The Imp of the Perverse

The Imp of the Perverse (about the Alb the pervert awareness ) is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe , the first of these in 1845 Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine published. He deals with compulsive, self-damaging behavior, especially of a criminal. There are different German translations with different titles.

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The narrator, of whom we only find out late that he is sitting on death row and waiting for his execution, confronts us with his theory of the Alb of Perversity , the instinct he postulates that lets us do things that are in our interests or else are diametrically opposed to the law. To do this, he cites three situations:

In a succinct and concise manner of expression, a thoroughly powerful speaker is suddenly plagued by the temptation to express himself verbosely and annoyingly - and gives in to this temptation only because it tries to.
A task has to be done urgently, after it has been done there is a high wage, but the person who is supposed to do it postpones it until the next day - and again to the next, although he knows very well that he will be harmed by it - until it is finally closed is late.
Standing on an abyss, the person experimenting with the thought feels its pull, feels tempted, even tempted, to throw himself down, although he does not want to in any way, but does so when a friendly arm is not there to prevent the jump.

After this extensive theoretical preparation for the end of the story, we hear that the narrator, apparently out of profit-seeking, killed the man whose heir he wants to inherit with a poisoned candle so cleverly that the coroner does not suspect anything. The narrator has staged a perfect murder, takes over the inheritance, enjoys it, but suddenly, walking through the streets of the city, he is seized by the Alb of perversity , behaves suspiciously, is arrested, confesses everything and now faces his execution.

interpretation

An imp is a gnome or a troll or a demon . Of course, one would underestimate Poe if one assumed that he only wanted to sketch a funny superstition here . At a time when scientific psychology has not yet advanced beyond phrenology , he wants to set up a theory of paradoxical action, as Paul von Tarsus put it: “For the good that I want, I do not do it; but the evil that I don't want, that's what I do. ”Of course, Poe mixes the moral with the utilitarian approach: the foulness of perversity does not provoke murder , but rather its confession. As a result, the Alb of Perversity can be interpreted as the voice of conscience , as in the thematically related short stories The Treasonous Heart and The Black Cat .

Autobiographically, Poe is once again working through his grief that his wealthy foster father, John Allan, did not leave him a penny when he died. In the depiction of the self-destructive postponing everything, the alcoholic can easily be recognized.

Literary allusions

Johann Spurzheim was a phrenologist and student of the founder of phrenology, Franz Joseph Gall .

German translations (selection)

1901: Hedda Moeller : The spirit of evil. JCC Bruns, Minden
1922: Gisela Etzel : The devil of wrongness. Propylaea Verlag, Munich
1922: Joachim von der Goltz : The Kobold of Perversion. Rösl, Munich
1925: Stefan Hofer: The demon of perversity. Interterritorial publishing house “Renaissance”, Vienna
1945: Marlies Wettstein: Against the sting. Artemis Verlag, Zurich
1966: Hans Wollschläger : The Alb of Perversity. Walter Verlag, Freiburg i. Br.
1989: Heide Steiner : The cons-ghost. Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, ISBN 3735101151 .
2020: Andreas Nohl : The demon of perversity. dtv, Munich, ISBN 978-3-423-28215-4 .

Web links

Original English text
Updating translation into German by Hedda Eulenberg (PDF; 256 kB)

Individual evidence

↑ cf. imp in the English Wikipedia
↑ Romans 7, 19
↑ On Spurzheim cf. in the English Wikipedia
↑ The Spirit of Evil (pdf)
↑ The devil of wrongdoing at projekt-gutenberg.org

[1] . imp in the English Wikipedia

[2] Romans 7, 19

[3] On Spurzheim cf. in the English Wikipedia

[4] The Spirit of Evil (pdf)

[5] The devil of wrongdoing at projekt-gutenberg.org


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