The Question of Poe's Narrators Author(s): James W. Gargano Source: College English, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Dec., 1963), pp. 177-181 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/373684 . Accessed: 03/05/2011 11:46

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http://www.jstor.org The Question of Poe's Narrators JAMES W. GARGANO

PART OF THE widespread critical con- makes no high claims for Poe as stylist, descension toward Edgar Allan Poe's he nevertheless points out that Poe could, short stories undoubtedly stems from and often did, write with lucidity and impatience with what is taken to be his without Gothic mannerisms.5Floyd Sto- "cheap" or embarrassing Gothic style. vall, a long-time and more enthusiastic Finding turgidity, hysteria, and crudely admirer of Poe, has recently paid his poetic overemphasis in Poe's works, critical respects to "the conscious art of many critics refuse to accept him as a Edgar Allan Poe."6 Though he says little really serious writer. Lowell's flashy in- about Poe's style, he seems to me to sug- dictment of Poe as "two-fifths sheer gest that the elements of Poe's stories, fudge"' agrees essentially with Henry style for example, should be analyzed in James's magesterial declaration that an terms of Poe's larger artistic intentions. "enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a Of course, other writers, notably Edward decidedly primitive stage of reflection."2 H. Davidson, have done much to demon- T. S. Eliot seems to be echoing James strate that an intelligible rationale in- when he attributes to Poe "the intellect forms Poe's best work.7 of a before highly gifted young person It goes without saying that Poe, like puberty."3 Discovering in Poe one of the other creative men, is sometimes at the fountainheads of American obscurantism, mercy of his own worst qualities. Yet Ivor Winters condemns the incoherence, the contention that he is fundamentally and of his puerility, histrionics style. a bad or tawdry stylist appears to me to Moreover, Huxley's charge that Poe's be rather facile and sophistical. It is poetry suffers from "vulgarity" of spirit, based, ultimately, on the untenable and has colored the of views critics of Poe's often unanalyzed assumption that Poe prose style.4 and his narrators are identical literary Certainly, Poe has always had his de- twins and that he must be held respon- fenders. One of the most brilliant of sible for all their wild or perfervid utter- modern critics, Allen Tate finds a variety ances; their shrieks and groans are too of styles in Poe's works; although Tate often conceived as emanating from Poe himself. I believe, on the contrary, that 1"A Fable for Critics," The Complete Poetical Poe's narrators possess a character and Works of James Russell Lowell (Cambridge, consciousness distinct from those of their 140. 1896), p. creator. These I am con- 2Henry James, "Charles Baudelaire," French protagonists, Poets and Novelists (London, 1878). vinced, speak their own thoughts and are 3T. S. Eliot, "From Poe to Valery," p. 28. the dupes of their own passions. In short, 'Aldous Huxley, "Vulgarity in Literature," Poe understands them far better than Music at Night and Other Essays (London, can understand themselves. 1949), pp. 297-309. they possibly

Professor Gargano of Washington and Jef- 5Allen Tate, "Our Cousin, Mr. Poe," The ferson College is Fulbright lecturer in Ameri- Man of Letters in the Modern World, Meridian can literature at the University of Caen Books, pp. 132-145. (France) 1963-64. He has published mainly 'Floyd Stovall, "The Conscious Art of Edgar on James and Poe; his most recent publications Allan Poe," College English, 24 (March 1963), are on Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" 417-421. in JEGP, April 1963, and Hawthorne's "The 'Davidson, Poe: A CriticalStudy (Cambridge, Artist of the Beautiful" in AL, May 1963. 1957). 177 178 COLLEGE ENGLISH

Indeed, he often so designs his tales as while reading Poe, we should cease to to show his narrators' limited compre- feel; but feeling should be "simultaneous" hension of their own problems and states with an analysis carried on with the of mind; the structure of many of Poe's composure and logic of Poe's great stories clearly reveals an ironical and detective, Dupin. For Poe is not merely a comprehensive intelligence critically and Romanticist; he is also a chronicler of artistically ordering events so as to es- the consequences of the Romantic ex- tablish a vision of life and character cesses which lead to psychic disorder, which the narrator's very inadequacies pain, and disintegration. help to "prove." Once Poe's narrative method is under- What I am saying is simply that the stood, the question of Poe's style and total organization or completed form of serious artistry returns in a new guise. a work of art tells more about the au- Clearly, there is often an aesthetic com- thor's sensibility than does the report or patibility between his narrators' hyper- confession of one of its characters. Only trophic language and their psychic the most naive reader, for example, will derangement; surely, the narrator in credit as the "whole truth" what the "Ligeia," whose life is consumed in a narratorsof BarryLyndon, Huckleberry blind rage against his human limitations, Finn, and The Aspern Papers will divulge cannot be expected to consider his di- about themselves and their experiences. lemma in cooly rational prose. The lan- In other words, the "meaning" of a liter- guage of men reaching futilely towards ary work (even when it has no narrator) the ineffable always runs the risk of ap- is to be found in its fully realized form; pearing more flatulent than inspired. In- for only the entire work achieves the deed, in the very breakdown of their resolution of the tensions, heterogeneities, visions into lurid and purple rhetoric, and individual visions which make up Poe's characters enforce the message of the parts. The Romantic apologists for failure that permeates their aspirations Milton's Satan afford a notorious example and actions. The narrator in "Ligeia" his of the fallacy of interpreting a brilliantly blurts out, in attempting to explain integrated poem from the point of view wife's beauty in terms of its "expres- of its most brilliant character. sion": "Ah, words of no meaning!" He anom- The structure of Poe's stories compels rants about "incomprehensible "words that are to con- realization that they are more than the alies," impotent effusions of their narrators' often dis- vey," and his inability to capture the He raves because he can- ordered mentalities. Through the irony "inexpressible." feverish of ex- of his characters' self-betrayal and not explain. His futility cannot be attributed through the development and arrange- pression, however, artistic ment of his dramatic actions, Poe suggests to Poe, who with an "control," and to his readers ideas never entertained by documents the stages of frustration the narrators. Poe intends his readers to fantastic desire which end in the nar- rator's madness. The action keep their powers of analysis and judg- completed comments on the nar- ment ever alert; he does not require or of "Ligeia," then, career of self-delusion and ex- desire complete surrender to the experi- rator's the of ence of the sensations being felt by his onerates Poe from charge lapsing sentimental rodoman- characters. The point of Poe's technique, into self-indulgent, then, is not to enable us to lose ourselves tade. in strange or outrageous emotions, but to In "The Tell-Tale Heart" the cleavage see these emotions and those obsessed by between author and narrator is perfectly them from a rich and thoughtful per- apparent. The sharp exclamations, ner- spective. I do not mean to advocate that, vous questions, and broken sentences THE QUESTION OF POE'S NARRATORS 179 almost too blatantly advertise Poe's narrator'sconfusion and blindness.Wil- conscious intention; the protagonist's son's story is organized in six parts: a painful insistence in "proving" himself rather "over-written" apologia for his sane only serves to intensify the idea of life; a long account of his early student his madness. Once again Poe presides days at Dr. Bransby'sgrammar school, with precision of perception at the psy- where he is initiated into evil and en- chological drama he describes. He makes counters the second Wilson; a brief us understand that the voluble murderer section on his wild behavior at Eton; has been tortured by the nightmarish ter- an episode showing his blackguardly rors he attributes to his victim: "He was conduct at Oxford; a non-dramaticde- sitting up in bed listening;-just as I scriptionof his flight from his namesake- have done, night after night, harkening pursuer; and a final, climactic scene in to the death watches in the wall"; fur- which he confronts and kills his ther the narrator interprets the old man's "double."The incidents are so arranged groan in terms of his own persistent an- as to trace the "development"of Wilson's guish: "Many a night, just at midnight, wickedness and moral blindness. More- when all the world slept, it has welled over, Poe's conscious artistic purpose is up from my own bosom, deepening, with evident in the effective functioning of its dreadful echo, the terrors that dis- many details of symbolism and setting. tracted me." Thus, Poe, in allowing his "Brightrays" from a lamp enableWilson narrator to disburden himself of his tale, to see his nemesis"vividly" at Dr. Brans- skillfully contrives to show also that he by's; at the critical appearanceof his lives in a haunted and eerie world of his double at Eton, Wilson's perception is own demented making. obscured by a "faint light"; and in the Poe assuredly knows what the narra- scene dealing with Wilson's expos6 at tor never suspects and what, by the con- Oxford, the darkness becomes almost trolled conditions of the tale, he is not total and the intruder'spresence is "felt" meant to suspect-that the narrator is a rather than seen. Surely, this gradualex- victim of his own self-torturing obses- tinction of light serves to point up the sions. Poe so manipulates the action that darkening of the narrator'svision. The the murder, instead of freeing the nar- setting at Dr. Bransby'sschool, where it rator, is shown to heighten his agony was impossibleto determine"upon which and intensify his delusions. The watches of its two stories one happened to be," in the wall become the ominously beat- cleverly enforces Poe's theme of the ing heart of the old man, and the nar- split consciousnessplaguing Wilson. So, rator's vaunted self-control explodes into too, does the portrait of the preacher- a frenzy that leads to self-betrayal. I pastor: "This reverend man, with coun- find it almost impossible to believe that tenance so demurely benign, with robes Poe has no serious artistic motive in so glossy and so clerically flowing, with "The Tell-Tale Heart," that he merely wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and revels in horror and only inadvertently so vast,-could this be he who, of late, illuminates the of the human soul. depths with sour visage and in snuffy habili- I find it equally difficult to accept the ferule in the view that Poe's should be assailed ments, administered, hand, style Draconian laws of the Oh, because of the ejaculatory and crazy academy?' confession of his narrator. gigantic paradox,too utterly monstrous for solution!" the For all of its strident passages, "Wil- Finally, masquerade liam Wilson" once again exhibits in its setting in the closing scene of the tale well-defined structure a sense of authorial ingeniously reveals that Wilson's whole poise which contrasts markedly with the life is a disguise from his own identity. 180 COLLEGE ENGLISH

To maintain that Poe has stumbled into ity; Montresor'sironic appreciation of so much organization as can be dis- his own deviousness seems further to covered in "William Wilson" and his justify his arroganceof intellect. But the other tales requires the support of strong greatestirony of all, to which Montresor prejudice. There seems little reason for is never sensitive, is that the "injuries" resisting the conclusion that Poe knows supposedlyperpetrated by Fortunatoare what ails Wilson and sees through his illusory and that the vengeance meant narrator's lurid self-characterization as for the victim recoils upon Montresor a "victim to the horror and the mystery himself. In immolating Fortunato, the of the wildest of all sublunary visions." narrator unconsciously calls him the Assuredly, a feeling for the design and "noble"Fortunato and confessesthat his subtlety of Poe's "William Wilson" own "heartgrew sick." Though Mont- should exorcise the idea that he is as im- resor attributes this sickness to "the mature and "desperate" as his protago- dampnessof the catacombs,"it is clear nist. After all, Poe created the situations that his crime has begun to "possess" in which Wilson confronts and is con- him. We see that, after fifty years, it fronted by his alter ego; it is Wilson remains the obsession of his life; the who refuses to meet, welcome, and be meaning of his existence resides in the restrained by him. tomb in which he has, symbolically, Evidence of Poe's "seriousness" seems buried himself. In other words, Poe to me indisputable in "The Cask of leaves little doubt that the narratorhas Amontillado," a tale which W. H. Auden violated his own mind and humanity, has belittled.8 Far from being his author's that the externalact has had its destruc- mouthpiece, the narrator, Montresor, is tive inner consequences. one of the supreme examples in fiction The sameartistic integrity and serious- of a deluded rationalist who cannot ness of purposeevident in "The Cask of glimpse the moral implications of his Amontillado"can be discoveredin "The planned folly. Poe's fine ironic sense Black Cat." No matter what covert makes clear that Montresor, the stalker meanings one may find in this much- of Fortunato, is both a compulsive and discussedstory, it can hardly be denied pursued man; for in committing a flaw- that the namelessnarrator does not speak less crime against another human being, for Poe. Whereas the narrator, at the he really (like Wilson and the protago- beginning of his "confession," admits nist in "The Tell-Tale Heart") commits that he cannot explain the events which the worst of crimes against himself. His overwhelmedhim, Poe's organizationof reasoned, "cool" intelligence weaves an his episodes provides an unmistakable intricate plot which, while ostensibly clue to his protagonist'spsychic deterio- satisfying his revenge, despoils him of ration. The tale has two distinct, almost humanity. His impeccably contrived parallelparts: in the first, the narrator's murder, his weird mask of goodness in inner moral collapse is presented in an enterprise of evil, and his abandon- largely symbolic narrative;in the second ment of all his life-energies in one pet part, the consequencesof his self-viola- project of hate convict him of a madness tion precipitatean act of murder,punish- which he mistakes for the inspiration of able by society. Each section of the story genius. The brilliant masquerade setting deals with an ominous cat, an atrocity, of Poe's tale intensifies the theme of and an expos6 of a "crime."In the first Montresor's apparently successful duplic- section, the narrator'shouse is consumed by fire after he has mutilated and sub- 8Auden,"Introduction" to EdgarAllan Poe: Selected Prose and Poetry, Rinehart Editions, sequently hanged Pluto, his pet cat. p. v. Blindly, he refuses to grant any connec- THE QUESTION OF POE'S NARRATORS 181 tion between his violence and the fire; max of damnation. Clearly, Poe does not yet the image of a hanged cat on the espouse his protagonist's theory any more one remaining wall indicates that he will than he approves of the specious ration- be haunted and hag-ridden by his deed. alizations of his other narrators. Just as The sinister figure of Pluto, seen by a the narrator's well constructed house has crowd of neighbors, is symbolically both a fatal flaw, so the theory of perverseness an accusation and a portent, an enigma is flawed because it really explains noth- to the spectators but an infallible sign to ing. Moreover, even the most cursory the reader. reader must be struck by the fact that In the second section of "The Black the narrator is most "possessed and mad- Cat," the reincarnated cat goads the nar- dened" when he most proudly boasts of rator into the murder of his wife. As in his self-control. If the narrator obviously "William Wilson," "The Tell-Tale cannot be believed at the end of the tale, Heart," and "The Cask of Amontillado," what argument is there for assuming that the narrator cannot understand that his he must be telling the truth when he assault upon another person derives from earlier tries to evade responsibility for his own moral sickness and unbalance. his "sin" by slippery rationalizations? Like his confreres, too, he seeks psychic A close analysis of "The Black Cat" release and freedom in a crime which must certainly exonerate Poe of the completes his torture. To the end of his charge of merely sensational writing. The life, he is incapable of locating the origin final frenzy of the narrator, with its ac- of his evil and damnation within himself. cumulation of superlatives, cannot be rid- The theme of "The Black Cat" is iculed as an example of Poe's style. The complicated for many critics by the nar- breakdown of the shrieking criminal does rator's dogged assertion that he was not reflect a similar breakdown in the pushed into evil and self-betrayal by the author. Poe, I maintain, is a serious art- "imp of the perverse." This imp is ex- ist who explores the neuroses of his plained, by a man who, it must be re- characters with probing intelligence. He membered, eschews explanation, as a permits his narrator to revel and flounder radical, motiveless, and irresistible impulse into torment, but he sees beyond the within the human soul. Consequently, if torment to its causes. his self-analysis is accepted, his responsi- In conclusion, then, the five tales I bility for his evil life vanishes. Yet, it have commented on display Poe's delib- must be asked if it is necessary to give erate craftsmanship and penetrating sense credence to the words of the narrator. of irony. If my thesis is correct, Poe's William Wilson, too, regarded himself narrators should not be construed as his as a "victim" of a force outside himself mouthpieces; instead they should be and Montresor speaks as if he has been regarded as expressing, in "charged" coerced into his crime by Fortunato. The language indicative of their internal narrator in "The Black Cat" differs from disturbances, their own peculiarly Wilson in bringing to his defense a well- nightmarish visions. Poe, I contend, is reasoned theory with perhaps a strong conscious of the abnormalities of his nar- appeal to many readers. Still, the nar- rators and does not condone the intel- rator's pat explanation is contradicted by lectual ruses through which they strive, the development of the tale, for instead only too earnestly, to justify themselves. of being pushed into crime, he pursues In short, though his narrators are often a life which makes crime inevitable. He febrile or demented, Poe is conspicuously cherishes the intemperate self-indulgence "sane." They may be "decidedly primi- which blunts his powers of self-analysis; tive" or "wildly incoherent," but Poe, he is guided by his delusions to the cli- in his stories at least, is mature and lucid.