“The good girl herself believed at first that what she felt and what they told her was a vivid troubled dream.” This idea will not appear strange to us who know so much about moon walking and that one does everything merely “in sleep” in order to remain blameless. “That she should become a mother seemed to her so strange and wonderful that she appeared to herself as some one else (this might well read, as her own mother dead at so early an age) or as suddenly transplanted into another world with strange people, animals and trees. The sound of her own voice, the tone of the bells seemed to her as other and strange sounds.” We may bring forward in explanation in this place the case analyzed at the beginning, where a moon walker had abandoned herself to all sorts of dreams. In the moon must be living men of another sort with other feelings, customs and manners, and the sexual, strongly forbidden upon earth, must be freely permitted upon this planet. She seemed to herself on account of her sexual phantasies already as a child quite different from other people, as if she belonged not upon this earth but upon the moon. Could not a similar thought process have taken place with Maria?
I said of her father, that he had been her first beloved. And it comes almost as an unconscious recognition of this when he, filled with anger, calls out to her mockingly, “Why do you not say that the whole affair has come to pass out of love to me, to prepare for me an unexpected joy?” Breitung also enjoyed since her earliest childhood her unlimited confidence only on this account because he loved her as his own child. Therefore she looks up with all her anxiety so trustfully and self confidently to this friend of her father. But when Breitung also no longer believed in her and her father turned from her with scorn it was “as if all her blood streamed into her eyes that, pressing out as tears, it might relieve her. Yet here it remained and pressed upon her brain as if threatening its fibers. With a strangely fearful haste she pressed her eyes with her fingers; they remained dry; a cry of pain would unburden her soul—no sound accompanied the trembling, convulsive breathing. The old servant, who entered after a while, found her lying with her breast upon the sofa pillow, her head thrown violently back,” in hysterical opisthotonos. “The old man had loved Maria from her earliest childhood” and stood accordingly in the place of a father. “He clasped his hands together in distress. She recognized him and suffered him patiently to bring her head to a less forced position. She looked at him sharply as if she would convince herself that he was the one she took him to be. His Kalmuck features seemed to her as beautiful as the soul which they hid and seemed to want to disown.
“The friendliness, the affectionate regard, which spoke so unmistakably out of the familiar old graybearded, sunburnt face, did her no end of good.” Since she could not yet entirely believe she asked, “Is it indeed you, Justin? And you will still recognize me? And you do not flee from me?” At first the deplorable commission which the old man had to carry out threw her back again. When she had to understand that her father would not again set foot in the pastor's house until she had departed, her countenance became deathly pale and convulsive movements trembled in quick succession over her delicate body so that the old man wept aloud, for he believed that she had gone mad. His signs of distress, the faithfulness and love which spoke through them, touched her so effectually that at last the hysterical convulsion relaxed and she sank down. “The old man caught her up. He placed her on the sofa. She lay across his lap; her head lay upon his left hand, with the other he held her body fast that it should not slip to the floor. It seemed as if she would weep her whole weary self away. The old servant held her with trembling hand and heavy heart.” Now the scene of childhood is complete, except that the old man plays the rôle of her father. So had Maria presumably done as a child when she felt too unhappy and so also the pastor's throwing himself down, as we saw above, over his daughter whom he believed dead, is not strange.
When Maria had left the parsonage her first thought and silent concern was how her father must now live without her care, even that perhaps he would not be there any more, when everything had later turned out well. Then she thought again of the time when she would be a mother and “her life seemed to her as a tale that is told.” On her journey to her new home there came over her ever more strongly “the feeling of her complete abandonment. All the dear childhood memories, into whose protection she would flee, turned in anger from her. With tears she cried to God for a heart that she might love, some one for whom she might really care. For it seemed as if a curse lay upon her, which estranged all hearts from her. She thought with fear at her heart that the being to whom she would give life might likewise turn from her, as everything had done that she loved.” Then a good fate brings to her the unfortunate Johannes whom his crazy father wished to throw into the water in order to preserve him for eternal happiness. At once Maria assumes the rôle of mother toward the boy and now “that once more she had to care for some one, she was again the calm and serene being.”
What had so thrown her out of her course? It was not so much the banishment from the father's house, not the contempt of all the world, nor even of her very oldest and truest friend. She would have been able to look beyond both of these, because her consciousness felt itself entirely blameless. But she took so to herself the truth that she was no more the loving, caretaking house mother nor might play that part, that for a brief while she planned to take her life. She prayed to God with tears for one heart only that she might love, that she might actually care for. Since the care of her father is taken from her she feels herself at first truly and utterly forlorn, all the dear memories of childhood turn in anger from her and a curse seems to rest upon her soul.
Why do all the memories of her childhood turn from her, if she actually knows herself guiltless? Is this merely because the father is indissolubly bound with them? If she still consciously feels entirely blameless toward him, and if he openly did her wrong from a false assumption, then should not the childhood memories return to her? I think the solution must be sought elsewhere, in this, that Maria knew nothing in clear consciousness of the happenings of that moonlight night and could honestly swear to that, but everything was known in the unconscious. Here is the sense of guilt engendered, of which consciousness may know nothing, here she knows well enough that the youthful Eisener has embraced her and she has together with him deceived the father whom she first loved. The goal of all moon walking is none other than to be able to enjoy and still be blameless, it is blamelessness because without accompanying consciousness.
The poet's words must confirm this, if this assumption is correct. We will test them. The first night of her banishment Maria, while going to sleep, thought first of her father “who must go to bed without the little services which he was accustomed to receive from her.” Then she thought of Breitung and the apothecary's daughter, who had turned from her full of scorn. “The young Eisener occurred to her in the midst of this, she knew not how, and a sort of curiosity whether Eisener also would have turned from her in so unfriendly a fashion as Breitung. She pictured to herself how he might have looked upon her now with contempt, now with friendliness, as on that morning which she so gladly remembered.” Also an evident identification of the young Eisener with the father and the father's friend, and flight from the loved ones who had cast her off to him who had inclined to her as a friend.
Yet more convincing is a passage which follows. Maria had born a son and “the more she looked with joy upon the small infant contemplating his sound and beautiful body, the more grew the need within her, only instinctively felt at first, to have some one who could rejoice in the child with her, not out of mere sympathy with her, but because he had the same right to it and so that she could rejoice again in his joy, as he might in hers. Without knowing how and why, she thought again of the friendly and true hearted Eisener. Her dreams brought his picture before her eyes in most vivid colors. It seemed as if it were Eisener who should enjoy the child with her. She hastened to him with tears of joy to lay the beautiful boy in his arms, and when she now stood by him, she had scarcely the heart to show him the boy. Then she cast down her eyes and said confusedly, ‘See this beautiful child, Eisener, Sir!’” Maria knew quite well in the unconscious that she had conceived her child from Eisener and the sudden restraint when she laid the boy in his arms is only a compromise with consciousness, which must not know the facts, otherwise she could not be spared her feeling of guilt. Yes, when Julie then came with her love child, which she had conceived that same moonlight night from the hunter, although she really loved Eisener, then “Maria experienced, she knew not why, a gentle aversion toward her. She said quietly, ‘That in which one has done no wrong and cannot change, one must bear patiently.’”
Soon however there awoke a desire in her “for something new, still unknown to her, which she nevertheless felt must come now. It was the strange, fearfully sweet condition of the ripeness of love, which had not yet found the object on which she could open her heart. That night a need awakened, formerly repressed into the background by greater pain, but which threatened now to outgrow other desires and feelings in the undisputed possession of him.” Often she sat knitting and dreaming at the boy's cradle. “There was a fair at Marklinde. She went early in her rose-colored dress into the garden and plucked wild hedge roses. She was startled for she heard a noise behind her and she knew that it was Eisener who was coming after her. She turned into another path; she was afraid to meet him, and yet she wished that he would follow her. As she bent low behind some flowers, she threw a hasty look behind her. She grew rosy because he might have noticed the look, and still it would have made her glad if he had noticed it. ‘Yet if he knew everything,’ she whispered to herself; ‘but I could not tell him, nor could I let him perceive it. I would have to say No, although he understood it as Yes!’ Suddenly he stood near her; he had seized her hand and was looking into her eyes. She bowed her head, he bent toward her. It seemed so strange to her—their lips touched—Maria frightened and blushing, sprang involuntarily from her chair, as if what she was dreaming were real.
“A strangely mingled feeling drove her from her chair to the window and from the window back to the chair. She felt herself stirred in her very depths by something which wounded her sensibility as much as it excited her longing. She fled to her child. She strove to think of something else; in vain. That thought continually returned and gradually lost its frightful character. Soon she felt it only as a sweet dread and so the idea received a double stimulation while it woke the curious question, why and for what reason she must really be afraid. And as she looked now upon the child, it seemed to her so marvellous that she, mother and yet maiden, knew nothing of the happiness of which this little life must be the fruit. Julie's words were continually ringing in her ears, ‘The happiness which is granted him, has to be reckoned too dear.’ It gave her unending satisfaction, to think of herself actually in such a situation to the young Eisener that all her unhappiness was the result of a joy which she had granted him, without knowing what joy this must have been.” I consider it superfluous to add a word to complete the interpretation of these phantasies, which speak for themselves. They confirm everything that I have said above, better than any labored explanation. Later Maria came to know that what had sustained her in the hours of her sorrow was nothing else than that mysterious but certain premonition of a happy life with Eisener and her George.