The Portable Edgar Allan Poe (28 page)

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.” The debauched narrator’s temperance tale recounts the “household events” that lead him to hang a pet cat and then to kill his wife for thwarting his assault on a second feline. By walling up the still-living creature with his wife’s corpse, the murderer dooms the obscure object of his antagonism: himself. Curiously, Poe composed this domestic tale soon after the bloody onset of his wife’s tuberculosis.

Poe philosophizes further on compulsive self-destruction in “The Imp of the Perverse,” which begins as an essay on the impulse to defy reason and morality. This reflection leads to a brief narrative, which (as in “The Black Cat”) proves to be the confession of a condemned criminal. Having committed an undetectable crime, murdering a man to inherit his estate, the narrator becomes consumed by an irrational, irrepressible need to confess his homicidal ingenuity.

Another story of doubling, “The Cask of Amontillado,” presents a more intricate “perfect crime,” Montresor’s entrapment and living entombment of Fortunato. Spurred by his rival’s insults, the narrator vows to punish with impunity and walls up his enemy among the bones of the Montresors, signaling an odd bond underlying their rivalry and thus explaining his obstinate need to confess. Poe wrote this tale in the midst of a raging feud with writer-editor Thomas Dunn English.

In Poe’s last tale of antagonism, “Hop-Frog,” a spectator recounts the jester Hop-Frog’s revenge against the cruel king for humiliating Trippetta, another dwarf “forcibly carried off” from her home. Composed for a Boston antislavery newspaper, the tale alludes crudely to the threat of slave revolt in Hop-Frog’s ploy of dressing the king and ministers as “ourang-outangs” before putting them to the torch. The story unfolds, however, from a perspective sympathetic to the jester, who exposes the true character of his longtime oppressors by carrying out his deadly masquerade.

MARTIN LUTHER
¹

 

 

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. 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 Bruyère says of all our unhappiness) “
vient de ne pouvoir être seuls
.”*
²

But there are 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’une seule fois dans un corps sensible: au reste—un cheval, un chien, un homme même, n’est que la ressemblance peu tangible de ces animaux. ”
³

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

 

*Mercier, in “
L’an deux mille quarte cents quarante
,” seriously maintains the doctrines of Metempsychosis, and I. D’Israeli says that “no system is so simple and so little repugnant to the understanding.” Colonel Ethan Allen, the “Green Mountain Boy,” is also said to have been a serious metempsychosist. [Poe’s note] 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 fore-ground 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 bed-chamber 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.