Hoffmann's fairy tale short story The Sandman is the most famous and popular work of the author. The Sandman story is recommended for adults and children over 14 years of age.
You should not literally take all the arguments of Hoffmann in the person of the main character Nathanael, take a closer look and you will see in them a lot of hidden meaning, living energy; you will be able to feel how childhood mental traumas can become stronger in the mind of a person and haunt him all his life.

Sandman. Summary
The fairy tale short story The Sandman is divided into four parts. The first three are the letters of the protagonist Nathanael to his friend Lothar and the answer of the girl Clara to Nathanael. The fourth part is the story itself.

First letter (Nathanael to Lothar). Summary
In his first letter, Nathanael tells a childhood story about the Sandman, who scared him before going to bed, about the death of his father and about his terrible friend Coppelius, in whom the boy saw evil and the incarnation of the Sandman. A case is also described about a seller of barometers.

Second letter (Clara to Nathanael.) Summary
Nathanael's beloved Clara accidentally read a letter addressed to her brother Lothar and expresses her point of view on the young man's experiences, showing him that all fears and horrors are not real.

Third letter (Nathanael to Lothar). Summary
Nathanael talks about how he lives, about his physics teacher Spalanzani and about his mysterious daughter Olympia.

Brief summary of the history of the Sandman
After visiting Clara and Lothar, the young man returns to study in the city and sees that his apartment has burned down. Having moved to another house, he is surprised to notice that he lives directly opposite the professor of physics. Having bought a spyglass, he spends whole days watching Olympia and meets her at a holiday at Spalanzani, falling in love with unconsciousness. Nathanael's best friend tries to help, saying that Olympia is very strange and that she has lifeless eyes, but he does not listen, forgetting about Lothar and his bride Clara.
By coincidence, Nathanael ends up at the professor's house at the wrong hour and learns terrible news: Olympia is not a person, but just a doll. The young man is going crazy.
Having been in a lunatic asylum and returning to his homeland, to his mother and friends, he recovers and plans a calm, measured life with Clara. However, this is not destined to come true. The story ends with the suicide of Nathanael, once again obsessed with the Sandman.

Nathanael - Lothar

You are probably all now in terrible anxiety that I have not written for such a long, long time. Mother, of course, is angry, and Clara, perhaps, thinks that I spend my life in noisy pleasures and completely forgot my lovely angel, whose image is so deeply imprinted on my mind and heart. But this is not fair: every day and every hour I remember you, and in sweet dreams the friendly image of my dear Clerchen appears to me, and her bright eyes smile at me as captivatingly as they used to when I came to you.

Oh, how could I have written to you in that mental turmoil which hitherto had upset all my thoughts! Something terrible has invaded my life! A gloomy premonition of a terrible fate that threatens me creeps over me like black shadows of clouds that not a single friendly ray of the sun penetrates. But first I must tell you what happened to me. I know I have to do it, but as soon as I think about it, insane laughter rises in me. Oh, dear Lothar, how can I make you feel at least in part that what happened to me a few days ago could really ruin my life!

If you were here, you would see everything yourself; however, now you, surely, will regard me as an extravagant ghost-seer. In a word, the terrible thing that happened to me and made a deadly impression on me, from which I vainly try to get rid of, consisted simply in the fact that a few days ago, precisely on October 30, at noon, a salesman came into my room barometers and offered me his goods. I didn't buy anything, and even threatened to throw him down the stairs, in response to which he immediately left himself.

You guess that only quite extraordinary circumstances, which left a deep mark on my life, could give importance to this adventure, so that the person of the ill-fated junk dealer must have had such a devastating effect on me. And it is. I am gathering all my strength to calmly and patiently tell you something from the time of my early youth, so that everything will be clearly and clearly presented to your moving mind in living images.

But as soon as I want to start this, I already hear your laughter and Clara’s words: “Why, this is sheer childishness!” Laugh, I beg you, laugh at me with all your heart! I'm begging you! But, dear God, my hair is standing on end, and it seems to me that, begging you to laugh at me, I am in the same crazy despair in which Franz Moor conjured Daniel. But get down to business!

Except during dinner, my brothers and sisters and I rarely saw our father during the day. He must have been very busy with his position. After supper, which, according to the old custom, was served at seven o'clock, we all went with my mother to my father's study and sat down at the round table. My father smoked tobacco and sipped from a large glass of beer from time to time. He often told us various strange stories, and he himself got into such a rage that his pipe always went out, and I had to bring burning paper to it and kindle it again, which amused me greatly. Often he also gave us picture books, and he himself, silent and motionless, sat in armchairs, blowing such thick clouds of smoke around him that we all seemed to be floating in a fog. On such evenings, the mother would be very sad and, as soon as nine o'clock struck, she would say:

“Well, children! Now to bed! To bed! Sandman is coming, I already notice!”

And, it is true, every time I heard how heavy, measured steps rumbled up the stairs; That's right, it was the Sandman. Once this dull stomping and roaring especially frightened me; I asked my mother when she was taking us away:

“Ah, mother, who is this evil Sandman that always drives us away from dad? What does he look like? “My child, there is no Sandman,” the mother answered, “when I say that the Sandman is coming, it only means that your eyelids stick together and you cannot open your eyes, as if you were covered with sand.”

Mother's answer did not reassure me, and the thought clearly arose in my childish mind that mother denies the existence of the Sandman only so that we would not be afraid of him - after all, I always heard him going up the stairs! Spurred on by curiosity and wanting to find out in detail everything about the Sandman and his attitude towards children, I finally asked the old nanny who nursed my younger sister, what kind of person is this Sandman?

“Oh, Tanelchen,” she said, “do you really not know yet? This is such an evil person who comes after the children, when they are stubborn and do not want to go to sleep, he throws a handful of sand in their eyes, so that they bleed and climb on their foreheads, and then he puts the children in a bag and takes them to the moon, to feed to their babies that sit there in the nest, and their beaks are crooked, like owls, and they peck out the eyes of naughty human children.

And so my imagination presented me with a terrible image of the cruel Sandman; in the evening, as soon as the footsteps rumbled on the stairs, I trembled with melancholy and horror. Mother could get nothing from me, except for cries interrupted by sobs: “Sandpiper! Sandman! I ran headlong into the bedroom, and all night I was tormented by the terrifying ghost of the Sandman. I had already come of such years that I could understand that with the Sandman and his nest in the moon, everything was not quite the way my nanny had told me; however, the Sandman was still a terrible ghost to me, and horror and trembling filled me when I not only heard him go up the stairs, but also with a noise open the door to my father’s study and enter there. Sometimes he disappeared for a long time. But after that he came for several days in a row.

So many years passed, and yet I could not get used to this sinister obsession, and the image of the cruel Sandman did not fade in my soul. His brief encounter with my father occupied my imagination more and more; some insurmountable shyness did not allow me to ask my father about this, but the desire to investigate this mystery myself, to see the fabulous Sandman, grew in me year by year. The sandman led me on the path of the miraculous, the extraordinary, where it is so easy to seduce a child's soul. I loved nothing so much as reading or listening to terrible stories about kobolds, witches, gnomes, etc.; but the Sandman ruled over all, whom I incessantly drew everywhere - on tables, cabinets, walls, charcoal and chalk in the most strange and disgusting guises. When I was ten years old, my mother, after escorting me out of the nursery, gave me a little room in the corridor not far from my father's office. We were still hurriedly sent to bed, as soon as nine o'clock struck and the approach of a stranger was heard in the house. From my closet I heard how he was entering my father, and soon it began to seem to me that some thin, strange-smelling fumes were spreading around the house. Curiosity inflamed me more and more and finally gave me the determination to somehow see the Sandman. Often, as soon as my mother left, I would sneak out of my little room into the corridor. But I could not notice anything, for when I reached the place from which I could see the Sandman, he was already shutting the door behind him. Finally, driven by an irresistible desire, I decided to hide in my father's office and wait for the Sandman there.

One evening, from the silence of my father and the mournful thoughtfulness of my mother, I concluded that the Sandman must come; and therefore, saying I was very tired, and without waiting for nine o'clock, I left the room and hid in a dark nook near the door. The front door creaked; slow, heavy footsteps were heard in the passage and on the stairs. The mother hurried past, taking the children away. Quietly, quietly, I opened the door of my father's room. He sat, as usual, silent and motionless, with his back to the entrance; he did not notice me, I quickly slipped into the room and took cover behind the curtain that covered the open closet where my father's dress hung. Closer - steps were heard closer - behind the doors someone was strangely coughing, groaning and mumbling. My heart was beating with fear and anticipation. Here steps rumbled near the door itself, - near the door itself. Someone pulled the handle hard, the door creaked open! Holding on with all my might, I cautiously stick my head forward. The sandman is standing in the middle of the room right in front of my father, the bright light of the candles illuminating his face! Sandman, terrible Sandman - yes, it was the old lawyer Coppelius, who often dined with us!

However, no most terrible vision could plunge me into greater horror than this same Coppelius. Imagine a tall, broad-shouldered man with a large awkward head, an earthy yellow face; under his thick gray eyebrows, greenish cat eyes sparkle angrily; a huge, hefty nose hung over his upper lip. His crooked mouth often twitches with an evil smile; then two purple spots appear on the cheeks and a strange hiss escapes from behind clenched teeth. Coppelius always appeared in an ash-gray tailcoat of the old cut; he had the same camisole and pantaloons, and black stockings and shoes with rhinestone buckles. A small wig barely covered the top of his head, curls stuck up over his large crimson ears, and a wide blank purse bulged at the back of his head, revealing a silver buckle that fastened his neckerchief. His whole appearance inspired horror and disgust; but we children especially hated his knotty, shaggy hands, so that we hated everything he touched. He noticed this and began to amuse himself with the fact that, under various pretexts, he deliberately touched cookies or fruits that our kind mother furtively put on our plates, so that we, with tears in our eyes, looked at them and could not taste those delicacies that have always delighted us. He did the same on holidays, when my father poured us a glass of sweet wine. He hurried to sort through everything with his hands, or even raised a glass to his blue lips and burst into hellish laughter, noticing that we did not dare to reveal our annoyance otherwise than by quiet sobs. He always called us little beasts, we were not allowed to utter a word in his presence, and we cursed with all our hearts the vile, hostile man who poisoned our most innocent joys with intent and intention. Mother seemed to hate the disgusting Coppelius, just as we do, for as soon as he appeared, her cheerful ease was replaced by a gloomy and preoccupied seriousness. His father treated him as if he were a higher being who needed to be pleasing in every possible way and patiently endure all his ignorance. The slightest hint was enough - and his favorite dishes were prepared for him and rare wines were served.

When I saw Coppelius, a sudden thought dawned on me, plunging into horror and awe, that after all, no one else could be the Sandman, but this Sandman no longer seemed to me a bunch of nanny's fairy tales, which drags children's eyes to feed his offspring in an owl's nest on the moon, no! - it was a disgusting ghostly sorcerer who, wherever he appeared, brought grief, misfortune - temporary and eternal death.

I stood spellbound. Sticking my head out of the curtains, I froze, eavesdropping, although I risked being exposed and, as I well understood, severely punished. Father met Coppelius very solemnly. “Live! For business!” he exclaimed in a dull, nasal voice, and threw off his dress. The father silently and grimly took off his dressing gown, and they dressed themselves in long black robes. Where they got them from, I overlooked. Father opened the closet doors; and I saw: what I had long considered a cupboard was rather a black recess where a small hearth stood. Coppelius approached, and a blue flame crackled over the hearth. Many outlandish vessels stood around. Oh my God! When my old father bent over the fire, what a terrible change happened to him! It seemed that a severe convulsive pain had transformed his meek, honest face into an ugly, disgusting satanic mask. He looked like Coppelius! This latter, taking red-hot tongs, pulled out with them white-hot clods of some substance, which he then diligently beat with a hammer. It seemed to me that everywhere around me flashed a lot of human faces, only without eyes - instead of them, terrible, deep black depressions. "Eyes here! Eyes!" exclaimed Coppelius in a dull and menacing voice. Embraced by inexplicable horror, I screamed and collapsed from my ambush to the floor. And then Coppelius grabbed me. "Ah, beast! Animal! he bleated, gnashing his teeth, picking me up and throwing me on the hearth, so that the flames singed my hair. “Now we have eyes, eyes, wonderful children’s eyes,” muttered Coppelius and, having collected handfuls of red-hot coals in the oven, he was about to throw them in my face. And so my father, stretching out his hands to him, prayed: “Master! Master! - leave the eyes of my Nathanael, - leave!

Coppelius laughed out loud: “Let the little one have eyes, and he will repay his lesson well in this world; Well, nevertheless, we will conduct an audit of how his arms and legs fit there. ” And then he grabbed me with such force that all my joints crackled, and began to twist my arms and legs, twisting them, then setting them. “Yeah, this one doesn’t hurt okay! - and this one is good, as it was! The old man knew his business! - so hissed and muttered Coppelius. But everything went dark and clouded before my eyes, a sudden convulsion pierced my whole being - I no longer felt anything. A warm gentle breath touched my face, I woke up as if from a sleep of death, my mother bent over me. "Is the Sandman still here?" I murmured. “No, my dear child, no, he left a long time ago and will do you no harm!” - so said the mother and kissed and pressed her beloved son back to her heart.

But why trouble you, dear Lothar? Why tell you all the details at such length when there is so much more to tell you? In a word, my eavesdropping was open, and Coppelius treated me cruelly. Fright and horror produced in me a strong fever, from which I suffered for several weeks. "Is the Sandman still here?" - those were my first reasonable words and a sign of my recovery, my salvation. Now it remains to tell you about the most terrible hour of my youth; then you will be convinced: it is not the weakening of my eyes that is the reason that everything seems colorless to me, but a dark predestination really hangs over me, like a gloomy cloud, which I, perhaps, will dispel only by death.

Coppelius did not appear again; word spread that he had left the city.

About a year passed, we, according to our old, unchanged custom, sat in the evening at a round table. My father was cheerful and told many entertaining stories that happened to him in his travels during his youth. And so, when nine o'clock struck, we suddenly heard the hinges of the front door creak and slow cast-iron steps rattled in the hallway and up the stairs.

"It's Coppelius!" - said, turning pale, mother. "Yes! “This is Coppelius,” repeated the father in a tired, broken voice. Tears welled up from my mother's eyes. "Father! Father! she cried. “Is it still necessary?”

"Last time! - he answered, - for the last time he comes to me, I promise you. Go, go with the kids! Go, go to sleep! Good night!"

It was as if a heavy cold stone pressed down on me - my breath stopped! Mother, seeing that I was frozen in immobility, took my hand: “Let's go, Nathanael, let's go!” I allowed myself to be led away, I entered my room. “Be calm, be calm, go to bed - sleep! sleep!” my mother called after me; however, tormented by unspeakable inner fear and anxiety, I could not close my eyes.

The hateful, vile Coppelius, his eyes flashing, stood in front of me, laughing mockingly, and I tried in vain to drive his image away from me. True, it was already about midnight when there was a terrible blow, as if fired from a cannon. The whole house shook, something rumbled and hissed near my door, and the front door slammed shut. "It's Coppelius!" I exclaimed beside myself and jumped out of bed. And suddenly a piercing cry of inconsolable, unbearable grief was heard; I rushed to my father's room; the door was wide open, a suffocating fumes poured towards me, the maid yelled: “Ah, master, master!” In front of the smoking hearth on the floor lay my father, dead, with a black, burnt, disfigured face; around him the sisters squealed and howled - the mother was unconscious. "Coppelius, fiend, you killed my father!" - so I exclaimed and lost my senses. Two days later, when my father's body was placed in the coffin, his features brightened up again and became quiet and meek, as in the course of his whole life. Consolation came to my soul when I thought that his union with the infernal Coppelius would not bring eternal condemnation upon him.

The explosion woke up the neighbors, rumors spread about what had happened, and the authorities, having been informed of this, wanted to demand Coppelius to account; but he disappeared from the city without a trace.

Now, my dear friend, when I reveal to you that the aforementioned seller of barometers was none other than the accursed Coppelius, you will not blame me for thinking that this hostile intrusion would bring me great misfortune. He was dressed differently, but the figure and facial features of Coppelius were too deeply imprinted in my soul, so that I could not misunderstand. Moreover, Coppelius did not even change his name. Here he pretends to be a Piedmontese mechanic and calls himself Giuseppe Coppola.

I decided to have a good talk with him and avenge my father's death, no matter what the cost.

Don't tell your mother anything about the appearance of this vile sorcerer. Bow from me to dear Clara, I will write to her in a calmer frame of mind. Farewell and so on.

Clara to Nathanael

I will tell you frankly, I think that all that terrible and terrible thing that you are talking about happened only in your soul, and the real outside world has very little to do with it. You see, old Coppelius was indeed rather vile, but the fact that he hated children instilled in you a true disgust for him.

The terrible Sandman from the nanny's fairy tale very naturally united in your childish soul with old Coppelius, who, even when you stopped believing in the Sandman, remained for you a phantom sorcerer, especially dangerous for children. His sinister rendezvous with your father at night was nothing but secret alchemy, which your mother could not be pleased with, for this, no doubt, wasted a lot of money, and, as always happens with such adepts, these labors, filling the soul of your father with deceptive aspirations for high wisdom, distracted him from worries about his family. Your father must have caused his own death by his own negligence, and Coppelius is innocent of that. Believe me, yesterday I asked our knowledgeable neighbor, the pharmacist, whether such explosions could happen during chemical experiments, suddenly striking death. He replied: "Of course!" - and described, as usual, very extensively and in detail, how this could be done, while saying a lot of tricky words, of which I could not remember a single one. Now you will become annoyed with your Clara, you will say: “Not a single ray of that mysterious that so often encircles a person with invisible arms penetrates into this cold soul; she sees only the motley surface of the world and, like a childish child, rejoices in golden fruits, in the core of which a deadly poison is hidden.

Oh, beloved Nathanael, or do you not believe that a cheerful, carefree, carefree soul can feel the hostile penetration of a dark force that seeks to destroy us in our own "I"? But forgive me if I, an unlearned girl, try to somehow explain what, in fact, I mean by this internal struggle. In the end, I’m sure I won’t find the right words, and you will make fun of me, not because I have stupid thoughts, but because I try so awkwardly to express them.

If there is a dark force that hostilely and treacherously throws a noose into our soul in order to capture us later and drag us onto a dangerous, destructive path where we would never otherwise have entered - if there is such a force, then it must take on our own image, become our “I”, for only in this case we will believe in it and give it a place in our soul, which is necessary for it for its mysterious work. But if our spirit is firm and strengthened by vital vigor, then it is able to distinguish an alien, hostile influence, exactly as such, and calmly follow the path where our inclinations and vocation lead us - then this sinister force will disappear in a vain struggle for its own image. , which should become a reflection of our self. “It is also true,” Lothar added, “that the dark physical force, which we indulge in only of our own free will, often inhabits our soul with alien images brought into it by the outside world, so that we ourselves only ignite our spirit, which, as it seems to us, in a strange delusion, speaks from this image. It is the phantom of our own self, whose inward affinity with us and the deep influence on our soul plunges us into hell or lifts us to heaven. Now you see, my invaluable Nathanael, that we, brother Lothar and I, have talked a lot about dark forces and principles, and this matter - after I have not without difficulty outlined the most important thing here - seems to me rather thoughtful. I do not understand Lothar's last words very well, I only feel what he means by this, and yet it seems to me that all this is very fair. I beg you, get the nasty lawyer Coppelius and barometer salesman Giuseppe Coppola out of your head. Be imbued with the thought that these alien images have no power over you; only faith in their hostile power can make them truly hostile to you. If every line of your letter did not testify to the cruel confusion of your mind, if your condition did not crush me to the depths of my soul, then I really could laugh at the lawyer Sandman and the seller of barometers Coppelius. Be cheerful, be cheerful! I decided to be your guardian angel, and as soon as the vile Coppola intends to disturb your sleep, I will come to you and drive him away with a loud laugh. I am not in the least afraid of him or his nasty hands, and he will not dare, under the guise of a lawyer, to spoil my delicacies or, like the Sandman, fill my eyes with sand.

Yours forever, my dearly beloved Nathanael.

Nathanael - Lothar

I am very annoyed that Clara the other day, however, due to my absent-mindedness, by mistake printed out and read my letter to you. She wrote me a very thoughtful, philosophical letter, in which she argues at length that Coppelius and Coppola exist only in my imagination, they are only phantoms of my “I”, which will instantly shatter into dust if I recognize them as such. Indeed, who would have thought that the mind, so often shining like a sweet dream in those bright, charming, laughing children's eyes, could be so reasonable, so capable of master's definitions. She refers to you. You were talking about me together. You must be giving her a full course in logic so that she can distinguish and separate everything so subtly. Drop it! However, now there is no doubt that the seller of barometers, Giuseppe Coppola, is not the old lawyer Coppelius at all. I am listening to lectures by a recently arrived professor of physics, a natural Italian, who, like the famous naturalist, is called Spalanzani. He has known Coppola for a long time, and, besides, one can already notice from one reprimand that he is the purest Piedmontese. Coppelius was a German, but I don't think he was real. I'm not completely calm yet. Consider me both, you and Clara, if you like, a gloomy dreamer, I still cannot free myself from the impression that the damned face of Coppelius made on me. I'm glad he left town, as Spalanzani told me. By the way, this professor is an amazing eccentric. A short, stout little man with prominent cheekbones, a thin nose, protruding lips, and small, sharp eyes. But better than from any description, you will recognize him when you look in some Berlin pocket calendar at the portrait of Cagliostro engraved by Chodovetsky. Such is Spalanzani! The other day I went up the stairs to him and noticed that the curtain, which is usually tightly drawn over the glass door, had slightly turned up and left a small crack. I do not know how it happened, but I looked there with curiosity. In the room, in front of a small table, with her hands clasped together on it, sat a tall, very slender, well-dressed girl, proportionate in all proportions. She was sitting opposite the door, so I could get a good look at her angelic face. She did not seem to notice me, in general there was some kind of numbness in her eyes, I could even say that they lacked visual power, as if she was sleeping with her eyes open. I felt uneasy, and I quietly crept into the auditorium, which was located nearby. Later I learned that the girl I saw was the daughter of Spalanzani, named Olympia; he keeps her locked up with such admirable severity that not a single person dares to penetrate her. After all, there is some important circumstance hidden here, perhaps she is weak-minded or has some other defect. But why am I writing to you about all this? I could tell you all this in words better and in more detail. Know that in two weeks I will be with you. I must certainly see my lovely, gentle angel, my Clara. Then that bad mood will dissipate, which (I confess) almost took possession of me after her ill-fated reasonable letter, therefore I do not write to her today.

I bow countless times.

Novella

It is impossible to think of anything more strange and wonderful than what happened to my poor friend, the young student Nathanael, and which I am going to tell you, indulgent reader, now. Have you, dear reader, experienced something that would completely take over your heart, feelings and thoughts, crowding out everything else? Everything in you boils and bubbles, ignited blood boils in your veins and fills your cheeks with a hot blush. Your gaze is strange, it seems to catch images in the void that are invisible to others, and your speech is lost in obscure sighs. And now your friends ask you: “What is the matter with you, most respected? What is your concern, dear?" And so, with all the fiery colors, with all the shadows and light, you want to convey the visions that have arisen in you and you are trying to find words in order to at least begin the story. But it seems to you that from the very first word you must imagine all that wonderful, magnificent, terrible, cheerful, terrifying that happened to you, and strike everyone as if with an electric shock. However, every word, everything that our speech has at our disposal, seems to you colorless, cold and dead. And you keep looking and catching, stammering and stammering, and the sober questions of your friends, like an icy breeze, cool the heat of your soul until it dies out completely.

But if you, like a bold painter, first outline with bold strokes the outline of your inner vision, then later you can easily apply more and more fiery colors, and a lively swarm of colorful images will captivate your friends, and together with you they will see themselves in the middle of the picture that originated in your soul. I must confess, kind reader, that no one really asked me about the story of young Nathanael; but you know perfectly well that I belong to that amazing breed of authors who, when they carry something like the one just described, immediately imagine that everyone they meet, and the whole world, only asks: “What is there ? Tell me, my dear!"

And now I am irresistibly attracted to talk to you about the ill-fated life of Nathanael. Its strangeness, its extraordinaryness struck my soul, and therefore - and also so that I could - O my reader! - to immediately persuade you to understand everything wonderful, which is not enough here - I tried my best to start the story of Nathanael as cleverly as possible - more original, more captivating. "Once" - the most beautiful beginning for any story - too ordinary! "In a small provincial town S ... lived" - somewhat better, at least gives rise to gradation. Or immediately by means of “medias in res”: “Go to hell,” cried the student Nathanael, and fury and horror were reflected in his wild gaze when the barometer salesman Giuseppe Coppola ... “So I really would have started when b thought that there was something funny in the wild look of the student Nathanael, but this story is not at all funny. Not a single phrase came to my mind that even slightly reflected the iridescent radiance of the image that arose before my inner gaze. I decided not to start at all. So, kind reader, take these three letters, which my friend Lothar willingly handed over to me, as the outline of the picture, on which, as I tell, I will try to add more and more colors. Perhaps I will be lucky, like a good portrait painter, to capture other faces so accurately that you will find them similar without knowing the original, and it will even seem to you that you have already seen these people more than once with your own eyes. And perhaps then, my reader, you will believe that there is nothing more amazing and crazy than real life itself, and that the poet can imagine only its vague reflection, as if in a mirror that has not been polished smoothly.

In order to immediately say everything that needs to be known from the very beginning, it should be added to the previous letters that soon after the death of Nathanael's father, Clara and Lothar, the children of a distant relative, who also recently died and left them orphans, were adopted into the family by Nathanael's mother. Clara and Nathanael felt a lively inclination towards each other, against which not a single person in the world could object; they were already engaged when Nathanael left the city to continue his studies in G. As can be seen from his last letter, he is now there and listens to lectures by the famous professor of physics Spalanzani.

Now I could safely continue my story. But at that moment the image of Clara appears so vividly to my imagination that I cannot take my eyes off it, as it always happens to me when she looks at me with a sweet smile. Clara was by no means beautiful; on this agreed all those who, according to their position, were to understand beauty. But the architects praised the pure proportions of her figure, the painters found that her back, shoulders and chest were formed, perhaps, too chastely, but they were all captivated by her wonderful hair, like Mary Magdalene, and chatted endlessly about the color of Buttoni. And one of them, a true science fiction writer, made a strange comparison, likening Clara's eyes to Lake Ruisdael, in the mirror surface of which the azure of a cloudless sky, forests and flowering pastures, the whole lively, colorful, rich, cheerful landscape is reflected. But poets and virtuosos went even further, assuring:

“What a lake there, what a mirror surface there! Have we ever seen this virgin, when her eyes did not shine with the most wonderful heavenly harmony, penetrating into our soul, so that everything in her awakens and comes to life. If even then we do not sing anything worthwhile, then we are of little use at all, and we unambiguously read this in the thin grin that flickers on Clara’s lips when we decide to squeak in front of her something that claims to be called singing, although these are just incoherent and randomly jumping sounds."

So it was. Clara was endowed with a lively and strong imagination, like a cheerful, unconstrained child, possessed a woman's heart, tender and sensitive, and a very penetrating mind. Thinking and philosophizing heads were not successful with her, for Clara's bright gaze and the aforementioned thin ironic grin, without superfluous words, not at all characteristic of her silent nature, seemed to say to them: “Dear friends! How can you demand from me that I take the blurry shadows you have created for real figures, full of life and movement? That is why many reproached Clara for coldness, insensibility and prosaicness; but others, whose understanding of life was distinguished by clarity and depth, loved this cordial, reasonable, trusting, like a child, girl, but no one loved her more than Nathanael, who cheerfully and zealously practiced in the sciences and arts. Clara was devoted to Nathanael with all her heart. The first shadows darkened her life when he parted from her. With what admiration she threw herself into his arms when, as he promised in his last letter to Lothar, he finally really returned to his native city and entered his parents' house. Nathanael's hopes were fulfilled; for from the moment he met Clara, he no longer remembered either her philosophical letter or the lawyer Coppelius; bad mood completely vanished.

However, Nathanael was right when he wrote to his friend Lothar that the image of the disgusting barometer salesman Coppola perniciously penetrated his life. Everyone felt this, for already from the first days of his stay, Nathanael showed a complete change in his whole being. He plunged into a gloomy reverie and indulged in it with a strangeness that had never been noticed in him. His whole life consisted of dreams and forebodings. He constantly said that every person, thinking himself free, only serves the terrible game of dark forces; it will be in vain to resist them, it is necessary with humility to endure what is destined by fate itself. He went even further, arguing that it is very reckless to believe that in art and science one can create according to one’s own will, because inspiration, without which it is impossible to produce anything, is born not from our soul, but from the influence of some higher principle lying outside of us.

To reasonable Clara, all these mystical nonsense were extremely disgusting, but all efforts to refute them, apparently, were in vain. Only when Nathanael began to prove that Conpelius was the evil inclination that had taken possession of him from the moment he had been eavesdropping behind the curtain, and that this disgusting demon could embarrass their love happiness in the most terrible way, Clara suddenly became very serious and said:

Yes, Nathanael! You're right. Coppelius is an evil hostile principle, he, like a diabolical force that has clearly penetrated into our lives, can produce a terrible effect, but only if you do not expel him from your mind and heart. As long as you believe in it, it exists and has its effect on you, only your faith makes up its power.

Nathanael, enraged that Clara admits the existence of a demon only in his own soul, was about to launch into a presentation of the whole doctrine of the devil and dark forces, but Clara, to his considerable annoyance, interrupted him with displeasure with some insignificant remark. He believed that it was not given to cold, insensitive souls to comprehend such deep secrets, however, not realizing that he ranked Clara among such base natures, he did not abandon attempts to introduce her to these secrets. Early in the morning, when Clara was helping to prepare breakfast, he stood beside her and read all kinds of mystical books to her, so that Clara finally said:

Oh, my dear Nathanael, what if I take it into my head to call you an evil inclination that has a destructive effect on my coffee? After all, if I drop everything and begin to listen to you without taking my eyes off, as you wish, then the coffee will certainly run away and everyone will be left without breakfast!

Nathanael hurriedly closed the book and ran away in anger to his room. Previously, he was especially good at composing cheerful, lively stories, which Clara listened to with unfeigned pleasure; now his creations had become gloomy, incomprehensible, shapeless, and although Clara, sparing him, did not speak of this, he nevertheless easily guessed how little they pleased her. Nothing was so unbearable to her as boredom; an irresistible mental drowsiness was immediately revealed in her glances and speeches. Nathanael's writings were indeed remarkably boring. His annoyance at Clara's cold, prosaic disposition grew daily; Clara also could not overcome her displeasure at the dark, gloomy, dull mysticism of Nathanael, and thus, imperceptibly to themselves, their hearts were more and more divided. The image of the disgusting Coppelius, as Nathanael admitted to himself, faded in his imagination, and it often cost him no small effort to vividly present him in his poems, where he acted as a terrible fate. Finally, he took it into his head to make his dark premonition that Coppelius would embarrass his love happiness as the subject of a poem. He imagined himself united with Clara by eternal love, but from time to time, as if a black hand invades their lives and steals one after another the joys sent down to them. Finally, when they are already standing in front of the altar, the terrible Coppelius appears and touches Clara's lovely eyes; like bloody sparks, they penetrate Nathanael's chest, scorching and burning. Coppelius grabs him and throws him into a flaming circle of fire, which spins with the speed of a whirlwind and carries him along with a noise and a roar. Everything is howling, as if an evil hurricane is furiously scourging the seething sea walls, rising like black grey-headed giants. But in the midst of this wild rage, Clara's voice is heard: “Can't you look at me? Coppelius deceived you, it wasn’t my eyes that burned your chest, it was the burning drops of the blood of your own heart - my eyes are intact, look at me! Nathanael thinks: "This is Clara - and I am devoted to her forever!" And now, as if this thought bursts into the fiery circle with irresistible force; it stops spinning, and the dull roar fades into the black abyss. Nathanael looks into Clara's eyes; but it is death itself that kindly looks at him with the eyes of its beloved.

Writing this, Nathanael was very reasonable and calm, he perfected and improved every line, and since he subordinated himself to the metrical canons, he did not calm down until his verse reached complete purity and harmony. But when his work came to an end and he read his poems aloud, a sudden fear and trembling seized him, and he cried out in a frenzy: “Whose terrifying voice is this?” Soon it again seemed to him that this was only a very successful poetic work, and he decided that it should inflame Clara's cold soul, although he could not give himself a clear idea for what, in fact, it was necessary to inflame it and where it would lead if it began to torment her terrifying images that portend a terrible and destructive fate for her love.

Nathanael and Clara were sitting one day in a little garden near the house; Clara was cheerful, for Nathanael spent the whole three days that he used to compose poetry without tormenting her with his dreams and forebodings. Nathanael, as before, spoke with great vivacity and joy about various merry subjects, so that Clara said:

Well, finally, you are completely mine again, do you see how we drove that vile Coppelius away?

But then Nathanael remembered that in his pocket he had poems that he intended to read to her. He immediately took out a notebook and began to read; Clara, as usual expecting something boring, with patient resignation set to knitting. But when the gloomy clouds began to thicken more and more, Clara dropped her stocking from her hands and looked intently into Nathanael's eyes. He uncontrollably continued to read, his cheeks burned with internal heat, tears poured from his eyes - at last he finished, groaning from deep exhaustion, took Clara's hand and sighed, as if in inconsolable grief: “Ah! Clara! Clara!" Clara tenderly pressed him to her breast and said softly, but firmly and seriously:

Nathanael, my beloved Nathanael, throw this absurd, absurd, extravagant tale into the fire.

Here Nathanael jumped up and with vehemence, pushing Clara away from him, exclaimed:

You soulless, damn automaton!

He ran away; deeply offended, Clara burst into bitter tears. "Oh, he never, never loved me, he doesn't understand me!" she exclaimed loudly, sobbing. Lothar entered the pavilion; Clara was forced to tell him everything that had happened; he loved his sister with all his heart, every word of her complaint, like a spark, ignited his soul, so that the displeasure that he had long harbored against the dreamy Nathanael turned into furious anger. He ran after him and began to cruelly reproach him for his reckless act, to which the quick-tempered Nathanael answered him with the same fervor. For "an extravagant, insane jester" was repaid in the name of a low, pitiful, ordinary soul. The duel was inevitable. They decided the next morning to meet behind the garden and exchange knowledge with each other, according to the local academic custom, on sharply honed short rapiers. Gloomy and silent, they wandered around; Clara heard their skirmish and noticed that at dusk the Feuchtmeister brought rapiers. She foresaw what was about to happen. Arriving at the place of the duel, Nathanael and Lothar, in the same gloomy silence, threw off their outer dress and, sparkling in their eyes, were ready to attack each other with bloodthirsty fury, when, opening the garden gate, Clara rushed towards them. Sobbing, she exclaimed:

Furious, rabid madmen! Stab me before you fight! How can I live in the world when my beloved kills my brother or my beloved brother!

Lothar lowered his weapon and lowered his eyes in silence, but in Nathanael's soul, along with consuming melancholy, the former love that he felt for the charming Clara in the carefree days of his youth was revived. He dropped the deadly weapon and fell at Clara's feet.

Will you ever forgive me, my Clara, my only love? Will you forgive me, my dear brother Lothar?

Lothar was touched by his deep sorrow. Reconciled, all three embraced each other and vowed to remain forever in unceasing love and fidelity.

It seemed to Nathanael that an immeasurable weight had fallen from him, pressing him to the ground, and that, having rebelled against the dark power that had taken possession of him, he had saved his whole being, which was threatened with destruction. He spent three more blissful days with his beloved friends, then went to G., where he planned to stay for another year, in order to return forever to his native city.

Everything that had to do with Coppelius was hidden from Nathanael's mother, for they knew that she could not, without a shudder, remember the man whom she, like Nathanael, considered guilty of the death of her husband.

What was Nathanael's surprise when, on his way to his apartment, he saw that the whole house had burned down and only bare charred walls stuck out from under a pile of garbage in the conflagration. Despite the fact that the fire started in the laboratory of the pharmacist who lived on the ground floor, and the house began to burn out from below, Nathanael's brave and determined friends managed to get into his room, located under the very roof, in time, and saved his books, manuscripts and tools. Everything was transferred in complete safety to another house, where they rented a room and where Nathanael immediately moved. He did not attach much importance to the fact that he now lived just opposite Professor Spalanzani, and in the same way it did not seem at all strange to him when he noticed that from his window he could see the room where Olympia often sat alone, so that he could clearly distinguish her figure, although her features remained vague and indistinct. True, finally, he was surprised that Olympia remained for hours on end in the same position in which he had once seen her through the glass door; doing nothing, she sat at a small table, relentlessly fixing her motionless gaze on him; he had to confess that he had never seen such a beautiful camp; meanwhile, keeping in his heart the image of Clara, he remained completely indifferent to the stiff and motionless Olympia and only occasionally threw an absent-minded glance over the compendium at this beautiful statue, and that was all. And then one day, when he was writing a letter to Clara, there was a soft knock on his door; at his invitation to enter, the door opened and the hideous head of Coppelius poked forward. Nathanael shuddered in his heart, but remembering what Spalanzani had told him about his fellow countryman Coppola, and what he himself sacredly promised his beloved about Coppelius the Sandman, he was ashamed of his childish fear of ghosts, fought himself with an effort and said with possible meekness and calmness:

I do not buy barometers, my dear, leave me!

But then Coppola entered the room completely and, twisting his huge mouth into a vile smile, sparkling with small prickly eyes from under long gray eyelashes, said in a hoarse voice:

Eh, not a barometer, not a barometer! - there are good eyes - good eyes!

Nathanael cried out in horror:

Madman, how can you sell eyes? Eyes! Eyes!

But at the same moment Coppola put aside the barometers and, reaching into a large pocket, pulled out lorgnettes and spectacles and began laying them out on the table.

Well, well, here, - glasses, put glasses on your nose, - here is my eye, - good eye!

And he kept pulling out and pulling out his spectacles, so that soon the whole table began to shimmer and shimmer strangely. Thousands of eyes gazed at Nathanael, blinked convulsively and stared; and he himself could no longer take his eyes off the table; and more and more points were laid out by Coppola; and those flaming eyes sparkled and jumped more and more terrible, and their bloody rays struck Nathanael's chest. Seized with inexplicable trepidation, he shouted:

Stop, stop, horrible man!

He grabbed Coppola's arm tightly as he reached into his pocket for more glasses, even though the table was already littered with them. With a nasty, hoarse laugh, Coppola quietly freed himself, saying:

Ah, - not for you - but that's a good glass. He scooped up all the glasses, put them away, and took out of his side pocket a multitude of small and large spyglasses. As soon as the spectacles were removed, Nathanael completely calmed down and, remembering Clara, realized that this terrible ghost had arisen in his own soul, as well as the fact that Coppola was a very respectable mechanic and optician, and by no means a cursed double and a descendant of Light Coppelius. Also, in all the instruments that Coppola laid out on the table, there was nothing special, at least not as ghostly as in glasses, and to make amends, Nathanael decided to actually buy something from Coppola. So he took a small pocket spyglass of very skillful workmanship and looked out of the window to try it out. In all his life he had never come across glasses that would bring objects so faithfully, cleanly and clearly. Involuntarily he glanced into Spalanzani's room; Olympia, as usual, was sitting at a small table, her hands resting on it and her fingers laced together. It was only then that Nathanael saw the wondrous beauty of her face. Only the eyes seemed to him strangely still and dead. But the closer he peered into the spyglass, the more it seemed to him that Olympia's eyes emit a moist moonlight. It was as if the visual power had just now ignited in them; her eyes became more and more alive. Nathanael, as if spellbound, stood at the window, constantly contemplating the heavenly beautiful Olympia. A coughing and shuffling near him awakened him as if from a deep sleep. Behind him stood Coppola: "Tre zechini - three ducats." Nathanael completely forgot about the optician; he hastily paid what he demanded.

Well, how is glass good? Good glass? Coppola asked with an insidious grin in a vile, hoarse voice.

Yes Yes Yes! Nathanael replied irritably.

Adieu, dear. Coppola walked off, still throwing strange sidelong glances at Nathanael. Nathanael heard him laughing out loud on the stairs. "Well," he decided, "he is laughing at me because I paid too much for this little spyglass - I paid too much!" When he whispered these words, a soul-chilling, deep, dying sigh was heard in the room; Nathanael's breath caught in the horror that filled him. But it was he himself who sighed, of which he immediately assured himself. “Clara,” he said at last to himself, “rightly considers me an absurd visionary, but isn’t it stupid, oh, more than stupid, that the absurd idea that I overpaid Coppola for glass still strangely disturbs me; I don't see any reason for that." And so he sat down at the table to finish the letter to Clara, but, looking out the window, he was convinced that Olympia was still in the same place, and at that very moment, as if impelled by an irresistible force, he jumped up, grabbed Coppola's telescope and could no longer more to take his eyes off the seductive appearance of Olympia, until his friend and sworn brother Sigmund came for him to go to a lecture by Professor Spalanzani. The curtain that hid the fateful room was tightly drawn; neither this time, nor the next two days, he could not see Olympia either here or in her room, although he almost did not tear himself away from the window and constantly looked into Coppola's telescope. On the third day, even the windows were curtained. Full of despair, driven by longing and fiery desire, he ran out of town. The image of Olympia hovered in the air in front of him, emerging from behind the bushes, and with large bright eyes looked at him from a transparent spring. The face of Clara was completely blotted out of his heart; Thinking of nothing more than Olympia, he groaned loudly and sorrowfully: “Oh, beautiful, mountainous star of my love, did you really rise just to immediately disappear again and leave me in the darkness of an inconsolable night?”

Returning home, Nathanael noticed a noisy movement in the house of Professor Spalanzani. The doors were thrown wide open, all kinds of furniture were brought in; the frames of the first-floor windows were exposed, busy maids scurrying back and forth, sweeping the floor and dusting with long hairbrushes. Joiners and upholsterers filled the house with hammers. Nathanael, in complete astonishment, stopped in the middle of the street; then Sigmund came up to him and asked with a laugh:

Well, what about old Spalanzani?

Nathanael replied that he absolutely could not say anything, because he knew nothing about the professor, moreover, he could not be surprised why such a commotion and turmoil arose in such a quiet, unsociable house; then he learned from Sigmund that Spalanzani was giving a big feast tomorrow, a concert and a ball, and that half the university had been invited. There was a rumor that Spalanzani would for the first time show his daughter, whom he had so long and timidly hidden from prying eyes.

Nathanael found an invitation card and at the appointed hour, with a beating heart, went to the professor, when the carriages had already begun to arrive and the decorated halls shone with lights. The meeting was numerous and brilliant. Olympia appeared in a rich outfit, chosen with great taste. It was impossible not to admire the beautiful features of her face, her figure. Her somewhat oddly curved back, her wasp-thin waist, seemed to come from too much lacing. In her posture and gait, some regularity and rigidity were noticeable, which unpleasantly surprised many; this was attributed to the constraint she experienced in society. The concert has begun. Olympia played the piano with the greatest fluency, and also sang one bravura aria in a clear, almost harsh voice, like a crystal bell. Nathanael was beside himself with delight; he was standing in the very last row, and the dazzling brilliance of the candles did not allow him to properly examine the features of the singer. Therefore, he quietly took out Coppola's telescope and began to look through it at the beautiful Olympia. Ah, then he noticed how longingly she looked at him, how every sound first arises in a look full of love that inflames his soul. The most skillful roulades seemed to Nathanael the exultation of the soul ascending to heaven, enlightened by love, and when, at the end of the cadenza, a long ringing trill scattered around the hall, as if fiery arms suddenly wrapped around him, he could no longer control himself and, in a frenzy of delight and pain, loudly cried out: "Olympia!" Everyone turned to him, many laughed. The cathedral organist took on an even more gloomy look and said only: “Well, well!”

The concert ended, the ball began. "Dance with her! with her!" This was the goal of all thoughts, all desires of Nathanael; but how to find in yourself so much impudence to invite her, the queen of the ball? But still! When the dancing began, he himself, not knowing how, found himself near Olympia, whom no one had yet invited, and, barely able to murmur a few slurred words, took her by the hand. Olympia's hand was cold as ice; he shuddered as he felt the terrifying chill of death; he looked intently into her eyes, and they lit up with love and desire, and at the same moment it seemed to him that a pulse began to beat in the veins of her cold hand and living hot blood boiled in them. And now the soul of Nathanael was even more lit with loving delight; he embraced the camp of the beautiful Olympia and rushed off with her in a dance. Until now, he believed that he always danced to the beat, but the peculiar rhythmic firmness with which Olympia danced confused him, and he soon noticed how little he kept the beat. However, he no longer wanted to dance with any other woman and was ready to immediately kill anyone who came up to invite Olympia. But this happened only twice, and, to his amazement, Olympia, when the dancing began, each time remained in place, and he did not get tired of inviting her again and again. If Nathanael could see anything other than the beautiful Olympia, then some annoying quarrel and skirmish would inevitably happen, for there is no doubt that the low, hard-to-control laughter that arose in the corners among young people referred to the beautiful Olympia, on which they, for some unknown reason, were constantly fixing with curious eyes. Excited by the dances and the wine drunk in abundance, Nathanael cast aside his natural shyness. He sat beside Olympia and, without letting go of her hand, with the greatest ardor and enthusiasm spoke of his love in expressions that no one could understand - neither he nor Olympia. However, she, perhaps, understood, for she did not take her eyes off him and sighed every minute: “Ah-ah-ah!”

In response, Nathanael said: - Oh, beautiful heavenly maiden! You are a ray from the promised other world of love! All my being is reflected in the crystal depths of your soul! - and many other similar words, to which Olympia always answered only: "Ah-ah!" Professor Spalanzani several times passed by the happy lovers and, looking at them, smiled with a kind of strange satisfaction. Meanwhile, Nathanael, although he was in a completely different world, suddenly seemed to grow darker in Professor Spalanzani's chambers; he looked around and, to his considerable dismay, saw that in the empty hall the last two candles were burning down and were about to go out. The music and dancing had long ceased. "Separation, separation!" he cried in confusion and despair. He kissed Olympia's hand, he bent down to her lips, ice-cold lips met his glowing ones! And then he felt that horror seizes him, as when he touched the cold hand of Olympia; the legend of the dead bride suddenly came to his mind; but Olympia pressed him tightly to her, and the kiss seemed to fill her lips with life-giving warmth. Professor Spalanzani walked slowly up and down the empty hall; his steps echoed loudly, shaky shadows slid over his figure, giving him a terrifying ghostly appearance.

Do you love me? Do you love me, Olympia? Just one word! Do you love me? Nathanael whispered to her, but Olympia, rising from her seat, only sighed: “Ah-ah!”

O beautiful benevolent star of my love, - said Nathanael, - you have risen for me and will forever shine and transform my soul with your light!

Ahah! - answered Olympia, moving away. Nathanael followed her; they found themselves in front of the professor.

You had an unusually lively conversation with my daughter,” he said, smiling, “well, dear Mr. Nathanael, if you find pleasure in conversing with this timid girl, I will always be glad to see you at home!

Nathanael left, carrying in his heart the boundless radiant sky.

All the following days, the Spalanzani festival was the subject of urban talk. And although the professor made every effort to show off his splendor and splendor, there were still scoffers who managed to tell about all the oddities and absurdities that were noticed at the holiday, and especially attacked the numb, mute Olympia, who, despite her beautiful appearance, was accused of complete stupidity, for which reason Spalanzani kept it hidden for so long. Nathanael listened to these talk not without hidden anger, but he was silent; for, he thought, is it worth the trouble to prove to these Burches that their own stupidity prevents them from knowing the deep beautiful soul of Olympia.

Do me a favor, brother, - Sigmund once asked him, - do me a favor and tell me how you managed to fall in love with this wooden doll, this wax figure?

Nathanael almost got angry, but immediately changed his mind and answered:

Tell me, Sigmund, how could the unearthly charms of Olympia escape from your impressionable soul, from your clairvoyant eyes, always open to everything beautiful? But therefore - let us thank fate for this! - you did not become my rival; for then one of us must have fallen, bleeding.

Sigmund immediately saw how far his friend had gone, skillfully changed the conversation, and, noting that in love one can never judge an object, he added:

However, it is surprising that many of us have about the same judgment about Olympia. She seemed to us - do not complain, brother! - some strangely constrained and soulless. Then, however, her camp is proportionate and correct, just like her face! She could be considered a beauty if her eyes were not so lifeless, I would even say, devoid of visual power. There is some amazing regularity in her steps, every movement seems to be subordinated to the movement of the wheels of the winding mechanism. In her playing, in her singing, one can notice the unpleasantly regular, soulless beat of a singing machine; the same can be said about her dance. We felt uneasy from the presence of this Olympia, and we really did not want to have anything to do with her, it seemed to us that she only acts like a living being, but there is some special circumstance hidden here.

Nathanael did not give vent to the bitter feeling that had seized him after Sigmund's words, he overcame his annoyance and only said with great seriousness:

It may be that you, cold prose writers, are uncomfortable with the presence of Olympia. But only the soul of the poet reveals itself to an organization similar in nature! It is only for me that her eyes full of love shine, penetrating all my feelings and thoughts with radiance, only in the love of Olympia do I find myself again. You may not like the fact that she does not go into empty talk, like other superficial souls. It is not verbose, it is true, but her stingy words serve as if true hieroglyphs of the inner world, filled with love and higher comprehension of spiritual life through the contemplation of eternal otherworldly existence. However, you are deaf to all this, and my words are in vain.

God bless you, dear brother! - said Sigmund with great tenderness, almost mournfully, - but it seems to me that you are on a bad path. Rely on me when everyone... - no, I can't say anything more!

Nathanael suddenly felt that the cold, prosaic Sigmund was genuinely devoted to him, and with great cordiality shook the hand extended to him.

Nathanael completely forgot that Clara, whom he had once loved, existed in the world; mother, Lothar - everything was erased from his memory, he lived only for Olympia and spent several hours every day with her, ranting about his love, about awakened sympathy, about mental selective affinity, and Olympia listened to him with unfailing goodwill. From the farthest corners of his desk, Nathanael raked out everything he had ever composed. Poems, fantasies, visions, novels, stories multiplied day by day, and all this, mixed with all sorts of chaotic sonnets, stanzas and canzones, he tirelessly read Olympia for hours. But on the other hand, he had never had such a diligent listener. She didn’t knit or embroider, she didn’t look out the window, she didn’t feed the birds, she didn’t play with a lap dog, with her beloved cat, she didn’t fiddle with a piece of paper or anything else, she didn’t try to hide her yawn with a quiet fake cough - in a word, whole for hours, without moving from her place, without moving, she looked into the eyes of her beloved, without taking her motionless gaze from him, and this gaze became more and more fiery, more and more alive. Only when Nathanael finally got up from his seat and kissed her hand, and sometimes on the lips, did she sigh: "Ax-ax!" - and added:

Good night my dear!

Oh, beautiful, inexpressible soul! - exclaimed Nathanael, return to your room, - only you, only you alone deeply understand me!

He trembled with inner delight when he thought about what an amazing consonance of their souls was revealed every day; for it seemed to him that Olympia drew a judgment about his creations, about his poetic gift from the innermost depths of his soul, as if his own inner voice sounded. So it must have been; for Olympia never uttered any other words than those mentioned above. But if Nathanael in bright, reasonable moments, as, for example, in the morning, immediately after waking up, and recalled Olympia's complete passivity and taciturnity, he still said: “What do words, words mean! The gaze of her heavenly eyes speaks to me more than any language on earth! Indeed, can a child of heaven fit himself into a narrow circle outlined by our miserable earthly needs? Professor Spalanzani seemed overjoyed at his daughter's relationship with Nathanael; he gave him unequivocal tokens of favor, and when Nathanael at last ventured to bluntly express his desire to betrothed to Olympia, the professor broke into a smile and announced that he was giving his daughter a free choice. Encouraged by these words, with a fiery desire in his heart, Nathanael decided the next day to beg Olympia with all frankness, in clear words to tell him what her beautiful, full of love eyes had long ago revealed to him - that she wanted to belong to him forever. He began to look for the ring that his mother gave him when parting, in order to bring it to Olympia as a symbol of his devotion, the emerging common blooming life.

Letters from Clara and Lothar fell into his hands; he cast them aside indifferently, found the ring, put it on his finger, and flew off to Olympia. Already on the stairs, already in the passage, he heard an unusual noise, which seemed to come from Spalanzani's study. Stomping, ringing, jolts, thumps on the door interspersed with abuse and curses. “Let go, let go, dishonorable villain! I put my whole life into it! - Ha-ha-ha-ha! There was no such agreement! - I, I made eyes! - And I'm a clockwork mechanism! - You fool with your mechanism! - Cursed dog, brainless watchmaker! - Get out! - Satan! - Stop! Day laborer! Canaglia! - Stop! - Get out! - Let it go! They were the voices of Spalanzani and the hideous Coppelius, thundering and raging, drowning each other out. Nathanael, seized with inexplicable fear, rushed to them. The professor held some female figure by the shoulders, the Italian Coppola pulled her by the legs, both dragged and pulled in different directions, trying with furious bitterness to take possession of her. In unspeakable horror, Nathanael recoiled, recognizing Olympia; inflamed with insane anger, he wanted to rush to the raging in order to take away his beloved; but at the same moment, with superhuman strength, Coppola tore the figure out of Spalanzani's hands and struck the professor with such a cruel blow that he staggered and fell backward on a table piled with phials, retorts, bottles and glass cylinders; all this utensils with a ringing shattered into smithereens. And so Coppola hoisted the figure on his shoulders and, with a vile, shrill laugh, hurriedly ran down the stairs, so that one could hear how Olympia's disgustingly dangling legs beat and rumbled down the steps with a wooden thud.

Nathanael froze - he now saw too clearly that the deathly pale wax face of Olympia was devoid of eyes, in their place two hollows blackened: she was a lifeless doll. Spalanzani writhed on the floor, glass fragments hurt his head, chest and arm, blood flowed in streams. But he mustered all his strength.

In pursuit - in pursuit - why are you delaying? Coppélius, Coppélius, he stole my best submachine gun... I worked on it for twenty years - I put my whole life into it; clockwork, speech, movement - all mine. Eyes, eyes he stole from you! Damned villain! In pursuit! Give me back Olympia. Here are your eyes!

And then Nathanael saw bloody eyes on the floor, fixing a fixed gaze on him; Spalanzani seized them with an unharmed hand and threw them at him, so that they struck him in the chest. And then madness let its fiery claws into him and penetrated into his soul, tearing apart his thoughts and feelings. “Live-live-live, - spin, fiery circle, spin, - more fun, more fun, doll, beautiful doll, live, - spin, spin!” And he rushed at the professor and squeezed his throat. He would have strangled him if a multitude of people had not come running to the noise, who burst into the house and, dragging the frenzied Nathanael, saved the professor and bandaged his wounds. Sigmund, no matter how strong he was, could not cope with the raging one; Nathanael incessantly shouted in a terrible voice: “Chrysalis, whirl, whirl!” - and blindly beat around him with his fists. Finally, by the combined efforts of several people, it was possible to overcome it; they threw him to the floor and tied him up. His speech turned into a terrifying bestial howl. So the raging and disgustingly raging Nathanael was transported to the lunatic asylum.

Benevolent reader, before I continue my story of what happened next to the unfortunate Nathanael, I can - if you took some part in the skillful mechanic and master of automata Spalanzani - assure you that he was completely cured of his wounds. However, he was forced to leave the university, because the story of Nathanael aroused universal attention and everyone considered it an absolutely unacceptable deceit, instead of a living person, to smuggle a wooden doll into sensible secular meetings at the tea table (Olympia successfully attended such tea parties). Lawyers even called it a particularly skillful forgery and worthy of severe punishment, for it was directed against the whole society and set up with such cunning that not a single person (with the exception of some very astute students) noticed it, although now everyone shook their heads and referred to various circumstances that seemed highly suspicious to them. But, to tell the truth, they found nothing worthwhile. Could anyone, for example, seem suspicious that Olympia, in the words of one elegant tea drinker, contrary to all decorum, sneezed more often than yawned? This, the dandy believed, was the self-winding of a hidden mechanism, from which a crackle, etc., was clearly heard. The professor of poetry and eloquence, taking a pinch of tobacco, slammed the snuffbox shut, cleared his throat and said solemnly: “Highly esteemed gentlemen and ladies! Haven't you noticed what's the catch here? All this is an allegory - a continuation of the metaphor. Do you understand me! Sapienti sat!" However, most of the highly esteemed gentlemen were not reassured by such explanations; The story of the automaton had sunk deep into their souls, and they were filled with a disgusting distrust of human faces. Many lovers, in order to make absolutely sure that they were not captivated by a wooden doll, demanded from their beloved that they sing slightly out of tune and dance out of time, so that when they were read aloud, they knitted, embroidered, played with a lap dog, etc. etc., and most of all, that they not only listen, but sometimes speak themselves, so much so that their speech really expresses thoughts and feelings. For many, love relationships have strengthened and become sincere, while others, on the contrary, calmly dispersed. “Truly, nothing can be vouched for,” said one or the other. During the tea party, everyone yawned incredibly and no one sneezed to avert any suspicion from themselves. Spalanzani, as already mentioned, was forced to leave in order to avoid a judicial investigation in the case of "fraudulently introducing human automatons into society." Coppola also disappeared.

Nathanael awoke as if from a deep, heavy sleep; he opened his eyes and felt an inexplicable joy enveloping him with gentle heavenly warmth. He was lying on the bed in his room, in his parents' house, Clara bent over him, and his mother and Lothar were nearby.

Finally, finally, my beloved Nathanael, you are healed of a serious illness - you are mine again! - so said Clara with penetrating cordiality, embracing Nathanael.

Bright, hot tears of anguish and delight gushed from his eyes, and he exclaimed with a groan:

Clara! My Clara!

Sigmund, who had devotedly looked after his friend all this time, entered the room. Nathanael held out his hand to him.

Faithful friend and brother, you have not left me!

All traces of insanity vanished; soon, with the care of his mother, his lover, and his friends, Nathanael recovered completely. Happiness visited their house again; an old stingy uncle, from whom no inheritance was ever expected, died, refusing to Nathanael's mother, in addition to a significant fortune, a small estate in a friendly area, not far from the city. They decided to move there: mother, Nathanael, Clara, with whom he now decided to marry, and Lothar. Nathanael, more than ever, became soft and childishly cordial, only now the heavenly pure, beautiful soul of Clara was revealed to him. No one gave even the slightest hint that could remind him of the past. Only when Sigmund was leaving did Nathanael say to him:

By God, brother, I was on a bad path, but the angel led me on a bright path in time! Oh, that was Clara!

Sigmund did not let him continue, fearing that memories that deeply hurt the soul would not flash in him with blinding force. The time came when the four lucky ones were to move to their estate. Around noon they walked through the city. Made some purchases; the high tower of the town hall cast a gigantic shadow over the market.

That's what, - said Clara, - and why not go upstairs to once again look at the surrounding mountains?

No sooner said than done. Both Nathanael and Clara went up to the tower, the mother and the servant went home, and Lothar, not a great fan of climbing stairs, decided to wait for them below. And now the lovers stood hand in hand on the upper gallery of the tower, wandering with their eyes in the misty forests, behind which, like gigantic cities, towered blue mountains.

Look at that strange little gray bush, it seems to be moving towards us,” Clara said.

Nathanael mechanically put his hand into his pocket; he found Coppola's spyglass, looked away... In front of him was Clara! And now the blood throbbed and boiled in his veins - all dead, he fixed his motionless gaze on Clara, but immediately a fiery stream, boiling and scattering fiery splashes, flooded his revolving eyes; he roared terribly, like a hunted animal, then jumped high and, interrupting himself with disgusting laughter, shouted piercingly: “Dolly, dolly, whirl! Dolly, spin, spin! - with violent force grabbed Clara and wanted to throw her down, but Clara, in despair and in mortal fear, tightly clung to the railing. Lothar heard the fury of the madman, heard the heart-rending cry of Clara; a terrible foreboding seized him, he rushed headlong upstairs; the door to the second gallery was locked; Clara's desperate cries grew louder and louder. Lost in fear and rage, Lothar pushed the door with all his might, so that it swung open. Clara's cries became more and more muffled: “Help! save, save ... "- her voice died away. "She died - she was killed by a frenzied madman!" shouted Lothar. The door to the upper gallery was also locked. Despair gave him incredible strength. He knocked the door off its hinges. God righteous! Clara struggled in the arms of the madman who threw her over the railing. With only one hand she clung to the iron column of the gallery. With the speed of lightning, Lothar grabbed his sister, pulled him to him, and at the same instant struck the raging Nathanael in the face with his fist, so that he recoiled, releasing his victim from his hands.

Lothar ran downstairs, carrying the unconscious Clara in his arms. She was saved. And so Nathanael began to rush about the gallery, jumping and shouting: “Circle of fire, spin, spin! Circle of fire, spin, spin! The people began to run to his wild cries; in the crowd loomed the lanky figure of the lawyer Coppelius, who had just returned to the city and immediately came to the market. They were going to climb the tower to tie the madman, but Coppelius said with a laugh: “Ha ha, wait a little, he will go down by himself,” and began to look along with everyone. Suddenly Nathanael became motionless, as if numb, leaned down, saw Coppelius and with a piercing cry:

“Ah... Eyes! Good eyes! ..” - jumped over the railing.

When Nathanael fell on the pavement with a crushed head, Coppelius disappeared into the crowd.

They say that many years later, in a remote area, Clara was seen sitting in front of a beautiful country house, arm in arm with a friendly husband, and beside them two frisky boys were playing. From this we can conclude that Clara finally found family happiness, which corresponded to her cheerful, cheerful disposition and which the troubled Nathanael would never bring her.

NATANAEL TO LOTHAR

You are probably all now in terrible anxiety that I have not written for such a long, long time. Mother, of course, is angry, and Clara, perhaps, thinks that I spend my life in noisy pleasures and completely forgot my lovely angel, whose image is so deeply imprinted on my mind and heart. But this is not fair: every day and every hour I remember you, and in sweet dreams the friendly image of my dear Clerchen appears to me, and her bright eyes smile at me as captivatingly as they used to when I came to you. Oh, how could I have written to you in that mental turmoil which hitherto had upset all my thoughts! Something terrible has invaded my life! A gloomy premonition of a terrible fate that threatens me creeps over me like black shadows of clouds that not a single friendly ray of the sun penetrates. But first I must tell you what happened to me. I know I have to do it, but as soon as I think about it, insane laughter rises in me. Oh, dear Lothar, how can I make you feel at least in part that what happened to me a few days ago could really ruin my life! If you were here, you would see everything yourself; however, now you, surely, will regard me as an extravagant ghost-seer. In a word, the terrible thing that happened to me and made a deadly impression on me, from which I vainly try to get rid of, consisted simply in the fact that a few days ago, precisely on October 30, at noon, a salesman came into my room barometers and offered me his goods. I didn't buy anything, and even threatened to throw him down the stairs, in response to which he immediately left himself.

You guess that only quite extraordinary circumstances, which left a deep mark on my life, could give importance to this adventure, so that the person of the ill-fated junk dealer must have had such a devastating effect on me. And it is. I am gathering all my strength to calmly and patiently tell you something from the time of my early youth, so that everything will be clearly and clearly presented to your moving mind in living images. But as soon as I want to start this, I already hear your laughter and Clara’s words: “Why, this is sheer childishness!” Laugh, I beg you, laugh at me with all your heart! I'm begging you! But, dear God, my hair stands on end, and it seems to me that, begging you to laugh at me, I am in the same crazy despair in which Franz Moor conjured Daniel. But get down to business!

Except during dinner, my brothers and sisters and I rarely saw our father during the day. He must have been very busy with his position. After supper, which, according to the old custom, was served at seven o'clock, we all went with my mother to my father's study and sat down at the round table. My father smoked tobacco and sipped from a large glass of beer from time to time. He often told us various strange stories, and he himself got into such a rage that his pipe always went out, and I had to bring burning paper to it and kindle it again, which amused me greatly. Often he also gave us picture books, and he himself, silent and motionless, sat in armchairs, blowing such thick clouds of smoke around him that we all seemed to be floating in a fog. On such evenings, the mother would be very sad and, as soon as nine o'clock struck, she would say: “Well, children! Now to bed! To bed! Sandman is coming, I already notice!” And indeed, every time I heard heavy, measured steps rumble up the stairs; That's right, it was the Sandman. Once this dull stomping and roaring especially frightened me; I asked my mother when she was taking us away: “Ah, mother, who is this evil Sandman that always drives us away from dad? What does he look like? “My child, there is no Sandman,” answered the mother, “when I say that the Sandman is coming, it only means that your eyelids are stuck together and you cannot open your eyes, as if you were covered with sand.” Mother's answer did not reassure me, and in my childish mind the thought clearly arose that mother denied the existence of the Sandman only so that we would not be afraid of him - after all, I always heard him going up the stairs! Spurred on by curiosity and wanting to find out in detail everything about the Sandman and his attitude towards children, I finally asked the old nanny who nursed my younger sister, what kind of person is this Sandman? “Oh, Tanelchen,” she said, “do you really not know yet? This is such an evil person who comes after the children, when they are stubborn and do not want to go to sleep, he throws a handful of sand in their eyes, so that they bleed and climb on their foreheads, and then he puts the children in a bag and takes them to the moon, to feed to their babies that sit there in the nest, and their beaks are crooked, like owls, and they peck out the eyes of naughty human children. And so my imagination presented me with a terrible image of the cruel Sandman; in the evening, as soon as the footsteps rumbled on the stairs, I trembled with melancholy and horror. Mother could get nothing from me, except for cries interrupted by sobs: “Sandpiper! Sandman! I ran headlong into the bedroom, and all night I was tormented by the terrifying ghost of the Sandman. I had already come of such years that I could understand that with the Sandman and his nest in the moon, everything was not quite the way my nanny had told me; however, the Sandman was still a terrible ghost to me - horror and trembling filled me when I not only heard him go up the stairs, but also with a noise open the door to my father's study and enter there. Sometimes he disappeared for a long time. But after that he came for several days in a row. So many years passed, and yet I could not get used to this sinister obsession, and the image of the cruel Sandman did not fade in my soul. His brief encounter with my father occupied my imagination more and more; some insurmountable timidity did not allow me to ask my father about this, but the desire to investigate this mystery myself, to see the fabulous Sandman, grew in me from year to year. The sandman led me on the path of the miraculous, the extraordinary, where it is so easy to seduce a child's soul. I loved nothing so much as Reading or listening to terrible stories about kobolds, witches, gnomes, etc.; but the Sandman ruled over all, whom I incessantly drew everywhere - on tables, cabinets, walls, charcoal and chalk in the most strange and disgusting guises. When I was ten years old, my mother, after escorting me out of the nursery, gave me a little room in the corridor not far from my father's office. We were still hurriedly sent to bed, as soon as nine o'clock struck and the approach of a stranger was heard in the house. From my closet I heard how he was entering my father, and soon it began to seem to me that some thin, strange-smelling fumes were spreading around the house. Curiosity inflamed me more and more and finally gave me the determination to somehow see the Sandman. Often, as soon as my mother left, I would sneak out of my little room into the corridor. But I could not notice anything, for when I reached the place from which I could see the Sandman, he was already shutting the door behind him. Finally, driven by an irresistible desire, I decided to hide in my father's office and wait for the Sandman there.

One evening, from the silence of my father and the mournful thoughtfulness of my mother, I concluded that the Sandman must come; and therefore, saying I was very tired, and without waiting for nine o'clock, I left the room and hid in a dark nook near the door. The front door creaked; slow, heavy footsteps were heard in the passage and on the stairs. The mother hurried past, taking the children away. Quietly, quietly, I opened the door of my father's room. He sat, as usual, silent and motionless, with his back to the entrance; he did not notice me, I quickly slipped into the room and took cover behind the curtain that covered the open closet where my father's dress hung. Closer - steps were heard closer - behind the doors someone was coughing, groaning and muttering strangely. My heart was beating with fear and anticipation. Here steps rumbled near the door itself, near the door itself. Someone pulled the handle hard, the door creaked open! Holding on with all my might, I cautiously stick my head forward. The sandman is standing in the middle of the room right in front of my father, the bright light of the candles illuminating his face! Sandman, terrible Sandman - yes, it was the old lawyer Coppelius, who often dined with us!

However, no most terrible vision could plunge me into greater horror than this same Coppelius. Imagine a tall, broad-shouldered man with a large awkward head, an earthy yellow face; under his thick gray eyebrows, greenish cat eyes sparkle angrily; a huge, hefty nose hung over his upper lip. His crooked mouth often twitches with an evil smile; then two purple spots appear on the cheeks and a strange hiss escapes from behind clenched teeth. Coppelius always appeared in an ash-gray tailcoat of the old cut; he had the same camisole and pantaloons, and black stockings and shoes with rhinestone buckles. A small wig barely covered the top of his head, curls stuck up over his large crimson ears, and a wide blank purse bulged at the back of his head, revealing a silver buckle that fastened his neckerchief. His whole appearance inspired horror and disgust; but we children especially hated his knotty, shaggy hands, so that we hated everything he touched. He noticed this and began to amuse himself with the fact that, under various pretexts, he deliberately touched cookies or fruits that our kind mother furtively put on our plates, so that we, with tears in our eyes, looked at them and could not taste those delicacies that have always delighted us. He did the same on holidays, when my father poured us a glass of sweet wine. He hurried to sort through everything with his hands, or even raised a glass to his blue lips and burst into hellish laughter, noticing that we did not dare to reveal our annoyance otherwise than by quiet sobs. He always called us little beasts, we were not allowed to utter a word in his presence, and we cursed with all our hearts the vile, hostile man who poisoned our most innocent joys with intent and intention. Mother seemed to hate the disgusting Coppelius, just as we do, for as soon as he appeared, her cheerful ease was replaced by a gloomy and preoccupied seriousness. His father treated him as if he were a higher being who needed to be pleasing in every possible way and patiently endure all his ignorance. The slightest hint was enough - and his favorite dishes were prepared for him and rare wines were served.

When I saw Coppelius, a sudden thought dawned on me, plunging into horror and awe, that after all, no one else could be the Sandman, but this Sandman no longer seemed to me a bunch of nanny's fairy tales, which drags children's eyes to feed his offspring in an owl's nest on the moon, no! - it was a disgusting ghostly sorcerer who, wherever he appeared, brought grief, misfortune - temporary and eternal death.

I stood spellbound. Sticking my head out of the curtains, I froze, eavesdropping, although I risked being exposed and, as I well understood, severely punished. Father met Coppelius very solemnly. “Live! For business!” he exclaimed in a dull, nasal voice, and threw off his dress. The father silently and grimly took off his dressing gown, and they dressed themselves in long black robes. Where they got them from, I overlooked. Father opened the closet doors; and I saw: what I had long considered a cupboard was rather a black recess where a small hearth stood. Coppelius approached, and a blue flame crackled over the hearth. Many outlandish vessels stood around. Oh my God! When my old father bent over the fire, what a terrible change happened to him! It seemed that a severe convulsive pain had transformed his meek, honest face into an ugly, disgusting satanic mask. He looked like Coppelius! This latter, taking red-hot tongs, pulled out with them white-hot clods of some substance, which he then diligently beat with a hammer. It seemed to me that everywhere around me flashed a multitude of human faces, only without eyes - instead of them, terrible, deep black depressions. "Eyes here! Eyes!" exclaimed Coppelius in a dull and menacing voice. Embraced by inexplicable horror, I screamed and collapsed from my ambush to the floor. And then Coppelius grabbed me. "Ah, beast! Animal! he bleated, gnashing his teeth, picking me up and throwing me on the hearth, so that the flames singed my hair. “Now we have eyes, eyes, wonderful children’s eyes,” muttered Coppelius and, having collected handfuls of red-hot coals in the furnace, he was about to throw them in my face. And so my father, stretching out his hands to him, prayed: “Master! Master! - leave the eyes of my Nathanael - leave! Coppelius laughed out loud: “Let the little one have eyes, and he will repay his lesson well in this world; Well, nevertheless, we will conduct an audit of how his arms and legs fit there. ” And then he grabbed me with such force that all my joints crackled, and began to twist my arms and legs, twisting them, then setting them. “Yeah, this one doesn’t hurt well! - and this one is good, as it was! The old man knew his business! - so hissed and muttered Coppelius. But everything went dark and clouded before my eyes, a sudden convulsion pierced my whole being - I no longer felt anything. A warm gentle breath touched my face, I woke up as if from a sleep of death, my mother bent over me. "Is the Sandman still here?" I murmured. “No, my dear child, no, he left a long time ago and will do you no harm! - so said the mother and kissed and pressed to her heart her beloved son returned to her.

But why trouble you, dear Lothar? Why tell you all the details at such length when there is so much more to tell you? In a word, my eavesdropping was open, and Coppelius treated me cruelly. Fright and horror produced in me a strong fever, from which I suffered for several weeks. "Is the Sandman still here?" - those were my first reasonable words and a sign of my recovery, my salvation. Now it remains to tell you about the most terrible hour of my youth; then you will be convinced: it is not the weakening of my eyes that is the reason that everything seems colorless to me, but a dark predestination really hangs over me, like a gloomy cloud, which I, perhaps, will dispel only by death.

Coppelius did not appear again; word spread that he had left the city.

About a year passed, we, according to our old, unchanged custom, sat in the evening at a round table. My father was cheerful and told many entertaining stories that happened to him in his travels during his youth. And so, when nine o'clock struck, we suddenly heard the hinges of the front door creak and slow cast-iron steps rattled in the hallway and up the stairs. "It's Coppelius!" said mother, turning pale. "Yes! “This is Coppelius,” repeated the father in a weary, broken voice. Tears welled up from my mother's eyes. "Father! Father! she cried. “Is it still necessary?” - ."Last time! - he answered, - for the last time he comes to me, I promise you. Go, go with the kids! Go, go to sleep! Good night!"

It was as if a heavy cold stone pressed down on me - my breath was stopped! Mother, seeing that I was frozen in immobility, took my hand: “Let's go, Nathanael, let's go!” I allowed myself to be led away, I entered my room. “Be calm, be calm, go to bed - sleep! sleep!” my mother called after me; however, tormented by unspeakable inner fear and anxiety, I could not close my eyes. The hateful, vile Coppelius, his eyes flashing, stood in front of me, laughing mockingly, and I tried in vain to drive his image away from me. True, it was already about midnight when there was a terrible blow, as if fired from a cannon. The whole house shook, something rumbled and hissed near my door, and the front door slammed shut. "It's Coppelius!" I exclaimed beside myself and jumped out of bed. And suddenly a piercing cry of inconsolable, unbearable grief was heard; I rushed to my father's room; the door was wide open, a suffocating fumes poured towards me, the maid yelled: “Ah, master, master!” In front of the smoking hearth on the floor lay my father, dead, with a black, burnt, disfigured face; around him the sisters squealed and howled - the mother was unconscious. "Coppelius, fiend, you killed my father!" - so I exclaimed and lost my senses. Two days later, when my father's body was placed in the coffin, his features brightened up again and became quiet and meek, as in the course of his whole life. Consolation came to my soul when I thought that his union with the infernal Coppelius would not bring eternal condemnation upon him.

The explosion woke up the neighbors, rumors spread about what had happened, and the authorities, having been informed of this, wanted to demand Coppelius to account; but he disappeared from the city without a trace.

Now, my dear friend, when I reveal to you that the aforementioned seller of barometers was none other than the accursed Coppelius, you will not blame me for thinking that this hostile intrusion would bring me great misfortune. He was dressed differently, but the figure and facial features of Coppelius were too deeply imprinted in my soul, so that I could not misunderstand. Moreover, Coppelius did not even change his name. Here he pretends to be a Piedmontese mechanic and calls himself Giuseppe Coppola.

I decided to have a good talk with him and avenge my father's death, no matter what the cost.

Don't tell your mother anything about the appearance of this vile sorcerer. Bow from me to dear Clara, I will write to her in a calmer frame of mind. Farewell, etc.

CLARA TO NATANAEL

I will tell you frankly, I think that all that terrible and terrible thing that you are talking about happened only in your soul, and the real outside world has very little to do with it. You see, old Coppelius was indeed rather vile, but the fact that he hated children instilled in you a true disgust for him.

The terrible Sandman from the nanny's fairy tale very naturally united in your childish soul with old Coppelius, who, even when you stopped believing in the Sandman, remained for you a phantom sorcerer, especially dangerous for children. His sinister rendezvous with your father at night was nothing but secret alchemy, which your mother could not be pleased with, for this, no doubt, wasted a lot of money, and, as always happens with such adepts, these labors, filling the soul of your father with deceptive aspirations for high wisdom, distracted him from worries about his family. Your father must have caused his own death by his own negligence, and Coppelius is innocent of that. Believe me, yesterday I asked our knowledgeable neighbor, the pharmacist, whether such explosions could happen during chemical experiments, suddenly striking death. He replied: "Of course!" - and described, as usual, very extensively and in detail, how this could be done, while saying a lot of tricky words, of which I could not remember a single one. Now you will become annoyed with your Clara, you will say: “Not a single ray of that mysterious that so often encircles a person with invisible arms penetrates into this cold soul; she sees only the motley surface of the world and, like a childish child, rejoices in golden fruits, in the core of which a deadly poison is hidden.

Oh, beloved Nathanael, or do you not believe that a cheerful, carefree, carefree soul can feel the hostile penetration of a dark force that seeks to destroy us in our own "I"? But forgive me if I, an unlearned girl, try to somehow explain what, in fact, I mean by this internal struggle. In the end, I’m sure I won’t find the right words, and you will make fun of me, not because I have stupid thoughts, but because I try so awkwardly to express them.

If there is a dark force that hostilely and treacherously throws a noose into our soul in order to capture us later and drag us onto a dangerous, destructive path where we would never otherwise have entered - if there is such a force, then it must take on our own image, become our “I”, for only in this case we will believe in it and give it a place in our soul, which is necessary for it for its mysterious work. But if our spirit is firm and strengthened by vital vigor, then it is able to distinguish an alien, hostile influence, exactly as such, and calmly follow the path where our inclinations and vocation lead us - then this sinister force will disappear in a vain struggle for its own image. , which should become a reflection of our self. “It is also true,” Lothar added, “that the dark physical force, which we indulge in only of our own free will, often inhabits our soul with alien images brought into it by the outside world, so that we ourselves only ignite our spirit, which, as it seems to us, in a strange delusion, speaks from this image. It is the phantom of our own self, whose inward affinity with us and the deep influence on our soul plunges us into hell or lifts us to heaven. Now you see, my priceless Nathanael, that we, my brother Lothar and I, have talked enough about the dark forces and principles, and this matter - after I have not without difficulty outlined the most important thing here - seems to me rather thoughtful. I do not understand Lothar's last words very well, I only feel what he means by this, and yet it seems to me that all this is very fair. I beg you, get the nasty lawyer Coppelius and barometer salesman Giuseppe Coppola out of your head. Be imbued with the thought that these alien images have no power over you; only faith in their hostile power can make them truly hostile to you. If every line of your letter did not testify to the cruel confusion of your mind, if your condition did not crush me to the depths of my soul, then I really could laugh at the lawyer Sandman and the seller of barometers Coppelius. Be cheerful, be cheerful! I decided to be your guardian angel, and as soon as the vile Coppola intends to disturb your sleep, I will come to you and drive him away with a loud laugh. I am not in the least afraid of him or his nasty hands, and he will not dare, under the guise of a lawyer, to spoil my delicacies or, like the Sandman, fill my eyes with sand.

Yours forever, my dearly beloved Nathanael, etc., etc.

NATANAEL TO LOTHAR

I am very annoyed that Clara the other day, however, due to my absent-mindedness, by mistake printed out and read my letter to you. She wrote me a very thoughtful, philosophical letter, in which she argues at length that Coppelius and Coppola exist only in my imagination, they are only phantoms of my “I”, which will instantly shatter into dust if I recognize them as such. Indeed, who would have thought that the mind, so often shining like a sweet dream in those bright, charming, laughing children's eyes, could be so reasonable, so capable of master's definitions. She refers to you. You were talking about me together. You must be giving her a full course in logic so that she can distinguish and separate everything so subtly. Drop it! However, now there is no doubt that the seller of barometers, Giuseppe Coppola, is not the old lawyer Coppelius at all. I am listening to lectures by a recently arrived professor of physics, a natural Italian, who, like the famous naturalist, is called Spalanzani. He has known Coppola for a long time, and, besides, one can already notice from one reprimand that he is the purest Piedmontese. Coppelius was a German, but I don't think he was real. I'm not completely calm yet. Consider me both, you and Clara, if you like, a gloomy dreamer, I still cannot free myself from the impression that the damned face of Coppelius made on me. I'm glad he left town, as Spalanzani told me. By the way, this professor is an amazing eccentric. A short, stout little man with prominent cheekbones, a thin nose, protruding lips, and small, sharp eyes. But better than from any description, you will recognize him when you look in some Berlin pocket calendar at the portrait of Cagliostro engraved by Chodovetsky. Such is Spalanzani! The other day I went up the stairs to him and noticed that the curtain, which is usually tightly drawn over the glass door, had slightly turned up and left a small crack. I do not know how it happened, but I looked there with curiosity. In the room, in front of a small table, with her hands clasped together on it, sat a tall, very slender, well-dressed girl, proportionate in all proportions. She was sitting opposite the door, so I could get a good look at her angelic face. She did not seem to notice me, in general there was some kind of numbness in her eyes, I could even say that they lacked visual power, as if she was sleeping with her eyes open. I felt uneasy, and I quietly crept into the auditorium, which was located nearby. Later I learned that the girl I saw was the daughter of Spalanzani, named Olympia; he keeps her locked up with such admirable severity that not a single person dares to penetrate her. After all, there is some important circumstance hidden here, perhaps she is weak-minded or has some other defect. But why am I writing to you about all this? I could tell you all this in words better and in more detail. Know that in two weeks I will be with you. I must certainly see my lovely, gentle angel, my Clara. Then that bad mood will dissipate, which (I confess) almost took possession of me after her ill-fated reasonable letter, therefore I do not write to her today.

I bow countless times, etc., etc.

It is impossible to think of anything more strange and wonderful than what happened to my poor friend, the young student Nathanael, and which I am going to tell you, indulgent reader, now. Have you, dear reader, experienced something that would completely take over your heart, feelings and thoughts, crowding out everything else? Everything in you boils and bubbles, ignited blood boils in your veins and fills your cheeks with a hot blush. Your gaze is strange, it seems to catch images in the void that are invisible to others, and your speech is lost in obscure sighs. And now your friends ask you: “What is the matter with you, most respected? What is your concern, dear?" And so, with all the fiery colors, with all the shadows and light, you want to convey the visions that have arisen in you and you are trying to find words in order to at least begin the story. But it seems to you that from the very first word you must imagine all that wonderful, magnificent, terrible, cheerful, terrifying that happened to you, and strike everyone as if with an electric shock. However, every word, everything that our speech has at our disposal, seems to you colorless, cold and dead. And you keep looking and catching, stammering and stammering, and the sober questions of your friends, like an icy breeze, cool the heat of your soul until it dies out completely. But if you, like a bold painter, first outline with bold strokes the outline of your inner vision, then later you can easily apply more and more fiery colors, and a lively swarm of colorful images will captivate your friends, and together with you they will see themselves in the middle of the picture that originated in your soul. I must confess, kind reader, that no one really asked me about the story of young Nathanael; but you know perfectly well that I belong to that amazing breed of authors who, when they carry something like the one just described, immediately imagine that everyone they meet, and the whole world, only asks: “What is there ? Tell me, my dear!" And now I am irresistibly attracted to talk to you about the ill-fated life of Nathanael. Its strangeness, its extraordinaryness struck my soul, and therefore—and also so that I could—oh, my reader! “Immediately persuade you to understand everything wonderful, which is not enough here,” I tried my best to start the story of Nathanael as cleverly as possible - more original, more captivating. "Once" is the most beautiful beginning for any story - too ordinary! “In a small provincial town C ... lived” is somewhat better, at least it gives rise to gradation. Or immediately by means of "medias in res" [*]: "Fuck off to hell," cried the student Nathanael, and fury and horror were reflected in his wild look, when the barometer salesman Giuseppe Coppola ... "So I really would have begun, when I thought that something funny could be sensed in the wild look of the student Nathanael, but this story is not at all funny. Not a single phrase came to my mind that even slightly reflected the iridescent radiance of the image that arose before my inner gaze. I decided not to start at all. So, kind reader, take these three letters, which my friend Lothar willingly handed over to me, as the outline of the picture, on which, as I tell, I will try to add more and more colors. Perhaps I will be lucky, like a good portrait painter, to capture other faces so accurately that you will find them similar without knowing the original, and it will even seem to you that you have already seen these people more than once with your own eyes. And perhaps then, my reader, you will believe that there is nothing more amazing and crazy than real life itself, and that the poet can imagine only its vague reflection, as if in a mirror that has not been polished smoothly.

[* "Straight to the point" [lat.).]

In order to immediately say everything that needs to be known from the very beginning, it should be added to the previous letters that soon after the death of Nathanael's father, Clara and Lothar, the children of a distant relative, who also recently died and left them orphans, were adopted into the family by Nathanael's mother. Clara and Nathanael felt a lively inclination towards each other, against which not a single person in the world could object; they were already engaged when Nathanael left the city to continue his studies in G. As can be seen from his last letter, he is now there and listens to lectures by the famous professor of physics Spalanzani.

Now I could safely continue my story. But at that moment the image of Clara appears so vividly to my imagination that I cannot take my eyes off it, as it always happens to me when she looks at me with a sweet smile. Clara was by no means beautiful; on this agreed all those who, according to their position, were to understand beauty. But the architects praised the pure proportions of her figure, the painters found that her back, shoulders and chest were formed, perhaps, too chastely, but they were all captivated by her wonderful hair, like Mary Magdalene, and chatted endlessly about the color of Buttoni. And one of them, a true science fiction writer, made a strange comparison, likening Clara's eyes to Lake Ruisdael, in the mirror surface of which the azure of a cloudless sky, forests and flowering pastures, the whole lively, colorful, rich, cheerful landscape is reflected. But poets and virtuosos went even further, assuring: “What a lake is there, what a mirror surface is there! Have we ever seen this virgin, when her eyes did not shine with the most wonderful heavenly harmony, penetrating into our soul, so that everything in her awakens and comes to life. If even then we do not sing anything worthwhile, then we are of little use at all, and we unambiguously read this in the thin grin that flickers on Clara’s lips when we decide to squeak in front of her something that claims to be called singing, although these are just incoherent and randomly jumping sounds." So it was. Clara was endowed with a lively and strong imagination, like a cheerful, unconstrained child, possessed a woman's heart, tender and sensitive, and a very penetrating mind. Thinking and philosophizing heads were not successful with her, for Clara's bright gaze and the aforementioned thin ironic grin, without superfluous words, not at all characteristic of her silent nature, seemed to say to them: “Dear friends! How can you demand from me that I take the blurry shadows you have created for real figures, full of life and movement? That is why many reproached Clara for coldness, insensibility and prosaicness; but others, whose understanding of life was distinguished by clarity and depth, loved this cordial, reasonable, trusting, like a child, girl, but no one loved her more than Nathanael, who cheerfully and zealously practiced in the sciences and arts. Clara was devoted to Nathanael with all her heart. The first shadows darkened her life when he parted from her. With what admiration she threw herself into his arms when, as he promised in his last letter to Lothar, he finally really returned to his native city and entered his parents' house. Nathanael's hopes were fulfilled; for from the moment he met Clara, he no longer remembered either her philosophical letter or the lawyer Coppelius; bad mood completely vanished.

However, Nathanael was right when he wrote to his friend Lothar that the image of the disgusting barometer salesman Coppola perniciously penetrated his life. Everyone felt this, for already from the first days of his stay, Nathanael showed a complete change in his whole being. He plunged into a gloomy reverie and indulged in it with a strangeness that had never been noticed in him. His whole life consisted of dreams and forebodings. He constantly said that every person, thinking himself free, only serves the terrible game of dark forces; it will be in vain to resist them, it is necessary with humility to endure what is destined by fate itself. He went even further, arguing that it is very reckless to believe that in art and science one can create according to one’s own will, because inspiration, without which it is impossible to produce anything, is born not from our soul, but from the influence of some higher principle lying outside of us.

To reasonable Clara, all these mystical nonsense were extremely disgusting, but all efforts to refute them, apparently, were in vain. Only when Nathanael began to prove that Conpelius was the evil inclination that had taken possession of him from the moment he had been eavesdropping behind the curtain, and that this disgusting demon could embarrass their love happiness in the most terrible way, Clara suddenly became very serious and said:

Yes, Nathanael! You're right. Coppelius is an evil hostile principle, he, like a diabolical force that has clearly penetrated into our lives, can produce a terrible effect, but only if you do not expel him from your mind and heart. As long as you believe in it, it exists and has its effect on you, only your faith makes up its power.

Nathanael, enraged that Clara admits the existence of a demon only in his own soul, was about to launch into a presentation of the whole doctrine of the devil and dark forces, but Clara, to his considerable annoyance, interrupted him with displeasure with some insignificant remark. He believed that it was not given to cold, insensitive souls to comprehend such deep secrets, however, not realizing that he ranked Clara among such base natures, he did not abandon attempts to introduce her to these secrets. Early in the morning, when Clara was helping to prepare breakfast, he stood beside her and read all kinds of mystical books to her, so that Clara finally said:

“Ah, my dear Nathanael, what if I take it into my head to call you an evil inclination that has a destructive effect on my coffee? After all, if I drop everything and begin to listen to you without taking my eyes off, as you wish, then the coffee will certainly run away and everyone will be left without breakfast!

Nathanael hurriedly closed the book and ran away in anger to his room. Previously, he was especially good at composing cheerful, lively stories, which Clara listened to with unfeigned pleasure; now his creations had become gloomy, incomprehensible, shapeless, and although Clara, sparing him, did not speak of this, he nevertheless easily guessed how little they pleased her. Nothing was so unbearable to her as boredom; an irresistible mental drowsiness was immediately revealed in her glances and speeches. Nathanael's writings were indeed remarkably boring. His annoyance at Clara's cold, prosaic disposition grew daily; Clara also could not overcome her displeasure at the dark, gloomy, dull mysticism of Nathanael, and thus, imperceptibly to themselves, their hearts were more and more divided. The image of the disgusting Coppelius, as Nathanael admitted to himself, faded in his imagination, and it often cost him no small effort to vividly present him in his poems, where he acted as a terrible fate. Finally, he took it into his head to make his dark premonition that Coppelius would embarrass his love happiness as the subject of a poem. He imagined himself united with Clara by eternal love, but from time to time, as if a black hand invades their lives and steals one after another the joys sent down to them. Finally, when they are already standing in front of the altar, the terrible Coppelius appears and touches Clara's lovely eyes; like bloody sparks, they penetrate Nathanael's chest, scorching and burning. Coppelius grabs him and throws him into a flaming circle of fire, which spins with the speed of a whirlwind and carries him along with a noise and a roar. Everything is howling, as if an evil hurricane is furiously scourging the seething sea walls, rising like black grey-headed giants. But in the midst of this wild rage, Clara's voice is heard: “Can't you look at me? Coppelius deceived you, then it wasn’t my eyes that burned your chest, it was the burning drops of the blood of your own heart - my eyes are intact, look at me! Nathanael thinks: "This is Clara - and I am devoted to her forever!" And now, as if this thought bursts into the fiery circle with irresistible force; it stops spinning, and the dull roar fades into the black abyss. Nathanael looks into Clara's eyes; but it is death itself that kindly looks at him with the eyes of its beloved.

Writing this, Nathanael was very reasonable and calm, he perfected and improved every line, and since he subordinated himself to the metrical canons, he did not calm down until his verse reached complete purity and harmony. But when his work came to an end and he read his poems aloud, a sudden fear and trembling seized him, and he cried out in a frenzy: “Whose terrifying voice is this?” Soon it again seemed to him that this was only a very successful poetic work, and he decided that it should inflame Clara's cold soul, although he could not give himself a clear idea for what, in fact, it was necessary to inflame it and where it would lead if it began to torment her terrifying images that portend a terrible and destructive fate for her love.

Nathanael and Clara were sitting one day in a little garden near the house; Clara was cheerful, for Nathanael spent the whole three days that he used to compose poetry without tormenting her with his dreams and forebodings. Nathanael, as before, spoke with great vivacity and joy about various merry subjects, so that Clara said:

- Well, now, finally, you are completely mine again, do you see how we drove that vile Coppelius away?

But then Nathanael remembered that in his pocket he had poems that he intended to read to her. He immediately took out a notebook and began to read; Clara, as usual expecting something boring, with patient resignation set to knitting. But when the gloomy clouds began to thicken more and more, Clara dropped her stocking from her hands and looked intently into Nathanael's eyes. He uncontrollably continued to read, his cheeks burned with internal heat, tears flowed from his eyes - at last he finished, groaning from deep exhaustion, took Clara's hand and sighed, as if in inconsolable grief: “Ah! Clara! Clara!" Clara tenderly pressed him to her breast and said softly, but firmly and seriously:

“Nathanael, my beloved Nathanael, throw this absurd, absurd, extravagant tale into the fire.

Here Nathanael jumped up and with vehemence, pushing Clara away from him, exclaimed:

“You soulless, damned automaton!”

He ran away; deeply offended, Clara burst into bitter tears. "Oh, he never, never loved me, he doesn't understand me!" she exclaimed loudly, sobbing. Lothar entered the pavilion; Clara was forced to tell him everything that had happened; he loved his sister with all his heart, every word of her complaint, like a spark, ignited his soul, so that the displeasure that he had long harbored against the dreamy Nathanael turned into furious anger. He ran after him and began to cruelly reproach him for his reckless act, to which the quick-tempered Nathanael answered him with the same fervor. For "an extravagant, insane jester" was repaid in the name of a low, pitiful, ordinary soul. The duel was inevitable. They decided the next morning to meet behind the garden and exchange knowledge with each other, according to the local academic custom, on sharply honed short rapiers. Gloomy and silent, they wandered around; Clara heard their skirmish and noticed that at dusk the Feuchtmeister brought rapiers. She foresaw what was about to happen. Arriving at the place of the duel, Nathanael and Lothar, in the same gloomy silence, threw off their outer dress and, sparkling in their eyes, were ready to attack each other with bloodthirsty fury, when, opening the garden gate, Clara rushed towards them. Sobbing, she exclaimed:

"Furious, rabid madmen!" Stab me before you fight! How can I live in the world when my beloved kills my brother or my beloved brother!

Lothar lowered his weapon and lowered his eyes in silence, but in Nathanael's soul, along with consuming melancholy, the former love that he felt for the charming Clara in the carefree days of his youth was revived. He dropped the deadly weapon and fell at Clara's feet.

Will you ever forgive me, my Clara, my only love? Will you forgive me, my dear brother Lothar?

Lothar was touched by his deep sorrow. Reconciled, all three embraced each other and vowed to remain forever in unceasing love and fidelity.

It seemed to Nathanael that an immeasurable weight had fallen from him, pressing him to the ground, and that, having rebelled against the dark power that had taken possession of him, he had saved his whole being, which was threatened with destruction. He spent three more blissful days with his beloved friends, then went to G., where he planned to stay for another year, in order to return forever to his native city.

Everything that had to do with Coppelius was hidden from Nathanael's mother, for they knew that she could not, without a shudder, remember the man whom she, like Nathanael, considered guilty of the death of her husband.

What was Nathanael's surprise when, on his way to his apartment, he saw that the whole house had burned down and only bare charred walls stuck out from under a pile of garbage in the conflagration. Despite the fact that the fire started in the laboratory of the pharmacist who lived on the ground floor, and the house began to burn out from below, Nathanael's brave and determined friends managed to get into his room, located under the very roof, in time, and saved his books, manuscripts and tools. Everything was transferred in complete safety to another house, where they rented a room and where Nathanael immediately moved. He did not attach much importance to the fact that he now lived just opposite Professor Spalanzani, and in the same way it did not seem at all strange to him when he noticed that from his window he could see the room where Olympia often sat alone, so that he could clearly distinguish her figure, although her features remained vague and indistinct. True, he was finally surprised that Olympia remained for whole hours in the same position in which he had once seen her through the glass door; doing nothing, she sat at a small table, relentlessly fixing her motionless gaze on him; he had to confess that he had never seen such a beautiful camp; meanwhile, keeping in his heart the image of Clara, he remained completely indifferent to the stiff and motionless Olympia and only occasionally threw an absent-minded glance over the compendium at this beautiful statue, and that was all. And then one day, when he was writing a letter to Clara, there was a soft knock on his door; at his invitation to enter, the door opened and the hideous head of Coppelius poked forward. Nathanael shuddered in his heart, but remembering what Spalanzani had told him about his fellow countryman Coppola, and what he himself sacredly promised his beloved about Coppelius the Sandman, he was ashamed of his childish fear of ghosts, fought himself with an effort and said with possible meekness and calmness:

"I don't buy barometers, my dear, leave me alone!"

But then Coppola entered the room completely and, twisting his huge mouth into a vile smile, sparkling with small prickly eyes from under long gray eyelashes, said in a hoarse voice:

— Eh, not a barometer, not a barometer! - there are good eyes - good eyes!

Nathanael cried out in horror:

“Crazy, how can you sell eyes? Eyes! Eyes!

But at the same moment Coppola put aside the barometers and, reaching into a large pocket, pulled out lorgnettes and spectacles and began laying them out on the table.

- Well, well, - glasses, put glasses on your nose, - here is my eye, - good eye!

And he kept pulling out and pulling out his spectacles, so that soon the whole table began to shimmer and shimmer strangely. Thousands of eyes gazed at Nathanael, blinked convulsively and stared; and he himself could no longer take his eyes off the table; and more and more points were laid out by Coppola; and those flaming eyes sparkled and jumped more and more terrible, and their bloody rays struck Nathanael's chest. Seized with inexplicable trepidation, he shouted:

"Stop, stop, you horrible man!"

He grabbed Coppola's arm tightly as he reached into his pocket for more glasses, even though the table was already littered with them. With a nasty, hoarse laugh, Coppola quietly freed himself, saying:

- Ah, - not for you - but glass is good. He piled up all his glasses, put them away, and took out of his side pocket a multitude of small and large spyglasses. As soon as the glasses were removed, Nathanael completely calmed down and, remembering Clara, realized that this terrible ghost had arisen in his own soul, as well as the fact that Coppola was a very respectable mechanic and optician, and by no means a cursed double and a descendant of Light Coppelius. Also, in all the instruments that Coppola laid out on the table, there was nothing special, at least not as ghostly as in glasses, and to make amends, Nathanael decided to actually buy something from Coppola. So he took a small pocket spyglass of very skillful workmanship and looked out of the window to try it out. In all his life he had never come across glasses that would bring objects so faithfully, cleanly and clearly. Involuntarily he glanced into Spalanzani's room; Olympia, as usual, was sitting at a small table, her hands resting on it and her fingers laced together. It was only then that Nathanael saw the wondrous beauty of her face. Only the eyes seemed to him strangely still and dead. But the closer he peered into the spyglass, the more it seemed to him that Olympia's eyes emit a moist moonlight. It was as if the visual power had just now ignited in them; her eyes became more and more alive. Nathanael, as if spellbound, stood at the window, constantly contemplating the heavenly beautiful Olympia. A coughing and shuffling near him awakened him as if from a deep sleep. Behind him stood Coppola: "Tre zechini - three ducats." Nathanael completely forgot about the optician; he hastily paid what he demanded.

- Well, how is the glass good? Good glass? Coppola asked with a sly grin in a nasty, hoarse voice.

- Yes Yes Yes! Nathanael replied irritably.

- Adieu, my dear. Coppola walked off, still throwing strange sidelong glances at Nathanael. Nathanael heard him laughing out loud on the stairs. “Well,” he decided, “he is laughing at me because I paid too much for this little spyglass—paid too much!” When he whispered these words, a soul-chilling, deep, dying sigh was heard in the room; Nathanael's breath caught in the horror that filled him. But it was he himself who sighed, of which he immediately assured himself. “Clara,” he said at last to himself, “rightly considers me a foolish visionary, but isn’t it stupid—ah, more than stupid—that the absurd idea that I overpaid Coppola for the glass still strangely disturbs me; I don't see any reason for that." And so he sat down at the table to finish the letter to Clara, but, looking out the window, he was convinced that Olympia was still in the same place, and at that very moment, as if impelled by an irresistible force, he jumped up, grabbed Coppola's telescope and could no longer more to take his eyes off the seductive appearance of Olympia, until his friend and sworn brother Sigmund came for him to go to a lecture by Professor Spalanzani. The curtain that hid the fateful room was tightly drawn; neither this time, nor the next two days, he could not see Olympia either here or in her room, although he almost did not tear himself away from the window and constantly looked into Coppola's telescope. On the third day, even the windows were curtained. Full of despair, driven by longing and fiery desire, he ran out of town. The image of Olympia hovered in the air in front of him, emerging from behind the bushes, and with large bright eyes looked at him from a transparent spring. The face of Clara was completely blotted out of his heart; Thinking of nothing more than Olympia, he groaned loudly and sorrowfully: “O beautiful, mountainous star of my love, did you really rise just to immediately disappear again and leave me in the darkness of an inconsolable night?”

Returning home, Nathanael noticed a noisy movement in the house of Professor Spalanzani. The doors were thrown wide open, all kinds of furniture were brought in; the frames of the first-floor windows were exposed, busy maids scurrying back and forth, sweeping the floor and dusting with long hairbrushes. Joiners and upholsterers filled the house with hammers. Nathanael, in complete astonishment, stopped in the middle of the street; then Sigmund came up to him and asked with a laugh:

“Well, what about old Spalanzani?”

Nathanael replied that he absolutely could not say anything, because he knew nothing about the professor, moreover, he could not be surprised why such a commotion and turmoil arose in such a quiet, unsociable house; then he learned from Sigmund that Spalanzani was giving a big feast tomorrow, a concert and a ball, and that half the university had been invited. There was a rumor that Spalanzani would for the first time show his daughter, whom he had so long and timidly hidden from prying eyes.

Nathanael found an invitation card and at the appointed hour, with a beating heart, went to the professor, when the carriages had already begun to arrive and the decorated halls shone with lights. The meeting was numerous and brilliant. Olympia appeared in a rich outfit, chosen with great taste. It was impossible not to admire the beautiful features of her face, her figure. Her somewhat oddly curved back, her wasp-thin waist, seemed to come from too much lacing. In her posture and gait, some regularity and rigidity were noticeable, which unpleasantly surprised many; this was attributed to the constraint she experienced in society. The concert has begun. Olympia played the piano with the greatest fluency, and also sang one bravura aria in a clear, almost harsh voice, like a crystal bell. Nathanael was beside himself with delight; he was standing in the very last row, and the dazzling brilliance of the candles did not allow him to properly examine the features of the singer. Therefore, he quietly took out Coppola's telescope and began to look through it at the beautiful Olympia. Ah, then he noticed how longingly she looked at him, how every sound first arises in a look full of love that inflames his soul. The most skillful roulades seemed to Nathanael the exultation of the soul ascending to heaven, enlightened by love, and when, at the end of the cadenza, a long ringing trill scattered around the hall, as if fiery arms suddenly wrapped around him, he could no longer control himself and, in a frenzy of delight and pain, loudly cried out: "Olympia!" Everyone turned to him, many laughed. The cathedral organist took on an even more gloomy look and said only: “Well, well!” The concert ended, the ball began. "Dance with her! with her!" This was the goal of all thoughts, all desires of Nathanael; but how to find in yourself so much impudence to invite her, the queen of the ball? But still! When the dancing began, he himself, not knowing how, found himself near Olympia, whom no one had yet invited, and, barely able to murmur a few slurred words, took her by the hand. Olympia's hand was cold as ice; he shuddered as he felt the terrifying chill of death; he looked intently into her eyes, and they lit up with love and desire, and at the same moment it seemed to him that a pulse began to beat in the veins of her cold hand and living hot blood boiled in them. And now the soul of Nathanael was even more lit with loving delight; he embraced the camp of the beautiful Olympia and rushed off with her in a dance. Until now, he believed that he always danced to the beat, but the peculiar rhythmic firmness with which Olympia danced confused him, and he soon noticed how little he kept the beat. However, he no longer wanted to dance with any other woman and was ready to immediately kill anyone who came up to invite Olympia. But this happened only twice, and, to his amazement, Olympia, when the dancing began, each time remained in place, and he did not get tired of inviting her again and again. If Nathanael could see anything other than the beautiful Olympia, then some annoying quarrel and skirmish would inevitably happen, for there is no doubt that the low, hard-to-control laughter that arose in the corners among young people referred to the beautiful Olympia, on which they, for some unknown reason, were constantly fixing with curious eyes. Excited by the dances and the wine drunk in abundance, Nathanael cast aside his natural shyness. He sat beside Olympia and, without letting go of her hand, with the greatest ardor and enthusiasm spoke of his love in expressions that no one could understand - neither he nor Olympia. However, she, perhaps, understood, for she did not take her eyes off him and sighed every minute: “Ah-ah-ah!”

In response, Nathanael said:

“O beautiful heavenly maiden! You are a ray from the promised other world of love! All my being is reflected in the crystal depths of your soul! - and many other similar words, to which Olympia always answered only: "Ah-ah!" Professor Spalanzani several times passed by the happy lovers and, looking at them, smiled with a kind of strange satisfaction. Meanwhile, Nathanael, although he was in a completely different world, suddenly seemed to grow darker in Professor Spalanzani's chambers; he looked around and, to his considerable dismay, saw that in the empty hall the last two candles were burning down and were about to go out. The music and dancing had long ceased. "Separation, separation!" he cried in confusion and despair. He kissed Olympia's hand, he bent down to her lips, ice-cold lips met his glowing ones! And then he felt that horror seizes him, as when he touched the cold hand of Olympia; the legend of the dead bride suddenly came to his mind; but Olympia pressed him tightly to her, and the kiss seemed to fill her lips with life-giving warmth. Professor Spalanzani walked slowly up and down the empty hall; his steps echoed loudly, shaky shadows slid over his figure, giving him a terrifying ghostly appearance.

- Do you love me? Do you love me, Olympia? Just one word! Do you love me? Nathanael whispered to her, but Olympia, rising from her seat, only sighed: “Ah-ah!”

“O beautiful benevolent star of my love,” said Nathanael, “you have risen for me and will forever shine and transform my soul with your light!”

- Ahah! Olympia answered, moving away. Nathanael followed her; they found themselves in front of the professor.

“You had an unusually lively conversation with my daughter,” he said, smiling, “well, dear Mr. Nathanael, if you find pleasure in conversing with this timid girl, I will always be glad to see you at home!”

Nathanael left, carrying in his heart the boundless radiant sky.

All the following days the holiday of Spalanpani was the subject of urban talk. And although the professor made every effort to show off his splendor and splendor, there were still scoffers who managed to tell about all the oddities and absurdities that were noticed at the holiday, and especially attacked the numb, mute Olympia, who, despite her beautiful appearance, was accused of complete stupidity, for which reason Spalanzani kept it hidden for so long. Nathanael listened to these talk not without hidden anger, but he was silent; for, he thought, is it worth the trouble to prove to these Burches that their own stupidity prevents them from knowing the deep beautiful soul of Olympia.

“Do me a favor, brother,” Sigmund once asked him, “do me a favor and tell me how you managed to fall in love with this wooden doll, this wax figure?

Nathanael almost got angry, but immediately changed his mind and answered:

“Tell me, Sigmund, how could the unearthly charms of Olympia escape from your impressionable soul, from your clairvoyant eyes, always open to everything beautiful?” But therefore - let us thank fate for this! - you did not become my rival; for then one of us must have fallen, bleeding.

Sigmund immediately saw how far his friend had gone, skillfully changed the conversation, and, noting that in love one can never judge an object, he added:

“However, it is surprising that many of us have about the same opinion about Olympia. She seemed to us - do not complain, brother! - some strangely constrained and soulless. That's true, her camp is proportionate and correct, just like her face! She could be considered a beauty if her eyes were not so lifeless, I would even say, devoid of visual power. There is some amazing regularity in her steps, every movement seems to be subordinated to the movement of the wheels of the winding mechanism. In her playing, in her singing, one can notice the unpleasantly regular, soulless beat of a singing machine; the same can be said about her dance. We felt uneasy from the presence of this Olympia, and we really did not want to have anything to do with her, it seemed to us that she only acts like a living being, but there is some special circumstance hidden here.

Nathanael did not give vent to the bitter feeling that had seized him after Sigmund's words, he overcame his annoyance and only said with great seriousness:

“It may turn out that you, cold prose writers, are uncomfortable with the presence of Olympia. But only the soul of the poet reveals itself to an organization similar in nature! It is only for me that her eyes full of love shine, penetrating all my feelings and thoughts with radiance, only in the love of Olympia do I find myself again. You may not like the fact that she does not go into empty talk, like other superficial souls. It is not verbose, it is true, but her stingy words serve as if true hieroglyphs of the inner world, filled with love and higher comprehension of spiritual life through the contemplation of eternal otherworldly existence. However, you are deaf to all this, and my words are in vain.

God bless you, dear brother! - said Sigmund with great tenderness, almost mournfully, - but it seems to me that you are on a bad path. Rely on me when everyone... - no, I can’t say anything more! ..

Nathanael suddenly felt that the cold, prosaic Sigmund was genuinely devoted to him, and with great cordiality shook the hand extended to him.

Nathanael completely forgot that Clara, whom he had once loved, existed in the world; his mother, Lothar — everything was erased from his memory, he lived only for Olympia and spent several hours every day with her, ranting about his love, about awakened sympathy, about mental selective affinity, and Olympia listened to him with unfailing goodwill. From the farthest corners of his desk, Nathanael raked out everything he had ever composed. Poems, fantasies, visions, novels, stories multiplied day by day, and all this, mixed with all sorts of chaotic sonnets, stanzas and canzones, he tirelessly read Olympia for hours. But on the other hand, he had never had such a diligent listener. She didn’t knit or embroider, she didn’t look out the window, she didn’t feed the birds, she didn’t play with a lap dog, with her beloved cat, she didn’t fiddle with a piece of paper or anything else, she didn’t try to hide her yawn with a quiet fake cough - in a word, whole for hours, without moving from her place, without moving, she looked into the eyes of her beloved, without taking her motionless gaze from him, and this gaze became more and more fiery, more and more alive. Only when Nathanael finally got up from his seat and kissed her hand, and sometimes on the lips, did she sigh: "Ax-ax!" - and added:

- Good night, my dear!

“O beautiful, inexpressible soul! - exclaimed Nathanael, return to your room, - only you, only you alone deeply understand me!

He trembled with inner delight when he thought about what an amazing consonance of their souls was revealed every day; for it seemed to him that Olympia drew a judgment about his creations, about his poetic gift from the innermost depths of his soul, as if his own inner voice sounded. So it must have been; for Olympia never uttered any other words than those mentioned above. But if Nathanael in bright, reasonable moments, as, for example, in the morning, immediately after waking up, and recalled Olympia's complete passivity and taciturnity, he still said: “What do words, words mean! The gaze of her heavenly eyes speaks to me more than any language on earth! Indeed, can a child of heaven fit himself into a narrow circle outlined by our miserable earthly needs? Professor Spalanzani seemed overjoyed at his daughter's relationship with Nathanael; he gave him unequivocal tokens of favor, and when Nathanael at last ventured to bluntly express his desire to betrothed to Olympia, the professor broke into a smile and announced that he was giving his daughter a free choice. Encouraged by these words, with a fiery desire in his heart, Nathanael decided the next day to beg Olympia with all frankness, in clear words to tell him what her beautiful, full of love eyes had long ago revealed to him - that she wanted to belong to him forever. He began to look for the ring that his mother gave him when parting, in order to bring it to Olympia as a symbol of his devotion, the emerging common blooming life. The letters of Clara and Lothar fell into his hands; he cast them aside indifferently, found the ring, put it on his finger, and flew off to Olympia. Already on the stairs, already in the passage, he heard an unusual noise, which seemed to come from Spalanzani's study. Stomping, ringing, jolts, thumps on the door interspersed with abuse and curses. “Let go, let go, dishonorable villain! I put my whole life into it! — Ha-ha-ha-ha! There was no such agreement! - I, I made eyes! - And I'm a clockwork mechanism! “You fool with your mechanism!” “Damned dog, brainless watchmaker!” - Get out! — Satan! - Stop! Day laborer! Canaglia! - Stop! - Get out! “Let go!” They were the voices of Spalanzani and the hideous Coppelius, thundering and raging, drowning each other out. Nathanael, seized with inexplicable fear, rushed to them. The professor held some female figure by the shoulders, the Italian Coppola pulled her by the legs, both dragged and pulled in different directions, trying with furious bitterness to take possession of her. In unspeakable horror, Nathanael recoiled, recognizing Olympia; inflamed with insane anger, he wanted to rush to the raging in order to take away his beloved; but at the same moment, with superhuman strength, Coppola tore the figure out of Spalanzani's hands and struck the professor with such a cruel blow that he staggered and fell backward on a table piled with phials, retorts, bottles and glass cylinders; all this utensils with a ringing shattered into smithereens. And so Coppola hoisted the figure on his shoulders and, with a vile, shrill laugh, hurriedly ran down the stairs, so that one could hear how Olympia's disgustingly dangling legs beat and rumbled down the steps with a wooden thud.

Nathanael froze - he now saw too clearly that the deathly pale waxy face of Olympia was devoid of eyes, in their place two hollows blackened: she was a lifeless doll. Spalanzani writhed on the floor, glass fragments hurt his head, chest and arm, blood flowed in streams. But he mustered all his strength.

- In pursuit - in pursuit - why are you delaying? Coppélius, Coppélius, he stole my best submachine gun... I worked on it for twenty years—I put my whole life into it; clockwork, speech, movement - all mine. Eyes, eyes he stole from you! Damned villain! In pursuit!.. Give me back Olympia... Here are your eyes!

And then Nathanael saw bloody eyes on the floor, fixing a fixed gaze on him; Spalaitsani seized them with an unharmed hand and threw them at him, so that they struck him in the chest. And then madness let its fiery claws into him and penetrated into his soul, tearing apart his thoughts and feelings. "Live-live-live, - spin, fiery circle, spin, - more fun, more fun, doll, beautiful doll - live, - spin, spin!" And he rushed at the professor and squeezed his throat. He would have strangled him if a multitude of people had not come running to the noise, who burst into the house and, dragging the frenzied Nathanael, saved the professor and bandaged his wounds. Sigmund, no matter how strong he was, could not cope with the raging one; Nathanael incessantly shouted in a terrible voice: “Chrysalis, whirl, whirl!” and beat blindly around him with his fists. Finally, by the combined efforts of several people, it was possible to overcome it; they threw him to the floor and tied him up. His speech turned into a terrifying bestial howl. So the raging and disgustingly raging Nathanael was transported to the lunatic asylum.

Benevolent reader, before I continue my story of what happened next to the unfortunate Nathanael, I can - if you took some part in the skillful mechanic and master of automata Spalanzani - assure you that he was completely cured of his wounds. However, he was forced to leave the university, because the story of Nathanael aroused universal attention and everyone considered it an absolutely unacceptable deceit, instead of a living person, to smuggle a wooden doll into sensible secular meetings at the tea table (Olympia successfully attended such tea parties). Lawyers even called it a particularly skillful forgery and worthy of severe punishment, for it was directed against the whole society and set up with such cunning that not a single person (with the exception of some very astute students) noticed it, although now everyone shook their heads and referred to various circumstances that seemed highly suspicious to them. But, to tell the truth, they found nothing worthwhile. Could anyone, for example, seem suspicious that Olympia, in the words of one elegant tea drinker,[*] contrary to all decency, sneezed more often than yawned? This, the dandy believed, was the self-winding of a hidden mechanism, from which a crackle, etc., was clearly heard. The professor of poetry and eloquence, taking a pinch of tobacco, slammed the snuffbox shut, cleared his throat and said solemnly: “Highly esteemed gentlemen and ladies! Haven't you noticed what's the catch here? All this is an allegory - an extension of the metaphor. Do you understand me! Sapienti sat!”[**] However, such explanations did not reassure most of the highly esteemed gentlemen; The story of the automaton had sunk deep into their souls, and they were filled with a disgusting distrust of human faces. Many lovers, in order to make absolutely sure that they were not captivated by a wooden doll, demanded from their beloved that they sing slightly out of tune and dance out of time, so that when they were read aloud, they knitted, embroidered, played with a lap dog, etc. etc., and most of all, that they not only listen, but sometimes speak themselves, so much so that their speech really expresses thoughts and feelings. For many, love relationships have strengthened and become sincere, while others, on the contrary, calmly dispersed. “Truly, nothing can be vouched for,” said one or the other. During the tea party, everyone yawned incredibly and no one sneezed to avert any suspicion from themselves. Spalanzani, as already mentioned, was forced to leave in order to avoid a judicial investigation in the case of "fraudulently introducing human automatons into society." Coppola also disappeared.

[* Original pun: Teeist. — Ed.]

[** Wise enough! (lat.)]

Nathanael awoke as if from a deep, heavy sleep; he opened his eyes and felt an inexplicable joy enveloping him with gentle heavenly warmth. He was lying on the bed in his room, in his parents' house, Clara bent over him, and his mother and Lothar were nearby.

- Finally, finally, my beloved Nathanael, you are healed of a serious illness - you are mine again! - so said Clara with penetrating cordiality, embracing Nathanael.

Bright, hot tears of anguish and delight gushed from his eyes, and he exclaimed with a groan:

- Clara! .. My Clara!

Sigmund, who had devotedly looked after his friend all this time, entered the room. Nathanael held out his hand to him.

- Faithful friend and brother, you have not left me!

All traces of insanity vanished; soon, with the care of his mother, his beloved, his friends, Nathanael recovered completely. Happiness visited their house again; an old stingy uncle, from whom no inheritance was ever expected, died, refusing to Nathanael's mother, in addition to a significant fortune, a small estate in a friendly area, not far from the city. They decided to move there: mother, Nathanael, Clara, with whom he now decided to marry, and Lothar. Nathanael, more than ever, became soft and childishly cordial, only now the heavenly pure, beautiful soul of Clara was revealed to him. No one gave even the slightest hint that could remind him of the past. Only when Sigmund was leaving did Nathanael say to him:

- By God, brother, I was on a bad path, but the angel led me on a bright path in time! Oh, that was Clara!

Sigmund did not let him continue, fearing that memories that deeply hurt the soul would not flash in him with blinding force. The time came when the four lucky ones were to move to their estate. Around noon they walked through the city. Made some purchases; the high tower of the town hall cast a gigantic shadow over the market.

"Well," said Clara, "wouldn't we go upstairs to have another look at the surrounding mountains?"

No sooner said than done. Both Nathanael and Clara went up to the tower, the mother and the servant went home, and Lothar, not a great fan of climbing stairs, decided to wait for them below. And now the lovers stood hand in hand on the upper gallery of the tower, wandering with their eyes in the misty forests, behind which, like gigantic cities, towered blue mountains.

“Look at that strange little gray bush, it looks like it's heading straight for us,” Clara said.

Nathanael mechanically put his hand into his pocket; he found Coppola's spyglass, looked away... In front of him was Clara! And then the blood throbbed and boiled in his veins - all dead, he fixed his motionless gaze on Clara, but immediately a fiery stream, boiling and scattering fiery splashes, flooded his revolving eyes; he roared terribly, like a hunted animal, then jumped high and, interrupting himself with disgusting laughter, shouted piercingly: “Dolly, dolly, whirl! Dolly, spin, spin! - grabbed Clara with violent force and wanted to throw her down, but Clara, in despair and in mortal fear, tightly clung to the railing. Lothar heard the fury of the madman, heard the heart-rending cry of Clara; a terrible foreboding seized him, he rushed headlong upstairs; the door to the second gallery was locked; Clara's desperate cries grew louder and louder. Lost in fear and rage, Lothar pushed the door with all his might, so that it swung open. Clara's cries became more and more muffled: “Help! save, save…” her voice trailed off. "She died - she was killed by a frenzied madman!" shouted Lothar. The door to the upper gallery was also locked. Despair gave him incredible strength. He knocked the door off its hinges. God righteous! Clara struggled in the arms of the madman who threw her over the railing. With only one hand she clung to the iron column of the gallery. With the speed of lightning, Lothar grabbed his sister, pulled him to him, and at the same instant struck the raging Nathanael in the face with his fist, so that he recoiled, releasing his victim from his hands.

Lothar ran downstairs, carrying the unconscious Clara in his arms. She was saved. And so Nathanael began to rush about the gallery, jumping and shouting: “Circle of fire, spin, spin! Circle of fire, spin, spin! The people began to run to his wild cries; in the crowd loomed the lanky figure of the lawyer Coppelius, who had just returned to the city and immediately came to the market. They were going to climb the tower to bind the madman, but Coppelius said with a laugh: “Ha ha, wait a little, he will go down by himself,” and began to look along with everyone. Suddenly Nathanael became motionless, as if numb, leaned down, saw Coppelius and with a piercing cry:

“Ah… Eyes! Good eyes! .. ”- jumped over the railing.

When Nathanael fell on the pavement with a crushed head, Coppelius disappeared into the crowd.

Many years later, Clara is said to have been seen sitting in front of a beautiful country house, arm in arm with her friendly husband, while two frisky little boys were playing beside them. From this we can conclude that Clara finally found family happiness, which corresponded to her cheerful, cheerful disposition and which the troubled Nathanael would never bring her.

As a child, Nathaniel's mother put him to bed with the words: "The Sandman is coming, I see." Despite the fact that she simply meant that his eyes were sleepy, as if they were filled with sand, Nathaniel was frightened by this expression. One day he asked Natty, the old woman who took care of his younger sister, to describe the Sandman. She said that if the children do not want to sleep, he comes and takes out their eyes and feeds them to his children.

Every evening Nathaniel heard the footsteps of Coppelius, a sadistic man who often visited his father, they were doing chemical experiments. During such an experiment, an explosion occurs and Nathaniel's father dies and Coppelius disappears. After which, Nathaniel thinks that Coppelius is the Sandman.

Shortly thereafter, a distant relative dies, leaving two orphans named Clara and Lothar. Nathaniel's mother takes them in. When Nathaniel and Clara grow up, they get engaged.

At the university, Nathaniel meets Coppola. He thinks that Coppola is actually the same evil person from his childhood. Clara and Lothar try to convince him that these are his childhood delusions. However, he will attack Clara when she says that his story is insane.

Nathaniel returns to the university and meets the daughter of one of his professors, a beautiful but strange girl named Olympia. He is so carried away by her that he seems to forget about Coppelius, Coppola, and even Clara. However, one day he hears a noise and sees the professor and Coppola arguing over who came up with which part of Olympia; Nathaniel realizes that Olympia has only been a doll all this time.

He returns home, and seems to come to his senses, but it all ends with Nathaniel jumping from the parapet and breaking to death, in front of Coppelius, and Clara marries another and continues to live happily.

Picture or drawing Sandman

Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary

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• Summary of Shukshin Alone

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• Summary of Bianchi Forest houses

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"Sandman"

In The Sandman, the problem of social twins is much more acute. The clockwork doll Olympia is just the accumulation of all possible stamps that society needs to recognize a person, and nothing more. Society, it turns out, does not need a human soul, does not need individuality, a mechanical doll is quite enough. And here this problem also intersects with the problem of egoism - no one needs human opinions and thoughts - they need to be listened to, to be recognized and agreed, and this is enough.

Let us turn to the work of Berkovsky: “Hoffmann liked to laugh at what conveniences the man-automaton brings to the life of his environment. All concern about the neighbor immediately disappears, there is no concern about what he needs, what he thinks, what he feels ... ".

The main character is Nathaniel. His childhood friend Clara.

A certain triangle - around Nathaniel are two female images. Clara is more like a friend, she has spiritual beauty, she loves him very devotedly, but she seems to him, to some extent, earthly, too simple. Which is better - benefit without beauty or beauty without benefit? Olympia is a typically Hoffmann motif of a doll, and a doll is an external likeness of a living thing, devoid of life. Love for a doll leads to madness, suicide.

In the short story The Sandman, student Nathaniel could not help but fall in love with a doll named Olympia, which Professor Spallanzani slipped on him - she only listens, but she herself does not say anything, does not judge, does not criticize; Nathaniel has great confidence that she approves of his works, which he reads in front of her, that she admires them.

Olympia is a wooden doll, pushed into the society of living people, living among them as a human being, an impostor, a fake. Those who have taken vtirusha, seduced by it, bear retribution - they themselves become infected with its wooden qualities, become stupid, fooled, as happened with Nathaniel. However, Nathaniel ended in madness...” In Olympia, Nathanael, like Narcissus, admires only himself, in her he loves his reflection, at the expense of her he satisfies his ambitions. And he doesn't care if the doll has a heart.

Doppelgänger - Both Clara and Olympia are doubles of Nathaniel. Clara is a living, bright, Olympia is a dark, irrational beginning, a gravitation towards absolute perfection.

Nathanael, like Anselm, is also a romantic, one of those who can see another reality. But his selfishness and fear allow him to see only the way down. His romanticism is turned inward, not outward. This closeness does not allow him to see reality.

Do not give dark forces a place in your soul - this is the problem that worries Hoffmann, and he increasingly suspects that it is the romantically exalted consciousness that is especially susceptible to this weakness.

Clara, a simple and reasonable girl, tries to heal Nathanael in her own way: as soon as he starts reading his poems to her with their "gloomy, boring mysticism", she knocks down his exaltation with a sly reminder that coffee can run out of her. But that is precisely why she is not a decree to him.

But the clockwork doll Olympia, who knows how to sigh languidly and periodically emits “Ah!” when listening to his poems, turns out to be preferable to Nathanael, seems to him a “soul mate”, and he falls in love with her, not seeing, not understanding that this is just an ingenious mechanism, machine.

Hoffmann's trick in The Sandman is interesting - Nathanael calls Clara "... a soulless, damned automaton", and in Olympia he recognizes the highest harmonious soul. The cruelest irony is seen in this substitution - Nathanael's egoism knows no bounds, he loves only himself and is ready to accept only his own reflections into his world.

Olympia is the embodiment of a mockery of society. And this mockery was designed precisely to awaken the conscience of the people of the “pious society”. Even from the text it is clear that Hoffmann had a clear hope for at least some kind of positive reaction, albeit a weak one.

One of the main symbols that walks through the whole story is the “eyes”. The gloomy Coppelius tries to deprive little Nathanael of his eyes while still a child, the Sandman fills the eyes of naughty children with sand, the barometer salesman Coppola (a double of Coppelius, an expression of the same dark power) tries to sell Nathanael's eyes and sells a spyglass, Olympia's empty eyes, then bloody eyes dolls that Spalanzani throws at Nathanael's chest, etc. etc. There are many meanings behind this motif, but the main one is this: the eyes are a symbol of spiritual vision, true vision. One who has "real eyes" and a living eye is able to see the world and perceive its true beauty. But the one who is deprived of eyes or replaced them with artificial ones is doomed to see the world distorted, corrupted. And since the eyes are the windows of the soul, corresponding changes take place in the soul.

Yielding to dark forces, Nathanael agrees to change his "eyes" - he buys a telescope from Coppola. “The mechanical is terrifying when we are directly shown the living, displaced by the mechanical, when all the pretensions of the mechanical, all its anger and deceit, are present. The old optician-charlatan Coppola-Coppelius takes out lorgnettes and glasses from his pocket and lays them out in front of him. He takes out more and more glasses, the whole table is occupied by them, real living eyes sparkle and burn from under the glasses, thousands of eyes; their convulsive, inflamed, blood-red rays pierce Nathaniel. In this episode, the semantic center of the short story about the sandman is the substitution of mechanical art for the living and original, the usurpation produced by mechanical art. And he did this because of his egoism, he did not want to see beyond his own nose before, as we notice this already in his letters . He wants to recognize only his own vision and no one else, so he is initially ready to change the true vision and step onto the dark path. When he makes his choice, a chilling death sigh was heard in his room - this sigh meant the spiritual death of Nathanael. He retains the ability to see the hidden world, but only its dark part, the abode of horror, deceit and lies.

However, a merciful fate gives Nathanael a chance - after the terrible events, Clara saves him, he himself calls her an angel, which led him to a bright path. But he can't resist... When he and Clara go up to the town hall to survey the beauties of nature, he looks through the cursed spyglass - then the madness finally absorbs him. He can no longer look at the world openly, once having descended into the abyss of horror, he is no longer able to return from there.

The whole short story is the path of the soul to degradation, encrypted with symbols. The key to the dark path is selfishness, accompanied by unbelief and doubt. And the well-deserved reward is madness and suicide, as one of the main sins.

"Little Tsakhes"

The fairy tale "Little Tsakhes, nicknamed Zinnober" (1818) opens before us the endless horizons of Hoffmann's artistic anthropology. In the tale, Hoffmann's dual world in the perception of reality is clearly traced, which is again reflected in the two-dimensional composition of the novel, in the characters' characters and their arrangement.

A person is fraught with such opportunities that he sometimes does not even suspect, and some kind of strength and, perhaps, circumstances are needed to awaken in him the awareness of his abilities. Creating a fairy-tale world, Hoffmann seems to place a person in a special environment in which not only contrasting faces of Good and Evil are exposed in him, but subtle transitions from one to another. And in the fairy tale, Hoffmann, on the one hand, in masks and through the masks of Good and Evil, revives the polar principles in a person, but on the other hand, the development of the narrative removes this polarization clearly indicated at the beginning of the fairy tale. The author ends his story about the misadventures of Tsakhes with a "joyful end": Balthasar and Candida lived in a "happy marriage".

The plot of the story begins with a contrast: the beautiful fairy Rosabelvelde leans over a basket with a little freak - little Tsakhes. The mother of this “tiny werewolf” is sleeping next to the basket: she is tired of carrying a heavy basket and complaining about her unfortunate fate. The plot of the story is not only contrasting, but also ironic: how many all sorts of troubles will happen because then the beautiful fairy took pity on the ugly child - and gave little Tsakhes a magical gift of golden hairs.

Soon, her charms will begin to affect the inhabitants of the "enlightened" principality. And this is how: if some handsome man is near the ugly baby, then everyone will suddenly begin to admire the beauty of Little Tsakhes, if someone reads his poems next to him, then Zinnober will applaud. The violinist will play a concert - everyone will think: this is Tsakhes. The student will pass the exam with brilliance - all the glory will go to Tsakhes. Other people's merits will pass to him. And, on the contrary, his ridiculous antics and inarticulate muttering will pass to others. The golden hairs of the "tiny werewolf" will appropriate, alienate the best properties and achievements of others.

It is not surprising that soon Zinnober makes a brilliant career at the court of Prince Barzanuf, the heir of Paphnutius. Whatever Tsakhes mumbles, the prince and retinue admire: a new rank for Tsakhes, an order for Tsakhes. So he grows up to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the all-powerful temporary worker. The higher the little freak climbs the social ladder, the clearer the fairy's grotesque play. If such absurdities occur in a rationally arranged society, an enlightened state, then what is the value of reason, enlightenment, society, the state? Tsakhes is assigned more and more ranks - so aren't these ranks nonsense? Tsakhes is given orders - so why are they better than children's toys? Having done an insidious trick with Zinnober, the oppressed and banished fantasy in the face of a fairy cheerfully takes revenge on those who oppress her common sense and sober mind. She beats them with a paradox, convicts them of failure, makes a diagnosis: common sense is meaningless, reason is reckless.

And why are Zinnober's hairs necessarily golden? This detail reveals a grotesque metonymy.

Tiny Tsakhes' enchantment begins when he is in front of the mint: golden hairs metonymically imply the power of money. Having endowed the freak with golden hairs, the crafty fairy aims at the sore spot of the "reasonable" civilization - its obsession with gold, the mania of hoarding and wastefulness. The insane magic of gold is already such that natural properties, talents, souls are put into circulation, appropriated and alienated.

However, someone needs to break the spell and overthrow the evil dwarf. The magician Prosper Alpanus honors the dreamy student Balthazar with this honor. Why him? Because he understands the music of nature, the music of life.

“The two-dimensional nature of the novel is revealed in the opposition of the world of poetic dreams, the fabulous country of Dzhinnistan, the world of real everyday life, the principality of Prince Barsanuf, in which the action of the novel takes place. Some characters and things lead a dual existence here, as they combine their fairy-tale magical existence with existence in the real world. Fairy Rosabelverde, she is also the Canoness of the Rosenshen Orphanage for Noble Maidens, patronizes the disgusting little Tsakhes, rewarding him with three magical golden hairs.

In the same dual capacity as the fairy Rosabelverde, she is also Canoness Rosenshen, the good wizard Alpanus also acts, surrounding himself with various fabulous miracles that the poet and dreamer student Baltazar well sees. In his ordinary incarnation, only accessible to philistines and sober-minded rationalists, Alpanus is just a doctor, prone, however, to very intricate quirks.

Thus, Hoffmann's tale told us to a lesser extent about the "acts" of inherently polar heroes, but to a greater extent about the diversity and many-sidedness of man. Hoffmann, as an analyst, showed the reader in an exaggerated form the state of a person, their personified separate existence. However, the whole fairy tale is an artistic study of a person in general and his consciousness.

"Worldly views of Kota Murr"

The novel "Worldly Views of Murr the Cat" brought together all the creative experience of Hoffmann, here all the themes of his previous works are present.

If the short story “Little Tsakhes” is already marked by a clear shift in emphasis from the fantasy world to the real world, then this trend was even more pronounced in the novel “The Worldly Views of Cat Murr, coupled with fragments of the biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler, accidentally surviving in waste paper” (1819- 1821).

The dualism of Hoffmann's worldview remains and even deepens in the novel. But it is expressed not through the opposition of the fairy-tale world and the real world, but through the disclosure of the real conflicts of the latter, through the general theme of the writer's work - the conflict between the artist and reality. The world of magical fantasy completely disappears from the pages of the novel, with the exception of some minor details associated with the image of Meister Abraham, and all the author's attention is focused on the real world, on the conflicts taking place in contemporary Germany, and their artistic comprehension is freed from the fabulous-fantastic shell. This does not mean, however, that Hoffmann becomes a realist, standing on the position of the determinism of characters and the development of the plot. The principle of romantic convention, the introduction of conflict from the outside, still determines these main components. In addition, it is enhanced by a number of other details: this is the story of Meister Abraham and the "invisible girl" Chiara with a touch of romantic mystery, and the line of Prince Hector - monk Cyprian - Angela - Abbot Chrysostom with extraordinary adventures, sinister murders, fatal recognitions, as it were moved here from the novel The Devil's Elixir.

The composition of the novel is based on the principle of two-dimensionality, the opposition of two antithetical principles, which in their development are skillfully combined by the writer into a single narrative line. A purely formal technique becomes the main ideological and artistic principle of the embodiment of the author's idea, philosophical understanding of moral, ethical and social categories. The autobiographical narrative of a certain scientist cat Murr is interspersed with excerpts from the life of the composer Johannes Kreisler. Already in the combination of these two ideological and plot plans, not only by their mechanical combination in one book, but also by the plot detail that the owner of the cat Murra, Meister Abraham is one of the main characters in Kreisler's biography, a deep ironic parodic meaning is laid. The dramatic fate of a genuine artist, musician, tormented in an atmosphere of petty intrigues, surrounded by high-born nonentities of the chimerical Principality of Sighartsweiler, is opposed by the life of the “enlightened” philistine Murr. Moreover, such an opposition is given in a simultaneous comparison, because Murr is not only the antipode of Kreisler.

One must have a very clear idea of ​​the peculiarities of the structure of this novel, emphasized by its very composition. This structure is unusual for Hoffmann. Outwardly, it may seem that the biography of Murr and the biography of Kreisler is a repetition of Hoffmann's division of the world into two parts: artists and philistines. But things are more complicated. The two-plane structure is already present in Kreisler's biography itself (Kreisler and the court of Irenaeus). What is new here is the Murr line (the second structure is built on top of the first). Here the cat is trying to appear to the reader as an enthusiast, a dreamer. This idea is very important to understand, because usually students at the exam, hastily leafing through the novel, stubbornly repeat that Murr is a philistine, period. In fact, Murr's biography is a parodic mirror of the former Hoffmannian romantic structure. And both parts exist only in interaction. Without Murr, this would have been another typical Hoffmannian story, without Kreisler it would have been a wonderful example of satirical, self-revealing irony, which is very common in world literature (something like Saltykov-Shchedrin's The Wise Gudgeon). But here Hoffmann collides parody with a lofty romantic style, which gives his irony a completely murderous character. Murr is, as it were, the quintessence of philistinism. He imagines himself to be an outstanding personality, scientist, poet, philosopher, and therefore he keeps the chronicle of his life "for the edification of budding feline youth." But in reality, Murr is an example of that “harmonic vulgarity” that was so hated by the romantics.

The whole cat-and-dog world in the novel is a satirical parody of the estate society of the German states: on the “enlightened” philistine burghers, on student unions - burschenschafts, on the police (yard dog Achilles), on the bureaucratic nobility (spitz), on the highest aristocracy (poodle Scaramouche , Salon of the Italian Greyhound Badina).

But Hoffmann's satire becomes even more acute when he chooses the nobility as the object of it, encroaching on its upper strata and on those state-political institutions that are associated with this class. Leaving the ducal residence, where he was the court bandmaster, Kreisler ends up with Prince Iriney, his imaginary court. The fact is that once the prince “really ruled over a picturesque owner near Sighartsweiler. From the belvedere of his palace, with the help of a spyglass, he could survey his entire state from edge to edge ... At any moment it was easy for him to check whether Peter’s wheat was harvested in the most remote corner of the country, and with the same success to see how carefully they processed their vineyards of Hans and Kunz. The Napoleonic Wars deprived Prince Irenaeus of his possessions: he "dropped his toy state out of his pocket during a short promenade to a neighboring country." But Prince Irenaeus decided to preserve his small court, “turning life into a sweet dream in which he and his retinue stayed,” and the good-natured burghers pretended that the false brilliance of this ghostly courtyard brought them glory and honor.

Prince Irenaeus, in his spiritual poverty, is not an exclusive representative for Hoffmann; of his class. The entire princely house, starting with the illustrious father Irenaeus, are stupid, flawed people. And what is especially important in the eyes of Hoffmann, the high-ranking nobility, no less than the enlightened philistines from the burgher class, is hopelessly far from art: “It may well be that the love of the greats of this world for the arts and sciences is only an integral part of court life. The position obliges to have pictures and listen to music.

In the arrangement of characters, the scheme of opposing the world of poetry and the world of everyday prose, characteristic of Hoffmann's two-dimensionality, is preserved. The main character of the novel is Johannes Kreisler. In the writer's work, he is the most complete embodiment of the image of the artist, the "wandering enthusiast." It is no coincidence that Hoffmann gives Kreisler many autobiographical features in the novel. Kreisler, Meister Abraham and the daughter of Benzon's adviser Yulia make up a group of "true musicians" in the work who oppose the court of Prince Iriney.

Although the novel is not completed, the reader becomes clear about the hopelessness and tragedy of the fate of the Kapellmeister, in whose image Hoffmann reflected the irreconcilable conflict of a true artist with the existing social order.

The childhood fear of a young man - the fear of the Sandman - comes to life, invades the adult life of a young man and destroys him.

Nathaniel writes to a friend, his fiancee's brother, Lothar. In the letter, the young man talks about his childhood fear of the Sandman coming for children who don't want to go to bed.

As a child, Nathaniel and his sisters gathered in the evenings in the living room, and their father told them interesting stories. At nine in the evening, mother said that the Sandman would come soon, she hurriedly took the children to bed, and soon slow, heavy steps were heard on the stairs. Nathaniel was sure that the terrible Sandman was visiting his father, although his mother denied it.

Nathaniel's old nanny said that the Sandman takes children's eyes and feeds them to his owl-billed children who live in a nest on the moon. After this story, Nathaniel began to suffer from nightmares.

This went on for many years, but I still could not get used to this ominous ghost, and the image of a terrible sandman did not fade in my imagination.

One day, Nathaniel decided to see the Sandman and after nine in the evening he hid in his father's room. The sandman turned out to be lawyer Coppelius, who often dined with them. He was an extremely nasty person, the children, and their mother feared and hated him, and their father treated Coppelius with great respect.

Nathaniel was numb with fear, and the lawyer and his father opened the closet doors, behind which was a deep alcove with a small brazier, lit a fire and began to forge something. In a hollow voice, Coppelius ordered to give him the eyes, and Nathaniel, seized with horror, fell out of his hiding place.

The lawyer grabbed the boy, intending to use his eyes in his experiments, but the father begged him to spare his son. Then Coppelius began to twist and bend the arms and legs of the child, wanting to study their mechanism. Nathaniel lost consciousness and lay in a fever for many weeks.

Coppellius disappeared from the city, but a year later reappeared at Nathaniel's house and set about alchemical experiments. In the dead of night, an explosion thundered, his father died, and the police began to search for Coppelius, and he disappeared.

Shortly before writing the letter, already a student, Nathaniel saw the Sandman again - he appeared to him under the guise of a barometer seller, Piedmontese mechanic Giuseppe Coppola, but was very similar to Coppelius. The young man decided to meet with him and avenge the death of his father.

Clara accidentally reads a letter addressed to her brother Lothar and tries to prove to her fiancé Nathanael that all this is just a fantasy that he takes for reality.

If there is a dark force that so hostilely and insidiously imposes threads on our soul, with which it then completely entangles us, <...> then it must be contained in ourselves.

In a reply letter, Nathaniel chuckles at his fiancée's sanity and asks his friend not to let her read his letters again. Now Nathaniel is sure: Giuseppe Coppola is not the lawyer Coppelius at all. In this he was convinced by the professor of physics Spalanzani, whose lectures the young man began to attend. The scientist has known Coppola for many years and is sure that he is a native Piedmontese. Nathaniel also mentions the mysterious daughter of the professor, Olympia, an incredibly beautiful girl that Spalanzani hides from prying eyes.

These letters fall into the hands of the narrator. Based on them, he describes the further fate of Nathaniel. The narrator reports that after the death of his father, Nathaniel's mother took the orphaned children of a distant relative, Lothar and Clara, into the house. Soon Lothar became the young man's best friend, and Clara was his lover and bride. After the betrothal, Nathaniel went to study in another city, from where he wrote his letters.

After the last letter, Nathaniel interrupted his studies in the sciences and came to the bride. Clara found that her lover had changed a lot - he became gloomy, thoughtful, full of mystical forebodings.

Any person who considers himself free actually serves the terrible game of dark forces, and it is useless to fight it, it is better to humbly submit to the will of fate.

Nathaniel began to write strange poems that irritated and annoyed the sensible and intelligent Clara. The young man began to consider the bride cold and insensitive, unable to understand his poetic nature.

Once Nathaniel wrote a particularly macabre poem. It frightened Clara, and the girl asked to burn it. The offended young man brought the bride to tears, for which Lothar challenged him to a duel. Clara found out about this and hurried to the place of the duel, where a complete reconciliation took place.

Nathaniel returned to school almost the same. When he arrived, he was surprised to find that the house where he rented an apartment had burned down. Friends managed to save his belongings and rented a room for him opposite Professor Spalanzani's apartment. Nathaniel could see Olympia's room - the girl sat motionless for hours, stroking before her.

One evening, Coppola again appeared to Nathaniel and, laughing nastily, sold him a telescope with surprisingly good lenses. The young man took a better look at Olivia and marveled at her perfection. For days he looked at Olivia, until Spalanzani ordered the windows in his daughter's room to be curtained.

Soon Spalanzani arranged a big ball at which Nathaniel met Olivia and fell in love with the girl unconscious, forgetting about his bride. He did not notice that Olivia hardly spoke, her hands were cold, and her movements were like those of a mechanical doll, although the girl made a repulsive impression on the rest of the students. In vain Sigmund, Nathaniel's best friend, tried to reason with him - the young man did not want to listen to anything.

After the ball, the professor allowed Nathaniel to visit Olivia.

Never before had he had such an appreciative listener. She ‹…› sat motionless, fixing her motionless gaze into the eyes of her lover, and this gaze became more and more fiery and alive.

The young man was going to propose to Olivia when he heard a noise in Spalanzani's office and found the professor and the terrible Coppelius there. They quarreled and pulled out a motionless female figure from each other. It was the eyeless Olivia.

It turned out that Olympia is not really a person, but an automaton invented by a professor and a lawyer. Coppelius snatched the doll from the professor and fled, while Spalanzani claimed that Olivia's eyes had been stolen from Nathaniel. Madness seized the young man, and he ended up in a lunatic asylum.

Because of the scandal that began, Spalanzini left the university. Nathaniel recovered and returned to Clara. Soon Nathaniel's family received a good inheritance, and the lovers decided to get married.

Walking around the city one day, Nathaniel and Clara decided to climb the high tower of the town hall. Looking over the surroundings from above, Clara pointed out to the groom something small, he took out Coppola's telescope, looked into it, and he was again seized by madness.

Suddenly, fiery streams poured from his wandering eyes, he howled like a hunted animal, jumped high and, laughing terribly, screamed in a piercing voice.

Nathaniel tried to throw Clara down, but she managed to grab onto the railing. Lothar, who was waiting near the town hall, heard the screams, rushed to help and managed to save his sister. Meanwhile, a crowd had gathered in the square, in which the mad Nathaniel noticed Coppelius, who had just returned to the city. With a wild cry, the young man jumped down and smashed his head on the pavement, and the lawyer disappeared again.

Clara moved to a remote area, got married, gave birth to two sons and found family happiness, "which Nathanael with his eternal spiritual discord could never give her."