The two friends finally returned in silence to the city, but as Ludwig was about to bid Ferdinand farewell, the latter pressed him in a tight embrace and whispered, “Stay true to me! Stay true to me! Oh, I can feel a strange force piercing my innermost self, stroking all my hidden heartstrings that now must ring out accordingly, even if I die in the process! Was the hateful irony with which the professor received us at his house not the expression of a deep-seated inimical tendency, and did he not simply seek to make short shrift of us by showing off his automata to preclude any closer contact with me in life?”

  “You may very well be right,” replied Ludwig. “I too have a hunch that in some way that presently remains a mystery to us, the professor has honed in upon your life, or rather, intruded in your mysterious psychic rapport with that unknown female presence. Perhaps against his will, intertwined with and fortified by that hostile force pitted against you, he himself is strengthening your rapport, bolstered in opposition; and it is conceivable that your approaching him may well be detestable to him for the very reason that your spiritual essence is opposed to his will, or rather, contrary to some conventional intention of his, reawakens all the memories of that psychic rapport, bringing it to life.”

  The friends resolved to try by all means to approach the professor again, and perhaps finally resolve the mystery that had such a profound impact on Ferdinand’s life. The very next morning they planned a second visit, but an unexpected letter from Ferdinand’s father compelled him to travel without delay to B——; hours later he was already rushing off by postal coach, though he wrote to assure his friend that nothing would keep him from seeing him again in J—— at the latest in two weeks’ time.

  Ludwig found it very strange that, shortly after Ferdinand’s departure, he learned from the same somewhat elderly gentleman who had first told him of Professor X——’s influence on the Talking Turk that the professor’s weakness for mechanical artworks was a secondary pastime, and that his primary research, to which he devoted himself body and soul, delved into all aspects of natural science. The man praised the professor’s musical discoveries in particular, which, however, he had to date revealed to no one. His secret laboratory was a lovely garden at the city’s edge, and oftentimes passersby had heard the most peculiar tones and melodies resounding from behind the hedge, as though the garden were inhabited by fairies and spirits.

  Two weeks went by, but Ferdinand did not come back, and finally two months later Ludwig received a letter that read as follows:

  “Read, and be amazed, but be apprised of what you perhaps already suspected after, as I hope you did, getting closer to the professor. The horses are just being changed here in the village of P——, as I stand and peer mindlessly into the distance.

  “A coach driving by halts in front of a nearby open church; a simply dressed woman climbs out, followed by a handsome young man in a Russian military huntsman’s uniform bedecked with medals; two men climb out of a second coach. The postman remarks: ‘This is the foreign couple our pastor is due to wed today.’ Without thinking, I enter the church at the precise moment when the pastor bestows his blessing at the end of the marriage ceremony. I look over— the bride is the singer in my dream. She catches sight of me and goes pale, she faints; the man standing behind her catches her in his arms, it is Professor X——. What transpired thereafter I don’t know, not even how I got here— you’ll find it out from Professor X——. A calm and serenity such as I have never felt before has taken hold of my soul. The Turk’s calamitous fortune-telling was a damned lie engendered by a haphazard sound tapping with a shoddy device. Have I really lost her? Is she not eternally mine in the glowing core of my heart of hearts? You will not hear from me for quite a while, as I’m bound for K——, and perhaps also headed to the far north in P——.”

  Reading between the lines of his friend’s words, Ludwig surmised all too clearly his state of mind, and the entire business became all the more puzzling when he learned that Professor X—— had never left town.

  “What if,” he thought, “it was merely a matter of the conflicts between inexplicable psychological relations, in which several people were perhaps concurrently involved, that spilled out into life and thereby effected otherwise unconnected external occurrences, such that one of those people misconstrued the import of that twisted internal state, firmly believing it to be a manifestation of something in himself? But perhaps in the future the unspoken premonition I have of good things to come will spill out and fulfill itself in life in such a way as to comfort my friend! The Turk’s fateful prediction has been fulfilled, and perhaps this very fulfillment fended off the crushing blow that threatened my friend.”

  “So,” said Ottmar, as Theodor suddenly fell silent, “is that all? How does it all turn out? What finally happened to Ferdinand, Professor X——, the lovely songstress, and the Russian officer?”[*3]

  “Did I not say from the start,” Theodor replied, “that I only intended to relate an enigmatic fragment? It seems to me, moreover, that the strange story of the Talking Turk must necessarily remain fragmentary. What I mean is, the reader’s or listener’s imagination should only receive a few hefty jolts and then string out the rest for itself. But should you, dear Ottmar, seek reassurance as to Ferdinand’s fate, you need merely recall the conversation concerning the opera which I read aloud some time ago. It’s the selfsame Ferdinand, perfectly fit in body and mind, setting out with a lust for life, whom we encounter here in an earlier period of his life, so all must have turned out for the best with his somnambulist love affair.

  Skip Notes

  *1 Johann Carl Enslen (1759–1848), a German traveling painter, exhibitor and creator of panorama structures, and early pioneer in photography. His Voltigeur was featured as part of an elaborate show displayed in Berlin, which incorporated a mechanical automaton with trick mirrors, laterna magica, and camera obscura, and greatly inspired Hoffmann.

  *2 An aria from Allessandro nell’ Indie, an opera libretto about the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great, by Pietro Metatasio (1698–1782), set to music more than ninety times, first by Italian composer Leonardo Vinci (1690–1730), whose version premiered in Rome on January 2, 1730.

  *3 Inspired by Boccaccio’s The Decameron, Hoffmann situated the tale of “The Automaton” in an overall fictional narrative frame of a four-volume collection of novellas and fairy tales titled Die Serapionsbrüder (The Serapion Brethren), in which a group of friends, Ottmar, Theodor, Lothar, Cyprian, Vinzenz, and Sylvester, tell one another stories. The title derives from an actual celebratory gathering of Hoffmann’s friends at his home held on the feast day of Saint Serapion. The celebrants and members of the short-lived literary brotherhood included Hoffmann’s friend and first biographer, Julius Eduard Hitzig, and authors Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, Adelbert von Chamisso, and Karl Wilhelm Salice-Contessa.

  The Sandman

  1816

  Nathaniel to Lothar

  You must surely all be worried sick not to have had word from me in such a long time. Mother, no doubt, is mad at me, and Clara may well believe that I am living it up here, having forgotten my beloved angel whose face is so deeply and indelibly graven in my heart and mind. But it isn’t so; every day of the week and every hour of the day I think of you all and my lovely little Clärchen’s figure floats past me in my dreams, smiling so sweetly at me with her bright eyes as she is wont to do whenever I walk in. Oh, how could I put pen to paper in this wretched state that till now distracted my every thought! Something awful came into my life – dark premonitions of a terrible impending fate cast their pall over me like the shadows of black storm clouds impermeable to any friendly rays of sunlight. Let me tell you then what happened to me. I have to tell you, that much I know, but just the thought of it prompts a mad burst of laughter. Oh, my dearest Lothar! How should I begin to make you fathom that what befell me just a few days ago could have such a devastating effect on my life! If only you were here, you could see for yourself – but by now you must surely take me for a deranged seer of spooks. In short, the terrible thing that happened to me, whose fatal impression I have tried in vain to forget, is this: a few days ago, on October 30, at twelve noon, a barometer salesman stepped into my room and offered me his wares. I bought nothing and threatened to throw him down the stairs, but he left promptly on his own.

  You suspect, I imagine, that only the most extraordinary life-altering relations could have lent this occurrence such significance, indeed that the very character of that miserable peddler could have so cut me to the quick. And that is just what happened. I will pull myself together with all the strength of my willpower to quietly and patiently recount the circumstances of my early youth as plainly and clearly as possible so that you, with your alert mind, may take everything in and paint as clear as possible a picture of my condition. But even now as I begin, I can hear you laughing and Clara remarking: “What childish notions!” Laugh, if you like, have yourself a right hearty laugh at my expense! Be my guest! But God in heaven, my hair stands on end, and it seems to me as if I were begging you in my mad desperation to make me sound ridiculous, like Franz Moor did Daniel.[*] But it’s time to begin!

  Except for at lunchtime, we, my siblings and I, saw little of my father during the day. He must have been very busy. After supper, which was served at seven o’clock as is customary, all of us, my mother included, gathered in my father’s study, and each took our place at a round table. Father smoked and drank a tall glass of beer. Often he told us many wondrous tales and would get so involved in the telling that his pipe went out, and it was my duty to fetch a burning wad of paper for him to relight it, a task that gave me the greatest pleasure. But many times, he would just give us picture books to look at and sit there in silence, propped up in his easy chair, blowing dense clouds of smoke, so that we were all enveloped in a fog. On such evenings Mother was very sad, and no sooner did the clock strike nine than she would declare: “Now children, to bed! To bed with you! The Sandman’s coming, I can sense it!” And every time she said it, I really did hear the sound of slow heavy steps lumbering up the stairs; it must have been the Sandman. One time, the muffled thump and lumbering step sounded particularly grim to me, so I asked Mother as she led us away: “Mama, who is that evil Sandman who always chases us away from Papa? What does he look like?”

  “There is no Sandman, my dear child,” replied Mother; “when I say the Sandman is coming, all it means is that you kids are sleepy and can’t keep your eyes open, as if somebody had scattered sand in them.”

  Mother’s answer didn’t satisfy me, indeed the notion that Mother only denied the existence of the Sandman so that we wouldn’t be afraid took firm hold of my childish imagination – didn’t I hear him with my own two ears coming up the steps? With a burning desire to know more about this Sandman and his connection to us children, I finally asked the old woman who took care of my youngest sister: “What kind of man is that, the Sandman?”

  “Oh, Thanelchen,” she replied, “don’t you know yet? He’s a bad man who comes to visit children when they won’t go to sleep and flings a handful of sand in their eyes, so they scratch themselves bloody. Then he flings them in his bag and carries them off to the half-moon to feed his children. They sit up there in their nest and have crooked beaks like owls with which they pick out the eyes of naughty human brats.”

  So in my mind I painted a grim picture of that awful Sandman; as soon as I heard that lumbering step on the stairs I trembled with fear and horror. My mother could get nothing out of me but that one word stuttered amidst tears: “Sandman! Sandman!” Then I bounded up to my bedroom, and all night long I was tormented by the terrible presence of the Sandman. By the time I was old enough to know that all that business about the Sandman and his children’s nest on the half-moon the nanny had told me couldn’t possibly be true, the Sandman had become entrenched in my mind as a hair-raising spook, and I was gripped by dread and terror when I heard him not only come clambering up the steps, but also tearing open the door to my father’s study and barging in.

  Sometimes he stayed away a long time, but then he came more often, night after night. This went on for years, but I was never able to get used to that ghastly spook, nor did the grisly image of the Sandman ever fade from my mind. I got steadily more and more worked up about his dealings with my father; while some insurmountable reserve kept me from asking him about it, the desire grew stronger from year to year to find out the secret for myself – to see the fabled Sandman with my own two eyes. The Sandman lured me down the path of wonder, made me crave adventure with a longing that had taken seed in my childish mind. I liked nothing better than to hear or read fear-tingling tales of goblins, witches, sprites, and such; but the Sandman remained at the top of my list of the grisly figures I scribbled with chalk and charcoal on tabletops, cupboards, and walls.

  When I turned ten, my mother moved me from the nursery into a little room off the corridor not far from my father’s study. We still had to make ourselves scarce at the strike of nine, when that unseen presence was heard in the house. From my little room I distinctly heard him enter my father’s chamber, and soon thereafter it seemed to me as if the entire house filled with a strange-smelling vapor. As my curiosity grew, so did my courage – I was determined to find a way to make the Sandman’s acquaintance. I would slip out into the corridor as soon as Mother had passed, but I was too late. By the time I reached the spot from which I might catch a glimpse of him, the Sandman had invariably already entered my father’s study. Finally, driven by an overpowering urge, I decided to hide in my father’s room and await the Sandman’s appearance.

  One evening, by my father’s silence and my mother’s sadness, I surmised that the Sandman was coming. Pretending to be very tired, I excused myself before nine o’clock and hid in a nook beside my father’s door. The front door creaked, the slow, heavy thud of steps advanced through the vestibule toward the stairs. Mother hastened by me with my brothers and sisters. Quietly, I opened my father’s door. He was seated in silence, as usual, with his back to the door, and did not notice me slip in behind the curtain drawn over a closet where he hung his clothes. Closer, ever closer came the thud of the steps, there was a curious cough and a scraping and a grumbling outside. My heart beat double-time in terror and expectation. Right there at the door came a powerful kick, a hefty blow on the latch, the door sprung open with a bang! Gathering all my pluck, I peeked out with great trepidation. The Sandman was standing there in the middle of the room in front of my father, the bright glow of the lamps lighting up his face. So the Sandman, the terrible Sandman, was the old barrister Coppelius who sometimes dined with us for lunch.

  But the most hideous figure could not have instilled a deeper sense of horror in me than this Coppelius. Imagine a large, broad-shouldered man with a misshapen clumpish head, an ochre-colored face, gray, bushy eyebrows, beneath which a pair of piercing, greenish cat’s eyes peered forth, and a big nose bent down over the upper lip. His crooked mouth often twisted into a crafty snicker, at which dark red spots appeared on his cheeks and a curious hissing tone issued from between his clenched teeth. Coppelius always dressed in an old-fashioned ash-gray coat, a waistcoat, and pants of the same color, with black socks and shoes affixed with tiny buckles. His minuscule toupee hardly covered his skull, his curls hung out over his big red ears, and a big half-hidden tuft of hair poked out from the scruff of his neck so as to reveal the silver clasp of his collar. His entire appearance was altogether repulsive and disgusting; but what disgusted us children the most were his big, knotty, hairy fists, so much so that we were repelled by anything he’d touched. He noticed this and consequently took great pleasure in finding this or that excuse to graze a piece of cake or some sweet fruit that our dear mother surreptitiously dropped on our plate so that, with tears in our eyes, repulsion kept us from enjoying a sweet tidbit that we would otherwise have savored. He did that same thing when, on holidays, our father poured us a little glass of sweet wine. He would then pass his fist quickly over it, even bring the glass to his blue lips and laugh a devilish laugh when we quietly sniffled in anger. He always called us the little beasts; we were not permitted to make a sound in his presence, and we cursed the hideous and hostile man who intentionally and maliciously spoiled our little pleasures. Our mother seemed to hate that disgusting man as much as we did, for as soon as he appeared her high spirits and easygoing cheerful manner faded into a sad and dour solemnity. Father behaved in his presence as if he were a higher being whose incivility one had to tolerate and whom one had to humor in every way possible. He only dared make timid suggestions in his presence, and made sure to serve him his favorite dishes and the finest wines.

  So when I set eyes on this Coppelius I felt a grim shudder in my soul at the sudden realization that no one but he could be the Sandman, but now the Sandman was no longer the fairy-tale bogeyman who dragged children off to feed to his young in the owl’s nest on the moon— no!— he was a hideous, ghastly fiend who brought misery, rack, and ruin— temporal and eternal— wherever he appeared.

  Positively paralyzed with fear at the thought of being caught and severely punished, I just stood there with my head outstretched, listening through the curtain. My father received Coppelius respectfully. “Up now – to work!” the latter cried with a hoarse snarl, throwing off his coat. In grim-faced silence, father flung off his dressing gown and both men pulled on long black frocks. I didn’t see where they came from. Father opened the folding door of a wall closet; but then I noticed that what I had long taken for a wall closet was not one at all, but rather a dark hidden space fitted with a small hearth. Coppelius stepped forward and a blue flame flickered up. All kinds of curious instruments were scattered about. Dear God! When my old father bent down toward the fire, he looked altogether different. A ghastly convulsive pain seemed to have twisted the gentle, honest features of his face into a devilish grimace. He looked just like Coppelius, who swung the red-hot tongs and fetched a bright flickering mass of ore out of the thick vapor, which he then assiduously hammered. It seemed to me as if human faces became visible all about, but without eyes – dreadful, deep, black hollows where the eyes ought to be.

 

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