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Criminal Artists And Artisans In Mysteries By E.T.A. Hoffman, Dorothy Sayers, Ernesto Sábato, Patrick Süskind, And Thomas Harris, Edith Borchardt

German Publications

Much has been written on the subject of genius and neurosis, and psychobiographies of the artistic personality are numerous; however, literature on the artist as criminal is scarce. In real life, there are probably no artists who murder for their art or whose art is murder. In literature, such figures are also relatively rare. There are, however, several fictional artists with psychopathic disorders that cause them to murder. E.T.A. Hoffmann's Cardillac in Das Fraulein von Scuderi is a goldsmith in seventeenth-century Paris who kills the recipients of the jewelry he creates. Loder in "The Abominable History of the Man with …