The Sandman

A generation before Poe, when the idea of a gothic horror story was decidedly more a German than an English or American notion, E.T.A. Hoffmann was widely regarded as the master of the genre. Not all of Hoffmann's stories involved horror as such -- but they were all "tales," in the sense that they set aside, for a moment, all the particularities of everyday life and took place in a generalized, imaginary realm halfway between moralistic parables and frightening fancies, where children were quite often in the thrall of cruel and unpredictable adults, and fears took palpable form. His tales in many ways resemble those of the Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, which were first published just four years before "Der Sandmann."

Hoffmann was also a musician and a stage director, with the result that his tales often have  a theatre-like three-act structure, with powerful visual imagery and strong atmosphere. These have led them to be frequently adapted for stage, and later for screen; among the more notable versions have been Arthur Saint-Léon's "Coppélia" (1870), Offenbach's opéra fantastique "Tales of Hoffmann" (1881), Powell and Pressburger's 1951 film based upon it, and Paul Berry's 1993 Oscar-nominated stop-motion animation "The Sandman." Most recently, the young German director S. Andreas Dahn has brought out a relatively faithful period version, one which -- alas -- is not yet available on disc or streaming; the image above is of "Bela B." Felsenheimer in the title role.

But there's much more to this story than its dramatic touches, and vivid imagery. There's the primal scene of a child excluded from the adult world, the implicit threat of the Sandman, stealer of eyes (Freud read this as a displaced threat of castration), and the peculiar charms -- or lack thereof -- of an automaton woman. We often think that we today -- with our Terminators, cyborgs, replicants, and other semi-human robotic figures -- have invented the uncanny notion of a non-human human being, but in fact the idea is far older, going well back into the eighteenth century. Some of the automata built then still exist today, such as Maillardet's writing automaton. This small boyish figure, designed to sit at a writing desk and draw, was hard to identify when it was deposited at the steps of Philadelphia's Franklin Institute many years ago. Under patient care, its mechanism was restored, and a pen placed in its hand -- after which it produced six drawings, one of which the machine itself "signed," declaring, "I am the automaton of M. Maillardet" -- and so it identified itself (the idea was incorporated by David Selznick into his graphic novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which was adapted as a film by Martin Scorsese.

So read the story -- I suspect you will soon join the ranks of those haunted by its peculiar, shadowy scenes. Then choose one of this week's discussion questions, and post your answer below.

Descent into the Maelstrom/MS. Found in a Bottle

 Let us all pause and shed a tear for Edgar Poe -- not, as most of us might suppose, because he led a troubled, brief life, but because this life has so often eclipsed the merit and significance of his work. Poe, it appears, will always be with us, peering over our shoulder as we read, and despite his charms, this is far from an ideal situation. The writings of an author must speak for themselves across the gulf of time, and in an ideal world, the author does not, indeed cannot accompany them, save in that subtlest of survivals, the scattered cells of his or her words.

While Poe is best remembered for his macabre tales -- "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Black Cat," or "The Masque of the Red Death," in his time he was noted for his tales of the sea, of explorers and adventurers who risked -- and sometimes lost -- their lives on hazardous voyages that brought them to fantastical countries. Such tales were a stock-in-trade of his day, with those of Sinbad the Sailor the best-known -- but one could easily think of modern science-fiction serials, such as Star Trek, as the inheritors of this tradition.

Poe's unique gift was to blend such fanciful adventures with elements of extraordinary realism, giving a fresh sense of the limited power of humans in the face of the sublime forces of the oceans. The effect was very carefully obtained. Poe had devoured any number of nautical narratives, and always had some navigational manuals, along with the Encyclopedia Brittanica, close at hand. He had not, it is true, the benefit of very much experience at sea -- but he was master and commander of the words, the perfect mixture of nautical terminology and first-person terror, that could make his readers shiver in their imaginary sea-boots.

"A Descent into the Maelstrom" was an early work, and opens innocently enough as a sort of travelogue: the reader is taken to the edge of a cliff, where a wizened old local is going to tell his tale of the sea below. And yet, as it develops, it turns into a horror story, one in which -- as with so many haunted houses -- the experience has driven its teller into old age overnight with fear, escape though he did. It's a perfect little diversion, ending with an almost too-practical solution, rather like a problem in mechanics.

"MS. Found in a Bottle" take Poe's dark romance with the sea to a far deeper and more disturbing level. Published in 1833, it earned him a fifty-dollar prize -- then a considerable sum -- from the Baltimore Saturday Visiter. In it, Poe makes use of a device he would come to rely on frequently: a first-person narrator who is an absolute realist, one to whom "the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and a nullity." For what better person to tell us of wonders beyond our wildest imaginings? The story draws from other myths and tales as well, such as that of the "Flying Dutchman" (which goes back way before Disney) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. And yet, in a way that's difficult to entirely pin down, it goes far beyond these tales by evoking the uncanny scene of a ship filled with ancient navigators, all indifferent to their guest, plummeting to their doom with peculiar looks of joy upon their faces.

The Shadow

We've probably all experienced the sensation: somewhere, somehow, we saw a new possibility open up before us, or felt a strange impulse to follow a desire that we could hardly name. We were wise, or so we thought, to resist the temptation, to stay on the path of our sober-minded, plan-in-advance selves. And then, perhaps years later, we wondered why, and what things might have been like if we hadn't.

Hans Christian Andersen's "The Shadow" takes up this question -- decidedly one that haunts adults rather than children -- in a strange allegory that reads like a fairy tale but burns at the soul like some mad tale of Poe. And like Poe (and Shelley, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, and many others), Andersen hit upon the folk legend of a double, or doppelgänger, as a metaphor for this desire deferred. With roots deep in popular folklore, these tales of someone with an uncanny resemblance to one's self are chilling enough as far as they go -- for it seems that there's only room in the universe for one of them: either the double or the self must die.

In Andersen's tale, the "learned man" (perhaps "scholar" would be a more apt English translation) permits his shadow to do pursue a course of action he himself was too timid to attempt, and initially counts himself fortunate. The lack of a shadow, after all, was but a minor inconvenience -- what of it? The twist here is that this decision precipitates the birth of a separate entity, one that eventually comes to possess all of the boldness and sense of purpose that the student lacked. The student, gradually and inexorably, is fated to become the shadow's shadow, and eventually even less than that.

Many people assume that fairy tales ought to teach some moral lesson. They forget that, in their original forms, most folktales had no such lesson; it was moralizers such as Perrault (who published the most popular versions of "Cinderella" and "Little Red Riding Hood") who attached morals to them, in part to make them safe for family reading, to harness their wild imaginings in the name of civilizing influence.

But although "The Shadow," like many of Andersen's tales, has a sort of moral in it, there's also a strong contravening force: if we are to avoid the fate of the unfortunate scholar, we must in fact act on our desires, must sometimes step outside the moral and personal codes that bind us. And indeed, anyone who creates -- whether a writer of fictions, a visual artist, or a filmmaker -- is already engaged in the shadow business.

So read this story, and let it speak to you freely -- then post your comment below. If you'd like, you can respond to one of the discussion questions I've prepared to help get your thoughts flowing. I've also put up a link to one quite famous response to this story by the science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin -- the first few pages of her essay offer a remarkable interpretation of the story.

Welcome to English 120: Self and Shadow

The moment we walk out the front doors of our homes and apartments, we enter the world of social expectations. Our entire journey to adulthood is filled with their study -- we must first learn language, then how to speak properly to parents, teachers, and playmates; at school, we learn to sit attentively at our desks, and not to make noise in libraries. Later, to get our drivers' licenses, we learn the rules of the road, and in our workplaces we learn to follow the guidelines laid down by our supervisors. Our life is so rule-bound, indeed, that it's no wonder we need release at the end of the day, whether that comes in the form of food, entertainment, or just relaxation. Yet  are those enough? What unfulfilled wishes, what resentments, what cravings are left for our shadows to pursue?

In this class, we'll look at the way a number of different literary writers have represented this world of shadows. We'll begin with one of the first and most potent of these tales, Hans Christian Andersen's "The Shadow." Next, it's Edgar Allan Poe, whose contributions to this tradition include such macabre tales as "Descent into the Maelstrom" and "Manuscript Found in a Bottle." We'll wrap up our first three weeks with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Ryme of the Ancient Mariner," a tale told by a madman, but signifying a great deal!

After that we'll turn our attention to another early tale, E.T.A. Hoffman's original "Sandman," a far more disturbing figure than either the innocent 1950's version of "Mr. Sandman" or the comic/graphic novel versions of the twentieth century. Then, there comes a ghost -- summoned accidentally, but no matter -- in the M.R. James's classic "Whistle and I'll come to you," along with its brilliant television adaptation by Jonathan Miller. Lastly, we'll take on the work of America's greatest writer of the surreal, Shirley Jackson, particularly the very last stories she completed, many of which touch on this theme of welcome -- or unwelcome -- doubleness. 

Wherever possible, our readings will be made available freely, as will our viewings, though in a few cases you will need to order the book or rent a movie from a streaming service. In addition to the online responses in our discussion, there will be a formal final paper of 4-6 pages in length, on a text or film of your choosing from among those we've read or seen as part of the class.