Заживо погребенный. Рассказы

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ-93
          П 41

© КАРО, 2009
ISBN 978-5-9925-0584-9

По Э.А.

П 41
Заживо погребенный. Рассказы: Книга для чтения
на английском языке. — СПб.: КАРО, 2010. — 352 с. —
(Classical literature).

ISBN 978-5-9925-0584-9.

Эдгар Аллан По (1809–1849) — классик американской
литературы, поэт, прозаик, критик.
В данный сборник вошли его лучшие рассказы  — трагические, фантастические, юмористические и, конечно, «Золотой
жук» и «Убийство на улице Морг» — первые шедевры детективной литературы.
Оригинальный текст снабжен постраничными комментариями и словарем.

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ-93

The Premature Burial

There are certain themes of which the interest
is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction. These
the mere romanticist must eschew, if he do not
wish to offend or to disgust. They are with propriety handled only when the severity and majesty of truth sanctify and sustain them. We thrill,
for example, with the most intense of ‘pleasurable pain’ over the accounts of the Passage of the
Beresina, of the Earthquake at Lisbon, of the
Plague at London, of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew or of the stifling of the hundred and
twenty-three prisoners in the Black Hole at Calcutta. But in these accounts it is the fact — it is
the reality — it is the history which excites. As
inventions we should regard them with simple
abhorrence.
I have mentioned some few of the more prominent and august calamities on record; but in
these it is the extent, not less than the character
of the calamity, which so vividly impresses the

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fancy. I need not remind the reader that from the
long and weird catalogue of human miseries I
might have selected many individual instances
more replete with essential suffering than any of
these vast generalities of disaster. The true
wretchedness indeed — the ultimate woe — is particular, not diffuse. That the ghastly extremes of
agony are endured by man the unit and never by
man the mass — for this let us thank a merciful
God!
To be buried while alive is beyond question
the most terrific of these extremes which has
ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality. That it
has frequently, very frequently, so fallen will
scarcely be denied by those who think. The
boundaries which divide Life from Death are at
best1 shadowy and vague. Who shall say where
the one ends and where the other begins? We
know that there are diseases in which occur total
cessations of all the apparent functions of vitality,
and yet in which these cessations are merely suspensions, properly so called. They are only temporary pauses in the incomprehensible mechanism.
A certain period elapses and some unseen mysterious principle again sets in motion the magic
pinions and the wizard wheels. The silver cord

1 at best — (разг.) в лучшем случае

THE PREMATURE BURIAL

5

was not for ever loosed, nor the golden bowl irreparably broken. But where meantime was the
soul?
Apart, however, from the inevitable conclusion a priori that such causes must produce such
effects — that the well-known occurrence of such
cases of suspended animation must naturally
give rise now and then to premature interments —
apart from this consideration, we have the direct
testimony of medical and ordinary experience to
prove that a vast number of such interments
have actually taken place. I might refer at once, if
necessary, to a hundred well-authenticated instances. One of very remarkable character and of
which the circumstances may be fresh in the
memory of some of my readers, occurred not
very long ago in the neighboring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a painful, intense, and
widely-extended excitement. The wife of one of
the most respectable citizens — a lawyer of eminence and a member of Congress — was seized
with a sudden and unaccountable illness, which
completely baffled the skill of her physicians.
After much suffering she died or was supposed
to die. No one suspected indeed or had reason to
suspect that she was not actually dead. She presented all the ordinary appearances of death.
The face assumed the usual pinched and sunken

EDGAR ALLAN POE

outline. The lips were of the usual marble pallor.
The eyes were lustreless. There was no warmth.
Pulsation had ceased. For three days the body
was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony rigidity. The funeral, in short, was
hastened on account of the rapid advance of
what was supposed to be decomposition.
The lady was deposited in her family vault,
which for three subsequent years was undisturbed. At the expiration of this term it was
opened for the reception of a sarcophagus; but,
alas! how fearful a shock awaited the husband,
who personally threw open the door! As its portals swung outwardly back some white-apparelled object fell rattling within his arms. It
was the skeleton of his wife in her yet unmoulded
shroud.
A careful investigation rendered it evident
that she had revived within two days after her
entombment; that her struggles within the coffin
had caused it to fall from a ledge or shelf, to the
floor, where it was so broken as to permit her escape. A lamp which had been accidentally left
full of oil within the tomb, was found empty; it
might have been exhausted, however, by evaporation. On the uppermost of the steps which led
down into the dread chamber was a large fragment of the coffin, with which it seemed that she

THE PREMATURE BURIAL

7

had endeavored to arrest attention1 by striking
the iron door. While thus occupied, she probably
swooned, or possibly died through sheer terror;
and in falling her shroud became entangled in
some iron-work which projected interiorly. Thus
she remained and thus she rotted, erect.
In the year 1810, a case of living inhumation
happened in France, attended with circumstances
which go far to warrant the assertion that truth
is indeed stranger than fiction. The heroine of the
story was a Mademoiselle Victorine Lafourcade,
a young girl of illustrious family, of wealth, and
of great personal beauty. Among her numerous
suitors was Julien Bossuet, a poor litterateur or
journalist, of Paris. His talents and general amiability had recommended him to the notice of
the heiress, by whom he seems to have been truly beloved; but her pride of birth decided her
finally to reject him and to wed a Monsieur Renelle, a banker and a diplomatist of some eminence. After marriage, however, this gentleman
neglected and perhaps even more positively illtreated her. Having passed with him some
wretched years, she died — at least her condition
so closely resembled death as to deceive every
one who saw her. She was buried — not in a

1 to arrest attention — (разг.) привлечь внимание

EDGAR ALLAN POE

vault, but in an ordinary grave in the village of
her nativity. Filled with despair and still inflamed
by the memory of a profound attachment, the
lover journeys from the capital to the remote
province in which the village lies with the romantic purpose of disinterring the corpse and
possessing himself of its luxuriant tresses. He
reaches the grave. At midnight he unearths the
coffin, opens it, and is in the act of detaching the
hair, when he is arrested by the unclosing of the
beloved eyes. In fact, the lady had been buried
alive. Vitality had not altogether departed, and
she was aroused by the caresses of her lover from
the lethargy which had been mistaken for death.
He bore her frantically to his lodgings in the village. He employed certain powerful restoratives
suggested by no little medical learning. In fine,
she revived. She recognized her preserver. She
remained with him until by slow degrees she fully recovered her original health. Her woman’s
heart was not adamant, and this last lesson of
love sufficed to soften it. She bestowed it upon
Bossuet. She returned no more to her husband,
but concealing from him her resurrection fled
with her lover to America. Twenty years afterward, the two returned to France in the persuasion that time had so greatly altered the lady’s
appearance that her friends would be unable to

THE PREMATURE BURIAL

9

recognize her. They were mistaken, however; for
at the first meeting Monsieur Renelle did actually
recognize and make claim to his wife. This claim
she resisted, and a judicial tribunal sustained her
in her resistance, deciding that the peculiar circumstances with the long lapse of years had extinguished not only equitably but legally the
authority of the husband.
The Chirurgical Journal of Leipsic, a periodical of high authority and merit, which some
American bookseller would do well to translate
and republish, records in a late number a very
distressing event of the character in question.
An officer of artillery, a man of gigantic stature and of robust health, being thrown from an
unmanageable horse, received a very severe contusion upon the head, which rendered him insensible at once; the skull was slightly fractured, but
no immediate danger was apprehended. Trepanning was accomplished successfully. He was bled
and many other of the ordinary means of relief
were adopted. Gradually, however, he fell into a
more and more hopeless state of stupor, and finally it was thought that he died.
The weather was warm, and he was buried
with indecent haste in one of the public cemeteries. His funeral took place on Thursday. On the
Sunday following, the grounds of the cemetery

EDGAR ALLAN POE

were as usual much thronged with visitors, and
about noon an intense excitement was created
by the declaration of a peasant that, while sitting
upon the grave of the officer, he had distinctly
felt a commotion of the earth, as if occasioned by
some one struggling beneath. At first little attention was paid to the man’s asseveration; but his
evident terror and the dogged obstinacy with
which he persisted in his story had at length
their natural effect upon the crowd. Spades were
hurriedly procured, and the grave which was
shamefully shallow, was in a few minutes so far
thrown open that the head of its occupant appeared. He was then seemingly dead; but he sat
nearly erect within his coffin, the lid of which in
his furious struggles he had partially uplifted.
He was forthwith conveyed to the nearest hospital, and there pronounced to be still living, although in an asphytic condition. After some hours
he revived, recognized individuals of his acquaintance, and in broken sentences spoke of his agonies
in the grave.
From what he related, it was clear that he
must have been conscious of life for more than
an hour while inhumed, before lapsing into insensibility. The grave was carelessly and loosely
filled with an exceedingly porous soil; and thus
some air was necessarily admitted. He heard the