The Fall of the House of Usher

By Dan Ariely

The real protagonist of The Fall of the House of Usher, a masterpiece by Edgar Allan Poe written in 1839, is the dark pond in front of the ancient manor where the narrating self arrives, urgently convened by his friend Roderick Usher, not heard for many years. When he arrives in the evening near the great house of ancestry - belonging to an ancient family, capable of maintaining the considerable original heritage undisturbed over the centuries - his attention is magnetized by the pond, with strange chills and strange sensations, as if those waters blacks hide an omen of death, or in any case of ruin: a presage confirmed by the appearance of the house, old but not crumbling, from the outer walls entirely covered with small mushrooms, yet apparently still solid, able to challenge endlessly the wear and tear weather. Introduced by a servant in the presence of his childhood friend, the narrative self continues to experience negative feelings, but immediately focuses on the conditions of Roderick, who finds himself in a state of severe psychic alteration, to which he attempts to give positivist definitions.: nervous weakness, cerebral hyperactivity, exhaustion and so on. That same evening his strenuous dialogue with Roderick is interrupted by the appearance of his sister, Lady Madeline, who silently crosses the large room where the two are, and then disappears, like an autistic ghost, on the upper floors. Usher explains to his friend that Madeline is very ill, suffers from continuous attacks of catalepsy and has not much left to live. And the narrating self, meanwhile intent on diverting Roderick reading novels and stories, no longer has the opportunity to see her. And in the meantime the sinister signs multiply, but always as little nuances, fleeting clues, indecipherable presentations. Until the friend tells him that Madeline is dead, and that he has decided to stay for a while the coffin in a basement of the house, so as to avoid immediate publicity at the funeral event with the burial in the family tomb, far away and too exposed . The two perform the pitiful office, but in a night of terrible storm all the disquieting omens find their fulfillment, and in a horrendous tregenda the fate of disappearance of the Usher and their house, which in fact collapses into the black pond, is deposited last of a non-solvent mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Youcanprint
• Release date: Jan 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9788827804735

Dan Ariely

Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He is a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight; a cocreator of the film documentary (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies; and a three-time New York Times bestselling author. His books include Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, Irrationally Yours, Payoff, Dollars and Sense, and Amazing Decisions. His TED Talks have been viewed more than 27 million times. His work has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and elsewhere. He lives in North Carolina with his family.

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Ruggieri

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

Son cœur est un luth suspendu;

Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne.

De Béranger.

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was, but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me, upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain, upon the bleak walls, upon the vacant eye-like windows, upon a few rank sedges and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees, with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium, the bitter lapse into every-day life, the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it - I paused to think - what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or