The barrel of amontillado
The barrel Amontillado , engl. The Cask of Amontillado , is one of Edgar Allan Poe's famous late short stories , first published in the November 1846 issue of Godey's Lady's Book .
content
The first-person narrator Montrésor lures the hated Fortunato, who still thinks himself to be Montrésor's friend, into the vaults under his palazzo during the carnival and walled him up alive as revenge for the "thousandfold injustices" suffered. As bait, Montrésor uses a barrel of Amontillado , which is said to be waiting for the two connoisseurs down there and must be examined. Whenever Fortunato hesitates to come along, Montrésor Luchresi mentions (according to the original edition, in more modern editions and in literary research, “Luchesi” is occasionally used), another friend whom he could ask for his judgment. That is enough to lure Fortunato into the murderous trap. What Fortunato did to Montrésor, the narrator, remains in the dark.
In the text Montrésor mentions his family motto “Nemo me impune lacessit” (“Nobody offends me with impunity” or “Nobody attacks me with impunity”). The Latin family motto is not translated in every version of the text.
interpretation
Edgar Allan Poe wrote and published this short story in 1846 when he was in the War of the Literati , which culminated in Poe's lawsuit for defamation . Poe's opponent was Thomas Dunn English , the argument took place in the columns of the New York Evening Mirror , headed by Hiram Fuller. The secret anger of the first-person narrator Montrésor would then, in this interpretation, reflect his anger at Thomas Dunn English (Fortunato), the recurring Luchresi could mean Hiram Fuller (Hiram Fuller squinted slightly, which makes the anglicization "look crazy" in Italian Luchresi gets sense), which Poe threatens to call as a judge.
In 1846 English published the novel 1844, or, The Power of the SF or MDCCCXLII. or the Power of the SF In this novel appears the character of Marmaduke Hammerhead, who is a satirical parody of Poe. Hammerhead is described as the famous writer of 'The Black Crow' and uses phrases such as 'Nevermore' and 'lost Lenore', which have a clear reference to Poe's poem The Raven , published a year earlier . As a parody of Poes, Hammerhead is characterized as a drunkard and liar who also enters into an abusive sexual relationship.
Poe, in turn, takes up numerous themes and scenes from this novel in his short story and satirizes them in turn.
Martha Womack points out further parallels between the figure of Fortunato and Poe's stepfather John Allan.
As Hagopian and Cunliffe and O'Donovan show in their interpretations of history, Das Fass Amontillado goes far beyond the generic framework of a mere horror story . Beyond reading as an effective dark horror or revenge story (“first-class gothic story”) in the sense of the “single effect” poetologically demanded by Poe, The Cask of Amontillado can equally well be considered “a profound psychological and moral study ”(Eng .:“ a profound psychological and moral study ”) that suggestively appeals to the imagination and imagination of the reader.
Fifty years after his gruesome murder, Montrésor made an intimate confession - presumably on his own deathbed in the presence of a priest - in which he on the one hand showed repentance and prayed for the soul of his victim, but on the other hand was extremely bitter about his plan a perfect vengeance have ultimately not been fulfilled.
Another interpretation of "In Pace Requiescat" presents it as a final mockery of the victim. The reason for the vengeance is not mentioned in the entire story; Montrésor and Fortunato are represented as very similar characters, the coat of arms of the Montrésors, a foot trampling a snake, in whose heel the snake's teeth bite, comes from Genesis 3:15 and is a symbol for the fundamentally misguided Human vengeance: While the unreliable narrator Montrésor sees himself as the foot that tramples the snake Fortunato, it is more plausible for the reader to assume that Fortunato clumsily stepped on the snake Montrésor, which then doggedly doggedly its life in Fortunato.
Poe's protagonists describe Amontillado, which is a form of sherry , as an Italian type of wine ("I was skillful in the Italian vintages myself and bought largely whenever I could.") The two friends taste a Médoc , also not the "Italian harvest", to which Montrésor pretends to be capricious. Fortunato, the alleged wine connoisseur, declares the bait Luch (r) esi proposed by Montrésor to be a dilettante , since he cannot distinguish “amontillado from sherry”; He does not know how to classify the wines that Montrésor hands him, and by drinking he is unable to classify the amontillado as if “requested”. He might just be an alcoholic instead of the connaisseur he pretends to be .
The first-person narrator owns a Roman palazzo, but has a French name. In the Italian décor, Poe (as in Politian and The Appointment ) is attracted by the mask, music and embedding in fictional ancient traditions that do not exist in the United States , and he also pays homage to Byron's black romanticism .
Fear of living burial was widespread at the time the story was written. Many coffins were given ways with which someone falsely declared dead could make himself noticeable after the burial.
Marie Bonaparte seems to take the narrative completely out of context , which she sees as a witness for psychoanalysis and carries out other equations. She sees Fortunato as an image of the hated foster father John Allan and places the story in the group of those who dealt with Poe's alleged "patricide fantasies" in coded form. She interprets the shared love of wine as " Oedipus rivalry "; psychoanalytically she equates the vault with the womb. That he is depicted as a tomb makes sense when you consider that Poe's mother and foster mother as well as his father and foster father are dead at this point and his wife is terminally ill. Marie Bonaparte also points out that at this time Poe adored the poet Frances Osgood, whom his friend Rufus Wilmot Griswold also had an eye on. Rivalry for the beloved woman could have been a third motive for the story.
German translations (selection)
- 1908: Bodo Wildberg : The Amontillado barrel. The books of the German House, Berlin.
- 1910: Gisela Etzel : The Amontillado barrel. Propylaen Verlag, Munich.
- 1911: Hedda Moeller-Bruck and Hedwig Lachmann : The Amontillado barrel. JCC Bruns, Minden.
- 1922: M. Bretschneider : The Amontillado barrel. Rösl & Cie. Publishing house, Munich.
- 1925: Wilhelm Cremer : The barrel of Amontillado wine. Otto Mieth Verlag, Berlin.
- 1925: Stefan Hofer: The barrel with Amontillado wine. Interterritorial publishing house “Renaissance”, Vienna.
- approx. 1925: Bernhard Bernson : The Amontillado barrel. Josef Singer Verlag, Strasbourg.
- 1945: Marlies Wettstein : The Amontillado barrel. Artemis, Zurich.
- 1955: Arthur Seiffart : The Amontillado Barrel. Tauchnitz, Stuttgart.
- 1966: Hans Wollschläger : The Amontillado container. Walter Verlag, Freiburg i. Br.
- 1989: Heide Steiner : The Amontillado barrel. Insel-Verlag, Leipzig.
- 1989: Thekla Zachrau : Das Faß Amontillado. Reclams Universal Library, Stuttgart.
annotation
The story was set to music on the Alan Parsons Project's album Tales of Mystery and Imagination .
Adaptations
- In 1962, the British feature film Tales of Terror was released. This includes several stories from Poe. The plot of Das Fass Amontillado and The Black Cat were combined here.
- The feature film Dolan's Cadillac (2009) contains allusions to the story of Poe
literature
- Edgar Allan Poe: Works. ed. by Kuno Schuhmann and Hans Dieter Müller, Olten 1966.
- John V. Hagopian, W. Gordon Cunliffe: Poe, Edgar Allan - The Cask of Amontillado. In: John V. Hagopian, Martin Dolch (Eds.): Insight I. Analyzes of American Literature. Hirschgraben Verlag Frankfurt a. M. 1971, pp. 203-207.
- Noreen O'Donovan: Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado. In: Noreen O'Donovan: Famous Stories of Surprise. Model interpretations. Klett Verlag, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-12-577610-4 , pp. 17-24.
- Frank T. Zumbach : EA Poe - A biography. Munich 1986.
- Frank T. Zumbach: EA Poe - A biography. New edition, Patmos Verlag, Düsseldorf 2007, ISBN 978-3-491-69144-5 .
Web links
- Das Fass Amontillado - German translation by Hedda Eulenberg (1901) as a PDF file
- The barrel of Amontillado at Zeno.org .
- Edgar Allen Poe Das Faß Amontillado - German text ed. by Theodor Etzel on Project Gutenberg-DE
- free audio book at vorleser.net
- Original English text of the first edition in 1846
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Cf. the digital edition of the first impression dated November 5, 1846 in Godey's Lady's Book The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar A. Poe. On: Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. Retrieved January 30, 2015.
- ^ Rust, Richard D. "Punish with Impunity: Poe, Thomas Dunn English and 'The Cask of Amontillado'" in The Edgar Allan Poe Review, Vol. II, Issue 2 - Fall, 2001, St. Joseph's University.
- ↑ a b http://www.poedecoder.com/essays/cask/
- ↑ See Poe's essays The Philosophy of Composition and The Poetic Principle
- ↑ See John V. Hagopian and W. Gordon Cunliffe: Poe, Edgar Allan - The Cask of Amontillado. In: John V. Hagopian, Martin Dolch (Eds.): Insight I. Analyzes of American Literature. Hirschgraben Verlag Frankfurt a. M. 1971, p. 206, and Noreen O'Donovan: Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado . In: Noreen O'Donovan: Famous Stories of Surprise. Model interpretations. Klett Verlag , Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-12-577610-4 , p. 20.
- ↑ See in detail John V. Hagopian and W. Gordon Cunliffe: Poe, Edgar Allan - The Cask of Amontillado . In: John V. Hagopian, Martin Dolch (Eds.): Insight I Analyzes of American Literature. Hirschgraben Verlag Frankfurt a. M. 1971, pp. 203 ff., And Noreen O'Donovan: Edgar Allan Poe, The Cask of Amontillado. In: Noreen O'Donovan: Famous Stories of Surprise. Model interpretations. Klett Verlag, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-12-577610-4 , p. 17 f. and 19 ff.
- ↑ Cecil, L. Moffitt. "Poe's Wine List" , from Poe Studies , Vol. V, no. December 2, 1972. p. 41.
- ^ Marie Bonaparte: Edgar Poe. International Psychoanalytischer Verlag, Vienna 1934.