We consider the hero's path to self-knowledge, «inside himself» in Hoffmann's novel «The Devil's Elixirs», which is the key idea of Gnostic myths and mysteries. Images related to the heroes (the rose, the cross, the knife) in the beginning of the novel are just an illusion, they distract the reader's attention from the true sense, which will appear in the final of the novel in the dream of Medardus. This dream contains symbols of initiation and embodies the process of separation of the spiritual (rose) from the physical (cross).
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