Edgar Allan Poe
“From childhood's hour I have not
been as others were”
(Humanities 4)
Edgar Allan Poe
• 1809-1849
• Poet, critic, journalist
– Gothic, science fiction,
inventor of detective genre
• Among first Americans to
attempt to live solely as a
writer
• Married 13 year old cousin
Virginia Clemm in 1835
– Viriginia died of tuberculosis,
1847
• Mysterious death 1849
2
Alone
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
3
Alone
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
4
The Haunted Palace
Once a fair and stately palace—
Spirits moving musically
Radiant palace—reared its head. To a lute's well-tunèd law,
In the monarch Thought's
Round about a throne, where
dominion—
sitting
[...]
(Porphyrogene!)
Banners yellow, glorious, golden, In state his glory well befitting,
On its roof did float and flow;
The ruler of the realm was seen.
(This—all this—was in the olden
Time long ago)
[...]
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows
saw
5
The Haunted Palace
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing,
flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile no more.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!);
[...]
And travelers now within that valley,
6
The House of Usher
• I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact that the
stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had
put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other
words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of
descent, and had always, with very trifling and very
temporary variation, so lain.
– it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the
consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of
the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so
identified the two as to merge the original title of the
estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the
"House of Usher"—an appellation which seemed to
include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both
the family and the family mansion.
7
The House of Usher
• The House
– “I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the
simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—
upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and
upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of
soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than
to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium—the bitter lapse into
every-day life—the hideous dropping off of the veil.”
• Roderick
– “His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the
animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic
concision—that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding
enunciation—that leaden, self-balanced, and perfectly modulated
guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the
irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense
excitement.”
8
• “No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild
inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the
crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that
reminded me of the specious totality of old woodwork which has rotted
for years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of
the external air.
– Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token
of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered
a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in
front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in
the sullen waters of the tarn.”
• “Its evidence—the evidence of the sentience [of the house]—was to be
seen, he said (and I here started as he spoke), in the gradual yet certain
condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the
walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet
importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had molded the
destinies of his family, and which made him what I now saw him—what he
was.”
9
Hypochondria & Melancholy
• “To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. ‘I
shall perish,’ said he, ‘I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus,
thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the
future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the
thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate
upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no
abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect—in terror.
– In this unnerved—in this pitiable condition—I feel that the period will
sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in
some struggle with the grim phantasm, Fear.”’
• “I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and
equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He
was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the
dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had
never ventured forth”
10
• He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much
of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be
traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin—to
the severe and long-continued illness—indeed to the
evidently approaching dissolution—of a tenderly beloved
sister, his sole companion for long years, his last and only
relative on earth.
– "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness which I can never
forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last
of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady
Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a
remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed
my presence, disappeared.
11
• “The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her
physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person,
and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical
character, were the unusual diagnosis.”
– “One evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline
was no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a
fortnight (previously to its final interment) in one of the numerous
vaults within the main walls of the building.
• The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding,
was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had
been led to his resolution, so he told me, by consideration of the
unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain
obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and
of the remote and exposed situation of the burial ground of the
family.”
12
“Sympathies of a scarcely intelligible
nature”
• “A striking similitude between the brother and sister
now first arrested my attention; and Usher, divining,
perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words
from which I learned that the deceased and himself
had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely
intelligible nature had always existed between them.
– Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead—for
we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had
thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left,
as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character,
the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face,
and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is
so terrible in death.”
13
• “‘Oh, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not
hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep
on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of
her heart? Madman!’—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and
shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his
soul—’Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!’”
– “Then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded
figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white
robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of
her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and
reeling to and fro upon the threshold—then, with a low, moaning cry,
fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent
and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a
victim to the terrors he had anticipated.”
• Anticipated?
14
• “Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I
turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have
issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone
behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and
blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that
once barely discernible fissure, of which I have before
spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a
zigzag direction, to the base.
– While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened—there came a fierce
breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the satellite burst at
once upon my sight—my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls
rushing asunder—there was a long tumultuous shouting sound
like the voice of a thousand waters—and the deep and dank
tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of
the ‘House of Usher.’”
15
Masque of the Red Death
• “But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious.
When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his
presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the
knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep
seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive
and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own
eccentric yet august taste.”
– “They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the
sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was
amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid
defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In
the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had
provided all the appliances of pleasure.”
• “All these and security were within. Without was the ‘Red Death.’”
16
• “It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western
wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with
a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made
the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came
from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and
loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note
and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the
orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their
performance, to harken to the sound; and thus the waltzers
perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert
of the whole gay company”
– “and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three
thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came
yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert
and tremulousness and meditation as before.”
17
• “Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are
equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be
made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to
feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither
wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and
shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave.
– The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to
resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest
scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet
all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad
revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume
the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood —
and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was
besprinkled with the scarlet horror.”
18
• “There was a sharp cry — and the dagger dropped gleaming upon
the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in
death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of
despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the
black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood
erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped
in unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like
mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by
any tangible form”
– “And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had
come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in
the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing
posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of
the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And
Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over
all.”
19