Chapter IX: Part II: Literary Section (3)

But what lay specially at the foundation of her earlier wandering, when no man had yet made an impression upon her? Or was there perhaps one, in relation to whom sexuality is most strongly forbidden, her own father? What if her erotic desire toward him was repressed and the indifference which she had attained was transferred over to all men? Much that is apparently harmless is permitted to a child, which would be regarded with horror in the adult. Many parents like to take their children into bed early in the morning and play with them without any consciously sexual thoughts and without suspecting how very often they in this way stimulate sexual desire in their children. Frequently also the mother or father visit the child before going to sleep, lean over the bed, allow themselves often to press the child passionately to themselves and count this asexual love toward the child. The case analyzed at the beginning teaches us how much of the grossly sexual erotic is concealed behind this, even if well hidden. Maria likewise sought presumably in her sleep walking for the bed of her childhood because her earliest erotism was bound with it.

This had already happened under the instigation of puberty, before her heart had spoken. How is it now since she loves Eisener? We must keep in mind her unconscious wish, to climb into the bed of the man she loves, and on the other hand that Maria as housemother knew well that he was not sleeping alone, but with his friend, so only a compromise form of action would be possible. So she goes up again to her childhood room, which lies in the same direction as Eisener's sleeping room. There she first draws the curtain aside that she may gaze at the moon, which increases the sexual excitement with her, as I have earlier discussed. Then she undresses before the mirror as she probably had done as a child, and moves forward toward the beloved one, who after a brief struggle with himself embraces her passionately. She nevertheless submits to his caresses without response but also without resistance. For thus alone can the fiction be maintained that she has loved without consciousness of it and therefore also without culpability. It is not difficult, according to the analysis of the first case, to understand how she finally at the withdrawal of the moonlight gets up again, dresses herself before the mirror and leaves the room as noiselessly as she had entered it.

The later portions of the narrative must confirm my assumptions if they are correct, that Eisener merely embraces the mother in Maria and that she on the other hand knows well enough in the unconscious both as child and as maiden that she wishes for that which is sexually forbidden and knows whom she desires. Let us see what the poet tells us. As Eisener awakes after the bridal night, he is not at all invigorated and uplifted as otherwise a man in like case, but psychically and physically cast down, as if he had to atone for some great wrong. "He strove to consider the strange adventure of this night as the delusion of a fevered dream. Yet that adventure painted itself before him, in spite of all his effort to forget it, in ever more vivid colors," because indeed a wish of his heart had been fulfilled through it. His inner unrest drove him forth and, as walking about he met his beloved, he marveled "that Maria seemed taller to him today than yesterday, or rather that he believed that he first noticed today that she was tall." What could this mean except that Maria now seemed big to him as once the mother had seemed to the small boy? Only he had first to embrace his beloved, before he could perceive such a thing and give heed to it. Maria herself, who apparently had enjoyed her pleasure only in her sleep and unconsciously, and therefore knew nothing of it all, had lost her frank manner with him, which she still possessed the day before. She grew red at his look and drew the hand which she gave him "quickly back again in confused fear," without consciously knowing why. "The flower of womanhood which had slumbered in her too serene, too cold image, appeared in this one night to have come with magic swiftness to bud and immediately to have unfolded in all its fragrance." Maria herself pictures her condition: "That morning I can never forget. Everything was so still, so solemn; the guests were all yet asleep. I had never been so strong of heart. I felt that morning as if all my life before had been only a dream and life was now just beginning. It seemed to me that I had suddenly become grown up and was now for the first time a child no more." Maria thus felt herself through the bridal night to have grown up from the child to the mother, only, now, it was for the lover who had taken the father's place.

Both Eisener and Maria conducted themselves further entirely in accordance with their earlier unconscious wishes. The former for example "found a growing pleasure in representing his own action, when it was really the effect of many circumstances acting one upon the other, as the result of a cold, calm calculation on his part." And was it not at bottom actually something like a calculation, since he in his earliest childhood phantasies imagined something similar for himself from the mother? It is only natural that he now greatly exaggerated in consciousness the sin which he had desired. Never for a moment did it occur to him "to throw any part of the burden of guilt upon that being who so closely participated in it. His rightful feeling remained in regard to it that he had this night given to a woman a right to himself, which he, if she should demand it, could not dispute. It was a source of calmness to him to look upon himself as punished, as it were, in this manner." Only all too evident! This punishment was in reality a disguised reward, fulfilment of the infantile wish to win the mother.[24] For this reason he had not been able earlier to withstand Julie although Maria attracted him far more. For the former was the indulgent mother of his power of imagination, the latter on the contrary the proud, unapproachable mother of his real childhood. Moreover, though he did not conceal from himself that his heart belonged to the chaste Maria, yet he resolved, if Julie should convince him that she had been the ghostly visitor, to offer her his hand immediately. "The doubt, whether she deserved it, which was near enough at hand, he put from him as an excuse which he wished to make so that he could believe that he might release himself from that which he had to recognize as his duty." Maria however "he had in these days accustomed himself to think of as a being so high above him that his love must profane her." Again the well known splitting of the mother into the holy and the yielding one.

[24] Cf. with this also the interesting passage ... "the passionate
self accusations, in torturing himself with which he found comfort a
short time before."

How did it appear at this time to her, herself? The first weeks after that moonlight night the woman in her bloomed forth more and more, in spite of the fact that her lover tarried at a distance. Yet when in her body a new life began to develop and Eisener still did not appear, she was seized suddenly with a hysterical convulsion--she was wearing significantly the same rose-colored dress in which he had seen her that morning--which lasted twelve hours so that every one looked upon her as dead. The despairing father threw himself across her feet and lay there--a situation which will occupy us later--and Eisener, who was just now returning, was driven by the bitterest self reproaches across the ocean. After waking from her catalepsy Maria did not regain her former blooming health but grew more and more ill, which the family physician finally discovered as the result of her pregnancy.

"The good girl herself believed at first that what she felt and what they told her was a vivid troubled dream." This idea will not appear strange to us who know so much about moon walking and that one does everything merely "in sleep" in order to remain blameless. "That she should become a mother seemed to her so strange and wonderful that she appeared to herself as some one else (this might well read, as her own mother dead at so early an age) or as suddenly transplanted into another world with strange people, animals and trees. The sound of her own voice, the tone of the bells seemed to her as other and strange sounds." We may bring forward in explanation in this place the case analyzed at the beginning, where a moon walker had abandoned herself to all sorts of dreams. In the moon must be living men of another sort with other feelings, customs and manners, and the sexual, strongly forbidden upon earth, must be freely permitted upon this planet. She seemed to herself on account of her sexual phantasies already as a child quite different from other people, as if she belonged not upon this earth but upon the moon. Could not a similar thought process have taken place with Maria?

I said of her father, that he had been her first beloved. And it comes almost as an unconscious recognition of this when he, filled with anger, calls out to her mockingly, "Why do you not say that the whole affair has come to pass out of love to me, to prepare for me an unexpected joy?" Breitung also enjoyed since her earliest childhood her unlimited confidence only on this account because he loved her as his own child. Therefore she looks up with all her anxiety so trustfully and self confidently to this friend of her father. But when Breitung also no longer believed in her and her father turned from her with scorn it was "as if all her blood streamed into her eyes that, pressing out as tears, it might relieve her. Yet here it remained and pressed upon her brain as if threatening its fibers. With a strangely fearful haste she pressed her eyes with her fingers; they remained dry; a cry of pain would unburden her soul--no sound accompanied the trembling, convulsive breathing. The old servant, who entered after a while, found her lying with her breast upon the sofa pillow, her head thrown violently back," in hysterical opisthotonos. "The old man had loved Maria from her earliest childhood" and stood accordingly in the place of a father. "He clasped his hands together in distress. She recognized him and suffered him patiently to bring her head to a less forced position. She looked at him sharply as if she would convince herself that he was the one she took him to be. His Kalmuck features seemed to her as beautiful as the soul which they hid and seemed to want to disown.

"The friendliness, the affectionate regard, which spoke so unmistakably out of the familiar old graybearded, sunburnt face, did her no end of good." Since she could not yet entirely believe she asked, "Is it indeed you, Justin? And you will still recognize me? And you do not flee from me?" At first the deplorable commission which the old man had to carry out threw her back again. When she had to understand that her father would not again set foot in the pastor's house until she had departed, her countenance became deathly pale and convulsive movements trembled in quick succession over her delicate body so that the old man wept aloud, for he believed that she had gone mad. His signs of distress, the faithfulness and love which spoke through them, touched her so effectually that at last the hysterical convulsion relaxed and she sank down. "The old man caught her up. He placed her on the sofa. She lay across his lap; her head lay upon his left hand, with the other he held her body fast that it should not slip to the floor. It seemed as if she would weep her whole weary self away. The old servant held her with trembling hand and heavy heart." Now the scene of childhood is complete, except that the old man plays the rôle of her father. So had Maria presumably done as a child when she felt too unhappy and so also the pastor's throwing himself down, as we saw above, over his daughter whom he believed dead, is not strange.

When Maria had left the parsonage her first thought and silent concern was how her father must now live without her care, even that perhaps he would not be there any more, when everything had later turned out well. Then she thought again of the time when she would be a mother and "her life seemed to her as a tale that is told." On her journey to her new home there came over her ever more strongly "the feeling of her complete abandonment. All the dear childhood memories, into whose protection she would flee, turned in anger from her. With tears she cried to God for a heart that she might love, some one for whom she might really care. For it seemed as if a curse lay upon her, which estranged all hearts from her. She thought with fear at her heart that the being to whom she would give life might likewise turn from her, as everything had done that she loved." Then a good fate brings to her the unfortunate Johannes whom his crazy father wished to throw into the water in order to preserve him for eternal happiness. At once Maria assumes the rôle of mother toward the boy and now "that once more she had to care for some one, she was again the calm and serene being."

What had so thrown her out of her course? It was not so much the banishment from the father's house, not the contempt of all the world, nor even of her very oldest and truest friend. She would have been able to look beyond both of these, because her consciousness felt itself entirely blameless. But she took so to herself the truth that she was no more the loving, caretaking house mother nor might play that part, that for a brief while she planned to take her life. She prayed to God with tears for one heart only that she might love, that she might actually care for. Since the care of her father is taken from her she feels herself at first truly and utterly forlorn, all the dear memories of childhood turn in anger from her and a curse seems to rest upon her soul.

Why do all the memories of her childhood turn from her, if she actually knows herself guiltless? Is this merely because the father is indissolubly bound with them? If she still consciously feels entirely blameless toward him, and if he openly did her wrong from a false assumption, then should not the childhood memories return to her? I think the solution must be sought elsewhere, in this, that Maria knew nothing in clear consciousness of the happenings of that moonlight night and could honestly swear to that, but everything was known in the unconscious. Here is the sense of guilt engendered, of which consciousness may know nothing, here she knows well enough that the youthful Eisener has embraced her and she has together with him deceived the father whom she first loved. The goal of all moon walking is none other than to be able to enjoy and still be blameless, it is blamelessness because without accompanying consciousness.

The poet's words must confirm this, if this assumption is correct. We will test them. The first night of her banishment Maria, while going to sleep, thought first of her father "who must go to bed without the little services which he was accustomed to receive from her." Then she thought of Breitung and the apothecary's daughter, who had turned from her full of scorn. "The young Eisener occurred to her in the midst of this, she knew not how, and a sort of curiosity whether Eisener also would have turned from her in so unfriendly a fashion as Breitung. She pictured to herself how he might have looked upon her now with contempt, now with friendliness, as on that morning which she so gladly remembered." Also an evident identification of the young Eisener with the father and the father's friend, and flight from the loved ones who had cast her off to him who had inclined to her as a friend.

Yet more convincing is a passage which follows. Maria had born a son and "the more she looked with joy upon the small infant contemplating his sound and beautiful body, the more grew the need within her, only instinctively felt at first, to have some one who could rejoice in the child with her, not out of mere sympathy with her, but because he had the same right to it and so that she could rejoice again in his joy, as he might in hers. Without knowing how and why, she thought again of the friendly and true hearted Eisener. Her dreams brought his picture before her eyes in most vivid colors. It seemed as if it were Eisener who should enjoy the child with her. She hastened to him with tears of joy to lay the beautiful boy in his arms, and when she now stood by him, she had scarcely the heart to show him the boy. Then she cast down her eyes and said confusedly, 'See this beautiful child, Eisener, Sir!'" Maria knew quite well in the unconscious that she had conceived her child from Eisener and the sudden restraint when she laid the boy in his arms is only a compromise with consciousness, which must not know the facts, otherwise she could not be spared her feeling of guilt. Yes, when Julie then came with her love child, which she had conceived that same moonlight night from the hunter, although she really loved Eisener, then "Maria experienced, she knew not why, a gentle aversion toward her. She said quietly, 'That in which one has done no wrong and cannot change, one must bear patiently.'"

Soon however there awoke a desire in her "for something new, still unknown to her, which she nevertheless felt must come now. It was the strange, fearfully sweet condition of the ripeness of love, which had not yet found the object on which she could open her heart. That night a need awakened, formerly repressed into the background by greater pain, but which threatened now to outgrow other desires and feelings in the undisputed possession of him." Often she sat knitting and dreaming at the boy's cradle. "There was a fair at Marklinde. She went early in her rose-colored dress into the garden and plucked wild hedge roses. She was startled for she heard a noise behind her and she knew that it was Eisener who was coming after her. She turned into another path; she was afraid to meet him, and yet she wished that he would follow her. As she bent low behind some flowers, she threw a hasty look behind her. She grew rosy because he might have noticed the look, and still it would have made her glad if he had noticed it. 'Yet if he knew everything,' she whispered to herself; 'but I could not tell him, nor could I let him perceive it. I would have to say No, although he understood it as Yes!' Suddenly he stood near her; he had seized her hand and was looking into her eyes. She bowed her head, he bent toward her. It seemed so strange to her--their lips touched--Maria frightened and blushing, sprang involuntarily from her chair, as if what she was dreaming were real.

"A strangely mingled feeling drove her from her chair to the window and from the window back to the chair. She felt herself stirred in her very depths by something which wounded her sensibility as much as it excited her longing. She fled to her child. She strove to think of something else; in vain. That thought continually returned and gradually lost its frightful character. Soon she felt it only as a sweet dread and so the idea received a double stimulation while it woke the curious question, why and for what reason she must really be afraid. And as she looked now upon the child, it seemed to her so marvellous that she, mother and yet maiden, knew nothing of the happiness of which this little life must be the fruit. Julie's words were continually ringing in her ears, 'The happiness which is granted him, has to be reckoned too dear.' It gave her unending satisfaction, to think of herself actually in such a situation to the young Eisener that all her unhappiness was the result of a joy which she had granted him, without knowing what joy this must have been." I consider it superfluous to add a word to complete the interpretation of these phantasies, which speak for themselves. They confirm everything that I have said above, better than any labored explanation. Later Maria came to know that what had sustained her in the hours of her sorrow was nothing else than that mysterious but certain premonition of a happy life with Eisener and her George.

And now back to the purpose of the analysis of all these tales. What does it teach us for the understanding of moon walking? First of all it confirms many of our earlier conclusions. The most important thing, in the first place, is that sexual impulses lie at the foundation, desire for sexual gratification, and that one apparently acts in sleep in order to escape all culpability, while the unconscious still knows all about it. The sleep walking begins, in accordance with the sexual basic motive, at the time of puberty and lasts until it is inhibited by the close of that period or in women with the birth of the first child. It is further established that at the beginning the bed of childhood is sought, the place of earlier sexual pleasures, later however the bed of the loved object, who appears in the place of the originally loved object, the parent. Finally, moreover, when the night wanderer fixes his closed eyes upon the moon before starting out on his wandering, erotic thoughts hide behind this, which in turn go back to earliest childhood. The heavenly body effects a sexual excitement not only through its light, but indeed also through sexual phantasies which are bound with it. Lastly folk myth knows likewise that the woman in white represents nothing else than the maiden in her night shift with all her sexual longings.

One thing more this novel also confirms, which our earlier discoveries have already taught us, the abnormal muscle excitability and muscle erotic. For Maria was seized with a hysterical convulsion when her father's unkindness pressed itself upon her. It is interesting that this abnormal muscle excitability, which manifested itself in various muscular convulsions, was present with Otto Ludwig throughout his earthly career. Already as a boy he often suffered convulsive muscular twitchings, when he had exceptional tasks to perform or hard thinking was required of him, and "nervous twitchings of the head" are recorded of him when twenty-three years old, also presumably a tic had won for him the nickname of "the shaker." Later moreover our poet suffered chronically from convulsive manifestations of a lesser degree, repeatedly however in a stronger, special form although only in temporary attacks.[25]

[25] Cf. with this especially Ernst Jentsch, "Das Pathologische bei
Otto Ludwig," "Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens," published by
L. Löwenfeld, No. 90.

In other words, it may be said that Ludwig assigns to Maria and the young Eisener a series of his own personal characteristics. That is to say, not only was the tendency to convulsive attacks peculiar to him, but also to fainting, and a compulsive neurotic and hysterical tendency, the high grade myopia, a fondness for discussing painting, talking with inanimate things,[26] colored audition, as well as other synesthesias, and finally a special reverence for his mother.

[26] Cf. here the poet's words: "It is strange that nature is
personified for me, that I not only live in her, but as one human
being with another, exchanging, not merely receiving, thoughts and
feelings, and even so, that different places become as individual to
me, distinct from others and, as it were, transformed in
consciousness, so that I not only feel that they effect an influence
upon me but it seems to me as if I work upon them, and the forms, as
they appear to me, show the traces of this influence." Further: "I ...
who stood even in a wonderful mutual understanding with mountain and
flora, because the kingdom of love was not to be restrained...."

"BUSCHNOVELLE," by Otto Ludwig.

The moon plays an important part in the romance just discussed, even apart from Maria's night wandering, and a number of significant events take place under its very light. We find this relationship still stronger in Otto Ludwig's "Buschnovelle," briefly referred to earlier, which I add here, though it really does not directly treat of our problems. The heroine Pauline passed with many as moon struck and her blue eyes "have a strange expression of their own. They gaze as aliens upon this world, as angels, which, transplanted to our marvelous earth, belong to the heavenly home and cannot find themselves amid this confused and agitated humanity." Likewise his bride asserts of the count that he knows no other recreation "than to climb about in the night over the rocks and worship the moon." This perhaps gave occasion to the rumor of a ghost or at least breathed new life into an old tale.

A prince was banished under an enchantment to the rocks of the gods. He had "a face as of a person twenty years old or so, but pale and quite transparent like moonlight, and he could be rescued only through a maiden eighteen years old and as innocent as when she came from the mother's womb." The count, whom his bride deceived, became very melancholy over it and trusted no woman after this. He learned to know and love Pauline upon the rocks of the gods, where he was accustomed to wander in the moonlight. When she believed she saw in him the enchanted prince and declared her intention of voluntarily rescuing him, he stipulated that she must climb down from off the rocks, down from the cross, without touching them with her hands but holding her arms toward the full moon. "And that must take place tomorrow night when the moon is sailing overhead, otherwise I must remain enchanted. When you shall have climbed down the rocks, I shall be saved and then I will make you my princess." One may read afterward from the poet how Pauline then carried out her resolve--her determination alone, sprung evidently from a great love, had already cured the count of his sadness--how the count saved her and later wooed her.

Emphasis will be laid here merely upon two facts, first that not only all important events happen in the light of the full moon, but that also no other novel shows so many autobiographical features. The most recent publisher of this tale, Heinrich Borcherdt, gives this explanation: "One can recognize without much trouble in the portrait of the count with his well-trimmed beard the poet himself, who at that time tended to great seriousness and to melancholy. For this very reason the cheerfulness, gaiety and unrestrained naturalness of his bride Emilie worked most refreshingly upon him. Pauline in the tale exercised a similar influence upon the count. What we know of Emilie Ludwig from without agrees likewise with the picture of Pauline. Pauline's father suggests Emilie's father.... The greatest weight will be laid upon the fact that we possess in this work a poetic glorification of Otto Ludwig's love happiness in Triebischtal. The rural life is reproduced in every detail." Nothing unfortunately is reported in the different sketches of his life whether and how far the poet and his bride allowed themselves to be influenced by the light of the full moon. The striking fact remains at any rate that twice in the course of two years he spun out this theme and each time moreover with a strongly autobiographical note. That cannot be sufficiently explained merely through the influence of Tieck, whom he, to be sure, read diligently in his youth.

"LEBENSMAGIE, WIRKLICHKEIT UND TRAUM," by Theodor Mundt ("Life's Magic, Reality and Dream").

In the seventh volume of the "Euphorion" Richard M. Meyer has exhumed a probable source of Ludwig's "Maria." It is a fictitious tale of the "young German" Theodor Mundt, which appeared in his collection "Charaktere und Situationen" in 1837, five years before the "Maria," and shows in fact some external similarities with this. Still Otto Ludwig expressly acknowledges a tale told by a friend as the source, but gives no syllable of mention to Mundt. I must say that it seems at least very questionable that the latter's story was the model, although the Berlin literary historian comes to the conclusion, "A direct utilization would be here difficult to dispute." I will reproduce the contents of this story, as far as it touches our problems, as closely as possible in the words of Mundt, although this story, which is contained in the collection mentioned under the separate title of "Lebensmagie, Wirklichkeit und Traum," hardly possesses an artistic value.

The theological student Emil Hahn had, as one of his friends states, "lost life itself over his books and before his merry companions, who would have initiated him into the true enjoyment of existence, crowed many a moral cock-a-doodle-doo of virtue and self restraint." On the ride home to his father and foster sister Rosalinde he was urged by two student acquaintances to a little drinking bout, at which he partook of more wine than was good for him. The two comrades sang the praises of Rosalinde, whom Hahn had left as a fourteen year old girl and who in the two years of separation had blossomed out in full beauty. As Hahn returned to the father's house in a half intoxicated state and met Rosalinde in an adjacent room, he found at once, in contrast to his shyness of former times, the courage to approach her. "Ardently and daringly he embraced her and the passionate kiss which he impressed upon her maidenly lips was followed, as one lightning flash succeeds another, by a second more lingering one, which was reluctant to leave off." After he had for some time, again quite contrary to his custom, held his own place at the large party which his father was giving that very evening, "he felt himself gradually seized with weariness and the lively and excited mood, to which the wine he had enjoyed had awakened him, began little by little to disappear with the intoxication. He made his adieus in a dejected tone and betook himself with heavy, hanging head to his room, there to recover himself through sleep, which he could no longer withstand because of his painful state.

"It was late in the night when Emil sprang from his bed. A vivid dream seemed to have confused and frightened him. He stood half clothed in the middle of his room and stared straight ahead as if trying to recollect himself. Above in the night sky glowed the full round moon with a sharp ray seldom seen and its white silver light pierced directly over the head of the youth walking in his sleep. The room gleamed brightly in the moonbeams trembling with mystery, which had spun themselves out in long, glimmering threads over floor and ceiling. Emil had fastened his eyes upon the great disk of the moon and staggered with uncertain steps to the window to open it." While he stood thus there came a small snow white cat--the cat is well known as a favorite animal of the romantic writers--and spoke to him: "I am come to congratulate you on your bridal night. Yes, yes, I know well that you are married. This is a beautiful night to be married. The moon shoots down right warmly, and its strong shining stings the blood and we cats also feel the impulses stirring in the whispering May night. Happy one, you who are married! Married to Rosalinde!"

"Emil, distracted, clasped his forehead. Everything which he saw about him appeared to him changed and even the inanimate things in his vicinity seemed in this moment to have been drawn into a magic alliance. Everything, the very table, chair, press looked at him, rocking themselves saucily in the bright moonlight, personally and familiarly, and had to his eyes, arms and feet to move about, mouths to speak with, senses for communication. At the same time a fair picture rose before the youth deep out of the bottom of his heart, at which he smiled longingly. It was the recollection of Rosalinde and her matured beauty. She passed like a burning, ominous dream through his soul and he felt himself drunken, trembling, exultingly united with the proud but now subdued maiden in a love thrilled bridal night. While he was thus lost in thought his look was held chained by a painting, which hung on the wall opposite him. Strange, it was Rosa's portrait and he knew not whether this picture had just now arisen warm with life merely out of the force of the idea which was kindling him, or whether it had actually been formed over there in its golden frame by a painter's hand." Then the cat mewed again: "That is your young wife Rosalinde. The moonbeam chases her; see how its brightness kisses her temples unceasingly. The young woman is queen on her bridal night. We will crown her, all we who are here in this room and owe our life to the brightness of the moonlight night, we will crown her. I present her for her bridal crown burning, tender desires." Then the May blossoms in the room bestirred themselves and conferred upon her the bloom of fond innocence for her bridal crown. Also the bird in the cage made himself understood: "I give her for her bridal crown the score of my latest melody. Harmony and melody should be the dower of all young brides." Finally a cockchafer also which flew in offered her for her bridal crown "a pair of lovely crickets."

"The dreaming Emil, surrounded by these fairy treasures of the May night, stood in sweet intoxication opposite the glowing picture, bathed in moonlight, of the maiden to whom all this homage belonged. The longer and the more vividly he pictured to himself and leaned toward all the maidenly charms, which had allowed the first passionate wish in the young man's phantasy to blaze up, the more an impatience, almost consuming, pounding, benumbing his heart, seized him, which he did not know how to explain and had never felt before in his life. Like a seductively sweet poison the delusion imparted itself secretly to him that Rosalinde was his bride, his wife, and that this wondrously beautiful spring night, bright with moonlight, was his wedding night. His heart swelled with mighty, growing desire, youthful passion breathed high in him. Trembling, fearful, wavering, longing, he still felt himself strangely happy.

"Then it seemed to him that Rosalinde's picture began to move, as if the gleaming shoulders lifted themselves gradually and gently at first from it. Then the delicate outline of the bosom rose as the lovely form came forth, the face streaming with love bowed itself in modest shame before him. The form grew larger, rose to full beauty, stretched itself to life size. Smiling, beckoning, gazing at him full of mystery, promising favor and happiness, she took some steps toward him, then fled back again ashamed and as if frightened, floated away with sylphlike movements to the door and remained hidden behind it, yet peeping and looking out at the youth.

"He did not know if he should, if he might follow her. He was drawn powerfully after her and yet he stood still and hesitated. The bright moonlight seemed, like a fairy toward one enchanted, to make merry at the loud anxious beating of his heart. He restrained himself no longer; with a passionate movement he hastened with open arms to the beloved apparition, desiring to embrace her, throw himself upon her bosom, breathe out upon her his burning desire. She fled, he followed her. She fled before him, but softly and alluringly and he, intoxicated, rushed after her from room to room unable to overtake the form flitting on with ghostly swiftness. Like a star drawing him onward she floated there before him, his footsteps were as if bewitched by her running, and thus she led him after her, on and on, through a succession of rooms, so that he marveled and thought himself wandering about in a great, unfamiliar enchanted palace.

"At last he saw her no more, the lovely picture had suddenly disappeared from him. He must however still hasten and hasten, there was no rest for him. He no longer knew himself what he was seeking and what he hoped to find. But now he ran upon a door; it opened and he entered a small, cosy room in which stood a white bed. Seized with a strange apprehension the youth drew back the curtains with bold hand, and looked, astonished, smiling, burning with bliss. There lay a beautiful maiden asleep and dreaming--ah! it was Rosalinde herself. In the sweet forgetfulness of sleep, unveiling herself like the outblown petals of a rosebud, she revealed her most secret charms in lovely fulness to the eye of night. Emil stood before her in the dear delusion of aroused passion and bent over her. 'Is not tonight my bridal night?', thought he. He reflected and the hot tumult of exulting senses tore him irresistibly. Then he flung himself passionately into her arms, pressed his mouth to her mouth in yearning kisses and clung closer and closer to the warm, living delight of her charming form. He dared the boldest work of love. The sleeper did not oppose the daring beginning; in the power of a dream, like him, according to the myth, whom the chaste Luna had seized, she seemed at first to yield softly to the seductive moment. Only a glowing color suffused the tender cheek, a gentle halting exclamation breathed through the half open lips. The bright light of the full moon shone on high with its trembling beams directly over the couch of the maiden.

"Now, now however she awakes from the strange troubled dream. She opens her eyes, she shakes her beautiful head as if she would free herself from the fetters of a dark enchantment. With a loud outcry she beholds herself actually in the young man's arms and sees alas! that she has not dreamed it. Wildly with all the strength of horror she pushes him from her, springs up and stands wringing her hands distracted before him, her fluttering hair only half disclosing her frightened countenance. Then she calls him by name in a tone indescribably piercing, painfully questioning, 'Emil!' He in turn, hearing himself called by name, falls at the same moment with a faint sigh swooning to the floor. After a pause he raises himself up, rubs his eyes and looks wonderingly about him. He cannot comprehend how he has come here. The influence of the moon has permitted the poor night wanderer to experience this adventure. When he was completely awake and had come to himself, he stood up and began to think over his situation. Then his eye fell astonished upon Rosalinde, who continued to stare at him speechless and immovable. Shame and anger adorned with a deep glowing color the injured maiden, whose virgin whiteness had been sullied by the strange events of this night. A dark, frightening recollection of what had taken place flashed now like a remote, faded dream into Emil's consciousness. The alluring spirits of the night, which had buzzed around him, now mockingly stripped from him the deceitful mask.

"'Go, go, go!' called Rosalinde finally, who could no longer bear his look. 'Go!' she called and stretched out her hand with a passionate movement toward him, as if she would with it jerk a reeking dagger from her breast. 'Go, go!' she repeated, sobbing and beseeching. Then she hid her aching head with a loud outbreak of tears. Emil slipped away heartbroken and in despair. He was in such a state, when he reached his own room, that he would have put a ball through his head, had there been at that moment a pistol at hand." How Rosalinde then became pregnant and in spite of her resistance toward Emil, still married him to reëstablish her honor, how though after the wedding feast two acquaintances of the young husband, whom he had not invited, played him so mischievous a trick that he lost his reason in consequence, that deserves no further rendering.

We find here also as the nucleus of moon walking, when we strip from the foregoing all its mystical setting, the longing to approach the love object and there to be able to indulge oneself without punishment because it is done unconsciously. The literary historian Richard M. Meyer regards it quite correctly: "Theodor Mundt believed that he had emphasized something new in his way of presenting it. 'The influence of the moon had caused the night wanderer to undergo this adventure.'" To be sure Mundt attributes all sorts of mystical-romantic rubbish to the action of the heavenly body.

"DER PRINZ VON HOMBURG," by Heinrich von Kleist.

Heinrich von Kleist also like Ludwig carried night wandering and moon walking into material at hand. We know that Kleist not long before the origin of the "Prinz von Homburg" under Schubert's influence occupied himself very much with the "night side of the natural sciences" and Wukadinovic has made it also apparent that the poet went still deeper, back to one of Schubert's sources, to Reil's "Rhapsodien über die Anwendung der psychischen Kurmethode auf Geisteszerrüttungen."[27] There he found a number of features which he then interwove into his drama, although by no means all that he permitted his moonstruck hero to do. The matter of the drama is presumably so well known that I content myself here with giving the mystical setting and the beginning and end of the action.

[27] "Rhapsodies over the Employment of the Psychical Method of
Treatment for Mental Disturbances." See Critical Historical Review by
W. A. White, Journ. Nerv. and Ment. Dis., Vol. 43, No. 1. [Tr.]

Wearied with a long ride, the Prince von Homburg throws himself down to sleep that he may obtain a little rest before the great battle in which he is about to engage. In the morning when they seek the leader they find him sitting on a bench in the castle park of Fehrbellin, whither the moonlight had enticed the sleep walker. He sits absorbed with bared head and open breast, "Both for himself and his posterity, he dreams the splendid crown of fame to win." Still further, the laurel for this crown he himself must have obtained during the night from the electoral greenhouse. The electress thinks, "As true as I'm alive, this man is ill!" an opinion in which the princess Natalie concurs. "He needs the doctor." But Hohenzollern, his best friend, answers coolly, "He is perfectly well. It is nothing but a mere trick of his mind."

Meanwhile the prince has finished winding the wreath and regards it idly. Then the elector is moved to see how far the former would carry the matter and he takes the laurel wreath out of his hand. "The prince grows red and looks at him. The elector throws his necklace about the wreath and gives it to the princess; the prince stands up roused. The elector withdraws with the princess, who holds up the wreath; the prince follows her with outstretched arms." And now he betrays his inmost wish, "Natalie! my girl, my bride!" In vain the astonished elector, "Go, away with you!" for the prince turns also to him, "Friedrich, my prince, my father!" And then to the electress, "O my mother!" She thinks wonderingly, "Whom is it he thus names?" Yet the prince reaches after the laurel wreath, saying, "Dearest Natalie! Why run away from me?" and really seizes her gloves rather than the wreath. The elector however disappearing with his retinue behind the gates calls to him:

"Away, thou prince of Homburg, get thee back,
Naught here for thee, away! The battle's field
Will be our meeting place, when't pleases thee!
No man obtains such favors in his dreams!"

"The prince remains standing a moment with an expression of wonder before the door, then pondering descends from the terrace, laying his hand, in which he holds the glove, before his forehead, turns as soon as he is below and looks again toward the door." Out of this state the Hohenzollern returning awakens him. At the word "Arthur" the moonstruck prince collapses. "No better could a bullet have been aimed." Afterward of course he makes up some story in regard to his sleep walking, that he had slipped into the garden on account of the great heat. Only the princess's glove recalls to him what has happened in his sleep:

"What is this dream so strange that I have dreamed?
For all at once, with gold and silver gleaming,
A royal castle flung its portals wide.
While from the marble terraced heights above
Thronged down to me the happy dancers all;
Among them those my love has held most dear.
Elector and electress, and--who is the third?
--What name to call her?"

For the name of the princess there is amnesia, as well as for the reason for his moon walking. Then he continues:

"And he, the elector, with brow of mighty Zeus,
A wreath of laurel holds within his hand.
And pressing close before my very face
Plucks from his neck the chain that's pendant there.
His hand outstretched he sets it on my locks,
My soul meanwhile enkindled high."

Now again the complete forgetting of the loved one's name. He can only say:

"High up, as though to deck the brow of fame,
She lifts the wreath, on which the necklace swings,
To crown a hero, so her purpose seems.
With eager movement I my hands outstretch,
No word, mere haste to seize it in my grasp.
Down would I sink before her very feet.
Yet, as the fragrance over valleys spread
Is scattered by the wind's fresh blowing breath,
Along the sloping terrace flees the throng.
I tread the ramp--unending, far away
It stretches up to heaven's very gate,
I clutch to right, I clutch to left, and fear
No one of all the treasures to secure,
No one of all the dear ones to retain.
In vain--the castle's door is rudely closed;
A flash of brightness from within, then dark,
The doors once more swing clatteringly together.
And I awaking hold within my hand
Naught but a glove, alas! as my reward,
Torn from the arm of that sweet dream caught form
A glove, ye Gods of power, only this!"

It is evident that there is complete memory of the latter part of his night wandering up to the name of the beloved maiden, although he thinks, "One dumb from birth to name her would be able!" Only once, when he was dreaming by himself, he was on the way toward recollecting the repressed name. He turns even to the Hohenzollern:

"I fain would ask you, my dear friend,
The electress, her fair niece, are they still here
The lovely princess of the House of Orange,
Who lately had arrived at our encampment?"

But he was cut off briefly by his friend, "Eh, what! this long while they've been gone." The same friend had however to explain in detail later, when he appeared before the elector in behalf of the prince condemned to death:

"When I awoke him and his wits he gathered,
A flood of joy the memory roused in him;
In truth, no sight more touching could you find!
At once the whole occurrence, like a dream
He spread before me, drawn with finest touch.
So vivid, thought he, have I never dreamed.--
And firmer still within him grew belief
On him had Heaven a favoring sign bestowed;
With all, yes all his inner eye had seen,
The maiden, laurel crown and noble jewels,
Would God reward him on the battle's day."

We see here plainly that the kernel of the supposed dream belonging to the night wandering is wish fulfilment, desire for glory and the hand of the beloved. It agrees very well with this conception that the prince himself takes the laurel from the gardener's forcing house to wind a wreath of honor for himself. He looks at it with admiring eyes and puts it upon himself, playing the rôle of being beloved, only the elector and Natalie come in to interfere. The princess and the laurel, also love and fame really hypnotize him and draw him magnetically. The prince follows them both with outstretched arms until the elector and Natalie disappear behind the gates. It seems to me very significant that not long before the creation of this drama a crowning with laurel at the hands of a loved one had actually taken place in the life of the poet and that, as it is now generally admitted, Kleist himself stood as the model of the prince. "Two of the smallest, daintiest hands in Dresden," as Kleist relates, crowned him with laurel at a soirée in the house of the Austrian ambassador after the preliminary reading of the "Zerbrochenen Kruges." ("The Broken Pitcher.") These daintiest hands belonged to his beloved Julie Kunze, to whom Dame Rumor said he was engaged. Wukadinovic defines quite correctly the connection of the drama with its autobiographical meaning: "As the poet sees the ideal of love arising next to that of poetic fame, so he grants to the ambitious prince, who exhibits so many of his own traits, a loving woman standing at his side, who rewards him at the close with the wreath."

The matter goes yet much deeper. The prince says of the elector: "Plucks from his neck the chain that's pendant there.... My soul meanwhile enkindled high." The laurel attains a further value for the prince, because the elector binds his own necklace about it. The latter is continually taken by Homburg as the father, to which a number of verses testify. Since the prince unmistakably stands for the poet, it cannot be denied that Kleist had desired the reward not only from the beloved one, but this still more with the express concurrence of the father. In the beginning to be sure he is repulsed by him, "Naught here for thee, away!" and later on account of his disobedience is even condemned to death.[28] He was not only pardoned, however, after he had acknowledged his wrong and recognized the father's judgment as correct, but when he believed his last hour had struck, he was bedecked with the wreath which he desired and on which moreover his elector's chain hangs. Still further, the latter, the father himself, extends the laurel to Natalie and leads the beloved to him. It is beyond question that love is the chief motive of the moon walking of the prince von Homburg, love to a woman as well as a homosexual tendency otherwise authenticated in the case of Kleist. Only it appears here closely amalgamated with desire for fame, something completely unerotic, and with the sexual, as we have found it so far regularly in night wandering and moon walking, quite excluded.

[28] It is significant to compare here the Consul Brutus, who
permitted the execution of his sons.

We will attempt to get more light on the last two points. The striving after poetic fame does not remain with our poet within the usual, normal limits but becomes much more a peculiar neurotic characteristic. No less a hope for instance had Heinrich von Kleist than with an unheard of creation to strike at Sophocles, Shakespeare and Goethe and concerning the last named he uttered this audacious sentiment, "I will rend the crown from his brow!" Since he fails to attain this goal in spite of repeated most earnest onslaughts, he rushes away to die upon the battlefield. He writes to his sister, however, "Heaven denies me fame, the greatest of earthly possessions; I fling back to it all else like a self willed child!"