第7章 埃德加•爱伦•坡
7.1 复习笔记
I. Edgar Allan Poe（埃德加·艾伦·坡）
1．Life（生平）
Poe’s childhood was a miserable one. He lost both of his parents when still very small, and was taken care of by a wealthy merchant of Virginia. Father and son enjoyed nothing but an unhappy relationship together. At 17 Poe entered the University of Virginia but did not finish. He went to West Point as a cadet but was dismissed because of misbehavior. Poe wrote and worked as editor most of his short life. He was poor all his life. At 27 he married his thirteen-year-old cousin, whose death in 1847 left him inconsolable and bitter with life than ever. He died, in mysterious circumstances, in October, 1849. For a long time after his death Poe remained probably the most controversial and most misunderstood literary figure in the history of American literature. But today Poe is recognized as a great writer of fiction, a poet of the first rank, and a critic of acumen and insight. His works are read the world over with appreciation and understanding.
坡有着悲惨的童年。他年幼时父母双亡，他被弗吉尼亚一位富商收养，父子之间关系紧张。17岁时坡进入弗吉尼亚大学学习，但是没能完成学业。后来去了西点军校，却又因为行为不端而被校方开除。他短暂的一生中大部分时间都在从事写作和编辑工作。他终身贫困潦倒。27岁时，他和13岁的表妹结婚，1847年妻子的离世使他悲痛万分。1849年10月，他离奇地去世。坡死后相当长的时间里仍是美国文学史上最具争议性、被误解最深的文学家。而现在坡被认为是一位伟大的小说家、一流的诗人和具有敏锐洞察力的评论家。他的作品在世界范围内被广泛阅读，并获得了赞赏和理解。
2．Literary point of view（文学批评观）
(1) Theories for short story（短篇小说理论）
①The short story must be such length as to be read at one sitting (brevity), so as to ensure the totality of impression.
②The very first sentence ought to help to bring out the “single effect” of the story. No word should be used which does not contribute to the “pre-established” design of the work (compression).
③A tale should reveal some logic with “the fullest satisfaction,” and should end with the last sentence, leaving a sense of finality with the reader.
①短篇小说的篇幅以读者一口气读完为宜（简洁），这样可以确保印象的完整性。
②第一句话应当帮助引出故事的“单一效果”。不使用不符合“预先制定”情节的词（紧凑）。
③小说应当充分表现一些逻辑真理，最后一句应给人一种“完结感”。
(2) Theories for Poetry（诗歌理论）
①Poems should be short, concise and readable at one sitting.
②The aim of poem writing is beauty; the most beautiful thing described by a poem is the death of a beautiful woman; the desirable tone of a poem is melancholy.
③He opposed didactic poems.
④He stressed the form of poem, especially the beautiful and neat rhyme. He defined poetry as “the rhythmical creation of beauty”.
①诗歌应该简短，使读者可以一口气读完。
②诗歌创作的目的是表现美；最富诗意的美莫过于美丽女子的死亡；诗的最佳基调应是忧郁。
③他反感说教性的诗歌。
④他强调诗歌的形式，尤其强调韵律的美感。他认为“诗是美的节奏性创作”。
3．Theme and style（主题及写作风格）
He is a romantic poet who is preoccupied with the subject of the death of one’s beloved lover of great intelligence and beauty. He also writes about horror (Gothic) stories, murder, and insanity.
Poe’s style is traditional. It is much too rational, too ordinary to reflect the peculiarity of his theme. Somehow he failed to carry the newness of his idea into his style, which incidentally failed to echo his central theme. He is not easy to read. Poe’s choice of words and his syntax may have been responsible for his difficult prose.
他是浪漫主义诗人，专注于深爱的情人之死这样的主题，通常她们集智慧与美丽于一身。他也写恐怖小说（即哥特式小说），谋杀及精神错乱。
坡的写作风格很传统，很重理性，让人觉得太过平常而不易发掘他写作主题的特性。他不能将他想法的新意糅进他的风格，从而他难以重申他作品的主题思想。他的作品不好理解，作品的选词和句法是他散文难以理解的原因。
4．Influence（影响）
His influence is world-wide in modern literature. His aesthetics and conscious craftsmanship, his attack on “the heresy of the didactic”, and his call for “the rhythmical creation of beauty” have influenced French symbolists and the devotees of “art for art’s sake”. Poe is the father of psychoanalytic criticism and the father of detective story.
坡对现代文学的影响是世界性的。他的美学观点和精湛的写作技艺，对文学说教功能的抨击，以及他倡导的“诗是美的节奏性创作”对法国象征主义者和“为艺术而艺术”的信徒产生影响。坡是精神分析之父和侦探小说之父。
5．Major works（主要作品）
Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque《奇异怪诞故事集》
“MS. Found in a Bottle”《瓶子里发现的手稿》
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”《毛格街杀人案》
“The Fall of the House of Usher”《厄舍古屋的倒塌》
“The Masque of the Red Death”《红色死亡的化妆舞会》
“The Cask of Amontillado”《一桶酒的故事》
“The Raven”《乌鸦》
“Israfel”《伊斯拉菲尔》
“Annabel Lee”《安娜贝尔李》
“To Helen”《致海伦》
The Philosophy of Composition《创作哲学》
The Poetic Principle《诗歌原理》
6．Analysis of major works（主要作品分析）
◆“To Helen”《致海伦》
“To Helen” is one of the most famous of Poe’s lyrics. It was inspired by the beauty of the mother of a schoolmate of Poe’s in Richmond, Virginia. The poem is famous for a number of things, for example, its rhyme scheme, its varied line lengths, its metaphor of a travel on the sea, and its oft-quoted lines, “To the Glory that was Greece / And the grandeur that was Rome.”
《致海伦》是坡最著名的抒情诗之一。这首诗的灵感来源于坡在弗吉尼亚州里士满上学时一位同学母亲的美貌。该诗以其韵律、多变的句子长度、海上旅行这一比喻及经常被引用的诗行“光荣属于希腊，伟大属于罗马”而著称。
◆“The Raven”《乌鸦》
“The Raven” is an illustration of Poe’s poetic theory. It is about 100 lines (108 in fact), perfectly readable at one sitting. A sense of melancholy over the death of a beloved beautiful young woman pervades the whole poem: the portrayal of a young man grieving for his lost Lenore, his grief being turned to madness under the steady one-word repetition of the talking bird introduced right at the beginning of the poem.
The young man, a neurotic on the brink of a mental collapse, outpours his sorrow in his semi-sleep on the appearance of the bird. Poetic imagination externalizes itself in the phantom of a bird and intermingles with it to enhance the effect of the tragedy of the bereavement. Poe’s poems are heavily tinted in a dreamy, hallucinatory color. And the narrator is in a state of semi-stupor.
《乌鸦》体现了坡的诗歌创作理论。这首诗大概有一百行（实际上是108行），读者可以一气呵成，读完全诗。整首诗弥漫着因心爱的年轻美人逝去而忧郁的气氛。诗歌描写了一位年轻人哀悼逝去的丽诺，诗歌开篇出现的鸟儿反复重复一个词，在此影响下，他的悲伤继而转化为疯狂。
这位年轻人的精神濒临崩溃的边缘，在半梦半醒之间，面对鸟儿倾吐自己的悲伤。鸟儿的幻影是一种诗意的想象，增强了失去爱人的悲剧性。坡的诗歌中梦幻的色调较重，叙述者处于一种半昏迷的状态。