Edgar Allan Poe, the great captain

Many of their best horror stories not only have the component of the grave, but that of torture, with descriptions of emphatic and joyful cruelty, sometimes, and in other cases detailed and claustrophobic. ‘The well and the pendulum’, In its almost absence of context (the Inquisition, Toledo, the entry of troops, refers to all that vaguely, the narrator’s crimes are never specified, for example), it is a story about imminent death sensations, of the tortured body, of The machinery of institutional cruelty. The rats that come for food, The pit that is a cliff, The pendulum that brings a scythe, thirst. It could be the experience of a current kidnapped, of a prisoner in any anonymous dungeon.

WB Yeats did not like this story because he said there was no literature, that he only appealed to the physical, the effective we would say. Yeats was also a genius, but here he did not realize that, to describe with this level of chill and closeness, you have to have a lot of literature on top.

Although it is not usually considered, a story like ‘The Red Death Mask’ It is, for me, in its vaguely historical meaning and its waiting for the plague, a story similar to ‘the well and the pendulum’. Poe has no mercy with his description of the disease: “Sudden colic and vertigos were the usual symptoms and the pores ended up staining blood to blutons until death produced.” In A dystopia of last men, prosperous and their acolytes are locked in a walled abbey for months. But of death, says Poe, nobody escapes. And here death makes a triumphal entry, such as Lady Madeline Usher, such as William Wilson. ‘El Barril de Amontillado’ is another of the famous stories, in this case a story of revenge with all conscience and intention.

Montresor says, the one who leads to his death related to the distracted Fortunato: “Not only was it punishing him, but also with impunity.” Is An almost cheerful story: One can guess Montresor’s smile, which would say Canturrea while serving wines to his victim.

‘The facts of Mr. Valdemar’ It is another unbearable cruelty story. A researcher of hypnotism, or mesmerism, wants to prove what happens if the technique is used at the time of death. And for that he goes to his cobayo and friend? Valdemar, who is dying of tuberculosis. In the agonizing sigh, with doctors at home, hypnotizes it. And then one of Poe’s most implacable sequences begins, with poor Valdemar caught in the very death. It is not only the prolongation of agony, which also occurs and is morbid, but the permanence in death. In fact, at times They make it awake of their hypnosis And the poor man pleases that they sleep or kill him, and tells them that he is already dead. ‘The facts of the case of Mr. Valdemar’ does not seek to highlight about the excesses of science or the greed of knowledge.

These men of supposed science are unscrupulous and sadistic. To Poe He did not like didactism and here it is clear. There is no moral. It is a punk story. It is a story on the reader’s face. Read how these characters inspect the suspended dead, how he complains, how they take note and how they finally let him go, amazed at the horror and mystery, but without greater Congoja, ceremony or remorse.

They usually ask me if Edgar Allan Poe influenced my way of writing terror. I usually say no, because of the temporal remoteness, because they are irreproduible classics and too cited, because I go to the social element, and poe no. Now, while I put an end to this prologue, I realize that the obsession with death, body and cruelty is all poe, We are your children, Terror writers, but also those of police, storytellers, journalists, poets. I claim it, however, as the best captain of darkness. He knew it, and suffered it. He once said, and could be the voice of one of his characters: “Many times I have thought that I could perfectly hear the sound of darkness, sliding down the horizon.”