The Devil's Elixirs () is an 1815 novel by E. T. A. Hoffmann. The basic idea for the story was adopted from Matthew Gregory Lewis's novel The Monk, which is itself mentioned in the text. However, his treatment of the story of a fallen Monk was more deeply probing of the human psyche, and was considered far superior by the German poet and critic, Heinrich Heine. Story lines in plays by Pedro Calderon and Heinrich von Kleist, which Hoffman directed in 1811, were also influential.
Hoffman wrote the novel while living in Bamberg and visited the Catholic Capuchin monastery there. Although he was nominally a Lutheran, he made an entry in his diary that he was favorably impressed by the religious atmosphere, and he determined to write the novel in that setting. The visit provided authentic details for his monk. Characteristically for Hoffmann, he wrote the novel quickly. He completed the actual writing of part 1 in five weeks in 1814 and part 2 during several months in 1815.
The Devil's Elixirs is described by some literary critics as fitting into the German genre, Schauerroman, which may more properly be considered as part of a interrelated complex, "the literature of the uncanny", that includes English Gothic, German Schauerroman, and French littérature fantastique, prominent during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as well as subsequent gothic works by writers in the later 19th century and beyond, initiated most notably by Edgar Allan Poe.
From this perspective, Medardus, the protagonist, is a debauched monk who is born into a world manipulated by fate reminiscent of Nemesis. However, the story is deeply ambiguous and can also be read as a Christian redemption narrative that may have been over emphasized in the available English translations. In this alternate narrative the world is ultimately controlled by Providence which leads to Medardus's redemption.
The Devil's Elixirs was said by scholars of his era, and the present, to follow from the graphic tradition of the grotesques of Jacques Callot.
Synopsis The Devil's Elixirs (referred to hereafter as Elixirs) is predominantly a first-person narrative related by the Capuchin monk Medardus. The following summary of his unreliable narrative is based primarily on a German lecture.
Medardus (birth name, Franz) is ignorant of his family history and what he knows about his childhood is based upon fragments of memory and a few events his mother has explained to him. His father, a sinful man, repents and is told that he will receive redemption through the birth of a son. He dies at the moment of Franz's birth. Franz's first conscious memories are of the Monastery of the Holy Linden, which has been adorned by religious paintings by an Old Painter who has disappeared.
He and his mother meet the Abbess who hugs him; however, he is wounded by a diamond crucifix which she wears around her neck. The Abbess takes them under her care, and he is able to study at a Capuchin monastery where he becomes a monk and takes his religious name.
However, his sincerity wanes and he becomes a famed (but self-aggrandizing) preacher. He loses his eloquence after being confronted by the Old Painter, (unknown to Medardus at the time but distinguished by his dark eyes and purple cloak). He regains his eloquence after drinking the devil's elixir, a relic of Saint Anthony, a flask of wine offered to the saint by Satan, which he had refused to drink. While in the chapel, he has a dream (which seems like reality) of being approached by a beautiful young woman resembling Saint Rosalia depicted in the altarpiece painting. She asks him to hear her confession, and she confesses her love for him. He becomes infatuated and decides to escape the monastery to seek her. But before he makes his escape, the prior sends him on a mission to Rome.
In his subsequent travels, Medardus finds a man in a military uniform on a point of rock that projects over an abyss. When Medardus attempts to wake him, the man is startled, falls, and is apparently killed. (The actual circumstances are ambiguous.) Unbeknownst to all involved, the man is Count Viktorin, Medardus's look-alike half-brother. Viktorin had been on the way to meet his lover, Euphemie. He had planned to meet her at the local Baron's castle disguised as a monk. Much later, it is revealed that Euphemie is Medardus's half-sister.
Euphemie attempts to renew her relations with the fake Viktorin, but Medardus rejects her after he becomes infatuated with Aurelie, the Baron's daughter. Medardus attempts to seduce Aurelie; but she is protected by her brother, Hermogen. They later fight and Medardus kills Hermogen in self-defense. Euphemie also dies from a poison which she had intended for Medardus. An alarm is sounded and he flees. Meanwhile, It turns out that Viktorin is not dead; and he becomes Medardus's lunatic doppelgänger.
After his escape he takes the alias "Leonard" and assumes a new personality. Adventures continue at the home of a forester and in a principality headed by an eccentric Prince who becomes his friend. Although Pietro Belcampo (alias Peter Schönfeld), a foolish barber, had helped him change his appearance, when Aurelie arrives at the principality, she recognizes him as Medardus, her brother's killer, which is confirmed by the cruciform scar on his neck. He is arrested but released by the Prince after the doppelgänger, who has a similar scar, confesses.
After Leonard is freed, Aurelie accepts his new identity, befriends him, and they become engaged. He finds a letter from Aurelie to her aunt, the Abbess, that discloses that she had earlier had a dream about confessing her love for him in a agonized counterpart of his own dream. Just before the wedding, he has a fit of madness after hearing the voice of the doppelgänger as he passes by on the way to his execution. He stabs Aurelie; attacks the doppelgänger and unintentionally frees him. They continue fighting as he runs, into the wilderness. He loses consciousness as a result of wounds and awakens in an Italian monastery, saved by Belcampo.
He proceeds to Rome where he pursues his mission as emissary to the pope. Returned to his original identity, Medardus undergoes an intense process of repentance, he learns that Aurelie didn't die and discovers his family history by reading a parchment book written by the Old Painter, the families sinful, but repentant, ancient progenitor.
After a nearly fatal encounter with the inquisition, Medardus returns to the Capuchin monastery where a feast is being held – Aurelie is soon to take her final vows to become a nun. Her monastic name is to be Rosalia. Once again, he must struggle with his lust. Just as he seems to have mastered it, the doppelgänger rushes in and stabs Aurelie, fatally this time, and once more escapes. Aurelie confesses her love for Medardus as she is dying.
At the end, Medardus writes the story of his life as an act of penance. A final note from the monastery librarian reveals the circumstances of his death. He had the cell next to Medardus, where he heard strange laughing and a horrible voice which invited Medardus to join his betrothed. A man with dark eyes and purple cloak (obviously the Old Painter) is seen leaving the cell. Medardus dies soon after, precisely one year after Aurelie on the feast day of Saint Rosalia. A vagabond named Peter Schônfeld, is found placing flowers at the portrait of the saint. He is taken in and becomes a lay monk.
Francesko family tree and relationships
The life story of Medardus is imbedded in a larger story of five generations of the Francesko family. This larger context is revealed in the parchment book written by the progenitor of the family, the first Francesko (referred to hereafter simply as Francesko, although there are others with the same name). Medardus did not include the contents of the parchment book in his narrative. It was deciphered and inserted near the end of the second volume by the anonymous editor [Hoffmann] and seemingly resolves many of the puzzling aspects of the story up to that point. According to a journal article by Kenneth G. Negus, the parchment book account is the "focal point of the whole novel" and Francesko is the "prototype for Medardus". There are many parallels between Francesko and Medardus including:
Francesko's great sin was to paint Saint Rosalia in a naked erotic pose. However, he later repents and undergoes harsh penance. After he repents, he prays to her and the Virgin Mary, and they intercede with heaven on his behalf. However, his sins and those of his descendants are so great that he can not be forgiven until the whole family line is eliminated. As described by Francesko:
Francesko uses Medardus to accomplish his mission. He is harsh and ominous, even at Medardus' death. His final words said in a deep dark voice were, "The hour of fulfilment is not far hence". However, he also sought to protect him "with all the strength of his command".
On the other hand, James M. McGlathery concluded in another journal article that the perspectives of Francesko and Medardus likely differed:
Although the Francesko family tree is bewilderingly complex and the relationships between family members are often violent and misogynistic, Hoffman, as the editor, asks for the reader's forbearance while reading Francesko's account:
There may be an unsettling aspect of the family tree. Francesko and his evil descendants are Italian, which "to Hoffmann as to his fellow Germans, Italy was that ambiguous realm of beauty and of horror, the land of Raphael and of the Borgias". The grandmother of Aurelie was a German maiden and the mother of Medardus was also apparently German. According to Charles E. Passage, "the impetus that enables the good strain in these dual natures to prevail over the evil strain, comes, it would seem, from an infusion of German blood".
Motivation and antecedents As noted above, a primary focus of Elixirs was on how family history affected the ability of Medardus to establish his own self-identity. In her paper, On Genealogy: Biology, Religion, and Aesthetics in E. T. A. Hoffmann's Elixiere des Teufels (1815–16) and Erasmus Darwin's Zoonomia (1794–96), Christine Lehleiter noted that incidences of incest and murder in the family history of Medardus were correlated with "the number of blood connections to the original progenitor" and "particularly strong in those descendants who are the offspring of one or several incestuous relationships". She then went on to question the extent to which Hoffmann (without the benefit of information learned from the science of genetics) considered the importance of heredity in this regard.
In 1796, Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles Darwin) published the second volume of his work, Zoonomia. It included statements such as, "The disposition to insanity, as well as to convulsion, is believed to be hereditary; and in consequence to be induced in those families from slighter causes than in others". His book was translated into German about two years later; and, while clinical in nature and focused on treatment, it apparently helped spawn a philosophical debate there concerning the nature of selfhood. Hoffman often visited the library of his friend Carl Friedrich Kunz which contained a copy. According to Lehleiter, it is safe to assume that Hoffmann studied Kunz's copy of Darwin's Zoonomia, since he was "preoccupied" with mental disease.
He was a close friend of Dr. Adalbert Marcus, director of the mental asylum at St. Getreu, and conferred with him about mental disease. St. Getreu is specifically mentioned in Elixirs and its director praised by the prior in the Prince's court:
He was motivated to explore this topic because of concern for his own mental health, there being a tendency for insanity in his family. An entry in his diary stated in effect that he thought about madness "much of the time, whether awake or asleep".