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.

PART II

LITERARY SECTION

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 checks resounded from a whizzing blow." Her face glowed bright with anger and the delicate blue veins were swollen on her forehead, while with a scornful look she turned her back to him. His blood was however aflame with desire for revenge.

A second time had the young nobleman Soelver sought to satisfy his masculine passion, when he surprised Gro bathing upon Aebeloe. She however had defended her maidenhood and struck him about the head with an old, rusty sword, which she found on the shore, so that he sank upon the grass covered with blood. "He felt the pain of his wounds with a strange glow of pleasure. The blow had fallen upon the hard flint stone within him so that the sparks of passion had sprung forth. He loved the maiden Gro. A consuming passion raged in his blood. In his thoughts he knelt always before that ineffaceable image, which struck him to the earth with a flame of divine wrath in her eyes." In revenge for the trespass committed Sten Basse fell upon Soelver's castle and took the young nobleman himself prisoner.

Wild violence of this sort was indeed familiar to Sten Basse. He himself had once taken his wife thus by force. Just as he was flattering himself that he had broken her will once for all, she bit him in his chin so that the blood gushed forth and she spit his own blood into his eyes. He was struck with admiration at such strength. He had thought to desert her at once. Now he lifted her in his arms, carried her from her father's castle into the stable, bound her to his horse and rode forth-to his own home. Their marriage had been at first a long series of repetitions of the first encounter. In the end she loved him as the horse loves the iron bit between his teeth and the spur in his flank. She did not allow her

ness.

self to be subdued by the blows which he gave her, but she was the weaker and she loved him because he was strong enough to be the stronger. An evil fate had taken his sons from him one after the other. Therefore he wished to call forth in his only daughter the traits of his own blood, his pride, disdainfulness and stiff-necked"She must know neither fear nor weakness; her will must be hardened and her courage steeled like that of a man. When he heard that his daughter had been in danger but had saved herself, he swore revenge to the perpetrator of the outrage, yet at the same time his heart laughed with pride at Gro's fearlessness. He took the young nobleman prisoner and rewarded him with heavy and tedious torture as penance for his insolence. Yet at the same time he delighted himself with the thought of putting his daughter to a still more dangerous proof. He wished to see the young-blooded, inexperienced birds reach out swinging and scratching in attack and defense."

As if in mockery he gave to the imprisoned youth the passionately desired Gro to be with him in the dungeon. "She stood there as if she had glided into his prison by the flood of light entering in and he trembled lest the light would again absorb her into itself." He knew not what power forced him to his knees and threw him at her feet with a prayer for forgiveness. She had however merely a scornful laugh for the man humbling himself in his love and the cruelly abusive word, "Creeping worm!" Then in his sense of affront there comes the thought that Gro was given into his power. While he tried the walls of his dungeon to ascertain if he was perhaps watched, Gro stood and stared out by the aperture through which the light entered, now paler than before. Soelver stepped near her, drew the single gold ring from his finger, which had come down to him through many generations of his forefathers, and extended it to her as a bridal gift. But she threw it unhesitatingly out through the peephole.

Now bitterness raged in Soelver's blood. "He bowed himself before her face in order to intercept her gaze, but he did not meet it though her eyes were directed toward his. It was indeed no glance but a depth into which the whole light of day, which was blue now without overhead, was drawn down into a deep well. Soelver became intoxicated with this light, which, as it were, appeared to seek her alone and threw an aureole of intangible beauty about her form." He crept up and pushed forward the wooden shutter, then carried Gro to his cot. She had let herself go without resistance and fell

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lifelessly with her arms hanging down. Soelver laid his face close to hers. His breath was eager, his blood was on fire and in his fierce wrath he intended to yield himself to the boiling heat of sensual passion. Her cheeks however, her skin, her lips were cold as those of death. He began nevertheless wildly to kiss her face, once and again, as if to waken warmth and life in the cold skin. Yet with every kiss it was as if she grew more fixed, as if the lips shriveled and grew cold and damp as ice over the teeth. The cold from this embrace crept over Soelver, and drew the heat and fervor from his nerves, until he shook suddenly with the cold and shuddered with the thought that he had a corpse under him. Yet in that selfsame moment he marked the rising of her breast as she drew in her breath, full of strength with all its coldness, so full of strength that it pushed Soelver away and he slipped down to the hard flags of the floor.

"Soelver lay upon the floor, congealed with a coldness which was stronger than that of the hard tiles. It was as dark as in a walled-in grave. He dared not move however for fear that he would again feel that ice cold body. 'Hear me,' sounded suddenly a strangely shrill whisper, 'hear me, if you are a man, let me get out! Call my father! I want to get out-make light-give me air -I am almost choking-I want to get out!"" As Soelver opened the shutter again so that the dim shadowy glow of the night could enter, he saw Gro " tall and slender in the pale light." "Let me out, let me out!" she begged. "I am afraid here below-not of youbut of myself and of the dark-let me out!" "For the first time Soelver heard a soft rhythm in this voice smooth as steel. A soft breath breathed itself in her entreaty. He became a man, a protector and felt his power grow through her supplication."

Yet though he exerted himself to the utmost to open the door of his dungeon, it was all in vain. It must have been fastened on the outside with massive oak or iron bars. So finally he gave up entirely and turned back to the opening where the light came in. Gro had sunk down under the last bit of light, without complaint, without sound. Her eyes were closed, she leaned her head against the sharp edge of the aperture and her arms hung down lifelessly. Soelver bent over her; her breath was almost inaudible, but irregular and did not suggest sleep. Like a thirsty plant she stretched herself out of the single airhole of the dungeon that she might seize the last drop of light before the darkness extinguished everything. Soelver divined that she could not be brought away from this aperture for light.”