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from Weird tales, volume one of
two
Translated by J.T. Bealby, B.A.
FORMERLY SCHOLAR OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE,
CAMBRIDGE
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, (1885)
(1) "The Sand-man" forms the first of a series of tales called "The Night-pieces," and were published in 1817.
I KNOW you are all very uneasy because I have not written for such a long, long time. Mother, to be sure, is angry, and Clara, I dare say, believes I am living here in riot and revelry, and quite forgetting my sweet angel, whose image is so deeply engraved upon my heart and mind. But that is not so; daily and hourly do I think of you all, and my lovely Clara's form comes to gladden me in my dreams, and smiles upon me with her bright eyes, as graciously as she used to do in the days when I went in and out amongst you. Oh! how could I write to you in the distracted state of mind in which I have been, and which, until now, has quite bewildered me! A terrible thing has happened to me. Dark forebodings of some awful fate threatening me are spreading themselves out over my head like black clouds, impenetrable to every friendly ray of sunlight. I must now tell you what has taken place; I must, that I see well enough, but only to think upon it makes the wild laughter burst from my lips. Oh! my dear, dear Lothair, what shall I say to make you feel, if only in an inadequate way, that that which happened to me a few days ago could thus really exercise such a hostile and disturbing influence upon my life? Oh that you were here to see for yourself! but now you will, I suppose, take me for a superstitious ghost-seer. In a word, the terrible thing which I have experienced, the fatal effect of which I in vain exert every effort to shake off, is simply that some days ago, namely, on the 30th October, at twelve o'clock at noon, a dealer in weather-glasses came into my room and wanted to sell me one of his wares. I bought nothing, and threatened to kick him downstairs, whereupon he went away of his own accord.
You will conclude that it can only be very peculiar relations relations intimately intertwined with my life that can give significance to this event, and that it must be the person of this unfortunate hawker which has had such a very inimical effect upon me. And so it really is. I will summon up all my faculties in order to narrate to you calmly and patiently as much of the early days of my youth as will suffice to put matters before you in such a way that your keen sharp intellect may grasp everything clearly and distinctly, in bright and living pictures. Just as I am beginning, I hear you laugh and Clara say, "What's all this childish nonsense about!" Well, laugh at me, laugh heartily at me, pray do. But, good God! my hair is standing on end, and I seem to be entreating you to laugh at me in the same sort of frantic despair in which Franz Moor entreated Daniel to laugh him to scorn.(2) But to my story.
(2) See Schiller's Räuber, Act V., Scene I. Franz Moor, seeing that the failure of all his villainous schemes is inevitable, and that his own ruin is close upon him, is at length overwhelmed with the madness of despair, and unburdens the terrors of his conscience to the old servant Daniel, bidding him laugh him to scorn.
Except at dinner we, i.e., I and my brothers and sisters, saw but little of our father all day long. His business no doubt took up most of his time. After our evening meal, which, in accordance with an old custom, was served at seven o'clock, we all went, mother with us, into father's room, and took our places around a round table. My father smoked his pipe, drinking a large glass of beer to it. Often he told us many wonderful stories, and got so excited over them that his pipe always went out; I used then to light it for him with a spill, and this formed my chief amusement. Often, again, he would give us picture-books to look at, whilst he sat silent and motionless in his easy-chair, puffing out such dense clouds of smoke that we were all as it were enveloped in mist. On such evenings mother was very sad; and directly it struck nine she said, "Come, children! off to bed! Come! The 'Sand-man' is come I see." And I always did seem to hear something trampling upstairs with slow heavy steps; that must be the Sand-man. Once in particular I was very much frightened at this dull trampling and knocking; as mother was leading us out of the room I asked her, "O mamma! but who is this nasty Sand-man who always sends us away from papa? What does he look like?" Except at dinner we, i.e., I and my brothers and "There is no Sand-man, my dear child," mother answered; "when I say the Sand-man is come, I only mean that you are sleepy and can't keep your eyes open, as if somebody had put sand in them." This answer of mother's did not satisfy me; nay, in my childish mind the thought clearly unfolded itself that mother denied there was a Sand-man only to prevent us being afraid, why, I always heard him come upstairs. Full of curiosity to learn something more about this Sand-man and what he had to do with us children, I at length asked the old woman who acted as my youngest sister's attendant, what sort of a man he was the Sand-man? "Why, 'thanael, darling, don't you know?" she replied. "Oh! he's a wicked man, who comes to little children when they won't go to bed and throws handfuls of sand in their eyes, so that they jump out of their heads all bloody; and he puts them into a bag and takes them to the half-moon as food for his little ones; and they sit there in the nest and have hooked beaks like owls, and they pick naughty little boys' and girls' eyes out with them." After this I formed in my own mind a horrible picture of the cruel Sand-man. When anything came blundering upstairs at night I trembled with fear and dismay; and all that my mother could get out of me were the stammered words "The Sandman! the Sand-man!" whilst the tears coursed down my cheeks. Then I ran into my bedroom, and the whole night through tormented myself with the terrible apparition of the Sand-man. I was quite old enough to perceive that the old woman's tale about the Sand-man and his little ones' nest in the half-moon couldn't be altogether true; nevertheless the Sand-man continued to be for me a fearful incubus, and I was always seized with terror my blood always ran cold, not only when I heard anybody come up the stairs, but when I heard anybody noisily open my father's room door and go in. Often he stayed away for a long season altogether; then he would come several times in close succession.
This went on for years, without my being able to accustom myself to this fearful apparition, without the image of the horrible Sand-man growing any fainter in my imagination. His intercourse with my father began to occupy my fancy ever more and more; I was restrained from asking my father about him by an unconquerable shyness; but as the years went on the desire waxed stronger and stronger within me to fathom the mystery myself and to see the fabulous Sand-man. He had been the means of disclosing to me the path of the wonderful and the adventurous, which so easily find lodgment in the mind of the child. I liked nothing better than to hear or read horrible stories of goblins, witches, Tom Thumbs, and so on; but always at the head of them all stood the Sand-man, whose picture I scribbled in the most extraordinary and repulsive forms with both chalk and coal everywhere, on the tables, and cupboard doors, and walls. When I was ten years old my mother removed me from the nursery into a little chamber off the corridor not far from my father's room. We still had to withdraw hastily whenever, on the stroke of nine, the mysterious unknown was heard in the house. As I lay in my little chamber I could hear him go into father's room, and soon afterwards I fancied there was a fine and peculiar smelling steam spreading itself through the house. As my curiosity waxed stronger, my resolve to make somehow or other the Sand-man's acquaintance took deeper root. Often when my mother had gone past, I slipped quickly out of my room into the corridor, but I could never see anything, for always before I could reach the place where I could get sight of him, the Sand-man was well inside the door. At last, unable to resist the impulse any longer, I determined to conceal myself in father's room and there wait for the Sand-man.
One evening I perceived from my father's silence and mother's sadness that the Sand-man would come; accordingly, pleading that I was excessively tired, I left the room before nine o'clock and concealed myself in a hiding-place close beside the door. The street door creaked, and slow, heavy, echoing steps crossed the passage towards the stairs. Mother hurried past me with my brothers and sisters. Softly softly I opened father's room door. He sat as usual, silent and motionless, with his back towards it; he did not hear me; and in a moment I was in and behind a curtain drawn before my father's open wardrobe, which stood just inside the room. Nearer and nearer and nearer came the echoing footsteps. There was a strange coughing and shuffling and mumbling outside. My heart beat with expectation and fear. A quick step now close, close beside the door, a noisy rattle of the handle, and the door flies open with a bang. Recovering my courage with an effort, I take a cautious peep out. In the middle of the room in front of my father stands the Sand-man, the bright light of the lamp falling full upon his face. The Sand-man, the terrible Sand-man, is the old advocate Coppelius who often comes to dine with us.
But the most hideous figure could not have
awakened greater trepidation in my heart than this Coppelius
did. Picture to yourself a large broad-shouldered man, with
an immensely big head, a face the colour of yellow-ochre,
grey bushy eyebrows, from beneath which two piercing,
greenish, cat-like eyes glittered, and a prominent Roman
nose hanging over his upper lip. His distorted mouth was
often screwed up into a malicious smile; then two dark-red
spots appeared on his cheeks, and a strange hissing noise
proceeded from between his tightly clenched teeth. He always
wore an ash-grey coat of an old-fashioned cut, a waistcoat
of the same, and nether
As soon as I saw this Coppelius, therefore, the fearful and hideous thought arose in my mind that he, and he alone, must be the Sand-man; but I no longer conceived of the Sand-man as the bugbear in the old nurse's fable, who fetched children's eyes and took them to the half-moon as food for his little ones no I but as an ugly spectre-like fiend bringing trouble and misery and ruin, both temporal and everlasting, everywhere wherever he appeared.
I was spell-bound on the spot. At the risk of being discovered, and, as I well enough knew, of being severely punished, I remained as I was, with my head thrust through the curtains listening. My father received Coppelius in a ceremonious manner. "Come, to work!" cried the latter, in a hoarse snarling voice, throwing off his coat. Gloomily and silently my father took off his dressing-gown, and both put on long black smock-frocks. Where they took them from I forgot to notice. Father opened the folding-doors of a cupboard in the wall; but I saw that what I had so long taken to be a cupboard was really a dark recess, in which was a little hearth. Coppelius approached it, and a blue flame crackled upwards from it. Round about were all kinds of strange utensils. Good God! as my old father bent down over the fire how different he looked! His gentle and venerable features seemed to be drawn up by some dreadful convulsive pain into an ugly, repulsive Satanic mask. He looked like Coppelius. Coppelius plied the red-hot tongs and drew bright glowing masses out of the thick smoke and began assiduously to hammer them. I fancied that there were men's faces visible round about, but without eyes, having ghastly deep black holes where the eyes should have been. "Eyes here! Eyes here!" cried Coppelius, in a hollow sepulchral voice. My blood ran cold with horror; I screamed and tumbled out of my hiding-place into the floor. Coppelius immediately seized upon me. "You little brute! You little brute!" he bleated, grinding his teeth. Then, snatching me up, he threw me on the hearth, so that the flames began to singe my hair. "Now we've got eyes eyes a beautiful pair of children's eyes," he whispered, and, thrusting his hands into the flames he took out some red-hot grains and was about to strew t~em into my eyes. Then my father clasped his hands and entreated him, saying, "Master, master, let my Nathanael keep his eyes oh! do let him keep them." Coppelius laughed shrilly and replied, "Well then, the boy may keep his eyes and whine and pule his way through the world; but we will now at any rate observe the mechanism of the hand and the foot." And therewith he roughly laid hold upon me, so that my joints cracked, and twisted my hands and my feet, pulling them now this way, and now that, "That's not quite right altogether! It's better as it was! the old fellow knew what he was about." Thus lisped and hissed Coppelius; but all around me grew black and dark; a sudden convulsive pain shot through all my nerves and bones I knew nothing more.
I felt a soft warm breath fanning my cheek; I awakened as if out of the sleep of death; my mother was bending over me. "Is the Sand-man still there?" I stammered. "No, my dear child; he's been gone a long, long time; he'll not hurt you." Thus spoke my mother, as she kissed her recovered darling and pressed him to her heart. But why should I tire you, my dear Lothair? why do I dwell at such length on these details, when there's so much remains to be said? Enough I was detected in my eavesdropping, and roughly handled by Coppelius. Fear and terror had brought on a violent fever, of which I lay ill several weeks. "Is the Sand-man still there?" these were the first words I uttered on coming to myself again, the first sign of my recovery, of my safety. Thus, you see, I have only to relate to you the most terrible moment of my youth for you to thoroughly understand that it must not be ascribed to the weakness of my eyesight if all that I see is colourless, but to the fact that a mysterious destiny has hung a dark veil of clouds about my life, which I shall perhaps only break through when I die.
Coppelius did not show himself again; it was reported he had left the town.
It was about a year later when, in pursuance of the old unchanged custom, we sat around the round table in the evening. Father was in very good spirits, and was telling us amusing tales about his youthful travels. As it was striking nine we all at once heard the street door creak on its hinges, and slow ponderous steps echoed across the passage and up the stairs. "That is Coppelius," said my mother, turning pale. "Yes, it is Coppelius," replied my father in a faint broken voice. The tears started from my mother's eyes. "But, father, father," she cried, "must it be so?" "This is the last time," he replied; "this is the last time he will come to me, I promise you. Go now, go and take the children. Go, go to bed good-night."
As for me, I felt as if I were converted into
cold, heavy stone; I could not get my breath. As I stood
there immovable my mother seized me by the arm. "Come,
Nathanael! do come along!" I suffered myself to be led
away; I went into my room. "Be a good boy and keep
quiet," mother called after me; "get into bed and
go to sleep." But, tortured by indescribable fear and
uneasiness, I could not close my eyes. That hateful, hideous
Coppelius stood before me with his glittering eyes, smiling
maliciously down upon me; in vain did I strive to banish the
image. Somewhere about midnight there was a terrific crack,
as if a cannon were being fired off. The whole house shook;
something went rustling and clattering past my door; the
house door was pulled to with a bang. "That is
Coppelius," I cried, terror-struck, and leapt out of
bed. Then I heard a wild heart Our neighbours had been awakened by the
explosion; the affair got talked about, and came before the
magisterial authorities, who wished to cite Coppelius to
clear himself. But he had disappeared from the place,
leaving no traces behind him.
Now when I tell you, my dear friend, that the
weather-glass hawker I spoke of was the villain Coppelius,
you will not blame me for seeing impending mischief in his
inauspicious reappearance. He was differently dressed; but
Coppelius's figure and features are too deeply impressed
upon my mind for me to be capable of making a mistake in the
matter. Moreover, he has not even changed his name. He
proclaims himself here, I learn, to be a Piedmontese
mechanician, and styles himself Giuseppe Coppola.
I am resolved to enter the lists against him
and revenge my father's death, let the consequences be what
they may.
Don't say a word to mother about the
reappearance of this odious monster. Give my love to my
darling Clara; I will write to her when I am in a somewhat
calmer frame of mind. Adieu, &c.
You are right, you have not written to me for
a very long time, but nevertheless I believe that I still
retain a place in your mind and thoughts. It is a proof that
you were thinking a good deal about me when you were sending
off your last letter to brother Lothair, for instead of
directing it to him you directed it to me. With joy I tore
open the envelope, and did not perceive the mistake until I
read the words, "Oh! my dear, dear Lothair." Now I
know I ought not to have read any more of the letter, but
ought to have given it to my brother. But as you have so
often in innocent raillery made it a sort of reproach
against me that I possessed such a calm, and, for a woman,
cool-headed temperament that I should be like the woman we
read of if the house was threatening to tumble down, I
should, before hastily fleeing, stop to smooth down a
crumple in the window- I will frankly confess, it seems to me that
all that was fearsome and terrible of which you speak,
existed only in your own self, and that the real true outer
world had but little to do with it. I can quite admit that
old Coppelius may have been highly obnoxious to you
children, but your real detestation of him arose from the
fact that he hated children.
Naturally enough the gruesome Sand-man of the
old nurse's story was associated in your childish mind with
old Coppelius, who, even though you had not believed in the
Sand-man, would have been to you a ghostly bugbear,
especially dangerous to children. His mysterious labours
along with your father at night-time were, I daresay,
nothing more than secret experiments in alchemy, with which
your mother could not be over well pleased, owing to the
large sums of money that most likely were thrown away upon
them; and besides, your father, his mind full of the
deceptive striving after higher knowledge, may probably have
become rather indifferent to his family, as so often happens
in the case of such experimentalists. So also it is equally
probable that your father brought about his death by his own
imprudence, and that Coppelius is not to blame for it. I
must tell you that yesterday I asked our experienced
neighbour, the chemist, whether in experiments of this kind
an explosion could take place which would have a momentarily
fatal effect. He said, "Oh, certainly!" and
described to me in his prolix and circumstantial way how it
could be occasioned, mentioning at the same time so many
strange and funny words that I could not remember them at
all. Now I know you will be angry at your Clara, and will
say, "Of the Mysterious which often clasps man in its
invisible arms there's not a ray can find its way into this
cold heart. She sees only the varied surface of the things
of the world, and, like the little child, is pleased with
the golden glittering fruit, at the kernel of which lies the
fatal poison."
Oh! my beloved Nathanael, do you believe then
that the intuitive prescience of a dark power working within
us to our own ruin cannot exist also in minds which are
cheerful, natural, free from care? But please forgive me
that I, a simple girl, presume in my way to indicate to you
what I really think of such an inward strife. After all, I
should not find the proper words, and you would only laugh
at me, not because my thoughts were stupid, but because I
was so foolish as to attempt to tell them to you.
If there is a dark and hostile power which
traitorously fixes a thread in our hearts in order that,
laying hold of it and drawing us by means of it along a
dangerous road to ruin, which otherwise we should not have
trod if, I say, there is such a power, it must assume
within us a form like ourselves, nay, it must be ourselves;
for only in that way can we believe in it, and only so
understood do we yield to it so far that it is able to
accomplish its secret purpose. So long as we have sufficient
firmness, fortified by cheerfulness, to always acknowledge
foreign hostile influences for what they really are, whilst
we quietly pursue the path pointed out to us by both
inclination and calling, then this mysterious power perishes in
its futile struggles to attain the form which is to be the reflected
image of ourselves. It is also certain, Lothair adds, that
if we have once voluntarily given ourselves up to this dark
physical power, it often reproduces within us the strange
forms which the outer world throws in our way, so that thus
it is we ourselves who engender within ourselves the spirit
which by some remarkable delusion we imagine to speak in
that outer form. It is the phantom of our own self whose
intimate relationship with, and whose powerful influence
upon our soul either plunges us into hell or elevates us.to
heaven. Thus you will see, my beloved Nathanael, that I and
brother Lothair have well talked over the subject of dark
powers and forces; and now, after I have with some
difficulty written down the principal results of our
discussion, they seem to me to contain many really profound
thoughts. Lothair's last words, however, I don't quite
understand altogether; I only dimly guess what he means; and
yet I cannot help thinking it is all very true. I beg you,
dear, strive to forget the ugly advocate Coppelius as well
as the weather-glass hawker Giuseppe Coppola. Try and
convince yourself that these foreign influences can have no
power over you, that it is only the belief in their hostile
power which can in reality make them dangerous to you. If
every line of your letter did not betray the violent
excitement of your mind, and if I did not sympathise with
your condition from the bottom of my heart, I could in truth
jest about the advocate Sand-man and weather-glass hawker
Coppelius. Pluck up your spirits! Be cheerful! I have
resolved to appear to you as your guardian-angel if that
ugly man Coppola should dare take it into his head to bother
you in your dreams, and drive him away with a good hearty
laugh. I'm not afraid of him and his nasty hands, not the
least little bit; I won't let him either as advocate spoil
any dainty tit-bit I've taken, or as Sand-man rob me of my
eyes.
My darling, darling
Nathanael, I am very sorry that Clara opened and read my
last letter to you; of course the mistake is to be
attributed to my own absence of mind. She has written me a
very deep philosophical letter, proving conclusively that
Coppelius and Coppola only exist in my own mind and are
phantoms of my own self, which will at once be dissipated,
as soon as I look upon them in that light. In very truth one
can hardly believe that the mind which so often sparkles in
those bright, beautifully smiling, childlike eyes of hers
like a sweet lovely dream could draw such subtle and
scholastic distinctions. She also mentions your name. You
have been talking about me. I suppose you have been giving
her lectures, since she sifts and refines everything so
acutely. But enough of this! I must now tell you it is most
certain that the weather-glass hawker Giuseppe Coppola is
not the advocate Coppelius. I am attending the lectures of
our recently appointed Professor of Physics, who, like the
distinguished naturalist,(3) is called Spalanzani, and is of
Italian origin. He has known Coppola for many years; and it
is also easy to tell from his accent that he really is a
Piedmontese. Coppelius was a German, though no honest
German, I fancy. Nevertheless I am not quite satisfied. You
and Clara will perhaps take me for a gloomy dreamer, but
nohow can I get rid of the impression which Coppelius's
cursed face made upon me. I am glad to learn from Spalanzani
that he has left the town. This Professor Spalanzani is a
very queer fish. He is a little fat man, with prominent
cheek-bones, thin nose, projecting lips, and small piercing
eyes. You cannot get a better picture of him than by turning
over one of the Berlin pocket-almanacs(4) and looking at
Cagliostro's(5) portrait engraved by Chodowiecki;(6)
Spalanzani looks just like him.
(3) Lazaro
Spallanzani, a celebrated anatomist and naturalist
(1729-1799), filled for several years the chair of Natural
History at Pavia, and travelled extensively for scientific
purposes in Italy, Turkey, Sicily, Switzerland,
&c. (4) Or Almanacs of
the Muses, as they were also sometimes called, were
periodical, mostly yearly publications, containing all kinds
of literary effusions; mostly, however, lyrical. They
originated in the eighteenth century. Schiller, A. W. and F.
Schlegel, Tieck, and Chamisso, amongst others, conducted
undertakings of this
nature. (5) Joseph Balsamo,
a Sicilian by birth, calling himself count Cagliostro, one
of the greatest impostors of modern times, lived during the
latter part of the eighteenth century. See Carlyle's
"Miscellanies" for an account of his life and
character. (6) Daniel Nikolas
Chodowiecki, painter and engraver, of Polish descent, was
born at Dantzic in 1726. For some years he was so popular an
artist that few books were published in Prussia without
plates or vignettes by him. The catalogue of his works is
said to include 3000 items. Once lately, as I went up the steps to his
house, I perceived that beside the curtain which generally
covered a glass door there was a small chink. What it was
that excited my curiosity I cannot explain; but I looked
through. In the room I saw a female, tall, very slender, but
of perfect proportions, and splendidly dressed, sitting at a
little table, on which she had placed both her arms, her
hands being folded together. She sat opposite the door, so
that I could easily see her angelically beautiful face. She
did not appear to notice me, and there was moreover a
strangely fixed look about her eyes, I might almost say they
appeared as if they had no power of vision; I thought she
was sleeping with her eyes open. I felt quite uncomfortable,
and so I slipped away quietly into the Professor's
lecture-room, which was close at hand. Afterwards I learnt
that the figure which I had seen was Spalanzani's daughter,
Olimpia, whom he keeps locked in a most wicked and
unaccountable way, and no man is ever allowed to come near
her. Perhaps, however, there is after all something peculiar
about her; perhaps she's an idiot or something of that sort.
But why am I telling you all this? I could have told you it
all better and more in detail when I see you. For in a
fortnight I shall be amongst you. I must see my dear sweet
angel, my Clara, again. Then the little bit of ill-temper,
which, I must confess, took possession of me after her
fearfully sensible letter, will be blown away. And that is
the reason why I am not writing to her as well to-day. With
all best wishes, &c.
Nothing more strange and extraordinary can be
imagined, gracious reader, than what happened to my poor
friend, the young student Nathanael, and which I have
undertaken to relate to you. Have you ever lived to
experience anything that completely took possession of your
heart and mind and thoughts to the utter exclusion of
everything else? All was seething and boiling within you;
your blood, heated to fever pitch, leapt through your veins
and inflamed your cheeks. Your gaze was so peculiar, as if
seeking to grasp in empty space forms not seen of any other
eye, and all your words ended in sighs betokening some
mystery. Then your friends asked you, "What is the
matter with you, my dear friend? What do you see?"
And, wishing to describe the inner pictures in all their
vivid colours, with their lights and their shades, you in
vain struggled to find words with which to express yourself.
But you felt as if you must gather up all the events that
had happened, wonderful, splendid, terrible, jocose, and
awful, in the very first word, so that the whole might be
revealed by a single electric discharge, so to speak. Yet
every word and all that partook of the nature of
communication by intelligible sounds seemed to be
colourless, cold, and dead. Then you try and try again, and
stutter and stammer, whilst your friends' prosy questions
strike like icy winds upon your heart's hot fire until they
extinguish it. But if, like a bold painter, you had first
sketched in a few audacious strokes the outline of the
picture you had in your soul, you would then easily have
been able to deepen and intensify the colours one after the
other, until the varied throng of living figures carried
your friends away, and they, like you, saw themselves in the
midst of the scene that had proceeded out of your own soul.
Strictly speaking, indulgent reader, I must
indeed confess to you, nobody has asked me for the history
of young Nathanael; but you are very well aware that I
belong to that remarkable class of authors who, when they
are bearing anything about in their minds in the manner I
have just described, feel as if everybody who comes near
them, and also the whole world to boot, were asking,
"Oh! what is it? Oh! do tell us, my good sir?"
Hence I was most powerfully impelled to narrate to you
Nathanael's ominous life. My soul was full of the elements
of wonder and extraordinary peculiarity in it; but, for this
very reason, and because it was necessary in the very
beginning to dispose you, indulgent reader, to bear with
what is fantastic and that is not a little thing I racked
my brain to find a way of commencing the story in a
significant and original manner, calculated to arrest your
attention. To begin with "Once upon a time," the
best beginning for a story, seemed to me too tame; with
"In the small country town S lived," rather
better, at any rate allowing plenty of room to work up to
the climax; or to plunge at once in medias res,
"'Go to the devil!' cried the student Nathanael, his
eyes blazing wildly with rage and fear, when the
weather-glass hawker Giuseppe Coppola" well, that is
what I really had written, when I thought I detected
something of the ridiculous in Nathanael's wild glance; and
the history is anything but laughable. I could not find any
words which seemed fitted to reflect in even the feeblest
degree the brightness of the colours of my mental vision. I
determined not to begin at all. So I pray you, gracious
reader, accept the three letters which my friend Lothair has
been so kind as to communicate to me as the outline of the
picture, into which I will endeavour to introduce more and
more colour as I proceed with my narrative. Perhaps, like a
good portrait-painter, I may succeed in depicting more than
one figure in such wise that you will recognise it as a good
likeness without being acquainted with the original, and
feel as if you had very often seen the original with your
own bodily eyes. Perhaps, too, you will then believe that
nothing is more wonderful, nothing more fantastic than real
life, and that all that a writer can do is to present it as
a dark reflection from a dim cut mirror.
In order to make the very commencement more
intelligible, it is necessary to add to the letters that,
soon after the death of Nathanael's father, Clara and
Lothair, the children of a distant relative, who had
likewise died, leaving them orphans, were taken by
Nathanael's mother into her own house. Clara and Nathanael
conceived a warm affection for each other, against which not
the slightest objection in the world could be urged. When
therefore Nathanael left home to prosecute his studies in
G, they were betrothed. It is from G that his last
letter is written, where he is attending the lectures of
Spalanzani, the distinguished Professor of Physics.
I might now proceed comfortably with my
narration, did not at this moment Clara's image rise up so
vividly before my eyes that I cannot turn them away from it,
just as I never could when she looked upon me and smiled so
sweetly. Nowhere would she have passed for beautiful that
was the unanimous opinion of all who professed to have any
technical knowledge of beauty. But whilst architects praised
the pure proportions of her figure and form, painters
averred that her neck, shoulders, and bosom were almost too
chastely modelled, and yet, on the other hand, one and all
were in love with her glorious Magdalene hair, and talked a
good deal of nonsense about Battoni-like(7) colouring. One
of them, a veritable romanticist, strangely enough likened
her eyes to a lake by Ruisdael,(8) in which is reflected the
pure azure of the cloudless sky, the beauty of woods and
flowers, and all the bright and varied life of a living
landscape. Poets and musicians went still further and said,
"What's all this talk about seas and reflections? How
can we look upon the girl without feeling that wonderful
heavenly songs and melodies beam upon us from her eyes,
penetrating deep down into our hearts, till all becomes
awake and throbbing with emotion? And if we cannot sing
anything at all passable then, why, we are not worth much;
and this we can also plainly read in the rare smile which
flits around her lips when we have the hardihood to squeak
out something in her presence which we pretend to call
singing, in spite of the fact that it is nothing more than a
few single notes confusedly linked together." And it
really was so. Clara had the powerful fancy of a bright,
innocent, unaffected child, a woman's deep and sympathetic
heart, and an understanding clear, sharp, and
discriminating. Dreamers and visionaries had but a bad time
of it with her; for without saying very much she was not by
nature of a talkative disposition she plainly asked, by her
calm steady look, and rare ironical smile, "How can you
imagine, my dear friends, that I can take these fleeting
shadowy images for true living and breathing forms?"
For this reason many found fault with her as being cold,
prosaic, and devoid of feeling; others, however, who had
reached a clearer and deeper conception of life, were
extremely fond of the intelligent, childlike, large-hearted
girl. But none had such an affection for her as Nathanael,
who was a zealous and cheerful cultivator of the fields of
science and art. Clara clung to her lover with all her
heart; the first clouds she encountered in life were when he
had to separate from her. With what delight did she fly into
his arms when, as he had promised in his last letter to
Lothair, he really came back to his native town and entered
his mother's room! And as Nathanael had foreseen, the moment
he saw Clara again he no longer thought about either the
advocate Coppelius or her sensible letter; his ill-humour
had quite disappeared.
(7) Pompeo Girolamo
Batoni, an Italian painter of the eighteenth century, whose
works were at one time greatly
over-estimated. (8) Jakob Ruysdael
(c. 1625-1682), a painter of Haarlem, in Holland. His
favourite subjects were remote farms, lonely stagnant water,
deep~haded woods with marshy paths, the sea-coast subjects
of a dark melancholy kind. His sea-pieces are greatly
admired. Nevertheless Nathanael was right when he told
his friend Lothair that the repulsive vendor of
weather-glasses, Coppola, had exercised a fatal and
disturbing influence upon his life. It was quite patent to
all; for even during the first Few days he showed that he
was completely and entirely changed. He gave himself up to
gloomy reveries, and moreover acted so strangely; they had
never observed anything at all like it in him before.
Everything, even his own life, was to him but dreams and
presentiments. His constant theme was that every man who
delusively imagined himself to be free was merely the
plaything of the cruel sport of mysterious powers, and it
was vain for man to resist them; he must humbly submit to
whatever destiny had decreed for him. He went so far as to
maintain that it was foolish to believe that a man could do
anything in art or science of his own accord; for the
inspiration in which alone any true artistic work could be
done did not proceed from the spirit within outwards, but
was the result of the operation directed inwards of some
Higher Principle existing without and beyond ourselves.
This mystic extravagance was in the highest
degree repugnant to Clara's clear intelligent mind, but it
seemed vain to enter upon any attempt at refutation. Yet
when Nathanael went on to prove that Coppelius was the Evil
Principle which had entered into him and taken possession of
him at the time he was listening behind the curtain, and
that this hateful demon would in some terrible way ruin
their happiness, then Clara grew grave and said, "Yes,
Nathanael. You are right; Coppelius is an Evil Principle; he
can do dreadful things, as bad as could a Satanic power
which should assume a living physical form, but only only
if you do not banish him from your mind and thoughts. So
long as you believe in him he exists and is at work; your
belief in him is his only power." Whereupon Nathanael,
quite angry because Clara would only grant the existence of
the demon in his own mind, began to dilate at large upon the
whole mystic doctrine of devils and awful powers, but Clara
abruptly broke off the theme by making, to Nathanael's very
great disgust, some quite commonplace remark. Such deep
mysteries are sealed books to cold, unsusceptible
characters, he thought, without being clearly conscious to
himself that he counted Clara amongst these inferior
natures, and accordingly he did not remit his efforts to
initiate her into these mysteries. In the morning, when she
was helping to prepare breakfast, he would take his stand
beside her, and read all sorts of mystic books to her, until
she begged him "But, my dear Nathanael, I shall have
to scold you as the Evil Principle which exercises a fatal
influence upon my coffee. For if I do as you wish, and let
things go their own way, and look into your eyes whilst you
read, the coffee will all boil over into the fire, and you
will none of you get any breakfast." Then Nathanael
hastily banged the book to and ran away in great displeasure
to his own room.
Formerly he had possessed a peculiar talent
for writing pleasing, sparkling tales, which Clara took the
greatest delight in listening to; but now his productions
were gloomy, unintelligible, and wanting in form, so that,
although Clara out of forbearance towards him did not say
so, he nevertheless felt how very little interest she took
in them. There was nothing that Clara disliked so much as
what was tedious; at such times her intellectual sleepiness
was not to be overcome; it was betrayed both in her glances
and in her words. Nathanael's effusions were, in truth,
exceedingly tedious. His ill-humour at Clara's cold prosaic
temperament continued to increase; Clara could not conceal
her distaste of his dark, gloomy, wearying mysticism; and
thus both began to be more and more estranged from each
other without exactly being aware of it themselves. The
image of the ugly Coppelius had, as Nathanael was obliged to
confess to himself, faded considerably in bis fancy, and it
often cost him great pains to present him in vivid colours
in his literary efforts, in which he played the part of the
ghoul of Destiny. At length it entered into his head to make
his dismal presentiment that Coppelius would ruin his
happiness the subject of a poem. He made himself and Clara,
united by true love, the central figures, but represented a
black hand as being from time to time thrust into their life
and plucking out a joy that had blossomed for them. At
length, as they were standing at the altar, the terrible
Coppelius appeared and touched Clara's lovely eyes, which
leapt into Nathanael's own bosom, burning and hissing like
bloody sparks. Then Coppelius laid hold upon him, and hurled
him into a blazing circle of fire, which spun round with the
speed of a whirlwind, and, storming and blustering, dashed
away with him. The fearful noise it made was like a furious
hurricane lashing the foaming sea-waves until they rise up
like black, white-headed giants in the midst of the raging
struggle. But through the midst of the savage fury of the
tempest he heard Clara's voice calling, "Can you not
see me, dear? Coppelius has deceived you; they were not my
eyes which burned so in your bosom; they were fiery drops of
your own heart's blood. Look at me, I have got my own eyes
still." Nathanael thought, "Yes, that is Clara,
and I am hers for ever." Then this thought laid a
powerful grasp upon the fiery circle so that it stood still,
and the riotous turmoil died away rumbling down a dark
abyss. Nathanael looked into Clara's eyes; but it was death
whose gaze rested so kindly upon him.
Whilst Nathanael was writing this work he was
very quiet and sober-minded; he filed and polished every
line, and as he had chosen to submit himself to the
limitations of metre, he did not rest until all was pure and
musical. When, however, he had at length finished it and
read it aloud to himself he was seized with horror and awful
dread, and he screamed, "Whose hideous voice is
this?" But he soon came to see in it again nothing
beyond a very successful poem, and he confidently believed
it would enkindle Clara's cold temperament, though to what
end she should be thus aroused was not quite clear to his
own mind, nor yet what would be the real purpose served by
tormenting her with these dreadful pictures, which
prophesied a terrible and ruinous end to her affection.
Nathanael and Clara sat in his mother's
little garden. Clara was bright and cheerful, since for
three entire days her lover, who had been busy writing his
poem, had not teased her with his dreams or forebodings
Nathanael, too, spoke in a gay and vivacious way of things
of merry import, as he formerly used to do, so that Clara
said, "Ah! now I have you again. We have driven away
that ugly Coppelius, you see." Then it suddenly
occurred to him that he had got the poem in his pocket which
he wished to read to her. He at once took out the manuscript
and began to read. Clara, anticipating something tedious as
usual, prepared to submit to the infliction, and calmly
resumed her knitting. But as the sombre clouds rose up
darker and darker she let her knitting fall on her lap and
sat with her eyes fixed in a set stare upon Nathanael's
face.
He was quite carried away by his own work,
the fire of enthusiasm coloured his cheeks a deep red, and
tears started from his eyes. At length he concluded,
groaning and showing great lassitude; grasping Clara's hand,
he sighed as if he were being utterly melted in inconsolable
grief, "Oh! Clara! Clara!" She drew him softly to
her heart and said in a low but very grave and impressive
tone, "Nathanael, my darling Nathanael, throw that
foolish, senseless, stupid thing into the fire." Then
Nathanael leapt indignantly to his feet, crying, as he
pushed Clara from him, "You damned lifeless
automaton!" and rushed away. Clara was cut to the
heart, and wept bitterly. "Oh! he has never loved me,
for he does not understand me," she sobbed.
Lothair entered the arbour. Clara was obliged
to tell him all that had taken place. He was passionately
fond of his sister; and every word of her complaint fell
like a spark upon his heart, so that the displeasure which
he had long entertained against his dreamy friend Nathanael
was kindled into furious anger. He hastened to find
Nathanael, and upbraided him in harsh words for his
irrational behaviour towards his beloved sister. The fiery
Nathanael answered him in the same style. "A fantastic,
crack-brained fool," was retaliated with, "A
miserable, common, everyday sort of fellow." A meeting
was the inevitable consequence. They agreed to meet on the
following morning behind the garden-wall, and fight,
according to the custom of the students of the place, with
sharp rapiers. They went about silent and gloomy; Clara had
both heard and seen the violent quarrel, and also observed
the fencing master bring the rapiers in the dusk of the
evening. She had a presentiment of what was to happen. They
both appeared at the appointed place wrapped up in the same
gloomy silence, and threw off their coats. Their eyes
flaming with the bloodthirsty light of pugnacity, they were
about to begin their contest when Clara burst through the
garden door. Sobbing, she screamed, "You savage,
terrible men! Cut me down before you attack each other; for
how can I live when my lover has slain my brother, or my
brother slain my lover?" Lothair let his weapon fall
and gazed silently upon the ground, whilst Nathanael's heart
was rent with sorrow, and all the affection which he had
felt for his lovely Clara in the happiest days of her golden
youth was awakened within him. His murderous weapon, too,
fell from his hand; he threw himself at Clara's feet.
"Oh! can you ever forgive me, my only, my dearly loved
Clara? Can you, my dear brother Lothair, also forgive
me?" Lothair was touched by his friend's great
distress; the three young people embraced each other amidst
endless tears, and swore never again to break their bond of
love and fidelity.
Nathanael felt as if a heavy burden that had
been weighing him down to the earth was now rolled from off
him, nay, as if by offering resistance to the dark power
which had possessed him, he had rescued his own self from
the ruin which had threatened him. Three happy days he now
spent amidst the loved ones, and then returned to G,
where he had still a year to stay before settling down in
his native town for life.
Everything having reference to Coppelius had
been concealed from the mother, for they knew she could not
think of him without horror, since she as well as Nathanael
believed him to be guilty of causing her husband's death.
When Nathanael came to the house where he
lived he was greatly astonished to find it burnt down to the
ground, so that nothing but the bare outer walls were left
standing amidst a heap of ruins. Although the fire had
broken out in the laboratory of the chemist who lived on the
ground-floor, and had therefore spread upwards, some of
Nathanael's bold, active friends had succeeded in time in
forcing a way into his room in the upper storey and saving
his books and manuscripts and instruments. They had carried
them all uninjured into another house, where they engaged a
room for him; this he now at once took possession of. That
he lived opposite Professor Spalanzani did not strike him
particularly, nor did it occur to him as anything more
singular that he could, as he observed, by looking out of
his window, see straight into the room where Olimpia often
sat alone. Her figure he could plainly distinguish, although
her features were uncertain and confused. It did at length
occur to him, however, that she remained for hours together
in the same position in which he had first discovered her
through the glass door, sitting at a little table without
any occupation whatever, and it was evident that she was
constantly gazing across in his direction. He could not but
confess to himself that he had never seen a finer figure.
However, with Clara mistress of his heart, he remained
perfectly unaffected by Olimpia's stiffness and apathy; and
it was only occasionally that he sent a fugitive glance over
his compendium across to her that was all.
He was writing to Clara; a light tap came at
the door. At his summons to "Come in," Coppola's
repulsive face appeared peeping in. Nathanael felt his heart
beat with trepidation; but, recollecting what Spalanzani had
told him about his fellow-countryman Coppola, and what he
had himself so faithfully promised his beloved in respect to
the Sand-man Coppelius, he was ashamed at himself for this
childish fear of spectres. Accordingly, he controlled
himself with an effort, and said, as quietly and as calmly
as he possibly could, "I don't want to buy any
weather-glasses, my good friend; you had better go
elsewhere." Then Coppola came right into the room, and
said in a hoarse voice, screwing up his wide mouth into a
hideous smile, whilst his little eyes flashed keenly from
beneath his long grey eyelashes, "What! Nee
weather-gless? Nee weather-gless? 've got foine oyes as
well foine oyes!" Affrighted, Nathanael cried,
"You stupid man, how can you have
eyes? eyes eyes?" But Coppola, laying aside his
weather-glasses, thrust his hands into his big coat-pockets
and brought out several spy-glasses and spectacles, and put
them on the table. "Theer! Theer! Spect'cles!
Spect'cles to put 'n nose! Them's my oyes foine oyes."
And he continued to produce more and more spectacles from
his pockets until the table began to gleam and flash all
over. Thousands of eyes were looking and blinking
convulsively, and staring up at Nathanael; he could not
avert his gaze from the table. Coppola went on heaping up
his spectacles, whilst wilder and ever wilder burning
flashes crossed through and through each other and darted
their blood-red rays into Nathanael's breast. Quite
overcome, and frantic with terror, he shouted, "Stop!
stop! you terrible man!" and he seized Coppola by the
arm, which he had again thrust into his pocket in order to
bring out still more spectacles, although the whole table
was covered all over with them. With a harsh disagreeable
laugh Coppola gently freed himself; and with the words
"So! went none! Well, here foine gless!" he swept
all his spectacles together, and put them back into his
coat-pockets, whilst from a breastpocket he produced a great
number of larger and smaller perspectives. As soon as the
spectacles were gone Nathanael recovered his equanimity
again; and, bending his thoughts upon Clara, he clearly
discerned that the gruesome incubus had proceeded only from
himself, as also that Coppola was a right honest mechanician
and optician, and far from being Coppelius's dreaded double
and ghost. And then, besides, none of the glasses which
Coppola now placed on the table had anything at all singular
about them, at least nothing so weird as the spectacles; so,
in order to square accounts with himself, Nathanael now
really determined to buy something of the man. He took up a
small, very beautifully cut pocket perspective, and by way
of proving it looked through the window. Never before in his
life had he had a glass in his hands that brought out things
so clearly and sharply and distinctly. Involuntarily he
directed the glass upon Spalanzani's room; Olimpia sat at
the little table as usual, her arms laid upon it and her
hands folded. Now he saw for the first time the regular and
exquisite beauty of her features. The eyes, however, seemed
to him to have a singular look of fixity and Now he sat down to finish his letter to
Clara; but a glance through the window showed him Olimpia
still in her former posture. Urged by an irresistible
impulse he jumped up and seized Coppola's perspective; nor
could he tear himself away from the fascinating Olimpia
until his friend and brother Siegmund called for him to go
to Professor Spalanzani's lecture. The curtains before the
door of the all-important room were closely drawn, so that
he could not see Olimpia Nor could he even see her from his
own room during the two following days, notwithstanding that
he scarcely ever left his window, and maintained a scarce
interrupted watch through Coppola's perspective upon her
room. On the third day curtains even were drawn across the
window. Plunged into the depths of despair, goaded by
longing and ardent desire, he hurried outside the walls of
the town. Olimpia's image hovered about his path in the air
and stepped forth out of the bushes, and peeped up at him
with large and lustrous eyes from the bright surface of the
brook. Clara's image was completely faded from his mind; he
had no thoughts except for Olimpia He uttered his
love-plaints aloud and in a lachrymose tone, "Oh! my
glorious, noble star of love, have you only risen to vanish
again, and leave me in the darkness and hopelessness of
night?"
Returning home, he became aware that there
was a good deal of noisy bustle going on in Spalanzani's
house. All the doors stood wide open; men were taking in all
kinds of gear and furniture; the windows of the first floor
were all lifted off their hinges; busy maid-servants with
immense hair-brooms were driving backwards and forwards
dusting and sweeping, whilst within could be heard the
knocking and hammering of carpenters and upholsterers.
Utterly astonished, Nathanael stood still in the street;
then Siegmund joined him, laughing, and said, "Well,
what do you say to our old Spalanzani?" Nathanael
assured him that he could not say anything, since he knew
not what it all meant; to his great astonishment, he could
hear, however, that they were turning the quiet gloomy house
almost inside out with their dusting and cleaning and making
of alterations. Then he learned from Siegmund that
Spalanzani intended giving a great concert and ball on the
following day, and that half the university was invited. It
was generally reported that Spalanzani was going to let his
daughter Olimpia, whom he had so long so jealously guarded
from every eye, make her first appearance.
Nathanael received an invitation. At the
appointed hour, when the carriages were rolling up and the
lights were gleaming brightly in the decorated halls, he
went across to the Professor's, his heart beating high with
expectation. The company was both numerous and brilliant.
Olimpia was richly and tastefully dressed. One could not but
admire her figure and the regular beauty of her features.
The striking inward curve of her back, as well as the
wasp-like smallness of her waist, appeared to be the result
of too-tight lacing. There was something stiff and measured
in her gait and bearing that made an unfavourable impression
upon many; it was ascribed to the constraint imposed upon
her by the company. The concert began. Olimpia played on the
piano with great skill; and sang as skilfully an aria di
bravura, in a voice which was, if anything, almost too
sharp, but clear as glass bells. Nathanael was transported
with delight; he stood in the background farthest from her,
and owing to the blinding lights could not quite distinguish
her features. So, without being observed, he took Coppola's
glass out of his pocket, and directed it upon the beautiful
Olimpia. Oh! then he perceived how her yearning eyes sought
him, how every note only reached its full purity in the
loving glance which penetrated to and inflamed his heart.
Her artificial roulades seemed to him to be the
exultant cry towards heaven of the soul refined by love; and
when at last, after the cadenza, the long trill rang
shrilly and loudly through the hall, he felt as if he were
suddenly grasped by burning arms and could no longer control
himself, he could not help shouting aloud in his mingled
pain and delight, "Olimpia!" All eyes were turned
upon him; many people laughed. The face of the cathedral
organist wore a still more gloomy look than it had done
before, but all he said was, "Very well!"
The concert came to an end, and the ball
began. Oh! to dance with her with her that was now the aim
of all Nathanael's wishes, of all his desires. But how
should he have courage to request her, the queen of the
ball, to grant him the honour of a dance? And yet he
couldn't tell how it came about, just as the dance began, he
found himself standing close beside her, nobody having as
yet asked her to be his partner; so, with some difficulty
stammering out a few words, he grasped her hand. It was cold
as ice; he shook with an awful, frosty shiver. But, fixing
his eyes upon her face, he saw that her glance was beaming
upon him with love and longing, and at the same moment he
thought that the pulse began to beat in her cold hand, and
the warm life-blood to course through her veins. And passion
burned more intensely in his own heart also, he threw his
arm round her beautiful waist and whirled her round the
hall. He had always thought that he kept good and accurate
time in dancing, but from the perfectly rhythmical evenness
with which Olimpia danced, and which frequently put him
quite out, he perceived how very faulty his own time really
was. Notwithstanding, he would not dance with any other
lady; and everybody else who approached Olimpia to call upon
her for a dance, he would have liked to kill on the spot.
This, however, only happened twice; to his astonishment
Olimpia remained after this without a partner, and he failed
not on each occasion to take her out again. If Nathanael had
been able to see anything else except the beautiful Olimpia,
there would inevitably have been a good deal of unpleasant
quarrelling and strife; for it was evident that Olimpia was
the object of the smothered laughter only with difficulty
suppressed, which was heard in various corners amongst the
young people; and they followed her with very curious looks,
but nobody knew for what reason. Nathanael, excited by
dancing and the plentiful supply of wine he had consumed,
had laid aside the shyness which at other times
characterised him. He sat beside Olimpia, her hand in his
own, and declared his love enthusiastically and passionately
in words which neither of them understood, neither he nor
Olimpia. And yet she perhaps did, for she sat with her eyes
fixed unchangeably upon his, sighing repeatedly, "Ach!
Ach! Ach!" Upon this Nathanael would answer, "Oh,
you glorious heavenly lady! You ray from the promised
paradise of love! Oh! what a profound soul you have! my
whole being is mirrored in it!" and a good deal more in
the same strain. But Olimpia only continued to sigh
"Ach! Ach!" again and again.
Professor Spalanzani passed by the two happy
lovers once or twice, and smiled with a look of peculiar
satisfaction. All at once it seemed to Nathanael, albeit he
was far away in a different world, as if it were growing
perceptibly darker down below at Professor Spalanzani's. He
looked about him, and to his very great alarm became aware
that there were only two lights left burning in the hall,
and they were on the point of going out. The music and
dancing had long ago ceased. "We must part part!"
he cried, wildly and despairingly; he kissed Olimpia's hand;
he bent down to her mouth, but ice-cold lips met his burning
ones. As he touched her cold hand, he felt his heart
thrilled with awe; the legend of "The Dead
Bride"(9) shot suddenly through his mind. But Olimpia
had drawn him closer to her, and the kiss appeared to warm
her lips into vitality. Professor Spalanzani strode slowly
through the empty apartment, his footsteps giving a hollow
echo; and his figure had, as the flickering shadows played
about him, a ghostly, awful appearance. "Do you love
me? Do you love me, Olimpia? Only one little word Do you
love me?" whispered Nathanael, but she only sighed,
"Ach! Ach!" as she rose to her feet. "Yes,
you are my lovely, glorious star of love," said
Nathanael, "and will shine for ever, purifying and
ennobling my heart." "Ach! Ach!" replied
Olimpia, as she moved along. Nathanael followed her; they
stood before the Professor. "You have had an
extraordinarily animated conversation with my
daughter," said he, smiling; "well, well, my dear
Mr. Nathanael, if you find pleasure in talking to the stupid
girl, I am sure I shall be glad for you to come and do
so." Nathanael took his leave, his heart singing and
leaping in a perfect delirium of happiness.
(9) Phlegon, the
freedman of Hadrian, relates that a young maiden, Philemium,
the daughter of Philostratus and Charitas, became deeply
enamoured of a young man, named Machates, a guest in the
house of her father. This did not meet with the approbation
of her parents, and they turned Machates away. The young
maiden took this so much to heart that she pined away and
died. Some time afterwards Machates returned to his old
lodgings, when he was visited at night by his beloved, who
came from the grave to see him again. The story may be read
in Heywood's (Thos.) "Hierarchie of Blessed
Angels," Book vii, p. 479 (London, 1637). Goethe has
made this story the foundation of his beautiful poem
Die Braut von Korinth, with which form of it
Hoffmann was most likely
familiar. During the next few days Spalanzani's ball
was the general topic of conversation. Although the
Professor had done everything to make the thing a splendid
success, yet certain gay spirits related more than one thing
that had occurred which was quite irregular and out of
order. They were especially keen in pulling Olimpia to
pieces for her taciturnity and rigid stiffness; in spite of
her beautiful form they alleged that she was hopelessly
stupid, and in this fact they discerned the reason why
Spalanzani had so long kept her concealed from publicity.
Nathanael heard all this with inward wrath, but nevertheless
he held his tongue; for, thought he, would it indeed be
worth while to prove to these fellows that it is their own
stupidity which prevents them from appreciating Olimpia's
profound and brilliant parts? One day Siegmund said to him,
"Pray, brother, have the kindness to tell me how you, a
sensible fellow, came to lose your head over that Miss
Wax-face that wooden doll across there?" Nathanael was
about to fly into a rage, but he recollected himself and
replied, "Tell me, Siegmund, how came it that Olimpia's
divine charms could escape your eye, so keenly alive as it
always is to beauty, and your acute perception as well? But
Heaven be thanked for it, otherwise I should have had you
for a rival, and then the blood of one of us would have had
to be spilled." Siegmund, perceiving how matters stood
with his friend, skilfully interposed and said, after
remarking that all argument with one in love about the
object of his affections was out of place, "Yet it's
very strange that several of us have formed pretty much the
same opinion about Olimpia We think she is you won't take
it ill, brother? that she is singularly statuesque and
soulless. Her figure is regular, and so are her features,
that can't be gainsaid; and if her eyes were not so utterly
devoid of life, I may say, of the power of vision, she might
pass for a beauty. She is strangely measured in her
movements, they all seem as if they were dependent upon some
wound-up clock-work. Her playing and singing has the
disagreeably perfect, but insensitive time of a singing
machine. and her dancing is the same. We felt quite afraid
of this Olimpia, and did not like to have anything to do
with her; she seemed to us to be only acting like a
living creature, and as if there was some secret at the
bottom of it all." Nathanael did not give way to the
bitter feelings which threatened to master him at these
words of Siegmund's; he fought down and got the better of
his displeasure, and merely said, very earnestly, "You
cold prosaic fellows may very well be afraid of her. It is
only to its like that the poetically organised spirit
unfolds itself. Upon me alone did her loving glances fall,
and through my mind and thoughts alone did they radiate; and
only in her love can I find my own self again. Perhaps,
however, she doesn't do quite right not to jabber a lot of
nonsense and stupid talk like other shallow people. It is
true, she speaks but few words; but the few words she does
speak are genuine hieroglyphs of the inner world of Love and
of the higher cognition of the intellectual life revealed in
the intuition of the Eternal beyond the grave. But you have
no understanding for all these things, and I am only wasting
words." "God be with you, brother," said
Siegmund very gently, almost sadly, "but it seems to me
that you are in a very bad way. You may rely upon me, if
all No, I can't say any more." It all at once dawned
upon Nathanael that his cold prosaic friend Siegmund really
and sincerely wished him well, and so he warmly shook his
proffered hand.
Nathanael had completely forgotten that there
was a Clara in the world, whom he had once loved and his
mother and Lothair. They had all vanished from his mind; he
lived for Olimpia alone. He sat beside her every day for
hours together, rhapsodising about his love and sympathy
enkindled into life, and about psychic elective
affinity(10) all of which Olimpia listened to with great
reverence. He fished up from the very bottom of his desk all
the things that he had ever written poems, fancy sketches,
visions, romances, tales, and the heap was increased daily
with all kinds of aimless sonnets, stanzas, canzonets. All
these he read to Olimpia hour after hour without growing
tired; but then he had never had such an exemplary listener.
She neither embroidered, nor knitted; she did not look out
of the window, or feed a bird, or play with a little pet dog
or a favourite cat, neither did she twist a piece of paper
or anything of that kind round her finger; she did not
forcibly convert a yawn into a low affected cough in short,
she sat hour after hour with her eyes bent unchangeably upon
her lover's face, without moving or altering her position,
and her gaze grew more ardent and more ardent still. And it
was only when at last Nathanael rose and kissed her lips or
her hand that she said, "Ach! Ach!" and then
"Good-night, dear." Arrived in his own room,
Nathanael would break out with, "Oh! what a
brilliant what a profound mind! Only you you alone
understand me." And his heart trembled with rapture
when he reflected upon the wondrous harmony which daily
revealed itself between his own and his Olimpia's character;
for he fancied that she had expressed in respect to his
works and his poetic genius the identical sentiments which
he himself cherished deep down in his own heart in respect
to the same, and even as if it was his own heart's voice
speaking to him. And it must indeed have been so; for
Olimpia never uttered any other words than those already
mentioned. And when Nathanael himself in his clear and sober
moments, as, for instance, directly after waking in a
morning, thought about her utter passivity and taciturnity,
he only said, "What are words but words? The glance of
her heavenly eyes says more than any tongue of earth And how
can, anyway, a child of heaven accustom herself to the
narrow circle which the exigencies of a wretched mundane
life demand?"
(10) This phrase
(Die Wahlverwandschaft in German) has been made
celebrated as the title of one of Goethe's
works. Professor Spalanzani appeared to be greatly
pleased at the intimacy that had sprung up between his
daughter Olimpia and Nathanael, and showed the young man
many unmistakable proofs of his good feeling towards him;
and when Nathanael ventured at length to hint very
delicately at an alliance with Olimpia, the Professor smiled
all over his face at once, and said he should allow his
daughter to make a perfectly free choice. Encouraged by
these words, and with the fire of desire burning in his
heart, Nathanael resolved the very next day to implore
Olimpia to tell him frankly, in plain words, what he had
long read in her sweet loving glances, that she would be
his for ever. He looked for the ring which his mother had
given him at parting; he would present it to Olimpia as a
symbol of his devotion, and of the happy life he was to lead
with her from that time onwards. Whilst looking for it he
came across his letters from Clara and Lothair; he threw
them carelessly aside, found the ring, put it in his pocket,
and ran across to Olimpia Whilst still on the stairs, in the
entrance-passage, he heard an extraordinary hubbub; the
noise seemed to proceed from Spalanzani's study. There was a
stamping a rattling pushing knocking against
the door, with curses and oaths intermingled. "Leave
hold leave hold you monster you rascal slaked your
life and honour upon it.? Ha! ha! ha! ha! That was not our
wager I, I made the eyes I the clock-work. Go to the
devil with your clock-work you damned dog of a
watch-maker be off Satan stop you paltry
turner you infernal beast! stop begone let me
go." The voices which were thus making all this racket
and rumpus were those of Spalanzani and the fearsome
Coppelius. Nathanael rushed in, impelled by some nameless
dread. The Professor was grasping a female figure by the
shoulders, the Italian Coppola held her by the feet; and
they were pulling and dragging each other backwards and
forwards, fighting furiously to get possession of her.
Nathanael recoiled with horror on recognising that the
figure was Olimpia Boiling with rage, he was about to tear
his beloved from the grasp of the madmen, when Coppola by an
extraordinary exertion of strength twisted the figure out of
the Professor's hands and gave him such a terrible blow with
her, that he reeled backwards and fell over the table all
amongst the phials and retorts, the bottles and glass
cylinders, which covered it: all these things were smashed
into a thousand pieces. But Coppola threw the figure across
his shoulder, and, laughing shrilly and horribly, ran
hastily down the stairs, the figure's ugly feet hanging down
and banging and rattling like wood against the steps.
Nathanael was stupefied, he had seen only too distinctly
that in Olimpia's pallid waxed face there were no eyes,
merely black holes in their stead; she was an inanimate
puppet. Spalanzani was rolling on the floor; the pieces of
glass had cut his head and breast and arm; the blood was
escaping from him in streams. But he gathered his strength
together by an effort.
"After him after him! What do you stand
staring there for? Coppelius Coppelius he's stolen my
best automaton at which I've worked for twenty
years staked my life upon it the
clock-work speech movement mine your
eyes stolen your eyes damn him curse him after
him fetch me back Olimpia there are the eyes." And
now Nathanael saw a pair of bloody eyes lying on the floor
staring at him; Spalanzani seized them with his uninjured
hand and threw them at him, so that they hit his breast.
Then madness dug her burning talons into him and swept down
into his heart, rending his mind and thoughts to shreds.
"Aha! aha! aha!
Fire-wheel fire-wheel! Spin round, fire-wheel!
merrily, merrily! Aha! wooden doll! spin round, pretty
wooden doll!" and he threw himself upon the Professor,
clutching him fast by the throat. He would certainly have
strangled him had not several people, attracted by the
noise, rushed in and torn away the madman; and so they saved
the Professor, whose wounds were immediately dressed.
Siegmund, with all his strength, was not able to subdue the
frantic lunatic, who continued to scream in a dreadful way,
"Spin round, wooden doll!" and to strike out right
and left with his doubled fists. At length the united
strength of several succeeded in overpowering him by
throwing him on the floor and binding him. His cries passed
into a brutish bellow that was awful to hear; and thus
raging with the harrowing violence of madness, he was taken
away to the madhouse.
Before continuing my narration of what
happened further to the unfortunate Nathanael, I will tell
you, indulgent reader, in case you take any interest in that
skilful mechanician and fabricator of automata, Spalanzani,
that he recovered completely from his wounds. He had,
however, to leave the university, for Nathanael's fate had
created a great sensation; and the opinion vas pretty
generally expressed that it was an imposture altogether
unpardonable to have smuggled a wooden puppet instead of a
living person into intelligent tea-circles, for Olimpia had
been present at several with success Lawyers called it a
cunning piece of knavery, and all the harder to punish since
it was directed against the public; and it had been so
craftily contrived that it had escaped unobserved by all
except a few preternaturally acute students, although
everybody was very wise how and remembered to have thought
of several facts which occurred to them as suspicious. But
these latter could not succeed in making out any sort of a
consistent tale. For was it, for instance, a thing likely to
occur to any one as suspicious that, according to the
declaration of an elegant beau of these tea-parties, Olimpia
had, contrary to all good manners, sneezed oftener than she
had yawned? The former must have been, in the opinion of
this elegant gentleman, the winding up of the concealed
clock-work; it had always been accompanied by an observable
creaking, and so on. The Professor of Poetry and Eloquence
took a pinch of snuff, and, slapping the lid to and clearing
his throat, said solemnly, "My most honourable ladies
and gentlemen, don't you see then where the rub is? The
whole thing is an allegory, a continuous metaphor. You
understand me? Sapienti sat." But several most
honourable gentlemen did not rest satisfied with this
explanation; the history of this automaton had sunk deeply
into their souls, and an absurd mistrust of human figures
began to prevail. Several lovers, in order to be fully
convinced that they were not paying court to a wooden
puppet, required that their mistress should sing and dance a
little out of time, should embroider or knit or play with
her little pug, &c., when being read to, but above all
things else that she should do something more than merely
listen that she should frequently speak in such a way as to
really show that her words presupposed as a condition some
thinking and feeling. The bonds of love were in many cases
drawn closer in consequence, and so of course became more
engaging; in other instances they gradually relaxed and fell
away. "I cannot really be made responsible for
it," was the remark of more than one young gallant. At
the tea-gatherings everybody, in order to ward off
suspicion, yawned to an incredible extent and never sneezed.
Spalanzani was obliged, as has been said, to leave the place
in order to escape a criminal charge of having fraudulently
imposed an automaton upon human society. Coppola, too, had
also disappeared.
When Nathanael awoke he felt as if he had
been oppressed by a terrible nightmare; he opened his eyes
and experienced an indescribable sensation of mental
comfort, whilst a soft and most beautiful sensation of
warmth pervaded his body. He lay on his own bed in his own
room at home; Clara was bending over him, and at a little
distance stood his mother and Lothair. "At last, at
last, O my darling Nathanael; now we have you again; now you
are cured of your grievous illness, now you are mine
again." And Clara's words came from the depths of her
heart; and she clasped him in her arms. The bright scalding
tears streamed from his eyes, he was so overcome with
mingled feelings of sorrow and delight; and he gasped forth,
"My Clara, my Clara!" Siegmund, who had staunchly
stood by his friend in his hour of need, now came into the
room. Nathanael gave him his hand "My faithful
brother, you have not deserted me." Every trace of
insanity had left him, and in the tender hands of his mother
and his beloved, and his friends, he quickly recovered his
strength again. Good fortune had in the meantime visited the
house; a niggardly old uncle, from whom they had never
expected to get anything, had died, and left Nathanael's
mother not only a considerable fortune, but also a small
estate, pleasantly situated not far from the town. There
they resolved to go and live, Nathanael and his mother, and
Clara, to whom he was now to be married, and Lothair.
Nathanael was become gentler and more childlike than he had
ever been before, and now began really to understand Clara's
supremely pure and noble character.
None of them ever reminded him, even in the
remotest degree, of the past. But when Siegmund took leave
of him, he said, "By heaven, brother! I was in a bad
way, but an angel came just at the right moment and led me
back upon the path of light. Yes, it was Clara."
Siegmund would not let him speak further, fearing lest the
painful recollections of the past might arise too vividly
and too intensely in his mind.
The time came for the four happy people to
move to their little property. At noon they were going
through the streets. After making several purchases they
found that the lofty tower of the town-house was throwing
its giant shadows across the market-place. "Come,"
said Clara, "let us go up to the top once more and have
a look at the distant hills." No sooner said than done.
Both of them, Nathanael and Clara, went up the tower; their
mother, however, went on with the servant-girl to her new
home, and Lothair, not feeling inclined to climb up all the
many steps, waited below. There the two lovers stood
arm-in-arm on the topmost gallery of the tower, and gazed
out into the sweet scented wooded landscape, beyond which
the blue hills rose up like a giant's city.
"Oh! do look at that strange little grey
bush, it looks as if it were actually walking towards
us," said Clara. Mechanically he put his hand into his
sidepocket; he found Coppola's perspective and looked for
the bush; Clara stood in front of the glass. Then a
convulsive thrill shot through his pulse and veins; pale as
a corpse, he fixed his staring eyes upon her; but soon they
began to roll, and a fiery current flashed and sparkled in
them, and he yelled fearfully, like a hunted animal. Leaping
up high in the air and laughing horribly at the same time,
he began to shout, in a piercing voice, "Spin round,
wooden doll! Spin round, wooden doll!" With the
strength of a giant he laid hold upon Clara and tried to
hurl her over, but in an agony of despair she clutched fast
hold of the railing that went round the gallery. Lothair
heard the madman raging and Clara's scream of terror: a
fearful presentiment flashed across his mind. He ran up the
steps; the door of the second flight was locked Clara's
scream for help rang out more loudly. Mad with rage and
fear, he threw himself against the door, which at length
gave way. Clara's cries were growing fainter and
fainter, "Help! save me! save me!" and her voice
died away in the air. "She is killed murdered by that
madman," shouted Lothair. The door to the gallery was
also locked. Despair gave him the strength of a giant; he
burst the door off its hinges. Good God! there was Clara in
the grasp of the madman Nathanael, hanging over the gallery
in the air; she only held to the iron bar with one hand.
Quick as lightning, Lothair seized his sister and pulled her
back, at the same time dealing the madman a blow in the face
with his doubled fist, which sent him reeling backwards,
forcing him to let go his victim.
Lothair ran down with his insensible sister
in his arms. She was saved. But Nathanael ran round and
round the gallery, leaping up in the air and shouting,
"Spin round, fire-wheel! Spin round, fire-wheel!"
The people heard the wild shouting, and a crowd began to
gather. In the midst of them towered the advocate Coppelius,
like a giant; he had only just arrived in the town, and had
gone straight to the market-place. Some were going up to
overpower and take charge of the madman, but Coppelius
laughed and said, "Ha! ha! wait a bit; he'll come down
of his own accord;" and he stood gazing upwards along
with the rest. All at once Nathanael stopped as if
spell-bound; he bent down over the railing, and perceived
Coppelius. With a piercing scream, "Ha! foine oyes!
foine oyes!" he leapt over.
When Nathanael lay on the stone pavement with
a broken head, Coppelius had disappeared in the crush and
confusion.
Several years afterwards it was reported
that, outside the door of a pretty country house in a remote
district, Clara had been seen sitting hand in hand with a
pleasant gentleman, whilst two bright boys were playing at
her feet. From this it may be concluded that she eventually
found that quiet domestic happiness which her cheerful,
blithesome character required, and which Nathanael, with his
tempest-tossed soul, could never have been able to give her.
(End.)
CLARA TO
NATHANAEL
Eternally your, &c. &c.
NATHANAEL TO LOTHAIR.
. . . . . .