The Sphinx (Poe)
The Sphinx is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in January 1846 .
Table of contents
The story takes place at the time of cholera - epidemic in New York . The protagonist accepts an invitation from a relative to his country house on the banks of the Hudson River to stay for two weeks. Friends of the two die every day, which is communicated to them in the mail. The protagonist is extremely superstitious and becomes suspicious after reading a few books in his friend's library. Then something eerie happens: he sees a monster that reminds him a lot of an elephant with wings. The monster is very large and has a skull on its chest that stands out from the rest of its body. When he tells this to a friend, he sees the monster again and wants to show it to his friend, but the friend says he can't see anything. From this he concludes that he saw a sign of death or of his madness. He reads a concrete description of the being in a book and then sees it again. He now realizes that it is an optical illusion, actually just a butterfly on the window that was directly in front of the protagonist's face. This proximity made the animal look so incredibly large.
Characters
The characters are not named. The protagonist admits a certain tendency towards superstition . In contrast, his relative is calm, serene and astute; superstition is completely alien to him.
time and place
New York in the summer of 1832: Cholera is raging, it kills around 3000 people. Friends and relatives of Edgar Allan Poe also died of the disease.
Web links
- The Sphinx German translation by Hedda Eulenberg at Haus Freiheit ( PDF file )
- The Sphinx . German transfer from Gisela Etzel to Projekt Gutenberg-DE
- [1] - Original English text
- [2] - Background information on Poe's short story (en.)