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Lese immer noch die wunderbare Biografie Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Das Leben des Vaters von Sherlock Holmes, die Daniel Stashower schon vor zehn Jahren in den USA veröffentlichte und die seit Anfang des Jahres endlich auch in einer deutschen Übersetzung vorliegt. Auch wenn Stashower gelegentlich ein wenig zu sehr zum Anwalt von Conan Doyle wird, ist es eine sehr kenntnissreiche und klug verfasste Lebensgeschichte, die sich recht flüssig lesen lässt. Heute nun bin ich über den kleinen Disput gestoßen, den Conan Doyle mit seinem US-amerikanischen Kritiker Arthur Guiterman hatte. Guitermann griff Conan Doyle im Dezember 1912 in Form eines Gedichtes an.

In New York sind am 30. April 2009 die diesjährigen Preisträger der → „Edgar Awards“ bekanntgegeben worden. Die „Edgar Awards“ zählen den renommiertesten Krimipreisen und werden von den → Mystery Writers of America (MWA) vergeben. Hier die Liste der Preisträger:

Als kleiner Nachklapp zu gestern: Beim Guardian gibt es ein kurzes Quiz zum Geburtstagskind. → „How well do you know Edgar Allan Poe?“ Echte Fans dürften keine größeren Schwierigkeiten bei den Antworten haben.

Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine —
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

This publication is worthy of the Harpers. It is an honor to the country — not more in the fine taste displayed in its getting up, than as evincing a just appreciation of an invaluable work. How fondly do we recur, in memory, to those enchanted days of our boyhood when we first learned to grow serious over Robinson Crusoe! — when we first found the spirit of wild adventure enkindling within us, as, by the dim fire light, we labored out, line by line, the marvellous import of those pages, and hung breathless and trembling with eagerness over their absorbing — over their enchaining interest! Alas! the days of desolate islands are no more! „Nothing farther,“ as Vapid says, „can be done in that line.“ Wo, henceforward, to the Defoe who shall prate to us of „undiscovered bournes.“ There is positively not a square inch of new ground for any future Selkirk. Neither in the Indian, in the Pacific, nor in the Atlantic, has he a shadow of hope. The Southern Ocean has been incontinently ransacked, and in the North — Scoresby, Franklin, Parry, Ross, Ross & Co. have been little better than so many salt water Paul Prys.

In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace —
Radiant palace — reared its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion —
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!

Sit down beside me, Isabel,
Here, dearest, where the moonbeam fell
Just now so fairy-like and well.
Now thou art dress’d for paradise!
I am star-stricken with thine eyes!
My soul is lolling on thy sighs!
Thy hair is lifted by the moon
Like flowers by the low breath of June!
Sit down, sit down — how came we here?
Or is it all but a dream, my dear?

Twice-Told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Two Volumes. Boston: James Munroe and Co:

We said a few hurried words about Mr. Hawthorne in our last number, with the design of speaking more fully in the present. We are still, however, pressed for room, and must necessarily discuss his volumes more briefly and more at random than their high merits deserve.

The book professes to be a collection of tales, yet is, in two respects, misnamed. These pieces are now in their third ret publication, and, of course, are thrice-told. Moreover, they are by no means all tales, either in the ordinary or in the legitimate understanding of the term. Many of them are pure essays, for example, „Sights from a Steeple,“ „Sunday; Home,“ „Little Annie’s Ramble,“ „A Rill from the Town. Pump,“ „The Toll-Gatherer’s Day,“ „The Haunted Mind,“ „The Sister Years,“ „Snow-Flakes,“ „Night Sketches,“ and „Foot-Prints on the Sea-Shore.“ We mention these matters chiefly on account of their discrepancy with that marked precision and finish by which the body of the work is distinguished.

We presume our readers all know that „Barnaby Rudge,“ now „in course of publication“ periodically, is a story supposed to be narrated by one of the members of Master Humphrey’s society; and is in fact a continuation of the „Clock,“ although complete within itself. From the concluding words of „The Curiosity Shop“ — or rather of the volume which contained that tale — we gather that the present narrative will be occupied with matters tending to develope the spirit, or, in the language of Mr. Dickens himself, the „heart“ of the mighty London, toward the conclusion of the eighteenth century. This thesis affords the most ample scope for the great powers of the writer. His opening chapters assure us that he has at length discovered the secret of his true strength, and that „Barnaby Rudge“ will appeal principally to the imagination. Of this faculty we have many striking instances in the few numbers already issued. We see it where the belfry man in the lonely church at midnight, about to toll the „passing-bell,“ is struck with horror at hearing the solitary note of another, and awaits, aghast, a repetition of the sound. We recognise it more fully where this single note is discovered, in the morning, to have been that of an alarm pulled by the hand of one in the death-struggle with a murderer: — also in the expression of countenance which is so strikingly attributed to Mrs. Rudge — „the capacity for expressing terror“something only dimly seen, but never absent for a moment“the shadow of some look to which an instant of intense and most unutterable horror only could have given rise.“ This is a conception admirably adapted to whet curiosity in respect to the character of that event which is hinted at as forming the ground-work of the novel; and so far is well suited to the purposes of a periodical story. But this observation should not fail to be made — that the anticipation must surpass the reality; that no matter how terrific be the circumstances which, in the dénouement, shall appear to have occasioned the expression of countenance worn habitually by Mrs. Rudge, still they will not be able to satisfy the mind of the reader. He will surely be disappointed. The skilful intimation of horror held out by the artist produces an effect which will deprive his conclusion, of all. These intimations — these dark hints of some uncertain evil — are often rhetorically praised as effective — but are only justly so praised where there is no dénouement whatever — where the reader’s imagination is left to clear up the mystery for itself — and this, we suppose, is not the design of Mr. Dickens.