PART II

Literary Section

It is my purpose to bring also our beautiful literature to the solution

of the exceedingly difficult and obscure problem of sleep walking and

moon walking. Our poets, for all our psychiatrists and psychologists,

possess the finest knowledge of the psyche and during the centuries

before science was able to throw light upon the puzzles of the mind,

they solved them prophetically with discerning spirit. Thus they knew

how to bring to light various elements of our problem. Their creations

directed to that end arose from their own inner nature, through analogy,

or because sleep walking was not foreign to them themselves. And even if

neither were the case, they still had the ability of those who have a

real true knowledge of men, quite intuitively to see clearly into the

unconscious of others. We will come to know what profound interest many

of the great poets, like Otto Ludwig and Heinrich von Kleist took in

night wandering and moon walking and how they have first introduced

these dark problems into other traditional material. A striking

similarity is revealed if one compares that which the poet has in mind

with that which I have been able to report in the medical section. I

shall be able satisfactorily to verify the statement that science and

art have reached exactly the same result. First however I will present

the examples from the poets according to their comprehensibility and

their transparency. I begin with

"AEBELÖ," by Sophus Michaelis.

Twice had Soelver drawn near to the maiden Gro, daughter of his

neighbor, Sten Basse. The first time was when in the spring he visited

the island Aebeloe, which belonged to him but was quite uninhabited. So

bright the day and so warm the kiss of the sun upon him, yet suddenly it

was "as if his bare neck were flooded by a still warmer wave of light."

A maiden stood before him, "who was like pure light. The eyes were as if

without pupils, without a glance; as she looked it was as if white

clouds floated forth out of a heavenly blue background. Soelver sprang

up and stood face to face before her. Her cheeks grew red. Although

unknown to each other, they smiled one at the other like two seraphim.

Her hands opened toward his and before her, as out of her lap, fell the

flowers which she had gathered. Soelver believed for a moment that it

was all a dream. He swung his hands into the air and a hand waved toward

him. He closed his eyes that he might enjoy to the full the soft,

fleeting impression. It floated over his hand like an incorporeal

breath. Was it then a ghostly vision, that wandered there at his side!"

When however he knew that the maiden near him was a living being, then

"his lips sank toward her trembling with desire, unintentionally and yet

irrevocably." At this moment a "cloud passed over the sun and the light

became at once dulled as if a mist had fallen upon all the flowers. Of

all this he did not become so quickly aware, as that his own cheeks

resounded from a whizzing blow." Her face glowed bright with anger and

the delicate blue veins were swollen on her forehead, while with a

scornful look she turned her back to him. His blood was however aflame

with desire for revenge.

A second time had the young nobleman Soelver sought to satisfy his

masculine passion, when he surprised Gro bathing upon Aebeloe. She

however had defended her maidenhood and struck him about the head with

an old, rusty sword, which she found on the shore, so that he sank upon

the grass covered with blood. "He felt the pain of his wounds with a

strange glow of pleasure. The blow had fallen upon the hard flint stone

within him so that the sparks of passion had sprung forth. He loved the

maiden Gro. A consuming passion raged in his blood. In his thoughts he

knelt always before that ineffaceable image, which struck him to the

earth with a flame of divine wrath in her eyes." In revenge for the

trespass committed Sten Basse fell upon Soelver's castle and took the

young nobleman himself prisoner.

Wild violence of this sort was indeed familiar to Sten Basse. He himself

had once taken his wife thus by force. Just as he was flattering himself

that he had broken her will once for all, she bit him in his chin so

that the blood gushed forth and she spit his own blood into his eyes. He

was struck with admiration at such strength. He had thought to desert

her at once. Now he lifted her in his arms, carried her from her

father's castle into the stable, bound her to his horse and rode

forth--to his own home. Their marriage had been at first a long series

of repetitions of the first encounter. In the end she loved him as the

horse loves the iron bit between his teeth and the spur in his flank.

She did not allow herself to be subdued by the blows which he gave her,

but she was the weaker and she loved him because he was strong enough to

be the stronger. An evil fate had taken his sons from him one after the

other. Therefore he wished to call forth in his only daughter the traits

of his own blood, his pride, disdainfulness and stiff-neckedness. "She

must know neither fear nor weakness; her will must be hardened and her

courage steeled like that of a man. When he heard that his daughter had

been in danger but had saved herself, he swore revenge to the

perpetrator of the outrage, yet at the same time his heart laughed with

pride at Gro's fearlessness. He took the young nobleman prisoner and

rewarded him with heavy and tedious torture as penance for his

insolence. Yet at the same time he delighted himself with the thought of

putting his daughter to a still more dangerous proof. He wished to see

the young-blooded, inexperienced birds reach out swinging and scratching

in attack and defense."

As if in mockery he gave to the imprisoned youth the passionately

desired Gro to be with him in the dungeon. "She stood there as if she

had glided into his prison by the flood of light entering in and he

trembled lest the light would again absorb her into itself." He knew not

what power forced him to his knees and threw him at her feet with a

prayer for forgiveness. She had however merely a scornful laugh for the

man humbling himself in his love and the cruelly abusive word, "Creeping

worm!" Then in his sense of affront there comes the thought that Gro was

given into his power. While he tried the walls of his dungeon to

ascertain if he was perhaps watched, Gro stood and stared out by the

aperture through which the light entered, now paler than before. Soelver

stepped near her, drew the single gold ring from his finger, which had

come down to him through many generations of his forefathers, and

extended it to her as a bridal gift. But she threw it unhesitatingly out

through the peephole.

Now bitterness raged in Soelver's blood. "He bowed himself before her

face in order to intercept her gaze, but he did not meet it though her

eyes were directed toward his. It was indeed no glance but a depth into

which the whole light of day, which was blue now without overhead, was

drawn down into a deep well. Soelver became intoxicated with this light,

which, as it were, appeared to seek her alone and threw an aureole of

intangible beauty about her form." He crept up and pushed forward the

wooden shutter, then carried Gro to his cot. "She had let herself go

without resistance and fell lifelessly with her arms hanging down.

Soelver laid his face close to hers. His breath was eager, his blood was

on fire and in his fierce wrath he intended to yield himself to the

boiling heat of sensual passion. Her cheeks however, her skin, her lips

were cold as those of death. He began nevertheless wildly to kiss her

face, once and again, as if to waken warmth and life in the cold skin.

Yet with every kiss it was as if she grew more fixed, as if the lips

shriveled and grew cold and damp as ice over the teeth. The cold from

this embrace crept over Soelver, and drew the heat and fervor from his

nerves, until he shook suddenly with the cold and shuddered with the

thought that he had a corpse under him. Yet in that selfsame moment he

marked the rising of her breast as she drew in her breath, full of

strength with all its coldness, so full of strength that it pushed

Soelver away and he slipped down to the hard flags of the floor.

"Soelver lay upon the floor, congealed with a coldness which was

stronger than that of the hard tiles. It was as dark as in a walled-in

grave. He dared not move however for fear that he would again feel that

ice cold body. 'Hear me,' sounded suddenly a strangely shrill whisper,

'hear me, if you are a man, let me get out! Call my father! I want to

get out--make light--give me air--I am almost choking--I want to get

out!'" As Soelver opened the shutter again so that the dim shadowy glow

of the night could enter, he saw Gro "tall and slender in the pale

light." "Let me out, let me out!" she begged. "I am afraid here

below--not of you--but of myself and of the dark--let me out!" "For the

first time Soelver heard a soft rhythm in this voice smooth as steel. A

soft breath breathed itself in her entreaty. He became a man, a

protector and felt his power grow through her supplication."

Yet though he exerted himself to the utmost to open the door of his

dungeon, it was all in vain. It must have been fastened on the outside

with massive oak or iron bars. "So finally he gave up entirely and

turned back to the opening where the light came in. Gro had sunk down

under the last bit of light, without complaint, without sound. Her eyes

were closed, she leaned her head against the sharp edge of the aperture

and her arms hung down lifelessly. Soelver bent over her; her breath was

almost inaudible, but irregular and did not suggest sleep. Like a

thirsty plant she stretched herself out of the single airhole of the

dungeon that she might seize the last drop of light before the darkness

extinguished everything. Soelver divined that she could not be brought

away from this aperture for light." He brought all the skins from the

couch, spread them over her, pushed them under her body and "solicitously,

with infinite carefulness he protected her from the damp floor, while he

shoved his arm under her for support without ever touching her with his

hand. All his brutality was gone, all his burning passion. Here she lay

before him like a delicate sick flower, which must be covered over from

the cold of night."

When Soelver awoke the next morning he noticed that one of his hands was

seized by her, grasped in the unconsciousness of sleep and held fast by

her long, slender fingers, which clasped themselves about his hand. It

was as if her soul clung to him in sleep as helper and savior from him

himself, from his own brutal savagery. When Gro however opened her eyes

and stared into Soelver's face, lit up by the sun, she broke out into

weeping which could not be stilled. "She was terrified at awaking in a

cellar hole, into the close damp darkness of which she looked, while the

face of her vanquisher blazed strong in the sunlight before her; she

wept without understanding or comprehending anything of what had

happened about her." Perplexed, Soelver bent over her hand and kissed

it. Then came Sten Basse and saw how uncontrollably Gro sobbed. "If you

have gone near my daughter," he hissed at the young nobleman, "there

will be no punishment strong enough for you." At this there shot up in

Soelver a wild lust for revenge and he answered his enemy with

irritating coldness: "Yes, I took what you gave. You brought her

yourself into my presence, you laid her yourself in my arms. Now you may

take her back again. I spurn your daughter for I have not desired her

for the honor and keeping of my house, but only for the entertainment of

a night. Take her back now! Take her back!"

Nevertheless better treatment was from this time on accorded Soelver,

which he never for a moment doubted he owed to Gro. As he dwelt in his

cell upon his phantasies, he suddenly heard her voice singing that

melancholy song of Sir Tidemand, who tried to lure the maiden Blidelille

into his boat by vigorous runes written upon roses. Blidelille awoke at

midnight and knew not what it was that compelled her.

"It drew me along to Sir Tidemand

Whom never mine eyes had seen."

In vain the foster mother bids them spread velvets and satins over her

that she might sleep. Notwithstanding she arises suddenly, dresses

herself and goes down to the strand to Sir Tidemand, who meets her

scornfully. Then she goes into the lake, whither Tidemand follows her,

seized with heartfelt remorse.

"For evil the rune on the rose leaf traced

And evil the work it had wrought,

That two so noble, of royal grace,

To ruin and death were brought."

The woful song trailed itself through Soelver's mind like an indistinct

dream. Then he believed that he distinguished Gro's step, until it was

lost in her sleeping room. With his mental vision he saw the maiden, as

she looked out upon the lake toward Aebeloe. She looked away from him,

of whose fate she took no thought, but gazed fixedly over the sea, which

bore upon its bosom a ship with silken sails, on whose deck Sir Tidemand

stood. "Then Soelver was conscious of an infinite weakness in his love

toward this pure maiden, whom his coarseness had taken into his arms,

his desire had scorched with its hot breath but who had nevertheless

left him benumbed in his baseness, cowardliness and weakness. Now he

understood that love, in order to triumph, must first humble its own

power, still its own movement and soften its brutal will. Now he

comprehended that he must carve mystic runes of passion upon his own

heart as upon a glowing rose and fling it into the mighty sea of

feeling, praying it to bring the maiden Gro into his hands."

Day and night Soelver's thoughts tarried only with Gro. In his

phantasies "he forced himself through the bolted door, climbed sharp

angled passage ways and winding staircases and lifted oaken beams from

barred doors. Without once making a mistake, driven by a magic sense of

direction, he finally reached Gro's couch, at which he saw himself

staring with great white eyes, whose pupils in the darkness of sleep had

as it were glided over to the side. And upon the cover of her couch lay

her two gleaming arms and the fingers of the right hand trembled as if

they grasped another invisible hand. In this room Soelver remained until

her sleep drew him to itself, until the heaving of her breasts drew him

down, until her fingers entwined themselves with his, until their breath

mingled and his lids closed before her pure gaze."

Another time he dreamed that he was upon a vessel, evidently in the rôle

of Sir Tidemand. And Gro actually came over the water to him like the

maiden Blidelille, "with roses like two blood spots upon her breast. She

had crossed her hands beneath them and fastened her pure gaze upon

Soelver, so that he was seized with terror and, without escaping her

look, fled to the lee of the vessel to the edge of the ship. Yet Gro

steadily drew nearer. Now she reached the ship's border and Soelver

retreated. Step by step she followed him, the painful gaze of her

deathly white face absorbed by his own. And he withdrew over to the

other border, drew back until he felt the railing hard behind him. Gro

stepped forward alone and it was not possible to stop her; he felt as if

she wished to press within him like the sped arrow to its goal. Finally,

in an instant, as her garment fluttered against him, he threw himself

with a loud cry to one side and saw, with a great horror, that Gro went

forward, through the railing as through air and disappeared on the other

side in the sea, while Soelver lay moaning upon the deck and saw before

him only the red roses, which fallen from her breast crept like living

blood over the ship's planks."

Was it dream or reality, which he saw when he opened his eyes? "The

sun's rays burst forth through a crack in a long, radiant arrow, which

bored itself into the floor and transfixed as it were something red that

began to glow." And as Soelver crept nearer his astonishment grew

deeper. "For hard by the vision of red were footprints breathed so to

speak upon the floor, fine, slender prints, directed toward him, no more

distinct than if a warm breeze had blown away the dampness from the

surface of a stone, leaving the outline of a foot fixed there." As he

now stooped down and with his hand felt for the blood red spot, his

fingers actually touched "a heavy full-blown rose, whose sweet strong

odor he drank as if in an intoxication of reality." No one had forced

his way in through the hatchway, of this he soon convinced himself. Gro

must have dropped it here while he was spinning dreams about her.

In the nights which followed "he slept in a kind of hunger to feel her

physically and tangibly in his arms." Then when it was again full moon,

he found on awaking, in a spot upon which fell the rays of moonlight, a

little gold cross, "whose six polished stones seemed to radiate

moonlight from themselves. It was as if the moonlight lay within his

hand. He watched the small cross sparkle--it was the same that he had

seen in dreams upon her rose wreath. Gro had been also within his

prison."

He was led out soon after this to be shown to the monk, who had come to

obtain news of his imprisonment. "In the doorway the young nobleman met

Gro and drew back, so strong a power seemed to irradiate from her living

form. She stood in the half twilight, with her white hands and her

white neck and forehead, which shone as with their own light from out

her coal black velvet robe. There was a blinding, marvelous reality

about her, which drew him like a great fragrant flower." As the monk

expressed his compassion for him, that imprisonment had befallen him,

his pride of nobility awoke. "What do you say of imprisonment and ill

foreboding? Know you not then that I am of my free will Sten Basse's

guest?" This reply astonished even Sten Basse. "He admired the young,

undaunted spirit, who found in himself no occasion for pity. Soelver

stood before Gro, his arms firm at his sides, and breathed deep and

strong. His eyes drank in the clear light from her hands and face." When

however Sten Basse sought to approach him in a friendly manner, Soelver

motioned him back: "As prisoner was I led forth, as prisoner I return of

my free will. If you wish to make any apology to me, you know where my

dungeon is to be found." Then he went quickly, without turning toward

Gro, out of the hall and down into his prison. His senses nevertheless

had seized that warm, radiant picture of the beautiful Gro and

transplanted it to the midst of his cell. He saw it streaming before his

eyes in the shimmering light of the cross of moonlight and longed for

the clear light of the night, that he might go on and make the dream

face live. When the darkness advanced "he stripped himself naked and

allowed the air of the summer night to cool his limbs and purify them,

before he betook himself to his cot. The small cross he laid upon his

naked breast and watched the moonlight glimmer green and blue from every

stone" and kissed it thinking of Gro. Then he fell asleep in blissful

happiness.

Suddenly however he awoke without any apparent reason, from no dream or

thought. "He was awake, collected and yet at the same time strangely

under the control of something that lay outside himself, a strange

unknown power, which might be either mystical or natural. It appeared to

him as if the moonlight had been loosed from the moon and now floated

about in the room like a living being. So real seemed this fancy to him

that he turned his head to one side and was not astonished actually to

see a form standing in the center of the darkness. A feeling of

reverence and awe swept over Soelver as little by little he

distinguished in the floating folds of the moon white garment, the firm

outlines of a woman's arms, which were crossed beneath a half bared

breast, the line of the teeth in the open mouth, a flash of white light

from Gro's eyes gazing with a certain fixed power.

"Holy Mother of God--it was Gro herself!

"Soelver started upright, frightened at his own movement, for he

scarcely dared breathe, much less go towards her. He felt his nakedness

as a crime, even his being awake as a transgression. The form glided

forward out of the moonlight, the crossed hands separated themselves

from the breast and Gro pursued her way with outstretched hands, feeling

her way and yet mechanically sure like a sleep walker.

"Yes, she was walking in her sleep. Soelver recognized it by the staring

look in her eyes, which gazed through the night as through miles of

space. Soelver slid noiselessly to the floor in front of her, afraid

that he would be seen, in deadly terror lest she should awaken. For he

knew how dreadful it might be to awaken a sleep walker and in his

excited phantasy he heard already the cry of horror and madness which

would issue from Gro's mouth if she awoke and saw herself in this dark,

subterranean depth alone with a naked man as with a demon. It was as if

everything in Soelver cried out in protective anxiety that Gro should

not awaken. He crouched beseechingly upon the ground, his whole soul was

a sobbing prayer for grace, for instant means of deliverance, now that

Gro had come to him as if by fate.

"There came a whispered sound from her open mouth, as her lips for a

moment sought each other. It was as if she breathed out the one word

'Soelver.' This, however, to hear his name spoken, made Soelver strong

at once. It compelled him to arise from the floor, it banished fear from

his soul, it made him rejoice in every fiber of his being. The next

moment her outstretched arm reached his hand--he felt the firm, cool

skin under his trembling finger tips and his face felt the warm

breathing of her voice, 'Soelver, Soelver!' And driven by some mystic

power of will, he forced himself under the same hypnotic influence which

surrounded her. He compelled himself to leave the clear broad way of

reason and to enter the ecstatic, perilous, paths of the sleep walker.

He was no longer awake. He sought, he touched, he stood before that

after which he had groped. He was himself driven by a magic power, by a

marvelous single purpose, which must be attained. This whole

transformation took place in him merely because he felt that this was

the only means of saving her from awaking to consciousness and madness.

"'Soelver--Soelver!'--'Yes.'--'Soelver--are you--are

you--there?'--'Yes--I--am--here.'--'Yes--that is you--that is you--I

feel you.'--'And you see me?'--'Yes, I see you.'--'And you will stay

with me?'--'Yes--I will--I will stay with you.'

"Soelver answered her in the same whisperings in which she breathed out

her words. His hands passed over hers with infinite carefulness. But

finally his arms closed about her neck and he felt a marvelous tingling

in his finger tips as he touched her soft silken hair. His mouth

approached hers and mingled his warm breath with the breath which

escaped cold from her lips. He drew in the air with her own rhythm, it

was as if his naked heart bowed toward hers so that they all at once

touched one another. Then the blood flamed out of her cheeks and

streamed over into his, although they lay not upon each other. The blood

burned in all her skin and Soelver trembled for a moment lest this

transport was the beginning of the awakening.

"His heart stood still with fear. However the blood continued to surge

through Gro's body. She pressed Soelver close to herself and through her

soft clothing he felt her breast swell and throb, as if she would bore

herself into his flesh. 'Soelver--I love you.'--'Gro--I love you.' Then

a strange giddiness seized him as if he were rushing into her arms on a

tower miles high. He breathed upon her ethereal kisses, which closed her

lips, moistened her forehead and descended thence like a refreshing

spring rain so that her lids drooped. When her eyes were closed Soelver

felt for the first time quite secure. He fastened them with a real kiss

and now, since her sleep wandering had reached its goal in his arms and

Soelver was sure that her love dream was too deep to be disturbed, he

whispered louder than before, 'Gro--I love you!'--'Soelver--I love

you!'--'How long have you loved me?'--'Longer than I have known you,

Soelver.'--'Why have you not said so, Gro?'--'That, Soelver, I will

never tell!'

"So Soelver carried his wonderful burden to his couch and inhaled her

youthful fragrance and lifted his mouth to hers and all his blood at

once leaped forth. Every fiber of his being was stirred to kisses, every

blood drop became a yearning mouth to meet the thousand mouths of her

blood. And lost to sense--vehemently, seized by the divine power of

nature, unafraid that she might awaken, without control over himself and

yet proud as a master of worlds, he was impelled as the sunbeam to its

goal, when it forces open the flower and buries itself in its fragrant

depths. Soelver united himself with Gro. She on her part slumbered on,

quiet as the sea which has closed over its sacrifice.

"But Soelver felt his senses reawakening. What now? Should he let Gro

sleep until day woke her and she saw herself in his arms? He bent over

his beloved in deepest distress. She must not awaken in terror, not

again weep as on that first morning when she was with him. The most

delicate chords in her soul had trembled and sung to him in the night,

to him whom she unconsciously loved with all the indefinable conviction

of her heart. This love must not be rudely plucked and allowed to fade

like a plant whose tender shoot is torn asunder. She must go back to her

maiden's couch until the flower of the day had burst forth from its

leafy covering. Then he discovered that the panel at the foot of his cot

was opened, while some planking had been pushed back. Gro must have come

this way and by this way he carried her back. Led by an unerring

instinct, as if he knew from his nightly phantasied visits all the

turnings of the way, he went without deliberation into the secret room

behind the panel, found the passage to the main stairway, passed

straight up, turned through corridors, passed under the heavy tapestry

curtains, opened the last door and noticed first that he bore a burden

when he laid it down. The moon threw its faint silver light round about

in the little room. With a sweet wonder Soelver gazed upon the prayer

stool and the brown rosary--without its cross."

I may pass briefly over the remainder. In the first place Soelver was

given his liberty and he went back to his castle. The death of Sten

Basse occurred soon after. Soelver whispered to his daughter at his

death bed, "Gro, whatever may happen, know now that we belong to one

another." She "turned her head slowly toward him and looked at him with

her large eyes swollen with tears. Her look was that of a stranger and

quite uncomprehending, so that Soelver understood that she did not

simply deny everything but she had no recollection at all." So Soelver

turned and went. For the first time when bathing in the lake "he found

again his youth and his freedom, his radiant hope and the jubilant

certainty of his love. Gro loved him! Only the thought of love had not

yet arisen from the depths of her soul like pearls to the light.

Nevertheless the wonderful flower of her affection was growing in the

golden light of dreams. He longed after Gro as after his bride, although

he was only the bridegroom of her dreams, who dared to kiss her only

when her eyes were closed. By day he was her foe, as the bear in the

fairy tale, who by night alone is changed into a beautiful young man."

They met therefore first again at Sten's bier, at the side of which they

both kneeled. "Gro's eyes were directed upon him as upon a stranger,

staring with wonder, burning with a mystic light. Why was this stranger

here near her, the man whom her dead father had tortured and derided?

And yet her eyes were wet with tears of pity and she felt that this man

only desired to take her hand. Soelver observed her with his inmost

soul. He pressed the small cross of moonshine between his hands, he bent

over it and kissed it and a gleam from its blazing stones smote Gro's

eyes. She stretched out her arms and took the cross from him and gazed

into the stones as into well-known eyes. She knew not how this had come

into Soelver's hands but she also bent over it and kissed it and her

soul went out toward Soelver as toward a soul far, far away, whom she

once had known, whom however she could scarcely remember."

After this Soelver came and went at Egenaes, Sten Basse's castle, as if

he were lord and heir of the estate. "It was rumored also among the

tenants and the servants that he was betrothed to the maiden Gro. Yet no

word of it was exchanged between them. Soelver stood by Gro in small

things and great, and she allowed herself to be guided by his strength

and cleverness. Since that night when he had kneeled with her at her

father's lifeless body, she was bound to him by a nameless bond of

gratitude, of mutual feeling, and by an inner apprehension that their

fate was interwoven. Still no consciousness of love colored Gro's

attitude. She longed for Soelver's strong handclasp because it made her

will strong to withstand her sorrow. She could think of herself lying

upon his broad, deep breast, only however because there slumber would

come in sure forgetfulness. There was moreover a tenderness in her look,

when in a fleeting moment she let her glance rest upon his, such as the

realization of another's goodness awakens in us, especially when the

goodness is undeserved and disinterested. Yet there was never any of

love's surrender. Only she was glad to know herself observed by these

quiet, steadfast, clear eyes, from which the red specter of passion,

which had so frightened her that day upon Aebeloe, had long been

banished. She believed that she had in Soelver a friend given her for

life and death, a friend who could not desire her in love nor be

desired, a brother whom one might trust with infinitely more serenity

than any lover.

"Soelver was ever watchful of Gro. His eyes were on the lookout whether

he might not once surprise in hers the brightness of the dream, and make

the hidden rose of love break through the green covering and bloom in

reality. He longed thus within himself once to see the day and night

aspects of her soul melt into a wonderful golden twilight. But Gro made

no response to the gaze from his eyes. She turned her head aside so

that her silken lashes concealed her glance. 'Gro, why do you never look

at me?'--'I do look at you.'--'Do you see me with your cheek, Gro?'--'I

see you, though, Soelver. I see you with the outermost corner of my

eye.' Soelver bent his face beneath hers. 'Are you looking at me?' But

Gro pressed her lids together as before a bright light and shook her

head, 'No, Soelver, not so! You look too sharply, you look too deeply.

You look so deeply that it hurts me very much. No, stand so Soelver,

turn your eyes away!'--'Are you afraid of me?'--'No, no--why should I be

afraid? But I do not feel comfortable to have you all the time wanting

to read my heart, to have your eyes searching for some writing that does

not stand written there. My friend and beloved brother, I fear what your

look would draw from me--what would you drag out from my soul?'--'The

spring day, Gro, when we first met.'--'Ah! Soelver, I scarcely remember

it. It seems to me that I have always known you, that all your days you

have been good and kind to me. Lately I have felt it in my heart and

upon my cheek, as when my mother caressed me and that is long, long

ago.'--'Gro, only say it, you are afraid of the word, but not

truly--just say it--you love me.--You are silent because it is true.'

'No, Soelver, I have never felt that.'--'So you have dreamed it,

Gro.'--'Dreamed!' Gro became fiery red. 'Dreamed--dreamed--oh Soelver,

what have I dreamed? What do you know of my dreams? To have dreamed is

to have dreamed, and my dreams belong to me, to me alone!' For a moment

she turned to him a shy, quivering look, then tears trickled down from

under her drooping lids. But Soelver observed that he had hit upon the

truth. Immediately however he regretted that he had cast this look into

the sanctuary of her soul. It was like the curious peeping of which the

knight had been guilty, spying through the keyhole upon his wife,

Undine.

"A long time they sat silent. At last Gro was herself again, quiet and

controlled. Then she spoke in a soft but firm voice, 'Soelver, if you

remain with me to awaken me to love, then I beg of you, go and never

return. I can never look upon you with the eyes of love. Passion seems

to me like a glowing sword, which burns out one's eyes as it goes by.

There was a day when you made the flaming sword of your desire pass by

my face--since that time it is burned out. I have been blinded, Soelver,

I am blind to the desire of your eyes, and all your fervent prayers. I

have hated you, despised you, defied you, yet you have repaid evil with

good and now I return good for good. Look not upon me with love's eyes,

seek not to awaken the dead in me to life. You are to me more precious

than if the proud brother of my childhood had returned in you, your

spirit is his, I did not believe that in the will of a man so much

kindness could dwell. Leave it so, stay with me as my brother, or leave

me like my brother, but never speak to me of love, neither in words nor

in looks for I know no reply.'"

The young nobleman knew finally, for all his eager power, no other way

of escape than to go with the king to the war. He saw quite clearly that

"Gro struggled against the force deep in her heart. And yet the day's

flaming sun could cause the weak chrysalis of the dream to shrivel so

that no butterfly would break through the covering and rejoice in the

strong light of midday. But with Soelver away, the longing for him would

support the invisible growth of the dream and prepare the way for it

into consciousness. Ah! it was worth his departure." Then he took leave

of his beloved. "Goodbye; forget me not on our island. Bid me return

when you will. The wind will find me, wherever I am. Tell the wild

birds, when you want me and would call me home."

Gro, remaining behind alone, first became aware what she had lost in him

and in his "strong will, which was her source of light." She began to

long more and more for him who was far away. "Ah, if he would only come

again!" And when a bird flew by, she "flushed red at her own thought;

was that a message sent forth by her desire? This took place contrary to

her wish and will--she wished not to long for him, not to call him back,

not to love him! Angrily she roused herself and sought to recall the

burning gaze with which Soelver had wounded her modesty. So with a vexed

and hard stroke of the oars she pushed the boat away from Aebeloe."

When the war was ended, Soelver went to serve the king of France. For,

as he wrote in a letter sent by carrier pigeon, "he who is not summoned,

comes not." Meanwhile love towards the young nobleman had begun to grow

in her bosom. "Night after night she dreamed of Soelver and at last one

night she suddenly awoke and found herself cold and naked, wandering

around in her room and heard the last note of her heart's unconscious

avowal, 'Soelver, I love you.' There was a change within her. Hour after

hour would she sit inactive and half asleep, listening to the irregular

beating of her heart--something was drawing upon her very depths,

sucking her strength from her, from her proud will, something that

paralyzed her thought and bound her always to the same name, the same

memory." As she listened to her own depths, "she caught a momentary

something like a weak, quickly beating echo of her own slow heart, a

busily living little heart, that ticked louder and louder until at last

it deafened hers. A trembling joy seized her at that moment through all

her senses as she knew that she bore a life within her life, that she

enclosed in her body the germ of a new life that was not growing from

her alone and of her life alone."

Suddenly a crushing terror overcame her. Who was her child's father? "So

abruptly came this question over her naïve soul that she fancied for a

moment that this might be the punishment of fate for her longing for

Soelver. This longing was desire, and desire was sin no less than the

love itself. Her wish for him had grown to a fire in her blood and now

she was stained by her own passion, pregnant from her own sin. God's

punishment had visited her and soon would be visible to all the world.

Gro saw however immediately the foolishness of her thought. For one

moment she lingered at the thought of the one woman of all the earth,

who had immaculately conceived. Then she uttered an inward prayer that

the Mother of God would lighten her understanding and give her clearness

of vision that she should not go astray in her brooding over this

mystery."

When she questioned her nurse and the latter finally put it to her,

"Have you spent no night under the same roof with Soelver?" then there

occurred to her the many nights "when she had dreamed of the lonely

imprisoned man, who was being punished because of her. When she lay in

her bed in the dark, a strange curiosity had overcome her to imagine his

lot there below and, when sleep seized her and dreams chased away the

bitter, hard thoughts, her heart had become softer and the sun had shone

over the visions of her dreams as the spring day over the woods

blossoming with the green May bells. Many a night and many a morning was

she awakened by a strange burning desire in her thoughts, and her mouth

was as though touched with fresh dream kisses, and she had entered into

judgment with her own weak heart and had so inflamed herself to scorn

and hatred that she had done nothing to soften the fate of the prisoner.

But how could Soelver have been the guest of her dreams? And how had he

been able to command the virgin love fed by her slumber? Then came the

nurse to her aid and made it clear to her. She knew that the maiden Gro

had walked in her sleep; the servants had told of a white ghost on the

stairs and once she herself had seen it and recognized Gro, who had

disappeared upon a secret stairway, which led down into the dungeon. She

had kept still about it, for she thought it was a voluntary sleep

walking to the young nobleman."

Thus was Gro enlightened as to the source of her pregnancy. "She

quivered with shame that the desire in her dreams had the power to drive

her down to the lonely prisoner and she shook in her inmost soul at the

memory of that happy dream, which she had had the night before her

father's death. Now her love suddenly burst into the light like a

wonderful flower, which suddenly springs up with a thousand fragrant

buds. Now it was impossible to stem it or to conceal it. She had wanted

to suppress every germ, with her father's coldness and the day's

dispassionately proud haughtiness she had been willing to stifle every

impulse toward love, every longing for self avowal. Now she found her

pride was dead and buried and her being within and without was permeated

by love.

"For she had loved Soelver from the first springtime kiss, which he had

imprinted upon her cheek as she wandered among the fresh May bells,

loved him in the blow which she had inflicted upon his head when he had

touched her chaste nakedness, loved him in those nights when he had

slept uncomplaining in the cellar dungeon, loved him in those bitter

moments of his humbling when he, in spite of scorn and insult,

maintained his pride, loved him that evening when he kneeled at her

father's bier and kissed the hand of his enemy now dead, loved him day

by day all the time they were together, loved him in that hour when she

saw his banner disappear among the hundred others, and today upon

Aebeloe when she heard that new life singing within hers. And now she

rejoiced; for she bore him always within her, she could never again lose

her Soelver."

As we glance over the material of this tale, we find as the nucleus of

the night wandering and moon walking the strong repression of every

conscious love impulse and the breaking through of the unconscious in

sleep and dream wherever the censor's rule is relaxed. For the maiden

Gro had loved Soelver from the first moment, yet this love was confessed

only in moments of occasional self forgetfulness, as by the first

meeting with the young nobleman, when her hand met his, yes, even

pressed it for the moment. Only Gro should not have been frightened out

of her half unconscious action by a kiss or a passionate desire, for at

once there arose to life within her the coldness and haughtiness of her

father and the highhanded reaction which her mother had manifested to

her conqueror. The determining factor, to speak in psychoanalytic

language, is the struggle between the strong sexual rejection and the

equally compelling sexual desire. At first the former held the upper

hand with our heroine in her waking and conscious action, the latter in

the unconscious. Through the force of her will Gro seemed cold, even as

she had learned of her father. She defended herself from her lover's

craving by force and blow; even when conquered finally through the noble

spirit of her enemy, she would see in him only the friend for life and

death. She directly refused to think of love and displaced it to

external things, she even bade the young man go rather than desire her

as his wife. Soelver's devotion reminded her most significantly of her

mother's tenderness, his pride, of the brother of her childhood. "It is

as if in you the proud brother of my childhood had returned. Your spirit

is his. Leave it so, stay with me as my brother or leave me like my

brother, but never speak to me of love, neither in words nor in looks,

for I know no reply!"

Yet she avoided Soelver's searching eye and as he reminded her of her

dreams, she was smitten in the depths of her soul. For her dreams, she

well knew, chased away the bitter and hard thoughts, the repressed

unconscious broke through and the true feeling of her loving heart. This

already appeared clear to her when her beloved languished in captivity

at her father's hands. The strange desire to work out the fate of the

young nobleman, who suffered on her account, had overcome her lying

there in her bed in the dark. And in the morning she awoke with a

strange burning desire in her thoughts and her mouth was flecked with

his fresh dream kisses. Still she consciously kept back every outer

manifestation of love and met the young man while her father was alive

with coldness and suspicion and later even merely as a brother. The

great distance separating her beloved from her and above all the child

which she bore from him under her heart for the first time conquer her

haughty pride and her conscious aversion. And as she dreams one night

again of the loved one far away she finds herself suddenly awake, going

about cold and naked in her room and perceives as the lingering sound of

her heart's unconscious avowal, "Soelver, I love you!"

So severe is this struggle between conscious sexual denial and

unconscious desire, that it even forces itself through in her sleep and

her night wandering. Her dreams had indeed, as she later acknowledged

with shame, the force and the power to compel her below into the young

nobleman's dungeon. She had clasped Soelver's hand in her sleep, she

had told him everything in the moonlight, with eyes closed, everything

which she secretly felt, and had pressed him to herself. Yet when he

asked her why she could never confess to him that she had always loved

him so deeply, she repulsed him: "That I will never tell!" Even when he

had united himself to his beloved, she had slumbered on as if nothing

had happened and the next day knew nothing of it all.

This leads now to that which, according to folk belief, constitutes the

very core, the chief ground for sleep walking and moon walking in a

maiden. It is easy to understand the wish, on the part of the female sex

with their strongly demanded sexual repression, to come to the beloved

one and taste all the delights of satisfaction but without guilt. This

is possible only through wandering in unconscious sleep. For, as my

first patient explained, one is not accountable for anything that

happens in this state, and thus can enjoy without sin and without

consciousness of what is not permitted. Convention demands that the

maiden wait until the lover approaches her, but in that unconscious

state she may surrender herself. The need for repression explains then

the subsequent amnesia. Yet wandering by night is not concerned merely

with sexual enjoyment, over and above that it fulfills a second desire

that arises out of childhood, as we know from psychoanalysis. Every

small maiden has, that is, the wish to have a child by her father, her

first love, which is often in later years defined thus, one might have a

child, but without a husband. The night wandering fulfills this desire

to have a child yet without sin. Therefore has that motive of an

unconscious, not to say immaculate, conception inspired not a few poets,

as it has already, as is well known, been active in the creation of the

drama.

Less transparent than that chief motive is the action of the light,

sunlight as well as moonlight. The heroine of the story stands toward

both in a special relationship. Her body is almost illuminated by its

own light, her hair sparkles electrically when it is touched, "warm

waves of light" emanate from her, which Soelver noticed at their first

meeting, the sun seems expressly to seek her, a halo of impalpable

beauty surrounds her and above all glows from the depths of her eyes.

Not only so, Gro seems to dwell chiefly in the light, whose last drops

she greedily absorbs within herself. When the light fades, her body

becomes cold as ice like a corpse. In similar manner the shining of the

full moon affects her, the light of which the stones of her gold cross

have absorbed. The first time that the slumbering youth saw Gro

wandering, it seemed to him as if the moonlight had been loosed from the

planet and floated only in his room like a living being. The poet, to be

sure, has offered no explanation of this mystical effect of light and

what the reader may think for himself would be merely drawn from other

sources. For this reason I will not pursue this point further.

The narrative affords somewhat further means for an understanding in

another direction. It is not explained more fully just why Gro follows

the sunlight and moonlight or why both exercise upon her a peculiar

attraction, yet the tendency to a motor breaking through of the

unconscious may be derived from an inherited disposition. The father is

a rough, violent robber knight while the mother shows distinctly

sadistic traits and a truly ready hand at fighting. That confirms what I

explained in the first part, a heightened muscular excitability and

muscle eroticism, which strives to break through again on the sexual

side in sleep walking. Finally it may be affirmed without doubt that the

ghostly white figure upon the stairs was no other than the maiden in her

shift.

"JÖRN UHL," by Gustav Frenssen.

I can deal more briefly with "Jörn Uhl," the well-known rural romance of

Frenssen, in which the sketch of a moon walker constitutes merely an

episode. Joern Uhl, who, returned from the war, takes over the farm of

his unfortunate father, discovers Lena Tarn as the head maid-servant.

She pleased him at first sight. "She was large and strong and stately in

her walk. Besides her face was fresh with color, white and red, her hair

golden and slightly wavy. He thought he had never seen so fresh and at

the same time so goodly appearing a girl. He was pleased also at the way

she nodded to him and said 'good evening' and looked him over from head

to foot with such open curiosity and sincere friendliness." She sings

too much to please the old housekeeper! "She is so pert and too

straightforward with her speech." It is noteworthy too that she talks to

herself in unquiet sleep.

Lena Tarn can soon make observations also upon her side. Joern was very

short with the old graybeard, who advised him to an early marriage: "The

housekeeper is with me, I do not need a wife." Lena, entering just then,

heard what the unmannerly countryman said and assumed a proud look,

thinking to herself, "What is the sly old man saying!" Since however the

old man began to talk and compelled her and Joern Uhl to listen, she was

concerned almost entirely for the latter, whose "long, quiet face with

its deep discerning eyes she observed with a silent wonder, without

shyness, but with confident curiosity." Not alone in the kitchen, which

is under her control, can Lena show what is in her. When a young bull

broke loose and came after the women, she met him with sparkling eyes,

"Stop you wretch!" When he would not allow himself to be turned aside,

she threw a swift look flashing with anger upon the men, who were idly

looking on, then swung the three-legged milking stool which she had

taken along and hit the bull so forcibly on the head with it that

frightened, he lunged off sideways. "Lena Tarn had however all afternoon

a red glow coming and going in her cheeks because the farmer had looked

upon her with the eyes of a high and mighty young man. That caused her

secretly both joy and concern." Immediately after this she experienced

one satisfaction. Joern Uhl was dragged into the water by a mischievous

calf and was much worse cut up by it than she, the weaker one, the woman

had been.

"Lena saw always before her the face which Joern Uhl had made when she

had gone forward against the bull. She was otherwise in the best of

humors, but when, as in the last few days, she was not quite well

physically she was inclined to be angry. She preserved a gloomy

countenance as well and as long as she could. Soon though, as she went

here and there about her work and felt the new fresh health streaming

through her limbs, she altered her looks.... Joern Uhl moreover could

not be quiet that day. The sudden plunge in the water had brought his

blood to boiling. The spring sunshine did its part. A holiday spirit

came over him and he thought that he would go into the village and pay

his taxes, which were due. On the way he thought of Lena Tarn. Her hair

is coiled upon her head like a helmet of burnished brass, which slips

into her neck. When she 'does things,' as she says, her eyes are stern

and directed eagerly upon her work. When on the other hand she is spoken

to and speaks with any one she is quick to laugh. Work seems to her the

only field where quiet earnestness is in place. 'That must be so,' she

says. Toward everything else she is angry or in a good humor, mostly the

latter. Only toward me is she short and often spiteful. It has been a

great joke for her that I had the ill luck to have to go into the water

with that stupid beast. If she only dared she would spread it three

times a day on my bread and butter and say 'There you have it.'"

Now he meets old Dreier who gives him good advice: "How old are you?

Twenty-four? Don't you marry, Joern. On no account. That would be the

stupidest thing that you could do. I bet you $50.000 you don't dare do

it. Time will tell, I say." "Take it for granted that I will wait yet

ten years," he answered. And he went on thinking to himself, "It is

pleasanter to go thus alone and let one's thoughts run on. Marry? Marry

now? I will be on my guard. After I am thirty!" Then his thought came

back to Lena. "She looked well as she flung the stool at the bull.

Prancing like a three-year-old horse. Yesterday she did not look so

well, her eyes were not so bright, she spoke harshly to Wieten (the old

housekeeper) and said to her afterwards, 'Do not mind it, Wieten, I

slept badly,' and laughed. Funny thing, slept badly? When one is on the

go as she must be all day, one should sleep like a log. But that is all

right in the May days. It is well that men understand this, otherwise

every spring the world would go all to pieces." Then he rejoiced that he

was so young and could point out on the farm what was his. "Later, when

the years have gone by and I am well established I will take to myself a

fine wife with money and golden hair. There are also rich girls who are

as merry and fresh and as desirable and have as stately forms. It need

not be just this one."

Then he came to the parish clerk who had just been notified that day of

six children to be baptized and who was complaining of the increase in

births. Joern agreed with him: "What will we come to, if the folk

increase like that? Marrying before twenty-five must simply be

forbidden." "With these words he departed, filled with a proud

consciousness that he was of the same opinion with so intelligent,

experienced an old man as the parish clerk." At home he met Lena Tarn

with an old farmer, who came to inquire after the fate of his son who

had been with Joern in the war. Then for the first time the girl heard

of the frightful misery and the suffering of the soldiers which cried to

heaven, so that her face was drawn with pain. "Deep in her soul however

thrilled and laughed a secret joy, that you have come back whole, Joern

Uhl."

Later, when she was making out the butter account with the farmer, "she

had to bend her glowing head over the book, which he held in his hand.

There came such a glistening in his eyes that he wrinkled his forehead

and did not conceal his displeasure at such an unsteady flashing." In

the evening she came to get back the book. Then Joern spoke to her, "You

have not been in a good humor these last days. Is anything the matter?"

She threw her head back and said shortly, "Something is the matter

sometimes with one; but it soon passes over."--"As I came through the

passage yesterday evening I heard you call out in your sleep in your

room." "Oh, well!... I have not been well."--"What ... you not well? The

moon has done that. It has been shining into your room."--"I say,

though, there may be some other cause for that."--"I say that comes from

the moon." She looked at him angrily, "As if you knew everything! I did

not call out in my sleep at all but was wide awake. Three calves had

broken out and were frisking around in the grass. I saw them clearly in

the moonlight. I called them." He laughed mockingly, "Those certainly

were moon calves." "So? I believe not. For I brought them in myself this

morning and then I saw that the stable door stood open. I thought to

myself, the boy has gone courting tonight. Your eyes always sweep over

everything and light upon everything and you [du] worry so over

everything out of order, I wonder that you [du] have not seen it."--"You

say 'thou' [du] to me?"--"Yes, you say it to me. I am almost as great as

you and you are not a count, and I am as intelligent as you." She

carried her head pretty high and as she snatched the book from the

window seat as if it lay there in the fire, he saw the splendid scorn in

her eyes. "Take care of yourself when the moon is shining," he said,

"otherwise again tonight you will have to guard the calves."

"He had arisen, but dared not touch her. They looked at one another

however and each knew how it stood with the other. He had again the look

which he had revealed once in the morning, a presuming look, confident

of victory, such a look as if he would say, 'I know well enough how such

a maidenly scorn is to be interpreted.' But her eyes said, 'I am too

proud to love you.' She went slowly into the darkness of her room as if

she would give him time yet to say something or to long after her. He

was however too slow for that and laughed in confusion."

The night fell upon them, a wonderful still night. "I will take one more

look at the moon," thought Joern Uhl and took his telescope. He went

through the middle door with as little noise as possible, but the door

of Lena's room stood open and she appeared upon the threshold and leaned

against the side post. "Are you still awake?" he asked anxiously. "It is

not yet late."--"The sky is so clear. I want to look at the stars once

more. If you wish you may come with me." At first she remained standing,

then he heard her coming after him. When he had directed his telescope

to a nebulous star he invited her to look in. She placed herself so

awkwardly that he laid his hand on her shoulder and asked her, "What do

you see?"--"Oh!" she said, "I see--I see--a large farmhouse, which is

burning. It has a thatched roof. Oh!--Everything is burning; the roof is

all in flames. Sparks are flying about. It is really an old Ditmarsh

farmhouse."--"No, my girl, you have too much imagination, which is bad

for science.--What else do you see?"--"I see--I see--at one side of the

farmhouse a plank which is dark; for the burning house is behind it. But

I can look deep into the burning hall. Three, four sheaves have fallen

from the loft and lie burning on the blazing floor. Oh, how frightful

that is! Show me another house which is not burning.--Show me a house,

you know, show me a farmyard just where they are who hunt up the

calves." He laughed merrily. "You huzzy," said he, "you might well see

your three-legged stool in the sky, not? So, high overhead!"--"You

should have had the three-legged stool. I do not forget you that day,

you ... and how you looked at me. That you may believe."

He had never yet let anyone share in his observations. Now he marveled

and was pleased at her astonishment and joy. And then he showed her the

moon. He placed her and held her again by the arm as if she were an

awkward child. She was astonished at the masses on it: "What are those?

Boiling things, like in our copper kettles? Exactly. What if it hung

brightly scoured over our fireplace and tomorrow morning the fire shone

up upon it."--"The boiling things are mountains and valleys.--And now

you have seen enough and spoken wisely enough. Go inside. You will be

cold and then you will dream again and see in the dream I do not know

what. Will you be able to sleep?"--"I will try." He wanted again to

reach out his hand to her but his high respect for her held him back. He

thought he should not grasp her thus, along the way as it were. "Make

haste," he said, "to get away."

She went and he remained to pursue his studies. So the time passed. He

had grown eager and busied himself noiselessly with his telescope. "And

he thrust aside once more that young life, which an hour ago had

breathed so very near him and came again to the old beaten track of

thought that the old Dreier was right. 'Don't do anything foolish,

Joern.'--And yet, 'Fine she is and good. Happy the man about whose neck

her arms lie.--What precious treasure must those eyes hold, when they

can look with such frank confidence at a man.'"

About him now were only the customary sounds of night. Suddenly it was

as if near by over the house roof and then at the side at the wall of

the house he heard the soft cry of a goose and the weak flapping of

wings. And "as he looked, there stood under the house roof in the bright

moonlight a white human form, with one hand over the eyes and with the

other feeling along the wall, as if it would enter the house where there

was however no door. It spoke in excited hurried words, 'The calves are

in the garden; you must be more on the watch. Get up Joern and help me.'

Joern Uhl came in three long strides over the turf and softly called her

name: 'I am here.--Here I stand.--It is I.--So! so!--Now be still.--It

is I.--No one else is here.' She was speechless and began to rub her

eyes with the back of her hand, as a child rubs the sleep out of its

eyes, and she fretted also in childish fashion. Then he embraced her and

told her again where she was, and led her to the stable door seeking to

comfort her. 'Look, here is the door of the stable. Here you have gone

through, you dreamer; you have gone all through the stable in your

sleep. Have you been seeking the moon calves? Ah you foolish child!--So,

here you need not be anxious. You will straightway be back in your

room.' When she finally clearly recognized her situation, she was

frightened, flung her hands against her face and uttered mournful cries.

'Oh, oh, how frightful this is!' But he caressed her, took her hands

from her face and said to her feelingly, 'Now stop that complaining. Let

it be as it is.' So they came to the open door, which led to her room.

It must have been a remarkable night, for not only had half the calves

in the pasture broken out and in the morning were actually standing in

the garden and the court, but the boy this night of all nights had not

come home, but only returned in the early morning twilight."

The next morning Joern Uhl went to the parish clerk that the banns might

be published for him and the nineteen year old Lena Tarn. He was almost

embarrassed when he came again before her, "I should merely like to know

what you think of me." As she remained speechless, he came nearer. "You

have always been a great heroine, especially to me. Hold your head high

and make it known that I am right." She was still silent, merely pressed

both hands to her temples and stared into the glowing hearth. Then he

drew one of her hands down softly from her hair, seized it and went with

her over the vestibule, through the door communicating with the front of

the house. She followed him passively, her eyes upon the ground and the

other hand still on her hair. In the living room he led her to the

large chair which stood by the window and forced her into it. "So," said

he softly, "here we are all alone, Lena. Here in this chair has Mother

sat many a Sunday afternoon. You now belong in it." Still she said

nothing. "I have been to the parish clerk and arranged everything and

the wedding will be in June. Have you nothing to say yet?" Then she

seized his hands and said softly, "As you think, it is all good so." And

she covered her face with her hands and wept. Then he began to stroke

her and kiss her. "Child, only cease your weeping. You are my fair

little bride. Only be happy again." And in his distress he said, "I will

never do it again. Only laugh again." At last when he could think of no

more cajoling names, he called her "Redhead." Then she had to laugh, for

that was the name of the best cow, which stood first in the stalls. Now

she lifted her head and gazed long at him without moving. Thus Joern Uhl

came rightly to that tenderness and comfort which he thought he

deserved.

I have only a little to add that is important for our theme. As a young

wife also Lena Tarn was busy the whole day, working from early to late

without rest. The work flew from her hand. And when her confinement was

over, she got up the sixth day, against the earnest warning of the

housekeeper, cared for her boy alone the whole day, went even to the

kitchen and carried water for his bath. Joern Uhl allowed it. For he was

proud to have such a strong wife, "not so affected as the others." It

led however to her death. Somehow she must have become infected, for

soon after a severe childbed fever broke out.

Even as a young wife she, the poor humble cottager's daughter whose

childhood was pinched by bitterest need, shed a wealth of love and joy

upon all who dwelt about her. Yet now, "she, the friendly one, who had

never caused suffering to any one, went in her fever delirium to every

one in the house, even the smallest servant boy and to every neighbor

and begged their forgiveness, 'if I have done anything to hurt you in

any way.' Towards morning she became quieter but it was the exhaustion

of death and she spoke with great difficulty. Her husband must 'tell

Father that she had loved him.' Joern Uhl sobbed violently: 'Who has

never spoken a kind word to you, poor child.' She tried to smile. 'You

have had nothing but toil and work,' he said. Then she made him

understand in labored speech that she had been very happy." The last

fever phantasies finally put her back into her childhood. Her love went

out to the old teacher Karstensen, then again to Joern Uhl, until she

was finally led through angels to a further father-incarnation, to the

dear God. "It came to her like peace and strength. Clasped by many hands

and led forward, she came to an earnest, holy form who leaned forward

and looked kindly upon her. Then she stretched her hand out and suddenly

she had a great bunch of glowing red flowers in her hand. She gave them

to him saying, 'That is all that I have. I pray you let me remain with

you. I am fearfully weary. Afterwards I will work as hard as I can. If

you would like to hear it, I will gladly sing at my work.'"

Scarcely in any other tale is the fierce strife between the clearly

active sexual longing, and the conscious sexual denial present at the

same time, as well as the final victory which the unconscious attains,

so plainly shown as in Gustav Frenssen's romance, where the moon

walking, exhibitionistic woman completely overthrows the reasoning of

the man. The poet expresses it clearly and decisively: They each knew

the desire of the other. Joern Uhl saw through the meaning of a maiden's

scorn and Lena's eyes said, I am too proud to love you, but I do love

you. Yet opportunity must be given to the unconscious to break through

victoriously so that the inhibiting reason shall be deprived of its

power. Therefore the powerful increase of libido with the woman during

the occurrence of menstruation and through the wooing of the boy, who

lets the calves break out, in the man through the cold bath and

furthermore in both through the seductive May air. Finally the moon acts

directly with its light as a precipitating cause.

The night before she had spoken out loud in her sleep just as Joern Uhl

went by to his room. He had spoken of it directly as the action of the

moonlight, which she of course contradicted; she had been lying awake

and heard the calves break out.[19] Then she takes the following night,

when the housekeeper, with whom she slept, was sitting up nursing an old

farmer and the boy had gone courting again, to approach Joern Uhl on her

part as a moon walker, who knew nothing of what she did and could not be

held responsible. More than this her unconscious had a fitting speech

ready, the calves had broken out again.

[19] Has not the bringing in of these animals and of the word

mooncalves a hidden closeness of meaning? The repetition twice of the

same motive, the analogy with the case at the beginning which I

analyzed, and at last the fact that Lena, when she looked at the

stars, wanted to see a farmhouse where some one was just driving out

the calves, all this gives food for thought.

The breaking through of the motor impulse is also well grounded.

Everything with Lena Tarn is joy in muscular activity, the restless,

almost unappeasable desire for work and pleasurable "getting things

done," "exerting herself," the constant singing, the easy giving way to

anger. Work is the only thing which she can carry on earnestly because

in that she lives out in part her sexuality, she meets every one else

smilingly or angrily according to her mood. It is noteworthy too that

her unquiet libido transforms itself toward Joern Uhl into anger and

animosity and so much so that once in anger she addresses him as "thou"

and acts as if she were his beloved.

One thing is especially evident in this example of sleep walking and

moon walking, the invariably infantile bearing of these phenomena. When

Lena, walking in her sleep, was called by her lover, she rubbed her eyes

with the back of her hand as a child rubs the sleep from its eyelids and

fretted also in childish fashion. Then again there is her strange

behavior when Joern announces that he has arranged for the publishing of

the banns. The farmer had in a significant way put her literally into

the mother's place and then in the same manner shown tenderness toward

her, stroking and caressing her, as he himself had once been treated by

his mother. Still Lena, who already in the night responded to the sudden

realization of her position with the cry, "Oh, oh, how frightful this

is!" cannot yet quiet herself. It is hardly to be believed that a farm

maiden would so lose control of herself at the thought of an

illegitimate relationship, which furthermore was to be immediately

legalized by marriage. Many things however point to this--I mention only

her later fever phantasies--that she always felt inwardly guilty because

she had been untrue to some one else, the first beloved of her

childhood, her own father. Only when Joern Uhl on his part becomes a

child and in his way solemnly declares, "I will never do it again," and

in the end names her "Redhead," apparently a pet name of her parent,

then she has to laugh and looks long at him without moving, wondering

perhaps if he is the real father. After this everything falls into

proper place. I can now somewhat extend the statement at the beginning

of this section. Night wandering and moon walking have not only inner

connections with the infantile but more exactly with the infantile

erotic.

I will briefly mention still one circumstance in conclusion. The

influence of the moonlight is but little touched upon in our tale. Joern

Uhl speaks of it only once. There is on the contrary a connection with

actual occurrences, a recent cause for Lena's moon walking. She has

looked at the moon through the lover's telescope and received

instruction in regard to it. That wakens the memory of the instruction

of the old Karstensen, her teacher when she attended the folk school,

from which we understand that he appears in the place of her father.

"MARIA," by Otto Ludwig.

Perhaps no poet has felt so deeply and expressed so clearly what

constitutes the fundamental problem of sleep walking and moon walking as

Otto Ludwig in his youthful novel "Maria." This novel has, according to

a letter from the poet, "sprung from the anecdote of the rich young

linen draper, who was passionately roused to commit an unnatural offence

at sight of the landlord's daughter laid out apparently dead in the room

through which he was conducted to his own. As a result of this, when he

put up there years after, he found her, whom he supposed to have been

buried, a mother, who had no knowledge as to who was her child's

father."

This anecdote, which he learned from a friend, took such a hold upon him

that he immediately wrote down not only what he had heard but the first

plan, although upon the insistent protestation of that friend he did not

work out the story as it had been first conceived nor so glaringly. "I

saw," writes our poet, "at first only the psychological interest in this

material. The problem was to present the story as well as possible and

this was indeed a significant one for the narrator. A distinctly

esthetic interest would not be possible in conjunction with that."

There is no doubt in the mind of the experienced psychoanalyst that,

when a poet is laid hold of in this manner by an anecdote, this only

happens because his own significant infantile complexes are roused out

of the unconscious. Also the transformations, not unworthy of

consideration, which the poet makes with the story are highly

indicative. The seemingly dead maiden becomes a moon walker, the

landlord's daughter is changed to the attractive daughter of a pastor.

"Out of the linen draper there is finally made a cultivated,

artistically sensitive youth, who has in him much of Ludwig's own

personality" (Borcherdt). The finished romance the poet considered the

best which he had so far created, it came nearest to his ideal of a

story. Although his attempts always failed to find a publisher for the

"Maria," the poet retained his love for this work all his life and it

was one of the few productions of his youth which he occasionally still

shared with his friends in his last years.

The theme of "Maria" is, as indeed the significant title represents, the

unconscious, not to say, the immaculate conception. It is unconscious

because the heroine, drawn by the moon and walking in her sleep, comes

to her beloved and becomes pregnant by him without a conscious memory of

the experience. Furthermore the analogy with the Mother of God becomes

emphasized by the fact that in a picture "Mary and Magdalene" described

at the beginning, the Queen of Heaven bears quite unmistakably the

features of the heroine of the title. The main event, with its results

and discovery, is developed out of the character of both hero and

heroine with extraordinary psychical keenness.

Eisener like Maria is the only child of rich parents. For both love

manifests itself for the most part rather unfortunately. Apparently

neither gets on well with the father and both have early lost their

mothers. Only Eisener even yet clings with deepest veneration to the

mother who taught him to revere all women and, judging from his words,

her influence upon her husband and the son's desire still appears.

"Whatever of good there is in me, I owe to women. The thought of my

excellent mother restrained me from many an indiscretion, as also the

teaching and the example of the wisest and best of men (the father).

This gentle power which is so sweet to obey and at the same time so full

of reward! In loving surrender it obeys the man, while its divine power

rules the man without his knowing it. The imperceptible but mighty

influence of her gentle presence has determined his decision before he

has comprehended it. It has fallen upon him in his anger like an angel

before his own strength could arm itself, it has turned him to what is

right and proper before he is conscious of the choice. Before her clear

look confusion cannot exist, the coarse word of insolence sinks back

unspoken into the shame filled breast. The brightness of a lost paradise

shines from her eyes upon the fallen bringing pain and warning, the

consolation of eternal pity smiles upon the penitent. These are the suns

about which the planets of greatness, honor and beauty revolve, lighted

and warmed by them." Maria's mother on the other hand is not praised by

a single syllable. We do not discover when she died nor how old the

little one was when she lost her natural protectress. Only indirectly

can one make conjectures in regard to this peculiarly important point.

Maria was from an early age a marvelous child. "She spoke a language of

her own, which only the initiated or a very poetic person could

understand. All lifeless things lived for her; she transferred to

flowers, trees, buildings, yes, even furniture and clothing the feelings

of a human soul. She mixed sense impressions in her speech in the

strangest fashion, so that she asserted of tones that they looked red or

blue, and inversely of the colors that they sounded cheerful or sad. A

girl a few years older than she named her the blue song." Both

phenomena, the attributing of life to inanimate things, to which one

speaks as to beloved human beings, as well as the phenomenon of

synesthesia, color audition and seeing of tone colors, are as we know

positively today, to be referred back to erotic motives.[20]

[20] According to my psychoanalytic experience children who cling so

to inanimate things see in them either sexual symbols or those things

were once objects of their secret sexual enjoyment. It may happen, for

example, that such a child falls in love with the furniture, the walls

of the room, yes, even a closet, stays there by the hour, kisses the

walls, tells them its joys and sorrows and hangs them with all sorts

of pictures. One very often sees children talking with inanimate

things. They are embarrassed and break off at once if surprised by

their elders. If there were not something forbidden behind this, there

would be no ground for denying what they are doing, the more so since

in fairy tales beasts, plants and also inanimate things speak with

mankind and with one another without the child taking offense at it.

The latter first becomes confused by the same action when he is

pilfering from the tree of knowledge and has something sexual to hide.

Hug-Hellmuth has convincingly demonstrated the erotic connection

of the child's enthusiasm for plants as well as the different

synesthesias. (See her study, "Über Farbenhören," Imago, Vol. I,

pp. 218 ff. Abstracted in Psa. Rev., Vol. II, No. 1, January, 1915.)

"With Maria's seventh year perhaps, the tendency to play and purposeless

dreaming, which is always bound with such lively, mobile phantasy, gave

place, to the astonishment of all, to an exactly opposite tendency. From

this time she began to take root in life with all the intensity of her

nature. Already in her twelfth or thirteenth year she looked after the

father's household, to the admiration of all who beheld her. A divine

blessing seemed to accompany everything which she undertook; everything

increased under her hands. She could in passing enjoy herself well in

the idealistic dreams of the poets and of her acquaintances, but her own

peculiar element was reality."

What had produced this sudden turn about? I cannot escape the conjecture

that here the death of her mother had a decisive influence and with it

the necessity to take the place with her father of his wife. Her

housewifely activity is noted first to be sure from her twelfth or

thirteenth year. Yet I am of the opinion that she had already in her

seventh year begun to play this rôle--in which year the death of her

mother would be placed--only because she was too small it had been under

the eye of a maid or housekeeper. My analyses of hysterics has taught me

that so profound and sudden a transformation of the whole character

always takes place upon definite erotic grounds and for a quite definite

erotic purpose.

The earliest love of the tiny maiden belongs almost always to her own

father, who is in truth her first beloved. One can often hear it from

the child's lips, "You know, Papa, when Mama dies then I will marry

you." That is in the childish sense meant quite properly and literally.

The early, premature death of the mother gives reality to such infantile

wishes, at least as far as concerns the care of the house. As soon then

as Maria may begin to play this part, she fills it in a striking and

inimitable fashion, although in years she is yet a mere child. She is

altogether the mother in the care of a boy outside the family and this,

as he quite rightly remarked, laughing boisterously and heartily, even

where it is not necessary. Thus her first thought, when she spends her

first night banished from home, is of "the poor father, who must go to

bed without the little services to which he is so accustomed."

She possesses a maturity in the management of the household which few

elders have. Everything goes on and is done without any one noticing

that it is being done. "Is there anything more charming than this

sixteen year old little house mother in her housekeeping activities?"

says one of her admirers. "Just look, let her do what she will, she

accomplishes it in the best way and at the same time most beautifully."

She is quite contented in the position which she has made. Her eroticism

seems completely satisfied. "She is psychically yet so little a woman

that there is not the least sexual inclination in the charm that infuses

her and therefore her bodily development is overlooked. There is also no

trace yet of that entrancing shyness which springs from the mere

suspicion that there must be something else about the man." A friend of

the family expresses it thus: "When one considers the repose, the self

possession of her nature, the freedom from constraint and the

spirituality of it, one might almost believe that _she was not

originally of this earth but perhaps a native of the moon, which seems

to exercise more influence upon her than the earth_." Every trace of

dreamy maiden phantasies, which represent nothing but unconscious love

desires, was wanting in her. What she formerly possessed of these was

now completely bound with her care of the father.

Her erotic nature is for the time satisfied and needs nothing more to

veil it and has nothing to wish for. Therefore she has on the one hand

kept childhood's clearness of vision, before which there can be no

deceit, on the other hand unbroken contentment with herself and all the

world as well as the capacity to forgive immediately every wrong

suffered. According to the picture drawn by the poet of the passionate

nature of the father, which is capable of hurrying him, the pastor, into

reviling God, it seems to me plain why Maria, if she suffered wrong, "is

distressed merely over the remorse which the other one, she knows, must

feel, when he has finally come to an insight and to reflection." This is

nothing else than the father's voice, who had once done wrong to his

child and had in a later searching of heart repented of it. Maria, with

such early satisfaction of her feelings of love begged "even as a child

for nothing which the parents had to refuse her. If she had any need it

was to be busy, to take care of the order and the nourishment of the

house, the satisfaction and welfare of the inmates. Where she could

love, she was happy and at home. Yet even the love for her father never

proclaimed itself passionately but always rather in unwearied attention

and concern for his smallest need, which only she might suspect as well

as for that which manifested itself actively." For herself she scarcely

had any wants. A piece of bread and two apples satisfied her as her

day's nourishment, which is typical for the hysteric anorexia and

perhaps merely signifies the unconscious wish to cost the father as

little as possible. Just one single characteristic was wanting for her

perfection, the soft, clinging, typically feminine characteristic. This

also becomes understandable when one considers that all eroticism toward

the father is inhibited in its sexual goal, and may manifest itself only

intellectually on account of the incest barrier, at least as far as it

comes into consciousness.

The womanly within her shall nevertheless find release through the young

Eisener. I have mentioned above how he hung upon his mother. As the

early inclination of the small maiden is generally toward the father, so

the first love of the boy is for the mother. It is she who teaches him

to love and to seek the woman of his heart according to her own image.

Later, just before puberty we might say, the boy becomes acquainted with

the secrets of sexual life, then, clinging to certain impulses of his

childhood, he begins to desire the mother also in the newly acquired

sense, while he begins to hate the father as a favored rival, who stands

in the way of this wish, and develops a conscious antagonism toward him.

He falls, as we say, under the domination of the Oedipus complex. Yet

the wishes toward the mother go as a rule no further, since meanwhile

the incest barrier has already for a long time been erected. Through

this the boy is compelled to submit the mother complex to a splitting.

For a moment the phantasy may come to him that the mother shall conduct

him into the sexual life--a feature not wanting in any youth--but it is

now decidedly rejected or more typically displaced upon those women who

make of love a profession and actually take care to initiate the youth

into the sexual life. For this reason the remainder of the mother

complex is idealized and the mother transformed to a pure virgin woman,

toward whom no man dares direct his desire. Similarly is it with the

loved one, whom one chooses after the pattern of the mother.

So Eisener expresses himself warmly. "Maria is not made for love, only

for reverence."

Yet without the child's craving for the mother[21] he would not have

become a compulsive neurotic,[22] with all the hypermorality of the

latter, pride in his moral purity and extravagant self reproaches, even

a lustful self laceration after he had at one single time been

overpowered by sensuality. Furthermore his lack of resoluteness,

decisiveness and courage is not, as he mentions, the result of his

myopia but of his neurosis. He has developed himself, out of an

unconscious rivalry, in direct contrast to his intensely narrow-minded

father. The latter was only a tradesman, who set his comfort above

everything, for whom art had value only in so far as it increased his

own enjoyment of life. So painting becomes the son's chief delight in

spite of his exaggerated myopia or perhaps just on account of it. He

bore his father's tyranny with difficulty[23] and with inner protest.

His tendency toward the free kingdom of art stood in contrast to him,

and in the same way he sought on the other hand a substitute for the

mother in every woman. He offered up for his sin the dreams of his youth

when he first believed that his moral nature was stained and became as a

result, as even the elder feels uneasily, an over obedient son.

[21] One thinks of Eisener's panegyric: "Before her clear look

confusion cannot exist, the coarse word of insolence sinks back

unspoken into the shame filled breast. The brightness of a lost

paradise shines from her eyes upon the fallen bringing pain and

warning, the consolation of eternal pity smiles upon the penitent."

[22] Like Otto Ludwig himself.

[23] The well-known psychic overcompensation in congenital organic

inferiority.

How had this so easily befallen him with a mother so deeply honored!

Around her spun all the boy's love desire and twined itself about her,

and all that lava heated feeling belonging so peculiarly to the child

alone. He had hung upon that idol the longing of his heart, the

phantasies of a power of imagination lustfully excited, which is not

indeed wanting in the best of children, although commonly these are

inhibited, and later even completely forgotten because of restraining

moral impulses. Therefore the memory of the highly honored mother is

awakened not only through Maria, the pure one, but also through Julie,

who comes into contact with his sensual desire and the unclean childish

phantasies slumbering in the last analysis behind this. It is

interesting how strikingly the poet is able to point out that double

emotion in Eisener's soul.

There the moral restraining impulses were first crowded back by the wine

plentifully pressed upon him, which he, accustomed from his early years

to moderation, could tolerate in only the smallest amount. Now "the sly

Julie seemed to him ever more charming. A play of glances began between

the two, which appeared to make the young hunter jealous. On the other

hand Eisener himself felt something similar when his neighbor on the

left addressed to the earnest Maria words which did not conceal the

liking she had inspired. He listened to her replies almost with fear and

was delighted that there was not audible in them the least response to

this inclination, and then he wondered at himself over this same

division in his nature. In Julie's dark eyes glowed a flame, of which he

felt how it kindled him and that its fire must attract more and more to

itself without his being able to defend himself from it, yes, without

his wishing to be able to do it." To be sure when "the slender Maria

stood like a holy picture behind Julie, the alluring child of the world

with all her seductive graces sank low in value in contrast to the

former. He felt the need to be open with himself." Transparency was a

necessity to him from his youth, as an inheritance from his wise mother.

"Then Breitung thrust with his glass against Eisener's refilled one.

Laughing and drinking he found the motley interchange of the liveliest

ideas outwardly, which already had taken the place of quiet thought,

soon becoming less and less menacing and finally even agreeable and

desirable."

His sexual excitement, heightened besides through the plentiful

indulgence in alcohol and the general boisterousness, was brought to a

high pitch by an episode with the passionate Julie. Eisener had to leave

the room with her during a social game. "A strange thing happened to

him, for as he bent down in the adjoining room in the dark to the quick

breathing Julie, instead of her ear her burning mouth met his mouth, and

the soft pulsating form fell as if fainting into his arms. Wrestling

with himself, striving to keep his senses, he seized her arm

involuntarily and stood again with her in the assembly room before he

was conscious what it was all about."

Is not this behavior of the youth burning with desire peculiarly

strange? What if behind it there is fixed a memory perhaps of a scene

with the mother, who brought him to his senses by seizing his arm? Yet,

it might always be so for him, he had found the power once more to

withstand the hot temptation. Not to be sure without subsequent regret.

For when he later sought his room he could not go to sleep and "his

phantasy conjured up again, as often as he resisted it, that dark room

about him and the bewitching Julie in his arms. He regretted a thousand

times, so much did he distress himself, his joy at his instinctive

flight, that he had not drunk that sweet poison to the full, whose mere

touch had brought his whole being to this feverish pulsation."

He sought now to find cooling for his heated blood in the garden, and in

fact the fragrance of the flowers and the rustling of the leaves so

soothed his excited mind that gradually the sense of a pleasant languor

came over him. In a half unconsciousness he went upstairs again and back

to bed. He was just falling asleep when he saw a white form enter, whose

features he could not make out because of his shortsightedness. As it

disrobed and came toward him, he first, as if seeking for help, reached

with his hands toward the side where his friend should be sleeping. He

did not however find him, he apparently had been put into another room.

"The thought of being alone for the first time with a womanly being in

the security of night crept over him at first like icecold drops, then

like the glow of fire over all his nerves. His heart pounded audibly as

the figure climbed into his bed. The strangeness and adventure of the

situation was not fitted to work rationally upon the intoxicated man,

whose excitement throbbed into his finger tips. The power of the warning

inner voice disappeared with his reason and the strife was brief before

nature came off conqueror."

I have before this sketched Maria's character development up to the time

when Eisener came into her life. Yet one point may be added. She had

retained one single influence from her childhood in spite of all change

in her seventh year, which "with the beginning of maturity appeared only

occasionally and as it were in secret. The moon had been her dearly

beloved and her desire; as a small child she had been able to look at

the moon for hours without intermission. If she was sick her mother or

nurse must carry her to the window through which she might look upon the

friend of her small soul." About half a year before her acquaintance

with Eisener "the moon had made its influence felt upon her sleep, as it

had before affected her waking. At the time of the full moon she often

left her couch, dressed herself and went up into the corner room in the

pavilion. Here she stood for some time and turned her closed eyes toward

the moon. Then she dropped the curtain, undressed and lay down in the

bed, which stood in the spot where she had been used to sleep as a

child. As soon as the moon had left the windows of this room or shone

through the windows of her present sleeping room, she arose again,

dressed herself and returned. She herself knew nothing of these

wanderings, and whatever was done to awaken her during them was in vain.

The physician thought that these attacks of moon walking would disappear

finally when maturity was established, or at least at her first

confinement."

In this picture from a layman are some new and striking features. First

is the love--one can call it nothing else--which the child bestows upon

the planet. Why is the moon her beloved and her desire from childhood

up, why can she stand by the hour looking at it, why does she long when

sick to be laid so that she can look at it all the time? He who observes

children knows that such extreme love, which endures for years without

wearying of it, and finally that ability to stare steadily at the moon,

must have a sexual content, although naturally no one will admit this.

Only when the object, in our case the heavenly body, is sexually

stimulating is the love for it enduring for all time, undergoing no

change, no abatement of feeling for it. As Maria's erotism later found

satisfaction in her father, her love toward the moon steadily receded.

But at the entrance upon puberty her sexual impulse increased and she

began to wander in the moonlight. The love finally which Eisener

inspires in her, together with the strong sexual excitement, which the

fête the day before had called forth in her, occasions again an attack,

in which she surrenders herself willingly to the beloved.

The folk, like the family physician, have not a doubt of the sexual

basis of the moon mania with her as with individuals in general. When

puberty is established or she has a child of her own the attacks will

cease, is the opinion of the latter. The servant maid Grete also, a

living book of fairy tales among her people, explains the moon

wandering as nothing else than the result of an unsatisfied sense

desire. There was a young knight who had wooed a rich woman of gentle

birth. Shortly before midnight they were both led into the bridal

chamber. "Yet hardly were they alone together when a strange voice

outside before the castle called, 'Conrad, come down here! Conrad, come

down here!' And again it called, 'Conrad, come down here!' The voice

sounded so plaintive and at the same time so threatening. The bridegroom

said, 'That is my best friend; he is in need and calls me.' The maiden

said however, 'The voice belongs to my cousin, who was found dead two

years ago.' Then she shuddered so that the gooseflesh stood up over her

whole body," and she implored her bridegroom not to follow the evil

spirit or at least to remain with her until the ghostly hour was past

and the full moon was up. But he would not be restrained: "Be it an evil

spirit or a good, no one shall call me in vain!" "And he went out. The

lady went to the window but could see nothing for the darkness outside

and for the tears in her eyes. Then the haunted hour was over and the

full moon arose and she waited and waited, but the knight never

returned. Thereupon she swore to take no rest on a night when the moon

was full until she had gone to bed with her bridegroom. And as her first

bridegroom never and nevermore came back, so she waited for another, but

there was no one who knew her story who would woo her, because each one

thought it would fare with him as it had fared with that other. Thus she

died; her oath is however still unfulfilled. Whenever it is full moon,

she is looking out to see if any bridegroom comes and she laments

sorely, and holds her hands weeping toward the moon."

In this folk tale the exclusively sexual foundation of the wandering is

quite plainly expressed. The ghost makes use of a voice, complaining and

threatening at the same time, which the bridegroom believes to be the

call for help of his best friend, and the bride on the other hand

imagines it the voice of her cousin, who had been found dead two years

before, perhaps after she had taken her own life because unhappy in

love. Both may be driven by sexual jealousy--I offer this as a

hypothesis--which would not permit the other sexual gratification which

is denied to himself or herself, the friend perhaps meaning jealousy

from a homosexual tendency. The ghost having accomplished its purpose at

the hour of midnight and in the light of the full moon, the lady swore

"to take no rest on a night when the moon was full until she had gone to

bed with her bridegroom." That is the kernel of the entire myth, the

naïve and yet apparently conclusive folk interpretation of the riddle

of moon walking, at least in its most frequent form.