Pelon ja kuoleman kertomuksia

by Edgar Allan Poe, Harri Haarikko (Translator), O. Nousiainen (Translator)

Pelon ja kuoleman kertomuksia on harvinainen kokoelma Edgar Allan Poen novelleja. Amerikkalaisen romantiikan merkittävän edustajan kertomuksissa neonputket muuttuvat tervasoihduiksi ja laserkirurgia suoneniskennäksi, mutta siltikään hänen maailmansa ei ole meille vieras. Vanhentumattomat teemat, kuten läheisten menettäminen, kuolemanpelko, taloudellinen ahdinko, sairaudet ja epätoivo, purkautuvat Poen kauhuntäyteisessä outouden ylistyksessä.

Kirja sisältää seuraavat novellit:

• Merkillinen laatikko (The Oblong Box, 1844)
• Soikeakehyksinen muotokuva (The Oval Portrait, 1842)
• Joukkosielu (The Man of the Crowd, 1840)
• Kertomus hiljaisuudesta (Silence – A Fable, 1837)
• Morella (Morella, 1835)
• Metzengerstein (Metzengerstein, 1832)
• Sanojen mahti (The Power of Words, 1845)
• Berenice (Berenice, 1835)
• Tapaaminen (The Assignation, 1834)
• Kampura (Hop-Frog, 1849)

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Gothic

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1849

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

[Uuttu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edgar Allan Poen lyhyitä novelleja, käytännössä kaikki pienellä kauhuteemalla. Novellien laatu vaihtelee: osa on tosi hyviä, osasta ei jäänyt käteen oikein mitään. Nopeasti luettava teos, jossa ei varsinaisesti mitään vikaa.

Suomijulkaisuun olisin toivonut myös vieraskielisten lainausten ym. kääntämistä.

[Lyureya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vähän epäselviä ja tulkinnanvaraisia osa tarinoista, mutta mielenkiintoisia ja symbolisilta vaikuttavia

[Panu Mäkinen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kummallinen kokoelma vaihtelevan tasoisia novelleja 1800-luvun alkupuolelta. Seassa on pari kiehtovaakin tarinaa, mutta muutoin teos kannattaa ottaa lähinnä katsauksena parisataa vuotta vanhaan kauhukirjallisuuteen.

[Denis Galkin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Olipas lattea.. Jäi kesken 90 sivun kohdalla.

[Kalle K · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aika lähellä 1 tähden arvostelua, en tiedä mistä tarinatynnyrinpohjalta tämä kasa novelleja on kaavittu.