Edgar Allan Poe (18 page)
Authors: Kevin J. Hayes
Suffering from catalepsy, the narrator builds several safety precautions into the family vault to guard against premature burial, but apparently he falls into a cataleptic state while away from home and is buried in a distant grave. Upon waking, he shrieks for help. As it turns out, he has not been buried alive. Instead he has awoken suddenly from a sound sleep, not in the narrow house but in the narrow berth of a small sloop.
The experience proves therapeutic. He explains: ‘I thought upon other subjects than Death. I discarded my medical books. “Buchan” I burned. I read no “Night Thoughts” – no fustian about church-yards – no bugaboo tales –
such as this.
’
12
The narrator’s willingness to put William Buchan’s
Domestic Medicine
and Edward Young’s
Night Thoughts
behind him is understandable. Since its initial appearance over a half century earlier, Buchan, the most trusted medical handbook in America, had not gone out of print. Thousands of readers consulted Buchan for the purpose of self-diagnosis. Young’s book, a classic of eighteenth-century British verse, exemplifies the graveyard school of poetry. Setting aside these two books, the narrator cures himself of both his hypochondria and his obsession with death.
‘The Oblong Box’ and ‘The Premature Burial’ can be seen as a diptych. Wyatt drowns because he refuses to let go of his dead wife’s body. He symbolizes anyone who is brought down by whatever they cling to, be it an outmoded philosophy, excess cultural baggage, prejudice or an outdated aesthetic. Setting aside Buchan and Young, the narrator of ‘The Premature Burial’ puts the eighteenth century behind him, jettisoning his excess cultural baggage and saving himself. He explains, ‘In short, I became a new man, and lived a man’s life. From that memorable night, I dismissed forever my charnel apprehensions, and with them vanished the cataleptic disorder, of which, perhaps, they had been less the consequence than the cause.’
13
A new man: this phrase recurs frequently in American literature. The ability to shrug off an old identity and take on a new one is a crucial aspect of the American national character. Perhaps the most startling line in the conclusion to ‘The Premature Burial’ is the one in which the narrator vows to read ‘no bugaboo tales –
such as this
’. As a writer, Poe himself was always maturing, always progressing, always taking new approaches. As ‘The Premature Burial’ nears its conclusion, it almost seems as if Poe has outgrown the story even before he has finished writing it. He wants to put it behind him and move forward.
Other stories Poe wrote in 1844 explore other ways the dead influence the living. Though Benjamin Franklin had debunked the theories of Viennese physician Franz Anton Mesmer more than a half century earlier, mesmerism underwent a revival in Poe’s day. According to Mesmer, animal magnetism permeated the universe, attuning itself to the human nervous system. Nervous illness thus resulted from an imbalance between a person’s animal magnetism and the external world. Practising mesmerists channelled animal magnetism through themselves to their patients. Some people believed that animal magnetism could put the living in contact with the dead. Given such bizarre ideas, Poe’s imagination could work wonders.
In ‘A Tale of the Ragged Mountains’, the narrator tells the story of Dr Templeton – a practising mesmerist – and a patient named Augustus Bedloe. Between them, ‘there had grown up, little by little, a very distinct and strongly marked
rapport
, or magnetic relation’.
14
Further distancing him from reality, Bedloe is also a morphine addict. While hiking through the Virginia countryside, he suddenly enters a city straight from
The Arabian Nights
. Simultaneously, Templeton is at home writing about one Mr Oldeb, a participant in the Benares Insurrection. Bedloe soon perishes from a remarkably similar wound to the one that took the life of Oldeb. Templeton, having channelled Oldeb to Bedloe, has apparently prompted Bedloe to repeat Oldeb’s tragic death.
When Poe published ‘A Tale of the Ragged Mountains’ in the April 1844 issue of
Godey’s
, he knew he had not exhausted mesmerism’s imaginative possibilities. He returned to the subject a few months later in ‘Mesmeric Revelation’. This story’s narrator, another practising mesmerist, attends the bedside of a terminally ill patient, Mr Vankirk, one evening. He mesmerizes Vankirk and, in the belief that mesmerism places a patient in a heightened state of consciousness, quizzes him on several topics regarding the nature of God, heaven and the universe. A dialogue between the two occupies much of the story. Ultimately the narrator attempts to awake Vankirk from his hypnotic state only to realize he has perished under hypnosis. The narrator ends the story with a chilling question: ‘Had the sleep-waker, indeed, during the latter portion of his discourse, been addressing me from out the region of the shadows?’
15
‘Mesmeric Revelation’ intrigued contemporary readers. After its initial appearance in the August 1844 issue of the
Columbian Magazine
, one reader admitted being ‘staggered’ by the work and predicted it would be ‘universally circulated’.
16
The prediction came true. The story reappeared in numerous American and British periodicals. The
Penny Satirist
, a London weekly, reprinted it as ‘The Last Conversation of a Somnabule’, introducing it as ‘an interesting piece of composition, independent of all consideration of its truth or untruth’. Other periodicals seem inclined to take it as truth, including
The Dissector
, a New York medical journal, and
Evangelical Magazine and Gospel Advocate
, a biweekly religious journal out of Utica, New York.
17
From the curious to the devout, contemporary readers found something to like in ‘Mesmeric Revelation’.
Poe was surprised by the reprints in medical journals: he had not intended the work as a hoax. He was pleased with the reprints in religious journals: he
had
intended it as an outline of his theories about God and the universe. Prior to the story’s appearance, he paraphrased its cosmology for Dr Thomas Holley Chivers: ‘There is no such thing as spirituality. God is material. All things are material; yet the matter of God has all the qualities which we attribute to spirit: thus the difference is scarcely more than of words. There is a matter without particles – of no atomic composition: this is God. It permeates and impels all things, and thus
is
all things in itself.’
18
To be sure, Poe never read that in his
Book of Common Prayer
.
Chivers, a physician and poet from Oaky Grove, Georgia, had been an ardent admirer of Poe ever since his
Southern Literary Messenger
days. When Poe announced the
Penn Magazine
in 1840, Chivers took the opportunity to initiate a correspondence. Seeing him as a potential backer, Poe cultivated his friendship. Chivers refrained from giving Poe the necessary financial support for his planned magazine, but his enthusiasm for Poe’s art and ideas never withered. The letter about ‘Mesmeric Revelation’ gave Chivers great ‘intellectual delight – the highest pleasure that a man can enjoy on earth’.
19
Making this remark in a letter to Poe the fourth week of September 1844, Chivers eagerly anticipated reading ‘Mesmeric Revelation’ in the
Columbian Magazine
.
Patterned on
Graham’s
, the
Columbian
had only been established in January 1844 but was so far going strong. The same could not be said for the
New Mirror
, which ceased publication that September. Try as they might, Morris and Willis could not keep their weekly afloat. Postage was their single biggest expense. Current rates for magazines were all out of proportion with newspaper rates. Consequently, they decided to publish a daily paper, turning their weekly into a newspaper supplement. The
Evening Mirror
, as the paper would be called, commenced publication on 7 October 1844.
An evening paper required much more editorial work than a weekly magazine. Willis needed help and, at Maria Clemm’s instigation, hired Poe as his assistant. Suddenly, Poe’s months-long hermitage ended. Years later Willis reminded Morris:
It was rather a step downward, after being the chief editor of several monthlies, as Poe had been, to come into the office of a daily journal as a mechanical paragraphist. It was his business to sit at a desk, in a corner of the editorial room, ready to be called upon for any of the miscellaneous work of the moment – announcing news, condensing statements, answering correspondents, noticing amusements – everything but the writing of a ‘leader’, or constructing any article upon which his peculiar idiosyncrasy of mind could be impressed. Yet you remember how absolutely and how good-humoredly ready he was for any suggestion, how punctually and industriously reliable, in the following out of the wish once expressed, how cheerful and present-minded in his work when he might excusably have been so listless and abstracted. We loved the man for the entireness of fidelity with which he served us – himself, or any vanity of his own, so utterly put aside.
20
Willis was right. Working as an editorial assistant was a big come-down. But Poe’s role as ‘mechanical paragraphist’ did not sap his creative energy the way more responsible editorial positions did. When Poe assumed the responsibilities of editor for the
Southern Literary Messenger
, for example, he stopped writing short stories. As Willis’s assistant, he continued his creative writing on the side. The following month, in fact, he wrote ‘The Literary Life of Thingum Bob’, a hilarious send-up of periodical publishing. Amazingly, this tale anticipates William Burroughs’ cut-up technique, which involved slicing up a manuscript, randomly rearranging the resulting fragments, and then publishing the work in all its rearranged randomness. In Poe’s story, Bob explains his process of reviewing books:
These works I cut up thoroughly with a curry-comb, and then, throwing the shreds into a sieve, sifted out carefully all that might be thought decent, (a mere trifle); reserving the hard phrases, which I threw into a large tin pepper-castor with longitudinal holes, so that an entire sentence could get through without material injury. The mixture was then ready for use. When called upon to play Thomas Hawk, I anointed a sheet of foolscap with the white of a gander’s egg; then, shredding the thing to be reviewed as I had previously shredded the books, – only with more care, so as to get every word separate – I threw the latter shreds in with the former, screwed on the lid of the castor, gave it a shake, and so dusted out the mixture upon the egg’d foolscap; where it stuck. The effect was beautiful to behold.
21
Written while Poe was Willis’s assistant, this story shows Poe retained his sense of humour during the experience. So does ‘Some Words with a Mummy’, another prime example of Poe’s literary humour. Describing the revival of a five-thousand-year-old mummy, Poe continued exploring his fascination with death while satirising contemporary life. Having resusicated Count Allamistakeo – for such is the mummy’s name – the story’s scientists question him about what his life was like, learning to their surprise that ancient Egypt possessed the basic attributes of advanced civilization. The scientists boast about many aspects of modern life, but almost every time, Count Allamistakeo tops them. When they brag about the ‘marvels of animal magnetism’, for example, the Count assures them ‘that the manoeuvres of Mesmer were really very contemptible tricks when put in collation with the positive miracles of the Theban
savans
, who created lice and a great many other similar things’.
22
The 1840s was a time of great optimism in America, a time when many, if not most believed in progress. Despite its slapstick humour, ‘Some Words with a Mummy’ provocatively challenges the whole notion of progress.
During his time with the
Evening Mirror
, Poe also returned to poetry. In so doing, he created one of the most memorable poems in American literature: ‘The Raven’. Imagining how a woman’s death affects her lover, Poe continued in verse a theme he had treated in his recent fiction. As he says in ‘The Philosophy of Composition’, the tongue-in-cheek story of how he wrote ‘The Raven’, the death of a beautiful woman is ‘the most poetical topic in the world’, and ‘the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover’.
23
‘The Raven’ appeared almost simultaneously in both the 29 January issue of the
Evening Mirror
and the February issue of
American Review
, which was released the last week of January. It met with instant acclaim, being reprinted by numerous periodicals, memorized by countless readers, and parodied by wits, wags, and sundry poetasters.
US
Lithography Company,
Mr Henry Ludlowe in The Raven: The Love Story of Edgar Allan Poe by George Hazelton
, 1908.
