Children's fairy tales online. "The Sandman", an artistic analysis of Hoffmann's novella

As a child, Nathaniel's mother would put him to bed with the words: "The Sandman is coming, I see it." Even though she simply meant that his eyes were sleepy, as if there was sand in them, Nathaniel was frightened by this expression. One day he asked Natty, the old woman who took care of his little sister, to describe the Sandman. She said that if the children do not want to sleep, he comes and takes out their eyes and feeds them to his children.

Every evening Nathaniel heard the footsteps of Coppelius, a sadistic man who often came to his father, they conducted chemical experiments. During such an experiment, an explosion occurs, and Nathaniel's father dies, and Coppelius disappears. After which, Nathaniel thinks that Coppelius is the Sandman.

Shortly after this, a distant relative dies, leaving two orphans named Clara and Lothar. Nathaniel's mother takes them in with her. When Nathaniel and Clara grow up, they get engaged.

At the university, Nathaniel meets Coppola. He thinks Coppola is actually the same evil man from his childhood. Clara and Lothar try to convince him that these are his childhood delusions. However, he attacks Clara when she says his story is madness.

Nathaniel returns to the university and meets the daughter of one of his professors, a beautiful but strange girl named Olympia. He is so carried away by her that he seems to forget about Coppelius, Coppola, and even Clara. However, one day he hears a noise and sees the professor and Coppola arguing about who came up with which part of Olympia; Nathaniel realizes that Olympia was just a doll all this time.

He returns home and seems to come to his senses, but it all ends with Nathaniel jumping from the parapet and falling to his death in front of Coppelius, and Clara marries someone else and continues to live happily.

Picture or drawing of Sandman

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Nathaniel writes to his friend, his fiancee's brother, Lothar. In the letter, the young man talks about his childhood fear of the Sandman, who comes for children who do not want to go to bed.

As a child, Nathaniel and his sisters gathered in the living room in the evenings, and their father told them interesting stories. At nine in the evening, mother said that the Sandman would come soon, hurriedly took the children to bed, and soon slow, heavy steps were heard on the stairs. Nathaniel was sure that the terrible Sandman was coming to his father, although his mother denied it.

Nathaniel's old nanny said that the Sandman takes children's eyes and feeds them to his owl-beaked children, who live in a nest made on the moon. After this story, Nathaniel began to have nightmares.

This went on for many years, but I still could not get used to this ominous ghost, and the image of the terrible sandman did not fade in my imagination.

One day, Nathaniel decided to see the Sandman and after nine in the evening hid in his father’s room. The sandman turned out to be lawyer Coppelius, who often dined with them. He was an extremely nasty person, the children and their mother feared and hated him, and their father treated Coppelius with great respect.

Nathaniel was numb with fear, and the lawyer and father opened the closet doors, behind which there was a deep alcove with a small brazier, lit a fire and began to forge something. In a dull voice, Coppelius ordered his eyes to be given, and Nathaniel, overcome with horror, fell out of his hiding place.

The lawyer grabbed the boy, intending to use his eyes in his experiments, but the father begged him to spare his son. Then Coppelius began to twist and bend the child's arms and legs, wanting to study their mechanism. Nathaniel lost consciousness and lay in a fever for many weeks.

Copelius disappeared from the city, but a year later he reappeared at Nathaniel's house and began alchemical experiments. In the dead of night there was an explosion, the father was killed, and the police began to look for Coppelius, and he disappeared.

Shortly before writing the letter, already as a student, Nathaniel saw the Sandman again - he came to him under the guise of a barometer seller, Piedmontese mechanic Giuseppe Coppola, but was very similar to Coppelius. The young man decided to meet him and avenge his father's death.

Clara accidentally reads a letter addressed to her brother Lothar and tries to prove to her fiancé Nathanael that all this is just a fantasy that he takes for reality.

If there is a dark force that so hostilely and insidiously places threads on our soul, with which it then completely entangles us, ‹…› then it must lie within ourselves.

In his reply letter, Nathaniel laughs at his fiancée's sanity and asks his friend not to let her read his letters anymore. Now Nathaniel is sure: Giuseppe Coppola is not lawyer Coppelius at all. He was convinced of this by physics professor Spalanzani, whose lectures the young man began to attend. The scientist has known Coppola for many years and is sure that he is a native Piedmontese. Nathaniel also mentions the professor’s mysterious daughter, Olympia, an incredibly beautiful girl whom Spalanzani hides from prying eyes.

These letters fall into the hands of the narrator. Based on them, he describes the further fate of Nathaniel. The narrator reports that after the death of his father, Nathaniel’s mother took the orphaned children of a distant relative, Lothar and Clara, into the house. Soon Lothar became the young man's best friend, and Clara became his lover and bride. After the engagement, Nathaniel went to study in another city, from where he wrote his letters.

After the last letter, Nathaniel interrupted his studies and came to his bride. Clara discovered that her lover had changed a lot - he had become gloomy, brooding, full of mystical forebodings.

Every person who considers himself free is actually serving a terrible game of dark forces, and it is useless to fight this; it is better to humbly submit to the will of fate.

Nathaniel began to write strange poems that irritated and angered the sensible and intelligent Clara. The young man began to consider the bride cold and insensitive, unable to understand his poetic nature.

One day, Nathaniel wrote a particularly creepy poem. It scared Clara, and the girl asked to burn it. The offended young man brought the bride to tears, for which Lothar challenged him to a duel. Clara found out about this and hurried to the place of the duel, where complete reconciliation took place.

Nathaniel returned to his studies almost the same. When he arrived, he was surprised to find that the house where he rented an apartment had burned down. Friends managed to save his things and rented a room for him opposite Professor Spalanzani’s apartment. Nathaniel could see Olympia's room - the girl sat motionless for hours, stroking in front of her.

One evening Coppola came to Nathaniel again and, laughing nastily, sold him a spyglass with surprisingly good lenses. The young man took a better look at Olivia and was amazed at her perfection. For days he looked at Olivia, until Spalanzani ordered the windows in his daughter’s room to be curtained.

Soon Spalanzani organized a big ball, at which Nathaniel met Olivia and fell madly in love with the girl, forgetting about his bride. He did not notice that Olivia hardly spoke, her hands were cold, and her movements were like those of a mechanical doll, although the girl made a repulsive impression on the other students. In vain did Sigmund, Nathaniel's best friend, try to reason with him - the young man did not want to listen to anything.

After the ball, the professor allowed Nathaniel to visit Olivia.

Never before had he had such a grateful listener. She ‹…› sat motionless, fixing her motionless gaze into the eyes of her lover, and this gaze became more and more fiery and lively.

The young man was on his way to propose to Olivia when he heard a noise in Spalanzani’s office and found the professor and the terrible Coppelius there. They quarreled and snatched the motionless female figure from each other. It was Olivia, deprived of eyes.

It turns out that Olympia is not actually a person, but an automaton invented by a professor and a lawyer. Coppelius snatched the doll from the professor and fled, and Spalanzani stated that Olivia's eyes were stolen from Nathaniel. Madness took possession of the young man, and he ended up in a madhouse.

Due to the ensuing scandal, Spalanzini left the university. Nathaniel recovered and returned to Clara. Soon Nathaniel's family received a good inheritance, and the lovers decided to get married.

Walking around the city one day, Nathaniel and Clara decided to climb the high tower of the town hall. Examining the surroundings from above, Clara pointed out something small to the groom, he took out Coppola’s telescope, looked into it, and was again overcome by madness.

Suddenly streams of fire poured from his wandering eyes, he howled like a hunted animal, jumped high and, laughing terribly, screamed in a piercing voice.

Nathaniel tried to throw Clara down, but she managed to grab the railing. Lothar, waiting near the town hall, heard the screams, rushed to the rescue and managed to save his sister. Meanwhile, a crowd had gathered in the square, in which the mad Nathaniel noticed Coppelius, who had just returned to the city. Screaming wildly, the young man jumped down and smashed his head on the pavement, and the lawyer disappeared again.

Clara moved to a remote area, got married, gave birth to two sons and found family happiness, “which Nathanael with his eternal mental discord could never have given her.”

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Summary of “The Sandman” by Hoffmann

"Sandman"

In The Sandman, the problem of social doubles is posed much more acutely. The clockwork doll Olympia is precisely the accumulation of all possible cliches that society needs to recognize a person, and nothing more. Society, it turns out, does not need a human soul, does not need individuality, a mechanical doll is quite enough. And here this problem also intersects with the problem of egoism - no one needs human opinions and thoughts - they need to be listened to, recognized and agreed, and that’s enough.

Let us turn to the work of Berkovsky: “Hoffmann loved to laugh at what conveniences the automaton man brings into the life of his environment. Immediately all concern for one’s neighbor disappears, there is no concern about what he needs, what he thinks, what he feels...”

The main character is Nathaniel. His childhood friend Clara.

A certain triangle - there are two female images around Nathaniel. Clara is more like a friend, she has spiritual beauty, she loves him very devotedly, but she seems to him, to some extent, earthly, too simple. What is better - benefit without beauty or beauty without benefit? Olympia is a typically Hoffmannian motif of a doll, and a doll is an external resemblance of a living thing, devoid of life. Love for a doll leads to madness and suicide.

In the short story “The Sandman,” student Nathaniel could not help but fall in love with a doll named Olympia, which Professor Spallanzani slipped him - she only listens, but does not say anything, does not judge, does not criticize; Nathaniel has great confidence that she approves of his works, which he reads in front of her, that she admires them.

Olympia is a wooden doll, thrust into the society of living people, also living as a human among them, an impostor, a deceiver. Those who accept the lie and are deceived by it suffer retribution - they themselves become infected with its wooden qualities, become stupid, and become fooled, as happened with Nathaniel. However, Nathaniel ended in madness...” In Olympia, Nathanael, like Narcissus, admires only himself, in her he loves his reflection, at the expense of her he satisfies his ambitions. And it doesn’t matter to him whether the doll has a heart.

Doubleness - both Clara and Olympia are Nathaniel's doubles. Clara is a living, bright principle, Olympia is a dark, irrational principle, a gravitation towards absolute perfection.

Nathanael, like Anselm, is a romantic, one of those who are given the ability to see another reality. But his selfishness and fear allow him to see only the road down. His romanticism is turned inward, not outward. This closeness does not allow him to see reality.

Not giving dark forces a place in your soul is the problem that worries Hoffmann, and he increasingly suspects that it is the romantically exalted consciousness that is especially susceptible to this weakness.

Clara, a simple and sensible girl, tries to heal Nathanael in her own way: as soon as he starts reading his poems to her with their “gloomy, boring mysticism,” she knocks down his exaltation with a sly reminder that her coffee can run away. But that is precisely why she is not a decree for him.

But the clockwork doll Olympia, who can sigh languidly and periodically let out “Ah!” when listening to his poems, turns out to be preferable to Nathanael, seems to him like a “soul mate,” and he falls in love with her, not seeing, not understanding that this is just a cunning mechanism, machine.

Hoffmann’s technique in “The Sandman” is interesting - Nathanael calls Clara “...a soulless, damned automaton,” and in Olympia he recognizes the highest harmonious soul. There is a cruel irony in this substitution - Nathanael’s egoism knows no bounds, he loves only himself and is ready to accept only his own reflections into his world.

Olympia is the embodiment of a mockery of society. And this mockery was designed precisely to awaken the conscience of people of the “pious society.” Even from the text it is clear that Hoffmann had a clear hope for at least some positive reaction, although weak.

One of the main symbols that runs through the entire narrative is “eyes”. The gloomy Coppelius, as a child, tries to deprive little Nathanael of his eyes, the Sandman pours sand into the eyes of naughty children, the barometer seller Coppola (a double of Coppelius, an expression of the same dark force) tries to sell Nathanael's eyes and sells a spyglass, Olympia's empty eyes, then bloody eyes dolls that Spalanzani throws into Nathanael's chest, etc. etc. There are many meanings hidden behind this motif, but the main one is this: eyes are a symbol of spiritual vision, true vision. Anyone who has “real eyes” and a lively gaze is able to see the world and perceive its true beauty. But those who are deprived of eyes or have replaced them with artificial ones are doomed to see the world distorted and corrupted. And since the eyes are the windows of the soul, corresponding changes occur in the soul.

Having succumbed to dark forces, Nathanael agrees to change his “eyes” - he buys a spyglass from Coppola. “The mechanical is terrifying when we are directly shown the living, supplanted by the mechanical, when all the claims of the mechanical, all its anger and deception are evident. The old charlatan optician Coppola-Coppelius takes lorgnettes and glasses from his pocket and places them in front of him. He takes out more and more glasses, the whole table is occupied with them, from under the glasses real living eyes sparkle and glow, thousands of eyes; their gaze is convulsive, inflamed, rays red as blood pierce Nathaniel. In this episode, the semantic center of the short story about the sandman is the substitution of mechanical art for the living and original, the usurpation carried out by the mechanical. And he did this due to his egoism, he did not want to see beyond his own nose, as we notice this already in his letters . He wants to recognize only his own vision and no one else’s, so he is initially ready to change his true vision and take the dark path. When he makes his choice, a chilling dying sigh was heard in his room - this sigh meant the spiritual death of Nathanael. He retains the ability to see the hidden world, but only its dark part, the abode of horror, deception and lies.

However, merciful fate gives Nathanael a chance - after terrible events, Clara saves him, he himself calls her an angel, who led him to a bright path. But he can’t resist... When he and Clara go up to the town hall to survey the beauty of nature, he looks into the damned spyglass - then madness completely consumes him. He can no longer look at the world openly; once he has descended into the abyss of horror, he is no longer able to return from there.

The entire novel is a path of the soul to degradation encrypted with symbols. The key to the dark path is selfishness, accompanied by unbelief and doubt. And the well-deserved reward is madness and suicide, as one of the main sins.

"Little Tsakhes"

The fairy tale “Little Tsakhes, nicknamed Zinnober” (1818) opens up to us the endless horizons of Hoffmann’s artistic anthropology. The tale clearly shows Hoffmann's two-worldness in his perception of reality, which is again reflected in the two-dimensional composition of the short story, in the characters and their arrangement.

A person conceals within himself such possibilities that he is sometimes unaware of, and some kind of force and, perhaps, circumstances are needed to awaken in him an awareness of his abilities. By creating a fairy-tale world, Hoffmann seems to place a person in a special environment in which not only the contrasting faces of Good and Evil are revealed, but subtle transitions from one to the other. And in the fairy tale, Hoffmann, on the one hand, in masks and through the masks of Good and Evil, revives the polar principles in man, but on the other hand, the development of the narrative removes this polarization clearly indicated at the beginning of the fairy tale. The author ends his story about the misadventures of Tsakhes with a “happy ending”: Balthazar and Candida lived in a “happy marriage.”

The plot of the story begins with a contrast: the beautiful fairy Rosabelvelde bends over a basket with a little freak - little Tsakhes. The mother of this “tiny werewolf” is sleeping next to the basket: she is tired of carrying a heavy basket and complaining about her unhappy fate. The plot of the story is not only contrasting, but also ironic: how many different troubles will happen because the beautiful fairy then took pity on the ugly child - and gave little Tsakhes the magical gift of golden hairs.

Soon her charms will begin to affect the inhabitants of the “enlightened” principality. And this is how: if there is some handsome man near the ugly baby, then everyone will suddenly begin to admire the beauty of Little Tsakhes, if someone reads his poetry next to him, then they will applaud Zinnober. The violinist will play a concert - everyone will think: this is Tsakhes. If the student passes the exam with flying colors, all the glory will go to Tsakhes. Other people's merits will go to him. And, on the contrary, his ridiculous antics and inarticulate muttering will pass on to others. The golden hairs of the “tiny werewolf” will appropriate and alienate the best properties and achievements of those around him.

It is not surprising that Zinnober soon makes a brilliant career at the court of Prince Barzanuf, the heir of Paphnutius. Whatever Tsakhes mumbles, the prince and his retinue admire: the new rank of Tsakhes, the Order of Tsakhes. So he rises to the rank of Minister of Foreign Affairs, an all-powerful temporary worker. The higher the little freak rises on the social ladder, the clearer the fairy's grotesque play. If such absurdities occur in a rationally structured society, an enlightened state, then what are reason, enlightenment, society, and the state worth? Tsakhes is being assigned more and more ranks - so aren’t these ranks nonsense? Tsakhes is given orders - so why are they better than children's toys? Having performed an insidious trick with Zinnober, the oppressed and expelled fantasy in the person of the fairy cheerfully takes revenge on the common sense and sober mind that oppresses it. She hits them with a paradox, convicts them of inconsistency, makes a diagnosis: common sense is meaningless, reason is reckless.

Why are Zinnober's hairs always golden? This detail reveals a grotesque metonymy.

Little Tsakhes's spell begins to work when he finds himself in front of the mint: the golden hairs metonymically imply the power of money. Having bestowed golden hairs on the freak, the crafty fairy targets a sore spot in “intelligent” civilization - its obsession with gold, mania for hoarding and wastefulness. The crazy magic of gold is such that natural properties, talents, and souls are put into circulation, appropriated and alienated.

However, someone needs to break the spell and overthrow the evil dwarf. The wizard Prosper Alpanus bestows this honor on the dreamy student Balthasar. Why him? Because he understands the music of nature, the music of life.

“The two-dimensionality of the novella is revealed in the contrast between the world of a poetic dream, the fabulous country of Dzhinnistan, and the world of real everyday life, the principality of Prince Barsanuf, in which the novella takes place. Some characters and things lead a dual existence here, as they combine their fabulous magical existence with existence in the real world. Fairy Rosabelverde, who is also the canoness of the Rosenschen shelter for noble maidens, patronizes the disgusting little Tsakhes, rewarding him with three magical golden hairs.

In the same dual capacity as the fairy Rosabelverde, who is also Canoness Rosenschen, appears the good wizard Alpanus, who surrounds himself with various fairy-tale wonders, which the poet and dreamer student Balthazar clearly sees. In his everyday incarnation, only accessible to philistines and sober-minded rationalists, Alpanus is just a doctor, prone, however, to very intricate quirks.

Hoffmann's tale, thus, told us to a lesser extent about the "deeds" of heroes who were polar in their essence, but more about the diversity and many-sidedness of man. Hoffman, as an analyst, showed the reader in an exaggerated form the human condition, their personified separate existence. However, the whole fairy tale is an artistic study of man in general and his consciousness.

"Everyday views of Kota Murr"

The novel “The Everyday Views of the Cat Murr” brought together all of Hoffmann’s creative experience; here all the themes of his previous works are evident.

If the short story “Little Tsakhes” is already marked by a clear shift in emphasis from the world of fantasy to the real world, then this trend was reflected to an even greater extent in the novel “The Everyday Views of Cat Murr, coupled with fragments of the biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler, which accidentally survived in waste paper sheets” (1819- 1821).

The dualism of Hoffman's worldview remains and even deepens in the novel. But it is expressed not through the opposition of the fairy-tale world and the real world, but through the disclosure of real conflicts of the latter, through the general theme of the writer’s work - the artist’s conflict with reality. The world of magical fantasy completely disappears from the pages of the novel, with the exception of some minor details associated with the image of Maester Abraham, and all the author’s attention is focused on the real world, on the conflicts occurring in contemporary Germany, and their artistic understanding is freed from the fairy-tale-fantastic shell. This does not mean, however, that Hoffman becomes a realist, taking the position of determinism of characters and plot development. The principle of romantic convention, the introduction of conflict from the outside, still determines these basic components. In addition, it is enhanced by a number of other details: this is the story of Maester Abraham and the “invisible girl” Chiara with a touch of romantic mystery, and the line of Prince Hector - monk Cyprian - Angela - Abbot Chrysostom with extraordinary adventures, ominous murders, fatal recognitions, as it were moved here from the novel The Devil's Elixir.

The composition of the novel is based on the principle of biplane, the opposition of two antithetical principles, which in their development are skillfully combined by the writer into a single narrative line. A purely formal technique becomes the main ideological and artistic principle for the embodiment of the author's idea, the philosophical understanding of moral, ethical and social categories. The autobiographical narrative of a certain learned cat Murr is interspersed with excerpts from the biography of the composer Johannes Kreisler. Already in the combination of these two ideological and plot plans, not only by their mechanical connection in one book, but also by the plot detail that the owner of the cat Murr, Maester Abraham, is one of the main characters in Kreisler’s biography, there is a deep ironic parody meaning. The dramatic fate of a true artist, a musician, tormented in an atmosphere of petty intrigue, surrounded by high-born nonentities of the chimerical principality of Sieghartsweiler, is contrasted with the existence of the “enlightened” philistine Murr. Moreover, such a contrast is given in simultaneous comparison, for Murr is not only the antipode of Kreisler.

You need to be very clear about the structural features of this novel, emphasized by its composition itself. This structure is unusual for Hoffmann. Outwardly, it may seem that Murr's biography and Kreisler's biography are a repetition of Hoffmann's division of the world into two parts: artists and philistines. But things are more complicated. The two-plane structure is already present in the biography of Kreisler itself (Kreisler and the Court of Irenaeus). What is new here is precisely the Murrah line (the second structure is built on top of the first). Here the cat is trying to appear before the reader as an enthusiast, a dreamer. This idea is very important to understand, because usually students during the exam, hastily leafing through the novel, stubbornly insist that Murr is a philistine, period. In fact, Murr's biography is a parodic mirror of Hoffmann's earlier romantic structure. And both parts exist only in interaction. Without Murr, it would have been another typically Hoffmannian story; without Kreisler, it would have been a wonderful example of satirical, self-exposing irony, which is very common in world literature (something like “The Wise Minnow” by Saltykov-Shchedrin). But Hoffmann here juxtaposes parody with a high romantic style, which gives his irony an absolutely murderous character. Murr is, as it were, the quintessence of philistinism. He considers himself an outstanding personality, a scientist, a poet, a philosopher, and therefore he chronicles his life “for the edification of promising feline youth.” But in reality, Murr is an example of that “harmonic vulgarity” that was so hated by the romantics.

The whole cat-and-dog world in the novel is a satirical parody of the class society of the German states: the “enlightened” philistine burghers, the student unions - Burschenschafts, the police (the yard dog Achilles), the bureaucratic nobility (Spitz), the high aristocracy (the poodle Scaramouche , Badina's Italian greyhound salon).

But Hoffmann’s satire becomes even more acute when he chooses the nobility as its object, encroaching on its upper strata and on those state and political institutions that are associated with this class. Leaving the ducal residence, where he was the court bandmaster, Kreisler ends up with Prince Irenaeus, at his imaginary court. The fact is that once the prince “really ruled over a picturesque landlady near Sieghartsweiler. From the belvedere of his palace, with the help of a telescope, he could survey his entire state from edge to edge... At any moment it was easy for him to check whether Peter’s wheat had grown in the most remote corner of the country, and with the same success to see how carefully his own crops had been cultivated. Hans and Kunz vineyards. The Napoleonic Wars deprived Prince Irenaeus of his possessions: he “dropped his toy state from his pocket during a short promenade to a neighboring country.” But Prince Irenaeus decided to preserve his small court, “turning life into a sweet dream in which he and his retinue lived,” and the good-natured burghers pretended that the false splendor of this ghostly court brought them fame and honor.

Prince Irenaeus is not an exceptional representative for Hoffmann in his spiritual wretchedness; of his class. The entire princely house, starting with the illustrious father Irenaeus, are weak-minded and flawed people. And what is especially important in Hoffmann’s eyes is that the high-ranking nobility, no less than the enlightened philistines from the burgher class, are hopelessly far from art: “It may well turn out that the love of the greats of this world for the arts and sciences is only an integral part of court life. The regulations oblige us to have paintings and listen to music.”

In the arrangement of characters, the scheme of opposition between the poetic world and the world of everyday prose, characteristic of Hoffman’s two-dimensionality, is preserved. The main character of the novel is Johannes Kreisler. In the writer’s work, he is the most complete embodiment of the image of the artist, the “wandering enthusiast.” It is no coincidence that Hoffman gives many autobiographical features to Kreisler in the novel. Kreisler, Master Abraham and the daughter of adviser Bentzon Julia constitute in the work a group of “true musicians” opposing the court of Prince Irenaeus.

Although the novel is not completed, the hopelessness and tragedy of the fate of the conductor, in whose image Hoffmann reflected the irreconcilable conflict of a true artist with the existing social order, becomes clear to the reader.

One of the most famous short stories 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 of “Night Stories” in 1817: in it, the devilish influence of Coppelius had a more comprehensive, physical nature and concerned not only the main character, Nathanael, but also his beloved Clara, who initially became blind from the touch of the old lawyer and then died. Leaving Coppelius to influence only the soul of Nathanael, Hoffmann gave the novella greater psychology and, at the same time, an inexplicable mysticism of what was happening.

The title of the work is associated with Western European folklore Sandman image: in the interpretation of Nathanael’s mother, this is a beautiful metaphor with which she explains the process of “blurrying the eyes” before going to bed; in the old nanny’s understanding, this is a real evil creature who throws sand into the eyes of naughty children, so that they become filled with blood, after which he hides them (the children) in a bag and takes them to the moon, to the owl’s nest, to his offspring, who have crooked beaks They permanently deprive children of their sight. Nathanael, due to his youth, accepts the old woman’s story as the truth. He begins to get carried away by everything wonderful and mysterious. Over time, the hero realizes that the Sandman is not exactly what they say about him, and stops connecting his childhood fears with an unknown character who comes to his father at nine o’clock in the evening.

Nathanael's growing up allows him to go beyond the mystical perception of the world, but shows his unpreparedness to comprehend the real world: at ten years old, the boy witnesses strange actions carried out by his father and the old lawyer Coppelius, is mortally afraid of the latter and spends several weeks in a fever. New children's fears are explained (by the hero, the author, Clara) by a 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 this the kids will not be able to touch them. Actions incomprehensible to Nathaniel (later Clara will find out from a pharmacist friend that it was about alchemy) and the transformation of his father during them, in whose face something satanic appears, making him look like Coppelius, is associated in the mind of the protagonist with the attack on him by the old lawyer and death father - with all that can create the most terrible life experiences for a person.

From a psychological point of view, Nathanael, who received severe psychological trauma, bears its destructive impact throughout his youth (while studying in G.). From the perspective of plot events, everything looks somewhat different, but, as often happens with Hoffmann, it can have at least two interpretations: fantastic and real.

Nathanael's second meeting with Coppelius takes place outside the walls of his home. The old lawyer introduces himself 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, telescopes, etc.). Having come face to face with a devilish creature, Nathanael is horrified and begins to foresee his imminent death. At first, he holds on thanks to Clara, who considers his fears to be empty nonsense, Lothar, who suggests not letting unnecessary emotions into his soul, Professor Spalanzani, who confirms Coppola’s Italian origin, and therefore the lack of connection between him and the German Coppelius. Nathanael even takes a step towards Coppola, who places a pocket spyglass in his hands, which has become another bridge on the path 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 was the main cause of the disaster is not indicated in the novella. What is known is that the student’s friends managed to save his books and manuscripts and rent a new room, just opposite Professor Spalanzani’s windows. So Nathanael had a wonderful, but explained by a real reason, opportunity to see the beautiful Olympia. Coppola's telescope brought the object of interest to the student closer, but, contrary to the real properties of the object, it 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. In just three days, everyone who was dear to him left the young man’s heart - 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 gait, her even, beautiful voice.

Nathanael's passionate love for Olympia is a classic expression of the devilish blindness of man. Despite the fact that the young man periodically catches himself in the coldness of his beloved’s hands and lips, in her taciturnity, in 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 due to his own character: he likes to be listened to without interruption; when they are delighted with everything he says; 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, as cold, soulless, and someone who does not understand him. As soon as the hero comes to his senses, his true beloved again becomes close to his heart. Clara's fate is beautiful: the girl survives the attempt on her life, the madness and death of Nathanael, but finds the strength to get married and live in happiness and contentment with her husband and two sons. The main character cannot stand the madness and dies.

Machine gun motif, expressed in the terrible conclusion about the indistinguishability of the mechanical/dead from the natural/spiritual, is closely connected in the novella with symbolically the eyes, which are a reflection of both the human soul and his life. As a child, Nathanael fears for his eyes (Sandman, Coppelius); in his youth - he falls in love with Olympia's artificial eyes. Attacks of madness visit the hero every time there is a danger of losing his sight (Coppelius's threats to pluck out his eyes, Olympia's plucked out eyes, the use of Coppola's spyglass).

Hoffmann's fairy tale novel The Sandman is the author's most famous and popular work. The story of The Sandman is recommended for adults and children over 14 years of age to read.

You shouldn’t take literally all of Hoffmann’s arguments in the person of the main character Nathanael; take a closer look and you will see a lot of hidden meaning and living energy in them; You will be able to feel how childhood mental traumas can become stronger in a person’s consciousness and haunt him throughout his life.

Sandman. Summary

The fairy tale novel The Sandman is divided into four parts. The first three are letters from the main character Nathanael to his friend Lothar and the response of the girl Clara to Nathanael. The fourth part is the story itself.

First letter (Nathanael to Lothar). Summary

In his first letter, Nathanael tells the story of his childhood about the Sandman, who scared him before going to bed, about the death of his father and about his terrible friend Coppelius, in whom the boy saw evil and the embodiment of the Sandman. The case of a barometer seller is also described.

Second letter (Clara to Nathanael.) Summary

Nathanael's beloved Clara accidentally read a letter addressed to her brother Lothar and expresses her point of view on the young man's experiences, showing him that all fears and horrors are not real.

Third letter (Nathanael to Lothar). Summary

Nathanael talks about how he lives, about his physics teacher Spalanzani and his mysterious daughter Olympia.

After visiting Clara and Lothar, the young man returns to study in the city and sees that his apartment has burned down. Having moved to another house, he is surprised to notice that he lives directly opposite the physics professor. Having bought a telescope, he spends whole days watching Olympia and at Spalanzani’s party he meets her, falling madly in love. Nathanael's best friend tries to help, saying that Olympia is very strange and that she has lifeless eyes, but he does not listen, forgetting about Lothar and his fiancee Clara.

By coincidence, Nathanael ends up in the professor’s house at the wrong hour and learns terrible news: Olympia is not a person, but just a doll. The young man is going crazy.

Having been in a mental hospital and returning to his homeland, to his mother and friends, he is cured and plans a calm, measured life with Clara. However, this is not destined to come true. The story ends with Nathanael's suicide, once again obsessed with the Sandman.