It is my purpose to bring also our beautiful literature to the solution of the exceedingly difficult and obscure problem of sleep walking and moon walking. Our poets, for all our psychiatrists and psychologists, possess the finest knowledge of the psyche and during the centuries before science was able to throw light upon the puzzles of the mind, they solved them prophetically with discerning spirit. Thus they knew how to bring to light various elements of our problem. Their creations directed to that end arose from their own inner nature, through analogy, or because sleep walking was not foreign to them themselves. And even if neither were the case, they still had the ability of those who have a real true knowledge of men, quite intuitively to see clearly into the unconscious of others. We will come to know what profound interest many of the great poets, like Otto Ludwig and Heinrich von Kleist took in night wandering and moon walking and how they have first introduced these dark problems into other traditional material. A striking similarity is revealed if one compares that which the poet has in mind with that which I have been able to report in the medical section. I shall be able satisfactorily to verify the statement that science and art have reached exactly the same result. First however I will present the examples from the poets according to their comprehensibility and their transparency. I begin with
Twice had Soelver drawn near to the maiden Gro, daughter of his neighbor, Sten Basse. The first time was when in the spring he visited the island Aebeloe, which belonged to him but was quite uninhabited. So bright the day and so warm the kiss of the sun upon him, yet suddenly it was “as if his bare neck were flooded by a still warmer wave of light.” A maiden stood before him, “who was like pure light. The eyes were as if without pupils, without a glance; as she looked it was as if white clouds floated forth out of a heavenly blue background. Soelver sprang up and stood face to face before her. Her cheeks grew red. Although unknown to eachother, they smiled one at the other like two seraphim. Her hands opened toward his and before her, as out of her lap, fell the flowers which she had gathered. Soelver believed for a moment that it was all a dream. He swung his hands into the air and a hand waved toward him. He closed his eyes that he might enjoy to the full the soft, fleeting impression. It floated over his hand like an incorporeal breath. Was it then a ghostly vision, that wandered there at his side!” When however he knew that the maiden near him was a living being, then “his lips sank toward her trembling with desire, unintentionally and yet irrevocably.” At this moment a “cloud passed over the sun and the light became at once dulled as if a mist had fallen upon all the flowers. Of all this he did not become so quickly aware, as that his owncheeksresounded from a whizzing blow.” Her face glowed bright with anger and the delicate blue veins were swollen on her forehead, while with a scornful look she turned her back to him. His blood was however aflame with desire for revenge.
A second time had the young nobleman Soelver sought to satisfy his masculine passion, when he surprised Gro bathing upon Aebeloe. She however had defended her maidenhood and struck him about the head with an old, rusty sword, which she found on the shore, so that he sank upon the grass covered with blood. “He felt the pain of his wounds with a strange glow of pleasure. The blow had fallen upon the hard flint stone within him so that the sparks of passion had sprung forth. He loved the maiden Gro. A consuming passion raged in his blood. In his thoughts he knelt always before that ineffaceable image, which struck him to the earth with a flame of divine wrath in her eyes.” In revenge for the trespass committed Sten Basse fell upon Soelver's castle and took the young nobleman himself prisoner.
Wild violence of this sort was indeed familiar to Sten Basse. He himself had once taken his wife thus by force. Just as he was flattering himself that he had broken her will once for all, she bit him in his chin so that the blood gushed forth and she spit his own blood into his eyes. He was struck with admiration at such strength. He had thought to desert her at once. Now he lifted her in his arms, carried her from her father's castle into the stable, bound her to his horse and rode forth—to his own home. Their marriage had been at first a long series of repetitions of the first encounter. In the end she loved him as the horse loves the iron bit between his teeth and the spur in his flank. She did not allow herselfto be subdued by the blows which he gave her, but she was the weaker and she loved him because he was strong enough to be the stronger. An evil fate had taken his sons from him one after the other. Therefore he wished to call forth in his only daughter the traits of his own blood, his pride, disdainfulness and stiff-neckedness. “She must know neither fear nor weakness; her will must be hardened and her courage steeled like that of a man. When he heard that his daughter had been in danger but had saved herself, he swore revenge to the perpetrator of the outrage, yet at the same time his heart laughed with pride at Gro's fearlessness. He took the young nobleman prisoner and rewarded him with heavy and tedious torture as penance for his insolence. Yet at the same time he delighted himself with the thought of putting his daughter to a still more dangerous proof. He wished to see the young-blooded, inexperienced birds reach out swinging and scratching in attack and defense.”
As if in mockery he gave to the imprisoned youth the passionately desired Gro to be with him in the dungeon. “She stood there as if she had glided into his prison by the flood of light entering in and he trembled lest the light would again absorb her into itself.” He knew not what power forced him to his knees and threw him at her feet with a prayer for forgiveness. She had however merely a scornful laugh for the man humbling himself in his love and the cruelly abusive word, “Creeping worm!” Then in his sense of affront there comes the thought that Gro was given into his power. While he tried the walls of his dungeon to ascertain if he was perhaps watched, Gro stood and stared out by the aperture through which the light entered, now paler than before. Soelver stepped near her, drew the single gold ring from his finger, which had come down to him through many generations of his forefathers, and extended it to her as a bridal gift. But she threw it unhesitatingly out through the peephole.
Now bitterness raged in Soelver's blood. “He bowed himself before her face in order to intercept her gaze, but he did not meet it though her eyes were directed toward his. It was indeed no glance but a depth into which the whole light of day, which was blue now without overhead, was drawn down into a deep well. Soelver became intoxicated with this light, which, as it were, appeared to seek her alone and threw an aureole of intangible beauty about her form.” He crept up and pushed forward the wooden shutter, then carried Gro to his cot. “She had let herself go without resistance and felllifelessly with her arms hanging down. Soelver laid his face close to hers. His breath was eager, his blood was on fire and in his fierce wrath he intended to yield himself to the boiling heat of sensual passion. Her cheeks however, her skin, her lips were cold as those of death. He began nevertheless wildly to kiss her face, once and again, as if to waken warmth and life in the cold skin. Yet with every kiss it was as if she grew more fixed, as if the lips shriveled and grew cold and damp as ice over the teeth. The cold from this embrace crept over Soelver, and drew the heat and fervor from his nerves, until he shook suddenly with the cold and shuddered with the thought that he had a corpse under him. Yet in that selfsame moment he marked the rising of her breast as she drew in her breath, full of strength with all its coldness, so full of strength that it pushed Soelver away and he slipped down to the hard flags of the floor.
“Soelver lay upon the floor, congealed with a coldness which was stronger than that of the hard tiles. It was as dark as in a walled-in grave. He dared not move however for fear that he would again feel that ice cold body. ‘Hear me,’ sounded suddenly a strangely shrill whisper, ‘hear me, if you are a man, let me get out! Call my father! I want to get out—make light—give me air—I am almost choking—I want to get out!’” As Soelver opened the shutter again so that the dim shadowy glow of the night could enter, he saw Gro “tall and slender in the pale light.” “Let me out, let me out!” she begged. “I am afraid here below—not of you—but of myself and of the dark—let me out!” “For the first time Soelver heard a soft rhythm in this voice smooth as steel. A soft breath breathed itself in her entreaty. He became a man, a protector and felt his power grow through her supplication.”
Yet though he exerted himself to the utmost to open the door of his dungeon, it was all in vain. It must have been fastened on the outside with massive oak or iron bars.“Sofinally he gave up entirely and turned back to the opening where the light came in. Gro had sunk down under the last bit of light, without complaint, without sound. Her eyes were closed, she leaned her head against the sharp edge of the aperture and her arms hung down lifelessly. Soelver bent over her; her breath was almost inaudible, but irregular and did not suggest sleep. Like a thirsty plant she stretched herself out of the single airhole of the dungeon that she might seize the last drop of light before the darkness extinguished everything. Soelver divined that she could not be brought away from this aperture for light.”He brought all the skins from the couch, spread them over her, pushed them under her body and “solicitously, with infinite carefulness he protected her from the damp floor, while he shoved his arm under her for support without ever touching her with his hand. All his brutality was gone, all his burning passion. Here she lay before him like a delicate sick flower, which must be covered over from the cold of night.”
When Soelver awoke the next morning he noticed that one of his hands was seized by her, grasped in the unconsciousness of sleep and held fast by her long, slender fingers, which clasped themselves about his hand. It was as if her soul clung to him in sleep as helper and savior from him himself, from his own brutal savagery. When Gro however opened her eyes and stared into Soelver's face, lit up by the sun, she broke out into weeping which could not be stilled. “She was terrified at awaking in a cellar hole, into the close damp darkness of which she looked, while the face of her vanquisher blazed strong in the sunlight before her; she wept without understanding or comprehending anything of what had happened about her.” Perplexed, Soelver bent over her hand and kissed it. Then came Sten Basse and saw how uncontrollably Gro sobbed. “If you have gone near my daughter,” he hissed at the young nobleman, “there will be no punishment strong enough for you.” At this there shot up in Soelver a wild lust for revenge and he answered his enemy with irritating coldness: “Yes, I took what you gave. You brought her yourself into my presence, you laid her yourself in my arms. Now you may take her back again. I spurn your daughter for I have not desired her for the honor and keeping of my house, but only for the entertainment of a night. Take her back now! Take her back!”
Nevertheless better treatment was from this time on accorded Soelver, which he never for a moment doubted he owed to Gro. As he dwelt in his cell upon his phantasies, he suddenly heard her voice singing that melancholy song of Sir Tidemand, who tried to lure the maiden Blidelille into his boat by vigorous runes written upon roses. Blidelille awoke at midnight and knew not what it was that compelled her.
“It drew me along to Sir TidemandWhom never mine eyes had seen.”
“It drew me along to Sir TidemandWhom never mine eyes had seen.”
In vain the foster mother bids them spread velvets and satins over her that she might sleep. Notwithstanding she arises suddenly,dresses herself and goes down to the strand to Sir Tidemand, who meets her scornfully. Then she goes into the lake, whither Tidemand follows her, seized with heartfelt remorse.
“For evil the rune on the rose leaf tracedAnd evil the work it had wrought,That two so noble, of royal grace,To ruin and death were brought.”
“For evil the rune on the rose leaf tracedAnd evil the work it had wrought,That two so noble, of royal grace,To ruin and death were brought.”
The woful song trailed itself through Soelver's mind like an indistinct dream. Then he believed that he distinguished Gro's step, until it was lost in her sleeping room. With his mental vision he saw the maiden, as she looked out upon the lake toward Aebeloe. She looked away from him, of whose fate she took no thought, but gazed fixedly over the sea, which bore upon its bosom a ship with silken sails, on whose deck Sir Tidemand stood. “Then Soelver was conscious of an infinite weakness in his love toward this pure maiden, whom his coarseness had taken into his arms, his desire had scorched with its hot breath but who had nevertheless left him benumbed in his baseness, cowardliness and weakness. Now he understood that love, in order to triumph, must first humble its own power, still its own movement and soften its brutal will. Now he comprehended that he must carve mystic runes of passion upon his own heart as upon a glowing rose and fling it into the mighty sea of feeling, praying it to bring the maiden Gro into his hands.”
Day and night Soelver's thoughts tarried only with Gro. In his phantasies “he forced himself through the bolted door, climbed sharp angled passage ways and winding staircases and lifted oaken beams from barred doors. Without once making a mistake, driven by a magic sense of direction, he finally reached Gro's couch, at which he saw himself staring with great white eyes, whose pupils in the darkness of sleep had as it were glided over to the side. And upon the cover of her couch lay her two gleaming arms and the fingers of the right hand trembled as if they grasped another invisible hand. In this room Soelver remained until her sleep drew him to itself, until the heaving of her breasts drew him down, until her fingers entwined themselves with his, until their breath mingled and his lids closed before her pure gaze.”
Another time he dreamed that he was upon a vessel, evidently in the rôle of Sir Tidemand. And Gro actually came over the water to him like the maiden Blidelille, “with roses like two blood spots upon her breast. She had crossed her hands beneath them andfastened her pure gaze upon Soelver, so that he was seized with terror and, without escaping her look, fled to the lee of the vessel to the edge of the ship. Yet Gro steadily drew nearer. Now she reached the ship's border and Soelver retreated. Step by step she followed him, the painful gaze of her deathly white face absorbed by his own. And he withdrew over to the other border, drew back until he felt the railing hard behind him. Gro stepped forward alone and it was not possible to stop her; he felt as if she wished to press within him like the sped arrow to its goal. Finally, in an instant, as her garment fluttered against him, he threw himself with a loud cry to one side and saw, with a great horror, that Gro went forward, through the railing as through air and disappeared on the other side in the sea, while Soelver lay moaning upon the deck and saw before him only the red roses, which fallen from her breast crept like living blood over the ship's planks.”
Was it dream or reality, which he saw when he opened his eyes? “The sun's rays burst forth through a crack in a long, radiant arrow, which bored itself into the floor and transfixed as it were something red that began to glow.” And as Soelver crept nearer his astonishment grew deeper. “For hard by the vision of red were footprints breathed so to speak upon the floor, fine, slender prints, directed toward him, no more distinct than if a warm breeze had blown away the dampness from the surface of a stone, leaving the outline of a foot fixed there.” As he now stooped down and with his hand felt for the blood red spot, his fingers actually touched “a heavy full-blown rose, whose sweet strong odor he drank as if in an intoxication of reality.” No one had forced his way in through the hatchway, of this he soon convinced himself. Gro must have dropped it here while he was spinning dreams about her.
In the nights which followed “he slept in a kind of hunger to feel her physically and tangibly in his arms.” Then when it was again full moon, he found on awaking, in a spot upon which fell the rays of moonlight, a little gold cross, “whose six polished stones seemed to radiate moonlight from themselves. It was as if the moonlight lay within his hand. He watched the small cross sparkle—it was the same that he had seen in dreams upon her rose wreath. Gro had been also within his prison.”
He was led out soon after this to be shown to the monk, who had come to obtain news of his imprisonment. “In the doorway the young nobleman met Gro and drew back, so strong a power seemed to irradiate from her living form. She stood in the half twilight,with her white hands and her white neck and forehead, which shone as with their own light from out her coal black velvet robe. There was a blinding, marvelous reality about her, which drew him like a great fragrant flower.” As the monk expressed his compassion for him, that imprisonment had befallen him, his pride of nobility awoke. “What do you say of imprisonment and ill foreboding? Know you not then that I am of my free will Sten Basse's guest?” This reply astonished even Sten Basse. “He admired the young, undaunted spirit, who found in himself no occasion for pity. Soelver stood before Gro, his arms firm at his sides, and breathed deep and strong. His eyes drank in the clear light from her hands and face.” When however Sten Basse sought to approach him in a friendly manner, Soelver motioned him back: “As prisoner was I led forth, as prisoner I return of my free will. If you wish to make any apology to me, you know where my dungeon is to be found.” Then he went quickly, without turning toward Gro, out of the hall and down into his prison. His senses nevertheless had seized that warm, radiant picture of the beautiful Gro and transplanted it to the midst of his cell. He saw it streaming before his eyes in the shimmering light of the cross of moonlight and longed for the clear light of the night, that he might go on and make the dream face live. When the darkness advanced “he stripped himself naked and allowed the air of the summer night to cool his limbs and purify them, before he betook himself to his cot. The small cross he laid upon his naked breast and watched the moonlight glimmer green and blue from every stone” and kissed it thinking of Gro. Then he fell asleep in blissful happiness.
Suddenly however he awoke without any apparent reason, from no dream or thought. “He was awake, collected and yet at the same time strangely under the control of something that lay outside himself, a strange unknown power, which might be either mystical or natural. It appeared to him as if the moonlight had been loosed from the moon and now floated about in the room like a living being. So real seemed this fancy to him that he turned his head to one side and was not astonished actually to see a form standing in the center of the darkness. A feeling of reverence and awe swept over Soelver as little by little he distinguished in the floating folds of the moon white garment, the firm outlines of a woman's arms, which were crossed beneath a half bared breast, the line of the teeth in the open mouth, a flash of white light from Gro's eyes gazing with a certain fixed power.
“Holy Mother of God—it was Gro herself!
“Soelver started upright, frightened at his own movement, for he scarcely dared breathe, much less go towards her. He felt his nakedness as a crime, even his being awake as a transgression. The form glided forward out of the moonlight, the crossed hands separated themselves from the breast and Gro pursued her way with outstretched hands, feeling her way and yet mechanically sure like a sleep walker.
“Yes, she was walking in her sleep. Soelver recognized it by the staring look in her eyes, which gazed through the night as through miles of space. Soelver slid noiselessly to the floor in front of her, afraid that he would be seen, in deadly terror lest she should awaken. For he knew how dreadful it might be to awaken a sleep walker and in his excited phantasy he heard already the cry of horror and madness which would issue from Gro's mouth if she awoke and saw herself in this dark, subterranean depth alone with a naked man as with a demon. It was as if everything in Soelver cried out in protective anxiety that Gro should not awaken. He crouched beseechingly upon the ground, his whole soul was a sobbing prayer for grace, for instant means of deliverance, now that Gro had come to him as if by fate.
“There came a whispered sound from her open mouth, as her lips for a moment sought each other. It was as if she breathed out the one word ‘Soelver.’ This, however, to hear his name spoken, made Soelver strong at once. It compelled him to arise from the floor, it banished fear from his soul, it made him rejoice in every fiber of his being. The next moment her outstretched arm reached his hand—he felt the firm, cool skin under his trembling finger tips and his face felt the warm breathing of her voice, ‘Soelver, Soelver!’ And driven by some mystic power of will, he forced himself under the same hypnotic influence which surrounded her. He compelledhimselfto leave the clear broad way of reason and to enter the ecstatic, perilous, paths of the sleep walker. He was no longer awake. He sought, he touched, he stood before that after which he had groped. He was himself driven by a magic power, by a marvelous single purpose, which must be attained. This whole transformation took place in him merely because he felt that this was the only means of saving her from awaking to consciousness and madness.
“‘Soelver—Soelver!’—‘Yes.’—‘Soelver—are you—are you—there?’—‘Yes—I—am—here.’—‘Yes—that is you—that is you—I feel you.’—‘And you see me?’—‘Yes, I see you.’—‘And you will stay with me?’—‘Yes—I will—I will stay with you.’
“Soelver answered her in the same whisperings in which she breathed out her words. His hands passed over hers with infinite carefulness. But finally his arms closed about her neck and he felt a marvelous tingling in his finger tips as he touched her soft silken hair. His mouth approached hers and mingled his warm breath with the breath which escaped cold from her lips. He drew in the air with her own rhythm, it was as if his naked heart bowed toward hers so that they all at once touched one another. Then the blood flamed out of her cheeks and streamed over into his, although they lay not upon each other. The blood burned in all her skin and Soelver trembled for a moment lest this transport was the beginning of the awakening.
“His heart stood still with fear. However the blood continued to surge through Gro's body. She pressed Soelver close to herself and through her soft clothing he felt her breast swell and throb, as if she would bore herself into his flesh. ‘Soelver—I love you.’—‘Gro—I love you.’ Then a strange giddiness seized him as if he were rushing into her arms on a tower miles high. He breathed upon her ethereal kisses, which closed her lips, moistened her forehead and descended thence like a refreshing spring rain so that her lids drooped. When her eyes were closed Soelver felt for the first time quite secure. He fastened them with a real kiss and now, since her sleep wandering had reached its goal in his arms and Soelver was sure that her love dream was too deep to be disturbed, he whispered louder than before, ‘Gro—I love you!’—‘Soelver—I love you!’—‘How long have you loved me?’—‘Longer than I have known you, Soelver.’—‘Why have you not said so, Gro?’—‘That, Soelver, I will never tell!’
“So Soelver carried his wonderful burden to his couch and inhaled her youthful fragrance and lifted his mouth to hers and all his blood at once leaped forth. Every fiber of his being was stirred to kisses, every blood drop became a yearning mouth to meet the thousand mouths of her blood. And lost to sense—vehemently, seized by the divine power of nature, unafraid that she might awaken, without control over himself and yet proud as a master of worlds, he was impelled as the sunbeam to its goal, when it forces open the flower and buries itself in its fragrant depths. Soelver united himself with Gro. She on her part slumbered on, quiet as the sea which has closed over its sacrifice.
“But Soelver felt his senses reawakening. What now? Should he let Gro sleep until day woke her and she saw herself in his arms?He bent over his beloved in deepest distress. She must not awaken in terror, not again weep as on that first morning when she was with him. The most delicate chords in her soul had trembled and sung to him in the night, to him whom she unconsciously loved with all the indefinable conviction of her heart. This love must not be rudely plucked and allowed to fade like a plant whose tender shoot is torn asunder. She must go back to her maiden's couch until the flower of the day had burst forth from its leafy covering. Then he discovered that the panel at the foot of his cot was opened, while some planking had been pushed back. Gro must have come this way and by this way he carried her back. Led by an unerring instinct, as if he knew from his nightly phantasied visits all the turnings of the way, he went without deliberation into the secret room behind the panel, found the passage to the main stairway, passed straight up, turned through corridors, passed under the heavy tapestry curtains, opened the last door and noticed first that he bore a burden when he laid it down. The moon threw its faint silver light round about in the little room. With a sweet wonder Soelver gazed upon the prayer stool and the brown rosary—without its cross.”
I may pass briefly over the remainder. In the first place Soelver was given his liberty and he went back to his castle. The death of Sten Basse occurred soon after. Soelver whispered to his daughter at his death bed, “Gro, whatever may happen, know now that we belong to one another.” She “turned her head slowly toward him and looked at him with her large eyes swollen with tears. Her look was that of a stranger and quite uncomprehending, so that Soelver understood that she did not simply deny everything but she had no recollection at all.” So Soelver turned and went. For the first time when bathing in the lake “he found again his youth and his freedom, his radiant hope and the jubilant certainty of his love. Gro loved him! Only the thought of love had not yet arisen from the depths of her soul like pearls to the light. Nevertheless the wonderful flower of her affection was growing in the golden light of dreams. He longed after Gro as after his bride, although he was only the bridegroom of her dreams, who dared to kiss her only when her eyes were closed. By day he was her foe, as the bear in the fairy tale, who by night alone is changed into a beautiful young man.”
They met therefore first again at Sten's bier, at the side of which they both kneeled. “Gro's eyes were directed upon him as upon a stranger, staring with wonder, burning with a mystic light. Whywas this stranger here near her, the man whom her dead father had tortured and derided? And yet her eyes were wet with tears of pity and she felt that this man only desired to take her hand. Soelver observed her with his inmost soul. He pressed the small cross of moonshine between his hands, he bent over it and kissed it and a gleam from its blazing stones smote Gro's eyes. She stretched out her arms and took the cross from him and gazed into the stones as into well-known eyes. She knew not how this had come into Soelver's hands but she also bent over it and kissed it and her soul went out toward Soelver as toward a soul far, far away, whom she once had known, whom however she could scarcely remember.”
After this Soelver came and went at Egenaes, Sten Basse's castle, as if he were lord and heir of the estate. “It was rumored also among the tenants and the servants that he was betrothed to the maiden Gro. Yet no word of it was exchanged between them. Soelver stood by Gro in small things and great, and she allowed herself to be guided by his strength and cleverness. Since that night when he had kneeled with her at her father's lifeless body, she was bound to him by a nameless bond of gratitude, of mutual feeling, and by an inner apprehension that their fate was interwoven. Still no consciousness of love colored Gro's attitude. She longed for Soelver's strong handclasp because it made her will strong to withstand her sorrow. She could think of herself lying upon his broad, deep breast, only however because there slumber would come in sure forgetfulness. There was moreover a tenderness in her look, when in a fleeting moment she let her glance rest upon his, such as the realization of another's goodness awakens in us, especially when the goodness is undeserved and disinterested. Yet there was never any of love's surrender. Only she was glad to know herself observed by these quiet, steadfast, clear eyes, from which the red specter of passion, which had so frightened her that day upon Aebeloe, had long been banished. She believed that she had in Soelver a friend given her for life and death, a friend who could not desire her in love nor be desired, a brother whom one might trust with infinitely more serenity than any lover.
“Soelver was ever watchful of Gro. His eyes were on the lookout whether he might not once surprise in hers the brightness of the dream, and make the hidden rose of love break through the green covering and bloom in reality. He longed thus within himself once to see the day and night aspects of her soul melt into a wonderful golden twilight. But Gro made no response to thegaze from his eyes. She turned her head aside so that her silken lashes concealed her glance. ‘Gro, why do you never look at me?’—‘I do look at you.’—‘Do you see me with your cheek, Gro?’—‘I see you, though, Soelver. I see you with the outermost corner of my eye.’ Soelver bent his face beneath hers. ‘Are you looking at me?’ But Gro pressed her lids together as before a bright light and shook her head, ‘No, Soelver, not so! You look too sharply, you look too deeply. You look so deeply that it hurts me very much. No, stand so Soelver, turn your eyes away!’—‘Are you afraid of me?’—‘No, no—why should I be afraid? But I do not feel comfortable to have you all the time wanting to read my heart, to have your eyes searching for some writing that does not stand written there. My friend and beloved brother, I fear what your look would draw from me—what would you drag out from mysoul?’—‘The spring day, Gro, when we first met.’—‘Ah! Soelver, I scarcely remember it. It seems to me that I have always known you, that all your days you have been good and kind to me. Lately I have felt it in my heart and upon my cheek, as when my mother caressed me and that is long, long ago.’—‘Gro, only say it, you are afraid of the word, but not truly—just say it—you love me.—You are silent because it is true.’ ‘No, Soelver, I have never felt that.’—‘So you have dreamed it, Gro.’—‘Dreamed!’ Gro became fiery red. ‘Dreamed—dreamed—oh Soelver, what have I dreamed? What do you know of my dreams? To have dreamed is to have dreamed, and my dreams belong to me, to me alone!’ For a moment she turned to him a shy, quivering look, then tears trickled down from under her drooping lids. But Soelver observed that he had hit upon the truth. Immediately however he regretted that he had cast this look into the sanctuary of her soul. It was like the curious peeping of which the knight had been guilty, spying through the keyhole upon his wife, Undine.
“A long time they sat silent. At last Gro was herself again, quiet and controlled. Then she spoke in a soft but firm voice, ‘Soelver, if you remain with me to awaken me to love, then I beg of you, go and never return. I can never look upon you with the eyes of love. Passion seems to me like a glowing sword, which burns out one's eyes as it goes by. There was a day when you made the flaming sword of your desire pass by my face—since that time it is burned out. I have been blinded, Soelver, I am blind to the desire of your eyes, and all your fervent prayers. I have hated you, despised you, defied you, yet you have repaid evil with goodand now I return good for good. Look not upon me with love's eyes, seek not to awaken the dead in me to life. You are to me more precious than if the proud brother of my childhood had returned in you, your spirit is his, I did not believe that in the will of a man so much kindness could dwell. Leave it so, stay with me as my brother, or leave me like my brother, but never speak to me of love, neither in words nor in looks for I know no reply.’”
The young nobleman knew finally, for all his eager power, no other way of escape than to go with the king to the war. He saw quite clearly that “Gro struggled against the force deep in her heart. And yet the day's flaming sun could cause the weak chrysalis of the dream to shrivel so that no butterfly would break through the covering and rejoice in the strong light of midday. But with Soelver away, the longing for him would support the invisible growth of the dream and prepare the way for it into consciousness. Ah! it was worth his departure.” Then he took leave of his beloved. “Goodbye; forget me not on our island. Bid me return when you will. The wind will find me, wherever I am. Tell the wild birds, when you want me and would call me home.”
Gro, remaining behind alone, first became aware what she had lost in him and in his “strong will, which was her source of light.” She began to long more and more for him who was far away. “Ah, if he would only come again!” And when a bird flew by, she “flushed red at her own thought; was that a message sent forth by her desire? This took place contrary to her wish and will—she wished not to long for him, not to call him back, not to love him! Angrily she roused herself and sought to recall the burning gaze with which Soelver had wounded her modesty. So with a vexed and hard stroke of the oars she pushed the boat away from Aebeloe.”
When the war was ended, Soelver went to serve the king of France. For, as he wrote in a letter sent by carrier pigeon, “he who is not summoned, comes not.” Meanwhile love towards the young nobleman had begun to grow in her bosom. “Night after night she dreamed of Soelver and at last one night she suddenly awoke and found herself cold and naked, wandering around in her room and heard the last note of her heart's unconscious avowal, ‘Soelver, I love you.’ There was a change within her. Hour after hour would she sit inactive and half asleep, listening to the irregular beating of her heart—something was drawing upon her very depths, sucking her strength from her, from her proud will, something that paralyzed her thought and bound her always to the same name, thesame memory.” As she listened to her own depths, “she caught a momentary something like a weak, quickly beating echo of her own slow heart, a busily living little heart, that ticked louder and louder until at last it deafened hers. A trembling joy seized her at that moment through all her senses as she knew that she bore a life within her life, that she enclosed in her body the germ of a new life that was not growing from her alone and of her life alone.”
Suddenly a crushing terror overcame her. Who was her child's father? “So abruptly came this question over her naïve soul that she fancied for a moment that this might be the punishment of fate for her longing for Soelver. This longing was desire, and desire was sin no less than the love itself. Her wish for him had grown to a fire in her blood and now she was stained by her own passion, pregnant from her own sin. God's punishment had visited her and soon would be visible to all the world. Gro saw however immediately the foolishness of her thought. For one moment she lingered at the thought of the one woman of all the earth, who had immaculately conceived. Then she uttered an inward prayer that the Mother of God would lighten her understanding and give her clearness of vision that she should not go astray in her brooding over this mystery.”
When she questioned her nurse and the latter finally put it to her, “Have you spent no night under the same roof with Soelver?” then there occurred to her the many nights“whenshe had dreamed of the lonely imprisoned man, who was being punished because of her. When she lay in her bed in the dark, a strange curiosity had overcome her to imagine his lot there below and, when sleep seized her and dreams chased away the bitter, hard thoughts, her heart had become softer and the sun had shone over the visions of her dreams as the spring day over the woods blossoming with the green May bells. Many a night and many a morning was she awakened by a strange burning desire in her thoughts, and her mouth was as though touched with fresh dream kisses, and she had entered into judgment with her own weak heart and had so inflamed herself to scorn and hatred that she had done nothing to soften the fate of the prisoner. But how could Soelver have been the guest of her dreams? And how had he been able to command the virgin love fed by her slumber? Then came the nurse to her aid and made it clear to her. She knew that the maiden Gro had walked in her sleep; the servants had told of a white ghost on the stairs and once sheherself had seen it and recognized Gro, who had disappeared upon a secret stairway, which led down into the dungeon. She had kept still about it, for she thought it was a voluntary sleep walking to the young nobleman.”
Thus was Gro enlightened as to the source of her pregnancy. “She quivered with shame that the desire in her dreams had the power to drive her down to the lonely prisoner and she shook in her inmost soul at the memory of that happy dream, which she had had the night before her father's death. Now her love suddenly burst into the light like a wonderful flower, which suddenly springs up with a thousand fragrant buds. Now it was impossible to stem it or to conceal it. She had wanted to suppress every germ, with her father's coldness and the day's dispassionately proud haughtiness she had been willing to stifle every impulse toward love, every longing for self avowal. Now she found her pride was dead and buried and her being within and without was permeated by love.
“For she had loved Soelver from the first springtime kiss, which he had imprinted upon her cheek as she wandered among the fresh May bells, loved him in the blow which she had inflicted upon his head when he had touched her chaste nakedness, loved him in those nights when he had slept uncomplaining in the cellar dungeon, loved him in those bitter moments of his humbling when he, in spite of scorn and insult, maintained his pride, loved him that evening when he kneeled at her father's bier and kissed the hand of his enemy now dead, loved him day by day all the time they were together, loved him in that hour when she saw his banner disappear among the hundred others, and today upon Aebeloe when she heard that new life singing within hers. And now she rejoiced; for she bore him always within her, she could never again lose her Soelver.”
As we glance over the material of this tale, we find as the nucleus of the night wandering and moon walking the strong repression of every conscious love impulse and the breaking through of the unconscious in sleep and dream wherever the censor's rule is relaxed. For the maiden Gro had loved Soelver from the first moment, yet this love was confessed only in moments of occasional self forgetfulness, as by the first meeting with the young nobleman, when her hand met his, yes, even pressed it for the moment. Only Gro should not have been frightened out of her half unconscious action by a kiss or a passionate desire, for at once there arose to life within her the coldness and haughtiness of her father and the highhanded reaction which her mother had manifested to her conqueror. Thedetermining factor, to speak in psychoanalytic language, is the struggle between the strong sexual rejection and the equally compelling sexual desire. At first the former held the upper hand with our heroine in her waking and conscious action, the latter in the unconscious. Through the force of her will Gro seemed cold, even as she had learned of her father. She defended herself from her lover's craving by force and blow; even when conquered finally through the noble spirit of her enemy, she would see in him only the friend for life and death. She directly refused to think of love and displaced it to external things, she even bade the young man go rather than desire her as his wife. Soelver's devotion reminded her most significantly of her mother's tenderness, his pride, of the brother of her childhood. “It is as if in you the proud brother of my childhood had returned. Your spirit is his. Leave it so, stay with me as my brother or leave me like my brother, but never speak to me of love, neither in words nor in looks, for I know no reply!”
Yet she avoided Soelver's searching eye and as he reminded her of her dreams, she was smitten in the depths of her soul. For her dreams, she well knew, chased away the bitter and hard thoughts, the repressed unconscious broke through and the true feeling of her loving heart. This already appeared clear to her when her beloved languished in captivity at her father's hands. The strange desire to work out the fate of the young nobleman, who suffered on her account, had overcome her lying there in her bed in the dark. And in the morning she awoke with a strange burning desire in her thoughts and her mouth was flecked with his fresh dreamkisses. Still she consciously kept back every outer manifestation of love and met the young man while her father was alive with coldness and suspicion and later even merely as a brother. The great distance separating her beloved from her and above all the child which she bore from him under her heart for the first time conquer her haughty pride and her conscious aversion. And as she dreams one night again of the loved one far away she finds herself suddenly awake, going about cold and naked in her room and perceives as the lingering sound of her heart's unconscious avowal, “Soelver, I love you!”
So severe is this struggle between conscious sexual denial and unconscious desire, that it even forces itself through in her sleep and her night wandering. Her dreams had indeed, as she later acknowledged with shame, the force and the power to compel her below into the young nobleman's dungeon. She had clasped Soelver'shand in her sleep, she had told him everything in the moonlight, with eyes closed, everything which she secretly felt, and had pressed him to herself. Yet when he asked her why she could never confess to him that she had always loved him so deeply, she repulsed him: “That I will never tell!” Even when he had united himself to his beloved, she had slumbered on as if nothing had happened and the next day knew nothing of it all.
This leads now to that which, according to folk belief, constitutes the very core, the chief ground for sleep walking and moon walking in a maiden. It is easy to understand the wish, on the part of the female sex with their strongly demanded sexual repression, to come to the beloved one and taste all the delights of satisfaction but without guilt. This is possible only through wandering in unconscious sleep. For, as my first patient explained, one is not accountable for anything that happens in this state, and thus can enjoy without sin and without consciousness of what is not permitted. Convention demands that the maiden wait until the lover approaches her, but in that unconscious state she may surrender herself. The need for repression explains then the subsequent amnesia. Yet wandering by night is not concerned merely with sexual enjoyment, over and above that it fulfills a second desire that arises out of childhood, as we know from psychoanalysis. Every small maiden has, that is, the wish to have a child by her father, her first love, which is often in later years defined thus, one might have a child, but without a husband. The night wandering fulfills this desire to have a child yet without sin. Therefore has that motive of an unconscious, not to say immaculate, conception inspired not a few poets, as it has already, as is well known, been active in the creation of the drama.
Less transparent than that chief motive is the action of the light, sunlight as well as moonlight. The heroine of the story stands toward both in a special relationship. Her body is almost illuminated by its own light, her hair sparkles electrically when it is touched, “warm waves of light” emanate from her, which Soelver noticed at their first meeting, the sun seems expressly to seek her, a halo of impalpable beauty surrounds her and above all glows from the depths of her eyes. Not only so, Gro seems to dwell chiefly in the light, whose last drops she greedily absorbs within herself. When the light fades, her body becomes cold as ice like a corpse. In similar manner the shining of the full moon affects her, the light of which the stones of her gold cross have absorbed. The first timethat the slumbering youth saw Gro wandering, it seemed to him as if the moonlight had been loosed from the planet and floated only in his room like a living being. The poet, to be sure, has offered no explanation of this mystical effect of light and what the reader may think for himself would be merely drawn from other sources. For this reason I will not pursue this point further.
The narrative affords somewhat further means for an understanding in another direction. It is not explained more fully just why Gro follows the sunlight and moonlight or why both exercise upon her a peculiar attraction, yet the tendency to a motor breaking through of the unconscious may be derived from an inherited disposition. The father is a rough, violent robber knight while the mother shows distinctly sadistic traits and a truly ready hand at fighting. That confirms what I explained in the first part, a heightened muscular excitability and muscle eroticism, which strives to break through again on the sexual side in sleep walking. Finally it may be affirmed without doubt that the ghostly white figure upon the stairs was no other than the maiden in her shift.
I can deal more briefly with“JörnUhl,” the well-known rural romance of Frenssen, in which the sketch of a moon walker constitutes merely an episode. Joern Uhl, who, returned from the war, takes over the farm of his unfortunate father, discovers Lena Tarn as the head maid-servant. She pleased him at first sight. “She was large and strong and stately in her walk. Besides her face was fresh with color, white and red, her hair golden and slightly wavy. He thought he had never seen so fresh and at the same time so goodly appearing a girl. He was pleased also at the way she nodded to him and said ‘good evening’ and looked him over from head to foot with such open curiosity and sincere friendliness.” She sings too much to please the old housekeeper! “She is so pert and too straightforward with her speech.” It is noteworthy too that she talks to herself in unquiet sleep.
Lena Tarn can soon make observations also upon her side. Joern was very short with the old graybeard, who advised him to an early marriage: “The housekeeper is with me, I do not need a wife.” Lena, entering just then, heard what the unmannerly countryman said and assumed a proud look, thinking to herself, “What is the sly old man saying!” Since however the old man began to talk and compelled her and Joern Uhl to listen, she was concernedalmost entirely for the latter, whose “long, quiet face with its deep discerning eyes she observed with a silent wonder, without shyness, but with confident curiosity.” Not alone in the kitchen, which is under her control, can Lena show what is in her. When a young bull broke loose and came after the women, she met him with sparkling eyes, “Stop you wretch!” When he would not allow himself to be turned aside, she threw a swift look flashing with anger upon the men, who were idly looking on, then swung the three-legged milking stool which she had taken along and hit the bull so forcibly on the head with it that frightened, he lunged off sideways. “Lena Tarn had however all afternoon a red glow coming and going in her cheeks because the farmer had looked upon her with the eyes of a high and mighty young man. That caused her secretly both joy and concern.” Immediately after this she experienced one satisfaction. Joern Uhl was dragged into the water by a mischievous calf and was much worse cut up by it than she, the weaker one, the woman had been.
“Lena saw always before her the face which Joern Uhl had made when she had gone forward against the bull. She was otherwise in the best of humors, but when, as in the last few days, she was not quite well physically she was inclined to be angry. She preserved a gloomy countenance as well and as long as she could. Soon though, as she went here and there about her work and felt the new fresh health streaming through her limbs, she altered her looks.… Joern Uhl moreover could not be quiet that day. The sudden plunge in the water had brought his blood to boiling. The spring sunshine did its part. A holiday spirit came over him and he thought that he would go into the village and pay his taxes, which were due. On the way he thought of Lena Tarn. Her hair is coiled upon her head like a helmet of burnished brass, which slips into her neck. When she ‘does things,’ as she says, her eyes are stern and directed eagerly upon her work. When on the other hand she is spoken to and speaks with any one she is quick to laugh. Work seems to her the only field where quiet earnestness is in place. ‘That must be so,’ she says. Toward everything else she is angry or in a good humor, mostly the latter. Only toward me is she short and often spiteful. It has been a great joke for her that I had the ill luck to have to go into the water with that stupid beast. If she only dared she would spread it three times a day on my bread and butter and say ‘There you have it.’”
Now he meets old Dreier who gives him good advice: “Howold are you? Twenty-four? Don't you marry, Joern. On no account. That would be the stupidest thing that you could do. I bet you $50.000 you don't dare do it. Time will tell, I say.” “Take it for granted that I will wait yet ten years,” he answered. And he went on thinking to himself, “It is pleasanter to go thus alone and let one's thoughts run on. Marry? Marry now? I will be on my guard. After I am thirty!” Then his thought came back to Lena. “She looked well as she flung the stool at the bull. Prancing like a three-year-old horse. Yesterday she did not look so well, her eyes were not so bright, she spoke harshly to Wieten (the old housekeeper) and said to her afterwards, ‘Do not mind it, Wieten, I slept badly,’ and laughed. Funny thing, slept badly? When one is on the go as she must be all day, one should sleep like a log. But that is all right in the May days. It is well that men understand this, otherwise every spring the world would go all to pieces.” Then he rejoiced that he was so young and could point out on the farm what was his. “Later, when the years have gone by and I am well established I will take to myself a fine wife with money and golden hair. There are also rich girls who are as merry and fresh and as desirable and have as stately forms. It need not be just this one.”
Then he came to the parish clerk who had just been notified that day of six children to be baptized and who was complaining of the increase in births. Joern agreed with him: “What will we come to, if the folk increase like that? Marrying before twenty-five must simply be forbidden.” “With these words he departed, filled with a proud consciousness that he was of the same opinion with so intelligent, experienced an old man as the parish clerk.” At home he met Lena Tarn with an old farmer, who came to inquire after the fate of his son who had been with Joern in the war. Then for the first time the girl heard of the frightful misery and the suffering of the soldiers which cried to heaven, so that her face was drawn with pain. “Deep in her soul however thrilled and laughed a secret joy, that you have come back whole, Joern Uhl.”
Later, when she was making out the butter account with the farmer, “she had to bend her glowing head over the book, which he held in his hand. There came such a glistening in his eyes that he wrinkled his forehead and did not conceal his displeasure at such an unsteady flashing.” In the evening she came to get back the book. Then Joern spoke to her, “You have not been in a good humor these last days. Is anything the matter?” She threw her head back and said shortly, “Something is the matter sometimeswith one; but it soon passes over.”—“As I came through the passage yesterday evening I heard you call out in your sleep in your room.” “Oh, well!… I have not been well.”—“What … you not well? The moon has done that. It has been shining into your room.”—“I say, though, there may be some other cause for that.”—“I say that comes from the moon.” She looked at him angrily, “As if you knew everything! I did not call out in my sleep at all but was wide awake. Three calves had broken out and were frisking around in the grass. I saw them clearly in the moonlight. I called them.” He laughed mockingly, “Those certainly were moon calves.” “So? I believe not. For I brought them in myself this morning and then I saw that the stable door stood open. I thought to myself, the boy has gone courting tonight. Your eyes always sweep over everything and light upon everything and you [du] worry so over everything out of order, I wonder that you [du] have not seen it.”—“You say ‘thou’ [du] to me?”—“Yes, you say it to me. I am almost as great as you and you are not a count, and I am as intelligent as you.” She carried her head pretty high and as she snatched the book from the window seat as if it lay there in the fire, he saw the splendid scorn in her eyes. “Take care of yourself when the moon is shining,” he said, “otherwise again tonight you will have to guard the calves.”
“He had arisen, but dared not touch her. They looked at one another however and each knew how it stood with the other. He had again the look which he had revealed once in the morning, a presuming look, confident of victory, such a look as if he would say, ‘I know well enough how such a maidenly scorn is to be interpreted.’ But her eyes said, ‘I am too proud to love you.’ She went slowly into the darkness of her room as if she would give him time yet to say something or to long after her. He was however too slow for that and laughed in confusion.”
The night fell upon them, a wonderful still night. “I will take one more look at the moon,” thought Joern Uhl and took his telescope. He went through the middle door with as little noise as possible, but the door of Lena's room stood open and she appeared upon the threshold and leaned against the side post. “Are you still awake?” he asked anxiously. “It is not yetlate.”—“The sky is so clear. I want to look at the stars once more. If you wish you may come with me.” At first she remained standing, then he heard her coming after him. When he had directed his telescope to a nebulous star he invited her to look in. She placed herself so awkwardly thathe laid his hand on her shoulder and asked her, “What do you see?”—“Oh!” she said, “I see—I see—a large farmhouse, which is burning. It has a thatched roof. Oh!—Everything is burning; the roof is all in flames. Sparks are flying about. It is really an old Ditmarsh farmhouse.”—“No, my girl, you have too much imagination, which is bad for science.—What else do you see?”—“I see—I see—at one side of the farmhouse a plank which is dark; for the burning house is behind it. But I can look deep into the burning hall. Three, four sheaves have fallen from the loft and lie burning on the blazing floor. Oh, how frightful that is! Show me another house which is not burning.—Show me a house, you know, show me a farmyard just where they are who hunt up the calves.” He laughed merrily. “You huzzy,” said he, “you might well see your three-legged stool in the sky, not? So, high overhead!”—“You should have had the three-legged stool. I do not forget you that day, you … and how you looked at me. That you may believe.”
He had never yet let anyone share in his observations. Now he marveled and was pleased at her astonishment and joy. And then he showed her the moon. He placed her and held her again by the arm as if she were an awkward child. She was astonished at the masses on it: “What are those? Boiling things, like in our copper kettles? Exactly. What if it hung brightly scoured over our fireplace and tomorrow morning the fire shone up upon it.”—“The boiling things are mountains and valleys.—And now you have seen enough and spoken wisely enough. Go inside. You will be cold and then you will dream again and see in the dream I do not know what. Will you be able to sleep?”—“I will try.” He wanted again to reach out his hand to her but his high respect for her held him back. He thought he should not grasp her thus, along the way as it were. “Make haste,” he said, “to get away.”
She went and he remained to pursue his studies. So the time passed. He had grown eager and busied himself noiselessly with his telescope. “And he thrust aside once more that young life, which an hour ago had breathed so very near him and came again to the old beaten track of thought that the old Dreier was right. ‘Don't do anything foolish, Joern.’—And yet, ‘Fine she is and good. Happy the man about whose neck her arms lie.—What precious treasure must those eyes hold, when they can look with such frank confidence at a man.’”
About him now were only the customary sounds of night. Suddenly it was as if near by over the house roof and then at the side at the wall of the house he heard the soft cry of a goose and the weak flapping of wings. And “as he looked, there stood under the house roof in the bright moonlight a white human form, with one hand over the eyes and with the other feeling along the wall, as if it would enter the house where there was however no door. It spoke in excited hurried words, ‘The calves are in the garden; you must be more on the watch. Get up Joern and help me.’ Joern Uhl came in three long strides over the turf and softly called her name: ‘I am here.—Here I stand.—It is I.—So! so!—Now be still.—It is I.—No one else is here.’ She was speechless and began to rub her eyes with the back of her hand, as a child rubs the sleep out of its eyes, and she fretted also in childish fashion. Then he embraced her and told her again where she was, and led her to the stable door seeking to comfort her. ‘Look, here is the door of the stable. Here you have gone through, you dreamer; you have gone all through the stable in your sleep. Have you been seeking the moon calves? Ah you foolish child!—So, here you need not be anxious. You will straightway be back in your room.’ When she finally clearly recognized her situation, she was frightened, flung her hands against her face and uttered mournful cries. ‘Oh, oh, how frightful this is!’ But he caressed her, took her hands from her face and said to her feelingly, ‘Now stop that complaining. Let it be as it is.’ So they came to the open door, which led to her room. It must have been a remarkable night, for not only had half the calves in the pasture broken out and in the morning were actually standing in the garden and the court, but the boy this night of all nights had not come home, but only returned in the early morning twilight.”
The next morning Joern Uhl went to the parish clerk that the banns might be published for him and the nineteen year old Lena Tarn. He was almost embarrassed when he came again before her, “I should merely like to know what you think of me.” As she remained speechless, he came nearer. “You have always been a great heroine, especially to me. Hold your head high and make it known that I am right.” She was still silent, merely pressed both hands to her temples and stared into the glowing hearth. Then he drew one of her hands down softly from her hair, seized it and went with her over the vestibule, through the door communicating with the front of the house. She followed him passively, her eyes upon the ground and the other hand still on her hair. In the living roomhe led her to the large chair which stood by the window and forced her into it. “So,” said he softly, “here we are all alone, Lena. Here in this chair has Mother sat many a Sunday afternoon. You now belong in it.” Still she said nothing. “I have been to the parish clerk and arranged everything and the wedding will be in June. Have you nothing to say yet?” Then she seized his hands and said softly, “As you think, it is all good so.” And she covered her face with her hands and wept. Then he began to stroke her and kiss her. “Child, only cease your weeping. You are my fair little bride. Only be happy again.” And in his distress he said, “I will never do it again. Only laugh again.” At last when he could think of no more cajoling names, he called her “Redhead.” Then she had to laugh, for that was the name of the best cow, which stood first in the stalls. Now she lifted her head and gazed long at him without moving. Thus Joern Uhl came rightly to that tenderness and comfort which he thought he deserved.
I have only a little to add that is important for our theme. As a young wife also Lena Tarn was busy the whole day, working from early to late without rest. The work flew from her hand. And when her confinement was over, she got up the sixth day, against the earnest warning of the housekeeper, cared for her boy alone the whole day, went even to the kitchen and carried water for his bath. Joern Uhl allowed it. For he was proud to have such a strong wife, “not so affected as the others.” It led however to her death. Somehow she must have become infected, for soon after a severe childbed fever broke out.
Even as a young wife she, the poor humble cottager's daughter whose childhood was pinched by bitterest need, shed a wealth of love and joy upon all who dwelt about her. Yet now, “she, the friendly one, who had never caused suffering to any one, went in her fever delirium to every one in the house, even the smallest servant boy and to every neighbor and begged their forgiveness, ‘if I have done anything to hurt you in any way.’ Towards morning she became quieter but it was the exhaustion of death and she spoke with great difficulty. Her husband must ‘tell Father that she had loved him.’ Joern Uhl sobbed violently: ‘Who has never spoken a kind word to you, poor child.’ She tried to smile. ‘You have had nothing but toil and work,’ he said. Then she made him understand in labored speech that she had been very happy.” The last fever phantasies finally put her back into her childhood. Her love went out to the old teacher Karstensen, then again to Joern Uhl,until she was finally led through angels to a further father-incarnation, to the dear God. “It came to her like peace and strength. Clasped by many hands and led forward, she came to an earnest, holy form who leaned forward and looked kindly upon her. Then she stretched her hand out and suddenly she had a great bunch of glowing red flowers in her hand. She gave them to him saying, ‘That is all that I have. I pray you let me remain with you. I am fearfully weary. Afterwards I will work as hard as I can. If you would like to hear it, I will gladly sing at my work.’”
Scarcely in any other tale is the fierce strife between the clearly active sexual longing, and the conscious sexual denial present at the same time, as well as the final victory which the unconscious attains, so plainly shown as in Gustav Frenssen's romance, where the moon walking, exhibitionistic woman completely overthrows the reasoning of the man. The poet expresses it clearly and decisively: They each knew the desire of the other. Joern Uhl saw through the meaning of a maiden's scorn and Lena's eyes said, I am too proud to love you, but I do love you. Yet opportunity must be given to the unconscious to break through victoriously so that the inhibiting reason shall be deprived of its power. Therefore the powerful increase of libido with the woman during the occurrence of menstruation and through the wooing of the boy, who lets the calves break out, in the man through the cold bath and furthermore in both through the seductive May air. Finally the moon acts directly with its light as a precipitating cause.
The night before she had spoken out loud in her sleep just as Joern Uhl went by to his room. He had spoken of it directly as the action of the moonlight, which she of course contradicted; she had been lying awake and heard the calves break out.[19]Then she takes the following night, when the housekeeper, with whom she slept, was sitting up nursing an old farmer and the boy had gone courting again, to approach Joern Uhl on her part as a moon walker, who knew nothing of what she did and could not be held responsible. More than this her unconscious had a fitting speech ready, the calves had broken out again.
The breaking through of the motor impulse is also well grounded. Everything with Lena Tarn is joy in muscular activity, the restless,almost unappeasable desire for work and pleasurable “getting things done,” “exerting herself,” the constant singing, the easy giving way to anger. Work is the only thing which she can carry on earnestly because in that she lives out in part her sexuality, she meets every one else smilingly or angrily according to her mood. It is noteworthy too that her unquiet libido transforms itself toward Joern Uhl into anger and animosity and so much so that once in anger she addresses him as “thou” and acts as if she were his beloved.
One thing is especially evident in this example of sleep walking and moon walking, the invariably infantile bearing of these phenomena. When Lena, walking in her sleep, was called by her lover, she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand as a child rubs the sleep from its eyelids and fretted also in childish fashion. Then again there is her strange behavior when Joern announces that he has arranged for the publishing of the banns. The farmer had in a significant way put her literally into the mother's place and then in the same manner shown tenderness toward her, stroking and caressing her, as he himself had once been treated by his mother. Still Lena, who already in the night responded to the sudden realization of her position with the cry, “Oh, oh, how frightful this is!” cannot yet quiet herself. It is hardly to be believed that a farm maiden would so lose control of herself at the thought of an illegitimate relationship, which furthermore was to be immediately legalized by marriage. Many things however point to this—I mention only her later fever phantasies—that she always felt inwardly guilty because she had been untrue to some one else, the first beloved of her childhood, her own father. Only when Joern Uhl on his part becomes a child and in his way solemnlydeclares,“I will never do it again,” and in the end names her “Redhead,” apparently a pet name of her parent, then she has to laugh and looks long at him without moving, wondering perhaps if he is the real father. After this everything falls into proper place. I can now somewhat extend the statement at the beginning of this section. Night wandering and moon walking have not only inner connections with the infantile but more exactly with the infantile erotic.
I will briefly mention still one circumstance in conclusion. The influence of the moonlight is but little touched upon in our tale. Joern Uhl speaks of it only once. There is on the contrary a connection with actual occurrences, a recent cause for Lena's moon walking. She has looked at the moon through the lover's telescopeand received instruction in regard to it. That wakens the memory of the instruction of the old Karstensen, her teacher when she attended the folk school, from which we understand that he appears in the place of her father.