Mid-Century Adaptations, or Albedo
Mid-Century Adaptations, or Albedo
The growing popularity of alchemy as a metaphor led to the adaptation of the alchemist in novels and plays by Hugo, Dumas, and Balzac, in all of which the alchemist’s noble ambition or lust for gold reduces his initial genius to ignominy and ridicule. Similarly, in the Austrian Friedrich Halm’s drama The Adept the alchemist’s obsession with the great secret of nature is misconstrued by society and gradually transformed into a lust for power. Like their French and German contemporaries, Poe and Hawthorne introduced the figure of the alchemist into their stories to show how his initially noble obsession could be perverted and lead to the destruction of those around him and his own dismay. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Mary Anne Atwood, whose personal practice of alchemy produced her remarkable work A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery.
Keywords: albedo, Mary Anne Atwood, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Honoré de Balzac, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, perverted obsession
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