Post by account_disabled on Dec 24, 2023 5:40:24 GMT 1
Sometimes a sort of particular atmosphere is created around a name, which gives its bearer a precise character, a sort of qualification that will be impossible to get rid of. That's what happened to Edgar Allan Poe . Can we perhaps think of this brilliant writer without the word horror forming in our mind? The answer is no. He is the Master of Terror. He always has been. Yet Poe did not exclusively write horror stories. Not even a third of his stories can be classified in the horror genre. I met Poe many years ago. Already as a child, perhaps due to some film adaptation that had been released, I had this name in mind. And his face too, so serious, melancholy, with his gaze lost in who knows what mystery.
The image of Edgar Allan Poe as a synonym of pure terror remained rooted in me, and in my head I recalled lost cemeteries and empty tombs, ghosts and abandoned and haunted houses. The first collection of his stories that I read obviously contained the best known ones, such as The Murders in the Rue Morgue , A Descent into the Maelström , The Pit Special Data and the Pendulum , The Cask of Amontillado and so on. Historical, detective, adventurous, dramatic stories: Poe narrated perfectly probable stories, he created situations that were perhaps absurd, but still with more than real elements. Except for a few, but very few, all of his stories could have happened. So what did Poe write that was so horrible? Just think of Berenice , in my opinion one of the most terrible and successful stories, in which the reader finds himself submerged by the horror of what happened only in the final sentence.
Poe probed an internal horror, more psychological than physical. Even if sometimes the protagonist's inner turmoil leads to a crime, there are no supernatural forces that intervene in the story. Poe told the horror of man, born of drama and pain. Poe perhaps wanted to free himself from the suffering he had within him, giving us stories that will always remain present in literature. Still remaining among the stories, we must mention those of a satirical nature, in which he enjoyed making fun of a character, a magazine or a fashion of the time. And here we must talk about the stories that caused a sensation, such as The Balloon-Hoax , published in 1844 in the New York Sun. Story appeared without title and written as a report. And so it was taken by the readers.
The image of Edgar Allan Poe as a synonym of pure terror remained rooted in me, and in my head I recalled lost cemeteries and empty tombs, ghosts and abandoned and haunted houses. The first collection of his stories that I read obviously contained the best known ones, such as The Murders in the Rue Morgue , A Descent into the Maelström , The Pit Special Data and the Pendulum , The Cask of Amontillado and so on. Historical, detective, adventurous, dramatic stories: Poe narrated perfectly probable stories, he created situations that were perhaps absurd, but still with more than real elements. Except for a few, but very few, all of his stories could have happened. So what did Poe write that was so horrible? Just think of Berenice , in my opinion one of the most terrible and successful stories, in which the reader finds himself submerged by the horror of what happened only in the final sentence.
Poe probed an internal horror, more psychological than physical. Even if sometimes the protagonist's inner turmoil leads to a crime, there are no supernatural forces that intervene in the story. Poe told the horror of man, born of drama and pain. Poe perhaps wanted to free himself from the suffering he had within him, giving us stories that will always remain present in literature. Still remaining among the stories, we must mention those of a satirical nature, in which he enjoyed making fun of a character, a magazine or a fashion of the time. And here we must talk about the stories that caused a sensation, such as The Balloon-Hoax , published in 1844 in the New York Sun. Story appeared without title and written as a report. And so it was taken by the readers.