"Devil in Love" by J. Cazotte and "The Elemental Spirit" by E. T. A. Hoffmann: Symbolic and Psychological Interpretation of Motive of Temptation

The article deals with the story of the French pre-romanticist J. Cazotte "The Devil in Love" and the late novella of the German romanticist E. T. A. Hoffmann's "Elemen-tal Spirit", in which, as in a "magic mirror", recurring fantastic events of the temptation of heroes by evil spirits are presented. The rel-evance of the study is related to the problem of the formation of science fiction as a histori-cal concept. It is shown that the characters have a love feeling for the messengers of the natu-ral world. Faced with a miracle, they become participants in supernatural events and expe-rience the "pernicious consequences of fiery imagination." It is noted that the dream of car-nal love, its bodily embodiment, sobering up are presented through a deep penetration into the psychology of the characters. It describes how the supernatural is introduced into eve-ryday life with the help of symbolic images: a mirror, a dagger, a dream, a mother, etc. It is emphasized that the motive of tempta-tion in conjunction with the motives of trial, fall, suffering, fate create a kind of "circle". The novelty of the study is connected with the identification in the system of characters of the tempted person image as a direct par-ticipant (witness) of supernatural events. This approach made it possible to present a his-torical perspective, complicated and refined, of J. Cazotte temptation motif functioning in the romantic era in the work of E. T. A. Hoff-mann and in the works of Russian writers.