The Appointment (Poe)
The appointment , Eng. The title "The Assignation", ( 1834 ) is one of the early stories by Edgar Allan Poe . It shows him still completely under the spell of an enthusiastic, pompous Byronism .
content
The child slipped away from the Marchesa Afrodite di Mentoni and fell into the Grand Canal . Various swimmers try in vain to save it. But then a stranger steps out of the shadows, emerges the child and wants to put it in the arms of the blushing mother - but Mentoni, the father, has already snatched it from him and had it brought to the Doge's Palace . The Marchesa whispers to the stranger: “You have won. We'll meet again an hour after sunrise. So let it be! ”The stranger climbs to the (also nameless) first-person narrator in his gondola and asks him to come to him very early the next morning.
The first-person narrator is overwhelmed by the splendor and exquisite taste with which the stranger surrounds himself in his palace. Despite the early hour, he asks him to drink Johannisberger with him . An English poem reminds the narrator that he has heard that the stranger is an Englishman, and the Marchesa, to whom the poem is probably addressed, is also said to have lived in London for a time. An hour after sunrise, the stranger sinks unconscious on an ottoman . A lackey Mentonis comes and reports breathlessly that his mistress has poisoned herself. The first-person narrator turns to the stranger - but he too is dead, his mug has gone black.
interpretation
The motif of a love that is only realized in death has been designed several times by Poe. The generosity with which the stranger saves the child whose father is the Marchesa's husband, although he loves her himself, this generosity makes him the victor, not over the Marchesa, but over her " satyr-like " husband, who is not her Had bravery to go down in the water. Since the stranger and the Marchesa cannot come together in life, they unite through simultaneous suicide (cf. also the end of the Beauchamp-Sharp-Tragedy , whose previous history inspired Poe to become Politian ).
In the stranger who lives in Venice (like Lord Byron), who is wealthy (by inheritance) (like Lord Byron), who has a relationship with a married woman (like Lord Byron to Countess Teresa Guiccioli ), Sparta , that is Peloponnese , known (like Lord Byron, who died there in 1824), is generally seen a portrait of the British, whose black romanticism Poe admired unrestrainedly. Like Lord Byron, Poe was an excellent swimmer, had poetic talent like him, would have liked to have been rich like him (by inheritance) - and so the stranger is also a self-portrait of Poe. In his tendency towards unmotivated cheerfulness, he strongly resembles the Politian in Poe's play design of the same name and simultaneous with this narrative. Politian is also an Englishman in Italy, but in contrast to the Politian's position, the Marchesa Mentoni is only “dishonored” by marriage.
Marie Bonaparte sees the rescued child as a child of the stranger from the Marchesa. But what would be his victory then? And wouldn't the synchronous suicide of the two then be absurd?
annotation
An Englishman is drinking Johannisberger , a late harvest from the Rheingau , with his friend in Venice ... Poe's generosity in dealing with provenances can also be seen elsewhere (in Das Fass Amontillado ). The lavish furnishings in the stranger's palazzo, the admiration of which Poe would like to induce, with its mishmash ("medley") from Etruscan vases to Canova figures, is more the cabinet of a nouveau riche who surrounds himself with everything that is good and expensive. But all of this is just a décor for Poe's favorite motif, which here already sounds powerfully in all gayness: the synthesis of love and death.
source
Poe's story may have been inspired by a Byron anecdote that hit the press at the time.
- In Missolunghi Byron was mortally in love with Marietta, one of the most beautiful Greek women. He once saw her from his balcony, addressed her in Greek, she replied in French. Byron went to her and found a highly educated girl, brought up in France. She was good to Byron, but she didn't love him. He went to her every day, took a liking to her music, to her whole being. Once he was also with Marietta. She played one of his Greek songs for him on the piano, although she felt ill. As she played, she fell to the ground, dying. “Know,” she said to Byron, “my beloved, my Pallikari is dead! I just got this message. We swore to die with one another. I drank poison and am dying for him. ”Marietta died in Byron's arms. A Greek who had known Byron better in Missolunghi told Herr von Bonstetten in Geneva, and he told Matthisson in a letter (from the collection that appeared in print in 1827) .
This article, which appeared in the "Wochenblatt für Segeberg und Umgebung" (Weekly Journal for Segeberg and Its Surroundings) on April 5, 1829, should have correspondences in American papers from the same period. The report cannot be confirmed biographically. It is known that Byron's last passion was a 15-year-old Greek (Loukas Chalandritsanos).
literature
- Edgar Allan Poe: Works , ed. by Kuno Schuhmann and Hans Dieter Müller, Olten 1966
- Marie Bonaparte: Edgar Poe , Vienna 1934
