The Premature Burial - Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) american autor, poet, editor

There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell-but the imagination of man is no Carathis[1], to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful-but, like the Demons in whose company Afrasiab[2] made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us-they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.

Así termina el cuento The Premature Burial del afamado autor, poeta, editor y crítico norteamericano Edgar Allan Poe.

El entierro prematuro es una historia corta de horror basada en el tema de “ser enterrado vivo”. Fue publicada en 1844 por el periódico The Philadelphia Dollar.

El miedo a ser enterrado vivo era común en esa época y Poe sacaba provecho de ese interés público. Este cuento ha tenido innumerables adaptaciones incluyendo el cine. El tema del entierro en vida se haya también presente, con variaciones, en los siguientes relatos de Poe: Berenice, La caída de la casa Usher y El barril de amontillado.

Ilustración para The Premature Burial
a cargo de Harry Clarke, 1919

La muerte —y los entierros— siempre fueron fuente de inspiración, sobre todo en sus relatos de horror, para el atormentado Poe. De hecho su obituario —y con errores— publicado por un diario de la época fue bastante simple para la estatura de uno de los escritores más admirados del mundo literario de todos los tiempos:

DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE -- We regret to learn that Edgar A. Poe, Esq., the distinguished American poet, scholar and critic, died in this city yesterday morning, after an illness of four or five days. This announcement, coming so sudden and unexpected, will cause poignant regret among all who admire genius, and have sympathies for the frailties too often attending it. Mr. Poe, we believe, was a native of this state, though reared by a foster father at Richmond, Va., where he lately spent some time on a visit. He was in the 38th year of his age.

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[1] A character in “The History of the Caliph Vathek”, a Gothic novel written by William Thomas Beckford. It was composed in French in 1782.

[2] Afrasiab is a character from Firdowsi’s great Persian epic, “Shahnama” (The Epic of Kings), written around 1,000 AD. It is a remarkable work, containing 62 stories, 990 chapters, and 60,000 rhyming couplets, making it more than seven times the length of Homer’s Iliad.