Fantasy life

E. T. A. Hoffmann
 This chapter will:
• Introduce you to the short prose
fiction of the Romantic period.
• Continue exploring how Romantic
writers depicted themselves and
how this fed into subsequent
representations of them as
Aims Romantic geniuses.
• Continue the discussion of the dark
side of the Romantic imagination as
associated with the extremes of
madness and delusion.
• Consider the depiction of women in
relation to Romantic genius.
Introduction In this chapter, we pursue the
theme of Romantic lives through
a tale. ’The Sandman’ (1816) by
E.T.A. Hoffman, one of the
greatest European Romantic
writers.
Biographical
information
Give a brief background about information
about Hoffman?
E.T.A. Hoffmann
• Hoffmann (1776-1822) was one of the greatest
European Romantic writers.
• A German writer who was born in Prussia
( currently Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Russia ).
• He lived during Napoleon's wars and suffered from
deportation (exile), and was forced to flee back and
forth across Europe, in 1807, he was deported to
Berlin by the French authorities, where he nearly
starved to death
• He experienced war personally during the battles of
Dresden and the battle of the Nations – unlike the
other three English Romantics.
 • He worked as a musical journalist and could barely
make a living.
• He did not write autobiography, but he wrote fiction
with many different personas. Thus, when studying
Hoffmann, we’ll be turning away from
autobiographical versions of the Romantic life to
experimental fictive representations.
• Hoffmann’s work is often said to represent the
culmination of German Romanticism.
• He also wrote criticism on music and literature. His
writing was his main source of income
• He is the author of two novels and seven fairy tales
including the original source for the ballet The
Nutcracker. English translations of his work appeared
in mid 19th century.
Hoffmann’s influence
Hoffmann’s work exerted considerable influence
on the subsequent development of the short
form of the ‘tale of mystery and imagination’.
Comment. (p.102)
Walter Scott
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Edgar Allan Poe
Alexander Pushkin
Dostoyevsky
 • Hoffman influenced the short form
of “the tale of mystery and

Hoffman
imagination” later practiced by
Walter Scott and Nathaniel
Hawthorne.

influenc
• He became famous after he died
and his work influenced French,
Russian and American and English
Literature. His work inspired many

e operas, films, plays and other

fictions.
• Hoffmann’s work cannot be read as
autobiography although it contains
many references to Hoffmann’s life.
 • Les Contes d’Hoffmann, is a play made about
the life of Hoffmann, that was produced in
1851. The play was made through the use of 3
of his ‘tales’ (‘A New Year’s Eve Adventure’ –
‘The Sandman’ – ‘Councilor Krespel’).
• The play was fundamentally faithful in its
depiction of Hoffmann’s life as a man and as a
writer:
Hoffmann’ 1) It preserves the author’s arguably well-
deserved reputation as a heavy-drinking
s play genius.
2) It repeats his habit of framing up his stories
collectively and internally as tales told to
and discussed with a band of male friends.
3) It recasts Hoffmann’s unhappy love stories
in thinly disguised fictional form to the
great annoyance and embarrassment of
everyone else concerned.
 Hoffmann’s personas
• Hoffmann had a habit of crafting personae for himself: A persona is an
assumed (unreal) character.
• He created personas for himself: As a music critic, he adopted the
persona of one Johannes Kreisler (Fig 4.1 P. 104), an imaginary violinist
and conductor. as a novelist , he appeared as a character called
Theodore or Hoffmann and as the editor of the journals, he presents
himself as a man called ‘the travelling enthusiast’.
• This was done to distance himself from his work and achieve the mixing
up of realism and fantasy as a style.
• In “A New Year’s Eve Adventure”, the travelling enthusiast, the hero of
the story, is writing to Theodore Amadeus Hoffmann who is supposedly
the editor talking to him “You can see, my dear Theodore Amadeus
Hoffmann, that a strange dark power manifests itself in my life too
often”
 • Hoffmann’s tales are throughout characterized by
an oscillation between voices located in the real
world of contemporary Berlin and voices prey to
dreams and visions and living in ‘a strange magical
realm’.
• It also allows him to show that it is difficult to
Hoffmann’s distinguish inner life from the outside world.
• His distance from the tales allows him to comment
Personas on the protagonists and the events and show how
fantasy and realism are mixed (intertwined).
Hoffmann shows that ‘one can encounter so much
madness and strangeness in the real world” .
• He was influenced by living the war in Berlin.
Hoffmann’s characters -
MAIN IDEA

• Hoffman’s tales were published under titles such as ‘Fantasy

Pieces’ and ‘Night-Pieces’, titles calculated to evoke ideas of
darkness, obscured vision and the world of dreams.
• In fact, the stories evoke fantasy and the fantastic – which
maybe defined as literature which is interested in portraying
events that could not happen in real life. It is the opposite of
realism which is depiction (description ) of everyday life in full
details.
• In this sense, fantasy and the fantastic are the opposite of
realism, which specializes in portraying the everyday in faithful
detail.
• Hoffman’s stories have since come to be known as ‘literary
tales’, to signal their kinship with another kind of story, the
‘children’s and household tales’ published in 1812 by the
Brothers Grimm.
 • The ‘literary tales’ had an important prehistory within
literature in German as allegorical tales set inside longer
stories.
• A recent editor of Hoffmann’s works, Everett Bleiler, notes

Hoffman’s that the concept of “marchen” literary tale is “a structure

of doubling and parallelism where a supernatural story is
juxtaposed (contrasted) to the everyday. “
Romantic • Hoffmann is famous for this structure which he took from

vision: fairy tales and allegories. For example, ‘The Sandman’

insists that the real world and the fantastical are
contiguous and simultaneous.
Marchen’s • Another example, “A New Year’s Eve Adventure” tells of a

structure realistic story of a lover who is going to an evening party

where his beloved ignores him and he gets drunk
afterwards. This story is juxtaposed with a fantastic story
of the beloved changed into a witch.
• The ability to mix the real and the fantastic is part of
Hoffmann’s romantic vision
Hoffmann’s Romantic Vision - childhood

• Hoffmann’s romantic vision also included the perspective of the

child who could live in the fantastic world of beautiful things
and the adult perspective who relied on memory and usually
suffered from the world that existed (reality).
• The theme of childhood memories is common among
Romantics: Wordsworth, De Quincey and Hoffmann.
The
sandman
1. What is the myth of Sandman?
2. Give a summary of Hoffman’s The Sandman.
3. Give a list of the main characters in Hoffman’s The Sandman.
The Sandman
(1816):
P.307:336

• The Sandman is one of his three mostly

adapted tales which also include “A New
Year’s Eve Adventure” (1815) and
“Councillor Krespel”(1818). The interplay
between the real world and the fictional
world is found in “The Sandman”.
• These three tales were the source for a
French play in 1815 Les Contes
d’Hoffmannn. This play took three of
Hoffmann’s love affairs and framed them
in a complex form . The play tried to tell
Hoffmann’s story as a man and as a
writer and how his style was complex.
 The Story of The Sandman

Nathanael, the troubled character, turns mad

when he is visited by Coppola, the barometer
seller who reminds him of his traumatic childhood
memory: (Dr. Coppelius the devilish character and
the stories of the sandman who are going to pluck
his eyes). He falls in love with two ladies: Clara and
Olimpia; the latter turns out to be an automaton
(robot). Olimpia’s death scene is proleptic
(foreshadows) the scene where Nathanael tries to
kill Clara in one of his mad fits. Clara is saved by
her brother Lothar and Nathanael commits suicide
and Clara is happily married and has two sons.
Three Romantic Writers
 ‘The Sandman’ opens with letters
written by two of the story’s central
characters, Nathanael and Clara. These
precede a one section of narration in
the voice of a fictionalized authorial
persona: the ‘Hoffmann’ figure.
 This narrating persona begins by
addressing the reader directly in the
first person, his use of ‘I’ disappears as
his narrative gains momentum.
 What confronts us here are three fictive
versions of the Romantic writer, with
each providing their own perspective on
events.
 The effect produces a fragmented
structure and demonstrates the
difficulty of obtaining any definitive
account of reality.
 Activity 1:
3 Narrators:
3 Romantic Writers
P.107
 1. Nathanael
2. Clara
3. The narrator
• Each tells the story from their own
Three perspective
Romantic Read:
Extract 1: (From Nathanael’s opening letter to
Writers = All Lothar) P. 107-8
Fictionalized Extract 2: (Clara’s reply to the misdirected
letter) P. 108
Extract 3: (The fictionalized author explains
his motivations for telling the story) P. 108-9
 1. How is each of these Romantic narrators
characterized? Attend to their style of expression, as
well as to what they tell us about themselves.
Extract 1= Nathanael letter to Lothar telling him about
the worst thing which happened to him and cursed his
life at 12 noon on 30 October. A barometer-seller
came into his hotel room trying to sell him his
Extract 1= products but Nathanael threatened to throw him
downstairs if he does not leave which he did.

Nathanael Nathanael is the victim of extreme feelings and his

register (vocabulary) shows a disturbed mind. His
exclamatory register betrays the heightened

letter emotional sensitivity of a mind troubled by ‘dark

forebodings’ and the compulsive rehearsing of a ‘fatal
memory’.
At the same time, his account of the occasion which
sparkled this reaction is matter-of-fact and draws on
the conventions of realism (the exact specification of
time and date). Realism is a literary term that
describes modes (types) of writing that show real
characters and events.
 • In her account, Clara tries to convince
Nathaniel not to follow superstitions
and forget about the barometer –man
Coppola who has no power over him
and that it is his confused state of mind
which makes him fear the barometer –
seller.

Extract 2- • She is answering the letter directed to

Lothar, her brother.
Clara’s reply to • Clara’s voice strikes us as one of
commonsense reassurance; she explains
Nathaniel’s away Nathanael’s fears as the product of
a ‘phantom’ self and of his misguided
letter ‘belief’ in malevolent powers. She is the
practical character who tries to offer
therapy (cure).
• - Underlying her pragmatic dose of
therapy is a hint of anxious uncertainty:
‘I don’t quite understand’, ‘I only have a
dim idea’.
 • The fictionalized author-figure adopts a
confidential and conversational tone,
but portrays himself as a Romantic
visionary: ‘absorbed’ by the tale he has
to relate and ‘powerfully’ impelled to
tell it.
Extract 3- The • The narrator explains to the reader how
narrator he decided to tell the story of young
Nathanael because he was curious.
Nathanael has a calamitous life (crises)
and the narrator wanted to tell his
strange story.
• His unique insight will allow him to tell
the secrets of the tale.
 1) They declare themselves in tones of intense

2. The 2)
passion
They share a characteristically Gothic vocabulary

three of ‘menacing fate’, ‘dark powers and forces’, and

‘strange’ and ‘portentous’ stories.

romantic
3) They exhibit a confusing mix of obsession and
detachment.
4) They all refer to the difficulty of communicating
writers what they want to say: ‘how am I ever to convey
to you’, ‘I have with some labour, written down’,

Nathanael,
‘they are unable to find words’. Thus, there is a
sense here of a crisis in the Romantic vocation: a
suspicion that language may be inadequate to

Clara, the the enormity of the Romantic visionary’s

endeavor to both capture and transcend reality.

Narrator
5) The three have imagination that they cannot
control. Clara, the rational one, imagines how
Nathanael must be confused and suffering so she

Similarities feels worried about him. The narrator- author

persona is an eye witness to the mix of real and
gothic horrors and he uses irony to comment
 Summary of the Sandman Introductory
letters- Difference

Clara’s letter
Nathanael letter
• Common sense
• Victim
and reassurance
• Exclamatory The Narrator’s
• She explains
register Letter:
away Nathanael
• Heightened fears.
emotional
sensitivity • Confidential
• Anxious • Conversational
• Date and
uncertainty. tone
location make
his memories • Addressing the
realistic reader.
 3) What resemblances can you identify
between the personae of these three fictional
Romantic writers and any of the Romantic
selves we have encountered in the preceding
The chapters of the book?
1- The troubled figure of Nathanael resembles
Sandman: De Quincey’s depiction of a ‘self undone by its
the dreams’.
2- The theme of inescapable memory connects
Romantic back to the autobiographical persona of
Writers Wordsworth’s Prelude.
3-The image of the Romantic writer as a
visionary unsure of his own expressive powers
might remind us of the figure of the poet
articulated in Shelly’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’.
 3 Romantic In each of these three fictional personae, we have a
construct of the Romantic writer whose imagination
has in some way exceeded their control:
writers: How  Nathanael is ‘vainly struggling’ to escape from the

do the 3
imagined threat posed by the barometer-seller.
 Clara’s inclination to turn the story into a joke in

writers show thwarted by her anxiety about what she imagines as

Nathanael’s ‘deep perturbation of spirits’ and ‘state
of mind’.
the romantic  The authorial persona, with more than a hint of
irony, declares ‘the prismatic radiance’ of his own
self? imagination to be beyond his power as a writer to
convey.
• Irony is implying something different from what is
explicitly said . It requires reading between the
lines . Romantic irony is a kind of literary self-
consciousness in which an author is free to expose
the fictional illusion of the work.
Ways of Seeing: eyes
and ‘I’s
• Recurring pattern of references to
sight, vision, and to eyes
• Seeing – sight – vision
• Dark – dim
• Vision – prismatic radiance
Ways of seeing: eyes and ‘I’s

 The main idea that the story presents is that there is more
than one way of seeing.
 The images of eyes, vision and seeing are metaphors for the
different ways of seeing reality. As the story is told from
three perspectives so we have different perceptions and
different ways of seeing.
 The fact that the Romantic artist might be equipped with a
special and privileged way of seeing, is this explored in ‘The
Sandman’ through the recurring pattern of references to
sight, vision, and above all, to eyes.
 It is supposed that The Romantic artist has a privileged or
unique way of seeing things. This reflects the ability of the
romantic writer: as the fictionalized Hoffman narrator
 Reread the two sections of the story which focus on the
doubled figure of Coppelius / Coppola.

The first is in Nathanael’s opening letter, from ‘On seeing

Coppelius now’ (p. 311) to ‘I felt nothing more’ (p. 312).
This is the scene in which he recalls his childhood

Activity
eavesdropping and discovery during one of his father’s
mysterious experiments with Coppelius.

2 The second features the scene in which Coppola sells the

spyglass to Nathanael, from ‘Now, however, Coppola
came …’ (p. 324) to ‘laughing loudly as he went
downstairs’ (326).

How do the motifs of eyes are seeing function in these

episodes?
 1) Nathanael’s Opening letter: Nathanial as a
child
• Since Nathanial’s childhood, eyes are connected
with fear of loss which are at the heart of his
nightmare.
• In the early scene of the child Nathanael: ‘It
seemed to me that human faces were visible on all
sides, but without eyes, and with ghastly, deep,
black cavities instead’.
• Neither child nor reader is clear at this stage about
Ways of Seeing: the nature of the experiment taking place in the
father’s study; but reading retrospectively we
Nathanial as a child/ realize that the eyes are the last and most difficult
additions to the dolls. Dolls are given human eyes
Coppelius to look as living figures, Eyes are the thing that
make them humans.
• Being able to see thus becomes a symbol of
existence: to see is to be. “Seeing is existing”
according to the story of the sandman .
• Thus, when the Sandman throws a handful of sand
into your eyes and you are forced to close them,
you are cut off from feeling and thinking. Existence
returns only when you awake and see again. When
Sandman takes the child’s eye, he takes his vision,
his true self (To see is to be)
 2. The Scene in which Coppola sells the
spyglass to Nathanael:
- The scene in which Coppola brings
spectacles and spyglasses for sale to
Nathanael’s house provides a key point
I/eye in this pattern of imagery.
- At first, Nathanael is baffled by
significance: Coppola’s cry ‘I’ave beautiful eyes-a to
sell you’; but then he sees the
Nathaniel as an spectacles piling up and instantly
imagines them as ‘flaming eyes’ which
Adult ‘flickered and winked and goggled’ at
him.
- The spectacles take on a life of their
own, the multiple versions of reality
they offer leaving Nathanael disoriented
and overwhelmed.
Was Nathanial able to
see/ create his true self?
2. The Scene in which Coppola sells the spyglass to
Nathanael:
- The spyglass, on the other hand (which in fact
magnifies rather than corrects the version of reality
that we see), seems to bring ‘objects before one’s
eyes with the clarity, sharpness, and distinctness’ of
accurate and single vision.
- It seems that Hoffmann is establishing two ways of
seeing here: the spyglass way in which vision is
apparently unproblematically improved; and the
spectacles way, which renders reality subject to
countless subjective and bewildering perspectives.
Romantic Ways of Seeing Reality

• These ways of seeing can be understood as metaphors for different Romantic ways of
perceiving reality.
• The distorting lenses of the multiple pairs of spectacles show how there are many ways
of seeing reality and demonstrate how perception is vulnerable to individual subjectivity:
the ‘eyes’ of the spectacles represent the innumerable ‘I’s who see the world in different
ways.
• On the other hand, the spyglass can in theory provide privileged access to a single truth.
However, perception which depends on a scientific instrument may not be entirely
reliable. Through using of irony , the spyglass which is supposed to be a scientific
invention that allowed better seeing, is in reality unreliable because it makes him blind
to see the truth of Olimpia as a mechanical doll.
• What the events of ‘The Sandman’ show is that even this heightened ability of the
Romantic imagination can render the truth obscure and inaccessible, and even fatal,
when it is misapplied.
 • The scene of Olimpia’s death brings the recurring theme
of eyes and sight to a powerful climax, and demonstrates
how ways of seeing are fundamental to self-identity.
Ways of Seeing • Coppola and Spalanzani argue their competing claims to
have given ‘life’ to Olimpia through respectively providing
3. Scene of the eyes and the clockwork mechanism.

Olimpia’s Death • Olimpia’s own terrible fate is symbolized by the tearing

out of her eyes exactly like the figures in the child’s
earlier nightmare vision.
• When Spalanzani picks up the eyes and hurls them at
Nathanael, it is plain that in his estimation the eyes, and
the ‘life’ they gave to the doll, belong most properly to
Nathanael.
• The story shows that Nathaniel relied on a wrong vision
to see Olimpia that represented to him passion and
transcendence. When he knows that the way of seeing
reality fails, he loses his mind, identity and the
construction of “I” destroyed.
• Thus,the Romantic vision is contrasted with Nathaniel’s
fractured vision which shows that in all cases the reality
is never accessible.
Childhood
Trauma and
Romantic
Subjectivity
 Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) – the famous
founder of psychoanalysis – discussion of
‘The Sandman’ appears in an article written
in 1919 on ‘the uncanny’, where he treats
the story of Nathanael and his nightmare
fate as if it were one of his own case
studies.
 At the heart of Freud’s thinking is the idea
that the experiences we have as a child
shape our adult identities, and in particular,
our sexual selves.
 Nicola Watson, the critic, linked Rousseau's
interest in childhood memories and their
effect on adult behaviour to Wordsworth’s
interest in childhood memory and its
power.
 Compare the adult Nathanael’s
assessment of his formative childhood
memories with the adult Wordsworth’s
1799 reflection on his memory o f the
Activity 3 drowning, both reproduced below.
How does each of the speakers sum up
the remembered event? And how do they
explain its impact on them?
Why should I weary you, my dear Lothar? Why should I
dwell on minute details, when so much remains to be
told? Suffice it to say that I was caught eavesdropping
and was roughly treated by Coppelius. Fear and terror
brough on a violent fever, with which I was laid low for
several weeks. ‘Is the Sandman still there?’ These were
my first coherent words and the sign that I was cured,
that my life had been saved. Now I need only tell you
about the most terrifying moment of my early life; you
will then be convinced that it is not the weakness of my
eyesight that makes everything appear colourless, but
that a sombre destiny has indeed veiled my life in a
murky cloud, which perhaps I shall not penetrate until I
die.
… I might advert
To numerous accidents in flood or field,
Quarry or moor, o r’mid the winter snows,
Distresses and disasters, tragic facts
Of rural history, that impressed my mind
With images to which in following years
Far other feelings were attached – with
forms
That yet exist with independent life,
And, like their archetypes, know no decay.
(Wordsworth, 1979 [1799], ll.279–87)
Wordsworth - Compare the adult Nathanael’s
vs. Hoffman: assessment of his formative childhood
memories with the adult
Role of Wordsoworth’s 1799 reflection on his
Memories memory of the drowning. How does
each of the speakers sum up the
remembered event?
- How do they explain its impact on
them?
 Comparing Childhood Memories in Wordsworth’s “The
Prelude” and Nathanael's in “The Sandman”
Wordsworth’s The Prelude
• “The Prelude” extract tells the adult memory
of the recovery of the drowned body – one
of the many tragic facts from his childhood.
- He remarks that such memories in
retrospect evoke ‘far other feelings’ than
those experienced at the time.
- He, also, notes how the ‘independent life’
of the imagination has invested the
memories with different significance.
• The loss of the father provides a calm
perspective
• Childhood memories of loss are absorbed
into poetic imagination.
• Memory is valuable for their role in poet’s
growth and maturity.
The sandman
• Memories are associated with fear and terror.
• The adult is burdened with loss and fate.
• Being caught eavesdropping on his father’s
study is a prelude to the most terrifying moment
in his life which is the death of his father.
• The effect of childhood memories is destructive.
Its immediate effect is “violent fever” and the
feeling of loss and terror remains with him until
he dies.
• The loss of the father entrapped him in
traumatic childhood and Gothic horror. , its
memory does not supply perspective but further
distorts it.
• The death of the father has stopped his growth
from childhood to adulthood, and he finds
himself in a ‘colourless’ adult present in which
the anxiety of childhood trauma remains
unprocessed
Sigmund Freud’s the uncanny and the
Sandman

 Freud explains this impact of childhood memory in ‘The Sandman’ in relation

to his concept of the ‘uncanny’ or ‘unheimlich’. In German, this term gains
most of its meaning as the opposite of ‘Heimlich’, which usually means
‘homely’ or ‘familiar’. According to the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm
Joseph Schelling (1775-1854), ‘unheimlich’ is that which ought to have
remained hidden, but has nonetheless come to light.
 Freud thinks “the experiences we have as a child shape our adult identity, and
our sexual selves.
 In analysing the uncanny in “The Sandman”, Freud writes that an uncanny
experience is childhood bad memories that were repressed (hidden) in the
unconscious and are revived by an impression.
 Freud’s the Uncanny
 Freud analysed “The Sandman” as a case study of childhood trauma (Oedipus
Complex), This is Freud’s theory of child’s fear of castration, a fear associated
with sense of rivalry with his father for the affections of his mother. Without
dealing with this fear, a male child can’t grow up as an adult personality.
 In Nathanael’s retelling the repressed memory, he links his experience in the
room that seems both workshop and torture chamber, the return of Coppelius a
year later, with the death of his father.
 The sudden appearance of the barometer seller revives this repressed memory in
Nathanael which is a composite of the story of the Sandman, and Coppelius’s
threat that his eyes will be pulled out.
 The particular ‘infantile complex’ that Freud refers to is Nathanael suffering from
guilt for being responsible for his father’s death so he is unable to grow up or
mature. Father’s death stopped his growth from childhood to adulthood.
Clara and Olimpia
Activity 4

Read the following two passages from The Sandman:

first, from ‘I might now go on cheerfully with my story …’,to‘… and all his
irritation vanished’; and second, from ‘Observing his friend’s state of mind’ to ‘…
and I’m wasting my words’.
Compare the narrator’s introductory description of Clara, in the first passage,
with Sigmund's account of the general opinion of Olimpia and Nathanael’s
response to it, in the second, by answering the following questions.
1. W hat strike you as the similarities and differences between these
descriptions?
2. How do the descriptions convey that both women are, in their different ways,
constructed as the artificial creations of men?
3. How are we invited to respond to these efforts of artificial creation
‘Homely’ & ‘uncanny’: Clara &
Olimpia

1. What strike you as the similarities and differences between

these descriptions?
- We are told twice about Clara’s ‘sly, ironic smile’ and the
narrator offers apparently sincere praise for her ‘warm-
hearted’ tenderness, and ‘acute, discriminating mind’.
- He seems to be providing a balanced judgment of a woman
who, he implies, should be valued for her internal personal
qualities rather than her external beauty.
- In the descriptions of Olimpia, we are given two starkly opposing
views of the woman which can’t be reconciled.
- The focus is on physical body, finding her face and figure
‘regular’ but her gaze and movement uncannily lifeless.
- Nathanael praises the depths of Olimpia’s ‘soul’, recognizing
himself in the ‘inner world’ of her love.
- The reader is persuaded by the author-figure’s view of Clara, but
Nathanael’s view of Olimpia is deluded because he is the only
one who holds it.
Female
Characters:
Clara and
Olimpia
• The relationship between the ‘homely’ and the ‘uncanny, the familiar and the
strange, is equally important for the story’s treatment of its own female
characters., Clara and Olimpia.
• Similarities: Both female characters are balanced and calm. They are described as
cold and silent, prosaic and rigid. Both are examples of domestic virtue. They fulfil
the social role of passive, modest women.
• Difference: Clara has a voice while Olimpia is totally passive. Clara sees, Olimpia is
seen. Clara’s role is to contain Nathanael’s fantasies by opposing them and
bringing him back to reality while Olimpia compliant responses feed his extreme
fantasies.
- Moreover, the two females are contrasted in outward
appearance: Clara is characterized by calm and
deliberation’ in the face of crisis.
- Olimpia reveals her as a similarly composed and
balanced figure: ‘a tall, very slim woman, beautifully
proportioned and magnificently dressed
• Clara has internal personal qualities rather than
external beauty. Olimpia’s beauty is lifeless and
Nathanael is lost in inner world of her love. They are
contrasted as warm versus cold. These women both
exemplify the ‘Heimlich’ in that they fulfill the socially
approved role for women as the passive, modest
exemplars of domestic virtue.
• However, both women critique the masculine
Romantic imagination. Clara with her rational
sensibility and clear sight is contrasted to Nathanael's
sickness While Olimpia’s doll mechanical character
exposes Nathaneal’s idealizing vision. Both are
presented as products of male’s vision
 The Female characters: Art & Craft

• Hoffmann’s description of Clara and Olimpia is framed by reference to art.

• Painters, poets and musicians have used female beauty as a source for their
work.
• Hoffmann’s description of Clara is interrupted by a telling digression on some
of the ways in which painters, poets, and other creative workers have
attempted to render female beauty in artistic form.
• In describing her beauty, Clara’s eyes was compared to landscape in an
allusion to women’s fertility is equal to land productivity.
• In contrast, Olimpia’s beauty was derived from craft than art, “her soulless
timing of a machine”, her “measured, perfect” qualities reflect her as “only
pretending to be a living being”
Female characters portrayed, Why?

• In both cases, Hoffmann attacks painters, poets and musicians idealization of

women. The tale suggests a critique of the efforts of both artists and scientists
to reconstruct the feminine ideal in imaginary form.
• He also criticizes the use of the image of land as a trope (motif) for female
fertility.
• He ridicules using science to create an ideal woman. Olimpia is strange and
lifeless. Olimpia is an example of the failure of both science and the Romantic
imagination to reconstruct a feminine ideal.
•Thus, both women, in different ways, act as a critique of the masculine
Romantic imagination. Clara’s clear-sighted but rational sensibility would seem
to throw into sharp relief the distortion and sickness of Nathanael’s vision.
Olimpia is a mere mechanical doll, equally reveals his idealizing vision as creative
but deluded
 Art &
Automata:
Frankstein
 Art and Automata: Nathanial distorted
romantic

• Skepticism (doubt) in creative genius, whether artistic or scientific, is

common at that time.
• It appears in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein 1818. The novel tells of a
scientist who creates a human being by animating body parts with electricity.
The result is a monster and the scientist destroys the female companion he
later makes for his monster.
• In the Sandman, Nathanael is the embodiment of Romantic imagination,
which becomes self-destroying in its excess of aspiration.
• Like Frankenstein, Nathanael is ultimately destroyed by the paradox of the
Romantic artist’s condition who, according to Roder, “remain subject to the
constraints of the temporal world while his imagination makes him yearn for
the higher realm of the ideal” . The conflict comes from the inability to
reconcile reality with the ideal .
 • Nathanael tries to animate the
inanimate by reading to Olimpia
poems, novels, stories and ballads.
Nathanial here is an example of
romantic imagination which destroys
itself in seeking aspiration.

The Conflict of • Nathanael's poems are not brilliant

inventions so much as literary
Nathanael versions of the automata.
• His love for – Olimpia- is a parody of
the love of invisible world of
transcendence .
• Thus, Nathanael represents a
distorted version of the Romantic
author.
 • Nathanael used to write good poems
in the past when he had the special
gift of romantic poets but when he
Nathanael as the lost that gift because of his delusions
, his poems became “gloomy,
distorted version unintelligible and formless”.

of the Romantic • Nathanael’s ‘special gift’ has,

however, been distorted by the
introspective mood which loads him
author to dwell on ‘dreams and
premonitions’
• His poem, a fantasy narrative poem,
about his relationship with Clara and
how it is destroyed, is an example of
how delusions can destroy poetic
imagination.
Activity 5 Focus on the section of ‘The Sandman’ in
which Nathanael writes his fantasy narrative
poem about the impending destruction of
his relationship with Clara, and then reads it
out to her. The passage begins with the
sentence: ‘Finally he conceived the plan of
writing a poem’, and ends with Clara’s
injunction to ‘Throw the crazy, senseless,
insane story into the fire’.
1. What effect does the act of writing the
poem have on Nathanael?
2. What is the effect of its content when he
reads it aloud, both to himself and later to
Clara?
 Once Nathaniel wrote a poem to Clara, which should have a therapeutic effect
(imagination), but it becomes a nightmarish experience.
 In writing the poem, Nathanael is calm and detached. He wishes to follow the
rules of meter (constraints of meter) . All his fears and nightmares disappear
during the act of writing. For a moment he is like Wordsworth in The Prelude
able to contain the dark side of his imagination.
 All of his real-world fears and nightmarish forebodings have been channeled
into the act of literary creation by subjecting it to the distancing and control of
the writing process.
• However, the content of the poem and
Nathaniel reaction reveal that writing
poetry has simply become means for
the romantic author to indulge his wild
fantasies.
• While reading the poem loud, he
starts seeing hallucinatory visions, that
culminate in the delusion” what looks
at him from Clara’s eyes is death”, On
reading the poem to Clara, Nathanael
experiences a splitting of the self : he
asks “WHO IS THAT Hideous VOICE ?”
Nathanael is again ‘entirely carried
away’ from reality by the force of the
imaginary world which possesses him.
• Hoffmann’s story shows us, then, how
a wild imagination allowed to run riot
can too easily mutate into destructive
delusion.
  Nathanael shows how imagination can
Clara as a go wrong and cause the artist’s
madness, but Clara is the healthier

the healthy alternative offered by the story.

 Clara is the moderate balanced

alternative imagination “the vivid imagination of

a cheerful, ingenious, child-like child”.

to the sick  Her happy ending since she found

“quite domestic happiness” is the
result of her cheerful character. She is
Nathanael the healthy contrast to the tormented
self divided Nathanael.
Dr. Coppelius= Romantic Figure

- Nathanael is not the only figure in this story who seems to embody the
equivocal nature of Romantic art and the Romantic imagination.
- An alternative, more powerful figure for the Romantic artist might rather be
Dr. Coppelius .
- A diabolical seducer, who possesses the power of giving his automaton an
apparent life.
• He is capable in appearing in multiple forms.
• Coppelius is a version of demonic figure who appears repeatedly in Hoffman’s
fiction.
Activity 6

Read the two extracts from ‘Automata’.

The first deals with a formal visit that two friends pay to Professor X—,
celebrated for his connection with a particularly mysterious
automaton, the ‘Talking Turk’, who appears to be able to read the very
soul of his questioner. They ask to see his famous collection of
automata.
The second describes their discovery, while on a walk beyond the
town, of the Professor wandering in his garden, which another friend
describes as ‘his mysterious laboratory’
(Hoffmann,1967,p.101).Compare what these two extracts have to say
about the nature of art and Romantic genius.
 The first deals with a formal visit that two friends pay
to Professor X -, celebrated for his connection with a
particularly mysterious automaton.
 The second described their discovery, while on a walk
beyond the town, of the Professor X wandering in his
garden, which is described as ‘his mysterious
laboratory’.
True & Fake
 The first passage describes the Professor as a
genius man in producing musical machines,
but also a showman.
Art  The second one describes him as a true
Romantic artist who produces music which,
though possibly uniting with nature, seems
to transcend it.
 The ‘revelations’ that the friends had hoped
from the first display are provided by the
second.
 The story is concerned to distinguish true art
from fake. True art channels the
transcendent, however imperfectly, and is
associated with the natural; fake art may be
perfect but is merely mechanical.
 • Hoffmann, like other Romantic
contemporaries, experimented constantly to
try to find an appropriate form and language
through which to convey an apprehension of
the transcendent – and its dark double,
madness and delusion.
• “The Sandman” is the least imperfect in form
and inconclusive in story.
• His fragmented fantastic style shows the play
of the imagination.
• The multiple narratives sustain the strange and
the fantastic and the reader never perceives
reality . The different versions of events
conform to the Romantic aesthetics (art) .
• The supernatural fantastic is never explained in
the ironic account of the narrator. The entire
story will poise in a delicate balance the
rational and the unexplained, or even
supernatural.

Conclusion
 • Hoffmann’s multiple persona = the divided
self
• The Sandman as the fictional example of
Hoffmann’s personas = three points of view.

Summary • Nathanael as the tormented Romantic artist

who fantasize and idealize = A critique of

of this through Female characters.

• Hoffmann’s stories juxtapose the homely

Chapter 4
(real) with the uncanny (strange /fantastic)
• The Romantic artist is torn between the
fake talent and the creative genius and
wants to find the form and language that
will express this opposition.
 Summary: The Four Romantic Poets

Wordsworth and Hoffmann

• The theme of inescapable memory connects both Wordsworth’s The
Prelude and Hoffmann’s The Sandman

Shelley and Hoffmann

• The romantic writer who is a visionary who is not sure about his
expressive powers is similar to Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind
Reflection