Quem se desafia a ler um texto todo em inglês? Acompanhe o relato do HalloMuertos, escrito pelo estudante de Letras, João Augusto Reich da Silva.

 

Once upon a midnight scary, while we,
students and teachers of Letras course,
were almost sleeping over many volumes of forgotten lore,
we heard suddenly a tapping, a tapping at our chamber doors.
Who – or what – could it be? Some late visitor?
At that hour, good things could be no more.
It was the spirit of All Hallows Eve that came through the door!
And the ghostly apparition left our houses, nevermore!

 

Did you recognize the famous poem behind the one you just read? If you do, that just proves that Poe (or his soul) is still alive and well in our days. If you didn’t, were you locked behind a brick wall all your life?! We’re talking about The Raven, a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, one of the greatest names of North-American literature.

Edgar Allan Poe, born in Boston (MA), in 1809, was a North-American author, famous for
being a master storyteller and the forerunner of sci-fi and detective stories. Most of all, he is known for writing about disturbed people, horrible crimes, haunted places, undead creatures and supernatural environments. Unfortunately, like most other writers, Poe’s fame only increased after his obscure death, in 1847.

According to The Poe Museum, after disappearing for five days while travelling to Philadelphia, he was found in Baltimore, semiconscious and in cheap and strange clothes (some even believe he had his own clothes stolen) in the bar room of a public house. Poe was then taken to a hospital, where he died after spending days between delirium and unconsciousness. Even though his causa mortis was described as a “congestion of the brain”, people still question it, feeding the unsolved mystery of Poe’s death. Ironically, it all seems like a plot fitting to one of his own tales, don’t you think?

Long after his death, Poe is still remembered and read all over the world. He left a great collection of poems, short stories, essays, book reviews and other works. Inspired by his renowned tales of mystery and madness, the class of English IV of Letras course of the University of Passo Fundo (UPF), with the coordination of professor Ricardo Buchweitz, planned activities of HalloMuertos based on Edgar Allan Poe’s horror literature.

HalloMuertos is an annual event that takes place at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences at UPF and is organized by students and professors of Letras course, both from English and Spanish courses. HalloMuertos congregates two of the main holidays from the English and Spanish cultures: Halloween (or All Hallows Eve), on the U.S.A., and Día de los Muertos, on Mexico. The first one happens on October 31 st, and the second one is a celebration that can go from October 31 st to November 2 nd.

The celebration of HalloMuertos is becoming a tradition at UPF and between the students of the course, who anxiously wait for the night they can give life to whatever inhabits the twilight zone of their imagination. It is somehow usual to see psycho nurses, evil witches, creepy monsters, beautiful catrinas and dead gentleman with their sombreros wandering around the Institute in the last night of October.

After a previous reading, the class of English IV selected Poe’s short stories that they liked the most and gave life to them on the 2018 edition of HalloMuertos that occurred in the night of October 30 th . Especially, they agreed that the illustrious poem The Raven should receive special attention above all the other works of Poe, due to its maximum literary quality that shows in every goosebumps caused by its reading and, of course, on the well-constructed text. So, they prepared a special declamation of the complete poem, with all sort of dark things inclusive: dark clothing, candlelight, bloody faces and even… the diabolical crow itself! (And that justifies the screams and shrieks we all heard that night).

The presentation was given at other classes (three of Letras and one of Psychology course) and had a special moment in the entrance hall of the building, where there was an altar to the dead (made by the Spanish course group) and an area decorated with hanging lights, vampire bats, spider webs and some typical Halloween candies for the public passing by (some people may say that they even saw drips of blood on the ground around, but we have no proof if that was only their own imagination speaking!).

It was a remarkable and thrilling moment of curious listening and anxious expectation, when everyone was captured by Poe’s brilliant representation of fearful loneliness and anguishing hysteria. The temporary – sometimes it lasts until you put down the book, sometimes it follows you for a long time, countless here for ever more – feeling of fear that emerges from Poe’s work brings out the best and worst of us. We go deep into ourselves, experiencing emotions never felt before in so extreme ways, almost leading us into despair. We may not believe in the supernatural, but Edgar Allan Poe always shows us that the true monsters are humans and horror lies within.

We felt guilty in The Tell-Tale Heart; we experienced anger and madness in The Black Cat; we feared the crescent desire for revenge in The Cask of Amontillado; we felt hopeless under the power of the unknown in The Mask of the Red Death.

To put it briefly, Poe never fails to amaze us with fear: of losing someone you love, of solitude, of being the target of cruel intentions, of death and of whatever lies unrest beyond the world of the living.

The class of English IV of the UPF’s Letras course succeeded in giving life to a part of Edgar Allan Poe’s literature, creating a frightening atmosphere very similar to the one that comes out from a great part of his work. It was an excellent opportunity for the students to express their creativity and exercise team work abilities. With the professor’s orientations and everybody’s collaboration, it was possible to develop very good ideas and make HalloMuertos a democratic construction.

We hope that future classes of English and Spanish carry on this extraordinary idea that is HalloMuertos, when we share the mains aspects of each culture and the best of ourselves through art and literature. For us, it is very clear that the dead and the living wish that HalloMuertos lasts… for evermore!

 

This text is based on The Poe Museum (www.poemuseum.org) and
Spirits of the Dead: Tales and Poems, by Edgar Allan Poe (Penguin Books, 1997)

 

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João Augusto Reich da Silva é acadêmico do sexto nível de Letras, Português-Inglês e Respectivas Literaturas (UPF) e bolsista PIBIC – UPF de Iniciação Científica.