Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary StudySadger, J.
Science
Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary Study
Sadger, J.
Psychoanalysis; Sleepwalking
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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