she can persuade her husband to the murder.
She has stupefied the two chamberlains, upon whom the guilt shall be
rolled, with spiced wine and drunk herself full of courage for the deed,
as so many criminals.
"That which hath made them drunk, hath made me bold;
What hath quenched them, hath given me fire."
Then she hears Macbeth within at his gruesome work uttering a terrified
question, and continues:
"Alack! I am afraid they have awaked,
And 'tis not done:--the attempt, and not the deed,
Confounds us;--Hark!--I laid their daggers ready,
He could not miss them.--Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done't."
Then her husband appears with the daggers. As he looks at his bloody
hands a cry is wrung from him, "This is a sorry sight." Yet the Lady
repulses him harshly, "A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight."
Macbeth:
"Methought, I heard a voice cry, _Sleep no more!
Macbeth doth murder sleep . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
And therefore ... Macbeth shall sleep no more!_"
Lady Macbeth quiets him but he weakens his high courage by brooding over
the deed.
"Go, get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.--
Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
They must lie there. Go, carry them; and smear
The sleepy grooms with blood."
Then however as her husband refuses to look again upon his deed Lady
Macbeth herself seizes the daggers:
"The sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures; 'tis the eye of childhood,
That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,
I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal."
Macbeth (alone):
"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red."
Lady Macbeth (returning):
"My hands are of your colour; but I shame
To wear a heart so white . . . . .
. . . . . . . retire we to our chamber:
A little water clears us of this deed;
How easy is it then! Your constancy
Hath left you unattended."
But the horrid deed has not brought the expected good fortune. After
Duncan's murder Macbeth finds no rest and no sleep: "To be thus, is
nothing; But to be safely thus." So he first considers removing Banquo
and his son. But Lady Macbeth is little content:
"Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content;
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy,
Than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy."
Then comes her husband. All night he has been so shaken with terrible
dreams that he would rather be in Duncan's place, "Than on the torture
of the mind to lie, In restless ecstasy." Lady Macbeth tries here to
comfort him with the only tender impulse in the drama:
"Come on;
Gentle my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks;
Be bright and jovial 'mong your guests to-night."[35]
Macbeth promises to do as she asks and charges her to treat Banquo
especially with distinction. Nor does he conceal from her what now
tortures him most, "Dear wife, Thou knowest that Banquo, and his
Fleance, lives." And immediately the Lady is her old self: "But in them
nature's copy's not eterne." Though Lady Macbeth is represented as at
once prepared for a second murder, Macbeth has now no more need of her:
"Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, Till thou applaud the
deed."
[35] One notes the emptiness of this passage. She could scarcely have
said much less, if she wished to comfort him. And yet this passage is
always quoted by those authors who accept love on the part of Lady
Macbeth for her husband as the driving motive for her action. Indeed,
Friedrich Theodor Vischer himself does not shrink from an
interpolation and translates the passage: Lady Macbeth
("caressingly")--"Come, come, my noble lord, remove thy wrinkles,
smooth thy gloomy brow, be jovial this evening, well-disposed toward
thy guests." And although the original English text contains no word
for "caressingly," yet Vischer gives this commentary: "His wife's
answer to him must be spoken on the stage with an altogether tender
accent. She embraces him and strokes his forehead."
(Shakespeare-Vorträge, Vol. 2, pp. 36, 102.)
Yet, although he shrinks back no longer from any sort of evil deed, he
does so before the horrible pictures of his phantasies, the
hallucinations of his unconscious. Here is where Shakespeare's genius
enters. The Macbeth of the Chronicle commits throughout all his acts of
horror apparently in cold blood. At least nothing to the contrary is
reported. With Shakespeare on the other hand Macbeth, who is represented
in the beginning as more ambitious than cruel, is pathologically
tainted. From his youth on he suffered from frequent visions, which, for
example, caused him to see before Duncan's murder an imaginary dagger.
This "strange infirmity, which is nothing To those that know me," comes
to light most vividly on the appearance of Banquo's ghost at the
banquet. Lady Macbeth must use all her presence of mind to save at least
the outward appearance. With friendly exhortation, yet with grim reproof
and scornful word, she attempts to bring her husband to himself. In this
last scene, when she interposes in Macbeth's behavior, she stands
completely at the height. Not until the guests have departed does she
grow slack in her replies. In truth neither her husband's resolution to
wade on in blood nor his word that strange things haunt his brain can
draw from her more than the response, "You lack the season of all
natures, sleep." It seems as if she had collapsed exhausted after her
tremendous psychical effort.
Shakespeare has in strange fashion told us nothing of what goes on
further in her soul, though he overmotivates everything else, even
devotes whole scenes to this one purpose. We first see her again in the
last act in the famous sleep walking scene. She begins to walk in her
sleep, falls ill with it one might well say, just on that day when
Macbeth goes to war. Her lady in waiting saw her from this day on, at
night, "rise from her bed, throw her nightgown upon her, unlock her
closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon it, read it, afterwards
seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast
sleep."--"A great perturbation in nature! to receive at once the benefit
of sleep, and do the effects of watching," the evidently keen sighted
physician thinks. He soon has the opportunity to observe the Lady's
sleep walking for himself. She comes, in her hand a lighted candle,
which at her express command must be always burning near her bed. Her
eyes are open as she walks, but their sense is shut. Then she rubs her
hands together as if to wash them, which she does according to the
statement of the lady in waiting, often continuously for a quarter of an
hour.
Now they hear her speaking: "Yet here's a spot. Out damned spot! out, I
say!--One, two, why, then 'tis time to do't.--Hell is murky!--Fie, my
lord! a soldier, and afear'd? What need we fear who knows it, when none
can call our power to account?--Yet who would have thought the old man
to have had so much blood in him?--The Thane of Fife had a wife; Where
is she now?--What, will these hands ne'er be clean?--No more o' that, my
lord, no more o' that; you mar all with this starting.--Here's the smell
of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this
little hand. Oh! oh! oh!--Wash your hands, put on your nightgown; look
not so pale;--I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he cannot come out
of his grave.--To bed, to bed; there's knocking at the gate. Come, come,
come, come, give me your hand. What's done cannot be undone. To bed, to
bed, to bed." After such appearances she always in fact goes promptly to
bed. The physician who observes her pronounces his opinion: "This
disease is beyond my practice. Yet have I known those which have walked
in their sleep, who have died holily in their beds." Here however there
seems to be something different:
"Foul whisperings are abroad; unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles."
And then as if he were a psychoanalyst:
"Infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.
More needs she the divine, than the physician.--
God, God forgive us all! Look after her;
Remove from her the means of all annoyance,
And still keep eyes upon her."
Also he answers Macbeth, who inquires after the condition of the
patient.
"Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies,
That keep her from her rest....
. . . . . . Therein the patient
Must minister to himself."
Yet as the king's star declines neither the doctor's foresight nor his
skill prevents Lady Macbeth, the "diabolical queen" from laying hands
upon herself.
This case of sleep walking, if we consider it, seems first to correspond
entirely to the popular view, that the wanderer carries over to the
nighttime the activities of the day, or to speak more correctly, of the
most important day of the last month. We saw in the first act how she
reproaches Macbeth for his cowardice, encourages him and controls his
actions. Only in two points, very significant ones to be sure, does it
appear that she has now taken over her husband's rôle upon herself; in
the disturbance of her sleep and the concern for the blood upon her
hands. How had she rebuffed Macbeth when he had called out in regard to
his bloody hands, "This is a sorry sight!" It was only a foolish
thought. "Go get some water, And wash this filthy witness from your
hand." But Macbeth was not to be shaken, the entire ocean would not
suffice. Rather would the king's blood, which he had shed, change its
green to glowing red. Yet when Lady Macbeth completes his work for him,
she remarks lightly, "My hands are of your color; but I shame To wear a
heart so white.... A little water clears us of this deed." In her sleep
walking itself she encourages her husband, "Wash your hands, put on your
nightgown." She seeks however in vain in this very sleep walking to
wipe the stains from her hands, they smell always of blood and not all
the perfumes of Arabia will sweeten her hands. Must not the inner
meaning of all her sleep walking lie exactly in these two points, in
which she has so completely turned about?
It must be observed that in the tragedy as in the previously related
tale of the "Sin Child" the sleep walking does not begin in childhood
nor in puberty, but in both instances in somewhat more mature years,
and, what is significant, as an illness, more precisely a psychic
illness. The sin child fell ill because he had lost his pure beloved
one, who had taken the place of his mother, the original love object of
his earliest childhood; and Lady Macbeth, who had herself become queen
through a murder, falls ill just at that moment when her lord must go to
the battlefield to defend his life and his crown. For not without reason
the fate of Macduff's wife, who was slain when her husband had gone from
her, occurs to her also when she, while wandering, speaks of the much
blood which Duncan had. Therefore it seems likely, and is in fact
generally believed, that Lady Macbeth becomes ill because of her anxiety
for life and kingdom. Only the facts do not strictly agree with this. In
the first place her husband's campaign is by no means unpromising. On
the contrary he has heard from the witches that his end would be bound
with apparently unfulfillable conditions, so unfulfillable that the
prophecy at once frees him from all fear.
Having hidden nothing from the "partner of his greatness" he would
scarcely conceal the promise of the witches, which increased his
confidence to the uttermost. Besides it cannot be fear and anxiety which
brings on her night wandering. Another current explanation also seems to
me to have little ground. As Brandes has recently interpreted it, "The
sleep walking scene shows in the most remarkable fashion how the
pricking of an evil conscience, when it is dulled by day, is more keen
at night and robs the guilty one of sleep and health." Now severe pangs
of conscience may well disturb sleep, but they would hardly create sleep
walking. Criminals are hardly noctambulists. Macbeth himself is an
example how far stings of conscience and remorse can lead a sensitive
man. He has no more rest after he has murdered the king and Banquo, yet
he does not become a sleep walker. There must be another cause here
which precipitates Lady Macbeth's sleep walking.
We will first examine the relation of husband and wife to one another in
order to trace out this mystery. The character of Lady Macbeth has
caused many a one in Germany to rack his brains since the time of Tieck.
Up till that time she passed simply as Megaera, as an "arch witch," as
Goethe calls her. This opinion prevailed not only in Germany but in the
English motherland too. But this view went against the grain with the
German spirit. Therefore Ludwig Tieck first looked upon Lady Macbeth as
a tender, loving wife. From this time on there arose critics and even
poets, who in the same way wished to wash her clean. I will cite the two
most important, Friedrich Theodor Vischer and Rudolf Hans Bartsch. The
former, of whom I explained earlier, that he did not hesitate to make an
interpolation to prove his point, sums up his judgment in the following
sentences: "It is not ambition alone that moves her, but love which
would see her lord become great" (p. 78). And in a second place, "She
loved her husband and had sacrificed her conscience more for him than
for herself" (p. 124). R. H. Bartsch goes much further in his romance,
"Elisabeth Kött." Wigram says to the heroine, "Do you not feel how she
(Lady Macbeth) before everything that she says cannot hitch horses
enough to carry her slow and immovable lord along?" In the sleep walking
scene "the utter crushing of this poor, overburdened heart burst forth
in the torture of the dream wandering." At the close he pronounces his
opinion: "If there is a poor weak woman upon earth, so it is this arch
enchantress, who loves her husband so much that she has in admirable
fashion studied all his faults and weaknesses that she may cover over
the deficiencies with her trembling body. Seek the wife in her rôle!"
What truth is there in these viewpoints? The poet himself has been dead
for three hundred years and has left behind him not a syllable
concerning Lady Macbeth except in the text of the tragedy. Therefore
according to my opinion nothing remains but to keep to this. At the most
we can draw upon Holinshed's chronicle, which Shakespeare so frequently
followed literally. According to this Lady Macbeth was extravagantly
ambitious and when she continually urged Macbeth to murder Duncan, this
was only because she "burned with an unquenchable desire to bear the
name of queen." There is never a syllable of a feeling of love for her
husband, or that she desired the crown only for his sake. This objection
might be made here, that as Shakespeare has often gone beyond his
source, as in creating the sleep walking scene without a model for it,
so he might just as well have given characters to Lady Macbeth of which
the source said nothing. Certainly that would be a priori conceivable.
Only that must appear clearly from the text of the tragedy. Yet what
does this say? Carefully as I have read its lines, I have not been able
to find a single, actual uninterpolated word of love from Lady Macbeth.
That is of double significance from the poet of "Romeo and Juliet." He
who could give such language to love would not have completely denied it
in "Macbeth," if Lady Macbeth was to have been a loving wife. One can
find everything in her words, warning, entreaty and adjuration,
upbraidings and threatenings, anger, yes, almost abuse, yet not one
natural note of love.
This has a so much harsher effect since her husband approaches her
usually as an actual lover, or more accurately stated up to the murder
of Banquo. She is warm only where it concerns the attainment of her
goal; it is her ambition which demands satisfaction. She is always to
her husband "my dearest partner of my greatness" as he once
appropriately writes her. It is not to be considered that Shakespeare,
who always overmotivates his situations, should have at the height of
his power so obscured from recognition all the love impulses, which
would have seemed to be decisive for her whole character. The truth is
simply that Lady Macbeth is no loving wife, but merely greedy of fame,
as already represented in the Chronicle. I suspect that the authors who
all the way through see in her the loving spouse are expressing their
own complexes, their own unconscious wishes. Such an one as Bartsch for
example cannot think otherwise of a woman than as unfolding lovingly to
the man.
Lady Macbeth makes upon me, in her relation toward her frequently wooing
husband as it were, the impression of a _natura frigida_, that is a
sexually cold woman. If one takes her own frightful word for it, that
she could tear the breast from her own sucking child and dash its brains
out, then the mother love seems never to have been strong within her,
but rather whatever feeling she has possessed has been changed to
passionate ambition. Now psychoanalytic experience teaches that when a
woman remains sexually cold toward a sympathetic and potent man, this
goes back to an early sealing up of affect with a forbidden, because an
incest object. Such women have almost always from their tenderest
infancy on loved father or brother above all and never through all their
lives freed themselves from this early loved object. Though at puberty
compelled to cut them off as sexual objects, yet they have held fast to
them in the unconscious and become incapable of transferring to another
man. It is possible also in the case of Lady Macbeth to think of such
an indissoluble bond. Moreover certain features in the sleep walking
scene seem to speak directly of a repressed sexual life.
Lady Macbeth wanders at night, since her husband has left her and
marital intercourse has been broken off.[36] In her hand is a lighted
candle, which according to her express command must burn near her bed,
and only now for the first time, otherwise the lady in waiting would not
have laid such stress upon the fact. The candle in her hand, that is a
feature which up till now we have met in none of our cases, but which,
as a glance into literature teaches me, is by no means infrequently
found with sleep walkers. It can hardly be considered a mere accident
that Shakespeare discovered just this characteristic, which is really
atypical. One would be much more inclined to suspect in it a secret,
hidden meaning. Then at once a connection forces itself. We know from
the infantile history of so many people that a tenderly solicitous
parent, the father or the mother, likes to convince himself or herself,
with a candle in the hand, that the child is asleep.[37] Then we would
have on one side a motive for sleep walking in general, that one is
playing the part of the loving parent, as on the other hand a motive for
the lighted candle. The latter has however a symbolic sexual sense which
is quite typical and is repeatedly and regularly found. The burning
candle always stands for one thing and signifies in dreams as in fairy
tales, folklore, and sagas without exception the same thing, an erect
phallus. Now it becomes clear why Lady Macbeth, after her husband had
gone to the war, has a lighted candle always burning near her bed, and
why then she wanders around like a ghost with it at night.
[36] This is not without significance as a direct precipitating cause,
although naturally not the true source of her night wandering.
[37] A second still more important motivation for the nightly visit I
will discuss later.
The conclusion of the words she utters during her sleep walking contains
a second unmistakably sexual relationship. Here she repeats not less
than five times the demand upon her husband, "To bed," while in the
corresponding murder scene (II, 2) it simply reads, "Retire we to our
chamber; A little water clears us of this deed." The further repetition,
"Come, come, come, come, give me your hand," sounds again infantile
through and through. So one speaks to a child, scarcely to an adult. It
seems as if she takes the father or the mother by the hand and bids them
go to bed. One recognizes already in this passage that this atypical
sleep walking of Lady Macbeth also leads naturally into the sexual and
the infantile.
It will not be difficult to determine now toward whom the repressed,
because strongly forbidden, sexual wishes of Lady Macbeth are directed.
Who else could it be but her own father, the original love object of
every little girl; what other person of her childhood, who later becomes
an unsuitable sexual object, but yet hinders for all the future the
transference of love over to the husband? This is the one who summons
her to walk in her sleep, the lighted candle in her hand. It is quite an
everyday experience, which holds for everyone, for the well as for every
one who later becomes ill, that in reality the first love, which bears
quite clearly features of sense pleasure, belongs to the earliest years
of childhood, and that its objects are none other than the child's own
parents and in the second place the brothers and sisters. Here the polar
attraction of the sexes holds in the relation of the elder to the
younger and vice versa, that is the attraction of the man to the woman
and the woman to the man. It is "a natural tendency," says Freud[38] in
the "Interpretation of Dreams," "for the father to indulge the little
daughter, and for the mother to take the part of the sons, while both
work earnestly for the education of the little ones when the magic of
sex does not prejudice their judgment. The child is very well aware of
any partiality, and resists that member of the parental couple who
discourages it.... Thus the child obeys its own sexual impulse, and at
the same time reinforces the feeling which proceeds from the parents, if
it makes a selection among the parents that corresponds to theirs."
[38] Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams, translated by A. A. Brill.
The Macmillan Company, London, New York, 4th edition, p. 218.
We will stop here at two factors which will occupy us again later, the
being in love with the parent of the opposite sex, and then the
resistance against the one of the same sex. Corresponding to the love,
every child in the period of innocence wants to "marry" the former. I
recall what a colleague told me of a dialogue between him and his little
five year old daughter. She began, "I want to get married."--"To
whom?"--"To you, Papa."--"I already have a wife."--"Then you would have
two wives."--"That won't do."--"Very well, then I will choose a man who
is as nice as you." And Freud relates (p. 219), "An eight year old girl
of my acquaintance, when her mother is called from the table, takes
advantage of the opportunity to proclaim herself her successor. 'Now I
shall be Mamma; Charles, do you want some more vegetables? Have some, I
beg you,' and so on. A particularly gifted and vivacious girl, not yet
four years old, ... says outright: 'Now mother can go away; then father
must marry me and I shall be his wife.'"
We will add just one more little experience to give us a broader point
of view. The interpretation of dreams, fairy tales and myths teaches us
regularly that the phantasies of the child, like those of all peoples in
their period, identify father with king or emperor. Naturally then the
father's wife becomes the queen. This fact of experience, which is
always to be substantiated, can be applied to Lady Macbeth and makes her
ambition at once transparent to us. I affirmed above that her lack of
sexual feeling toward her husband had its origin in the fact that she
had loved her father too much and could not therefore free herself from
him. Her sexuality had transformed itself into ambition and that, the
ambition to be queen,[39] in other words, the father's wife. So could
she hold fast to the infantile ideal and realize the forbidden incest.
The intensity with which she pursues the ambition of her life is
explained then by the glowing intensity of her sexual wishes.
[39] Holinshed's chronicle lays emphasis upon this: "She ... burned
with an inextinguishable desire to bear the name of queen."
With Shakespeare also king and father come together. A remark of Lady
Macbeth shows that when she addresses herself to the murder of Duncan.
"Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done't." This
physical likeness signifies identity of individuals, as we know from
many analogous examples. The king therefore resembles the father because
he stands for her parent. Still one more point may be well explained
from her father complex. The Chronicle speaks of the overweening
ambition of Lady Macbeth. Now we know from neuropsychology that burning
ambition in later years represents a reaction formation to infantile bed
wetting. It is the rule with such children that they are placed upon the
chamber at night by father or mother. Thus we comprehend from another
side, with the so frequent identification with beloved persons,
precisely why the lady wanders at night with a candle in her hand. Here
again appears plainly the return to the infantile erotic.
Now for the grounds of her collapse. As long as Lady Macbeth is fighting
only for the childish goal, she is an unshakeable rock amid the storms
of danger. She shrinks from no wrong and no crime that she may be queen
at her husband's side. But she must gradually perceive that her husband
will never win satisfaction, he will never recover from the king-father
murder, her hopes will never be fulfilled and she will never live in
quiet satisfaction at the side of her father. Then her power of
endurance gives way until her very soul fails utterly. As she says on
the occasion of the first disappointment after Duncan's death:
"Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content;
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy,
Than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy."
Now the unconscious, hitherto successfully repressed, avenges itself,
now conscience awakes and as the husband leaves her completely alone she
begins to wander, that is to seek to return to the infantile ideal. In
her wandering she herself plays the rôle of father, who once approached
her with the lighted candle and then called to her, "Come, come, come,
come, give me your hand!" and bade her go to bed.
Why however does not the ruthless Macbeth live down the murder of the
king as he does in the history? I believe that we must here go still
further back than to the Chronicle, even to the creator of the tragedy
himself. There is a certain important crisis in Shakespeare's life,
where according to the biography by George Brandes "cheerfulness, the
very joy of life, was extinguished in his soul. Heavy clouds gathered
over his horizon, we now do not know just what their source. Gnawing
griefs and disappointments gathered within him. We see his melancholy
grow and extend itself; we can observe the changing effects of this
melancholy without clearly recognizing its cause. Only we feel this,
that the scene of action which he sees with the inner eye of the soul
has now become as black as the external scene of which he makes use. A
veil of phantasy has sunk down over both. He writes no more comedies but
puts a succession of dark tragedies upon the stage, which lately
reëchoed to the laughter of his Rosalinds and Beatrices."
This crisis came in the year 1601, when the earl of Essex and Lord
Southampton, Shakespeare's special patron, were condemned to death
because of treason against the life of the king. According to Brandes
the depression over their fate must have been one of the original causes
for the poet's beginning melancholy. Perhaps the death of Shakespeare's
father, which followed some months later, made a more lasting impression
with all the memories which it recalled. The dramas which the poet
published about that time, Julius Cæsar, Hamlet and Macbeth, have a
common theme, they all revolve about a father murder. In "Julius
Cæsar," Brutus murders his fatherly friend, his mother's beloved ("And
thou too, my son Brutus?"). Hamlet comes to shipwreck in his undertaking
to avenge upon his uncle the father's murder, because the uncle, as
Freud explains in his "Interpretation of Dreams," had at bottom done
nothing else than Hamlet had wished in his childhood but had not had the
self confidence to carry out. And Macbeth in the last analysis is ruined
by the king and father murder, the results of which he can never
overcome. We may consider this theme of the father murder, always
presented in some new form, in the light of its direct precipitating
causes, the actual death of Shakespeare's father and Southampton's
treason against the ruling power of the state. It is not difficult to
accept that at that time the infantile death wishes against his father
were newly awakened in our poet himself and were then projected
externally in a series of powerful dramas.
Perhaps the reader, who has followed me more or less up to this point,
will stop here indignant: "How could any one maintain that a genius like
Shakespeare could have wished to murder his father, even if only in the
phantasies of childhood?" I can only reply to this apparently justified
indignation that the assumption I here make concerning Shakespeare is
fundamentally and universally human and is true with every male child.
We go for proof to what we have earlier discovered, that the first
inclination of every child, also already erotically colored, belongs to
the parent of the opposite sex, the love of the girl to the father, the
leaning of the boy to his mother, while the child sets himself against
the parent of the same sex, who may be only justly concerned in his
education without over indulging him. The child would be most delighted
to "marry" the tender parent, as we heard above, and therefore feels
that the other parent stands in the way as a disturbing rival. "If the
little boy," says Freud in the "Interpretation of Dreams,"[40] "is
allowed to sleep at his mother's side whenever his father goes on a
journey, and if after his father's return he must go back to the nursery
to a person whom he likes far less, the wish may be easily actuated that
his father may always be absent, in order that he may keep his place
next to his dear, beautiful mamma; and the father's death is obviously a
means for the attainment of this wish; for the child's experience has
taught him that 'dead' folks, like grandpa, for example, are always
absent; they never return."
[40] Freud, _l. c._, p. 219.
Yet how does the child reach such a depth of depravity as to wish his
parents dead? We may answer "that the childish idea of 'being dead' has
little else but the words in common with our own. The child knows
nothing of the horrors of decay, of shivering in the cold grave, of the
terror of the infinite Nothing.... Fear of death is strange to the
child, therefore it plays with the horrible word.... Being dead means
for the child, which has been spared the scenes of suffering previous to
dying, the same as 'being gone,' not disturbing the survivors any more.
The child does not distinguish the manner and means by which this
absence is brought about, whether by traveling, estrangement or
death.... If, then, the child has motives for wishing the absence of
another child, every restraint is lacking which would prevent it from
clothing this wish in the form that the child may die."[41] It may be
conjectured, if we apply this to Shakespeare, that also this greatest of
all dramatists repeatedly during his childhood wished his father dead
and that this appeared in consciousness agitating him afresh at the
actual decease of the father and impelled him to those dramas which had
the father murder as their theme. Moreover the father's calling, for he
was not only a tanner but also a butcher, who stuck animals with a
knife, may have influenced the form of his death wishes as well as of
their later reappearances in the great dramas.
[41] Freud, _l. c._, pp. 215, 216.
The evil thoughts against the father in the child psyche by no means
exclude the fact that at the same time there are present with them
tender impulses, feelings of warmest love. This is indeed the rule
according to all experience and can be proved also with Shakespeare.
This other side of his childish impulse leads for example to the
powerful ambition which we find as a chief characteristic of Macbeth and
Lady Macbeth, as in truth of the poet himself. We know that when the
latter was a boy his father became bankrupt. He had not only lost
everything which he himself possessed, his wife's dowry and his position
as alderman, but was also so deeply in debt at this time that he had to
guard himself against arrest. Once more I let Brandes express it: "The
object of Shakespeare's desire was not in the first place either the
calling of a poet or fame as an actor, but wealth and that chiefly as a
means for social advance. He took very much to heart his father's
decline in material fortune and official respect. He held passionately
from his youth up to the purpose to reëstablish the name and the
position of his family.... His father had not dared to go along the
streets, fearing to be arrested for debt. He himself as a young man had
been whipped at the command of the landowner and thrown into jail. The
small town which had been the witness of these humiliations should be
witness of the restoration of his honor. Where he had been spoken of as
the actor and playwright of doubtful fame, there would he be seen again
as the honored possessor of house and land. There and elsewhere should
the people, who had counted him among the proletariat, learn to know him
as a gentleman, that is as a member of the lesser nobility.... In the
year 1596 his father, apparently at his instigation and with his
support, entered a petition at Heralds College for the bestowal of a
coat of arms. The granting of the coat of arms signified the ceremonial
entry into the gentry." The ambition of the small child is to become as
great as the father, and so later that of the man is to exalt the father
himself, to make him king. One sees how close and how very personal the
theme of ambition was to Shakespeare.
Before I go on to analyze further what the poet has woven into his
treatment of "Macbeth" from his own purely personal experience, we must
first consider a technical factor which is common to all dramatists. It
has been discovered that Shakespeare projected his own complexes into
his tragedies, complexes which are in no way simple, but which show, for
example, close to the hatred even as great a love as well as other
contrary elements. He is fond of separating his dramatic projection into
two personalities wherever his feeling is an ambivalent one, these two
forms standing in contrast to one another. He splits his ego into two
persons, each of which corresponds to only one single emotional impulse.
That is a discovery which of course was not made for the first time by
psychoanalysis. Minor, for instance, writes in his book on Schiller:
"Only in conjunction with Carlos does Posa represent Schiller's whole
nature, the wild passion of the one is the expression of the sensual
side, the noble exaltation of the other the stoical side of his
nature.... Schiller has not drawn this figure from external nature; it
has not come to him from without but he has taken it deep from his inner
being." Otto Ludwig expresses himself similarly: "Goethe often separates
a man into two poetic forms, Faust-Mephisto, Clavigo-Carlos."
It is plainly to be seen, if we apply our recognition of this fact to
Shakespeare, that he has projected his ego affect into Macbeth as well
as his wife, which gives numerous advantages. So far we have considered
Lady Macbeth merely as a complete dramatic character, which she is
first of all. Besides this nevertheless she surely corresponds to a
splitting of Shakespeare's affect, for the poet incorporates in her his
instincts for ruthless ambition. He has worked over the character
already given her by the Chronicle for his own exculpation. It was
stated previously that Macbeth in the first two acts is by no means the
bloodthirsty tyrant of Holinshed and really stands far behind his wife
in ambition. It is as if our poet, who plainly stands behind his hero,
wished thereby to say, I am not capable of a father murder and would
surely have put it off or not have accomplished it at all, if I had not
been compelled by a woman's influence. Macbeth will go no further in the
affair in spite of all favorable outward circumstances, but it is Lady
Macbeth who forces the deed to completion. The final cause of every
father hatred is rivalry in regard to the mother and so it was she,
represented by Lady Macbeth, who in his phantasy would have urged the
infantile Shakespeare to put his father out of the way. Here branches
out another path for the sleep walking. We have so far spoken only of
the father who comes at night to the child, but now Lady Macbeth walking
in her sleep, seems also to represent Shakespeare's mother, who with the
candle in her hand convinces herself that her darling child is sleeping
soundly.[42]
[42] Going back into Shakespeare's own life gives further illumination
and foundation for Lady Macbeth's behavior in the sleep walking scene.
The reader may already have secretly thought that those little
tendernesses on the part of ordinary parents hardly enter into
consideration in the case of a thane's daughter. It may be said in
answer to this that Shakespeare often, as in the presentation of
ancient scenes, put without scruple the environment of his own time in
place of the historical setting. And according to the above he would
be quite likely to utilize with Lady Macbeth recollections from the
Stratford childhood.
It need not seem strange that I give a number of interpretations
apparently so fundamentally different for one and the same thing. There
is nothing on earth more complicated than psychic things, among which
poetic creation belongs. Psychic phenomena are according to all
experience never simply built up nor simply grounded but always brought
together in manifold form. Whoever presses deeply into them discovers
behind every psychic manifestation without exception an abundance of
relationships and overdeterminations. We are accustomed in the natural
sciences to simple motivation, on the one side cause, on the other
effect. In the psychic life it is quite otherwise. Only a superficial
psychology is satisfied with single causes. So manifold a chain of
circumstances, those that lie near at hand and those more remotely
connected, come into play in most, yes, apparently in all cases, that
one scarcely has the right to assert that a psychic phenomenon has been
completely explained. Dream analysis at once proves this. One can almost
always rightfully take it for granted that several, indeed manifold
interpretations are correct. It is best to think of a stratified
structure. In the most superficial layer lies the most obvious
explanation, in the second a somewhat more hidden one, and in yet deeper
strata broader and more remote relationships and all have their part
more or less in the manifested phenomenon. This latter is more or less
well motivated.
We now turn back to Shakespeare and observe the great depression under
which he labored just at the time when he created his greatest
tragedies. Does it seem too presumptuous to conceive that one so shaken
and dejected psychically should have slept badly and even possibly--we
know so little of his life--walked in his sleep? The poet always
hastened to repress[43] whatever personal revelations threatened to
press through too plainly, as we know from many proofs. The poverty of
motivation quite unusual with Shakespeare, just at the critical point of
the sleep walking, seems to me to score for such a repression. We might
perhaps say that the fact that the poet has introduced to such slight
extent the wandering of Lady Macbeth, has given it so little connection
with what went before, is due simply to this, that all sorts of most
personal relationships were too much involved to allow him to be more
explicit. See how Lady Macbeth comforted Macbeth directly after the
frightful deed, the king and father murder:
"Consider it not so deeply.
. . . . . . . . .
These deeds must not be thought
After these ways; so, it will make us mad."
[43] Otto Rank in his book, "Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage,"
furnishes a beautiful and convincing example of such repression: It
comes from a second drama based on a king's murder, "Julius Cæsar." I
quote from the author's words: "A heightened significance and at the
same time an incontrovertible conclusiveness is given to our whole
conception and interpretation of the son relationship of Brutus to
Cæsar by the circumstance that in the historical source, which
Shakespeare evidently used and which he followed almost word for word,
namely in Plutarch, it is shown that Cæsar considered Brutus his
illegitimate son. In this sense Cæsar's outcry, which has become a
catch-word, may be understood, which he may have uttered again and
again when he saw Brutus pressing upon his body with drawn sword, 'And
you too my son Brutus?' With Shakespeare the wounded Cæsar merely
calls out, 'Et tu Brute! Then fall, Cæsar!' Shakespeare has set aside
this son relationship of Brutus to Cæsar, though doubtless known to
the poet, in his working out of the traditional sources. Not only is
there deep psychic ground for the modifications to which the poet
subjects the historical and traditional circumstances and characters
or the conceptions of his predecessor, but also for the omissions from
the sources. These originate from the repressive tendency toward the
exposure of impulses which work painfully and which are restrained as
a result of the repression, and this was doubtless the case with
Shakespeare in regard to his strongly affective father complex." Rank
has in the same work demonstrated that this father complex runs
through all of Shakespeare's dramatic work, from his first work,
"Titus Andronicus," down to his very last tragedy. I cannot go into
detail on this important point for my task here is merely to explain
Lady Macbeth's sleep walking, but any one who is interested may find
overwhelming abundance of evidence in Rank's book on incest (Chapter 6).
It is not only that I have introduced Shakespeare's strong father
complex here to make comprehensible Lady Macbeth's sleep walking, but
his own chief complex stood affectively in the foreground, and was
worked out, at the same time, as Macbeth.
This must have referred to Shakespeare as much as to his hero. Moreover
the writing and sealing of the letter at the beginning of the sleep
walking described by the lady in waiting seems as if Lady Macbeth had a
secret, a confession to make--in the name of the poet. I think also at
the end, when the everlasting brooding over her deed drives her to
suicide, she dies as a substitute for her intellectual creator, for his
own self punishment.[44]
[44] I also recall that it is in fact she who expresses Duncan's
character as father, "Had he not so resembled my father...."
There remain yet only one or two points to be touched upon and
explained. No discussion is needed for the fact that an outspoken
sadistic nature in Lady Macbeth leads her to walk in her sleep, indeed,
disposes her to it. We can easily understand also that this breaks forth
just at the moment when her husband sets out, that is, translated into
the infantile, when Macbeth, or in the deeper layer her own father,
dies. It is much more necessary to explain why immediately after the
deed she has no scruples in staining the chamberlains with Duncan's
blood and takes the affair so lightly, while later she is never rid of
the fear of the blood and is always striving in vain to wash her hands
clean. Here it must be again recalled that Lady Macbeth on the one hand
represents the actual wife of Macbeth, on the other hand the poet
himself and in two epochs of his life; Shakespeare first in his
unrestrained striving and then when he is brought low, shaken in his
very depths by the death of his father. Murder phantasies toward his
father came to him as a boy and then as a youth at the beginning of
puberty, and yet at neither time was he ill. The more mature man
however, borne down more heavily by life, met by the actual death of his
father, broke down under the weight of things. This explains in the last
analysis the change in the attitude of Lady Macbeth.
I do not know how far the reader is willing to follow me. Yet one thing
I believe I have proved, that also in Lady Macbeth's sleep walking the
erotic is not wanting nor the regression into the infantile.
CONCLUSION AND RÉSUMÉ
If now at the close of this book we bring together all our material, we
may with certainty or with the highest probability speak of sleep
walking and moon walking as follows:
1. Sleep walking under or without the influence of the moon represents
a motor outbreak of the unconscious and serves, like the dream, the
fulfilment of secret, forbidden wishes, first of the present, behind
which however infantile wishes regularly hide. Both prove themselves in
all the cases analyzed more or less completely as of a sexual erotic
nature.
2. Those wishes also which present themselves without disguise are
mostly of the same nature. The leading wish may be claimed to be that
the sleep walker, male or female, would climb into bed with the loved
object as in childhood, which both the folk and the poet well know. The
love object need not belong necessarily to the present, it can much more
likely be one of earliest childhood.
3. Not infrequently the sleep walker identifies himself with the beloved
person, sometimes even puts on his clothes, linen or outer garments, or
imitates his manner to the life.
4. Sleep walking can also have an infantile prototype, when the child
pretends to be asleep in order that it may be able, without fear of
punishment, to experience all sorts of forbidden things, that is of a
sexual nature, because it cannot be held accountable for that which it
does "unconsciously, in its sleep." The same motive of not being held
accountable actuates the adult sleep walker, who will satisfy his sexual
desires, yet without incurring guilt in so doing. The same cause works
also psychically, when sleep walking occurs mostly in the very deepest
sleep, even if organic causes are likewise responsible for it.
5. The motor outbreak during sleep, which drives one from rest in bed
and results in sleep walking and wandering under the light of the moon,
may be referred to this, that all sleep walkers exhibit a heightened
muscular irritability and muscle erotic, the endogenous excitement of
which can compensate for the giving up of the rest in bed. In accordance
with this these phenomena are especially frequent in the offspring of
alcoholics, epileptics, sadists and hysterics with preponderating
involvement of the motor apparatus.
6. Sleep walking and moon walking are in themselves as little symptoms
of hysteria as of epilepsy. Yet they are found frequently in conjunction
with the former.
7. The influence of the moon in this moon affectivity is very little
known, especially in its psychic overdetermination. Yet there is little
doubt that the moon's light is reminiscent of the light in the hand of a
beloved parent, who every night came in loving solicitude to assure
himself or herself of the child's sleep. Nothing so promptly wakes the
sleep walker as the calling of his name, which accords with his being
spoken to as a child by the parent. Fixed gazing upon the planet also
has probably an erotic coloring like the staring of the hypnotizer to
secure hypnosis. Other psychic overdeterminations appear merely to fit
individual cases. It is possible finally that there actually exists a
special power of attraction in the moon, which may expressly force the
moon walker out of his bed and entice him to longer walks, but on this
point we have no scientific hypotheses.
8. Furthermore it seems possible that sleep walking and moon walking may
be permanently cured through Freud's psychoanalytic method.
I know very well that this explanation which I give here, offers only
the first beginning of an understanding. It will be the task of a
future, which we hope is not too far distant, to comprehend fully these
puzzling phenomena.
INDEX
"Aebelö," ix, 45
Alcoholics, 137
descendants of, 25
Alcoholism, 1
Anorexia, hysteric, 76
Anxiety dreams, 41
Anzengruber, Ludwig, ix, 106
Audition, color, 91
Blood, 3, 15, 17, 20
Burdach, Karl Friedrich, 35
"Buschnovelle," 91
Buttocks, 7
moon as, 19
Cataleptic muscular rigidity, 25
Color audition, 74, 91
Compulsion, 6
Compulsive neurotic, 77, 91
Conception, Immaculate, 62, 73
unconscious, 62, 73
Concussion of the brain, 2
Consciousness, disturbances of, 32
Contractures, 25
Convulsion, hysterical, 85, 90
Convulsions, 25
muscular, 90
Convulsive attacks, 2, 7, 25
Cruelty, 25
Dream, Function of, x
relationship between sleep-walking and, 21
Dreams, anxiety, 41
frightful, 7
of Gro, 61
terrifying, 25
Dysuria psychica, 27
Eclamptic attacks, 2
Enuresis nocturna, 2
pleasure in, 29
Enuretic, 1
Epilepsy, viii, 1, 138
Epileptics, 137
descendants of, 25
Eroticism, muscle, 63
urethral, 2
vaginal, 3
Erotic, muscle, 8, 25, 31, 42, 90, 137
nature, 23
urethral, 27
Exhibition, 22
Exhibitionism, 36
Exhibitionistic, 70
Folk belief, 62
interpretation, 82
mind, 24
tale, 81
Frenssen, Gustav, ix, 63
Freud, 104, 127, 130, 131
Freud's psychoanalytic method, 138
Ganghofer, Ludwig, ix, 40
Ghostly hour, 27, 81
Ghosts, belief in, 26
Hemoptysis, 3, 15, 20
Holinshed's "History of Scotland," 115
Homosexual, 2
Homosexuality, 20
Hypnosis, 138
Hypnotic fixation, 26
somnambulism, viii, 22
Hypnotism, love transference in, 26
Hypnotist, 23
Hypnotized subject, 23
Hysteria, viii, 33, 138
Hysteric, 30
Hysteric anorexia, 76
Hysterical cardiac distress, 27
convulsion, 85, 90
opisthotonos, 86
somnambulism, viii
tendency, 91
Hysterics, 25, 75, 137
Immaculate conception, 62, 73
Infantile causes, 113
erotic, 71
regression, 136
sexuality, 21
"Interpretation of Dreams," 127, 130, 131
"Jörn Uhl," 63
Kleist, Heinrich von, ix, 46, 97
Krafft-Ebing, viii, 20, 25
"Lebensmagie, Wirklichkeit und Traum," 92
Libido, 23
repressed, 10
Ludwig, Otto, ix, 45, 72, 91
"Macbeth," 114
Macbeth, Lady, 114
"Maria," 72
Masochistic, sadistic, 7
Menstruation, 3, 15, 17, 30, 70
Michaelis, Sophus, ix, 45
Moonstruck, vii
Motor activities, 23
impulse, 70
overexcitability, 26
phenomena of dreams, viii, ix
stimulability, 25
Mundt, Theodor, 92
Muscular activity, 31, 70
convulsions, 90
excitability, 63, 90
irritability, heightened, 137
rigidity, cataleptic, 25
sense, viii
Muscle erotic, 8, 25, 27, 31, 42, 90, 137
eroticism, 63
Myopia, 77, 91
Nates, 26
Neurotic, compulsive, 77
Neuroses, 22
Night wandering, vii
Noctambulism, vii
Nosebleed, 30
Organic disposition, 25
Orgasm, 2
Paralysis of arm, 26
Paralyses, 25
Pavor nocturnus, 25
Phantasies, sexual, 17, 19
Poets, 24, 45
"Prinz von Homburg, Der," 97
Psychoanalysis for moon walking, ix
Puberty, 21, 41, 80, 82
Rank, Otto, 102, 134
Regression, 113, 136
Repressed libido, 10
Repression, 60
Sadistic, 20, 25
Sadistic-masochistic, 2, 7
Sadism, 8
blood, 2
Sadists, 137
Shakespeare, ix, 114
Sleep, normal, vii, viii
Somnambulism, vii, 22
hysterical and hypnotic, viii
Somnambulist, 23
Spirits, belief in, 26
Splitting of mother complex, 77
"Sündkind, Das," 106
Synesthesia, 74, 91
Talking in sleep, 7, 33
Tic, 90
Tieck, Ludwig, ix, 42, 124
Transference in hypnotism, 26
Unconscious conception, 62, 73
Urethral erotic, 27
eroticism, 2
Vaginal eroticism, 3
"Woman in white," 26
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Wishfulfillment and Symbolism in Fairy Tales. Riklin.
Character and the Neuroses. Trigant Burrow.
The Wildisbush Crucified Saint. Theodore Schroeder.
The Pragmatic Advantage of Freudo-Analysis. Knight Dunlap.
Moon Myth in Medicine. William A. White.
The Sadism of Oscar Wilde's "Salome." Isador H. Coriat.
Psychoanalysis and Hospitals. L. E. Emerson.
The Dream as a Simple Wishfulfillment in the Negro. John E. Lind.
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The Integrative Functions of the Nervous System Applied to Some
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A Manic-Depressive Upset Presenting Frank Wish-Realization
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Psychoanalytic Parallels. William A. White.
Rôle of Sexual Complex in Dementia Præcox. James C. Hassall.
Psycho-Genetics of Androcratic Evolution. Theodore Schroeder.
Significance of Psychoanalysis for the Mental Sciences. Otto Rank and
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Art in the Insane. L. Grimberg.
Retaliation Dreams. Hansell Crenshaw.
History of the Psychoanalytic Movement. Sigmund Freud.
Clinical Cases Exhibiting Unconscious Defence Reactions. Francis H.
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Processes of Recovery in Schizophrenics. H. Bertschinger.
Freud and Sociology. Ernest R. Groves.
The Ontogenetic Against the Phylogenetic Elements in the Psychoses of
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Discomfiture and Evil Spirits. Elsie Clews Parsons.
Two Very Definite Wish-Fulfillment Dreams. C. B. Burr.
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A Study of a Severe Case of Compulsion Neurosis. H. W. Frink.
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A Literary Forerunner of Freud. Helen Williston Brown.
The Technique of Dream Interpretation. Wilhelm Steckel.
The Social and Sexual Behavior of Infrahuman Primates with some
Comparable Facts in Human Behavior. Edw. J. Kempf.
Pain as a Reaction of Defence. H. B. Moyle.
Some Statistical Results of the Psychoanalytic Treatment of
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The Rôle of Animals in the Unconscious. S. E. Jelliffe and L. Brink.
The Genesis and Meaning of Homosexuality. Trigant Burrow.
Phylogenetic Elements in the Psychoses of the Negro. John E. Lind.
Freudian Elements in the Animism of the Niger Delta. E. R. Groves.
The Mechanism of Transference. William A. White.
The Future of Psychoanalysis. Isador H. Coriat.
Hermaphroditic Dreams. Isador H. Coriat.
The Psychology of "The Yellow Jacket." E. J. Kempf.
Heredity and Self-Conceit. Mabel Stevens.
The Long Handicap. Helen R. Hull.
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Analysis of a Case of Manic-Depressive Psychosis Showing well-marked
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Reactions to Personal Names. C. P. Oberndorf.
A Study of the Mental Life of the Child. H. von Hug-Hellmuth.
An Interpretation of Certain Symbolisms. J. J. Putnam.
Charles Darwin--The Affective Source of His Inspiration and Anxiety
Neurosis. Edw. J. Kempf.
The Origin of the Incest-Awe. Trigant Burrow.
Compulsion and Freedom: The Fantasy of the Willow Tree. S. E. Jelliffe
and L. Brink.
A Case of Childhood Conflicts with Prominent Reference to the Urinary
System: with some General Considerations on Urinary Symptoms in the
Psychoneuroses and Psychoses. C. Macfie Campbell.
The Hound of Heaven. Thomas Vernon Moore.
A Lace Creation Revealing an Incest Fantasy. Arrah B. Evarts.
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29. A Study of the Mental Life of the Child. $2.00. By Dr. H. Von
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Conclusion and Resumé 137
Conclusion and Résumé 137
of importance to medical pschology. The author of this book has pursued
of importance to medical psychology. The author of this book has pursued
writers of these preceding science have made in regard to sleep walking
writers of the preceding science have made in regard to sleep walking
[1] Über Nachtwandeln und Mondsucht. Eine medizinish-literarische
[1] Über Nachtwandeln und Mondsucht. Eine medizinisch-literarische
Sechzentes Heft, Leipzig und Wien, Franz Deuticke, 1914.
Sechzehntes Heft, Leipzig und Wien, Franz Deuticke, 1914.
[6] "Über den sado-masochistichen Komplex," Jahr. f. psychoanal.
[6] "Über den sado-masochistischen Komplex," Jahrb. f. psychoanal.
sleep. In the same way similar erotic motives and analagous behavior may
sleep. In the same way similar erotic motives and analogous behavior may
it for him. Then I went to bed and slept soundly for some hours, as I
it for him.' Then I went to bed and slept soundly for some hours, as I
no sign of waking. This must represent a second form of consciounsess,
no sign of waking. This must represent a second form of consciousness,
"At that time I had to sleep in a small room which by brother had
"At that time I had to sleep in a small room which my brother had
Before going to sleep I always barred the door of the room, which near
"Before going to sleep I always barred the door of the room, which near
brothr-in-law Emil had first taken breakfast with her mother in her
brother-in-law Emil had first taken breakfast with her mother in her
maiden in her nightgown, who thus exhibits hereself in her night garment
maiden in her nightgown, who thus exhibits herself in her night garment
perform coitus."--How is that?"--"I have remonstrated rather seriously
perform coitus."--"How is that?"--"I have remonstrated rather seriously
mother call you, or did you come of yourself?"--I believe that my
mother call you, or did you come of yourself?"--"I believe that my
gone he could do nothing more to the mother. And they you could take his
gone he could do nothing more to the mother. And then you could take his
again"--"Or rather, I bolt the door so that my father cannot come to my
again."--"Or rather, I bolt the door so that my father cannot come to my
in!'--"That would mean also that if the mother wants to come, only she
in!'"--"That would mean also that if the mother wants to come, only she
he answered me, 'Yes, here I am!'--"What about the warden of the
he answered me, 'Yes, here I am!'"--"What about the warden of the
myself immediately, realizing where I was, and went beck to bed. I told
myself immediately, realizing where I was, and went back to bed. I told
episode: 'When I was nine or ten years old, the healthy brother was ill
episode: "When I was nine or ten years old, the healthy brother was ill
lunacy but of a vertable moon lover, presumably our poet himself. There
lunacy but of a veritable moon lover, presumably our poet himself. There
all this he did not become so quickly aware, as that his own checks
all this he did not become so quickly aware, as that his own cheeks
with massive oak or iron bars. So finally he gave up entirely and
with massive oak or iron bars. "So finally he gave up entirely and
surrounded her. He compelled himeslf to leave the clear broad way of
surrounded her. He compelled himself to leave the clear broad way of
look would draw from me--what would you drag out from my soul?--'The
look would draw from me--what would you drag out from my soul?'--'The
occurred to her the many nights when she had dreamed of the lonely
occurred to her the many nights "when she had dreamed of the lonely
his fresh dream kissees. Still she consciously kept back every outer
his fresh dream kisses. Still she consciously kept back every outer
I can deal more briefly with Jörn Uhl," the well-known rural romance of
I can deal more briefly with "Jörn Uhl," the well-known rural romance of
not yet late"--"The sky is so clear. I want to look at the stars once
not yet late."--"The sky is so clear. I want to look at the stars once
child and in his way solemnly declares "I will never do it again," and
child and in his way solemnly declares, "I will never do it again," and
for reverence.'"
for reverence."
is the love--one can call it nothing else--which the child betows upon
is the love--one can call it nothing else--which the child bestows upon
now for the first time a child no more. Maria thus felt herself through
now for the first time a child no more." Maria thus felt herself through
manner." Only all to evident! This punishment was in reality a
manner." Only all too evident! This punishment was in reality a
The friendliness, the affectionate regard, which spoke so unmistakably
"The friendliness, the affectionate regard, which spoke so unmistakably
good. Since she could not yet entirely believe she asked, "Is it indeed
good." Since she could not yet entirely believe she asked, "Is it indeed
and said confusedly, "See this beautiful child, Eisener, Sir!" Maria
and said confusedly, 'See this beautiful child, Eisener, Sir!'" Maria
premonition of a happy life with Eisener and her George."
premonition of a happy life with Eisener and her George.
[25] Cf. with this especially Ernest Jentsch, "Das Pathologische bei
[25] Cf. with this especially Ernst Jentsch, "Das Pathologische bei
[27] Rhapsodies over the Employment of the Psychical Method of
[27] "Rhapsodies over the Employment of the Psychical Method of
the laurel wreath, saying, "Dearest Natalie, Why run away from me?" and
the laurel wreath, saying, "Dearest Natalie! Why run away from me?" and
Who lately had arrived at our encampment?'
Who lately had arrived at our encampment?"
Kruges," ("The Broken Pitcher.") These daintiest hands belonged to his
Kruges." ("The Broken Pitcher.") These daintiest hands belonged to his
limits but becomes much more a peculiar neurotic charactertistic. No less
limits but becomes much more a peculiar neurotic characteristic. No less
in life, by displacing it over upon a discovered or given material.
in life, by displacing it over a discovered or given material.
everything as possible and is ready to sacrifiee even the hand of the
everything as possible and is ready to sacrifice even the hand of the
the justice of the sentence--I might almost has said, after he had asked
the justice of the sentence--I might almost have said, after he had asked
not only remorse seized him but be began to curse at the folk, who see
not only remorse seized him but he began to curse at the folk, who see
'that's the end,' and there remains nothing more to tell." Soon he
'that's the end, and there remains nothing more to tell.'" Soon he
The multitudinous seas incarnardine,
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
his bloody hands, "This is a sorry sight"! It was only a foolish
his bloody hands, "This is a sorry sight!" It was only a foolish
come, give me your hand!' and bade her go to bed.
come, give me your hand!" and bade her go to bed.
phantasies of childhood? I can only reply to this apparently justified
phantasies of childhood?" I can only reply to this apparently justified
their later reappearancess in the great dramas.
their later reappearances in the great dramas.
apparently so fundamentally different for one and the same thing, There
apparently so fundamentally different for one and the same thing. There
calls out, "Et tu Brute! Then fall, Cæsar!" Shakespeare has set aside
calls out, 'Et tu Brute! Then fall, Cæsar!' Shakespeare has set aside
Conception, Immacuate, 62, 73
Conception, Immaculate, 62, 73
Epilepsy, iv, 1, 138
Epilepsy, viii, 1, 138
]