Томас де Квинси — книжные серии

Английский писатель, ученый, автор знаменитой «Исповеди англичанина, употреблявшего опиум» Томас де Квинси рассказывает об убийстве с точки зрения эстетических категорий. Исполненное черного юмора повествование представляет собой научный доклад о наиболее ярких и экстравагантных убийствах прошлого. Пугающая осведомленность профессора о нашумевших преступлениях эпохи…

В книгу вошел лучший и самый полный вариант знаменитого автобиографического эссе Де Квинси вместе с позднейшим продолжением «Suspiria De Profundis», где автор живописует личный опыт употребления лаудана - спиртового раствора опиума.

Английский писатель, ученый, автор знаменитой «Исповеди англичанина, употреблявшего опиум» Томас де Квинси рассказывает об убийстве с точки зрения эстетических категорий. Исполненное черного юмора повествование представляет собой научный доклад о наиболее ярких и экстравагантных убийствах прошлого. Пугающая осведомленность профессора о нашумевших преступлениях эпохи наводит на мысли о том, что это не научный доклад, а исповедь убийцы. Так ли это на самом деле или, возможно, так проявляется писательский талант автора, вдохновившего Чарльза Диккенса на лучшие его романы? Ответить на этот вопрос сможет сам читатель, ознакомившись с книгой.

'People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed - a knife - a purse - and a dark lane...' In this provocative and blackly funny essay, Thomas de Quincey considers murder in a purely aesthetic light and explains how practically every philosopher over the past two hundred years has been…

'I took it: - and in an hour, oh! Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me!'

Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) launched a fascination with drug use and abuse that has continued from his day to ours. In the Confessions De Quincey invents recreational drug taking, but he also details both the lurid nightmares that beset him in the depths of his addiction as well as his humiliatingly futile attempts to renounce the drug. Suspiria de Profundis centres on the deep afflictions of De Quincey's childhood, and examines the powerful and often paradoxical relationship between drugs and human creativity. In 'The English Mail-Coach', the tragedies of De Quincey's past are played out with horrifying repetitiveness against a backdrop of Britain as a Protestant and an imperial power.

This edition presents De Quincey's finest essays in impassioned autobiography, together with three appendices that are highlighted by a wealth of manuscript material related to the three main texts.

'For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination'

Thomas De Quincey's three essays 'On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts' centre on the notorious career of the murderer John Williams, who in 1811 brutally killed seven people in London's East End. De Quincey's response to Williams's attacks turns morality on its head, celebrating and coolly dissecting the art of murder and its perfections. Ranging from gruesomely vivid reportage and brilliantly funny satiric high jinks to penetrating literary and aesthetic criticism, the essays had a remarkable impact on crime, terror, and detective fiction, as well as on the rise of nineteenth-century decadence.

The volume also contains De Quincey's best-known piece of literary criticism, 'On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth', and his finest tale of terror, 'The Avenger', a disturbing exploration of violence, vigilantism, and religious persecution.

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is an account of the early life and opium addiction of Thomas De Quincey, in prose which is by turns witty, conversational, and nightmarish. 'On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth' offers both a small masterpiece of Shakespearian interpretation and a provocative statement of De Quincey's personal aesthetic of contrast and counterpoint. Suspiria de Profundis blends autobiography and philosophical speculation into a series of dazzling prose-poems which explore the mysteries of time, memory, and suffering. 'The English Mail-Coach' develops a richly apocalyptic vision which sets nineteenth-century England's political and imperial grandeur against the suffering and loss of innocence which it entails. This selection presents De Quincey's major works in their original uncut and unrevised versions, which in some cases have not been available for many years.

В книгу английского писателя Томаса де Квинси (1785-1859) вошло самое известное его произведение `Исповедь англичанина, употреблявшего опиум`. Это повесть о `радостях и горестях` опиума, болезненной к нему привязанности и ее последствиях, оказываемых на психику человека.

Написанная в начале XX века `Исповедь` не утратила своей актуальности до наших дней.

"Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" (1821) relates Thomas De Quincey's early life and experiences of opium addiction at a time when that drug was widely used for the relief of pain, and before its addictive qualities were properly understood. It is a work which encompasses amusement with nightmare as the author experiences in turn the marvels of opium-induced dreams and the equally vivid nightmares which are their counterpoint.