The fall of the House of Usher

The Fall of the House of Usher , illustration by Aubrey Beardsley , 1894

The Fall of the House of Usher , rarely also the case of the House of Usher and The Fall of the House Ash (original: The Fall of the House of Usher ), is a short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe in 1839 in, Burton's Gentleman's Magazine revised 1840 appeared in the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque collection . A German translation of the story by Hedda Eulenberg was first published in 1901. In 1960 the text was retransmitted into German by Christel and Helmut Wiemken ; Another translation by Arno Schmidt followed in 1966 .

content

Disturbed by the urgent letter from childhood friend Roderick Usher, the nameless first-person narrator rides to his property, the House of Usher, which is characterized by its ghostly surroundings, especially the pool from which it rises, as well as a crack that runs through the walls , creates an unsettling and terrifying impression. It also tells of the lake on which the Usher house is located. Demonic figures should come up and fetch those who stare too long at the lake.

There the narrator meets the nervously overstrained, apparently mentally ill landlord, the last offspring of a degenerate noble family. Roderick Usher asks his visitor to keep him company for a while to make his illness more bearable. Shortly thereafter, the host's twin sister, Lady Madeline, allegedly dies and is laid out and buried in the basement of the house.

During a stormy night a few days later, the first-person narrator reads a supposedly cheering knight's story to Roderick, who is severely nervous and also sleepless, which ultimately only increases the horror of the eerie noises in the house. Through the course of the knight's story and the accompanying noises, as well as Roderick's subsequent confession, it becomes obvious that Roderick must have buried his sister alive. Suddenly Lady Madeline stands in the doorway covered in blood; she throws herself dying on her brother, who dies immediately from the shock.

The first-person narrator flees in panic from the property and sees how the crack that runs through the house continues to gape apart until it collapses and sinks into the lake.

interpretation

Poe had spent a few years in his youth in Scotland and England and went to school there. The world of the nobility, which still exists here, with its long history, made a deep impression on the young American writer and poet, who in comparison felt almost devoid of history.

At the same time, Poe designs and uses some of his favorite motifs: insanity, an opium rush, love among close relatives, being buried alive, the resurrection of people believed dead or the dying of a beautiful young woman. The fact that he not only arranges these motifs for the purpose of increasing the effect, but also works them off in part from his own life story, makes a story like that of the downfall of the Usher house interesting biographically.

The title of the story not only points to the central event, i. H. the "fall" or downfall of the Usher sex through the death of the siblings Roderick and Madeline, but also contains a double reference to the Ushers' house, which in the end actually collapses and sinks into the mountain lake. The meaning of space and the interrelationship between people and space represent one of the author's most important design principles in this short story.

The first-person narrator begins his story with the first sight of the house, which he visits at the request of his childhood friend Roderick Usher, and ends with a look back at the collapsing building, from which he escapes in horror. In between is the depiction of the growing psycho-physical decline of the main character Roderick, the sudden death of his twin sister Madeline as well as her mysterious burial in the underground vault of the house and the subsequent ghostly reappearance of Madeline, believed dead, on an eerie night, which then the common end of the siblings has the consequence.

The limited perspective of the first-person narrator, who, as an outsider, is not fully privy to the background of the processes he describes and therefore only has a more or less superficial understanding of the connections due to his own analysis and combination of the facts accessible to him, creates the narrative Impression of a complexity in which much is still puzzled or undiscovered or unsaid, and thus contributes to a significant tension in this story of Poe. Likewise, the predominantly rational attitude of the narrator indicates that the irrational depths of the events cannot really be tapped by him. In this way the narrative appears to the reader from the outset in terms of its form and conception as in need of supplementation; the reader is stimulated to make his own speculations and combinations in order to understand the meaning of the events presented.

The narrator's common sense and his skepticism towards supernatural phenomena also create the appearance of authenticity in his descriptions; his increasing dismay by the uncanny events and the appearance and behavior of Usher transfers the gruesome atmosphere of the house to the reader all the more impressively. On the external level of events, the events receive a special power of persuasion or verisimilitude , which Poe tried to implement according to his theoretical ideas about the short story, precisely through the emotional and intellectual overpowering of the narrator .

The impression of the ambiguity and irrationality of the events is further deepened by the mystery of the main characters and their relationships to the spatial and human environment. The appearance that presents itself to the narrator as well as the reader is characterized by numerous inconsistencies and strange or mysterious features, which provide both a supplement and a variant of the narrative perspective. The physical as well as mental and emotional state of Roderick Usher is characterized by a morbid sensitivity and nervous excitability, which make an ultimately fateful catastrophe appear inevitable from the very beginning. The narrator's contrast between the past and the now underscores the crisis nature of the presented situation and the decline of his personality.

Roderick's mood fluctuates constantly between lively open-mindedness and annoyance as a sign of his "mental disorder" , which is expressed equally in the pathological sensitivity of his senses. For example, he can only sit in darkened rooms, only listen to violin music, only eat slightly spicy dishes and wear special fabrics. At the same time, however, Roderick's artistic products (the narrator speaks of him as an artist) are signs of the intensity of his “mental collectedness and concentration” , thus an intensity and concentration of his imagination and his thinking. On the other hand, the narrator expressly emphasizes several times the detachment of the products of Roderick's artistic imagination in his paintings, poems or musical interpretations from all normal social, temporal or spatial references and thus again emphasizes the lack of any usual relationship between Roderick and (everyday) reality. In spite of all the fantasticism , Roderick's works show a strange clairvoyance and reflect an objectively correct insight into his own mental and spiritual state.

The central theme of the decline of personality in The Fall of the House of Usher is used by Poe in the sense of the “single or unique effect” he calls for in a series of analogous processes in the human and extra-human realm mirrored and highlighted. External and internal, material and immaterial, animate and inanimate are equated in Poe's cosmological conception of a "sentience" , ie a sensual ability to perceive things, which is also made clear to the reader by the corresponding utterances of Roderick Usher after his lecture of the ballad.

The “language of things” can be heard at the beginning of the narrative and, as in other of his stories, Poe uses to design the room: the fine crack in the masonry corresponds to the first signs of disintegration in Roderick's inconsistent behavior. The atmosphere surrounding the whole building is on the human level parallelized by the associations of the narrator of disease and decay; In Poe's orientation of the spatial design to the comprehensive whole, the symbol is “not an isolated or isolatable object”, but “part of an expressive whole” in which the invisible, mysterious effective forces of the space are presented suggestively and atmospherically in an almost allegorical form and so in the Narrative can be used to intensify and dramatize interpersonal relationships as well as the relationships between people and the inorganic and organic world around them.

The design principle of correspondences and parallels (Roderick's inner and outer state, correspondence house - inhabitant, house - lake) can also be found in the figure constellation of the narrative; the parallels between Roderick and Madeline, both inside and outside, are made particularly vivid in the form of the twin motif on various levels. At the end of the story, the symptoms of the illness are exchanged, as it were: Roderick appears frozen, while Madeline's appearance shows signs of a high degree of inner excitement.

The parallelism of the two characters is shown most strongly at the end of the story in their common death, which at the same time lets the reader guess why Madeline, the apparently dead, could not die before: as a “second self” she was, so to speak, outwardly and inwardly Roderick bound.

The relationships between the house and its residents, and above all between Roderick and his sister, which are impressively mirrored in the last scene, raise a number of questions that focus in particular on the peculiar relationship or bond between the siblings and on different interpretations or readings of history. Read as a horror story , Madeline can be seen in the context of the genre-typical motifs as a vampire who "sucks the life blood of his brother" and vice versa. From a depth psychological point of view, on the other hand, Madeline becomes the "dark underside" or the unconscious "evil" in Roderick, possibly based on an incest relationship that is not clearly expressed in the story lies. Likewise, Madeline has been interpreted in Freud's sense as the embodiment of Roderick's death instinct, which opposes his instinct for life .

Whether one likes to follow the interpretation of Marie Bonaparte , who sees in the Usher house and in the figure of Madeline the dead mother who avenges herself for the breach of faith of the son, is accordingly also dependent on the attitude to psychoanalysis .

Literary template

In literary studies since 1943, subsequently u. a. The German Poe translator Arno Schmidt also assumed that Poe's narrative was strongly influenced in essential elements by the story Das Raubschloß by the German writer Heinrich Clauren , published in 1812 . The content and structure are so similar that a coincidence can be ruled out. Clauren was very popular in his day and some of his works have been translated into different languages, including English. The robbery castle never appeared under this title in English translation, but a heavily revised version, adapted to the expectations of the British readership, was published in 1828 under the title The Robber's Tower. A true adventure. ( The Robber's Tower. A True Adventure ) Published in the prestigious British literary magazine Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine . The translator was John Hardman. Poe had valued the magazine, which was mostly ghost stories and tales of improbable emergencies, since he was a boy. In 1838 he therefore even wrote the satirical story How to Write a Blackwood Article ( How to Make a Blackwood article writes ). Poe could thus be The Robber's Tower. read and used it as inspiration.

German translations (selection)

• 1861: unknown translator: The fall of the House of Usher. Scheible, Stuttgart.
• 1901: Hedda Moeller-Bruck and Hedwig Lachmann : The downfall of the Usher house. JCC Bruns, Minden.
• 1909: Gisela Etzel : The downfall of the Usher house. Propylaen Verlag, Munich.
• 1912: unknown translator: The fall of the House of Usher. Kiepenheuer, Weimar.
• 1920: Wilhelm Cremer : The downfall of the house of Usher. Verlag der Schiller-Buchhandlung, Berlin.
• 1922: M. Bretschneider : The downfall of the Usher house. Rösl & Cie. Publishing house, Munich.
• approx. 1925: Bernhard Bernson : The last from Usher. Josef Singer Verlag, Strasbourg.
• 1930: Fanny Fitting : The Fall of Usherhaus. Fikentscher, Leipzig.
• 1953: Günther Steinig : The downfall of the Usher house. Dietrich'sche Verlagbuchhandlung, Leipzig.
• 1960: Christel Wiemken , Helmut Wiemken The downfall of the Usher house. German Book Community, Berlin.
• 1966: Arno Schmidt : The fall of the Ascher house ! . Walter Verlag, Freiburg i. Br.
• 1989: Otto Weith : The downfall of the Usher house. Reclams Universal Library, Stuttgart.

Impact history

The Fall of the House of Usher , illustration by Harry Clarke 1923

Despite its melodramatic effect, Poe's story is one of the best among Poe's tales of effect in literary studies and literary criticism , because in it the principle of unity of effect postulated by him in literary theory in his essay The Philosophy of Composition for the short story . Unity of the effect ”) and his demand for “ suggestiveness ” ( Eng .“ Ambiguity or ambiguity ”) or an “ undercurrent of meaning ” ( Eng . Approximately:“ subliminal level of meaning ”) can be realized in an artistically almost perfect way.

The Fall of the House of Usher is not only “a horror story in the sense of the accumulation of blatant effects, but a story of high artistic importance”. The comparatively sparse plot, the characters and the spatial environment form an integrated whole in this short story by Poe and point beyond themselves by expressing the universally valid or regular in individual symbolic cases: the decay of the personality of Roderick Usher, which progresses with inner logic and necessity through a refinement of his senses and mental powers, which at the same time contains ambiguous references to the decline of the noble family and the house of Usher, which, however, do not allow any clear assignment or definition of the relationships. The downfall of the House of Usher is therefore one of the most ambiguous stories of Poe, as the number and diversity of the attempts at interpretation show, which "defies any one-meaning interpretation".

In The Downfall of the House of Usher, the specific character of Poe's “disintegrating prose” of his stories of “horror” is expressed in an exemplary manner, which partly results from a fusion of normally incompatible elements, such as B. the connection of a ghostly atmosphere as well as the irrational or pathologically confused imagination with rational form and rational style emerges.

Also noteworthy is the similarity to ETA Hoffmann's story Das Majorat from 1819 from the night plays . Here you can also find the motifs of the collapsing house in a ghostly environment, the eerie nocturnal noises, the story in the story, and the landlord is called Roderich. Poe knew this text for sure and used elements from it for his conception.

The non-conformist Kai Graf Mölln, Hanno Buddenbrook's only friend from Thomas Mann's novel Buddenbrooks , later wants to become a writer and secretly reads Poe's works in Bible lessons , admiring his literary abilities. When he reads The Fall of the House of Usher in one scene , he escapes: “This Roderich [sic!] Usher is the most wonderful character that has ever been invented! […] If I could ever write such a good story! ”.

Film adaptations

• The Fall of the House of Usher ( La Chute de la maison Usher ) (1928) by Jean Epstein
• The Fall of the House of Usher (1949)
• The cursed / The Fall of the House of Usher ( The Fall of the House of Usher ) (1960) by Roger Corman with Vincent Price
• The Fall of the House of Usher (1966) (TV version)
• Zánik domu Usherů ( The Fall of the House of Usher ) (1980) (animated short film, b / w) by Jan Švankmajer
• Histoires extraordinaires: La chute de la maison Usher (1981) (TV version) with Mathieu Carrière
• The Fall of the House of Usher (1982) (TV version) with Martin Landau and Ray Walston
• El hundimiento de la Casa Usher (1983) by Jess Franco with Howard Vernon and Antonio Mayáns
• The House of Usher (1988) with Oliver Reed
• The House Of Usher (2006) by Collin Chang
• House of Usher (2008) by David DeCoteau

Dramas

• «La Chute de la Maison Usher», 1-act act by Ernest-Maurice Laumann . First performance in Paris in March 1918 at the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol .

Settings

• The Alan Parsons Project : Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976/1987)
  from it Track 6 to 10: Prelude - Arrival - Intermezzo - Pavane - Fall
• Claude Debussy - The Fall of the House of Usher (opera fragment). There are several reconstructions / instrumentations of the material left behind, for example by Robert Orledge (2006) and Juan Allende-Blin
• Manfred Stahnke : The Downfall of the House of Usher (Chamber Opera 1981)
• The Other : Return to the house of Usher (Track 10 of the album The Place To Bleed )
• Grave Digger : The House (2001)
• Philip Glass : The Fall of the House of Usher (Opera in two acts)
• Finch : The Casket of Roderick Usher
  (Track 13 of the album Say Hello to Sunshine )
• Peter Hammill : The Fall of the House of Usher (opera in six acts; 1991 and 1999)
• Art Zoyd : La chute de la maison Usher (2008)
• Gordon Getty : Usher House (opera; 2014)

Radio plays

• The Downfall of the House of Usher (1969) with Hans Clarin and Peter Folken , directed by Konrad Halver
• The Downfall of the Usher House (2006) with Oliver Feld and Tobias Kluckert , directed by Marc Gruppe
• The downfall of the Usher house (2008) with Manuel Kreitmeier (narrator) and Florian Wetter (Usher / music), directed by Florian Wetter
• The fall of the Usher house by Ulrich Pleitgen, Till Hagen and Klaus Jespen

theatre

• The downfall of the Usher house in the puppet theater on the Cipolla stage (2018) with Sebastian Kautz

Secondary literature

• Gerhard Hoffmann: Poe • The Fall of the House of Usher. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 82-93.
• Franz H. Link: Edgar Allan Poe: A poet between romanticism and modernity . Athenäum Verlag , Frankfurt am Main / Bonn 1968, pp. 190–198.
• E. Arthur Robinson: Order and "Sentience" in Edgar Allan Poe's ›The Fall of the House of Usher‹ . In: Gerhard Hoffmann (Ed.): American literature of the 19th century . Interpretations Volume X, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, ISBN 3-436-01456-7 , pp. 52-76.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eulenberg's translation was published in 1901 as part of the ten-volume German complete edition of Poe's works by JCC Bruns Verlag Minden, which was published in various editions. See Edgar Allan Poe - Erzählungen , Auf: haus-freiheit.de , accessed on January 31, 2016. The transmission by Helmut and Christel Wiemken was published in the by Günter Blöckler ed. Collection: Edgar Allan Poe - master stories. German Book Association, Berlin, Darmstadt, Vienna 1960, published as a licensed edition by Carl Schünemann Verlag, Bremen (cf. ibid., Der Untergang des Haus Usher , pp. 247–271). The new translation by Arno Schmidt appeared under the title Der Fall des Haus Ascher in the first volume of a four-volume work edition by Edgar Allan Poe (translations by Arno Schmidt and Hans Wollschläger) in Walter-Verlag, Olten and Freiburg im Breisgau, 1966. Later it became reprinted in the by Max Nänny ed. Collection: Edgar Allan Poe - master stories. Manesse Verlag, Zurich 1979, 4th edition 1993, ISBN 3-7175-1564-0 , pp. 88–117.
2. ^ On the biographical significance of the story, for example the remarkable external similarity between Poe himself and the description of Usher, see E. Arthur Robinson: Order and "Sentience" in Edgar Allan Poe's ›The Fall of the House of Usher‹ . In: Gerhard Hoffmann (Ed.): American literature of the 19th century . Interpretations Volume X, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, ISBN 3-436-01456-7 , pp. 74f.
3. ↑ See in detail E. Arthur Robinson: Order and "Sentience" in Edgar Allan Poe's ›The Fall of the House of Usher‹ . In: Gerhard Hoffmann (Ed.): American literature of the 19th century . Interpretations Volume X, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, ISBN 3-436-01456-7 , pp. 58, 63f. and 71f.
4. ^ Gerhard Hoffmann: Poe • The Fall of the House of Usher. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 82ff.
5. ↑ See more detailed Gerhard Hoffmann: Poe • The Fall of the House of Usher. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 83f. On the function and position of the narrator, see also E. Arthur Robinson: Order and "Sentience" in Edgar Allan Poe's ›The Fall of the House of Usher‹ . In: Gerhard Hoffmann (Ed.): American literature of the 19th century . Interpretations Volume X, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, ISBN 3-436-01456-7 , p. 72ff.
6. ↑ See in detail Gerhard Hoffmann: Poe • The Fall of the House of Usher. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 83-86.
7. ↑ See The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. by JA Harrison, New York 1965, Volume III, pp. 274 and 284
8. ↑ See in detail Gerhard Hoffmann: Poe • The Fall of the House of Usher. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 84f.
9. ↑ See in detail E. Arthur Robinson: Order and "Sentience" in Edgar Allan Poe's ›The Fall of the House of Usher‹ . In: Gerhard Hoffmann (Ed.): American literature of the 19th century . Interpretations Volume X, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, ISBN 3-436-01456-7 , pp. 52-56.
10. ↑ See in detail E. Arthur Robinson: Order and "Sentience" in Edgar Allan Poe's ›The Fall of the House of Usher‹ . In: Gerhard Hoffmann (Ed.): American literature of the 19th century . Interpretations Volume X, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, ISBN 3-436-01456-7 , pp. 56ff.
11. ↑ See in detail Gerhard Hoffmann: Poe • The Fall of the House of Usher. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 86ff.
12. ↑ See in detail Gerhard Hoffmann: Poe • The Fall of the House of Usher. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 88ff. On the meaning of Madeline and her death, see also E. Arthur Robinson's approach to interpretation: Order and "Sentience" in Edgar Allan Poe's ›The Fall of the House of Usher‹ . In: Gerhard Hoffmann (Ed.): American literature of the 19th century . Interpretations Volume X, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, ISBN 3-436-01456-7 , pp. 67-71.
13. ↑ On the various interpretive approaches and readings, cf. in detail the description in Gerhard Hoffmann: Poe • The Fall of the House of Usher. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , pp. 891ff.
14. ^ John H. Collins: Critique of William Mudford. In: American Notes & Queries. III, April 1943 p. 9.
15. ↑ Thomas S. Hansen: Arno Schmidt and Poe's German Source for “The Fall of the House of Usher”. In: Bargfelder Bote , Lfg. 115 / June 1987 p. 12ff.
16. ↑ Thomas S. Hansen: Arno Schmidt and Poe's German Source for “The Fall of the House of Usher”. P. 14.
17. ↑ Thomas S. Hansen: Arno Schmidt and Poe's German Source for “The Fall of the House of Usher”. P. 13.
18. ↑ Thomas S. Hansen: Arno Schmidt and Poe's German Source for “The Fall of the House of Usher”. P. 15.
19. ^ Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. No. 24, December 1828, pp. 874-884.
20. ↑ The Robber's Tower. A True Adventure (pdf version)
21. ↑ Una Pope-Hennessy : Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849. A Critical Biography. Macmillan, London 1934, p. 127.
22. ↑ JR Hammond: To Edgar Allan Poe Companion. Macmillan Press, London and Basingstoke 1981, ISBN 0-333-27571-3 , p. 45.
23. ↑ See in detail the information and evidence in Gerhard Hoffmann: Poe • The Fall of the House of Usher. In: Karl Heinz Göller et al. (Ed.): The American short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, ISBN 3-513-02212-3 , p. 82ff.
24. ↑ See E. Arthur Robinson: Order and "Sentience" in Edgar Allan Poe's ›The Fall of the House of Usher‹ . In: Gerhard Hoffmann (Ed.): American literature of the 19th century . Interpretations Volume X, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, ISBN 3-436-01456-7 , pp. 73f.
25. ↑ Hans Rudolf Vaget : Thomas Mann, the American. Life and Work in Exile in America, 1938–1952. S. Fischer, Frankfurt / Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-100870-04-9 .
26. ↑ La Chute de la Maison Usher. 1 acte de ME-M. Laumann. In: Supplément Théâtral. Éditions de Paris-Magazine. 25 août 1919, pp. 19-23.

Web links

Wikisource: The Fall of the House of Usher (original English text)  - sources and full texts

• The fall of the Usher house at Zeno.org . in German translation.
• Free audio book version on vorleser.net