Let’s cut out the exercise. This is Freud‘s recounting of a story in his essay on the word unHeimlich.
I’m gonna leave it here and we’ll pick up on it later
A student named Nathaniel, with whose childhood memories this fantastic tale opens, is unable, for all his present happiness, to banish certain memories connected with the mysterious and terrifying death of his much-loved father. On certain evenings his mother would send the children to bed early with the warning ‘The SandMan is coming. And sure enough, on each such occasion the boy would hear the heavy tread of a visitor, with whom his father would then spend the whole evening. It is true that, when asked about the Sand-Man, the boy’s mother would deny that any such person existed, except as a figure of speech, but a nursemaid was able to give him more tangible information: ‘He is a bad man who comes to children when they won’t go to bed and throws a handful of sand in their eyes, so that their eyes jump out of their heads, all bleeding.
He then throws their eyes in his bag and takes them off to the half-moon as food for his children. These children sit up there in their nest; they have hooked beaks like owls, and use them to peck up the eyes of the naughty little boys and girls.’ Although little Nathaniel was old and sensible enough to dismiss such grisly details about the Sand-Man, fear of this figure took root even in him. He resolved to find out what the Sand-Man looked like, and one evening, when another visitation was due, he hid in his father’s study. He recognized the visitor as a lawyer named Cop-pelius, a repulsive person of whom the children were afraid when he occasionally came to lunch. He now identified Coppelius with the dreaded Sand-Man. In the remainder of this scene the author leaves us in doubt as to whether we are dealing with the initial delirium of the panic-stricken boy or an account of events that must be taken as real within the world represented in the tale. The boy’s father and the visitor busy themselves at a brazier that emits glowing flames. Hearing Coppelius shout ‘Eyes here! eyes here!’ the little eavesdropper lets out a scream and reveals his presence. Coppelius seizes him and is about to drop red-hot grains of coal in his eyes and then throw these into the brazier. The father begs him to spare his son’s eyes. This experience ends with the boy falling into a deep swoon, followed by a long illness. Whoever favours a rationalistic interpretation of the Sand-Man is bound to ascribe the child’s fantasy to the continuing influence of the nursemaid’s account. Instead of grains of sand, red-hot grains of coal are to be thrown into the child’s eyes, but in either case the purpose is to make them jump out of his head. A year later, during another visit by the Sand-Man, the father is killed by an explosion in his study, and the lawyer Coppelius disappears from the town without trace. Later, as a student, Nathaniel thinks he recognizes this fearful figure from his childhood in the person of Giuseppe Coppola, an itinerant Italian optician who hawks weather-glasses in the university town. When Nathaniel declines to buy one, Coppola says, ‘So, no weather-glass, no weather-glass! I’ve got lovely eyes too, lovely eyes.’ Nathaniel is at first terrified, but his terror is allayed when the eyes he is offered turn out to be harmless spectacles. He buys a pocket spyglass from Coppola and uses it to look into the house of Professor Spalanzani, on the other side of the street, where he catches sight of Olimpia, the professor’s beautiful, but strangely silent and motionless daughter. He soon falls so madly in love with her that he forgets his wise and level-headed fiancée, Clara. But Olimpia is an automaton, for which Spalanzini has made the clockwork and in which Coppola – the Sand-Man – has set the eyes. The student comes upon the two quarrelling over their handiwork. The optician has carried off the eyeless wooden doll; the mechanic, Spalanzani, picks up Olimpia’s bleeding eyes from the floor and throws them at Nathaniel, from whom he says Coppola has stolen them. Nathaniel is seized by a fresh access of madness. In his delirium the memory of his father’s death is compounded with this new impression: Hurry hurry – hurry! – ring of fire – ring of fire! Spin round, ring of fire quick – quick! Wooden doll, hurry, lovely wooden doll, spin round – Whereupon he hurls himself at the professor, Olimpia’s supposed father, and tries to strangle him. Having recovered from a long, serious illness, Nathaniel at last seems to be cured. He finds his fiancée again and plans to marry her. One day they are out walking in the town with her brother. The tall tower of the town hall casts a huge shadow over the market-place. Clara suggests that they go up the tower together while her brother remains below. At the top, her attention is drawn to the curious sight of something moving along the street. Nathaniel examines this through Coppola’s spyglass, which he finds in his pocket. Again he is seized by madness and, uttering the words Wooden doll, spin round, he tries to cast the girl down from the tower. Her brother, hearing her screams, comes to her rescue and quickly escorts her to the ground. Up above, the madman runs around shouting out Ring of fire, spin round’ – words whose origin is already familiar to us. Conspicuous among the people gathering below is the lawyer Coppelius, who has suddenly reappeared. We may assume that it was the sight of his approach that brought on Nathaniel’s fit of madness. Some of the crowd want to go up the tower and overpower the madman, but Coppelius says laughingly: Just wait. He’ll come down by himself.’ Nathaniel suddenly stands still, catches sight of Coppelius and, with a cry of ‘Yes! Lovely eyes – lovely eyes’, throws himself over the parapet. Moments later he is lying on the pavement, his head shattered, and the Sand-Man has vanished in the milling crowd.
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