Dicte : Edgar Allan Poe, Manuscrit trouv dans une bouteille, Extrait n1

De mon pays et de ma famille, je nai pas grandchose dire. De mauvais (wrong, incorrect,
bad) procds (conduct, behaviour) et laccumulation des annes mont rendu ( se render =
make oneself) tranger lun et lautre. Mon patrimoine (inheritance) me fit bnficier dune
ducation peu commune, et un tour contemplatif desprit me rendit apte classer
mthodiquement tout ce matriel dinstruction diligemment amass par une tude prcoce.
Par-dessus tout (most of all, above all), les ouvrages des philosophes allemands me
procuraient (bring) de grandes dlices; cela ne venait pas dune admiration malavise pour
leur loquente folie (madness), mais du plaisir que, grce mes habitudes danalyse
rigoureuse, javais surprendre leurs erreurs. On ma souvent (often, frequently) reproch
laridit de mon gnie; un manque dimagination ma t imput comme un crime, et le
pyrrhonisme de mes opinions a fait de moi, en tout temps, un homme fameux.

Of my country and of my family I have little to say. Ill usage and length of years have driven me
from the one, and estranged me from the other. Hereditary wealth afforded me an education
of no common order, and a contemplative turn of mind enabled me to methodize the stores
which early study very diligently garnered up. - Beyond all things, the study of the German
moralists gave me great delight; not from any ill-advised admiration of their eloquent
madness, but from the ease with which my habits of rigid thought enabled me to detect their
falsities. I have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency of
imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the Pyrrhonism of my opinions has at all
times rendered me notorious.