红死病论文

在美国文学界再也找不到一个比爱伦·坡更加命运坎坷的大作家了。他的一生大多在同命运搏斗的逆境中度过。在爱伦·坡成长的时代，美国文坛文豪辈出，欧文、库伯、梭罗、霍桑和爱默生等等，不一而足，但历史却只给爱伦·坡戴上了天才的桂冠。1827年5月，位于波士顿市华盛顿街70号的一家小印刷所出版了一本名为《帖木尔及其他诗》的薄薄的诗集。那家印刷所的老板兼工人是个19岁的小伙子，名叫卡尔文·F·S·托马斯，他把自己的名字印在该书的扉页上。那本诗集的作者是个18岁的青年，名叫埃德加·爱伦·坡，但他在诗集上留下的作者署名则是“一个波士顿人”。时光荏苒，那位姓托马斯的印刷商自那之后便销声匿迹并无从查找，而那位匿名作者后来却蜚声文坛并名垂青史。那本收诗10首、只印了大约50册、售价为12美分半的诗集原版，如今只有4册留存于世，早已成了美国文库中的无价之宝。爱伦·坡在这个世界上生活了40年（1809—1849年）。爱伦·坡于1809年1月19日生在波士顿的一个流浪艺人的家庭里。他很小就父母双亡，被他的教父收养。在里士满他养父母的家里，他几乎拥有他所需要的一切：家具齐备的房间、最新式样的服装、各种他爱读的书籍。他甚至还有一架养父约翰·爱伦为他买的天文望远镜，并经常约朋友来家和他一起眺望星空。少年时代的坡遭受过一次打击，那是因为一个女人的去世。这女人是坡的同学罗伯特·斯坦纳德的母亲，她端庄美丽，成了坡心中美的偶像。1824年4月，31岁的斯坦纳德夫人病故，坡为此非常伤心，其后很长一段时间神思恍惚，常做恶梦，而且多次在夜里到斯坦纳德夫人坟头哭泣。这种“失美之痛”使他后来写出了《致海伦》一诗。就在斯坦纳德夫人去世前后，约翰·爱伦的商行在长时间不景气之后终于倒闭，这段时间爱伦动辄发怒，坡开始感到往日的父爱越来越少。不过约翰·爱伦仍然把坡送进了弗吉尼亚大学，但令人费解的是，当时弗吉尼亚大学每名学生1年的费用约为350美元，而爱伦只给了坡110美元。这导致了坡后来中途辍学并最终与养父决裂，开始了他的漂泊生涯。坡是怀着他的文学梦开始漂泊的。可惜他在波士顿出的那本《帖木儿》无人问津。迫于生计，他化名应征入伍，后来还进了西点军校。可对文学的渴望使他设法离开了军校。在其后的日子里，他为了生活苦苦挣扎。1849年10月3日，有人在巴尔的摩街头发现了处于昏迷状态的坡，4天后，在美国文学史上，堪与马克·吐温并称的小说家兼诗人爱伦·坡溘然长逝。死之前，他对着头顶阴霾的天空愤愤叫道，“愿上帝保佑我！”这是他向命运第一次乞求宽恕，也是最后一次对之最有力的抗争。综观爱伦·坡的一生，一直都陷于痛苦泥淖之中而不能自拔。不幸总是接踵而来，他失去双亲，继而失去兄妹，再而失去对其呵护有加的养母、失去爱妻、失去生活保障、最后失去种种生活的理想，致使他的内心始终处于颤栗之中，恐惧占据他心头。“恐惧”是他一生的主题，也成为他所有作品的主题。在他短短一生写下的不少作品中，文学评论是很重要的一部分。当时文坛上，除了詹姆斯·罗塞尔·洛威尔之外，几乎无人可与之抗衡。洛威尔一向不轻易赞扬别人，却把坡誉为“最有见识、最富哲理的大无畏评论家”。当代文学评论家埃德蒙·威尔逊也称“坡的文学评论确实是美国文坛上空前的杰作”。他一向主张“为艺术而艺术”。他的艺术主张几乎贯穿于他的所有作品中，包括诗歌、短篇小说和论文。在这些作品中，他声称“一切艺术的目的是娱乐，不是真理。”他认为“在诗歌中只有创造美———超凡绝尘的美才是引起乐趣的正当途径。音乐是诗歌不可缺少的成分，对诗人力求表现超凡绝尘的美尤其重要。而在故事写作方面，艺术家就不妨力图制造惊险、恐怖和强烈情感的效果。而且每篇作品都应该收到一种效果。”坡的小说，特别是恐怖小说，不仅描绘了令人战栗的现象，而且抽丝剥茧地探讨了因恐惧而丧失理智的过程，成为心理分析小说的滥觞。爱伦·坡首开先河创造了四种迥然不同的小说叙述类型：一是恐怖悬疑小说，大多是与异常心理的探讨有关，被视为其代表作的，如《亚夏古屋的崩塌》、《贝瑞妮丝》、《黑猫》和《泄密的心脏》；二是假想故事，虽然不可信但具有寓言性，这方面的作品如《红死病之面具》、《别用你的脑袋跟魔鬼打赌》等；第三类是极为著名的，那就是侦探推理小说，爱伦·坡是侦探小说的鼻祖，著名的侦探小说人物柯南的形象与爱伦·坡《莫格街凶杀案》、《玛莉罗杰奇安》中的杜宾十分相似，有着明显的传承关系；第四类是科学冒险小说，如《热气球轶事》。这四种类型都是爱伦·坡开创的先河。真正的天才都是不幸者，他们很难得到同代人的理解和赏识。坡曾试图阐释死亡欲望，可在弗洛伊德为其下定义之前，谁会理解这种欲望呢？坡喜欢描写血淋淋的暴力，可在海明威那些短篇小说问世之前，谁会认为暴力小说也是纯艺术呢？坡特别擅长制造恐怖悬念，可那个时代的读者尚不知“心理恐怖小说”为何物。坡不止一次地以双重自我作为小说的主题，可当时评论家的词库中还没有分裂人格这个字眼。坡仰天浩叹青山绿水被高炉浓烟蹂躏，可19世纪的芸芸众生还没有环保意识。坡俯首嗟叹科学的发展，并没有为人类带来真正的幸福，可那时的文化人并不热衷于谈论终极关怀。坡在《诗歌原理》中点评平克尼的一首诗歌时说：“不幸的是平克尼先生出生在遥远的南方，不然他早就成了美国的头号抒情诗人。”若平克尼真是生错了地方的话，那爱伦·坡则是生错了时代。这位不幸的天才本该生在我们这个不幸的世纪。似乎坡当时也意识到了这点，所以他在《我发现了》中说：“我不在乎我的作品是现在被人读还是由子孙后代来读，我可以花一个世纪来等待读者……”爱伦·坡谢世已整整150周年，但愿他等来的读者能告慰他的在天之灵。爱伦·坡葬于巴尔的摩，是一些不相干的人，甚至是对他怀有敌意的人将他安葬的。他们订购了一块厚重的石板，置于曾经很不安分的诗人的墓穴上，他们希望诗人能够就此沉息。当他们将这块石板盖上的时候，它却断裂了。次年春天，石板的裂缝中长满了随风飘来的种子生发的野花，整座坟墓被点缀在朵朵野花、丛丛野草之中。至于列提纲吗，只要先读几本小说，然后感到什么特点写下来，哪怕一两个字也行，最后再把它扩充成一篇文章就行了。至于影响，不用说了，开辟了恐怖小说和推理小说这两大类型，让后世的许多作家竞向模仿。

杰克·伦敦（Jack London 1876～1916）美国作家。生于破产农民家庭，从小出卖劳力为生，曾卖报、卸货、当童工。成年后当过水手、工人，曾去阿拉斯加淘金，得了坏血症。从此埋头读书写作，成为职业作家。他共写了19部长篇小说、150多篇短篇小说和故事，3部剧本，以及论文、特写等。早期作品有描写北方淘金者生活的短篇小说集（包括1900至1902年发表的《狼的儿子》等3部集子，通称“北方故事”）；描写伦敦贫民生活的特写集《深渊中的人们》（1903）；描写兽性般残忍和利己主义的长篇小说《海狼》（1904）。作品揭露了资本主义社会的弊端，表现了对劳动人民顽强意志的歌颂和苦难生活的同情，也显示了作者的“适者生存”的社会进化论思想和尼采式“超人”哲学观念。19世纪90年代他参加社会主义运动，1905年后参加社会党的活动，此间创作了一些优秀的现实主义作品，如号召工人阶级抛开幻想、准备坚持长期武装斗争的政治幻想小说《铁蹄》（1908）；描写劳动者出身的现实主义作家因理想破灭而投海自杀的自传体长篇小说《马丁·伊登》（1909）。小说描写了劳动人民的苦难生活，展示了工人阶级的革命斗争，揭露了资产阶级的虚伪、势利和自私，但小说的主人公却是强调个人意志和脱离群众的“超人”。到后期，杰克·伦敦逐渐脱离社会斗争，追求个人享受。虽创作了《一块排骨》（1911）、《在甲板的天蓬下面》（1913）等优秀小说，也写了《埃尔西诺尔号的叛变》（1914）、《红死病》（1915）等诬蔑工人运动及宣扬世界未日的作品。1916年他在精神极度苦闷空虚中服毒自杀。

Literary Giant: Edgar Allen PoeRalph Waldo Emerson called him the jingle man, Mark Twain said that his prose was unreadable, and Henry James felt that a taste for his work was the mark of a second-rate sensibility. According to T. S. Eliot, "the forms which his lively curiosity takes are those in which a preadolescent mentality delights." After notices like those, most reputations would be sunk without a trace, and yet Edgar Allan Poe shows no sign whatsoever of loosening his extraordinary hold on our imaginations. In 1959, Richard Wilbur, an elegant poet and a critic of refined taste, inaugurated the Dell Laurel Poetry Series (mass-market paperback selections from classic British and American poets) with an edition of Poe's complete poems, for which he provided a long and thoughtful introduction. In 1973, Daniel Hoffman, also a distinguished poet and critic, published a highly regarded study of Poe's writings. In 1984, two massive volumes of Poe's collected works, together comprising some three thousand pages, were published in the Library of America. In the 1990s, Poe has been the subject of a children's book and a substantial new biography, and a Halloween episode of the Baltimore-based television series Homicide: Life on the Street made very effective use of his legend and his writings, especially the poem "Dream-Land" and the stories "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado." A century and a half after his death, he is the one American author whose name is known to virtually everyone. Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809, the second of the three children of David Poe and Elizabeth (Arnold) Poe, both of whom were professional actors and members of a touring theatrical company. Eclipsed by his more famous wife, his own promising career ruined by alcoholism, Poe's father deserted the family when Edgar was still an infant; nothing conclusive is known of his life thereafter. While appearing professionally in Richmond, Virginia, Poe's mother became ill and died on December 8, 1811, at the age of twenty-four. Her three children, who would maintain contact with one another throughout their lives, were sent to live with different foster families. Edgar became the ward of John Allan, a successful tobacco merchant in Richmond, and his wife Frances, who had no children of their own. Although never formally adopted by them, Poe regarded the couple, especially Mrs. Allan, as parents, and he took their surname as his own middle name. In 1815, business reasons led Allan to move to England for what would be a five-year stay. Both in London and then in Richmond after the family's return, Poe was well educated in private academies. In 1825, he became secretly engaged to a girl named Elmira Royster. The engagement, opposed by both families, was subsequently broken off. In 1826, Poe entered the University of Virginia, newly founded by former President Thomas Jefferson. He distinguished himself as a student, but he also took to drinking, and he amassed gambling debts of $2,000, a significant amount of money at the time, which John Allan, although he had recently inherited a fortune, refused to honor. After quarreling with Allan, Poe left Richmond in March 1827 and sailed to Boston, where, in relatively short order, he enlisted in the United States Army (under the name Edgar A. Perry, and claiming to be four years older than his actual age of eighteen) and published a pamphlet called Tamerlane and Other Poems, whose author was cited on the title page only as "a Bostonian." This little book did not sell at all, but its few surviving copies are among the most highly prized items in the rare-book market; one accidentally discovered copy, bought for a dollar, was recently auctioned for $150,000. Poe's military career went more successfully. After two years, he had been promoted to sergeant major, the highest noncommissioned rank. He was honorably discharged in 1829, and decided to seek an appointment to West Point in the hope of becoming a career commissioned officer. He entered West Point in May of 1830, but chafed under the regimen and, after deliberately missing classes, roll-calls, and compulsory chapel attendance, was expelled in January 1831. In 1829, Poe had published a second collection of verse, which attracted little more attention than its predecessor. A third volume, funded through contributions from fellow cadets, appeared in 1831. Among its contents was "To Helen," which had been inspired by Jane Stanard, the mother of one his Richmond schoolmates. Poe referred to her as "the first, purely ideal love of my soul." Also in 1831, Poe went to Baltimore, where he moved in with his widowed aunt Maria Clemm, his father's sister, who was to be the most deeply devoted of his several mother-figures, and her eight-year-old daughter Virginia. It was in this period that he began to achieve wider recognition as a writer. In 1832, he published five tales in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier. In 1833, he entered a competition sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter (sic), winning the second prize in poetry for "The Coliseum" and the first prize in fiction for "MS. Found in a Bottle." In 1834, the publication of "The Visionary" in Godey's Lady's Book marked the first time that his fiction appeared in a magazine of more than local circulation. Frances Allan had died in February 1829, and John Allan, who was by this time permanently alienated from Poe, had remarried in October 1830. On Allan's death in 1834, Poe received nothing. Effectively disinherited, unsuited for business or the military, Poe turned to journalism, the one avenue likely to afford a successful career to someone of his interests and abilities. Through the recommendation of the novelist John Pendleton Kennedy, who had been one of the judges of the Saturday Visiter contest, Poe began in March 1835 to contribute short fiction and book reviews to the Richmond-based Southern Literary Messenger. In a period of American literature not notable for them, Poe exhibited coherent aesthetic principles and high critical standards, and within months his vigorous and uncompromising reviews began to increase the Messenger's circulation and to enhance its reputation, prompting its publisher to make Poe his principal book reviewer and editorial assistant. By the end of the year, Poe, who had moved to Richmond with Virginia and Mrs. Clemm, was named editor in chief. In May of 1836, he secretly married Virginia, his first cousin, who was then not quite fourteen years of age. Dissatisfied both with his salary and with limits on his editorial independence, he resigned from the Southern Literary Messenger in January 1837. Struggling to support Virginia and Mrs. Clemm through freelance writing, he moved his family first to New York and then to Philadelphia as he sought another editorial position. Despite financial difficulties, Poe was able in this period to advance his own writing career, publishing reviews, poems, and especially fiction in various journals and in several volumes. In 1839, he began to write regularly for Thomas Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, contributing a feature article and a number of book reviews each month. Once again, Poe's editorship brought dramatic advances in both quality and circulation, but he was dismissed from this position in June 1840 after once again quarreling with his publisher. Failing in attempts to found his own journal, in 1841 Poe became an editor of Graham's Magazine, a new journal formed by George Graham through a merger of his magazine The Casket with the Gentleman's Magazine, which he had bought from Burton. Once more the pattern played itself out: the magazine thrived under Poe's direction, he wanted a higher salary and a freer editorial hand, and he left his position--although this time on relatively good terms with the publisher. Poe's personal fortunes once more suffered reverses as his writing career advanced. In January 1842, Virginia suddenly began to hemorrhage from the mouth, the first indication that she had contracted tuberculosis. She was seriously ill for a time, and would never again be truly healthy. Poe also had renewed difficulties in his attempts to find steady employment. But in 1843 he published several works, including "The Tell-Tale Heart," in James Russell Lowell's short-lived journal The Pioneer, and in June of that year his story "The Gold-Bug" won a $100 prize in a contest sponsored by the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper. Widely reprinted, it made Poe famous with a broad fiction-reading public, but he did not become financially secure. Owing to lax copyright standards at the time that allowed for widespread reprinting--a condition that Poe himself editorialized about--writers did not profit directly from the popularity of their work. In 1844, Poe moved to New York, where he lectured on American poetry and contributed articles to newspapers and magazines. The year 1845 would bring both triumphs and the beginning of a final downward spiral in Poe's life. His poem "The Raven" appeared in the New York Evening Mirror in January, and was an instant success with both readers and critics. He began writing for the Broadway Journal, became its editor in July, and shortly thereafter fulfilled a longstanding dream by becoming its owner as well. But a series of articles in which he groundlessly accused Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of plagiarism did harm to Poe's reputation, and Virginia's health problems became severe. Financial difficulties, his worry over Virginia, and his own precarious physical and emotional state caused him to cease publication of the Broadway Journal after less than six months as its proprietor. He moved out of New York City to a cottage in then-rural Fordham (now a heavily urban section of the Bronx), where in the midst of poverty, ill health, and Virginia's now grave illness, he still somehow continued to earn a small income writing reviews and articles. A satirical piece on fellow writer Thomas Dunn English provoked from its subject a scurrilous personal attack in the Evening Mirror, which led Poe to sue the publication. Although he would win the suit and collect damages the following year, the whole episode was a great strain upon Poe's already fragile nervous system. On January 30, 1847, Virginia died, plunging Poe into an emotional and physical collapse that lasted for most of the year. In 1848, he was briefly engaged to marry Sarah Helen Whitman, a widowed poet several years his senior, but their relationship was tense and strained, and the engagement was broken off. He went to Richmond in the summer of 1849, hoping to find financial backing for yet another journal, and while there he was reunited with and re-engaged to Elmira Royster, his first love, now herself a widow. He sailed from Richmond to Baltimore, where on October 3, 1849, he was found outside a polling place (it was election day), in a state of delirium and wearing shabby and ill-fitting clothing. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he raved feverishly for several days before dying on October 7 at the age of forty. Neither the circumstances that had led to his condition nor the exact cause of his death have ever been satisfactorily determined. Poe's posthumous reputation sustained grievous and long-lasting damage from a libelous biography by Rufus Griswold, whom Poe himself had appointed his literary executor, and rumors, mostly unfounded, circulate to this day about Poe's mental state and personal habits. Whatever mysteries may still surround his life and character, there is no doubt of his enormous importance to American literature in several different areas. His best poems--"To Helen," "The Raven," "Annabel Lee," and others--which many can recite by heart, demonstrate him to be a master of rhythmic effect. His stories, particularly his tales of horror and terror, are equally treasured by an immense readership. Yet despite his popular association with the gothic and the grotesque, Poe was also an accomplished humorist, as shown in a number of his short stories, and was capable of hilarious satire at the expense of inferior writers. For all his interest in lurid effects and morbid states of mind, he was also fascinated by ratiocination: in his three tales featuring Auguste Dupin, he singlehandedly invented the genre of the detective story. And more than anyone else in early nineteenth-century America, he played a crucial role in shaping and elevating literary taste and in developing aesthetic theory, particularly in the field of poetry. Thus, both with critics and scholars and with the general public, Poe remains a permanent fixture of our living literary culture.