‘Tales of Mystery & Imagination’ by Edgar Allan Poe

Sekarang mau, hmmm, review (?) Gimana ya, dibilang review juga bukan kata yang tepat soalnya karya-karyanya Edgar Allan Poe ini kan karya klasik, dan gw juga ini aslinya nggak ngebahas karya-karyanya beliau. Cuma heboh sendiri soal buku ini sih, heuhe.

Jadi aslinya itu kemarin gw kan jalan-jalan ya ke area Bukit Bintang naik MRT. Area Bukit Bintang itu area mall dan pertokoan yang sebenernya semacam kebagi jadi dua; area mevvah, dan area, errrrrr, tidak mevvah.

Nah, di area mewah ini ada lah mall-mall macem Starhill Gallery (secara harafiah artinya ‘Bukit Bintang’. Star = bintang, dan hill = bukit) yang sak mall-mallnya dikarpetin dan harga parkirnya sejam sampe RM 20 (sementara mall biasa paling pol parkir sejam RM 4-5. Malah ada yang RM 1,) Pavilion Bukit Bintang yang selalu megah hiasannya setiap hari besar atau perayaan (sampe ada temen yang bilang, “hari libur lu di KL belum komplit kalo belum liat hiasan perayaan di Pavilion,” Lot 10 yang gw udah 5 tahun di sini masih belum mampir ke sana, dan di seberangnya Pavilion Bukit Bintang ini ada mall namanya Fahrenheit 88. Fahrenheit 88 ini konsepnya anak muda. Dulu, di lantai tiga, satu lantai itu isinya barang-barang berbau Jepang, dari anime, manga, sampe pakaian. Seperti teriakan terakhir J-wave di Kuala Lumpur, akhirnya sekarang jadi area perlengkapan travelling.

Nah, di Fahrenheit 88 ini ada toko buku namanya BookXcess. Familiar dengan pameran buku Big Bad Wolf? Nah, BookXcess ini semacem head group yang punya hajatan BBW. Jadi kalo misalnya lu ga sempet ke BBW atau males kepikiran rame pengunjung dan kebetulan lu di Malaysia, mampir aja ke toko buku BookXcess. Harga buku-bukunya murah banget gila. Diskonnya bisa ampun dije.

Kemarin, gw liat lah itu buku ‘Tales of Mystery & Imagination’ di etalase kan. Ya tentu aja gw tertarik lah. Rada-rada obsesi sama The Masque of the Red Death dan The Cask of Amontillado ya begini lah jadinya.

Nah. Lu liat deh tuh harganya.

Dari RM 112.99, dipangkas jadi RM 29.90. Itu bukan pertama kalinya lho diskon bikin megap-megap gitu.

Buku ini berisikan cerita-cerita pendek dan novella karya Edgar Allan Poe yang dibarengi dengan ilustrasi oleh Harry Clarke. Harry Clarke ini awalnya seniman lukis kaca (stained glass; lukisan kaca warna-warni yang biasa ada di gereja) dan menjadi salah satu perintis gerakan gaya seni melukis art nouveau; dan malah dibilang salah satu seniman yang menggabungkan gaya art nouveau, art deco, dan simbolik. Pokoknya yang mevvah, dramatis, dan lebay begitu tante sukaaaaa, hahaha.

Pertama, soal bukunya dulu ya. Bukunya ini hard cover dengan sampul kain. Macem buku-buku klasik yang di perpustakaan isinya lemari dari kayu mahogani warna gelap terus ada perapiannya gitu. Untuk tulisan judulnya baik di sampul utama dan sampul samping, dicetak emboss dengan tinta perak. Gw suka banget; kontras hitam, merah, dan putih/perak.

Ini bukunya ketika dikeluarkan dari kotak. Nggak sedramatis kotaknya, tapi ya wajar lah ya. Nyetaknya repot kali ya *sotoy*

Dibuka, udah ada satu ilustrasi yang muncul. Ini ilustrasi dari cerita ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’; menceritakan delusi dan paranoia yang dialami seseorang setelah membunuh seorang tua di rumahnya.

Gw CINTA MATI dengan ekspresi yang dilukiskan oleh Harry Clarke ini. Gambar hitam putih, sedikit “halus”, tapi rasa teror dan kesakitan baik si korban maupun si pelaku tergambar jelas. Liat deh mukanya si korban abis dibunuh dengan mata melotot, dan mata si pelaku yang macam kegilaan sekaligus teror dan ketakutan. Harry Clarke ini bisa banget mengambil esensi horor dan kegilaan Edgar Allan Poe lalu digambarkan dengan baik di lukisan-lukisannya. Ini hal yang bikin gw terobsesi dalam menggambar, sebenernya. Gw pengen banget bisa menyampaikan ekspresi dan perasaan si karakter ke publik yang melihat dengan tarikan garis seminim mungkin.

Ini jenis tulisan/typeface yang digunakan. Nggak terlalu besar, tapi nyaman untuk dibaca.

Terus liat deh itu penanda halamannya tengkorak mini gitu, heuhehe.

Nah, ini daftar isi cerita yang ada di buku ini. Jadi Tales of Mystery & Imagination ini kumpulan cerita yang bertema thriller atau horor yang dikumpulkan setelah meninggalnya Edgar Allan Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe sendiri meninggalnya dalam kondisi yang misterius. Biasanya dia tampil dengan pakaian hitam yang rapi, namun di musim gugur, bulan Oktober 1849, Edgar Allan Poe yang saat itu berusia 41 tahun ditemukan dalam kondisi tidak sadar di sebuah bar di Baltimore, Amerika. Dia ditemukan dalam pakaian acak-acakan, yang ternyata merupakan pakaian orang lain, dan nampak memar di sekujur badannya. Dia dibawa ke rumah sakit terdekat, dan selama empat hari dia berada di limbo ketidaksadaran dan igauan sebelum akhirnya meninggal.

Nah, buat para fans Sherlock Holmes — fans beneran yang udah baca novel karya Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ya — mungkin familiar dengan nama seorang detektif Perancis yang dicela Holmes di serial pertama Sherlock Holmes, ‘A Study in Scarlet’.

Sherlock rose and lit his pipe. ‘No doubt you think you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin, he observed ‘Now in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends’ thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour’s silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine.

Tapi apakah Sir Arthur Conan Doyle menghina Poe di sini? Justru nggak. Conan Doyle sangat menghormati Poe, dan menyatakan, “Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?” Dengan caranya sendiri, Conan Doyle menghormati Poe sekaligus memberikan batasan yang jelas antara karakter Sherlock Holmes dengan Auguste Dupin. Dupin ya punya Poe, Holmes ya punya Conan Doyle.

Kalo pengen tau kasusnya Auguste Dupin, bisa dicari di cerita The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

Sedikit cerita menarik soal The Murders in the Rue Morgue: Nobody talk about the orangutan.

have i told this story yet? idk but it’s good. The Orangutan Story:

my american lit professor went to this poe conference. like to be clear this is a man who has a doctorate in being a book nerd. he reads moby dick to his four-year-old son. and poe is one of the cornerstones of american literature, right, so this should be right up his alley?

wrong. apparently poe scholars are like,advanced. there is a branch of edgar allen poe scholarship that specifically looks for coded messages based on the number of words per line and letters per word poe uses. my professor, who has a phd in american literature, realizes he is totally out of his depth. but he already committed his day to this so he thinks fuck it! and goes to a panel on racism in poe’s works, because that’s relevant to his interests.

background info: edgar allen poe was a broke white alcoholic from virginia who wrote horror in the first half of the 19th century. rule 1 of Horror Academia is that horror reflects the cultural anxieties of its time (see: my other professor’s sermon abt how zombie stories are popular when people are scared of immigrants, or that purge movie that was literally abt the election). since poe’s shit is a product of 1800s white southern culture, you can safely assume it’s at least a little about race. but the racial subtext is very open to interpretation, and scholars believe all kinds of different things about what poe says about race (if he says anything), and the poe stans get extremely tense about it.

so my professor sits down to watch this panel and within like five minutes a bunch of crusty academics get super heated about poe’s theoretical racism. because it’s academia, though, this is limited to poorly concealed passive aggression and forceful tones of inside voice. one professor is like “this isn’t even about race!” and another professor is like “this proves he’s a racist!” people are interrupting each other. tensions are rising. a panelist starts saying that poe is like writing a critique of how racist society was, and the racist stuff is there to prove that racism is stupid, and that on a metaphorical level the racist philosophy always loses—

then my professor, perhaps in a bid to prove that he too is a smart literature person, loudly calls: “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ORANGUTAN?”

some more background: in poe’s well-known short story “the murder in the rue morgue,” two single ladies—a lovely old woman and her lovely daughter who takes care of her, aka super vulnerable and respectable people—are violently killed. the murderer turns out to be not a person, but an orangutan brought back by a sailor who went to like burma or something. and it’s pretty goddamn racially coded, like they reeeeally focus on all this stuff about coarse hairs and big hands and superhuman strength and chattering that sounds like people talking but isn’t actually. if that’s intentional, then he’s literally written an analogy about how black people are a threat to vulnerable white women, which is classic white supremacist shit. BUT if he really only meant for it to be an orangutan, then it’s a whole other metaphor about how colonialism pillages other countries and brings their wealth back to europe and that’s REALLY gonna bite them in the ass one day. klansman or komrade? it all hangs on this.

much later, when my professor told this story to a poe nerd friend, the guy said the orangutan thing was a one of the biggest landmines in their field. he said it was a reliable discussion ruiner that had started so many shouting matches that some conferences had an actual ban on bringing it up.

so the place goes dead fucking silent as every giant ass poe stan in the room is immediately thrust into a series of war flashbacks: the orangutan argument, violently carried out over seminar tables, in literary journals, at graduate student house parties, the spittle flying, the wine and coffee spilled, the friendships torn—the red faces and bulging veins—curses thrown and teaching posts abandoned—panels just like this one fallen into chaos—distant sirens, skies falling, the dog-eared norton critical editions slicing through the air like sabres—the textual support! o, the quotes! they gaze at this madman in numb disbelief, but he could not have known. nay, he was a literary theorist, a 17th-century man, only a visitor to their haunted land. he had never heard the whistle of the mortars overhead. he had never felt the cold earth under his cheek as he prayed for god’s deliverance. and yet he would have broken their fragile peace and brought them all back into the trenches.

my professor sits there for a second, still totally clueless. the panel moderator suddenly stands up in his tweed jacket and yells, with the raw panic of a once-broken man:

WE! DO NOT! TALK ABOUT! THE ORANGUTAN!