The pit and the pendulum
The pit and the pendulum (also: Grube und Pendel ; English The pit and the pendulum ) is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1842. It is about the torments that a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition had to endure, whereby Poe modified historical facts in the sense of the " Black Legend ".
The story is written in the style of horror literature and is suitable to frighten the reader .
content
The story begins with a trial in Toledo, Spain , during the Spanish Inquisition. The first-person narrator (also the main character ), in whose thoughts the reader participates, is sentenced to death and then faints. After an indefinite period of time, he wakes up lying on a damp stone floor in an initially completely dark room. After some time in the twilight state, in which the protagonist even thinks himself dead, he suspects that he will have to wait for his execution in a dungeon deep in the Toledo catacombs if it does not even turn into his grave. After a while he tries to find his way around: He feels his way along the cold, smooth stone walls of his prison until he returns to his starting point and estimates the total perimeter of the strongly angled room to be 50 yards . Then he tries to cross the room. He stumbles and falls face first on the floor. Since only the chin, but not the lips or forehead, touches the floor, he suspects that there is a shaft in the middle of the room that leads straight down into the depths. With the help of a stone that he drops into the round shaft, he tries to fathom its depth. It turns out that there is water at the bottom of the shaft far below him, and the protagonist realizes that by stumbling he has barely escaped death by falling into this well.
After a short refreshment with some bread and water, he falls asleep and when he wakes up he realizes that he must have been wrong about the size of his cell: its circumference is only 25 meters, the floor plan is a square. He was also tied up while he was sleeping. After the eyes have got used to the darkness, a structure emerges in the ceiling that the first-person narrator identifies as a pendulum . He estimates the height of the ceiling to be 30 to 40 feet. Rats appear, attracted by meat that was handed to him to eat in the dungeon. A little later he notices that the ceiling doesn't seem to be as high as initially believed. The apparently metal pendulum appears to be very large and heavy.
The narrator now realizes that one is apparently looking for another way to put an end to his life: In the following days it becomes clear that the pendulum, which is now recognizable as a sharp, crescent-shaped blade, sways further and further down in swinging movements, until finally you can even smell its steel. The narrator fears that the pendulum will cut him sooner or later. At the last moment he got the saving idea: He rubbed his bonds with the sparse remains of his meal, which the rats had not yet eaten. After a brief moment of shock, they attack him and gnaw at his bonds until they finally give way and the protagonist can free himself at the last second. At this point the pendulum has already cut his clothes at chest level.
The pendulum is then pulled up again, and a narrow gap appears, through which light penetrates into the interior of the chamber. The walls of the cell suddenly begin to glow reddish "like a thousand eyes". The inmate quickly realizes that they are trying to kill him with the heat of the scald. The walls begin to move towards each other, narrowing the space. His tormentors try to drive the narrator towards the well in order to plunge him into it and thus finally carry out the execution. But suddenly the walls recede and the protagonist is grabbed by an arm. It is General Lasalle's arm. The story ends with the words: “The French army entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of their enemies. "
time and place
The story takes place in Toledo at the time of the occupation by Napoléon Bonaparte's troops in 1808, during the Napoleonic Wars on the Iberian Peninsula . General Lasalle is believed to be Antoine Charles Louis Lasalle .
German translations (selection)
- 1861: unknown translator: The Abyss and the Pendulum. Scheible, Stuttgart.
- 1901: Hedda Moeller and Hedwig Lachmann : The tortures. JCC Bruns, Minden.
- 1922: M. Bretschneider : The pit and the pendulum. Rösl & Cie. Publishing house, Munich.
- 1922: Gisela Etzel : water pit and pendulum. Propylaea, Munich.
- 1923: Wilhelm Cremer : The pit and the pendulum. Verlag der Schiller-Buchhandlung, Berlin.
- ca. 1925: Bernhard Bernson : Torture. Josef Singer Verlag, Strasbourg.
- 1925: unknown translator: The Pit and the Pendulum. Mieth, Berlin.
- 1930: unknown translator: The Torture. Fikentscher, Leipzig.
- 1945: Marlies Wettstein : The pendulum. Artemis, Zurich.
- 1953: Elisabeth Seidel : Pit and Pendulum. Dietrich'sche Verlagbuchhandlung, Leipzig.
- 1966: Hans Wollschläger : Pit and Pendulum. Walter Verlag, Freiburg i. Br.
- 1989: Otto Weith : Pit and Pendulum. Reclams Universal Library, Stuttgart.
Film adaptation and quotes
The story saw several film adaptations, such as:
- 1913: The Pit and the Pendulum by Alice Guy
- 1961: The Pit and the Pendulum ( The Pit and the Pendulum ) by Roger Corman , with Vincent Price in the lead role
- 1983: Kyvadlo, jáma a naděje ( The Pit, the Pendulum and Hope ), short film by Jan Švankmajer
- 1991: Meister des Horens ( The Pit and the Pendulum ) by Stuart Gordon
- 2009: Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum by David DeCoteau
Tuomas Holopainen of the band Nightwish was inspired by this story when writing the song The Poet and The Pendulum . The pendulum that can be seen on the cover of the album Dark Passion Play is also very similar to the one described by Edgar Allan Poe.
Previously, the German band Rage used the story as a theme for a song that was called The Pit and the Pendulum after the original title and appeared on the 1993 album The Missing Link .
Web links
- The pit and the pendulum at Zeno.org ., German translation.
- German translation: The tortures of Hedda Eulenberg at Haus Freiheit (PDF file; 280 kB)
- Water pit and pendulum as a free audio book