Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Sandman
Sandman
E. T. A. Hoffmann
This chapter will:
• Introduce you to the short prose
fiction of the Romantic period.
• Continue exploring how Romantic
writers depicted themselves and
how this fed into subsequent
representations of them as
Aims Romantic geniuses.
• Continue the discussion of the dark
side of the Romantic imagination as
associated with the extremes of
madness and delusion.
• Consider the depiction of women in
relation to Romantic genius.
Introduction In this chapter, we pursue the
theme of Romantic lives through
a tale. ’The Sandman’ (1816) by
E.T.A. Hoffman, one of the
greatest European Romantic
writers.
Biographical
information
Give a brief background about information
about Hoffman?
E.T.A. Hoffmann
• Hoffmann (1776-1822) was one of the greatest
European Romantic writers.
• A German writer who was born in Prussia
( currently Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Russia ).
• He lived during Napoleon's wars and suffered from
deportation (exile), and was forced to flee back and
forth across Europe, in 1807, he was deported to
Berlin by the French authorities, where he nearly
starved to death
• He experienced war personally during the battles of
Dresden and the battle of the Nations – unlike the
other three English Romantics.
• He worked as a musical journalist and could barely
make a living.
• He did not write autobiography, but he wrote fiction
with many different personas. Thus, when studying
Hoffmann, we’ll be turning away from
autobiographical versions of the Romantic life to
experimental fictive representations.
• Hoffmann’s work is often said to represent the
culmination of German Romanticism.
• He also wrote criticism on music and literature. His
writing was his main source of income
• He is the author of two novels and seven fairy tales
including the original source for the ballet The
Nutcracker. English translations of his work appeared
in mid 19th century.
Hoffmann’s influence
Hoffmann’s work exerted considerable influence
on the subsequent development of the short
form of the ‘tale of mystery and imagination’.
Comment. (p.102)
Walter Scott
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Edgar Allan Poe
Alexander Pushkin
Dostoyevsky
• Hoffman influenced the short form
of “the tale of mystery and
Hoffman
imagination” later practiced by
Walter Scott and Nathaniel
Hawthorne.
influenc
• He became famous after he died
and his work influenced French,
Russian and American and English
Literature. His work inspired many
2. The 2)
passion
They share a characteristically Gothic vocabulary
romantic
3) They exhibit a confusing mix of obsession and
detachment.
4) They all refer to the difficulty of communicating
writers what they want to say: ‘how am I ever to convey
to you’, ‘I have with some labour, written down’,
Nathanael,
‘they are unable to find words’. Thus, there is a
sense here of a crisis in the Romantic vocation: a
suspicion that language may be inadequate to
Narrator
5) The three have imagination that they cannot
control. Clara, the rational one, imagines how
Nathanael must be confused and suffering so she
Clara’s letter
Nathanael letter
• Common sense
• Victim
and reassurance
• Exclamatory The Narrator’s
• She explains
register Letter:
away Nathanael
• Heightened fears.
emotional
sensitivity • Confidential
• Anxious • Conversational
• Date and
uncertainty. tone
location make
his memories • Addressing the
realistic reader.
3) What resemblances can you identify
between the personae of these three fictional
Romantic writers and any of the Romantic
selves we have encountered in the preceding
The chapters of the book?
1- The troubled figure of Nathanael resembles
Sandman: De Quincey’s depiction of a ‘self undone by its
the dreams’.
2- The theme of inescapable memory connects
Romantic back to the autobiographical persona of
Writers Wordsworth’s Prelude.
3-The image of the Romantic writer as a
visionary unsure of his own expressive powers
might remind us of the figure of the poet
articulated in Shelly’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’.
3 Romantic In each of these three fictional personae, we have a
construct of the Romantic writer whose imagination
has in some way exceeded their control:
writers: How Nathanael is ‘vainly struggling’ to escape from the
do the 3
imagined threat posed by the barometer-seller.
Clara’s inclination to turn the story into a joke in
The main idea that the story presents is that there is more
than one way of seeing.
The images of eyes, vision and seeing are metaphors for the
different ways of seeing reality. As the story is told from
three perspectives so we have different perceptions and
different ways of seeing.
The fact that the Romantic artist might be equipped with a
special and privileged way of seeing, is this explored in ‘The
Sandman’ through the recurring pattern of references to
sight, vision, and above all, to eyes.
It is supposed that The Romantic artist has a privileged or
unique way of seeing things. This reflects the ability of the
romantic writer: as the fictionalized Hoffman narrator
Reread the two sections of the story which focus on the
doubled figure of Coppelius / Coppola.
Activity
eavesdropping and discovery during one of his father’s
mysterious experiments with Coppelius.
• These ways of seeing can be understood as metaphors for different Romantic ways of
perceiving reality.
• The distorting lenses of the multiple pairs of spectacles show how there are many ways
of seeing reality and demonstrate how perception is vulnerable to individual subjectivity:
the ‘eyes’ of the spectacles represent the innumerable ‘I’s who see the world in different
ways.
• On the other hand, the spyglass can in theory provide privileged access to a single truth.
However, perception which depends on a scientific instrument may not be entirely
reliable. Through using of irony , the spyglass which is supposed to be a scientific
invention that allowed better seeing, is in reality unreliable because it makes him blind
to see the truth of Olimpia as a mechanical doll.
• What the events of ‘The Sandman’ show is that even this heightened ability of the
Romantic imagination can render the truth obscure and inaccessible, and even fatal,
when it is misapplied.
• The scene of Olimpia’s death brings the recurring theme
of eyes and sight to a powerful climax, and demonstrates
how ways of seeing are fundamental to self-identity.
Ways of Seeing • Coppola and Spalanzani argue their competing claims to
have given ‘life’ to Olimpia through respectively providing
3. Scene of the eyes and the clockwork mechanism.
- Nathanael is not the only figure in this story who seems to embody the
equivocal nature of Romantic art and the Romantic imagination.
- An alternative, more powerful figure for the Romantic artist might rather be
Dr. Coppelius .
- A diabolical seducer, who possesses the power of giving his automaton an
apparent life.
• He is capable in appearing in multiple forms.
• Coppelius is a version of demonic figure who appears repeatedly in Hoffman’s
fiction.
Activity 6
Conclusion
• Hoffmann’s multiple persona = the divided
self
• The Sandman as the fictional example of
Hoffmann’s personas = three points of view.
Chapter 4
(real) with the uncanny (strange /fantastic)
• The Romantic artist is torn between the
fake talent and the creative genius and
wants to find the form and language that
will express this opposition.
Summary: The Four Romantic Poets