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"All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream."
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1845), U.S. poet, critic, short-story writer. A Dream within a Dream (1849). |
"How much more intense is the excitement wrought in the feelings of a crowd by the contemplation of human agony, than that brought about by the most appalling spectacles of inanimate matter."
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. author. The narrator, in "Metzengerstein," Saturday Courier (1832).
The aesthetic of terror. |
"I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep—while I weep!"
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. poet. A Dream within a Dream (l. 1-7). . .
Complete Poems and Selected Essays [Edgar Allan Poe]. Richard Gray, ed. (1993) Everyman. |
"I have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the Pyrrhonism of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. Indeed, a strong relish for physical philosophy has, I fear, tinctured my mind with a very common error of this age—I mean the habit of referring occurrences, even the least susceptible of such reference, to the principles of that science."
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. author. The narrator, in "Ms. Found in a Bottle," Baltimore Saturday Visitor (1833).
Echoing Poe's fascination with his nihilistic self. |
"There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous—secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will—we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books ... we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland."
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1845), U.S. poet, critic, short-story writer. "American Nationality in Literature," Marginalia (1844-1849). |
"I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity."
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. author. The narrator, in "The Black Cat," United States Saturday Post (1843).
Poe satirizing his penchant for self-justification. |
"the wind came out of the cloud chilling
And killing my Annabel Lee."
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. poet. Annabel Lee (l. 25-26). . .
Complete Poems and Selected Essays [Edgar Allan Poe]. Richard Gray, ed. (1993) Everyman. |
"As I rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejaculations of "dead! dead!" absolutely bursting from the tongue and not from the lips of the sufferer, his whole frame at once ... crumbled—absolutely rotted away beneath my hands."
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. author. The narrator, in "The Case of M. Valdemar," American Review: A Whig Journal (1845).
Dying and the "physique of horror." |
"And so all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the side of the sea."
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. poet. Annabel Lee (l. 38-41). . .
Complete Poems and Selected Essays [Edgar Allan Poe]. Richard Gray, ed. (1993) Everyman. |
"I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong."
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), U.S. author. The narrator, in "The Cask of Amontillado," Godey's Magazine and Lady's Book (1846).
Revenge perfected into an art by the psychopathic Montresor. |
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Edgar Allan Poe
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