The Sci-Fi Sandman
If you’re reading this, I warn you, it’s probably going to be a long one. I’ve worked on it for a while. After reading Hoffman’s The Sandman, apart from the song constantly getting stuck in my head I also couldn’t stop thinking about … Continue reading →
Was Nathanael really just imagining things?
Reading the sandman, I pondered a lot about whether the account given by Nathanael about the sandman was real. I wondered a lot about whether those scenes of ‘memory’ were pieced together by his subconscious out of fear. As human, I think most of us would agree that we sometimes create our own versions of […]
The Sandman – Hoffmann
Through the reading of The Sandman by Hoffmann, I found the link between the symbol of eyes and Nathanael’s mentality being affected by the character created from his mind, Coppelius. I believe the eyes can be seen as a symbol for one’s clarity of vision and mind, as Nathanael often loses sight/vision as he gets closer towards […]
Nathaniel the metal menace – an automaton in human clothing?
In Hoffmann’s 1816 “The Sandman”, the main protagonist Nathaniel falls in love with Olimpia – an automaton created by university professor Spallanzani and Coppelius-double Coppola. How did Nathaniel not find out earlier? Had robot technology advanced so far in 1816 that an automaton became indistinguishable from humans? Was Nathaniel just blinded by his humongous […]
Freud/Hoffmann Presentation
My presentation question: “So in ‘The Sandman’, Hoffmann REALLY likes to use heat and fire as a motif. He often links it to the overarching theme of perception/vision/eyes…Why is that? How is that? How does it link? WHAT?” As you guys know what happened at our last Freud/Hoffmann seminar, my group and I had a […]
Just a Taste of Everything that is Confusing about The Sandman
I think everyone here can agree that there’s really no possible way to entirely wrap our heads around this story…
Eyeglass theory…
OKAY SO THIS WAS IN MY ESSAY, AND I JUST CUT IT RIGHT OUT. It was turning into too much of an unsupported conspiracy, which probably came out of bits and pieces from seminar, but I spent time on it so I’m putting it here Perhaps not quite within “inner vision”, but when Nathanael looks […]
Freud & Hoffmann
In this lecture from Fall 2015, Christina Hendricks talks about Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams and “Leonardo da Vinci,” and Jason Lieblang talks about Freud’s “The Uncanny” and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman.”
E.T.A. Hoffmann, “The Sandman”
In Arts One last week, we read a number of texts by Freud, including “The Uncanny,” in which he discusses a short story by E.T.A. Hoffmann called “The Sandman.” Here’s a version of this short story, though it’s not the translation we read: http://germanstories.vcu.edu/hoffmann/sand_e.html We used the version of the story in this book: Five […]