I first encountered the work of Edgar Allan Poe watching those schlocky, ham-fisted, yet not entirely charmless Roger Corman film adaptions of a number of the writer's short stories. The Masque of the Red Death, The Fall of the House of Usher and the like. Corman produced eight such movies in all, most featuring Vincent Price chewing away on the scenery for all he was worth.
I can recall seeing an animated version of The Tell-Tale Heart on UK TV in the early 1970s which had me riveted, but it took an English teacher from the fag-end of my schooling to make me fall in love with Poe.
Mr Abbie the chap's name was, a pleasingly affable individual who unfortunately had been cursed with perhaps the dullest speaking voice ever. Nevertheless, even as he plodded on through The Cask of Amontillado in his whispery monotone, Poe's magic shone through.
I obtained a couple of compilations of the author's work, but it was only when (?early 1980s) I bought a shockingly poorly bound copy of Poe's complete works did I first begin to appreciate his writing went way beyond murderous madmen and ghosts of dead women returning. I have to say, many of the stories I abandoned after a few paragraphs, little interest did my younger self have in these obscure, often lengthy, ramblings with which Poe would often preface his writing.
Anyway - no excuses now I am retired, for putting off any further reading all the great man's tales in publication order. First, though, a very brief outline of his early days; for I was utterly delighted to learn when researching these scribbles, that Poe, albeit as a wee boy had visited Scotland!
Edgar Allan Poe was born Edgar Poe on January 19th 1809 in Boston, Mass. to David and Eliza Poe. Both were travelling actors, although Poe's father took the travelling aspect a touch too far, abandoning his family in 1810. Eliza died the following year, and the young Edgar was fostered by a Richmond, VA businessman John Allan; who renamed him Edgar Allan Poe although never formally adopted him.
The Allan family spent the years between 1815 and 1820 in the United Kingdom, mostly in Ayrshire and London, the young Edgar attending (very briefly) The Kailyard Grammar School in Irvine, Scotland.
By the spring of 1820, the Allan family were back in Richmond, Poe continuing his education at the William Burke Academy. Poe entered Richmond University at the age of 17, in 1826 to study ancient and modern languages, but dropped out when John Allan refused to fully fund Poe's studies and living costs.....or to clear off his gambling debts. Sources differ.
The US Army was the next port of call for the youthful Poe, where he spent the following few years before contriving to get himself kicked out in 1931. By this point he was already a self-published author; having produced a run of fifty copies of his poetry collection "Tamerlane and other Poems", albeit under the byline of "A Bostonian".
He also began writing and sending short stories to a number of the literary periodicals which flourished in the US north east around this time, achieving his first success with a gothic tale Metzengerstein - it appearing in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier in January 1832.
1832 tales
METZENGERSTEIN
The wealthy Hungarian Metzengerstein and Berlifitzing families have been bickering for centuries over.....well, no-one can quite remember what. Four days after the feckless and hedonistic young Frederick inherits the title of Baron von Metzengerstein, a fire breaks out at the stables owned by the Berlifitzing family, in which the elderly Count Berlifitzing perishes attempting to rescue a number of his horses.
During the conflagration a large white horse appears "flying all smoking, and foaming with rage, from the burning stables". Yet the Berlifitzing stable-boys claim not to recognise the horse, so Frederick takes it as his own.
He alone able to subdue the beast sufficiently to ride it.
The reader is, I think, led to believe that the horse is the reincarnation of Count Berlifitzing, Poe helping the slower reader along by prefacing the yarn with a brief few lines on the notion of Metempsychosis - wherein a soul of an individual upon death may immediately transfer into the body of another living being, human or animal.
It is a moderately entertaining read, if a touch verbose at times.
THE DUC de L'OMLETTE
The Duc (Duke) of the title is set to dine upon a tiny bird (an 0rtolan), when he dies in a "paroxysm of disgust" upon seeing that the bird has been served up without its feathers.
Three days later, the Duc finds himself in Hell bantering with the devil. However, by cheating at a game of cards, the Duc is able to escape his fate.
Designated as one of Poe's humorous tales, one must only assume what passed for funny in 1932 Pennsylvania differed greatly from today. Now it may well be that Poe was poking fun at some well-known contemporary figure, and that his readers were wetting themselves laughing, but for the 21st century reader this is a deeply unfunny tale.
It is also deeply irritating to read, as Poe has written all of the Duc's dialogue in French. Were there really that many bilingual readers back when it was published? It all just comes across as un peu prétentieux.
But I can only assume this is the sort of stuff which was selling back in the day, because the Philadelphia Saturday Courier lapped this one up, in addition to the following three "humorous" stories
A TALE OF JERUSALEM
We are in Roman-besieged Jerusalem here, and a group of Hebrews within the city walls have gathered to lower a basket of coins down to a centurion in exchange for a lamb to sacrifice. Pulling the animal back up the faithful begin congratulate themselves upon their good fortune, for the weight suggests it is actually a calf which has been given to them.
It is not.
This one is basically a long-winded telling of, I suppose, a joke with a funny (if borderline anti-semitic) punchline. Poe here wrapping the joke up in a lengthy lecture on medieval Jewish rituals.
A LOSS OF BREATH
The morning after their wedding Mr. Lacko’breath is (for reasons never made totally clear) viciously haranguing his wife when he suffers, as the title suggests, a loss of breath which immediately silences him.
Concealing the fact from his wife, he searches the house for his lost breath. In despair after failing to locate it, he briefly considers suicide, before deciding to hide his shame by leaving the country.
Mr. Lacko’breath then departs upon a journey which becomes more and more absurd as it progresses. During which he has both arms broken, both ears cut-off, endures a premature autopsy leading to several of his organs being removed. The unlucky chap is then hung in a case of mistaken identity, before being placed in a coffin. Undaunted, he escapes from the box, to discover his former neighbour Mr. Windenough inhabiting one of the coffins nearby.
Thus is Mr. Lacko’breath reunited with his lost breath. And all live happily ever after.
A bizarre rambling adventure this one, with no explanation given quite how the hero, without the ability to breathe, remains upright for as long as he does. Nor how he succeeds in remaining unaffected by the loss of various pieces of anatomy along the way.
As was the way of things in these early Poe writings, the story is (or I assume, was regarded as such in 1832, when it was first published) a humorous satire on something contemporary. Wikipedia suggests the sensationalist Edinburgh Blackwood Magazine, and also a general mistrust of the medical profession of the time.
Neither of which helps the 21st Century reader keep up, nor to care much for the protagonist. Loss of Breath represented an improvement upon his two previous published humorous tales - but not by much.
(Note - The tale was originally published as A Decided Loss, but I have reviewed the revised and retitled version from 1935)
BON-BON
Pierre Bon-Bon runs a restaurant in the French town of Rouen. Whilst he is certainly a chef of some renown, he also fancies himself a philosopher of no small intellect. His kitchen is scattered with philosophical tracts, and we learn "Volumes of German morality were hand and glove with the gridiron — a toasting fork might be discovered by the side of Eusebius — Plato reclined at his ease in the frying pan".
The Devil, who apparently has a taste for eating the souls of philosophers, drops by for a chat.
Poe has another Frenchman chatting away with Auld Nick, in this piece of tiresome nonsense splattered with Gallic phrases. But whereas The Duc de L'Omelette outwitted the devil with trickery, here Satan bluntly rejects Bon-Bon's offer of his soul, as he sees through the latter's phony philosopher guise.
Bon-Bon was the last of Poe's five tales published by the Philadelphia Saturday Courier during 1832. All five had been submitted to the newspaper as entries in a writing competition, one assumes in late 1831. Poe did not win the $100 prize, although the publication subsequently printed all five entries. So, somebody somewhere clearly felt they had merit.
1833 tales
MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE
The unnamed MS. (manuscript) writer is a passenger on a cargo ship bound for "the Archipelago of the Sunda Islands", when the ship is overwhelmed by a foam-laden storm. All aboard are either drowned below decks or swept overboard, excepting the writer and an "old Swede".
The storm continues to drive the wrecked ship south, until it encounters a much larger vessel in a sea swell. This latter ship crashes down onto the smaller, although the writer is saved by being thrown onto the rigging of the larger ship.
Once on-board, he ascertains that this is a very old ship indeed and that, more disconcertingly the elderly, indeed decrepit, crew cannot see him.
Meanwhile the ship continues to be blown south.
Changing tack for his next writing competition - this one run by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter (sic) - Poe penned a full-blooded sea-faring adventure yarn. And duly won the $25 prize; his entry being published in October 1833.
Almost a hundred years later, the story still stands up well, irrespective of whether or not aspects of it are said to be Poe satirising sea tales.
There is no verbose flannelly introduction for the modern reader to wade through, nor is the text overloaded with Poe's irritating foreign text affectation. The transition from the natural to the supernatural in the narrative is seamless, and the reader genuinely finds themself concerned for the fate of the unfortunate traveller. Unlike for any of the bods in the previous five tales.
Poe's raised profile as a writer subsequent to winning the prize for this one helped him obtain his first job, as assistant editor on The Southern Literary Messenger. He held down, often for not very long, the posts of assistant editor or contributing editor at a number of monthly periodicals over the next few years.
1834 tales
THE ASSIGNATION
An unnamed narrator is being transported through the canals of Venice, when he witnesses a child falling into the water from a upper floor window - seemingly a consequence of "slipping from the arms of it's own mother". The alarm is immediately raised and a number of the neighbours attempt to recover the child.
Just when the throng are on the verge of giving up, a young man emerges from the shadows, dives into the canal and emerges with the "still living and breathing child". The mother whispers something to the stranger, before the pair part.
Once the fuss has dies down the rescuer begs the use of the narrator's gondola, and in gratitude invites him to call upon him first thing the next day.
It really is difficult to attempt to work out what Poe is playing at here. He has successfully set up an intriguing mystery for the reader to ponder, which is resolved by a Romeo and Juliet suicide pact between the young man and the child's mother.
All of which is fine and good.....but. Into the middle of the narrative Poe has chosen not to place, not to push, but to positively hammer in a 2,000 plus word meander on the internal furnishings of the young man's palazzo. To what ends I cannot imagine - other than perhaps to weed out any casual readers, who would soon fall by the wayside upon attempting to wade through this swamp.
The Assignation was originally published in 1834 as "The Visionary" in Godey's Lady's Book, which (according to Wiki) "was an American women's magazine that was published in Philadelphia from 1830 to 1878. It was the most widely circulated magazine in the period before the Civil War."
Perhaps it paid by the word. In any event Poe really needed the money at this point in his life, for his foster-father John Allan had recently died leaving Poe nothing in his will.
1935 tales
BERENICE
Berenice grew up with her cousin Agaeus in the latter's "gloomy, grey hereditary halls". Whilst Berenice is a cheerful happy-go-lucky girl, her dull, bookish cousin prefers reading. Agaeus also appears to suffer from monomania - what we may term today Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, I suppose, and admits he can often while away a whole day contemplating the simplest things. He gives the example of spending "an entire night watching the steady flame of a lamp."
It is clear to Agaeus that Berenice is in love with him, but her feelings are (initially) not reciprocated. It is only when Berenice falls ill with a consumptive disorder, that Agaeus discovers he has the hots for her, and proposes marriage.
As Berenice's disease progresses, and she wastes away, she becomes almost unrecognisable. Except for her teeth, which remain pristeen white and as perfect as ever.
Catching sight of these teeth one day, Agaeus's monomania kicks in and he becomes obsessed with them, convincing himself if only he could possess the teeth he could find relief from his obsession.
Berenice represents, in the my opinion, the first of Poe's classic tales of horror. Indeed, I do not think he again would pen a short story with such an horrifically violent denouement. Following publication of the story in the Southern Literary Messenger in March 1835, the publishers received a number of complaints from readers concerning the violence in the story.
Even today, the climax to the yarn still packs a vicious punch.
MORELLA
So. Here we have an unnamed narrator who has a "most singular affection" for his friend Morella. The strong attraction, he insists, is not sexual. But rather it is her intellect he has fallen for. A quite literal case of a man loving a woman for her mind!
The pair marry, but almost immediately settle into a teacher/pupil relationship, as Morella introduces her new spouse to all manner of obscure and "forbidden" theological texts. In particular, one which suggests death may not be the end of things for an individual's Self.
The narrator soon tires of all this nonsense, and comes to loathe his wife. Morella then falls ill with a wasting disease (this is a Poe story, after all) and dies giving birth to a daughter. But not before spouting a lengthy lecture, effectively informing her husband "the hours of thy happiness are over."
As the girl grows, she begins to look, speak and act more and more like her mother. So, on her tenth birthday, our narrator decides it is time to finally have her baptised and named. But what to call her?
It very much feels like a dry run for Ligea this one, with the word "dry" very much to the fore. For Poe populates his narrative here with perhaps three of the most arid, dullest, unsympathetic characters he ever put down on paper.
Our narrator relates the whole business in such a tedious, self-pitying manner, even the freaky stuff which comes along at the end barely causes a ripple.
The reader is asked to just accept that Morella's "erudition was profound", and that "her powers of mind were gigantic" without any evidence, other than Poe sprinkling a selection of obscure authors into the text. Any of us can read a philosophy book - understanding it is the tricky bit.
And as for the child, she just lurks in the shadows of the narrative, only opening her mouth as she expires, to inform the narrator what I am sure the strung-out basket-case had already sussed: that Morella was back.
And just in case any reader still had not divined what was going on, Poe bolts on and entirely superfluous last-line sting.
THE UNPARALLELED ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL
The narrative begins with the delivery of a letter to an assembled throng in Rotterdam via air balloon, by an "odd little gentleman".
The letter does indeed relate an unparalleled adventure, it's author claiming to be one Hans Pfaall, a local bellows-maker who had disappeared from the town some five years previously. To escape his debtors, it was generally assumed.
To cut a long, if never less than entertaining, story short, in the letter Pfaall claims to have flown to the moon in a self-made air balloon!
Now homesick for Earth he has persuaded one of the squat, two-foot tall inhabitants of the moon, to deliver (along with the manuscript) a request for a pardon for killing three of his creditors, to allow him to return home unpunished. The request is granted by the local big-wigs, but the little moon-man is nowhere to be found. So there is no way to relate the decision back to Pfaall.
An hilariously silly, yet exhilarating journey the pages of which, for me anyway, flew past.
Sensibly Poe has Pfaall just glossing over the really big sciency-problems. For instance, the balloon is to be filled with a "gas never yet generated by any other person than myself....and that its density is about 37.4 times less than that of hydrogen."
The tricky business of breathing in outer space is similarly swatted away by the use of "condensing apparatus", which we are assured can readily be enabled to extract those few molecules of oxygen which exist in space in sufficient quantity for the purposes of respiration. Sealing the basket to prevent any breathable condensed atmospheric air from escaping is achieved by buttoning on a "flexible gum-elastic bag".
One could go on, of course. But ultimately none of this really matters. The point is Pfaall encountered a series of problems, and came up with solutions, however preposterous, and successfully completed his journey. Hurray!!
Rather oddly, though, Pfaall barely touched upon his five years spent amongst the denizens of the moon. Instead choosing to tantalise the reader with a number of teasers, not least the revelation that there exists an "incomprehensible connection between each particular individual in the moon, with some particular individual on the earth."
Note: The tale as published in 1835 had a little coda attached, wherein the good and the great of Rotterdam list a number of reasonably compelling reasons why the whole business should be regarded as a hoax.
Spoilsports.
LIONIZING
A chap called Robert Jones tells us how he is held in the highest regard in society not only because he has a large nose himself, but also because of his in-depth studies of the science of nosology.
Baffled by this one, I sought help from no less an august organisation than The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore where, on their website, I learned:
"Lionizing is often considered the best of Poe's humorous stories." (Hardly a high bar, in my opinion).
and
"The piece is obviously a quiz on N.P Willis, and is also a parody on a story by Bulwer".
This must be a new meaning of the word "obviously", which I was hitherto unaware of.
All of which really highlights the problem with satire in general, not just Poe's - that unless the reader is acquainted with who or what the subject of the parody is, the writing generally comes across as so much pretentious shite. Which this most assuredly does.
And, I would aver that had this short story been written by an obscure 19th century American writer by the name of Edward Albert Toe, this nonsense would have been consigned to the literary dustbin long ago.
KING PEST
Set during the reign of England's King Edward III, here we have a pair of sailors - the tall and lean Legs, and the short and portly Tarpaulin - out carousing of an evening in 14th Century London.
Penniless, they make a bolt from their latest hostelry without paying their bill, pursued by the landlord and landlady.
But they stumble into one of the streets closed off due to the current outbreak of the "Demon of Disease". Plague, we assume. The fleeing pair break into a building they know to belong to an undertaker, where they encounter six bizarre figures seated around a table drinking. One of whom introduces himself as King Pest the First.
A tale of two parts this one - the first describing a couple of sailors out and about enjoying themselves of an evening, and their subsequent Drinking and Dashing.
Things take a much darker turn in the second part, as the pair encounter the sinister family of Pests who are having their own little party. But all ends sort of happily for our heroes, as they avoid drowning, despatch the four male Pests, before kidnapping the two female Pests, for their own pleasure once back on board ship.
The allegory referred to in the the title is generally believed to be that King Pest refers to the US President at the time the tale was written (1834): Andrew Jackson. There are a few clues hidden therein: the ale-house which the two sailors fled from was in the "parish of St Andrews". And at one point during the narrative King Pest is referred to as "the president".
There can be found on the internet various folks guessing who the other five odd-bods at the table may represent. Poe does take an inordinate time in describing all the table guests, killing the pacing dead in the process, so he must have felt all those details important to the 1830's readers.
But ultimately who cares who they are?
That being said, this is one of Poe's satires which I feel still stands up on its own two feet, and remains an entertaining romp even for today's discerning reader.
SHADOW - A PARABLE
Seven (we assume) noblemen of the town of Ptolemais, have locked themselves away awaiting death, for the "black wings of the Pestilence were spread abroad." An eighth member of their party has already succumbed to the disease, and his body lies wrapped in a shroud in a corner of the chamber.
The seven are drinking and singing hysterically, when a shadow emerges from within the draperies of the room.
I love this one, for even at just forty-odd lines long, Poe wastes not a word in describing the situation and the action (such as it is). There can be few better opening lines to a short story than the author delivers with this one:
"Ye who read are still among the living: but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows."
It feels very much like an early bash at The Masque of the Red Death, but without the masque obviously. The other main difference, I feel anyway, is that the group here have already accepted their fate, whereby in "Masque" Prince Prospero thought he could escape death by hiding away.
A story I find myself returning to time after time.
September 1835 was a busy time for Poe, for not only did he have the above two stories published in The Southern Literary Messenger, but he also married his cousin Virginia.
1836 tales
FOUR BEASTS IN ONE - THE CAMELEOPARD
We find ourselves in Antioch here, around 150BC (Poe is capriciously vague about the dates in the text).
The King of Syria is celebrating just having slaughtered "a thousand chained Israelitish prisoners", by cavorting around the streets of Antioch wearing a cameleopard (giraffe) skin.
However, the sight of a man thus attired angers the real four-legged beasts in the city, leading to a riotous uprising. Leaving the King to quite literally hoof it to the local hippodrome for safety.
Once there he impresses everyone, man and beast alike, with his speed and agility. So much so that, not only do they all take the King to their heart once more, but present him, in advance, a winner's wreath from the next Olympiad.
I am sure this one is another very subtle dig by Poe at either some 19th Century dignitary, or perhaps one or other of Poe's literary rivals (he collected a few over the years). But it is practically unreadable today.
The first half of the yarn is taken up with paragraphs of skull-numbing scene-setting, before the silliness with the King-in-a-Giraffe-Skin stuff takes over.
In fact the sole entertainment the reader can glean from the tripe, is working out what the "Four Beasts" of the title are. Homo, would suggest homo sapien (i.e. the King) is one, with a camel, a leopard and the giraffe the fourth.
But who knows. Or cares.
1837 tales
MYSTIFICATION
The young Hungarian Baron Ritzner von Jung is a bit of a character; the life and soul of the community life at his university. Into the outer rim of his social circle arrives one day Hermann, a dull-witted individual whose sole attribute in life is an ability to win duels. And who is always seemingly on the lookout for offence.
The gregarious and voluble Ritzner soon falls foul of Hermann's inflated sense of propriety, and is duly challenged to a duel.....unless he can come up with "an explanation of this evening's occurrences".
The confrontation appears inevitable, but the Baron has a trick up his sleeve.
The simplest message the reader can take away from this one is that clever people can generally outwit foolish ones. It is a fair to middling read, even if Poe seems to take an inordinate time with his characterisation of Ritzner. The Baron is painted as such a super-popular Alpha-Plus male, we almost look forward to Hermann shooting him down. But, of course, the latter does not.
One particular point of interest in the tale is that is contains Poe's first reference to the use of a cypher in writing. A tool the author would subsequently return to, perhaps most famously in The Gold Bug.
1838 tales
THE NARRATIVE OF A. GORDON PYM OF NANTUCKET
Seventeen (or possibly eighteen) year-old Arthur Gordon Pym decides, with the aid of his friend Augustus, to stow away on a whaling ship owned by the latter's father.
However, a mutiny breaks out on board ship, which Pym and Augustus succeed in quelling with the aid of crew member Dirk Peters. A storm all but wrecks the whaling ship leaving only four alive - our trio, plus a fourth member (one of the mutineers).
These remaining bods endure terrible privations due to lack of drinking water, encounter a ship crewed by corpses, then indulge in a bout of cannibalism, before being picked up by a passing ship. This being a British vessel called the Jane Guy which has been invested with "discretionary powers to cruise in the South Seas for any cargo which might come most readily to hand."
So begins a second adventure, where Pym encounters (well within the Antarctic Circle!) Galapagos tortoises, a Polar Bear and most bizarrely of all, a tribe of black skinned "savages".
The narrative ends with Pym and Peters paddling towards the South Pole into even warmer climes - the sea becomes too hot to touch - before the pair encounter a huge white-skinned, white-shrouded figure standing in their path.
"The narrative of...." is the only full length novel Poe completed. A couple of early instalments had found their way into the Southern Literary Messenger in 1937, but it was 1938 before the full story made it into print.
And, at over 70,000 words reading the thing can represent a bit of a chore.
During Pym's time hidden in the hold of the whaling ship for example, which takes up a significant proportion of the pages early on, every one of the stowaway's problems (and solutions) are recorded in the minutest details. I found myself entreating Poe to simplify, simplify, simplify.
Recorded rather less assiduously is the cannibalism scene, where Pym, Augustus and Peters dine out on the remaining mutineer (who had lost out drawing lots). The unfortunate chap being promptly dispatched with a knife, and his head, feet, hands and innards removed and tossed overboard before the remaining three tuck in to what Poe chastely calls a repast.
And so does the yarn progress, until it's rather unsatisfactory ending.
SILENCE - A FABLE
The bulk of this one is a nested story told by a demon of "a dreary region in Libya, by the borders of the river Zaire". There is never any silence in the region apparently, due to the sighing of giant water lilies, tall trees forever rocking back and forth and grey clouds rushing west with a rustling and loud noise.
One day the demon espies a man on a rock, which seems to piss him off inordinately. So, with the aid of a few hippopotami, he calls up a tempest which silences those pesky water-lilies, trees and clouds.
The man then sees the demon, looks him in the eyes, then scurries off afraid.
What the feck this one is about, I have no idea. Jesus in the wilderness, perhaps? I discovered one lengthy interpretation on the internet, but it makes even less sense than the original prose.
LIGEA
The Ligea of the title was the first wife of our unnamed narrator here. An unparalleled blend of dark-haired beauty and intelligence, which does not stop her fading away and dying.
The narrator remarries to the plainer, blonde Lady Rowena, who also succumbs to an early death.
During an overnight vigil, the narrator is stunned to hear a sob emanate from Rowena's corpse. An attempt to revive his wife fails. This process of apparent recovery and subsequent relapse occurs a number of times throughout the night.
When dawn arrives, the body gets up and stands erect letting loose "huge masses of long and dishevelled hair.....blacker than the raven wings of midnight".
Ligea is back.
I have never had much time for this one. I think it is the lazy, lazy plotting of having the narrator losing two wives. And also: why did he never go for aid during Rowen's frequent "recoveries"?
HOW TO WRITE A BLACKWOOD ARTICLE
A female writer Signora Psyche Zenobia visits Mr. Blackwood of Blackwood's Magazine, in order to gain advice on....well....the title says it all.
Blackwood's Magazine was a real publication, produced in Edinburgh from 1817 up until as recently as 1980. Back in Poe's time it had apparently acquired a bit of a reputation for publishing deliberately sensationalist stories.
Poe clearly was not much impressed with such tales, so penned this vicious, eviscerating, scathing satire. Which took the form of having a self-obsessed, air-headed writer taking tips from the equally vacuous Mr. Blackwood himself.
It really feels like Poe had great fun writing this one. I particularly loved the way he effortlessly dismisses the periodical's political articles, with what must be one of the earliest references to cut'n'paste in any literature.
It is a really strong piece of writing, a rare Poe "humerous" tale, which is still funny today; with many of the sentiments as relevant to today's gutter press outpourings, as it was back in 1838,
The short story "A Predicament" is a companion article to this one, relating Zenobia's travails as she sets out to put Mr. Blackwood's advice into practice.
A PREDICAMENT
In which Signora Psyche Zenobia decides to take Mr. Blackwood's advice to heart, and goes looking for an adventure she can document. Blackwood's suggestion being "to get yourself into such a scrape as no one ever got into before" whilst impressing upon her to "be sure and make a note of your sensations—they will be worth to you ten guineas a sheet."
In the company of her tiny poodle, and a three foot tall negro companion by the name of Pompey, Psyche sets off for a wander around the Scottish capital Edina (Edinbugh).
Investigating the tower of a large cathedral, the trio find themselves in the clock tower. Desirous of viewing the city through small, high sited window Psyche clambers up onto Pompey's shoulders and pokes her head out of the window, and realises she is looking out through the tower clock face.
Too late she divines her danger, for the huge minute hand of the clock moves and traps her head. The pressure upon her neck causes both of her eyes to pop out completely, they coming to rest in the guttering around the church roof. Our hero insists she is glad to be rid of them!
Decapitation is completed a few (literal) minutes later, and a still sentient Psyche dutifully continues to record her sensations.
I don't know if the fact this story takes place in Edinburgh positively prejudiced my judgement, but I just think this one is great. Poe's touch is so deft and light, you can almost feel him writing with a smile on his face - as opposed to many of his other so called humorous tales, which seem to be written with a grim determination to viciously poke fun at his intended target(s).
As an aside - these two Psyche Zenobia stories are Poe's only to have a positively identified female narrator. Although I am fairly sure the character Pundita from Mellonta Tauta (1849) is female.
1839 tales
THE DEVIL IN THE BELFRY
Hidden in a remote circular valley may be found the small Dutch/American borough of Vondervotteimittiss. The inhabitants live a quiet, unassuming existence, their daily routine predicated by the regular chiming of the hours by the town clock.
But one day, into the community, strolls a short, squat stranger.
Another slice of easily digestible nonsensical fun from Poe here, originally published in the Philadelphia Saturday Chronicle in May 1839. It was probably intended as a satire, but of whom it is hard to ascertain.
Martin van Buren, of Dutch ancestry, had just been elected US President around the time of this tale's publication, so it has been suggested he was the subject of this story's ire. But there is little real evidence to that effect in the text. Rather, if anything, Poe appears to be taking a poke at the ordered and well-organised Dutch communities in his part of the world in general. A soft and rather pointless target in my opinion.
The devil of the title, who barges his way into the clock tower belfry, beats the belfry-man senseless with a fiddle before setting the clock to chime thirteen, could be viewed in two ways. Either as an agent of chaos disrupting an otherwise well-ordered community. Or as a positive force for change, arriving to shake up the dull, plaster-cast set-in-their-ways populace.
Either works for me.
THE MAN THAT WAS USED UP
Our unnamed narrator encounters the esteemed military veteran Brevet Brigadier General John A. B. C. Smith. Greatly impressed by the elderly chap's impressive physical appearance, his "voice of surpassing clearness, melody, and strength", and his "singularly commanding" presence.
Keen to find out more about the General, the narrator quizzes a number of his own friends and acquaintances about the war hero. But on each occasion, the conversation is either ended or diverted, just as it appears some rather intriguing info on the chap is about to be related. Leading the narrator to believe the General has some dark secret to hide.
So he finally decides to visit the General early one morning, declaring to himself he will be "as short as pie-crust" and demand from the General exactly what his secret is.
There is an very old joke which goes:
A slightly drunk young man gets chatting to an apparently well-preserved older woman at a night club. They go back to her place. Up in the bedroom the woman begins to undress; beginning with removing her wig, one glass eye and her false teeth. An industrial-strength padded bra follows, leaving her breasts to flop down to her navel.
When she begins to remove a wooden leg, the young man disappears downstairs to make himself a drink to fortify himself for the ordeal to come.
Eventually she shouts from the bedroom "Do you want to come up here for some pussy?"
"Just throw it down", the boy responds.
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
(Yet another) unnamed narrator here - this one having received a slightly desperate invitation from old friend Roderick Usher to visit, in the hope his company may "by the cheerfulness of my society, (facilitate) some alleviation of.....a mental disorder which oppressed him".
One of the reasons for Usher's ennui (and there are many) is the expected imminent demise of his twin sister Madeline, from an undetermined and incurable wasting disease.
She duly checks out, and is placed into the family vault beneath the house. But then the narrator begins to hear odd noises of a stormy night.
I can find it a little bit challenging, when penning these scribbles, to ensure I separate in my head the original Poe story from the often marvellously tacky Roger Corman film interpretations of the 1960s. Especially so, given I generally encountered these movies on late-night UK TV, way before the actual stories.
This is certainly one such, and I still cannot read Poe's prose today, without involuntarily summoning up images of Vincent Price's pained expression as his ears hurt him, or of Myrna Fahey's bloodied fingers creeping around a door.
To the story itself: it is certainly one of Poe's best known and most effective. It is such a gothic horror archetype, one could almost believe old Edgar was up to his parody tricks again.
I love the opening description of the countryside the narrator has to travel through to reach The House of Usher, and his impressions upon first viewing the house. Which really sets the tone for overwhelming impression of fin de siecle decay which pervades the whole yarn.
The seemingly incongruous insertion of a previously published Poe poem (The Haunted Palace) into the text, actually works quite well. As does the marvellous scene where the narrator is reading aloud to Usher a passage from some obscure adventure yarn, and finds sounds from off-stage, as it were, uncannily appropriate to the action in the story.
But the tale is not perfect, for it relies upon what surely was already becoming, even in 1840, a Poe cliche: the slowly dying beautiful woman. And the early internment business due to the unfortune Madeline's undiagnosed catalepsy had already been visited in Berenice.
In addition, the mutual expiring in each other arms of the Usher twins is all a bit too convenient close out to the narrative - although here the capricious Mr Poe could well have been parodying gothic melodrama.
I did enjoy Poe's easily missed wordplay as the narrator is brought to his host: "The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master."
WILLIAM WILSON
The narrator here asks us to call him William Wilson, although acknowledges that is not his real name. He spins a yarn of a doppelganger, with the same name as his and born on the same day, who dogs his steps through school, Eton and onto Oxford University. The double appears to take great delight in thwarting all of Wilson's questionable plans for self-gratification. Culminating in the unmasking of Wilson as a card-cheat.
In shame, Wilson subsequently flees to the continent where, to his dismay he finds his nemesis has followed him, and continues to step "in between me and my ambition!"
When Wilson Two turns up in Rome at a masquerade where Wilson One had planned to seduce the young wife of a wealthy, elderly Duke, Wilson One decides to rid himself of the pesky Wilson Two once and for all.
So many of Poe's stories are written from a first-person point of view, that the reader always has to be wary of the author utilising the literary technique of the unreliable narrator. I believe there are few stories to which this warning applies more pertinently than to William Wilson.
I first encountered the yarn back in my twenties where I found it extremely dull, and struggled to finish it. Re-reading it now in my Autumn years, with a less horror-hungry hat on, I feel I am able to better appreciate William Wilson what it is: a superbly well-constructed exploration of self-destruction.
So, what is going on? Is the supernatural at play, or has Wilson One truly attracted the attention of a very creepy, very effective stalker? Or perhaps Wilson Two does not exist at all, outside of Wilson One's head.
I lean towards this latter explanation and believe Wilson Two to represent the better side of Wilson One's personality; his conscience, if you like. For example, Wilson One knows he is doing wrong when cheating a fellow-student at cards, but before he can make off with his winnings, he himself (not Wilson Two - it is dark at the time remember) owns up to the deception, whispering the evidence to those present.
Poe does not detail quite how Wilson Two exactly sabotages Wilson One's dubious schemes he attempts to perpetrate across Europe, but I am sure the process would have been the same. With Wilson One, when on the cusp of profiting from some shady shenanigans, contriving to deliberately scupper his own plans, subsequently convincing himself Wilson Two was to blame.
I could be well wide of the mark, of course, but I think Poe epigraph to the story does lend credence to my interpretation:
"What say of it? what say of CONSCIENCE grim,
That spectre in my path? -Chamberlaine's Pharronida."
Although I do acknowledge, that final scene where the two Wilson's indulge in a rapier duel, and Wilson One kills Wilson Two yet sees a bloodied vision of himself in a mirror, does not sit well with my interpretation. So, I lazily put that down to an hallucination.
As an aside - and nothing really to do with the plot - can we all appreciate Poe's wonderfully evocative description in the story of his first school, and the surrounding village. Stoke Newington, by all accounts.
THE CONVERSATION OF EIRON AND CHARMION
The two individuals named above, both deceased, relate how the End of the World came about.
I had never heard of, far less read, this short story before doing so for this blog. It is written in an unusual format for Poe, the whole business presented as a dialogue.
It is a reasonably diverting read, with Poe coming up with a rather novel (for the 1830s) way of fulfilling the biblical End of Days prophecy. But I hardly feel many modern day readers would be revisiting this one terribly often.
Many of Poe's previously published tales, and a few new ones, were collected together in his first volume of short stories Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1940). The book did not sell and Poe received little money from the publisher.
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