French Hoffmania: Théophile Gautier’s “Onuphrius” (1833) and the critique of the etiology of pathological reading

“Of unknown cause” – that was the verdict given by the doctors after the death of the character of Onuphrius after his infatuation with E.T.A. Hoffmann led him to a mental asylum. in the conclusion of the eponymous tale written by Théophile Gautier in 1833, What exactly does Onuphrius die of? Although Gautier stresses that reading can cause not only madness but also death, he does not mention how his hero dies, and thus separates himself from both the tradition of literary discourses on pathological reading and from the new aetiology of mental disorders. My hypothesis is that this suppression of the aetiology of pathological reading is far from accidental: the reference to the possibility of “Hoffmania” is both highly medicalized, as Hoffmann appears at that time as a case study of the sick author, and treated as a fantastic motive, leaving unexplored all its causes and mechanisms. This allows Gautier to ascertain the premises of his theory of “art for art’s sake,” as it echoes the syllogism this theory is based upon, which contends that art is free and independent, yet its effects are deeply felt on the subject’s body, in a way that must remain unclear.