by Poe · Cluster: Mortality · Grave · Memento Mori
Abstract
A plague-haunted company in ancient Ptolemais confronts a shadow speaking with the voices of the dead; a meditation on death, pestilence and the inescapable presence of the departed.
Readability (prose)57.6 Flesch ease12.8 FK grade15.8 Fog9% complex30.4 words/sent
Connections
Topoi: Memento Mori, Dance of Death Archetypes: Ghost Motifs: Death, Supernatural, Ghosts, Wine and Drink, Mirror, Stars Themes & Concepts: Mortality, Terror and Horror, Grief and Loss Forms & Genres: Parable, Allegory Historical References: Classical Antiquity Settings: Egypt
Testo integrale / Full text
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.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 4, by Edgar Allan Poe