[page 90, continued:]

SHADOW — A PARABLE.(1)

YE who read are still among the living: but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed strange things shall happen, and secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen of(3) men. And, when seen, there will be some to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find [page 91:] much to ponder upon in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron.

The year had been a year of terror, and of feelings more intense than terror for which there is no name upon the earth. For many prodigies and signs had taken place, and far and wide, over sea and land, the black wings of the Pestilence were spread abroad.(1) To those, nevertheless, cunning in the stars, it was not unknown that the heavens wore an aspect of ill; and to me, the Greek Oinos,(2) among others, it was evident that now had arrived the alternation of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth year when, at the entrance of Aries, the planet Jupiter is conjoined with the red ring of the terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of the skies, if I mistake not greatly, made itself manifest, not only in the physical orb of the earth, but in the souls, imaginations, and meditations of mankind.(3)

Over some flasks of the red Chian(4) wine, within the walls of a noble hall, in a dim city called Ptolemais,(5) [page 92:] we sat, at night, a company of seven. And to our chamber there was no entrance save by a lofty door of brass: and the door was fashioned by the artisan Corinnos,(1) and, being of rare workmanship, was fastened from within. Black draperies, likewise, in the gloomy room, shut out from our view the moon, the lurid stars, and the peopleless streets — but the boding and the memory of Evil — they(2) would not be so excluded. There were things around us and about of which I can render no distinct account — things material and spiritual: heaviness in the atmosphere, a sense of suffocation, anxiety — and, above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant. A dead weight hung upon us. It hung upon our limbs, upon the household furniture, upon the goblets from which we drank; and all things were depressed, and borne down thereby — all things save only the flames of the seven iron lamps which illumined our revel. Uprearing themselves in tall slender lines of light, they thus remained burning all pallid and motionless; and in the mirror which their lustre formed upon the round table of ebony at which we sat, each of us there assembled beheld the pallor of his own countenance, and the unquiet glare in the downcast eyes of his companions. Yet we laughed and were merry in our proper(3) way — which was hysterical; and sang [page 93:] the songs of Anacreon,(1) — which are madness; and drank deeply — although the purple wine reminded us of blood. For there was yet another tenant of our chamber in the person of young Zoïlus.(2) Dead, and at full length he lay, enshrouded: the genius and the demon(3) of the scene. Alas! he bore no portion in our mirth, save that his countenance, distorted with the plague, and his eyes in which Death had but half extinguished the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such interest in our merriment as the dead may haply take in the merriment of those who are to die. But although I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me, still I forced myself not to perceive the bitterness of their expression, and, gazing down steadily into the depths of the ebony mirror, sang with a loud and sonorous voice the songs of the son of Teios.(4) But gradually my songs they ceased, and their echoes, rolling afar off among the sable draperies of the chamber, became weak, and undistinguishable, and so faded away. And lo! from among those sable draperies where the sounds of the song departed, there came forth a dark and undefined shadow — a shadow such as the moon, when low in heaven, might fashion [page 94:] from the figure of a man: but it was the shadow neither of man nor of God, nor of any familiar thing. And quivering awhile among the draperies of the room, it at length rested in full view upon the surface of the door of brass. But the shadow was vague, and formless, and indefinite, and was the shadow neither of man nor God — neither God of Greece, nor God of Chaldæa, nor any Egyptian God. And the shadow rested upon the brazen doorway, and under the arch of the entablature(1) of the door, and moved not, nor spoke any word, but there became stationary and remained. And the door whereupon the shadow rested was, if I remember aright, over against the feet of the young Zoilus enshrouded. But we, the seven there assembled, having seen the shadow as it came out from among the draperies, dared not steadily behold it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed continually into the depths of the mirror of ebony. And at length I, Oinos, speaking some low words, demanded of the shadow its dwelling and its appellation. And the shadow answered, “I am SHADOW, and my dwelling is near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by those dim plains of Helusion(2) which border upon the foul Charonian canal.”(3) And then did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, and stand trembling, and shuddering, and aghast: for the tones in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one [page 95:] being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying in their cadences from syllable to syllable, fell duskily upon our ears in the well remembered and familiar accents of many thousand departed friends.(1)

[[Footnotes]]

[The following notes appear at the bottom of page 90:]

1 Shadow was first published in The Southern Literary Messenger for September, 1835. It seems to have been written prior to October, 1833, and to have formed part of the projected Tales of the Folio Club. In style, as Professor Woodberry has noted, it shows the mark of Bulwer's influence, but it displays at the same time some of the most strikingly original qualities of Poe's weird imagination. It is a most beautiful harmony of thought and sound and color, to paraphrase Mr. Stedman, and takes very high rank among its author's creations, despite certain infelicities of style, and the questionable quality of the scholarship displayed. Its companion piece Silence should certainly be read by the student, who should be careful not to be misled by the hypercritical strictures sometimes directed against the two “prose poems.”

2 Psalm xxiii.

3 Note the poetic effect of the obsolete use of the preposition.

[The following notes appear at the bottom of page 91:]

1 See King Pest (written near the same time) and The Masque of the Red Death for Poe's descriptions of plagues.

2 Oinos is simply the Greek for “wine.”

3 This passage is steeped in the spirit of the old astrology. Alternation means “recurrence.”

4 Chios, now Scio, one of the most important of the islands of the Ægean, was famous for its wine and marble. Cf. Matthew Arnold's The Scholar Gypsy: —

“Freighted with amber grapes and Chian wine.”

5 There were five cities of this name in the ancient world. The mention of “Catacombs” farther on might incline one to believe that Poe meant Ptolemais Hermii, a city of Upper Egypt (if he meant anything); but the reference to the Elysian plains points as strongly to the most western of the five cities, that Ptolemais (now Tolmeta) which formed an important member of the Libyan Pentapolis. See Harper's Classical Dictionary.

[The following notes appear at the bottom of page 92:]

1 This name does not seem to have been borne in Greek history or literature by any person of importance except by a shadowy epic poet.

2 Notice the poetic effect of this use of the pronoun, a device employed later in the “Parable.”

3 Is this epithet used here in the sense of “appropriate,” or in its obsolete sense of “own”?

[The following notes appear at the bottom of page 93:]

1 The famous Greek lyric poet of wine and love, born about 550 B. C. at Teos in Asia Minor. Most of his genuine work has perished, but a number of songs in imitation of his style have been preserved, which may be read in the graceful translations of Thomas Moore.

2 Zoïlus is a name of unpleasant suggestion. See Harper's Classical Dictionary.

3 Poe possibly means that Zoïlus was the daimon (Gr. δαίμω), i. e. ministering spirit, or genius, rather than that he was strictly the evil spirit of the scene. Taken in this sense, “demon” would intensify “genius.”

4 Should be Teos (Gr. Tέως). See note 1, above. There is an adjective Tὴιος which may have misled Poe.

[The following notes appear at the bottom of page 94:]

1 See Century Dictionary, or some treatise on architecture. Speaking loosely, it is a part of a lintel construction.

2 That is, the plains of Elysium, or Elusion (not Helusion; cf. Gr. 'ΗΑύσιον), near the western borders of the earth, where, according to Homer, fortunate heroes, without previously dying, enjoyed an immortality of happiness.

3 The river of Acheron, over which Charon ferried the souls of the dead to the infernal regions.

[The following note appears at the bottom of page 95:]

1 These is no more finely imaginative conception in Poe's writings than this of the voice of the Shadow uniting in itself the tones of the victims of the plague.