A Classic Crime Collection (42 page)

Dream-Land

1
.   
Dream-Land:
This poem was originally published in
Graham’s Magazine
, June 1844.

2
.   
ill:
In the sense of ill-willed or malicious.

3
.   
Eidolon:
A ghost or phantom.

4
.   
Thule:
Greek word for the farthest known point of land.

5
.   
Eldorado:
Mythical city of gold sought by the Spanish conquistadores in the New World.

6
.   
darkened glasses:
Partly closed eyes; suggests 1 Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see through a glass, darkly.”

Dreams

1
.   
Dreams:
Originally published in
Tamerlane and Other Poems
(1827).

Silence

1
.   
Silence:
First published in the Philadelphia
Saturday Courier
, January 4, 1840. Originally titled “Sonnet—Silence,” despite the fact that it has fifteen lines rather than the fourteen sonnets usually have.

2
.   
corporate:
Or corporeal, meaning “of the body.”

Eldorado

1
.   
Eldorado:
Originally published in the Boston
Flag of Our Union
, April 21, 1849. El Dorado was a city of gold the Spanish conquerors of the New World believed lay in the western part of the continent. In Poe’s time it connoted the gold rush underway in California.

2
.   
Mountains of the Moon:
Mountains in Africa, once thought to be the source of the Nile River; possibly the Ruwenzori Range that separates Uganda and the Congo. In literary terms they represent a place a fantastic distance away.

3
.   
Valley of the Shadow:
Possibly a reference to Psalm 23:4: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. . . .”

Israfel

1
.   
Israfel:
Originally published in
Poems, by Edgar A. Poe. Second Edition
(1831).

2
.   
levin:
Lightning.

3
.   
Pleiads:
Or the Pleiades, a cluster of seven stars in the constellation Taurus who were sisters, according to Greek mythology.

4
.   
grown-up God:
As opposed to the cherubic Cupid of Roman mythology.

5
.   
Houri:
In Muslim mythology, one of the virgins who await men in heaven; “houri” literally refers to their dark eyes.

For Annie

1
.   
For Annie:
Originally published in the Boston
Flag of Our Union
, April 28, 1849. Poe apparently wrote it thinking of Annie Richmond, an acquaintance with whom he carried on a literary flirtation.

2
.   
naphthaline:
A flammable oil; “napthaline river” suggests one of the fiery rivers of Hades.

3
.   
tantalized:
Tortured with desire and left unsatisfied, a reference to the fate of Tantalus in Greek mythology, a king who was punished by the gods by spending all eternity just out of reach of a supply of fruit and water.

4
.   
rue:
An herb with bitter leaves, symbolic of regret.

5
.   
queen of the angels:
The Virgin Mary.

Sonnet—To Science

1
.   
Sonnet—To Science:
Originally published as the introductory poem to
Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems
(1829).

2
.   
Diana from her car:
Diana is the Roman goddess of the moon; her “car” is the chariot she rode across the sky.

3
.   
Hamadryad:
Wood nymph in Greek mythology.

4
.   
Naiad:
Water nymph in Greek mythology.

A Dream

1
.   
A Dream:
Originally published in
Tamerlane and Other Poems
(1827).

2
.   
day-star:
The sun. The poet is comparing the trembling light of a faraway star with the brighter light of the sun.

To ————

1
.   
To ————:
Originally published in
Al Aaraaf,
Tamerlane, and Minor Poems
(1829).

Romance

1
.   
Romance:
Originally published in
Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems
(1829).

2
.   
paroquet:
Parakeet.

Spirits of the Dead

1
.   
Spirits of the Dead:
Originally published in
Tamerlane and Other Poems
(1827).

To Helen

1
.   
To Helen:
Originally published in
Poems, by Edgar A. Poe. Second Edition
(1831). The Helen in question is Mrs. Helen Stannard, actually Jane Stith Stanard, the mother of a schoolmate of Poe’s, whose death when Poe was a boy affected him greatly.

2
.   
Nicean:
A reference to Nicea, a city now known as Iznik in modern-day Turkey.

3
.   
Naiad:
Water nymph in Greek mythology.

4
.   
agate:
A semitranslucent chalcedony, usually with multicolored bands.

5
.   
Psyche:
Princess in Greek mythology whose marriage to Cupid results in her becoming immortal; more generally, she embodies the soul.

Evening Star

1
.   
Evening Star:
Originally published in
Tamerlane and Other Poems
(1827). The evening star is actually Venus, named after the Roman goddess of love.

Alone

1
.   
Alone:
Unpublished and untitled in Poe’s lifetime, it was written around 1829, and first published in
Scribner’s Monthly Magazine
, September 1875.

E
NDNOTES

*
Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of Llandaff.—See “
Chemical Essays,” vol v.
¹¹

*
Rousseau—
Nouvelle Héloise
.

*
See Archimedes,
“De Incidentibus in Fluido.”
—lib. 2.
¹³

*
And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.—K
ORAN
.

I
NTERPRETIVE
N
OTES

Poe’s Stories

Poe published nearly eighty short stories in magazines and newspapers in the 1830s and 1840s. He was one of the earliest, and one of the most prolific, American practitioners of the form. Many of his stories are satires on other writers or intellectual fads of his day and are largely unread by modern readers. The tales that have ensured his continued fame are those of horror, death and life after death, and madness. Such themes came naturally to Poe, who was prone to periods of deep melancholy and who had lost virtually everyone he loved in his life by the time of his own death at age forty. How much his unhappy life affected the content of his stories is a subject critics continue to debate.

Poe saw himself as an outsider throughout his life: in the family of a foster father who disinherited him; in the army, where he was never happy following orders; and in society, where he had flashes of literary success but usually was penniless. His stories are mostly about outsiders, too, people who are isolated by a terrible fate or by their own peculiar psychology. Almost always, the tales recognizably take place in the minds of their narrators, and so they really only seem to have one character. We know almost nothing about the old man in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” for example, except that even his catatonic presence in the world drives the narrator to murderous madness. In “William Wilson,” the narrator is shadowed throughout his life by his exact double in appearance, manner, and even name, so that William Wilson is both the protagonist and antagonist of the story.

Poe is also generally credited as the inventor of the detective story, although scholars have established that he was drawing on earlier sources when he created the character of the ratiocinative detective C. Auguste Dupin. Dupin, who has a genius for devising intellectual solutions to baffling mysteries, clearly inspired Arthur Conan Doyle when he created his own, more famous, intellectual detective, Sherlock Holmes. And writers, for television and movies as well as print, have been devising variations on this type of character ever since. Every year the Mystery Writers of America recognize Poe’s central importance to the genre by giving out awards for excellence called the Edgars.

Poe’s major stories, despite their differences in details of plot and setting, focus on some central themes: themes of murder and madness; of engulfment, confinement, and catastrophe; of mind over matter, in the form of doubles and life after death; and of puzzles and cryptography. These are by no means exclusive or definitive categories. Poe scholars have grouped and regrouped his stories into many different schemes over the years. But nearly every one of his tales can be considered in light of at least one of these themes.

Madness and Murder.
“The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Black Cat” are all narrated by murderers, and not very sympathetic ones. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat,” the narrators might have gotten away with terrible crimes, but their guilty consciences overwhelm their attempts to appear normal. In “The Cask of Amontillado,” the narrator did get away with murder; the story itself is his confession fifty years after the fact.

In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator insists that he is not mad, then proceeds to tell a gruesome story of murdering the invalid old man he looks after and dismembering and hiding the body. He confesses to the crime because he can still hear the beating of the old man’s heart under the floor where he hid it. In “The Black Cat,” the narrator starts in similar fashion, proclaiming his sanity despite the incredible events he describes. Alcoholism led him to abuse his wife and the pet cat he felt a special attachment to; after he killed the cat in a fit of drunken spite, a similar-looking one came along, seeming to the narrator like a vengeful double of the first. He tried to kill the second cat and struck his wife dead with an ax when she got in the way. He, too, hid the evidence of his murderous act, but when he accidentally walled up the cat in the basement with his wife’s body, the animal’s cries gave him away.

Both of these stories have retained the power to shock in the matter-of-fact way the narrators confess to their crimes. Nameless and seemingly lacking any real motive or sense of remorse, they are perfect examples of what author Hannah Arendt, in a different context, referred to as “the banality of evil.” The killer in “The Tell-Tale Heart” claims to love the old man—it’s just that his vulture-like “pale blue eye” stares at him, chilling his blood. The drunken husband of “The Black Cat” attributes his terrible behavior to “perverseness,” which has a ring of authenticity about it in terms of an alcoholic’s self-loathing justification of his actions. In both cases the men seem to be lashing out murderously against a sense of being trapped in their own lives. They try to wall up the evidence of their discontent, but it still breaks through and exposes them.

“The Cask of Amontillado” is a variation on the same plot, with Montresor burying his nemesis, Fortunato, in the family catacombs where he keeps his wine. Killing him in this way also serves to hide evidence of Montresor’s madness. At least he offers a motive that makes sense: he intends to avenge himself on Fortunato for a “thousand injuries” and one insult, though neither injuries nor insult are specified. We are never told what Fortunato’s crimes against Montresor were, but it is hard to imagine that they rival Montresor’s evil act of vengeance. Montresor is more successful as a murderer than the narrators of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat,” but the fact that he is telling the story to someone suggests that ultimately his crime could not stay hidden either.

In each of these stories Poe utilizes one of his favorite devices, the unreliable narrator. And his narrators—high-strung, opium addicted, frequently delusional or psychotic—are especially unreliable. Their insistence on their sanity tends to have the opposite effect of confirming their craziness. They are intent on justifying themselves and consequently are oblivious to the immorality of their behavior. Montresor in “The Cask of Amontillado,” for example, and the narrator of “William Wilson” never seem to realize that they are actually the villains of the stories they tell.

Tales of Entrapment, Engulfment, Catastrophe.
Some of Poe’s most overtly fantastic adventure stories convey a sense of being trapped, engulfed, or otherwise overwhelmed by hostile natural forces. These tales are dreamlike or allegorical in that they seem to make the most sense when understood in symbolic terms. “Ms. Found in a Bottle” and “A Descent into the Maelström” are set at sea, but they are not really sea stories, in the sense of Robert Louis Stevenson’s or Herman Melville’s. Poe’s interest in the sea is like that of Coleridge in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”: as the setting for man to have an existential confrontation with the enormousness and the indifference of nature. In “Ms. Found in a Bottle,” the author of the manuscript is the only survivor when his ship sinks in a hurricane. He writes from an enormous ghost ship that is being pulled along in the same storm, on which the decrepit crew does not acknowledge his presence. Himself a ghostly stowaway on the ship’s doomed voyage, he can only watch as they are sucked into a whirlpool at the South Pole, pulled down to an uncertain fate.

“A Descent into the Maelström,” with a description of the Norwegian coast at the beginning to help establish its authenticity, also features a giant whirlpool. Unlike the narrator of “Ms. Found in a Bottle,” who apparently dies at the end of the story, the Norwegian fisherman sucked into the vortex in “Descent” is able to lash himself to a barrel and thus float to the surface rather than going down with the ship, as his brother does. The fisherman (who, in a slight variation on Poe’s usual technique, tells his story to the narrator) relates how, when he was certain he was going to die, he could appreciate the beauty of the nighttime sky seen from the depths of the whirlpool. Still, the terror of his experience that night aged him, turning his hair completely white.