Το μυστήριο της οδού Μπόου

Ο αφηγητής περιγράφει τον φόνο σαν προσεκτικά σχεδιασμένο πείραμα.

She cowered back, for an instant (I divined rather than saw the action) she shut off the dreaded sight with her hands. In that instant I had made my cut—precisely, scientifically—made so deep a cut and drew out the weapon so sharply that there was scarce a drop of blood on it; then there came from the throat a jet of blood which Mrs. Drabdump, conscious only of the horrid gash, saw but vaguely. I covered up the face quickly with a handkerchief to hide any convulsive distortion. But as the medical evidence (in this detail accurate) testified, death was instantaneous. I pocketed the razor and the empty sulfonal phial. With a woman like Mrs. Drabdump to watch me, I could do anything I pleased. I got her to draw my attention to the fact that both the windows were fastened.

Η φύση αντιγράφει τον Πόε ή απλώς κρύβει ένα παράλογο μυστήριο;

To the proverb, “You must not say Bo to a goose,” one added, “or else she will explain you the Mystery.” The name of the gentleman who asked whether the Bow Mystery was not ’arrowing shall not be divulged. There was more point in “Dagonet’s” remark that, if he had been one of the unhappy jurymen, he should have been driven to “suicide.” A professional paradox-monger pointed triumphantly to the somewhat similar situation in “the murder in the Rue Morgue,” and said that Nature had been plagiarizing again—like the monkey she was—and he recommended Poe’s publishers to apply for an injunction. More seriously, Poe’s solution was re-suggested by “Constant Reader” as an original idea. He thought that a small organ-grinder’s monkey might have got down the chimney with its master’s razor, and, after attempting to shave the occupant of the bed, have returned the way it came.

Πόσα θυμάσαι πραγματικά για κάποιον που γνώρισες;

“Not five. I say nothing of lapses of memory, of inborn defects of observational power—though the suspiciously precise recollection of dates and events possessed by ordinary witnesses in important trials taking place years after the occurrences involved, is one of the most amazing things in the curiosities of modern jurisprudence. I defy you, sir, to tell me what you had for dinner last Monday, or what exactly you were saying and doing at five o’clock last Tuesday afternoon. Nobody whose life does not run in mechanical grooves can do anything of the sort; unless, of course, the facts have been very impressive. But this by the way. The great obstacle to veracious observation is the element of prepossession in all vision. Has it ever struck you, sir, that we never see anyone more than once, if that?