Review of “The Oval Portrait” (1842)
Edgar Allan Poe (writer).
Read in 2022.
A gravely injured man takes refuge in an abandoned mansion. An unusually lifeflike portrait on the wall catches his attention and he reads a note on its provenance.
On the border between the Todorovian uncanny and the fantastic, because of its strong metaphor of artistic self-destruction.
References here: “The Imp of the Perverse” (1845), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891).