Absolute Signification and Ontological Inconsistency in E. T. A. Hoffmann's Der Sandmann

"Der ächte philosophische Akt ist Selbsttödtung, dies ist der reale Anfang aller Philosophie, dahin geht alles Bedürfniß des philosophischen Jüngers, und nur dieser Akt entspricht allen Bedingungen und Merkmalen der transcendendalen Handlung."¹

[The true philosophical act is the putting to death of the self, this is the real beginning of all philosophy, and every need of the philosophical disciple goes in this direction, and only this act corresponds to all the conditions and characteristics of the transcendental attitude.]

These words, written by Novalis, declare that philosophy begins in an act of self-destruction, or more precisely formulated: all properly philosophical acts aim to destroy the self. This demand is not as mysterious as it might seem. A self, by definition, is differentiated and limited, and thus represents one of the most palpable impediments to that which romantic philosophy seeks, namely, the absolute, das Unbedingte, that which is without condition and without limit. A truly philosophical act must efface the horizon of limitations and differences that constitutes self-hood: Selbsttödtung, self-annihilation. The proper name for this act is not suicide, but transcendence.

And yet: what is suicide other than the most extreme and literal form of self-extinction? E. T. A. Hoffmann would have been able to read the fragment cited above in Schlegel and Tieck's edition of Novalis's collected works.² In light of this fragment, it is worth considering whether or not Hoffmann's most celebrated Nachtstück (Night Piece), Der Sandmann—which culminates in a spectacular act of self-destruction, Selbsttödtung—is much more than a story about childhood trauma, abuse, irony, or the tragic frustrations of a mediocre poet. Rather, Der Sandmann, as an aesthetic document, indexes a distinctly philosophical problem, namely, the phenomenal movements and operations associated with a conception of the absolute that exists beyond all instances of differential signification attached to a limited self. Seen from this perspective, the central problem of Der Sandmann is less psychological than ontological: it concerns not the pathological psyche of a problematic individual, but the order of beings as a whole.

At the center of this philosophical problem—which is in turn a representational problem: how does that which is outside representation and differentiation as such, the absolute as unconditioned and unlimited, announce itself in the field of beings and world of differences—lies the figure of the Sandman himself. As a textual presence, the Sandman cannot be reduced to the indexical sign of a primordial psychological trauma. Such a simplification overlooks the fact that the Sandman functions as a generative presence at the very source and origin of aesthetic representations, a figure beyond all figuration whose central impulse manifests itself in a drive to self-reproduction.³ The Sandman stands as the executor of an imaginative operation that does not simply block the successful formation of an ego identity; on the contrary, the Sandman gives form to the very transcendental principle of the absolute as articulated in the philosophical discourse of romanticism. The attempt to produce the absolute discursively generates a specific form of romantic semiosis that I shall call absolute signification, and a close examination of E. T. A. Hoffmann's narrative reveals a distinct engagement with and repurposing of this form of signification.

First, I will define absolute signification more precisely within the specific ontology of romantic science and romantic philosophical inquiry, for which Schelling's philosophy of nature (Naturphilosophie) and Johann Wilhelm Ritter's Fragmente aus dem Nachlasse eines jungen Physikers (Fragments from the Estate of a Young Physicist 1810) may serve as models. Then, I will examine in what way the various operations and functions of absolute signification animate Hoffmann's text. Reading the text ontologically as opposed to psychologically encourages us to rethink the central value of the Sandman: the Sandman enables a pervasive and wandering mode of signification predicated upon an internal contradiction in the world of appearances that in turn propels the differential system to self-reproduce. To be sure, the textual and imaginative operations associated with the Sandman represent a dangerous and...