The Cask Of Amontillado - Edgar Allan Poe - Halloween Special! - a podcast by Christy and Garry Shriver

The Cask Of Amontillado - Edgar Allen Poe - Halloween Special!

 

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver. We’re here to talk about books that have changed us and changed the world.

 

I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  If you’re listening to us for the first time or have been listening for a while, please take a second and scroll down to the bottom of your podcast app and hit the five stars- that helps us move up in the world!!

 

And if you’re thinking, I don’t know if I want to give them five stars- rest assured- we’ve got a great discussion for your on a great poet and short story writer.  You’re going to love it.   He’s a fan favorite- even though, I have to be honest, he’s not my favorite- no fault of his, it’s on me. Today and next week we’re talking about the one and only Edgar Alan Poe.

 

Christy, I like Edgar Alan Poe.  I remember reading his stories in class as a teenager- one of the few things I actually remember from my high school English classes, and they were entertaining. 

 

I know, and he’s still super-popular.  All of my kids really like him – even if he is incredibly hard to read,  but as you know and I brought this up when we went through Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein= being scared is just not my thing, and Poe is very scary- his writings even find humor in the grotesque and that’s what people like.  There’s such a range from gothic horror, to true evil, to the struggle between the rational and the crazy- there is even sadness- all of that- it can be truly frightening.  That’s his contribution really- and totally not my genre although I respect the art, so  I tried to pick a couple of his less creepy pieces for this series- for myself really- I can’t go down the road of burying people alive- although I know all you Stephen King fans feel the adrenaline rush of the faux-terror!!!.

 

In that case, Christy- thanks for taking one for the team there for this  special holiday series- if you’re listening to this in real time  we are doing Edgar Alan Poe this week and again next week because here in the United States it’s Halloween and in most of Latin America just south of us it’s followed up by the Day of the Dead, so it is all in the spirit of community- which in Memphis, to be honest- Halloween is more about community than anything else.  Even in the year of Covid- houses are decorated, candy has been purchased and everyone is in the spirit of getting outside and seeing your neighbors that you really don’t see much doing the year.  My son, Ben,  and his wife, Rachel, who live on a street where decorations and trick or treating is particularly serious business have made a special Covid candy shoot, so kids won’t have to come all the way to the door this year.  They are going to send candy down a shoot they made out of plumbing pipes into the buckets of the trick or treater children, true innovation and effort for the season.  So, Christy, think of that instead of the gore as This week, we highlight the popular short story “The Cask of Amontillado” and next week the very popular poem, “The Raven”.  And, per our usual, let’s start with the life and times of Edgar Alan Poe. 

 

Yes- and I know we could talk for an entire episode just on his life, but the Cask of Amontillado is so interesting, we’re just going hit a few big highlights of Poe’s life this week- and then we’ll talk about his mysterious death next week- maybe we’ll circle back around next year for Halloween and hit him again with an even creepier tale if I have the nerve, but in summary- Poe’s life very much mirrors the chaos and gore that so often characterized his writing.  Poe’s life had so many self-sabotaging events, lots of people have questioned whether he was mentally ill.  Garry, do you have any thoughts on that before we start to illustrate what I’m talking about.

 

Well, let me just say that it goes without saying that you cannot and I haven’t seen any articles from any real legitimate sources that medically diagnose a person who is not alive- and since Poe died in 1849, this is nothing but speculation.  At that time people used the expression that someone was “mad’.  But science has evolved significantly since those days, and we do understand a lot about what haunts us as humans- and from his writings we can see a lot of this reflected.  Today there are treatments that can truly change the course of people’s lives who back then would be condemned to feeling lonely, estranged and depressed- things Poe powerfully illustrates.  Also, I will say, that genius and insanity, some would say is often entwined.  There are many many examples in history of amazing people who stood out in their generation by being great artists  but who likely truly struggled with some shadow of mental illness.  We obviously think of Van Gogh, but Mark Twain, Hermann Hesse, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Wolfe and Sylvia Plath are just a few writers that pop out immediately.  Poe seems to fall in this category.  Heck, Poe himself once said when asked if he was crazy, “The question is not yet settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence-whether much that is glorious- whether all that is profound- does not spring from disease of thought- from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.”

 

Wow- that’s pretty insightful for a guy that predates modern psychology.

 

True, and let me be very clear, there is no one that claims that mental illness promotes artistic talent.  That’s a very simplistic notion and a generalization that trivializes serious medical conditions.  It also discredits artistic genius that is innate to any artist.  Having said that, there does seem to be some correlation between some disorders and the ability to create incredible art, especially in artists who suffer from bipolar depression and hypomania.  There is reason to believe that these artists because of their hypomania experience enhanced rates of original thought.  They can experience unusual creative thinking and increased productivity.  There is evidence to suggest that these artists also experience increased fluency and frequency of thoughts.  They often tend to rhyme and use other sound associations such as alliteration, musical things like that.  It seems that for some creative people who are already gifted manic-depressive illness provides opportunity to produce art because during these times they don’t require very much sleep and can focus intensely with vigor and even with great confidence of thought on their art.  I read one researcher who concluded that contradictory mood swings when they are harnessed enhance the artists already innate ability to accurately see and reflect truth in nature and humanity in a way that those without these biological issues simply cannot even detect or feel, much less put into words. 

 

So, are you saying, IF you already are an artistic genius, this disorder could actually help you create genius works you otherwise could never pull off.

 

Possibly, that is one way of thinking about it.  Of course, it goes without saying that any mental illness naturally comes with a lot of struggle, and Edgar Alan Poe, whether he suffered as some suggest from bipolar depression or not, reflects great struggle- so much internal both internal and external- lots of it he created himself, but a lot of it he did not- he was victimized, especially as a child.

 

His life truly was difficult- under any circumstances, no matter how his brain chemistry worked.  Everyone would struggle with real life traumas- if this were your set of circumstances.  What’s remarkable is these struggles were honed into art from artists  from the day he was born.  He was born in 1809 in Boston to nactors: apparently his mother was fabulous, his father not awesome both on and off the stage.  His dad abandoned them, and his mother died before he turned 3- a death he remembered always and spoke about her vomiting blood and being carried away forever by horrible men dressed in black.  Most scholars agree that this death, she died of tuberculosis, really changed him and in many ways informs his a great bit of his work.  Lots of his stories carry with them this idea burial and loss and return, living versus dead.  He had an idealized image of who his mother was, and this idealized woman who is lost is also something that we see.

 

She was the first woman he lost, but loss characterized every relationship with a woman that he loved for the rest of his life.

 

You’re exactly right, he had a close friend, who’s mother died when he was a teenager.  His step-mother (Francis and John Alan were a very wealthy couple who took him in as a child to raised him although they never adopted him- he and the dad were at odds to the day the dad died and left him nothing in the will- but Francis, his stepmom, he loved and she died tragically- and then of course, his wife died which we’ll talk about next week. 

 

When his real mother died and he was taken in by the Alan’s, Poe went to live in England with the Alan’s and they sent him to boarding school- a very lonely place it seems for Poe, but he did hit the British literary scene at a great time.  During his education there, he was exposed to the great Romantic writers, Byron and the Shelley’s  are the two we’ve talked about, but he likely read a lot of romantic writers.

 

For sure- and really when you read his things- there is a lot of obvious gothic influence. 

In fact, lots of critics almost make fun of him for his overblown romantic style.  And I will say, he does kind of go out of control at times- you can tell in the Raven immediately that= the man loves him some good alliteration and rhyme.  Ezra Pound said he never used a noun without coupling it with an adjective, preferably vague and suggestive of horror, gloom, vastness, strangeness and indefiniteness- which is all true. 

 

After this we’re going to read a real British gothic tale with Wuthering Heights, and we can see for ourselves- the comparisons. 

 

True- And I know I’m getting ahead of myself talking about the unusual and really iconic style of Poe, but he does have a real style that is uniquely his=whether you like it or not.  He refers to bold colors- black, white, red, he uses long words on purpose where he could use short words.  For example instead of being sick, Poe would have you experience a malady.  Stuff like that. 

 

Well, contrived writing or not, he was clearly extremely bright, and when it came time Poe managed to get admitted into the University of Virginia where he studied French, Italian, Spanish, Latin.  And was doing really well, until he self-sabotaged himself.  He got mad because Mr. Alan wouldn’t give him enough money to live off of, so by way of getting back…he took up gambling, ran up debts of over $2000, got himself repeatedly drunk to the point that he got thrown out of school. 

 

Yes- that was his first mess but not his last- his relationship with alcohol was particularly bad- he couldn’t handle it- after leaving Richmond, he goes to the army- and again did really well, he moved up to the rank to Regimental Sargeant Major, which is as high as an enlisted person could go.  He even got Mr. Alan to help him leverage that into an appointment at the very prestigious West Point Military Academy.

 

But of course, he does well until he self-sabotages again.  He starts skipping classes and got himself court-martialed for “gross neglect of duties.”

 

Poor Poe, to me he seems just lost- he can’t even find a place to call home- he just moves around from city to city for the rest of his life.  He moves to New York, cannot find a job at all and remember-this is back in the days when no work- no eat.  There is no such thing as public assistance.  He reaches out to Mr. Allan, his step=father- but nothing.  I should mention, btw, that he has published a couple of books of poems during all of this time, but again- back in those days- nobody was making a living as a writer.  Eventually, he moves to yet another city, Baltimore, to live with a relative, an Aunt named Mrs. Clemm.  He also gains a little bit of luck as a writer because when he gets some of his short stories published, he attracts the attention from a recognized novelist, a MRs. Jphn P. Kennedy, who gets him a gig as an assistant editor at this really impressive literary magazine called the Southern Literary Messenger.  This is a fantastic break, so he moves again, to Richmond to take this job.  This time he brings MRs. Clemm and her daughter Virginia with him- they are his new family. He truly loves them, and it isn’t but a few years later he marries Mrs. Clemm’s daughter.

 

Which is one of thing things people know about him that really grosses them out.  There really is not a satisfactory explanation why a 27 year old man would marry a 13 year old girl. 

 

True- there is a yuck factor that has crossed the ages- they actually tried to lie and say she was 21, but reports say no one believed that.  I’ve read some things that say she didn’t even look 13.  But, if it’s any consolation, most people doubt they actually consummated the marriage.  And if that wasn’t bad enough to make him a bit unlikeable, it seems he was a true jerk as a person.  He was extremely arrogant, mean-spirited and was always making enemies in the publishing business.  He lied about his job at the magazine he worked for claiming to be more important than he was.  He would lambast popular writers and even insulted the readers of his magazine.  Here’s a funny Poe quote, one time he chided American readers for “liking a stupid book the better, because sure enough, it’s stupidity is American.”  He also published short stories that were so horrifying they were insulting- like the story Berenice where a man preparing to marry his cousin actually ends up burying her alive and then later digging her up again- it’s weird and shocking- on purpose. 

 

He was one of the first artists (of course this is the concept behind all of social media click bait but also all kinds of tv shows now)- but he understood- that shocking and insulting gets you noticed and you can’t be famous if no one knows who you are- Poe actually said that. 

 

Yes, and as true as that is, Poe kept getting himself into so much trouble because he couldn’t moderate this stuff. He would get fired, go somewhere else, get another job, insult people again and so on- like I said, always self-sabotaging.  

 

He had such confidence that he was this amazing writer, and he had this incredible disdain for people who did not recognize his genius.- Of course, we can argue if he was right or wrong about his talents- history seems to agree with him, but regardless, he just couldn’t get along.

 

 I want to stop here with his life and finish that crazy tale next week, but I did want to end with a very interesting insult that relates to the story we’re about to read, so in 1840, Poe is back in Philadelphia getting fired by yet another boss, well Poe is indignant, per his usual, with being fired and he fires off a letter to his boss in which he says this, “If by accident you have taken it into you head that I am to be insulted with impunity I can only assume that you are an ass.  Nemo me impune Lacessit- which is my poor attempt at reading latin – this phrase in Latin means for No one insults me with impunity….YIKES- Which of course is the inscription that we’re going to read in the story “The Cask of Amontillado”…

 

Well, it is also an ironic turn of phrase because it seems there was absolutely NO one in the literary world that Poe would not just blast and savage in review after review.  He was a huge insulter.  He even accuses Henry David Longfellow of plagiarism.  Which from what I read Poe wasn’t above himself- he did it more than once.  His whole professional  life is picking one fight he can’t win after another- just professional derailment for no real apparent reason.  He would get a break, work really hard to make something happen and then do something so deliberate and horrible it guaranteed failure.  And a lot of this was peppered by alcoholic drinking binges that did him no good either. 

 

Well as true as that is, Poe is a man that felt slighted humanity.  He was robbed of many women he loved.  He was robbed, at least in his own mind, although this doesn’t seem really factual to me, but in his mind he was robbed by the literary success that was his birthright because of his true brilliance.  There were those who were far worse and less talented than him that were more fortunate than him.   It is no wonder that by 1846, he would write what would become one of his most famous stories- and it is a story that really channels this feeling we’ve all experienced at one time or another who a person is who lesser than you- is more successful than you are- and who doesn’t recognize this.  This person looks down on you, has an inflated sense of themselves- and this is the story of them getting what they deserve – at least in Poe’s vision- they get - the Cask of Amontillado.

 

Well, like I said, this is the first story of his I ever remember reading. 

 

 It’s. great one- for a lot of reasons, and we’re going to read the whole thing, but before we do, I want to give you all the literary things to look for when you read it- because beyond channeling our desire for revenge- it’s very cleverly written.  Poe had these rules of what constituted a great story and The Cask of Amontillado” follows them.  His first rule for a short story is that you should be able to sit down and read the whole thing in one setting.  The second rule is that it should have what he calls a “unity of impression”- in other words- really just one thing that the author is trying to do.  He also thinks that a tale should be self-sufficient or in his words “should contain within itself all that is required for its own comprehension.”  And he really does this.  He is going to pack it in from the beginning to end.  Every word is intentional, every name is symbolic every piece of dialogue is ironic, and every action takes you deeper and deeper into this crazy reality. 

 

To begin with let’s start with the title- it’s a pun

 

Amontillado is a kind of Sherry (which is a kind of wine)- I’ve never heard of it before this story but it’s Spanish- and a cask would be a case.  However, here, he’s making it a pun.  Monte- is a form of the word mountain- cask is a shortened form of the word casket- so it’s also a mountain for a casket- see how clever

 

Very clever-

 

Well, everything in this story is clever like that and deliberate.  The setting is kind of vague, but it seems like it’s Italy, maybe Rome, we’ll assume that, but it doesn’t really matter- some people think France, but it’s during Carnival.  Being from Brazil, I know a little about Carnival.  Carnival is a three day holiday= it’s a sort of religious holiday- you’re supposed to dress up, party really hard and act the fool the last three days before lent where in the Catholic tradition of Christianity you have to straighten up get be good for the 40 days before Easter, which is the most holy day in the Christiain faith.  The year is more vague, he gives us a clue because Montressor, our main character is a mason which only began in Italy in the 1730s, and he’s wearing a roquelaire which was a fashion during the 1700s. There are a couple of other clues like that, but it’s sometime in the second half of the 1700s- not super-important to know. 

            The names are kind of coded- Fortunato means- fortunate- which this dude is quite UNFORTUNATE in what happens to him, but before that he seems to have been very fortunate which is part of the reason Montressor hates him so much.  He apparently considers himself to be better than Montressor- a wine conneseeur, although he doesn’t know anything- we know this because he doesn’t know that amontillado is a sherry (which I wouldn’t know either, but than again, Im of noble Italian lineage either. And this is what I mean by every word is deliberate- he makes fun at one point of this third person, a guy named luchesi- and says over and over- this guy doesn’t know amontillado from sherry- but amontillado IS sherry- so in saying that he informs the reader that he’s stupid.  Also,  He pretends he’s some blue-blooded aristocrat, but his crest isn’t very impressive.  And he doesn’t know how to look dignified.  He’s wearing a stupid jester’s costume which makes him look like a fool. And of course, Carnival is about dressing up- but we all know- there’s a bit of art involved there.  If you’ve ever been to a Halloween party, you know there’s always the dufus who’s costume is just off.  Fortunato is that guy.  All the details seem to suggest that he had gotten really lucky in life but has mistaken this luck with talent and looks down on people that are better than him- namely Montressor- and that names is interesting to mon-tressor means= my treasure- because he’s the one with the nice heritage and real expertise in wine. 

 

So, as we read are we look for all the hidden ironies.  

 

Exactly that, I may stop and interrupt you to point them out when I can’t resist, but I’ll try to refrain, for me it’s really interesting- because the fun of this story is the irony.  Like as they go down the stairs and Montressor keeps saying things like, “I woldn’t want you to die of a cold”= and you know he’s getting ready to kill this do- but as interesting as I find it,  it can also be annoying and disruptive.

 

Even the very first sentence it something to notice- it’s kind of a thesis statement- the narrator is going to claim some sort of weird primitive honor code.  The idea being if someone insults you bodly enough you should not only get them back- but you must do it without getting caught.  Montressor is telling his story “half a century” after he committed the murder.  He’s not regretful- he’s proud.  It’s an artful revenge.  Fortunato is a fool who dared to condescend to someone better than him- montressor had put up with his arrogance for long enough- and when we get to the part where MNontressor points out his coat of arms notice that it is of a human foot crushing a snake.  From Montressor’s perspective- this is a story of a man getting what’s coming- not for any specific bad thing- but for not knowing his place- the ultimate insult worthy of the ultimate punishment.  Let’s begin….

 

 

 

 

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