{"product_id":"2940013684805","title":"Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque Volume 1 \u0026 2","description":"The epithets \"Grotesque\" and \"Arabesque\" will be found to indicate\u003cbr\u003ewith sufficient precision the prevalent tenor of the tales here\u003cbr\u003epublished. But from the fact that, during a period of some two or\u003cbr\u003ethree years, I have written five-and-twenty short stories whose\u003cbr\u003egeneral character may be so briefly defined, it cannot be fairly\u003cbr\u003einferred--at all events it is not truly inferred--that I have, for\u003cbr\u003ethis species of writing, any inordinate, or indeed any peculiar taste\u003cbr\u003eor prepossession. I may have written with an eye to this republication\u003cbr\u003ein volume form, and may, therefore, have desired to preserve, as far\u003cbr\u003eas a certain point, a certain unity of design. This is, indeed, the\u003cbr\u003efact; and it may even happen that, in this manner, I shall never\u003cbr\u003ecompose anything again. I speak of these things here, because I am led\u003cbr\u003eto think it is this prevalence of the \"Arabesque\" in my serious tales,\u003cbr\u003ewhich has induced one or two critics to tax me, in all friendliness,\u003cbr\u003ewith what they have been pleased to term \"Germanism\" and gloom. The\u003cbr\u003echarge is in bad taste, and the grounds of the accusation have not\u003cbr\u003ebeen sufficiently considered. Let us admit, for the moment, that the\u003cbr\u003e\"phantasy-pieces\" now given are Germanic, or what not. Then Germanism\u003cbr\u003eis \"the vein\" for the time being. To morrow I may be anything but\u003cbr\u003eGerman, as yesterday I was everything else. These many pieces are yet\u003cbr\u003eone book. My friends would be quite as wise in taxing an astronomer\u003cbr\u003ewith too much astronomy, or an ethical author with treating too\u003cbr\u003elargely of morals. But the truth is that, with a single exception,\u003cbr\u003ethere is no one of these stories in which the scholar should recognise\u003cbr\u003ethe distinctive features of that species of pseudo-horror which we are\u003cbr\u003etaught to call Germanic, for no better reason than that some of the\u003cbr\u003esecondary names of German literature have become identified with its\u003cbr\u003efolly. If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I\u003cbr\u003emaintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul,--that I have\u003cbr\u003ededuced this terror only from its legitimate sources, and urged it\u003cbr\u003eonly to its legitimate results.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere are one or two of the articles here, (conceived and executed in\u003cbr\u003ethe purest spirit of extravaganza,) to which I expect no serious\u003cbr\u003eattention, and of which I shall speak no farther. But for the rest I\u003cbr\u003ecannot conscientiously claim indulgence on the score of hasty effort.\u003cbr\u003eI think it best becomes me to say, therefore, that if I have sinned, I\u003cbr\u003ehave deliberately sinned. These brief compositions are, in chief part,\u003cbr\u003ethe results of matured purpose and very careful elaboration.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47070192664816,"sku":"2940013684805","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013684805_p0.jpg?v=1763584335","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013684805","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}