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The Family Tree in E. T. A. Hoffmann's Die Elixiere Des Teufels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Kenneth G. Negus
Kenneth G. Negus*
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
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Extract

It has been generally recognized in critical works which treat Die Elixiere des Teufels that the central event in the story is the revelation of the facts contained in the cryptic document written by Francesko, “der alte Maler.”In this episode, all but a few of the innumerable mysteries which have existed previously in the story are dispelled by this highly concentrated history of Medardus' ancestry. Thus a focal point appears here on which much of the whole novel converges. Hoffmann himself (p. 274) uses this image to describe the role that the manuscript plays in the novel.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 73 , Issue 5-part1 , December 1958 , pp. 516 - 520
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1958

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References

Note 1 in page 516 Hoffmanns Samtliche Werke, ed. Carl Georg von Maassen (Leipzig, 1908), ii, 276-296. All subsequent page references will be to this edition, and will be given in the text.

Note 2 in page 516 Hoffmanns Samtliche Werke, n, 375; E. T. A. Hoffmann: Das Leben eines Kiinstlers (Berlin, 1920), I, 282; and E.T.A. Hoffmann: Die drei Reiche seiner Gestaltenwelt (Berlin, 1939), p. 123.

Note 3 in page 517 Pietro Belcampo, although of major importance in the novel, is not a member of the family tree, and therefore is not discussed in detail here. It should be pointed out, however, that his conspicuous absence in the family tree is significant. Only through the objectivity and irony achieved thereby is it possible for him to release extreme tensions through comic relief. His lack of personal involvement in the story also enables him to remold much of the painfully serious material of the novel into a comic form, thus helping to make things of the past appear less problematical. One of the best examples of this process is his subtle travesty of the murder supposedly committed by Medardus. At the Italian asylum, Schônfeld tells of his own flight to Italy, “eines Mordes wegen.” Medardus' vehement reaction to this indicates that he is thinking of the murder of Hermogen; his horror is allayed, however, when he learns that the murder in question here is merely that of a Backenbarl, which Peter has “killed” while shaving the face of an influential person!

Note 4 in page 517 For the sake of clarity, I have numbered characters bearing similar names in the order of their appearance on the family tree.

Note 5 in page 517 That Hoffmann conceived of Francesko I as a variation on Ahasvérus, the guilt-laden Wandering Jew, is shown not only in general parallels between the two figures. In the Handelsstadi episode Pietro Belcampo explicitly draws the comparison by referring to him as Ahasvérus in a mock exorcism which is to liberate Medardus from this threatening apparition (p. 118).

Note 6 in page 518 This is related in detail near the end of Pt. I of the novel (p. 178 ff.) by the Leibarzt: the event is only briefly alluded to in the manuscript (p. 294).