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Universi^ Microfilms International 300 N. Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 8225510 Mainville, Stephen John LANGUAGE AND THE VOID: POE’S DISCOURSE OF HORROR The University o f Oklahoma PH.D. 1982 University Microfilms I n ter n âti O n si300 N. zeeb Road. Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE LANGUAGE AND THE VOID: POE'S DISCOURSE OF HORROR A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY STEPHEN MAINVILLE Norman, Oklahoma 1982 LANGUAGE AND THE VOID: POE'S DISCOURSE OF HORROR APPROVE-EKBY WM (r^ / ^ f/J DISSERTATION COMMITTE]^ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe much gratitude to all of those teachers— partic­ ularly Professors Wesley Sweetser, Bruce Granger, and Joe Fritz— and others— particularly my mother and father— who encouraged me during my long bout with Poe. I would like to profusely thank my committee. Professors Alan Velie (who taught me the "heimlich maneuver"), Paul Ruggiers, and David Levy, in spite of their busy schedules, patiently read the dissertation in its various stages and offered insightful and useful suggestions. Professors Ray Male and Ronald Schleifer never gave up— as far as I know (or care to know)— in their belief that this study would emerge from the void, in spite of a few humorous remarks leaning in that direction. (I recall-_digtinctly, very distinctly— my situation being compared to that of the narrator in "The Pit and the Pendulum," the blade of the pendulum descending, the walls closing in, pushing him toward the abyss, the void. .) I thank them for their invaluable energy and their advice, often "rotten with perfection," which helped give some focus to what I had in my mind. My thanks, too, to Jody Foster and Kaye Robertson, for their support and constant reminders of the horror of not going the distance with Poe. And, finally, my thanks to Edgar Poe. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION: LANGUAGE AND THE VOID............. 1 II. FRAGMENTED DISCOURSE: THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM ................................. 30 III. SELF-REFLEXIVE DISCOURSE: LANGUAGE AND THE VOID IN POE'S GOTHIC FRONTIERS.................... 60 IV. REMEMBERED DISCOURSE: POE'S BEREAVED LOVERS.... 90 V. DISMEMBERED DISCOURSE: DEATH SENTENCES IN . POE'S MURDEROUS NARRATIVES........................ 132 VI. DEADLY DISCOURSE: HORROR AND THE POE-SCRIPT OF NATURE............................................ 189 LIST OF WORKS CITED........................................222 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: LANGUAGE AND THE VOID Poe knew well the language of horror, but he also knew the horror of language, of language and the void. His best tales, it is generally acknowledged, are those tales of horror termed the "arabesques," an arabesque being "a prose equivalent of a poem!'^ These tales, like Poe's poems, attempt to bring about an effect of beauty, which Poe regarded as the aim of poetry. The world of these tales with beauty as their aim is a world, I will argue, riddled with images of language, of print, created by the juxtaposi­ tion of black and white, the two colors which permeate Poe's tales. Language, specifically print, black print on a white page— white, also the void, the blank page always waiting beyond print, beyond language— was what Poe had to use to achieve the desired effect of beauty. The paradox is that in fact what Poe does— or tries to do— is to use language to transcend itself. What Jacques Derrida says of Rousseau can be said of Poe: Between prelanguage and the linguistic catastrophe instituting the division of discourse, [Poe] attempts to recapture a sort of happy pause, the instantaneity of a full language, the image stabilizing what was 2 no more than a point of pure passage: a language without discourse, a speech without sentence, without syntax, without parts, without grammar, a language of pure effusion, beyond the cry, but short of the hinge . that articulates and at the same time disarticulates the immediate unity of meaning, within which the being of the subject distinguishes itself neither from its act nor from its attributes. But language cannot be truly born except by the dis­ ruption and fracture of that happy plenitude.2 The connection to Poe here becomes clear. What is an example of a word taken from "a language of pure effusion"? "Eureka" is one example. It is "beyond the cry, but short of the hinge" that both articulates and disarticulates "the immediate unity of meaning." So it is indeed telling that Poe titled his essay on the nature of "the material and spiritual universe" nothing other than Eureka. And it is just as telling that he presented Eureka "as a Poem"— 'hot in its character of Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth. A discussion of Eureka is, in fact, a useful preface to an analysis of the language of horror in Poe's arabesques, which is the focus of the following chapters. For in Eureka, as we shall see, Poe presents an aesthetic universe, a universe which moves from unity to annihilation, a unity and annihilation which haunt the psyches of the poetagonists in the tales of horror. Eureka begins with the general proposition that "In the Original Unity of the First Thing lies the Secondary Cause of All Things, with the germ of 3 their Inevitable Annihilation" (XVI, 185-86). From this Poe derives what he describes as the Divine Being's "almost Infinite Self-Diffusion": What you call the Universe is but his present expansive existence. He now feels his life through an infinity of imperfect pleasures— the partial and pain-inter­ tangled pleasures of those inconceivably numerous things which you designate as his creatures but which are really but infinite individuations of Himself. All these creatures— all— those which you term animate, as well as those to whom you deny life for no better reason than that you do not behold it in operation— all•these creatures have, in a greater or less degree, a capacity for pleasure and for pain: but the general sum of their sensations is precisely that amount of happiness which appertains by right to the Divine Being when concentrated within Himselfl These creatures are all too, more or less conscious Intel­ ligences: conscious, first, of a proper identity, conscious secondly and by faint indeterminate glimpses, of an identity with the Divine Being of whom we speak— of an identity with God. Of the two classes of consciousness, fancy that the former will grow weaker, the latter stronger, during the long suc­ cession of ages which must elapse before these myriads of individual Intelligences become blended— into One. Think that the sense of individual identity will be gradually merged in the general consciousness— that Man— for example, ceasing imperceptibly to feel himself Man, will at length attain that awfully triumphant epoch when he shall recognize his existence as that of Jehovah. (XVI, 314-15) Eureka, we see, is Poe's deciphering of the text of the world or the universe. Everything in this universe will eventually be seen to contribute to its approaching unity, a unity which Poe also posits as necessary in fiction. Unity will be seen to be necessary to Poe's conceptions of Truth and Beauty. But what is Beauty to Poe? First, 4 it is Beauty that concerns Poe in his Preface to Eureka, where he declares that "I offer this Book of Truths, not in its character of Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth; constituting it true. I present the composition as an Art-Product alone:— let us say as a Romance; or, if I be not urging too lofty a claim, as a Poem." And, adds Poe, "it is as a Poem only that I wish this work to be judged after I am dead." Elsewhere, in "The Poetic Principle," he defines "the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty.

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