"Edgar Allan Poe - The Premature Burial" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

patient, with a hurried but quite unconvulsive movement, arose from
the table, stepped into the middle of the floor, gazed about him
uneasily for a few seconds, and then- spoke. What he said was
unintelligible, but words were uttered; the syllabification was
distinct. Having spoken, he fell heavily to the floor.
For some moments all were paralyzed with awe- but the urgency of the
case soon restored them their presence of mind. It was seen that Mr.
Stapleton was alive, although in a swoon. Upon exhibition of ether
he revived and was rapidly restored to health, and to the society of
his friends- from whom, however, all knowledge of his resuscitation
was withheld, until a relapse was no longer to be apprehended. Their
wonder- their rapturous astonishment- may be conceived.
The most thrilling peculiarity of this incident, nevertheless, is
involved in what Mr. S. himself asserts. He declares that at no period
was he altogether insensible- that, dully and confusedly, he was aware
of everything which happened to him, from the moment in which he was
pronounced dead by his physicians, to that in which he fell swooning
to the floor of the hospital. "I am alive," were the uncomprehended
words which, upon recognizing the locality of the dissecting-room,
he had endeavored, in his extremity, to utter.
It were an easy matter to multiply such histories as these- but I
forbear- for, indeed, we have no need of such to establish the fact
that premature interments occur. When we reflect how very rarely, from
the nature of the case, we have it in our power to detect them, we
must admit that they may frequently occur without our cognizance.
Scarcely, in truth, is a graveyard ever encroached upon, for any
purpose, to any great extent, that skeletons are not found in postures
which suggest the most fearful of suspicions.
Fearful indeed the suspicion- but more fearful the doom! It may be
asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well
adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress,
as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs-
the stifling fumes from the damp earth- the clinging to the death
garments- the rigid embrace of the narrow house- the blackness of
the absolute Night- the silence like a sea that overwhelms- the unseen
but palpable presence of the Conqueror Worm- these things, with the
thoughts of the air and grass above, with memory of dear friends who
would fly to save us if but informed of our fate, and with
consciousness that of this fate they can never be informed- that our
hopeless portion is that of the really dead- these considerations, I
say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree of
appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring
imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth-
we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the
nethermost Hell. And thus all narratives upon this topic have an
interest profound; an interest, nevertheless, which, through the
sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly
depends upon our conviction of the truth of the matter narrated.
What I have now to tell is of my own actual knowledge- of my own
positive and personal experience.