MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch - as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? - from the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.
-E.A.P.
As part of the R.I.P.
Challenge, I've been doing the 'Short Story Sunday Peril' and reading from 'The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe'.
It's a bit hard to review these stories, I don't really know why. Maybe because they are so short, but I will quotes the parts I liked best.
This weekend I read 'The Oblong Box', 'A Predicament' and 'Berenice'
I enjoyed these 3 short stories, and the setting was perfect, I woke up to a cold, rainy day and curled up with my book and a cup of tea.
I liked 'Berenice' most:
Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grew - I, ill of health, and buried in gloom - she, agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy; hers, the ramble on the hill-side - mine the studies of the cloister; I, living within my own heart, and addicted, body and soul, to the most intense and painful meditation - she, roaming carelessly through life, with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice! -I call upon her name - Berenice! - and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah, vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy! Oh, gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh, sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim! Oh, Naiad among its fountains! And then - then all is mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told.
I found 'A Predicament'
to be strange and even kind of racist. It was just plain ridiculous at one point, it did make me laugh out loud:
But now a new horror presented itself, and one indeed sufficient tostartle the strongest nerves. My eyes, from the cruel pressure of themachine, were absolutely starting from their sockets. While I wasthinking how I should possibly manage without them, one actuallytumbled out of my head, and, rolling down the steep side of thesteeple, lodged in the rain gutter which ran along the eaves of themain building. The loss of the eye was not so much as the insolentair of independence and contempt with which it regarded me after itwas out. There it lay in the gutter just under my nose, and the airsit gave itself would have been ridiculous had they not been disgusting. Such a winking and blinking were never before seen.
'The Oblong Box' was not what I expected.
I called assistance, and, with much difficulty, we brought him to himself. Upon reviving he spoke incoherently for some time. At length we bled him and put him to bed. The next morning he was quite recovered, so far as regarded his mere bodily health. Of his mind I say nothing, of course. I avoided him during the rest of the passage, by advice of the captain, who seemed to coincide with me altogether in my views of his insanity, but cautioned me to say nothing on this head to any person on board.
I'll be reading more Poe and posting again next weekend.
see here for his complete works online
