The Sand-mart
141
you some mischief, Lothair tells you I am in quite as
good spirits, and just the same as ever.
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 o f 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
142
E.T.A. Hoffman
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 any 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,
The Sand-man
143
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 Sandman rob me of my eyes.
My darling, darling Nathanael,
Eternally yours, &c. &c.
N ath an ael to L o th air______________
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
144
E.T.A. Hoffman
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, 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 noho
w 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 and looking at
Cagliostro’s portrait engraved by Chodowiecki; Spalanzani looks just like him.
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
The Sand-man
145
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 today. 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
146
E.T.A. Hoffman
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 one in medias res, “ ‘Go to the
devil!’ cried the student Nathanael, his eyes blazing
wildly with rage and fear, when the weather-glass hawker
The Sand-man
147
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, 1 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 pro
secute 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
148
E.T.A. Hoffman
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 colouring. One of them, a veritable
romanticist, strangely enough likened her eyes to a lake
by Ruisdael, 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,
Visions of Fear - Foundations of Fear III (1992) Page 18