Freud - Complete Works (611 page)

   For compounds see above, Ic. Note
especially the negative ‘
un
-’: eerie, weird,
arousing gruesome fear: ‘Seeming quite
unheimlich
and
ghostly to him.’ ‘The
unheimlich
, fearful hours
of night.’ ‘I had already long since felt an
unheimlich
, even gruesome feeling.’ ‘Now I am
beginning to have an
unheimlich
feeling.’ . . . ‘Feels an
unheimlich
horror.’ ‘
Unheimlich
and
motionless like a stone image.’ ‘The
unheimlich
mist called hill-fog.’ ‘These pale youths are
unheimlich
and are brewing heaven knows what
mischief.’ ‘"
Unheimlich
"
is the
name for everything that ought to have
remained . . . secret and hidden but has come to
light
’ (Schelling). - ‘To veil the divine, to
surround it with a certain
Unheimlichkeit
.’ -
Unheimlich
is not often used as opposite to meaning II
(above).

The 'Uncanny'

3679

   What interests us most in this
long extract is to find that among its different shades of meaning
the word ‘
heimlich
’ exhibits one which is
identical with its opposite, ‘
unheimlich
’. What
is
heimlich
thus comes to be
unheimlich
. (Cf. the
quotation from Gutzkow: ‘We call it
"
unheimlich
"; you call it
"
heimlich
".’) In general we are reminded
that the word ‘
heimlich
’ is not unambiguous, but
belongs to two sets of ideas, which, without being contradictory,
are yet very different: on the one hand it means what is familiar
and agreeable, and on the other, what is concealed and kept out of
sight. ‘
Unheimlich
’ is customarily used, we are
told, as the contrary only of the first signification of
heimlich
’, and not of the second. Sanders tells us
nothing concerning a possible genetic connection between these two
meanings of
heimlich
. On the other hand, we notice that
Schelling says something which throws quite a new light on the
concept of the
Unheimlich
, for which we were certainly not
prepared. According to him, everything is
unheimlich
that
ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light.

   Some of the doubts that have thus
arisen are removed if we consult Grimm’s dictionary. (1877,
4
, Part 2, 873 ff.)

   We read:

  
Heimlich
; adj. and adv.
vernaculus
,
occultus
; MHG. heimelîch,
heimlîch.

   (P. 874.) In a slightly different
sense: ‘I feel
heimlich
, well, free from
fear.’ . . .

    (
b
)
Heimlich
is also used of a place free from ghostly
influences . . . familiar, friendly, intimate.

   (P. 875:
β
)
Familiar, amicable, unreserved.

   4.
From the idea of
‘homelike’, ‘belonging to the house’, the
further idea is developed of something withdrawn from the eyes of
strangers, something concealed, secret; and this idea is expanded
in many ways . . .

   (P. 876.) ‘On the left bank
of the lake there lies a meadow
heimlich
in the wood.’
(Schiller,
Wilhelm Tell
, I. 4.) . . . Poetic
licence, rarely so used in modern speech . . .
Heimlich
is used in conjunction with a verb expressing the
act of concealing: ‘In the secret of his tabernacle he shall
hide me
heimlich
.’ (Ps. xxvii.
5.) . . .
Heimlich
parts of the human body,
pudenda 
. . . ‘the men that died not
were smitten on their
heimlich
parts.’ (1 Samuel v.
12.) . . .

   (
c
) Officials who give
important advice which has to be kept secret in matters of state
are called
heimlich
councillors; the adjective, according to
modern usage, has been replaced by
geheim
[secret] . . . ‘Pharaoh called Joseph’s
name "him to whom secrets are revealed"‘
(
heimlich
councillor). (Gen. xli. 45.)

   (P. 878.) 6.
Heimlich
, as
used of knowledge - mystic, allegorical: a
heimlich
meaning,
mysticus
,
divinus
,
occultus
,
figuratus
.

   (P. 878.)
Heimlich
in a
different sense, as withdrawn from knowledge,
unconscious . . .
Heimlich
also has the
meaning of that which is obscure, inaccessible to
knowledge . . . ‘Do you not see? They do not
trust us; they fear the
heimlich
face of the Duke of
Friedland.’ (Schiller,
Wallensteins Lager
, Scene
2.)

   9.
The notion of something
hidden and dangerous, which is expressed in the last paragraph, is
still further developed, so that ‘heimlich’ comes to
have the meaning usually ascribed to ‘unheimlich’
.
Thus: ‘At times I feel like a man who walks in the night and
believes in ghosts; every corner is
heimlich
and full of
terrors for him’. (Klinger,
Theater
, 3. 298.)

   Thus
heimlich
is a word
the meaning of which develops in the direction of ambivalence,
until it finally coincides with its opposite,
unheimlich
.
Unheimlich
is in some way or other a sub-species of
heimlich
. Let us bear this discovery in mind, though we
cannot yet rightly understand it, alongside of Schelling’s
definition of the
Unheimlich
. If we go on to examine
individual instances of uncanniness, these hints will become
intelligible to us.

The 'Uncanny'

3680

II

   When we proceed to review the
things, persons, impressions, events and situations which are able
to arouse in us a feeling of the uncanny in a particularly forcible
and definite form, the first requirement is obviously to select a
suitable example to start on. Jentsch has taken as a very good
instance ‘doubts whether an apparently animate being is
really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be
in fact animate’; and he refers in this connection to the
impression made by wax-work figures, ingeniously constructed dolls
and automata. To these he adds the uncanny effect of epileptic
fits, and of manifestations of insanity, because these excite in
the spectator the impression of automatic, mechanical processes at
work behind the ordinary appearance of mental activity. Without
entirely accepting this author’s view, we will take it as a
starting-point for our own investigation because in what follows he
reminds us of a writer who has succeeded in producing uncanny
effects better than anyone else.

   Jentsch writes: ‘In telling
a story, one of the most successful devices for easily creating
uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a
particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton,
and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused
directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may not be led to go into
the matter and clear it up immediately. That, as we have said,
would quickly dissipate the peculiar emotional effect of the thing.
E. T. A. Hoffmann has repeatedly employed this psychological
artifice with success in his fantastic narratives.’

   This observation, undoubtedly a
correct one, refers primarily to the story of ‘The
Sand-Man’ in Hoffmann’s
Nachtstücken
,¹
which contains the original of Olympia, the doll that appears in
the first act of Offenbach’s opera,
Tales of Hoffman
.
But I cannot think - and I hope most readers of the story will
agree with me - that the theme of the doll Olympia, who is to all
appearances a living being, is by any means the only, or indeed the
most important, element that must be held responsible for the quite
unparalleled atmosphere of uncanniness evoked by the story. Nor is
this atmosphere heightened by the fact that the author himself
treats the episode of Olympia with a faint touch of satire and uses
it to poke fun at the young man’s idealization of his
mistress. The main theme of the story is, on the contrary,
something different, something which gives it its name, and which
is always re-introduced at critical moments: it is the theme of the
‘Sand-Man’ who tears out children’s eyes.

   This fantastic tale opens with
the childhood recollections of the student Nathaniel. In spite of
his present happiness, he cannot banish the memories associated
with the mysterious and terrifying death of his beloved father. On
certain evenings his mother used to send the children to bed early,
warning them that ‘the Sand-Man was coming’; and, sure
enough, Nathaniel would not fail to hear the heavy tread of a
visitor, with whom his father would then be occupied for the
evening. When questioned about the Sand-Man, his mother, it is
true, denied that such a person existed except as a figure of
speech; but his nurse could give him more definite information:
‘He’s a wicked man who comes when children won’t
go to bed, and throws handfuls of sand in their eyes so that they
jump out of their heads all bleeding. Then he puts the eyes in a
sack and carries them off to the half-moon to feed his children.
They sit up there in their nest, and their beaks are hooked like
owls’ beaks, and they use them to peck up naughty boys’
and girls’ eyes with.’

  
¹
Hoffmann’s
Sämtliche
Werke
, Grisebach Edition,
3
.

The 'Uncanny'

3681

   Although little Nathaniel was
sensible and old enough not to credit the figure of the Sand-Man
with such gruesome attributes, yet the dread of him became fixed in
his heart. He determined to find out what the Sand-Man looked like;
and one evening, when the Sand-Man was expected again, he hid in
his father’s study. He recognized the visitor as the lawyer
Coppelius, a repulsive person whom the children were frightened of
when he occasionally came to a meal; and he now identified this
Coppelius with the dreaded Sand-Man. As regards the rest of the
scene, Hoffmann already leaves us in doubt whether what we are
witnessing is the first delirium of the panic-stricken boy, or a
succession of events which are to be regarded in the story as being
real. His father and the guest are at work at a brazier with
glowing flames. The little eavesdropper hears Coppelius call out:
‘Eyes here! Eyes here!’ and betrays himself by
screaming aloud. Coppelius seizes him and is on the point of
dropping bits of red-hot coal from the fire into his eyes, and then
of throwing them into the brazier, but his father begs him off and
saves his eyes. After this the boy falls into a deep swoon; and a
long illness brings his experience to an end. Those who decide in
favour of the rationalistic interpretation of the Sand-Man will not
fail to recognize in the child’s phantasy the persisting
influence of his nurse’s story. The bits of sand that are to
be thrown into the child’s eyes turn into bits of red-hot
coal from the flames; and in both cases they are intended to make
his eyes jump out. In the course of another visit of the
Sand-Man’s, a year later, his father is killed in his study
by an explosion. The lawyer Coppelius disappears from the place
without leaving a trace behind.

The 'Uncanny'

3682

   Nathaniel, now a student,
believes that he has recognized this phantom of horror from his
childhood in an itinerant optician, an Italian called Giuseppe
Coppola, who at his university town, offers him weather-glasses for
sale. When Nathaniel refuses, the man goes on: ‘Not
weather-glasses? not weather-glasses? also got fine eyes, fine
eyes!’ The student’s terror is allayed when he finds
that the proffered eyes are only harmless spectacles, and he buys a
pocket spy-glass from Coppola. With its aid he looks across into
Professor Spalanzani’s house opposite and there spies
Spalanzani’s beautiful, but strangely silent and motionless
daughter, Olympia. He soon falls in love with her so violently
that, because of her, he quite forgets the clever and sensible girl
to whom he is betrothed. But Olympia is an automaton whose
clock-work has been made by Spalanzani, and whose eyes have been
put in by Coppola, the Sand-Man. The student surprises the two
Masters quarrelling over their handiwork. The optician carries off
the wooden eyeless doll; and the mechanician, Spalanzani, picks up
Olympia’s bleeding eyes from the ground and throws them at
Nathaniel’s breast, saying that Coppola had stolen them from
the student. Nathaniel succumbs to a fresh attack of madness, and
in his delirium his recollection of his father’s death is
mingled with this new experience. ‘Hurry up! hurry up! ring
of fire!’ he cries. ‘Spin about, ring of fire - Hurrah!
Hurry up, wooden doll! lovely wooden doll, spin about -.’ He
then falls upon the professor, Olympia’s
‘father’, and tries to strangle him.

   Rallying from a long and serious
illness, Nathaniel seems at last to have recovered. He intends to
marry his betrothed, with whom he bas become reconciled. One day he
and she are walking through the city market-place, over which the
high tower of the Town Hall throws its huge shadow. On the
girl’s suggestion, they climb the tower, leaving her brother,
who is walking with them, down below. From the top, Clara’s
attention is drawn to a curious object moving along the street.
Nathaniel looks at this thing through Coppola’s spy-glass,
which he finds in his pocket, and falls into a new attack of
madness. Shouting ‘Spin about, wooden doll!’ he tries
to throw the girl into the gulf below. Her brother, brought to her
side by her cries, rescues her and hastens down with her to safety.
On the tower above, the madman rushes round, shrieking ‘Ring
of fire, spin about!’ - and we know the origin of the words.
Among the people who begin to gather below there comes forward the
figure of the lawyer Coppelius, who has suddenly returned. We may
suppose that it was his approach, seen through the spy-glass, which
threw Nathaniel into his fit of madness. As the onlookers prepare
to go up and overpower the madman, Coppelius laughs and says:
‘Wait a bit; he’ll come down of himself.’
Nathaniel suddenly stands still, catches sight of Coppelius, and
with a wild shriek ‘Yes! "Fine eyes - fine
eyes"!’ flings himself over the parapet. While he lies
on the paving-stones with a shattered skull the Sand-Man vanishes
in the throng.