The ambiguous tentacles of the grotesque

Paul Rumsey

" 'Mamma, who is this naughty Sandman, who always drives us away from Papa? 

What does he look like?'

'There is no Sandman, dear child,' replied my mother. 

'When I say the Sandman's coming, I only mean that you're sleepy and can't keep your eyes open 

 just as if sane had been sprinkled into them.'

This answer of my mother's did not satisfy me - nay, 

the thought soon ripened in my childish mind the she only denied the Sandman's existence 

to prevent our being terrified of him. 

Certainly I always heard him coming up the stairs. 

Most curious to know more of this Sandman and his particular connection with children, 

I at last asked the old woman who looked after my youngest sister what sort of man he was.

'Eh, Natty,' said she, 'don't you know that yet? 

He is a wicked man, who comes to children when they won't go to bed, 

and throws a handful of sand into their eyes, so that they start out bleeding from their heads. 

He puts their eyes in a bag and carries them to the crescent moon to feed his own children, 

who sit in the nest up there. 

They have crooked beaks like owls 

so that they can pick up the eyes of naughty human children.'

A most frightful picture of the cruel Sandman became impressed upon my mind; 

so that when in the evening I heard the noise on the stairs I trembled with agony and alarm, 

and my mother could get nothing out of me but the cry, 

'The Sandman, the Sandman!' 

stuttered forth through my tears. 

I then ran into the bedroom, where the frightful apparition of the Sandman 

terrified me during the whole night".

E.T.A. Hoffmann