Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary StudySadger, J.
Science
Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary Study
Sadger, J.
Psychoanalysis; Sleepwalking
"Now, now however she awakes from the strange troubled dream. She opens
her eyes, she shakes her beautiful head as if she would free herself
from the fetters of a dark enchantment. With a loud outcry she beholds
herself actually in the young man's arms and sees alas! that she has not
dreamed it. Wildly with all the strength of horror she pushes him from
her, springs up and stands wringing her hands distracted before him, her
fluttering hair only half disclosing her frightened countenance. Then
she calls him by name in a tone indescribably piercing, painfully
questioning, 'Emil!' He in turn, hearing himself called by name, falls
at the same moment with a faint sigh swooning to the floor. After a
pause he raises himself up, rubs his eyes and looks wonderingly about
him. He cannot comprehend how he has come here. The influence of the
moon has permitted the poor night wanderer to experience this adventure.
When he was completely awake and had come to himself, he stood up and
began to think over his situation. Then his eye fell astonished upon
Rosalinde, who continued to stare at him speechless and immovable. Shame
and anger adorned with a deep glowing color the injured maiden, whose
virgin whiteness had been sullied by the strange events of this night. A
dark, frightening recollection of what had taken place flashed now like
a remote, faded dream into Emil's consciousness. The alluring spirits of
the night, which had buzzed around him, now mockingly stripped from him
the deceitful mask.
"'Go, go, go!' called Rosalinde finally, who could no longer bear his
look. 'Go!' she called and stretched out her hand with a passionate
movement toward him, as if she would with it jerk a reeking dagger from
her breast. 'Go, go!' she repeated, sobbing and beseeching. Then she hid
her aching head with a loud outbreak of tears. Emil slipped away
heartbroken and in despair. He was in such a state, when he reached his
own room, that he would have put a ball through his head, had there been
at that moment a pistol at hand." How Rosalinde then became pregnant and
in spite of her resistance toward Emil, still married him to reëstablish
her honor, how though after the wedding feast two acquaintances of the
young husband, whom he had not invited, played him so mischievous a
trick that he lost his reason in consequence, that deserves no further
rendering.
We find here also as the nucleus of moon walking, when we strip from the
foregoing all its mystical setting, the longing to approach the love
object and there to be able to indulge oneself without punishment
because it is done unconsciously. The literary historian Richard M.
Meyer regards it quite correctly: "Theodor Mundt believed that he had
emphasized something new in his way of presenting it. 'The influence of
the moon had caused the night wanderer to undergo this adventure.'" To
be sure Mundt attributes all sorts of mystical-romantic rubbish to the
action of the heavenly body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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