The Pit and the Pendulum
Author Edgar Allan Poe
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Horror
Short story
Publisher
The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1843
Publication date 1842
Media type Print (periodical)
"The Pit and the Pendulum" is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and first published in 1842. The story is about the torments endured by a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, though Poe skews historical facts. The narrator of the story describes his experience being tortured. The story is especially effective at inspiring fear in the reader because of its heavy focus on the senses, such as sound, emphasizing its reality, unlike many of Poe's stories which are aided by the supernatural. The traditional elements established in popular horror tales at the time are followed but critical reception has been mixed.
Plot summary
The story takes place during the Spanish Inquisition. At the beginning of the story an unnamed narrator is brought to trial before various sinister judges. Poe provides no explanation of why he is there or for what he has been arrested. Before him are seven tall white candles on a table, and, as they melt, his hopes of survival also diminish. He is condemned to death and finds himself in a pitch black compartment. At first the prisoner thinks that he is locked in a tomb, but he discovers that he is in a cell. He decides to explore the cell by placing a hem from his robe against a wall so he can count the paces around the room; however, he faints before being able to measure the whole perimeter.
When the prisoner awakens he discovers food and water near by. He gets back up and tries to measure the prison again, finding that the perimeter measures one hundred steps. While crossing the room he slips on the hem of his shirt. He discovers that if he had not tripped he would have walked into a deep pit with water residing on the bottom in the center of the cell.
After losing consciousness again the narrator discovers that the prison is slightly illuminated and that he is bound to a wooden board by ropes. He looks up in horror to see a painted picture of Father Time on the ceiling; hanging from the figure is a gigantic scythe-like pendulum swinging slowly back and forth. The pendulum is inexorably sliding downwards and will eventually kill him. However the condemned man is able to attract rats to his bonds with meat left for him to eat and they start chewing through the ropes. As the pendulum reaches a point inches above his heart, the prisoner breaks free of the ropes and watches as the pendulum is drawn back to the ceiling.
He then sees that the walls have become red-hot and begun moving inwards, driving him into the center of the room and towards the brink of the pit. As he gazes into the pit, he decides that no fate could be worse than falling into it. It is implied by the text that the narrator fears what he sees at the bottom of the pit, or perhaps is frightened by its depth. The exact cause of his fear is not clearly stated. However, as the narrator moves back from the pit, he sees that the red-hot walls are leaving him with no foothold. As the prisoner begins to fall into the pit, he hears human voices. The walls rush back and an arm catches him. The French Army has taken Toledo and the Inquisition is in the hands of its enemies.
Historicity
Poe takes dramatic license with history in this story. The rescuers are led by Napoleon's General Lasalle (who was not, however, in command of the French occupation of Toledo) and this places the action during the Peninsular War, centuries after the height of the Spanish Inquisition and at a time when it had lost much of its power. The elaborate tortures of this story have no historic parallels in the activity of the Spanish Inquisition in any century, let alone the nineteenth. The Inquisition was, however, abolished during the period of French intervention (1808–13).
Poe places a Latin epigraph before the story, describing it as "a quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be erected upon the site of the Jacobin Club House at Paris". The epigraph was not Poe's invention; such an inscription had been reported, no later than 1803, as having been composed with the intention (possibly facetious) of having it placed on the site [1], and it had appeared, without attribution, as an item of trivia in the 1836 Southern Literary Messenger, a periodical to which Poe contributed [2].
It does not appear, however, that the market was ever built as intended. Charles Baudelaire, a noted French writer who translated Poe's works into French and who was largely inspired by him, said that the building on the site of the Old Jacobin Club had no gates and, therefore, no inscription.[1]
Analysis
"The Pit and the Pendulum" is really a study of the effect terror has on the narrator,[2] starting with the opening line that suggests he is already suffering from death anxiety ("I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony") and, shortly thereafter, when he loses consciousness upon receiving the death sentence.[3] Such anxiety is ironic to the reader, who knows of the narrator's implicit survival: the text refers to the black-robed judges having lips "whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words", showing that he himself is writing the story after the events have happened.[4] What makes the story particularly effective at evoking terror is in its lack of supernatural elements; the action taking place is real and not imagined.[5] The "reality" of the story is enhanced through Poe's focus on sensation: the dungeon is airless and unlit, the narrator is subject to thirst and starvation, he is swarmed by rats, the closing walls are red-hot metal and, of course, the razor-sharp pendulum threatens to slice into the narrator.[6] The narrator experiences the blade mostly through sound as it "hissed" while swinging. Poe further emphasizes this with words like "surcingle", "cessation", "crescent", "scimitar", and various forms of sibilance.[7] "The Pit and the Pendulum" can be considered a serious re-telling of the satirical "A Predicament". In that story, a similar "scythe" slowly (and comically) removes the narrator's head. That action has been re-imagined with a pendulum preparing to slice through the narrator's chest.[8]
Inspiration
Poe was following an established model of terror writing of his day, often seen in Blackwood's Magazine (a formula he mocks in "A Predicament"). Those stories, however, often focused on chance occurrences or personal vengeance as a source of terror. Poe may have been inspired to focus on the purposeful impersonal torture in part by Juan Antonio Llorente's History of the Spanish Inquisition, first published in 1817.[9] It has also been suggested that Poe's "pit" was inspired by a translation of the Koran (Poe had referenced the Koran also in "Al Aaraaf" and "Israfel") by George Sale. Poe was familiar with Sale, and even mentioned him by name in a note in his story "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade". Sale's translation included commentary and, in one of those notes, refers to an allegedly common form of torture and execution by "throwing [people] into a glowing pit of fire, whence he had the opprobrious appellation of the Lord of the Pit." In the Koran itself, in Sura (Chapter) 85, "The Celestial Signs", a passage reads: "...cursed were the contrivers of the pit, of fire supplied with the fuel... and they afflicted them for no other reason, but because they believed in the mighty, the glorious God."[10]
Publication and response
"The Pit and the Pendulum" was included in The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1843, published by Carey & Hart. It was slightly revised for a republication in the May 17, 1845 issue of the Broadway Journal.[11]
William Butler Yeats was generally critical of Poe, calling him "vulgar." Of "The Pit and the Pendulum" in particular he said, "[it does] not seem to me to have permanent literary value of any kind... Analyse the Pit and the Pendulum and you find an appeal to the nerves by tawdry physical affrightments."[12]
Adaptations
Film and television
• Several film adaptations of the story have been produced, including the early French language film Le Puits et le pendule in 1909 by Henri Desfontaines. The first English language adaptation was in 1913, directed by Alice Guy Blanche.[13]
• The 1961 film The Pit and the Pendulum directed by Roger Corman starring Vincent Price and Barbara Steele, like the other installments in the Corman/Price "Poe Cycle", bears minimal resemblance to the Poe story: the torture apparatus of the title makes its appearance only in the final 10 minutes of the film.
• In 1983, Czech Surrealist Jan Švankmajer directed a 15-minute short film called The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope, based on this story and the short story "A Torture by Hope" by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. It is a fairly faithful adaptation of both stories, featuring a unique first-person camera perspective and segments of Švankmajer's trademark stop-motion and cut-out animation (in an otherwise live action film). Most of the art design was done by his wife, Eva Švankmajerová
• In 1991 a film version of the story, directed by Stuart Gordon and starring Lance Henriksen, was released. The plot was altered to a love story set in Spain in 1492.
• In 2006 a stop-motion animated version of the story "The Pit and the Pendulum" was completed under the 'Ray Harryhausen Presents' banner. The film was executively produced by Ray Harryhausen and Fred Fuchs, directed by Marc Lougee, produced by Susan Ma and Marc Lougee, and funded by Bravo!FACT.[14]
• The 2009 horror film directed by David DeCoteau bears little resemblance to the original story but, like the 1961 version, utilizes the large swinging pendulum in the penultimate scene. The film follows a group of university students who visit a hypnotherapy institute lorded over by a sinister hypnotist who wants to use the students to experiment with the possibility of breaking the pain threshold.
Monday, February 8, 2010
oscar wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish playwright, poet and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest "celebrities" of his day. Several of his plays continue to be widely performed, especially The Importance of Being Earnest. As the result of a widely covered series of trials, Wilde suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years' hard labour after being convicted of homosexual relationships, described as "gross indecency" with other men. After Wilde was released from prison he set sail for Dieppe by the night ferry, never to return to Ireland or Britain.
Birth and early life
Statue of Oscar Wilde by Danny Osborne in Dublin's Merrion Square (Archbishop Ryan Park)
Oscar Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin - now home of the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College Dublin. He was the second of three children born to Sir William Wilde and his wife Jane Francesca Wilde. The other siblings were an older brother known as Willie and a sister named Isola.
His father's extramarital affairs produced three other children: Henry Wilson, born in 1838, and Emily and Mary Wilde, born in 1847 and 1849 respectively. Emily and Mary died in a horrifying accident in 1871 when the dress of one caught fire; her sister rushed her out of the house and down the steps to roll her in the snow, but her dress also took fire, and both died.
Isola died aged eight of what appears to have been meningitis. Wilde's poem Requiescat is dedicated to her memory: "Tread lightly, she is near/ Under the snow... All my life's buried here/ Heap earth upon it..."
When William Wilde died in 1876, Henry Wilson supported the family until his own sudden death a year later.
Jane Wilde, under the pseudonym "Speranza" (Italian word for 'hope'), wrote poetry for the revolutionary Young Irelanders in 1848 and was a life-long Irish nationalist.[1] William Wilde was Ireland's leading oto-ophthalmologic (ear and eye) surgeon and was knighted in 1864 for his services to medicine.[1] He also wrote books about archaeology and folklore. A renowned philanthropist, his dispensary for the care of the city's poor at the rear of Trinity College, Dublin, was the forerunner of the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital, now located at Adelaide Road.
In 1855, the family moved to 1 Merrion Square, where Wilde's sister, Isola, was born the following year. Lady Wilde held a regular Saturday afternoon salon with guests that included Sheridan le Fanu, Charles Lever, George Petrie, Isaac Butt and Samuel Ferguson.
Education
Dublin, Portora, & Dublin
Oscar Wilde was educated at home until he was nine, where he learned French and German. He then attended Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Fermanagh,[2] spending the summer months with his family in rural Wicklow, Waterford, Wexford and at his father's family home in Mayo. There Wilde played with the older George Moore.
Leaving Portora, Wilde studied classics at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1871 to 1874, sharing rooms with his older brother Willie Wilde. His tutor, John Pentland Mahaffy, the leading Greek scholar at Trinity, interested him in Greek literature. Wilde later, though having reservations about Mahaffy, was generous with his praise calling him "my first and best teacher" and "the scholar who interested me in Greek things".[2] For his part Mahaffy first boasted of having created Wilde, only, later, he credit him as "the only blot on my tutorship".[3] Wilde quickly established himself as an outstanding student: he came first in his class in his first year, and won a Scholarship by competitive examination in his second, and then, in his finals, won the Berkeley Gold Medal, the highest award available to classics students at Trinity. The University Philosophical Society also provided an education, discussing intellectual and artistic subjects such as Rosetti and Swinburne weekly. Wilde quickly became an established member - The Members' suggestion book for 1874contains two pages of banter (sportingly) mocking Wilde's emergent aestheticism. He even presented a paper entitled "Aesthetic Morality".
Oxford
He was encouraged to compete for a demyship to Magdalen College, Oxford, which he won easily having already studied Greek for over nine years. He studied from 1874 to 1878 at Magdalen, and became a part of the Aesthetic movement; one of its tenets was to make an art of life. He was rusticated for one term, having returned to college late from a trip to Greece with Prof. Mahaffy.
On matriculating in 1874, he had applied to join the Oxford Union, but failed to be elected.[4] Nevertheless, when the Union's librarian requested a presentation copy of Poems (1881), Wilde complied. After a debate called by Oliver Elton, the book was condemned for alleged plagiarism. The Librarian, who had liked the book and wanted it for the library, and returned to Wilde with a note of apology.[5][6]
Attracted by its dress, secrecy and ritual Wilde petitioned the Apollo Masonic Lodge at Oxford, and was soon raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason.[7] He also deeply considered converting to Catholicism, discussing the possibility with clergy several times. Ellman reports that Wilde was left speechless after an audience with Pope Pius IX while visiting Rome. He eagerly read Cardinal Newman's books, though during a resurgent interest in Freemasonry in his third year, he commmented he "would be awfully sorry to give [freemasonry] up if I secede from the Protestant Heresy".[2] His tone became altogether more serious in 1878, when he met the Reverend Sebastain Bowden, a priest in the Brompton Oratory who had handled some high profile conversions. Neither his father, who threatened to cut his funds, nor Mahaffy, thought much of the plan; but mostly Wilde, the supreme individualist balked at the last minute from pledging himself to any formal creed. He retained a lifelong interest in Catholic theology and liturgy.
While at Magdalen College, Wilde became particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. He began wearing his hair long and openly scorning so-called "manly" sports, and began decorating his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers, blue china and other objets d'art. He dressed flambloyantly and entertained and spent lavishly. Lillies became a dominant symbol of Wilde, and his remark "Everyday I find it harder and harder to live up to my blue china", quickly became famous grasped as a slogan for the aesthetes, and as the epitome of their terrible vacousness by critics.
Legends persist that this behaviour cost him a dunking in the River Cherwell in addition to having his rooms (which still survive as student accommodation at his old college) vandalised, but the cult spread among certain segments of society to such an extent that languishing attitudes, "too-too" costumes and aestheticism generally became a recognised pose. Wilde was frowned upon by some of his fellow students, who were suspicious of his poses, but respected in his own aesthetic circle.[8] Publications such as the Springfield Republican commented on Wilde's behaviour during his visit to Boston to lecture on aestheticism, suggesting that Wilde's conduct was more of a bid for notoriety rather than a devotion to beauty and the aesthetic. Wilde's mode of dress also came under attack by critics such as Higginson, who wrote in his paper Unmanly Manhood, of his general concern that Wilde's effeminacy would influence the behaviour of men and women, arguing that his poetry "eclipses masculine ideals [..that..] under such influence men would become effeminate dandies". He also scrutinised the links between Oscar Wilde's writing, personal image and homosexuality, calling his work and way of life "immoral".
Wilde was deeply impressed by the English writers John Ruskin and Walter Pater, who argued for the central importance of art in life. Though he did not meet Prof. Pater personally until his third year, he was enthralled by Studies in the History of the Renaissance, which had been published during Wilde's final year in Dublin.[2] Pater argued that man's sensibility to beauty should be refined above all else, and that each moment should be felt to its fullest extent. Years later in De Profundis, Wilde called Pater's Studies... "that book that has had such a strange influence over my life". He learned tracts of the book by heart, and carried it with him on travels in later years. Pater gave Wilde his sense of almost flippant devotion to art, though it was Ruskin who gave him a purpose for it. Ruskin despaired at the self-validating aesthism in Pater for him the importance of art lay in its potential for the betterment of society. He too admired beauty, but it must be ailled to moral good. When Wilde eagerly attended his lecture series The Aesthetic and Mathematic Schools of Art in Florence, he learned about aesthetics as the non-matematical elements of painting. Despite being given to neither early rising nor manual labour, Wilde volunteered for Ruskin's project to convert a swampy country lane into a smart road neatly edged with flowers.[2] Wilde later commented ironically when he wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray that "All art is quite useless". The statement was meant to be read literally, as it was in keeping with the doctrine of art for art's sake, but he argued later for the immorality of non-creative work, and the dehumanisation the working classes experience by manual labour. By 1879 Wilde started to teach aesthetic values in London.
While at Magdalen, Wilde won the 1878 Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna, which reflected on his visit there the year before, and he duly read at Encaenia. In November 1878, he graduated with a rare double first in his B.A. of classical moderations and Literae Humaniores, or "Greats".
Apprenticeship of an aesthete
After graduation from Oxford, Wilde returned to Dublin, where he met again Florence Balcombe, a childhood sweetheart. She, however, became engaged to Bram Stoker who was later the author of Dracula, and they married in 1878.[9] Wilde was disappointed but stoic, writing her a gracious letter and remembering fondly the years they had spent together.[2] He also stated his intention to leave Ireland "probably for good". That he did in 1878, and returned to his native country only twice, for brief visits.
Unsure of his next step, he wrote to various contacts looking for Classics positions at Oxbridge, it was a lean year, though Wilde competed for the fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford, which he did not take altogher seriously. His mother encouraged him to stand for Parliament, though he continued to try to use his classical learning. The Rise of Historical Criticism was his submission for the Chancellor's Essay prize of 1879, which, though no longer a student, he was stil eligible to enter. Though its subject "Historical Criticism among the Ancients" seemed ready made for Wilde - with both his skill in composition and ancient learning, Wilde struggles to find his voice with the long, flat, scholarly style. Unusually, no prize was awarded that year.[2] Though the essay was later published in "Miscellanies", the final section of a 1905 edition of Wilde's collected works.[10] With the last of his inheritance from the sale of his father's houses, he set himself up as a bachleor in London. Wilde's address in the 1881 British Census is given as 1 Tite Street, London. The head of the household is listed as Frank Miles, with whom Wilde shared rooms at this address. Wilde would spend the next six years in London and Paris, and in the United States, where he travelled to deliver lectures.
To the New World and back
Aestheticism in general was caricatured in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera Patience (1881). While Patience was a success in New York, it was not known how much the aesthetic movement had penetrated the rest of America. So producer Richard D'Oyly Carte invited Wilde for a lecture tour of North America. D'Oyly Carte felt this tour would "prime the pump" for the U.S. tour of Patience, making the ticket-buying public aware of one of the aesthetic movement's charming personalities. Duly arranged, Wilde arrived on 3 January 1882 aboard the SS Arizona. Wilde reputedly told a customs officer that "I have nothing to declare except my genius", although there is no contemporary evidence for the remark.
Keller cartoon from the Wasp of San Francisco depicting Wilde on the occasion of his visit there in 1882
During his tour of the United States and Canada, Wilde was torn apart by no small number of critics—The Wasp, a San Francisco newspaper, published a cartoon ridiculing Wilde and aestheticism—but he was also surprisingly well received in such rough-and-tumble settings as the mining town of Leadville, Colorado.[11]
His earnings, plus expected income from the Duchess of Padua allowed him to live at leisure in Paris for several months, where he met Robert Sherard.[2] When the play fell through, he returned to England to lecture there, Personal Impressions of America, The Value of Art in Modern Life and Dress were among his topics. In London, he had met Constance Lloyd in 1881, daughter of wealthy Queen's Counsel Horace Lloyd. She was visiting Dublin in 1884, when Wilde was in the city to give lectures at the Gaiety Theatre, Constance and an 18 year old W.B Yeats were among the audience. He proposed to her, and they married on 29 May 1884 at the Anglican St. James Church[12] in Paddington, London. Constance's allowance of £250 was generous, but the Wildes' tastes were relativly luxurious, and after preaching to others for so long, their home was expected to set new standards of design. 16 Tite Street was renovated in seven months at considerable expense. The couple had two sons, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886).
Criticism in the Pall Mall Gazette provoked a letter in his defense, and soon Wilde was a contributor to that and other journals during the years 1885-1887. He enjoyed reviewing and journalism, a form that suited his style, his reviews were largely chatty and postive.[2]
Editorship: 1887-1889
With his youth nearly over, and a family to support, Wilde became the editor of "The Lady's World" magazine, which he promptly renamed The Woman's World.[2] During his editorship, Wilde raised the tone of the magazine, adding serious articles on parenting, culture and politics; while keeping the discussions of fashion and arts. Two pieces of fiction were usually included, one to be read to children, the other for the ladies themselves. Wilde's used his wide artistic acquaintance to solicit good contributions, including Lady Wilde and his wife Constance, while his own "Literary and other notes" were popular and amusing themselves.[2] The initial vigour and excitement he brought to the job began to fade as administration, commuting and office became tedious. His disinterest showed in the magazine's declining quality and flagging sales. He increasingly sent instructions by letter from home, and as he began a new period of creative work: he was writing his fairy tales, short fiction and novel at this time, and his own column appeared less regularly. In October 1889, at the end of the second volume, Wilde left. The magazine ceased to exist shortly afterwards.
Sexuality
Robert Ross at twenty-four
Oscar Wilde by Napoleon Sarony
Robert Ross had read Wilde's poems before they met, even been beaten for doing so, yet he was also unrestrained by the Victorian prohibition against homosexuality. By Richard Ellmann's account, Ross, "...so young and yet so knowing, was determined to seduce Wilde". Later, Ross boasted to Lord Alfred Douglas that he was his first homosexual experience and there seems to have been much jealousy between them. Soon, Wilde would have more homosexual encounters in local bars or brothels. In Wilde's words, the relations were akin to "feasting with panthers,"[13] and he revelled in the risk: "the danger was half the excitement."[13] In his public writings, Wilde's first celebration of homosexual love can be found in "The Portrait of Mr. W. H." (1889), a short story in which a theory that Shakespeare's sonnets were written out of the poet's love of young male Elizabethan actor "Willie Hughes" is advanced, retracted, and then propunded again.
In the early summer of 1891 poet Lionel Johnson introduced Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas, an undergraduate at Oxford at the time. An intimate friendship immediately sprang up between Wilde and Douglas, but it was not initially sexual, nor did the sexual activity progress far when it did eventually take place. According to Douglas, speaking in his old age, for the first six months their relations remained on a purely intellectual and emotional level. Despite the fact that "from the second time he saw me, when he gave me a copy of Dorian Gray which I took with me to Oxford, he made overtures to me. It was not till I had known him for at least six months and after I had seen him over and over again and he had twice stayed with me in Oxford, that I gave in to him. I did with him and allowed him to do just what was done among boys at Winchester and Oxford ... Sodomy never took place between us, nor was it attempted or dreamed of. Wilde treated me as an older one does a younger one at school." After Wilde realised that Douglas only consented in order to please him, Wilde permanently ceased his physical attentions.[14]
Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas in 1893
For a few years they lived together more or less openly in a number of locations. Wilde and some within his upper-class social group also began to speak about homosexual-law reform, and their commitment to "The Cause" was formalised by the founding of a highly secretive organisation called the Order of Chaeronea, of which Wilde was a member. A homosexual pornographic novel, Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal, written at about the same time and clandestinely published in 1893, has been attributed to Oscar Wilde, although it was possibly an ensemeble effort by a number of Wilde's friends, with Wilde as editor. Wilde's authorship has never been ascertained, the book, for instance, is not listed in Bibliography of Oscar Wilde, (S. Mason, 1914).
Lord Alfred's first mentor had been his cosmopolitan grandfather Alfred Montgomery. His older brother Francis Douglas, Viscount Drumlanrig possibly had an intimate association with the Prime Minister Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, which ended on Francis' death in an unexplained shooting accident. Lord Alfred's father John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry came to believe his sons had been corrupted by older homosexuals, or as he phrased it in a letter, "Snob Queers like Rosebery".[15] As he had attempted to do with Rosebery, Queensberry confronted Wilde and Lord Alfred on several occasions, but each time Wilde was able to mollify him.
Divorced and spending wildly, Queensberry was known for his outspoken views and the boxing roughs who often accompanied him. He abhorred his younger son and plagued the boy with threats to cut him off if he did not stop idling his life away. Queensberry was determined to end the friendship with Wilde. Wilde was in full flow of rehearsal when Bosie returned from a diplomatic posting to Cairo, around the time Queensberry visited Wilde at his Tite Street home. He angrily pushed past Wilde's servant and entered the ground-floor study, shouting obscenities and asking Wilde about his divorce. Wilde became incensed, but it is said he calmly told his manservant that Queensberry was the most infamous brute in London, and that he was not to be shown into the house ever again. It is said that, despite the presence of a bodyguard, Wilde forced Queensberry to leave in no uncertain terms.
On the opening night of The Importance of Being Earnest Queensberry further planned to insult and socially embarrass Wilde by throwing a bouquet of turnips. Wilde was tipped off, and Queensberry was barred from entering the theatre. Wilde took legal advice against him, and wished to prosecute, but his friends refused to give evidence against the Marquess and hence the case was dropped. Wilde and Bosie left London for a holiday in Monte Carlo. While they were there, on 18 February 1895, the Marquess left his calling card at Wilde's club, the Albermarle, with a scrawled inscription accusing Wilde of being a "posing somdomite" [sic].[16]
Trials
The Marquess of Queensberry's calling card with the offending inscription "For Oscar Wilde posing Somdomite [sic]"
Wilde vs Queensbury
Wilde made a complaint of criminal libel against the Marquess of Queensberry based on the calling card incident, and the Marquess was arrested but later freed on bail. The libel trial became a cause célèbre as salacious details of Wilde's private life with Alfred Taylor and Lord Alfred Douglas began to appear in the press. A team of detectives, with the help of the actor Charles Brookfield, had directed Queensberry's lawyers (led by Edward Carson QC) to the world of the Victorian underground. Here Wilde's association with blackmailers and male prostitutes, crossdressers and homosexual brothels was recorded, and various persons involved were interviewed, some being coerced to appear as witnesses.[17]
The trial opened on 3 April 1895 amongst scenes of near hysteria both in the press and the public galleries. After a shaky start, Wilde regained some ground when defending his art from attacks of perversion. The Picture of Dorian Gray came under fierce moral criticism, but Wilde fended it off with his usual charm and confidence on artistic matters. Some of his personal letters to Lord Alfred were examined, their wording challenged as inappropriate and evidence of immoral relations. Queensberry's legal team proposed that the libel was published for the public good, but it was only when the prosecution moved on to sexual matters that Wilde balked. He was challenged on the reason given for not kissing a young servant; Wilde had replied, "He was a particularly plain boy—unfortunately ugly—I pitied him for it."[18] Counsel for the defence, scenting blood, pressed him on the point. Wilde hesitated, complaining of Carson's insults and attempts to unnerve him. The prosecution eventually dropped the case, after the defence threatened to bring boy prostitutes to the stand to testify to Wilde's corruption and influence over Queensberry's son, effectively crippling the case.
'The Crown vs Wilde
After Wilde left the court, a warrant for his arrest was applied for and (after a delay that would have permitted Wilde, had he wished, to escape to the continent) later served on him at the Cadogan Hotel, Knightsbridge. Robert Ross found him there with Reginald Turner; both men advised Wilde to go at once to Dover and try to get a boat to France. Wilde, lapsing into inaction, could only say, "The train has gone. It's too late."[19] That moment was immortalised in a poem by Sir John Betjeman, although he himself said that it was "complained that it wasn't true - but I happened to like it".[citation needed] Wilde was arrested for "gross indecency" under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. In British legislation of the time, this term implied homosexual acts not amounting to buggery, which was an offence under a separate statute.[20][21] After his arrest Wilde sent Robert Ross to his home in Tite Street with orders to remove certain items and Ross broke into the bedroom to rescue some of Wilde's belongings. Wilde was then imprisoned on remand at Holloway where he received daily visits from Lord Alfred Douglas.
Wilde in the dock, from The Illustrated Police News, 4 May 1895
Events moved quickly and his prosecution opened on 26 April 1895. Wilde had already begged Douglas to leave London for Paris, but Douglas complained bitterly, even wanting to take the stand; however, he was pressed to go and soon fled to the Hotel du Monde. Ross and many others also left the United Kingdom during this time. Under cross examination Wilde presented an eloquent defence:
Charles Gill (prosecuting): What is "the love that dare not speak its name?"
Wilde: "The love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "the love that dare not speak its name," and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it."
The trial ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict and Wilde's counsel, Sir Edward Clark, was finally able to agree bail. Wilde was freed from Holloway and went into hiding at the house of Ernest and Ada Leverson, two of Wilde's firm friends. The Reverend Stewart Headlam put up most of the £5,000 bail,[22] having disagreed with Wilde's heinous treatment by the press and the courts. Edward Carson, it was said, asked for the service to let up on Wilde.[23] His request was denied. If the Crown was seen to give up at that point, it would have appeared that there was one rule for some and not others, and outrage could have followed.
The final trial was presided over by Mr Justice Wills. On 25 May 1895 Wilde was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years' hard labour. The judge himself described the sentence as "totally inadequate for a case such as this," although it was the maximum sentence allowed for the charge under the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885.[24]
Decline: 1895-1900
Imprisonment
Wilde was imprisoned first in Pentonville and then in Wandsworth prison in London, and finally transferred in November to Reading Prison, some 30 miles west of London. Wilde knew the town of Reading from happier times when boating on the Thames and also from visits to the Palmer family, including a tour of the famous Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory which was quite close to the prison.
Now known as prisoner C. 3.3, (which described the fact that he was in block C, floor three, cell three) he was not, at first, even allowed paper and pen, but a later governor was more amenable. Eventually, when Wilde was allowed to have books sent in to him, the first he requested was The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by his Oxford mentor, Walter Pater. The book had been a comfort to him in the past.[25]
Wilde was championed by the Liberal MP and reformer Richard B. Haldane who had helped transfer him and afforded him the literary catharsis he needed. During his time in prison, Wilde wrote a 50,000-word letter to Douglas, which he was not allowed to send while still a prisoner, but which he was allowed to take with him at the end of his sentence. On his release, he gave the manuscript to Ross, who may or may not have carried out Wilde's instructions to send a copy to Douglas (who later denied having received it). Ross published a much expurgated version of the letter (about a third of it) in 1905 (four years after Wilde's death) with the title De Profundis, expanding it slightly for an edition of Wilde's collected works in 1908, and then donated it to the British Museum on the understanding that it would not be made public until 1960. In 1949, Wilde's son Vyvyan Holland published it again, including parts formerly omitted, but relying on a faulty typescript bequeathed to him by Ross. Its complete and correct publication first occurred in 1962, in "The Letters of Oscar Wilde."
Exile
Prison was unkind to Wilde's health and after he was released on 19 May 1897, he spent his last three years penniless, in self-imposed exile abroad and cut off from society and artistic circles. He went under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth, after Saint Sebastian and the devilish central character of Wilde's great-uncle Charles Maturin's gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer.
Wilde spent the summer of 1897 with Robert Ross in in Berneval-le-Grand, where he wrote the famous poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, it was a commercial success and brought him a little money. The title page identified the author as "C.3.3." (Wilde's prisoner number) it was only after the sixth printing, that his name was added in parentheses, though many in literary circles knew Wilde to be the author.
Although Douglas had been the cause of his misfortunes, he and Wilde were reunited in August 1897 at Rouen. This meeting was disapproved of by the friends and families of both men. Constance Wilde was already refusing to meet Wilde or allow him to see their sons, though she kept him supplied with money. During the latter part of 1897, Wilde and Douglas lived together near Naples, but for financial and other reasons, they separated.[26]
Wilde spent his last years in the Hôtel d'Alsace, now known as L'Hôtel, in Paris, where he lived in poverty. He corrected and published his plays An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, but otherwise had lost the "intense joy that creation requires". He spent much time wandering the Boulevards alone, and spent what little money he had on alcohol. A series of embarrassing encounters with English visitors, or Frenchmen he had known in better days, further damaged his spirit. He is quoted as saying, just a month before his death, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go."
His moods fluctuated; Max Beerbohm relates how, a few days before Wilde's death, their mutual friend Reginald 'Reggie' Turner had found Wilde very depressed after a nightmare. "I dreamt that I had died, and was supping with the dead!" "I am sure", Turner replied, "that you must have been the life and soul of the party."[27] Turner was one of the very few of the old circle who remained with Wilde right to the end, and was at his bedside when he died.The tomb of Oscar Wilde in Père Lachaise Cemetery
Death
Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on 30 November 1900. Different opinions are given as to the cause of the meningitis; Richard Ellmann claimed it was syphilitic; Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson, thought this to be a misconception, noting that Wilde's meningitis followed a surgical intervention, perhaps a mastoidectomy; Wilde's physicians, Dr. Paul Cleiss and A'Court Tucker, reported that the condition stemmed from an old suppuration of the right ear (une ancienne suppuration de l'oreille droite d'ailleurs en traitement depuis plusieurs années) and did not allude to syphilis. Most modern scholars and doctors agree that syphilis was unlikely to have been the cause of his death.[28]
On his deathbed Wilde was received into the Roman Catholic church and Robert Ross, in his letter to More Adey (dated 14 December 1900), states "He was conscious that people were in the room, and raised his hand when I asked him whether he understood. He pressed our hands. I then sent in search of a priest, and after great difficulty found Father Cuthbert Dunne ... who came with me at once and administered Baptism and Extreme Unction. - Oscar could not take the Eucharist".[29] Wilde had long maintained an interest in the Catholic Church having met with Pope Pius IX in 1877 and describing it as "for saints and sinners alone – for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do".[30] During his time in prison Wilde had pored over the works of Saint Augustine, Dante and Cardinal Newman.
Wilde was buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris but was later moved to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. His tomb in Père Lachaise was designed by sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein, at the request of Robert Ross, who also asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes. Ross's ashes were transferred to the tomb in 1950. The epitaph is a verse from The Ballad of Reading Gaol:
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.
The modernist angel depicted as a relief on the tomb was originally complete with male genitals which were broken off by a visitor and subsequently kept as a paperweight by a succession of cemetery keepers; their current whereabouts are unknown. In the summer of 2000, intermedia artist Leon Johnson performed a forty-minute ceremony entitled Re-membering Wilde in which a commissioned silver prosthesis was installed to replace the vandalised genitals.[31]
Aestheticism and philosophy
1881 caricature in Punch
The aesthetic movement, represented by the school of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, had a permanent influence on English decorative art. As the leading aesthete in Britain, Wilde became one of the most prominent personalities of his day. Though he was sometimes ridiculed for them, his paradoxes and witty sayings were quoted on all sides.Publications such as the Springfield Republican commented on Wilde's behaviour during his visit to Boston to lecture on aestheticism, suggesting that Wilde's conduct was more of a bid for notoriety rather than a devotion to beauty and the aesthetic. Wilde's mode of dress also came under attack by critics such as Higginson, who wrote in his paper Unmanly Manhood, of his general concern that Wilde's effeminacy would influence the behaviour of men and women, arguing that his poetry "eclipses masculine ideals [..that..] under such influence men would become effeminate dandies". He also scrutinised the links between Oscar Wilde's writing, personal image and homosexuality, calling his work and way of life "immoral".
Politics
For much of his life, Wilde advocated socialism, which he argued "will be of value simply because it will lead to individualism".[32] He also had a strong libertarian streak as shown in his poem Sonnet to Liberty and, subsequent to reading the works of Peter Kropotkin (whom he described as "a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia"[13]);he declared himself an anarchist.[33] Wilde was concerned about the effect of moralising on art: following his vision of art as separate from life, he thought that the government most amiable to artists was no government at all. This point of view did not align him with the Fabians, the leading intellectual socialists of the time.[34] In "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" he presents a vision of society where mechanisation has freed human effort from the burden of necessity, and can be expended entirely on artistic creation. Other political influences on Wilde may have been William Morris and John Ruskin.[35] Wilde was also a pacifist and quipped that "When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her". In addition to his primary
political text, the essay "The Soul of Man under Socialism", Wilde wrote several letters to the Daily Chronicle advocating prison reform and was the sole signatory of George Bernard Shaw's petition for a pardon of the anarchists arrested (and later executed) after the Haymarket massacre in Chicago in 1886.[36]
In Lady Florence Dixie's 1890 novel "Gloriana, or the Revolution of 1900" women win the right to vote after the protagonist, Gloriana, poses as a man to get elected to the House of Commons. The male character she impersonates is clearly based on that of Wilde. Dixie was an aunt of Lord Alfred Douglas.[37]
Biographies
Oscar Wilde's house in Tite Street, Chelsea
• After Wilde's death, his friend Frank Harris wrote a biography, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions. Of his other close friends, Robert Sherard, Robert Ross, Charles Ricketts and Lord Alfred Douglas variously published biographies, reminiscences or correspondence.
• An account of the argument between Frank Harris, Lord Alfred Douglas and Oscar Wilde as to the advisability of Wilde's prosecuting Queensberry can be found in the preface to George Bernard Shaw's play The Dark Lady of the Sonnets.
• In 1946, Hesketh Pearson published The Life of Oscar Wilde (Methuen), containing materials derived from conversations with Bernard Shaw, George Alexander, Herbert Beerbohm Tree and many others who had known or worked with Wilde. This is a lively read, although inevitably somewhat dated in its approach. It gives a particularly vivid impression of what Wilde's conversation must have been like.
• In 1954 Vyvyan Holland published his memoir Son of Oscar Wilde. It was revised and updated by Merlin Holland in 1989.
• In 1955 Sewell Stokes wrote a novel, Beyond His Means, based on the life of Oscar Wilde.
• In 1983 Peter Ackroyd published The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde, a novel in the form of a pretended memoir.
• In 1987 literary biographer Richard Ellmann published his detailed work Oscar Wilde.
• In 1987, Robert Reilly wrote and published "The God Of Mirrors", a novel based on the facts of Wilde's "dazzling life and tragic fate."
• In 1991, cartoonist Dave Sim published Melmoth, a partially fictionalized account of Oscar Wilde's last days, as a part of his graphic epic Cerebus.
• In 1994, Melissa Knox published her psychobiography, Oscar Wilde: A Long and Lovely Suicide. This book explores the ways in which Wilde's literary styles and the events of his life developed in response to his desires, conflicts, and suffering. It offers new biographic information as well as new insights into Wilde as an artist.
• In 1997 Merlin Holland published a book entitled The Wilde Album. This rather small volume contained many pictures and other Wilde memorabilia, much of which had not been published before. It includes 27 pictures taken by the portrait photographer Napoleon Sarony, one of which is at the beginning of this article.
• 1999 saw the publication of Oscar Wilde on Stage and Screen written by Robert Tanitch. This book is a comprehensive record of Wilde's life and work as presented on stage and screen from 1880 until 1999. It includes cast lists and snippets of reviews.
• In 2000 Columbia University professor Barbara Belford published the biography, Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius.
• 2003 saw the publication of the first complete account of Wilde's sexual and emotional life in The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by Neil McKenna (Century/Random House).
• 2003 also saw the publication of the first uncensored transcripts of Wilde's 1895 trial vs. the Marquess of Queensberry. The book contained a 50-page introduction by Merlin Holland, and a foreword by John Mortimer. It was published as Irish Peacock and Scarlett Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde in the UK, and as simply The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde in some other countries.
• 2005 saw the publication of The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde, by literary biographer Joseph Pearce. It explores the Catholic sensibility in his art, his interior suffering and dissatisfaction, and his lifelong fascination with the Catholicism, which led to his deathbed embrace of the Church.
• In 2008 Chatto & Windus published Thomas Wright's "Oscar's Books", a biography of Wilde the reader, which explores all aspects of his reading, from his childhood in Dublin to his death in Paris. Wright tracked down many books that formerly belonged in Wilde's Tite Street Library, which was dispersed at the time of his trials; these contain Wilde's marginal notes, which no scholar had previously examined. The book will be published as a Vintage paperback in September 2009.
Biographical films, television series and stage plays
• The play Oscar Wilde (1936), written by Leslie and Sewell Stokes, based on the life of Wilde, included Frank Harris as a character. Starring Robert Morley, the play opened at the Gate Theatre in London in 1936, and two years later was staged in New York where its success launched the career of Morley as a stage actor.
• Two films of his life were released in 1960. The first to be released was Oscar Wilde starring Robert Morley and based on the Stokes brothers' play mentioned above. Then came The Trials of Oscar Wilde starring Peter Finch. At the time homosexuality was still a criminal offence in the UK and both films were rather cagey in touching on the subject without being explicit.
• In 1960, the Irish actor Micheál MacLíammóir began performing a one-man show called The Importance of Being Oscar. The show was heavily influenced by Brechtian theory and contained many poems and samples of Wilde's writing. The play was a success and MacLiammoir toured it with success everywhere he went. It was published in 1963.
• In 1972, director Adrian Hall's and composer Richard Cumming's play Feasting with Panthers, based on Wilde's writings and set in Reading Gaol, premiered at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island.
• In the summer of 1977 Vincent Price began performing the one-man play Diversions and Delights. Written by John Gay and directed by Joseph Hardy,[1] the premise of the play is that an aging Oscar Wilde, in order to earn some much-needed money, gave a lecture on his life in a Parisian theatre on 28 November 1899 (just a year before his death). The play was a success everywhere it was performed, except for its New York City run. It was revived in 1990 in London with Donald Sinden in the role.
• In 1978 London Weekend Television produced a television series about the life of Lillie Langtry entitled Lillie. In it Peter Egan played Oscar. The bulk of his scenes portrayed their close friendship up to and including their tours of America in 1882. Thereafter, he was in a few more scenes leading up to his trials in 1895.
• Michael Gambon portrayed Wilde on British television in 1985 in the three-part BBC series Oscar concentrating on the trial and prison term.
• 1988 saw Nickolas Grace playing Wilde in Ken Russell's film Salome's Last Dance.
• In 1989 Terry Eagleton premiered his play St. Oscar. Eagleton agrees that only one line in the entire play is taken directly from Wilde, while the rest of the dialogue is his own fancy. The play is also influenced by Brechtian theory.
• Tom Holland's 1988 play (radio version 1990, professional performance 1991) The Importance of Being Frank relates Wilde's trial, imprisonment and exile, using quotation and pastiche of The Importance of Being Earnest.
• In 1994 Jim Bartley published Stephen and Mr. Wilde, a novel about Wilde and his fictional black manservant Stephen set during Wilde's American tour.
• Moises Kaufman's 1997 play Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde uses real quotes and transcripts of Wilde's three trials.
• Wilde appears as a supporting character in Tom Stoppard's 1997 play The Invention of Love and is referenced extensively in Stoppard's 1974 play Travesties.
• Avoiding the restrictions on the two films from 1960, British actor Stephen Fry portrayed Wilde (whose fan he had been since the age of 13) in the 1997 film Wilde to critical acclaim - a role that he has said he was "born to play". Fry, an acknowledged Wilde scholar, also appeared as Wilde in the short-lived American television series Ned Blessing (1993).
• David Hare's 1998 play The Judas Kiss portrays Wilde as a manly homosexual Christ figure.
• In 1999, Romulus Linney published "Oscar Over Here" which recounts Wilde's lectures in America during the 1880s, specifically in Leadville, CO, as well as his time in prison and a death fantasy which included a conversation with a Jesus Christ figure. The first performance of this work was in New York in 1995.
• The main character in the Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty musical A Man of No Importance identifies himself with Oscar Wilde, and Wilde appears to him several times.
• Actor/playwright Jade Esteban Estrada portrayed Wilde in the solo musical comedy ICONS: The Lesbian and Gay History of the World, Vol. 1 in 2002.
• Oscar: in October 2004, a stage musical by Mike Read about Wilde closed after just one night at the Shaw Theatre in Euston after a severe critical mauling.
• De Profundis in 2004, a theatrical adaptation of Wilde's letter of the same name, was performed by Don Anderson at the Segal Centre for the Arts in Montreal, Quebec. Receiving rave reviews and playing to sold out audiences, the role won Anderson the MECCA, Montreal English Critic's Circle Award, for best actor of 2004.
Works
Main article: Oscar Wilde bibliography
Wilde's first published work was Poems (1881), after which he lectured extensivesly in America and reviewed prolifically in London peroidicals. Intentions, a collection of essays and dialogues outlining his aesthetic theories was published in 1891, a year after his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which had been serialised the year before. The children's stories The Happy Prince and other stories (1888), Lord Arthur Saville's Crime and other stories, and House of Pomegrantes (1891) were also published around this time. It was in drama that Wilde made his lasting mark, and in a burst of industry produced his plays, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893). An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest were still playing on the London stage in 1895 when his trials began. His correspondence and other works were published posthumously.
The bulk of Wilde's letters, manuscripts, and other material relating to his literary circle are housed at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.[38][39] A number of Wilde's letters and manuscripts can also be found at The British Library, as well as public and private collections throughout Britain, the United States and France.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish playwright, poet and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest "celebrities" of his day. Several of his plays continue to be widely performed, especially The Importance of Being Earnest. As the result of a widely covered series of trials, Wilde suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years' hard labour after being convicted of homosexual relationships, described as "gross indecency" with other men. After Wilde was released from prison he set sail for Dieppe by the night ferry, never to return to Ireland or Britain.
Birth and early life
Statue of Oscar Wilde by Danny Osborne in Dublin's Merrion Square (Archbishop Ryan Park)
Oscar Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin - now home of the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College Dublin. He was the second of three children born to Sir William Wilde and his wife Jane Francesca Wilde. The other siblings were an older brother known as Willie and a sister named Isola.
His father's extramarital affairs produced three other children: Henry Wilson, born in 1838, and Emily and Mary Wilde, born in 1847 and 1849 respectively. Emily and Mary died in a horrifying accident in 1871 when the dress of one caught fire; her sister rushed her out of the house and down the steps to roll her in the snow, but her dress also took fire, and both died.
Isola died aged eight of what appears to have been meningitis. Wilde's poem Requiescat is dedicated to her memory: "Tread lightly, she is near/ Under the snow... All my life's buried here/ Heap earth upon it..."
When William Wilde died in 1876, Henry Wilson supported the family until his own sudden death a year later.
Jane Wilde, under the pseudonym "Speranza" (Italian word for 'hope'), wrote poetry for the revolutionary Young Irelanders in 1848 and was a life-long Irish nationalist.[1] William Wilde was Ireland's leading oto-ophthalmologic (ear and eye) surgeon and was knighted in 1864 for his services to medicine.[1] He also wrote books about archaeology and folklore. A renowned philanthropist, his dispensary for the care of the city's poor at the rear of Trinity College, Dublin, was the forerunner of the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital, now located at Adelaide Road.
In 1855, the family moved to 1 Merrion Square, where Wilde's sister, Isola, was born the following year. Lady Wilde held a regular Saturday afternoon salon with guests that included Sheridan le Fanu, Charles Lever, George Petrie, Isaac Butt and Samuel Ferguson.
Education
Dublin, Portora, & Dublin
Oscar Wilde was educated at home until he was nine, where he learned French and German. He then attended Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Fermanagh,[2] spending the summer months with his family in rural Wicklow, Waterford, Wexford and at his father's family home in Mayo. There Wilde played with the older George Moore.
Leaving Portora, Wilde studied classics at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1871 to 1874, sharing rooms with his older brother Willie Wilde. His tutor, John Pentland Mahaffy, the leading Greek scholar at Trinity, interested him in Greek literature. Wilde later, though having reservations about Mahaffy, was generous with his praise calling him "my first and best teacher" and "the scholar who interested me in Greek things".[2] For his part Mahaffy first boasted of having created Wilde, only, later, he credit him as "the only blot on my tutorship".[3] Wilde quickly established himself as an outstanding student: he came first in his class in his first year, and won a Scholarship by competitive examination in his second, and then, in his finals, won the Berkeley Gold Medal, the highest award available to classics students at Trinity. The University Philosophical Society also provided an education, discussing intellectual and artistic subjects such as Rosetti and Swinburne weekly. Wilde quickly became an established member - The Members' suggestion book for 1874contains two pages of banter (sportingly) mocking Wilde's emergent aestheticism. He even presented a paper entitled "Aesthetic Morality".
Oxford
He was encouraged to compete for a demyship to Magdalen College, Oxford, which he won easily having already studied Greek for over nine years. He studied from 1874 to 1878 at Magdalen, and became a part of the Aesthetic movement; one of its tenets was to make an art of life. He was rusticated for one term, having returned to college late from a trip to Greece with Prof. Mahaffy.
On matriculating in 1874, he had applied to join the Oxford Union, but failed to be elected.[4] Nevertheless, when the Union's librarian requested a presentation copy of Poems (1881), Wilde complied. After a debate called by Oliver Elton, the book was condemned for alleged plagiarism. The Librarian, who had liked the book and wanted it for the library, and returned to Wilde with a note of apology.[5][6]
Attracted by its dress, secrecy and ritual Wilde petitioned the Apollo Masonic Lodge at Oxford, and was soon raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason.[7] He also deeply considered converting to Catholicism, discussing the possibility with clergy several times. Ellman reports that Wilde was left speechless after an audience with Pope Pius IX while visiting Rome. He eagerly read Cardinal Newman's books, though during a resurgent interest in Freemasonry in his third year, he commmented he "would be awfully sorry to give [freemasonry] up if I secede from the Protestant Heresy".[2] His tone became altogether more serious in 1878, when he met the Reverend Sebastain Bowden, a priest in the Brompton Oratory who had handled some high profile conversions. Neither his father, who threatened to cut his funds, nor Mahaffy, thought much of the plan; but mostly Wilde, the supreme individualist balked at the last minute from pledging himself to any formal creed. He retained a lifelong interest in Catholic theology and liturgy.
While at Magdalen College, Wilde became particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. He began wearing his hair long and openly scorning so-called "manly" sports, and began decorating his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers, blue china and other objets d'art. He dressed flambloyantly and entertained and spent lavishly. Lillies became a dominant symbol of Wilde, and his remark "Everyday I find it harder and harder to live up to my blue china", quickly became famous grasped as a slogan for the aesthetes, and as the epitome of their terrible vacousness by critics.
Legends persist that this behaviour cost him a dunking in the River Cherwell in addition to having his rooms (which still survive as student accommodation at his old college) vandalised, but the cult spread among certain segments of society to such an extent that languishing attitudes, "too-too" costumes and aestheticism generally became a recognised pose. Wilde was frowned upon by some of his fellow students, who were suspicious of his poses, but respected in his own aesthetic circle.[8] Publications such as the Springfield Republican commented on Wilde's behaviour during his visit to Boston to lecture on aestheticism, suggesting that Wilde's conduct was more of a bid for notoriety rather than a devotion to beauty and the aesthetic. Wilde's mode of dress also came under attack by critics such as Higginson, who wrote in his paper Unmanly Manhood, of his general concern that Wilde's effeminacy would influence the behaviour of men and women, arguing that his poetry "eclipses masculine ideals [..that..] under such influence men would become effeminate dandies". He also scrutinised the links between Oscar Wilde's writing, personal image and homosexuality, calling his work and way of life "immoral".
Wilde was deeply impressed by the English writers John Ruskin and Walter Pater, who argued for the central importance of art in life. Though he did not meet Prof. Pater personally until his third year, he was enthralled by Studies in the History of the Renaissance, which had been published during Wilde's final year in Dublin.[2] Pater argued that man's sensibility to beauty should be refined above all else, and that each moment should be felt to its fullest extent. Years later in De Profundis, Wilde called Pater's Studies... "that book that has had such a strange influence over my life". He learned tracts of the book by heart, and carried it with him on travels in later years. Pater gave Wilde his sense of almost flippant devotion to art, though it was Ruskin who gave him a purpose for it. Ruskin despaired at the self-validating aesthism in Pater for him the importance of art lay in its potential for the betterment of society. He too admired beauty, but it must be ailled to moral good. When Wilde eagerly attended his lecture series The Aesthetic and Mathematic Schools of Art in Florence, he learned about aesthetics as the non-matematical elements of painting. Despite being given to neither early rising nor manual labour, Wilde volunteered for Ruskin's project to convert a swampy country lane into a smart road neatly edged with flowers.[2] Wilde later commented ironically when he wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray that "All art is quite useless". The statement was meant to be read literally, as it was in keeping with the doctrine of art for art's sake, but he argued later for the immorality of non-creative work, and the dehumanisation the working classes experience by manual labour. By 1879 Wilde started to teach aesthetic values in London.
While at Magdalen, Wilde won the 1878 Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna, which reflected on his visit there the year before, and he duly read at Encaenia. In November 1878, he graduated with a rare double first in his B.A. of classical moderations and Literae Humaniores, or "Greats".
Apprenticeship of an aesthete
After graduation from Oxford, Wilde returned to Dublin, where he met again Florence Balcombe, a childhood sweetheart. She, however, became engaged to Bram Stoker who was later the author of Dracula, and they married in 1878.[9] Wilde was disappointed but stoic, writing her a gracious letter and remembering fondly the years they had spent together.[2] He also stated his intention to leave Ireland "probably for good". That he did in 1878, and returned to his native country only twice, for brief visits.
Unsure of his next step, he wrote to various contacts looking for Classics positions at Oxbridge, it was a lean year, though Wilde competed for the fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford, which he did not take altogher seriously. His mother encouraged him to stand for Parliament, though he continued to try to use his classical learning. The Rise of Historical Criticism was his submission for the Chancellor's Essay prize of 1879, which, though no longer a student, he was stil eligible to enter. Though its subject "Historical Criticism among the Ancients" seemed ready made for Wilde - with both his skill in composition and ancient learning, Wilde struggles to find his voice with the long, flat, scholarly style. Unusually, no prize was awarded that year.[2] Though the essay was later published in "Miscellanies", the final section of a 1905 edition of Wilde's collected works.[10] With the last of his inheritance from the sale of his father's houses, he set himself up as a bachleor in London. Wilde's address in the 1881 British Census is given as 1 Tite Street, London. The head of the household is listed as Frank Miles, with whom Wilde shared rooms at this address. Wilde would spend the next six years in London and Paris, and in the United States, where he travelled to deliver lectures.
To the New World and back
Aestheticism in general was caricatured in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera Patience (1881). While Patience was a success in New York, it was not known how much the aesthetic movement had penetrated the rest of America. So producer Richard D'Oyly Carte invited Wilde for a lecture tour of North America. D'Oyly Carte felt this tour would "prime the pump" for the U.S. tour of Patience, making the ticket-buying public aware of one of the aesthetic movement's charming personalities. Duly arranged, Wilde arrived on 3 January 1882 aboard the SS Arizona. Wilde reputedly told a customs officer that "I have nothing to declare except my genius", although there is no contemporary evidence for the remark.
Keller cartoon from the Wasp of San Francisco depicting Wilde on the occasion of his visit there in 1882
During his tour of the United States and Canada, Wilde was torn apart by no small number of critics—The Wasp, a San Francisco newspaper, published a cartoon ridiculing Wilde and aestheticism—but he was also surprisingly well received in such rough-and-tumble settings as the mining town of Leadville, Colorado.[11]
His earnings, plus expected income from the Duchess of Padua allowed him to live at leisure in Paris for several months, where he met Robert Sherard.[2] When the play fell through, he returned to England to lecture there, Personal Impressions of America, The Value of Art in Modern Life and Dress were among his topics. In London, he had met Constance Lloyd in 1881, daughter of wealthy Queen's Counsel Horace Lloyd. She was visiting Dublin in 1884, when Wilde was in the city to give lectures at the Gaiety Theatre, Constance and an 18 year old W.B Yeats were among the audience. He proposed to her, and they married on 29 May 1884 at the Anglican St. James Church[12] in Paddington, London. Constance's allowance of £250 was generous, but the Wildes' tastes were relativly luxurious, and after preaching to others for so long, their home was expected to set new standards of design. 16 Tite Street was renovated in seven months at considerable expense. The couple had two sons, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886).
Criticism in the Pall Mall Gazette provoked a letter in his defense, and soon Wilde was a contributor to that and other journals during the years 1885-1887. He enjoyed reviewing and journalism, a form that suited his style, his reviews were largely chatty and postive.[2]
Editorship: 1887-1889
With his youth nearly over, and a family to support, Wilde became the editor of "The Lady's World" magazine, which he promptly renamed The Woman's World.[2] During his editorship, Wilde raised the tone of the magazine, adding serious articles on parenting, culture and politics; while keeping the discussions of fashion and arts. Two pieces of fiction were usually included, one to be read to children, the other for the ladies themselves. Wilde's used his wide artistic acquaintance to solicit good contributions, including Lady Wilde and his wife Constance, while his own "Literary and other notes" were popular and amusing themselves.[2] The initial vigour and excitement he brought to the job began to fade as administration, commuting and office became tedious. His disinterest showed in the magazine's declining quality and flagging sales. He increasingly sent instructions by letter from home, and as he began a new period of creative work: he was writing his fairy tales, short fiction and novel at this time, and his own column appeared less regularly. In October 1889, at the end of the second volume, Wilde left. The magazine ceased to exist shortly afterwards.
Sexuality
Robert Ross at twenty-four
Oscar Wilde by Napoleon Sarony
Robert Ross had read Wilde's poems before they met, even been beaten for doing so, yet he was also unrestrained by the Victorian prohibition against homosexuality. By Richard Ellmann's account, Ross, "...so young and yet so knowing, was determined to seduce Wilde". Later, Ross boasted to Lord Alfred Douglas that he was his first homosexual experience and there seems to have been much jealousy between them. Soon, Wilde would have more homosexual encounters in local bars or brothels. In Wilde's words, the relations were akin to "feasting with panthers,"[13] and he revelled in the risk: "the danger was half the excitement."[13] In his public writings, Wilde's first celebration of homosexual love can be found in "The Portrait of Mr. W. H." (1889), a short story in which a theory that Shakespeare's sonnets were written out of the poet's love of young male Elizabethan actor "Willie Hughes" is advanced, retracted, and then propunded again.
In the early summer of 1891 poet Lionel Johnson introduced Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas, an undergraduate at Oxford at the time. An intimate friendship immediately sprang up between Wilde and Douglas, but it was not initially sexual, nor did the sexual activity progress far when it did eventually take place. According to Douglas, speaking in his old age, for the first six months their relations remained on a purely intellectual and emotional level. Despite the fact that "from the second time he saw me, when he gave me a copy of Dorian Gray which I took with me to Oxford, he made overtures to me. It was not till I had known him for at least six months and after I had seen him over and over again and he had twice stayed with me in Oxford, that I gave in to him. I did with him and allowed him to do just what was done among boys at Winchester and Oxford ... Sodomy never took place between us, nor was it attempted or dreamed of. Wilde treated me as an older one does a younger one at school." After Wilde realised that Douglas only consented in order to please him, Wilde permanently ceased his physical attentions.[14]
Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas in 1893
For a few years they lived together more or less openly in a number of locations. Wilde and some within his upper-class social group also began to speak about homosexual-law reform, and their commitment to "The Cause" was formalised by the founding of a highly secretive organisation called the Order of Chaeronea, of which Wilde was a member. A homosexual pornographic novel, Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal, written at about the same time and clandestinely published in 1893, has been attributed to Oscar Wilde, although it was possibly an ensemeble effort by a number of Wilde's friends, with Wilde as editor. Wilde's authorship has never been ascertained, the book, for instance, is not listed in Bibliography of Oscar Wilde, (S. Mason, 1914).
Lord Alfred's first mentor had been his cosmopolitan grandfather Alfred Montgomery. His older brother Francis Douglas, Viscount Drumlanrig possibly had an intimate association with the Prime Minister Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, which ended on Francis' death in an unexplained shooting accident. Lord Alfred's father John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry came to believe his sons had been corrupted by older homosexuals, or as he phrased it in a letter, "Snob Queers like Rosebery".[15] As he had attempted to do with Rosebery, Queensberry confronted Wilde and Lord Alfred on several occasions, but each time Wilde was able to mollify him.
Divorced and spending wildly, Queensberry was known for his outspoken views and the boxing roughs who often accompanied him. He abhorred his younger son and plagued the boy with threats to cut him off if he did not stop idling his life away. Queensberry was determined to end the friendship with Wilde. Wilde was in full flow of rehearsal when Bosie returned from a diplomatic posting to Cairo, around the time Queensberry visited Wilde at his Tite Street home. He angrily pushed past Wilde's servant and entered the ground-floor study, shouting obscenities and asking Wilde about his divorce. Wilde became incensed, but it is said he calmly told his manservant that Queensberry was the most infamous brute in London, and that he was not to be shown into the house ever again. It is said that, despite the presence of a bodyguard, Wilde forced Queensberry to leave in no uncertain terms.
On the opening night of The Importance of Being Earnest Queensberry further planned to insult and socially embarrass Wilde by throwing a bouquet of turnips. Wilde was tipped off, and Queensberry was barred from entering the theatre. Wilde took legal advice against him, and wished to prosecute, but his friends refused to give evidence against the Marquess and hence the case was dropped. Wilde and Bosie left London for a holiday in Monte Carlo. While they were there, on 18 February 1895, the Marquess left his calling card at Wilde's club, the Albermarle, with a scrawled inscription accusing Wilde of being a "posing somdomite" [sic].[16]
Trials
The Marquess of Queensberry's calling card with the offending inscription "For Oscar Wilde posing Somdomite [sic]"
Wilde vs Queensbury
Wilde made a complaint of criminal libel against the Marquess of Queensberry based on the calling card incident, and the Marquess was arrested but later freed on bail. The libel trial became a cause célèbre as salacious details of Wilde's private life with Alfred Taylor and Lord Alfred Douglas began to appear in the press. A team of detectives, with the help of the actor Charles Brookfield, had directed Queensberry's lawyers (led by Edward Carson QC) to the world of the Victorian underground. Here Wilde's association with blackmailers and male prostitutes, crossdressers and homosexual brothels was recorded, and various persons involved were interviewed, some being coerced to appear as witnesses.[17]
The trial opened on 3 April 1895 amongst scenes of near hysteria both in the press and the public galleries. After a shaky start, Wilde regained some ground when defending his art from attacks of perversion. The Picture of Dorian Gray came under fierce moral criticism, but Wilde fended it off with his usual charm and confidence on artistic matters. Some of his personal letters to Lord Alfred were examined, their wording challenged as inappropriate and evidence of immoral relations. Queensberry's legal team proposed that the libel was published for the public good, but it was only when the prosecution moved on to sexual matters that Wilde balked. He was challenged on the reason given for not kissing a young servant; Wilde had replied, "He was a particularly plain boy—unfortunately ugly—I pitied him for it."[18] Counsel for the defence, scenting blood, pressed him on the point. Wilde hesitated, complaining of Carson's insults and attempts to unnerve him. The prosecution eventually dropped the case, after the defence threatened to bring boy prostitutes to the stand to testify to Wilde's corruption and influence over Queensberry's son, effectively crippling the case.
'The Crown vs Wilde
After Wilde left the court, a warrant for his arrest was applied for and (after a delay that would have permitted Wilde, had he wished, to escape to the continent) later served on him at the Cadogan Hotel, Knightsbridge. Robert Ross found him there with Reginald Turner; both men advised Wilde to go at once to Dover and try to get a boat to France. Wilde, lapsing into inaction, could only say, "The train has gone. It's too late."[19] That moment was immortalised in a poem by Sir John Betjeman, although he himself said that it was "complained that it wasn't true - but I happened to like it".[citation needed] Wilde was arrested for "gross indecency" under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. In British legislation of the time, this term implied homosexual acts not amounting to buggery, which was an offence under a separate statute.[20][21] After his arrest Wilde sent Robert Ross to his home in Tite Street with orders to remove certain items and Ross broke into the bedroom to rescue some of Wilde's belongings. Wilde was then imprisoned on remand at Holloway where he received daily visits from Lord Alfred Douglas.
Wilde in the dock, from The Illustrated Police News, 4 May 1895
Events moved quickly and his prosecution opened on 26 April 1895. Wilde had already begged Douglas to leave London for Paris, but Douglas complained bitterly, even wanting to take the stand; however, he was pressed to go and soon fled to the Hotel du Monde. Ross and many others also left the United Kingdom during this time. Under cross examination Wilde presented an eloquent defence:
Charles Gill (prosecuting): What is "the love that dare not speak its name?"
Wilde: "The love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "the love that dare not speak its name," and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it."
The trial ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict and Wilde's counsel, Sir Edward Clark, was finally able to agree bail. Wilde was freed from Holloway and went into hiding at the house of Ernest and Ada Leverson, two of Wilde's firm friends. The Reverend Stewart Headlam put up most of the £5,000 bail,[22] having disagreed with Wilde's heinous treatment by the press and the courts. Edward Carson, it was said, asked for the service to let up on Wilde.[23] His request was denied. If the Crown was seen to give up at that point, it would have appeared that there was one rule for some and not others, and outrage could have followed.
The final trial was presided over by Mr Justice Wills. On 25 May 1895 Wilde was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years' hard labour. The judge himself described the sentence as "totally inadequate for a case such as this," although it was the maximum sentence allowed for the charge under the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885.[24]
Decline: 1895-1900
Imprisonment
Wilde was imprisoned first in Pentonville and then in Wandsworth prison in London, and finally transferred in November to Reading Prison, some 30 miles west of London. Wilde knew the town of Reading from happier times when boating on the Thames and also from visits to the Palmer family, including a tour of the famous Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory which was quite close to the prison.
Now known as prisoner C. 3.3, (which described the fact that he was in block C, floor three, cell three) he was not, at first, even allowed paper and pen, but a later governor was more amenable. Eventually, when Wilde was allowed to have books sent in to him, the first he requested was The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by his Oxford mentor, Walter Pater. The book had been a comfort to him in the past.[25]
Wilde was championed by the Liberal MP and reformer Richard B. Haldane who had helped transfer him and afforded him the literary catharsis he needed. During his time in prison, Wilde wrote a 50,000-word letter to Douglas, which he was not allowed to send while still a prisoner, but which he was allowed to take with him at the end of his sentence. On his release, he gave the manuscript to Ross, who may or may not have carried out Wilde's instructions to send a copy to Douglas (who later denied having received it). Ross published a much expurgated version of the letter (about a third of it) in 1905 (four years after Wilde's death) with the title De Profundis, expanding it slightly for an edition of Wilde's collected works in 1908, and then donated it to the British Museum on the understanding that it would not be made public until 1960. In 1949, Wilde's son Vyvyan Holland published it again, including parts formerly omitted, but relying on a faulty typescript bequeathed to him by Ross. Its complete and correct publication first occurred in 1962, in "The Letters of Oscar Wilde."
Exile
Prison was unkind to Wilde's health and after he was released on 19 May 1897, he spent his last three years penniless, in self-imposed exile abroad and cut off from society and artistic circles. He went under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth, after Saint Sebastian and the devilish central character of Wilde's great-uncle Charles Maturin's gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer.
Wilde spent the summer of 1897 with Robert Ross in in Berneval-le-Grand, where he wrote the famous poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, it was a commercial success and brought him a little money. The title page identified the author as "C.3.3." (Wilde's prisoner number) it was only after the sixth printing, that his name was added in parentheses, though many in literary circles knew Wilde to be the author.
Although Douglas had been the cause of his misfortunes, he and Wilde were reunited in August 1897 at Rouen. This meeting was disapproved of by the friends and families of both men. Constance Wilde was already refusing to meet Wilde or allow him to see their sons, though she kept him supplied with money. During the latter part of 1897, Wilde and Douglas lived together near Naples, but for financial and other reasons, they separated.[26]
Wilde spent his last years in the Hôtel d'Alsace, now known as L'Hôtel, in Paris, where he lived in poverty. He corrected and published his plays An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, but otherwise had lost the "intense joy that creation requires". He spent much time wandering the Boulevards alone, and spent what little money he had on alcohol. A series of embarrassing encounters with English visitors, or Frenchmen he had known in better days, further damaged his spirit. He is quoted as saying, just a month before his death, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go."
His moods fluctuated; Max Beerbohm relates how, a few days before Wilde's death, their mutual friend Reginald 'Reggie' Turner had found Wilde very depressed after a nightmare. "I dreamt that I had died, and was supping with the dead!" "I am sure", Turner replied, "that you must have been the life and soul of the party."[27] Turner was one of the very few of the old circle who remained with Wilde right to the end, and was at his bedside when he died.The tomb of Oscar Wilde in Père Lachaise Cemetery
Death
Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on 30 November 1900. Different opinions are given as to the cause of the meningitis; Richard Ellmann claimed it was syphilitic; Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson, thought this to be a misconception, noting that Wilde's meningitis followed a surgical intervention, perhaps a mastoidectomy; Wilde's physicians, Dr. Paul Cleiss and A'Court Tucker, reported that the condition stemmed from an old suppuration of the right ear (une ancienne suppuration de l'oreille droite d'ailleurs en traitement depuis plusieurs années) and did not allude to syphilis. Most modern scholars and doctors agree that syphilis was unlikely to have been the cause of his death.[28]
On his deathbed Wilde was received into the Roman Catholic church and Robert Ross, in his letter to More Adey (dated 14 December 1900), states "He was conscious that people were in the room, and raised his hand when I asked him whether he understood. He pressed our hands. I then sent in search of a priest, and after great difficulty found Father Cuthbert Dunne ... who came with me at once and administered Baptism and Extreme Unction. - Oscar could not take the Eucharist".[29] Wilde had long maintained an interest in the Catholic Church having met with Pope Pius IX in 1877 and describing it as "for saints and sinners alone – for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do".[30] During his time in prison Wilde had pored over the works of Saint Augustine, Dante and Cardinal Newman.
Wilde was buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris but was later moved to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. His tomb in Père Lachaise was designed by sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein, at the request of Robert Ross, who also asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes. Ross's ashes were transferred to the tomb in 1950. The epitaph is a verse from The Ballad of Reading Gaol:
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.
The modernist angel depicted as a relief on the tomb was originally complete with male genitals which were broken off by a visitor and subsequently kept as a paperweight by a succession of cemetery keepers; their current whereabouts are unknown. In the summer of 2000, intermedia artist Leon Johnson performed a forty-minute ceremony entitled Re-membering Wilde in which a commissioned silver prosthesis was installed to replace the vandalised genitals.[31]
Aestheticism and philosophy
1881 caricature in Punch
The aesthetic movement, represented by the school of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, had a permanent influence on English decorative art. As the leading aesthete in Britain, Wilde became one of the most prominent personalities of his day. Though he was sometimes ridiculed for them, his paradoxes and witty sayings were quoted on all sides.Publications such as the Springfield Republican commented on Wilde's behaviour during his visit to Boston to lecture on aestheticism, suggesting that Wilde's conduct was more of a bid for notoriety rather than a devotion to beauty and the aesthetic. Wilde's mode of dress also came under attack by critics such as Higginson, who wrote in his paper Unmanly Manhood, of his general concern that Wilde's effeminacy would influence the behaviour of men and women, arguing that his poetry "eclipses masculine ideals [..that..] under such influence men would become effeminate dandies". He also scrutinised the links between Oscar Wilde's writing, personal image and homosexuality, calling his work and way of life "immoral".
Politics
For much of his life, Wilde advocated socialism, which he argued "will be of value simply because it will lead to individualism".[32] He also had a strong libertarian streak as shown in his poem Sonnet to Liberty and, subsequent to reading the works of Peter Kropotkin (whom he described as "a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia"[13]);he declared himself an anarchist.[33] Wilde was concerned about the effect of moralising on art: following his vision of art as separate from life, he thought that the government most amiable to artists was no government at all. This point of view did not align him with the Fabians, the leading intellectual socialists of the time.[34] In "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" he presents a vision of society where mechanisation has freed human effort from the burden of necessity, and can be expended entirely on artistic creation. Other political influences on Wilde may have been William Morris and John Ruskin.[35] Wilde was also a pacifist and quipped that "When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her". In addition to his primary
political text, the essay "The Soul of Man under Socialism", Wilde wrote several letters to the Daily Chronicle advocating prison reform and was the sole signatory of George Bernard Shaw's petition for a pardon of the anarchists arrested (and later executed) after the Haymarket massacre in Chicago in 1886.[36]
In Lady Florence Dixie's 1890 novel "Gloriana, or the Revolution of 1900" women win the right to vote after the protagonist, Gloriana, poses as a man to get elected to the House of Commons. The male character she impersonates is clearly based on that of Wilde. Dixie was an aunt of Lord Alfred Douglas.[37]
Biographies
Oscar Wilde's house in Tite Street, Chelsea
• After Wilde's death, his friend Frank Harris wrote a biography, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions. Of his other close friends, Robert Sherard, Robert Ross, Charles Ricketts and Lord Alfred Douglas variously published biographies, reminiscences or correspondence.
• An account of the argument between Frank Harris, Lord Alfred Douglas and Oscar Wilde as to the advisability of Wilde's prosecuting Queensberry can be found in the preface to George Bernard Shaw's play The Dark Lady of the Sonnets.
• In 1946, Hesketh Pearson published The Life of Oscar Wilde (Methuen), containing materials derived from conversations with Bernard Shaw, George Alexander, Herbert Beerbohm Tree and many others who had known or worked with Wilde. This is a lively read, although inevitably somewhat dated in its approach. It gives a particularly vivid impression of what Wilde's conversation must have been like.
• In 1954 Vyvyan Holland published his memoir Son of Oscar Wilde. It was revised and updated by Merlin Holland in 1989.
• In 1955 Sewell Stokes wrote a novel, Beyond His Means, based on the life of Oscar Wilde.
• In 1983 Peter Ackroyd published The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde, a novel in the form of a pretended memoir.
• In 1987 literary biographer Richard Ellmann published his detailed work Oscar Wilde.
• In 1987, Robert Reilly wrote and published "The God Of Mirrors", a novel based on the facts of Wilde's "dazzling life and tragic fate."
• In 1991, cartoonist Dave Sim published Melmoth, a partially fictionalized account of Oscar Wilde's last days, as a part of his graphic epic Cerebus.
• In 1994, Melissa Knox published her psychobiography, Oscar Wilde: A Long and Lovely Suicide. This book explores the ways in which Wilde's literary styles and the events of his life developed in response to his desires, conflicts, and suffering. It offers new biographic information as well as new insights into Wilde as an artist.
• In 1997 Merlin Holland published a book entitled The Wilde Album. This rather small volume contained many pictures and other Wilde memorabilia, much of which had not been published before. It includes 27 pictures taken by the portrait photographer Napoleon Sarony, one of which is at the beginning of this article.
• 1999 saw the publication of Oscar Wilde on Stage and Screen written by Robert Tanitch. This book is a comprehensive record of Wilde's life and work as presented on stage and screen from 1880 until 1999. It includes cast lists and snippets of reviews.
• In 2000 Columbia University professor Barbara Belford published the biography, Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius.
• 2003 saw the publication of the first complete account of Wilde's sexual and emotional life in The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by Neil McKenna (Century/Random House).
• 2003 also saw the publication of the first uncensored transcripts of Wilde's 1895 trial vs. the Marquess of Queensberry. The book contained a 50-page introduction by Merlin Holland, and a foreword by John Mortimer. It was published as Irish Peacock and Scarlett Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde in the UK, and as simply The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde in some other countries.
• 2005 saw the publication of The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde, by literary biographer Joseph Pearce. It explores the Catholic sensibility in his art, his interior suffering and dissatisfaction, and his lifelong fascination with the Catholicism, which led to his deathbed embrace of the Church.
• In 2008 Chatto & Windus published Thomas Wright's "Oscar's Books", a biography of Wilde the reader, which explores all aspects of his reading, from his childhood in Dublin to his death in Paris. Wright tracked down many books that formerly belonged in Wilde's Tite Street Library, which was dispersed at the time of his trials; these contain Wilde's marginal notes, which no scholar had previously examined. The book will be published as a Vintage paperback in September 2009.
Biographical films, television series and stage plays
• The play Oscar Wilde (1936), written by Leslie and Sewell Stokes, based on the life of Wilde, included Frank Harris as a character. Starring Robert Morley, the play opened at the Gate Theatre in London in 1936, and two years later was staged in New York where its success launched the career of Morley as a stage actor.
• Two films of his life were released in 1960. The first to be released was Oscar Wilde starring Robert Morley and based on the Stokes brothers' play mentioned above. Then came The Trials of Oscar Wilde starring Peter Finch. At the time homosexuality was still a criminal offence in the UK and both films were rather cagey in touching on the subject without being explicit.
• In 1960, the Irish actor Micheál MacLíammóir began performing a one-man show called The Importance of Being Oscar. The show was heavily influenced by Brechtian theory and contained many poems and samples of Wilde's writing. The play was a success and MacLiammoir toured it with success everywhere he went. It was published in 1963.
• In 1972, director Adrian Hall's and composer Richard Cumming's play Feasting with Panthers, based on Wilde's writings and set in Reading Gaol, premiered at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island.
• In the summer of 1977 Vincent Price began performing the one-man play Diversions and Delights. Written by John Gay and directed by Joseph Hardy,[1] the premise of the play is that an aging Oscar Wilde, in order to earn some much-needed money, gave a lecture on his life in a Parisian theatre on 28 November 1899 (just a year before his death). The play was a success everywhere it was performed, except for its New York City run. It was revived in 1990 in London with Donald Sinden in the role.
• In 1978 London Weekend Television produced a television series about the life of Lillie Langtry entitled Lillie. In it Peter Egan played Oscar. The bulk of his scenes portrayed their close friendship up to and including their tours of America in 1882. Thereafter, he was in a few more scenes leading up to his trials in 1895.
• Michael Gambon portrayed Wilde on British television in 1985 in the three-part BBC series Oscar concentrating on the trial and prison term.
• 1988 saw Nickolas Grace playing Wilde in Ken Russell's film Salome's Last Dance.
• In 1989 Terry Eagleton premiered his play St. Oscar. Eagleton agrees that only one line in the entire play is taken directly from Wilde, while the rest of the dialogue is his own fancy. The play is also influenced by Brechtian theory.
• Tom Holland's 1988 play (radio version 1990, professional performance 1991) The Importance of Being Frank relates Wilde's trial, imprisonment and exile, using quotation and pastiche of The Importance of Being Earnest.
• In 1994 Jim Bartley published Stephen and Mr. Wilde, a novel about Wilde and his fictional black manservant Stephen set during Wilde's American tour.
• Moises Kaufman's 1997 play Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde uses real quotes and transcripts of Wilde's three trials.
• Wilde appears as a supporting character in Tom Stoppard's 1997 play The Invention of Love and is referenced extensively in Stoppard's 1974 play Travesties.
• Avoiding the restrictions on the two films from 1960, British actor Stephen Fry portrayed Wilde (whose fan he had been since the age of 13) in the 1997 film Wilde to critical acclaim - a role that he has said he was "born to play". Fry, an acknowledged Wilde scholar, also appeared as Wilde in the short-lived American television series Ned Blessing (1993).
• David Hare's 1998 play The Judas Kiss portrays Wilde as a manly homosexual Christ figure.
• In 1999, Romulus Linney published "Oscar Over Here" which recounts Wilde's lectures in America during the 1880s, specifically in Leadville, CO, as well as his time in prison and a death fantasy which included a conversation with a Jesus Christ figure. The first performance of this work was in New York in 1995.
• The main character in the Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty musical A Man of No Importance identifies himself with Oscar Wilde, and Wilde appears to him several times.
• Actor/playwright Jade Esteban Estrada portrayed Wilde in the solo musical comedy ICONS: The Lesbian and Gay History of the World, Vol. 1 in 2002.
• Oscar: in October 2004, a stage musical by Mike Read about Wilde closed after just one night at the Shaw Theatre in Euston after a severe critical mauling.
• De Profundis in 2004, a theatrical adaptation of Wilde's letter of the same name, was performed by Don Anderson at the Segal Centre for the Arts in Montreal, Quebec. Receiving rave reviews and playing to sold out audiences, the role won Anderson the MECCA, Montreal English Critic's Circle Award, for best actor of 2004.
Works
Main article: Oscar Wilde bibliography
Wilde's first published work was Poems (1881), after which he lectured extensivesly in America and reviewed prolifically in London peroidicals. Intentions, a collection of essays and dialogues outlining his aesthetic theories was published in 1891, a year after his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which had been serialised the year before. The children's stories The Happy Prince and other stories (1888), Lord Arthur Saville's Crime and other stories, and House of Pomegrantes (1891) were also published around this time. It was in drama that Wilde made his lasting mark, and in a burst of industry produced his plays, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893). An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest were still playing on the London stage in 1895 when his trials began. His correspondence and other works were published posthumously.
The bulk of Wilde's letters, manuscripts, and other material relating to his literary circle are housed at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.[38][39] A number of Wilde's letters and manuscripts can also be found at The British Library, as well as public and private collections throughout Britain, the United States and France.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Edgar Allan Poe Life and Times of Poe
Mar 9, 2009 Gwendolyn Cuizon
Edgar Allan Poe lived a fascinating life, as fascinating as the tales he wove. He undoubtedly mastered the art of irony and writing psychological thrillers.
Edgar Allan Poe is probably one of the most recognizable names in American literature. He was a poet, short story writer, editor and critic. He gained immense popularity and acclaimed for his works in poems and short fiction. He is credited for making a short story from an anecdote to a work of art. His works give him a lot of distinction, making him a household name today.
He practically invented the detective story and perfected the craft of writing psychological thrillers. His literary criticisms which usually revolve on theoretical statements on poetry and short story are considered the most influential during his time. His influence on worldwide literature is also apparent (Regan, 1967).
His Life and Works
Edgar Allan Poe was born to David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins in Boston on January 19, 1809. Unfortunately, Poe's parents died before he turned 3 years old. John Allan a prosperous merchant in Richmond, Va., took him in his home and had him baptized as Edgar Allan Poe. He studied in England from 1815-20. He enrolled in the University of Virginia 1n 1826. He only stayed for a year though.
Poe incurred gambling debts. As a result, Allan prevented him to return to the university and broke his engagement to his girlfriend in Richmond, Sarah Elmira Royster. With no financial support, Poe joined the army. By this time he had already self-published his first book, Tammerlane and Other Poems (1827).
Allan and Poe reconciled. Poe knowingly disobeyed commands so he would be dismissed from West Point. His fellow cadets contributed money so he could print his third book Poems by Edgar A. Poe ... Second Edition (1831). His first two were Tamerlane and Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829).
Poe moved to Baltimore with his widowed aunt Maria Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia. In 1832, the Philadelphia Saturday Courier published five of his stories. In 1833, Baltimore Saturday Visitor gave him $50 prize for MS. Found in a Bottle. In 1835, Poe, his aunt, and Virginia moved to Richmond. He became editor of the Southern Literary Messenger.
He married Virginia, who was barely 14 years old. At this time, Poe published another fiction, including his most horrifying tale, Berenice in the Messenger. He contributed critical reviews on contemporary authors which increased the magazine’s circulation. This, however, caught the ire of the publisher who also dislike Poe’s habitual drinking. Poe considered Ligeia (1838), as his finest. The Fall Of The House Of Usher (1839), became one of his most famous stories.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) is sometimes referred as the first detective story. Then came his exemplary verses The Raven (1845) and The Bells (1849). Virginia died in January 1847. This broke Poe’s spirit but he continued his writing and conducting lectures. In 1849 he revisited Richmond, lectured, and became engaged to the fiancée he had lost in 1826 (Regan, 1967).
Poe's Contributions
Due to Edgar Allan Poe’s distinct style of writing and the timeless truths found in his pieces, his works lasted through centuries. If his works were interesting, his real life actually inspires more controversy. Poe led a full but short existence. Despite passing away at an early age of 40, he has achieved far more than those who lived longer than him.
His contribution to the transformation of short stories to an art, his flawless psychological thrillers and his memorable poems are forever etched in the memory of people the world over. He is famed for his tales about death as well as a recognized early practitioner of the short story and he is attributed to have started Gothic and Detective fiction (Crime fiction) in the United States. Poe is an undisputable force in literary journalism. His works are a source of inspiration to this day. And his legacy will most likely endure.
Read more at Suite101: Edgar Allan Poe: Life and Times of Poe http://biographiesmemoirs.suite101.com/article.cfm/edgar_allan_poe#ixzz0eQEUZgjz
Edgar Allan Poe Life and Times of Poe
Mar 9, 2009 Gwendolyn Cuizon
Edgar Allan Poe lived a fascinating life, as fascinating as the tales he wove. He undoubtedly mastered the art of irony and writing psychological thrillers.
Edgar Allan Poe is probably one of the most recognizable names in American literature. He was a poet, short story writer, editor and critic. He gained immense popularity and acclaimed for his works in poems and short fiction. He is credited for making a short story from an anecdote to a work of art. His works give him a lot of distinction, making him a household name today.
He practically invented the detective story and perfected the craft of writing psychological thrillers. His literary criticisms which usually revolve on theoretical statements on poetry and short story are considered the most influential during his time. His influence on worldwide literature is also apparent (Regan, 1967).
His Life and Works
Edgar Allan Poe was born to David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins in Boston on January 19, 1809. Unfortunately, Poe's parents died before he turned 3 years old. John Allan a prosperous merchant in Richmond, Va., took him in his home and had him baptized as Edgar Allan Poe. He studied in England from 1815-20. He enrolled in the University of Virginia 1n 1826. He only stayed for a year though.
Poe incurred gambling debts. As a result, Allan prevented him to return to the university and broke his engagement to his girlfriend in Richmond, Sarah Elmira Royster. With no financial support, Poe joined the army. By this time he had already self-published his first book, Tammerlane and Other Poems (1827).
Allan and Poe reconciled. Poe knowingly disobeyed commands so he would be dismissed from West Point. His fellow cadets contributed money so he could print his third book Poems by Edgar A. Poe ... Second Edition (1831). His first two were Tamerlane and Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829).
Poe moved to Baltimore with his widowed aunt Maria Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia. In 1832, the Philadelphia Saturday Courier published five of his stories. In 1833, Baltimore Saturday Visitor gave him $50 prize for MS. Found in a Bottle. In 1835, Poe, his aunt, and Virginia moved to Richmond. He became editor of the Southern Literary Messenger.
He married Virginia, who was barely 14 years old. At this time, Poe published another fiction, including his most horrifying tale, Berenice in the Messenger. He contributed critical reviews on contemporary authors which increased the magazine’s circulation. This, however, caught the ire of the publisher who also dislike Poe’s habitual drinking. Poe considered Ligeia (1838), as his finest. The Fall Of The House Of Usher (1839), became one of his most famous stories.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) is sometimes referred as the first detective story. Then came his exemplary verses The Raven (1845) and The Bells (1849). Virginia died in January 1847. This broke Poe’s spirit but he continued his writing and conducting lectures. In 1849 he revisited Richmond, lectured, and became engaged to the fiancée he had lost in 1826 (Regan, 1967).
Poe's Contributions
Due to Edgar Allan Poe’s distinct style of writing and the timeless truths found in his pieces, his works lasted through centuries. If his works were interesting, his real life actually inspires more controversy. Poe led a full but short existence. Despite passing away at an early age of 40, he has achieved far more than those who lived longer than him.
His contribution to the transformation of short stories to an art, his flawless psychological thrillers and his memorable poems are forever etched in the memory of people the world over. He is famed for his tales about death as well as a recognized early practitioner of the short story and he is attributed to have started Gothic and Detective fiction (Crime fiction) in the United States. Poe is an undisputable force in literary journalism. His works are a source of inspiration to this day. And his legacy will most likely endure.
Read more at Suite101: Edgar Allan Poe: Life and Times of Poe http://biographiesmemoirs.suite101.com/article.cfm/edgar_allan_poe#ixzz0eQDyubkC
Read more at Suite101: Edgar Allan Poe: Life and Times of Poe http://biographiesmemoirs.suite101.com/article.cfm/edgar_allan_poe#ixzz0eQDkEG9l
Edgar Allan Poe lived a fascinating life, as fascinating as the tales he wove. He undoubtedly mastered the art of irony and writing psychological thrillers.
Edgar Allan Poe is probably one of the most recognizable names in American literature. He was a poet, short story writer, editor and critic. He gained immense popularity and acclaimed for his works in poems and short fiction. He is credited for making a short story from an anecdote to a work of art. His works give him a lot of distinction, making him a household name today.
He practically invented the detective story and perfected the craft of writing psychological thrillers. His literary criticisms which usually revolve on theoretical statements on poetry and short story are considered the most influential during his time. His influence on worldwide literature is also apparent (Regan, 1967).
His Life and Works
Edgar Allan Poe was born to David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins in Boston on January 19, 1809. Unfortunately, Poe's parents died before he turned 3 years old. John Allan a prosperous merchant in Richmond, Va., took him in his home and had him baptized as Edgar Allan Poe. He studied in England from 1815-20. He enrolled in the University of Virginia 1n 1826. He only stayed for a year though.
Poe incurred gambling debts. As a result, Allan prevented him to return to the university and broke his engagement to his girlfriend in Richmond, Sarah Elmira Royster. With no financial support, Poe joined the army. By this time he had already self-published his first book, Tammerlane and Other Poems (1827).
Allan and Poe reconciled. Poe knowingly disobeyed commands so he would be dismissed from West Point. His fellow cadets contributed money so he could print his third book Poems by Edgar A. Poe ... Second Edition (1831). His first two were Tamerlane and Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829).
Poe moved to Baltimore with his widowed aunt Maria Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia. In 1832, the Philadelphia Saturday Courier published five of his stories. In 1833, Baltimore Saturday Visitor gave him $50 prize for MS. Found in a Bottle. In 1835, Poe, his aunt, and Virginia moved to Richmond. He became editor of the Southern Literary Messenger.
He married Virginia, who was barely 14 years old. At this time, Poe published another fiction, including his most horrifying tale, Berenice in the Messenger. He contributed critical reviews on contemporary authors which increased the magazine’s circulation. This, however, caught the ire of the publisher who also dislike Poe’s habitual drinking. Poe considered Ligeia (1838), as his finest. The Fall Of The House Of Usher (1839), became one of his most famous stories.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) is sometimes referred as the first detective story. Then came his exemplary verses The Raven (1845) and The Bells (1849). Virginia died in January 1847. This broke Poe’s spirit but he continued his writing and conducting lectures. In 1849 he revisited Richmond, lectured, and became engaged to the fiancée he had lost in 1826 (Regan, 1967).
Poe's Contributions
Due to Edgar Allan Poe’s distinct style of writing and the timeless truths found in his pieces, his works lasted through centuries. If his works were interesting, his real life actually inspires more controversy. Poe led a full but short existence. Despite passing away at an early age of 40, he has achieved far more than those who lived longer than him.
His contribution to the transformation of short stories to an art, his flawless psychological thrillers and his memorable poems are forever etched in the memory of people the world over. He is famed for his tales about death as well as a recognized early practitioner of the short story and he is attributed to have started Gothic and Detective fiction (Crime fiction) in the United States. Poe is an undisputable force in literary journalism. His works are a source of inspiration to this day. And his legacy will most likely endure.
Read more at Suite101: Edgar Allan Poe: Life and Times of Poe http://biographiesmemoirs.suite101.com/article.cfm/edgar_allan_poe#ixzz0eQDyubkC
Read more at Suite101: Edgar Allan Poe: Life and Times of Poe http://biographiesmemoirs.suite101.com/article.cfm/edgar_allan_poe#ixzz0eQDkEG9l
Edgar Allan Poe Life and Times of Poe
Mar 9, 2009 Gwendolyn Cuizon
Edgar Allan Poe lived a fascinating life, as fascinating as the tales he wove. He undoubtedly mastered the art of irony and writing psychological thrillers.
Edgar Allan Poe is probably one of the most recognizable names in American literature. He was a poet, short story writer, editor and critic. He gained immense popularity and acclaimed for his works in poems and short fiction. He is credited for making a short story from an anecdote to a work of art. His works give him a lot of distinction, making him a household name today.
He practically invented the detective story and perfected the craft of writing psychological thrillers. His literary criticisms which usually revolve on theoretical statements on poetry and short story are considered the most influential during his time. His influence on worldwide literature is also apparent (Regan, 1967).
His Life and Works
Edgar Allan Poe was born to David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins in Boston on January 19, 1809. Unfortunately, Poe's parents died before he turned 3 years old. John Allan a prosperous merchant in Richmond, Va., took him in his home and had him baptized as Edgar Allan Poe. He studied in England from 1815-20. He enrolled in the University of Virginia 1n 1826. He only stayed for a year though.
Poe incurred gambling debts. As a result, Allan prevented him to return to the university and broke his engagement to his girlfriend in Richmond, Sarah Elmira Royster. With no financial support, Poe joined the army. By this time he had already self-published his first book, Tammerlane and Other Poems (1827).
Allan and Poe reconciled. Poe knowingly disobeyed commands so he would be dismissed from West Point. His fellow cadets contributed money so he could print his third book Poems by Edgar A. Poe ... Second Edition (1831). His first two were Tamerlane and Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829).
Read more at Suite101: Edgar Allan Poe: Life and Times of Poe http://biographiesmemoirs.suite101.com/article.cfm/edgar_allan_poe#ixzz0eQDkEG9l
Edgar Allan Poe lived a fascinating life, as fascinating as the tales he wove. He undoubtedly mastered the art of irony and writing psychological thrillers.
Edgar Allan Poe is probably one of the most recognizable names in American literature. He was a poet, short story writer, editor and critic. He gained immense popularity and acclaimed for his works in poems and short fiction. He is credited for making a short story from an anecdote to a work of art. His works give him a lot of distinction, making him a household name today.
He practically invented the detective story and perfected the craft of writing psychological thrillers. His literary criticisms which usually revolve on theoretical statements on poetry and short story are considered the most influential during his time. His influence on worldwide literature is also apparent (Regan, 1967).
His Life and Works
Edgar Allan Poe was born to David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins in Boston on January 19, 1809. Unfortunately, Poe's parents died before he turned 3 years old. John Allan a prosperous merchant in Richmond, Va., took him in his home and had him baptized as Edgar Allan Poe. He studied in England from 1815-20. He enrolled in the University of Virginia 1n 1826. He only stayed for a year though.
Poe incurred gambling debts. As a result, Allan prevented him to return to the university and broke his engagement to his girlfriend in Richmond, Sarah Elmira Royster. With no financial support, Poe joined the army. By this time he had already self-published his first book, Tammerlane and Other Poems (1827).
Allan and Poe reconciled. Poe knowingly disobeyed commands so he would be dismissed from West Point. His fellow cadets contributed money so he could print his third book Poems by Edgar A. Poe ... Second Edition (1831). His first two were Tamerlane and Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829).
Read more at Suite101: Edgar Allan Poe: Life and Times of Poe http://biographiesmemoirs.suite101.com/article.cfm/edgar_allan_poe#ixzz0eQDkEG9l
The Pit and the Pendulum Summary
Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Story about Psychological Torture
May 15, 2008 Melissa Howard
A summary of the short story The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe. The Pit and the Pendulum delves into the psychological games played by torturers and the mental
The unnamed narrator opens Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Pit and the Pendulum, by saying “I was sick, sick unto death...The sentence the dread sentence of death, was the last distinct accentuation which reached my ears.” Soon after he hears his sentence, the narrator passes out. We soon realize that we are hearing a first-hand account of a victim of the Spanish Inquisition.
Impressions of Fainting
The first sense to leave the narrator was his ability to hear. Yet before he passes out completely, he is still able to register visual impressions such as the thin white lips of the judges who have declared him guilty of some unknown crime. His focus shifts to the seven candles on the table before him before he passes out completely.
The narrator goes on to share with the reader some of the various impressions and moods left upon him by his time of unconsciousness and then shares the horror of returning to consciousness and of remembering his situation.
The Pit
At first, the narrator keeps his eyes closed out of fear of being able to see nothing once he opened his eyes. When he does open his eyes, he discovers that he is in complete darkness, which seemed to confirm his worst fears. However, he finally breaks out of his fear of entombment, stands up, and begins to move around. Once he realizes he is not in a tomb, he begins a methodical exploration of his cell. After some exploration, he falls into a nervous sleep, when he awakes, he finds food and drink has been place near him. After refreshing himself, he resumes his exploration. During which he narrowly escapes falling into a pit in the darkness.
Two Types of Torture
After avoiding the pit, the narrator reflects on what he knows of the Inquisition’s methods of torturing those they destroy. He divides their techniques into two categories “death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors.” He concluded that a death of moral torture was the death for which he is destined. The narrator is distressed and notes that for the torturers “The sudden extinction of life formed no part of their most horrible plan.”
Finally, the prisoner sleeps and once again he wakes to find food and water by his side. He drinks and enters into a drug-induced slumber. When he wakes, his cell now has light and he discovers that his impressions of it were incorrect. He makes a detailed list of its attributes with great difficulty because he is no longer at liberty. He has been strapped to a low frame. He is given spicy food but no water to drink.
The Pendulum
The prisoner then discovers that painted on the ceiling of the cell is the figure of Time holding a pendulum. However, the narrator soon realizes that the pendulum is actually a scythe that is swinging above him. After watching its slow movement, he looks around his cell again and notices huge rats emerging from the pit to explore his cell. When his gaze returns to the pendulum, he realizes to his horror that not only does it swing back and forth but it also descends. His terror eventually causes him to pass out.
When the narrator wakes, he realizes that the rats have consumed nearly all of his food. He also discovers that the pendulum has ceased movement. At first, he felt hopeful and then discerned that since it was obvious his captors watched his every move they had suspended the pendulum’s descent for their own amusement. He states that long-suffering had ‘nearly annihilated the ordinary powers of my mind. I was an imbecile – an idiot.”
As the pendulum began to descend, the prisoner realizes that the only place the straps do not cover his body is where the pendulum will begin its dreadful descent into his body. He then has another plan of escape. He smears his remaining food on the straps and lays still while the rats swarm over his body and chew through the straps.
Freedom and Rescue
At first, he is elated by his freedom but suddenly he realizes that his freedom is false. The room is now being heated the narrator decides to cast himself into the coolness of the well when he realizes that the room is changing shape from a square to a diamond. He despairs when he realizes the well is where his captors want him to go.
The walls draw nearer and the prisoner is forced nearer to the well. Just as he is about to be pushed into the pit, he hears trumpets, and human voices. The walls withdraw and he is caught just as he is about to totter into the pit. His savior is the French general LaSalle. The narrator realizes that the French have liberated Toledo from the Inquisition and that his captors are now themselves prisoners.
Read more at Suite101: The Pit and the Pendulum Summary: Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Story about Psychological Torture http://classic-american-fiction.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_pit_and_the_pendulum_summary#ixzz0eQDVn0qh
Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Story about Psychological Torture
May 15, 2008 Melissa Howard
A summary of the short story The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe. The Pit and the Pendulum delves into the psychological games played by torturers and the mental
The unnamed narrator opens Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Pit and the Pendulum, by saying “I was sick, sick unto death...The sentence the dread sentence of death, was the last distinct accentuation which reached my ears.” Soon after he hears his sentence, the narrator passes out. We soon realize that we are hearing a first-hand account of a victim of the Spanish Inquisition.
Impressions of Fainting
The first sense to leave the narrator was his ability to hear. Yet before he passes out completely, he is still able to register visual impressions such as the thin white lips of the judges who have declared him guilty of some unknown crime. His focus shifts to the seven candles on the table before him before he passes out completely.
The narrator goes on to share with the reader some of the various impressions and moods left upon him by his time of unconsciousness and then shares the horror of returning to consciousness and of remembering his situation.
The Pit
At first, the narrator keeps his eyes closed out of fear of being able to see nothing once he opened his eyes. When he does open his eyes, he discovers that he is in complete darkness, which seemed to confirm his worst fears. However, he finally breaks out of his fear of entombment, stands up, and begins to move around. Once he realizes he is not in a tomb, he begins a methodical exploration of his cell. After some exploration, he falls into a nervous sleep, when he awakes, he finds food and drink has been place near him. After refreshing himself, he resumes his exploration. During which he narrowly escapes falling into a pit in the darkness.
Two Types of Torture
After avoiding the pit, the narrator reflects on what he knows of the Inquisition’s methods of torturing those they destroy. He divides their techniques into two categories “death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors.” He concluded that a death of moral torture was the death for which he is destined. The narrator is distressed and notes that for the torturers “The sudden extinction of life formed no part of their most horrible plan.”
Finally, the prisoner sleeps and once again he wakes to find food and water by his side. He drinks and enters into a drug-induced slumber. When he wakes, his cell now has light and he discovers that his impressions of it were incorrect. He makes a detailed list of its attributes with great difficulty because he is no longer at liberty. He has been strapped to a low frame. He is given spicy food but no water to drink.
The Pendulum
The prisoner then discovers that painted on the ceiling of the cell is the figure of Time holding a pendulum. However, the narrator soon realizes that the pendulum is actually a scythe that is swinging above him. After watching its slow movement, he looks around his cell again and notices huge rats emerging from the pit to explore his cell. When his gaze returns to the pendulum, he realizes to his horror that not only does it swing back and forth but it also descends. His terror eventually causes him to pass out.
When the narrator wakes, he realizes that the rats have consumed nearly all of his food. He also discovers that the pendulum has ceased movement. At first, he felt hopeful and then discerned that since it was obvious his captors watched his every move they had suspended the pendulum’s descent for their own amusement. He states that long-suffering had ‘nearly annihilated the ordinary powers of my mind. I was an imbecile – an idiot.”
As the pendulum began to descend, the prisoner realizes that the only place the straps do not cover his body is where the pendulum will begin its dreadful descent into his body. He then has another plan of escape. He smears his remaining food on the straps and lays still while the rats swarm over his body and chew through the straps.
Freedom and Rescue
At first, he is elated by his freedom but suddenly he realizes that his freedom is false. The room is now being heated the narrator decides to cast himself into the coolness of the well when he realizes that the room is changing shape from a square to a diamond. He despairs when he realizes the well is where his captors want him to go.
The walls draw nearer and the prisoner is forced nearer to the well. Just as he is about to be pushed into the pit, he hears trumpets, and human voices. The walls withdraw and he is caught just as he is about to totter into the pit. His savior is the French general LaSalle. The narrator realizes that the French have liberated Toledo from the Inquisition and that his captors are now themselves prisoners.
Read more at Suite101: The Pit and the Pendulum Summary: Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Story about Psychological Torture http://classic-american-fiction.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_pit_and_the_pendulum_summary#ixzz0eQDVn0qh
edgar allan poe
Biography of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe Poe was born in Massachusetts, the son of travelling actors David and Elizabeth Arnold Poe. His mother died when he was two and his father was an alcoholic, so Poe went to live with a prosperous Scottish tobacco merchant, John Allan, in Richmond. Allan always refused to adopt Poe which led to bad feeling between the two of them.
Poe was educated at Stoke Newington in London from 1815-20. Despite considerable academic success his gambling debts forced him to leave the University of Virginia, where he had gone to study, after one year. By 1827 Poe, with typical restlessness, had moved from Boston to Richmond and then back to Boston again. He gained a good reputation in the army which he joined in 1827, but spent a miserable year at the US Military Academy at West Point in 1830, before being dishonourably discharged.
Poe stayed in Baltimore from 1831-35 and began writing more seriously. In 1836 he married his 13 year old cousin, Virginia. He had been working as a journalist since 1831, earning a bare minimum to survive, and from 1835-37 edited the Southern Literary Messenger.
His short stories reveal a fascination with emotional extremes, particularly fear, though his essays show that he was capable of being objective and critical.
In 1844 Poe moved to New York, but despite popular acclaim his life was still wretched. Virginia died of tuberculosis in 1847 and Poe, still poor and an alcoholic, died in Baltimore two years later.
Edgar Allan Poe Poe was born in Massachusetts, the son of travelling actors David and Elizabeth Arnold Poe. His mother died when he was two and his father was an alcoholic, so Poe went to live with a prosperous Scottish tobacco merchant, John Allan, in Richmond. Allan always refused to adopt Poe which led to bad feeling between the two of them.
Poe was educated at Stoke Newington in London from 1815-20. Despite considerable academic success his gambling debts forced him to leave the University of Virginia, where he had gone to study, after one year. By 1827 Poe, with typical restlessness, had moved from Boston to Richmond and then back to Boston again. He gained a good reputation in the army which he joined in 1827, but spent a miserable year at the US Military Academy at West Point in 1830, before being dishonourably discharged.
Poe stayed in Baltimore from 1831-35 and began writing more seriously. In 1836 he married his 13 year old cousin, Virginia. He had been working as a journalist since 1831, earning a bare minimum to survive, and from 1835-37 edited the Southern Literary Messenger.
His short stories reveal a fascination with emotional extremes, particularly fear, though his essays show that he was capable of being objective and critical.
In 1844 Poe moved to New York, but despite popular acclaim his life was still wretched. Virginia died of tuberculosis in 1847 and Poe, still poor and an alcoholic, died in Baltimore two years later.
The Pit and the Pendulum
by: Edgar Allan Poe
Impia tortorum longas hic turba furores Sanguinis innocui non satiata, aluit. Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro, Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.
- Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be erected upon the site of the Jacobin Club House in Paris.
I WAS sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence, the dread sentence of death, was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of REVOLUTION, perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill-wheel. This only for a brief period, for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a while, I saw, but with how terrible an exaggeration ! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white -- whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words -- and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness, of immovable resolution, of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was fate were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name, and I shuddered, because no sound succeeded. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment; and then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slender angels who would save me: but then all at once there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill, as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness superened ; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe.
I had swooned; but still will not say that all of consciousness was lost. What of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or even to describe; yet all was not lost. In the deepest slumber -- no! In delirium -- no! In a swoon -- no! In death -- no! Even in the grave all was not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterwards (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the swoon there are two stages; first, that of the sense of mental or spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of physical existence. It seems probable that if, upon reaching the second stage, we could recall the impressions of the first, we should find these impressions eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf is, what? How at least shall we distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb? But if the impressions of what I have termed the first stage are not at will recalled, yet, after long interval, do they not come unbidden, while we marvel whence they come? He who has never swooned is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over the perfume of some novel flower; is not he whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never before arrested his attention.
Amid frequent and thoughtful endeavours to remember , amid earnest struggles to regather some token of the state of seeming nothingness into which my soul had lapsed, there have been moments when I have dreamed of success; there have been brief, very brief periods when I have conjured up remembrances which the lucid reason of a later epoch assures me could have had reference only to that condition of seeming unconsciousness. These shadows of memory tell indistinctly of tall figures that lifted and bore me in silence down -- down -- still down -- till a hideous dizziness oppressed me at the mere idea of the interminableness of the descent. They tell also of a vague horror at my heart on account of that heart's unnatural stillness. Then comes a sense of sudden motionlessness throughout all things; as if those who bore me (a ghastly train!) had outrun, in their descent, the limits of the limitless , and paused from the wearisomeness of their toil. After this I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is MADNESS -- the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things.
Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound -- the tumultuous motion of the heart, and in my ears the sound of its beating. Then a pause in which all is blank. Then again sound, and motion, and touch, a tingling sensation pervading my frame. Then the mere consciousness of existence, without thought, a condition which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, THOUGHT, and shuddering terror, and earnest endeavour to comprehend my true state. Then a strong desire to lapse into insensibility. Then a rushing revival of soul and a successful effort to move. And now a full memory of the trial, of the judges, of the sable draperies, of the sentence, of the sickness, of the swoon. Then entire forgetfulness of all that followed; of all that a later day and much earnestness of endeavour have enabled me vaguely to recall.
So far I had not opened my eyes. I felt that I lay upon my back unbound. I reached out my hand, and it fell heavily upon something damp and hard. There I suffered it to remain for many minutes, while I strove to imagine where and what I could be. I longed, yet dared not, to employ my vision. I dreaded the first glance at objects around me. It was not that I feared to look upon things horrible, but that I grew aghast lest there should be NOTHING to see. At length, with a wild desperation at heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes. My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably close. I still lay quietly, and made effort to exercise my reason. I brought to mind the inquisitorial proceedings, and attempted from that point to deduce my real condition. The sentence had passed, and it appeared to me that a very long interval of time had since elapsed. Yet not for a moment did I suppose myself actually dead. Such a supposition, notwithstanding what we read in fiction , is altogether inconsistent with real existence; -- but where and in what state was I? The condemned to death, I knew, perished usually at the auto-da-fes, and one of these had been held on the very night of the day of my trial. Had I been remanded to my dungeon, to await the next sacrifice, which would not take place for many months? This I at once saw could not be. Victims had been in immediate demand. Moreover my dungeon, as well as all the condemned cells at Toledo, had stone floors, and light was not altogether excluded.
A fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood in torrents upon my heart, and for a brief period I once more relapsed into insensibility. Upon recovering, I at once started to my feet, trembling convulsively in every fibre. I thrust my arms wildly above and around me in all directions. I felt nothing; yet dreaded to move a step, lest I should be impeded by the walls of a TOMB. Perspiration burst from every pore, and stood in cold big beads upon my forehead. The agony of suspense grew at length intolerable, and I cautiously moved forward, with my arms extended , and my eyes straining from their sockets, in the hope of catching some faint ray of light. I proceeded for many paces, but still all was blackness and vacancy. I breathed more freely. It seemed evident that mine was not, at least, the most hideous of fates.
And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumours of the horrors of Toledo. Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated -- fables I had always deemed them -- but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper. Was I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness; or what fate perhaps even more fearful awaited me? That the result would be death, and a death of more than customary bitterness, I knew too well the character of my judges to doubt. The mode and the hour were all that occupied or distracted me.
My outstretched hands at length encountered some solid obstruction. It was a wall, seemingly of stone masonry -- very smooth, slimy, and cold. I followed it up; stepping with all the careful distrust with which certain antique narratives had inspired me. This process, however, afforded me no means of ascertaining the dimensions of my dungeon; as I might make its circuit, and return to the point whence I set out, without being aware of the fact, so perfectly uniform seemed the wall. I therefore sought the knife which had been in my pocket when led into the inquisitorial chamber, but it was gone; my clothes had been exchanged for a wrapper of coarse serge. I had thought of forcing the blade in some minute crevice of the masonry, so as to identify my point of departure. The difficulty, nevertheless, was but trivial, although, in the disorder of my fancy, it seemed at first insuperable. I tore a part of the hem from the robe, and placed the fragment at full length, and at right angles to the wall. In groping my way around the prison, I could not fail to encounter this rag upon completing the circuit. So, at least, I thought, but I had not counted upon the extent of the dungeon, or upon my own weakness. The ground was moist and slippery. I staggered onward for some time, when I stumbled and fell. My excessive fatigue induced me to remain prostrate, and sleep soon overtook me as I lay.
Upon awaking, and stretching forth an arm, I found beside me a loaf and a pitcher with water. I was too much exhausted to reflect upon this circumstance , but ate and drank with avidity. Shortly afterwards I resumed my tour around the prison, and with much toil came at last upon the fragment of the serge. Up to the period when I fell I had counted fifty-two paces, and upon resuming my walk I had counted forty-eight more, when I arrived at the rag. There were in all, then, a hundred paces; and, admitting two paces to the yard, I presumed the dungeon to be fifty yards in circuit. I had met, however, with many angles in the wall, and thus I could form no guess at the shape of the vault, for vault I could not help supposing it to be.
I had little object -- certainly no hope -- in these researches, but a vague curiosity prompted me to continue them. Quitting the wall, I resolved to cross the area of the enclosure. At first I proceeded with extreme caution, for the floor although seemingly of solid material was treacherous with slime. At length, however, I took courage and did not hesitate to step firmly -- endeavouring to cross in as direct a line as possible. I had advanced some ten or twelve paces in this manner, when the remnant of the torn hem of my robe became entangled between my legs. I stepped on it, and fell violently on my face.
In the confusion attending my fall, I did not immediately apprehend a somewhat startling circumstance , which yet, in a few seconds afterward, and while I still lay prostrate, arrested my attention. It was this: my chin rested upon the floor of the prison, but my lips, and the upper portion of my head, although seemingly at a less elevation than the chin, touched nothing. At the same time, my forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapour, and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose to my nostrils. I put forward my arm, and shuddered to find that I had fallen at the very brink of a circular pit, whose extent of course I had no means of ascertaining at the moment. Groping about the masonry just below the margin, I succeeded in dislodging a small fragment, and let it fall into the abyss. For many seconds I hearkened to its reverberations as it dashed against the sides of the chasm in its descent ; at length there was a sullen plunge into water, succeeded by loud echoes. At the same moment there came a sound resembling the quick opening, and as rapid closing of a door overhead, while a faint gleam of light flashed suddenly through the gloom, and as suddenly faded away.
I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me, and congratulated myself upon the timely accident by which I had escaped. Another step before my fall, and the world had seen me no more and the death just avoided was of that very character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales respecting the Inquisition. To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been reserved for the latter. By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me.
Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall -- resolving there to perish rather than risk the terrors of the wells, of which my imagination now pictured many in various positions about the dungeon. In other conditions of mind I might have had courage to end my misery at once by a plunge into one of these abysses; but now I was the veriest of cowards. Neither could I forget what I had read of these pits -- that the SUDDEN extinction of life formed no part of their most horrible plan.
Agitation of spirit kept me awake for many long hours; but at length I again slumbered. Upon arousing, I found by my side, as before, a loaf and a pitcher of water. A burning thirst consumed me, and I emptied the vessel at a draught. It must have been drugged, for scarcely had I drunk before I became irresistibly drowsy. A deep sleep fell upon me -- a sleep like that of death. How long it lasted of course I know not; but when once again I unclosed my eyes the objects around me were visible. By a wild sulphurous lustre, the origin of which I could not at first determine, I was enabled to see the extent and aspect of the prison.
In its size I had been greatly mistaken. The whole circuit of its walls did not exceed twenty-five yards. For some minutes this fact occasioned me a world of vain trouble; vain indeed -- for what could be of less importance, under the terrible circumstances which environed me than the mere dimensions of my dungeon? But my soul took a wild interest in trifles, and I busied myself in endeavours to account for the error I had committed in my measurement. The truth at length flashed upon me. In my first attempt at exploration I had counted fifty-two paces up to the period when I fell; I must then have been within a pace or two of the fragment of serge; in fact I had nearly performed the circuit of the vault. I then slept, and upon awaking, I must have returned upon my steps, thus supposing the circuit nearly double what it actually was. My confusion of mind prevented me from observing that I began my tour with the wall to the left, and ended it with the wall to the right.
I had been deceived too in respect to the shape of the enclosure. In feeling my way I had found many angles, and thus deduced an idea of great irregularity, so potent is the effect of total darkness upon one arousing from lethargy or sleep! The angles were simply those of a few slight depressions or niches at odd intervals. The general shape of the prison was square. What I had taken for masonry seemed now to be iron, or some other metal in huge plates, whose sutures or joints occasioned the depression. The entire surface of this metallic enclosure was rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive devices to which the charnel superstition of the monks has given rise. The figures of fiends in aspects of menace, with skeleton forms and other more really fearful images, overspread and disfigured the walls. I observed that the outlines of these monstrosities were sufficiently distinct, but that the colours seemed faded and blurred, as if from the effects of a damp atmosphere. I now noticed the floor, too, which was of stone. In the centre yawned the circular pit from whose jaws I had escaped ; but it was the only one in the dungeon.
All this I saw indistinctly and by much effort, for my personal condition had been greatly changed during slumber. I now lay upon my back, and at full length, on a species of low framework of wood. To this I was securely bound by a long strap resembling a surcingle. It passed in many convolutions about my limbs and body, leaving at liberty only my head, and my left arm to such extent that I could by dint of much exertion supply myself with food from an earthen dish which lay by my side on the floor. I saw to my horror that the pitcher had been removed . I say to my horror, for I was consumed with intolerable thirst. This thirst it appeared to be the design of my persecutors to stimulate, for the food in the dish was meat pungently seasoned.
Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my prison. It was some thirty or forty feet overhead, and constructed much as the side walls. In one of its panels a very singular figure riveted my whole attention . It was the painted figure of Time as he is commonly represented, save that in lieu of a scythe he held what at a casual glance I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum, such as we see on antique clocks. There was something, however, in the appearance of this machine which caused me to regard it more attentively. While I gazed directly upward at it (for its position was immediately over my own), I fancied that I saw it in motion. In an instant afterward the fancy was confirmed. Its sweep was brief, and of course slow. I watched it for some minutes, somewhat in fear but more in wonder. Wearied at length with observing its dull movement, I turned my eyes upon the other objects in the cell.
A slight noise attracted my notice, and looking to the floor, I saw several enormous rats traversing it. They had issued from the well which lay just within view to my right. Even then while I gazed, they came up in troops hurriedly, with ravenous eyes, allured by the scent of the meat. From this it required much effort and attention to scare them away.
It might have been half-an-hour, perhaps even an hour (for I could take but imperfect note of time) before I again cast my eyes upward. What I then saw confounded and amazed me. The sweep of the pendulum had increased in extent by nearly a yard. As a natural consequence, its velocity was also much greater. But what mainly disturbed me was the idea that it had perceptibly DESCENDED. I now observed, with what horror it is needless to say, that its nether extremity was formed of a crescent of glittering steel, about a foot in length from horn to horn; the horns upward, and the under edge evidently as keen as that of a razor. Like a razor also it seemed massy and heavy, tapering from the edge into a solid and broad structure above. It was appended to a weighty rod of brass, and the whole HISSED as it swung through the air.
I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by monkish ingenuity in torture. My cognisance of the pit had become known to the inquisitorial agents -- THE PIT, whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as myself, THE PIT, typical of hell, and regarded by rumour as the Ultima Thule of all their punishments. The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of accidents, and I knew that surprise or entrapment into torment formed an important portion of all the grotesquerie of these dungeon deaths. Having failed to fall, it was no part of the demon plan to hurl me into the abyss, and thus (there being no alternative) a different and a milder destruction awaited me. Milder! I half smiled in my agony as I thought of such application of such a term.
What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal, during which I counted the rushing oscillations of the steel! Inch by inch -- line by line -- with a descent only appreciable at intervals that seemed ages -- down and still down it came! Days passed -- it might have been that many days passed -- ere it swept so closely over me as to fan me with its acrid breath. The odour of the sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils. I prayed -- I wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful scimitar. And then I fell suddenly calm and lay smiling at the glittering death as a child at some rare bauble.
There was another interval of utter insensibility; it was brief, for upon again lapsing into life there had been no perceptible descent in the pendulum. But it might have been long -- for I knew there were demons who took note of my swoon, and who could have arrested the vibration at pleasure. Upon my recovery, too, I felt very -- oh! inexpressibly -- sick and weak, as if through long inanition. Even amid the agonies of that period the human nature craved food. With painful effort I outstretched my left arm as far as my bonds permitted, and took possession of the small remnant which had been spared me by the rats. As I put a portion of it within my lips there rushed to my mind a half-formed thought of joy -- of hope. Yet what business had I with hope? It was, as I say, a half-formed thought -- man has many such, which are never completed. I felt that it was of joy -- of hope; but I felt also that it had perished in its formation. In vain I struggled to perfect -- to regain it. Long suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind. I was an imbecile -- an idiot.
The vibration of the pendulum was at right angles to my length. I saw that the crescent was designed to cross the region of the heart. It would fray the serge of my robe; it would return and repeat its operations -- again -- and again. Notwithstanding its terrifically wide sweep (some thirty feet or more) and the hissing vigour of its descent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of iron, still the fraying of my robe would be all that, for several minutes, it would accomplish; and at this thought I paused. I dared not go farther than this reflection. I dwelt upon it with a pertinacity of attention -- as if, in so dwelling, I could arrest HERE the descent of the steel. I forced myself to ponder upon the sound of the crescent as it should pass across the garment -- upon the peculiar thrilling sensation which the friction of cloth produces on the nerves. I pondered upon all this frivolity until my teeth were on edge.
Down -- steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting its downward with its lateral velocity. To the right -- to the left -- far and wide -- with the shriek of a damned spirit! to my heart with the stealthy pace of the tiger! I alternately laughed and howled, as the one or the other idea grew predominant.
Down -- certainly, relentlessly down! It vibrated within three inches of my bosom! I struggled violently -- furiously -- to free my left arm. This was free only from the elbow to the hand. I could reach the latter, from the platter beside me to my mouth with great effort, but no farther. Could I have broken the fastenings above the elbow, I would have seized and attempted to arrest the pendulum. I might as well have attempted to arrest an avalanche!
Down -- still unceasingly -- still inevitably down! I gasped and struggled at each vibration. I shrunk convulsively at its very sweep. My eyes followed its outward or upward whirls with the eagerness of the most unmeaning despair; they closed themselves spasmodically at the descent, although death would have been a relief, O, how unspeakable! Still I quivered in every nerve to think how slight a sinking of the machinery would precipitate that keen glistening axe upon my bosom. It was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver -- the frame to shrink. It was HOPE -- the hope that triumphs on the rack -- that whispers to the death-condemned even in the dungeons of the Inquisition.
I saw that some ten or twelve vibrations would bring the steel in actual contact with my robe, and with this observation there suddenly came over my spirit all the keen, collected calmness of despair. For the first time during many hours, or perhaps days, I THOUGHT. It now occurred to me that the bandage or surcingle which enveloped me was UNIQUE. I was tied by no separate cord. The first stroke of the razor-like crescent athwart any portion of the band would so detach it that it might be unwound from my person by means of my left hand. But how fearful, in that case, the proximity of the steel! The result of the slightest struggle, how deadly! Was it likely, moreover, that the minions of the torturer had not foreseen and provided for this possibility! Was it probable that the bandage crossed my bosom in the track of the pendulum? Dreading to find my faint, and, as it seemed, my last hope frustrated, I so far elevated my head as to obtain a distinct view of my breast. The surcingle enveloped my limbs and body close in all directions save SAVE IN THE PATH OF THE DESTROYING CRESCENT.
Scarcely had I dropped my head back into its original position when there flashed upon my mind what I cannot better describe than as the unformed half of that idea of deliverance to which I have previously alluded, and of which a moiety only floated indeterminately through my brain when I raised food to my burning lips. The whole thought was now present -- feeble, scarcely sane, scarcely definite, but still entire. I proceeded at once, with the nervous energy of despair, to attempt its execution.
For many hours the immediate vicinity of the low framework upon which I lay had been literally swarming with rats. They were wild, bold, ravenous , their red eyes glaring upon me as if they waited but for motionlessness on my part to make me their prey. "To what food," I thought, "have they been accustomed in the well?"
They had devoured, in spite of all my efforts to prevent them, all but a small remnant of the contents of the dish. I had fallen into an habitual see-saw or wave of the hand about the platter; and at length the unconscious uniformity of the movement deprived it of effect. In their voracity the vermin frequently fastened their sharp fangs in my fingers. With the particles of the oily and spicy viand which now remained, I thoroughly rubbed the bandage wherever I could reach it; then, raising my hand from the floor, I lay breathlessly still.
At first the ravenous animals were startled and terrified at the change -- at the cessation of movement . They shrank alarmedly back; many sought the well. But this was only for a moment. I had not counted in vain upon their voracity. Observing that I remained without motion, one or two of the boldest leaped upon the frame-work and smelt at the surcingle. This seemed the signal for a general rush. Forth from the well they hurried in fresh troops. They clung to the wood, they overran it, and leaped in hundreds upon my person. The measured movement of the pendulum disturbed them not at all. Avoiding its strokes, they busied themselves with the annointed bandage. They pressed, they swarmed upon me in ever accumulating heaps. They writhed upon my throat; their cold lips sought my own; I was half stifled by their thronging pressure; disgust, for which the world has no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled with heavy clamminess my heart. Yet one minute and I felt that the struggle would be over. Plainly I perceived the loosening of the bandage. I knew that in more than one place it must be already severed. With a more than human resolution I lay STILL.
Nor had I erred in my calculations, nor had I endured in vain. I at length felt that I was FREE. The surcingle hung in ribands from my body. But the stroke of the pendulum already pressed upon my bosom. It had divided the serge of the robe. It had cut through the linen beneath. Twice again it swung, and a sharp sense of pain shot through every nerve. But the moment of escape had arrived. At a wave of my hand my deliverers hurried tumultously away. With a steady movement, cautious, sidelong, shrinking, and slow, I slid from the embrace of the bandage and beyond the reach of the scimitar. For the moment, at least I WAS FREE.
Free! and in the grasp of the Inquisition! I had scarcely stepped from my wooden bed of horror upon the stone floor of the prison, when the motion of the hellish machine ceased and I beheld it drawn up by some invisible force through the ceiling. This was a lesson which I took desperately to heart. My every motion was undoubtedly watched. Free! I had but escaped death in one form of agony to be delivered unto worse than death in some other. With that thought I rolled my eyes nervously around on the barriers of iron that hemmed me in. Something unusual -- some change which at first I could not appreciate distinctly -- it was obvious had taken place in the apartment. For many minutes of a dreamy and trembling abstraction I busied myself in vain, unconnected conjecture. During this period I became aware, for the first time, of the origin of the sulphurous light which illumined the cell. It proceeded from a fissure about half-an-inch in width extending entirely around the prison at the base of the walls which thus appeared, and were completely separated from the floor. I endeavoured, but of course in vain, to look through the aperture.
As I arose from the attempt, the mystery of the alteration in the chamber broke at once upon my understanding. I have observed that although the outlines of the figures upon the walls were sufficiently distinct, yet the colours seemed blurred and indefinite . These colours had now assumed, and were momentarily assuming, a startling and most intense brilliancy, that give to the spectral and fiendish portraitures an aspect that might have thrilled even firmer nerves than my own. Demon eyes, of a wild and ghastly vivacity, glared upon me in a thousand directions where none had been visible before, and gleamed with the lurid lustre of a fire that I could not force my imagination to regard as unreal.
UNREAL! -- Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of the vapour of heated iron! A suffocating odour pervaded the prison! A deeper glow settled each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies! A richer tint of crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. I panted ' I gasped for breath! There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors -- oh most unrelenting! oh, most demoniac of men! I shrank from the glowing metal to the centre of the cell. Amid the thought of the fiery destruction that impended, the idea of the coolness of the well came over my soul like balm. I rushed to its deadly brink. I threw my straining vision below. The glare from the enkindled roof illumined its inmost recesses. Yet, for a wild moment, did my spirit refuse to comprehend the meaning of what I saw. At length it forced -- it wrestled its way into my soul -- it burned itself in upon my shuddering reason. O for a voice to speak! -- oh, horror! -- oh, any horror but this! With a shriek I rushed from the margin and buried my face in my hands -- weeping bitterly.
The heat rapidly increased, and once again I looked up, shuddering as if with a fit of the ague. There had been a second change in the cell -- and now the change was obviously in the FORM. As before , it was in vain that I at first endeavoured to appreciate or understand what was taking place. But not long was I left in doubt. The inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried by my two-fold escape, and there was to be no more dallying with the King of Terrors. The room had been square. I saw that two of its iron angles were now acute -- two consequently, obtuse. The fearful difference quickly increased with a low rumbling or moaning sound. In an instant the apartment had shifted its form into that of a lozenge. But the alteration stopped not here -- I neither hoped nor desired it to stop. I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I not have known that INTO THE PIT it was the object of the burning iron to urge me? Could I resist its glow? or if even that, could I withstand its pressure ? And now, flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for contempla- tion. Its centre, and of course, its greatest width, came just over the yawning gulf. I shrank back -- but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly onward . At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair. I felt that I tottered upon the brink -- I averted my eyes --
There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell fainting into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.
Impia tortorum longas hic turba furores Sanguinis innocui non satiata, aluit. Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro, Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.
- Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be erected upon the site of the Jacobin Club House in Paris.
I WAS sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence, the dread sentence of death, was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of REVOLUTION, perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill-wheel. This only for a brief period, for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a while, I saw, but with how terrible an exaggeration ! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white -- whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words -- and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness, of immovable resolution, of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was fate were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name, and I shuddered, because no sound succeeded. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment; and then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slender angels who would save me: but then all at once there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill, as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness superened ; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe.
I had swooned; but still will not say that all of consciousness was lost. What of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or even to describe; yet all was not lost. In the deepest slumber -- no! In delirium -- no! In a swoon -- no! In death -- no! Even in the grave all was not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterwards (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the swoon there are two stages; first, that of the sense of mental or spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of physical existence. It seems probable that if, upon reaching the second stage, we could recall the impressions of the first, we should find these impressions eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf is, what? How at least shall we distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb? But if the impressions of what I have termed the first stage are not at will recalled, yet, after long interval, do they not come unbidden, while we marvel whence they come? He who has never swooned is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over the perfume of some novel flower; is not he whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never before arrested his attention.
Amid frequent and thoughtful endeavours to remember , amid earnest struggles to regather some token of the state of seeming nothingness into which my soul had lapsed, there have been moments when I have dreamed of success; there have been brief, very brief periods when I have conjured up remembrances which the lucid reason of a later epoch assures me could have had reference only to that condition of seeming unconsciousness. These shadows of memory tell indistinctly of tall figures that lifted and bore me in silence down -- down -- still down -- till a hideous dizziness oppressed me at the mere idea of the interminableness of the descent. They tell also of a vague horror at my heart on account of that heart's unnatural stillness. Then comes a sense of sudden motionlessness throughout all things; as if those who bore me (a ghastly train!) had outrun, in their descent, the limits of the limitless , and paused from the wearisomeness of their toil. After this I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is MADNESS -- the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things.
Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound -- the tumultuous motion of the heart, and in my ears the sound of its beating. Then a pause in which all is blank. Then again sound, and motion, and touch, a tingling sensation pervading my frame. Then the mere consciousness of existence, without thought, a condition which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, THOUGHT, and shuddering terror, and earnest endeavour to comprehend my true state. Then a strong desire to lapse into insensibility. Then a rushing revival of soul and a successful effort to move. And now a full memory of the trial, of the judges, of the sable draperies, of the sentence, of the sickness, of the swoon. Then entire forgetfulness of all that followed; of all that a later day and much earnestness of endeavour have enabled me vaguely to recall.
So far I had not opened my eyes. I felt that I lay upon my back unbound. I reached out my hand, and it fell heavily upon something damp and hard. There I suffered it to remain for many minutes, while I strove to imagine where and what I could be. I longed, yet dared not, to employ my vision. I dreaded the first glance at objects around me. It was not that I feared to look upon things horrible, but that I grew aghast lest there should be NOTHING to see. At length, with a wild desperation at heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes. My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably close. I still lay quietly, and made effort to exercise my reason. I brought to mind the inquisitorial proceedings, and attempted from that point to deduce my real condition. The sentence had passed, and it appeared to me that a very long interval of time had since elapsed. Yet not for a moment did I suppose myself actually dead. Such a supposition, notwithstanding what we read in fiction , is altogether inconsistent with real existence; -- but where and in what state was I? The condemned to death, I knew, perished usually at the auto-da-fes, and one of these had been held on the very night of the day of my trial. Had I been remanded to my dungeon, to await the next sacrifice, which would not take place for many months? This I at once saw could not be. Victims had been in immediate demand. Moreover my dungeon, as well as all the condemned cells at Toledo, had stone floors, and light was not altogether excluded.
A fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood in torrents upon my heart, and for a brief period I once more relapsed into insensibility. Upon recovering, I at once started to my feet, trembling convulsively in every fibre. I thrust my arms wildly above and around me in all directions. I felt nothing; yet dreaded to move a step, lest I should be impeded by the walls of a TOMB. Perspiration burst from every pore, and stood in cold big beads upon my forehead. The agony of suspense grew at length intolerable, and I cautiously moved forward, with my arms extended , and my eyes straining from their sockets, in the hope of catching some faint ray of light. I proceeded for many paces, but still all was blackness and vacancy. I breathed more freely. It seemed evident that mine was not, at least, the most hideous of fates.
And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumours of the horrors of Toledo. Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated -- fables I had always deemed them -- but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper. Was I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness; or what fate perhaps even more fearful awaited me? That the result would be death, and a death of more than customary bitterness, I knew too well the character of my judges to doubt. The mode and the hour were all that occupied or distracted me.
My outstretched hands at length encountered some solid obstruction. It was a wall, seemingly of stone masonry -- very smooth, slimy, and cold. I followed it up; stepping with all the careful distrust with which certain antique narratives had inspired me. This process, however, afforded me no means of ascertaining the dimensions of my dungeon; as I might make its circuit, and return to the point whence I set out, without being aware of the fact, so perfectly uniform seemed the wall. I therefore sought the knife which had been in my pocket when led into the inquisitorial chamber, but it was gone; my clothes had been exchanged for a wrapper of coarse serge. I had thought of forcing the blade in some minute crevice of the masonry, so as to identify my point of departure. The difficulty, nevertheless, was but trivial, although, in the disorder of my fancy, it seemed at first insuperable. I tore a part of the hem from the robe, and placed the fragment at full length, and at right angles to the wall. In groping my way around the prison, I could not fail to encounter this rag upon completing the circuit. So, at least, I thought, but I had not counted upon the extent of the dungeon, or upon my own weakness. The ground was moist and slippery. I staggered onward for some time, when I stumbled and fell. My excessive fatigue induced me to remain prostrate, and sleep soon overtook me as I lay.
Upon awaking, and stretching forth an arm, I found beside me a loaf and a pitcher with water. I was too much exhausted to reflect upon this circumstance , but ate and drank with avidity. Shortly afterwards I resumed my tour around the prison, and with much toil came at last upon the fragment of the serge. Up to the period when I fell I had counted fifty-two paces, and upon resuming my walk I had counted forty-eight more, when I arrived at the rag. There were in all, then, a hundred paces; and, admitting two paces to the yard, I presumed the dungeon to be fifty yards in circuit. I had met, however, with many angles in the wall, and thus I could form no guess at the shape of the vault, for vault I could not help supposing it to be.
I had little object -- certainly no hope -- in these researches, but a vague curiosity prompted me to continue them. Quitting the wall, I resolved to cross the area of the enclosure. At first I proceeded with extreme caution, for the floor although seemingly of solid material was treacherous with slime. At length, however, I took courage and did not hesitate to step firmly -- endeavouring to cross in as direct a line as possible. I had advanced some ten or twelve paces in this manner, when the remnant of the torn hem of my robe became entangled between my legs. I stepped on it, and fell violently on my face.
In the confusion attending my fall, I did not immediately apprehend a somewhat startling circumstance , which yet, in a few seconds afterward, and while I still lay prostrate, arrested my attention. It was this: my chin rested upon the floor of the prison, but my lips, and the upper portion of my head, although seemingly at a less elevation than the chin, touched nothing. At the same time, my forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapour, and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose to my nostrils. I put forward my arm, and shuddered to find that I had fallen at the very brink of a circular pit, whose extent of course I had no means of ascertaining at the moment. Groping about the masonry just below the margin, I succeeded in dislodging a small fragment, and let it fall into the abyss. For many seconds I hearkened to its reverberations as it dashed against the sides of the chasm in its descent ; at length there was a sullen plunge into water, succeeded by loud echoes. At the same moment there came a sound resembling the quick opening, and as rapid closing of a door overhead, while a faint gleam of light flashed suddenly through the gloom, and as suddenly faded away.
I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me, and congratulated myself upon the timely accident by which I had escaped. Another step before my fall, and the world had seen me no more and the death just avoided was of that very character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales respecting the Inquisition. To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been reserved for the latter. By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me.
Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall -- resolving there to perish rather than risk the terrors of the wells, of which my imagination now pictured many in various positions about the dungeon. In other conditions of mind I might have had courage to end my misery at once by a plunge into one of these abysses; but now I was the veriest of cowards. Neither could I forget what I had read of these pits -- that the SUDDEN extinction of life formed no part of their most horrible plan.
Agitation of spirit kept me awake for many long hours; but at length I again slumbered. Upon arousing, I found by my side, as before, a loaf and a pitcher of water. A burning thirst consumed me, and I emptied the vessel at a draught. It must have been drugged, for scarcely had I drunk before I became irresistibly drowsy. A deep sleep fell upon me -- a sleep like that of death. How long it lasted of course I know not; but when once again I unclosed my eyes the objects around me were visible. By a wild sulphurous lustre, the origin of which I could not at first determine, I was enabled to see the extent and aspect of the prison.
In its size I had been greatly mistaken. The whole circuit of its walls did not exceed twenty-five yards. For some minutes this fact occasioned me a world of vain trouble; vain indeed -- for what could be of less importance, under the terrible circumstances which environed me than the mere dimensions of my dungeon? But my soul took a wild interest in trifles, and I busied myself in endeavours to account for the error I had committed in my measurement. The truth at length flashed upon me. In my first attempt at exploration I had counted fifty-two paces up to the period when I fell; I must then have been within a pace or two of the fragment of serge; in fact I had nearly performed the circuit of the vault. I then slept, and upon awaking, I must have returned upon my steps, thus supposing the circuit nearly double what it actually was. My confusion of mind prevented me from observing that I began my tour with the wall to the left, and ended it with the wall to the right.
I had been deceived too in respect to the shape of the enclosure. In feeling my way I had found many angles, and thus deduced an idea of great irregularity, so potent is the effect of total darkness upon one arousing from lethargy or sleep! The angles were simply those of a few slight depressions or niches at odd intervals. The general shape of the prison was square. What I had taken for masonry seemed now to be iron, or some other metal in huge plates, whose sutures or joints occasioned the depression. The entire surface of this metallic enclosure was rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive devices to which the charnel superstition of the monks has given rise. The figures of fiends in aspects of menace, with skeleton forms and other more really fearful images, overspread and disfigured the walls. I observed that the outlines of these monstrosities were sufficiently distinct, but that the colours seemed faded and blurred, as if from the effects of a damp atmosphere. I now noticed the floor, too, which was of stone. In the centre yawned the circular pit from whose jaws I had escaped ; but it was the only one in the dungeon.
All this I saw indistinctly and by much effort, for my personal condition had been greatly changed during slumber. I now lay upon my back, and at full length, on a species of low framework of wood. To this I was securely bound by a long strap resembling a surcingle. It passed in many convolutions about my limbs and body, leaving at liberty only my head, and my left arm to such extent that I could by dint of much exertion supply myself with food from an earthen dish which lay by my side on the floor. I saw to my horror that the pitcher had been removed . I say to my horror, for I was consumed with intolerable thirst. This thirst it appeared to be the design of my persecutors to stimulate, for the food in the dish was meat pungently seasoned.
Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my prison. It was some thirty or forty feet overhead, and constructed much as the side walls. In one of its panels a very singular figure riveted my whole attention . It was the painted figure of Time as he is commonly represented, save that in lieu of a scythe he held what at a casual glance I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum, such as we see on antique clocks. There was something, however, in the appearance of this machine which caused me to regard it more attentively. While I gazed directly upward at it (for its position was immediately over my own), I fancied that I saw it in motion. In an instant afterward the fancy was confirmed. Its sweep was brief, and of course slow. I watched it for some minutes, somewhat in fear but more in wonder. Wearied at length with observing its dull movement, I turned my eyes upon the other objects in the cell.
A slight noise attracted my notice, and looking to the floor, I saw several enormous rats traversing it. They had issued from the well which lay just within view to my right. Even then while I gazed, they came up in troops hurriedly, with ravenous eyes, allured by the scent of the meat. From this it required much effort and attention to scare them away.
It might have been half-an-hour, perhaps even an hour (for I could take but imperfect note of time) before I again cast my eyes upward. What I then saw confounded and amazed me. The sweep of the pendulum had increased in extent by nearly a yard. As a natural consequence, its velocity was also much greater. But what mainly disturbed me was the idea that it had perceptibly DESCENDED. I now observed, with what horror it is needless to say, that its nether extremity was formed of a crescent of glittering steel, about a foot in length from horn to horn; the horns upward, and the under edge evidently as keen as that of a razor. Like a razor also it seemed massy and heavy, tapering from the edge into a solid and broad structure above. It was appended to a weighty rod of brass, and the whole HISSED as it swung through the air.
I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by monkish ingenuity in torture. My cognisance of the pit had become known to the inquisitorial agents -- THE PIT, whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as myself, THE PIT, typical of hell, and regarded by rumour as the Ultima Thule of all their punishments. The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of accidents, and I knew that surprise or entrapment into torment formed an important portion of all the grotesquerie of these dungeon deaths. Having failed to fall, it was no part of the demon plan to hurl me into the abyss, and thus (there being no alternative) a different and a milder destruction awaited me. Milder! I half smiled in my agony as I thought of such application of such a term.
What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal, during which I counted the rushing oscillations of the steel! Inch by inch -- line by line -- with a descent only appreciable at intervals that seemed ages -- down and still down it came! Days passed -- it might have been that many days passed -- ere it swept so closely over me as to fan me with its acrid breath. The odour of the sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils. I prayed -- I wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful scimitar. And then I fell suddenly calm and lay smiling at the glittering death as a child at some rare bauble.
There was another interval of utter insensibility; it was brief, for upon again lapsing into life there had been no perceptible descent in the pendulum. But it might have been long -- for I knew there were demons who took note of my swoon, and who could have arrested the vibration at pleasure. Upon my recovery, too, I felt very -- oh! inexpressibly -- sick and weak, as if through long inanition. Even amid the agonies of that period the human nature craved food. With painful effort I outstretched my left arm as far as my bonds permitted, and took possession of the small remnant which had been spared me by the rats. As I put a portion of it within my lips there rushed to my mind a half-formed thought of joy -- of hope. Yet what business had I with hope? It was, as I say, a half-formed thought -- man has many such, which are never completed. I felt that it was of joy -- of hope; but I felt also that it had perished in its formation. In vain I struggled to perfect -- to regain it. Long suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind. I was an imbecile -- an idiot.
The vibration of the pendulum was at right angles to my length. I saw that the crescent was designed to cross the region of the heart. It would fray the serge of my robe; it would return and repeat its operations -- again -- and again. Notwithstanding its terrifically wide sweep (some thirty feet or more) and the hissing vigour of its descent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of iron, still the fraying of my robe would be all that, for several minutes, it would accomplish; and at this thought I paused. I dared not go farther than this reflection. I dwelt upon it with a pertinacity of attention -- as if, in so dwelling, I could arrest HERE the descent of the steel. I forced myself to ponder upon the sound of the crescent as it should pass across the garment -- upon the peculiar thrilling sensation which the friction of cloth produces on the nerves. I pondered upon all this frivolity until my teeth were on edge.
Down -- steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting its downward with its lateral velocity. To the right -- to the left -- far and wide -- with the shriek of a damned spirit! to my heart with the stealthy pace of the tiger! I alternately laughed and howled, as the one or the other idea grew predominant.
Down -- certainly, relentlessly down! It vibrated within three inches of my bosom! I struggled violently -- furiously -- to free my left arm. This was free only from the elbow to the hand. I could reach the latter, from the platter beside me to my mouth with great effort, but no farther. Could I have broken the fastenings above the elbow, I would have seized and attempted to arrest the pendulum. I might as well have attempted to arrest an avalanche!
Down -- still unceasingly -- still inevitably down! I gasped and struggled at each vibration. I shrunk convulsively at its very sweep. My eyes followed its outward or upward whirls with the eagerness of the most unmeaning despair; they closed themselves spasmodically at the descent, although death would have been a relief, O, how unspeakable! Still I quivered in every nerve to think how slight a sinking of the machinery would precipitate that keen glistening axe upon my bosom. It was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver -- the frame to shrink. It was HOPE -- the hope that triumphs on the rack -- that whispers to the death-condemned even in the dungeons of the Inquisition.
I saw that some ten or twelve vibrations would bring the steel in actual contact with my robe, and with this observation there suddenly came over my spirit all the keen, collected calmness of despair. For the first time during many hours, or perhaps days, I THOUGHT. It now occurred to me that the bandage or surcingle which enveloped me was UNIQUE. I was tied by no separate cord. The first stroke of the razor-like crescent athwart any portion of the band would so detach it that it might be unwound from my person by means of my left hand. But how fearful, in that case, the proximity of the steel! The result of the slightest struggle, how deadly! Was it likely, moreover, that the minions of the torturer had not foreseen and provided for this possibility! Was it probable that the bandage crossed my bosom in the track of the pendulum? Dreading to find my faint, and, as it seemed, my last hope frustrated, I so far elevated my head as to obtain a distinct view of my breast. The surcingle enveloped my limbs and body close in all directions save SAVE IN THE PATH OF THE DESTROYING CRESCENT.
Scarcely had I dropped my head back into its original position when there flashed upon my mind what I cannot better describe than as the unformed half of that idea of deliverance to which I have previously alluded, and of which a moiety only floated indeterminately through my brain when I raised food to my burning lips. The whole thought was now present -- feeble, scarcely sane, scarcely definite, but still entire. I proceeded at once, with the nervous energy of despair, to attempt its execution.
For many hours the immediate vicinity of the low framework upon which I lay had been literally swarming with rats. They were wild, bold, ravenous , their red eyes glaring upon me as if they waited but for motionlessness on my part to make me their prey. "To what food," I thought, "have they been accustomed in the well?"
They had devoured, in spite of all my efforts to prevent them, all but a small remnant of the contents of the dish. I had fallen into an habitual see-saw or wave of the hand about the platter; and at length the unconscious uniformity of the movement deprived it of effect. In their voracity the vermin frequently fastened their sharp fangs in my fingers. With the particles of the oily and spicy viand which now remained, I thoroughly rubbed the bandage wherever I could reach it; then, raising my hand from the floor, I lay breathlessly still.
At first the ravenous animals were startled and terrified at the change -- at the cessation of movement . They shrank alarmedly back; many sought the well. But this was only for a moment. I had not counted in vain upon their voracity. Observing that I remained without motion, one or two of the boldest leaped upon the frame-work and smelt at the surcingle. This seemed the signal for a general rush. Forth from the well they hurried in fresh troops. They clung to the wood, they overran it, and leaped in hundreds upon my person. The measured movement of the pendulum disturbed them not at all. Avoiding its strokes, they busied themselves with the annointed bandage. They pressed, they swarmed upon me in ever accumulating heaps. They writhed upon my throat; their cold lips sought my own; I was half stifled by their thronging pressure; disgust, for which the world has no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled with heavy clamminess my heart. Yet one minute and I felt that the struggle would be over. Plainly I perceived the loosening of the bandage. I knew that in more than one place it must be already severed. With a more than human resolution I lay STILL.
Nor had I erred in my calculations, nor had I endured in vain. I at length felt that I was FREE. The surcingle hung in ribands from my body. But the stroke of the pendulum already pressed upon my bosom. It had divided the serge of the robe. It had cut through the linen beneath. Twice again it swung, and a sharp sense of pain shot through every nerve. But the moment of escape had arrived. At a wave of my hand my deliverers hurried tumultously away. With a steady movement, cautious, sidelong, shrinking, and slow, I slid from the embrace of the bandage and beyond the reach of the scimitar. For the moment, at least I WAS FREE.
Free! and in the grasp of the Inquisition! I had scarcely stepped from my wooden bed of horror upon the stone floor of the prison, when the motion of the hellish machine ceased and I beheld it drawn up by some invisible force through the ceiling. This was a lesson which I took desperately to heart. My every motion was undoubtedly watched. Free! I had but escaped death in one form of agony to be delivered unto worse than death in some other. With that thought I rolled my eyes nervously around on the barriers of iron that hemmed me in. Something unusual -- some change which at first I could not appreciate distinctly -- it was obvious had taken place in the apartment. For many minutes of a dreamy and trembling abstraction I busied myself in vain, unconnected conjecture. During this period I became aware, for the first time, of the origin of the sulphurous light which illumined the cell. It proceeded from a fissure about half-an-inch in width extending entirely around the prison at the base of the walls which thus appeared, and were completely separated from the floor. I endeavoured, but of course in vain, to look through the aperture.
As I arose from the attempt, the mystery of the alteration in the chamber broke at once upon my understanding. I have observed that although the outlines of the figures upon the walls were sufficiently distinct, yet the colours seemed blurred and indefinite . These colours had now assumed, and were momentarily assuming, a startling and most intense brilliancy, that give to the spectral and fiendish portraitures an aspect that might have thrilled even firmer nerves than my own. Demon eyes, of a wild and ghastly vivacity, glared upon me in a thousand directions where none had been visible before, and gleamed with the lurid lustre of a fire that I could not force my imagination to regard as unreal.
UNREAL! -- Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of the vapour of heated iron! A suffocating odour pervaded the prison! A deeper glow settled each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies! A richer tint of crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. I panted ' I gasped for breath! There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors -- oh most unrelenting! oh, most demoniac of men! I shrank from the glowing metal to the centre of the cell. Amid the thought of the fiery destruction that impended, the idea of the coolness of the well came over my soul like balm. I rushed to its deadly brink. I threw my straining vision below. The glare from the enkindled roof illumined its inmost recesses. Yet, for a wild moment, did my spirit refuse to comprehend the meaning of what I saw. At length it forced -- it wrestled its way into my soul -- it burned itself in upon my shuddering reason. O for a voice to speak! -- oh, horror! -- oh, any horror but this! With a shriek I rushed from the margin and buried my face in my hands -- weeping bitterly.
The heat rapidly increased, and once again I looked up, shuddering as if with a fit of the ague. There had been a second change in the cell -- and now the change was obviously in the FORM. As before , it was in vain that I at first endeavoured to appreciate or understand what was taking place. But not long was I left in doubt. The inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried by my two-fold escape, and there was to be no more dallying with the King of Terrors. The room had been square. I saw that two of its iron angles were now acute -- two consequently, obtuse. The fearful difference quickly increased with a low rumbling or moaning sound. In an instant the apartment had shifted its form into that of a lozenge. But the alteration stopped not here -- I neither hoped nor desired it to stop. I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I not have known that INTO THE PIT it was the object of the burning iron to urge me? Could I resist its glow? or if even that, could I withstand its pressure ? And now, flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for contempla- tion. Its centre, and of course, its greatest width, came just over the yawning gulf. I shrank back -- but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly onward . At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair. I felt that I tottered upon the brink -- I averted my eyes --
There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell fainting into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)