Chapter 49 weird fiction

This contest did not last long.I was so wild with all sorts of savage stimuli that I felt infinite power in one arm.In just a few seconds, I pushed him against the wall panel with brute force, immobilized him, and then, like a raging beast, I brutally stabbed the sword into his heart, stabbing again and again. At this moment, someone turned the latch.I hastened to block it, so that no one could break in, and then immediately returned to my dying opponent.But the astonishment, the horror I felt when I saw that sight is indescribable.I didn't stare at it for a while, and the layout at the top and end of the room changed obviously.Where there was no mirror before, now there is a big mirror; at first I thought it was a distraction, but I was wrong!I was half-dead in fright, and walked towards the mirror step by step, only to see my own shadow walking towards me, with a pale complexion, covered in blood, staggering and powerless steps, as if flying through the clouds.

As I said just now, it seems so, but it is not.Oncoming is my opponent - Wilson.He stood before me, the agony of death tormenting him.The mask and cloak he had thrown on the floor earlier were still there.None of the clothes on my body look like mine - none of the eye-catching and unique features look like mine, and they are even absolutely the same, not bad at all! Edgar Allan Poe, William Wilson (1839) The French (Bulgarian-born) structuralist critic Tsvetan Todrov once proposed that supernatural novels can be divided into three categories: strange novels (these novels cannot give reasonable explanations for some supernatural phenomena), grotesque novels (such novels) Novels that can give explanations for some supernatural phenomena) and fantastic novels (in which the narrator can give natural explanations for supernatural phenomena, and can also give supernatural explanations).

In this sense, a classic example of fantastic fiction is Henry James' famous ghost story The Turn of the Screw.In the novel, a young woman is assigned to a lonely country house as a governess to look after two young orphans.She saw two ghosts, one resembling, judging by appearance, the former governess, the other the immoral manservant who had seduced her.Both men died.Convinced that these evil spirits were out to harm the two young children, she did everything in her power to free them.In the novel's climax, she wrestles the male ghost for Miles' soul, but the boy dies: "His little heart has been taken from him, and has long since stopped beating." (It was narrated by the female governess) According to Toddrov's classification method of "bizarre novels" and "weird novels", there are two interpretations, and some people have already done so, that is: either the ghosts are "real" , the governess engages in a valiant struggle with a supernatural demon; or the ghost is a projection of her own phobias and sexual troubles, and she actually frightens the little boy to death.Critics have tried unsuccessfully to justify a certain understanding.The point of this story is that it is open to two interpretations everywhere, so that either interpretation is suspect.

Todroff's rule of thirds can be useful for provoking our thinking on this question, although his term "le merveilleux, I'etrange, le fantastigue" (strange, grotesque, absurd) translates into English in much the same way.In English, the word fantastic (absurd) is usually clearly opposed to "real", and it seems more appropriate to use "weird fiction" to summarize novels like "The Screw Is Turning".Of course, we can also find fault with it.Toddrov himself has to admit that some works in between must be classified as "absurd-weird fiction" or "absurd-weird fiction".Edgar Allan Poe's William Wilson is such a work, although Todroff sees it as an allegory or morality tale about a man with a disturbed conscience, and thus belongs in his terminology to the "Fantastic Fiction," but it still contains that element of ambiguity that he regards as essential to fantastic fiction.

"William Wilson" tells a ghost story.The novel's eponymous narrator confesses his own depravity at the beginning of the story.He described his first boarding school as a quaint old building where "at no time could you tell whether you were upstairs or downstairs." (Here, the author uses the pun intentionally , stories can refer to both "floor" and "story".——Translator's Note) He has a rival in this school. They all look exactly the same.The other party takes advantage of this to ironically imitate the narrator's behavior.The only difference between this lookalike is that he doesn't speak loudly.

After graduating from primary school, Wilson entered Eton and then Oxford, and his life became more and more dissolute.Every time he did something particularly heinous, someone was bound to appear, dressed like him, covering his face, and calling only "William Wilson" in a distinct whisper.Wilson cheated at cards, was exposed by the man, and he fled abroad.But no matter where he fled, he was haunted by that man. "I thought to myself over and over again, asking this series of questions: "Who is he?where is he from?What does he want to do? In Venice, Wilson was about to go to his tryst when he suddenly felt "a hand lightly placed on my shoulder, and that low, obnoxious whisper that I will never forget again. Frantic with rage, Wilson drew his sword and stabbed his tormentor.

Obviously, we can interpret the likeness as Wilson's own conscience or the good side of his humanity reflected in his hallucinations, which is also hinted at in several places in the text.For example, Wilson says that the boy who looks like him "has a much stronger sense of morality than I do..." And no one but himself seems to be particularly concerned about their resemblance.But the story wouldn't have all this charm without adding something believable and concrete to the grotesque phenomenon.The climax of the novel makes a vague reference to mirrors, which is its brilliance.From an intellectual standpoint, we can assume that Wilson, in a delirium of guilt and self-hatred, stabbed him and himself in the face of his mirror image by mistaking it for his likeness; From Wilson's perspective, it seemed the opposite was happening—what he thought was his image turned out to be the bleeding, dying lookalike.

Classical weird novels always use "I" as the narrator of the story, and imitate confessions, letters and testimonies to make the story more believable. (Compare Mary Shelley's Franken Stein to Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll.) These narrators tend to write in a traditional "literary" style, which This style of language can make people feel too trite and tiresome in another context: for example, the "savage thrill", "infinite power", "brute force", "beastlike" in the first paragraph of this excerpt cruel".Poe belongs to the genre of Gothic horror tradition and played a huge role in its development, and the novels of this genre are full of the above-mentioned struggle between good and evil.The predictability and lack of originality of the novel's artistic style ensure the reliability of the narrator and make his grotesque experiences more believable.