A subject of this empire converses with a fiery spirit resembling his sister Elsa after falling on hard times in its metropole. For 10 points each:
[10e] Name this empire, the setting of the novella “The Salamander.” A country in this empire that was called its “little” counterpart is the setting of the collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka.
ANSWER: Russia [or Russian Empire or Rossiya or Rossiyskaya Imperiya] (“The Salamander” is by Vladimir Odoyevsky.)
[10h] Imperial Russia only features explicitly in this entry of Nikolai Gogol’s Dikanka stories. In this story, the Devil flies a blacksmith to St. Petersburg so he can ask Catherine the Great for her slippers.
ANSWER: “Christmas Eve” [or “The Night Before Christmas”; or Nich pered Rizdvom]
[10m] Antony Pogorelsky’s My Evenings in Little Russia is an imitation of this author. A Soviet circle called the Serapion Brothers drew on the “serapiontic principle” of this author, whose Golden Pot influenced Gogol.
ANSWER: E. T. A Hoffmann [or Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann; or Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann]
<European Literature>