Devil Elixir by Hoffmann E T A: First Edition (1 results)
More imagesPublished by William Blackwood & T. Cadell, Edinburgh & London 1824
- First Edition
Seller: Biblioctopus, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.Biblioctopus
Contact seller4-star sellerFirst Edition. 2 vols. in one. First in English. Original blue cloth backed boards, and printed paper spine label. Light wear, bookplate, small ink signature to the title page, a little foxed, but withal near fine, amazing condition for any book this vintage, especially this one. A rare book, even when it's rebound, and this is…the only copy I have ever seen of it in its original, fragile binding, in any condition, anywhere (best copy in the world so far). Coll: 12mo. [viii], 379; [4], 339 pages. Following 30 years of gothic novels with logical (not paranormal) explanations at the end, Matthew Lewis added the supernatural in his 1795 novel The Monk, but it was Hoffmann, in The Devil's Elixirs ("Die Elixiere des Teufels" Berlin, 1815), who took supernatural horror out of the Gothic castle, and on to the highway, rearranging and expanding the potential plotlines and leaving a legacy vitally alive today, for his descendants, Bram Stoker, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King. He elevates the sport to a new zenith as he analyzes the destructive psychological state, the deeply divided nature of human imagination, and the seductive ambiguities of art. The Capuchin monk Medardus is a charismatic criminal whose superficial holiness is a facade masking an inner wickedness. Driven by power fantasies Medardus drinks an arcane liquor (60 years before Stevenson's Jekyll & and Hyde) and becomes implicated in a mystery against his will. Traveling on the road to Rome, and wrestling with the enigma of his own identity (65 years before Freud), he is pursued by a demonic and murderous doppelganger (multiple identity as a wraith of himself). The monk's only potential salvation lies with the sex object Aurelie, but to escape the curse which lies over him (and his family), he must evade sinister powers, of the living and the dead. Does he do it? Nope.
