你的句子选自“纽约书评”网站的一篇文章。

详情参见：

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/02/05/edgar-allan-poe/

文章的题目是：On Edgar Allan Poe《论埃德加·爱伦·坡》（十九世纪美国诗人、小说家和文学评论家）。

这篇文章曾被江苏省(南师附中、淮阴、海门、天一)四校用作联考英语试题中的阅读理解篇目。联考试题本身有误，可能是以讹传讹的原因吧，你提供的句子也有误。应该是下面这个句子：

And the horror that fascinated him and gave such dreadful unity to his tales is often the inescapable confrontation of the self by a perfect justice, the exposure of a guilty act in a form that makes its revelation a recoil of the mind against itself.

【翻译】让他着迷而且给他的故事带来如此完整统一的那种恐怖，常常是合乎法律的正义所带来的不可避免的自我冲突，对犯罪行为的揭露，所使用的展现方式是背叛自我的心灵退缩。

【简析】最难理解的部分是：the exposure of a guilty act in a form that makes its revelation a recoil of the mind against itself.

1. the exposure of a guilty act：对犯罪行为的揭露

2. in a form...用某种方式

3. that makes its revelation a recoil of the mind against itself：定语从句修饰方式form，that关系代词。

4. makes its revelation a recoil of the mind against itself：make +名词（宾语）+名词（宾补），让...成为...

5. a recoil of the mind：心灵的退缩

6. against itself：与自身背道而驰，作定语。

Edgar Allan Poe