爱伦·坡短篇小说集 - 书评
爱伦·坡著有小说《怪诞故事集》、《黑猫》、《莫格街谋杀案》等。论文有《写作的哲学》、《诗歌原理》。1841年发表的《莫格街谋杀案》是公认为最早的侦探小说。内容写密室凶杀，凶手居然是猩猩。1842年发表的《 ...此主题为自动生成的书评内容贴，书籍链接地址: http://www.dothinkings.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=11440
书评内容会自动聚合在本帖中 如果你手头读的也是人民文学出版社名著名译这一版，来我们翻开目录页一个一个掰扯，看看这位仅仅活了四十年的坡先森到底发明了多少梗：
《瓶中手稿》：鬼船（灰翔的河南人默默飘过）
《出名》《生意人》《辛格姆鲍勃先生的文学生涯》：讽刺小说（极其刻薄，极其辛辣，极其夸张，看了最后一篇就会知道为什么坡先生死后一堆编辑出来黑他喷他）
《丽姬娅》《鄂榭府崩溃记》：死尸复活，女鬼（后者在哥特小说界的大名不必多说了）
《钟楼里的魔鬼》：多出来的时间（喂这个主意多棒啊我就不说安房直子《谁也不知道的时间》我当初是有多爱了）
《威廉威尔逊》：人格分裂（致命ID搏击俱乐部精神病患者什么的你们都给跪了吧）
《大漩涡底余生记》：海上历险
《艾蕾奥瑙拉》：善良的女鬼负心汉（蒲松龄老师你好）
《一星期有三个星期天》《眼镜》《斯芬克斯》：恶作剧小把戏，逆转结局（但绝对让人捧腹，尤其眼镜，尼玛神逆转）
《椭圆形画像》：真人和画像互替（是的，你想到的就是《道连格雷》。我自己写的《画魂》也抄的是这个创意啊不过当时我以为我抄的是王尔德是芥川的地狱变结果某天我读到了坡于是虎躯一震……）
《红死魔的面具》：中世纪哥特风恐怖小说
《陷坑与钟摆》：酷刑+心理折磨（我发誓我真没想到《风声》）
《泄密的心》《黑猫》：心理恐怖（我懒得说了这俩太有名了，韩露画了个漫画连名字都直接照抄了黑猫……）
《骗术》：类攥罗列式小说？
《长方形的盒子》：悬疑推理
《凹凸山的传说》：灵魂转世 前世今生
《提前埋葬》：活埋（这个梗现在恐怖片都用烂了吧==）
《焦油博士与羽毛教授的疗法》：精神病人反扮医生（我和达里奥福一起中枪了）
《气球骗局》：科幻
《离奇天使》：“黄粱一梦”模式
《同木乃伊的对话》：穿越（呵呵）古今之争
《一桶白葡萄酒》《跳蛙》：惊险复仇故事
《毛格街血案》《玛丽罗热疑案》《金甲虫》《窃信案》《就是你》：侦探推理（以后出现的诸如“安乐椅神探”“密码破译”“利用心理误区”“最不可能的人就是凶手”之类的梗，没错他们都学的是坡先森！没借鉴过坡先森的怎么好意思自称推理作家！）
综上所述，世间小说之梗，坡君一人占六七矣。
The Masque of the Red Death: A Life Story
Lux Bai
Oct 2010
Critics often regard “The Masque of the Red Death” as an allegorical tale about man’s fear of death (Cassuto, Wheat, Bell), assuming the mysterious deadly contagion “Red Death” as a representative of death. It is, however, a misinterpretation — the Red Death is in fact life itself. By describing at large Prince Prospero and his guests’ response towards him, Edgar Allan Poe reveals the tragic nature of life and the futility of human’s every attempt to escape from it.
As appearing in the title, what the Red Death represents is crucial for understanding the theme of the allegory. In the beginning of the story, Poe introduces us the hideous plague with such description: “Blood was its Avatar and its seal –– the redness and the horror of blood.” “Avatar” means that the blood is an incarnation of the Red Death. According to Joseph Roppolo, Avatar can also be defined as “a variant phase or version of a continuing entity”, thus suggests a second meaning of blood: an eternal ruling principle of the universe. What blood or the Red Death should represent, therefore is this eternal universal principle that man strives to avoid but fails. The question is: As blood could symbolize either life or death, which one is the rule?
The story depicts a metaphoric battle between Prospero and the Red Death. One should assume if we know what Prospero’s world represents, we would automatically know what the Red Death means since it must be the opposite. Examining the text of the work, I discover there is strong implicit of Prospero’s insanity. He is “happy and dauntless” when his dominions were half depopulated. His “eccentric tastes” and love of “bizarre” are emphasized constantly throughout the story. Poe also explicitly tells us “there are some who would have though him mad”, but carefully avoids revealing too much by saying “his followers felt that he was not”. His followers, however, are revealed later as “dreams”, “phantasm” and “mad revelers”, suggesting they might be as insane as well or even unreal. All above evidence suggests the madness of Prospero’s world.
From the above clues, one may speculate the Red Death as the “enemy” of Prospero represents sanity, reality and solidness. In terms of a universal rule, the Red Death is the nature of life.
Besides the madness stressed in the story, other interesting points also support this interpretation. One question I came across when reading the story is why the Red Death has no tangible form. Also, how does he sneak in the abbey? Then I realized that instead of moving around in a form as the guests see, the Red Death is actually omnipresent, like God. He is not an independent figure but exists everywhere in the air. By giving him no tangible form, Poe suggests that Red Death is the universal rule Life.
Later in the story there is a scene in which Prospero chases the Red Death from the blue room to the black room. The color of the rooms symbolizes Prospero’s lifespan (Bell). As blue refers to birth and black refers to death, the scene would not make sense if we regard the Red Death as death itself. Why would Prospero chase death from the date of his birth? It makes better sense to view the scene as Prospero seeking the nature of life, as human has been since the beginning of history.
Another peculiar thing occurs in the beginning of the story: The courtiers “welded the bolts” not to keep the Red Death out, but to prevent the courtiers own “sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy” to get out. What is so attractive to incite people to risk their lives? The answer certainly is not death itself. There is no reason for them to kill themselves if the world inside the abbey is as happy as seemed. The explanation would be although the world outside, represented by the Red Death is dreadful, it is real while the world inside is just a mad dream. People in the abbey somewhat know the self-deceiving nature of their world and it is man’s primary instinct to seek the reality.
Poe even compares the looks of the guests and the Red Death’s to make further implications. He lets every guest wear various grotesque mask and costumes, while giving the Red Death a face “so nearly resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have difficulty in detecting the cheat” to suggest he represents the truth.
Another interesting point to notice is: If the Red Death was the representative of death which Prospero tries so hard to avoid, why would he include the black room in his design of the suite? Clearly, he is not so afraid of the black room as he is afraid of the Red Death, for he “shuddered either of terror or distaste” at the sight of him. The only possible explanation is that the Red Death refers to something more than death.
While all above evidence supports our previous speculation, one may argue that there are many obvious implications of death in the story. For example, the clock of ebony symbolizes the limited time each person has to live. While the stroking of each hour minds the guests their inevitable, they react deeply disturbed and anxious. The clock as a representation of human life is also suggested in the end, as “the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay.” Also, the seven rooms of the abbey, according to Bell, is “an allegorical representation of Prince Prospero’s life span”. The direction of the rooms, in accord with the sun rising in the east and setting in the west indicates the dawn and dust of one’s life. The order of the rooms –– blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet — also symbolizes “Prospero’s physical and mental condition in that decade of his life” (Bell). Guests’ fear of the westernmost black room is a distinct metaphor for man’s fear of death.
Notwithstanding the idea is well supported, the Red Death does not necessarily represent only death. As Prospero includes the black room in his suites suggests, Poe suggests death is in fact a part of life. The inevitability of death therefore is also part of the tragic nature of life, the main theme of the story. Contrary to the common belief, Poe in “The Masque of the Red Death” cleverly combines death and life into one reality.
Now we know the Red Death represents the nature of life, but in order to get the message of the story, we must know Poe’s idea of life. In “The Masque of the Red Death”, he suggests directly, both from language and plot, that life is tragic, hopeless and invincible.
Regarding the language, Poe’s usage of a deadly contagion the Red Death to symbolize life is a clever irony. It powerfully reveals life as tragic, horrid and hopeless. When depicting the six rooms, he connects life with sickness: “feverishly the heart of life”. Regarding the plot, Poe contributes much time describing the life Prospero and his guests’ have in the abbey to convey the message that man can never delude himself and escape from reality. Under the extravagant and happy surface, Poe suggests, their world is actually fragile and deeply corrupted. More notably, the world created by the characters in the story significantly reflects the world we live in on both individual and societal level.
On a personal level, Poe suggests man tries to distract himself from the tragic nature of life by earthly emotional experiences and material comforts. Deeply afraid of the Red Death’s invasion, Prospero attempts to deny it by “all appliances of pleasure”. Among these pleasures, Poe implies both emotional and material comforts man often indulges himself with.
Prospero’s crenellated abbeys of “an extensive and magnificent structure” with “strong and lofty wall” signify man’s common desire for a secure and wealthy residence. The masque ball as a “voluptuous scene” also is the very depiction of man’s obsession with sumptuous lifestyle. Most notably, the “imperial suite” holding the masquerade with superb embellishments and the guests all meticulously dressed up in “grotesque” style represents the utmost material pleasure one could ever imagine. However, no matter to what extent is the extravagance, the Red Death comes “like a thief in night” and massacred all.
Poe also suggests that man seeks emotive incitement to distract himself from the cruelty of life.The color of the seven rooms, besides suggesting different periods of life, also implies the various and complicated sensibilities man possesses; the guests stalking “to and fro in the seven chambers” is a metaphor for man’s constant craving for emotional stimulation. Similarly, Poe deliberately devotes much time describing the guests enjoying music and dancing “feverishly” to suggest the same thing. However, at the moment the clock rings, all pause and listen shows the insignificance and triviality of man’s emotion compared to the gravity of life itself.
On a societal level, Poe shows how humans use each other to seek consolation and enhance their illusions. In the allegory, Poe reveals dark sides of human relationship in three aspects. First, Poe shows the apparent cruelty and indifference of man. In the beginning of the story, Poe depicts the scarlet stains as “the pest pan, which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-man”. Poe clearly reveals the heartless attitudes of the privileged groups toward the vulnerable group. Prospero’s reaction towards the misery of his people as “happy” is an example of his extreme brutality. Also, from lines like ''the external world... take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think," Poe presents the reader a group of corrupted souls with no morality.
Second, Poe implies the serious inequality of people’s status in the society. Prospero enjoys absolute power over all his guests. In his power-centralized world, everyone relies on this subordinate relationship to seek a sense of security. Being worshipped and embraced by his followers, Prospero finds consolation in his followers, while the followers seek sense of safety under the “protection” of Prospero. The design of the ball and the guest costumes reflects this issue most:“it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders.” We see a total loss of identity and freedom of the subordinate.
Thirdly, people deceives and consoles each other, the “masque” itself is a metaphor for people’s hypocrisies. Dancing to the same music with same paces, they hide their inner selves under the masks to integrate into the environment. Poe notes this point by saying the guests “taking hue from the rooms”, which is a metaphor for man changing faces in different social occasions. Meanwhile, people console each other to comfort their own anxiety. After hearing the stroke, they “made whispering vows” and had “laughter floats after them as they depart”, only to deepen their illusions.
As one may expect, all these efforts Prospero and his guests make to distract themselves from the Red Death, in possessions, emotions and social relations, fail to save them from death. At last, “Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all”; dreams are devastated by reality. As Poe suggests, the dream itself, although beautifully embellished, is just as bad as life in nature, filled with deception, indifference and brutality. That may well explains how the Red Death creeps in with the bolts welded, for the abbey in fact has always been under his domination.
“The Masque of the Red Death” is therefore a story about life, a mysterious allegorical tale that reflects the dark sides of man’s society and the tragic nature of life that man is hopeless to escape.
* This is an abandoned rough draft without references.
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