Edgar Allen Poe is as famous and has been, as a poet, as a writer of fiction.

And one might ask what is the relationship or what are the relationships between his prose and his verse work. In order to explore at least one dimension of those relations, I'd like to raise a pair of contrasting technical terms from the field of Rhetoric, that are used by Erich Auerbach in a famous work of analysis called Mimesis, The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Auerbach contrasts parataxis with hypotaxis. Parataxis, the adjective is paratactic means para along side, taxis, order. Things are ordered along side each other. Hypotaxis means below or underneath order. A hypotactic statement is one that goes beneath to connect everything so that it remains connected. How exactly does that work? Here is a favorite passage of mine from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Jake Barnes is the narrator and he does not want to spend time with a character named Robert Cohn who's come to see him in his apartment where he does his work as a journalist. Cohn has come in but Jake has suggested that they leave. Aren't you working?, Robert Cohen asked of Jake Barnes. No, I said. We went down the stairs to the cafe on the ground floor. I had discovered, that was the best way to get rid of friends. Interesting that he wants to get rid of friends. Once you had a drink, all you had to say was, well I've got to get back and get off some cables and it was done. It is very important to discover graceful exits like that in the newspaper business, where it is such an important part of the ethics that you should never seemed to be working. Anyway, we went downstairs to the bar and had a whiskey and soda. Cohn looked at the bottles and bins around the wall. This is a good place, he said. There's a lot of liquor, I agreed. Now, something is missing between this is a good place and there's a lot of liquor, but we know that the something is covered by Barnes' notion that it is an agreement. In other words, what's left out is. If a place has a lo t of liquor, that's what makes it good. If it doesn't, it isn't. If it does, it is. This reliance on the importance of liquor is characteristic of the entire lost generation that Jake Barnes is part of, that Earnest Hemingway, at this time in his life, was part of. So we have, it's a good place jammed right against there's a

lot of liquor, I agreed. That's a paratactic statement. A paratactic statement is one in which all the underlying connections are made clear. As for example, giving you the first statement and showing you that it connects with the second. The way I'm doing right now by saying the first and repeating the second and making sure that you understand that the connections are underlying but we're making them explicit so that those connections are clear. You see what happens. If you push hypertaxis too far, you bore your reader. If you push parataxis to far, your reader can't make the leap of meaning that fills in the connection from one step to the next. Auerbach points out that when we have a fundamentally paratactic style, we can suppose that the writer is writing for an audience he believes will make those leaps. He's writing for an audience or she is writing for an audience that can be made to share certain assumptions. But a hypotactic style is used when one cannot assume that those assumptions are shared, and the context has to be drawn out again and again. To put this then most clearly, when we look at Poe's stories and poems. The stories are hypotactic versions of the paratactic poems. Let's take a look at some of them. In The Fall of the House of Usher, we have Roderick, finding respite from his melancholy in one activity and one only, the creating of poetry. And we're shown the poem that he creates. It's called The Haunted Palace which might well be a transformation of the chateau, the House of Usher, inhabited by the ghost of the dead Madeleine. The Haunted Palace, in the greenest of our valleys, by good angels tenanted, once a fair and stately palace, radiant palace, reared its head. I won't read further of that particular stanza, but rather turn to the Raven. The Raven is one of Poe's most famous poems. It's a poem in which someone writes after he has lost the true love of his life, Leonore. And every stanza ends with the speaking of a blackbird perched on the bust of Athena, a goddess of wisdom and the black bird is saying or heard to say either nevermore or in the case of her death, evermore. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. In the greenest of our valleys, by good angels tenanted, once a fair and stately palace, radiant palace reared it's head. Astonishingly, at least

in the beginning of The Haunted Palace, Poe writes with precisely the same metric form that he uses in The Raven. The Raven is a story, a poem about having lost one's love. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. This some visitor, I muttered, tapping at my chamber door. Only this and nothing more. A visitor, that's what the narrator is to Roderick Usher. In fact, he's nearly napping this narrator of the Raven over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. The narrator of The Fall of the House of Usher. Joins Roderick in his study of our books, the books which for years had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the invalid. They are phantasms. We poured together over them and then he names all of these strange medieval sounding names, over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight however was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book of Goth, quarto Gothic, the manual of a forgotten church. Curious volume, forgotten book, forgotten church, forgotten lore, over many a and curious volume of forgotten lore. The story in the Fall of the House of Usher expands and draws out the underlying c onnections between the visitor and the narrator that we see in The Raven. At the end of The Raven, the last stanza, we read this. And the raven never flitting still is sitting, still is sitting on the pallid bust of palace just above my chamber door and his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming. And the lamplight or him streaming throws his shadow on the floor. And my soul from out that shadow lies floating on the floor shall be lifted never more. The death of the person who ponders those quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore, is permanent. Notice the word for the shadow. It's floating like the image that the visiting narrator sees of the Fallen House of Usher reflected twice in the mountain tarn. The story of The Raven and the story of the fall of the house of Usher are in fact in many ways, the same story. But the story is motivated by connected hypotactic explanations in a fantastic world that allows ghosts. In the prose, in the poetry, in the verse, it just happens. Let's take a look at the oval portrait.

The oval portrait reminds me at least of Annabel Lee. Annabel Lee is a strange poem because it's usually taken by people to be quite lovely. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea, that a maiden there lived whom you may know by the name of Annabel Lee. And this maiden, she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child in this kingdom by the sea but we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee. With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven coveted her and me. The music of this poem is so captivating. That it's hard to realize, it is about the loss of Annabel Lee. She dies, after all, because, according to the poetic voice of the coveted angel, coveting angels in heaven. And so, at the end, for the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee. And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes of the beautiful Annabel Lee. And so, all the nighttide, I lie down by the side of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride, in the sepulchre there by the sea, in her tomb by the sounding sea. Annabelle Lee is a poem about necrophilia. The poet is explaining why every night he gets into the tomb and lies down next to this corpse. That's what Annabel Lee is like. Now, let's look again at that famous beginning. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea, then a maiden there lived whom you may know by the name of Annabel Lee. The Oval Portrait is that story in which someone forces his way into a chateau, or his servant does it for him what we we're told. And he spends the first half getting settled into someone else's bed and the second half reading a description of a woman's portrait on the wall around that bedroom. A woman who, at the end of the description, is told to have died because the art has become life itself. And the second half of the story, then, is nothing but the quotation of that description of the portrait. Here is how the portrait's description begins. She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee, and evil was the hour that she saw and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere and having already a bride in his art. She, a maiden of rarest beauty. Now, wait a minute, it's written as prose but let's reread it. Annabel Lee. It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea. That a maiden there lived who you may know

by the name of Annabelle Lee. And this maiden, she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me. She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already, a bride in his art. She, a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. I don't mean to suggest for a moment that Poe was thinking in writing The Oval Portrait, that he would capture the precise rhythms of Annabel Lee. But something is going on in that creative mi nd that puts certain rhythms in the very same place when the very same story is told. Of someone who cannot possibly be with his bride, but the bride is gorgeous and dies and is taken away at the moment of marriage. That story is made connected in the fantastic hypotactic tale of The Oval Portrait, it is paratactically presented in Annabel Lee. It just happens. Perhaps, from an artistic viewpoint, the most powerful of all of Poe's stories, so it seems to me, is The Black Cat. The Black Cat is a story, as I mentioned in an earlier part of this unit, in which we have to read through what the narrator says because he goes on at length and only by realizing the impossibility of that length in comparison to his other descriptions do we realize how untrustworthy he is. He says, for example, in the second full paragraph of the story, from my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these, I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them. This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principle sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable. There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere man. I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not

uncongenial to my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity to procuring those of the most agreeable kind. A disposition not uncongenial to my own? This fellow has just gone on for an excessively long paragraph explaining how wond erful animals are, how much he enjoys their company when he's a child, and all he can say about his wife, the only thing he can use to characterize her is a disposition not uncongenial to my own. Obviously, the man is incapable of making a true connection with a woman even though he has married. And what happens of course in this story is that they, they have terrible times with the cat. He gets a second cat. The house bursts into flame. With the second cat coming down the stairs, in fact, we have a strange, terrible occurrence. The cat comes down the stairs to the narrator. One day, she accompanied me upon some household errand into the cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. This, by the way, is typical of Poe's language. It's not himself that caused a problem. It's the poverty that caused the problem for him. He has no responsibility for the poverty. The fiend imtemperance made him do things. Perverseness made him do things. The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and nearly throwing me headlong exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an ax and forgetting in my wrath the childish dread, which had hither to stayed my hand. I aimed a blow at the animal, which of course would have proved instantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded by the interference into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the ax in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot without a groan. This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forth with. What, you've just killed your wife, and all you can say is this hideous murder accomplished? Obviously, we have the story of someone who cannot deal with human beings, who only can only deal with animals because you can have power over them, for whom marriage promise is good but in fact gives bad. It leads to conflagration and eventually to death. It's an extraordinary story but it is in fact, the same story that we find in The Bells. The Bells is often been criticized as nearly beautiful to hear. It has four stanzas. The first. Hear the sledges with the bells, silver

bells. What a world of merriment their melody foretells. How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, in the icy air of night. While the stars that oversprinkle, all the heavens seems to twinkle with a crystalline delight. Keeping time, time, time in a sort of runic rhyme. To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells from the bells, bells, bells, bells. Bells, bells, bells, from the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. Obviously, Poe has in gorgeous control of the sounds there. The eyes in silver and jingle and tingle the elves and the bells and rolling sounds. We have housed something else going on thematically. We go from stanza to stanza, we go from silver bells to golden bells to brazen bells to iron bells. Now, Hesiod has explained to us way back at the beginning at recorded Western Civilization that the age of humanity goes from the Golden Age to the Silver Age to the Brass Age, to the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Poe has taken those same four ages and explicitly inverted them so that the age that comes first, the happiest age, is the Age of Silver, when one is alone, when one hears a melody, one line of music and listen to a monody. Then we have this same notion in each stanza, of a specific metal. A specific event, and the music to associate with it. Though hear the mellow, the second stanza, hear the mellow wedding bells, golden bells. What a world of happiness their harmony foretells. The same gorgeous control of the language of the poetry, the music of the poetry, but now, we should be moving to something better than silver. We should be moving to gold. We should be moving away from melody to harmony. In fact, however, once marriage happens, we go without any explanation to the third stanza. Hear the loud alarum bells, brazen bells. What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells. In the startled ear of night, how they scream out their affright. Too much horrified to speak, they can only shriek, shriek, out of time . It is, in fact, the alarm bells, the fire alarm bells. And then without any further explanation, hear the tolling of the bells, iron bells, what a world of solemn thought their monody compels. The melody is changed to monody, an ode for death. They are called monotone. Ghouls come around, and we're back to Runic rhyme. These are death knells. In other words, The Bells is a story that goes, by its inversion, from silver, singular, to gold,

marriage, to an instant outbreak of fire to death. The psychological trajectory of The Bells is exactly the trajectory of The Black Cat. But while everything is accounted thus to my reason, by the narrator of The Black Cat, everything in The Bells just happens. The poetry of Poe, again and again, is the paratactic version of the hypotactic fiction. These poems are not merely Beautiful to listen to. They resonate for us because they activate at an unconscious level, the same powerful psychological stories that Poe tells in his prose.