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 matter goes yet much deeper. The prince says of the elector: "Plucks
from his neck the chain that's pendant there.... My soul meanwhile
enkindled high." The laurel attains a further value for the prince,
because the elector binds his own necklace about it. The latter is
continually taken by Homburg as the father, to which a number of verses
testify. Since the prince unmistakably stands for the poet, it cannot be
denied that Kleist had desired the reward not only from the beloved one,
but this still more with the express concurrence of the father. In the
beginning to be sure he is repulsed by him, "Naught here for thee,
away!" and later on account of his disobedience is even condemned to
death.[28] He was not only pardoned, however, after he had acknowledged
his wrong and recognized the father's judgment as correct, but when he
believed his last hour had struck, he was bedecked with the wreath which
he desired and on which moreover his elector's chain hangs. Still
further, the latter, the father himself, extends the laurel to Natalie
and leads the beloved to him. It is beyond question that love is the
chief motive of the moon walking of the prince von Homburg, love to a
woman as well as a homosexual tendency otherwise authenticated in the
case of Kleist. Only it appears here closely amalgamated with desire for
fame, something completely unerotic, and with the sexual, as we have
found it so far regularly in night wandering and moon walking, quite
excluded.
[28] It is significant to compare here the Consul Brutus, who
permitted the execution of his sons.
We will attempt to get more light on the last two points. The striving
after poetic fame does not remain with our poet within the usual, normal
limits but becomes much more a peculiar neurotic characteristic. No less
a hope for instance had Heinrich von Kleist than with an unheard of
creation to strike at Sophocles, Shakespeare and Goethe and concerning
the last named he uttered this audacious sentiment, "I will rend the
crown from his brow!" Since he fails to attain this goal in spite of
repeated most earnest onslaughts, he rushes away to die upon the
battlefield. He writes to his sister, however, "Heaven denies me fame,
the greatest of earthly possessions; I fling back to it all else like a
self willed child!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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