To celebrate the new year, after the grapes, I read the story The premature burial, by Edgar Allan Poe. It is a very entertaining and completely romantic story. But, the romantic thing, in the sense of the cultural and artistic current that we have called romanticism; not from a more common point of view, where romanticism is identified with the remains of the Harlequin collection (veritable machines for making mincemeat of readers and authors), or with the sentimental novels of Rosemunde Pilcher (many of which were adapted on television by the German public broadcaster ZDF, which gives an idea of how bored a person can get licking a piece of cheap jam toast for hours).
Already at the beginning of The premature burial, Poe advises the romantic writer (for him, the most praiseworthy) not to be inspired by real events. I didn’t remember this phrase from the other times I had read the story, and it was comforting to find it, because it reflected my situation at that precise moment. As an example of real events, Poe pointed out the Lisbon earthquake and the London plague, among other catastrophes that have moved humanity. Edgar Allan Poe is also a romantic writer, he believes in the power of literature, and takes a stand for fiction in its purest form.
#real #facts
