“One night I awoke suddenly as if roused by a burning heat. I experienced a horrible suffering and believed I felt a hand on my body. I cried out and pushed with my feet, and as I lay there in a half consciousness it was as if many of my dormitory companions were awake and I heard them ask, ‘What is it? Who has called out this way?’ A voice, ‘Some one has been dreaming!’ And another voice, ‘Silence in the dormitory!’ And all was gone from me as if under a heavy veil. Once again quiet. Am I asleep or am I awake? A wild beating in the arteries of my neck, a roaring in my ears. Yet in the dormitory all is quiet. The lamp is burning, I see the white beds. I see the copper of the washstand glimmer like red gold. Must I have dreamed—an oppressive, frightful dream? Drops of sweat stood out on my forehead. Then came a heavy sleep. What was this? I rarely had days of depression or restless, disturbed nights. And yet in these weeks I entered upon this uncomfortable experience.
“One night I awoke. Darkness was round about me. And I was cold. And I saw no lamp, no bed, no shining copper. Was this also a dream? Yet my hands felt plainly the hard wood in front of me. Slowly I recognized a number of vaguely outlined squares, the great windows. Clad only in my shirt, I sat in the study room before my desk. Such a horror fell upon me as I cannot describe. I ran wildly up the stairs, threw myself into my bed and shook. Another night I awoke. Darkness was about me. Again I was cold. And I believed that I was again sitting at my desk. No; I was standing. My hands however felt no wood, my eyes found not the gray windows. As I moved, my head struck against something hard. I became aware of a feeble light shining. As I went towards it, I came from some dark room upon the dimly lighted stair landing.
“I awoke again in the night. I was cold. A semi-darkness was about me and over me many stars twinkled. I sat upon the shingle roof of the bowling alley. It was not a far leap to the ground below. But the pebble stones of the seminary garden pricked my bare feet. Moreover, when I wanted to get into the house, I found the gate closed. My God! how had I then come out? Somewhere I found an open window and climbed into the house and noiselessly up to the dormitory. The window near my bed stood open—and there outside, I believe, was a lightning rod.
“All day I racked my brains to find a way to escape from the fear of this dreadful thing. I dared not confide in anyone, for fear of the ridicule of the others, for fear—I never knew just what I feared. In the evening I took one of Mother's balls of yarn to bed with me, bound two double strands about my wrists and tied the ends around the knobs of the bedstead. In the night, as I was about to wander again, I felt the pull of Mother's threads and awoke. It never came again. I was cured.”
This appears at the first glance a non-sexual sleep walking. This is only however in its first appearance, although it is to be regretted that the full explanation can scarcely be given in the absence of any analysis. It is first to be noted that sleep walking sets in at puberty and is ushered in by anxiety dreams, pollutions and various anxiety equivalents. The hammering in the arteries, the roaring in the ears, the restless, disturbed nights, as well as the unusually disturbed days, we know these all as manifestations of an unsatisfied libido. The first “frightful” anxiety dream seems to lead deeper, as well, as the “horrible suffering” started by a hand, which he felt upon his body. Must not this hand, which causes this “horrible suffering” to the youth who had never yet known trouble, have touched his genitals?[17] Behind this perhaps, moreover, are very early memories of the care bestowed upon the nursing infant and the child.
The terror which fell upon him every time that he walked in his sleep is worthy of note, for he was not otherwise easily frightened. “A terror which I could not describe,” “fear of that dreadful thing” and fear not merely of the ridicule of his fellows but of something, what, he never knew, which is a far more violent reaction than we have been accustomed to find with sleep walkers. This excessive reaction may be very well understood, however, if behind it a particularly inacceptable sexual factor hides itself. Finally the cure by means of the mother's balls of yarn, homely proof of her love, doubtless has to do with the erotic. It must be admitted to be sure that we have to confine ourselves to mere conjectures. Only one may well maintain that even an apparently non-sexual case soon reveals its sexual grounding. Moreover, a strong muscle erotic is demonstrated further throughout Ganghofer's autobiography.
Case 8. I will now, especially upon the subject of moon walking, cite an author who shows a very unusual preference for this heavenly body. In many a description and in many of the speeches which he has put into the mouths of his heroes, has Ludwig Tieck, who also has sung of the “moon-lustered magic night,” given artistic expression to this quite remarkable love mania—this is the correct designation for it. Ricarda Huch in her “Blütezeit der Romantik” makes the striking statement that from this poet's figures one must “tear away the labels stuck upon them and name them altogether Ludwig Tieck, for in truth they are only refractions of this one beam.” One may hear for example how Sternbald felt: “The orb of the moon stood exactly opposite the window of his room.” He watched it with longing eyes, he sought upon the shining disk and in the spots upon it mountains and forests, wonderful castles and enchanted flowers and fragrant trees. He believed that he saw lakes with shining swans which were drawing boats, a skiff which carried him and his beloved, while about them charming mermaids blew upon their twisted conchs and stretched their arms filled with water lilies over into the bark.
“Ah, there, there!” he would call out, “is perchance the home of all desire, all wishes; therefore there falls upon us so sweet a melancholy, so soft a charm, when that still light, full and golden, floats upon the heavens and pours down its silver light upon us. Yes, it awaits us and prepares for us our happiness, and for this reason its sorrowful look toward us, that we must still remain in this earthly twilight.” The similarity here with the phantasies of the psychoanalytic patient at the beginning is indeed unmistakable.
Yet one or two extracts from the novel “Der Mondsüchtige,”[18] the title of which is misleading since it in no way treats of one afflicted with lunacy but of a veritable moon lover, presumably our poet himself. There the nephew, Ludwig Licht(!), writes to his uncle: “It is now three months since I had a very serious quarrel with my friend, a quarrel which almost separated us, for he mocked at an entire world which is to me so immeasurably precious. In a word, he railed at the moon and would not admit that the magic light with which it shines was anything beautiful or exalting. From Ossian to Siegwart he reviled a susceptibility toward the moon although the poets express it, and he almost had declared in plain words that if there were a hell, it certainly would be located in the moon. At any rate he thought that the entire sphere of the moon consists of burned out craters, water could not be found upon it, and hardly any plant life, and the wan, unwholesome reflection of a borrowed light would bring us sickness, madness, ruin of fruits and grains, and he who is already foolish will without doubt behave himself worst at the time of full moon.… What concern is it of mine what the astronomers have discovered in the moon or what they will yet discover?… It may be ludicrous and vexatious to devote oneself exclusively and unreservedly to this or that, any observation, any favorite object. Upon my earlier wanderings I met a rich Englishman who traveled only to waterfalls and battlefields. Ridiculously enough, though I have not journeyed only in the moonlight, yet I have from my earliest youth forever taken note of the influence of its light, have never in any region missed the light of the full moon and I dream of being, not quite an Endymion, but yet a favorite of the moon. When it returns, its orb little by little growing full, I cannot suppress a feeling of longing while I gaze upon it, whether in meadow and woodland, on the mountains or in the city itself and in my own room.”
And the uncle answers him: “It is true, you are moon sick, as we have always called you, and to such a one much must be forgiven which would have to be reckoned differently to a well man. I have myself however always inclined to this disease.” In fact the entire action, loving and losing, the development and solution of the plot, takes place almost exclusively under the light of the moon. At the conclusion, when the hero finds the beloved given up for lost, he cannot refrain from the outcry: “Yes, the moonlight has given her and led her to me, he, the moon has so rewarded me, his true friend and inspired panegyrist!” I regret that I find nothing in the biographies which would explain Tieck's exquisite amorousness toward the moon.