Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary Study — John Shaqi
Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary StudySadger, J.
Science
Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary Study
Sadger, J.
Psychoanalysis; Sleepwalking
It is my purpose to bring also our beautiful literature to the solution
of the exceedingly difficult and obscure problem of sleep walking and
moon walking. Our poets, for all our psychiatrists and psychologists,
possess the finest knowledge of the psyche and during the centuries
before science was able to throw light upon the puzzles of the mind,
they solved them prophetically with discerning spirit. Thus they knew
how to bring to light various elements of our problem. Their creations
directed to that end arose from their own inner nature, through analogy,
or because sleep walking was not foreign to them themselves. And even if
neither were the case, they still had the ability of those who have a
real true knowledge of men, quite intuitively to see clearly into the
unconscious of others. We will come to know what profound interest many
of the great poets, like Otto Ludwig and Heinrich von Kleist took in
night wandering and moon walking and how they have first introduced
these dark problems into other traditional material. A striking
similarity is revealed if one compares that which the poet has in mind
with that which I have been able to report in the medical section. I
shall be able satisfactorily to verify the statement that science and
art have reached exactly the same result. First however I will present
the examples from the poets according to their comprehensibility and
their transparency. I begin with
"AEBELÖ," by Sophus Michaelis.
Twice had Soelver drawn near to the maiden Gro, daughter of his
neighbor, Sten Basse. The first time was when in the spring he visited
the island Aebeloe, which belonged to him but was quite uninhabited. So
bright the day and so warm the kiss of the sun upon him, yet suddenly it
was "as if his bare neck were flooded by a still warmer wave of light."
A maiden stood before him, "who was like pure light. The eyes were as if
without pupils, without a glance; as she looked it was as if white
clouds floated forth out of a heavenly blue background. Soelver sprang
up and stood face to face before her. Her cheeks grew red. Although
unknown to each other, they smiled one at the other like two seraphim.
Her hands opened toward his and before her, as out of her lap, fell the
flowers which she had gathered. Soelver believed for a moment that it
was all a dream. He swung his hands into the air and a hand waved toward
him. He closed his eyes that he might enjoy to the full the soft,
fleeting impression. It floated over his hand like an incorporeal
breath. Was it then a ghostly vision, that wandered there at his side!"
When however he knew that the maiden near him was a living being, then
"his lips sank toward her trembling with desire, unintentionally and yet
irrevocably." At this moment a "cloud passed over the sun and the light
became at once dulled as if a mist had fallen upon all the flowers. Of
all this he did not become so quickly aware, as that his own cheeks
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