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Wordly Obsessions

~ … the occasional ramblings of a book addict …

Wordly Obsessions

Tag Archives: edgar allan poe

Book Review | ‘Florence and Giles’ by John Harding

15 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Book Review

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

book review, edgar allan poe, florence and giles, gothic fiction, henry james, john harding, literature, peter ackroyd, poe a life cut short, the turn of the screw


Florence and GilesFlorence and Giles by John Harding

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was my Hallowe’en read for the year, and I did get rather excited at the prospect of a ‘Poe’ meets ‘The Turn of the Screw‘, but it really wasn’t to be. While the concept is firmly rooted in the Gothic tradition (thanks to it being almost a re-write of the illustrious, aforementioned title by Henry James) it really does lack in the ‘scare factor’ that it so promises on the back cover.

This is the story of Florence and Giles, two orphaned children living with their estranged uncle in a vast, sprawling estate known as Blithe House. However, the name of the house is grossly misleading as nothing about the place is ‘blithe’. It is a cold, forbidding mansion with ancient turrets and a dark history. Florence is our precocious little narrator, and guides us through the ghostly happenings of the place and the strange people who live there.

Besides her quiet, rather innocent brother (who needs protecting most of the time) there is her uncle, a pedantic odd sort of man who much to Florence’s annoyance, forbids her to read. Despite her uncle’s stern request Florence does read and her midnight sojourns to the crumbling library were the most enjoyable parts of the book. A bit of a childhood fantasy come true for me! Another endearing aspect to Florence’s personality is her affection for Shakespeare, which she admires so much that she adopts his ‘word-forgery’. As a result she develops her own take on English, splicing words together to make them seem more dramatic. In some aspects she is uncannily like her uncle, and as the novel progresses is further strengthened to suggest a far closer blood-bond.

However when it comes to the accidental death of the old governess, and the appointment of the new one, I find things get a bit tedious. I could clearly see that the new governess was supposed to be a very scary witch-like character, possibly even a revenant, and Harding almost DID pull it off in a particularly hair-raising sequence, but it was never followed up after that.

Instead there is a ‘twist’, in that we realise that our narrator may not be as reliable as we first thought. For me, the turn of events served to kill the story rather than improve it.

It is a good novel for gothic fiction fans, but those looking fora bit more ‘oomph’ needn’t bother. If you want something like Poe, read Poe. There are really no substitutes for them in my opinion, but having said that I do commend Harding for having a go at it.

If you are interested in Edgar Allen Poe, please read my review on Poe: A Life Cut Short by Peter Ackroyd.

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Book Review | ‘The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

12 Thursday May 2011

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Book Review, Excerpts

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

1001 book list, book review, charlotte perkins gilman, classics, edgar allan poe, feminist literature, short story, virginia woolf, Yellow Wallpaper


The Yellow Wall-paper and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)The Yellow Wall-paper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“A man’s honor always seems to want to kill a woman to satisfy it. “

Gilman’s prose is of the scary type. Scary for its’ intellect and practical advice for all women. First of all, she is an unapologetic feminist. These well-structured little stories could be divided into three themes which showcase Gilman’s adeptness in her art. The first third of the book displays distinct Gothic elements where houses (what Freud called the ‘Unheimliche’) become objects that reflect female repression. In ‘Yellow-Wallpaper‘, Gilman’s most famous and disturbing story, the house is portrayed as a domestic prison, a warden, and later as a mirror that depicts the awful break-down of the main character. In truth, I was not prepared for the subtle horror of the final scene due to Gilman’s clever use of language. There were also undertones to this story that paralleled partly with Virginia Woolf‘s own tragic death. Gilman’s inspiration came from personal experience after being admitted to a mental institution whereupon the regime was so bad that it almost made her lose her mind. In her preface, she states in particular how the story was written to all doctors who think total rest and complete detachment from any activity are sure cures for a curious, flexible mind.

“I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once.
But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at one time.
And though I always see her, she may be able to creep faster than I can turn!

I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.”

The second set of stories are mostly humorous satire’s based on the style of different well-known authors such as Austen and R.L. Stevenson. While they were well-written these did not particularly interest me so much. The last part of the book however clearly hammered home the political and socio-economic potential of women in the world. The stories prove that Gilman was a woman very much ahead of her time. The stories themselves must have caused a real stir and they are worded in such a way to stamp out any kind of protest from the ‘male chauvinistic pigs’ that she is constantly pounding.

“Woman” in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether.”

While the stories were entertaining, I did tire of the overly feminist tone, and soon the plots all began to merge together. Allow me to explain: a woman at the dregs of her life (a mere 50 years old) suddenly gets the urge to live for herself for once. Her children are married off, the husband is conveniently dead, so there is nothing stopping her. The children are trying to get at her money (what little is left of it) by getting her to sell off the property and move in with them. The matriarch refuses and instead of explaining what she’ll do with her life, sets about renting off her property, setting up ‘ladies clubs’, starting up a jam-making business, whereupon in a year her income doubles and trebles. In two years she becomes a millionaire and laughs in the face of her children and everyone else who considered her a helpless good for nothing old lady. End of story.

As I said, while this is entertaining, it does get tedious. But all in all a must-read even if just for ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.

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Book Review | ‘The Angel’s Game’ by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

14 Monday Mar 2011

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Book Review, Excerpts

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Barcelona, book review, carlos ruiz zafon, edgar allan poe, gothic fiction, House of Usher, Jorge Luis Borges, Library of Babel, Shadow of the Wind, the angel's game


The Angel’s GameThe Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.”

From the forbidden vaults of ‘Monk’ Lewis to the forgotten labyrinths of Borgian verse emerges ‘The Angel’s Game’, a sinister tale set in 1930’s Barcelona; a city both blessed and damned by the genius of its literary talent. Loosely following on from ‘Shadow of the Wind’, Zafon revisits old haunts like the antique book-dealer Sempere, Barcelo the publisher and the dangerously alluring ‘Cemetery of Forgotten Books’.

At the heart of this story is David Martin, a young man struggling to make ends meet as a crime-reporter by day and a writer of erotic gothic thrillers by night. With a little help from literary patron Pedro Vidal he soon strikes success with his pulp series ‘City of the Damned’. Martin then decides to become a full-time writer, yet living life by the pen means to have a ‘room of one’s own’, and in Martin’s case this means moving to an abandoned tower in the heart of the city. Driven by his growing fame and his literary aspirations, Martin soon begins to lose track of reality. An impending sense of doom begins to creep upon him as the macabre creations that populate his stories begin to show up in real life.

Meanwhile, a letter from enigmatic publisher Andreas Corelli begins a diabolical cycle of events that seem to involve Martin on a level beyond the physical realm, as he comes with an offer that Martin cannot refuse. Andreas Corelli, with his expensive stationary curiously embossed with angels and his devilish charm, wants Martin to write a book to surpass all books; a tome ‘with the power to change hearts and minds’. In return Martin will earn a fortune, and possibly more. But as he begins his undertaking, the shadows of the haunted tower stalk him and they begin to reveal a terrible history that was played out years ago within the walls of the mansion.

I love Zafon’s Barcelona. I say ‘his’, because it is so very different from any other version I have had the pleasure of reading. As a lover of old-fashioned Gothic, I revelled in the sepia-tinted landscapes and decayed, baroque buildings that evoked the bittersweet, naphthalene aroma of nostalgia. Another thing I cannot resist is a book about the terrible power and beauty of books; and that is exactly what rests at the heart of ‘The Angel’s Game’. As in ‘Shadow of the Wind’, Zafon yet again represents Barcelona as a city preoccupied with urban myths which in this novel, veers towards notions of bibliomancy.The characters in the novel (be they main or simply bit-part players) are all beautifully developed. I found myself liking all of them, even the ‘bad’ ones. But upon finishing it I discovered that the real hero here was simply and purely ‘books’, who throughout the story demand and conspire to be brought forth into the world through very innovative ways. In this way the Borgian influence is very apparent, as is the Poe-esque ‘The House of Usher’ flavouring he adds to the architecture. Zafon’s flirtation with Borgian metaphysics comes in the form of an homage by way of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books; a grotesque, cavernous labyrinthine library that one may gain admittance only through recommendation. Readers of Borges will recognise this structure and all its horror from his short story ‘The Library of Babel’ (to read, click on the link).

In short this novel is a bibliophile’s heaven. But anyone who has read ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ will also know of the secret pact one must agree to if they enter the cemetery, and the bad luck that ensues when one ventures to take out a book from the maw of that malicious place.

“As I walked, I ran my fingers along the spines of hundreds of books. I let myself be imbued with the smell, with the light that filtered through the cracks or from the glass lanterns that embedded in the wooden structure, floating among mirrors and shadows.”

What I also like about this story is how Zafon concentrates on a time when the written word still had a magical potency to bless or damn its author. This is a story of intricate secrets, where books are not simply of ink and paper, but are voracious, sentient beings with the capacity to cannibalise both master and reader. In Zafon’s world, books have more than one story to tell. As surely as there is a sub-text to every text, what I call the ‘world within a world’ or the whisper in the shout; there is also another more important story being playing out between each and every person that touches the cover of a single book. It is this personal history of the creation and career of these objects as they are launched into the world that forms the overarching narrative that continues until it is destroyed. The Cemetery of Forgotten Books guards against this literary death, and it is here that Martin witnesses what the cemetery really is: a morgue of human thought.

“Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it.”

However beautifully the plot was crafted and presented, I found this slightly lacking from ‘The Shadow of the Wind’, which earned a 5/5. Zafon tends to leave a few loose-ends to some sub-plots which, while it didn’t detract from the overall story, did annoy me a little. These little imperfections together with its’ ending (which was a bit anti-climatic) meant I couldn’t give it a full house. But all the same, fans of ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ will enjoy revisiting these old places and characters once more. In fact I felt a certain déjà vu in some places, as I remembered similar scenes being played out in ‘The Shadow of the Wind’. It gave me a weird sensation, as if I were watching two films at once. It’s the best experience of dramatic irony I have ever HAD!

I hope Zafon continues to spin tales based around Barcelona, especially if it includes the cemetery of forgotten books. Who is Sempere? Why does he damn people by introducing them to that awful place? And more importantly, what is the history of that awful place? Too many questions. I just hope Zafon can provide us with the answers.

View all my reviews

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Quick Review | ‘Poe: A Life Cut Short’ by Peter Ackroyd

06 Saturday Nov 2010

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Authors, Book Review

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

biography, book review, edgar allan poe, gothic fiction, literature, peter ackroyd, poe a life cut short, Rufus Wilmot Griswold


Poe: A Life Cut ShortPoe: A Life Cut Short by Peter Ackroyd

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Anyone interested in the life of Poe will be aware of the tremendous hype surrounding his death. It is a fact that he died in a state of delirium, and was found in this state only a week after he had cheerfully waved goodbye to his aunt from a steamboat bound from Richmond to Baltimore. This was the last sighting of Poe until he was found dying six days later in a dirty tavern. What happened during that missing week is a complete mystery; one that is just as confounding as his tales of ‘ratiocination’ or detective fiction. Ackroyd’s short but succinct biography of this enigmatic literary figure begins with his death and the scant facts of his final days on earth.

As an author of the perverse and the macabre, Poe’s literary legacy has somehow managed to pervade all aspects of his life, and this is something Ackroyd explores without falling into the trap of sensationalism. But having said this, there were certain themes that ‘haunted’ Poe which Ackroyd looks at in great detail. Poverty, death from consumption, loneliness and abandonment were some of Poe’s most destructive and constant companions; demons that rode his back and coloured his outlook on life. As an orphan, Poe always yearned for love in the way of literary recognition. Acceptance by the masses was to be his vanity; which sadly pointed to a very deep and forlorn void stemmed by the women in his life; or a lack of them.

“Be silent in that solitude
           Which is not loneliness, for then
The spirits of the dead who stood
           In life before thee are again
In death around thee, and their will
          Shall overshadow thee: be still.”

Ackroyd deftly highlights in a straightforward manner how all these elements combined to produce Poe’s most extraordinary tales of terror and the suppressed psyche. Through them, Ackroyd explores the varying stages of Poe’s mental and psychological health, which unfortunately were always in a state of painful flux. If he was ecstatic and full of hope one minute, he would be found floundering in the pits of despair the next. Ackroyd doesn’t state as much, but he gives the impression that Poe might have been a manic-depressive or even bipolar. But it was probably his alcoholism that condemned him mockery by his literary peers and kept him from the fame that he so despaired for. Ackroyd documents how Poe struggled to keep a job down due to his binge-drinking and lost some very prestigious positions because of his unpredictable nature. In fact, drink was a common demon to the Poe family, as a letter by William (a cousin) shows.

“William Poe also wished to caution his cousin against that ‘which has been a great enemy to our family.’ The enemy was of course, a ‘too free use of the Bottle’. The Bottle was the demon of the Poes.”

But despite the negativity, Ackroyd also states Poe’s achievements. He was for one, a great critic who had an innate understanding of real art. He was a perfectionist, and it was often this sensitivity to beauty and an aggressive intolerance for anything short of it that earned him many enemies. Ackroyd describes how his reviews were often scathing, bordering on personal attacks. In ‘Poe: A Life Cut Short’ Ackroyd tries hard to present Poe as a more rounded personality. His loves were all-consuming and full of sacrifice; his hate was also much the same; and his financial state did not hinder him from saying exactly what was on his mind. His most famous disagreement to date is probably with Rufus Griswold, who abhorred him so much that after Poe died, he published a false memoir which stated all sorts of defamatory allegations against the deceased. Much to my relief, Ackroyd sensibly ignores this aspect of Poe’s life (again, too much hype), but does make a statement that very neatly sums up the actions of Griswold:

“Poe had met Griswold two years before, and they had circled each other in mutual suspicion masked by professional admiration. Griswold had succeeded Poe at Graham’s Magazine, where he had gained a reputation for literary chicanery. But the publication of his anthology in 1842 brought him a measure of success. Poe was ambivalent, describing it as ‘a most outrageous humbug’ to a private correspondent while lauding it in print as ‘the most important addition which our literature has had for many years received.’ The protestation was not enough. When a wholly and sarcastically negative review appeared in the Saturday Museum, Griswold assumed (wrongly, as it happened) that Poe had composed it. The there came Poe’s animadversions upon the book in his series of lectures. But Griswold eventually had his revenge. After Poe’s death he would be responsible for the most lethal character assassination in the history of American literature.”

This probably illustrates the reason why Ackroyd found it wise to steer clear of this episode (as interesting as it is). He acknowledges the fact, but does not allow it to take over and give birth to half-baked theories and gossip about Poe’s death that have found root over the years. A ‘character assassination’ it definitely was, but Ackroyd also makes it clear that Poe was no angel during his time as editor of various journals and magazines. For one, he reveals that Poe regularly wrote ‘spoofs’ or ‘hoaxes’ that were soon found out to be nothing but lies. These little events did not go in his favour, and reflected badly on his status as a credible editor.

Overall, I think this biography did a good job in weeding out the ‘gossip’ from the ‘facts’ surrounding Poe’s life. Ackroyd is an academic writer, and I appreciated his sensitivity in what went into the account and what was left out. The best thing about it is that Ackroyd allows the reader to make up their own mind about Poe. There is a very clear relationship between his life and his works and Ackroyd gets this just right. His account is not overdone with quotations which neatly side-steps the path to sentimentalism. After reading this I realised that Poe was a difficult man to pin down. The accounts of him vary from being as ‘unstable as water’, a ‘characterless character’ to being ‘the merest shell of a man’. Those who loved him commented on his deep intellect and his way with words. I think Ackroyd sums it up very well when he states that:

“Like a salamander he could only live in fire. But the fire was often started by himself. He stumbled from one passionate outburst to the next. He hardly seemed to know himself at all, but relied upon the power of impassioned words to create his identity.”

While alive, Poe’s words were constantly used against him. He was mocked and ridiculed, only because he had mocked and ridiculed others (a sign of starting the fire himself in many ways). But it was only after the death of this orphan, when only his words were left that he finally found his identity.

“Tennyson described him as ‘the most original genius that America has produced’, worthy to stand beside Catallus and Heine. Thomas Hardy considered him to be ‘the first to realise in full the possibility of the English language’… The science fiction works of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells are heavily indebted to him, and Arthur Conan Doyle paid tribute to Poe’s mastery of the detective genre… The orphan, in the end, found his true family.”

View all my reviews

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Hallowe’en Poetry | ‘The Raven’ by E.A. Poe

30 Saturday Oct 2010

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Authors, Poetry

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

brandon lee, christopher lee, christopher walken, dracula, edgar allan poe, eric draven, frankenstein, halloween, james earl jones, jekyll and hyde, john astin, peter ackroyd, poetry, the crow, the raven, vincent price


‘”While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.”
… You heard me rapping, right?’ – Eric Draven, ‘The Crow’

Even though I do not celebrate it, the Hallowe’en spirit is something that I am very fond of. I suppose it’s my love for Romantic Gothic literature that has me looking forward to it every year. It’s any old excuse really for classics like ‘Frankenstein’, ‘Dracula’ and the ‘Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ to be pulled off the shelf and given a once over. This year however I have changed tack; instead of immersing myself in the epistolary accounts of Jonathan Harker and Victor Frankenstein I have decided to revisit Poe and his wonderfully morbid collection of short stories and poems. So since this is my first hallowe’en blog post I thought what better way to celebrate it than with the famous Gothic poem: ‘The Raven’.

This poem holds a very special place in my heart, as it evokes the true spirit of the Gothic: terror of the unknown and melancholic desire. Peter Ackroyd’s short biography ‘Poe: A Life Cut Short’ has also thrown some very interesting light on the popularity of the poem that I wish to share. In the chapter entitled ‘The Bird’ I discovered its origins and the reason why it has endured as one of the most popular ‘recited’ poems of all time. After it was published, ‘The Raven’ became one of those rarest of things; an overnight success. This intricate masterpiece of form and meter was the only real commercial fame Poe ever gained in his lifetime as he was suddenly being hailed in the street as the ‘raven’ (very apt as he always wore black) and the words ‘nevermore’ had quickly been adopted and immortalised by actors.  

However, the thing that excited me most, was that Poe himself was frequently asked to read the poem out loud. Yet this all began when a famous actor and friend of Poe recited it for the first time in Poe’s office. From that moment ‘The Raven’ has remained as a famous narrative poem that has continued to be recited by famous actors throughout history. Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, James Earl Jones and John Astin are to name but a few who have lent their voices to it, but the version I love most is the one by Christopher Walken. So here it is, complete with scary sound effects that reminds me of that Tim Burton classic ‘Sleepy Hollow’. Enjoy!

Now, the question poses itself: Which famous actor would you like to hear recite the poem? My choice would be the late Brandon Lee who starred as Eric Draven in ‘The Crow’. In the film, he only recited a couple of lines (see caption of image), but it was absolutely fantastic.

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10 Things You Should Know About Edgar Allan Poe

25 Monday Oct 2010

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Authors, General

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

edgar allan poe, murders in the rue morgue, tuberculosis


 

  1. He was born on 19th January 1809 in Boston to David Poe (American lawyer/actor) and Eliza Poe (English actress). He was named after the manager of the theatrical troupe that his parents were a part of. He had an older brother Henry and a younger sister Rosalie.
  2. Loneliness, despair and poverty were key themes throughout Poe’s life, as his father abandoned them when he was barely two years old. Left to raise three children on her own, Eliza succumbed to tuberculosis and died in 1811; the first of many deaths that would affect Poe’s work.
  3. He was adopted by the wealthy Black family soon after his mother’s death. His time with them was to be his happiest until the death of his adoptive mother. An estrangement with his adoptive father meant he would yet again be alone in the world.
  4. His first work to be published was Tamerlane and Other Poems in 1827 when he was serving as a soldier. It was penned under the name of ‘a Bostonian’. Fifty copies were sold.
  5. He was known as a ‘Magazinist’ in his lifetime, as he spent most of his career writing and editing various publications including Gentlemen’s Magazine and the Southern Literary Messenger. Subsequently he was fired from all his posts because of his severe drinking problem.
  6. He married his 14-year-old cousin, Virginia, in the spring of 1836. He lied about her age, saying she was 21. She too would die of tuberculosis in 1847 aged 25, the same age as Poe’s mother. The only remaining portrait of Virginia is a watercolour that was painted immediately after her death.
  7. Almost all his close relatives and friends died by consumption including his mother, brother, adoptive mother, wife and two previous lovers. It was called the ‘family disease’. As a result, most of his short stories such as The Fall of the House of Usher contain female characters that are plagued by unknown illnesses. 
       
  8. He is hailed as the father of the detective fiction genre with his creation of Auguste C. Dupin in 1841. The Murders in the Rue Morgue is his most popular collection of such stories. The term ‘Detective fiction’ however was not coined until 1843, and Poe described it as ‘ratiocination’.
  9. Edgar Allan Poe died on 7th October under mysterious circumstances. His death is a case that has never been resolved as he died in the grip of a delirium after being found by his relatives. He had been missing for some days in Baltimore while trying to get subscriptions for his new periodical the Stylus. His funeral was attended by only four people. To this day, Poe’s death is still debated.
  10. In 2009, after 160 years, Edgar Allen Poe was given a proper ceremony. The event was attended by hundreds of fans from all over the world. Like most artists, Poe was never sufficiently appreciated during his life. However in death he found the fame he so thirsted after.

To read the works of Edgar Allan Poe online for free, you can visit classiclit.about.com.

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Famous Quotes | Edgar Allan Poe

25 Monday Oct 2010

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Quotes

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

edgar allan poe, gothic fiction, peter ackroyd



Edgar Allan Poe (January 19 1809 – October 7 1849)
The father of detective fiction and probably the first proper ‘Goth’ of modern literature. He was known for his stories of mystery and the macabre.

Calling all emo-goths, Tim Burton fans and general lovers of kohl-rimmed eyes and dark, dark clothing; a round of applause please because our next ‘Famous Quotes’ author is none other than Edgar Allan Poe. Here is the original ‘man of melacholy’ letters. Let’s face it, Hallowe’en just isn’t the same without him. I’m a bit upset that I missed the anniversary of his death (it would have been VERY fitting to have posted this 18 days ago) but you can’t have everything. So here I am gearing up for Hallowe’en by reading up a little on Poe’s dramatic life through Peter Ackroyd’s ‘Poe: A Life Cut Short’. Even though I’m halfway through it, I got a strong sense that although Poe was born under a lucky literary star, he was always sabotaged by his demons, his vanity and his circumstances. Like most great writers, Poe was way ahead of his time; and unfortunately people only truly appreciated his work after his death.

In honour of Poe and all Gothic fiction here are some brilliant quotes from the master of the macabre.

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”

“I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”

“I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.”

“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”

“It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.”

“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”

“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”

“Men have called me mad; but 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.”

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.” 

“Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.” 

Probably the most curious quote out of all of these is the one about the cat. I would love to know exactly what he meant by it.

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