THE VICTIM OF MAGICAL DELUSION (1790–1793)

“I...was preparing to rush into eternity, and going to approach the dead with a pistol in my hand, when suddenly the coffin began to shake, the boards to crack, and the cloth to move. I stopped, seized with terror. ‘Ferdinand!’ it resounded from the coffin, and at the same time Amelia arose. Her cheeks were still covered with a livid hue, her eyes shut, her lips blue, and her hands folded. Amazement and horror had fixed me to the floor, my blood curdled in my veins. ‘Ferdinand!’ the corpse addressed me in a hollow accent, ‘Ferdinand, don’t be afraid! My spirit has got leave to return once more to its former abode in order to take leave of thee. Our love was not for this world. Retire to a cloister, and there await the hour which will soon unite us by indissoluble bonds.’ Having pronounced these words, she shut her lips and dropped down again into the coffin...”Following in the wake of Friedrich Schiller's The Ghost-Seer and enormously popular in its day, Cajetan Tschink's 1790s gothic thriller of trap doors and castles, secret conspiracies, European intrigue, other-worldly magic, heart-tugging romance (joined to some metaphysical speculation of highly questionable value) entertained (if not per se influenced; the point is debatable) Sir Walter Scott, Charles Brockden Brown and the Friendly Club, the Byron/Shelley circle, and others is (by way of its English translation by Peter Will) now back in print after over 200 years.Who, when all is said and done, is the real VICTIM OF MAGICAL DELUSION? In the end, only the reader can say.

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