Edgar on the adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym. Edgar Allan Posted by Arthur Gordon Pym

Edgar Allan Poe

The Tale of the Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym

Per. - G. Zlobin

FOREWORD

A few months ago, on my return to the United States, after a series of most wonderful adventures in the Southern Ocean, which are given below, circumstances brought me into contact with several gentlemen from Richmond, Virginia, who showed a deep interest in everything that touched the places where I visited, and considered it my indispensable duty to publish my story. However, I had reasons for refusing, and of a purely private nature, affecting only me alone, and not quite private.

One of the considerations that held me back was the fear that, since I did not keep a diary for most of my journey, I would not be able to reproduce events from memory in sufficient detail and coherence, so that they would seem as true as they were in reality - not considering only the natural exaggerations into which we all inevitably fall when talking about incidents that have deeply struck our imagination.

Besides, the events which I had to relate were of such an unusual nature, and, moreover, no one, by virtue of circumstances, could confirm them (except for the only witness, and that half-breed Indian), that I could only count on the favorable attention of my family. and those of my friends who, having known me all my life, had no reason to doubt my veracity, while the general public, in all probability, would have considered what I wrote to be an unabashed, though skilful fiction. However, one of the main reasons why I did not follow the advice of my acquaintances was a lack of confidence in my writing abilities.

Among the Virginian gentlemen who took a deep interest in my stories, especially in that part of them relating to the Antarctic Ocean, was Mr. Poe, who had recently become editor of the Southern Literary Gazette, a monthly magazine published by Mr. Thomas W. White in Richmond. Like others, Mr. Poe urged me to write without delay about all that I saw and experienced, and to rely on the insight and common sense of the reading public; while he convincingly argued that, however unskillful the book may turn out, the very roughness of style, if any, will ensure it a greater likelihood of being accepted as a true account of actual events.

Despite these arguments, I did not dare to follow his advice. Then he suggested (seeing that I was unshakable) that I allow him to describe, based on the facts I have stated, my early adventures and publish it in the Southern Herald _under the guise of a fictional story_. Seeing no obstacles to this, I agreed, making the only condition that my real name appear in the narration. As a result, two parts written by Mr. Poe appeared in the Herald in the January and February editions (1837), and in order to be perceived precisely as fiction, his name appeared in the contents of the magazine.

The manner in which this literary stratagem was received prompted me at last to take up the systematic presentation of my adventures and the publication of notes, for, despite the appearance of fiction in which the part of my story that appeared in the magazine was so skillfully clothed (and not a single fact was altered or distorted), I found that readers are still not inclined to perceive it as fiction; on the contrary, several letters have been sent to Mr. Poe expressly expressing the conviction to the contrary. From this I concluded that the facts of my narration in themselves contain sufficient evidence of their authenticity and, therefore, I have nothing to fear from the distrust of the public.

After that, expose [statement, report (fr.)] everyone will see how great is the share of the following, which belongs to me; it must also be reiterated that not a single fact has been misrepresented in the first few pages which are written by Mr. Poe. Even those readers who have not caught the eye of the "Vestnik" do not need to indicate where its part ends and mine begins: they will easily feel the difference in style.

A.-G. Pim. New York, July 1838

My name is Arthur Gordon Pym. My father was a respectable marine merchant in Nantucket, where I was born. My maternal grandfather was a lawyer and had a good practice. He was always lucky, and he successfully invested in shares of the Edgartown New Bank, as it was then called. In these and other cases, he managed to set aside a considerable amount. I think that he was attached to me more than to anyone else, so that after his death I expected to inherit most of his fortune. When I was six years old he sent me to the school of old Mr. Ricketts, an eccentric, one-armed gentleman who is well known to almost everyone who has been to New Bedford. I attended his school until the age of sixteen, and then moved to Mr. E. Ronald's school, located on the hill. Here I became close to the son of Captain Barnard, who used to sail on the ships of Lloyd and Redenberg - Mr. Barnard is also very well known in New Bedford, and I am sure that he has many relatives in Edgartown. His son's name was August, he was almost two years older than me. He had already gone whale watching with his father on the John Donaldson and kept telling me about his adventures in the South Pacific. I often visited his house, staying there for the whole day, and even for the night. We climbed into bed and I stayed up until almost dawn listening to his stories of the savages from Tinian and other islands he visited during his travels. I was involuntarily fascinated by his stories, and I gradually began to feel a burning desire to set off into the sea myself. I had a sailboat, the Ariel, worth about seventy-five dollars, with a small cabin fitted out like a sloop. I forgot her carrying capacity, but she held ten with no difficulty. We used to make the most reckless sorties on this ship, and when I now think of them, it seems to me an unheard-of miracle that I survived.

I am not a fan of sea adventures, and in general everything connected with the sea / water. But this year the water just surrounds me! This summer I have been in the water and swam more than in the last 5 years. And then this novel by Po with his sea adventures, which went in parallel with my adventures in a 3-day rafting along the unforgettable Ai River. Therefore, the impression of the book remained more sublime than that of other readers, since I plunged into this topic with my head.

The first thing to keep in mind before reading is the time of writing the book. The novel was published in the first half of the 19th century, when knowledge of the sea was not only far from perfect, they were not even at the stage of progress in such geographical discoveries. That is, this is the very beginning of marine research. And if not for the fantastic part, one could consider the events historical. And so today it is perceived as the discovery of a child, because they look so naive. In particular, when the author and I swim to Antarctica ... Science fiction just rolls over! And the whole journey that the main character makes - a very young adventurer, looks beyond fiction, and not a serious journey. Of course, in the book, Poe gave a lot of marine terms, especially in the smallest detail, it was postponed how best to pack the cargo in the hold. Well, it was very important information for me! Descriptions of nature and strange animals encountered. And how much the author has invested in the novel of stories about real geographical discoveries, so for the information of those readers who did not particularly follow the progress of discoveries in these areas. And everything is fine, if everything was not mixed with fantasy. The effect was created that the author was simply not able to come up with adventures anymore.

But let's leave the fantasy. She didn't draw me to the book. The novel is clearly a plot failure. And it would be better if the author continued to write his masterpiece stories. By the way, even the syllable was simpler in the novel. Colloquial, without philosophy and reflections. I was fascinated by the description of the behavior of the characters with the onset of maritime misadventures. Why I love Poe. Here he is also accurate in conveying the state of mind in the moments from which the blood runs cold, as in his gloomy stories. The ominous atmosphere that is present in the "adventures" of Arthur Pym made it goosebumps. The ship of the dead terribly appeared on the horizon. The savages horrified with their cunning, commercialism, and especially cruelty. And the south pole of nothingness has left a mystery, only now with a layer of nightmare.

As a result. Those who get acquainted with Edgar Allan Poe, and those who want to read, it is better not to read something on the marine theme. The rest… I liked it. Fascinated.

Faculty of Onomastics

Foreword

A few months ago, on my return to the United States, after a series of most wonderful adventures in the Southern Ocean, which are given below, circumstances brought me into contact with several gentlemen from Richmond, Virginia, who showed a deep interest in everything that touched the places where I visited, and considered it my indispensable duty to publish my story. However, I had reasons for refusing, and of a purely private nature, affecting only me alone, and not quite private.

One of the considerations that held me back was the fear that, since I did not keep a diary for most of my journey, I would not be able to reproduce events from memory in sufficient detail and coherence, so that they would seem as true as they were in reality - not except perhaps for the natural exaggerations into which we all inevitably fall when talking about incidents that have deeply struck our imagination.

Besides, the events I was about to recount were of such an unusual nature, and, moreover, no one, by virtue of circumstances, could confirm them (except for the only witness, and that half-breed Indian), that I could only count on the favorable attention of my family. and those of my friends who, having known me all my life, had no reason to doubt my veracity, while the general public, in all probability, would have considered what I wrote to be an unabashed, though skilful fiction. However, one of the main reasons why I did not follow the advice of my acquaintances was a disbelief in my writing abilities.

Among the Virginian gentlemen who took a deep interest in my stories, especially that part of them relating to the Antarctic Ocean, was Mr. Poe, who had recently become editor of the Southern Literary Herald, a monthly magazine published by Mr. Thomas W. White in Richmond. Like others, Mr. Poe urged me to write without delay about all that I saw and experienced, and to rely on the insight and common sense of the reading public; while he convincingly argued that, however unskillful the book may turn out, the very roughness of style, if any, will ensure it a greater likelihood of being accepted as a true account of actual events.

Despite these arguments, I did not dare to follow his advice. Then he suggested (seeing that I was unshakable) that I allow him to describe, based on the facts I have stated, my early adventures and print it in the Southern Herald. under the guise of a fictional story. Seeing no obstacles to this, I agreed, making the only condition that my real name appear in the narration. As a result, two parts written by Mr. Poe appeared in the Herald in the January and February issues (1837), and in order to be perceived precisely as fiction, his name appeared in the contents of the magazine.

The manner in which this literary stratagem was received prompted me at last to take up the systematic presentation of my adventures and the publication of notes, for, despite the appearance of fiction in which the part of my story that appeared in the magazine was so skillfully clothed (and not a single fact was altered or distorted), I found that readers are still not inclined to perceive it as fiction; on the contrary, several letters have been sent to Mr. Poe expressly expressing the conviction to the contrary. From this I concluded that the facts of my narration in themselves contain sufficient evidence of their authenticity and, therefore, I have nothing to fear from the distrust of the public.

After this expose, everyone will see how great is the share of the following, which belongs to me; it must also be reiterated that not a single fact has been misrepresented in the first few pages which are written by Mr. Poe. Even those readers who have not caught the eye of the Vestnik do not need to indicate where its part ends and mine begins: they will easily feel the difference in style.

A.-G. Pim. New York, July 1838

My name is Arthur Gordon Pym. My father was a respectable marine merchant in Nantucket, where I was born. My maternal grandfather was a lawyer and had a good practice. He was always lucky, and he successfully invested in shares of the Edgartown New Bank, as it was then called. In these and other cases, he managed to set aside a considerable amount. I think that he was attached to me more than to anyone else, so that after his death I expected to inherit most of his fortune. When I was six years old, he sent me to the school of old Mr. Ricketts, a one-armed gentleman with eccentric manners, who is well known to almost everyone who has been to New Bedford. I attended his school until the age of sixteen, and then moved to Mr. E. Ronald's school on the hill. Here I became close to the son of Captain Barnard, who used to sail on the ships of Lloyd and Redenberg - Mr. Barnard is also very well known in New Bedford, and I am sure that he has many relatives in Edgartown. His son's name was August, he was almost two years older than me. He had already gone whale watching with his father on the John Donaldson and kept telling me about his adventures in the South Pacific. I often visited his house, staying there for the whole day, and even for the night. We climbed into bed and I stayed up until almost dawn listening to his stories of the savages from Tinian and other islands he visited during his travels. I was involuntarily fascinated by his stories, and I gradually began to feel a burning desire to set off into the sea myself. I had a sailboat, the Ariel, worth about seventy-five dollars, with a small cabin, fitted out like a sloop. I forgot her carrying capacity, but she held ten with no difficulty. We used to make the most reckless sorties on this ship, and when I now think of them, it seems to me an unheard-of miracle that I survived.

Before proceeding to the main part of the story, I will talk about one of these adventures. One day the Barnards had some guests, and by the end of the day August and I were pretty tipsy. As usual in such cases, I preferred to take part of his bed rather than trudge home. I believed that he fell asleep peacefully, without dropping a single word on his favorite topic (it was already about one in the morning when the guests dispersed). It must have been half an hour since we lay down, and I was about to fall asleep, when suddenly he got up and, bursting out with terrible curses, declared that he personally was not going to sleep when such a glorious breeze was blowing from the south-west - no matter what all the Gordon Pyms in the Christian world thought about this together. I was astonished as never before in my life, for I did not know what he was up to, and decided that Augustus was simply out of his mind from the consumed wine and other drinks. He spoke, however, quite sensibly and said that I, of course, consider him drunk, but in fact he is sober as a glass. He was just tired, he added, of lying like a lazy dog ​​in bed on a night like this, and now he would get up, get dressed and go for a boat ride. I don’t know what came over me, but as soon as he said this, I felt the deepest excitement and delight, and his reckless undertaking seemed to me almost the most magnificent and witty in the world. Almost a gale arose, it was very cold: it happened at the end of October. Nevertheless, I jumped out of bed in some kind of ecstasy and declared that I, too, was not a timid ten, that I, too, was tired of wallowing like a lazy dog ​​in bed, and that I, too, was ready to have fun, for any trick, how and what That's August Barnard from Nantucket.

Title page of the first edition.

Narration by Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, in Russian translation - "The Tale of the Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym") - the only finished novel by Edgar Allan Poe (1838). It is considered one of the most controversial and mysterious of his works.

The “Tale” is distinguished by a loose structure and is divided into two unequal parts, the first of which describes events that are quite plausible, and the second is fantastic. The story (which Poe tried to pass off as genuine notes, and not entirely unsuccessfully) is told by a young Nantucketer named Arthur Gordon Pym, who seems to have traveled the South Seas.

Plot

Hiding with his dog on the Grampus brig leaving Nantucket harbor, the young adventurer is forced to spend day after day in the pitch darkness of a cramped hold, so that his mind is on the verge of insanity. The dog brings him a friend's note, on which with great difficulty he distinguishes the words scrawled in blood: "If you want to live, do not leave the shelter."

As it turns out, the sailors rebelled on board. By agreement with his friend, Pym unexpectedly appears before the rebels under the guise of the ghost of a deceased sailor and, taking advantage of their confusion, seizes the initiative along with allies from the crew. After a brutal massacre, four remain alive on the ship, during a storm the provisions are washed into the ocean, a ship floats by with corpses scattered on the deck. To survive on the high seas, Pym and his companions are forced to indulge in cannibalism. In the end, Pim and his friend find themselves on an overturned ship, surrounded by hungry sharks.

In this seemingly hopeless situation, they are unexpectedly picked up by a ship from Liverpool heading south. Having overcome ice obstacles, they fall into unusually warm regions near the south pole. There they land on an island where blacks live so black that even their teeth are black, and they do not know white at all. At the sight of mirrors, savages tend to fall on their faces and lie motionless, covering their faces with their hands.

After all the whites on the ship become victims of the bloodthirsty natives, Pym and his companion hide in the mountains on the island, then, seizing the moment, steals a pirogue from the savages and, together with the captive native, makes his way south along the milky waves. Every day it gets hotter, instead of rain, “fine white dust” like ash falls from the sky. Huge dead-white birds rush towards the travelers.

We rush straight into the whiteness enveloping the world, the abyss opens up before us, as if inviting us into its arms. And at this moment, a human figure in a shroud, rising from the sea, is blocking our way, much higher than any inhabitant of our planet. And her skin is whiter than white.

This ends Arthur Gordon Pym's daily entries. In a short afterword, the publisher gives an interpretation of the signs Pym discovered on the walls of the labyrinth on the island of black-toothed people. In his opinion, these signs form "the Ethiopian verbal root be black”, “Arabic verbal root be white” and the ancient Egyptian word for “region of the south”.

Interpretations

Throughout the 19th century, Poe's only novel was considered his absolute failure and was reprinted only in complete works (and even then without the final lines about the figure in the shroud). Critics like Wallace pointed to the incompatibility of the events described in the book with scientific data. Poe himself mentioned the novel only once, calling it in private correspondence "a stupid book." It is possible that at the time of writing the story he was influenced by John Simms' Hollow Earth teachings.

A general reassessment of the significance of "The Tale ..." in Poe's legacy and in the history of American literature was outlined in the middle of the 20th century. Critics began to pay attention to the spiral structure of the narrative, which is characterized by a rhythm of repetition, similar to the onrushing sea waves. Jorge Luis Borges considered Pym's narration to be the best of Poe's. Like Ambrose Bierce's "The Owl Creek Bridge Incident" and his own short story "The South", Pym's journey across the white ocean can be seen as a metaphor for the posthumous demise of the narrator's consciousness (or the journey of the soul to the creator) - if one accepts the thesis that Pym is in reality did not escape anywhere, but died during the attack of hostile Negroes.

Attempts to interpret the novel and its mysterious ending run into the problem of the symbolism of white. The chapter “Moby Dick” about the mystical whiteness of the white whale is consonant with it: of all earthly colors, only white - the color of emptiness and non-existence - evokes unaccountable, supernatural horror. Modern African-American commentators, led by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, see Poe's color symbolism as nothing more than a reflection of his racial prejudice, but there are more sophisticated interpretations (the author's metaphysical horror is caused by the whiteness of a blank sheet of paper).

In Russia

For the first time in Russian, the novel was published in Dostoevsky's magazine Vremya in 1861, translated by Yegor Moller. In the next 50 years, 6 more translations appeared, including those by Mikhail Engelhardt and Konstantin Balmont. Balmont's translation is reprinted today along with the modern translation by Georgy Zlobin. "The Tale..." is the subtext of Boris Sadovsky's science fiction novel "The Adventures of Karl Weber", which also describes an expedition to the South Pole.

A source

• Ronald Clark Harvey. The Critical History of Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym: A Dialogue with Unreason. Routledge, 1998.

Links

OBSCURUM PER OBSCURIUM

IGNOTUM PER IGNOTIUS

Collection "GARFANG"

Literature of restless presence

The collection is maintained

Evgeny Golovin

Participating in the publication of the collection

Sergey Zhigalkin, Irina Koltasheva

The GARFANG collection will include works of black, fantastic, sinister fiction. Primarily.

But this should not be understood unambiguously. After all, our sunset is the dawn of antipodes.

And even in the core of hell, a spark of divine laughter smolders.

Garfang - a white snowy owl - has long symbolized the fearless search for the unknown. The famous Viking Torfin Carlson, one of the discoverers of the new continent, drew a garfang on his shield.

When Raul Amundsen was dying of exhaustion in the polar ice, he saw a garfang and realized that the shore was close. But which coast?

Edgar Allan Poe.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1837).

details of the outrage and brutal massacre on the American brig Grampus on her way to the South Seas, with a story about the recapture of the ship by the survivors; of their downfall and subsequent terrible suffering from hunger; about their rescue by the British schooner Jan Guy; of the brief cruise of this last vessel in the Midday Ocean; about the capture of a schooner and the beating of her crew among a group of islands at the 84th parallel of south latitude, about the incredible adventures and discoveries even further south, to which this unfortunate misfortune led.

On my return a few months ago to the United States, after an extraordinary series of adventures in the South Seas and elsewhere, which I relate in the following pages, chance brought me into the company of a few gentlemen in Richmond, Virginia, and they, being greatly interested in everything concerning the regions which I visited insisted upon me that it was my duty to present my narration to the public. I had, however, reasons for refusing to do so—some of them were of an entirely personal nature and concern no one but myself; but there were also other reasons. One consideration that held me back was this: not keeping a diary during most of the time when I was away, I was afraid that I would not be able to write from memory a story so detailed and coherent that it would have the appearance of the truth that was in it. in fact, and I will show only the natural, inevitable exaggeration to which each of us is prone when describing incidents that have had a powerful effect on the excitement of our imagination faculties. Another reason was that the incidents which had to be told were by their nature so positively miraculous that, in view of the lack of support for my statements by any evidence, as it inevitably had to be (except the evidence of one individual, and even that Indian of mixed blood) I could only hope that they would believe me in my family and among those friends of mine who, throughout their whole life, had reason to be convinced of my veracity - but, in all likelihood, a large public would begin to look at what I have become I would argue, just as a brazen and ingenuous fiction. Distrust of my own abilities as a writer was, with all that, one of the main reasons that prevented me from agreeing with the persuasion of my advisers.

Among those gentlemen in Virginia who expressed the greatest interest in my story, especially in that part of it relating to the Midday Ocean, was Mr. city ​​of Richmond. He strongly advised, along with others, to now prepare a full account of what I saw and experienced, and rely on the insight and common sense of the public - asserting with full plausibility that, despite the rawness in a purely literary respect, with which in the light of my book, its very clumsiness, if it has any, will give the greatest probability of being accepted as the truth.

Despite this admonition, I could not set my mind to do as he advised me. Seeing that I would not deal with this, he suggested that I state in my own words the first part of my adventures according to the data reported by me, and publish it in the Southern Herald under the guise of fiction. Having no objection to this, I agreed, having agreed only that my real name would be kept. Two issues of the supposed fiction appeared in succession in the Herald, in January and February (1837), and in order to be really looked upon as fiction, Mr.