Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.17234/ZGB.30.3

Apocalyptic Chamber Musik – Edgar Allan Poe Composes a Story about a Shipwreck, Alfred Kubin Draws It

Hans Richard Brittnacher orcid.org/0000-0003-0282-2510 ; Free University Berlin

Abstract

Stories about adventures at sea offer an exemplary scheme for modern heroic narratives – they provide the bourgeois world with the longed-for ›metaphors for existence‹ (Blumenberg), which certify its cultural superiority, economic vigor, masculine determination, and technical efficiency. E. A. Poe’s only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, irritates this indestructible optimism with its poetic profession to the end of the world. In an elegiac suite to apocalyptic experience, failure is varied until it finally succeeds, and is experienced by its participants in a state of almost lustful apathy. In the ink drawings by Alfred Kubin, the diffuse lure of the apocalypse finds its congenial counterpart.

Keywords

shipwreck; apocalypse; cannibalism; journey to the South Pole; Edgar Allan Poe; Alfred Kubin

Hrčak ID:

272138

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/272138

Publication date:

1.2.2022.

Article data in other languages: german

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