In
reading _The Scarlet Letter_ we do not think of the style; in
reading _The Masque of the Red Death_ we are forcibly impressed
by the skilful arrangement of words, the alternation of long and
short sentences, the device of repetition and the deliberate
choice of epithets. Hawthorne uses his own natural form of
expression. Poe, with laborious art, fashions an instrument
admirably adapted to his purposes.
Poe's earliest published story, _A Manuscript Found in a
Bottle_--the prize tale for the _Baltimore Saturday Visitor_,
1833--proves that he soon recognised his peculiar vein of talent.
He straightway takes the tale of terror for his own. The
experiences of a sailor, shipwrecked in the Simoom and hurled on
the crest of a towering billow into a gigantic ship manned by a
hoary crew who glide uneasily to and fro "like the ghosts of
buried centuries," forecast the more frightful horrors of _A
Descent into the Maelstrom_ (1841). Poe's method in both stories
is to induce belief by beginning with a circumstantial narrative
of every-day events, and by proceeding to relate the most
startling phenomena in the same calm, matter-of-fact manner. The
whirling abyss of the Maelstrom in which the tiny boat is
engulfed, and the sensations of the fishermen--awe, wonder,
horror, curiosity, hope, alternating or intermingled--are
described with the same quiet precision as the trivial
preliminary adventures.
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