_By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)_
Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne.
—De Béranger.[2]
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of
the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had
been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of
country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it
was; but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the
feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic,
sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest
natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene
before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the
domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—a few rank
sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter
depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more
properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter
lapse into every-day life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There
was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed
dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture
into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it
that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was
a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies
that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the
unsatisfactory conclusion that while, beyond doubt, there _are_
combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of
thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among
considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a
mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the
details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to
annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this
idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid
tarn[3] that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed
down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the
remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree
stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a
sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of
my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our
last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant
part of the country—a letter from him—which, in its wildly importunate
nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The Ms. gave
evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily
illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an earnest
desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only, personal friend,
with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some
alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and
much more, was said—it was the apparent _heart_ that went with his
request—which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly
obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really
knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and
habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been
noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament,
displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and
manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent, yet unobtrusive,
charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies,
perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable
beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable
fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had
put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the
entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with
very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this
deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect
keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character
of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which
the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the
other—it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the
consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony
with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge
the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal
appellation of the _House of Usher_—an appellation which seemed to
include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and
the family mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment of
looking down within the tarn had been to deepen the first singular
impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid
increase of my superstition—for why should I not so term it?—served
mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is
the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it
might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my
eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my
mind a strange fancy—a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention
it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had
so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole
mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and
their immediate vicinity—an atmosphere which had no affinity with the
air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the
gray wall, and the silent tarn—a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull,
sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what _must_ have been a dream, I scanned
more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature
seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages
had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in
a fine, tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from
any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen;
and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect
adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual
stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious
totality of old woodwork which has rotted for years in some neglected
vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond
this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little
token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might
have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the
roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag
direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A
servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of
the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence,
through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the _studio_
of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know
not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already
spoken. While the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings,
the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors,
and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode,
were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed
from my infancy—while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was
all this—I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which
ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases I met the
physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled
expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with
trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered
me into the presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows
were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the
black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble
gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes,
and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects
around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles
of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling.
Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse,
comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments
lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I
felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep,
and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at
full length, and greeted me with, a vivacious warmth which had much in
it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality—of the constrained
effort of the _ennuyé_[4] man of the world. A glance, however, at his
countenance convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for
some moments, while he spoke not. I gazed upon him with a feeling half
of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered,
in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty
that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before
me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his
face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion;
an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat
thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of
a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in
similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of
prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like
softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion
above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not
easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the
prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were
wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke.
The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of
the eye, above all things startled, and even awed me. The silken hair,
too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild
gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could
not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with any idea
of simple humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence—an
inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble
and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy, an excessive
nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been
prepared, no less by his letter than by reminiscences of certain boyish
traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical
conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and
sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the
animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic
concision—that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding
enunciation—that leaden, self-balanced, and perfectly modulated
guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the
irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense
excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest
desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He
entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his
malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one
for which he despaired to find a remedy—a mere nervous affection, he
immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed
itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed
them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms and
the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much
from a morbid acuteness of the senses. The most insipid food was alone
endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of
all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint
light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed
instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden[5] slave. "I
shall perish," said he, "I _must_ perish, in this deplorable folly.
Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of
the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the
thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon
this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of
danger, except in its absolute effect—in terror. In this unnerved—in
this pitiable condition—I feel that the period will sooner or later
arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle
with the grim phantasm, FEAR."
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal
hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was
enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the
dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never
ventured forth—in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was
conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be restated—an influence which
some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family
mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his
spirit—an effect which the _physique_ of the gray walls and turrets,
and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length,
brought about upon the _morale_ of his existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the
peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more
natural and far more palpable origin—to the severe and long-continued
illness—indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution—of a tenderly
beloved sister, his sole companion for long years, his last and only
relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness which I
can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the
last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady
Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion
of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared.
I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread[6];
and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation
of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When
a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and
eagerly the countenance of the brother; but he had buried his face in
his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary
wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled
many passionate tears.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her
physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and
frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical
character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne
up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself
finally to bed; but on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at
the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with
inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and
I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus
probably be the last I should obtain—that the lady, at least while
living, would be seen by me no more.
For several days ensuing her name was unmentioned by either Usher or
myself; and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to
alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or
I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations[7] of his
speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy
admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more
bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind
from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth
upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing
radiation of gloom.
I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus
spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in
any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or
of the occupations in which he involved me, or led me the way. An
excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphurous luster over
all. His long, improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among
other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion
and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of von Weber[8].
From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which
grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more
thrillingly because I shuddered knowing not why,—from these paintings
(vivid as their images now are before, me) I would in vain endeavor to
educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of
merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his
designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an
idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me, at least, in the
circumstances then surrounding me, there arose out of the pure
abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw, upon his
canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever
yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete
reveries of Fuseli.[9]
One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so
rigidly of the spirit of abstraction may be shadowed forth, although
feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an
immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth,
white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of
the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at
an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was
observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch or other
artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays
rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate
splendor.
I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which
rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of
certain effects of stringed, instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow
limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave
birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his
performances. But the fervid _facility_ of his _impromptus_ could not
be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as
well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently
accompanied himself with rimed verbal improvisations), the result of
that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have
previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the
highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I
have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed
with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its
meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full
consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty
reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted
Palace,"[10] ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:—
I
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,