The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2

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Эдгар Аллан По. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2

THE PURLOINED LETTER

THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE OF SCHEHERAZADE

A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTRÖM

VON KEMPELEN AND HIS DISCOVERY

MESMERIC REVELATION

THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR

THE BLACK CAT

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

SILENCE — A FABLE

THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH

THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO

THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE

THE ISLAND OF THE FAY

THE ASSIGNATION

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

THE PREMATURE BURIAL

THE DOMAIN OF ARNHEIM

LANDOR’S COTTAGE

WILLIAM WILSON

THE TELL-TALE HEART

BERENICE

ELEONORA

NOTES TO THIS VOLUME

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HAVING had occasion, lately, in the course of some Oriental investigations, to consult the Tellmenow Isitsoornot, a work which (like the Zohar of Simeon Jochaides) is scarcely known at all, even in Europe; and which has never been quoted, to my knowledge, by any American — if we except, perhaps, the author of the “Curiosities of American Literature”; — having had occasion, I say, to turn over some pages of the first-mentioned very remarkable work, I was not a little astonished to discover that the literary world has hitherto been strangely in error respecting the fate of the vizier’s daughter, Scheherazade, as that fate is depicted in the “Arabian Nights”; and that the denouement there given, if not altogether inaccurate, as far as it goes, is at least to blame in not having gone very much farther.

For full information on this interesting topic, I must refer the inquisitive reader to the “Isitsoornot” itself, but in the meantime, I shall be pardoned for giving a summary of what I there discovered.

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“Hum!” said the king. “‘We then swam into a region of the sea where we found a lofty mountain, down whose sides there streamed torrents of melted metal, some of which were twelve miles wide and sixty miles long (*4); while from an abyss on the summit, issued so vast a quantity of ashes that the sun was entirely blotted out from the heavens, and it became darker than the darkest midnight; so that when we were even at the distance of a hundred and fifty miles from the mountain, it was impossible to see the whitest object, however close we held it to our eyes.’” (*5)

“Hum!” said the king.

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