Edgar Allan

Poe

William Wilson

Übersetzt von Gisela Etzel
Synchronisation und Ergänzungen © Doppeltext 2022

TITELBLATT

WILLIAM WILSON

IMPRESSUM

What say of it? what say of con­science grim,
That spectre in my path?
Cham­ber­layne’s Phar­ronida.
Let me call my­self, for the present, Wil­li­am Wilson. The fair page now ly­ing be­fore me need not be sul­lied with my real ap­pel­la­tion.
This has been already too much an ob­ject for the scorn — for the hor­ror — for the de­test­a­tion of my race.
To the ut­ter­most re­gions of the globe have not the in­dig­nant winds bruited its un­par­alleled in­famy?
Oh, out­cast of all out­casts most aban­doned! — to the earth art thou not forever dead? to its hon­ors, to its flowers, to its golden as­pir­a­tions?
— and a cloud, dense, dis­mal, and lim­it­less, does it not hang etern­ally between thy hopes and heav­en?
I would not, if I could, here or to-day, em­body a re­cord of my later years of un­speak­able misery, and un­par­don­able crime.
This epoch — these later years — took unto them­selves a sud­den el­ev­a­tion in turpitude,
whose ori­gin alone it is my present pur­pose to as­sign.
Men usu­ally grow base by de­grees. From me, in an in­stant, all vir­tue dropped bod­ily as a mantle.
From com­par­at­ively trivi­al wicked­ness I passed, with the stride of a gi­ant, into more than the enorm­it­ies of an Elah-Gabal­us.
What chance — what one event brought this evil thing to pass, bear with me while I re­late.
Death ap­proaches; and the shad­ow which fore­runs him has thrown a soften­ing in­flu­ence over my spir­it.
I long, in passing through the dim val­ley, for the sym­pathy — I had nearly said for the pity — of my fel­low men.
I would fain have them be­lieve that I have been, in some meas­ure, the slave of cir­cum­stances bey­ond hu­man con­trol.
I would wish them to seek out for me, in the de­tails I am about to give, some little oas­is of fatal­ity amid a wil­der­ness of er­ror.
I would have them al­low — what they can­not re­frain from al­low­ing
— that, al­though tempta­tion may have ere­while ex­is­ted as great, man was nev­er thus, at least, temp­ted be­fore — cer­tainly, nev­er thus fell.
And is it there­fore that he has nev­er thus suffered? Have I not in­deed been liv­ing in a dream?
And am I not now dy­ing a vic­tim to the hor­ror and the mys­tery of the wild­est of all sub­lun­ary vis­ions?

Edgar Allan Poe
William Wilson
Zweisprachige Ausgabe
Übersetzt von Gisela Etzel

Dies ist ein interaktives E-Book. Klicken Sie auf den Text, um die Übersetzung einzublenden.

Der Originaltext und die Übersetzung sind gemeinfrei. Die Rechte für die synchronisierte zweisprachige Ausgabe und für die von uns in der Übersetzung ergänzten Textpassagen liegen bei Doppeltext.

Unser Programm umfasst viele weitere zweisprachige Titel. Besuchen Sie www.doppeltext.com, um mehr zu erfahren.

Wir freuen uns auf Ihre Meinung und Kritik.

Doppeltext
Igor Kogan & Tatiana Zelenska
Karwendelstr. 25
D-81369 München
Tel. +49-89-74 79 28 26
www.doppeltext.com
info@doppeltext.com