This leads now to that which, according to folk belief, constitutes the very core, the chief ground for sleep walking and moon walking in a maiden. It is easy to understand the wish, on the part of the female sex with their strongly demanded sexual repression, to come to the beloved one and taste all the delights of satisfaction but without guilt. This is possible only through wandering in unconscious sleep. For, as my first patient explained, one is not accountable for anything that happens in this state, and thus can enjoy without sin and without consciousness of what is not permitted. Convention demands that the maiden wait until the lover approaches her, but in that unconscious state she may surrender herself. The need for repression explains then the subsequent amnesia. Yet wandering by night is not concerned merely with sexual enjoyment, over and above that it fulfills a second desire that arises out of childhood, as we know from psychoanalysis. Every small maiden has, that is, the wish to have a child by her father, her first love, which is often in later years defined thus, one might have a child, but without a husband. The night wandering fulfills this desire to have a child yet without sin. Therefore has that motive of an unconscious, not to say immaculate, conception inspired not a few poets, as it has already, as is well known, been active in the creation of the drama.

Less transparent than that chief motive is the action of the light, sunlight as well as moonlight. The heroine of the story stands toward both in a special relationship. Her body is almost illuminated by its own light, her hair sparkles electrically when it is touched, "warm waves of light" emanate from her, which Soelver noticed at their first meeting, the sun seems expressly to seek her, a halo of impalpable beauty surrounds her and above all glows from the depths of her eyes. Not only so, Gro seems to dwell chiefly in the light, whose last drops she greedily absorbs within herself. When the light fades, her body becomes cold as ice like a corpse. In similar manner the shining of the full moon affects her, the light of which the stones of her gold cross have absorbed. The first time that the slumbering youth saw Gro wandering, it seemed to him as if the moonlight had been loosed from the planet and floated only in his room like a living being. The poet, to be sure, has offered no explanation of this mystical effect of light and what the reader may think for himself would be merely drawn from other sources. For this reason I will not pursue this point further.

The narrative affords somewhat further means for an understanding in another direction. It is not explained more fully just why Gro follows the sunlight and moonlight or why both exercise upon her a peculiar attraction, yet the tendency to a motor breaking through of the unconscious may be derived from an inherited disposition. The father is a rough, violent robber knight while the mother shows distinctly sadistic traits and a truly ready hand at fighting. That confirms what I explained in the first part, a heightened muscular excitability and muscle eroticism, which strives to break through again on the sexual side in sleep walking. Finally it may be affirmed without doubt that the ghostly white figure upon the stairs was no other than the maiden in her shift.

"JRN UHL," by Gustav Frenssen.

I can deal more briefly with "Jrn Uhl," the well-known rural romance of Frenssen, in which the sketch of a moon walker constitutes merely an episode. Joern Uhl, who, returned from the war, takes over the farm of his unfortunate father, discovers Lena Tarn as the head maid-servant. She pleased him at first sight. "She was large and strong and stately in her walk. Besides her face was fresh with color, white and red, her hair golden and slightly wavy. He thought he had never seen so fresh and at the same time so goodly appearing a girl. He was pleased also at the way she nodded to him and said 'good evening' and looked him over from head to foot with such open curiosity and sincere friendliness." She sings too much to please the old housekeeper! "She is so pert and too straightforward with her speech." It is noteworthy too that she talks to herself in unquiet sleep.

Lena Tarn can soon make observations also upon her side. Joern was very short with the old graybeard, who advised him to an early marriage: "The housekeeper is with me, I do not need a wife." Lena, entering just then, heard what the unmannerly countryman said and assumed a proud look, thinking to herself, "What is the sly old man saying!" Since however the old man began to talk and compelled her and Joern Uhl to listen, she was concerned almost entirely for the latter, whose "long, quiet face with its deep discerning eyes she observed with a silent wonder, without shyness, but with confident curiosity." Not alone in the kitchen, which is under her control, can Lena show what is in her. When a young bull broke loose and came after the women, she met him with sparkling eyes, "Stop you wretch!" When he would not allow himself to be turned aside, she threw a swift look flashing with anger upon the men, who were idly looking on, then swung the three-legged milking stool which she had taken along and hit the bull so forcibly on the head with it that frightened, he lunged off sideways. "Lena Tarn had however all afternoon a red glow coming and going in her cheeks because the farmer had looked upon her with the eyes of a high and mighty young man. That caused her secretly both joy and concern." Immediately after this she experienced one satisfaction. Joern Uhl was dragged into the water by a mischievous calf and was much worse cut up by it than she, the weaker one, the woman had been.

"Lena saw always before her the face which Joern Uhl had made when she had gone forward against the bull. She was otherwise in the best of humors, but when, as in the last few days, she was not quite well physically she was inclined to be angry. She preserved a gloomy countenance as well and as long as she could. Soon though, as she went here and there about her work and felt the new fresh health streaming through her limbs, she altered her looks.... Joern Uhl moreover could not be quiet that day. The sudden plunge in the water had brought his blood to boiling. The spring sunshine did its part. A holiday spirit came over him and he thought that he would go into the village and pay his taxes, which were due. On the way he thought of Lena Tarn. Her hair is coiled upon her head like a helmet of burnished brass, which slips into her neck. When she 'does things,' as she says, her eyes are stern and directed eagerly upon her work. When on the other hand she is spoken to and speaks with any one she is quick to laugh. Work seems to her the only field where quiet earnestness is in place. 'That must be so,' she says. Toward everything else she is angry or in a good humor, mostly the latter. Only toward me is she short and often spiteful. It has been a great joke for her that I had the ill luck to have to go into the water with that stupid beast. If she only dared she would spread it three times a day on my bread and butter and say 'There you have it.'"

Now he meets old Dreier who gives him good advice: "How old are you? Twenty-four? Don't you marry, Joern. On no account. That would be the stupidest thing that you could do. I bet you $50.000 you don't dare do it. Time will tell, I say." "Take it for granted that I will wait yet ten years," he answered. And he went on thinking to himself, "It is pleasanter to go thus alone and let one's thoughts run on. Marry? Marry now? I will be on my guard. After I am thirty!" Then his thought came back to Lena. "She looked well as she flung the stool at the bull. Prancing like a three-year-old horse. Yesterday she did not look so well, her eyes were not so bright, she spoke harshly to Wieten (the old housekeeper) and said to her afterwards, 'Do not mind it, Wieten, I slept badly,' and laughed. Funny thing, slept badly? When one is on the go as she must be all day, one should sleep like a log. But that is all right in the May days. It is well that men understand this, otherwise every spring the world would go all to pieces." Then he rejoiced that he was so young and could point out on the farm what was his. "Later, when the years have gone by and I am well established I will take to myself a fine wife with money and golden hair. There are also rich girls who are as merry and fresh and as desirable and have as stately forms. It need not be just this one."

Then he came to the parish clerk who had just been notified that day of six children to be baptized and who was complaining of the increase in births. Joern agreed with him: "What will we come to, if the folk increase like that? Marrying before twenty-five must simply be forbidden." "With these words he departed, filled with a proud consciousness that he was of the same opinion with so intelligent, experienced an old man as the parish clerk." At home he met Lena Tarn with an old farmer, who came to inquire after the fate of his son who had been with Joern in the war. Then for the first time the girl heard of the frightful misery and the suffering of the soldiers which cried to heaven, so that her face was drawn with pain. "Deep in her soul however thrilled and laughed a secret joy, that you have come back whole, Joern Uhl."

Later, when she was making out the butter account with the farmer, "she had to bend her glowing head over the book, which he held in his hand. There came such a glistening in his eyes that he wrinkled his forehead and did not conceal his displeasure at such an unsteady flashing." In the evening she came to get back the book. Then Joern spoke to her, "You have not been in a good humor these last days. Is anything the matter?" She threw her head back and said shortly, "Something is the matter sometimes with one; but it soon passes over."—"As I came through the passage yesterday evening I heard you call out in your sleep in your room." "Oh, well!... I have not been well."—"What ... you not well? The moon has done that. It has been shining into your room."—"I say, though, there may be some other cause for that."—"I say that comes from the moon." She looked at him angrily, "As if you knew everything! I did not call out in my sleep at all but was wide awake. Three calves had broken out and were frisking around in the grass. I saw them clearly in the moonlight. I called them." He laughed mockingly, "Those certainly were moon calves." "So? I believe not. For I brought them in myself this morning and then I saw that the stable door stood open. I thought to myself, the boy has gone courting tonight. Your eyes always sweep over everything and light upon everything and you [du] worry so over everything out of order, I wonder that you [du] have not seen it."—"You say 'thou' [du] to me?"—"Yes, you say it to me. I am almost as great as you and you are not a count, and I am as intelligent as you." She carried her head pretty high and as she snatched the book from the window seat as if it lay there in the fire, he saw the splendid scorn in her eyes. "Take care of yourself when the moon is shining," he said, "otherwise again tonight you will have to guard the calves."

"He had arisen, but dared not touch her. They looked at one another however and each knew how it stood with the other. He had again the look which he had revealed once in the morning, a presuming look, confident of victory, such a look as if he would say, 'I know well enough how such a maidenly scorn is to be interpreted.' But her eyes said, 'I am too proud to love you.' She went slowly into the darkness of her room as if she would give him time yet to say something or to long after her. He was however too slow for that and laughed in confusion."

The night fell upon them, a wonderful still night. "I will take one more look at the moon," thought Joern Uhl and took his telescope. He went through the middle door with as little noise as possible, but the door of Lena's room stood open and she appeared upon the threshold and leaned against the side post. "Are you still awake?" he asked anxiously. "It is not yet late."—"The sky is so clear. I want to look at the stars once more. If you wish you may come with me." At first she remained standing, then he heard her coming after him. When he had directed his telescope to a nebulous star he invited her to look in. She placed herself so awkwardly that he laid his hand on her shoulder and asked her, "What do you see?"—"Oh!" she said, "I see—I see—a large farmhouse, which is burning. It has a thatched roof. Oh!—Everything is burning; the roof is all in flames. Sparks are flying about. It is really an old Ditmarsh farmhouse."—"No, my girl, you have too much imagination, which is bad for science.—What else do you see?"—"I see—I see—at one side of the farmhouse a plank which is dark; for the burning house is behind it. But I can look deep into the burning hall. Three, four sheaves have fallen from the loft and lie burning on the blazing floor. Oh, how frightful that is! Show me another house which is not burning.—Show me a house, you know, show me a farmyard just where they are who hunt up the calves." He laughed merrily. "You huzzy," said he, "you might well see your three-legged stool in the sky, not? So, high overhead!"—"You should have had the three-legged stool. I do not forget you that day, you ... and how you looked at me. That you may believe."

He had never yet let anyone share in his observations. Now he marveled and was pleased at her astonishment and joy. And then he showed her the moon. He placed her and held her again by the arm as if she were an awkward child. She was astonished at the masses on it: "What are those? Boiling things, like in our copper kettles? Exactly. What if it hung brightly scoured over our fireplace and tomorrow morning the fire shone up upon it."—"The boiling things are mountains and valleys.—And now you have seen enough and spoken wisely enough. Go inside. You will be cold and then you will dream again and see in the dream I do not know what. Will you be able to sleep?"—"I will try." He wanted again to reach out his hand to her but his high respect for her held him back. He thought he should not grasp her thus, along the way as it were. "Make haste," he said, "to get away."

She went and he remained to pursue his studies. So the time passed. He had grown eager and busied himself noiselessly with his telescope. "And he thrust aside once more that young life, which an hour ago had breathed so very near him and came again to the old beaten track of thought that the old Dreier was right. 'Don't do anything foolish, Joern.'—And yet, 'Fine she is and good. Happy the man about whose neck her arms lie.—What precious treasure must those eyes hold, when they can look with such frank confidence at a man.'"

About him now were only the customary sounds of night. Suddenly it was as if near by over the house roof and then at the side at the wall of the house he heard the soft cry of a goose and the weak flapping of wings. And "as he looked, there stood under the house roof in the bright moonlight a white human form, with one hand over the eyes and with the other feeling along the wall, as if it would enter the house where there was however no door. It spoke in excited hurried words, 'The calves are in the garden; you must be more on the watch. Get up Joern and help me.' Joern Uhl came in three long strides over the turf and softly called her name: 'I am here.—Here I stand.—It is I.—So! so!—Now be still.—It is I.—No one else is here.' She was speechless and began to rub her eyes with the back of her hand, as a child rubs the sleep out of its eyes, and she fretted also in childish fashion. Then he embraced her and told her again where she was, and led her to the stable door seeking to comfort her. 'Look, here is the door of the stable. Here you have gone through, you dreamer; you have gone all through the stable in your sleep. Have you been seeking the moon calves? Ah you foolish child!—So, here you need not be anxious. You will straightway be back in your room.' When she finally clearly recognized her situation, she was frightened, flung her hands against her face and uttered mournful cries. 'Oh, oh, how frightful this is!' But he caressed her, took her hands from her face and said to her feelingly, 'Now stop that complaining. Let it be as it is.' So they came to the open door, which led to her room. It must have been a remarkable night, for not only had half the calves in the pasture broken out and in the morning were actually standing in the garden and the court, but the boy this night of all nights had not come home, but only returned in the early morning twilight."

The next morning Joern Uhl went to the parish clerk that the banns might be published for him and the nineteen year old Lena Tarn. He was almost embarrassed when he came again before her, "I should merely like to know what you think of me." As she remained speechless, he came nearer. "You have always been a great heroine, especially to me. Hold your head high and make it known that I am right." She was still silent, merely pressed both hands to her temples and stared into the glowing hearth. Then he drew one of her hands down softly from her hair, seized it and went with her over the vestibule, through the door communicating with the front of the house. She followed him passively, her eyes upon the ground and the other hand still on her hair. In the living room he led her to the large chair which stood by the window and forced her into it. "So," said he softly, "here we are all alone, Lena. Here in this chair has Mother sat many a Sunday afternoon. You now belong in it." Still she said nothing. "I have been to the parish clerk and arranged everything and the wedding will be in June. Have you nothing to say yet?" Then she seized his hands and said softly, "As you think, it is all good so." And she covered her face with her hands and wept. Then he began to stroke her and kiss her. "Child, only cease your weeping. You are my fair little bride. Only be happy again." And in his distress he said, "I will never do it again. Only laugh again." At last when he could think of no more cajoling names, he called her "Redhead." Then she had to laugh, for that was the name of the best cow, which stood first in the stalls. Now she lifted her head and gazed long at him without moving. Thus Joern Uhl came rightly to that tenderness and comfort which he thought he deserved.

I have only a little to add that is important for our theme. As a young wife also Lena Tarn was busy the whole day, working from early to late without rest. The work flew from her hand. And when her confinement was over, she got up the sixth day, against the earnest warning of the housekeeper, cared for her boy alone the whole day, went even to the kitchen and carried water for his bath. Joern Uhl allowed it. For he was proud to have such a strong wife, "not so affected as the others." It led however to her death. Somehow she must have become infected, for soon after a severe childbed fever broke out.

Even as a young wife she, the poor humble cottager's daughter whose childhood was pinched by bitterest need, shed a wealth of love and joy upon all who dwelt about her. Yet now, "she, the friendly one, who had never caused suffering to any one, went in her fever delirium to every one in the house, even the smallest servant boy and to every neighbor and begged their forgiveness, 'if I have done anything to hurt you in any way.' Towards morning she became quieter but it was the exhaustion of death and she spoke with great difficulty. Her husband must 'tell Father that she had loved him.' Joern Uhl sobbed violently: 'Who has never spoken a kind word to you, poor child.' She tried to smile. 'You have had nothing but toil and work,' he said. Then she made him understand in labored speech that she had been very happy." The last fever phantasies finally put her back into her childhood. Her love went out to the old teacher Karstensen, then again to Joern Uhl, until she was finally led through angels to a further father-incarnation, to the dear God. "It came to her like peace and strength. Clasped by many hands and led forward, she came to an earnest, holy form who leaned forward and looked kindly upon her. Then she stretched her hand out and suddenly she had a great bunch of glowing red flowers in her hand. She gave them to him saying, 'That is all that I have. I pray you let me remain with you. I am fearfully weary. Afterwards I will work as hard as I can. If you would like to hear it, I will gladly sing at my work.'"

Scarcely in any other tale is the fierce strife between the clearly active sexual longing, and the conscious sexual denial present at the same time, as well as the final victory which the unconscious attains, so plainly shown as in Gustav Frenssen's romance, where the moon walking, exhibitionistic woman completely overthrows the reasoning of the man. The poet expresses it clearly and decisively: They each knew the desire of the other. Joern Uhl saw through the meaning of a maiden's scorn and Lena's eyes said, I am too proud to love you, but I do love you. Yet opportunity must be given to the unconscious to break through victoriously so that the inhibiting reason shall be deprived of its power. Therefore the powerful increase of libido with the woman during the occurrence of menstruation and through the wooing of the boy, who lets the calves break out, in the man through the cold bath and furthermore in both through the seductive May air. Finally the moon acts directly with its light as a precipitating cause.

The night before she had spoken out loud in her sleep just as Joern Uhl went by to his room. He had spoken of it directly as the action of the moonlight, which she of course contradicted; she had been lying awake and heard the calves break out.[19] Then she takes the following night, when the housekeeper, with whom she slept, was sitting up nursing an old farmer and the boy had gone courting again, to approach Joern Uhl on her part as a moon walker, who knew nothing of what she did and could not be held responsible. More than this her unconscious had a fitting speech ready, the calves had broken out again.

[19] Has not the bringing in of these animals and of the word mooncalves a hidden closeness of meaning? The repetition twice of the same motive, the analogy with the case at the beginning which I analyzed, and at last the fact that Lena, when she looked at the stars, wanted to see a farmhouse where some one was just driving out the calves, all this gives food for thought.

The breaking through of the motor impulse is also well grounded. Everything with Lena Tarn is joy in muscular activity, the restless, almost unappeasable desire for work and pleasurable "getting things done," "exerting herself," the constant singing, the easy giving way to anger. Work is the only thing which she can carry on earnestly because in that she lives out in part her sexuality, she meets every one else smilingly or angrily according to her mood. It is noteworthy too that her unquiet libido transforms itself toward Joern Uhl into anger and animosity and so much so that once in anger she addresses him as "thou" and acts as if she were his beloved.

One thing is especially evident in this example of sleep walking and moon walking, the invariably infantile bearing of these phenomena. When Lena, walking in her sleep, was called by her lover, she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand as a child rubs the sleep from its eyelids and fretted also in childish fashion. Then again there is her strange behavior when Joern announces that he has arranged for the publishing of the banns. The farmer had in a significant way put her literally into the mother's place and then in the same manner shown tenderness toward her, stroking and caressing her, as he himself had once been treated by his mother. Still Lena, who already in the night responded to the sudden realization of her position with the cry, "Oh, oh, how frightful this is!" cannot yet quiet herself. It is hardly to be believed that a farm maiden would so lose control of herself at the thought of an illegitimate relationship, which furthermore was to be immediately legalized by marriage. Many things however point to this—I mention only her later fever phantasies—that she always felt inwardly guilty because she had been untrue to some one else, the first beloved of her childhood, her own father. Only when Joern Uhl on his part becomes a child and in his way solemnly declares, "I will never do it again," and in the end names her "Redhead," apparently a pet name of her parent, then she has to laugh and looks long at him without moving, wondering perhaps if he is the real father. After this everything falls into proper place. I can now somewhat extend the statement at the beginning of this section. Night wandering and moon walking have not only inner connections with the infantile but more exactly with the infantile erotic.

I will briefly mention still one circumstance in conclusion. The influence of the moonlight is but little touched upon in our tale. Joern Uhl speaks of it only once. There is on the contrary a connection with actual occurrences, a recent cause for Lena's moon walking. She has looked at the moon through the lover's telescope and received instruction in regard to it. That wakens the memory of the instruction of the old Karstensen, her teacher when she attended the folk school, from which we understand that he appears in the place of her father.

"MARIA," by Otto Ludwig.

Perhaps no poet has felt so deeply and expressed so clearly what constitutes the fundamental problem of sleep walking and moon walking as Otto Ludwig in his youthful novel "Maria." This novel has, according to a letter from the poet, "sprung from the anecdote of the rich young linen draper, who was passionately roused to commit an unnatural offence at sight of the landlord's daughter laid out apparently dead in the room through which he was conducted to his own. As a result of this, when he put up there years after, he found her, whom he supposed to have been buried, a mother, who had no knowledge as to who was her child's father."

This anecdote, which he learned from a friend, took such a hold upon him that he immediately wrote down not only what he had heard but the first plan, although upon the insistent protestation of that friend he did not work out the story as it had been first conceived nor so glaringly. "I saw," writes our poet, "at first only the psychological interest in this material. The problem was to present the story as well as possible and this was indeed a significant one for the narrator. A distinctly esthetic interest would not be possible in conjunction with that."

There is no doubt in the mind of the experienced psychoanalyst that, when a poet is laid hold of in this manner by an anecdote, this only happens because his own significant infantile complexes are roused out of the unconscious. Also the transformations, not unworthy of consideration, which the poet makes with the story are highly indicative. The seemingly dead maiden becomes a moon walker, the landlord's daughter is changed to the attractive daughter of a pastor. "Out of the linen draper there is finally made a cultivated, artistically sensitive youth, who has in him much of Ludwig's own personality" (Borcherdt). The finished romance the poet considered the best which he had so far created, it came nearest to his ideal of a story. Although his attempts always failed to find a publisher for the "Maria," the poet retained his love for this work all his life and it was one of the few productions of his youth which he occasionally still shared with his friends in his last years.

The theme of "Maria" is, as indeed the significant title represents, the unconscious, not to say, the immaculate conception. It is unconscious because the heroine, drawn by the moon and walking in her sleep, comes to her beloved and becomes pregnant by him without a conscious memory of the experience. Furthermore the analogy with the Mother of God becomes emphasized by the fact that in a picture "Mary and Magdalene" described at the beginning, the Queen of Heaven bears quite unmistakably the features of the heroine of the title. The main event, with its results and discovery, is developed out of the character of both hero and heroine with extraordinary psychical keenness.

Eisener like Maria is the only child of rich parents. For both love manifests itself for the most part rather unfortunately. Apparently neither gets on well with the father and both have early lost their mothers. Only Eisener even yet clings with deepest veneration to the mother who taught him to revere all women and, judging from his words, her influence upon her husband and the son's desire still appears. "Whatever of good there is in me, I owe to women. The thought of my excellent mother restrained me from many an indiscretion, as also the teaching and the example of the wisest and best of men (the father). This gentle power which is so sweet to obey and at the same time so full of reward! In loving surrender it obeys the man, while its divine power rules the man without his knowing it. The imperceptible but mighty influence of her gentle presence has determined his decision before he has comprehended it. It has fallen upon him in his anger like an angel before his own strength could arm itself, it has turned him to what is right and proper before he is conscious of the choice. Before her clear look confusion cannot exist, the coarse word of insolence sinks back unspoken into the shame filled breast. The brightness of a lost paradise shines from her eyes upon the fallen bringing pain and warning, the consolation of eternal pity smiles upon the penitent. These are the suns about which the planets of greatness, honor and beauty revolve, lighted and warmed by them." Maria's mother on the other hand is not praised by a single syllable. We do not discover when she died nor how old the little one was when she lost her natural protectress. Only indirectly can one make conjectures in regard to this peculiarly important point.

Maria was from an early age a marvelous child. "She spoke a language of her own, which only the initiated or a very poetic person could understand. All lifeless things lived for her; she transferred to flowers, trees, buildings, yes, even furniture and clothing the feelings of a human soul. She mixed sense impressions in her speech in the strangest fashion, so that she asserted of tones that they looked red or blue, and inversely of the colors that they sounded cheerful or sad. A girl a few years older than she named her the blue song." Both phenomena, the attributing of life to inanimate things, to which one speaks as to beloved human beings, as well as the phenomenon of synesthesia, color audition and seeing of tone colors, are as we know positively today, to be referred back to erotic motives.[20]

[20] According to my psychoanalytic experience children who cling so to inanimate things see in them either sexual symbols or those things were once objects of their secret sexual enjoyment. It may happen, for example, that such a child falls in love with the furniture, the walls of the room, yes, even a closet, stays there by the hour, kisses the walls, tells them its joys and sorrows and hangs them with all sorts of pictures. One very often sees children talking with inanimate things. They are embarrassed and break off at once if surprised by their elders. If there were not something forbidden behind this, there would be no ground for denying what they are doing, the more so since in fairy tales beasts, plants and also inanimate things speak with mankind and with one another without the child taking offense at it. The latter first becomes confused by the same action when he is pilfering from the tree of knowledge and has something sexual to hide. Hug-Hellmuth has convincingly demonstrated the erotic connection of the child's enthusiasm for plants as well as the different synesthesias. (See her study, "ber Farbenhren," Imago, Vol.I, pp.218ff. Abstracted in Psa. Rev., Vol.II, No.1, January, 1915.)

"With Maria's seventh year perhaps, the tendency to play and purposeless dreaming, which is always bound with such lively, mobile phantasy, gave place, to the astonishment of all, to an exactly opposite tendency. From this time she began to take root in life with all the intensity of her nature. Already in her twelfth or thirteenth year she looked after the father's household, to the admiration of all who beheld her. A divine blessing seemed to accompany everything which she undertook; everything increased under her hands. She could in passing enjoy herself well in the idealistic dreams of the poets and of her acquaintances, but her own peculiar element was reality."

What had produced this sudden turn about? I cannot escape the conjecture that here the death of her mother had a decisive influence and with it the necessity to take the place with her father of his wife. Her housewifely activity is noted first to be sure from her twelfth or thirteenth year. Yet I am of the opinion that she had already in her seventh year begun to play this rle—in which year the death of her mother would be placed—only because she was too small it had been under the eye of a maid or housekeeper. My analyses of hysterics has taught me that so profound and sudden a transformation of the whole character always takes place upon definite erotic grounds and for a quite definite erotic purpose.

The earliest love of the tiny maiden belongs almost always to her own father, who is in truth her first beloved. One can often hear it from the child's lips, "You know, Papa, when Mama dies then I will marry you." That is in the childish sense meant quite properly and literally. The early, premature death of the mother gives reality to such infantile wishes, at least as far as concerns the care of the house. As soon then as Maria may begin to play this part, she fills it in a striking and inimitable fashion, although in years she is yet a mere child. She is altogether the mother in the care of a boy outside the family and this, as he quite rightly remarked, laughing boisterously and heartily, even where it is not necessary. Thus her first thought, when she spends her first night banished from home, is of "the poor father, who must go to bed without the little services to which he is so accustomed."

She possesses a maturity in the management of the household which few elders have. Everything goes on and is done without any one noticing that it is being done. "Is there anything more charming than this sixteen year old little house mother in her housekeeping activities?" says one of her admirers. "Just look, let her do what she will, she accomplishes it in the best way and at the same time most beautifully." She is quite contented in the position which she has made. Her eroticism seems completely satisfied. "She is psychically yet so little a woman that there is not the least sexual inclination in the charm that infuses her and therefore her bodily development is overlooked. There is also no trace yet of that entrancing shyness which springs from the mere suspicion that there must be something else about the man." A friend of the family expresses it thus: "When one considers the repose, the self possession of her nature, the freedom from constraint and the spirituality of it, one might almost believe that she was not originally of this earth but perhaps a native of the moon, which seems to exercise more influence upon her than the earth." Every trace of dreamy maiden phantasies, which represent nothing but unconscious love desires, was wanting in her. What she formerly possessed of these was now completely bound with her care of the father.

Her erotic nature is for the time satisfied and needs nothing more to veil it and has nothing to wish for. Therefore she has on the one hand kept childhood's clearness of vision, before which there can be no deceit, on the other hand unbroken contentment with herself and all the world as well as the capacity to forgive immediately every wrong suffered. According to the picture drawn by the poet of the passionate nature of the father, which is capable of hurrying him, the pastor, into reviling God, it seems to me plain why Maria, if she suffered wrong, "is distressed merely over the remorse which the other one, she knows, must feel, when he has finally come to an insight and to reflection." This is nothing else than the father's voice, who had once done wrong to his child and had in a later searching of heart repented of it. Maria, with such early satisfaction of her feelings of love begged "even as a child for nothing which the parents had to refuse her. If she had any need it was to be busy, to take care of the order and the nourishment of the house, the satisfaction and welfare of the inmates. Where she could love, she was happy and at home. Yet even the love for her father never proclaimed itself passionately but always rather in unwearied attention and concern for his smallest need, which only she might suspect as well as for that which manifested itself actively." For herself she scarcely had any wants. A piece of bread and two apples satisfied her as her day's nourishment, which is typical for the hysteric anorexia and perhaps merely signifies the unconscious wish to cost the father as little as possible. Just one single characteristic was wanting for her perfection, the soft, clinging, typically feminine characteristic. This also becomes understandable when one considers that all eroticism toward the father is inhibited in its sexual goal, and may manifest itself only intellectually on account of the incest barrier, at least as far as it comes into consciousness.

The womanly within her shall nevertheless find release through the young Eisener. I have mentioned above how he hung upon his mother. As the early inclination of the small maiden is generally toward the father, so the first love of the boy is for the mother. It is she who teaches him to love and to seek the woman of his heart according to her own image. Later, just before puberty we might say, the boy becomes acquainted with the secrets of sexual life, then, clinging to certain impulses of his childhood, he begins to desire the mother also in the newly acquired sense, while he begins to hate the father as a favored rival, who stands in the way of this wish, and develops a conscious antagonism toward him. He falls, as we say, under the domination of the Oedipus complex. Yet the wishes toward the mother go as a rule no further, since meanwhile the incest barrier has already for a long time been erected. Through this the boy is compelled to submit the mother complex to a splitting. For a moment the phantasy may come to him that the mother shall conduct him into the sexual life—a feature not wanting in any youth—but it is now decidedly rejected or more typically displaced upon those women who make of love a profession and actually take care to initiate the youth into the sexual life. For this reason the remainder of the mother complex is idealized and the mother transformed to a pure virgin woman, toward whom no man dares direct his desire. Similarly is it with the loved one, whom one chooses after the pattern of the mother.

So Eisener expresses himself warmly. "Maria is not made for love, only for reverence."

Yet without the child's craving for the mother[21] he would not have become a compulsive neurotic,[22] with all the hypermorality of the latter, pride in his moral purity and extravagant self reproaches, even a lustful self laceration after he had at one single time been overpowered by sensuality. Furthermore his lack of resoluteness, decisiveness and courage is not, as he mentions, the result of his myopia but of his neurosis. He has developed himself, out of an unconscious rivalry, in direct contrast to his intensely narrow-minded father. The latter was only a tradesman, who set his comfort above everything, for whom art had value only in so far as it increased his own enjoyment of life. So painting becomes the son's chief delight in spite of his exaggerated myopia or perhaps just on account of it. He bore his father's tyranny with difficulty[23] and with inner protest. His tendency toward the free kingdom of art stood in contrast to him, and in the same way he sought on the other hand a substitute for the mother in every woman. He offered up for his sin the dreams of his youth when he first believed that his moral nature was stained and became as a result, as even the elder feels uneasily, an over obedient son.

[21] One thinks of Eisener's panegyric: "Before her clear look confusion cannot exist, the coarse word of insolence sinks back unspoken into the shame filled breast. The brightness of a lost paradise shines from her eyes upon the fallen bringing pain and warning, the consolation of eternal pity smiles upon the penitent."

[22] Like Otto Ludwig himself.

[23] The well-known psychic overcompensation in congenital organic inferiority.

How had this so easily befallen him with a mother so deeply honored! Around her spun all the boy's love desire and twined itself about her, and all that lava heated feeling belonging so peculiarly to the child alone. He had hung upon that idol the longing of his heart, the phantasies of a power of imagination lustfully excited, which is not indeed wanting in the best of children, although commonly these are inhibited, and later even completely forgotten because of restraining moral impulses. Therefore the memory of the highly honored mother is awakened not only through Maria, the pure one, but also through Julie, who comes into contact with his sensual desire and the unclean childish phantasies slumbering in the last analysis behind this. It is interesting how strikingly the poet is able to point out that double emotion in Eisener's soul.

There the moral restraining impulses were first crowded back by the wine plentifully pressed upon him, which he, accustomed from his early years to moderation, could tolerate in only the smallest amount. Now "the sly Julie seemed to him ever more charming. A play of glances began between the two, which appeared to make the young hunter jealous. On the other hand Eisener himself felt something similar when his neighbor on the left addressed to the earnest Maria words which did not conceal the liking she had inspired. He listened to her replies almost with fear and was delighted that there was not audible in them the least response to this inclination, and then he wondered at himself over this same division in his nature. In Julie's dark eyes glowed a flame, of which he felt how it kindled him and that its fire must attract more and more to itself without his being able to defend himself from it, yes, without his wishing to be able to do it." To be sure when "the slender Maria stood like a holy picture behind Julie, the alluring child of the world with all her seductive graces sank low in value in contrast to the former. He felt the need to be open with himself." Transparency was a necessity to him from his youth, as an inheritance from his wise mother. "Then Breitung thrust with his glass against Eisener's refilled one. Laughing and drinking he found the motley interchange of the liveliest ideas outwardly, which already had taken the place of quiet thought, soon becoming less and less menacing and finally even agreeable and desirable."

His sexual excitement, heightened besides through the plentiful indulgence in alcohol and the general boisterousness, was brought to a high pitch by an episode with the passionate Julie. Eisener had to leave the room with her during a social game. "A strange thing happened to him, for as he bent down in the adjoining room in the dark to the quick breathing Julie, instead of her ear her burning mouth met his mouth, and the soft pulsating form fell as if fainting into his arms. Wrestling with himself, striving to keep his senses, he seized her arm involuntarily and stood again with her in the assembly room before he was conscious what it was all about."

Is not this behavior of the youth burning with desire peculiarly strange? What if behind it there is fixed a memory perhaps of a scene with the mother, who brought him to his senses by seizing his arm? Yet, it might always be so for him, he had found the power once more to withstand the hot temptation. Not to be sure without subsequent regret. For when he later sought his room he could not go to sleep and "his phantasy conjured up again, as often as he resisted it, that dark room about him and the bewitching Julie in his arms. He regretted a thousand times, so much did he distress himself, his joy at his instinctive flight, that he had not drunk that sweet poison to the full, whose mere touch had brought his whole being to this feverish pulsation."

He sought now to find cooling for his heated blood in the garden, and in fact the fragrance of the flowers and the rustling of the leaves so soothed his excited mind that gradually the sense of a pleasant languor came over him. In a half unconsciousness he went upstairs again and back to bed. He was just falling asleep when he saw a white form enter, whose features he could not make out because of his shortsightedness. As it disrobed and came toward him, he first, as if seeking for help, reached with his hands toward the side where his friend should be sleeping. He did not however find him, he apparently had been put into another room. "The thought of being alone for the first time with a womanly being in the security of night crept over him at first like icecold drops, then like the glow of fire over all his nerves. His heart pounded audibly as the figure climbed into his bed. The strangeness and adventure of the situation was not fitted to work rationally upon the intoxicated man, whose excitement throbbed into his finger tips. The power of the warning inner voice disappeared with his reason and the strife was brief before nature came off conqueror."

I have before this sketched Maria's character development up to the time when Eisener came into her life. Yet one point may be added. She had retained one single influence from her childhood in spite of all change in her seventh year, which "with the beginning of maturity appeared only occasionally and as it were in secret. The moon had been her dearly beloved and her desire; as a small child she had been able to look at the moon for hours without intermission. If she was sick her mother or nurse must carry her to the window through which she might look upon the friend of her small soul." About half a year before her acquaintance with Eisener "the moon had made its influence felt upon her sleep, as it had before affected her waking. At the time of the full moon she often left her couch, dressed herself and went up into the corner room in the pavilion. Here she stood for some time and turned her closed eyes toward the moon. Then she dropped the curtain, undressed and lay down in the bed, which stood in the spot where she had been used to sleep as a child. As soon as the moon had left the windows of this room or shone through the windows of her present sleeping room, she arose again, dressed herself and returned. She herself knew nothing of these wanderings, and whatever was done to awaken her during them was in vain. The physician thought that these attacks of moon walking would disappear finally when maturity was established, or at least at her first confinement."

In this picture from a layman are some new and striking features. First is the love—one can call it nothing else—which the child bestows upon the planet. Why is the moon her beloved and her desire from childhood up, why can she stand by the hour looking at it, why does she long when sick to be laid so that she can look at it all the time? He who observes children knows that such extreme love, which endures for years without wearying of it, and finally that ability to stare steadily at the moon, must have a sexual content, although naturally no one will admit this. Only when the object, in our case the heavenly body, is sexually stimulating is the love for it enduring for all time, undergoing no change, no abatement of feeling for it. As Maria's erotism later found satisfaction in her father, her love toward the moon steadily receded. But at the entrance upon puberty her sexual impulse increased and she began to wander in the moonlight. The love finally which Eisener inspires in her, together with the strong sexual excitement, which the fte the day before had called forth in her, occasions again an attack, in which she surrenders herself willingly to the beloved.

The folk, like the family physician, have not a doubt of the sexual basis of the moon mania with her as with individuals in general. When puberty is established or she has a child of her own the attacks will cease, is the opinion of the latter. The servant maid Grete also, a living book of fairy tales among her people, explains the moon wandering as nothing else than the result of an unsatisfied sense desire. There was a young knight who had wooed a rich woman of gentle birth. Shortly before midnight they were both led into the bridal chamber. "Yet hardly were they alone together when a strange voice outside before the castle called, 'Conrad, come down here! Conrad, come down here!' And again it called, 'Conrad, come down here!' The voice sounded so plaintive and at the same time so threatening. The bridegroom said, 'That is my best friend; he is in need and calls me.' The maiden said however, 'The voice belongs to my cousin, who was found dead two years ago.' Then she shuddered so that the gooseflesh stood up over her whole body," and she implored her bridegroom not to follow the evil spirit or at least to remain with her until the ghostly hour was past and the full moon was up. But he would not be restrained: "Be it an evil spirit or a good, no one shall call me in vain!" "And he went out. The lady went to the window but could see nothing for the darkness outside and for the tears in her eyes. Then the haunted hour was over and the full moon arose and she waited and waited, but the knight never returned. Thereupon she swore to take no rest on a night when the moon was full until she had gone to bed with her bridegroom. And as her first bridegroom never and nevermore came back, so she waited for another, but there was no one who knew her story who would woo her, because each one thought it would fare with him as it had fared with that other. Thus she died; her oath is however still unfulfilled. Whenever it is full moon, she is looking out to see if any bridegroom comes and she laments sorely, and holds her hands weeping toward the moon."

In this folk tale the exclusively sexual foundation of the wandering is quite plainly expressed. The ghost makes use of a voice, complaining and threatening at the same time, which the bridegroom believes to be the call for help of his best friend, and the bride on the other hand imagines it the voice of her cousin, who had been found dead two years before, perhaps after she had taken her own life because unhappy in love. Both may be driven by sexual jealousy—I offer this as a hypothesis—which would not permit the other sexual gratification which is denied to himself or herself, the friend perhaps meaning jealousy from a homosexual tendency. The ghost having accomplished its purpose at the hour of midnight and in the light of the full moon, the lady swore "to take no rest on a night when the moon was full until she had gone to bed with her bridegroom." That is the kernel of the entire myth, the nave and yet apparently conclusive folk interpretation of the riddle of moon walking, at least in its most frequent form.

I have above taken it for granted that Maria's erotism was satisfied through her care for her father. That must of course be understood with some qualification. For she could play the rle of mother only as housekeeper, not as wife. The former is satisfying therefore only so long, until stronger sexual impulses awaken through external stimuli or, according to rule, through the natural development of a maiden. When once that has come to pass, one so disposed to it as Maria was, begins to wander in the moonlight. Why then, it may further be asked, does Maria seek for her childhood bed, if the goal and the aim of the wandering is the sexual satisfaction of the maiden? In the case analyzed at the beginning the compelling motive was a sexual self stimulation upon the mother, in later years in the loved object whoever it was, male or female. In most cases, since normal sexual feeling predominates, the aim of the sleep walking is that of the folk tale, to go to bed with the lover. That would explain without difficulty the scene of the union in Maria's case, as soon as she had come to know Eisener.

But what lay specially at the foundation of her earlier wandering, when no man had yet made an impression upon her? Or was there perhaps one, in relation to whom sexuality is most strongly forbidden, her own father? What if her erotic desire toward him was repressed and the indifference which she had attained was transferred over to all men? Much that is apparently harmless is permitted to a child, which would be regarded with horror in the adult. Many parents like to take their children into bed early in the morning and play with them without any consciously sexual thoughts and without suspecting how very often they in this way stimulate sexual desire in their children. Frequently also the mother or father visit the child before going to sleep, lean over the bed, allow themselves often to press the child passionately to themselves and count this asexual love toward the child. The case analyzed at the beginning teaches us how much of the grossly sexual erotic is concealed behind this, even if well hidden. Maria likewise sought presumably in her sleep walking for the bed of her childhood because her earliest erotism was bound with it.

This had already happened under the instigation of puberty, before her heart had spoken. How is it now since she loves Eisener? We must keep in mind her unconscious wish, to climb into the bed of the man she loves, and on the other hand that Maria as housemother knew well that he was not sleeping alone, but with his friend, so only a compromise form of action would be possible. So she goes up again to her childhood room, which lies in the same direction as Eisener's sleeping room. There she first draws the curtain aside that she may gaze at the moon, which increases the sexual excitement with her, as I have earlier discussed. Then she undresses before the mirror as she probably had done as a child, and moves forward toward the beloved one, who after a brief struggle with himself embraces her passionately. She nevertheless submits to his caresses without response but also without resistance. For thus alone can the fiction be maintained that she has loved without consciousness of it and therefore also without culpability. It is not difficult, according to the analysis of the first case, to understand how she finally at the withdrawal of the moonlight gets up again, dresses herself before the mirror and leaves the room as noiselessly as she had entered it.

The later portions of the narrative must confirm my assumptions if they are correct, that Eisener merely embraces the mother in Maria and that she on the other hand knows well enough in the unconscious both as child and as maiden that she wishes for that which is sexually forbidden and knows whom she desires. Let us see what the poet tells us. As Eisener awakes after the bridal night, he is not at all invigorated and uplifted as otherwise a man in like case, but psychically and physically cast down, as if he had to atone for some great wrong. "He strove to consider the strange adventure of this night as the delusion of a fevered dream. Yet that adventure painted itself before him, in spite of all his effort to forget it, in ever more vivid colors," because indeed a wish of his heart had been fulfilled through it. His inner unrest drove him forth and, as walking about he met his beloved, he marveled "that Maria seemed taller to him today than yesterday, or rather that he believed that he first noticed today that she was tall." What could this mean except that Maria now seemed big to him as once the mother had seemed to the small boy? Only he had first to embrace his beloved, before he could perceive such a thing and give heed to it. Maria herself, who apparently had enjoyed her pleasure only in her sleep and unconsciously, and therefore knew nothing of it all, had lost her frank manner with him, which she still possessed the day before. She grew red at his look and drew the hand which she gave him "quickly back again in confused fear," without consciously knowing why. "The flower of womanhood which had slumbered in her too serene, too cold image, appeared in this one night to have come with magic swiftness to bud and immediately to have unfolded in all its fragrance." Maria herself pictures her condition: "That morning I can never forget. Everything was so still, so solemn; the guests were all yet asleep. I had never been so strong of heart. I felt that morning as if all my life before had been only a dream and life was now just beginning. It seemed to me that I had suddenly become grown up and was now for the first time a child no more." Maria thus felt herself through the bridal night to have grown up from the child to the mother, only, now, it was for the lover who had taken the father's place.

Both Eisener and Maria conducted themselves further entirely in accordance with their earlier unconscious wishes. The former for example "found a growing pleasure in representing his own action, when it was really the effect of many circumstances acting one upon the other, as the result of a cold, calm calculation on his part." And was it not at bottom actually something like a calculation, since he in his earliest childhood phantasies imagined something similar for himself from the mother? It is only natural that he now greatly exaggerated in consciousness the sin which he had desired. Never for a moment did it occur to him "to throw any part of the burden of guilt upon that being who so closely participated in it. His rightful feeling remained in regard to it that he had this night given to a woman a right to himself, which he, if she should demand it, could not dispute. It was a source of calmness to him to look upon himself as punished, as it were, in this manner." Only all too evident! This punishment was in reality a disguised reward, fulfilment of the infantile wish to win the mother.[24] For this reason he had not been able earlier to withstand Julie although Maria attracted him far more. For the former was the indulgent mother of his power of imagination, the latter on the contrary the proud, unapproachable mother of his real childhood. Moreover, though he did not conceal from himself that his heart belonged to the chaste Maria, yet he resolved, if Julie should convince him that she had been the ghostly visitor, to offer her his hand immediately. "The doubt, whether she deserved it, which was near enough at hand, he put from him as an excuse which he wished to make so that he could believe that he might release himself from that which he had to recognize as his duty." Maria however "he had in these days accustomed himself to think of as a being so high above him that his love must profane her." Again the well known splitting of the mother into the holy and the yielding one.

[24] Cf. with this also the interesting passage ... "the passionate self accusations, in torturing himself with which he found comfort a short time before."

How did it appear at this time to her, herself? The first weeks after that moonlight night the woman in her bloomed forth more and more, in spite of the fact that her lover tarried at a distance. Yet when in her body a new life began to develop and Eisener still did not appear, she was seized suddenly with a hysterical convulsion—she was wearing significantly the same rose-colored dress in which he had seen her that morning—which lasted twelve hours so that every one looked upon her as dead. The despairing father threw himself across her feet and lay there—a situation which will occupy us later—and Eisener, who was just now returning, was driven by the bitterest self reproaches across the ocean. After waking from her catalepsy Maria did not regain her former blooming health but grew more and more ill, which the family physician finally discovered as the result of her pregnancy.

"The good girl herself believed at first that what she felt and what they told her was a vivid troubled dream." This idea will not appear strange to us who know so much about moon walking and that one does everything merely "in sleep" in order to remain blameless. "That she should become a mother seemed to her so strange and wonderful that she appeared to herself as some one else (this might well read, as her own mother dead at so early an age) or as suddenly transplanted into another world with strange people, animals and trees. The sound of her own voice, the tone of the bells seemed to her as other and strange sounds." We may bring forward in explanation in this place the case analyzed at the beginning, where a moon walker had abandoned herself to all sorts of dreams. In the moon must be living men of another sort with other feelings, customs and manners, and the sexual, strongly forbidden upon earth, must be freely permitted upon this planet. She seemed to herself on account of her sexual phantasies already as a child quite different from other people, as if she belonged not upon this earth but upon the moon. Could not a similar thought process have taken place with Maria?

I said of her father, that he had been her first beloved. And it comes almost as an unconscious recognition of this when he, filled with anger, calls out to her mockingly, "Why do you not say that the whole affair has come to pass out of love to me, to prepare for me an unexpected joy?" Breitung also enjoyed since her earliest childhood her unlimited confidence only on this account because he loved her as his own child. Therefore she looks up with all her anxiety so trustfully and self confidently to this friend of her father. But when Breitung also no longer believed in her and her father turned from her with scorn it was "as if all her blood streamed into her eyes that, pressing out as tears, it might relieve her. Yet here it remained and pressed upon her brain as if threatening its fibers. With a strangely fearful haste she pressed her eyes with her fingers; they remained dry; a cry of pain would unburden her soul—no sound accompanied the trembling, convulsive breathing. The old servant, who entered after a while, found her lying with her breast upon the sofa pillow, her head thrown violently back," in hysterical opisthotonos. "The old man had loved Maria from her earliest childhood" and stood accordingly in the place of a father. "He clasped his hands together in distress. She recognized him and suffered him patiently to bring her head to a less forced position. She looked at him sharply as if she would convince herself that he was the one she took him to be. His Kalmuck features seemed to her as beautiful as the soul which they hid and seemed to want to disown.

"The friendliness, the affectionate regard, which spoke so unmistakably out of the familiar old graybearded, sunburnt face, did her no end of good." Since she could not yet entirely believe she asked, "Is it indeed you, Justin? And you will still recognize me? And you do not flee from me?" At first the deplorable commission which the old man had to carry out threw her back again. When she had to understand that her father would not again set foot in the pastor's house until she had departed, her countenance became deathly pale and convulsive movements trembled in quick succession over her delicate body so that the old man wept aloud, for he believed that she had gone mad. His signs of distress, the faithfulness and love which spoke through them, touched her so effectually that at last the hysterical convulsion relaxed and she sank down. "The old man caught her up. He placed her on the sofa. She lay across his lap; her head lay upon his left hand, with the other he held her body fast that it should not slip to the floor. It seemed as if she would weep her whole weary self away. The old servant held her with trembling hand and heavy heart." Now the scene of childhood is complete, except that the old man plays the rle of her father. So had Maria presumably done as a child when she felt too unhappy and so also the pastor's throwing himself down, as we saw above, over his daughter whom he believed dead, is not strange.

When Maria had left the parsonage her first thought and silent concern was how her father must now live without her care, even that perhaps he would not be there any more, when everything had later turned out well. Then she thought again of the time when she would be a mother and "her life seemed to her as a tale that is told." On her journey to her new home there came over her ever more strongly "the feeling of her complete abandonment. All the dear childhood memories, into whose protection she would flee, turned in anger from her. With tears she cried to God for a heart that she might love, some one for whom she might really care. For it seemed as if a curse lay upon her, which estranged all hearts from her. She thought with fear at her heart that the being to whom she would give life might likewise turn from her, as everything had done that she loved." Then a good fate brings to her the unfortunate Johannes whom his crazy father wished to throw into the water in order to preserve him for eternal happiness. At once Maria assumes the rle of mother toward the boy and now "that once more she had to care for some one, she was again the calm and serene being."

What had so thrown her out of her course? It was not so much the banishment from the father's house, not the contempt of all the world, nor even of her very oldest and truest friend. She would have been able to look beyond both of these, because her consciousness felt itself entirely blameless. But she took so to herself the truth that she was no more the loving, caretaking house mother nor might play that part, that for a brief while she planned to take her life. She prayed to God with tears for one heart only that she might love, that she might actually care for. Since the care of her father is taken from her she feels herself at first truly and utterly forlorn, all the dear memories of childhood turn in anger from her and a curse seems to rest upon her soul.

Why do all the memories of her childhood turn from her, if she actually knows herself guiltless? Is this merely because the father is indissolubly bound with them? If she still consciously feels entirely blameless toward him, and if he openly did her wrong from a false assumption, then should not the childhood memories return to her? I think the solution must be sought elsewhere, in this, that Maria knew nothing in clear consciousness of the happenings of that moonlight night and could honestly swear to that, but everything was known in the unconscious. Here is the sense of guilt engendered, of which consciousness may know nothing, here she knows well enough that the youthful Eisener has embraced her and she has together with him deceived the father whom she first loved. The goal of all moon walking is none other than to be able to enjoy and still be blameless, it is blamelessness because without accompanying consciousness.

The poet's words must confirm this, if this assumption is correct. We will test them. The first night of her banishment Maria, while going to sleep, thought first of her father "who must go to bed without the little services which he was accustomed to receive from her." Then she thought of Breitung and the apothecary's daughter, who had turned from her full of scorn. "The young Eisener occurred to her in the midst of this, she knew not how, and a sort of curiosity whether Eisener also would have turned from her in so unfriendly a fashion as Breitung. She pictured to herself how he might have looked upon her now with contempt, now with friendliness, as on that morning which she so gladly remembered." Also an evident identification of the young Eisener with the father and the father's friend, and flight from the loved ones who had cast her off to him who had inclined to her as a friend.

Yet more convincing is a passage which follows. Maria had born a son and "the more she looked with joy upon the small infant contemplating his sound and beautiful body, the more grew the need within her, only instinctively felt at first, to have some one who could rejoice in the child with her, not out of mere sympathy with her, but because he had the same right to it and so that she could rejoice again in his joy, as he might in hers. Without knowing how and why, she thought again of the friendly and true hearted Eisener. Her dreams brought his picture before her eyes in most vivid colors. It seemed as if it were Eisener who should enjoy the child with her. She hastened to him with tears of joy to lay the beautiful boy in his arms, and when she now stood by him, she had scarcely the heart to show him the boy. Then she cast down her eyes and said confusedly, 'See this beautiful child, Eisener, Sir!'" Maria knew quite well in the unconscious that she had conceived her child from Eisener and the sudden restraint when she laid the boy in his arms is only a compromise with consciousness, which must not know the facts, otherwise she could not be spared her feeling of guilt. Yes, when Julie then came with her love child, which she had conceived that same moonlight night from the hunter, although she really loved Eisener, then "Maria experienced, she knew not why, a gentle aversion toward her. She said quietly, 'That in which one has done no wrong and cannot change, one must bear patiently.'"

Soon however there awoke a desire in her "for something new, still unknown to her, which she nevertheless felt must come now. It was the strange, fearfully sweet condition of the ripeness of love, which had not yet found the object on which she could open her heart. That night a need awakened, formerly repressed into the background by greater pain, but which threatened now to outgrow other desires and feelings in the undisputed possession of him." Often she sat knitting and dreaming at the boy's cradle. "There was a fair at Marklinde. She went early in her rose-colored dress into the garden and plucked wild hedge roses. She was startled for she heard a noise behind her and she knew that it was Eisener who was coming after her. She turned into another path; she was afraid to meet him, and yet she wished that he would follow her. As she bent low behind some flowers, she threw a hasty look behind her. She grew rosy because he might have noticed the look, and still it would have made her glad if he had noticed it. 'Yet if he knew everything,' she whispered to herself; 'but I could not tell him, nor could I let him perceive it. I would have to say No, although he understood it as Yes!' Suddenly he stood near her; he had seized her hand and was looking into her eyes. She bowed her head, he bent toward her. It seemed so strange to her—their lips touched—Maria frightened and blushing, sprang involuntarily from her chair, as if what she was dreaming were real.

"A strangely mingled feeling drove her from her chair to the window and from the window back to the chair. She felt herself stirred in her very depths by something which wounded her sensibility as much as it excited her longing. She fled to her child. She strove to think of something else; in vain. That thought continually returned and gradually lost its frightful character. Soon she felt it only as a sweet dread and so the idea received a double stimulation while it woke the curious question, why and for what reason she must really be afraid. And as she looked now upon the child, it seemed to her so marvellous that she, mother and yet maiden, knew nothing of the happiness of which this little life must be the fruit. Julie's words were continually ringing in her ears, 'The happiness which is granted him, has to be reckoned too dear.' It gave her unending satisfaction, to think of herself actually in such a situation to the young Eisener that all her unhappiness was the result of a joy which she had granted him, without knowing what joy this must have been." I consider it superfluous to add a word to complete the interpretation of these phantasies, which speak for themselves. They confirm everything that I have said above, better than any labored explanation. Later Maria came to know that what had sustained her in the hours of her sorrow was nothing else than that mysterious but certain premonition of a happy life with Eisener and her George.

And now back to the purpose of the analysis of all these tales. What does it teach us for the understanding of moon walking? First of all it confirms many of our earlier conclusions. The most important thing, in the first place, is that sexual impulses lie at the foundation, desire for sexual gratification, and that one apparently acts in sleep in order to escape all culpability, while the unconscious still knows all about it. The sleep walking begins, in accordance with the sexual basic motive, at the time of puberty and lasts until it is inhibited by the close of that period or in women with the birth of the first child. It is further established that at the beginning the bed of childhood is sought, the place of earlier sexual pleasures, later however the bed of the loved object, who appears in the place of the originally loved object, the parent. Finally, moreover, when the night wanderer fixes his closed eyes upon the moon before starting out on his wandering, erotic thoughts hide behind this, which in turn go back to earliest childhood. The heavenly body effects a sexual excitement not only through its light, but indeed also through sexual phantasies which are bound with it. Lastly folk myth knows likewise that the woman in white represents nothing else than the maiden in her night shift with all her sexual longings.

One thing more this novel also confirms, which our earlier discoveries have already taught us, the abnormal muscle excitability and muscle erotic. For Maria was seized with a hysterical convulsion when her father's unkindness pressed itself upon her. It is interesting that this abnormal muscle excitability, which manifested itself in various muscular convulsions, was present with Otto Ludwig throughout his earthly career. Already as a boy he often suffered convulsive muscular twitchings, when he had exceptional tasks to perform or hard thinking was required of him, and "nervous twitchings of the head" are recorded of him when twenty-three years old, also presumably a tic had won for him the nickname of "the shaker." Later moreover our poet suffered chronically from convulsive manifestations of a lesser degree, repeatedly however in a stronger, special form although only in temporary attacks.[25]

[25] Cf. with this especially Ernst Jentsch, "Das Pathologische bei Otto Ludwig," "Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens," published by L. Lwenfeld, No.90.

In other words, it may be said that Ludwig assigns to Maria and the young Eisener a series of his own personal characteristics. That is to say, not only was the tendency to convulsive attacks peculiar to him, but also to fainting, and a compulsive neurotic and hysterical tendency, the high grade myopia, a fondness for discussing painting, talking with inanimate things,[26] colored audition, as well as other synesthesias, and finally a special reverence for his mother.

[26] Cf. here the poet's words: "It is strange that nature is personified for me, that I not only live in her, but as one human being with another, exchanging, not merely receiving, thoughts and feelings, and even so, that different places become as individual to me, distinct from others and, as it were, transformed in consciousness, so that I not only feel that they effect an influence upon me but it seems to me as if I work upon them, and the forms, as they appear to me, show the traces of this influence." Further: "I ... who stood even in a wonderful mutual understanding with mountain and flora, because the kingdom of love was not to be restrained...."

"BUSCHNOVELLE," by Otto Ludwig.

The moon plays an important part in the romance just discussed, even apart from Maria's night wandering, and a number of significant events take place under its very light. We find this relationship still stronger in Otto Ludwig's "Buschnovelle," briefly referred to earlier, which I add here, though it really does not directly treat of our problems. The heroine Pauline passed with many as moon struck and her blue eyes "have a strange expression of their own. They gaze as aliens upon this world, as angels, which, transplanted to our marvelous earth, belong to the heavenly home and cannot find themselves amid this confused and agitated humanity." Likewise his bride asserts of the count that he knows no other recreation "than to climb about in the night over the rocks and worship the moon." This perhaps gave occasion to the rumor of a ghost or at least breathed new life into an old tale.

A prince was banished under an enchantment to the rocks of the gods. He had "a face as of a person twenty years old or so, but pale and quite transparent like moonlight, and he could be rescued only through a maiden eighteen years old and as innocent as when she came from the mother's womb." The count, whom his bride deceived, became very melancholy over it and trusted no woman after this. He learned to know and love Pauline upon the rocks of the gods, where he was accustomed to wander in the moonlight. When she believed she saw in him the enchanted prince and declared her intention of voluntarily rescuing him, he stipulated that she must climb down from off the rocks, down from the cross, without touching them with her hands but holding her arms toward the full moon. "And that must take place tomorrow night when the moon is sailing overhead, otherwise I must remain enchanted. When you shall have climbed down the rocks, I shall be saved and then I will make you my princess." One may read afterward from the poet how Pauline then carried out her resolve—her determination alone, sprung evidently from a great love, had already cured the count of his sadness—how the count saved her and later wooed her.

Emphasis will be laid here merely upon two facts, first that not only all important events happen in the light of the full moon, but that also no other novel shows so many autobiographical features. The most recent publisher of this tale, Heinrich Borcherdt, gives this explanation: "One can recognize without much trouble in the portrait of the count with his well-trimmed beard the poet himself, who at that time tended to great seriousness and to melancholy. For this very reason the cheerfulness, gaiety and unrestrained naturalness of his bride Emilie worked most refreshingly upon him. Pauline in the tale exercised a similar influence upon the count. What we know of Emilie Ludwig from without agrees likewise with the picture of Pauline. Pauline's father suggests Emilie's father.... The greatest weight will be laid upon the fact that we possess in this work a poetic glorification of Otto Ludwig's love happiness in Triebischtal. The rural life is reproduced in every detail." Nothing unfortunately is reported in the different sketches of his life whether and how far the poet and his bride allowed themselves to be influenced by the light of the full moon. The striking fact remains at any rate that twice in the course of two years he spun out this theme and each time moreover with a strongly autobiographical note. That cannot be sufficiently explained merely through the influence of Tieck, whom he, to be sure, read diligently in his youth.

"LEBENSMAGIE, WIRKLICHKEIT UND TRAUM," by Theodor Mundt ("Life's Magic, Reality and Dream").

In the seventh volume of the "Euphorion" Richard M. Meyer has exhumed a probable source of Ludwig's "Maria." It is a fictitious tale of the "young German" Theodor Mundt, which appeared in his collection "Charaktere und Situationen" in 1837, five years before the "Maria," and shows in fact some external similarities with this. Still Otto Ludwig expressly acknowledges a tale told by a friend as the source, but gives no syllable of mention to Mundt. I must say that it seems at least very questionable that the latter's story was the model, although the Berlin literary historian comes to the conclusion, "A direct utilization would be here difficult to dispute." I will reproduce the contents of this story, as far as it touches our problems, as closely as possible in the words of Mundt, although this story, which is contained in the collection mentioned under the separate title of "Lebensmagie, Wirklichkeit und Traum," hardly possesses an artistic value.

The theological student Emil Hahn had, as one of his friends states, "lost life itself over his books and before his merry companions, who would have initiated him into the true enjoyment of existence, crowed many a moral cock-a-doodle-doo of virtue and self restraint." On the ride home to his father and foster sister Rosalinde he was urged by two student acquaintances to a little drinking bout, at which he partook of more wine than was good for him. The two comrades sang the praises of Rosalinde, whom Hahn had left as a fourteen year old girl and who in the two years of separation had blossomed out in full beauty. As Hahn returned to the father's house in a half intoxicated state and met Rosalinde in an adjacent room, he found at once, in contrast to his shyness of former times, the courage to approach her. "Ardently and daringly he embraced her and the passionate kiss which he impressed upon her maidenly lips was followed, as one lightning flash succeeds another, by a second more lingering one, which was reluctant to leave off." After he had for some time, again quite contrary to his custom, held his own place at the large party which his father was giving that very evening, "he felt himself gradually seized with weariness and the lively and excited mood, to which the wine he had enjoyed had awakened him, began little by little to disappear with the intoxication. He made his adieus in a dejected tone and betook himself with heavy, hanging head to his room, there to recover himself through sleep, which he could no longer withstand because of his painful state.

"It was late in the night when Emil sprang from his bed. A vivid dream seemed to have confused and frightened him. He stood half clothed in the middle of his room and stared straight ahead as if trying to recollect himself. Above in the night sky glowed the full round moon with a sharp ray seldom seen and its white silver light pierced directly over the head of the youth walking in his sleep. The room gleamed brightly in the moonbeams trembling with mystery, which had spun themselves out in long, glimmering threads over floor and ceiling. Emil had fastened his eyes upon the great disk of the moon and staggered with uncertain steps to the window to open it." While he stood thus there came a small snow white cat—the cat is well known as a favorite animal of the romantic writers—and spoke to him: "I am come to congratulate you on your bridal night. Yes, yes, I know well that you are married. This is a beautiful night to be married. The moon shoots down right warmly, and its strong shining stings the blood and we cats also feel the impulses stirring in the whispering May night. Happy one, you who are married! Married to Rosalinde!"

"Emil, distracted, clasped his forehead. Everything which he saw about him appeared to him changed and even the inanimate things in his vicinity seemed in this moment to have been drawn into a magic alliance. Everything, the very table, chair, press looked at him, rocking themselves saucily in the bright moonlight, personally and familiarly, and had to his eyes, arms and feet to move about, mouths to speak with, senses for communication. At the same time a fair picture rose before the youth deep out of the bottom of his heart, at which he smiled longingly. It was the recollection of Rosalinde and her matured beauty. She passed like a burning, ominous dream through his soul and he felt himself drunken, trembling, exultingly united with the proud but now subdued maiden in a love thrilled bridal night. While he was thus lost in thought his look was held chained by a painting, which hung on the wall opposite him. Strange, it was Rosa's portrait and he knew not whether this picture had just now arisen warm with life merely out of the force of the idea which was kindling him, or whether it had actually been formed over there in its golden frame by a painter's hand." Then the cat mewed again: "That is your young wife Rosalinde. The moonbeam chases her; see how its brightness kisses her temples unceasingly. The young woman is queen on her bridal night. We will crown her, all we who are here in this room and owe our life to the brightness of the moonlight night, we will crown her. I present her for her bridal crown burning, tender desires." Then the May blossoms in the room bestirred themselves and conferred upon her the bloom of fond innocence for her bridal crown. Also the bird in the cage made himself understood: "I give her for her bridal crown the score of my latest melody. Harmony and melody should be the dower of all young brides." Finally a cockchafer also which flew in offered her for her bridal crown "a pair of lovely crickets."