentiments of a dreadful fate hover over me like black clouds impenetrable to any friendly ray of sunlight.
Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 8: THE SANDMAN
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Chapter progress: 22.19%
Highlight: he was now a repellent spectral monster bringing misery, distress and earthly and eternal ruination wherever he went.
Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 8: THE SANDMAN
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Chapter progress: 25.08%
Highlight: Everything, the whole of life, had become for him a dream and a feeling of foreboding; he spoke continually of how each of us, thinking himself free, was in reality the tortured plaything of mysterious powers: resistance was vain; we had humbly to submit to the decrees of fate.
Notes: Prison planet.

Chapter 8: THE SANDMAN
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Chapter progress: 28.94%
Highlight: Can a child of heaven accommodate itself to the narrow circle drawn by the wretched circumstances of earth?

Chapter 9: THE ARTUSHOF
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Chapter progress: 31.19%
Highlight: (the abundance of his locks and the elegance of his dress made him look almost feminine);

Chapter 9: THE ARTUSHOF
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Chapter progress: 31.51%
Highlight: It would never occur to a truly dedicated merchant to draw pictures instead of writing letters of advice.

Chapter 9: THE ARTUSHOF
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Chapter progress: 32.8%
Highlight: you will allow that in life you have to live, which the artist by profession, oppressed as he is by want, almost never manages to do.’

Chapter 9: THE ARTUSHOF
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Chapter progress: 33.44%
Highlight: Are these bonds really worth so little?’

Chapter 9: THE ARTUSHOF
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Chapter progress: 36.33%
Highlight: It was prophesied to him that if his daughter contracted a love match he would thereupon die a shameful death, so he tried to prevent anyone knowing of her existence, and brought her up as his son.’

Chapter 9: THE ARTUSHOF
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Chapter progress: 36.33%
Highlight: What have your confounded ledgers and daybooks to do with me?

Chapter 9: THE ARTUSHOF
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Chapter progress: 38.26%
Highlight: O you eternal powers,’ he cried, ‘how deeply, incurably, you wound with your bitter mockery the tender breast of poor man!

Chapter 10: COUNCILLOR KRESPEL
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Chapter progress: 41.48%
Highlight: it would indeed offend against all good breeding if I were openly to express the wish that Satan would come from Hell at this moment and break your neck;
Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 10: COUNCILLOR KRESPEL
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Chapter progress: 43.09%
Highlight: she retaliated by surrounding herself with a crowd of abbés, maestros and academics who, not knowing who he was, snubbed him thoroughly as an unendurable and importunate admirer who knew no better than to abuse the Signora’s good nature.

Chapter 10: COUNCILLOR KRESPEL
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Chapter progress: 44.05%
Highlight: for these people are, when it comes to their enjoyments, cruel and egotistical.

Chapter 11: THE ENTAIL
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Chapter progress: 46.62%
Highlight: Schiller’s Ghost-Seer.

Chapter 11: THE ENTAIL
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Chapter progress: 48.23%
Highlight: She was then perhaps no more than nineteen years old; her face was angelic, and in her dark eyes there lay the indescribable magic of moonbeams suffused with melancholy yearning.

Chapter 11: THE ENTAIL
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Chapter progress: 49.84%
Highlight: The Devil take your music if you don’t know anything better to do with it than entice impressionable women.

Chapter 11: THE ENTAIL
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Chapter progress: 50.8%
Highlight: Do you not know that the days of Orpheus are over and that the beasts have lost all respect for singers?’

Chapter 11: THE ENTAIL
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Chapter progress: 58.84%
Highlight: I do not want to die on the scaffold;
Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 12: DOGE AND DOGARESSA
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Chapter progress: 61.41%
Highlight: There one could see the distorted faces of the Signoria’s brokers, as they mopped the cold sweat from their livid brows, hoarsely offering unheard-of rates of interest for the loan of hard cash, for the threatened Republic was also short of ready money.

Notes: Federal reserve.

Chapter 12: DOGE AND DOGARESSA
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Chapter progress: 62.7%
Highlight: Everywhere I went, everywhere I stopped, they called after me: “German dog!

Chapter 12: DOGE AND DOGARESSA
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Chapter progress: 63.34%
Highlight: But in real life, Destiny always grants the successful accomplishment of a bold deed to one person only, so that all other efforts are rendered vain.

Chapter 12: DOGE AND DOGARESSA
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Chapter progress: 65.59%
Highlight: You must surely remember that day of terror barely seven years ago when the earth trembled, when towers and palaces swayed as if the arms of invisible giants were tearing at their very foundations.
Notes: Prepare yourselves.

Chapter 12: DOGE AND DOGARESSA
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Chapter progress: 65.59%
Highlight: But this terrifying event was but the harbinger of the approaching monster, soon to breathe its poison over town and country alike. We knew that the plague had reached Sicily first of all from the Levant, but it was already raging in Tuscany by then.
Notes: The vaccine is the virus.

Chapter 12: DOGE AND DOGARESSA
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Chapter progress: 67.2%
Highlight: I often see future events, as in a dark, distant looking-glass, and whether I will or no, I have to utter aloud what I see, often using words that do not make sense even to me, compelled by an unknown but irresistible power.
Notes: Certain death a destruction of face mask people.

Chapter 12: DOGE AND DOGARESSA
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Chapter progress: 67.2%
Highlight: This awakened the envy of the doctors and charlatans who were wont to sell their pills and elixirs in the Piazza San Marco, on the Rialto or beside the Zecca, and who used to poison the sick rather than cure them.
Notes: Allopathic medicine is dead.

Chapter 12: DOGE AND DOGARESSA
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Chapter progress: 69.45%
Highlight: Not far from the villa stood a cool dark pinewood, fragrant and loud with birdsong.
Notes: Thank you, Father.

Chapter 12: DOGE AND DOGARESSA
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Chapter progress: 69.77%
Highlight: When evening falls, no one knows what the morrow will bring; the things seen in a dream become reality at daybreak.

Chapter 12: DOGE AND DOGARESSA
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Chapter progress: 74.6%
Highlight: the powers of evil appeared to be threatening death and destruction.
Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 13: THE MINES AT FALUN
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Chapter progress: 76.21%
Highlight: Take counsel with yourself and then do as your spirit bids you!
Notes: Critical thinking skillz.

Chapter 13: THE MINES AT FALUN
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Chapter progress: 77.49%
Highlight: No, never can I be one of you, you black earthworms; never could I live your dismal life!’

Notes: Face mask people.

Chapter 13: THE MINES AT FALUN
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Chapter progress: 79.1%
Highlight: Take care, false traitor, that the Prince of Metals whom you mock does not seize you and hurl you down, so that your limbs shatter on the sharp rocks.
Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 13: THE MINES AT FALUN
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Chapter progress: 79.1%
Highlight: and since he had neither wife nor child – he was a gloomy kind of man and had no regular dwelling-place either

Chapter 13: THE MINES AT FALUN
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Chapter progress: 80.06%
Highlight: It was your silence that annoyed and upset me.’

Chapter 14: THE CHOOSING OF THE BRIDE
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Chapter progress: 81.99%
Highlight: You are’, the stranger said in a raised voice, ‘a peculiar man, with your titles and ranks.
Notes: Academic. Doctor. Attorney garbage people

Chapter 14: THE CHOOSING OF THE BRIDE
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Chapter progress: 82.64%
Highlight: What? You intend to get married? But you are much too old for it and as ugly as a baboon.

Chapter 14: THE CHOOSING OF THE BRIDE
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Chapter progress: 84.24%
Highlight: you allude to the iniquitous witch-trials that took place in the old days, my dear sir!
Notes: Burn the witches.

Chapter 14: THE CHOOSING OF THE BRIDE
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Chapter progress: 85.85%
Highlight: At that time, as you will know, every chemist was called an alchemist and every astronomer an astrologer,

Chapter 14: THE CHOOSING OF THE BRIDE
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Chapter progress: 87.78%
Highlight: Tieck’s Sternbald

Chapter 14: THE CHOOSING OF THE BRIDE
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Chapter progress: 88.1%
Highlight: he read indiscriminately whatever he came across, though only works of earlier times, since he hated modern authors.

Chapter 14: THE CHOOSING OF THE BRIDE
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Chapter progress: 88.75%
Highlight: read the Somnium Scipionis and Artemidorus’s celebrated work on dreams and the Frankfurt Dream Book.

Chapter 14: THE CHOOSING OF THE BRIDE
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Chapter progress: 92.6%
Highlight: and you shall beg in rags at the doors of the despised Chosen People, who shall spurn you like a mangy dog.

Chapter 14: THE CHOOSING OF THE BRIDE
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Chapter progress: 96.46%
Highlight: Wiegleb’s Natural Magic