I would like to know about the term "the horror".I wonder if the term "the horror" has become a term of aesthetics.I wonder if I could research the "horror" in the fictions by Poe.Who could explain for me about the features of the horror in the fictions by Poe?

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2004

Answers

Sorry for the very late answer. Horror for Poe is aesthetically appelaing and inspiring, climactic emotionally for the air of danger, descent and death. His character(A.Gordon Pym for example) actively seek out melancholy sitautions and morbid terror, dleight in ghosts they don't believe in and relish the shock of awesome misinterpetations of terrifying phenomena. It is an aveue of transcendence of the ordinary and the natural, a meeting of the self with the ultimates, the defeat of the weak and the loss of everything.

It is the extreme dramatic form of melancholy and despair concentrated into an instant of falling. But never does the hero surrender the will or the battle of intelligence against even the deadliest forces or the most fated destiny except for actually embracing the end. (The Pit and the Pendulum contains a lot of this type of horror usage.) And rarely if ever is it empty bloodshed or cheap supernatural devices. It is in the sensitive soul tortured and shocked to the maximum, a type of the general Romantic elan.

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2005