Essential Tales and Poems (Barnes & Noble Signature Editions)

By Edgar Allan Poe and Jeffrey Goddin

It is hard to think of a more influential American writer than Edgar Allan Poe. He brought to the short story genre a new literary polish, writing scores of tales that came to epitomize the form. H invented detective fiction, and the gothic aspect of his work continues to inspire young writers. Poe also changed the direction of American poetry, insisting that-rather than deliver a message-a poems first obligation is to create beauty through rhythm, rhyme, and visual imagery.
 Among the twenty-two eloquently eerie stories collected in Essential Tales and Poems are “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Cast of Amontillado,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and perhaps the most terrifying of all, “The Tell-Tale Heart.” These stories penetrate a readers subconscious and draw into the light its deepest fears. Poes sensuous poetry is also on display, inviting readers into a world of grief, delirium, and pulsing rhythms. These qualities reach their peak in Poes best-known poems, “The Bells,” “The Raven,” “Ulalume,” and “Annabel Lee.”
 The book also includes Poes only complete d novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and three of his best short works of nonfiction-most saliently, his groundbreaking essays on aesthetics, “The Philosophy of Compositions.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Nov 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781435141094

Edgar Allan Poe

Dan Ariely is James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and Sunday Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions. Ariely's TED talks have over 10 million views; he has 90,000 Twitter followers; and probably the second most famous Behavioural Economist in the World after Daniel Kahneman.

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Introduction, Annotations, and Further Reading

© 2012 by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

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CONTENTS

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF EDGAR ALLAN POE

INTRODUCTION

TALES OF THE MACABRE

METZENGERSTEIN

MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE

SHADOW—A PARABLE

SILENCE—A FABLE

BERENICE

MORELLA

LIGEIA

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

WILLIAM WILSON

A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTRÖM

THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

THE TELL-TALE HEART

THE BLACK CAT

THE PREMATURE BURIAL

THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR

THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO

HOP-FROG

TALES OF DETECTION

THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE

THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGÊT

THE PURLOINED LETTER

THE GOLD BUG

SKETCHES AND ESSAYS

THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE

DIDDLING CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE EXACT SCIENCES

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION

THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM OF NANTUCKET

POEMS

THE LAKE: TO ———

FAIRY-LAND

ALONE

ISRAFEL

THE VALLEY OF UNREST

THE CITY IN THE SEA

LENORE

SONNET—SILENCE

THE HAUNTED PALACE

THE CONQUEROR WORM

DREAM-LAND

THE RAVEN

ULALUME—A BALLAD

THE BELLS

TO HELEN

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

ELDORADO

ANNABEL LEE

ENDNOTES

BASED ON THE BOOK

FURTHER READING

INDEX OF TITLES

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF EDGAR ALLAN POE

INTRODUCTION

HOW MANY MAJOR LEAGUE SPORTS TEAMS HAVE BEEN NAMED FOR A 150-year-old poem? Such is the enduring fame of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven that it provided the name for Baltimore’s professional football team. Poe’s writing has claimed a unique place in American literature. Almost every American student has at some point read The Fall of the House of Usher, The Black Cat, William Wilson, or The Pit and the Pendulum, and has at least a vague idea of what Poe looked like, with his high pale forehead and the black clothes he habitually wore. Poe’s stories and poems are not only read for their richly descriptive style and the eerie enjoyment they bring, but are, along with his essays, closely analyzed by critics to uncover the many allusions and levels of symbolism that Poe wove into them. As well as crafting gripping stories of lost love, obsession, and madness that set the standard for future writers in the horror genre, Poe is credited with inventing the modern detective story, with The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, and The Purloined Letter. Reading Poe is an experience that is both engaging and disturbing, because no other American writer so illuminated the dark side of the human soul.

Poe is probably best known today for his horror and detective stories, written mostly from the 1830s to the mid 1840s. His works have been praised by such writers as Arthur Conan Doyle, Ray Bradbury, H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Thomas M. Disch. Many of his tales are quite scary and disturbing, and in showing us the emotions and thoughts of his heroes and heroines, Poe was one of the first writers to give us a character’s interior monologue. His horror, rather than revolving around vampires, werewolves, and the like, is usually psychological horror, bred from a character’s obsession and paranoia; in this respect, his brand of horror is very modern. The contemporary reader who is exposed to Poe’s tales, the twists and turns of his essays, the evocative magic of his poetry, and the weird mystery of his one novel is in for a strange journey into the world of one of the most creative minds in literature.

Edgar Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809, while his actor parents, David Poe, Jr., and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe, were on tour. His parents soon separated, and his mother died of tuberculosis in 1811. His father died in 1810 or 1811 (exact date unknown). This left the three Poe children—Edgar; his older brother, William Henry Leonard; and his younger sister, Rosalie—to be raised by different families. Edgar was taken in, though not actually adopted, by John and Frances Allan, a well-to-do couple from Richmond, Virginia. In school, Poe was sometimes called Edgar Allan, and in later years often wrote his name as Edgar A. Poe. Poe showed an interest in literature at an early age, and by the time he was five, he was reciting passages from the English poetry of the era.

The Allans moved to Scotland, then England, and Poe attended a manor house school in Stoke Newington, now a part of north London, from 1817 to 1820. The Allans then moved back to the United States, settling in Richmond. At Joseph H. Clarke’s Academy and William Burke’s School, Poe excelled at Latin and athletics, but his mind was not entirely on his studies. With his dark hair, high forehead, pale eyes, and slender build, Poe was popular with members of the opposite sex. In 1825, at age sixteen, he was secretly engaged to his childhood sweetheart, the lovely Sarah Elmira Royster, but her parents disapproved of the engagement so intensely that they intercepted his letters; thinking Poe had abandoned her, Sarah married someone else.

 At age seventeen, Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia, excelling at Latin and French. At the university, Poe proved fond of drinking and gambling, incurring serious debts from the latter vice. John Allan wouldn’t help pay those debts, and with no money and no immediate prospects of getting any, Poe dropped out of the university (or was expelled). He self-published his first book of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems, in 1827, but the book made no money and drew little attention. As a matter of survival, Poe enlisted in the US Army under the assumed name of Edgar A. Perry. Within nineteen months, Poe was promoted to the highest rank an enlisted man could achieve, sergeant major, and he later used Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, where he was stationed, as the setting for his tales The Gold Bug (1843) and The Balloon Hoax (1844).

Poe tired of the Army, and resigned his office. He suffered one of the first of his nervous breakdowns when John Allan subsequently refused to see him. Poe then enrolled at West Point, where for a brief period, he did well. While at West Point, he was actively writing poetry. One poem from this period is Israfel (1831), which provides an example of how similar images often appear in Poe’s poems and stories. Inspired by an angel mentioned in the Koran (though not one with that name), Israfel is a lyrical description of the beauty of the angel’s song, which literally charms the stars of heaven. A line describing the angel, Whose heart-strings are a lute, is echoed by a quotation from a poem by De Beranger placed, years later, at the beginning of The Fall of the House of Usher (1839):

Son Coeur est un luth suspendu;

Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne.

This translates to: His heart is a lute that’s been suspended (hung up). As soon as you touch it, it makes sound.

Poe soon tired of West Point, as he had the Army, and he deliberately got himself court-martialed for drinking and other offenses. He was, however, so popular with his fellow students at West Point that they took up a collection to help him publish his third book of poems, entitled simply Poems, which appeared in 1831, after he left the Academy.

Poe moved to Baltimore to live with a paternal aunt, Maria Poe Clemm, and his young cousin Virginia. Virginia adored him, and she once made a valentine for him crafted so that the first letter of each line, read from top to bottom, spelled out his name. In 1831, Poe’s beloved brother died—yet another in the series of personal losses that would punctuate the author’s life (Frances Allan had died in 1829). During the Baltimore years, Poe wrote many stories and poems and received some encouragement when, in 1833, his story MS. Found in a Bottle won a literary prize of fifty dollars. In 1835, he and the Clemms moved to Richmond, and Poe began working for the Southern Literary Messenger, his first major association with one of the periodicals of the era. He left the Messenger after about a year, possibly having been forced out because of his drinking.

Poe’s weaknesses are somewhat legendary, and perhaps exaggerated, in that much of the image of Poe as a strange alcoholic character comes from obituaries written by Rufus Griswold, a fellow who didn’t like Poe, but became literary executor of Poe’s estate. It does seem, however, that Poe did drink frequently. He was chided for his drinking in a letter (September 29, l835) from his boss, Thomas White, at the Southern Literary Messenger: No man is safe who drinks before breakfast! No man can do so, and attend to business properly.¹

In 1836, Poe married his then thirteen-year-old cousin Virginia. The couple continued to live happily together with Poe’s aunt (and mother-in-law), Maria, who is probably the unsung heroine of the whole saga of Poe’s career. She loved Poe deeply, provided stability in his life, and would later nurse him through a variety of illnesses and breakdowns, as well as look after his soon-to-be invalid young wife.

In the following years, Poe worked as an editor for a number of periodicals, including Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, Graham’s Magazine, and Godey’s Lady’s Book. He frequently published stories, poems, sketches, and essays, but was chronically short of money. While he wanted to be a popular writer, during much of his life, he was probably better known for his critical work in various magazines than for his fiction or poetry. Totaling all the reviews, fillers, and hack work that Poe did for a few dollars, he probably published over 350 pieces of writing (rather impressive for an alleged alcoholic), but during his lifetime, his writing brought in very little income. Well into the 1840s, his letters are sprinkled with references to his poverty—and requests for money.

Poe’s only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, was published in 1838. It is a strange story of a young man’s dramatic adventures (involving storms, bloody mutiny, and cannibalism) after stowing away in a sailing ship. The novel shows Poe’s ability to craft scenes of both heightened tension and surprising grotesqueness, as when the beleaguered protagonist encounters a ship from which he hopes to find rescue, only to discover that it’s a ship of dead men; the apparent animation of one sailor in the bow is caused by a seagull that has tunneled into the back of the dead sailor’s head. The scenes that take place in a fantastical South Pole region are among the most surreal in American literature. It’s possible that The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (as well as Herman Melville’s Moby Dick) was influenced by a popular book, Owen Chase’s Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Disturbing Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex (1821), which recounts the true story of the ill-fated voyage of a whaling ship whose crew endured harrowing adventures ranging from shipwreck to cannibalism. Poe’s novel is also notable for the extended symbolism of the color white (also found in Moby Dick) as being of particular ill omen.

Regarding Poe’s short fiction, H. P. Lovecraft commented: Surely, it may be said that Poe invented the short story in its present form.² By the time The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was published, Poe’s short fiction had also begun to appear regularly in various periodicals. Some of the influences on Poe’s poetry and fiction are easily traced. Poe was very fond of the English Romantic poets Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Byron particularly captured Poe’s imagination, with his dramatic poems and equally dramatic lifestyle. Like Byron, who once held a ghost story competition that gave rise to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819), Poe was fond of the trappings of gothic tales—or at least recognized their commercial potential. A good gothic story would have a gloomy castle, ghosts, perhaps a fallen nun or two, darkness, death, torture, madness, and a family curse. The true gothic story goes back to Horace Walpole and The Castle of Otranto (1764), and Poe brought many of the gothic trappings into his own era with such stories as The Pit and the Pendulum (1842) and The Fall of the House of Usher.

When in 1839 (title page dated 1840) Lea and Blanchard published a two-volume set of twenty-five of Poe’s short stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, which included The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe’s literary reputation received a solid boost. The Fall of the House of Usher employs a motif that would later become common in horror fiction (and was often used by H. P. Lovecraft): someone visits an old friend whose residence is the site of terrible happenings and/or possesses a sinister past. This tale features another theme used by Poe in several stories—that of premature burial. In this case, the narrator visits his old friend Roderick Usher, who is convinced that his sister Madeline has been buried alive. As the story of dark obsession evolves, it turns out that Usher may not be entirely wrong.

The Fall of the House of Usher also provides a good example of how Poe works his magic of wordcraft at the very beginning of the story, creating an instant mood with three adjectives in the first sentence.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

Also included in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was William Wilson, a story which may have been inspired by a Washington Irving story with a similar theme—that of the doppelgänger, or double, which frequently appears in Poe’s work. This somewhat autobiographical tale begins with the young William Wilson attending a private academy in England, as Poe did. At the school he meets a boy also named William Wilson, who becomes his only competitor in athletics and scholarship. This boy gradually assumes the main character’s mannerisms until the two boys are nearly indistinguishable. The protagonist leaves the school to attend the university (and escape his double), and falls into a decadent lifestyle that leads him to theft, dissipation, and the attempted seduction of a married woman; at a pivotal point in each of his adventures, his old adversary, the other William Wilson, appears and reveals the protagonist’s intentions. Finally, at a ball in Rome, the main character meets his double once again and determines to murder him on the spot, with truly weird results.

In 1841, Poe joined the staff of Graham’s Magazine. He worked there for about a year before leaving to attempt, unsuccessfully, to found his own magazine. Although Poe’s wife, Virginia, ruptured a blood vessel while playing piano in 1842 and never recovered her health, some of Poe’s most interesting fiction was published in the early 1840s, including The Masque of the Red Death (1842), The Pit and the Pendulum (1842), The Mystery of Marie Rogêt (1842–43), The Gold Bug (1843), and The Tell-Tale Heart (1843).

It was in 1841 that Poe published a story that was to change the future of fiction. The appearance of The Murders in the Rue Morgue is said to mark the birth of the modern detective story. For his three detective stories, Poe created the character of C. Auguste Dupin, a mildly eccentric private investigator, and precursor of Sherlock Holmes, who uses the deductive method to solve crimes and catch criminals. The other two Dupin stories are The Mystery of Marie Rogêt and The Purloined Letter (1844).

In The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Dupin must solve a double murder. Madame L’Espanaye is found with her head nearly cut off, and her daughter’s body is found stuffed in a chimney. Fortunately, Dupin discovers an important clue at the scene—a hair that didn’t come from a human being. Dupin is depicted as something of a mind reader, to the point of completing the thoughts of those he converses with. He uses what Poe calls ratiocination—a combination of scientific logic and imagination—to put himself in the mind of the criminal, thus gaining insight on the crime. Dupin’s outwitting of the more slow-minded police presages the style of many modern fictional detectives. Both Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie paid direct tribute to Poe’s Dupin. Sherlock Holmes’ friend Watson compares Holmes to Dupin in A Study in Scarlet (1887), and Agatha Christie’s famous detective Hercule Poirot writes a book on Poe in the novel The Third Girl (l966).

The year 1843 saw the publication of a number of Poe’s most famous works, among them the poem The Conqueror Worm and the story The Black Cat. The former is an allegorical poem in which angels watch a play produced by mimes and chase a phantom they can’t catch. The appearance of a sinister shape on the scene is described in the following lines:

But see, amid the mimic rout,

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude!

The crawling shape eats the mimes, and it turns out that the play is called Man, and its hero is the Conqueror Worm. This poem was also worked into a short story that Poe considered to be his best, Ligeia (1838), titled after the heroine’s name, which is Greek for clear-voiced.

The Black Cat, one of Poe’s best-known and most often dramatized stories, is an eerie tale of guilt, psychological horror, and revenge. The Black Cat was also instrumental in spreading Poe’s reputation abroad. Not long after its publication, the French poet Baudelaire discovered the story and began to translate Poe into French. The French Symbolist writers Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, and Stéphane Mallarmé came to know Poe’s works through Baudelaire’s translations; fascinated by Poe’s charting of the darker areas of the human consciousness through the use of striking images and subtle symbolism, they began to work similar themes into their own poetry. The French became so fond of Poe that after his death they sent a plaque for his grave.

In 1844, Poe moved back to New York City, where he worked at the Evening Mirror and bought and briefly owned The Broadway Journal, which soon failed. It was during this period that Poe wrote The Balloon Hoax.

The Balloon Hoax, which is quite different from his horror stories, created a stir when it was published on April 13, 1844, in the New York Sun. The response somewhat presaged the public reaction to Orson Welles’ narration of The War of the Worlds—a 1938 Mercury Theatre radio production dramatizing H. G. Wells’ novel of the same name that was taken by some listeners to be a true account of an attack on the earth by Martians. Poe’s story, which relates the more peaceful event of an imaginary transatlantic crossing by hot air balloon in seventy-five hours, was believed by thousands and generated a lot of publicity for the Sun, which wound up retracting the story.

In 1845, the publication of The Raven and Other Poems and Tales established Poe’s literary reputation (the two volumes were combined in 1846). In The Raven, a lover is brooding over his lost love when a mysterious talking raven appears and perches on a bust of Pallas, Greek goddess of wisdom. Although the man soon discovers the raven speaks only one word, he nonetheless asks the creature a number of personal and philosophical questions, only to have his grief punctuated each time with the refrain, Nevermore!

With The Raven and Other Poems and Tales, Poe began to make a modest sum of money from his writing. Although his biographers sometimes depict him as a man who took himself too seriously, Poe’s comments (from May 4, 1845) on a copy of The Raven that he sent to his friend Frederick Thomas reveal someone with a sense of wit and practicality: ‘The Raven’ has had a great ‘run,’ Thomas—but I wrote it for the express purpose of running—just as I did ‘The Gold Bug,’ you know. The bird beat the bug, all hollow.³

In addition to his fiction and poetry, Poe’s essays contributed to his growing reputation. In The Philosophy of Composition, published in Graham’s Magazine in 1846, Poe discusses the process by which he wrote The Raven as a way of developing a set of theories of what creates good writing. In this essay, he talks about how to craft all the elements of a work to unify the themes, characters, setting, and several other aspects for the strongest effect. Among his conclusions is that the death of a beautiful woman is the most poetic theme—and that the writer best suited for developing this theme is her grieving lover. A particularly interesting passage is one in which Poe contrasts Truth (as the satisfaction of the intellect) and Passion with his idea of Beauty: "Truth, in fact, demands a precision, and Passion, a homeliness (the truly passionate will comprehend me) which are absolutely antagonistic to that Beauty which, I maintain, is the excitement, or pleasurable elevation, of the soul. Critics have debated whether Poe actually followed the process so beautifully described in The Philosophy of Composition" or simply made the whole thing up after the fact.

In 1847, Poe’s wife died of tuberculosis. Poe suffered a complete collapse, but was again nursed back to health by the ever-loyal Maria. At this point in his life, after losing his parents, his second mother, his brother, and his beloved wife/cousin, the exact state of Poe’s psyche is hard to gauge. In 1848, he moved back to Richmond, but he seemed to be somewhat adrift, having at one point a liaison with the poet Sarah Helen Whitman. He then began to pursue an engagement with his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster, now Elmira Shelton, who was both widowed and wealthy. In August 1849, Poe gave a famous lecture on The Poetic Principle, which was well attended, widely praised, and generally considered to be the last great accomplishment of his career. After joining the Sons of Temperance in an effort to give up drinking (or to create the appearance of doing so), possibly to impress his fiancée and her family, Poe mysteriously disappeared for five days while en route from Richmond to New York. On October 3, he was found and recognized in a delirious state in a tavern in Baltimore and taken to the hospital. Poe died on October 7, and was buried in Baltimore in the Presbyterian burying ground on Greene Street. The cause of Poe’s death remains a mystery, as does how he came to be in Baltimore at the time of his death. Poe might have fallen victim to cholera, which was epidemic at the time, or meningitis. A popular theory of his death is that he was used as a phantom voter and made drunk until he became ill as he was taken from one polling place to another. Another theory has the brothers of his fiancée, who hated Poe, following him and getting him drunk to break his temperance vow, but overdoing the job. In all there are more than forty theories of how Poe died and, most likely, we’ll never know what really happened.

One of Poe’s best-known poems, the melancholy Annabel Lee, was published two days after his death. Annabel Lee is about a childhood love so sweet that it is envied by the angels in heaven, who indirectly kill the beloved. The bereaved lover’s devotion is so strong that each night he lies down in the tomb of his lost love. The poem is a suitable coda to Poe’s life.

Although Poe’s popularity declined somewhat in the first half of the twentieth century, the last few decades have seen a revival of interest in his works. The dark themes of death, melancholy, loss, horror, and madness—and his marvelous writing—are connecting once again with modern readers.

Since the l950s, Poe’s original grave marker has been the site of a peculiar phenomenon called the Poe Toaster. Every year on Poe’s birthday, January 19, a small group of people gathers at Poe’s grave, and a tall figure in a black cape and top hat appears, places three roses on the grave, and makes a toast of cognac to Poe’s memory.

Doubtless Poe would have approved.

Jeffrey Goddin is the author of two horror novels and some sixty short stories and articles, as well as essays on writers such as Lafcadio Hearn, Algernon Blackwood and David Case. He holds a Master’s Degree in English Literature from Indiana University.

TALES OF THE MACABRE

METZENGERSTEIN

Pestis eram vivus—moriens tua mors ero.¹

—MARTIN LUTHER

HORROR AND FATALITY HAVE BEEN STALKING ABROAD IN ALL AGES. WHY then give a date to this story I have to tell? Let it suffice to say, that at the period of which I speak, there existed, in the interior of Hungary, a settled although hidden belief in the doctrines of the Metempsychosis.² Of the doctrines themselves—that is, of their falsity, or of their probability—I say nothing. I assert, however, that much of our incredulity (as La Bruyere says of all our unhappiness) "vient de ne pouvoir etre seuls."f1

But there were some points in the Hungarian superstition which were fast verging to absurdity. They—the Hungarians—differed very essentially from their Eastern authorities. For example, The soul, said the former—I give the words of an acute and intelligent Parisian—ne demeure qu’un seul fois dans un corps sensible: au reste—un cheval, un chien, un homme meme, n’est que la ressemblance peu tangible de ces animaux.

The families of Berlifitzing and Metzengerstein had been at variance for centuries. Never before were two houses so illustrious, mutually embittered by hostility so deadly. The origin of this enmity seems to be found in the words of an ancient prophecy—A lofty name shall have a fearful fall when, as the rider over his horse, the mortality of Metzengerstein shall triumph over the immortality of Berlifitzing.

To be sure the words themselves had little or no meaning. But more trivial causes have given rise—and that no long while ago—to consequences equally eventful. Besides, the estates, which were contiguous, had long exercised a rival influence in the affairs of a busy government. Moreover, near neighbors are seldom friends; and the inhabitants of the Castle Berlifitzing might look, from their lofty buttresses, into the very windows of the palace Metzengerstein. Least of all had the more than feudal magnificence thus discovered, a tendency to allay the irritable feelings of the less ancient and less wealthy Berlifitzings. What wonder, then, that the words, however silly, of that prediction, should have succeeded in setting and keeping at variance two families already predisposed to quarrel by every instigation of hereditary jealousy? The prophecy seemed to imply—if it implied anything—a final triumph on the part of the already more powerful house; and was of course remembered with the more bitter animosity by the weaker and less influential.

Wilhelm, Count Berlifitzing, although loftily descended, was, at the epoch of this narrative, an infirm and doting old man, remarkable for nothing but an inordinate and inveterate personal antipathy to the family of his rival, and so passionate a love of horses, and of hunting, that neither bodily infirmity, great age, nor mental incapacity, prevented his daily participation in the dangers of the chase.

Frederick, Baron Metzengerstein, was, on the other hand, not yet of age. His father, the Minister G——, died young. His mother, the Lady Mary, followed him quickly. Frederick was, at that time, in his eighteenth year. In a city, eighteen years are no long period: but in a wilderness—in so magnificent a wilderness as that old principality, the pendulum vibrates with a deeper meaning.

From some peculiar circumstances attending the administration of his father, the young Baron, at the decease of the former, entered immediately upon his vast possessions. Such estates were seldom held before by a nobleman of Hungary. His castles were without number. The chief in point of splendor and extent was the Palace Metzengerstein. The boundary line of his dominions was never clearly defined; but his principal park embraced a circuit of fifty miles.

Upon the succession of a proprietor so young, with a character so well known, to a fortune so unparalleled, little speculation was afloat in regard to his probable course of conduct. And, indeed, for the space of three days, the behavior of the heir out-heroded Herod, and fairly surpassed the expectations of his most enthusiastic admirers. Shameful debaucheries—flagrant treacheries—unheard-of atrocities—gave his trembling vassals quickly to understand that no servile submission on their part—no punctilios of conscience on his own—were thenceforward to prove any security against the remorseless fangs of a petty Caligula. On the night of the fourth day, the stables of the Castle Berlifitzing were discovered to be on fire; and the unanimous opinion of the neighborhood added the crime of the incendiary to the already hideous list of the Baron’s misdemeanors and enormities.

But during the tumult occasioned by this occurrence, the young nobleman himself, sat apparently buried in meditation, in a vast and desolate upper apartment of the family palace of Metzengerstein. The rich although faded tapestry hangings which swung gloomily upon the walls, represented the shadowy and majestic forms of a thousand illustrious ancestors. Here, rich-ermined priests, and pontifical dignitaries, familiarly seated with the autocrat and the sovereign, put a veto on the wishes of a temporal king, or restrained with the fiat of papal supremacy the rebellious sceptre of the Arch-enemy. There, the dark, tall statures of the Princes Metzengerstein—their muscular war-coursers plunging over the carcasses of fallen foes—startled the steadiest nerves with their vigorous expression: and here, again, the voluptuous and swan-like figures of the dames of days gone by, floated away in the mazes of an unreal dance to the strains of imaginary melody.

But as the Baron listened, or affected to listen, to the gradually increasing uproar in the stables of Berlifitzing—or perhaps pondered upon some more novel, some more decided act of audacity—his eyes were turned unwittingly to the figure of an enormous, and unnaturally colored horse, represented in the tapestry as belonging to a Saracen ancestor of the family of his rival. The horse itself, in the foreground of the design, stood motionless and statue-like—while, farther back, its discomfited rider perished by the dagger of a Metzengerstein.

On Frederick’s lip arose a fiendish expression, as he became aware of the direction which his glance had, without his consciousness, assumed. Yet he did not remove it. On the contrary, he could by no means account for the overwhelming anxiety which appeared falling like a pall upon his senses. It was with difficulty that he reconciled his dreamy and incoherent feelings with the certainty of being awake. The longer he gazed, the more absorbing became the spell—the more impossible did it appear that he could ever withdraw his glance from the fascination of that tapestry. But the tumult without becoming suddenly more violent, with a compulsory exertion he diverted his attention to the glare of ruddy light thrown full by the flaming stables upon the windows of the apartment.

The action, however, was but momentary; his gaze returned mechanically to the wall. To his extreme horror and astonishment, the head of the gigantic steed had, in the meantime, altered its position. The neck of the animal, before arched, as if in compassion, over the prostrate body of its lord, was now extended, at full length, in the direction of the Baron. The eyes, before invisible, now wore an energetic and human expression, while they gleamed with a fiery and unusual red; and the distended lips of the apparently enraged horse left in full view his sepulchral and disgusting teeth.

Stupified with terror, the young nobleman tottered to the door. As he threw it open, a flash of red light, streaming far into the chamber, flung his shadow with a clear outline against the quivering tapestry; and he shuddered to perceive that shadow—as he staggered awhile upon the threshold— assuming the exact position, and precisely filling up the contour, of the relentless and triumphant murderer of the Saracen Berlifitzing.

To lighten the depression of his spirits, the Baron hurried into the open air. At the principal gate of the palace he encountered three equerries. With much difficulty, and at the imminent peril of their lives, they were restraining the convulsive plunges of a gigantic and fiery-colored horse.

Whose horse? Where did you get him? demanded the youth, in a querulous and husky tone, as he became instantly aware that the mysterious steed in the tapestried chamber was the very counterpart of the furious animal before his eyes.

He is your own property, sire, replied one of the equerries, at least he is claimed by no other owner. We caught him flying, all smoking and foaming with rage, from the burning stables of the Castle Berlifitzing. Supposing him to have belonged to the old Count’s stud of foreign horses, we led him back as an estray. But the grooms there disclaim any title to the creature; which is strange, since he bears evident marks of having made a narrow escape from the flames.

The letters W. V. B. are also branded very distinctly on his forehead, interrupted a second equerry; I supposed them, of course, to be the initials of Wilhelm Von Berlifitzing—but all at the castle are positive in denying any knowledge of the horse.

Extremely singular! said the young Baron, with a musing air, and apparently unconscious of the meaning of his words. He is, as you say, a remarkable horse—a prodigious horse! although, as you very justly observe, of a suspicious and untractable character; let him be mine, however, he added, after a pause, perhaps a rider like Frederick of Metzengerstein, may tame even the devil from the stables of Berlifitzing.

"You are mistaken, my lord; the horse, as I think we mentioned, is not from the stables of the Count. If such had been the case, we know our duty better than to bring him into the presence of a noble of your family."

True! observed the Baron, dryly; and at that instant a page of the bedchamber came from the palace with a heightened color, and a precipitate step. He whispered into his master’s ear an account of the sudden disappearance of a small portion of the tapestry, in an apartment which he designated; entering, at the same time, into particulars of a minute and circumstantial character; but from the low tone of voice in which these latter were communicated, nothing escaped to gratify the excited curiosity of the equerries.

The young Frederick, during the conference, seemed agitated by a variety of emotions. He soon, however, recovered his composure, and an expression of determined malignancy settled upon his countenance, as he gave peremptory orders that the apartment in question should be immediately locked up, and the key placed in his own possession.

Have you heard of the unhappy death of the old hunter Berlifitzing? said one of his vassals to the Baron, as, after the departure of the page, the huge steed which that nobleman had adopted as his own, plunged and curveted, with redoubled fury, down the long avenue which extended from the palace to the stables of Metzengerstein.

No! said the Baron, turning abruptly towards the speaker; dead! say you?

It is indeed true, my lord; and, to a noble of your name, will be, I imagine, no unwelcome intelligence.

A rapid smile shot over the countenance of the listener. How died he?

In his rash exertions to rescue a favorite portion of his hunting stud, he has himself perished miserably in the flames.

I—n—d—e—e—d—! ejaculated the Baron, as if slowly and deliberately impressed with the truth of some exciting idea.

Indeed, repeated the vassal.

Shocking! said the youth, calmly, and turned quietly into the palace.

From this date a marked alteration took place in the outward demeanor of the dissolute young Baron Frederick Von Metzengerstein. Indeed, his behavior disappointed every expectation, and proved little in accordance with the views of many a maneuvering mamma; while his habits and manners, still less than formerly, offered anything congenial with those of the neighboring aristocracy. He was never to be seen beyond the limits of his own domain, and, in this wide and social world, was utterly companionless—unless, indeed, that unnatural, impetuous, and fiery-colored horse, which he henceforward continually bestrode, had any mysterious right to the title of his friend.

Numerous invitations on the part of the neighborhood for a long time, however, periodically came in. Will the Baron honor our festivals with his presence? Will the Baron join us in a hunting of the boar? Metzengerstein does not hunt; Metzengerstein will not attend, were the haughty and laconic answers.

These repeated insults were not to be endured by an imperious nobility. Such invitations became less cordial—less frequent—in time they ceased altogether. The widow of the unfortunate Count Berlifitzing was even heard to express a hope that the Baron might be at home when he did not wish to be at home, since he disdained the company of his equals; and ride when he did not wish to ride, since he preferred the society of a horse. This to be sure was a very silly explosion of hereditary pique; and merely proved how singularly unmeaning our sayings are apt to become, when we desire to be unusually energetic.

The charitable, nevertheless, attributed the alteration in the conduct of the young nobleman to the natural sorrow of a son for the untimely loss of his parents; forgetting, however, his atrocious and reckless behavior during the short period immediately succeeding that bereavement. Some there were, indeed, who suggested a too haughty idea of self-consequence and dignity. Others again (among whom may be mentioned the family physician) did not hesitate in speaking of morbid melancholy, and hereditary ill-health; while dark hints, of a more equivocal nature, were current among the multitude.

Indeed, the Baron’s perverse attachment to his lately acquired charger—an attachment which seemed to attain new strength from every fresh example of the animal’s ferocious and demon-like propensities—at length became, in the eyes of all reasonable men, a hideous and unnatural fervor. In the glare of noon—at the dead hour of night—in sickness or in health—in calm or in tempest—the young Metzengerstein seemed riveted to the saddle of that colossal horse, whose intractable audacities so well accorded with his own spirit.

There were circumstances, moreover, which, coupled with late events, gave an unearthly and portentous character to the mania of the rider, and to the capabilities of the steed. The space passed over in a single leap had been accurately measured, and was found to exceed, by an astounding difference, the wildest expectations of the most imaginative. The Baron, besides, had no particular name for the animal, although all the rest in his collection were distinguished by characteristic appellations. His stable, too, was appointed at a distance from the rest; and with regard to grooming and other necessary offices, none but the owner in person had ventured to officiate, or even to enter the enclosure of that horse’s particular stall. It was also to be observed, that although the three grooms, who had caught the steed as he fled from the conflagration at Berlifitzing, had succeeded in arresting his course, by means of a chain-bridle and noose—yet no one of the three could with any certainty affirm that he had, during that dangerous struggle, or at any period thereafter, actually placed his hand upon the body of the beast. Instances of peculiar intelligence in the demeanor of a noble and high-spirited horse are not to be supposed capable of exciting unreasonable attention, but there were certain circumstances which intruded themselves per force upon the most skeptical and phlegmatic; and it is said there were times when the animal caused the gaping crowd who stood around to recoil in horror from the deep and impressive meaning of his terrible stamp—times when the young Metzengerstein turned pale and shrunk away from the rapid and searching expression of his earnest and human-looking eye.

Among all the retinue of the Baron, however, none were found to doubt the ardor of that extraordinary affection which existed on the part of the young nobleman for the fiery qualities of his horse; at least, none but an insignificant and misshapen little page, whose deformities were in everybody’s way, and whose opinions were of the least possible importance. He (if his ideas are worth mentioning at all) had the effrontery to assert that his master never vaulted into the saddle, without an unaccountable and almost imperceptible shudder; and that, upon his return from every long-continued and habitual ride, an expression of triumphant malignity distorted every muscle in his countenance.

One tempestuous night, Metzengerstein, awaking from heavy slumber, descended like a maniac from his chamber, and, mounting in hot haste, bounded away into the mazes of the forest. An occurrence so common attracted no particular attention, but his return was looked for with intense anxiety on the part of his domestics, when, after some hours’ absence, the stupendous and magnificent battlements of the Palace Metzengerstein, were discovered crackling and rocking to their very foundation, under the influence of a dense and livid mass of ungovernable fire.

As the flames, when first seen, had already made so terrible a progress that all efforts to save any portion of the building were evidently futile, the astonished neighborhood stood idly around in silent, if not apathetic wonder. But a new and fearful object soon riveted the attention of the multitude, and proved how much more intense is the excitement wrought in the feelings of a crowd by the contemplation of human agony, than that brought about by the most appalling spectacles of inanimate matter.

Up the long avenue of aged oaks which led from the forest to the main entrance of the Palace Metzengerstein, a steed, bearing an unbonneted and disordered rider, was seen leaping with an impetuosity which outstripped the very Demon of the Tempest.

The career of the horseman was indisputably, on his own part, uncontrollable. The agony of his countenance, the convulsive struggle of his frame, gave evidence of superhuman exertion: but no sound, save a solitary shriek, escaped from his lacerated lips, which were bitten through and through in the intensity of terror. One instant, and the clattering of hoofs resounded sharply and shrilly above the roaring of the flames and the shrieking of the winds—another, and, clearing at a single plunge the gate-way and the moat, the steed bounded far up the tottering staircases of the palace, and, with its rider, disappeared amid the whirlwind of chaotic fire.

The fury of the tempest immediately died away, and a dead calm sullenly succeeded. A white flame still enveloped the building like a shroud, and, streaming far away into the quiet atmosphere, shot forth a glare of preternatural light; while a cloud of smoke settled heavily over the battlements in the distinct colossal figure of—a horse.

MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE

Qui n’a plus qu’un moment à vivre

N’a plus rien à dissimuler.¹

—QUINAULT, ATYS

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 works 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 Pyrrhonism² of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. Indeed, a strong relish for physical philosophy has, I fear, tinctured my mind with a very common error of this age—I mean the habit of referring occurrences, even the least susceptible of such reference, to the principles of that science. Upon the whole, no person could be less liable than myself to be led away from the severe precincts of truth by the ignes fatui of superstition. I have thought proper to premise thus much, lest the incredible tale I have to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination, than the positive experience of a mind to which the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and a nullity.

After many years spent in foreign travel, I sailed in the year 18—, from the port of Batavia, in the rich and populous island of Java, on a voyage to the Archipelago of the Sunda islands. I went as passenger—having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a fiend.

Our vessel was a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons, copper-fastened, and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive islands. We had also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium. The stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consequently crank.

We got under way with a mere breath of wind, and for many days stood along the eastern coast of Java, without any other incident to beguile the monotony of our course than the occasional meeting with some of the small grabs of the Archipelago to which we were bound.

One evening, leaning over the taffrail, I observed a very singular, isolated cloud, to the N. W. It was remarkable, as well for its color, as from its being the first we had seen since our departure from Batavia. I watched it attentively until sunset, when it spread all at once to the eastward and westward, girting in the horizon with a narrow strip of vapor, and looking like a long line of low beach. My notice was soon afterwards attracted by the dusky-red appearance of the moon, and the peculiar character of the sea. The latter was undergoing a rapid change, and the water seemed more than usually transparent. Although I could distinctly see the bottom, yet, heaving the lead, I found the ship in fifteen fathoms. The air now became intolerably hot, and was loaded with spiral exhalations similar to those arising from heated iron. As night came on, every breath of wind died away, and more entire calm it is impossible to conceive. The flame of a candle burned upon the poop without the least perceptible motion, and a long hair, held between the finger and thumb, hung without the possibility of detecting a vibration. However, as the captain said he could perceive no indication of danger, and as we were drifting in bodily to shore, he ordered the sails to be furled, and the anchor let go. No watch was set, and the crew, consisting principally of Malays, stretched themselves deliberately upon deck. I went below—not without a full presentiment of evil. Indeed, every appearance warranted me in apprehending a Simoon. I told the captain my fears; but he paid no attention to what I said, and left me without deigning to give a reply. My uneasiness, however, prevented me from sleeping, and about midnight I went upon deck. As I placed my foot upon the upper step of the companion-ladder, I was startled by a loud, humming noise, like that occasioned by the rapid revolution of a mill-wheel, and before I could ascertain its meaning, I found the ship quivering to its center. In the next instant, a wilderness of foam hurled us upon our beam-ends, and, rushing over us fore and aft, swept the entire decks from stem to stern.

The extreme fury of the blast proved, in a great measure, the salvation of the ship. Although completely water-logged, yet, as her masts had gone by the board, she rose, after a minute, heavily from the sea, and, staggering awhile beneath the immense pressure of the tempest, finally righted.

By what miracle I escaped destruction, it is impossible to say. Stunned by the shock of the water, I found myself, upon recovery, jammed in between the stern-post and rudder. With great difficulty I gained my feet, and looking dizzily around, was at first struck with the idea of our being among breakers; so terrific, beyond the wildest imagination, was the whirlpool of mountainous and foaming ocean within which we were engulfed. After a while, I heard the voice of an old Swede, who had shipped with us at the moment of our leaving port. I hallooed to him with all my strength, and presently he came reeling aft. We soon discovered that we were the sole survivors of the accident. All on deck, with the exception of ourselves, had been swept overboard; the captain and mates must have perished as they slept, for the cabins were deluged with water. Without assistance, we could expect to do little for the security of the ship, and our exertions were at first paralyzed by the momentary expectation of going down. Our cable had, of course, parted like pack-thread, at the first breath of the hurricane, or we should have been instantaneously overwhelmed. We scudded with frightful velocity before the sea, and the water made clear breaches over us. The framework of our stern was shattered excessively, and, in almost every respect, we had received considerable injury; but to our extreme joy we found the pumps unchoked, and that we had made no

Reviews for Essential Tales and Poems (Barnes & Noble Signature Editions)

[stef7sa-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Had he lived longer Poe might have produced a few more masterpieces. Now we are left with two or three good poems, one of which, The Raven, an unforgettable masterpiece and a story ot five that are still worthwhile. A lot of the others are outdated, too obviously written to please the taste of the contemporary gothic-loving readers.