ETA Hoffmann's 'The Sandman'

[Paul Ferguson]

"Hoffmann’s most famous text, ‘The Sandman’, the ur-text on the Doppelgänger, has been the object of a dizzying number of readings, among them Freud’s essay on the uncanny, and must be one of the most frequently translated texts from German into English. It is the dense and unsettling story of a young man, Nathanael, who suffers from a fixation rooted in the nocturnal visitations during his childhood of his father’s mysterious friend Coppelius. As a boy Nathanael believes that Coppelius is the Sandman, a demonic figure who (so the family nursemaid tells him) throws sand in children’s eyes and makes them fall out of their sockets. One night, he hides himself in his father’s room to spy on Coppelius and his father, and watches them engage in an alchemical experiment."


Polly Dickson on new Hoffmann translations here:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n01/...hic-carrot


Wiki on The Sandman with links to the text in English and German and to an audiobook here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman_(short_story)