2. The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allan Poe

The Fall of the House of Usher

Edgar Allan Poe was an interesting writer but considered strange because many thought he was an alcoholic, while his real problem was poverty because he wasn't in the literary market. Poe wanted to make money, but there was no copyright, so he worked as an editor (redattore), to know what kind of things he could publish to become famous. He was also a journalist (there's still a debate if some of the articles published were written by him or not: he wrote many articles but he signed them with a different name – not his own – many of them are unknown). He published the review of the first translation of "I Promessi Sposi".

In Europe he became very popular thanks to the translation of Baudelaire (the most famous 19^th French poet): Baudelaire read his writings and translated them, he considered him as an alter-ego – Baudelaire had a strong identification with him because he felt that he could have written those stories. The Fall of the House of Usher is a gothic novel.

The Gothic Novel

The most important text is The Castle of Otranto (Horace Walpole). It was written in England when the entire classic models collapsed. People became interested in death, in the afterlife, and other strange, gothic things (it's all a reaction against classicism).

• Sublime (SUBLIM): Latin word which means SOMETHING BEYOND THE LIMIT, a place that can't be understood (E. Burke wrote its Manifesto).
• Metaphysic: what is beyond our capacity to interpret – qualcosa oltre il limite, al di là della comprensione umana.

The sublime and the gothic novel demonstrate that there were things that humans couldn't understand (against the Illuminism and the Rationalism that thought everything could be explained). The metaphysic heads to the Anti Rational Movement (Gothic – Sublime: they contain things the human mind can't understand).

It's linked to the French Revolution: During this period aristocracy came to an end, in this way aristocrats had lost their privileges. Gothic takes inspiration from this because the main characters are aristocrats who turn into ghosts or vampires (they are no longer alive and they suck blood as they did before by exploiting people's work).

Poe – Deadly Genre

Poe's work is ambiguous. He wants to get rid of the gothic novel because they were typical of Europe; he wanted to create something different, a new type of literature (to create a National Literature). But, at the same time – while he was attacking it, he understood that American readers weren't sophisticated and they wanted to read the same things that there were in Europe. To survive this dichotomy, he tried to survive by creating a gothic novel that makes fun of the gothic novel. When we read Poe's novel, we read a meta-gothic novel (meta-language, such as criticism, used to criticize – he created a Meta-Gothic-Games). He writes stories that talk about the gothic novels, but at the same time, they are commentaries (sono sia testi gotici che commenti veri e propri – such as The Fall of the House of Usher).

Narrative Structure

There is a basic distinction between internal and external narrator:

• Internal Narrator: It's also a character of the story. It could be unreliable (inaffidabile – such as a mad person, someone who's drunk, with a distorted perception of reality).
• External Narrator: It could be a third-person narrator or someone who's just telling the story. It could be omniscient, partly omniscient, or an unreliable narrator.

Usher is an internal narrator partially unreliable (he manipulates the perception).

Main Characters

• 3 Aristocrats: Usher, Madeleine, The Narrator.
• Usher tries to make the romantic way aristocratic people live to survive in himself, even if he's sick and his sister is going to die. They are the only representatives of the family, no one's left (happened after the French Revolution).
• The narrator is also a reader because when he enters the house of Usher he realizes he's in a gothic novel (there's something mysterious happening – Entering the Castle = Entering the Gothic Genre – Poe wants to show that the romantic art is too old, it's a metaphor to explain how the readers enter this genre, which is at its end).

Usher è l'anticipazione dei personaggi del Decadentismo: i DANDY. Nell'universo di Usher c'è un intruso, ovvero il Narratore che all'inizio del racconto si sta avvicinando al castello poiché Usher ha richiesto il suo aiuto.

The Text

Setting Gotico, dentro ad un castello. C'è un intruso: Il Narratore. Usher è un suo vecchio amico d'infanzia che gli chiede aiuto, e il Narratore non se la sente di dirgli di no. (Il Narratore è il lettore americano che si lascia risucchiare dal mondo gotico). Il narratore assiste all'annuncio della morte della sorella di Usher (era molto malata) e lo assiste nelle settimane seguenti dove dà segni di squilibrio mentale (Il romanzo gotico è come Usher: morente). Il Narratore è al capezzale dell'amico.

Alla fine del racconto la sorella ritorna con un vestito bianco insanguinato (non si capisce se è un fantasma, un cadavere o se è ancora viva – si sentono i suoi passi). Usher non regge a questa visione e muore. Poco dopo si sente un forte rumore, come di un terremoto: il castello inizia a tremare, il Narratore scappa fuori e quando esce il castello crolla (METAFORA del crollo/fine del Gotico).

"Son coeur est un luth suspendu; sitôt qu'on le touche il resonne" [De Béranger]

It's a description of Usher's heart (è una persona molto impressionabile, tutto ciò che lo tocca provoca in lui un forte impatto – he's a hypersensitive person and every time something touches him, he's affected by it – it's a typical romantic-gothic actor).

How is the narrator going to react to Usher?

• Will he be attracted/manipulated?
• "During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung...."

The letter D is very present in the first part of the text (alliteration – D stands for Death). The idea of darkness and soundless (the absence of sounds is the absence of life) the idea of solitude. Melancholy is the mood of the depression, a typical feeling of the romantic poet.

C'è sempre qualcosa di soprannaturale nei paesaggi desolati (manca quella sensazione quasi quasi piacevole, perché poetica, di una natura desolata e terribile – desolate nature = sublime).

"I know not how it was..."