Professor David Peimer
Edgar Allan Poe: The Mysterious World of the Mind

Professor David Peimer - Edgar Allan Poe: The Mysterious World of the Mind

- As Wendy has said, hi everybody, and thank you so much for being part of us and the whole lockdown, to use Wendy’s great word, family, and thanks to Karina for all your help as always, putting the PowerPoints, helping us get everything together. Okay, so I’m going to dive into this, to me, remarkable pardon me, this, to me, this quite remarkable, strange, I hate to use the word crazy, but certainly individual, who certainly lived in the margins in his mind of his times, and yet of our times as well, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. I chose, I’m going to show one or two other pictures of him, not only this one, which looks perhaps slightly demonic or much more sad or slightly depressed, even, of Mr. Poe. But, what is striking is that he only lived for 40 years, and yet the impact and the reach that is so global is quite phenomenal. And his impact and reach that, into various different areas of art and literature, to film, to TV, obviously now to internet, to theatre is extraordinary, the influence that he had, and obviously not in America, but globally in all these different genres and media. And it’s fascinating to ask why and how, and that’s, I want to look at his, a bit of about his life, and then ask that question. Why has he lasted? How had he lasted? What was he trying to tap into that, consciously or not, that really endures and is enduring and inspiring for us still today, that we are still so attracted to the stories that he wrote, the ideas that he, in a way, initiated to a large degree.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said, “Where was detective fiction? It only breathed when Edgar Allan Poe started it.” So, Conan Doyle, Arthur Conan Doyle saw Poe as originating detective fiction, and certainly that idea of the Holmes-Watson relationship, of the super smart, scientifically-minded sleuth or detective together with the sidekick, who is half witty, half funny, but at least five or six intellectual steps behind, The Holmes-Watson relationship. And that begins a lot with Poe, and Arthur Conan Doyle acknowledges it absolutely fully as do many many other writers. You know, one can go on. Oscar Wilde speaks about it. Just so many writers of the 20th century have referred back to him. So, I’m going to look at, a little bit about his life and then his influence, and then look at one poem, “The Raven,” in particular ‘cause that not only is the most famous poem, but I think it’s where he spells out his ideas and his approach to writing. And then, I want to look at a couple of clips from the great and unique Vincent Price, acting in the film of obviously “The Fall of the House of Usher” just to give us some movie examples as well. And, okay, so if we can go on to the next slide, please. So, this is a younger version of Poe, which I wanted to show contrasted to the other one. And this is his wife, who, Virginia, who was 13 years younger than him, and he eventually managed to convince to go out with him, marry him, etc, and their whole life together. And then she died tragically, I think, much younger and before him, and he only, he dies at the age of 40.

So, enormous amount of death and disease that is rifling through his life and his family’s life, not so different to the life of Emily Dickinson, which we spoke about last week compared to Walt Whitman. And Emily Dickinson was, the number of people who died that she was so close to at a young age, at her teenage, at her 20s, so many died. And obviously the influence is so close, and most obviously of disease, given the times, naturally. So, Edgar Allan Poe lives in those times, and I want to start before going into a little about his life. I want to ask the question is why on earth do we enjoy horror movies? Why do we think today in our times with so much horror in the world, and so much horror and real horror obviously, in war, in famine everywhere, in butchery, in terrible things happening, and yet, why do people still, even before recent times, why do people still love going to the horror movies or reading horror stories, what has become known as horror, which in a way, is a genre that Edgar Allan Poe almost invented in a sense, together with the detective fiction. As Hitchcock said, Hitchcock said it was because of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories and suspense that he created that he was inspired to make his movies. That’s huge from Hitchcock, the master of ultimate horror and the macabre and that whole genre, all referring back to Poe. So, why do we, as humans, enjoy horror movies? Why do we go to them, pay good money, watch them, like reading stories about them, novels? I’m going to show you at the end a brief clip from “The Shining,” not only 'cause I love Stanley Kubrick, he’s one of my favourite directors, I mean, brilliant, but because there’s one piece which I think pulls together what I really want to suggest about why Edgar Allan Poe lasts and endures to our day. Okay, and of course, there’s Polanski, “Rosemary’s Baby,” and just so many in the genre coming out of Edgar Allan Poe, not to mention film noir and all those other forms as well, Fritz Lang, “Third Man” and others.

So, it’s interestingly Stephen King, who for me probably is one of the really great masters in novels of the genre of horror and the macabre, and Stephen King wrote, “We use horror movies as a catharsis to act out our nightmares and the worst parts of us. Getting to watch insanity and depravity in a movie allows us to release our own inner insanity, which in turn keeps us a bit sane.” Interesting, that’s Stephen King writing about the power of horror novels, horror movies in particular, and of course, he’s probably the great novelist of our times of this genre. Why are horror movies parts of us that are so dark and yet we can live it out vicariously in a safe context and actually feel more sane because we’ve experienced an hour and a half of insanity and depravity? It’s quite Freudian in a way, that insight. Why are horror movies so addictive? Many theories, and I want to suggest one or two. Obviously, there’s a sympathetic nervous system. When we’re scared, we get a rush of adrenalin, which releases endorphins, dopamine. So, fear releases that in us so that the irony of being human is that fear releases adrenalin which also releases endorphins and dopamine, feel good. Classic duality of being human, both aspects of the dark and the euphoric in us chemically, almost, and those of you watching, please help me more with more chemical knowledge of how it really works in our bodies, as to why we would go and see a movie or read a book and pay that induces fear and terror. Quite extraordinary if you think about it. We’re going to go watch something that induces such fear and terror in us. There’s obviously no single explanation. Then, there’s another fairly recent theory about vicarious experience and what they call, in the phraseology, threat mastery, the constant danger of our ancient ancestors, obviously. They were living in constant danger in the cave, and going out and trying to hunt down something to eat for the cave, etc.

But, those ancient experiences, the theory goes, gave us a highly responsive threat detection system. And because horror movies simulate threatening situations, our emotional responses to them are as if we experienced a real life threat. Now, that’s fascinating to me of this, this threat detection, threat mastery idea, of relatively recent thinking because that means that vicariously, we will experience it, which will give us a similar chemical and emotional response as if we were doing the real thing, which speaks to me of the remarkable power of theatre and film and art, that it can create a vicarious experience. It’s totally not real, Obviously, it’s not real, but through Coleridge’s phrase, through the suspension of disbelief, we can experience it as if it’s real, the extraordinary power of art, which I have loved ever since I began to understand it a little bit all those decades ago. Theatre, film, novels, painting, sculpture, everything going together. Art in total can give us that which is phenomenal because it’s in a safe context and safe space. It’s vicarious. We aren’t literally doing it. So, whether we agree with the threat mastery idea or not, but it gives us that simulated threatened situation. The question is, why do we want to simulate being threatened? Why do we want to simulate having fear and terror and horror and threat thrust on us? We do, part of being human. So, we don’t encounter real life threats, like obviously like our ancient humans. So, going to horror movies or reading the stories lets us put our threat detection system to use. It’s a fairly contemporary way of some scholars anyway, of thinking. We want to experience post-apocalyptic movies, alien invasions, the threat of the attacker, “Jaws” the shark, whatever the monsters, “Jurassic Park,” the dinosaurs.

So, we want to experience and get our threat detection system activated, those the theory of some people. So, horror movies become a risk-free way to vicariously experience threat, which is quite a thoughtful idea of the paradox of being all too human. We want to experience threat. Why, 'cause our lives are boring, banal. We need that extra kick, that extra edge of adrenalin, maybe, an endorphin rush, like the rush of falling in love or falling out of love, of being emotionally hurt and emotionally inspired, maybe, that somewhere there’ a need for all of it together. The terrific and the terrifying, all too human, and then of course, there’s the excitation transfer theory. Okay, and I’ve got to ask for help from psychologists watching to feed me more. I’ll sort of give the essence here. When the threat is resolved, that’s interesting, then goes the theory of excitation transfer, when the threat is resolved and we’ve mastered the threat, ‘cause we feel we’ve mastered it vicariously in watching the film, we have a euphoric high, and that’s the release. Yes, we can link it to sexuality and many other things as well, but the aim of, that we can have a euphoric high because we’ve mastered that terrible threat coming in, and that euphoric release really is part of the whole experience in a way, fascinating to me.

Of course, it’s obviously an opportunity to explore the darker side of humanity, which is a more obvious known way of thinking about it. Maybe we have. I don’t know. We could discuss this endlessly. Maybe we have a morbid curiosity as well. Subjects like terror and horror, the dark side, the death and death defying, who survives, who doesn’t, how do they survive, and it can be as classic as “Moby Dick.” It can be as classic as fighting off Jaws, the shark, the alien, dinosaur, “Jurassic Park,” whatever, and just, the alien invasions, “Independence Day,” whatever, all these different versions of the dark shadow attacking us. Horror movies let us vicariously explore the nature of evil or maybe darkness is another word in others and, of course, in ourselves. Also, allow us to grapple with the darkest parts of humanity, but in a safe environment, and then at the end, because the darkness is mastered goes the theory, we have the euphoric high at the very end of the movie or the book. Okay, can we go on to the next slide, please?

• Sorry about that.

• Thank you. Okay, no problem. So, on the left is the house, the last house in The Bronx that Edgar Allan Poe lived in. It was more like a cottage. I suppose we would call it a small cottage today, and on the right hand side, 1875, so this was after he was dead quite a long time, a French, fantastic French painter, artist, chooses to paint something of homage, homage to Edgar Allan Poe. So, early on, his works are translated and have gone across the pond to Europe, to England and elsewhere in the world. Fascinating, that the reach was so quick, and this was obviously way before all modern forms of communication. So, Edgar Allan Poe, remember, let’s remember, he dies in 1849 at the age of 40. Mystery, the macabre, ultimately, I think there is a dark or has become known by some scholars as a dark romanticism, and of course, giving rise to Gothic fiction. The short story, he is almost the, and Arthur Conan Doyle said he was the inventor of the detective fiction genre, and certainly one of the initiators of the science fiction genre. That’s a massive amount. Gothic fiction, romanticism, the macabre, all of these things that he actually begins almost in a way. And yes, I mean Gothic literature and this dark romanticism are very popular, but they were taken up much more later. Mary Shelley, “Frankenstein,” and many of the other, sorry, “Dracula,” and sorry, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” So many of these, but they were taken up a little bit later, but influenced or originated even by this guy. He’s born in Boston.

He’s the second child of actors. Father abandons the family in 1810. So that’s very soon after, it’s a year after he’s born, and his mother died the next year. So, his mother dies when he’s two years old, and his father’s left when he’s one year old. Then, he was taken in by a couple whose surname was Allan in Richmond, Virginia, and they helped look after and bring him up. So, not even his biological family, just a couple who, in a way, adopt him. He goes to University of Virginia, but leaves after a year due to lack of money, and possibly gambling debts as well. He worked for various literary journals in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York. 1836, he married his cousin Virginia, the picture I showed the last slide. She was 13 years old at the time. She died of tuberculosis at a very young age, and then he, of course, died at the age of 40 in 1849. He enlisted in 1827, Edgar Allan Poe enlisted in the American Army, the US Army for two years, and he decided, he went to West Point to train to be an officer. He decided to leave West Point, and he purposely set up that he be kicked out by getting court martialed. There’s quite a bit of a story. Don’t want to go into it now of how he set it up to get kicked out. 1835, at the age of 26, he married Virginia, who as I said, was all those years younger. They were married for 11 years till he was 37, and she was 24 when she dies of TB. So, let’s imagine the feeling of abandonment. His own parents leave or die before he’s two years old.

Brought up by this couple in Richmond. Doesn’t get on very well with them at all, but goes to university, leaves. Goes to the army, leaves. Basically, it’s a theme of abandonment every step of the road of his life, and I think abandonment is in every single one of his stories, and every single one of his novels, his poetry and his short stories. It’s so hidden and deep, but it’s abandonment, not by choice necessarily, and it can be by family or by whoever, but it’s a profound sense of this utter aloneness in life. He, at the time, he wrote, he said that one must always include the death of a beautiful woman in one’s story, which of course, he did, but maybe, theoretically, what some scholars have said, it links to the very, the death of his own wife at the age of 24, and she was 24. So, the genres that he covers, Gothic, horror, themes of death, but it’s not only that. What I think he brings in is there are the physical, the physical bodily signs and effects of decomposition and the body together with the psychological. And this is way before any of this has been spoken about, before the theories of psychology really that he’s writing and all this in-depth investigation of the physical, what happens to the body in all these ways. And, of course, there’s a fascination with this happening in England and America and Europe as well, but he’s the first really to bring it into these short stories. Okay, go on to the next slide, please. This is just another picture of Poe, a slightly more amicable picture. I wanted to show a few, so we don’t just have one, sort of horror image of him at all. Obviously, there’s wit and other things. Can you show the next slide, please?

Okay, this is an image from a pretty contemporary version of “The Fall of the House of Usher” on Netflix. Just to show how, in the last 10-15 years, how Netflix has tried to take on, in this case, Usher, sort of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” using some very traditional, the mask, but then how the hair and the costume, the body are portrayed. The idea of gory death, decomposition, but also so alive, the flesh, the body, and how the little bits of the dress, the colour, it’s sort of erotically and exotically sensual, but it’s also deathly. So, it’s trying to attract and repulse us, I think, in a fairly contemporary image of just over 10 years ago. Can you show the next slide, please? This is from also, from the contemporary version of Netflix called “Fall of the House of Usher.” It’s visually, all of this, you can see what he inspires, even 170 years later of this feeling of something mysterious and ominous going to happen. Fireplace, what is it? It’s just a fireplace and two guys talking with a drink, but the way it’s lit and the fireplace, and the shadows cast, all of it is trying to suggest something ominous is going to happen, something mysterious, strange, uncertain, abandoned. We abandon ultimately control of our own lives. Abandonment of control in life in general, of society on a sociological level, historical and very personal level. And I think that’s what the ominous and the idea of menace suggest, and how filmmakers and visual artists try to capture something of his, of Edgar Allan Poe’s vision today. Okay, if we can go to the next slide, please.

So, I’m going to, in a minute, start with Christopher Lee with his wonderful voice, reading the great poem of his, “The Raven,” and just going to read the first little bit of it, but just before I do, it’s really a haunting hymn, I think, to abandonment, to finality of life and death. It’s tinged with what we might call, in his times, with a certain kind of madness, but not a kind of ridiculous or satirical sense of madness, but a profound sense of being so out of control of our own psyche, of our own life. And always, with Edgar Allan Poe, it’s waiting around the corner, much much later in Jungian terms, the shadow. It’s always following. It’s always around the corner. It’s always something that might or might not happen that is ominous, menacing, threatening in some way. And I wasn’t going to show, I’m not going to show it today, but this grainy version, they’re very bad of the very very early movies of Poe’s work, and you see the origins of Hitchcock. You see the origins of everybody who’s ever dealt with the genre in those very very early movies, and silent movies of his work, with music and the haunted house, Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” “Vertigo.” So, the haunted house, the walking up the steps, the going up the steps slowly, the shadow literally and so on all begins in Poe’s stories. That’s how he wrote. These filmmakers have all just taken from what he wrote and put it into movies. It’s so obvious the link, but he originates the strange, dark, mysterious world, but it’s a world where something is always waiting to happen. It’s not unsubtle, and suddenly, everything’ll, 10 punches in your face make you exhausted. No, horror and terror are built slowly, slowly, in Edgar Allan Poe in very thoughtful language step by step. I think that’s what Conan Doyle took on with his very scientific, logical mind of Sherlock Holmes and so many others. It’s logical. It’s slow. It’s a gradual buildup that we know so well with Hitchcock and so many others. Kubrick, it’s so many, I’m not going to go into it now. Steven Spielberg said that before he made “Jaws,” he knew he was going to make the audience wait for 20 minutes before you see that shark. You plant the seeds that goes back to Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. Plant the seed, the clues, build it, build it, build it, and then, you let out the reality of the alien, the invasion, whatever, the dark, symbolic image. Okay, we can show this little bit please, Christopher Lee reading, again, Poe’s poem.

• [Christopher] “The Raven.” “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. "Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door Only this, and nothing more.” Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow from my books surcease of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore. For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore nameless here for evermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain thrilled me, filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before. So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating “Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door, some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door: this it is, and nothing more.” Presently my soul grew stronger: hesitating then no longer, “Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore: but the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, and so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, that I scarce was sure I heard you,” here I opened wide the door: Darkness there and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before: but the silence was unbroken and the darkness gave no token, and the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!” This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!” Merely this and nothing more.

• So, by the way, this is to show you, sorry, if we can go on to the next slide, please, just if we can hold it and freeze it. Thank you, so I’m going to come on to this in a moment. Just, I wanted to share with us because he’s so telling us about his approach to writing, why he’s choosing the theme, and how he’s going to write it. Couple of things, “The Raven,” first of all is his idea. Just think of how many movies we have today where the raven comes and all the rest, the vultures up in the sky, and there’s the decomposing body or there’s the dead or the dying or going to be or the threatening fear. It starts with him. He chose the raven, Edgar Allan Poe. Next, it starts with the tapping. The poem is just a tapping. Huh, is anything there? A tapping, I was napping. Maybe there was nothing. Who knows? But, a little bit more, I go to the door. There’s nothing but darkness. I peer outside, nothing, dark. I go back in, there’s a tapping again, and you see how subtly, step by step, he builds up what became known as the horror genre, the terror genre. It’s not just in your face. It’s so subtly clues are planted step by step, and that’s how we create the creepy scary feeling. That’s what hooks our adrenalin, I think. To go back to some of these ideas from earlier on that I mentioned, that’s what hooks us, chemically and emotionally into the story. The child’s question, what’s going to happen next? We don’t know, but something strange. Something’s not quite right in the state of the home. Something strange is happening and we don’t know what it is. Remember Bob Dylan’s line. So, it’s something, it’s built up very very slowly is what I’m trying, and it’s the writing for me that is beautiful because he has the courage to just take it slow clues. And let’s remember, he’s originating all these things, dreams that are dark and strange. And, 'cause it could be so cliched.

I’m going to give a little bit of Christopher Lee, reading from Edgar Allan Poe here, first “Fall of House of Usher” just to get a clear sense of actual, of his actual writing, but before that, HG Wells praises him to the hilt. Hitchcock praises him. I’ve mentioned some of the others as well, Conan Doyle and many many others, but interestingly, WB Yeats called him a vulgar writer. Didn’t like the idea of this strange, menacing atmosphere. Ralph Waldo Emerson, he reacted to “The Raven” by saying, “I see absolutely nothing in it.” Aldous Huxley said that Poe’s writing is vulgar. It feels like the wearing of a diamond ring on every finger. Now, that’s an interesting comment by Aldous Huxley. It feels like a diamond ring on every finger, and that’s what makes it vulgar. In other words, it’s too gross. It’s too full of too much dark and horror and macabre and all of those things. Interesting different kind of criticism to just saying, it’s vulgar because it’s full of horrible stories and scary things. Some of the, and that debate continues to this day. Some people really dismiss him, writers, not only in academics. Just some of the short stories, I want to share some of the titles, 'cause he’s originating all this. “A Descent Into The Maelstrom,” “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” or Monsieur Valdemar, “Fall Of The House of Usher” we all know, “The Imp of the Perverse,” “The Mask Of The Red Death,” “The Murders In The Rue Morgue,” “Never Bet The Devil Your Head,” “The Premature Burial,” and of course “The Tell-Tale Heart,” which so many people know. So, these are phrases which are, they’re not, they’re cast in this very logical, rational, scientific way, which is what Conan Doyle takes up with Sherlock so much, and that, I think, helps to heighten the feeling of the darkness and the horror, that kind of, what he’s been known as The Dark Romantic. Okay, if we can show a little bit of Christopher Lee just reading the first couple of paragraphs of “Usher.”

• [Christopher] “The Fall Of The House Of Usher.” 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 for 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 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. 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 fences that crowded upon me as I pondered. I reigned my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid lake that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling and gazed down, what with the shadow even more thrilling than before, upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey 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 manuscript 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.“

• Can you hold it there, please, can you? Thank you, so I wanted us just to get a sense, this is the beginning of the story, of course, but that writing is very slow, thoughtful, planting little bit clue by clue the house, the walk into the house. Then, we learn that there was a letter from a friend, who is Usher. Who is Usher? Who is the family? Who is the friend who is going, and he seems very rational, very calm and thoughtful, slowly, in other words, building up dread and that sense of ominous menace step by step slowly, which hooks us, I think, emotionally. It hooks us onto the story, and perhaps we will have the catharsis at the end of mastery of threat detection, and the euphoria that chemically apparently goes along with it. Okay, so, but what I’m interested in is how that is beautifully built up, as we do in really good movies or other stories, and it’s per understanding how you build fear, how you build dread through writing and through art. And it can be done through music as well or visuals, whatever form, but I think this is one of the reasons that his writing lasts so much, and why it has had such a global impact, and so many years and years later after he wrote it. Okay, if we can go on to the next slide, please. Okay, this is from the classic Vincent Price, from, this is the trailer of "Usher,” and it’s Roger Corman who for me is one of the really so underrated as a film director, and many, Tarantino, Spielberg, so many of the great directors of our times talk about Roger Corman, but I think he’s really underestimated and underrated. Anyway, and he’d made a lot of films around, let’s call it the horror genre and terrifying.

This is the trailer, made in 1960, if I’m right, with, of course, Vincent Price. Macabre, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “Phantom of the Opera,” “Frankenstein,” “Wuthering Heights,” look at the link and kind of to all these other writers. Okay, thank you. Once we see it’s, sorry, could we just hold it there? Obviously, this is using sensationalist, trailer-type stuff at the beginning, but it shows us the link in the popular consciousness. As diverse art and literature as “Wuthering Heights” to, all these other quite extraordinary links that are made, “Phantom of the Opera” and other things that people link to Edgar Allan Poe. Not only trying to show evil, but I think this kind of sense of a darker side of humanity. And, of course, you have to smile at it and almost laugh today, but it’s fascinating to me to hear, to see how all those links have been made in the popular culture and popular imagination, what he wrote so many, so many years and years ago. Okay, if we can go on to the next slide, please. So, this is a fantastic scene from that same Vincent Price film, where we learn the family history of the different, the main members of the family of Usher. And the Vincent Price character is telling us about the evil-doings of each of his family members. So you’re looking at the pictures. It’s way before Oscar Wilde writes “Dorian Grey,” all the other novels and books with, which have images, photos or paintings as one of the primary motifs. Okay, we can show it please, Karina.

• Anthony Usher, thief, usurer, merchant of the flesh. Bernard Usher, swindler, forger, jewel thief, drug addict. Francis Usher, professional assassin. Vivian Usher, blackmailer, harlot, murderess, she died in the madhouse. Captain David Usher, smuggler, slave trader, mass murderer.

• Mr. Usher, I don’t see that this has anything to do with Madeline and myself. I don’t believe in the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children.

• You do not, sir? The House of Usher seems to you then normal?

• The house, sir, is neither normal nor abnormal. It is only a house.

• You are very wrong, Mr. Winthrop. This house is centuries old. It was brought here from England, and with it every evil rooted in its stones.

• You really believe this.

• Evil is not just a word. It is reality. Like any living thing, it can be created and was created by these people. The history of the Ushers is a history of savage degradations, first in England and then in New England, and always in this house, always in this house. The pall of evil which fills it is no illusion. For hundreds of years, foul thoughts and foul deeds have been committed within its walls. The house itself is evil now.

• Isn’t it extraordinary how it seems so contemporary, and yet it’s made over 60 years ago. So, we have the fall guy, the visitor, the friend, and we have Usher, the Vincent Price character, and he goes through each one of the six main family members, and he has the horrors they have committed and the evils they’ve done, and immediately throws in universal themes, just in the simple seed of introducing us to the family. Sins of the fathers visited on the children, is it true? Isn’t it? Well, it might be; it might not be real. We don’t know whatever the sins were. Is there such a thing as evil or isn’t there? Do we need all the other language for it that we would have today, not only of psychology, but many other disciplines would give us different kinds of languages, or is there something as fundamentally profound and ancient as the word evil, that actually does exist today or not? He’s throwing it all out in the simple interchange between the two characters. And then, the location, the house, we’re going to certain places, maybe prisons, maybe camps, maybe certain whatever. Is there a feeling of evil haunts or evil spirits are there, evil strangeness is there or not? Can we dismiss it rationally like a visitor? So, all these profound universal questions are thrown up in one short scene by Edgar Allan Poe, captured brilliantly in the Vincent Price for me, in the acting and in the making of the movie. Just a room with a couple of images, and of course, he acts it so subtly, speaking down, not trying to act crazy or mad.

And I love Steven Berkoff, fantastic writer and actor, but he did his own one-man version of “Usher,” and it’s just, for the stage even, it’s a little bit too much. It doesn’t have that same, quite that same sense of slow dread, slow, ominous buildup and so on, although it has fantastic sections in it. Now I think what Vincent Price captures is that exact thing, that way of staging, that way of building it up that I mentioned, which I think is crucial to the writing and the longevity of Edgar Allan Poe’s work. We have also here in the scene that why the friend has been called because in the end, we learn that Usher wants to confess. He wants to tell somebody all the stories of the life, all the stories that have happened, and understand, not only forgiveness, confession, but in some sense of the story’s got to get out, that all these things do actually exist. The last theme that I’ll mention that Edgar Allan Poe brought in so powerfully, the idea of the supernatural because post the enlightenment or in the enlightenment, the idea of scientific rationality and pushing aside certain spirituality, religion. Well if we do that, but what happens to the supernatural, to the unnatural? What happens to the spiritual, whether good or evil, whether right or wrong, whether the dark shadow or the shining light? What happens to all those other qualities in us as humans? As he says, do they? And all that he does, Edgar Allan Poe, is plant the seed of doubt in a very rational mind of the friend visiting. In other words, we the audience, are the friend visiting. It plants the seeds. Maybe it might, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s all just coincidence, chance, and it’s all nonsense. It’s just pure chance or not. And what he’s doing, Edgar Allan Poe, is just plant that seed of doubt, and that’s enough to start the whole story and begin. That’s why it goes back to the steps, the house, the going in, the pictures, the photo, yeah, all of that building slowly like the poem of “The Raven.”

So, science fictions begins, the horror movie. It becomes a memoir and confessional story as well, “Usher.” These are genres that he almost single-handedly, consciously or unconsciously, it doesn’t matter, created, Edgar Allan Poe, and of course, detective because the friend takes on the aura of being a detective, almost, of the Usher clan. And we learn of the past of the whole family, and how, at least, can one really escape the past of one’s family? Can one really escape the psychology and the true history of the family or not? Does it stay there, in whatever light, of light or dark or mixtures of both? And there’s the sense, not only the sense of dread, but we humans need an answer to these questions and I really believe it. And so, all of this we go through, the dark, the shadowy, and of course, the idea, I guess also of the Victorian question. This is going way back pre-Freud, the Victorian question, well, what is sanity? What is insanity? What is evil? What isn’t? And in a pre-Freudian way, to try and understand that era if we imagine it. We look at Hannibal Lecter today, “Silence of the Lambs,” what is he doing? What worlds are being created there to create this figure of horror and terror? Another one of his great stories, “The Mask of the Red Death,” it’s a cult classic, which is about a mediaeval plague closing in on a decadent count, where the god is disease. Well, how far back do you, of course, we go back to COVID and so on, and how many people are in denial about COVID? How many in, and I’m talking about an educated, anyway, how in denial about COVID, in denial about, whatever, and I’m not trying to debate the rights and wrongs, but here, that’s 1964, the cult classic by Roger Corman of that Edgar Allan Poe story of “The Mask of the Red Death” is a mediaeval plague, which is closing in on a very decadent, depraved count. And what’s going to happen to the whole world of that era, of The Count and all the people there? Well, there’s something profound in what he’s trying to do. Okay, if we can go on to the next clip, please.

• Anthony…

• This is at the beginning where the detective-type friend comes to visit Usher. Sorry, if we can go back to start it again.

• What is the meaning of this?

• I, this is Mr. Winthrop, sir.

• How dare you admit anyone into this house!

• I insisted, sir. I felt I had the right.

• Well, we can’t talk out here. Please, come in.

• I gather you know who I am, sir.

• If you please, Mr. Winthrop, softly, an affliction of the hearing, the sounds of any exaggerated degree cut into my brain like knives.

• My apologies.

• I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave, Mr. Winthrop.

• I’ve come to see Madeline.

• That is quite impossible. She is confined to her bed.

• Mr. Usher, your sister and I are betrothed.

• It was a mistake.

• I don’t believe that.

• Please don’t argue with me, sir. You must leave this house now. It is not a healthy place for you to be.

• Mr. Usher, I have ridden all the way from Boston to see Madeline, and I do not intend to leave without seeing her, now if…

• [Madeline] Philip.

• Madeline. Madeline, in heavens name, you must return to your bed.

• Madeline.

• You came all the way just to see me?

• Yes, to see you.

• Madeline, I must insist.

• We shall talk later, Philip.

• Mr. Winthrop is leaving.

• Leaving?

• I’m not leaving.

• He must stay, Roderick. Please let him stay, Roderick.

• Very well, he will stay. Now, for pity’s sake, return to your bed.

• Okay, if you can go to the next clip, please. And just hold it there for a moment. Thank you. So, that’s obviously for the character arrives. It seems pretty self explanatory, that scene, but we get again, just that beginning of that sense of dread, what’s going to happen, what isn’t to the daughter character and the Roderick character there as well. Extra points I wanted to make was that, I think one of the reasons the stories have, in a way, mutated so well to all the other genres, the genres, is just the sheer superb brilliance of his storytelling and the idea of building the dread slowly, the idea of the scientific, very rational, mathematical, almost mathematical, realistic mind, trying to deal with all these strange phenomena which are fantastical or strange or bizarre, don’t make logical sense don’t make an obvious, don’t have an obvious rational underpinning as to why, to explain why or how. And all of this deals with again the abandonment of reason, the abandonment of logic. Poe, and I think in his own life, maybe I’m stretching it here, but going through what he does at a very young age, and many other things. It’s abandonment every step of the way of life, and don’t we have that, I think it’s such a common theme of our times. Society abandons, what is promised and then is abandoned, not necessarily intentionally even, but unintentionally. War happens. Many other things happen, which are terrifying. Just as we feel we are about to control, so we are abandoned. It can be an alien. It can be the shadow. It can be an image of anything symbolic, but that is a profound ancient theme going way back in humanity. And I think it’s right there in Edgar Allan Poe’s, which I think is one of the real reasons it holds so powerfully, and that’s where the true fear and dread, the true terror and anxiety and apprehension start to creep in like in the poem of “The Raven.”

And he finds his own ways of telling it, and I think that’s what Hitchcock taps into as well. And it’s ultimately, it’s abandonment of rational understanding of what happens in human nature and human society. I want to show as the very last example this clip, which is for me, the real terrifying clip in Kubrick’s film, “The Shining,” with Jack Nicholson as we all know, where they’ve gone up to the house, the haunted house, right in the top of the mountains. There’s snow all around. It’s freezing cold. And he’s gone so that he can write his great novel, and this is the moment where the wife comes and discovers what he’s really been typing day after day, hour after after at his typewriter, discovers what the Jack Nicholson character has really been typing, thinking he’s been writing the great novel, which is why they’ve gone to such an isolated place in the first place. Classic Edgar Allan Poe image and setting, and the terrifying moment, which is psychological, when she discovers the truth. You can show it, please. Okay, if we can hold it there, please, and just freeze it, Karina. Thanks. It’s this classic, again, Poe. Hitchcock-influenced all of that as well, but what’s really profound for me, and where Kubrick really gets it is, in Edgar Allan Poe, it’s the psychology that is terrifying. Don’t need the bogeyman. Don’t need, of course, the shadow coming, yeah literally, but we don’t even need the shark or the dinosaur or the alien creature from whatever planet. It’s in the psychology ultimately that the true horror and terror lie, and it’s this moment of discovery.

Every image she’s had of her husband, every dream and hope, she gets it totally and we get it through, with her in this moment 'cause he’s meant to be spending all these days obviously writing a great novel, and the madness hits. Whether we call it madness, we call it evil, strange, whatever words we choose to use today, it’s right there. I still get a bit of, like, hairs at the back of my head when I watch this scene again and again and again. I’ve watched it so many times, but it’s all there. It’s the psychological together with how the terror builds up in that moment of discovery. When we look at Usher showing those paintings of his forebears to the other character, a seed is planted, that’s enough, and it starts to build very very slowly and gradually. So, for me, the bogeyman isn’t necessarily required. The family curses we hear about, may be ghosts, vampires, okay. That can be part of it, but it’s ultimately the psychological, not the bogeyman. It’s ultimately, it’s a tale of abandonment. In this moment, she feels utterly alone and abandoned of her own dream and hope for her husband and of the marriage. Everything goes in that second of seeing the typewriter, what he’s been writing all the time. I’m pushing the idea of abandonment, of course, into all of it, but I think it’s right there, and that’s the true terrifying thing, the abandonment of reason into a certain kind of madness that is really terrifying. And I think that is classic in Edgar Allan Poe and everything influenced by him since. Okay, thanks very much everybody. I’ll hold it there and we can go into questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Hannah, for Trudy, I will pass it on, thank you. And I’m sure Wendy will as well. We’ll both, mazeltov Trudy and her family, fantastic.

Thank you, and Ilana, Hazel. Edgar Poe died in Baltimore, where he is revered. Okay, every year on his anniversary, a mysterious masked man has laid a rose and a bottle of cognac on his grave. No one seems to know how the tradition began. Oh, that’s in the tradition.

Rita, the Poe taster, his father’s son has taken over the ritual, oh.

Phil, mazeltov to Trudy. We will tell her, thank you.

Okay, Rita, I was introduced to Poe at a very young age, “The Raven,” not for the faint of heart, no. Rita, I was only 15 years old. Yep, true.

Monique, it is Poe’s poetry I prefer. The French symbolist poets, Beaudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine were great admirers of Poe because he’d written an article, yeah, which was sort of a grammar for writing poetry. Yeah, absolutely, and they were starting to go into these worlds of what we’d call today the surreal, certainly through Rimbaud, the surrealist, and these worlds of the unconscious and dreams, the world of the supernatural. Janet, do not use my name. He should have said younger, and he, if younger than him. So, I’m not sure what you mean there.

Okay, Rita, I think you meant, oh, of, instead of younger than him. I’m not sure there, okay. Let’s hold that for now, thanks.

Q: Sandra, do you think women are less inclined to appreciate horror? I know I am and so are my female friends.

A: That’s, I don’t, I really wouldn’t be able to answer, but it’s a fascinating thought, Sandra, thank you. Be interesting to read about or ask.

Gail, hi, hope you’re well in Joburg. Hope everything’s okay. We’ll give you a horror movie. That’s a lot of people I know, male and female, a lot of friends.

Pamela, please note Poe’s psychology, married his cousin, Virginia. She was 13. He was 27, yep, and she died, as I mentioned, of TB at 24, when she was 24. Two years later, he died. I mean, it’s extraordinary of she dying, his own mother dying when he was two, father leaving when he was one, abandoning them, all of this going together. Even the adopted family, he felt abandoned him. By coincidence, Poe was a topic in our time this week. I didn’t know, okay. Just the marriage seemed to be about companionship. Maybe, thank you, okay thanks, Maxine. Hannah, depends on the horror story, yep.

Ron, I hope you’re well, Ron. Poe’s works were very influential in France, yes. In the decades after his death, Beaudelaire translated quite a, Manet, yeah, illustrated Mallarme’s translation of “The Raven.” Gauguin painted “Nevermore,” yes, absolutely. Should be Poe, thank you.

Paula, in your introduction, most of the examples of films are American, the very exception of “Frankenstein,” “Jekyll and Hyde,” “Dracula.” No, it’s only, nice point, Paula. It’s only because we’re focusing on America over these, this period now. So, I was choosing consciously to mention a few more American examples, but certainly it’s global as I said at the beginning, no question.

Myrna, it’s interesting if true, he adopted the name of his foster parents, Allan, as his middle name. Yeah, I mean, he certainly did as the middle name. Absolutely, Myrna.

Q: Hannah, did his parents die together?

A: No, his father left when he was one, and his mother died when he was two. Rita, when Edgar was a baby, David abandoned the family. Here, we get it exactly, yeah, okay. Edgar was never officially adopted, yep.

The constant tensions between the foster parent, foster father and him, yeah, absolutely. And, as a teenager, he did enjoy the life of an elite upper class. He went into a wealthy family, I mean, well, what was relatively wealthy for the times, definitely.

Hannah, and a wonderful voice, yeah, that’s Christopher Lee, riveting, even all these years later.

Maria, can never watch horror movies. They irritate me. Well, okay, absolutely, but think of one of today’s horror movies, “Jurassic Park,” “Jaws,” so many other versions of that kind of thing or Hitchcock, even.

Ron, coincidence, he was actually BBC Radio broadcast on Poe a few days ago. I didn’t know, thank you. Melvyn Bragg, yeah, he’s really good, Melvyn Bragg. Features three Poe scholars, great, thank you. Thanks for that to share with everyone.

Gail, thank you for that link, appreciate it. Gail again, in Radio 4. Yeah, Radio 4, of course, is the really good one. Thank you again, Gail.

Hannah, happy to hear Poe, well I don’t know about a good life. He had a short life. But, he certainly achieved an enormous amount in that short life through his writing. Also, one of the very first writers in America to really try and earn a living through just his writing, and battling for that, but he was really determined. Of course, it’s the first part of the 19th century.

Herbert, YouTube tour of Poe’s cottage in The Bronx. Oh great, thank you for that. There’s the link. Thanks, Herbert and Rita. Paula, the US and cable TV has a programme every Saturday, called “Svengoolie.” The host is created the costume persona of he loves more. Oh, that’s interesting, thank you, Paula.

Heather, so watched his programme when I was at Phoenix, a lot of humour. For me, we have to see it with humour and wit, and I think then way Roger Corman makes his films in 1960, early 60s, the way Vincent Price acts, I have to see it with some wit and humour. I have to watch even the Kubrick, “The Shining.” I have to watch some of the Spielberg classics that I’ve mentioned, you have to see it with wit and humour. I think, not only as a release for me, but I think Poe would be aware of that as well. You’ve got to see it.

Maria, Philip Glass wrote an opera, yes, based on “The Fall of the House of Usher,” yep.

Sonia, the role of music. Well, I think music for its time, that Roger Corman’s using it in 1960 is certainly. The way Kubrick’s using it much later in “The Shining,” would be much more of a discordant atonal sound in a way, maybe closer to, God, what’s his name, just slipped my mind, the German composer. Sorry, just slipped my mind, but I’ll get it back in a moment, of that very atonal discordant sound. It’s fascinating for our times.

Susan, Poe’s buried in Baltimore. Yep. Perfect genre, yep.

Ron, I like the picture gallery, since Vincent Price was a famous art collector. I didn’t know that, okay, sweet irony, yes. Thanks, thanks, Ron.

Q: Sandra, was Poe Catholic?

A: As far as I know, I don’t know how much he believed in any religion, for that matter, but he would have understood it, certainly, and the confession 'cause he does use that as a technique in “Usher.”

Maria, Debussy wrote an unfinished opera on the same conflict.

Oh, it was , thank you. Susan, there’s the International Edgar Poe Festival in Baltimore every October. Great, thank you for that, it’s interesting. Thanks, Rita, appreciate.

Francine, just read all of Edgar Allan Poe’s writing when I was a teen and when I read them now, nevermore. I also read biographies about him, and this is Poe’s house in The Bronx, fascinating. Thanks, Francine.

Rhonda, mazeltov to Trudy, absolutely and we’ll tell her. Thank you, Rhonda from Toronto, thank you. Ed, the abandonment of reason is the definition of the war. Yeah, well I think it is. I would agree with you. And the selective ways that the media has chosen to represent it. There’s an obvious bias in a whole lot of ways. Nicky, thank you for your kind comments.

Barbara, mazeltov to Trudy, we’ll tell her. Barbara, thank you, appreciate. Harry Potter, yep. Well, certainly JK Rowling understands Poe, that’s for sure, brilliantly.

Jackson, for me, the stories are more terrifying than the movies. The terror it’s evoked in my mind are worse than anything on the screen. Okay, that’s interesting, Jack. It’s really interesting that the writing, the words.

Q: Madeline, was her death suicide?

A: No.

Nicky suggests some people are more sensitive to the suggestion of horrors. Well, let’s think of Joseph Conrad and the “Heart of Darkness.” At the very end of it, Mr. Kurtz, he goes on this whole trip through Africa, ends up in the Congo through slavery times, and the butchery, the horror of slavery, and he uses those words, Conrad, at the end of “Heart of Darkness,” the horror, the horror. Coppola uses it at the end of “Apocalypse Now.” It’s the Brando character, which is a reference to Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” the horror, the horror. So, it’s the horror of what humans can be capable of doing, the terrifying butchery and rape and ways of slaughtering and dismembering bodies, and it’s all there in “Apocalypse Now,” of Coppola, Brando’s phrase at the end. It’s all there in Conrad, “Heart of Darkness,” and in so many others for that matter. Oscar Wilde, in so many forms and novels and short stories we could take. My thing is to say that I think so much originates with this guy. He’s also the first to use these words so much, like horror and other things. Yona, not all of Poe’s horror, yeah, “The Gold Bug,” I agree.

Q: Honey, was his persona influenced by the horror that he wrote?

A: Don’t think so, I mean, not particularly the persona, but I don’t think it necessarily has a direct link. I think he understood it.

Bob, ah, the Lovecraft, we’d have to, that’s another whole, thank you. That would be for another whole talk, but thank you. Julian, so I wanted to ask someone whether or not the words of the spells in Lovecraft may or may not have been influenced by the Kabbala, the Kabbala, yeah, maybe. I don’t know actually. It’s interesting, interesting to think about. But, I would talk about the Kabbala in a very different way. I wouldn’t necessarily link it just to Edgar Allan Poe, 'cause I think he’s got a different aim in fictional short story writing, but that’s a really interesting, it’s an idea to explore. Thanks, Julian.

Q: Nicky, the family were wealthy. Why did he have to leave university prematurely?

A: I guess, Nicky, we could ask that question of many. There’s no question of a restlessness, a hunger to understand, to know. Let’s just call it the darker side, the shadow, in a Jungian sense of the psychology of human societies, communities, and write about them, perfect his writing.

Rita, I have to urge you to look at how he quarrelled with John Allan over the funds for his education and his gambling debts. Actually, you’re right, Rita. That is the story that, as far as we know, is what happened. We don’t know if there was any reconciliation of that or attempted reconciliation.

Susan, mazeltov, thank you. I’ll pass it on to her, to Trudy. Every, it was for Trudy’s grandson who had his Bar Mitzvah yesterday. Thanks, Susan, for that. Sandra, in our day, the actions of Hamas is horror personified. Absolutely, I agree totally and unequivocally, and even more than, because it’s real.

It’s not fiction. Absolutely, Sandra.

Joseph, Vincent Price, not only an art collector, but was hired by Sears, ah, to create a collection. Okay, fascinating, thank you, Joseph. Right, well thank you so much everybody for all your wonderful questions, and for engaging today, and I hope that you all have a wonderful rest of the weekend in these terrible and dark times, and stay well, stay healthy and all my thoughts, and I shall pass on your wonderful wishes to Trudy.

Thank you and take care.