Novel
The Devil's Elixirs
Die Elixiere des Teufels
E.T.A. Hoffmann · 1815
Synopsis
Franz, entrusted as a child by his mother to a Capuchin monastery, takes the name Medardus there and becomes an admired preacher, then a proud one. As keeper of the relics, he secretly drinks the wine preserved as the elixir of Saint Anthony, by which the devil is said to have tempted the saint: his eloquence is revived, but desires awaken in him. A young woman confesses her love to him in the confessional, and he believes he sees Saint Rosalia. Sent to Rome by the prior, he glimpses on the way, at the edge of a precipice, a count who looks exactly like him.
Context
The novel was conceived in early 1814, the author recalling his visit to the Capuchin monastery in Bamberg; it takes up the plot of Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk, which the text cites. The first part appeared in Berlin from Duncker and Humblot in September 1815, the second the following year. The novel makes the double for the first time the central driving force of a literary work, and Freud dwells on it in his essay on the uncanny.
Who it is for
A novel in two parts, in the first person, presented as the posthumous papers of Brother Medardus.
Prizes and reception
Heinrich Heine judged it far superior to Lewis's novel; it has been adapted three times for the cinema, in 1922, 1973 and 1976.