Clara, Nathanael and the Narrator: Interpreting Hoffmann's Der Sandmann

Author(s): John M. Ellis

Source: The German Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Jan., 1981), pp. 1-18
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Association of Teachers of German
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/405828
Accessed: 11-05-2015 16:47 UTC

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 Clara, Nathanaeland the Narrator:
InterpretingHoffmann's
Der Sandmann
JOHN M. ELLIS

There are two major textual problems which criticism of Hoffmann's

Der Sandmann' has found it very difficult to handle in a convincing way.
The first is the meaning of the figure of Coppelius / Coppola (including
the question whether one figure or two separate ones is involved); the
second is the function of the narrator's excursus following his entry into
the story at the end of the three letters with which it begins. The purpose
of this article is to argue that these two questions are so closely linked
that one provides the answer to the other, and that the lack of convincing
answers to either one to date can largely be attributed to the fact that
they have always been taken in isolation from each other.
The first of my questions appears to be the more central of the two:
it links fairly quickly with most of the other interpretative issues of the
tale. For example: can the story be seen simply as a study of progressive
mental illness?2 It will certainly be easier to do so if we regard Coppola
and Coppelius as two separate individuals, since then their presumed
identity can be seen as part of Nathanael's sickness, the result of a mad-
man's paranoid delusions. If, on the other hand, they are one, Nathanael
did not imagine a threat to him, but on the contrary perceived one that
was real. Clara's function in the story is also linked to the question of
Coppelius and Coppola; if the two are separate, Clara is correct and a
source of sound judgment,3 but if they are one, she is deluded in telling
Nathanael that he is imagining things; and that in turn might affect our
view of her dismissiveness of Nathanael's fears, and of the value of her
calm, common-sense approach to life, both in general, and more particu-
larly for Nathanael. The meaning of the story's ending, again, is directly
linked to this same issue; is Nathanael's final attack of violence simply
randomly triggered, and so to be regarded as an inevitable last stage in
his mental decay, or does the simultaneous use by Nathanael of Cop-
pola's Perspektiv and appearance of Coppelius in the crowd have any
part in his breakdown? Even the reader's approach to and conception
of the world of the text depends on the separateness or identity of
these two figures. If the two are separate, then all departures from the
limitations of the everyday real world in which we live can be attributed

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2 JOHN M. ELLIS

to Nathanael's insanity; thus, the world of the story is a perfectly nor-

mal, sane world, as Clara says it is.4 If they are not separate then either
some extraordinary coincidences occur in the text (for example, the
coincidence of Nathanael's meeting the long since disappeared Cop-
pelius in a foreign country) or the world of the story may allow for
supernatural events-as do many, but not all of Hoffmann's stories.
But now let us turn to the second of the textual problems which I
mentioned-the function of the narrator's digressive address to the
reader which occurs after the three letters that begin the story. This ex-
cursus is about three pages long. Two pages (343-4) concern the process
of telling the story-what it feels like, and how the story might (or
should) otherwise have been told; and one page (345) is devoted
to a partly whimsical, perhaps even facetious description of Clara's ap-
pearance and character. The effect of all this is quite frankly bizarre. It is
not simply that the space given to the excursus is disproportionate to
the whole-about one tenth of an otherwise compact text; the tone is
also markedly different to that of the rest of the story, bantering and
expansive rather than the tense and often grim narrative we find else-
where. The general effect is obtrusive, odd, and out-of-place; it appears
so difficult to relate it to the rest of the story that most critics have
preferred to ignore it altogether. We may be tempted to attribute it to
Hoffmann's "bizarre playfulness"' or to "self-parody,"6 but that would
ultimately be to ignore it as far as any textual function goes. Hoffmann's
succumbing momentarily to the temptation to parody himself, or merely
to be playful with his readers, would have no necessary relation to the
rest of his story; and this presumed self-indulgence on the author's part
would surely have to be seen as a blemish in the text, an obtrusive and
inconsistent irrelevance. But should we be prepared to write off so
striking a part of one of Hoffmann's most important contributions to
German literature?
None of the few recent attempts to see the excursus as an integral part
of the text has seemed adequate. Among other things, Belgardt7 at-
tributed to it a technical function, that of involving the reader more
fully in the story, establishing a close relationship between reader and
narrator, and getting the reader to accept more readily the truth of the
story. But the trouble with this view is that the actual effect of the ex-
cursus seems to be, if anything, the reverse of that stated. For in drawing
attention to the question of how to tell a story, the narrator tends to
remind the reader of the fact that this is a literary text, i.e., fiction; the
bizarre quality of the whole passage puts more distance, not more close-
ness between narrator and reader, and the narrator's bantering tone
undermines the reader's commitment to the world of the story, breaking
the illusion of its self-sufficiency.
E.F. Hoffmann was the first to suggest a thematic importance for the
excursus. Hoffmann drew attention to the fact that parts of the descrip-
tion of Nathanael's creating his poem parallel the narrator's description
of his own compulsion to tell a story;8 and this led him to the notion that
Nathanael's madness may be related to his having, as an artist, a deeper

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 Interpreting Hoffmann's Der Sandmann 3

vision than others. Nathanael's problem, then, would lie "in seiner
tieferen Erkenntnis"9 than is usual. Some years later Belgardt developed
Hoffmann's rather cautiously stated argument into a much more ex-
treme form. Where Hoffmann had argued that Nathanael's madness
had to be seen not simply as madness in general, but more particularly
as madness resulting from artistic vision, Belgardt, also seizing on the
parallelism between the creativity of Nathanael on the one hand and of
the narrator on the other, asserted that the theme of the tale was artistic
creativity, and the positive value of poetry as against the cold, prosaic
real world."0 The excursus was, therefore, in part an exposition of an
artistic credo and a theory of artistic composition, and so a plain state-
ment of the story's values-of what it was really about. I must confess
that I am never very happy with interpretative arguments which result
in the view that poems are about poetry, or art about artistry; it seems
to me that we look to poets for inspired commentary on aspects of the
life that we all lead, not simply the life led by a small segment of human-
ity-namely poets." In general, then, I doubt if important writing could
be so restrictive. But in any case, there are here very strong textual
reasons to reject Belgardt's account. The tone of the descriptions of how
Nathanael and the narrator approach their writing seems remote from
the seriousness we could expect if these were to be taken as exemplary
accounts of true composition. The narrator's case, in particular, is out-
landish and caricatured. And though it is unproductive to write this
off as Hoffmann's self-parody, it is clear that elements of parody are
present, and parody would be a most unlikely medium through which
to present the deepest values of the story. Again, if Hoffmann had
meant to give us here a serious exposition of the nature and value of
artistic creativity, he would surely not have followed that with his nar-
rator's strange, rambling thoughts on Clara-a marked departure from
exemplary composition, by the previously announced standard of the
poet's total emotional commitment to his enterprise:
Fiir sch6n konnte Clara keineswegs gelten; das meinten alle,
die sich von Amtswegen auf Schonheit verstehen. Doch lobten
die Architekten die reinen Verhaltnisse ihres Wuchses, die
Maler fanden Nacken, Schultern und Brust beinahe zu keusch
geformt, verliebten sich dagegen samtlich in das wunderbare
Magdalenenhaar und faselten iiberhaupt viel von Battonischem
Kolorit. Einer von ihnen, ein wirklicher Phantast, verglich
aber hochstseltsamerweise Claras Augen mit einem See von
Ruisdael, ... (p. 345)

I do not think, therefore, that any of the accounts of the narrator's ex-
cursus that we have been offered so far is convincing; and I now wish to
offer a different view of its function, one that links with the important
interpretative problems of the story and changes them in crucial ways.
There is an entire spectrum of narrative possibilities in fiction; at the
one end of the spectrum is the epistolary novel, in which the person of
the narrator disappears; we do not experience directly his voice, his pres-
ence, his opinions or his judgments. At the other end is the "omniscient"

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4 JOHN M. ELLIS

narrator (a misnomer, since all narrators are subject to some limitations)

who makes his presence, personality and judgments felt, often in direct
address to the reader. In the Sandmann, Hoffmann begins at one end of
the spectrum, and then suddenly (p. 343) jumps all the way to the other
end. But not content with this, he then proceeds to have his narrator dis-
cuss various intervening stages of the spectrum:

Das Wunderbare, Seltsame davon erfuillte meine ganze

Seele, aber ebendeshalb und weil ich dich, o mein Leser! gleich
geneigt machen multe, Wunderliches zu ertragen, welches
nichts Geringes ist, quilte ich mich ab, Nathanaels Geschichte
bedeutend-originell, ergreifend,anzufangen:"Es war ein-
mal!"-der schOnste Anfang jeder Erzihlung, zu niichtern!-
"In der kleinen ProvinzialstadtS. lebte"--etwas besser,
wenigstens ausholend zum Klimax.-Oder gleich medias in
res: " 'Scherer sich zum Teufel,' rief, Wut und Entsetzenim
wilden Blick, der Student Nathanael, als der Wetterglashandler
Guiseppe Coppola"--Das hatte ich in der Tat schon aufge-
schrieben, als ich im dem wilden Blick des Studenten Nathanael
etwas Possierliches zu versptiren glaubte; die Geschichte ist
aber gar nicht spal3haft. (p. 344)

Now these beginnings are not simply stylistically different; they in-
volve different relationships between the reader and the story. The fairy-
tale beginning of "Es war einmal" tells the reader to accept super-
natural events as part of the world of the story and to believe in them
for its purposes. On the other hand, the factual realism of the Kleist-
like beginning "In der kleinen Provinzialstadt S. lebte . . ." promises a
different kind of story, and requires a different attitude from the reader.
In this mode, the narrator gives us the facts and vouches for them, leav-
ing value judgments to the reader; moreover his facts will probably be
limited to those of the real world. The last possibility, " 'Scher er sich
zum Teufel,' rief, Wut und Entsetzen im wilden Blick . . ." has the
narrator using language that is emotive and evaluative, and therefore
getting more involved in the interpretation of the events he relates. But
suddenly the narrator hesitates over the word "wild"; he thinks that
that might not be the right evaluation, since there may also be something
"possierlich" about Nathanael, and yet "possierlich" will not do either,
because the story is not to be taken as a humorous one.
What should by now occur to the reader is that all this is not simply
about how to tell the story in the most gripping way: at issue is really
what kind of story this is to be, and most importantly what will be the
status in the story of both facts and values. Is it a fantastic tale? Is it
serious or comic? Is it about a real world and real people? By the middle
section of the story, the reader is faced with serious problems of inter-
pretation: what to believe, whose version of events to trust, which char-
acter to identify with, what to expect from the world of the story. But
those problems could not have been the same ones had the narrator
chosen any of the three kinds of beginning of which he speaks. The first
would have changed the entire character of belief in the events of the

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 Interpreting Hoffmann's Der Sandmann 5

tale; the second would have offered credible facts, and there would have
been no uncertainty as to what has really happened; the third would have
been heavily evaluative, with the narrator offering at least his own view
of the emotional tenor of what happens, and probably his judgment of
people and events.
What the narrator's excursus does is to impress on the reader that the
position in which he stands after the three letters is completely the re-
sult of the narrative stance that Hoffmann has chosen; and so, we must
first look closely at that stance and what it has produced. But it will also
be important to remember that after the narrator's excursus, the story
is told in an entirely different way; there, the reader's position will be a
very different one, and reflecting on this difference is an important part
of interpreting the story. In the first letter, Nathanael gives an account
of experiences which have distressed him; in particular, the letter con-
cerns his anxiety about the apparent return of Coppelius as Coppola.
In the second letter, which reads like an analyst's report, Clara tells
Nathanael that this is all the result of his too vivid imagination. In the
third letter, Nathanael concedes that since he now thinks he has evidence
that Coppola is indeed an Italian, as he claims to be, anxiety about the
return of Coppelius was indeed the product of his imagination.
In this form of narrative, we have only one source of evidence as to
what really happened to Nathanael: Nathanael himself. Being con-
fronted with the story of a man who may suffer from paranoid delusions,
we have only his story; any element in it may simply be attributable to his
delusion. Thus, we can be certain of nothing; Hoffmann allows us no
other access to the events Nathanael describes. When Clara then writes
to give her opinion that Nathanael does indeed suffer from delusions,
and he accepts this view at least in relation to one fact-Coppola's
identity-we have reached a point at which the narrative form strongly
suggests that the first letter is delusional, and the second and third
explain how. But we cannot be at all sure. Had the narrator chosen the
second of his three alternative ways of telling the story, for example,
we should have been in a much better position to answer the central
question: do Nathanael's experiences generate his fear, or his fears gen-
erate his experiences? We should then have a source of information on
Coppelius and Coppola that would enable us at least to begin to under-
stand more. It is worth noting, too, that it is the epistolatory form which
allows Clara's perspective to be expounded at length; the confessional
nature of Nathanael's letter seems to lead naturally to the interpretative
quality of hers.
If, on the other hand, the narrator had chosen the first alternative, we
should have been taken into a fairytale world in which it would not be
necessary to be uncertain about the status of Nathanael's experience of
the Sandman-for there the Sandman would simply exist. In avoiding
this alternative, Hoffmann retains the distinction between illusion and
reality; but in narrating through letters, he does not allow us to see where
that line is to be drawn. And in avoiding the third alternative, he has
kept from us any comment on or evaluation of Nathanael or Clara by

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6 JOHN M. ELLIS

the narrator.
The epistolary narration, then, has both placed severe limitations on
what we can know, and predisposed us to one particular view of the
events so far-Clara's.'2 The significance of the first part of the narra-
tor's excursus is that it draws our attention to these limitations, disturbs
the previous pattern of narration, preparing for it to change, and then
leads gradually into a different pattern in which certain of the limitations
are removed so that we have a vantage point which is distinctly different
from that which we were formerly allowed. Viewed in this light, the
second part of the narrator's excursus is evidently complementary to the
first; it satirizes Clara, so undermining the source of the perspective to
which we had been inclined by the first half of the story.
Early in the story, Clara seems lucid, sensible, loving-and altogether
admirable. It is therefore immediately grating when the narrator begins
by saying: "Ftir schon konnte Clara keinswegs gelten" (p. 345). But
having thus transgressed against the convention that the heroines of
such stories are all sensible, loving and pretty, the narrator goes on to
discuss her in such a flippant way that he seems simply to be laughing
at her appearance. And when discussing the quality of her intelligence,
too, there appears to be considerable equivocation in the narrator's
account:

Clara hatte die lebenskraftige Fantasie des heitern unbefan-

genen, kindischen Kindes, ein tiefes weiblich zartes Gemuit,
einen gar hellen, scharf sichtenden Verstand. Die Nebler und
Schwebler hatten bei ihr boses Spiel; denn ohne zu viel zu
reden, was Oberhauptin Claras schweigsamer Natur nicht lag,
sagte ihnen der helle Blick und jenes feine ironische Lacheln:
"Lieben Freunde! wie moget ihr mir denn zumuten, daB ich
eure verflief3enden Schattengebilde for wahre Gestalten anse-
hen soll, mit Leben und Regung?"--Clara wurde deshalb von
vielen kalt, geftihllos, prosaisch gescholten; aber andere,
die das Leben in klarer Tiefe aufgefaf3t, liebten ungemein
das gemuitvolle, verstandige, kindliche Madchen, doch keiner
so sehr als Nathanael, der sich in Wissenschaft und Kunst
kraftig und heiter bewegte. (p. 345)

The narrator's defense of Clara here seems half-hearted. The picture

presented of her is not simply that of a sensible person, for she also ex-
presses, however silently, a contempt for what does not meet her approv-
al. And the contrast between Nathanael, on the one hand, and the many
who found her cold, feelingless and prosaic, on the other hand, is ex-
traordinarily unconvincing. If many people are more, not less inclined
than Nathanael to judge her cold and prosaic, that sounds bad for
Clara; Nathanael, after all, is a very unlikely supporter of cold reason.
And, sure enough, it is not long before Nathanael takes the same view of
her that is taken by others. Worse still, she also soon expresses the same
undisguised contempt for his books and his poetry that she shows the
"Nebler und Schwebler" in this passage. After this, Clara has much
less of an aura of a reliable observer and interpreter of Nathanael; in

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 Interpreting Hoffmann's Der Sandmann 7

particular, the narrator's reference to her bad relations with and super-
cilious attitudes to many others begins to raise the possibility that her
analysis of Nathanael's problem may at least in part have its source in
some problems of her own.
Taken together, then, the two parts of the narrator's excursus suggest
that what is to come will neither be seen only through Nathanael's eyes
(the possibly delusional view of a madman) nor be immediately subject
to an interpretation such as Clara's (the clinical analysis of delusion) but
instead something which will now be much more open to the reader's
own experience and interpretation.
Let me show how important the changed narrative pattern immediate-
ly becomes, and how seriously it alters the reader's view of events. When
Nathanael returns to his studies, he finds that the house in which he had
lived has burnt down:

Wie erstaunte Nathanael, als er in seine Wohnung wollte und

sah, daB das ganze Haus niedergebrannt war, so daB aus dem
Schutthaufen nur die nackten Feuermauern hervorragten.
Unerachtet das Feuer in dem Laboratorium das Apothekers,
der im untern Stocke wohnte, ausgebrochen war, das Haus
daher von unten herauf gebrannt hatte, so war es doch den
kiuhnen, rtistigen Freunden gelungen, noch zu rechter Zeit
in Nathanaels im obern Stock gelegenes Zimmer zu dringen,
und Bicher, Manuskripte, Instrumente zu retten. Alles hatten
sie unversehrt in ein anderes Haus getragen und dort ein
Zimmer in Beschlag genommen, welches Nathanael nun
sogleich bezog. Nicht sonderlich achtete er darauf, daB er
dem Professor Spalanzani gegeniber wohnte, und ebensowe-
nig schien es ihm etwas Besonderes, als er bemerkte, daB er aus
seinem Fenster gerade hinein in das Zimmer blickte, wo oft
Olimpia einsam saB, so, daB er ihre Figur deutlich erkennen
konnte, wiewohl die Ziige des Gesichts undeutlich und
verworren blieben. (p. 350)

The damage we are told, was done by a fire starting "Im Laborato-
rium des Apothekers," a sinister reminder of Coppelius and his experi-
ments. But it is not Nathanael who reports this, or who brings up the
threat of Coppelius. If it were, we could think once more that only his
paranoia is connecting unconnected events. This time, however, it is
the narrator who reports events in a way that raises the specter of Cop-
pelius; taken only by itself, the chemistry connection could be a coinci-
dence, but at least we can no longer entertain the possibility that the
entire story is a product of Nathanael's delusions-a recourse that was
not only possible, but encouraged, throughout the early part of the story.
We must now take such reports quite differently: we have no choice but
to accept the reality of the events related by a narrator.
But we soon see that the information about the origin of the fire is
only the first of a series of events which show an unmistakable pattern.
First, Nathanael's apartment is destroyed by a fire started in a chemist's
laboratory. Yet unspecified friends save all his possessions, and set up
an apartment for him in a house opposite Spalanzani's; an unlikely event

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8 JOHN M. ELLIS

is followed by yet another coincidence which can be added to that of

the origin of the fire. Nathanael's window happens to have a view of
precisely the window in which Spalanzani places Olimpia. Soon after,
Coppola knocks at his door and offers him a Perspektiv through which
he can see Olimpia better. (Still more coincidences?) When Nathanael
has had several days to look at her, and enough time to become inter-
ested in her, Spalanzani draws the curtain, which cuts off this distant
kind of contact, and simultaneously offers closer access by announcing
a ball at his home. Nathanael gets a ticket-we are not told how.
All of this seems like a well-calculated plan to involve Nathanael in
Olimpia-an experiment in which, unknown to him, Nathanael has
been chosen by Spalanzani and Coppola/Coppelius as their guinea pig.
What seems likely is that Coppola organized the change of apartment
by starting the fire, and that the two then manipulated events to draw
Nathanael further and further into contact with Olimpia.
But Nathanael himself does not notice what they are doing; on the
contrary, we are told, "Nicht sonderlich achtete er darauf" (p. 350) that
he now lives opposite Spalanzani. And that reinforces the point that
the underlying pattern in this sequence of events cannot be seen as the
result of Nathanael's delusions; we can now only see it as evidence of
a real conspiracy against him, evidence given by a narrator rather than
by Nathanael's own over-active imagination. We can wonder why
Nathanael is chosen as the victim; we might speculate that the Profes-
sor's knowledge of his student has suggested a likely subject for the
experiment, or that Coppelius (if it is he) welcomes the chance to play
a cruel joke on a child he always disliked. But what we can no longer do
is speculate about Nathanael's imagining the whole thing, and this is a
situation totally different to that existing before the narrator's excursus.
Sometimes it is possible in fiction to view the narrator's reports as an
extension of the consciousness of the central character whose experiences
he describes; thus, in Kafka's Das Urteil, for example, comment by the
narrator can often be seen as an extension of Georg's thought proc-
esses."3 If that were the case here, the distinction between Nathanael's
narrative and that of the narrator, together with the argument which I
have based on that distinction, would break down. But there are many
reasons why we cannot merge Nathanael's perspective with that of the
narrator at this point in Der Sandmann. The central excursus establishes
the narrator as a separate individual who addresses the audience directly,
and from that point on there occur a series of comments which separate
Nathanael's perspective from his own. We are told that Nathanael paid
no attention to the fact that he now lives opposite Spalanzani, but the
narrator comments on it; and it is clear that the narrator knows Olimpia
is a puppet long before Nathanael knows. The narrator distinguishes
between Nathanael's madness and his sane periods-again establishing
a separate position for himself. This well marked difference of perspec-
tive forces us to treat the disturbing elements in the narrator's account
of Nathanael's return to Italy as ominous signs of real conspiracy, not
simply as projections of Nathanael's groundless fears. And a decisive

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 Interpreting Hoffman's Der Sandmann 9

factor here is the later discovery that one large element in this apparent
conspiracy is later confirmed: Spalanzani and Coppola have been work-
ing together on Olimpia, as we see when Nathanael discovers them fight-
ing over her.
It is therefore not possible to ignore the changed status of the threats
to Nathanael which is produced by the change of narrators. Moreover,
there is another equally powerful reason to question the view of Na-
thanael's troubles as the product of his own delusions:14 the fact that
Clara, the source of that view, becomes more and more suspect during
the last part of the story.
During his stay at home just before the second period of his studies,
Nathanael becomes increasingly irritated with her, until he finally calls
her a "lebloses, verdammtes Automat!" (p. 348). Interestingly enough,
this term is introduced before the entry of Olimpia into the story.
Whether or not Clara has deserved this abuse up to this point, she seems
increasingly to deserve it as the story proceeds. If an automaton is a
creature which follows its own program regardless of what is going on
around it, there is definitely something automaton-like about Clara's
pursuit of happily married life with Nathanael: whatever Nathanael
does, and however obvious it is becoming that the two are incompatible,
she never wavers. The disastrous episode with Olimpia, for example,
might have made any normal person hesitate before marrying Nathanael;
but she accepts him back as if nothing had happened, pronouncing in
an utterly determined way "nun bist du wieder mein!" (p. 361). And
only a few lines later we are told that marriage is to follow. Throughout
the story, Clara brushes aside any signs of her incompatibility with
Nathanael, refusing to take it seriously, and merely responding angrily
when that incompatibility shows itself. To crown all this, Nathanael's
death and the trauma of her own near death have apparently had no
effect on Clara, who, we are told, lives in exactly the kind of perfect con-
tentment she had envisaged with Nathanael:

Nach mehreren Jahren will man in einer entfernten Gegend

Clara gesehen haben, wie sie mit einem freundlichen Mann,
Hand in Hand vor der Tiire eines schonen Landhauses saf3
und vor ihr zwei muntre Knaben spielten. Es ware daraus
zu schliefen, daB Clara das ruhige hausliche Gltick noch
fand, das ihrem heitern lebenslustigen Sinn zusagte und das
ihr der im Innern zerrissene Nathanael niemals hatte gewfhren
konnen. (p. 363'

At last, she has her kind husband, two children, and so on. But how
could she possibly have hoped for such a life with Nathanael? Surely
only by shutting out of her mind all that did not fit her ideal, just as she
is able to forget him after his death. His fate makes as little impact on her
as he himself did during his life. Nathanael was to fit into a role prede-
termined by Clara, and when he is no longer there, she soon finds an-
other who fits the role better anyway. Her behavior is programmed, and
even a horrendous experience has no effect on the program.

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10 JOHN M. ELLIS

Since the role she has in mind for Nathanael is so entirely of her
making, and so inflexible, it is not likely to be useful to him. But does it,
far from helping him, actually exacerbate the problems he must deal
with? A close look at the text reveals a very interesting fact: Clara di-
rectly provokes every violent outburst (including the last) except for that
in the Olimpia incident. Her worst effects here are not those due to her
habit of dismissing Nathanael's fears or flights of fancy, though of
course she does so routinely in a rather abrasive fashion. The list of
those incidents is to be sure a long one. On p. 346, he becomes erziirnt
after she tells him that only his belief in Coppelius' power gives it reality;
on p. 347 she is supercilious about the mystic books he reads her, with
the result that "Nathanael klappte das Buch heftig zu und rannte voll
Unmut fort in sein Zimmer"; on p. 348 she tells him, after he has read
his poem, "wirf das tolle-unsinnige-wahnsinnige Mdrchen ins
Feuer." But these are not the kinds of provocations that are most telling,
for they could be seen as responses to Nathanael's provocations to her.
There is another kind of incident, however, in which Clara provokes
trouble when there is no sign of it anywhere. Just after the narrator's
excursus, for example, Nathanael seems happy and undisturbed; every-
thing seems well:

Sie, Nathanael und Clara, sa3en in der Mutter kleinem

Garten, Clara war sehr heiter, weil Nathanael sie seit drei
Tagen, in denen er an jener Dichtung schrieb, nicht mit seinen
Traumen und Ahnungen geplagt hatte. Auch Nathanael sprach
lebhaft und froh von lustigen Dingen wie sonst, so, daB Clara
sagte: "Nun erst habe ich dich ganz wieder, siehst du es wohl,
wie wir den haiBlichen Coppeliusvertriebenhaben?" Da fiel
dem Nathanaelerst ein, daBer ja die Dichtungin der Tasche
trage, die er habe vorlesenwollen. Er zog auch sogleichdie
Blitter hervorund fing an zu lesen . . . (p. 348)

It is thus Clara who starts off the bitter squabble over the poem which
nearly results in the duel between Nathanael and Lothar. She asserts
possession of him (as she later does on his return from Italy) and she
reminds him of Coppelius, needlessly and condescendingly. One such
event might not mean too much, if it were isolated. But the same pattern
is repeated at the end of the story; twice more, all seems well until Clara
both times initiates a sequence of events which move in the direction
of the fatal ending.
Siegmund, Lothar, Nathanael and Clara are out walking together:

Es waran der Zeit, daBdie vierglticklichenMenschennach

dem Gutchenziehen wollten. Zur Mittagsstundegingen sie
durchdie StraBender Stadt. Sie hattenmancheseingekauft,
der hohe Ratsturm warf seinen Riesenschattentiber den
Markt. "Ei!" sagte Clara, "steigen wir doch noch einmal
heraufund schauenin das ferneGebirgehinein!"(p. 361)

It is Clara's idea to climb the fatal tower; though unintentionally, she

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 Interpreting Hoffmann's Der Sandmann 11

again starts off the trouble. When Nathanael and Clara reach the top,
they still seem contented enough:

Da standen die beiden LiebendenArm in Arm auf der

hOchsten Galerie des Turmes und schauten hinein in die duf-
tigen Waldungen, hinter denen das blaue Gebirge, wie eine
Riesenstadt, sich erhob.
"Sieh doch den sonderbaren kleinen grauen Busch, der
ordentlich auf uns loszuschreitenscheint," frug Clara.-
Nathanaelfaf3temechanischnach der Seitentasche;er fand
Coppolas Perspektiv, er schaute seitwArts-Clara stand vor
dem Glase! Da zuckte es krampfhaftin seinen Pulsen und
Adern. (pp. 361-62)

It is once again Clara who jolts Nathanael out of a normal state-

her drawing attention to the bush makes him reach into his pocket for
the Perspektiv, just as her comment on Coppelius had made him reach
into his pocket for the poem.
These incidents are a key to a deeper and more problematic effect of
Clara on Nathanael than her simply irritating him by dismissing what he
says as nonsense; she pushes him into madness by actions which are not
responses to him, but instead entirely initiated by her.'5 And what this
means is that it is not simply her overtly dismissive behavior that unbal-
ances Nathanael, but a much more complete effect of her entire per-
sonality. His fantasy tells him as much, for there, even though she is kind
(not dismissive) to him, he looks into her eyes at the end of the fantasy-
"aber es ist der Tod, der mit Claras Augen ihn freundlich anschaut"
(p. 348). Her wishes for him, though well-intentioned, are death to him.
Still, it might be argued, Nathanael met disaster all on his own and
without Clara's influence in the Olimpia episode; and the moral of that
episode might seem to be (and it has mostly been seen to be) that Na-
thanael cannot deal with a real woman'6 like Clara, but only with a
puppet like Olimpia, who offers no check to his narcissism. That, if true,
would make Nathanael's madness seem once more entirely self-gener-
ated. But to view Olimpia in this way is not to see the double-edged qual-
ity of the satire which she embodies. There is indeed a surface level of
the text which makes fun of Nathanael for not being able to distinguish
between an automaton and a real person. But there is a deeper and more
important level of satire which reverses the direction of the first; here,
it is ordinary people that are satirized for being so automaton-like that
they might be mistaken for automatons, or an automaton mistaken for a
real person. That second interpretation emerges after Olimpia's real
status becomes public knowledge:

Er [Spalanzani]mufte indes die Universitatverlassen,weil

Nathanaels Geschichte Aufsehen erregt hatte und es allgemein
fir gdnzlich unerlaubten Betrug gehalten wurde, verntinftigen
Teezirkeln (Olimpia hatte sie mit Gltick besucht) statt der
lebendigen Person eine Holzpuppe einzuschwarzen. Juristen
nannten es sogar einen feinen und um so h1rter zu bestrafenden

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12 JOHN M. ELLIS

Betrug, als er gegen das Publikum gerichtet und so schlau

angelegt worden, daB kein Mensch (ganz kluge Studenten
ausgenommen) es gemerkt habe, unerachtet jetzt alle weise
tun und sich auf allerlei Tatsachen berufen wollten, die ihnen
verdachtig vorgekommen. (p. 360)

We now learn that it was not only Nathanael who had been taken in;
Olimpia had been almost indistinguishable from members of "verniinf-
tigen Teezirkeln," her one failing, apparently, being that she had sneezed
more than she had yawned. But that only stresses how lifeless and asleep
the human company had seemed; if anything, Olimpia would have
looked somewhat more awake. The whole episode has had a serious and
possibly salutary effect on the society of the town:
... die Geschichte mit dem Automat hatte tief in ihrer
Seele Wurzel gefaBt, und es schlich sich in der Tat abscheuli-
ches MiBtrauen gegen menschliche Figuren ein. Um nun ganz
iiberzeugt zu werden, daB man keine Holzpuppe liebe, wurde
von mehreren Liebhabern verlangt, daB die Geliebte etwas
taktlos singe und tanze, dab sie beim Vorlesen sticke,
stricke, mit dem Mdpschen spiele una so welter, vor allen
Dingen aber, daB sie nicht bloB hdre, sondern auch manchmal
in der Art spreche, daB dies Sprechen wirklich ein Denken
und Empfinden voraussetze. Das Liebesbiindnis vieler wurde
fester und dabei anmutiger, andere dagegen gingen leise
auseinander. (p. 360)

Behavior in the town had degenerated to an automaton-like quality,

so that the town was vulnerable to the possibility of an Olimpia; speech
seemed no longer to relate to thought or feeling. Those conditions were
exploited but not created by Spalanzani. That the town as a whole was
involved requires some revision of our judgment of Nathanael; if so
many were taken in, his being among them no longer seems such a seri-
ous matter, or to require the judgment that he is mad. Olimpia's func-
tion, then, is not to contrast unfavorably with real people, but to drama-
tize how automaton-like they have become;17 and this general function is
particularly true in the case of Clara. The point is not that Clara is dif-
ferent from Olimpia, but that she is like her.1"The two are in fact linked
in many ways, and I want now to look especially at the parallels involv-
ing eyes, mirroring, and the motif of "entzuinden."
When Nathanael is with Olimpia, she looks steadily into his eyes, and
he calls her (p. 355) "du tiefes Gemot, in dem sich mein ganzes Sein
spiegelt." That usage immediately recalls the narrator's excursus in
which Clara's eyes are said to be like a lake in a Ruisdael painting, "in
dem sich des wolkenlosen Himmels reines Azur, Wald- und Blumenflur,
der reichen Landschaft ganzes buntes, heitres Leben spiegelt" (p. 345).
But the very first mention of mirroring is in Clara's letter to
Nathanael, and it provides the key to the interpretation of the later
instances:
Gibtes einedunkleMacht,die so rechtfeindlichundverrate-
risch einen Faden in unser Innereslegt, woran sie uns dann
festpacktund fortziehtauf einem gefahrvollenverderblichen

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 Interpreting Hoffmann's Der Sandmann 13

Wege, den wir sonst nicht betreten haben wiirden-gibt es eine

solche Macht, so muB sie in uns sich, wie wir selbst gestalten,
ja unser Selbst werden; denn nur so glauben wir an sie und
rurnumen ihr den Platz ein, dessen sie bedarf, um jenes geheime
Werk zu vollbringen. Haben wir festen, durch das heitre Leben
gesttarkten, Sinn genug, um fremdes feindliches Einwirken
als solches stets zu erkennen und den Weg, in den uns Neigung
und Beruf geschoben, ruhigen Schrittes zu verfolgen, so geht
wohl jene unheimliche Macht unter in dem vergeblichen Rin-
gen nach der Gestaltung, die unser eignes Spiegelbild sein
sollte. (p. 340)

The reader's general impression of Clara's attitude to Nathanael's

distress is of her telling him that it is self-generated. Yet that is not
what she says here."' On the contrary: she is saying that we must resist
the influence of external forces on our minds and cling to our own
Spiegelbild, the image of ourselves, following "ruhigen Schrittes" the
path which our own inclination and calling has pushed us into. Now this
sounds very odd advice, since her general view of Nathanael is of some-
one who should hold in check the workings of his own "Neigung." But
she is really talking about herself, not him. It is Clara who cultivates
her own Spiegelbild, and calmly pursues the path to which she thinks
she is called, resisting all external influences-she is the real narcissist.
And she is really talking about how she remains unaffected by foreign
influences in her life-unlike Nathanael. In the later passage, her eyes
mirror the happy landscape which is her unalterable view of life, no mat-
ter what happens to her. By contrast, Olimpia mirrors Nathanael's self,
which Clara refuses to do-she rejects it constantly.
Another pointer to the destructive influence of Clara, but not of Olim-
pia, is seen in the parallel uses of "entzAnden." Nathanael wants des-
perately to make an effect on Clara with his poem, ". . . als mtisse
Claras kaltes Gemuitdadurch entziindet werden .. ." (p. 348). Obviously
he wants her to take some notice of his concerns and mind. He fails,
since she reasserts her own inner self more strongly (and dismissively
of him) than ever. But when, on the other hand, he sees Olimpia through
Coppola's Perspektiv, "Es schien, als wenn nun erst die Sehkraft
entziindet wtirde" (p. 352), and when he sees her at the ball, she looks
at him in a way "der ztindend sein Inneres durchdrang" (p. 354). Again,
Nathanael can seem to give more to and get more from an automaton
than the cold Clara, incapable of real communication and of being af-
fected by anyone else. But interestingly enough, there is one moment
when Nathanael does draw a real emotional reaction from Clara, and
it is just as the duel between himself and Lothar is to take place:
"Schluchzend rief sie laut: 'Ihr wilden entsetzlichen Menschen! Stol3t
mich nur gleich nieder, ehe ihr euch anfallt; denn wie soll ich denn
langer leben auf der Welt, wenn der Geliebte den Bruder oder wenn der
Bruder den Geliebten ermordet hat!' " (p. 349). The friends drop their
weapons and are reconciled; and Nathanael feels an oddly intense relief:
"Dem Nathanael war es zu Mute, als sei eine schwere Last, die ihn zu
Boden gedruickt,von ihm abgewalzt, ja als habe er, Widerstand leistend

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14 JOHN M. ELLIS

der finstern Macht, die ihn befangen, sein ganzes Sein, dem Vernichtung
drohte, gerettet" (p. 349).
Nathanael suddenly feels completely saved from what had oppressed
him; but why should he? Surely because he has got what he had longed
for-a genuine sign of Clara's concern for him, in a strong expression
of emotion. It is only this that could have saved "sein ganzes Sein," and
the absence of it, through Clara's rigidity, that destroys him. But at this
one point in the story, he had, at last, "entziindet" Clara-he had
brought her to life. No wonder he feels so much better: he has got what
his psyche had needed from Clara-for the first and last time. Thus
emotionally satisfied at last, he is able to return to his studies.20
But this shows again that the real "finstre Macht" which threatens
his life is Clara-her dismissal of him and insistence on her own Spie-
gelbild as the measure of him and of all else in her life. Nathanael is
more comfortable with the automaton Olimpia not because he can in-
dulge his narcissism but because Clara is actively harmful to him while
Olimpia is inert.
Nathanael's death is the final event in a series precipitated by Clara's
suggesting that they ascend the tower. What is the significance of the
suggestion? From the top of the tower they look at the "angenehme
Gegend," and see "duftige Waldungen." This is a reminder of the narra-
tor's excursus, in which Clara's eyes are like a lake reflecting "der
reichen Landschaft ganzes buntes, heitres Leben." Clara is trying to
make Nathanael see her vision of a contented life and a sunny landscape,
to see with her eyes. That is still not enough to push him "over the
edge," but what she says does indeed do so: " 'Sieh doch den sonder-
baren kleinen grauen Busch, der ordentlich auf uns los zu schreiten
scheint,' frug Clara .. ." At which Nathanael's final fit of madness
begins. But why does what Clara says attack him in this way? What is the
significance of the strange gray bush? For this we must go back to
Nathanael's letter to Lothar (actually to Clara). He described Cop-
pelius there as follows: "Denke Dir einen grol3en breitschultrigen Mann
mit einem unformlich dicken Kopf, erdgelbem Gesicht, buschigten
grauen Augenbrauen . .." (p. 334-my italics). Just as she did before,
Clara interrupts a peaceful scene together by raising the question of
Coppelius and the threat to them ("der ordentlich auf uns loszuschreiten
scheint") as if to say again: only your obsession with Coppelius disturbs
the pretty scene. She aggressively provokes him once more. Nathanael
immediately reaches for Coppola's Perspektiv, looks at her, not the
bush, and sees an automaton, for he cries out "Holzptippchen dreh
dich." He knows that she will remain an automaton, that in her in-
flexibility she is the greatest of his problems, and he tries to kill her; and
when he fails to get rid of her and relieve that pressure in his life, the
other one appears below in the form of Coppelius, which is finally too
much for him.
It remains to consider Coppelius' role in this final scene and in the
story as a whole. We have seen that during the first part of the story all
sinister implications of Coppelius, including his possible identity with

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 Interpreting Hoffmann's Der Sandmann 15

Coppola, could be attributable to Nathanael's imagination, while the

last part of the story relates intrinsically menacing events which can no
longer be minimized in the same way. In this category belongs Coppola's
involvement in the sequence of events which draw Nathanael into the
orbit of Olimpia, which I have described above. But there follows clear
confirmation that Coppelius and Coppola are one, and thus that there
did exist a conspiracy against Nathanael. For when Nathanael dis-
covers the fight over Olimpia, he hears, as he listens outside the door,
not Coppola's voice, but Coppelius': "Es waren Spalanzanis und des
grai3lichen Coppelius Stimmen .. ." (p. 358). Nathanael bursts in and
sees "den Italiener Coppola," but again, when Coppola flees, the Pro-
fessor gives the truth: " 'Ihm nach-ihm nach, was zauderst du?-
Coppelius-Coppelius, mein bestes Automat hat er mir geraubt .. .' "
(p. 359). Spalanzani confirms that Coppola is indeed Coppelius.
All other facts about Coppelius and Coppola fall into place after this.
Spalanzani's statement that he had known Coppola (as Coppola) for
some years was not reliable because of the fact that both were involved
in making the automaton, while Coppelius' mistreatment of Nathanael
in his youth suggested the same interest of the "Mechanikus":
". .. 'aber nun wollen wir doch den Mechanismus der Hande und der
Ftiiie recnt observieren.' Und damit faBte er mich gewaltig, daB die
Gelenke knacKten . . ." (p. 336) Coppelius had fled Italy to go back to
Germany after the Olimpia scandal, just as he had earlier fled Germany
after the death of Nathanael's father, and that accounts for his turning
up in the market place in Nathanael's home town.
Coppelius and Spalanzani had indeed victimized Nathanael by treating
him like a puppet, as Coppelius had done to the child; but Clara vic-
timizes him also by behaving like an automaton, and demanding that he
be one too.
Nathanael is not a delusional madman, as the first part of the story
seems to allow, nor is he the artist driven mad by the difficulties of
living in a prosaic world, as some critics have thought; he is simply a
human being, but never allowed to be one, either by Coppelius, Spalan-
zani or Clara, all of whom, in their various ways, are only interested in
making him a puppet.

Universityof California,Santa Cruz

1 The editionI have used is E. T.A. Hoffmann: Fantasie- und Nachtstiicke, ed. W. Mtiller-
Seidel. Miinchen: Winkler Verlag, 1964, pp. 331-63. Separate essays on the story are by:
Ingrid Aichinger, "E.T.A. Hoffmanns Novelle 'Der Sandmann' und die Interpretation
Sigmund Freuds," Zeitschrift far deutsche Philologie, 95 (1976), Sonderheft, 113-32;
Raimund Belgardt "Der Ktinstler und die Puppe. Zur Interpretation von Hoffmanns
Der Sandmann," German Quarterly, 42 (1969), 686-700; Barbara Elling, "Die
Zwischenrede des Autors in E.T.A. Hoffmanns 'Sandmann'," Mitteilungen der E. T.A.
Hoffmann Gesesellschaft, 18 (1972), 47-53; Gtinter Hartung, "Anatomie des Sand-
manns," WeimarerBeitrdige,23 (1977), 45-65; Neil Hertz, "Freud and the Sandman,"
in Textual Strategies. Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism, ed. Josue V. Harari.
Ithaca, 1979, pp. 296-321; Charles N. Hayes, "Phantasie und Wirklichkeit im Werke

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16 JOHN M. ELLIS
E.T.A. Hoffmanns, mit einer Interpretation der Erzahlung 'Der Sandmann' " in Ideo-
logiekritische Studien zur Literatur. Essays I, ed. Volkmar Sander. Frankfurt/Main,
1972, pp. 169-214; Ernst Fedor Hoffmann, "Zu E.T.A. Hoffmanns 'Sandmann,' "
Monatshefte, 54 (1962), 244-52; Ursula D. Lawson, "Pathological Time in E.T.A.
Hoffmann's 'Der Sandmann,' " Monatshefte, 60 (1968), 51-61; Ursula Mahlendorf,
"E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Sandman: The Fictional Psycho-Biography of a Romantic
Poet," American Imago, 32 (1975), 217-39; Irving Massey, "Narcissism in 'The Sand-
man': Nathanael vs. E.T.A. Hoffmann," Genre, 9 (1973), 114-20; S.S. Prawer,
"Hoffmann's Uncanny Guest: A Reading of Der Sandmann," German Life and Let-
ters, N.S., 18 (1965), 297-308.
2 The view of, for example, Lawson ("the evolving pattern of insanity," p. 51) and

Hoffmann (". . . Geisteserkrankung, deren Verlauf mit wissenschaftlicher Genauig-

keit verzeichnet ist," p. 244).
3 Clara is a completely reliable source of good sense for Lawson ("clear, rational think-
ing," p. 56), Hoffmann (she is "wahrend der ganzen Erzahlung positiv gesehen .. .,"
p. 249) and many others, but especially for writers of more general books on Hoffmann,
e.g., her letter is written "from the standpoint of a cool, balanced, and healthy mind;
she argues with admirable sanity ..." (Harvey Hewett-Thayer, Hoffmann: Author
of the Tales, Princeton, 1948, p. 187). Some recent critics are more skeptical of Clara;
see below, n. 15.
4 Clara's determinedly rational analysis of the irrational corresponds to Freud's, as

Prawer points out (p. 301). For this reason Freudian interpreters tend to find Clara's
views congenial. E.g., Mahlendorf: "Klara's well-meant psychological explanation ...
that the fearful Coppelius is a creature of his imagination is sound enough" (p. 228).
In general, Mahlendorf's interpretation is of the kind which equates features of the
text with aspects of psychoanalytic theory in a very incautious manner; e.g., "A year
or so later, the sandman returns in a surprise visit. This seems to mean that puberty
comes and overwhelms the adolescent" (p. 225). Aichinger, also Freudian in approach,
rejects the notion that the story may see Clara in any negative way: "... Clara
tragt durchaus positive Ztige" (p. 119).
5 Hertz, p. 313. To be sure, Hertz applies similar concepts to much of the rest of the
text, speaking for example, of the narrator's "exuberant virtuosity" and Hoffmann's
"well-known levity and extravagance" (p. 309); but he does so only in order to say
that the text has "literariness," which Freud's interpretation ignores. This argument
is all the more strange since Hertz also thinks that Freud's diagnosis of Nathanael's
problem is justified. Hertz thus posits both a "psychological" and a "literary" reading
-a dichotomy which allows all of the textual features inconsistent with Freud's
interpretation to be disregarded as "literary." This is at bottom simply an extreme
version of the dichotomy of form and content, with the latter embodying meaning as
prescribed by Freud, and the former embodying "literary" qualities. But an inter-
pretation of the text, to be adequate, must abstract from all of its features; the "liter-
ary" features are also relevant to the question of what is wrong with Nathanael.
6 Prawer,
p. 298. Later in his essay, however, Prawer attributes a more integral func-
tion to the excursus by seeing it as "part of the pervading cat-and-mouse game" of the
text (p. 306).
7 Belgardt, p. 687: "Die ganze Zwischenrede ist bereits darauf angelegt, den Leser in
das Erzihlte zu involvieren . . . Der Dichter will, daB der Leser die Wahrheit des
Geschauten erkenne und es neben seiner Alltagswelt als auch eine Wirklichkeit
akzeptiere."
8 Hoffmann, p. 250: "In dem Abschnitt, der die Entstehung von Nathanaels erschrecken-
dem Gedicht beschreibt, findet die eigenartige Zwischenrede des Autors nach dem
dritten Brief eine wesentliche Entsprechung und wird nachtraglich als sinnvolles
Strukturelement gerechtfertigt."
9 Hoffmann, p. 249.
to Belgardt, p. 695. "Kalte prosaische Menschen konnen in einer solchen Welt der
Transzendenzlosigkeit und geistigen Ode wohl leben-der Dichter Nathanael mu13darin
zugrunde gehen .. . Die Erkenntnis des hoheren Seins, so wird angedeutet, ist nur
dem Kiinstler moglich."
" Cf. this restriction in Hertz's account: "Somewhere along the way, the gentle reader is

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 InterpretingHoffmann'sDer Sandmann 17
likely to realize that the torment he is being asked to imagine is not that of Nathanael,
though it sounds so much like it, but rather that of the narrator faced with the problem
of telling Nathanael's story" (p. 305). The anxiety of the artist (a rather weary clich6,
in any case) is here the focus of the critic's interest, rather than the anxieties which the
artist has written about and presented. In so writing, Hertz is also confusing the separate
figures of author and narrator.
12 The major weakness most commonly encountered in criticism of the story is precisely
a failure to respond to the changes introduced by the different narration of the middle
and later sections of the story.
13 Cf. my interpretation of Das Urteil in Narration in the German Novelle, (Cambridge,

1974), pp. 188-211.

14 A major error in Freud's interpretation in his famous essay "Das Unheimliche" is the

failure to see how the story moves away from the delusional view of Nathanael. This
error is shared by those who have followed Freud, i.e., Aichinger, Hertz, and Samuel
Weber, "The Sideshow, or: Remarks on a Canny Moment," MLN, 88 (1973), 1102-33.
The entire basis for Freud's (and his followers') discussion of the tale is removed by the
undermining of Clara's view of Nathanael.
15 Recent critics have been more willing to see a negative side of Clara than formerly;
e.g., Massey, Hayes and Belgardt. But they have done so most often to make her the
polar opposite of a poetic ideal represented by Olimpia, not (as in this interpretation)
to show the progressive reevaluation of the early view of Nathanael, and it appears
to me that this emphasis on her "unpoetic" nature deflects attention from the more
real issues of Clara's effect on Nathanael. Hayes' negative interpretation has a different
emphasis, one that is political in nature. For him, Clara is "das typische Burgermad-
chen"; and what alienates Nathanael from her is "seine berechtigte Angst vor der Un-
freiheit der burgerlichen Ehe, ja der burgerlichen Lebensweise iberhaupt" (pp. 191-93).
The story thus represents Hoffmann's rejection of bourgeois society (p. 185); and
Hoffmann himself, when through the figure of Olimpia characterizing "die Frau als
blode, lacherliche Puppe . . . reflektiert . . . typische Haltungen des mannlichen
Chauvinismus" (p. 202). This interpretation seems to me to bring the concerns of
modern political activism to the text in an incautious manner, without sufficient
care to see whether they really fit its concerns. For example, it is Clara's automaton-
like progress to a married life that is suspect in the story, and there is never any criticism
of the married state per se; Hoffmann's portrayal of Clara's reasoning power does
not fit the notion that he has an undifferentiated male chauvinist attitude to women, nor
is there ever in the representation of Olimpia as an automaton any issue of men con-
trolling women, but on the contrary, only of Spalanzani and Coppola controlling
Nathanael; and the social satire which is part of Olimpia's function is directed not at
bourgeois society in particular but at social interaction in general.
16 This is an important element in the Freudian view that Nathanael suffers from a

'castration complex' and can relate to the puppet but not to an actual female. But the
interpretation of Nathanael's childhood fear of loss of eyes as a fear of castration is
an untenable distortion of the meaning of eyes in the story; over and over again, ways
of seeing, reflecting and mirroring one's self are stressed in the story, so that Nathanael's
eyes must be taken in the context of Clara's eyes and their effect, Coppola's Perspek-
tiv, and so on. This is simply a case of the interpreter-no matter how prestigious a
figure-bringing his own obsessive interests to a text and forcing them upon it. How
uncritically Freud's view is so often accepted can be seen, for example, in the case of
Weber, who summarizes the story and then announces: "'After this summary we can
see that Freud's emphasis on the decisive importance of the eyes and of castration . . . is
wholly justified" (p. 1118). No argument is offered for a view that has not been at all
obvious to the vast majority of the story's readers.
"7Belgardt views Olimpia as "das wahre Ideal aber, das poetische Ideal," "des Dichters
Wunschbild einer Zuhorerin" and "die Verkorperung einer geistigen Welt hoheren
Verstehens und Erkennens" (pp. 691-92). It is, of course, implausible to see a dummy
without understanding of any kind as the poet's ideal listener, or as the embodiment
of a world of higher understanding! Belgardt rightly rejects the conventional view of
Olimpia, but substitutes for it one which lacks credibility.
, Peter von Matt, in his Die A ugen der A utomaten. E. T.A. Hoffmanns Imaginationslehre

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 18 JOHN M. ELLIS
als Prinzip seiner Erzdhlkunst (Tuibingen, 1971) comes to a view of Olimpia in relation
to Clara which is closer to that given here, though by way of a very different argument:
". .. wenn das eben Gesagte zutrifft, dann steht Clara gar nicht im Gegensatz zu Olimpia,
sondern eher parallel zu ihr ... als die gesteigerte Allegorie der lebendigen Braut .. ."
(p. 82). But to call Olimpia simply an allegory of Clara misses some of the differences of
emphasis; for example, Clara's aggressive assertion of her own nature, which is to be
sure equally mechanical.
19 Weber's disastrous misreading of this passage equates "jene unheimliche Nacht"
[sic, also translated "night,"] with "unser eigenes Spiegelbild," which reverses the
meaning of the text and reintroduces the notion which is not in this passage, that of
self-generated delusion: " 'That uncanny night,' she writes, is only 'the fantom of
our own ego' and 'our own mirror-image" (jene 'unheimliche Nacht' sei nur 'das
Phantom unseres eigenen Ichs' and 'unser eigenes Spiegelbild')" p. 1116. Hayes, p.
194, makes the same error in his reading of the position of "Spiegelbild" in the sentence.
20 Johannes Klein's summary of the story is inaccurate here in a quite crucial way: "In

Unmut kehrt er zur Universitit zuriick (Geschichte der deutschen Novelle, Wiesbaden,
1960, p. 126).

FESTSCHRIFTEN PROJECT UNDERWAY AT THE

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

Withthe assistanceof a $113,000grantfrom the NationalEndowmentfor the

Humanities,CharlesSzabo (WesternEuropeanBibliographerof the Memorial
Library), ChristopherKleinhenz (French and Italian), and James Brewer
(MemorialLibrary)are in the processof compilinga bibliographyof humanistic
articlesappearingin Festschriften.The project,when completed,will providea
catalogueand indexto the morethan 10,000Festschriftenin the Humanitiespub-
lished in North Americaand the United Kingdomthrough 1980. Due to the
complexityof the materialand the largenumberof entries,computerprocessing
will be used in preparingthe data. Anyone who knows of rareor obscureFest-
schriften, which fall under the scope of the bibliographyand which might be
difficultto locate, is kindlyrequestedto send all pertinentinformationto Chris-
topherKleinhenz,Departmentof Frenchand Italian,618 Van Hise Hall, Univer-
sity of Wisconsin,Madison53706.

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions