Dead Brides : Vampiric Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

by Poe, Edgar Allan; Lovecraft, H. P.; Clarke, Harry

• ISBN13: 9781902197401
• ISBN10: 1902197402
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2013-01-31
• Publisher: Scb Distributors

Summary

DEAD BRIDES contains the cycle of five vampiric stories, written between 1835 and 1842, which in many ways forms the sepulchral nucleus of Poe's prose work: Berenice, Morella, Ligeia, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, and The Oval Portrait. In these classic tales, Poe investigates the essentially vampiric nature of human relationships, including love and lust both normal and incestuous, and develops his theme to observe the lesion of vitality inherent in the creative or artistic process.Vampirism, with its terrible energy exchanges and exactions, is ultimately Poe's analogy for a love that persists beyond the grave - an all-consuming, necrophiliac passion that cannot be sated until an undead reconciliation is effected.DEAD BRIDES is illustrated by Harry Clarke, and includes a foreword on Poe by the author H P Lovecraft as well as an afterword on Poe, opium, and the pathology of the house of Usher.

Excerpts

"There is nothing so poetic in the world as the death of a beautiful woman.”-Edgar Allan PoeThe above quote lies at the dark heart of Poe's aesthetic, and his greatest works in poetry and prose all revolve around it. This book contains the "vampire” cycle of five stories, written between 1835 and 1842, which in many ways forms the nucleus of his prose work: "Berenice” (1835), "Morella” (1835), "Ligeia” (1838), "The Fall Of The House Of Usher” (1839), and "The Oval Portrait” (1842). In these classic tales, Poe investigates the vampiric nature of human relationships, including love and lust both "normal” and incestuous, and develops his theme to observe the vampiric qualities inherent in the creative or artistic process. Poe's obsessive tracts on trance, catalepsy, narcolepsy, premature burial, fetishism, and necrophilia comprise a crypt of manias epitomised by these key works. These epistles of a poisoned romance between body and soul, charting febrile dreamscapes and unnatural longings, seem to reflect the writer's life of sexual torment through a drink and opium mirror; a symphony of dead brides and delirium. The persistence of life even after death, whether by reanimation or metempsychosis, which is probably the single most dominant theme of Poe's work, is also central to the mythology of the vampire. As the protagonist of terminal poems such as "Annabel Lee”, Poe casts himself as an utterly abject figure, a subterranean doomed to spend eternity in the necrophiliac embrace of his deceased wife. The five tales in this volume plunge the reader into the hallucinant cartography of the necropolis - the vampire's realm. Vampirism, with its terrible energy exchanges and lesions, is Poe's analogy for a love that persists beyond the grave - an all-consuming passion that knows no peace until an undead reconciliation is effected. "Ligeia”, for example, is essentially vampiric in its atmosphere as well as its characterisations. The story of the female vampire, or lamia, is told by someone who could perhaps be a vampire himself. The lamia is dead, and according to the narrator she could be the cause of his debilitation. But we never can assess blame, such is the ambiguity of the recollection. Poe's stories in this vein are mirrors of the disintegration of the conscious, the ego and the objective rationality as two partners attempt to control, consume, seduce and destroy each other. His stories are black metaphors describing human interaction. The female ...