"The Sandman" by E T A Hoffmann

In  this short novel, Nathanael grows up to fear the Sandman, the bogeyman who sprinkles sand into the eyes of children when they don't fall asleep; he then steals the eyes and takes them back to feed his family who live in a nest in the half-moon. As a child he identifies the Sandman with his father's friend, Coppelius, with whom his father practises alchemy.

After his father's death from one of these experiments, Nathanael grows up and becomes a student. Here he is terrorised by barometer salesman Coppola, who is the very image of Coppelius, and who sells him a telescope. He uses the telescope to spy on Olimpia, the pretty daughter of his Physics teacher, who sits in the window opposite his. He becomes obsessed with Olimpia, forgetting his childhood sweetheart Clara. He dances with Olimpia at a ball, despite the fact that she scarcely says anything other than "Ah ah ah" and she is very stiff and stylised in her movements. Sure enough, she is revealed to be an automaton and Nathanael goes mad.

This story is the basis for the first act of Offenbach's Tales from Hoffmann; another of Hoffmann's short stories became the basis for Tschaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet.

The story has in interesting structure. It starts with three letters written by Nathanael; although the author claims that this means that he starts in media res, in the middle of things, these letters actually recount the back story of Nathanael's childhood. The narrator then begins the second portion of the story, the student days; this has a conventional narrative structure. It ends with the destruction of the automaton and Nathanael recovering from his madness. But wait! This is not the end. In a final postscript Nathanael tries to murder Clara and then kills himself. At this stage I wondered whether Hoffman had tried out the happy ending and didn't like it so added another; it felt a little like a false appendix.

The whole tone of the story reminded me very much of Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther; it was as fatalistically despairing, a hero doomed from the start. Fortunately, it was much shorter.

Unfortunately, I found the whole thing so over the top and hysterical that I couldn't believe in the sinister characters.

October 2015; 73 pages

Supplement, January 2016
I have read Nicholas Royle's The Uncanny. He points out (p 39) the multiple identity confusion:

• The Sandman
• The advocate Coppelius who is repellent
• The narrator's father who has a repulsive face and who practises alchemy with Coppelius
• The barometer salesman who looks like Coppelius but is called Coppola

Royle (p 46) thinks that Freud missed a lot of the meaning of the Sandman, including the passage which presages Freud's description of the death drive, when  Clara speaks of "a dark power which strives to ruin us within our own selves".

Other books by German authors reviewed in this blog.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Sorrows of Young Werther" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Werther writes letters to his friend Wilhelm describing the idyllic rural retreat in which he plans to do a little drawing. He meets Lotte. She is betrothed to another, Albert, but in Albert's absence Werther falls in love with Lotte. The loves is neither consummated nor indeed returned but Werther is a classic romantic hero, ruled by his wild unbridled passions. When Albert returns and marries Lotte, Werther despairs. He becomes gloomy and suicidal. The letters stop; the 'editor' then narrates the final days with extracts from further letters and the suicide note and large quotes from 'Ossian' the forged epic poem that Goethe adored.

This is all wild, romantic, passionate prose full of dashes - oh! - and exclamations. And coupled with extreme rectitude and punctilious etiquette. It is a sort of cross between Jane Austen and Emily Bronte: Wuthering and Sensibility. Not really my cup of tea. But remarkable as a landmark in romantic fiction with the classic Byronic hero driven to self destruction by untamed (except they are tamed) lusts. It is also surprisingly short.

In the letter dated 18th July Werther notes that a world without love is the same as a projector without a lamp which suggests that even in 1771 the magic lantern existed. Perhaps when Goethe spoke of these 'transient phantoms' he was thinking a little of Plato's Cave parable (which might suggest that magic lanterns properly date to 500 BC!) Indeed wikipedia suggests that the magic lantern was used by Cristian Huyghens before 1660 and that Germans (such as Kircher who describes a similar device in Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae) and Walgensten and Count Cagliostro were using lanterns to summon spirits; perhaps Goethe linked this to the legend of Faust that he was later to dramatise.

In the same letter Werther talks of 'Bologna rock': "if you lay it in the sun it will draw in the rays and shine for a while at night". Bologna rock is barium sulphide; it was exhibited in 1611 by Galileo according to my source. Sometimes it is amazing how old seemingly modern notions are.

My favourite quote from this book is from the letter of 20th October 1771 in which Werther writes "It is certain that since we are so made to compare everyone with ourselves and ourselves with everyone, happiness or misery lies in those circumstances with which we associate ourselves, and then nothing is more dangerous than solitude." I think I understand what he means but I do not think I agree with his conclusion.

It is a classic which you have to read with a little pinch of salt.

January 2012; 131 pages.

Other books by German authors reviewed in this blog.

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God