A Son of the Rock

Alma Classics, 2013, 110 p.Translated from the German Der Sandmann by Christopher Moncrieff. Borrowed from a doomed library.

Barely even as long as a novella, this “classic of German Gothic fiction” – as the blurb has it – has a curious structure beginning as an epistolary account, with three letters between two correspondents, before reverting to a straightforward third person narrative for the remainder of the tale.

Its protagonist Nathanael is haunted by the memory of childhood tales of the Sandman who would peck out children’s eyes and of the lawyer Coppelius (who caused Nathanael’s father’s death in the performance of alchemical experiments in his study and came to embody the Sandman in Nathanael’s mind.) In adult life Nathanael encounters barometer salesman Giuseppe Coppola, whom he takes to be that same Coppelius (and who may well be so,) around the same time as becoming besotted with the strangely behaved Olimpia, who seems to come to life only for him. The conjunction drives Nathanael mad.

The text is littered with references to eyes, not only the pecking as above, but on discovering Nathanael spying on the alchemical experiments Coppelius threatened to throw hot coals on the child’s eyes; later Coppola lays out lorgnettes and glasses in front of Nathanael while cackling, “these be my eyezies, pretty eyezies,” and Olimpia’s eyes have a compelling quality, for Nathanael at least.

Odd, but meaty, The Sandman packs a lot into its small frame.

This edition also contains an extract from Sigmund Freud’s The Uncanny wherein he analyses the way in which Hoffman achieved his uncanny effects in this story.

Pedant’s corner:- (in the Freud extract) this this.