E. A. Poe: Fall-Sucht | crisis of fancy

⇒ Aus dem Gordon Pym

… but presently I found my imagination growing terribly excited by thoughts of the vast dephts yet to be descended, and the precaious nature of the pegs and soapstone holes which were my only support. It was in vain I endeavored to banish these reflections, and to keep my eyes steadily bent upon the flat surface of the cliff beore me. The more earnestly I struggeld not to think, the more intensely vivid became my conceptions, and the more horribly distinct.
At length arrived that crisis of fancy, so fearful in all similar cases, the crisis in which we begin to anticipate the feelings with which we shall fall – to picture to ourselves the sickness, and dizziness, and the last struggle, and the half swoon, and the final bitterness of the rushing and headlong descent.
And now I found these fancies creating their own realities, and all imagined horrors crowding upon me in fact. …
And now I was consumed with the irrepressible desire of looking below, … I threw my vision far down into the abyss. For one moment my fingers clutched convulsively upon their hold, while, with the movement, the faintest possible idea of ultimate escape wandered, like a shadow, through my mind – in the next my whole soul was prevaded with a longing to fall; a desire, a yearning, a passion utterly uncontrollable.

Edgar Allan Poe: Narrative of A. Gordon Pym (1838) – The Complete Tales & Poems – New York, Vintage, p. 875

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NB 1: Sog der Leere. Kellers Grüner Heinrich: Schreck des Blicks in den Abgrund der Abstraktion. Vertigo der Moderne. Schwindel. Vertige.
NB 2: Trivialer Weise haben wir in|ad|ae|qu|at echt vergessen, dass Zitate simpel aus Netz-Volltexten Copy-Pastierbar sind. Bekanntlich schreiben wir ja grässlich schlecht ab . – Tröstlich womöglich ist die Bemerkung Walter Benjamins über den Wert der Abschrift und des eigenen Exzerpts. (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris)

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