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My Nightmare. The Last Tale by Poe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John E. Englekirk
John E. Englekirk*
Affiliation:
The University of New Mexico
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Extract

Mi Pesadilla,“ alleged to be ”the last tale by Edgar Poe,“ appeared in El Mundo Ilustrado of Mexico City in its issue of March 9, 1902. The translator does not reveal his identity nor does he offer any further information concerning the source of the original. The title is not suggestive of any tale in the Poe canon, and a reading of the story must convince one that it could not be an extravagantly free version or adaptation of any of Poe's known tales. The supposition that ”My Nightmare“ might be another positive contribution to the Poe canon—a tale inedited and lost until its miraculous reappearance in a Mexican review a half-century after Poe's death,—must be discarded as highly improbable.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , June 1937 , pp. 511 - 527
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1937

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References

page 512 note 1 Apparently the author forgot that he had the victim buried “within the space covered by six slabs.” This would seem to indicate that the discovery should have been made in the cellar and not in the attic.

page 512 note 2 See my article “The Song of Hollands, An Inedited Tale Ascribed to Poe,” New Mexico Quarterly, i (Aug. 1931), 247–269.

page 512 note 3 See Appendix iii of this study.

page 512 note 4 Aventuras maravillosas (Mexico: Santiago Sierra, 1877). See copy in the Biblioteca Nacional of Mexico-City.

page 512 note 5 See Appendix iv of this study.

page 512 note 6 For evidence of the influence Poe exerted over these men, see my Edgar Allan Poe in Hispanic Literature (New York: Institute de las Españas, 1934), pp. 240–247, 247–278, 415, and 417 respectively.

page 512 note 7 See his fine imitation of “The Raven,” “Los cuervos,” in Revista Moderna, ii (Nov., 1899), 337.

page 512 note 8 See his “Nevermore” in El Mundo Ilustrodo, Dec. 17, 1905, no pag.

page 512 note 9 See his “Las campanas de mi pueblo” and his “Esperândote” in the Oct. 20 and Nov. 10, 1907 issues of El Mundo Ilustrodo, no pag.

page 512 note 10 See his “Nevermore” in Presagios (Mexico, 1912), pp. 123–126.

page 512 note 11 “Edgardo Poe,” El Mundo Ilustrado, June 29, 1902, no pag. For Spanish text see Appendix ii of this study.

page 512 note 12 El Mundo, Dec. 4, 1898, pp. 423–424.

page 512 note 13 Cf., for example, the very inadequate translation of Poe's famous phrase from “Ligeia”—“it was blacker than the raven wings of midnight!” as “¡Era mâs negro que el ala del cuervo a la media noche!” See Edgar Allan Poe in Hispanic Literature, p. 28.

page 512 note 14 Poe's Short Stories, ed. by Killis Campbell (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1927), i, 324,

page 512 note 15 Zárate Ruiz, Cuentos del manicomio, pp. 43–52.

page 512 note 16 El Mundo Ilustrado, March 9, 1902, no pag.

page 512 note 17 El Mundo Ilustrodo, June 29, 1902, no pag.

page 512 note 18 I am indebted to J. R. Spell of the University of Texas for the entries preceded by the asterisk.

page 512 note 19 Unless otherwise indicated, the periodicals are all of Mexico City.

page 512 note 20 The volume announced as in preparation by “Cultura”—Prosa y versos de Edgar Poe, no. 9 of tomo xn, has not been published.