The Lighthouse (Poe)

1st leaf of the fragment

4th and last leaf of the fragment

The Lighthouse , also The Light-House (The Lighthouse) , is a literary fragment by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe , which was not made public until 1909, the year of his 100th birthday and 60 years after his death, by a (partial ) Publication became known. The work title does not come from Poe himself, but was given to the text in 1909 by George E. Woodberry , one of Poe's early biographers . Poe research assumes that the work was written between May and August 1849, in the last year of Poe's life, and was not completed on October 7th of that year because of his unexpected death.

Origin and position in the overall work

The fragment consists only of four narrow single sheets of light blue paper written on with brown ink. The sheets were part of Poe's estate , which Poe's mother-in-law Maria Clemm handed over to Rufus Wilmot Griswold, who was appointed by Poe . Since the type of paper, writing style and handwriting are typical of Poe's late work, Woodberry and Thomas Ollive Mabbott , another Poe biographer and researcher , suspected the fragment was one of Poe's last works, which he had written shortly before his death and was unable to complete.

According Mabbott Griswold's son was the first sheet of manuscript on 11 April 1896 in an auction to auction, and kept the remaining three first leaves. Years later, Griswold's grandsons handed them over to Harvard University . Sheet 1 is now in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library . Sheets 2, 3 and 4 are in the Houghton Library at Harvard. The text on sheets 2, 3 and 4 was first published by Woodberry in his biography The Life of Edgar Allan Poe , published on Poe's 100th birthday in 1909 . At that time, page 1 was still in the possession of the descendants of Griswold. It wasn't until 1942 that Mabbott was able to publish the full text of the fragment in Notes and Queries for the first time .

In Mabbott's view, it is Poe's last horror story , which may have been intended as a companion story to A Descent into the Maelström , because like this it seems to have the "land of the midnight sun " ( Norway ) as the location of the action and also as a sailor's story to have been conceived. Hammond sees parallels in this with Poe's MS. Found in a bottle . Mabbott assumed that Poe wanted to keep working on the narrative and had not given up on it. This is supported by the fact that the largest upper part of the first sheet has been kept free for the title and author's name and that there is still enough space for further text on the last page.

Poe died unexpectedly on October 7, 1849 while on a trip. Accordingly, the fragment could have been one of his last literary works on which he worked. Due to the brevity of just over 600 words, it is impossible to determine whether Poe was working on a short story or a longer story such as The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket , Poe's only novel and also a sailor's story .

content

The short text of The Lighthouse , three diary entries , is marked by a strong longing for loneliness, but also by concern and anxiety, topoi that often appear in Poe's works .

An unnamed first-person narrator begins on January 1, 1796, as agreed with a certain but otherwise unknown man named De Grät , to keep a diary. It's his first day in a lighthouse whose location remains unknown.

The first sentences of the diary entry for January 1st are:

“This day - my first on the light-house - I make this entry in my diary, as agreed on with De Grät. As regularly as I can keep the journal, I will - but there is no telling what may happen to a man all alone as I am - I may get sick, or worse ..... So far well! The cutter had a narrow escape - but why dwell on that, since I am here , all safe? My spirits are beginning to revive already, at the mere thought of being - for once in my life at least - thoroughly alone [...] ”

“On this day - my first at the lighthouse - I make this first entry in my diary, as agreed with De Grät. I'll keep the journal as regularly as I can - but nobody knows what can happen to a man as lonely as I am - I could get sick or worse ... So far, good! The cutter just got away again - but why bother with it, since I'm here , completely safe? Just the thought that I - at least once in my life - am completely alone, my mood begins to lift [...] "

This is followed by further entries on January 2nd and 3rd and finally only the date of January 4th - without any further text. This ends the fragment. The few details that the readers learn are that the narrator came from a cutter that is now on its way to Norland again and that said De Grät has made sure that the narrator can pull into the lighthouse and that he can give him something prophesied . The only companion of the narrator is a dog named Neptune . The lighthouse itself is described in detail - in comparison to the entire text: It is a tower riveted from iron plates with a total height of an estimated 180 feet , 160 of which above the waterline . Given that it is 20 feet below the waterline and that interior space has not been lined with masonry , as the narrator would have liked, to provide more stability in the event of a storm, the new resident is concerned about the safety of the Structure in a storm. In his opinion, the lighthouse is on chalk .

The literary scholar and Poe researcher Kenneth Silverman points out in his Poe biography Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance that this most likely last text by Edgar Allan Poe ends with the diary entry for January 3, 1796. That is exactly the same day that Poe's mother Elizabeth Arnold, at the age of nine, joined her 24-year-old mother Elizabeth Arnold, nee. Smith, who had arrived in the port of Boston on an emigrant ship from England and had set foot on American soil there for the first time.

reception

The fragment was unknown to the public until Woodberry's partial publication in 1909. It was not until 1942 that the entire text was published by Mabbott. Since then the story has rarely been reprinted.

The American writer Robert Bloch , the v. a. Known for its science fiction , fantasy and horror literature , the 1951 October issue of the US fantasy magazine Famous Fantastic Mysteries published the short story The Man Who Collected Poe , which he had written in the style of Edgar Allan Poe. According to Bloch, Thomas Ollive Mabbott was one of the first to read this story. Mabbott asked Bloch if he would be interested in finishing the Lighthouse fragment in the Poe style. Bloch agreed and published his version of The Lighthouse 1953 in the January / February issue of the American fantasy magazine Fantastic . The first page of Bloch's story is a facsimile of the first manuscript page of Poe's fragment. At the bottom of the page, Bloch thanks Mabbott with the words: The assistance of Prof. TO Mabbott, foremost Poe scholar, in obtaining this manuscript, is greatly acknowledged (Many thanks to Prof. TO Mabbott, leading Poe expert, for helping with the Procurement of this manuscript) .

There is a French translation of the Bloch version , published in 1973 by the Belgian translator Jacques Finné under the title Le Phare (The Lighthouse) and one from 1984 into Dutch under the title De vuurtoren (The Lighthouse) . A German translation is not yet available for either Poe's fragment or Bloch's version.

According to Robert Eggers , the American psychological thriller Der Leuchtturm by the brothers Max and Robert Eggers , which hit cinemas in 2019, was originally based on Poe's fragment.

literature

• Fredrick S. Frank, Anthony Main Line: The Poe Encyclopedia. Greenwood Press, Westport 1997, ISBN 0-313-27768-0 , p. 203.
• Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Ed.): Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Volume III: Tales and Sketches 1843-1849. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1978, ISBN 0-674-13936-4 , pp. 1388-1392 ( digitized ).

Web links

Wikisource: The Light-House (English)  - sources and full texts

• The Lighthouse , full text on eapoe.org
• Publication history of The Lighthouse

Individual evidence

1. ^ Fredrick S. Frank, Anthony Magistrale: The Poe Encyclopedia. Greenwood Press, Westport 1997, ISBN 0-313-27768-0 , p. 203.
2. ↑ Edgar Allan Poe - “The Light-House” on eapoe.org.
3. ↑ ^{a b} George E. Woodberry: “Appendix B,” “The Life of Edgar Allan Poe: Personal and Literary.” Volume II, pp. 397-399 at eapoe.org.
4. ↑ Kenneth Silverman : Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York et al. a. 1991, ISBN 0-06-092331-8 , pp. 412ff.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d} Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Ed.): Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Volume III: Tales and Sketches 1843-1849. P. 1389.
6. ↑ Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Ed.): Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Volume III: Tales and Sketches 1843-1849. P. 1388.
7. ↑ JR Hammond: To Edgar Allan Poe Companion. The Macmillan Press, Hong Kong 1981, ISBN 0-333-27571-3 , p. 46.
8. ↑ Sam Moskowitz : The Man Who Called Himself Poe. Doubleday 1969, p. 189.
9. ↑ Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Ed.): Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Volume III: Tales and Sketches 1843-1849. P. 1392, FN 2.
10. ^ Hans-Dieter Gelfert : Edgar Allan Poe: At the edge of the maelstrom. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57709-3 , p. 45.
11. ↑ Kenneth Silverman: Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. P. 414.
12. ↑ Edgar Allan Poe - “The Light-House” on eapoe.org.
13. ^ Robert Bloch: The Man Who Collected Poe. In: Famous Fantastic Mysteries. October 1951, pp. 98-105.
14. ^ Robert Bloch: Foreword. In: Peter Haining : The Edgar Allan Poe Scrapbook. New English Library, London 1977, pp. 129-132.
15. ↑ Fantastic. Jan.-Feb. 1953, Volume 2, Number 1, Ziff-Davis, New York 1953, pp. 147-162.
16. ↑ Fantastic. Jan.-Feb. 1953, Volume 2, Number 1, 1953, p. 147.
17. ↑ Jacques Finné: L'Amérique Fantastique de Poe à Lovecraft. Gérard, Verviers 1973, pp. 101-112.
18. ↑ Information on the Dutch translation on isfdb.org.
19. ↑ Interview with Robert Eggers (Edgar Allan Poe The Lighthouse , 35:36 min.) On youtube.com.
20. ↑ David Fear: Drunken Sailors and Movie Stars: Robert Eggers on Making 'The Lighthouse' from October 25, 2019 on rollingstone.com.
21. ↑ Andrey Arnold: A film as a lighthouse of horror from November 28, 2019 on diepresse.com.

Remarks

1. ↑ According to The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore , this statement could be incorrect as there is no entry in the auction catalog; see here .