"The Devil's Elixirs" by E T A Hoffmann

This Gothic novel is heavy on plot, if you can call this convoluted picaresque a plot, but light on character. Having drunk a wine associated with the relic of Saint Anthony and reputed to be one of the Devil's elixirs, with which Satan had unsuccessfully tried to tempt the Saint, Brother Medardus has an interlude as a highly successful preacher which puffs him up with pride before, as a penance, he is sent by his Abbot to Rome. On the course of this journey he assumes the identity of a Count who he has just seen fall from a cliff, falls in love with a noblewoman and murders her brother, escapes, travels to a Princely court, wins a fortune gambling, encounters his doppelganger, meets a smooth-talking barber, is arrested for murder, escapes, and continues his journey to Rome where he repents of his sins and seeks redemption. I may have missed a few dozen incidents out and confused others. After a while, I stopped paying attention.

All of the usual Gothic tropes are here: 

• the hero is a mad monk (there is even a name check to the English novel The Monk by Matthew Lewis which was published in 1796), 
• there is the usual Protestant hysteria over Roman Catholicism, 
• there is murder, 
• there is a doppelganger, 
• there is imprisonment in a dungeon (and the doppelganger tunnels his way into the cell in what seems like the source of a similar episode in the Count of Monte Cristo which was written by Alexandre Dumas pere in 1846), 
• there is a mysterious painter described as the Wandering Jew, 
• there's a secret trapdoor set in motion by a spring, 
• there is the phrase “odour of sanctity” (2.2) which always makes me wonder what sanctity smells of, I personally imagine a mix of must and floor polish
• there is the phrase "subtle cruelty" (2.2): something in Gothic romances of the time always had to be subtle.
• there is a thunderstorm

It is written in the heightened headlong hysteria common to the genre at the time: “Are you then free from sin, that you dare to look in loss to my heart as if you were the purest man alive, yea as if you were God Himself, whom you despise; that you dare to pronounce the remission of my sins - you, who will struggle in vain for forgiveness, for the blessedness of haven which will always be denied you? Despicable hypocrite, soon the hour of requital will come, and you will be grounded in the dust like a venomous serpent, rising in mortal shame and moaning in vain for release from your unutterable agony!” (1.2) When a writer uses words such as ‘unutterable’ or ‘indescribable’ I always think that, if they had sufficient skill, they would be able to utter or describe it.

Descriptions are equally rococo:

“As the coach moved off there were flashes of lightning in the distance and the clouds which the wind had hurled together and was driving across the sky, became blacker and blacker; the thunder rolled in a thousand echoes, and red lightning rent the heavens as far as the eye could see. The tall pines cracked, shattered to their roots, and the rain poured down in torrents.” (1.3)

Did I enjoy it? Not much. It just went on and on. Madness gets boring quite quickly. I did enjoy the barber who had a joie de vivre he expressed in wonderfully impetuous language, at once similar to and different from the standard prose of the book: “You will see the modern gentleman of fashion in every conceivable refinement - now boldly outshining everyone, now morose and disinterested, now naively flirting, now ironic, witty, ill-tempered, melancholic, bizarre, dissolute, graceful, jovial.” (1.3) He claims he isn't mad but a clown: “Is not a barber of genius inevitably a clown right from the beginning? Clowning is a protection against madness, and I can assure you, reverend sir, that even by north-northwest I can clearly distinguish a church spire from a lamp-post.” (2.2) This is clearly quoting Shakespeare. In Act 2 Scene 2, Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: "I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw".

It had its moments. I wondered whether the Elixirs were a metaphor for drug addiction, whether the Devil was a pusher: “O Brother Medardus, the Devil walks the earth unceasingly, offering his elixirs to men. Who has not at some time or other delighted in his potions?” (2.2) There were some wonderfully wacky moments which often seemed to include owls. But I struggled to finish it.

Selected quotes:

• “Just as Classical forms of architecture have been preserved in the churches, so a ray of light from the joyful age of Antiquity seems to have shone into the dark mysticism of Christianity, bringing with it something of the radiant glory which surrounded the ancient gods and heroes.” (1.1)
• “Satan ... leered mockingly at The Saint and asked him whether he would like to taste the elixirs that were in the bottles he was carrying.” (1.1)
• “Let us climb onto the roof beneath the weathercock, which is playing a merry tune for the owl’s wedding. Up there we will fight with each other, and the one who pushes the other over will become a king and be able to drink blood.” (1.3)
• “You wobbled about like a badly-made skittle.” (2.2)
• “Banished from the church, excluded like a leper from the gatherings of the brethren, I lay in the vaults of the monastery, ekeing out a pitiable existence on tasteless herbs boiled in water, whipping and torturing myself with instruments devised by the most subtle cruelty, and raising my voice in self accusation, in contrite prayer for my redemption from hell, whose flames were already glowing within me.” (2.2)
• “There was a confused rustling and whispering; people I had known before appeared, madly distorted; heads crawled about with grasshoppers’ legs growing out of their ears, and leering at me obscenely; strange birds, ravens with human heads, were beating their wings overhead. I saw the choir master from B — and his sister, who was wildly dancing a waltz while her brother accompanied her by playing on his breast, which had become a fiddle. Belcampo, with the ugly face of a lizard, was sitting on a horrible dragon; he made a rush as if to comb my beard with a red-hot iron comb, but he did not reach me. The chaos became mad and madder, the figures more and more weird, from the smallest ant dancing with human feet to the elongated skeleton of a horse with glittering eyes, its skin a saddlecloth on which was sitting a knight with a shining owl’s-head; his armour was a mug with the bottom knocked out, his helmet a funnel turned upside down.” (2.2)

Hoffmann was also author of The Sandman, which formed the basis for the first act of Offenbach's opera Tales from Hoffmann and the ballet Coppelia by Delibes; another of his short stories formed the basis the The Nutcracker, the ballet by Tchaikovsky. 

First published in 1816

My OneWorld Classics edition, based on Ronald Taylor's 1963 translation was issued in 2008.

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God