Thursday, June 5, 2014
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Know your Poe: The Cask of Amontillado
THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. AT LENGTH I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled -- but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.
It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile NOW was at the thought of his immolation.
He had a weak point -- this Fortunato -- although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity to practise imposture upon the British and Austrian MILLIONAIRES. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen , was a quack, but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him materially; I was skilful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could.
It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him, that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand.
I said to him -- "My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably well you are looking to-day! But I have received a pipe of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my doubts."
"How?" said he, "Amontillado? A pipe? Impossible ? And in the middle of the carnival?"
"I have my doubts," I replied; "and I was silly enough to pay the full Amontillado price without consulting you in the matter. You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain."
"Amontillado!"
"I have my doubts."
"Amontillado!"
"And I must satisfy them."
"Amontillado!"
"As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchesi. If any one has a critical turn, it is he. He will tell me" --
"Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry."
"And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your own."
"Come let us go."
"Whither?"
"To your vaults."
"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive you have an engagement Luchesi" --
"I have no engagement; come."
"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which I perceive you are afflicted . The vaults are insufferably damp. They are encrusted with nitre."
"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Amontillado! You have been imposed upon; and as for Luchesi, he cannot distinguish Sherry from Amontillado."
Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm. Putting on a mask of black silk and drawing a roquelaire closely about my person, I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo.
There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in honour of the time. I had told them that I should not return until the morning and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance , one and all, as soon as my back was turned.
I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to Fortunato bowed him through several suites of rooms to the archway that led into the vaults. I passed down a long and winding staircase, requesting him to be cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the descent, and stood together on the damp ground of the catacombs of the Montresors.
The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled as he strode.
"The pipe," said he.
"It is farther on," said I; "but observe the white webwork which gleams from these cavern walls."
He turned towards me and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication .
"Nitre?" he asked, at length
"Nitre," I replied. "How long have you had that cough!"
"Ugh! ugh! ugh! -- ugh! ugh! ugh! -- ugh! ugh! ugh! -- ugh! ugh! ugh! -- ugh! ugh! ugh!
My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes.
"It is nothing," he said, at last.
"Come," I said, with decision, we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We will go back; you will be ill and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is Luchesi" --
"Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough."
"True -- true," I replied; "and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming you unnecessarily -- but you should use all proper caution. A draught of this Medoc will defend us from the damps."
Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of its fellows that lay upon the mould.
"Drink," I said, presenting him the wine.
He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his bells jingled.
"I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us."
"And I to your long life."
He again took my arm and we proceeded.
"These vaults," he said, are extensive."
"The Montresors," I replied, "were a great numerous family."
"I forget your arms."
"A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are embedded in the heel."
"And the motto?"
"Nemo me impune lacessit."
"Good!" he said.
The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew warm with the Medoc. We had passed through walls of piled bones, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow.
"The nitre!" I said: see it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your cough" --
"It is nothing" he said; "let us go on. But first, another draught of the Medoc."
I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.
I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement -- a grotesque one.
"You do not comprehend?" he said.
"Not I," I replied.
"Then you are not of the brotherhood."
"How?"
"You are not of the masons."
"Yes, yes," I said "yes! yes."
"You? Impossible! A mason?"
"A mason," I replied.
"A sign," he said.
"It is this," I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of my roquelaire.
"You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed to the Amontillado."
"Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak, and again offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our route in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame.
At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains piled to the vault overhead , in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth the bones had been thrown down, and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size. Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, we perceived a still interior recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no especial use in itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing walls of solid granite.
It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavoured to pry into the depths of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us to see.
"Proceed," I said; "herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchesi" --
"He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered . A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain. from the other a padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to resist . Withdrawing the key I stepped back from the recess.
"Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you cannot help feeling the nitre. Indeed it is VERY damp. Once more let me IMPLORE you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little attentions in my power."
"The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment.
"True," I replied; "the Amontillado."
As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of which I have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered a quantity of building stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid of my trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche.
I had scarcely laid the first tier of my masonry when I discovered that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from the depth of the recess. It was NOT the cry of a drunken man. There was then a long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, and the third, and the fourth; and then I heard the furious vibrations of the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that I might hearken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my labours and sat down upon the bones. When at last the clanking subsided , I resumed the trowel, and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. The wall was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I again paused, and holding the flambeaux over the mason-work, threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within.
A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated -- I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs , and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall. I replied to the yells of him who clamoured. I reechoed -- I aided -- I surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamourer grew still.
It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier. I had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single stone to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight; I placed it partially in its destined position. But now there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognising as that of the noble Fortunato. The voice said --
"Ha! ha! ha! -- he! he! -- a very good joke indeed -- an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo -- he! he! he! -- over our wine -- he! he! he!"
"The Amontillado!" I said.
"He! he! he! -- he! he! he! -- yes, the Amontillado . But is it not getting late? Will not they be awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady Fortunato and the rest? Let us be gone."
"Yes," I said "let us be gone."
"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MONTRESOR!"
"Yes," I said, "for the love of God!"
But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called aloud --
"Fortunato!"
No answer. I called again --
"Fortunato!"
No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick -- on account of the dampness of the catacombs. I hastened to make an end of my labour. I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I reerected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them.
In pace requiescat!
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Eat, pee, walk in the woods
You see, for the past few days I have been putting together material for my launch on Saturday. I am having the usual trepidations that no one will come. I have agreed to give a presentation - they're calling it a workshop - called "how to keep on keepin' on" - likely the worst title ever, but the point is, I don't want to give any kind of lecture on technique, which is a private thing. But I DO know about this, about survival as an artist, about climbing back on the horse again and again and again (and bloody again). Writers are high idealists, and reality clashes hard, time and time again.
Can I help anybody with this? Who can tell. I've had to overcome being stuck, being terrified, then feeling like a total fraud because I never sell any books. Today I wrote nearly four typewritten single-spaced pages however. The ideas just tumbled out. Now I will have to cut them down. I'm getting there. I need to go eat, pee, walk in the woods. Come to think of it, that would be a good title for a writer's self-help book.
p. s. Below is a quote that keeps on popping up in my life, and it occurred to me that it sums up all I was trying to say in preparing my presentation for the launch. Lots of people talk about the novel they're going to write, even outline the characters, situation, etc, generally talk about it endlessly, and somehow-or-other it just never gets done. Meanwhile they poke a lot of holes in the person who went ahead and did it. Don't let the slightly archaic language phase you. Read it out loud. It's truth. Go get 'em, Teddy.
Do a barrel roll
I dare you. I dare you NOW. Do a Google search using those exact search terms:
Do a barrel roll.
And be prepared for fun, fun, fun!!
(NOTE. This was part of a much longer piece I found on a FB link, which of course I can't find now, nor can I remember the name of the person who posted it. Nor can I Google it. Damn. Anyway, it was about all kinds of tricks you can use in doing Google searches, ways to find stuff that you would not ordinarily find. And I lost it, see. My mind is elsewhere.
Monday, June 2, 2014
Know your Poe: The Bells
Hello, and welcome to a new series entitled Know your Poe. (a. k. a. Poe Corner). Though I plan to run through everything Poe ever croaked, yelled or hiccupped, we'll start with an easy one, a poem so shot through with unspeakable horror that it makes The Raven sound like a Beach Boys song. Little Deuce Coupe, perhaps.
Why am I doing this? Because it intrigues me that there are no apparent degrees of separation between Poe and a similar literary legend, Jerry Lee Lewis. Both married their 13-year-old cousins, a move that today might raise a few eyebrows. Wikipedia makes this comment:
Debate has raged regarding how unusual this pairing was based on the couple's age and blood relationship. Noted Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn argues it was not particularly unusual, nor was Poe's nicknaming his wife "Sissy" or "Sis". Another Poe biographer, Kenneth Silverman, contends that though their first-cousin marriage was not unusual, her young age was. It has been suggested that Clemm and Poe had a relationship more like that between brother and sister than between husband and wife.
Yeah, OK, but. How many brothers and sisters are married? There's just no way you can make this turn out right.
From the demented photographic portraits to the gruesome short stories in which people are walled up inside caves, to the death at age 40 from God-knows-what-but-probably-alcohol, Poe evolved into legend and now belongs to all of us. He's the patron saint of tortured souls, people left to die in the abyss. Never was abandonment portrayed like this, in a way that fascinates us even as we shrink back and shudder. I felt a visceral stab when reading that he lost both his parents in babyhood and was "taken in" by a couple who never formally adopted him, thus leaving him feeling like a permanent charity case. I can just hear them saying to him (and he likely really did hear this, as did many a literary legend): "Edgar, dear chap, do give up this poetry nonsense and make something of yourself."
Poe is part of pop culture as well as literature, and his crossover with Gomez Addams is obvious. If Poe had been happy, he would have been Gomez Addams. He would have had a more normal, wholesome marriage to someone like Morticia. But it was not to be, and at age forty, the poor sod (speaking of ravens) croaked.
Eons ago, I think in my teens, I found The Bells in an anthology somewhere, and a girl friend and I took turns reading it to each other (yes, I was like that, even back then). The locked-in rhyme and rhythm scheme can be headache-inducing and oppressive, but it was the format of the times, before Walt Whitman came along and blew everything apart. In rereading The Raven, a dense, thick, suffocating poem full of rustling purple curtains and velvet divans, I found some lines that were welded into my brain, that in fact were (unconsciously) a part of me:
`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'
I didn't catch up with that "balm in Gilead" reference until much later, until I stood up and sang it in church:
"There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul."
Sin-sick? I wonder if marrying your thirteen-year-old cousin counts as "sin". By my standards, it certainly is sick, though Poe biographers hasten to assure us that it was "normal" for the times. But I get the feeling she spent most of her short life chronically ill, gently expiring on his purple velvet divan.
Never mind, we're here to analyze The Bells, which to my mind is even more Hitchcockian than The Raven, and certainly more bizarre. I was going to count how many times "bells" appears in this poem, but gave up after 27 or so. Never have I seen so much repetition in any work of literature, making me wonder if Poe's brain was (as we used to say) like a broken record.
And here's a charming little tidbit, which explains several phrases still in common use:
England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people so they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave.
When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside. They realized they had been burying people alive so they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered "a dead ringer".
The Bells
HEAR the sledges with the bells,
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars, that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
Hear the loud alarum bells,
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now—now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,—
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells,
Of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!
Hear the tolling of the bells,
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people—ah, the people,
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone—
They are neither man nor woman,
They are neither man nor woman,
They are neither brute nor human,
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A pæan from the bells;
And his merry bosom swells
With the pæan of the bells,
And he dances, and he yells:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pæan of the bells,
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time,
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells—
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells:
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
Edgar Allan Poe. 1809–1849
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Sunday, June 1, 2014
What's the magic word? BLINGEE!
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Up to now, all I had were bleary thumbnails of this magnificent portrait of His Milkness. Now I have this! And it inspired me to make the following Blingee. . .
Well, clowns are a-spozed to be magic, aren't they? They didn't say what KIND of magic.
Saturday, May 31, 2014
The best thing I've seen on Facebook
http://news.distractify.com/culture/x-history-photos/?v=1
I posted this, then for some reason unposted it, and I'm finding it on Facebook so much that I decided to post it again. It's 60 very interesting pictures - some historical, others poppish, most of them intriguing or startling. I've pulled out just a few that jumped out at me.
Most of these don't have dates, but I would imagine this is 1940s: the very first computer, filling a whole room. Intimidating, and ugly, without a touch screen. As the verse says (Ogden Nash, perhaps?): "Clack clack/went the Univac".
The MGM lion. He has his own hairdresser, obviously.
A teenage Bill Gates grinning after some minor driving infraction. The Biebs has nothing on him.
The Beatles clowning with Ali.
Brando with King. We made fun of him then.
I'd say these are photoshopped, except that they're not. Castro and Malcolm X.
Ali talking down a would-be suicide.
A partially-completed Mount Rushmore. (This one amazes me, but somebody had to do it - even if I can never quite believe it).
Shaken, not stirred.
Robin Williams shows off his hairy chest, pre-Mrs. Doubtfire.
Amelia Earhart's last hair cut. Chilling.
Bill Clinton and JFK. Some similarities there.
So why would Audrey Hepburn be grocery shopping? It's even stranger than her pet deer. Obviously posed, but intriguing.
Pablo Picasso with Brigitte Bardot. Creepy to the max.
Drew Barrymore cuddling on Stephen Spielberg's lap. Well. . . a bit creepy now, but probably not then.
A young Hemingway's passport. It would take him far.
My personal fave: three of the four Beatles in 1958, barely out of their skiffle phase, dressed in natty three-piece suits for a wedding gig. Note John's Little Richard hair.
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