The Devil's Elixirs

E. T. A. Hoffmann · 1815 CE · Novel · German · Romantic

A Capuchin given charge of his monastery's relics finds a flask of wine said to remain from the devil's temptation of St Anthony, drinks it, and is sent out into the world with a new eloquence and nothing holding it. A murder he half commits is finished by a man wearing his own face and habit, and a painter's chronicle traces a hereditary curse toward him. Hoffmann built it on Matthew Lewis's The Monk and made the Doppelgänger German property; Poe and Dostoevsky both took it from here.

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• ↓ The Double
  Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1846 CE · Novel — influenced by this

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Closest analogues

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