The Dark Story Behind Edgar Allan Poe’s Most Famous Photograph, Taken Four Days After a Laudanum Overdose

In the Hal­loween sea­son, one Amer­i­can writer comes to mind more often than any oth­er: Edgar Allan Poe .

在万圣节季节，人们最常想到一位美国作家：埃德加·爱伦·坡。

That owes in large part to his famous­ly macabre tales like “ The Tell-Tale Heart ,” “The Cask of Amon­til­la­do,” and “The Masque of the Red Death,” writ­ten though they may have been with bare­ly con­cealed con­tempt for their sen­sa­tion-seek­ing mag­a­zine read­er­ship.

这在很大程度上要归功于他著名的恐怖故事，如《泄密的心》、《阿蒙蒂亚酒桶》和《红死病的面具》，尽管这些故事可能几乎不掩饰对追求轰动的杂志读者的蔑视。

But it also has to do with the image of the man him­self.

但这也与这个人本身的形象有关。

Or rather, it has to do with one image in par­tic­u­lar: a daguerreo­type pho­to­graph tak­en on Novem­ber 9, 1848, at a Prov­i­dence stu­dio that has inspired prac­ti­cal­ly every rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Poe in pop­u­lar cul­ture since.

或者更确切地说，它与一张特别的照片有关：一张 1848 年 11 月 9 日在普罗维登斯工作室拍摄的银版照片，此后几乎所有爱伦·坡在流行文化中的表现都受到了这张照片的启发。

Known as Ulti­ma Thule, this famous por­trait was in fact just one of per­haps ten daguerreo­types for which Poe sat in his life­time.

这幅著名的肖像画被称为“Ultima Thule”，实际上只是坡一生中拍摄的十幅银版照片之一。

Inven­tor Louis Daguer­re’s ear­ly pho­to­graph­ic process, which used sil­ver-coat­ed cop­per plates, fas­ci­nat­ed Poe, who in an 1840 news­pa­per arti­cle called it “the most impor­tant, and per­haps the most extra­or­di­nary tri­umph of mod­ern sci­ence.” He described its prod­uct as “ infi­nite­ly more accu­rate in its rep­re­sen­ta­tion than any paint­ing by human hands,” though any­one sit­ting for a pic­ture did have to sit still for min­utes on end, result­ing in not just the unsmil­ing vis­ages we asso­ciate with nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry pho­tog­ra­phy, but also in a com­bi­na­tion of dis­com­fort and slight blur­ring that can look vague­ly oth­er­world­ly.

发明家路易斯·达盖尔 (Louis Daguerre) 的早期摄影工艺使用镀银铜板，令坡着迷，坡在 1840 年的一篇报纸文章中称其为“现代科学最重要、或许也是最非凡的胜利”。他将其产品描述为“在表现上比任何人手绘画都要精确得多”，尽管任何坐着拍照的人都必须一动不动地坐上几分钟，这不仅导致了我们与十九世纪摄影联系在一起的不苟言笑的面孔，而且还带来了一种不适和轻微模糊的结合，看起来隐隐约约超凡脱俗。

That qual­i­ty may actu­al­ly have enhanced the aura of Ulti­ma Thule, which painter Michael J.

这种品质实际上可能增强了《Ultima Thule》的光环，画家 Michael J.

Deas calls “the image of the trag­ic roman­tic poet: solemn, detached, con­sumed by his own wild­ly self-destruc­tive nature.” It sure­ly also made a dif­fer­ence that the por­trait was made, in the words of poet Her­vey Allen, “prob­a­bly at the very hour when he looked the worst that he had ever looked in his life.” He’d been tak­en to the stu­dio by a stranger with whom he’d spent the pre­vi­ous night binge-drink­ing.

迪斯称其为“悲剧浪漫主义诗人的形象：庄严、超然，被自己疯狂的自我毁灭性所吞噬。”用诗人赫维·艾伦的话来说，这幅肖像画的制作“可能是在他一生中看起来最糟糕的时刻”，这无疑也产生了影响。他被一个陌生人带到了工作室，前一天晚上他还和他一起酗酒。

Just four days before that, he’d unsuc­cess­ful­ly attempt­ed sui­cide by lau­danum over­dose, a rash action tak­en after the rejec­tion of his mar­riage pro­pos­al by Sarah Helen Whit­man, a wid­owed poet he had­n’t known long — and who would give her suit­or’s immor­tal por­trait its Latin name, bor­rowed from his poem “Dream-Land.”

就在四天前，他曾试图服用鸦片过量自杀，但未成功，这是在莎拉·海伦·惠特曼（Sarah Helen Whitman）拒绝他的求婚后采取的鲁莽行动。莎拉·海伦·惠特曼是一位他认识不久的寡妇诗人，她为求婚者的不朽肖像取了一个拉丁名字，这个名字借用了他的诗《梦境》（Dream-Land）。

The orig­i­nal daguerreo­type, for which the stu­dio prob­a­bly paid the by-then notable, still per­pet­u­al­ly hard-up Poe to sit, remained with its mak­ers until it van­ished around 1860, and its where­abouts have remained unknown ever since.

最初的银版照片，工作室很可能付钱给了当时著名的、仍然穷困潦倒的爱伦·坡，让其坐了下来，直到它在 1860 年左右消失，它的下落一直无人知晓。

But copies have allowed gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of read­ers to behold Poe’s trou­bled vis­age when what Whit­man called “all the stormy grandeur of that via Dolorosa had left its sullen shad­ow on his brow.” Through the drunk­en chaos and pover­ty of his life, the writer him­self could see things to come.

但这些副本让一代又一代的读者看到了爱伦·坡的困扰面容，惠特曼称之为“通过多勒罗莎的所有暴风雨般的壮丽在他的额头上留下了阴沉的阴影”。通过醉酒的混乱和贫穷的生活，作家本人可以预见到即将发生的事情。

“The con­se­quences of any new sci­en­tif­ic inven­tion will, at the present day exceed, by very much, the wildest expec­ta­tions of the most imag­i­na­tive,” he wrote, an obser­va­tion true enough of pho­tog­ra­phy 178 years ago, and no doubt even truer of what we use to make images today.

他写道：“当今任何新科学发明的后果都将大大超出最有想象力的人的最疯狂的期望。”这一观察对于 178 年前的摄影来说足够真实，毫无疑问对于我们今天用来制作图像的东西来说更真实。

Relat­ed Con­tent: Iggy Pop Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ry, “The Tell-Tale Heart”

相关内容：伊基·波普读埃德加·爱伦·坡的经典恐怖故事《泄密的心》

The Mys­tery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death: 19 The­o­ries on What Caused the Poet’s Demise

埃德加·爱伦·坡之死之谜：导致诗人死亡的 19 种理论

Hear Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buck­ley, Christo­pher Walken, Mar­i­anne Faith­ful & More

聆听 Iggy Pop、Jeff Buckley、Christopher Walken、Marianne Faithful 等朗读埃德加·爱伦·坡的故事

The First Pho­to­graph of a Human Being: A Pho­to Tak­en by Louis Daguerre in 1838

第一张人类照片：路易斯·达盖尔 (Louis Daguerre) 于 1838 年拍摄的照片

Based in Seoul, Col­in M a rshall writes and broad­cas ts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture.

科林·马歇尔居住在首尔，撰写和广播有关城市、语言和文化的文章。

He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro .

他是时事通讯《城市书籍》以及《한국 요약 금지》（无总结韩国）和《韩国新歌》等书的作者。

Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinm a rshall .

在以前称为 Twitter 的社交网络上关注他：@colinm a rshall。