The epithets "Grotesque" and "Arabesque" will be found to indicate
with sufficient precision the prevalent tenor of the tales here
published. But from the fact that, during a period of some two or
three years, I have written five-and-twenty short stories whose
general character may be so briefly defined, it cannot be fairly
inferred--at all events it is not truly inferred--that I have, for
this species of writing, any inordinate, or indeed any peculiar taste
or prepossession. I may have written with an eye to this republication
in volume form, and may, therefore, have desired to preserve, as far
as a certain point, a certain unity of design. This is, indeed, the
fact; and it may even happen that, in this manner, I shall never
compose anything again. I speak of these things here, because I am led
to think it is this prevalence of the "Arabesque" in my serious tales,
which has induced one or two critics to tax me, in all friendliness,
with what they have been pleased to term "Germanism" and gloom. The
charge is in bad taste, and the grounds of the accusation have not
been sufficiently considered. Let us admit, for the moment, that the
"phantasy-pieces" now given are Germanic, or what not. Then Germanism
is "the vein" for the time being. To morrow I may be anything but
German, as yesterday I was everything else. These many pieces are yet
one book. My friends would be quite as wise in taxing an astronomer
with too much astronomy, or an ethical author with treating too
largely of morals. But the truth is that, with a single exception,
there is no one of these stories in which the scholar should recognise
the distinctive features of that species of pseudo-horror which we are
taught to call Germanic, for no better reason than that some of the
secondary names of German literature have become identified with its
folly. If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I
maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul,--that I have
deduced this terror only from its legitimate sources, and urged it
only to its legitimate results.
There are one or two of the articles here, (conceived and executed in
the purest spirit of extravaganza,) to which I expect no serious
attention, and of which I shall speak no farther. But for the rest I
cannot conscientiously claim indulgence on the score of hasty effort.
I think it best becomes me to say, therefore, that if I have sinned, I
have deliberately sinned. These brief compositions are, in chief part,
the results of matured purpose and very careful elaboration.
