Edgar Allan Poe

“We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow; and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle. To-morrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us, — of the definite with the indefinite — of the substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails, — we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer-note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies — it disappears — we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it is too late!”

“A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no words written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished because undisturbed: and this is an end unattainable by the novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided.”

“L'uomo non cede agli angeli, né interamente alla morte, se non a causa della fiacchezza della sua minuscola volontà”

“And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.”

“In other words, I believed, and still do believe, that truth, is frequently of its own essence, superficial, and that, in many cases, the depth lies more in the abysses where we seek her, than in the actual situations wherein she may be found.”

“Chi sogna di giorno conosce molte cose che sfuggono a chi sogna solo di notte.”

“Zekice bir kitap yazmışsın, Bon-Bon,” diye devam etti Majesteleri, dostumuzun omzuna, o verilen emri tam anlamıyla yerine getirdikten sonra bardağını bırakırken hafifçe, bilgiç bir tavırla vurarak. “Kesinlikle zekice bir kitap. Tam benim sevdiğim türden bir eser. Ancak özdeğe ilişkin tasarımın geliştirilebilir ve fikirlerinin pek çoğu bana Aristoteles’i anımsatıyor. O filozof en yakın tanıdıklarımdan biriydi. Onu hem korkunç huysuzluğundan, hem de pot kırmak gibi eğlenceli bir yönünden dolayı severdim. Bütün o yazdıkları arasında tek bir somut gerçek var ki, onun ipucunu da kendisinin absürdlüğünü sevdiğim için ben verdim. Pierre Bon-Bon, hangi yüce ahlâki gerçekten bahsettiğimi biliyorsun sanırım, değil mi?”“Bildiğimi söyleyemem –”“Evet! – Aristoteles’e insanların hapşırırken gereksiz fikirleri burunlarından dışarı attığını söyleyen bendim.”“Bu –hık!– gerçekten de doğru,” dedi metafizikçi, kendisine bir bardak daha Mousseux koyarken ve ziyaretçisinin parmaklarına enfiye kutusunu sunarken.“Platon’a da,” diye devam etti Majesteleri, enfiye kutusunu ve içerdiği iltifatı alçakgönüllülükle geri çevirerek, “Platon’a da bir zamanlar arkadaşça hisler beslemiştim. Platon’la tanıştın mı Bon-Bon? – Ah! Hayır, binlerce kez özür dilerim. Benimle bir gün Atina’da, Parthenon’da karşılaştı ve bana bir fikirden bunaldığını söyledi. Ona ο νους εδτιv αυλος‘yu* yazmasını önerdim. Bunu yapacağını söyleyip eve gitti, ben de piramitlere çıktım. Ama vicdanım beni bir arkadaşa bile olsa birine gerçeği söylediğim için kınadı ve apar topar Atina’ya geri dönüp ‘αυλος’yu yazarken filozofun sandalyesinin arkasında durdum. Kağıda parmağımla dokunarak ters çevirdim. Böylece cümle şimdi ‘ο νους εδτιv αυγος’** olarak okunuyor ve gördüğün gibi, metafiziğinin temel doktrini.”“Hiç Roma’da bulundunuz mu?” diye sordu restaurateur, ikinci Mousseux şişesini bitirdikten sonra dolaptan büyük bir şişe Chambertin alırken.“Sadece bir kez, sevgili Bon-Bon, sadece bir kez. Bir ara” –dedi Şeytan, sanki bir kitaptan okurcasına– “bir ara beş yıllık bir anarşi dönemi olmuştu ve o sırada bütün memurlarından yoksun kalan cumhuriyetin halkın seçtiklerinden başka yargıcı yoktu. Bunlar da yasal idari yetkiye sahip değildi – o zaman, Mösyö Bon-Bon – yalnızca o zaman Roma’daydım ve bu yüzden onun felsefesine ilişkin dünyevi bir tanıdığım yok.”“Epicurus hakkında ne –hık!– ne düşünüyorsunuz?”“Kimin hakkında?” dedi şeytan şaşkınlıkla, “Epicurus’ta kusur bulmak istiyor olamazsın! Epicurus hakkında ne düşünüyormuşum! Beni mi kastediyorsunuz bayım? – Epicurus benim. Diogenes Laertes tarafından adı anılan üç yüz bilimsel incelemenin herbirini yazan filozof benim.”* Ruh bir flüttür.** Ruh parlak bir ışıktır.”

“…nasıl etikte kötü iyinin bir sonucuysa, yine aynı şekilde sevinçten keder doğar. Ya geçmişte kalmış mutlulukların anısı bugünün acısıdır, ya da var olan ıstıraplar kökenlerini var olmuş olabilecek esrikliklerden alırlar.”

“…mutluluk hayatta iki kez elde edilmez…”

“Bu acılarla dolu dünya bazen en mantıklı bakışla bile bir cehennem gibi görünür. Ama insanın hayal gücü Carathis değildir ki, bu cehennemin tünellerinde cezalandırılmadan gezebilsin. Mezara ilişkin sayısız iç karartıcı korkuların hepsine de hayali olarak bakamayız ne yazık ki. Ama, tıpkı Afrasiab'a Oxus'a yaptığı yolculukta eşlik eden iblisler gibi, uyumaları gerekir - yoksa bizi yerler. Onlar uyumalıdır, yoksa biz ölürüz.”

“And boyhood is a summer sun / Whose waning is the dreariest one-- / For all we live to know is known, / And all we seek to keep hath flown--”

“O craving heart, for the lost flowers/ And sunshine of my summer hours!/ The undying voice of that dead time,/ With its interminable chime,/ Rings in the spirit of a spell, / Upon thy emptiness--a knell. / I have not always been as now:”

“but it is a trait in the perversity of human nature to reject the obvious and the ready, for the far-distant and equivocal.”

“It would be mockery to call such dreariness heaven at all.”

“Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

“تنفلت المواد من إدراك حواس الإنسان تدريجياً. لدينا مثلاً المعدن، قطعة الخشب، قطرة الماء، الهواء، الغاز، السعرات الحرارية، الكهرباء، الأثير الكونى. نسمي كل تلك الأشياء مادة، ونضع كل ما هو مادة تحت تعريف عام؛ مع ذلك، فليس هناك من فكرتان أكثر تناقضاً فيما بينهما من تلك التى نربطها بالمعدن، وتلك التى نربطها بالأثير الكوني.حين نصل للأخير نميل على نحو لا إرادى تقريبًا لتصنيفه مع النفس أو العدم. لا يقيدنا سوى تصورنا عن تكوينه الذرى، وحتى هنا نطلب العون من تصورنا للذرة كشيء دقيق دقة متناهية وصلب الملمس وله وزن. لو دمرنا فكرة التكوين الذرى لن نعتبر الأثير ككيان بعد الآن، أو على الأقل، كمادة. وللحاجة لكلمة أفضل قد نطلق عليه روحانى. الآن تقدم خطوة لما وراء الأثير الكوني - تصور مادة أندر كثيرًا من الأثير، بقدر ندرة الأثير مقارنة بالمعدن، فنصل فورًا (رغم كل عقائد العلم...) لفوضى لا نظير لها - مادة ليست من جسيمات. إذ رغم إقرارنا بالدقة اللامتناهية للذرات، فإن دقة الفراغات بينها هى التى لا تعقل.”

“Alas! for that accursed timeThey bore thee o'er the billow,From love to titled age and crime,And an unholy pillow!From me, and from our misty clime,Where weeps the silver willow!”

“Our talk had been serious and sober,But our thoughts they were palsied and sere -For we knew not the month was October,And we marked not the night of the year -(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)We noted not the dim lake of Auber -(Though once we had journeyed down here) -Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.”

“Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!Let the bell toll!-a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?-weep now or nevermore!”

“There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm”

“And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy.”

“When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket.”

“To look at a star by glances - to view it in a side-long way, by turning toward it the exterior portions of the retina (more susceptible of feeble impressions of light than the interior), is to behold the star distinctly - is to have the best appreciation of its lustre - a lustre which grows dim just in proportion as we turn our vision fully upon it.”

“Sensations are the great things, after all. Should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations; they will be worth to you ten guineas a sheet.”

“There are things around us and about, of which I can render no distinct account--Things material and spiritual; heaviness in the atmosphere; a sense of suffocation, anxiety, and above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant.”

“There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.”

“I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.”

“Over the MountainsOf the Moon,Down the Valley of the Shadow,Ride, boldly ride,"The shade replied,-"If you seek for Eldorado.”

“Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path.”

“True! - nervous - very, very nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?”

“Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often, Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its nature! How mysteriously did it act as a check to human bliss - saying unto it "thus far, and no farther!”

“In pace requiescat!”

“Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough." "True - true," I replied;”

“Thy soul shall find itself alone ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone—Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee—and their will Shall overshadow thee: be still. [...]”

“Dobbiamo tenere a mente che, in generale, fare sensazione, colpire le fantasie, per i nostri giornali è più importante che volere la verità. La verità è interessante soltanto quando coincide con la sensazione. La stampa che segua solo opinioni correnti, anche se si tratti di opinioni fondate, non ha credito fra la massa. La massa considera profondo solo chi suggerisce aspre contraddizioni con le idee generali. Nella logica, non meno che nella letteratura, il più pungente è l'epigramma e anche il più universalmente apprezzato; in entrambi i campi è quello più a buon mercato.(Cavaliere C. Auguste Dupin)”

“Is all that we see or seemBut a dream within a dream?”

“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasureable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.”

“Lo! 'tis a gala nightWithin the lonesome latter years! An angel throng, bewinged, bedightIn veils, and drowned in tears,Sit in a theatre, to seeA play of hopes and fears [...]”

“É um facto que um homem engenhoso é sempre fantasista, enquanto o homem verdadeiramente imaginativo é, no fundo, um analista.”

“The pioneers and missionaries of religion have been the real cause of more trouble and war than all other classes of mankind.”

“TRUE! – nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses – not destroyed – not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story.”

“I went as a passenger, having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a fiend”

“...the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic has assumed, of power. It is not that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in imagining a possible necessity for modification.”

“The history of human knowledge has so uninterruptedly shown that to collateral, or incidental, or accidental events we are indebted for the most numerous and most valuable discoveries, that it has at length become necessary, in any prospective view of improvement, to make not only large, but the largest allowances for inventions that shall arise by chance, and quite out of the range of ordinary expectation. It is no longer philosophical to base, upon what has been, a vision of what is to be. Accident is admitted as a portion of the substructure. We make chance a matter of absolute calculation. We subject the unlooked for and unimagined, to the mathematical formulae of the schools.”

“The mass of the people regard as profound only him who suggests pungent contradictions of the general idea. In ratiocination, not less than in literature, it is the epigram which is the most immediately and the most universally appreciated. In both, it is of the lowest order of merit.”

“...that fitful strain of melancholy which will ever be found inseperable from the perfection of the beautiful.”

“If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being?”

“THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely, settled --but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. ”

“The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.”

“To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.”