The Jesuits’ Church in G–
by E.T.W. HoffmannGenre: Suspense
Setting:
Format of Original Source: Short Story
Recommended Adaptation Length:
Candidate for Adaptation? Promising
EXCERPT:
He fancied that he could defy the gloomy power that seemed to grasp him,–he prepared his colours and began to paint; but his strength was broken, and all his endeavours were–as they had been formerly–only the puny efforts of a senseless child. Whatever he painted was stiff and inanimate, and even Angiola,–Angiola his ideal, became, when she sat to him, and he tried to paint her, a mere wax image on the canvass, staring at him with its glassy eyes. His soul became more and more the prey of a despondency, that consumed all the happiness of his life. He would not, nay, he could not, work any more; and thus he fell into a state of poverty, which was the more crushing, because Angiola did not utter a word of complaint.
“‘The grief that gnawed more and more into my soul, that grief that was the offspring of a hope, invariably deceived, when I summoned powers that were no longer mine, soon reduced me to a state that might be compared to madness. My wife bore me a son,–that increased my misery, and my long suppressed discontent broke out into open, burning hate. She–she alone had been the cause of my unhappiness.
COMMENTS:
A cursed painting; a tormented painter in this potboiler from Hoffmann.
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