articulation.
And why do you suppose that is the case? An argument could be made that only those who are free of the fear of death are able to truly apprehend human culture.
Yes, I’ll get back to the story now. One day we met as usual in the library, and I think we were meant to be talking about Dickens. But I wanted to talk about Poe.
After all my complaints, I’d decided on my own to take down The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe from the library shelf. During the previous week I’d read “The Tell-Tale Heart” without much interest, and “The Black Cat” with considerable un-ease (it conjured images of the unfortunate Marmalade), but “The Premature Burial” gave me a nightmare about being buried alive, and “Morella” caused me three sleepless nights.
“Morella” is the name of a wife who tells her husband, “I am dying, yet shall I live.” She dies in childbirth, and her daughter grows up unnamed. When the daughter is at last baptized, her father names her “Morella,” whereupon she replies, “I am here!” and promptly dies. He carries her to her mother’s tomb, which is of course empty — because the daughter was the mother.
Note how italics have crept into these pages. Blame Poe.
In any case, I had questions about “Morella,” and about myself. I wondered how like my mother I was. I didn’t think I was my mother; from my first conscious thought, I’d had an intense, if sometimes conflicted, sense of self. But since I’d never known her, how could I be sure?
My father, however, was not to be sidetracked. Today we would indeed talk about Dickens’s Hard Times . Tomorrow, if I insisted, we would return to Poe — but only after I’d read his essay, “The Philosophy of Composition.”
Accordingly, the next day (having set aside Dickens) we did return to Poe — rather gingerly at first.
“I approach this lesson with a certain trepidation,” my father began. “I hope that we’ll have no tears today.”
I gave him a look that made him shake his head. “You’re changing, Ari. I appreciate that you’re growing older, and I know we’ll need to consider modifications in your education.”
“And in the way we live,” I said, with emotion that sounded un-characteristic even to me.
“And the way we live.” His voice had a skeptical-sounding inflection that made me look hard at him. But his face was as composed as ever. I recall gazing at his crisply starched shirt — deep blue, that day — with onyx cufflinks securing the precise folds of its cuffs, and recall wishing that, just once, I could find some small sign of disorder.
“In any case, what did you make of the tales of Edgar Allan Poe?”
It was my turn to shake my head. “Poe seems to have a grave fear of acts of passion.”
He raised his eyebrows. “And you received that impression from which tales?”
“Not so much from the tales,” I said. “By the way, they’re all overwritten, in my opinion. But his essay seems to me a flagrant rationalization, possibly premised on his fear of his own passions.”
Yes, we really did talk that way. Our dialogues were conducted in precise, formal English — with lapses on my part only. With Kathleen and her family, I spoke a different language, and sometimes words from that language cropped up during my lessons.
“The essay discusses the composition of ‘The Raven,’” I said, “as if the poem were a mathematical problem. Poe maintains that he used a formula to determine his choices of length, and tone, and meter, and phrasing. But to me, his claim isn’t credible. His ‘formula’ seems a desperate plea to be considered logical and reasoned, when in all likelihood he was anything but.”
My father was smiling, now. “I’m glad to see that the essay provoked your interest to such an extent. Based on your reaction to ‘Annabel Lee,’ I’d anticipated something far less” — here he paused, as he sometimes did, as if trying to think of the most
And why do you suppose that is the case? An argument could be made that only those who are free of the fear of death are able to truly apprehend human culture.
Yes, I’ll get back to the story now. One day we met as usual in the library, and I think we were meant to be talking about Dickens. But I wanted to talk about Poe.
After all my complaints, I’d decided on my own to take down The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe from the library shelf. During the previous week I’d read “The Tell-Tale Heart” without much interest, and “The Black Cat” with considerable un-ease (it conjured images of the unfortunate Marmalade), but “The Premature Burial” gave me a nightmare about being buried alive, and “Morella” caused me three sleepless nights.
“Morella” is the name of a wife who tells her husband, “I am dying, yet shall I live.” She dies in childbirth, and her daughter grows up unnamed. When the daughter is at last baptized, her father names her “Morella,” whereupon she replies, “I am here!” and promptly dies. He carries her to her mother’s tomb, which is of course empty — because the daughter was the mother.
Note how italics have crept into these pages. Blame Poe.
In any case, I had questions about “Morella,” and about myself. I wondered how like my mother I was. I didn’t think I was my mother; from my first conscious thought, I’d had an intense, if sometimes conflicted, sense of self. But since I’d never known her, how could I be sure?
My father, however, was not to be sidetracked. Today we would indeed talk about Dickens’s Hard Times . Tomorrow, if I insisted, we would return to Poe — but only after I’d read his essay, “The Philosophy of Composition.”
Accordingly, the next day (having set aside Dickens) we did return to Poe — rather gingerly at first.
“I approach this lesson with a certain trepidation,” my father began. “I hope that we’ll have no tears today.”
I gave him a look that made him shake his head. “You’re changing, Ari. I appreciate that you’re growing older, and I know we’ll need to consider modifications in your education.”
“And in the way we live,” I said, with emotion that sounded un-characteristic even to me.
“And the way we live.” His voice had a skeptical-sounding inflection that made me look hard at him. But his face was as composed as ever. I recall gazing at his crisply starched shirt — deep blue, that day — with onyx cufflinks securing the precise folds of its cuffs, and recall wishing that, just once, I could find some small sign of disorder.
“In any case, what did you make of the tales of Edgar Allan Poe?”
It was my turn to shake my head. “Poe seems to have a grave fear of acts of passion.”
He raised his eyebrows. “And you received that impression from which tales?”
“Not so much from the tales,” I said. “By the way, they’re all overwritten, in my opinion. But his essay seems to me a flagrant rationalization, possibly premised on his fear of his own passions.”
Yes, we really did talk that way. Our dialogues were conducted in precise, formal English — with lapses on my part only. With Kathleen and her family, I spoke a different language, and sometimes words from that language cropped up during my lessons.
“The essay discusses the composition of ‘The Raven,’” I said, “as if the poem were a mathematical problem. Poe maintains that he used a formula to determine his choices of length, and tone, and meter, and phrasing. But to me, his claim isn’t credible. His ‘formula’ seems a desperate plea to be considered logical and reasoned, when in all likelihood he was anything but.”
My father was smiling, now. “I’m glad to see that the essay provoked your interest to such an extent. Based on your reaction to ‘Annabel Lee,’ I’d anticipated something far less” — here he paused, as he sometimes did, as if trying to think of the most
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