If the Faust allusions aren’t clear, then note his “sepulchral voice” and the laboratory explosion that kills the hapless dad. The kid recognizes his father’s business partner, a literally Satanic lawyer who practices alchemy by night. That’s right, “the terrible Sand-man” is a dual-identity supervillain. He reveals “the path of the wonderful and adventurous” as the child-narrator tries to unmask him. One of these is so wonderfully beautiful, that no one in the world can imagine anything like it but the other is just as ugly and frightful, so that it would be impossible to describe it.” The other Sandman isn’t a Dream-God. His sibling is named Ole-Luk-Oie too, except “he never visits anyone but once, and when he does come, he takes him away on his horse, and tells him stories as they ride along. Ole-Luk-Oie, the Dream-God, may be very “fond of children,” but if you’ve been naughty, he holds a black umbrella over you all night so come morning you’ve dreamt nothing at all. Although the Hans Anderson version isn’t all goodnight kisses either. That’s the guy Metallica is singing about. Hoffman takes the harmless Sandman, bringer of sleep to dozy children, and twists him into “a wicked man” who “throws handfuls of sand into their eyes, so that they jump out of their heads all bloody and he puts them into a bag and takes them to the half-moon as food for his little ones.” A student in my English Capstone assigned the 1816 “Der Sandmann” to our class earlier this semester. Hoffman is the better source for inverted fairies. One of Poe’s narrators does that, plucks out his beloved’s beautiful incisors and bicuspids with a pair of pliers. I must have a gothic disposition, because I assumed this creature would be coming for the rest of my still-attached teeth. Tooth fairy? Who the hell was the tooth fairy? First time I lost a tooth, I ran to the top of the steps and yelled, “My tooth came out!” I couldn’t see my mother in our laundry room, but she performed a reasonably convincing shout of excitement, ending with: “Looks like someone’s getting a visit from the tooth fairy tonight!”
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