It’s been a while since I last read anything by Edgar Allan Poe so I decided to pull my Complete Tales and Poems off the shelf this weekend to re-read a few of his stories. With Halloween on its way, I thought I would concentrate on some of his spooky, unsettling or gothic stories rather than the mysteries, science fiction, essays and other genres which are also included in the collection. Maybe I will write about some of those in a future post, but for now, here are my thoughts on the six stories I’ve managed to re-read over the weekend:
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Ligeia – This has always been one of my favourite Poe stories. It begins with the narrator describing his beautiful, talented, intelligent wife Ligeia, whom he met in a ‘large, old, decaying city near the Rhine’. When Ligeia dies, the heartbroken narrator retreats to England where he buys and restores an ancient abbey. Marrying again, he brings his new wife, the Lady Rowena, to live with him at the abbey where he prepares for her a chamber which sounds wonderfully sinister and eerie. The rays of the sun and moon fall ‘with a ghastly lustre on the objects within’, in each corner stands ‘a gigantic sarcophagus of black granite’ and an artificial current of wind behind the tapestries gives a ‘hideous and uneasy animation to the whole’.
The story is notable for the unreliability of the narrator and for the inclusion of one of Poe’s poems, The Conqueror Worm.
– 5 Ravens
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The Masque of the Red Death – This is a story I’ve always found slightly confusing. A prince and a thousand friends (could anyone really have a thousand friends?) lock themselves away in a castle while a terrible plague devastates the rest of the country. The moral of the story seems clear enough to me, but I’m not sure I’ve ever understood all of the symbolism, such as why the prince has seven chambers each decorated in a different colour – That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example in blue — and vividly blue were its windows. That’s maybe why this one has never been a favourite.
– 3 Ravens
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Metzengerstein – In this story, set in what I assume is medieval Germany, the young Baron Metzengerstein witnesses a horse in a tapestry take on human characteristics: 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. Moments later a strange horse appears in his stables outside. Is it just an innocent animal or is it something more sinister? Again, this is not a favourite, but it’s an interesting story with lots of gothic elements.
– 3 Ravens
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The Oblong Box – I found this the weakest of the stories I’ve read this weekend. The narrator takes passage on a ship from Charleston to New York City and meets an old friend aboard. The friend is accompanied by his wife, his two sisters…and an oblong-shaped box made of pine. I thought it was quite obvious what must be inside the box – and I guessed correctly. The most interesting thing about the story is that the narrator comes to entirely the wrong conclusion!
– 2 Ravens
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Silence: A Fable – This is a very short story (three pages long in my edition) but one that I’ve always loved, mainly for the language Poe uses to create atmosphere. The story is narrated by a Demon, who is describing a region of Libya where giant water lilies ‘stretch towards the heaven their long ghastly necks’, the river ‘palpitates forever and forever beneath the red eye of the sun’ and ‘strange poisonous flowers lie writhing in perturbed slumber’. With its rhythm and repetition it has the feel of a poem in prose. It was night, and the rain fell; and, falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood.
As it’s so short, I don’t want to spoil the plot (not that there’s much plot to spoil). Without going into details, I think there are different ways you could interpret this story, but I see it as meaning that while humans may not necessarily be afraid of chaos, noise and destruction, what they fear most of all is complete and utter silence.
5 Ravens
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The Oval Portrait – Another very short story, at two and a half pages long. Our narrator becomes injured during a journey and takes refuge in a château, a place of ‘gloom and grandeur’. A portrait of a young woman in an oval frame opposite his bed catches his eye and he is fascinated when he learns the tragic story behind it. The similarities between The Oval Portrait and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray – and what they each have to say about art and artists – are striking.
– 4 Ravens
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Have you read any of these? What are your favourite Poe stories?
If I’ve got you in the mood for more Poe, here are some of my older Poe-related posts which you may find interesting:
Dragonwyck by Anya Seton (Poe makes a few brief appearances in this one)
The American Boy by Andrew Taylor (the title character is the ten-year-old Poe)
Small and Spooky (a short story anthology including Poe’s Morella)
She Reads Novels 
I love Poe! Particularly fond of “Berenice” – that’s the rather dark one with the teeth…. :s
I have read Berenice, but can’t really remember it, except that it’s about teeth. I’ll have to pick another batch of Poe stories to re-read soon!
You’ve read a lot more of his stories than I have. The only one of these I’ve read is The Masque of the Red Death. I’m more familiar with the more wel-known ones, like The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Fall of the House of Usher.
I like all the stories you mention, but I decided to pick out some of the less well-known ones for a re-read.
Yes, that was a good idea.
I love Silence – of all the stories I’ve done for my Tuesday Terror slot, I think it’s my favourite, and it was also the first. There’s a great reading of it on youtube – very atmospheric and beautifully read. Coincidentally I listened to it again just a few nights ago. I don’t think I’ve read Ligeia so since it’s your other 5 Raven choice (love that!) I shall put it on my list…
I love Ligeia, mainly for the creepy descriptions of the abbey tower room. 🙂 Silence is wonderful too – so beautiful and eerie. I must listen to the Youtube reading you mention.
What a great post! I’ve never read Poe – being of a cowardly disposition! But Silence grabbed me from the start. I shall seek out the youtube reading that FF describes and listen to it tomorrow evening. Maybe by candlelight… 🙂
I love Poe…not all of his stories are scary ones – he also wrote detective stories, science fiction, non-fiction and even comedy, so I think there’s probably something for everyone! Silence is one of my favourites.
I only know the most famous stories, too, and the only one to which I’ve returned multiple times is “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Still, it is the perfect time of year to revisit, and you do make it sound awfully *awfully* tempting!
Yes, Poe is the perfect author for this time of year! The Tell-Tale Heart is a good one, but I thought I would highlight a few of his less well-known stories in this post.
Like Whatmeread, of these I’ve only read ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, but your list reminds me I need to revisit Poe as there’s so much I’m unaware of, much less read!
I think I must have read nearly all of Poe’s stories and poems over the years – they vary in quality, but most are worth reading at least once.
I haven’t read any Poe stories in a long time; I love The Tell-Tale Heart and the one story with the secret code…wish I could remember the title…the Golden Bug maybe? There are others, too, of course. I’ll have to pull my Poe book off the shelf and dust it off. Great post! 🙂
The Gold Bug is the one you’re thinking of. 🙂 I almost chose it to re-read, but decided to stick with the spookier ones for Halloween and that one is more of an adventure story, if I’m remembering it correctly.
Happy Halloween Helen! I have not read much Poe, nothing in recent years. In the novel, Edgar & Lucy, which I read recently the main character Edgar Allan is named after Poe. Does that count?
I’m sure that counts. 🙂 Happy Halloween to you too, Judy!