Visions of Fear - Foundations of Fear III (1992)

by David G. Hartwell (Ed. )

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  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

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  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,

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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,