Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (101 page)

Poems

1
(p. 8)
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car? l... The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?:
In classical mythology,
Diana,
called Artemis by the Romans, is the goddess of the forest, childbirth, and the moon;
hamadryads,
or dryads, are nymphs associated with trees, and
naiads
are nymphs associated with rivers and streams.
Elfin
means elflike or charming (in contexts of magic).
Tamarind trees,
native to the Orient, have brightly colored, delightfully fragrant flowers and seedpods that are used as a spice. Poe’s mythological beings are adapted from
Studies of Nature
(1796), Henry Hunter’s English translation of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s
Ètudes de la Nature.
Along with the trite metaphors and allusions, this borrowing is a giveaway to Poe’s casting his “poet” as pathetic. Poe’s use of Saint-Pierre’s book was recorded by Palmer C. Holt in “Notes on Poe’s ‘To Science,’ ‘To Helen,’ and ‘Ulalume’,”
Bulletin of the New York Public Library,
63 (1959): p. 568. This poem is also an early treatment of male-female oppositions, which will frequently recur in Poe’s creative writings.

2
(p. 11) the angel
Israfel:
Israfel, or Israfil, is described in the Koran as the angel of music, possessing a beautiful voice; thus he provides a perfect type for Poe’s idea of poets as singers. Poe’s knowledge of Israfel derives from George Sale’s information in his translation of the Koran (1734).

3
(p. 13)
Helen, thy beauty is to me /... Are Holy Land!:
According to classical legend, Helen of Troy was the most beautiful woman in the world.
Nicéan
defies precise definition, although it may allude to various conflicts in ancient classical or Christian lore.
Naiad
here means simply “graceful” or “beautiful.”
Psyche
was a beautiful woman of classical mythology whose lamp illuminated for her the features of her lover, Cupid, while he slept; Psyche may also mean “soul,” and in combination these associations characterize her as an illuminator—that is, a nurturer, mind-healer, or imaginative inspirer. She ultimately married her lover and was brought to heaven, and thus she is typically represented with wings.

4
(p. 24)
Lenore: Lenore
derives from the same word root as
Helen
(see note 3, above). Both carry implications of great beauty and dazzling light, and in both of Poe’s poems the combination may serve intentionally to blur physical and ideal attractiveness.

5
(p. 25)
Perched upon a bust of Pallas:
Pallas Athena is the Greek goddess of intellectual wisdom. The marble bust here may be pallid—that is, white or pale. The bird’s choice of this perch is symbolic: Rationality will give way to irrationality.

6
(p. 28)
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
/...
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir
—: Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782-1871) was a French composer, chiefly of operas. Robert Weir (1803—1889) was an American painter of the Hudson River School, noted for romantic and inspirational landscapes; ghouls here seem to be portrayed more kindly than usual.

7
(p.28)
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul:
Cypress trees are emblematic of death and mourning (see “Morella” for a similar theme).
Psyche,
the classical representation of the soul (see note 3, above), refers here more precisely to intuition, which cautions the speaker against proceeding; ignoring her counsel brings about his emotional tragedy.

8
(p.28)
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek /In the realms of the boreal pole: Yaanek
defies precise definition because Poe’s context blurs Arctic and Antarctic implications. Poe may be alluding here to Mount Erebus, the only active volcano in Antarctica.

9
(p. 29)
And has come past the stars of the Lion:
This is a reference to the astrological sign of Leo. Intersections of Venus with Leo reputedly encourage lust and are unfavorable to love and marriage; thus this line reinforces Psyche’s counsel to the speaker in the next stanza.

Tales

1
(p. 45)
Pestis eram vivus
—
moriens tua mors ero.
—Martin Luther: The Latin quotation, from German religious reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546), translates as, “Living I have been your plague—dying I shall be your death.” This idea dovetails with that of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls from one kind of body to another, whether from one human to another or between humans and animals or vice versa. Poe repeats this theme in several of his works.

2
(p. 46)
out-Heroded Herod:
This is a paraphrase of a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (act 3, scene 2). The expression means to be more extreme than Herod, the biblical king of Judea, who ordered the slaughter of male infants in hope of eradicating the Christ-child. Poe uses the phrase again in “The Masque of the Red Death” and “William Wilson.”

3
(p. 53)
Quand un bon vin meuble mon estomac
/...
Presenter du tabac:
The French translates as: “When a fine wine fills my stomach / I am more learned than Balzac—/ Smarter than Pibrac; / My single arm attacking / The nation of the Cossacks, / Would achieve a sack; / I would cross Charon’s lake / Sleeping in his craft; / Would take pride in going to Aeacus, / Without my heart beating tick-tack, / To offer him snuff.” In Greek mythology, Charon is a ferryman of souls to the underworld, and Aeacus is a judge in the underworld.

4
(p. 70)
After many years spent in foreign travel, ... the vessel consequently crank:
Places cited in these two paragraphs include Batavia, a city on the northwestern coast of Java, and the Lachadive, or Laccadive, Islands, which lie west of India. Coir, a fiber from coconut husks, is used to make ropes and mats. Jaggeree, or jaggery, is sugar made from coconuts or palm sap; ghee is clarified butter, which is used especially in Indian cooking.
Crank
here denotes instability; that is, the ship is in danger of upsetting.

5
(p. 78)
we are whirling dizzily, in ... a gigantic amphitheatre, the summit of whose walls is lost in the darkness and the distance:
The ship’s sensational descent alludes to a theory popular in Poe’s day—that there were “holes at the poles” through which one could penetrate to the center of the earth.

6
(p. 101)
My books, at this epoch, ... many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation:
The titles in this paragraph refer to early treatises on religious philosophy. The Latin phrase, from
De Carne Christi (On the Flesh of Christ),
by the early-second-century Christian writer Tertullian, translates as, “The Son of God has died, it is to be believed because it is incredible, and was buried; he is risen, certainly, because it is impossible.”

7
(p. 107) It is
unnecessary ... from the marked and agitated manner in which Morella mentioned them:
The ideas concerning human will and identity expressed in this paragraph involve ancient Greek (Pythagoras) and eighteenth-century German (Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich von Schelling) philosophic thought. John Locke, a seventeenth-century English philosopher, also took great interest in issues of identity. Poe’s narrator is fascinated with the idea that identity, or will, may continue after death of the physical body.

8
(p. 120)
“‘His Grace the Arch Duke Pest-Iferous... the Arch Duchess Ana-Pest.”’:
The names are comic references to the pest, or plague, although the final name may be a pun on the poetic term anapest (a metrical foot that comprises two unstressed syllables and one stressed syllable).

9
(p. 126)
the well of Democritus:
No such quotation appears in the writings of Democritus, the early Greek philosopher-scientist (born c.460 B.C.), but Poe repeats the phrase several times in his writings.

10
(p. 142)
“set of articles, in the way of model or study”:
The articles named in the following text appeared, with one exception, in
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
between 1821 and 1837.
Confessions of an English Opium Eater,
by Thomas De Quincey, originally appeared serially in
London Magazine
in September and October 1821; expanded, it appeared in book form the following year.

11
(p. 147)
“you can tell him from Lucan
...
a phrase which Silius Italicus ... applies to thoughts pompous and inflated”:
Neither of the two foreign phrases comes from the author designated. The passage supposedly from Lucan (a first-century Roman poet) actually comes from another classical writer, Greek satirist and rhetorician Lucian (c.115-200 A.D.); Poe may have been careless or he may have deliberately confused the names to test his readers—or a compositor’s error may have caused the substitution. The “Silius Italicus” passage actually comes from a Latin translation of Longinus (a first-century Greek critic), which Poe knew and had correctly cited in an earlier version of this story.

12
(p. 159)
Son cœur est un luth suspendu; l Sitôt qu‘on le touche il résonne.—
De Béranger: The motto is an inexact rendering of a written remark by French poet Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780-1857). It maybe translated: “His heart is a suspended lute; / When touched it reverberates.” A lute is a heart-shaped, stringed instrument. Poe may also allude to a device popular in his era, an aeolian harp, a stringed instrument placed in open windows, where the wind’s pressure created “music” of an involuntary type. An aeolian harp fittingly symbolizes instabilities in Roderick Usher and the narrator.

13
(pp. 167—168)
In the greenest of our valleys, /... And laugh—but smile no more:
This poem first appeared in the Baltimore
American Museum
(April 1839). Its placement at roughly midpoint in the tale and its lyrical intensity make it a deft epitome of Roderick’s physical-emotional collapse, which in turn is mirrored in the responses of the narrator.

14
(p. 168)
the sentience of all vegetable things:
Sentience in this context refers to the endowment of vegetable matter with mental-emotional responsiveness. Specifically, the stunted, decayed growth evident in the “singularly dreary tract of country” traveled by the narrator as well as the fungi that overspreads the mansion (which closely resembles Usher’s hair) symbolize the physical appearances and, more significant, the decayed emotional makeup of the major characters.

15
(p. 169)
such works as the “Ververt et Chartreuse” ... the Vigiliœ Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiœ Maguntinœ:
Most of these books treat variously sacred or profane subjects (several of which again concern animal-vegetable bondings or nature-worship, in which Pan and satyrs may figure), sometimes with comic implications (as in the mock epic
Ver- Vert
[1734], by French satirical writer Jean-Baptiste Louis Gresset), unstable male-female relationships, or mysticism or magic. The
Directorium Inquisitorium
(1376), by Spanish theologian Nicolás Eymeric, was used for examining heretics; its inclusion in this list may suggest that Roderick was himself a heretic, or that he wished to know what constituted a heretic. The
Vigiliae
was used as a mass for the dead at the Second Church in Mainz, Germany (1500), and was also invoked to keep vampires at bay. As such it may gloss the role of Madeline Usher, who could be a vampire—used by Poe, to be sure, for symbolic purpose in the tale. Thus Roderick may not wish to place her in the remote family graveyard because he may fear what the doctor may find, should he exhume her body to be used for medical purposes.

16
(p.202)
“Chantilly, Orion, Dr. Nichols, Epicurus, Stereotomy, the street stones, the fruiterer”:
This exemplifies Dupin’s quick-witted train of thought, which takes intuitive leaps from seventeenth-century astronomy (the constellation Orion), to the Greek philosopher Epicurus’ theory of atoms, to stonecutting (stereotomy) and street-paving, to the collision of the narrator with the fruit seller. Dupin explains himself in subsequent paragraphs.

17
(p. 248)
Mr. Coleridge would have called mystical, Mr. Kant pantheistical, Mr. Carlyle twistical, and Mr. Emerson hyperquizzitistical
...
I vowed to serve him as St. Patrick... served the toad:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was an English Romantic poet and philosophical prose writer; Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a German philosopher; Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), a Scottish essayist and historian; and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), an American lecturer, essayist, and poet. Poe generally portrays them as writers whose meanings were obscure, a thought borne out by his own invented comic word “hyperquizzitistical.” No specific source for the allusion to Saint Patrick (a fifth-century Irish apostle reputed to have freed Ireland of snakes) has been found, although Poe used it in another bit of writing, “Fifty Suggestions” (1849).

18
(p. 255)
play unto its riddle the
Œ
dipus
: In Greek mythology, the Sphinx, a horrifying monster, ate all passersby who could not solve its riddle, “What animal goes on four feet in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?” Oedipus correctly answered that a human crawls on hands and knees as a child, walks upright in adulthood, and uses a cane in old age.

19
(p. 261)
The Masque of the Red Death:
A masque is a brief but elaborate play originally intended for performance at a royal court (especially popular in Great Britain from the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries). Masques incorporated music, dance, poetic drama, and ornate costumes, and often had origins in myth or allegory. Poe’s tale includes all of these elements. Double-masqueing is used for the overall tale and for the stylized action of Prospero and the masquer in the conclusion.