I have above taken it for granted that Maria's erotism was satisfied

through her care for her father. That must of course be understood with

some qualification. For she could play the rôle of mother only as

housekeeper, not as wife. The former is satisfying therefore only so

long, until stronger sexual impulses awaken through external stimuli or,

according to rule, through the natural development of a maiden. When

once that has come to pass, one so disposed to it as Maria was, begins

to wander in the moonlight. Why then, it may further be asked, does

Maria seek for her childhood bed, if the goal and the aim of the

wandering is the sexual satisfaction of the maiden? In the case analyzed

at the beginning the compelling motive was a sexual self stimulation

upon the mother, in later years in the loved object whoever it was, male

or female. In most cases, since normal sexual feeling predominates, the

aim of the sleep walking is that of the folk tale, to go to bed with the

lover. That would explain without difficulty the scene of the union in

Maria's case, as soon as she had come to know Eisener.

But what lay specially at the foundation of her earlier wandering, when

no man had yet made an impression upon her? Or was there perhaps one, in

relation to whom sexuality is most strongly forbidden, her own father?

What if her erotic desire toward him was repressed and the indifference

which she had attained was transferred over to all men? Much that is

apparently harmless is permitted to a child, which would be regarded

with horror in the adult. Many parents like to take their children into

bed early in the morning and play with them without any consciously

sexual thoughts and without suspecting how very often they in this way

stimulate sexual desire in their children. Frequently also the mother or

father visit the child before going to sleep, lean over the bed, allow

themselves often to press the child passionately to themselves and count

this asexual love toward the child. The case analyzed at the beginning

teaches us how much of the grossly sexual erotic is concealed behind

this, even if well hidden. Maria likewise sought presumably in her sleep

walking for the bed of her childhood because her earliest erotism was

bound with it.

This had already happened under the instigation of puberty, before her

heart had spoken. How is it now since she loves Eisener? We must keep in

mind her unconscious wish, to climb into the bed of the man she loves,

and on the other hand that Maria as housemother knew well that he was

not sleeping alone, but with his friend, so only a compromise form of

action would be possible. So she goes up again to her childhood room,

which lies in the same direction as Eisener's sleeping room. There she

first draws the curtain aside that she may gaze at the moon, which

increases the sexual excitement with her, as I have earlier discussed.

Then she undresses before the mirror as she probably had done as a

child, and moves forward toward the beloved one, who after a brief

struggle with himself embraces her passionately. She nevertheless

submits to his caresses without response but also without resistance.

For thus alone can the fiction be maintained that she has loved without

consciousness of it and therefore also without culpability. It is not

difficult, according to the analysis of the first case, to understand

how she finally at the withdrawal of the moonlight gets up again,

dresses herself before the mirror and leaves the room as noiselessly as

she had entered it.

The later portions of the narrative must confirm my assumptions if they

are correct, that Eisener merely embraces the mother in Maria and that

she on the other hand knows well enough in the unconscious both as child

and as maiden that she wishes for that which is sexually forbidden and

knows whom she desires. Let us see what the poet tells us. As Eisener

awakes after the bridal night, he is not at all invigorated and uplifted

as otherwise a man in like case, but psychically and physically cast

down, as if he had to atone for some great wrong. "He strove to consider

the strange adventure of this night as the delusion of a fevered dream.

Yet that adventure painted itself before him, in spite of all his effort

to forget it, in ever more vivid colors," because indeed a wish of his

heart had been fulfilled through it. His inner unrest drove him forth

and, as walking about he met his beloved, he marveled "that Maria seemed

taller to him today than yesterday, or rather that he believed that he

first noticed today that she was tall." What could this mean except that

Maria now seemed big to him as once the mother had seemed to the small

boy? Only he had first to embrace his beloved, before he could perceive

such a thing and give heed to it. Maria herself, who apparently had

enjoyed her pleasure only in her sleep and unconsciously, and therefore

knew nothing of it all, had lost her frank manner with him, which she

still possessed the day before. She grew red at his look and drew the

hand which she gave him "quickly back again in confused fear," without

consciously knowing why. "The flower of womanhood which had slumbered

in her too serene, too cold image, appeared in this one night to have

come with magic swiftness to bud and immediately to have unfolded in all

its fragrance." Maria herself pictures her condition: "That morning I

can never forget. Everything was so still, so solemn; the guests were

all yet asleep. I had never been so strong of heart. I felt that morning

as if all my life before had been only a dream and life was now just

beginning. It seemed to me that I had suddenly become grown up and was

now for the first time a child no more." Maria thus felt herself through

the bridal night to have grown up from the child to the mother, only,

now, it was for the lover who had taken the father's place.

Both Eisener and Maria conducted themselves further entirely in

accordance with their earlier unconscious wishes. The former for example

"found a growing pleasure in representing his own action, when it was

really the effect of many circumstances acting one upon the other, as

the result of a cold, calm calculation on his part." And was it not at

bottom actually something like a calculation, since he in his earliest

childhood phantasies imagined something similar for himself from the

mother? It is only natural that he now greatly exaggerated in

consciousness the sin which he had desired. Never for a moment did it

occur to him "to throw any part of the burden of guilt upon that being

who so closely participated in it. His rightful feeling remained in

regard to it that he had this night given to a woman a right to himself,

which he, if she should demand it, could not dispute. It was a source of

calmness to him to look upon himself as punished, as it were, in this

manner." Only all too evident! This punishment was in reality a

disguised reward, fulfilment of the infantile wish to win the

mother.[24] For this reason he had not been able earlier to withstand

Julie although Maria attracted him far more. For the former was the

indulgent mother of his power of imagination, the latter on the contrary

the proud, unapproachable mother of his real childhood. Moreover, though

he did not conceal from himself that his heart belonged to the chaste

Maria, yet he resolved, if Julie should convince him that she had been

the ghostly visitor, to offer her his hand immediately. "The doubt,

whether she deserved it, which was near enough at hand, he put from him

as an excuse which he wished to make so that he could believe that he

might release himself from that which he had to recognize as his duty."

Maria however "he had in these days accustomed himself to think of as a

being so high above him that his love must profane her." Again the well

known splitting of the mother into the holy and the yielding one.

[24] Cf. with this also the interesting passage ... "the passionate

self accusations, in torturing himself with which he found comfort a

short time before."

How did it appear at this time to her, herself? The first weeks after

that moonlight night the woman in her bloomed forth more and more, in

spite of the fact that her lover tarried at a distance. Yet when in her

body a new life began to develop and Eisener still did not appear, she

was seized suddenly with a hysterical convulsion--she was wearing

significantly the same rose-colored dress in which he had seen her that

morning--which lasted twelve hours so that every one looked upon her as

dead. The despairing father threw himself across her feet and lay

there--a situation which will occupy us later--and Eisener, who was just

now returning, was driven by the bitterest self reproaches across the

ocean. After waking from her catalepsy Maria did not regain her former

blooming health but grew more and more ill, which the family physician

finally discovered as the result of her pregnancy.

"The good girl herself believed at first that what she felt and what

they told her was a vivid troubled dream." This idea will not appear

strange to us who know so much about moon walking and that one does

everything merely "in sleep" in order to remain blameless. "That she

should become a mother seemed to her so strange and wonderful that she

appeared to herself as some one else (this might well read, as her own

mother dead at so early an age) or as suddenly transplanted into another

world with strange people, animals and trees. The sound of her own

voice, the tone of the bells seemed to her as other and strange sounds."

We may bring forward in explanation in this place the case analyzed at

the beginning, where a moon walker had abandoned herself to all sorts of

dreams. In the moon must be living men of another sort with other

feelings, customs and manners, and the sexual, strongly forbidden upon

earth, must be freely permitted upon this planet. She seemed to herself

on account of her sexual phantasies already as a child quite different

from other people, as if she belonged not upon this earth but upon the

moon. Could not a similar thought process have taken place with Maria?

I said of her father, that he had been her first beloved. And it comes

almost as an unconscious recognition of this when he, filled with anger,

calls out to her mockingly, "Why do you not say that the whole affair

has come to pass out of love to me, to prepare for me an unexpected

joy?" Breitung also enjoyed since her earliest childhood her unlimited

confidence only on this account because he loved her as his own child.

Therefore she looks up with all her anxiety so trustfully and self

confidently to this friend of her father. But when Breitung also no

longer believed in her and her father turned from her with scorn it was

"as if all her blood streamed into her eyes that, pressing out as tears,

it might relieve her. Yet here it remained and pressed upon her brain as

if threatening its fibers. With a strangely fearful haste she pressed

her eyes with her fingers; they remained dry; a cry of pain would

unburden her soul--no sound accompanied the trembling, convulsive

breathing. The old servant, who entered after a while, found her lying

with her breast upon the sofa pillow, her head thrown violently back,"

in hysterical opisthotonos. "The old man had loved Maria from her

earliest childhood" and stood accordingly in the place of a father. "He

clasped his hands together in distress. She recognized him and suffered

him patiently to bring her head to a less forced position. She looked at

him sharply as if she would convince herself that he was the one she

took him to be. His Kalmuck features seemed to her as beautiful as the

soul which they hid and seemed to want to disown.

"The friendliness, the affectionate regard, which spoke so unmistakably

out of the familiar old graybearded, sunburnt face, did her no end of

good." Since she could not yet entirely believe she asked, "Is it indeed

you, Justin? And you will still recognize me? And you do not flee from

me?" At first the deplorable commission which the old man had to carry

out threw her back again. When she had to understand that her father

would not again set foot in the pastor's house until she had departed,

her countenance became deathly pale and convulsive movements trembled in

quick succession over her delicate body so that the old man wept aloud,

for he believed that she had gone mad. His signs of distress, the

faithfulness and love which spoke through them, touched her so

effectually that at last the hysterical convulsion relaxed and she sank

down. "The old man caught her up. He placed her on the sofa. She lay

across his lap; her head lay upon his left hand, with the other he held

her body fast that it should not slip to the floor. It seemed as if she

would weep her whole weary self away. The old servant held her with

trembling hand and heavy heart." Now the scene of childhood is complete,

except that the old man plays the rôle of her father. So had Maria

presumably done as a child when she felt too unhappy and so also the

pastor's throwing himself down, as we saw above, over his daughter whom

he believed dead, is not strange.

When Maria had left the parsonage her first thought and silent concern

was how her father must now live without her care, even that perhaps he

would not be there any more, when everything had later turned out well.

Then she thought again of the time when she would be a mother and "her

life seemed to her as a tale that is told." On her journey to her new

home there came over her ever more strongly "the feeling of her complete

abandonment. All the dear childhood memories, into whose protection she

would flee, turned in anger from her. With tears she cried to God for a

heart that she might love, some one for whom she might really care. For

it seemed as if a curse lay upon her, which estranged all hearts from

her. She thought with fear at her heart that the being to whom she would

give life might likewise turn from her, as everything had done that she

loved." Then a good fate brings to her the unfortunate Johannes whom his

crazy father wished to throw into the water in order to preserve him for

eternal happiness. At once Maria assumes the rôle of mother toward the

boy and now "that once more she had to care for some one, she was again

the calm and serene being."

What had so thrown her out of her course? It was not so much the

banishment from the father's house, not the contempt of all the world,

nor even of her very oldest and truest friend. She would have been able

to look beyond both of these, because her consciousness felt itself

entirely blameless. But she took so to herself the truth that she was no

more the loving, caretaking house mother nor might play that part, that

for a brief while she planned to take her life. She prayed to God with

tears for one heart only that she might love, that she might actually

care for. Since the care of her father is taken from her she feels

herself at first truly and utterly forlorn, all the dear memories of

childhood turn in anger from her and a curse seems to rest upon her

soul.

Why do all the memories of her childhood turn from her, if she actually

knows herself guiltless? Is this merely because the father is

indissolubly bound with them? If she still consciously feels entirely

blameless toward him, and if he openly did her wrong from a false

assumption, then should not the childhood memories return to her? I

think the solution must be sought elsewhere, in this, that Maria knew

nothing in clear consciousness of the happenings of that moonlight night

and could honestly swear to that, but everything was known in the

unconscious. Here is the sense of guilt engendered, of which

consciousness may know nothing, here she knows well enough that the

youthful Eisener has embraced her and she has together with him deceived

the father whom she first loved. The goal of all moon walking is none

other than to be able to enjoy and still be blameless, it is

blamelessness because without accompanying consciousness.

The poet's words must confirm this, if this assumption is correct. We

will test them. The first night of her banishment Maria, while going to

sleep, thought first of her father "who must go to bed without the

little services which he was accustomed to receive from her." Then she

thought of Breitung and the apothecary's daughter, who had turned from

her full of scorn. "The young Eisener occurred to her in the midst of

this, she knew not how, and a sort of curiosity whether Eisener also

would have turned from her in so unfriendly a fashion as Breitung. She

pictured to herself how he might have looked upon her now with contempt,

now with friendliness, as on that morning which she so gladly

remembered." Also an evident identification of the young Eisener with

the father and the father's friend, and flight from the loved ones who

had cast her off to him who had inclined to her as a friend.

Yet more convincing is a passage which follows. Maria had born a son and

"the more she looked with joy upon the small infant contemplating his

sound and beautiful body, the more grew the need within her, only

instinctively felt at first, to have some one who could rejoice in the

child with her, not out of mere sympathy with her, but because he had

the same right to it and so that she could rejoice again in his joy, as

he might in hers. Without knowing how and why, she thought again of the

friendly and true hearted Eisener. Her dreams brought his picture before

her eyes in most vivid colors. It seemed as if it were Eisener who

should enjoy the child with her. She hastened to him with tears of joy

to lay the beautiful boy in his arms, and when she now stood by him, she

had scarcely the heart to show him the boy. Then she cast down her eyes

and said confusedly, 'See this beautiful child, Eisener, Sir!'" Maria

knew quite well in the unconscious that she had conceived her child from

Eisener and the sudden restraint when she laid the boy in his arms is

only a compromise with consciousness, which must not know the facts,

otherwise she could not be spared her feeling of guilt. Yes, when Julie

then came with her love child, which she had conceived that same

moonlight night from the hunter, although she really loved Eisener, then

"Maria experienced, she knew not why, a gentle aversion toward her. She

said quietly, 'That in which one has done no wrong and cannot change,

one must bear patiently.'"

Soon however there awoke a desire in her "for something new, still

unknown to her, which she nevertheless felt must come now. It was the

strange, fearfully sweet condition of the ripeness of love, which had

not yet found the object on which she could open her heart. That night a

need awakened, formerly repressed into the background by greater pain,

but which threatened now to outgrow other desires and feelings in the

undisputed possession of him." Often she sat knitting and dreaming at

the boy's cradle. "There was a fair at Marklinde. She went early in her

rose-colored dress into the garden and plucked wild hedge roses. She was

startled for she heard a noise behind her and she knew that it was

Eisener who was coming after her. She turned into another path; she was

afraid to meet him, and yet she wished that he would follow her. As she

bent low behind some flowers, she threw a hasty look behind her. She

grew rosy because he might have noticed the look, and still it would

have made her glad if he had noticed it. 'Yet if he knew everything,'

she whispered to herself; 'but I could not tell him, nor could I let him

perceive it. I would have to say No, although he understood it as Yes!'

Suddenly he stood near her; he had seized her hand and was looking into

her eyes. She bowed her head, he bent toward her. It seemed so strange

to her--their lips touched--Maria frightened and blushing, sprang

involuntarily from her chair, as if what she was dreaming were real.

"A strangely mingled feeling drove her from her chair to the window and

from the window back to the chair. She felt herself stirred in her very

depths by something which wounded her sensibility as much as it excited

her longing. She fled to her child. She strove to think of something

else; in vain. That thought continually returned and gradually lost its

frightful character. Soon she felt it only as a sweet dread and so the

idea received a double stimulation while it woke the curious question,

why and for what reason she must really be afraid. And as she looked now

upon the child, it seemed to her so marvellous that she, mother and yet

maiden, knew nothing of the happiness of which this little life must be

the fruit. Julie's words were continually ringing in her ears, 'The

happiness which is granted him, has to be reckoned too dear.' It gave

her unending satisfaction, to think of herself actually in such a

situation to the young Eisener that all her unhappiness was the result

of a joy which she had granted him, without knowing what joy this must

have been." I consider it superfluous to add a word to complete the

interpretation of these phantasies, which speak for themselves. They

confirm everything that I have said above, better than any labored

explanation. Later Maria came to know that what had sustained her in the

hours of her sorrow was nothing else than that mysterious but certain

premonition of a happy life with Eisener and her George.

And now back to the purpose of the analysis of all these tales. What

does it teach us for the understanding of moon walking? First of all it

confirms many of our earlier conclusions. The most important thing, in

the first place, is that sexual impulses lie at the foundation, desire

for sexual gratification, and that one apparently acts in sleep in order

to escape all culpability, while the unconscious still knows all about

it. The sleep walking begins, in accordance with the sexual basic

motive, at the time of puberty and lasts until it is inhibited by the

close of that period or in women with the birth of the first child. It

is further established that at the beginning the bed of childhood is

sought, the place of earlier sexual pleasures, later however the bed of

the loved object, who appears in the place of the originally loved

object, the parent. Finally, moreover, when the night wanderer fixes his

closed eyes upon the moon before starting out on his wandering, erotic

thoughts hide behind this, which in turn go back to earliest childhood.

The heavenly body effects a sexual excitement not only through its

light, but indeed also through sexual phantasies which are bound with

it. Lastly folk myth knows likewise that the woman in white represents

nothing else than the maiden in her night shift with all her sexual

longings.

One thing more this novel also confirms, which our earlier discoveries

have already taught us, the abnormal muscle excitability and muscle

erotic. For Maria was seized with a hysterical convulsion when her

father's unkindness pressed itself upon her. It is interesting that this

abnormal muscle excitability, which manifested itself in various

muscular convulsions, was present with Otto Ludwig throughout his

earthly career. Already as a boy he often suffered convulsive muscular

twitchings, when he had exceptional tasks to perform or hard thinking

was required of him, and "nervous twitchings of the head" are recorded

of him when twenty-three years old, also presumably a tic had won for

him the nickname of "the shaker." Later moreover our poet suffered

chronically from convulsive manifestations of a lesser degree,

repeatedly however in a stronger, special form although only in

temporary attacks.[25]

[25] Cf. with this especially Ernst Jentsch, "Das Pathologische bei

Otto Ludwig," "Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens," published by

L. Löwenfeld, No. 90.

In other words, it may be said that Ludwig assigns to Maria

and the young Eisener a series of his own personal characteristics.

That is to say, not only was the tendency to convulsive attacks

peculiar to him, but also to fainting, and a compulsive neurotic and

hysterical tendency, the high grade myopia, a fondness for discussing

painting, talking with inanimate things,[26] colored audition,

as well as other synesthesias, and finally a special reverence for his

mother.

[26] Cf. here the poet's words: "It is strange that nature is

personified for me, that I not only live in her, but as one human

being with another, exchanging, not merely receiving, thoughts and

feelings, and even so, that different places become as individual to

me, distinct from others and, as it were, transformed in

consciousness, so that I not only feel that they effect an influence

upon me but it seems to me as if I work upon them, and the forms, as

they appear to me, show the traces of this influence." Further: "I ...

who stood even in a wonderful mutual understanding with mountain and

flora, because the kingdom of love was not to be restrained...."

"BUSCHNOVELLE," by Otto Ludwig.

The moon plays an important part in the romance just discussed, even

apart from Maria's night wandering, and a number of significant events

take place under its very light. We find this relationship still

stronger in Otto Ludwig's "Buschnovelle," briefly referred to earlier,

which I add here, though it really does not directly treat of our

problems. The heroine Pauline passed with many as moon struck and her

blue eyes "have a strange expression of their own. They gaze as aliens

upon this world, as angels, which, transplanted to our marvelous earth,

belong to the heavenly home and cannot find themselves amid this

confused and agitated humanity." Likewise his bride asserts of the count

that he knows no other recreation "than to climb about in the night over

the rocks and worship the moon." This perhaps gave occasion to the rumor

of a ghost or at least breathed new life into an old tale.

A prince was banished under an enchantment to the rocks of the gods. He

had "a face as of a person twenty years old or so, but pale and quite

transparent like moonlight, and he could be rescued only through a

maiden eighteen years old and as innocent as when she came from the

mother's womb." The count, whom his bride deceived, became very

melancholy over it and trusted no woman after this. He learned to know

and love Pauline upon the rocks of the gods, where he was accustomed to

wander in the moonlight. When she believed she saw in him the enchanted

prince and declared her intention of voluntarily rescuing him, he

stipulated that she must climb down from off the rocks, down from the

cross, without touching them with her hands but holding her arms toward

the full moon. "And that must take place tomorrow night when the moon is

sailing overhead, otherwise I must remain enchanted. When you shall have

climbed down the rocks, I shall be saved and then I will make you my

princess." One may read afterward from the poet how Pauline then carried

out her resolve--her determination alone, sprung evidently from a great

love, had already cured the count of his sadness--how the count saved

her and later wooed her.

Emphasis will be laid here merely upon two facts, first that not only

all important events happen in the light of the full moon, but that also

no other novel shows so many autobiographical features. The most recent

publisher of this tale, Heinrich Borcherdt, gives this explanation: "One

can recognize without much trouble in the portrait of the count with his

well-trimmed beard the poet himself, who at that time tended to great

seriousness and to melancholy. For this very reason the cheerfulness,

gaiety and unrestrained naturalness of his bride Emilie worked most

refreshingly upon him. Pauline in the tale exercised a similar influence

upon the count. What we know of Emilie Ludwig from without agrees

likewise with the picture of Pauline. Pauline's father suggests Emilie's

father.... The greatest weight will be laid upon the fact that we

possess in this work a poetic glorification of Otto Ludwig's love

happiness in Triebischtal. The rural life is reproduced in every

detail." Nothing unfortunately is reported in the different sketches of

his life whether and how far the poet and his bride allowed themselves

to be influenced by the light of the full moon. The striking fact

remains at any rate that twice in the course of two years he spun out

this theme and each time moreover with a strongly autobiographical note.

That cannot be sufficiently explained merely through the influence of

Tieck, whom he, to be sure, read diligently in his youth.

"LEBENSMAGIE, WIRKLICHKEIT UND TRAUM," by Theodor Mundt ("Life's Magic,

Reality and Dream").

In the seventh volume of the "Euphorion" Richard M. Meyer has exhumed a

probable source of Ludwig's "Maria." It is a fictitious tale of the

"young German" Theodor Mundt, which appeared in his collection

"Charaktere und Situationen" in 1837, five years before the "Maria," and

shows in fact some external similarities with this. Still Otto Ludwig

expressly acknowledges a tale told by a friend as the source, but gives

no syllable of mention to Mundt. I must say that it seems at least very

questionable that the latter's story was the model, although the Berlin

literary historian comes to the conclusion, "A direct utilization would

be here difficult to dispute." I will reproduce the contents of this

story, as far as it touches our problems, as closely as possible in the

words of Mundt, although this story, which is contained in the

collection mentioned under the separate title of "Lebensmagie,

Wirklichkeit und Traum," hardly possesses an artistic value.

The theological student Emil Hahn had, as one of his friends states,

"lost life itself over his books and before his merry companions, who

would have initiated him into the true enjoyment of existence, crowed

many a moral cock-a-doodle-doo of virtue and self restraint." On the

ride home to his father and foster sister Rosalinde he was urged by two

student acquaintances to a little drinking bout, at which he partook of

more wine than was good for him. The two comrades sang the praises of

Rosalinde, whom Hahn had left as a fourteen year old girl and who in the

two years of separation had blossomed out in full beauty. As Hahn

returned to the father's house in a half intoxicated state and met

Rosalinde in an adjacent room, he found at once, in contrast to his

shyness of former times, the courage to approach her. "Ardently and

daringly he embraced her and the passionate kiss which he impressed upon

her maidenly lips was followed, as one lightning flash succeeds another,

by a second more lingering one, which was reluctant to leave off." After

he had for some time, again quite contrary to his custom, held his own

place at the large party which his father was giving that very evening,

"he felt himself gradually seized with weariness and the lively and

excited mood, to which the wine he had enjoyed had awakened him, began

little by little to disappear with the intoxication. He made his adieus

in a dejected tone and betook himself with heavy, hanging head to his

room, there to recover himself through sleep, which he could no longer

withstand because of his painful state.

"It was late in the night when Emil sprang from his bed. A vivid dream

seemed to have confused and frightened him. He stood half clothed in

the middle of his room and stared straight ahead as if trying to

recollect himself. Above in the night sky glowed the full round moon

with a sharp ray seldom seen and its white silver light pierced directly

over the head of the youth walking in his sleep. The room gleamed

brightly in the moonbeams trembling with mystery, which had spun

themselves out in long, glimmering threads over floor and ceiling. Emil

had fastened his eyes upon the great disk of the moon and staggered with

uncertain steps to the window to open it." While he stood thus there

came a small snow white cat--the cat is well known as a favorite animal

of the romantic writers--and spoke to him: "I am come to congratulate

you on your bridal night. Yes, yes, I know well that you are married.

This is a beautiful night to be married. The moon shoots down right

warmly, and its strong shining stings the blood and we cats also feel

the impulses stirring in the whispering May night. Happy one, you who

are married! Married to Rosalinde!"

"Emil, distracted, clasped his forehead. Everything which he saw about

him appeared to him changed and even the inanimate things in his

vicinity seemed in this moment to have been drawn into a magic alliance.

Everything, the very table, chair, press looked at him, rocking

themselves saucily in the bright moonlight, personally and familiarly,

and had to his eyes, arms and feet to move about, mouths to speak with,

senses for communication. At the same time a fair picture rose before

the youth deep out of the bottom of his heart, at which he smiled

longingly. It was the recollection of Rosalinde and her matured beauty.

She passed like a burning, ominous dream through his soul and he felt

himself drunken, trembling, exultingly united with the proud but now

subdued maiden in a love thrilled bridal night. While he was thus lost

in thought his look was held chained by a painting, which hung on the

wall opposite him. Strange, it was Rosa's portrait and he knew not

whether this picture had just now arisen warm with life merely out of

the force of the idea which was kindling him, or whether it had actually

been formed over there in its golden frame by a painter's hand." Then

the cat mewed again: "That is your young wife Rosalinde. The moonbeam

chases her; see how its brightness kisses her temples unceasingly. The

young woman is queen on her bridal night. We will crown her, all we who

are here in this room and owe our life to the brightness of the

moonlight night, we will crown her. I present her for her bridal crown

burning, tender desires." Then the May blossoms in the room bestirred

themselves and conferred upon her the bloom of fond innocence for her

bridal crown. Also the bird in the cage made himself understood: "I give

her for her bridal crown the score of my latest melody. Harmony and

melody should be the dower of all young brides." Finally a cockchafer

also which flew in offered her for her bridal crown "a pair of lovely

crickets."

"The dreaming Emil, surrounded by these fairy treasures of the May

night, stood in sweet intoxication opposite the glowing picture, bathed

in moonlight, of the maiden to whom all this homage belonged. The longer

and the more vividly he pictured to himself and leaned toward all the

maidenly charms, which had allowed the first passionate wish in the

young man's phantasy to blaze up, the more an impatience, almost

consuming, pounding, benumbing his heart, seized him, which he did not

know how to explain and had never felt before in his life. Like a

seductively sweet poison the delusion imparted itself secretly to him

that Rosalinde was his bride, his wife, and that this wondrously

beautiful spring night, bright with moonlight, was his wedding night.

His heart swelled with mighty, growing desire, youthful passion breathed

high in him. Trembling, fearful, wavering, longing, he still felt

himself strangely happy.

"Then it seemed to him that Rosalinde's picture began to move, as if the

gleaming shoulders lifted themselves gradually and gently at first from

it. Then the delicate outline of the bosom rose as the lovely form came

forth, the face streaming with love bowed itself in modest shame before

him. The form grew larger, rose to full beauty, stretched itself to life

size. Smiling, beckoning, gazing at him full of mystery, promising favor

and happiness, she took some steps toward him, then fled back again

ashamed and as if frightened, floated away with sylphlike movements to

the door and remained hidden behind it, yet peeping and looking out at

the youth.

"He did not know if he should, if he might follow her. He was drawn

powerfully after her and yet he stood still and hesitated. The bright

moonlight seemed, like a fairy toward one enchanted, to make merry at

the loud anxious beating of his heart. He restrained himself no longer;

with a passionate movement he hastened with open arms to the beloved

apparition, desiring to embrace her, throw himself upon her bosom,

breathe out upon her his burning desire. She fled, he followed her. She

fled before him, but softly and alluringly and he, intoxicated, rushed

after her from room to room unable to overtake the form flitting on

with ghostly swiftness. Like a star drawing him onward she floated there

before him, his footsteps were as if bewitched by her running, and thus

she led him after her, on and on, through a succession of rooms, so that

he marveled and thought himself wandering about in a great, unfamiliar

enchanted palace.

"At last he saw her no more, the lovely picture had suddenly disappeared

from him. He must however still hasten and hasten, there was no rest for

him. He no longer knew himself what he was seeking and what he hoped to

find. But now he ran upon a door; it opened and he entered a small, cosy

room in which stood a white bed. Seized with a strange apprehension the

youth drew back the curtains with bold hand, and looked, astonished,

smiling, burning with bliss. There lay a beautiful maiden asleep and

dreaming--ah! it was Rosalinde herself. In the sweet forgetfulness of

sleep, unveiling herself like the outblown petals of a rosebud, she

revealed her most secret charms in lovely fulness to the eye of night.

Emil stood before her in the dear delusion of aroused passion and bent

over her. 'Is not tonight my bridal night?', thought he. He reflected

and the hot tumult of exulting senses tore him irresistibly. Then he

flung himself passionately into her arms, pressed his mouth to her mouth

in yearning kisses and clung closer and closer to the warm, living

delight of her charming form. He dared the boldest work of love. The

sleeper did not oppose the daring beginning; in the power of a dream,

like him, according to the myth, whom the chaste Luna had seized, she

seemed at first to yield softly to the seductive moment. Only a glowing

color suffused the tender cheek, a gentle halting exclamation breathed

through the half open lips. The bright light of the full moon shone on

high with its trembling beams directly over the couch of the maiden.

"Now, now however she awakes from the strange troubled dream. She opens

her eyes, she shakes her beautiful head as if she would free herself

from the fetters of a dark enchantment. With a loud outcry she beholds

herself actually in the young man's arms and sees alas! that she has not

dreamed it. Wildly with all the strength of horror she pushes him from

her, springs up and stands wringing her hands distracted before him, her

fluttering hair only half disclosing her frightened countenance. Then

she calls him by name in a tone indescribably piercing, painfully

questioning, 'Emil!' He in turn, hearing himself called by name, falls

at the same moment with a faint sigh swooning to the floor. After a

pause he raises himself up, rubs his eyes and looks wonderingly about

him. He cannot comprehend how he has come here. The influence of the

moon has permitted the poor night wanderer to experience this adventure.

When he was completely awake and had come to himself, he stood up and

began to think over his situation. Then his eye fell astonished upon

Rosalinde, who continued to stare at him speechless and immovable. Shame

and anger adorned with a deep glowing color the injured maiden, whose

virgin whiteness had been sullied by the strange events of this night. A

dark, frightening recollection of what had taken place flashed now like

a remote, faded dream into Emil's consciousness. The alluring spirits of

the night, which had buzzed around him, now mockingly stripped from him

the deceitful mask.

"'Go, go, go!' called Rosalinde finally, who could no longer bear his

look. 'Go!' she called and stretched out her hand with a passionate

movement toward him, as if she would with it jerk a reeking dagger from

her breast. 'Go, go!' she repeated, sobbing and beseeching. Then she hid

her aching head with a loud outbreak of tears. Emil slipped away

heartbroken and in despair. He was in such a state, when he reached his

own room, that he would have put a ball through his head, had there been

at that moment a pistol at hand." How Rosalinde then became pregnant and

in spite of her resistance toward Emil, still married him to reëstablish

her honor, how though after the wedding feast two acquaintances of the

young husband, whom he had not invited, played him so mischievous a

trick that he lost his reason in consequence, that deserves no further

rendering.

We find here also as the nucleus of moon walking, when we strip from the

foregoing all its mystical setting, the longing to approach the love

object and there to be able to indulge oneself without punishment

because it is done unconsciously. The literary historian Richard M.

Meyer regards it quite correctly: "Theodor Mundt believed that he had

emphasized something new in his way of presenting it. 'The influence of

the moon had caused the night wanderer to undergo this adventure.'" To

be sure Mundt attributes all sorts of mystical-romantic rubbish to the

action of the heavenly body.

"DER PRINZ VON HOMBURG," by Heinrich von Kleist.

Heinrich von Kleist also like Ludwig carried night wandering and moon

walking into material at hand. We know that Kleist not long before the

origin of the "Prinz von Homburg" under Schubert's influence occupied

himself very much with the "night side of the natural sciences" and

Wukadinovic has made it also apparent that the poet went still deeper,

back to one of Schubert's sources, to Reil's "Rhapsodien über die

Anwendung der psychischen Kurmethode auf Geisteszerrüttungen."[27] There

he found a number of features which he then interwove into his drama,

although by no means all that he permitted his moonstruck hero to do.

The matter of the drama is presumably so well known that I content

myself here with giving the mystical setting and the beginning and end

of the action.

[27] "Rhapsodies over the Employment of the Psychical Method of

Treatment for Mental Disturbances." See Critical Historical Review by

W. A. White, Journ. Nerv. and Ment. Dis., Vol. 43, No. 1. [Tr.]

Wearied with a long ride, the Prince von Homburg throws himself down to

sleep that he may obtain a little rest before the great battle in which

he is about to engage. In the morning when they seek the leader they

find him sitting on a bench in the castle park of Fehrbellin, whither

the moonlight had enticed the sleep walker. He sits absorbed with bared

head and open breast, "Both for himself and his posterity, he dreams the

splendid crown of fame to win." Still further, the laurel for this crown

he himself must have obtained during the night from the electoral

greenhouse. The electress thinks, "As true as I'm alive, this man is

ill!" an opinion in which the princess Natalie concurs. "He needs the

doctor." But Hohenzollern, his best friend, answers coolly, "He is

perfectly well. It is nothing but a mere trick of his mind."

Meanwhile the prince has finished winding the wreath and regards it

idly. Then the elector is moved to see how far the former would carry

the matter and he takes the laurel wreath out of his hand. "The prince

grows red and looks at him. The elector throws his necklace about the

wreath and gives it to the princess; the prince stands up roused. The

elector withdraws with the princess, who holds up the wreath; the prince

follows her with outstretched arms." And now he betrays his inmost wish,

"Natalie! my girl, my bride!" In vain the astonished elector, "Go, away

with you!" for the prince turns also to him, "Friedrich, my prince, my

father!" And then to the electress, "O my mother!" She thinks

wonderingly, "Whom is it he thus names?" Yet the prince reaches after

the laurel wreath, saying, "Dearest Natalie! Why run away from me?" and

really seizes her gloves rather than the wreath. The elector however

disappearing with his retinue behind the gates calls to him:

"Away, thou prince of Homburg, get thee back,

Naught here for thee, away! The battle's field

Will be our meeting place, when't pleases thee!

No man obtains such favors in his dreams!"

"The prince remains standing a moment with an expression of wonder

before the door, then pondering descends from the terrace, laying his

hand, in which he holds the glove, before his forehead, turns as soon as

he is below and looks again toward the door." Out of this state the

Hohenzollern returning awakens him. At the word "Arthur" the moonstruck

prince collapses. "No better could a bullet have been aimed." Afterward

of course he makes up some story in regard to his sleep walking, that he

had slipped into the garden on account of the great heat. Only the

princess's glove recalls to him what has happened in his sleep:

"What is this dream so strange that I have dreamed?

For all at once, with gold and silver gleaming,

A royal castle flung its portals wide.

While from the marble terraced heights above

Thronged down to me the happy dancers all;

Among them those my love has held most dear.

Elector and electress, and--who is the third?

--What name to call her?"

For the name of the princess there is amnesia, as well as for the reason

for his moon walking. Then he continues:

"And he, the elector, with brow of mighty Zeus,

A wreath of laurel holds within his hand.

And pressing close before my very face

Plucks from his neck the chain that's pendant there.

His hand outstretched he sets it on my locks,

My soul meanwhile enkindled high."

Now again the complete forgetting of the loved one's name. He can only

say:

"High up, as though to deck the brow of fame,

She lifts the wreath, on which the necklace swings,

To crown a hero, so her purpose seems.

With eager movement I my hands outstretch,

No word, mere haste to seize it in my grasp.

Down would I sink before her very feet.

Yet, as the fragrance over valleys spread

Is scattered by the wind's fresh blowing breath,

Along the sloping terrace flees the throng.

I tread the ramp--unending, far away

It stretches up to heaven's very gate,

I clutch to right, I clutch to left, and fear

No one of all the treasures to secure,

No one of all the dear ones to retain.

In vain--the castle's door is rudely closed;

A flash of brightness from within, then dark,

The doors once more swing clatteringly together.

And I awaking hold within my hand

Naught but a glove, alas! as my reward,

Torn from the arm of that sweet dream caught form

A glove, ye Gods of power, only this!"

It is evident that there is complete memory of the latter part of his

night wandering up to the name of the beloved maiden, although he

thinks, "One dumb from birth to name her would be able!" Only once, when

he was dreaming by himself, he was on the way toward recollecting the

repressed name. He turns even to the Hohenzollern:

"I fain would ask you, my dear friend,

The electress, her fair niece, are they still here

The lovely princess of the House of Orange,

Who lately had arrived at our encampment?"

But he was cut off briefly by his friend, "Eh, what! this long while

they've been gone." The same friend had however to explain in detail

later, when he appeared before the elector in behalf of the prince

condemned to death:

"When I awoke him and his wits he gathered,

A flood of joy the memory roused in him;

In truth, no sight more touching could you find!

At once the whole occurrence, like a dream

He spread before me, drawn with finest touch.

So vivid, thought he, have I never dreamed.--

And firmer still within him grew belief

On him had Heaven a favoring sign bestowed;

With all, yes all his inner eye had seen,

The maiden, laurel crown and noble jewels,

Would God reward him on the battle's day."

We see here plainly that the kernel of the supposed dream belonging to

the night wandering is wish fulfilment, desire for glory and the hand

of the beloved. It agrees very well with this conception that the prince

himself takes the laurel from the gardener's forcing house to wind a

wreath of honor for himself. He looks at it with admiring eyes and puts

it upon himself, playing the rôle of being beloved, only the elector and

Natalie come in to interfere. The princess and the laurel, also love and

fame really hypnotize him and draw him magnetically. The prince follows

them both with outstretched arms until the elector and Natalie disappear

behind the gates. It seems to me very significant that not long before

the creation of this drama a crowning with laurel at the hands of a

loved one had actually taken place in the life of the poet and that, as

it is now generally admitted, Kleist himself stood as the model of the

prince. "Two of the smallest, daintiest hands in Dresden," as Kleist

relates, crowned him with laurel at a soirée in the house of the

Austrian ambassador after the preliminary reading of the "Zerbrochenen

Kruges." ("The Broken Pitcher.") These daintiest hands belonged to his

beloved Julie Kunze, to whom Dame Rumor said he was engaged. Wukadinovic

defines quite correctly the connection of the drama with its

autobiographical meaning: "As the poet sees the ideal of love arising

next to that of poetic fame, so he grants to the ambitious prince, who

exhibits so many of his own traits, a loving woman standing at his side,

who rewards him at the close with the wreath."

The matter goes yet much deeper. The prince says of the elector: "Plucks

from his neck the chain that's pendant there.... My soul meanwhile

enkindled high." The laurel attains a further value for the prince,

because the elector binds his own necklace about it. The latter is

continually taken by Homburg as the father, to which a number of verses

testify. Since the prince unmistakably stands for the poet, it cannot be

denied that Kleist had desired the reward not only from the beloved one,

but this still more with the express concurrence of the father. In the

beginning to be sure he is repulsed by him, "Naught here for thee,

away!" and later on account of his disobedience is even condemned to

death.[28] He was not only pardoned, however, after he had acknowledged

his wrong and recognized the father's judgment as correct, but when he

believed his last hour had struck, he was bedecked with the wreath which

he desired and on which moreover his elector's chain hangs. Still

further, the latter, the father himself, extends the laurel to Natalie

and leads the beloved to him. It is beyond question that love is the

chief motive of the moon walking of the prince von Homburg, love to a

woman as well as a homosexual tendency otherwise authenticated in the

case of Kleist. Only it appears here closely amalgamated with desire for

fame, something completely unerotic, and with the sexual, as we have

found it so far regularly in night wandering and moon walking, quite

excluded.

[28] It is significant to compare here the Consul Brutus, who

permitted the execution of his sons.

We will attempt to get more light on the last two points. The striving

after poetic fame does not remain with our poet within the usual, normal

limits but becomes much more a peculiar neurotic characteristic. No less

a hope for instance had Heinrich von Kleist than with an unheard of

creation to strike at Sophocles, Shakespeare and Goethe and concerning

the last named he uttered this audacious sentiment, "I will rend the

crown from his brow!" Since he fails to attain this goal in spite of

repeated most earnest onslaughts, he rushes away to die upon the

battlefield. He writes to his sister, however, "Heaven denies me fame,

the greatest of earthly possessions; I fling back to it all else like a

self willed child!"

What lay in truth behind that unattainable goal that Kleist tried again

and again to carry by force? He himself confesses that it was not the

highest poetic art or at least not exclusively so. Otherwise Kleist

would have been able to content himself with his so commanding talent

and with that which he was able to accomplish with it, like so many

other great poets. Let us not forget that he sought to outdo especially

the three greatest. Therefore I think, in accordance with all my

psychoanalytic experience, that Sophocles, Shakespeare and Goethe are

together only father incarnations, that Kleist thus wanted to remove the

father from the field. One has a right to definite surmisings on the

basis of various works of Kleist, although nothing is known to us of the

poet's relations to his parents. The incest motive is one of the chief

determining factors of artistic creation, as Rank has outlined in his

beautiful book.[29] It is in the first place the desired and striven for

incest with the mother herself, in the way of which the father naturally

stands. The poet realizes in the freer land of poetry what is impossible

in life, by displacing it over a discovered or given material.

[29] Otto Rank, "Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage," 1912, Franz

Deuticke.

I discussed in a larger work,[30] previous to Rank's book, how Heinrich

von Kleist made the incest phantasies of his childhood the foundation of

many poems. So for instance the Marquise von O., assaulted in a fainting

fit, is protected from the foe pressing upon her by some one who loves

her and will subsequently surely marry her. I need hardly explain that

the evil one who will positively force himself upon her is the father,

from whom the son defends the mother, that he may subsequently woo her.

It is again only the poet himself who sets himself as a youthful ideal

god in place of the aging father, as Jupiter descended from his throne

renewed in beauty and youth according to his divine power, to visit

Alcmene in the form of her spouse Amphitryon. In the "Zerbrochenen Krug"

(Broken Pitcher) the judge breaks violently into the room of the beloved

one--a typical symbol for one's own father who is also in fact the

child's first judge--and is driven out by the rightful lover.

[30] "Heinrich von Kleist. Eine pathographisch-psychologische Studie,"

1910, J. F. Bergmann.

The objection need not be made that the poet has simply held to his

pattern. The choice of material betrays the purpose, which frequently

remains unconscious. What, we may say, impelled the poet although he

wished to translate it wholly, to take up Molière's Amphitryon, one of

his weakest productions too, and then change it in so striking a

fashion? Quite unlike the French version, Jupiter becomes for Kleist the

advocate with the wife-mother:

"What I now feel for thee, Alcmene dearest,

Ah, see! it soars far, far beyond the sun,

Which even a husband owes thee.

Depart, beloved, flee from this thy spouse,

And choose between us, either him or me.

I suffer with this shameful interchange,

The thought to me is all unbearable,

That this vain fellow's been received by thee,

Whose cold heart thinks he holds a right o'er thee.

Oh! might I now to thee, my sweetest light,

A being of another sort appear,

Thy conqueror since the art to conquer thee

Was taught me by the mighty gods."

In truth Kleist, like every other poet, chose the most of his material

in accordance with unconscious wishes, where beyond all else the mother

complex presses for poetic expression.

Let us apply once more that which has been so far discovered to the

"Prinz von Homburg." This is rendered yet more easy from the fact that

the electress is repeatedly designated by the hero as "Mother." His real

mother had indeed at her death delivered him over to the friend of her

youth with the words: "Be a mother to him when I am no longer here." And

the electress had answered in similar strain, "He shall be mine as if my

own in birth!" But since on the other hand Natalie also addresses her

repeatedly as Mother as she does the elector as Father, so Natalie is

Kleist's beloved sister in disguise. The poet would desire the laurel

wreath thus from his own sister. Why then the father's acquiescence? If

we now appeal to our psychoanalytic experience, this teaches us that

regularly the sister incest represents a later form of the older and

more serious mother incest. The boy, who first desires the mother,

satisfies himself later with the less forbidden and more easily

accessible sister. All poets follow very significantly this

psychoanalytically established relationship, as Rank[31] has recently

convincingly shown. The poets often represent this, that the phantasies

and wishes are displaced from the mother to the sister or they are split

up between mother and sister, which then makes their origin especially

clear.

[31] _L. c._

The latter is also the case with Kleist in the "Prinz von Homburg." He

takes for the mother he desires, at one time the electress, at another

time Natalie, "his girl, his bride."[32] It agrees strikingly also that

the prince in the fear of death expects to be saved only by the

electress, that is the mother, from the punishment with which the

elector father threatens him. So a child who knows no way out for

himself, no help any more, flees to his mother. Such an unusual,

shocking fear of death on the part of a field officer needs explanation.

It is nothing else than the child's fear in face of the stern parent. It

is further overdetermined in an infantile way. In the drama the prince

for a long time does not believe in the grim seriousness of his

position. The elector father will only put him to the test. The sudden

transition to frantic fear follows first when the friend informs him

that Natalie has sent back the addresses carried by the ambassador,

because she is betrothed to the latter. This would have so roused the

elector against him. From this time on the prince--and the poet--holds

everything as possible and is ready to sacrifice even the hand of the

beloved for his life.

[32] It is now plainly understood that the prince can name among the

dear ones who appear to him the elector and the electress, that is his

mother, but not the third, who is merely a split-off from the latter,

at bottom identical with her.

A second determination likewise is not wanting, which is also infantile.

Freud has shown in the "Interpretation of Dreams" that the child does

not at all connect the ideas of older people with the words "death" and

"to die." He knows neither the terror nor the shuddering fear of the

eternal nothingness. To be dead means to him merely to be away, gone

away, no longer to be disturbed in his wishes. For his slight experience

has already taught him one thing, dead people, as perhaps the

grandparents, do not come back. From this it is only a step that the

child sometimes wishes death to his father, when the latter disturbs

him. Psychoanalysis tells us that this is not perhaps a shocking

exception but a matter of everyday occurrence. Such thoughts are touched

upon in the "Prinz von Homburg." The false report has come that the

elector father has been shot and Natalie laments, "Who will protect us

from this world of foes?" Then is the prince ready on the spot to offer

his hand to the orphaned girl, also apparently to her mother. A child

wish comes to fulfilment, the setting aside of the father who interferes

with his plans for the mother. When the man believed to be dead

nevertheless returns, he pronounces, as we can understand, the sentence

of death upon his treacherous son. Only when the latter had acknowledged

the justice of the sentence--I might almost have said, after he had asked

forgiveness, is he not only pardoned but more than that recompensed,

while now the father voluntarily grants him his wish.

It seems to me significant that Kleist freely introduced into his drama

the complete condemnation to death as well as night wandering and moon

walking. In the first point he had turned tradition quite to its

opposite. In the original the great Friedrich relates that on the

triumphant battle field the elector has already forgiven the prince that

he had so lightly risked the welfare of the whole state: "If I had

judged you according to the stern martial law, you would have forfeited

your life. But God forbid that I should sully the brightness of this day

by shedding the blood of a prince, who was once the foremost instrument

of my victory." Personal reasons, and, as we know from psychoanalysis,

these are always infantile reasons, must have been involved when Kleist

incorporated this directly into his poetry and yet in so striking a

fashion. Some of these reasons I have been able to set forth above.

It is now clear that the apparently asexual desire for fame does not

lack its erotic foundation. The desire for fame is so greatly

exaggerated in Heinrich von Kleist that he will do no less than tear the

laurel from Goethe's forehead, because in his infantile attitude he

hopes through an unheard of poetic activity to supplant the father with

the mother. After the shipwreck of his masterpiece, the Guiskard

material, he longed for death because life had no more value for him,

but he finds later in the "Prinz von Homburg" a happier solution. For

not only does the mother herself now crown him but does it with the

father's affectionate blessing. And the old theme of night wandering and

moon walking, that is climbing into bed with the loved one, finds its

place here although in an opposite form and under a certain sexual

repression. The child does not come to the mother but she to him and

places the longed for crown upon his head even with the concurrence of

the father. Also the fact that the prince transgresses the elector's

commands as the result of his moon walking, to which the prince is

subject, must somehow, at least by analogy, have been created from the

poet's own breast. Nothing is said about this in regard to Kleist, of

whose inner life we know so little. Yet his very great interest in

noctambulism and similar "night sides of the human soul," as well as his

exceptional understanding of the same, show that he at least must have

possessed a disposition toward it. It should be emphasized once more in

conclusion that the moon walking in the "Prinz von Homburg" does not

lack the infantile sexual root, nor is the corresponding erotic purpose

wanting, which we have always found, heretofore, to come to the loved

one without being held responsible.

"DAS SÜNDKIND," by Ludwig Anzengruber.

"Das Sündkind" ("The Sin Child") by Anzengruber (in the first volume of

his "Dorfgänge") tells of an apparently non-sexually colored wandering

by moonlight. There a 45-year-old pitch worker, the mother of twelve

children, who had all died except the narrator, and for three years a

widow, had become pregnant with a "sin child" whose father no one would

acknowledge himself. She had always been a discreet woman, and was

almost equal to her son in her work, although he at thirty years old was

at the height of his manly strength. She had always been as exemplary in

love as in her work, a combination, as we know, not rare to find. Having

matured early she was with her first child at the age of fifteen and

when she was a widow "the people could not wonder enough how long it

would be before she showed her age." Not rarely "love" suddenly overcame

her and even toward her grown son she could occasionally make quite "God

forbidden" eyes. One might almost draw the conclusion from the following

circumstance that he also was more deeply dependent on the mother than

he might acknowledge to himself. Left alone with her during her

confinement, he was not able to look at her but drummed on the window

pane and became more and more confused although "God knows, there was no

call for it." Then he turned around with his face burning red and said,

"You ought to be ashamed, Mother, you ought to be ashamed!" Soon however

not only remorse seized him but he began to curse at the folk, who see

in the infant not his brother but only the "child of sin." "Do you think

for a moment that I would bear a grudge against the little innocent

worm? Curse you, anyone who would separate the children of one mother

from each other!" After he had lost the love of his youth in earlier

years, he had no more interest in women but dwelt with his mother alone

on the land which belonged to the family. Later Martin toiled early and

late for the illegitimate child Poldl, as if he were its true father,

for whom moreover he never might make inquiry.

When Poldl was perhaps sixteen years old, his mother's health began to

fail and with her anxiety at approaching death she began to be concerned

for her soul, which she, according to human custom, expressed as care

for her illegitimate child. He should dedicate himself to the Lord,

should become a clergyman, by which he would remain spotless. Martin,

with keen insight, thought thus, "That is indeed the easiest way to get

rid of one's own sin, to let some one else atone for it" and feared it

might go hard with Poldl, hot blooded by inheritance, but he had no

effect upon the mother, who was supported by the boy's guardian. Poldl

also did not permit himself simply to be talked of by her, but applied

himself ever more deeply to his future sacred calling, especially since

all the people of the place already paid court to him as if he were even

now an ordained clergyman. "Soon he had no other thought than of his

future holy office and he might stay or go where he would, for nothing

was for him too good or too bad to remind him of it." "He strolled about

one entire summer," Martin tells us, "and did not condescend to the

least bit of work but when I was out with the farm hands making hay in

the meadows or reaping in the field, it very often happened that he

rushed unexpectedly out of the bushes and began preaching to them. This

seemed quite right to the lazy folk, they would let their work lie and

would stand gathered about him and listen devoutly to him and I could

not take ill their so excessive piety. The mother thought as they did

and found that his absurd preaching there went straight to her heart."

We will stop here a moment. What drove Poldl so to the priestly

calling, what made him so intent upon it? We might mention in passing

the vanity and the high sense of importance, which is created by the

desire in the sixteen year old boy after the most reverend calling. Yet,

though I would in no way undervalue his ambition or the satisfaction of

a so pleasantly tickled vanity, yet decisive and determining these can

scarcely be. Strong motives must govern in order to explain more

completely such an impulsion. When Poldl strode over the fields and

began to preach, "At that time the Lord Jesus spoke to the disciples ...,"

then he was indeed not far from conceiving himself as the Holy One and

his mother as the Virgin Mary. Jesus had offered himself for the sins

of man, as he now for the sin of his mother. According to this it is

nothing else than his love to the mother which drives him to the sacred

office, in which it is not to be forgotten that such a love, which leads

to a thought obsession, is in the light of experience never without the

erotic.

This mingling of sensuality and love to the mother, and to an older

woman who could be his mother, shows itself still more clearly two years

later, when he has a holiday from the seminary for a few days. He finds

at home a buxom picture of a woman, a relative on a visit, almost twice

as old as he, the very essence of cheeriness and health. "The boy clung

closest to her. In spite of his eighteen years he still seemed childish

enough and this he turned to account, and 'played the calf with her,'"

to use the excellent word of the writer.

Six years later Poldl was appointed to assist an invalid vicar, in whose

home a regular vicar's cook kept house with her sixteen year old girl,

whom she had from the old vicar. In the same year Poldl's mother was

laid to rest and her son appeared at her funeral, where the robust

peasant girls and maidens pressed themselves upon him. But he "withdrew

shyly from every one of them and gave his hand to no one, as he

obligingly might have done. He has always before this appeared like milk

and blood," thought Martin, the anxious one, "now he has an unhealthy

look, no color, sunken cheeks, and his eyes are deep within, he stares

at the ground and cannot bear to have a stranger look at him. It does

not please me."

All this is clear and transparent to the physician. In the young man now

twenty-four years old the inherited blood began to make itself felt, and

at the same time the cook and her daughter let no stimulus be wanting.

He suffered under his self restraint, grew pale and hollow and because

only his actions remained chaste but not his thought, he could no more

look freely upon a woman. When he now preached in the pulpit, he spoke

of the devil as the tempter and of all his evil suggestions. He could

declare what evil thoughts come to a man and in closing he threatened

his flock most earnestly that the devil would carry them all away

together. We know well that no sins are more condemned than those which

one holds himself capable of committing or which one would himself most

gladly commit if only one dared.

The young priest owed it to a great love which he felt for the miller's

daughter that he kept himself pure at least in body. So much the more

was the vicar's cook intent upon bringing about his downfall through her

girl. Then they could again rule at the vicarage, since the old vicar's

days were numbered, when Poldl came into the fat living left vacant. It

was at the burial of the old priest that Poldl delivered at the grave

the funeral oration for the dead, and endeavored to lay the good example

which the old man had given upon the hearts of his flock. As he lifted

his eyes once and caught those of the miller's Marie-Liese, who was

listening so devoutly, not taking her eyes from him, he suddenly

remained stuck in the midst of his speech and could find his place in

the text again only with difficulty. Was he not able to maintain before

her pure glance the fiction of a noble priest, did it come to his

consciousness that he was wandering in the same paths on which the other

had been most severely wounded? Something of this the miller's daughter

seems to have had in mind, for as she later begged his pardon for having

confused him by staring at him, at the same time she advised him not to

have anything to do with those at the vicarage. The vicar's daughter,

who had stolen up unobserved, shook her fist at them both, while her

mother drew Poldl later into a corner to give vent to her feelings, "You

cannot have the miller's daughter and do not for a moment believe that

she would be willing to have you."

On his death bed in the lesser parish, which he held later, he

complained to Martin, "I should never have been a priest"--with his

inherited passionate blood, in spite of his mother's urging and his love

to her. "Martin, you have no idea how hard it is to run caught in a

sack; it costs a deal of trouble to keep oneself upright. If one does

not twist about one falls into it. The cowl was such a sack for me....

Brother, I have unwittingly fallen into disgrace as a wild beast into a

trap, and I am more ashamed of it perhaps than the worst sinner of that

which he has done deliberately and maliciously. I would not have stayed

in the trap, could everything at first only have remained secret, so

that no one would have been afraid to extend a clean hand to me, by

which I might have found myself and might again belong to the world and

everything. But that the others knew right well and they wanted me for

themselves and therefore they have behaved without fear or shame so that

soon everything was free and open to all Rodenstein from the forest

house at one end to the mill at the other. From that time on I have seen

no friendly eye, and the blue, yes, the blue eyes (of the miller's

daughter) were always turned defiantly away from me. And because she was

unkind to me she became all at once kind to some one whom she formerly

could not bear. The folk shook their heads and prophesied little good

for her. So the time came when I must come here to this parish. There

lay upon me what can soon crush one to the ground, for peace and honor

were squandered and those who had won them from me hung like chains upon

me and the bit of sunshine that I had had in life I had to leave behind

in Rodenstein. When however there was added to this concern for her to

whom I owed the bit of happiness, I broke under it and then they took me

and brought me here and I let myself be brought."

So had he truly become a child of sin with the feeling of lost purity

and a great consciousness of guilt upon his soul. And that he had not

merely squandered his own honor and peace but had also dragged the

beloved to harm, so that she must have doubts of her purity, this does

the rest for him and makes him the willing play ball of the parish folk.

From the first day when he took over his new charge, he began to wander

in the full moonlight up to the ghostly hour of midnight. At the stroke

of twelve he went to the pulpit, over which a bright moonbeam lay, which

also lighted up his face as bright as day. With closed eyes he knelt in

the pulpit, "his folded hands before him on the upholstered border, the

head bowed upon it as if in quiet prayer to collect himself as usual

before the sermon. All at once he raised himself, bent forward a little

as if the pews were full of people and he wished first to look them

over, then he threw his arms to either side and stood there like one who

would say, 'Strike me dead, if I have offended you, but I cannot do

otherwise!' He did not say this but in a voice as of one speaking in a

dream he uttered the words, 'I know of nothing!' And then once more--his

hands extended toward heaven and spread open, as if he would show

everything to all within or about the church--'I know of nothing!'

Afterward he turned and went."

In this classic picture of the brother are some features of a new sort.

Above all, sexuality appears only incidentally to play a part, in so far

as it awakens the latent tendency to moon walking. Poldl begins to

wander at midnight after the miller's daughter is lost to him and he is

tortured by anxiety for her future. Otherwise he does what so frequently

is done by the moon walker, he carries out the apparently harmless

activity of the day as he prays in the church before an imaginary

audience. At least he truly imitates the formalities with which prayer

begins, though the conclusion does not accord with the beginning. It

sounds like a justification before the folk of Rodenstein, who have

taken offence at his action, that he stands there in Luther's place as

one who cannot do otherwise though one strike him dead. At the same time

the repeated outcry at the end, "I know of nothing, I know of nothing!"

smacks not only of a denial that he did not know perhaps why Marie had

fallen into distress, but suggests the directly infantile. Thus a child

insists, when it is reproached, that it has done nothing.

Let us take up again the threads of our narrative. Poldl faded day by

day under the pressure of his heavy burden of soul. At last there

remained nothing else for him but to let them write to his brother that

he lay sick and wished to see him. As Martin entered the sickroom Poldl

stretched his lean arms toward him, breathed a heartfelt cry and began

to weep aloud like a child. "You are like a father to me, Martin, you

are like a father to me!" And from time to time he added, "Forgive me!"

Then he stroked Martin's rough hands, "the hands which had toiled for

his daily bread when he was a boy." And now he poured forth his

confession. He should not have become a priest, then the people of the

parish would have remained strangers to him and he perhaps would have

succeeded to the Rodenstein mill. His entire concern centered itself

about this, that he had not only lost Marie-Liese but was also to blame

for the overthrow of her happiness. He related to his brother how the

parish folk had apprehended him, so that he was covered with shame, how

they all hung about the great bell of Rodenstein until finally the

miller's daughter turned from him and to another. After the confession

was made Poldl fell asleep contentedly, yet only to wander that very

midnight. The invalid was very ill, when Martin talked with him again

the next day. And suddenly he began to speak of the days of his

childhood and it was remarkable to the brother "how he had remembered

the most trivial thing in regard to it and it seemed to me as if he

himself often wondered at it in the midst of his speech. Bit by bit

thus he took up his life and we talked together of the time when he ran

about the sitting-room and the court in his little child's frock, until

the time when he went to school, to the seminary, to Rodenstein.... The

sun had set when with our prattle we had come to the place where we

were, at Weissenhofen. 'That's the end,' I said, 'and there remains

nothing else to tell.'--'Yes, yes,' said my brother reflectively,

'that's the end, and there remains nothing more to tell.'" Soon he

noticed how truly Martin had spoken in every respect, for the end had

come for him now physically. With a blessing on his lips for the newly

won brother of his heart, he laid himself down to sleep. "It had become

still as a mouse in the room. After perhaps a quarter of an hour I heard

him say, 'Yes, yes, were we now together, only you must not hold me so

tightly to your breast.' With this he threw himself suddenly over to the

right, drew a deep breath, and it was over."

Let us consider once more the circumstances of the moon walking which

accompanied this. He begins with this after his removal from Rodenstein

and from his heart's beloved. There had preceded the grief over his

wasted honor and his forfeited peace, the pain at the loss of the

miller's daughter and, which is rather conclusive, the torturing regard

for her future, which completely paralyzed his will power. The latter

point is somewhat remarkable. For at bottom it was never said that her

marriage was unhappy. The people had shaken their heads before it, only,

and prophesied nothing good. When Martin fourteen years after the death

of his brother meets Marie-Liese at his grave, she has become a handsome

woman and has been a widow for eight years but is well poised mentally

and lives for her boy. In Poldl's concern the wish must indeed have been

father of the thought. If he could not have his treasure, then she

should not be happy at the side of another man. Yet apparently this does

not refer alone to the miller's daughter. Psychoanalytic experience

teaches that where the reaction manifests itself all too strongly this

happens because it is not merely a reaction to a present, but above all

to a long past experience, which stands behind the other and offers

first the original actual tonal background. Only apparently is the

effect too strong, if we measure it merely by the actual cause, in truth

however the action corresponds to all the causes, that is the new added

to the old.

We can say further, if we apply this experience to the poet's narrative,

Poldl had not merely lost the miller's daughter forever by entangling

himself with the vicar's daughter, but far more another, the one for

whom he had entered orders. The mother had said to Martin, "There is

only one way, one single way by which my boy can be saved from ruin and

I can obtain peace and forgiveness from my sin." This task, to atone for

the mother by a holy life, had not prevented him from a passionate love

for Marie-Liese or from an intrigue with the pastor's daughter, yet,

since he had on the latter's account lost his purity, something else was

also laid waste thereby, that which had given peace to him and a purpose

to his muddled life, the love for his mother. As he tarried already half

in the other world, his last words were, "Yes, yes, were we now

together, only you must not hold me so tightly to your breast." This had

the mother in her tenderness done to her little boy. We see here the

regression to the infantile, to a primitive child libido.

The matter can be followed still further. The walking by moonlight

itself did not begin, in spite of every predisposing cause, until Poldl

was connected with the new parish and no longer shared the same locality

with his beloved. It is not revealed whether the pulpit of the

Weissenhofen church looked perhaps in the direction of Rodenstein or

not. It seems to me significant that the pastor's daughter crept after

Poldl all night long, not perhaps merely the first time, as if she

suspected his hidden erotic or feared even that he might go out toward

Rodenstein. He must also every midnight establish the fact that, in

spite of his sins of the flesh, he considered himself still worthy to be

a priest. For the same reason he himself read the mass every day until

near the end. Indeed he read this not merely in the daytime but also at

midnight when other priests sought rest. And by his behavior in sleep

walking it was as if he wished each time anew to justify himself before

his Rodenstein parish, and especially before his beloved. The Luther

attitude referred to the former, "Though you slay me, I cannot do

otherwise!" the outspoken infantile expression, the only words which he

actually speaks, "I know of nothing!" is for the latter. Thus a small

boy protests his innocence when any one faces him with a misdeed. It was

as if he wanted to go back to his beloved, to Marie-Liese, as if to his

own mother.

Again we find libidinous and infantile causes as the starting point of

moonlight walking and sleep walking. Only the erotic no longer appears

so openly as with the other poets but receives a certain disguise. Yet

brother Martin, the philosopher of life, recognizes clearly the kernel

of the matter: "So I had also to witness the end with him, as with so

many of my brothers and sisters. But I still think today this need not

have happened, if the mother had permitted him his life as it would have

been lived out freely by himself. First she should not have counted it

so great as sin, for otherwise there would have been no pitch worker

Poldl in the world. Although she thought of it within herself that it

was a sin, she should have so looked upon it that she could have settled

it with the Lord God. Ah yes! he had to go about in the cowl, which had

become a greater sack than a farmer's jumper and there all the sins of

others enter, but if no one shall commit one in his own right, how would

one find shelter for all these? If I had only at that time been

obstinate about the planning of this thing, I would have foreseen the

wrong of it and have known that the mother was an old woman, and with

many conscience grows when reason is going to sleep. Faith, honor and

peace he would never have squandered, for the farmer's position does not

play with so high a stake. Still today the little fellow runs gaily

about the yard under my eyes.... Ah, you poor sin child, how wantonly

was the joy of living destroyed for you!"

"MACBETH," by Shakespeare.

As I now undertake the analysis of the case of Lady Macbeth, I stand not

only before the last but the most difficult portion of my work. Here

indeed everything sexual and the erotic itself seem to be quite

excluded; and my attempt appears to fail in both directions, in the

sexual as well as in the infantile, to apply to Shakespeare's heroine

what my psychoanalytically treated cases, as well as all those others

from literature have furnished. The poet has devoted no more than one

single scene to this entire sleep walking including the grounds for it,

and he has said as little of Lady Macbeth's childhood as of her sexual

erotic life. Our knowledge of Shakespeare's life is above all so meager,

if we turn from the case to the poet himself, that the difficulties

tower in our way almost mountain high. The reader will in this case,

which presents itself so unfavorably, have to expect neither that

certainty nor even that high degree of probability of results, which the

earlier examples gave us. Here through no fault of mine all aids to

interpretation are wanting. I should consider it as something

accomplished if the reader did not say at the close, "The case of Lady

Macbeth contradicts all that has been heretofore discovered," as it will

appear at first.

We will begin with the literary source for Macbeth, Holinshed's "History

of Scotland."[33] Shakespeare confined himself so closely to this that

he took over accurately, even to the dialogue, whole scenes into his

tragedy. The deviations are for this reason so much the more

interesting. In the chronicle Macbeth is simply the tyrant. At the very

beginning it is said of him, "he would certainly have been held as the

most worthy of rulers, if his nature had not had so strong a tendency to

cruelty." His cruelty is frequently emphasized, both at the bier of the

dead Macdowald and toward the dwellers in the western isles, who "called

him a bloodthirsty tyrant and the cruel murderer of those to whom the

king's grace had granted their lives." Finally also in the camp of the

Danes when they were overcome "he wrought such havoc upon all sides

without the least resistance that it was terrible to look upon." A

change seems however to have taken place in his character when, after

the murder of Duncan, he had seized the kingdom for himself. "He began

to reform the laws and to root out all the irregularities and abuses in

the administration." He freed the land for many years from all robbers,

guarded most carefully the church and clergy, and, to put it briefly,

was looked upon as the defender and shield of everything blameless. He

established also many good laws and ruled the kingdom for ten years with

the greatest wisdom and justice.

[33] I cite this according to "Die Quellen des Shakespeare," by Karl

Simrock, 2d edition, 1870.

"This apparent equity and zeal for all that is best was however merely

hypocrisy; he wished only to win the favor of the people. Tyrants are

always distrustful, they are always afraid that others will rob them of

their power by the same unrighteous means by which they themselves have

succeeded. As soon as Macbeth discovered any plans against himself, he

no longer concealed his intentions but practised and permitted every

kind of cruelty." At first the words of the three sisters of fate lay

always in his thoughts. In order to attain to what they had prophesied

he was willing to have Banquo and his son murdered. Yet the murderers

hired for the purpose killed only the former while Fleance succeeded in

escaping. "Luck seems to have deserted Macbeth after the murder of

Banquo. None of his undertakings were successful, every one feared for

his life and scarcely dared appear before the king. He feared every one

and every one feared him, so that he was always seeking opportunity for

the execution of suspected persons. His distrust and his cruelty

increased day by day, his bloodthirstiness was not to be appeased.... He

gave himself over recklessly to his natural ferocity, oppressed his

subjects even to the poorest and permitted himself every shameful deed."

Shakespeare has represented the rest fairly truly according to

Holinshed, only that in actuality this lasted for seven years, until

Macbeth fell at the hands of Macduff.

It is also worthy of note what Holinshed has made the ground of the

murder of Duncan. There preceded in the chronicle the promise of the

three witches, further Malcolm's appointment as prince of Cumberland

and, as a result of this, succession to the kingdom. Now Malcolm could

"ascend the throne directly after his father's death, while in the old

laws it was provided that the nearest relative would be placed upon the

throne, if, at the death of his predecessor, the prince who was called

to the succession was not yet capable of ruling." This latter had

happened to Macbeth, Duncan's cousin. "Then began Macbeth, from whom by

this arrangement of the king all hope of the throne was taken, to

consider the means whereby he could seize the crown by force for

himself. For he believed that Duncan had done him a great wrong, when he

named his infant son as successor to his throne and had so annulled all

other claims. Moreover the words of the witches encouraged him to his

purpose. But foremost of all his wife, a proud and haughty woman, who

longed with most burning desire after the name of queen, would not

desist until she had strengthened him to the uttermost in his

intention." This last sentence is the chronicler's only notice of Lady

Macbeth.

We can now measure what Shakespeare has contributed himself to her

character as well as to that of her husband. At first the absolute

cruelty, which with Holinshed was the chief trait of his character, is

wanting in Macbeth, and therefore ambition is mentioned first. Macbeth

becomes the tyrant wading in blood first after the murder of Duncan and

then more from a necessity to defend himself. His own wife characterizes

best the earlier hero:

"Yet I do fear thy nature;

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness,

To catch the nearest way; Thou would'st be great;

Art not without ambition; but without

The illness should attend it. What thou would'st highly

That would'st thou holily, would'st not play false,

And yet would'st wrongly win: thou'd'st have, great Glamis,

That which cries, _Thus thou must do, if thou have it_;

And that which rather thou dost fear to do,

Than wishest should be undone."

Yet Macbeth at bottom dared not murder the king, he only toyed with the

thought. He must be instigated from without, if the deed is not to be

put off until the Greek calends. Lady Macbeth from the very beginning

feels it her task to strengthen her laggard and doubting husband in his

ambition. This Shakespeare had already found in Holinshed. As the

chronicle has pictured it: "Still more did his wife urge him on to

attack the king, for she was exorbitantly ambitious and burned with an

inextinguishable desire to bear the name of queen."[34] While she thus

incited her husband, she fulfilled yet more the longing of her own

heart:

"Hie thee hither,

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;

And chastise with the valour of my tongue

All that impedes thee from the golden round."

[34] The words of Holinshed's chronicle.

She summons herself also to the task, calls the evil spirits of the air

to her aid and will become a man, since her husband is no man:

"Come, come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here;

And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full

Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,

Stop up the access and passage to remorse;

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers!"

When Macbeth announces, "Duncan comes here to-night," she asks

sinisterly, "And when goes hence?"--Macbeth: "To-morrow--as he

purposes."--Lady Macbeth:

"O, never

Shall sun that morrow see!

. . . . . . .

. . . . . He that's coming

Must be provided for; and you shall put

This night's great business into my despatch;

Which shall to all our nights and days to come

Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom."

It may be seen that the really cruel one is here first Lady Macbeth and

not her husband. He on the contrary must always torture himself with

scruples and doubts. He constantly holds before himself the outward

results of his deed, brings everything together which should protect

Duncan from his dagger and can only say in regard to the opposite

course:

"I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o'er-leaps itself,

And falls on the other."

And he explains to his wife, "We will proceed no further in this

business." Then must Lady Macbeth rebuke him as a coward, no longer

trust his love, if he, when time and place so wait upon him, retract

from his purpose. She lays on the strongest accent, yes, uses the "word

of fury":

"I have given suck; and know

How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me;

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums,

And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn, as you

Have done to this."--