Pactos

by Edgar Allan Poe

Em 1630, um navio chamado Arbella partiu da Europa e, após uma tempestuosa travessia oceânica, finalmente alcançou o porto de Salem. Sua tripulação era composta por um grupo muito específico de os puritanos, assim chamados pelo desejo de “purificar” o cristianismo de toda e qualquer influência católica. Insatisfeitos com os rumos espirituais e políticos da Inglaterra, deixaram suas casas com a promessa de recomeço no Novo Mundo. Tinham a intenção de transformar a terra que viria se tornar os Estados Unidos em um exemplo de perfeição. Suas vidas, inteiramente dedicadas aos ensinamentos bíblicos, seriam marcadas pelos ideais de trabalho árduo e rigidez moral. Mas o sonho de um paraíso terreno rapidamente se converteu em um pesadelo infernal.Assombrados com a natureza brutal das matas densas e tomando os povos nativos como selvagens, não demorou muito para que os puritanos vislumbrassem o demônio à espreita. Preconceito, ignorância e fanatismo religioso se combinaram em uma atmosfera de vigilância constante e perseguição implacável, que haveria de alcançar seu ápice no episódio histórico que hoje conhecemos como a caça às bruxas em Salem. A ideia por trás de toda essa tragédia era que o demônio estava solto no Novo Mundo, ocultando-se ardiloso nas florestas, invadindo quartos de madrugada, tentando almas inocentes e propondo pactos a serem assinados com sangue.Foi em busca da resposta literária a essa monstruosidade histórica que surgiu Pactos, o novo lançamento da marca Macabra. Reunindo contos de pactos demoníacos escritos por autores clássicos norte-americanos, o volume traz obras-primas de Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Washington Irving, Stephen Vincent Benét e Harriet Beecher Stowe, escritas entre 1824 e 1936.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 2019

About the author

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...

Reviews

[julia ☆ [owls reads] · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poucos histórias, mas gostei bastante delas! Com exceção do Mark Twain--nunca suportarei.

[Leonardo Machado · Rating 4 out of 5]

As artes do livro são lindas. A escolha dos contos são ótimos, poderia até ter mais alguns. Os textos de introdução e extra sobre o tema são bem interessantes também.