Episode 86: On E. T. A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman," and Freud's Sequel to It

The German polymath E. T. A. Hoffmann is one of the founding figures of what we now call weird literature. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss one of his most memorable tales, "Der Sandmann." Originally published in 1816, it is the story of a young German student whose fate is sealed by a terrifying encounter with the eponymous figure during his youth. The story packs several tropes that would later become staples of the weird: the protean monster, the double, the automaton... Your hosts discuss how Hoffmann uses these tropes without letting any of them coalesce into a stable thing in the reader's mind, thereby effecting a slowbuild of ambiguity upon ambiguity that culminates in a true paroxysm of dread. The argument is made that Freud does essentially the same thing in his famous essay "The Uncanny," wherein Hoffmann's story plays an important role.

REFERENCES

E. T. A. Hoffmann, The Sandman

Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto

Edgar Allan Poe, American writer

Sunn o))), American metal band

La Monte Young,, American composer

Stuart Davis, Aliens and Artists

Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny

Neil Gaiman, Mr. Punch

Jaques Offenbach, Tales of Hoffmann

Frank Zappa, American musician

Ernst Jentsch,, German psychiatrist

E. T. A. Hoffmann, The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

Weird Studies, episodes 73 and 74 on Carl Jung