E.T.A. Hoffman's narrator in the short story The Sand-Man explains how it is difficult for anyone (especially writers) to communicate the reality of a personal experience to someone else. Quoting the Christian Bible, the narrator explains that the experiences of real life cannot be replicated through factual descriptions, and that a  writer can only present truth “in a glass, darkly” (p. 196). Mentioning 1 Corinthians 13 can be seen as a sly maneuver by Hoffman - several of its constituent verses can be used to analyze aspects of the The Sand-Man.

    Verse 11 is applicable to the conflict between Nathanael and Clara. It is the well-known passage “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when became a man, I put away childish things.” In the story, Nathanael's first letter relates the traumatic experience he had the demonic Coppelius (the “Sand Man”) and the death of his father. In the letter, Nathanael explains how when he was a child, he understood as a child – his mother explained to him that there is not really a Sand Man, but in his “childish mind, ...my mother denied there was a Sand man only to prevent us from being afraid” (p. 184). We see that even as a man, Nathanael continues to think and understand as a child. Nathanael is quite shaken when he encounters Coppola, who reminds him of the Sand Man, and loses his senses at a number of points in the story. His (initial) love, Clara, however, has “put away childish things”  - she “possesse[s] ... a calm, and for a woman, cool-headed temperament” (p. 190). Nathanael wants for his childish mind to be understood and accepted by Clara, but her well-reasoned rebuttals to his fantastic claims only serve to frustrate him.

    Verse 4 highlights the difference between how Nathanael sees Clara and how he sees Olimpia. To Nathanael, “Love is patient, love is kind.” Nathanael cannot love Clara because he perceives her to be impatient – she knits while he reads to her, and unkind – she calls the poem he writes a “foolish, senseless thing” (p. 200). Olimpia is the perfect lover for him, however. She “listens” to him “hour after hour with her eyes bent unchangeably upon her lover's face,” displaying infinite patience. She makes no criticism of his “aimless sonnets, stanzas, [and] canzonets;” she kindly responds with an encouraging “Ah! Ah!” (p. 209). As Dr. Srathausen's lesson explains, Nathanael really is falling in love with himself – he projects his “whole being,” including his ideals about love, onto Olimpia.

    Hoffman's reference to verse 12, that we can only see “through a glass, darkly,” helps explain his portrayal of Clara. As Dr. Srathausen's lesson and Sigmund Freud's analysis in The Uncanny point out, Hoffman's stories defy a definitive interpretation of their events. In The Sand-Man, the reader is never sure which is real - Nathanael's fantastic claims about Coppelius, or Clara's rational explanations. Therefore, Clara's portrayal can be be seen as positive if the Sand Man is only a figment of Nathanael's imagination – she is then a “bright, innocent,” woman with a “deep and sympathetic heart,” and a “clear, sharp” understanding (p. 197).  On the other hand, Clara can be seen as missing the truth, blinded by her commitment to reason. Although Nathanael considers everyone to be a puppet of a higher power (p. 197 - 198), he considers Clara to be an especially vile type of “damned automaton” because she mechanically follows a set of “cold, unimaginative” rules. This idea, that formal logic misses some important aspect of the truth, has captivated thinkers past and present – Hoffman echoes Immanuel Kant's 18th century Critique of Pure Reason in his suggestion that truth can be arise from unreasonable sources (the critique of Clara on p. 196 - 197). He also anticipates Kurt Gödel's 20th century proof that there are true propositions that are undecidable in a system of formal logic. Whether Clara is right or wrong can be seen as an “undecidable proposition” on the basis of the facts presented by the story – we can only “know in part” (1 Cor 11:12) .

    Whether Hoffman intended for 1 Corinthians 13 to be used in analyzing The Sand-Man is unknowable. There are certainly other interesting devices to be used in interpreting the story – the helpful and harmful effects of the Enlightenment, the extensive allusions to eyes as “the windows to the soul,” and the importance of “doubles,” to name a few. However,  because the story contain references to the nature of love, maturity, and uncertainty, we can see that there is some merit to the use of the scripture (at least as much as Freud's focus on castration anxiety) in analyzing The Sand-Man.

Note: I feel I should note that I am not a Christian. After reviewing what I've written here, I'm a little uncomfortable with using the New Testament in my analysis; I am certain that my reading of 1 Corinthians is not what its author intended (so I hope it's not offensive). However, I think the text of the verses I cite apply to Hoffman's story (at the very least on a superficial level), and that I can make a more original argument using them as an interpretation aid than the well-worn ones I mention in my conclusion.