El escarabajo de oro y otros relatos

by Edgar Allan Poe

De todos es conocido el enorme talento (raras veces superado) de Edgar Alla Poe para estremecernos y hacernos sentir el terror irracional recorrer cada palmo de nuestro cuerpo. Pero solo unos pocos saben que Poe fue el precursor de la literatura detectivesca, llevando la perfeccion literaria y la riqueza de estimulos imaginativos hasta un techo que otros (Chesterton o Doyle) rozaran sin abrirle brechas. Quien se adentre en los relatos que conforman este libro se dara pronto cuenta de ello. En la literatura detectivesca, la razon es desafiada, acepta el desafio y vence; y es Poe, el presunto apostol de lo irracional, el que idea esa formula literaria del triunfo de la razon y del hallazgo de lo real detras de lo quimerico. Pero la razon no es lo unico que conduce a la la simpatia, el miedo, el amor, el odio, tambien pueden identificar realidades y generar ante ellas reacciones de aproximacion, proteccion o rechazo conformes a la verdadera naturaleza de las cosas.

108 pages, Paperback

Published January 11, 2000

About the author

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...

Reviews

[Musa Lexa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Libros muy fuertes. Poe tiene una forma de narrar impresionante.
El relato que más impacto en mí fue "El gato negro". Fue tan horroroso que cuanto más leía más me irritaba el protagonista, alguien sin empatía, que se esconde en el alcohol para hacer atrocidades, donde tal vez el alcohol desvelaba lo que él en verdad era. Cabe destacar que es la típica persona que hacen cargo a otros seres de su comportamiento inhumano; tratando así de acallar por momentos el remordimiento (si es que en algún momento lo sintió) que llega a su conciencia y corazón.

[Guada Vilanova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Los únicos salvables son los crímenes de la calle morgue y el escarabajo de oro

[Abraham C. H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me gustó mucho el cuento del gato. Ya había leído el corazón traidor en la preparatoria y me trajo recuerdos. Recomiendo leerlo en halloween >:)

[Pnyxis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una serie de cuentos cortos escritos por el genial Edgar Allan Poe. Si has leído a Sherlock Holmes te va a gustar, pues las historias del libro, protagonizadas por Dupin, inspiraron a Conan Doyle.