City Life and Feline Opinions: The Tomcat Murr and Hoffman’s Urban Landscape

Abstract

Lebens-Ansichten des Katers Murr (The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, 2 vols. 1820–22) offers some of the most detailed reflections on city life by Hoffmann, an author associated intimately with urban settings such as Bamberg, Dresden and Berlin. It also concretizes and elucidates the position of the feline vis-à-vis human society and the environment from the cat’s own point of view. Finally, it moves toward a synthesis of feline and human perspectives, which implies an aesthetic bridging of the homo sapiens / animal gap that is realized not only in the novel’s content, but also in the form. This remarkable novel both inscribes and expresses ecology, transforming space into content and content into space.