The black cat

This article covers the short story; for other meanings see black cat .

Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley , 1894

The Black Cat , or The Black Cat , (Engl. The Black Cat ) is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe . It first appeared in the United States Saturday Post on August 19, 1843. It is about the transformation of a once soft-hearted boy into a psychotic murderer.

content

The narrator describes prior to the date of execution to ease his conscience, how it came to his illness and the crimes:

He and his wife share a love for animals that they care for in their apartment. The preferred favorite among his protégés is the affectionate tomcat Pluto. Under the influence of alcohol, the narrator's affection turns into hate. The "spirit of perversity" overwhelms him:

“Philosophy has never dealt with this demon. But as true as my soul lives, I believe that perversity is one of the basic instincts of the human heart, one of the indivisible primal faculties or feelings that give the character of man its direction. Who would not have met a hundred times to be surprised at a baseness or foolish act that he committed only because he knew it was forbidden? Don't we have a constant tendency to violate the law just because we have to recognize it as such? "

He is now abusing animals, even his wife and Pluto. When he comes home drunk again and the cat accidentally bites him, he stabs his eye. He drowns the memory of the hideous act again in alcohol and the intoxication increases his aggression in a cycle. Finally he hangs the animal from a tree. The following night a fire breaks out and everyone can escape the house. On one of the inner walls, however, there is a strange picture: a relief in the shape of a cat. In order to rule out a supernatural connection and punishment for his actions, the narrator seeks a natural explanation. When the fire broke out, someone must have cut the animal from the tree and thrown it into the house through the window to wake him up, and the animal alkali burned the outlines into the lime.

For months the narrator is haunted in his fantasies and dreams by the ghost figure of the cat, but finally begins to miss the animal and is looking for a replacement. He finds something in a dive bar, and the new tomcat, who is also one-eyed and very similar to Pluto, becomes the woman's new darling. However, he wears a blurry white spot on his chest, in which the narrator thinks he sees the image of a gallows some time later. That scares him and he avoids the animal. The more it seeks its closeness, the more it hates it.

One day when he and his wife went into the basement, the hangover came between his feet. In senseless rage, he hits him with an ax. But the woman falls into his arms and saves the animal. Then the narrator becomes even more angry and kills his wife. He walled up her corpse in the cellar wall. The police investigations are unsuccessful, as are several house searches, which the narrator calmly pursues. Full of boastful self-assurance, in his arrogance, he even knocks on the hiding place with a stick, from which at that moment a low whining and unspeakable screaming can be heard. The police open the wall and discover the one-eyed cat on the head of the corpse, which has disappeared since the crime.

German translations (selection)

• 1861: unknown translator: The black cat. Scheible, Stuttgart
• around 1900: Johanna Möllenhoff : The black cat. Reclams Universal Library, Leipzig.
• 1901: Hedda Moeller and Hedwig Lachmann : The black cat. JCC Bruns, Minden.
• 1909: Gisela Etzel : The black cat. Propylaen Verlag, Munich.
• 1922: Joachim von der Goltz : The black cat. Rösl & Cie., Munich.
• 1923: Wilhelm Cremer : The black cat. Verlag der Schiller-Buchhandlung, Berlin.
• ca.1925 : Bernhard Bernson : The black cat. Josef Singer Verlag, Strasbourg.
• 1945: Marlies Wettstein : The black cat. Artemis Verlag, Zurich.
• 1948: Ruth Haemmerling and Konrad Haemmerling : The black cat. Schlösser Verlag, Braunschweig.
• 1955: Arthur Seiffart : The Black Cat. Tauchnitz Verlag, Stuttgart.
• 1966: Hans Wollschläger : The black cat. Walter Verlag, Freiburg i. Br.
• 1971: Dietrich Klose : The black cat. Reclams Universal Library, Leipzig.
• 1976: Günther Greffarth and Gisela Tronjeck : The black cat. Rütten & Loening, Berlin.
• 1980: Carl W. Neumann : The black cat. Reclams Universal Library, Leipzig.
• 1989: Günter Gensch : The black cat. Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, ISBN 3735101151 .

Film adaptations (selection)

• Eerie Tales , D , 1919 (Direction: Richard Oswald )
• Eerie Tales , D, 1932 (Director: R. Oswald)
• The Black Cat (Original title: The Black Cat ), USA , 1934 (Director: Edgar G. Ulmer )
• The horrible Mr. X (orig .: Tales of Terror ), in it the second episode The Black Cat , USA, 1962 (director: Roger Corman )
• Il tuo vizio è una stanza chiusa e solo io ne ho la chiave , I , 1972 (Director: Sergio Martino )
• The Black Cat (Orig .: Gatto nero ), I, 1981 (Direction: Lucio Fulci )
• Two Evil Eyes (Orig .: Due occhi diabolici ), including the second episode The Black Cat , I / USA, 1990 (Director: Dario Argento )
• The Black Cat , Masters of Horror Season 2, Episode 11, USA, 2007 (Director: Stuart Gordon )

literature

• James W. Gargano: "The Black Cat": Perverseness Reconsidered. In: Texas Studies in Literature and Language , Vol. 2, No. 2 (summer 1960), pp. 172-178. Reprinted in: William L. Howarth (Ed.): Twentieth Century Interpretation of Poe's Tales. A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall 1971, pp. 87-94.
• Roberta Reeder: “The Black Cat” as a Study in Repression. In: Poe Studies , June 1974, Vol. VII, Issue 1, pp. 20-22, available online at [1] on The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore .
• Susan Amper: Untold story: The lying narrator in `The Black Cat '. In: Studies in Short Fiction , Vol. 29, Issue 4, Fall 1992, pp. 475 ff.
• Ed Piacentino: Poe's "The Black Cat" as Psychobiography: Some Reflections on the Narratological Dynamics. In: Studies in Short Fiction , Volume 35, No. 2 (Spring 1998).

Web links

English versions of the short story:

• (August 19, 1843, text "A" - United States Saturday Post)
• (1845, text "B" - TALES)
• (November 1848, text "C" - Pictorial National Library)
• (1850, text "D" - WORKS)
• (common version)

German versions:

• German text by Hedda Eulenberg online at Haus Freiheit (pdf; 268 kB)
• The black cat at Zeno.org ., Another German translation.
• as a free audio book at Vorleser.net

Related Links:

• (Summary, Setting, Characters, Works Cited, et c .)