The man of the crowd
The man of the crowd (also Der Massenmensch , English original title The Man of The Crowd ) is a story by Edgar Allan Poe , which uses the literary motif of the cursed wanderer. It was first published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in 1840 .
content
In the introduction, with reference to a German book - the Hortulus animae from the Hans Grüninger publishing house - the reader is prepared for the fact that there are secrets that fortunately are just as unfathomable as this book is illegible. Then the nameless first-person narrator introduces himself as a stroller who watches the evening hustle and bustle on a large street in London through the window of a coffee house . Having just recovered from an illness, he enjoys this state of affairs with a newspaper and a cigar and describes in detail the different strata of people streaming past - from the businessmen, lawyers and nobles down to the better and less good employees to the workers, the pickpockets and whores. This sociological cross-section is made possible by the gas lighting , which keeps people on the streets until late at night and makes them observable. The observer's attention is now caught by a particularly fascinating man of about 70 years. The narrator says of him:
“I had never seen anything as strange as the look on my face before. My first thought when I saw him was, as I well remember, that Retzsch, had he seen it, would have definitely preferred him to all other models for his embodiment of Satan. "
The narrator leaves the coffeehouse and follows this man, who is outwardly dressed in ragged clothes, but under his rags, as can be seen in the light of a gas lantern, he is wearing good-quality underwear, and a diamond or a dagger gleams out. Driven by mysterious unrest, the shabby old man rushes through the city, it begins to rain, but the narrator doesn't mind, the old man turns into side streets, often changes the side of the street, turns several laps in a brightly lit square, then runs apparently aimlessly nevertheless purposefully through a department store, plunges into the crowd of the audience that gushes out of a theater, and finally hurries out of town into a shabby district of London. Here he makes his way through the crowd of drunkards in front of a dive bar. When it closes, he returns to town, back onto the now empty main street, where the narrator spotted him and went into pursuit. The exhausted narrator gives up:
“[I] stood boldly in the way of the wanderer and looked him firmly in the face. He didn't notice me. He resumed his sad pace, while I, abandoning the pursuit, remained lost in thought. 'This old man', I finally said, 'is the archetype and the demon of the drive to crime. He can't be alone. He's the man of the crowd. ' It would be in vain to follow him, because I will neither see deeply into him nor his actions. "
interpretation
The observer of human activity in a big city, the flaneur, has become a literary topos through Poe and, in his successor, Charles Baudelaire . It is linked in The Man of the Crowd with the motif of the cursed wanderer ( Eternal Jew , Flying Dutchman , Melmoth the wanderer, etc.). It is noticeable that Poe lets the narrator say that the narrator is the embodiment of crime (the dagger!), But does not show him doing any criminal activity. Associatively, the resemblance to the crook and stealer Fagin from Charles Dickens ' novel Oliver Twist , which was published in 1837, is evident . Perhaps that is why Poe, who wrote the story in Philadelphia , moved it to a London that, in its depth, is strongly reminiscent of Flora Tristan's In the Thicket of London ( Promenades dans Londres ) of 1840.
Hoping to unravel his secret, not only the narrator but also the reader eagerly follows this wanderer, whose curse it is that he cannot be alone (which is anticipated in La Bruyère's motto ): He is always looking for the crowd on. But the riddle is not solved. Marie Bonaparte's attempt to identify the old wanderer as the revenant of Poe's foster father John Allan seems to be due to the desire to reduce everything to the Oedipus complex . The story remains an ambiguous parable in the end .
German translations (selection)
- 1921 by Hedda Moeller-Bruck : The man of the crowd . In: Edgar Poe's works. Volume 3: Crime Stories . JCC Bruns, Minden i. W. 1921, DNB 367610094 .
- 1922 by Gisela Etzel : The man of the crowd . In: Theodor Etzel (Hrsg.): Edgar Allan Poe: Works, Volume 3: Criminal stories . Propylaea publishing house, Berlin 1922, DNB 367610159 .
- 1966 by Hans Wollschläger : The mass man . In: Kuno Schumann, Hans Dieter Müller (Hrsg.): Edgar Allan Poe: Works. Part 1. First stories, grotesques, arabesques, detective stories . Walter-Verlag, Olten u. Freiburg i. Br. 1966, DNB 367610256 .
Radio play versions (selection)
- 2016: The man in the crowd. Audio piece by Rainer Römer using the story of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire's poem "À une passante". Production: Südwestrundfunk in cooperation with the Popakademie Baden-Württemberg , online until January 2021 at SWR2.de.
Web links
- Original English text
- The man of the crowd in the Gutenberg-DE project
- The man of the crowd at Zeno.org .
- Translation by Hedda Eulenberg at Haus Freiheit
Individual evidence
- ↑ For example in The Black Cat: Stories . Reclam-Verlag, Leipzig, 2004, ISBN 3-379-20102-2 , p. 31
- ↑ a b Edgar Allan Poe: The man of the crowd. In: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved November 18, 2018 .
- ↑ In the original: “This old man is the type and the genius of deep crime. He refuses to be alone. He is the man of the crowd. "
- ↑ Rainer Römer: The man in the crowd. SWR2 Hörspiel-Studio, January 31, 2019, accessed on February 12, 2019 .