The Slender Poe Anthology Read online

  Few figures in literature have the mythic visibility of a Helen of Troy; her beauty made for war. In Poe’s lyric, beauty brings us divine vision.

  TO HELEN

  Helen, thy beauty is to me

  Like those Nicéan barks of yore,

  That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

  The weary way-worn wanderer bore

  To his own native shore.

  On desperate seas long wont to roam,

  Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

  Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

  To the glory that was Greece,

  And the grandeur that was Rome.

  Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche

  How statue-like I see thee stand,

  The agate lamp within thy hand!

  Ah, Psyche, from the regions which

  Are Holy-land!

  This is one of the last poems Poe composed. It was published in The Flag of Our Union out of Boston in 1849. The Gold Rush in California had taken hold of the nation’s imagination, and this was Poe’s deft response to the mania. Where is the true gold? A tandem tale of ‘49, “Von Kempelen and His Discovery,” also plays with this question. It is likely that an anonymous lyric, ”Tom-a-Bedlam Song,” also was a source of inspiration.

  Poe would not live out the year. One particular sadness regarding Poe’s early exit at the age of only 40 concerns his composition of poetry—for he was just catching his stride—and this dark jewel of poem is part of the evidence.

  ELDORADO

  Gaily bedight,

  A gallant knight,

  In sunshine and in shadow,

  Had journeyed long,

  Singing a song,

  In search of Eldorado.

  But he grew old—

  This knight so bold—

  And o’er his heart a shadow

  Fell, as he found

  No spot of ground

  That looked like Eldorado.

  And, as his strength

  Failed him at length,

  He met a pilgrim shadow—

  ‘Shadow,’ said he,

  ‘Where can it be—

  This land of Eldorado?’

  ‘Over the Mountains

  Of the Moon,

  Down the Valley of the Shadow,

  Ride, boldly ride,’

  The shade replied,—

  ‘If you seek for Eldorado!’

  Another dark gem. Portents in the sky, pestilence abroad. Funerary rites in the black draped chamber, drinking and singing: a merry wake. Oinos (Greek for either ‘one’ or ‘wine’) writing with his ‘stylus of iron’ from the perspective of authorship whereby he’s aware his reader and he won’t be breathing the same air (the situation of Poe to all who hold this slender tome). Who among us will not see their face pale in the ebony mirror?

  First published in the Southern Literary Messenger in September of 1835, it surely served in its own singular way the contemporary cult of memory, the duty never to forget the dead.

  Nowadays, ‘shadow’ suggests all those insalubrious aspects of an individual’s personality, those things we don’t like in others that we ourselves possess, but keep hidden from our consciousness. Yet, in his A Little Book on the Human Shadow, Robert Bly writes, “Only the shadow understands the ecstasy of sound.”

  SHADOW—A PARABLE

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the Shadow:”

  —Psalm of David

  Ye who read are still among the living; but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed strange things shall happen, and secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen of men. And, when seen, there will be some to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much to ponder upon in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron.

  The year had been a year of terror, and of feelings more intense than terror for which there is no name upon the earth. For many prodigies and signs had taken place, and far and wide, over sea and land, the black wings of the Pestilence were spread abroad. To those, nevertheless, cunning in the stars, it was not unknown that the heavens wore an aspect of ill; and to me, the Greek Oinos, among others, it was evident that now had arrived the alternation of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth year when, at the entrance of Aries, the planet Jupiter is conjoined with the red ring of the terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of the skies, if I mistake not greatly, made itself manifest, not only in the physical orb of the earth, but in the souls, imaginations, and meditations of mankind.

  Over some flasks of the red Chian wine, within the walls of a noble hall, in a dim city called Ptolemais, we sat, at night, a company of seven. And to our chamber there was no entrance save by a lofty door of brass: and the door was fashioned by the artisan Corinnos, and, being of rare workmanship, was fastened from within. Black draperies, likewise, in the gloomy room, shut out from our view the moon, the lurid stars, and the peopleless streets—but the boding and the memory of Evil they would not be so excluded. There were things around us and about of which I can render no distinct account—things material and spiritual—heaviness in the atmosphere—a sense of suffocation—anxiety—and, above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant. A dead weight hung upon us. It hung upon our limbs—upon the household furniture—upon the goblets from which we drank; and all things were depressed, and borne down thereby—all things save only the flames of the seven lamps which illumined our revel. Uprearing themselves in tall slender lines of light, they thus remained burning all pallid and motionless; and in the mirror which their lustre formed upon the round table of ebony at which we sat, each of us there assembled beheld the pallor of his own countenance, and the unquiet glare in the downcast eyes of his companions. Yet we laughed and were merry in our proper way—which was hysterical; and sang the songs of Anacreon—which are madness; and drank deeply—although the purple wine reminded us of blood. For there was yet another tenant of our chamber in the person of young Zoilus. Dead, and at full length he lay, enshrouded; the genius and the demon of the scene. Alas! he bore no portion in our mirth, save that his countenance, distorted with the plague, and his eyes, in which Death had but half extinguished the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such interest in our merriment as the dead may haply take in the merriment of those who are to die. But although I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me, still I forced myself not to perceive the bitterness of their expression, and gazing down steadily into the depths of the ebony mirror, sang with a loud and sonorous voice the songs of the son of Teios. But gradually my songs they ceased, and their echoes, rolling afar off among the sable draperies of the chamber, became weak, and undistinguishable, and so faded away. And lo! from among those sable draperies where the sounds of the song departed, there came forth a dark and undefined shadow—a shadow such as the moon, when low in heaven, might fashion from the figure of a man: but it was the shadow neither of man nor of God, nor of any familiar thing. And quivering awhile among the draperies of the room, it at length rested in full view upon the surface of the door of brass. But the shadow was vague, and formless, and indefinite, and was the shadow neither of man nor of God—neither God of Greece, nor God of Chaldaea, nor any Egyptian God. And the shadow rested upon the brazen doorway, and under the arch of the entablature of the door, and moved not, nor spoke any word, but there became stationary and remained. And the door whereupon the shadow rested was, if I remember aright, over against the feet of the young Zoilus enshrouded. But we, the seven there assembled, having seen the shadow as it came out from among the draperies, dared not steadily behold it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed continually into the depths of the mirror of ebony. And at length I, Oinos, speaking
some low words, demanded of the shadow its dwelling and its appellation. And the shadow answered, “I am SHADOW, and my dwelling is near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by those dim plains of Helusion which border upon the foul Charonian canal.” And then did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, and stand trembling, and shuddering, and aghast, for the tones in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying in their cadences from syllable to syllable fell duskly upon our ears in the well-remembered and familiar accents of many thousand departed friends.

  The poet-doctor of Rutherford, William Carlos Williams, selected this as ‘the best poem’ of Poe’s in the final sentence of his chapter on Poe from In The American Grain. Williams is the only one of our major modernist poets to stand up for Poe, whom he called “a genius intimately shaped by his locality and time.”

  The longing for paradise seems to be something everyone who wishes to escape an unhappy circumstance shares. Though Poe never really comes out and says that a poem should cast a spell, it often seems to be the effect he wants. The last stanza of this poem is one of my favorite spells of his, and what it means to me is never the same twice—and maybe that’s intended as well.

  TO ONE IN PARADISE

  Thou wast all that to me, love,

  For which my soul did pine—

  A green isle in the sea, love,

  A fountain and a shrine,

  All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,

  And all the flowers were mine.

  Ah, dream too bright to last!

  Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise

  But to be overcast!

  A voice from out the Future cries,

  “On! on!”—but o’er the Past

  (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies

  Mute, motionless, aghast!

  For, alas! alas! with me

  The light of Life is o’er!

  No more—no more—no more—

  (Such language holds the solemn sea

  To the sands upon the shore)

  Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,

  Or the stricken eagle soar!

  And all my days are trances,

  And all my nightly dreams

  Are where thy dark eye glances,

  And where thy footstep gleams—

  In what ethereal dances,

  By what eternal streams.

  In an 1835 letter to the man who would give him his first job as an editor, Thomas W. White, Poe explains that, though the subject of his tale, Berenice, is horrible, “The history of all Magazines show plainly that those which attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles “similar in nature —to Berenice.” Of what does this nature consist? “In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”

  In 1840, two volumes of Poe’s works were published in Philadelphia, each bearing the title, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. There are more arabesques in this collection than grotesques, but this wonderful grotesque on the old folktale theme of revenge is one of his best; it was his last tale to be published, brought out in Boston by The Flag of Our Union in March of 1849.

  The following year, the sixth edition of The Children’s and Household Tales, by the Brothers Grimm, was published in Germany.

  HOP-FROG

  I never knew anyone so keenly alive to a joke as the king was. He seemed to live only for joking. To tell a good story of the joke kind, and to tell it well, was the surest road to his favor. Thus it happened that his seven ministers were all noted for their accomplishments as jokers. They all took after the king, too, in being large, corpulent, oily men, as well as inimitable jokers. Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine; but certain it is that a lean joker is a rara avis in terris.

  About the refinements, or, as he called them, the ‘ghost’ of wit, the king troubled himself very little. He had an especial admiration for breadth in a jest, and would often put up with length, for the sake of it. Over-niceties wearied him. He would have preferred Rabelais’ ‘Gargantua’ to the ‘Zadig’ of Voltaire: and, upon the whole, practical jokes suited his taste far better than verbal ones.

  At the date of my narrative, professing jesters had not altogether gone out of fashion at court. Several of the great continental ‘powers’ still retain their ‘fools,’ who wore motley, with caps and bells, and who were expected to be always ready with sharp witticisms, at a moment’s notice, in consideration of the crumbs that fell from the royal table.

  Our king, as a matter of course, retained his ‘fool.’ The fact is, he required something in the way of folly—if only to counterbalance the heavy wisdom of the seven wise men who were his ministers—not to mention himself.

  His fool, or professional jester, was not only a fool, however. His value was trebled in the eyes of the king, by the fact of his being also a dwarf and a cripple. Dwarfs were as common at court, in those days, as fools; and many monarchs would have found it difficult to get through their days (days are rather longer at court than elsewhere) without both a jester to laugh with, and a dwarf to laugh at. But, as I have already observed, your jesters, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, are fat, round, and unwieldy—so that it was no small source of self-gratulation with our king that, in Hop-Frog (this was the fool’s name), he possessed a triplicate treasure in one person.

  I believe the name ‘Hop-Frog’ was not that given to the dwarf by his sponsors at baptism, but it was conferred upon him, by general consent of the several ministers, on account of his inability to walk as other men do. In fact, Hop-Frog could only get along by a sort of interjectional gait—something between a leap and a wriggle—a movement that afforded illimitable amusement, and of course consolation, to the king, for (notwithstanding the protuberance of his stomach and a constitutional swelling of the head) the king, by his whole court, was accounted a capital figure.

  But although Hop-Frog, through the distortion of his legs, could move only with great pain and difficulty along a road or floor, the prodigious muscular power which nature seemed to have bestowed upon his arms, by way of compensation for deficiency in the lower limbs, enabled him to perform many feats of wonderful dexterity, where trees or ropes were in question, or any thing else to climb. At such exercises he certainly much more resembled a squirrel, or a small monkey, than a frog.

  I am not able to say, with precision, from what country Hop-Frog originally came. It was from some barbarous region, however, that no person ever heard of—a vast distance from the court of our king. Hop-Frog, and a young girl very little less dwarfish than himself (although of exquisite proportions, and a marvellous dancer), had been forcibly carried off from their respective homes in adjoining provinces, and sent as presents to the king, by one of his ever-victorious generals.

  Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that a close intimacy arose between the two little captives. Indeed, they soon became sworn friends. Hop-Frog, who, although he made a great deal of sport, was by no means popular, had it not in his power to render Trippetta many services; but she, on account of her grace and exquisite beauty (although a dwarf), was universally admired and petted; so she possessed much influence; and never failed to use it, whenever she could, for the benefit of Hop-Frog.

  On some grand state occasion—I forgot what—the king determined to have a masquerade, and whenever a masquerade or any thing of that kind, occurred at our court, then the talents, both of Hop-Frog and Trippetta were sure to be called into play. Hop-Frog, in especial, was so inventive in the way of getting up pageants, suggesting novel characters, and arranging costumes, for masked balls, that nothing could be done, it seems, without his assistanc
e.

  The night appointed for the fête had arrived. A gorgeous hall had been fitted up, under Trippetta’s eye, with every kind of device which could possibly give éclât to a masquerade. The whole court was in a fever of expectation. As for costumes and characters, it might well be supposed that everybody had come to a decision on such points. Many had made up their minds (as to what roles they should assume) a week, or even a month, in advance; and, in fact, there was not a particle of indecision anywhere—except in the case of the king and his seven minsters. Why they hesitated I never could tell, unless they did it by way of a joke. More probably, they found it difficult, on account of being so fat, to make up their minds. At all events, time flew; and, as a last resort they sent for Trippetta and Hop-Frog.

  When the two little friends obeyed the summons of the king they found him sitting at his wine with the seven members of his cabinet council; but the monarch appeared to be in a very ill humor. He knew that Hop-Frog was not fond of wine, for it excited the poor cripple almost to madness; and madness is no comfortable feeling. But the king loved his practical jokes, and took pleasure in forcing Hop-Frog to drink and (as the king called it) ‘to be merry.’

  “Come here, Hop-Frog,” said he, as the jester and his friend entered the room; “swallow this bumper to the health of your absent friends, [here Hop-Frog sighed,] and then let us have the benefit of your invention. We want characters—characters, man—something novel—out of the way. We are wearied with this everlasting sameness. Come, drink! the wine will brighten your wits.”