My Heart Burns: E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Sandman

 My Heart Burns...

E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman (translated by Christopher Moncrieff): Tale of an Obsession

Nathanael’s childhood is haunted by the mysterious figure of Coppelius, a lawyer-friend of his father who regularly turns up at their house for night-time alchemical sessions. Nathanael associates Coppelius with the mythical Sandman, the legendary being said to steal the eyes of children who refuse to go to sleep. When Nathanael’s father dies as a result of an experiment gone wrong, this ominous mental link is sealed once and for all. Years later, with Nathanael now a university student, unwelcome memories are reawakened by the arrival in town of Italian barometer salesman Coppola. Could he be Coppelius under an assumed name? And what is his association with Professor Spalanzani? Nathanael’s ruminations increasingly skirt obsession. His infatuation with Olimpia, Spalanzani’s perfectly-formed but strangely uncommunicative daughter, only adds to his emotional confusion. 

I have the impression that continental Gothic tends to be more earnest and intense than English Gothic. No doubt this is a generalisation which invites any number of exceptions. However, it is certainly true of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman (first published 1816). Almost unremittingly dark, its bleakness is only tempered, if at all, by occasional bursts of black humour. The plot is underpinned by vague aura of supernatural dread, although from the start there is a strong suggestion that this is a tale not of ghosts or monsters but of a very human madness which may be more terrifying than any phantom.

A classic of its kind, The Sandman has inspired later authors including Poe and composers such as Delibes and Offenbach. This annotated Alma Classics edition features a new translation by Christopher Moncrieff and includes in an Appendix a few pages from Sigmund Freud’s The Uncanny – a celebrated essay which gives a predictably psycho-sexual interpretation of Hoffmann’s novella.

Paperback, 98 pages

Published June 1st 2014 by Alma Classics (first published January 19th 1816)

Illustration to "The Tales of Hoffmann" - Der Sandmann by Mario Laboccetta (1899-1988)

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E.T.A. Hoffmann’s stories in general, and The Sandman in particular, have exerted a strange pull over composers.  Perhaps the most famous of musical works inspired by Hoffmann is The Tales of Hoffmann (1880) by Jacques Offenbach, an opéra fantastique which has been described as “the darkest of all light operas”.  The French libretto was written by Jules Barbier, and is based on three short stories by Hoffmann, who is himself the protagonist of the opera.  Act 1 is an adaptation of The Sandman.  In it, Olympia sings one of the opera's most-famous arias, "Les oiseaux dans la charmille", also known as The Doll Song, during which she runs-down and needs to be wound-up before she can continue.  Here is a performance from The Met.

Coppélia (1870), sometimes subtitled: The Girl With The Enamel Eyes is a comic ballet to the music of Léo Delibes, with a libretto by Charles-Louis-Étienne Nuitter based upon the Hoffmann stories The Sandman and Die Puppe.  I have come across the following stop-animation version produced by the BBC in 1979.  It features some of the ballet’s best known music, including the Waltz of the Hours.

If all this sounds too saccharine, I have the perfect antidote for you.  In 2001, the German industrial metal group Rammstein issued their third studio album: "Mutter”.  The opening track on the album is the now iconic Mein Herz Brennt.  Significantly, the working title of this song was The Sandman, and it consists in a dark parody of the German children’s TV show Mr. Sandman, with echoes of the monster in Hoffmann’s story.  The music video in particular is the stuff of nightmare but, possibly, closer to the feverish mood of The Sandmann  than either Delibes or Offenbach.

Just as Philip Glass was inspired by David Bowie to write his “Bowie Symphonies” (Symphony No. 1 “Low”, Symphony no. 4 “Heroes” and his latest, Symphony No. 12 “Lodger”, just given its European premiere), German composer Torsten Rasch (b. 1965) turned to Rammstein for material for his song-cycle  Mein Herz Brennt.  The title-song takes the words of the original but recasts them into an expressionist, neo-Mahlerian lied set against a sprawling orchestral landscape.

E.T.A. Hoffmann was a Renaissance man.  Jurist, writer, artist, music critic… and also himself a composer.  So it’s fitting to end this brief playlist with one of his works.  Here’s the overture from his stage work Das Kreuz an der Ostee.   The heightened emotions of this overture fit in well with the mood of his literary works.