• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2856 0

for this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to portray even his young bride. But she was humble and obedient, and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark high turret-chamber where the light dripped upon the pale canvas only from overhead. But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour, and from day to day. And he was a passionate, and wild, and moody man, who became lost in reveries; so that he would not see that the light which fell so ghastly in that lone turret withered the health and the spirits of his bride, who pined visibly to all but him. Yet she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly, because she saw that the painter, (who had high renown,) took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task, and wrought day and night to depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited and weak. And in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a mighty marvel, and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. But at length, as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret; for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his eyes from the canvas rarely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sat beside him. And when many weeks had passed, and but little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye, the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame within the socket of the lamp. And then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, while he yet gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice, ‘This is indeed Life itself!’ turned suddenly to regard his beloved:—She was dead!”

Antagonisms

During his turbulent professional career, Poe counted among his enemies shameless editors, exploitative publishers, hostile reviewers, hated coteries, and acquaintances who had (in his view) insulted or betrayed him in private life. His indignation at perceived injustices sprang in part from clashes with his foster father that culminated in Poe’s abandonment and disinheritance.

Adopting the motto of John Allan’s native Scotland, “Nemo me impune lacessit” (no one wounds me with impunity), Poe turned instinctively as a writer to themes of hostility, rivalry, and revenge. His first published story, “Metzengerstein,” savors of German romanticism in evoking “metempsychosis”—the soul’s transmigration at death to a human or animal form. An “ancient prophecy” portends the outcome of a feud between warring families, and Poe hints that after Count Berlifitzing dies in a fire, trying to rescue his prized horses, he avenges himself against Baron Metzengerstein (the presumed arsonist) by taking the form of a gigantic “fiery-colored horse.”

A more intimate struggle informs “William Wilson,” a tale based in part on Poe’s memories of an English boarding school. The narrator’s antipathy for his nemesis, a youth whose name is identical to his own, ends in pathological derangement as Poe finally puts in question the existence of the hated rival. Doubling abounds in Poe, but here the doppelgänger motif elaborates the conflict of a self torn between impulsive depravity and ineluctable conscience.

The intensity of “The Tell-Tale Heart” develops as much from the narrator’s mad need to contradict an assumed imputation of madness as from his account of murdering and dismembering an old man. When he succumbs, under police questioning, to the delusion that he hears the dead man’s beating heart, his confession discloses more derangement than remorse. His admitted need to rid himself of the old man’s “vulture eye” hints that he shares his victim’s dread of death.

In “The Black Cat,” Poe calls the irrational urge to commit gratuitous atrocities “the spirit of PERVERSENESS.”