Edgar Allan Poe

anTales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
Poe, Edgar Allan

Published: 1840
Categorie(s): Fiction, Horror, Short Stories
Source: Wikisource

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About Poe:
Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, short story writer, playwright,
editor, critic, essayist and one of the leaders of the American Romantic
Movement. Best known for his tales of the macabre and mystery, Poe
was one of the earlyAmerican practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of detective fiction and crime fiction. He is also credited with
contributing to the emergent science fiction genre.Poe died at the age of
40. The cause of his death is undetermined and has been attributed to alcohol, drugs, cholera, rabies, suicide (although likely to be mistaken with
his suicide attempt in the previous year),tuberculosis, heart disease,
brain congestion and other agents. Source: Wikipedia
Also available on Feedbooks for Poe:
• The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)
• The Raven (1845)
• The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)
• The Pit and the Pendulum (1842)
• The Cask of Amontillado (1846)
• The Masque of the Red Death (1842)
• The Black Cat (1842)
• The Purloined Letter(1844)
• A Descent into the Maelström (1841)
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Seltsamen tochter Jovis
Seinem schosskinde
Der Phantasie
—Goethe

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Preface
The epithets "Grotesque" and "Arabesque" will be found to indicate with
sufficient precision the prevalent tenorof the tales here published. But
from the fact that, during a period of some two or three years, I have
written five-and-twenty short stories whose general character may be so
briefly defined, it cannot be fairly inferred — at all events it is not truly
inferred — that I have, for this species of writing, any inordinate, or indeed any peculiar taste or prepossession. I may have written with aneye
to this republication in volume form, and may, therefore, have desired to
preserve, as far as a certain point, a certain unity of design. This is, indeed, the fact; and it may even happen that, in this manner, I shall never
compose anything again. I speak of these things here, because I am led to
think it is this prevalence of the "Arabesque" in my serious tales, which
has induced one ortwo critics to tax me, in all friendliness, with what
they have been pleased to term "Germanism" and gloom. The charge is
in bad taste, and the grounds of the accusation have not been sufficiently
considered. Let us admit, for the moment, that the "phantasy-pieces"
now given are Germanic, or what not. Then Germanism is "the vein" for
the time being. To morrow I may be anything but German, asyesterday I
was everything else. These many pieces are yet one book. My friends
would be quite as wise in taxing an astronomer with too much astronomy, or an ethical author with treating too largely of morals. But the
truth is that, with a single exception, there is no one of these stories in
which the scholar should recognise the distinctive features of that species
of pseudo-horror whichwe are taught to call Germanic, for no better
reason than that some of the secondary names of German literature have
become identified with its folly. If in many of my productions terror has
been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul,
— that I have deduced this terror only from its legitimate sources, and
urged it only to its legitimate results.
There are oneor two of the articles here, (conceived and executed in
the purest spirit of extravaganza,) to which I expect no serious attention,
and of which I shall speak no farther. But for the rest I cannot conscientiously claim indulgence on the score of hasty effort. I think it best becomes me to say, therefore, that if I have sinned, I have deliberately
sinned. These brief compositions are, in chief...