Collected Works of A. I. Herzen, Volume 4

Medardus in two; and how terrifying is his double, with his matted beard, his tattered rags, his bloodied face: the height of horror! I trembled in every limb reading how the false-Medardus chased the real one in the forest; I thought I heard his piercing voice, creaking like rusted iron, with which he called him to battle with insane laughter. This double of Medardus is his brother, whom Medardus does not know; he has gone mad with the thought that he is Medardus, and so he pursues Medardus, who, tormented by pangs of conscience, thinks that his own being has split!—What boldness of imagination, and look how Hoffmann maintained all the scenes of their meetings, how he intertwined these two lives so that they are in truth not entirely different!—This is the most powerful work of his fantasy!

Let us move now to the pranks and follies of his powerful imagination.

Tatyana came to her senses, she looks...
And what does she see... Around the table
Sit monsters all around:
One with horns, with a dog’s muzzle,
Another with a rooster’s head,
Here is a witch with a goat’s beard,
There a proud trunk is moving,
There a dwarf with a tail, and here
A half-crane and half-cat...
Excerpt from Alexander Pushkin’s "Eugene Onegin," Chapter 5.

Who has not happened to see such dreams? Do you wish to see them while awake? Here you have "Meister Floh" Master Flea, Princess Brambilla, Little Zaches, The Golden Pot... These are all dreams, each one more incoherent than the next. There are no thoughts here, no complications, no resolutions, but the interest is terrible. Dreams are generally interesting, or else who would command a man to sleep every day? And how could they not be interesting? Live to be a hundred, you will never meet anything more wondrous. Here you will become acquainted with a prince who turned into a leech; sometimes he will become pensive, recall his former life, and stretch out to the ceiling, then shrink into a fist. Here you will see a princess who sleeps in the calyx of a beautiful flower, cute to the extreme; but what is the use: oculis non manibus to the eyes, not to the hands... and so they enlarge her through a microscope and make a quite decent young lady out of her. But above all, I beg you to hate Zaches: he is, truly, a villain, my personal enemy, and if he had not drowned in a washbasin, I would have killed him. Imagine: a freak a few inches tall, with three red hairs on his head, falls into the favor of a sorceress; and what happens? Whatever good anyone does, klein Zaches Ziunnober genannt called little Zaches Zinnober receives the praise. O-