Fairy tale Sandman. An excerpt characterizing the Sandman

The sovereign personality, which dominates the artistic system of romanticism, makes individual consciousness the starting point. The artistic text closes within its limits, which implies a “mono-subjective” organization of the narrative (B. O. Korman’s term) 1 . It is dominated, as a rule, "to self-oblivion by the expressive direct author's word, which does not cool itself by any refraction through someone else's verbal environment" 2 . Monosubjective narration naturally reduced the distance between the author and the hero. In one way or another, the hero turned into a mouthpiece of the author's ideas.

As romanticism developed, the complexity of the world opening up to the artist's eyes also required the complication of narrative forms. The subjective-personal perception of phenomena is recognized as insufficient. The multidimensionality of the world finds expression in the appearance of different speakers of speech within one artistic whole, in the emergence of a need to identify different semantic possibilities of the same life phenomenon. The principle of monosubjective narration gradually begins to give way to other narrative forms. It has already been noted that this tendency can manifest itself “not only on the scale of literature as a whole, but also within the evolution of an individual writer ...” 3. Changes occur in the subject organization of a work. "Monological context" (M. Bakhtin) is weakened. The number of native speakers is increasing. The outpouring of the hero may be accompanied by something like a cover letter from the publisher or the person into whose hands the manuscript fell (Chateaubriand "Rene", Constant "Adolf", Byron "Childe Harold", Hoffmann "Notes of Murr the Cat", etc.). Short story collections include comments on the story (Thick "Fantazus", Hoffman "Serapion Brothers", etc.). An integral literary text may include several speakers of speech or simply a commentary of a conditional “author”, addressing a “benevolent reader” in his own name, etc. The combination of different narrative perspectives complicates and enriches the content of the artistic form. In this regard, the forms of expression of the author's consciousness are changing and becoming more complex. Their system only in its entirety reflects the attitude of the author and its dynamics, because, as the researcher writes, “a work is not only a “statement”, not only “ speech structure", but also an attitude, being, a creation created with the help of artistic fantasy and on the basis of compositional calculation" 4 . Note also that reflected in artistic text the author's position implies, along with the expression of the concept of the world, also an assessment of what is depicted.

Let's try to consider the forms of expressing the author's position on the example of the famous story by E. T. A. Hoffmann " Sandman". Written in 1816 and opening the cycle of "Night Studies", this story became the favorite brainchild of researchers and the ground for the emergence of the most controversial concepts. There is a tendency to view The Sandman as "a masterpiece of ambivalent and ambiguous art" 5 .

Supporters of this concept underestimate the fact that the author's position is manifested not only through the subjective organization of the narrative, but also through the entire plot and compositional structure of the work.

There are several speakers in the story. The exposition and the plot are formed by the letters of the protagonist, student Nathanael and his fiancee Clara. Then the "author" is included in the story. The letters contain two different interpretations of the same phenomenon. In terms of reading the author's thought, they can be considered as a kind of statement of the problem. Nathanael tends to view the intrusion of the sinister and hideous Coppelius into his life as a fatal inevitability that came from outside. “... A dark predestination really hung over me, like a gloomy cloud, which I, perhaps, will dispel only by death,” he writes 6 . His fiancee Clara believes, on the contrary, that the sinister figures of the twins of Coppelius and Coppola are only a figment of the young man’s imagination, a phantom of his own “I”, “and the real outside world has very little to do with it” (2, 297).

The question immediately arises as to who is right. Are the terrible and tragic events that followed this rooted in the nature of Nathanael's psyche, in his imagination, or are they the result of the impact on him of some transpersonal and, in this sense, objective forces? The answer to this question is further development storytelling.

Supporters of the "ambivalent" reading of the story tend to believe that the author, avoiding answering the question, offers two equivalent explanations for what happened. And in the end, both characters - both Nathanael and Clara - equally express the author's point of view.

Let's try to understand the nature of the story. It is really built as a kind of alternation of the legitimacy of one or the other position. At first, Clara's point of view seems to be dominant. In a reply letter to her, Nathanael is forced to admit that the barometer salesman Coppola most likely has nothing to do with the lawyer Coppelius. But at the same time, the tone of his letter is disturbing; he cannot hide his "bad mood" (2, 301); the impression of "the cursed face of Coppelius" (2, 300) was not erased from his consciousness; and the letter from the “reasonable” Clara with his “master's definitions” (2, 300) obviously did not calm him down, but somehow irritated him.

The conditional “author”, entering into the story, does not join any of the opinions expressed by the heroes, but emphasizes the complexity and intricacy of life. “It is impossible to invent anything more strange and surprising than what happened to my young friend, the poor student Nathanael...,” he writes (2, 301). Attention is drawn to the undisguised sympathy and closeness of the "author" to the hero ("poor friend"). The concept of "invent" (erfinden) is contrasted here with the concept of "adventure" (zutragen). Obviously, the desire to emphasize the veracity of the story being told, since real life is more wonderful than the most unbridled fantasy. One must be able to “accept” (ertragen) the miraculous: “And then, maybe, then, my reader, you will believe that there is nothing more amazing and crazy than real life itself, and that the poet can only imagine its vague reflection, as if in a non-smoothly polished mirror" (2, 303).

The narrator from the very beginning refuses to see even a grain of the comic in Nathanael's story. Thinking about how best to start the story, he first offers one option, then decisively refuses it: “Fuck the hell out of here,” cried student Nathanael, and fury and horror were reflected in his wild look. When the barometer salesman Giuseppe Coppola ... So I really would have started if I thought that something funny was felt in the wild gaze of the student Nathanael, but this story is not at all funny ”(2, 302). The degree of proximity of the "author" to different heroes is not the same. Sometimes the narration is in the form of a simple report on events, sometimes the author seems to refer to someone else's opinion, and sometimes "merges" (V. Kaiser's term) 7 with the hero.

It is curious that the whole episode, depicting the story of Nathanael's love for the Olympia doll, is given only through his eyes, through his feeling. The passage beginning with the words: “What was Nathanael’s surprise...” (2, 308) and ending with: “... he rushed at the professor and squeezed his throat” (2, 319), formally belongs to the narrator, but could well have been given in first person form. Such a "fusion" of the fictitious author with the hero is observed only in relation to Nathanael.

In relation to Clara, the narrator's position is different. At first we hear undisguised sympathy in his words: “But at that moment the image of Clara presented itself so vividly to my imagination that I could not take my eyes off him, as it always happens to me when she looks at me with a smile” (2, 303 ). But then the “author” moves on to conveying other people’s opinions, begins to speak as if “from someone else’s voice”: “Clara could not be called beautiful; everyone agreed on this ... But the architects spoke with praise of the pure proportions of her figure, the painters found that her back, shoulders and chest were formed, perhaps, too chastely ... "(2, 303). A true science fiction writer likened Clara's eyes to Ruisdael's lake, poets and virtuosos put her high. But on the other hand, “... many reproached Clara for being cold, insensitive and prosaic; but others, whose understanding of life was distinguished by clarity and depth, loved this cordial, reasonable, trusting, like a child, girl ... ”(2, 304) (our italics. - A. B.). In a word, the creature is sweet, but far from the perfection of the ideal.

Images of the main actors devoid of clarity. An ironic glow also falls on the figure of Nathanael, when the narrator declares that Nathanael's writings "really were remarkably boring" (2, 306). But he is still a poet. And his poem, where “death itself looks at him kindly with the eyes of her beloved” (2, 306), is in its own way a prophetic work. When Clara, listening to the poem and "as usual, expecting something boring, began to knit with patient obedience," and then demanded that "an absurd, extravagant fairy tale be thrown into the fire," Nathanael was not so wrong when he shouted to her: "You soulless, damned automaton!” (2, 307).

Here the usual Hoffmannian irony manifests itself, relativizing the object of artistic research. Nathanael's life position, like the life position of any enthusiast, is always endowed by Hoffmann with a certain degree of inferiority, since the enthusiast is usually inclined to ignore the unwritten laws of social behavior. Let us recall, for example, another hero, Kapellmeister Kreisler, recognized as the alter ego of the writer himself, about whom it is said that nature, in creating him, “tried a new recipe and that the experiment failed” (1, 41).

The assessment of heroes does indeed have some ambivalence, but only up to a certain limit. Clara is the antipode of the reckless Nathanael. Her worldly stability in the eyes of the author has an undeniable appeal as an art of a calm and serene existence, but this is not his path. Recall that Anselm from the Golden Pot, although he turned out to be sensitive to the charms of the blue-eyed Veronica, however, the magical golden-green Serpentine snake turned out to be closer to his artistic nature. Subsequently, Thomas Mann with sharp piercing expressed the artist's eternal attraction to the thoughtless banality of "blonde and blue-eyed" as an acceptance of life itself. No matter how sane and reasonable the opposite of Nathanael is his bride, the final passage of the story, depicting her family happiness after the tragic death of Nathanael, indeed, as one researcher put it, looks “almost cynical” 8. “They say that many years later, in a remote area, Clara was seen sitting in front of a beautiful country house, hand in hand with a friendly husband, and next to them two frisky boys were playing ”(2, 322). The prudent are destined for peace and happiness. The narrator is deliberately objective here. He refrains from judgments and, keeping a distance in relation to the depicted, deliberately refers to someone else's opinion: they assure, they saw. Despite the complexity, the author's attitude towards these two characters is not the same. And Clara, who turned out to be incapable of a deep and lasting feeling, least of all embodies his ideal. Therefore, the point of view of I. Mirimsky, who writes: “Hoffman expressed his negative attitude towards the mystical hero of the story ... as the bearer of a certain, extremely pessimistic philosophical outlook on life, due to a flawed consciousness, in the form of Clara ... admiringly admires her bright mind, lively and strong fantasy, tender heart, cheerful disposition, so alien to everything foggy, painful, mystical. In this interpretation, the story of Nathanael is simply a clinical case.

It is more for a psychiatrist than for an artist to study it. Hardly, telling the story of his "poor friend, young student Nathanael", the author set himself the goal of showing the development of mental illness. Hoffmann's madmen are always highly gifted people, carriers of a "high illness", which, according to the just remark of O. Nipperday, is only a "spiritual development of a special kind" 10 . Hoffmann's interpretation of madness was closely connected with Schelling's concept of the relationship between mind and spirit. "People who do not carry any madness in themselves are people of an empty, unproductive mind," wrote Schelling 11 . The secret sides of life are open to the madmen, and they themselves allow them to penetrate into its riddle. One of the characters in the story “Counsellor Crespel” from “The Serapion Brothers” remarks: “There are people whom nature or merciless fate have deprived of cover, under the cover of which we, the rest of mortals, imperceptibly to the eyes of others proceed in our follies. Such people are like thin-skinned insects, whose organs, shimmering and trembling in front of everyone, represent them as ugly, although in the next minute everything can turn into a decent form ”(4, part 1, 41).

Nathanael belongs to such people, he is endowed with a special gift - the gift of foresight. He often discovers what is hidden from others, and at the same time the obvious, clear to everyone, is hidden from him. He firmly believes that his life and destiny are controlled by someone or something. Are his thoughts fair from the point of view of the author? I. Mirimsky believes, for example, that "Hoffmann, together with Clara, rejects his fatalistic theory that a person who considers himself free is in fact a plaything of dark forces..." 12 . Is it so? At the narrative level, that is, at the level of only subjective forms of expression of the author's consciousness, this issue is difficult to resolve. Only an analysis of the plot and compositional organization of the work can give a clue to its solution. A special role in the plot and compositional organization of the story belongs to the mysterious doubles - Coppelius and Coppola. The question, in essence, comes down to how this double image of the sinister Sandman is treated in the story. Does this image appear in the plot of the work only as a product of the inflamed and heightened imagination of the hero, caused by the tragic experiences of childhood, or is he assigned an independent role in the development of the plot action? Is the fate of the hero determined by external circumstances, or is his tragic death predetermined by the flaws in his psychological state?

One can consider the visits of the lawyer Coppelius to the house of Nathanael's parents as indifferent to the further events of his life: an impressionable child, having heard enough of nurse's tales, imagined the sinister role of an unpleasant guest. But if not Coppelius, then Coppola really influences the fate of the young man. It is he who slips him a spyglass, which clouded normal vision, distorted reality. The look of the doll at first seems lifeless to Nathanael. “But the more closely he peered into the telescope, the more it seemed to him that the eyes of Olympia emit a moist moonlight. As if only now the visual power was kindled in them...” (2, 310-311). Thus, all subsequent events - a fiery love for the doll, an attack of madness, a tragic death - are the result of the influence of an external, hostile principle. The appearance of Coppelius in the final provokes a catastrophe.

It is curious that in the first edition of The Sandman, Coppelius was visible only to Nathanael, the whole scene seemed to be seen through his eyes. In the first edition, it sounded like this: “Nathanael was rushing around the gallery, suddenly a disgusting voice shouted from below: “Ay, ah, little animal, do you want to learn how to make eyes ...?” Lawyer Coppelius was standing below.”13 In the final version, Hoffmann changed this place. The presence of Coppelius became obvious not only to Nathanael, he actually appeared in the crowd: “And so Nathanael began to rush around the gallery, jumping and shouting:“... Circle of fire, spin, spin! The people began to run to his wild cries; in the crowd loomed the lanky figure of the lawyer Coppelius” (2, 322). Naturally, the conclusion suggests itself that in the artistic mind of the author, the image of Coppelius-Coppola embodies some kind of objective laws that determine human destiny. “The basic life feeling of romanticism,” writes the well-known researcher of this artistic era, G. A. Korf, “is that a person is much more than he believes, a puppet on the wire of fate, which is the great mystery of life” 14 . This general romantic understanding was characteristic of Hoffmann as well. In one of his letters, he wrote about the forces hidden in nature, which from time to time make a person aware of themselves and mean "the mysterious connections of the human spirit with all higher principles" (4, part 1, 41).

The fantastic pair of Coppelius-Coppola indirectly expresses the action of these "higher principles" - certain patterns, incomprehensible and misunderstood, but already guessed by artistic flair. In the romantic consciousness, they inevitably appear in a mystified fantastic form, but one can hardly deny the writer's conviction in their objective existence. The terrible and ominous image of Coppelius embodies the life-destroying principle. The motif of fire, destroying forces, is associated with it. Father Nathanael, after experiments conducted with Coppelius, is found with a burnt face; a fire destroys the hero's dwelling before a fatal meeting with Olympia. In his last fit of madness, he remembers the circle of fire.

The motif of the eyes, which was widely interpreted, is also associated with the motif of fire. In the nanny's fairy tale, the Sandman is "an evil man who comes for the children, when they are stubborn and do not want to go to sleep, he throws handfuls of sand into their eyes, so that they bleed and climb on their foreheads ..." (2, 291) . During alchemical experiments, Nathanael, in the hearth crackling with a bluish flame, “... it seemed that a lot of human faces flickered around everywhere, only without eyes - instead of them, terrible, deep black depressions. "Eyes here! Eyes!" exclaimed Coppelius in a deaf and menacing voice" (2, 294). Throughout the story, the author continuously fixes attention on the eyes of the characters: Coppelius' "greenish cat's eyes", Clara's "bright eyes", Olympia's "motionless and dead" eyes; Coppelius threatens Nathanael's eyes, etc.

What does this symbolic image mean? He is significant. The eyes are a mirror of the soul and an organ of contemplation of the world, an intermediary in its perception. Ultimately, it is a symbol of the very existence of man as a spiritual being. In Hoffmann's story, it is human spirituality that is under threat of destruction from some destructive force.

This destructive force, perceived by the consciousness of the hero as a fate, in the objective course of the story, is the work of human hands. Hoffmann emphasizes in it an artificial, mechanical beginning. Only thanks to Coppola's instrument could Nathanael mistake the doll for a girl and fall in love with her. With the help of mechanics, it is possible to make not only a telescope, but also to fabricate a complete likeness of a person. The fashionable novelty of that time - the machine gun - seemed to the writer a sign of the times. In the story "Automata" from the cycle "The Serapion Brothers", Ludwig admits: "The attempts of mechanics to imitate our organs as deftly as possible, with the help of which we extract sounds, are tantamount to me declaring war on the spiritual principle..." (4, part 1, 314 ). He speaks of the feeling of horror and disgust evoked in him by contact with an imitation of a person: “When I see the frozen, dead, glassy eyes directed at me, I am tempted to throw Macbeth’s words to them: “Your eyes are blind, which you do not take off from me » (4, part 1, 300)

Mechanization is anti-natural. It is fraught with the destruction of the individual. At the same time, it is a social phenomenon. In the world where Hoffmann's heroes live, the boundary between the animate and the inanimate, the living and the mechanical is indistinguishable. And not just for Nathanael. Olympia was in society, and almost no one noticed that she was a doll. After its exposure, as is known, people “were instilled with a disgusting distrust of human faces. Many lovers, in order to make absolutely sure that they were not captivated by a wooden doll, demanded from their beloved that they sing slightly out of tune and dance out of time, so that when they were read aloud, they knitted, embroidered, played with a lap dog ... » (2, 320).

If the measure of humanity is determined by such signs, then the doll really differs little from people. Nathanael is surrounded by a dead world, and he was able to take it for a living one only by using Coppola's pipe, that is, by adopting a "mechanical" look. And he paid dearly for it. In this world, a person with a fine mental organization is destined for madness and death. For him, the tragic discovery was what others were used to. His guilt is in an attempt to accept this world as real, to reconcile with it, to grow into it.

Hoffmann's story is not about the madness of a young dreamer, but about the madness of existing forms of life, marked by a deep discrepancy with the thoughts and aspirations of an artistic nature. However, in this denial of the surrounding world lies another, dialectical idea that it is the only reality. Its complete disregard, as well as its acceptance, lead to collapse.

Hoffmann destroys the romantic monologism by intricately intertwining narrative perspectives. The combination of subjective and non-subjective forms of the author's consciousness contains the complexity of the author's thought. For all its ambiguity, it is not ambivalent. The high spiritual values ​​in The Sandman are not questioned, although the objective difficulties of their implementation are pointed out. The dialogue of the artist with reality, reflected in the structure of the work, betrays the complication of romantic thought in the process of development of the whole movement. Noting the difference between Hoffmann and his predecessors, A.V. Karelsky notes: “For orthodox romantics, genius is something self-sufficient, requiring no substantiation and justification. Hoffmann, on the other hand, does not so much oppose the creative life to the prose life as he compares them, analyzes the artistic consciousness in indispensable correlation with life” 15 .

Notes.

1 See Korman B. O. Lyrics and realism. - Irkutsk, 1986. - S. 34.

2 Bakhtin M. M. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. - M., 1972. - S. 343.

3 Korman B. O. Creative method and subjective organization of the work // Literary work as a whole and problems of its analysis. - Kemerovo, 1979. - S. 16-17.

4 Svitelsky V. A. The problem of the unity of the artistic world and the author's beginning in Dostoevsky's novel // The problem of the author in fiction. - Issue. I. - Izhevsk, 1974. - S. 185.

5 Kohn L. Vieldeutige Welt. Studien zur Struktur der Erzahlungen E. T. A. Hoffmanns und zur Entwicklung seines Werkes. - Tübingen, 1966. - S. 92.

6 Hoffman E.T.A. Sobr. cit.: In 6 volumes - M. 1994. - V. 2. - P. 295. Further references to the works of Hoffmann are given according to this edition, indicating the volume and pages in the text.

7 Kayser W. Das Groteske in Malerei und Dichtung. - Munchen, 1960. - S. 59.

8 Kohn L. Op. cit. — S. 107.

9 Mirimsky I. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffman // Hoffman E. T. A. Selected works: In 3 volumes - M., 1962. - T. 1. - P. 27-28.

10 Nipperdey O. Wahnsinsfiguren bei E. T. A. Hoffmann. - Koln, 1957. - S. 13.

11 Schelling F. W. J. Samtliche Werke. Abth I. - Stuttgart-Augsburg (o. J.). - Bd 7. - S. 478.

12 Mirimsky I. Decree. op. - S. 28.

13 Hoffmann E. T. A. Samtliche Werke. Hrsg. v. Carl Georg von Maassen. - München-Leipzig, 1908. - Bd 3. - S. 385-386.

14 Korff H. A. Geist der Goethezeit. - Leipzig, 1958. - T. IV. — S. 454.

15 Karelsky A. V. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffman // Hoffman E. T. A. Sobr. cit.: In 6 vols. - M., 1991. - T. 1. - S. 19.

E. Hoffmann is one of the most prominent representatives of the era of German romanticism. His work is very multifaceted: in addition to literary activity He composed music and painted. At the same time, his writings are distinguished by originality, which makes his fairy tales completely different from the traditional works of romantics of the era under study. Therefore, this writer takes special place in the history of world literature.

Briefly about the author

He was born in the family of a simple lawyer and after graduation he chose the same profession for himself. However, study and the subsequent public service weighed heavily on him, and he tried to make a living from art, but without success. The situation improved somewhat after the writer received a small inheritance. Despite the difficulties, he did not stop writing, but his works did not resonate with German critics and readers. At the same time, his works were popular in other Western European countries, in Russia, as well as in the USA.

Creation

Hoffmann's romance is very specific and differs from what the representatives of this trend wrote. Most of the authors approached the depicted objects and characters very seriously, glorifying the idea of ​​absolute freedom. But Ernst Amadeus abandoned these attitudes, introducing elements of sharp satire into his narrative. In addition, the author abandoned the utopian ideals of freedom, concentrating solely on the characters of his characters. Hoffmann's tales are fantastic and with an admixture of horror, but, nevertheless, they do not scare so much as teach. The author's humor is also very specific. The writer in a caustic and very ironic form ridicules the vices of contemporary society, for which, perhaps, his works were not very popular in his homeland. But in our country, he received recognition. Belinsky called him the greatest poet, and Dostoevsky was seriously carried away by his creations, moreover, Hoffmann's tales were reflected in the novelist's writings.

Peculiarities

A characteristic feature of the writer's works was the close interweaving of reality and fantasy. But the latter is not perceived by the author as something out of the ordinary: on the contrary, he portrays it as something taken for granted, as the other side of everyday human existence. His characters seem to live a double life: in the ordinary world and in a fairy-tale setting. An example of such a fairy tale is Hoffmann's short story "The Sandman". This is one of his most popular works, which has become the hallmark of the author. The work is based on folk legends, but at the same time, it reflects the realities of the era contemporary to the author. The short story proved to be so popular that its motifs are used in popular culture. One of the main storylines even became an integral part of the libretto of the famous French opera.

Composition

Of particular interest is the question of how he built his narrative in the Summary(“The Sandman” in this respect differs from other fairy tales), unfortunately, will not convey all the originality of the structure of the text. And she is very unusual. The author, as if not knowing how to tell this unusual story to his reader, chooses a very interesting form of narration. The tale begins with the main character's correspondence with his friend Lothar and his fiancee Clara. After retelling the content of the letters, the writer went directly to the climax of the action and its denouement. Such a composition allows you to better understand the character of the hero, who fell into madness and ended his life tragically. In the letters, the reader gets acquainted with the complex and extremely contradictory inner world Nathaniel, who is in terrible disarray due to childhood trauma: nightmares haunt him, and even all the attempts of the bride to distract him from heavy thoughts are in vain. In the second part of the story, the reader sees the hero as if from the outside, already knowing about his mental suffering. But now we see their external terrible manifestation, which leads to tragedy.

tie

In the analyzed work, Hoffmann showed himself to be one of the best masters of human psychology in world literature. Summary (“The Sandman” is distinguished by the dramatic and complex plot, despite the apparent simplicity of the structure), the tale should begin with a mention of the correspondence of friends, from which we learn its background. Nathaniel tells a friend scary story that happened to him in childhood. The nanny frightened him with a fairy tale about a sandman who supposedly punishes those children who do not want to go to bed. The memory of this was so deeply embedded in his memory that the child's imagination was in some way crippled. The final blow to the child's psyche was dealt after one terrible incident, which he witnessed.

In the work under consideration, Hoffmann showed himself to be a master of terrible fiction. The summary (“The Sandman” is a rather gloomy short story) of the work is not able to convey all the intensity of passions and the complex internal struggle of the main character, the text should be read in full. But since we are limited by the scope of the article, we will manage with an abbreviated retelling. Nathaniel witnessed the horrific death of his father, who was experimenting on a strange professor who visited their home. One evening, the boy spied how this stranger was experimenting with his eyes, and after the experiment, his father tragically died. The child is convinced that the professor is the killer and vows revenge.

Plot development

In the analyzed essay, Hoffmann proved his mastery in depicting human psychology. Summary (“The Sandman” is a work with deep philosophical overtones, despite the presence of fantastic elements), the fairy tale is distinguished by dynamism due to the rapid development of events and, at the same time, reliability in the depiction of characters. In the next letter, Nathaniel tells how he met an unusual physics teacher and began to study with him. There he met a mechanic who was very similar to the professor who killed his father. The hero was preparing to take revenge, but the bride, in a response letter, persuaded him to give up gloomy thoughts that could drive him crazy. After some time, the hero reported that he was mistaken: the mechanic just looked like a professor, and in order to somehow appease him, the hero bought a telescope from him, through which he began to observe the daughter of his teacher, Olympia, who turned out to be very beautiful girl. In vain, Nathaniel's friends assured him that she was very strange and resembled a mechanical doll (and it turned out later): the hero did not want to hear anything and, forgetting about his bride, decided to propose to Olympia.

Further developments

Hoffmann was one of the most controversial storytellers. The "Sandman", the analysis of which is the subject of this review, is the best confirmation of this. The gloomy coloring of the work is felt especially strongly as we approach the denouement. The hero was dissatisfied with Clara, who turned out to be a simple and sincere girl, not subject to superstitious fears and false impressions. Nathaniel read his dark stories to her, but she did not perceive them, which he took for indifference and stupidity, while Olympia listened to the young man, not distracted by anything. Deciding to propose to her, the young man came to her father's house, but to his horror he found a terrible picture: a teacher with a terrible professor broke the doll. Nathaniel went mad from what he saw.

The character of the hero and the denouement

The author focuses on the image of the main character, a very impressionable young man who could not get rid of his childhood obsession. Despite his love for Clara, a simple and sincere girl, he nevertheless succumbed to his superstitious fears, which led him to madness. Unfortunately, the good inclinations in him were destroyed by a broken psyche, which neither Clara's love nor the friendship of her brother Lothair could heal. In the finale, the hero returns home and, after a temporary improvement in well-being, spends time with his bride. But one day he looks in again and goes crazy again. Nearly killing Clara, he commits suicide. So, the writer's popular fairy tale is "The Sandman". Hoffman, whose reviews of the book, despite all the tragedy, turned out to be very positive, entered world literature precisely as the creator of works with unusual color and gloomy coloring, but with specific humor, which was noticed by many readers and critics.

Sandman (Sandman)- one of the fairly well-known supervillains in the Marvel universe, who eventually became a kind of ally of Spider-Man. He first appeared in comics in 1963. It's hard to imagine, but for the first time Spider-Man defeated him with a vacuum cleaner. Since then, the Sandman has repeatedly returned, extricating himself from seemingly unimaginable situations.

The Sandman's real name is William Baker, although he used pseudonyms such as "Flint Marco" and "Sylvester Mann" in his time. He has the ability to turn his body into sand, control its shape and size, and add extra sand to his body. The Sandman can also change the density of his body, making it just a cloud of sand, or hard like sandstone. His favorite tactic is turning his hands into weapons like hammers or spiked balls, as well as feints by sucking the enemy into the sand.

The future Sandman from childhood loved to visit the beaches and build sand castles. True, he did not do this very often - his father was in prison, and his mother preferred to spend time with a bottle, and not with her son. The guy began to improve himself early - to learn self-defense, to learn to fight back against hooligans. Then he became a bully himself. The bully who had previously bullied William became his friend and accomplice. William was nicknamed Flint to sound cooler. And he took the surname “Marco” when he met his father in prison. Flint was embarrassed to admit his relationship to his dad and chose to work with him as an accomplice, rather than as a son.

It is not known for certain how Flint got his powers. According to one version, while escaping from prison, he wandered into a nuclear bomb test site - and he was covered. According to another, he climbed to rest in a cave where radioactive waste was stored - and he was covered. One way or another, having received the ability, Flint became a supervillain. He repeatedly tried to defeat Spider-Man, but was defeated each time, often with the help of water, which significantly weakens him.

The Sandman was a pretty strong supervillain - it happened that he opposed the whole team of the Avengers on an equal footing. However, immediately after that, he lost to the Spider, who pushed Flint into the aircraft's turbine and dispelled it over the city. The Sandman subsequently became one of the original members of the Sinister Six. (Sinister Six), and another team, the Frightful Four (Frightful Four), enemies of the Fantastic Four. He also collaborated with Blastaar, the conqueror from the Negative Zone, and Iron Man's enemy the Mandarin.

In the battle with the Hulk, Sandman fell into a "crusher" and turned into glass. The Hulk did not break it - he regretted it. Very carefully, trying not to push anyone, Flint got to his accomplice, the scientist Sorcerer, and he healed him. Together with the Four, he continued to put a spoke in the wheels of the Four and the Spider. After numerous battles and setbacks, Flint decided to take a break from super-villainy, hit on one girl, but he had a competitor - Hydroman, a water man. As a result, as a result of an accident, sand and water merged into one, and the two criminals turned into a practically brainless and rather harmless Mud Thing. When they were separated, the Sandman decided to give up villainy altogether.

Flint befriended (a stone hulk from the Four) and really gave up on crime. However, it was not easy to give up the hooligan lifestyle, and although the Sandman stopped actively robbing banks and trying to kill certain heroes, he still took by force what was not given to him when he asked for good things. However, albeit gradually, but he still switched to the “bright side of the force”. Sandman helped the mercenary Silver Sable hunt criminals around the world, and was accepted on probation into the Avengers team. He was recognized as a full-fledged Avenger, but due to his own stupidity he left the team, believing that he did not succeed in becoming kind, and was about to return to crime.

However, having thought with his sandy brain and deciding not to give up, Flint again joined Sable and continued to catch criminals in order to prove to the world (and first of all to himself) that the Sandman can be a hero. At that time, Flint was turned to glass by Doctor Octopus and smashed, but Flint gathered himself, turning into a humanoid pile of glass shards, and beat Octopus to a pulp. He was stopped by the thought that heroes don't do that. Spidey then helped Flint return to his usual form. Since then, Flint has become a real hero - he repeatedly began to doubt himself, but each time he came to the conclusion that the life of a hero is cooler. And people began to respect him, and not just fear and hate him.

Sandman returned to crime suddenly - the Wizard, his former ally, believed that in the role of a hero, Flint was burying his talents. He kidnapped Flint and built a special device in order to bring back the long dormant evil personality of the Sandman to the surface. And it worked. Flint questioned the wisdom of heroism and began stealing, robbing, and attacking heroes again. And then a very strange adventure happened to him - the personality of the Sandman doubled many times.

The Sandman devoured several stoned pop stars, turned into a caricature version of himself, and then exploded - and split into several fragments of his personality. Dumb-headed kingpin Conscience, innocent child Billy, feisty bandit Flint Marko - three personalities could not get along. And if Conscience and the Kid were harmless guys, then Flint, no longer restrained by their presence, went to rage. Things got even worse when Flint's female nature was found and invited everyone to become one again. Flint, Baby (who became the embodiment of uncertainty) and Female Nature teamed up, and Conscience decided to wait it out for now. The empowered Sandman continued to rage with no conscience. Flint's conscience died sadly from such a turn.

Returning to a life of crime, Flint, however, was not without warm feelings. He fell in love with a woman who was addicted to captive supervillains and became practically a new father to her little daughter. Subsequently, when many villains became heroes under the influence of a polarity-reversing spell (), Sandman also decided to step on the side of good again. Unlike others, it is voluntary. But ordinary people no longer believed him.

The Sandman appeared in almost all the Spider-Man animated series, except for the beloved animated series of the 90s, where he did not make it, since at that time the film about Spider-Man from director James Cameron was supposed to come out, and Flint was supposed to be there one of the villains. Did not happen. Sandman also became one of the villains in the third Spider-Man film.

One of the most famous novels by E.T.A. Hoffmann was born in November 1815. The first edition of the work was somewhat different from the second, sent on November 24 to the publisher Georg Reimer and included in the collection Night Tales in 1817: in it, the diabolical influence of Coppelius had a more comprehensive, physical nature and concerned not only the main character - Nathanael, but also his beloved - Clara, who at first went blind from the touch of an old lawyer, and then died. Leaving Coppelius to act only on the soul of Nathanael, Hoffmann gave the short story more psychological and, at the same time, an inexplicable mysticism of what is happening.

The title of the work is connected with the Western European folklore sandman image: in the interpretation of Nathanael's mother - this is a beautiful metaphor, with which she explains the process of "closing her eyes" before going to bed; in the understanding of the old nanny, this is a real evil creature that throws sand into the eyes of naughty children, so that they become filled with blood, after which it hides them (children) in a bag and takes them to the moon, to an owl's nest, to their offspring, who have crooked beaks completely deprive children of sight. Nathanael takes the old woman's story as truth from her childhood. He begins to get involved in everything wonderful and mysterious. Over time, the hero realizes that the Sandman is not quite what they say about him, and ceases to associate his childhood fears with an unknown character who comes to his father at nine o'clock in the evening.

Growing up Nathanael allows him to go beyond the mystical perception of the world, but shows his unpreparedness to comprehend the real world: at the age of ten, the boy becomes a witness to strange actions carried out by his father and the old lawyer Coppelius, is mortally frightened of the latter and spends several weeks in a fever. The new children's fears are explained (by the hero, author, Clara) by the real rejection of the vile guest, who has both a terrible appearance and terrible manners, one of which is the desire to deliberately touch children's sweets, knowing that after that the kids will not be able to touch them. Actions incomprehensible to Nathaniel (later Clara will find out from a friend of the pharmacist that it was about alchemy) and the transformation of the father during them, in whose face something satanic appears, making him look like Coppelius, are associated in the mind of the protagonist with an attack on him by an old lawyer and death father - everything that can create the most nightmarish life impressions in a person.

From the point of view of psychology, Nathanael, who received a severe psychological trauma, bears its devastating effect throughout his youth (time of study in Georgia). From the standpoint of plot events, everything looks a little different, but, as often happens with Hoffmann, it can have at least two interpretations: fantastic and real.

The second meeting between Nathanael and Coppelius takes place outside the walls of his native home. The old lawyer appears to the hero at the beginning as a seller of barometers, and then as a Piedmontese mechanic Coppola, who sells a variety of optical instruments (lorgnettes, glasses, spyglasses, etc.). Face to face with a diabolical creature, Nathanael is horrified and begins to anticipate his imminent death. At first, he holds on thanks to Clara, who considers his fears to be empty nonsense, Lothar, who offers not to let unnecessary emotions into his soul, Professor Spalanzani, who confirms Coppola's Italian origin, and hence the lack of communication between him and the German Coppelius. Nathanael even takes a step towards Coppola, who puts a pocket spyglass in his hands, which has become another bridge on the way to final death.

The rapprochement between Nathanael and Olympia begins with a very real event - a fire that happened in the house where the main character rented a room. What served as the basis for the disaster is not indicated in the short story. It is only known that the student's friends managed to save his books and manuscripts and remove new room, just opposite the windows of Professor Spalanzani. So Nathanael had a wonderful, but explained by a real reason, the opportunity to see the beautiful Olympia. Coppola's spyglass brought the object of interest to the student closer, but, contrary to the real properties of the object, showed an automatic mechanism in the form of a living person. The more Nathanael looked at Olympia through the diabolical device, the more he fell in love with her. For some three days, everyone who was dear to him left the heart of the young man - Clara, mother, Lothar. Nathanael even almost had a fight with his best friend Sigmund, who dared to emphasize the mechanical nature of Olympia's behavior - her measured tread, her even, beautiful voice.

Nathanael's passionate love for Olympia is a classic expression of the diabolical blinding of man. Despite the fact that the young man periodically catches himself on the coldness of the hands and lips of his beloved, on her laconicism, on her strange behavior, he still cannot retreat from his feeling, which in fact is nothing more than selfishness. In a sense, Nathanael falls in love with the soulless automaton because of his own nature: he likes to be listened to without interruption; when they are delighted with everything he said; when he sees in a loved one a reflection of his own soul and nothing more.

Cheerful, cheerful, reasonable Clara seems to Nathanael, immersed in mystical moods, cold, soulless, who does not understand him special. As soon as the hero comes to his senses, the real lover again becomes close to his heart. Clara's fate is beautiful: the girl survives the attempt on life, madness and the death of Nathanael, but finds the strength to get married and live in happiness and contentment with her husband and two sons. Main character cannot stand the madness and dies.

Automaton motif, expressed in a terrible conclusion about the indistinguishability of the mechanical / dead from the natural / spiritual, is closely connected in the short story with symbolically the eye, which are a reflection of both the soul of a person and his life. As a child, Nathanael is afraid for his eyes (Sandman, Coppelius); in his youth, he falls in love with Olympia's artificial eyes. Attacks of insanity visit the hero every time there is a danger of loss of vision (Coppelius's threats to rip out his eyes, pluck out Olympia's eyes, use of Coppola's spyglass).

Romanticism is an era of incredible expansion of human consciousness. It is then that a person believes that he can resist fate, control his passions, heed the voice of Providence. European romanticism originates in Germany, where it experiences three periods: Jena, Heidelberg and Berlin. The last and later of them is the work of one of the most brilliant German writers of the nineteenth century, E.-T.-A. Hoffmann. Most of all, this author is known for his fairy tale short stories, one of which "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" became the basis for the libretto of the famous ballet P.I. Tchaikovsky. Hoffmann's works combine the optimism and pessimism of late romanticism, the spirituality and mechanization of the world. To be or to seem? Listen to reality or succumb to illusions? Get bogged down in a routine or strive with your soul in upper world? Such questions are put by the creator before his heroes.

The Sandman is included in one of two volumes of a collection of short stories published in 1817, it is called Night Studies. Why nightly? Firstly, perhaps because these works reveal the mystical, dark and secret side of the human soul. Secondly, if we turn to the manuscripts, then on the pages of the first edition of The Sandman one can see the note "November 16, 1815, one in the morning." That is, it is literally a night creation. A week later, Hoffmann creates a second version of the novel and sends it to Berlin, to the publisher Georg Reimer. The latest edition contains significant changes. So, in the final version, there is no episode where Coppelius touches Nathanael's sister, as a result of which she loses her sight and loses her life. The last episode of the early version is fundamentally different from the final version. The action also takes place on the town hall tower, but Coppelius demanded that Nathanael push Clara down and then follow her.

What is the novel about?

From the preface, in the form of Nathanael's correspondence with his beloved Clara and her brother, we learn how the Sandman came into being. One of characteristic features of Hoffmann's tales is that any seemingly fantastic phenomenon is rational explanation. Maybe the Sandman is the evil alchemist Coppelius, who made the protagonist and his family suffer, or maybe it's just a feeling of "sand in the eyes" that occurs when the eyes are overtired before going to bed.

Nathanael left native city for the sake of doing science in G. Here he meets the seller of barometers Coppola, in whom he recognizes the same Coppelius - the Sandman. After several meetings with the seller, the hero buys a small telescope from him, through which he watches Olympia, the daughter of the physics professor Spalanzani. The student meets her and her, as he believes, father, spends evenings with them. After much torment and doubt, carried away by the correctness and impeccability of the girl, the young man falls in love with her and decides to marry her.

Full of enthusiastic feelings, having come to her father's house with a marriage proposal, the young man sees a quarrel between Spalanzani and Coppola, as a result of which the mechanical doll Olympia was deprived of its eyes. Nathanael was not prepared for such a shock. After this incident, he woke up in his house, surrounded by friends and Clara. The health of the poor young man is being restored, it seems that the ending can be happy. However, during the walk, Nathanael and Clara climb the tower of the town hall, where the young man recalls the pocket spyglass. Looking into it, he sees again the dead, rolling eyes of Olympia, the old Coppelius. Unable to withstand this test, he rushes down.

Main characters and their characteristics

1. The protagonist of the work is Nathanael, a student from a poor family. Already from his first letters it follows that this young man from childhood was very impressionable and receptive. He does not agree to accept the world as simple and ordinary as it seems to many. Hoffmann, not without irony, depicts the young man's romantic inspiration. Imagining something that is not in reality, the character could not distinguish the true feelings of a living person from the monotonous actions of a mechanical doll. Dreams took possession of him so much that even, it would seem, looking into the eyes of reality, he could not come to terms with it.
2. Beloved of Nathanael Clara, a kind and sensible girl. The poetic views of her friend are alien to her, but he unfairly accused the girl of misunderstanding and insensitivity: only she was able to realize the danger that such a far-reaching fantasy poses. The heroine is opposed to the image of Olympia, the representative of the world of automata. To her, if I may say so, everything human was alien. Impeccable in every movement, in every note, unable to object or make an awkward gesture, she won the heart of the young man. But the revelation of the truth drove him crazy.
3. The most controversial character is Coppelius. If you look at the action of the novel through the eyes of Nathanael, then this hero appears before us in three guises: the lawyer Coppelius, the salesman Coppola and, of course, the Sandman himself. Judging, like Clara, we will conclude that Coppola and Coppelius are just coinciding names of different personalities, and the Sandman remained in children's fairy tales.

What's the point?

The idea of ​​​​creating a fantastic novel about a wind-up doll and a young man who fell in love with her came from Hoffmann not by chance. In the 18-19 centuries. in Europe, demonstrations of various mechanisms were very popular, for example, Vaucanson's automata, which imitated human activity. Struck by the plausibility of such inventions, the author creates his "Sandman.

The motif of the automaton appears in the tale even before Nathanael's acquaintance with Olympia. "You soulless, damn automaton!" - such an angry reproach allows the young man to Clara when she refuses to approve his poems. The hero perceives the doll as the only creature capable of understanding him. This is how two opposing worlds interpenetrate.

Another cross-cutting motif of The Sandman is the eyes. It is the “bright eyes” Clerchen recalls Nathanael in his letter to Lothar, the Sandman encroaches on the eyes, Coppelius also wanted to encroach on them when he found the hero in his father’s office. What primarily reflects the soul of a person attracted the attention of a young man in a doll of Olympia. It seemed to him that her eyes "emit a moist moonlight." Seeing them dead, thrown on the floor, the character could not come to terms with the fact that his love is a clockwork doll.

Romanticism in the novel

It is quite possible to imagine the existence of Hoffmann's fairy tales outside the context of romanticism, but the influence of the ideas of this era cannot be excluded.

Philosophical reasoning of Kant and Hegel about the cognizability of life and being developed a tendency among romantics to believe that there is more than one world. This is how the idea of ​​dual worlds was born, which Hoffmann embodies in his own way in The Sandman. It is not the fantasy heavenly and mortal earthly worlds that collide here, as can be found in the early romantics, but the world of impeccable automata and people who are alive, feeling and capable of making mistakes.

Another integral component of romanticism is the image of the poet. Again, in the novel under consideration, this is not a hero endowed with a special ability to hear a voice from above, not a conductor between people and heaven, as was the case with early romantics, for example, Novalis. The image of Nathanael was created by Hoffmann with a considerable amount of irony, and any fantasy of a misunderstood poet can be rationally explained.

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