| Title | : | The Pit and the Pendulum |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0146000110 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780146000119 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 64 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1842 |
We enter the mind of a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition. The dank prison room is without light and he begins to feel his way around the walls. Later, as a little light enters the room, he discovers two things: a deep and dangerous pit in the centre into which he had almost fallen when he explored the cell blindly, and a scythe-like pendulum suspended from the ceiling which is slowly descending as it swings back and forth with his body as its target. You'll feel his terror.
Librarian's note: this entry is for the short story, "The Pit and the Pendulum." Collections of the author's stories, including the one in which this story is the title work, "The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories," can be found elsewhere in Goodreads.
The Pit and the Pendulum Reviews
-
”The entire surface of this metallic enclosure was rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive devices to which the charnel superstition of the monks has given rise. The figures of fiends in aspects of menace, with skeleton forms, and other more really fearful images, overspread and disfigured the walls.”
Simply superb illustration by Harry Clarke.
Our nameless narrator has been condemned by a panel of black robed, white lipped, stern faced judges. His crime is unknown, but then this is the Inquisition so his offense could be that he is not a Catholic or not religious enough or he might have been accused of one of the many offences against God that require such a low level of proof. The Inquisition was not only about condemning and punishing, but also these thunderously righteous monks seemed inordinately fascinated with eliciting the most psychological and physical pain inspired terror as possible.
The judges pass judgement but do not tell him how he is to die. If I knew I was going to be beheaded or hanged or drawn and quartered, at least I could mentally prepare myself for my death. Visualizing it would somewhat help me come to peace with it. Not to say I still wouldn’t void my bladder at the first sight of the gallows or the executioner’s blade or the bristling rows of rifles all pointed at my heart. Our narrator finds himself in a cell nay more a vault, with hideous pictures on the walls, damp stone enclosing him all sides, bundles of writhing rats, and a deep pit that seems to be an abyss into hell.
The pit is supposed to be his death, but he discovers it just before plunging to his demise. "’Death,’ I said, ‘any death but that of the pit’!" Hold that thought!
He swoons out of fear or from some mild intoxicant that they lace his food and drink with (pure speculation on my part), and each time he comes to his senses there is food and drink at his side. He is grateful for the sustenance, but this ratchets up the fear that he is so helpless that someone came and went without his knowledge.
Whenever I read an Edgar Allan Poe, I’m always struck by the way he puts a sliver of fear in the reader and, then in progressive paragraphs, continues to rend that sliver of uneasiness wider. He lets loose spiders of dread that run amuck in the mind, leaving tendrils of webbing behind that vibrate, jangling the nerves and firing synapses until they burn out like collapsing stars. I need a nap after reading a Poe story, but who wants to sleep with all those fresh nightmares crowding the mind, waiting to pluck the boundaries of your sanity like petals on a flower?
The pit may not have worked, but these resourceful monks have more tricks up their voluminous sleeves. Our plucky narrator wakes from another swoon to find himself strapped to a wooden framed bed, and something truly insidious is descending from the ceiling.
”The sweep of the pendulum had increased in extent by nearly a yard. As a natural consequence, its velocity was also much greater. But what mainly disturbed me was the idea that had perceptibly descended. I now observed--with what horror it is needless to say--that its nether extremity was formed of a crescent of glittering steel, about a foot in length from horn to horn; the horns upward, and the under edge evidently as keen as that of a razor. Like a razor also, it seemed massy and heavy, tapering from the edge into a solid and broad structure above. It was appended to a weighty rod of brass, and the whole hissed as it swung through the air.”
My office was feeling a bit stuffy as I was reading this story, which might have been induced by feelings of being trapped, inspired quite possibly by Poe. I turned on the overhead fan, and as Poe describes the descent of the blade on the pendulum, I could feel my anxiety levels increasing exponentially. It took me a moment to realize that the hum generated by the fan was adding to my agitation. I stood to go turn the fan off, but then realized that, since I am probably healthy enough to sustain the higher terror levels, I should continue to allow the hum from the fan to enhance my reading experience.
***SHIVER***
To add to the narrator’s already high level of horror is something that is part of his nature, as it is of mine,...hope. It is difficult to believe, as dire as a circumstance can be, that this is truly our...final extinction. Something or someone will save us. Maybe even the God we have offended, according to the self-righteous monks, will intercede. As long as there is hope, there is the possibility of inducing more and more fear in the prisoner. Once a person has given up, accepted their death, adding more and more creative aspects of torture are futile and, dare I say, no longer entertaining.
Edgar Allan Poe
I often think of the nightmares of Poe. The demons that stalked the graveyards of his memories. The screams that must have emanated from his bedroom when a fresh horror had him by the throat. I can see him reaching with trembling hands for pen and paper with the beginnings of a smile turning up the corners of his mouth.
There are only about 6600 words in this story, but I was pleasantly surprised to have notated so many great, quotable lines. There are way too many for one review, but it gives you an idea of the power of Poe’s writing. I’ve read this story at least three times over my lifetime, and still every time I read it, I feel the chills racing up and down my spine. Now I need a nap, or better yet a double espresso.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit
http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:
https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten -
The Pit and the Pendulum by
Edgar Allan Poe
The story was remarkably suspenseful and chilling. It's a story about the torments endured by a prisoner of the
Spanish Inquisition. Because of the atmosphere, it inspired fear in the reader's mind. Notwithstanding a little book, it's long enough to be carried away to the gloomy, extreme dark, and horrifying dungeon.I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is madness - the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things.
Dark story. -
At age twelve I was given my first introduction to the world of literature by my mother who read me Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum. I can still vividly recollect living through the horrors of the chamber with the unnamed narrator, wondering why Christian monks would construct such a room and why Christian monks would inflict such torture. I still wrestle with a number of the story’s themes.
SADISM
Why do such a thing? The story’s torture chamber is not a makeshift construction slapped together; rather, with its pendulum descending in mathematical precision and its collapsing metal walls turning red hot, to assemble such a bizarre, intricate room would take sophisticated engineering, huge resources and lots of time, perhaps years. What does such a room say about the Western monastic tradition and the mentality of monks?
In The Distant Mirror, The Calamitous 14th Century author Barbara W. Tuchman richly portrays the psychology of these chaotic, disorderly times. For example, she writes, “In village games, players with hands tied behind them competed to kill a cat nailed to a post by battering it to death with their heads, at the risk of cheeks ripped open or eyes scratched out by the frantic animal’s claws. Trumpets enhanced the excitement. Or a pig enclosed in a wide pen was chased by men with clubs to the laughter of spectators as he ran squealing from the blows until beaten lifeless. Accustomed in their own lives to physical hardship and injury, medieval men and women were not necessarily repelled by the spectacle of pain but rather enjoyed it. It may be that the untender medieval infancy produced adults who valued others no more than they had been valued in their own formative years.”
Nowadays, we have a name for “untender infancy”: child abuse. We also have a word for enjoying the spectacle of pain inflicted on others: sadism. Of course, the effects of child abuse and living in a society accepting sadism as the norm would not disappear when men became monks. What undoubtedly added fuel to this psychological fire was a religion and theology giving a central place to guilt and sin and thus turning men against their own bodies and, more specifically, again their own sexuality.
Reaching absolute conclusions about the mindset of peoples living centuries ago can never be an exact science, but it doesn’t take too much imagination to understand how such a life in such a time would produce a population of dark, twisted people. Poe’s tale takes place in 1820s not the 1350s, but how much did the psychology of the monasteries really change in these years?
ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
In the beginning stages of the narrator’s ordeal, he conveys the following, “Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound – the tumultuous motion of the heart, and, in my ears, the sound of its beating. Then a pause in which all is blank. Then again sound, and motion and touch – a tingling sensation pervading my frame. Then the mere consciousness of existence, without thought – a condition which lasted long.”
Teachers within the various yoga and Buddhist traditions talk about the "consciousness of existence, without thought," that is, the gap between thoughts. In such a gap between thoughts we are given a glimpse of the ground of being, pure awareness of space. This awareness can be developed through meditation or occasionally experienced through such things as hallucinogens, trance, or, as with the narrator of Poe’s tale, extreme emotional states.
FEAR
Adding to the fear of actual physical suffering, there is the fear we project with our minds and imaginations. The narrator’s imagination is afire: “And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of Toledo. Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated – fables I had always deemed them – but yet strange and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper. Was I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness; or what fate, perhaps even more fearful, awaited me?” Fear thrives on our projecting into the future: whatever pain or agony we are currently experiencing, there is always the ever-present possibility our plight will become worse.
HOPE AND GOOD FORTUNE
The narrator is forever hopeful and it’s the narrator’s hope coupled with his fear and sufferings that gives the tale its emotional depth and breath. And, as it turns out, good fortune or what we more commonly call ‘luck’ follows the narrator at three critical junctures in the tale. Oh, Fortuna, if we could all have such good fortune and luck at critical points in our own lives!
“I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is madness - the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum -
A classic of sensational horror, The Pit and the Pendulum is also, for me, one of the Poe stories that most closely resembles (and certainly influences) later writers such as Franz Kafka. Here we have several Kafka-like elements: a judgment pronounced by distant, stern, inhuman judges, with no sense of what crime, if any, may have been committed, and then a devious punishment that gets more devious as time goes on. The narrator is also utterly alone in the world, save the hungry rats, and this loneliness allows him to reflect quite eloquently on his own dream-like consciousness. At the same time, Poe maintains a frenzied intensity that literally kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. Amazing how much he packs into so few pages!
-
As the doorbell rings nearly incessantly and the frigid air seeps into my living room, I am all tucked up in a corner of the couch with my fluffy blanket, a glass of The Velvet Devil Merlot, and a book of tales from the master of horror, Edgar Allan Poe. I'm leaving the job of distributing candy to everyone else. I can't think of a better way to spend the evening!
The Pit and the Pendulum is a classic - one that keeps you in the grip of horror while the tension mounts relentlessly. The torture chamber of the Inquisition is a place you will relish reading about, but do expect to get a grand case of the willies by the time you reach that last sentence! Oh, and that ending - perfect! -
WHAT DO YOU MEAN MR POE?!!!?
Time conquers all; it is an inescapable fate for all men: it cannot be defeated or avoided. It’s a powerful, unshakable, enemy and a recurring theme across many of Poe’s stories. I’ve seen it a few times now. This time it is a tormenter and a reminder of the incoming doom in the dark pit that is death. This is represented by the pendulum, sweeping like a minute hand, getting faster and faster as it approaches the narrator; it symbolises that death will be the end of all man’s time: it will approach all.
“I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said, "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?”
However, despite the cryptic metaphors, the complex imagery and fatalistic symbolism, the short story isn’t as simple as that. There’s also a political message alluding to Napoleon’s rule. Poe conveys time descending between two events. The first is the narrator being forced to sit with entities that embody the “dreamy” idea of the French rule and its “fanciful” progress. This is clearly a sarcastic suggestion towards beliefs that rarely work in action. The alleviation of the torment, time’s arching progress, the second event, occurs when the narrator is saved by General Lasalles. For those of you that don’t know, the general was a prominent commander under the command of Napoleon. Napoleon effectively ended the Revolution and the Spanish Inquisition.
So, the story becomes a little murky here. The narrator was in a hopeless situation, one that appears to be his ending. But, he is then rescued by a brave French general. So what does this suggest? Perhaps the time in the pit is a suggestion of the dark time that occurred during the Revolution, before Napoleon ended it. It was dark, hopeless and completely out of control. Perhaps the narrator being saved is a possible suggestion of the hopes liberal thinkers had towards Napoleon’s rule. Most of the early Romantic poets supported him, Wordsworth and Blake included. Or perhaps it’s a suggestion that darkness is symbiotic with a corrupt French rule. It’s hard to say, I can’t make a solid interpretation of it.
I find that the political allusions complicate the story. I find myself trying to discover their meaning when I should, perhaps, be focusing on the elements of torture and anxiety created by the narrator’s experience. This is a beautifully written story. Poe is the master; he is the undisputable, equivocal, paramount evoker of the sublime, the grotesque and the picturesque. This story is superb, but I just can’t form a solid impression of it: I cannot constitute what the political allusion means. And it’s bugging me so much. Perhaps I should go and read it for a fifth time. I don’t think I’ll get my answers though.
“...the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.”
This is your usual Poe: a wonderfully dark situation accentuated by exquisite writing. I just wish I could make an interpretation of it. -
Book Review
3+ of 5 stars to
The Pit and the Pendulum, a short story written in 1842, by
Edgar Allan Poe. As in the tradition of Poe's other Gothic and gory tales, this one takes the fear of death to new heights. Poe tells the story of a man facing punishment during the Spanish Inquisition, a death like no other. At first, he's strapped to a wooden table while a pendulum swings from above with a saw, getting lower and lower until it's nearly about to start ripping into his flesh. But the victim finds a way out... in a somewhat ingenious manner. But when he's saved, he falls into the pit as the walls begin to close in on him. Once again, before he perishes, he is saved when the Inquisition is over.
On the outskirts, it's just a Gothic tale of a man afraid to die. Two horrific options nearly take his life, all the way messing with this mental state. Neither are a quick and painless death. Both will shock his body and render his mind afraid of life... in a permanent state... just as he enters the after-life. Poe's saying a lot more here than what you read upon an initial viewing of this story. As expected, the story takes you on the ride of your life. It's a careful executed imagination that can find the right words and the perfect background to constantly jiggle the paranoia we all feel at some point in our lives.
Certainly not the best of his short stories, it is a good one... something all beginning thriller fans should read.
About Me
For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at
https://thisismytruthnow.com, where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by. -
The Pit:
and the Pendulum:
3.75 stars. In this 1842 short story by Edgar Allen Poe, an unnamed prisoner details the ghastly and elaborate tortures he endures at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. He begins with his sentencing by black-robed judges, a nightmarish sequence of images that culminates in his loss of consciousness. When he awakes, he's in a pitch dark room, free to move about, but unable to see a thing. And there his true tortures begin.
Poe, despite a supreme disregard for any historical accuracy,* has created a compelling tale of both physical and psychological horror. The oppressive atmosphere of the tomb-like room, the decayed fungus smell of the pit, the "glittering death" of the razor-sharp pendulum, the cold lips of enormous red-eyed rats seeking the lips of the prisoner (YES) -- the descriptions Poe uses are vivid, engaging all of the reader's senses.
Even though the story is completely fanciful from a factual point of view, as an examination of the psychological effects of imprisonment and torture it's very effective. The story is heavier on atmosphere than plot, but it still makes for compelling reading.
You can read "The Pit and the Pendulum" online (or download it) many places, including
here at Project Gutenberg.
Bonus: an English translation of the Latin epigram at the beginning of the story:"Here an unholy mob of torturers with an insatiable thirst for innocent blood, once fed their long frenzy. Now our homeland is safe, the funereal cave destroyed, and life and health appear where dreadful death once was."
*Just for fun, here are some of the historical inaccuracies in this story: **spoilers ahoy!**
- There's no evidence that the Spanish inquisitors used such elaborate (and unlikely) means of torture as are described in this story. (They favored the rack, water torture, and the strappado, hanging the victim from the ceiling by his wrists, which were tied behind the back. At least if Wikipedia is to be believed. I claim no independent knowledge or research here.)
- Also, torture was used before the trial, to obtain a confession, not as a method of punishment or death.
- The prisoner is rescued by General Lasalle of Napoleon's army. This means the story is set in the early 1800s, centuries after the Spanish Inquisition was at its height.
- Lasalle wasn't actually in command of the French army in Toledo, Spain. So he wouldn't have been around to play deus ex machina for our prisoner in that city. -
A brilliant, awe-full, awful portrayal of torture taking a man to the brink of the abyss. It’s sensual (the senses - not sexy), visceral, and real - not in terms of historical accuracy, but because there’s no trace of the supernatural: all the evil comes from unseen humans.
I’ve read it before, but had forgotten that it’s utterly ruined by its ending.
The narrator has been sentenced to death by the black-robed, white-lipped Inquisitors of Toledo. Seven tall candles, like “white and slender angels”, burn down as he descends to delirium. His tomb-like cell is dark and damp, smelly, silent, and solitary. His memories blur, as does his consciousness.
“The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me.”
He tries to rationalise, remember, and work out the shape and dimensions of his containment. He recalls:
“A thousand vague rumors… too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper.”
The pit he finds is, of course, a metaphor, but absolutely real as well (inasmuch as anything in this is definitely real).
“I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me.”
More than one: sedation, hunger, thirst, restraint, rats, and, of course, the pendulum. Worst of all, helplessly watching, hearing, and smelling the hissing, glittering steel crescent blade getting ever closer to his heart.
Image: The pendulum in the story is like a scythe, but Harry Clarke’s 1919 illustration has a Beardsley-esque quality that suits the story well. (
Source)
Quotes
• “I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment.”
• “There was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors.”
• “The entire surface of this metallic enclosure was rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive devices to which the charnel superstition of the monks has given rise.”
• “I knew that surprise, or entrapment into torment, formed an important portion of all the grotesquerie of these dungeon deaths.”
• “I had but escaped death in one form of agony, to be delivered unto worse than death in some other.”
See also
• Are you expecting
this and
this?
• There are several mentions of his heart: the “heart's unnatural stillness” and “the tumultuous motion of the heart”. See The Tell-Tale Heart, which I reviewed
HERE, for a spookier slant. I’ve also reviewed Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher,
HERE.
• Adolfo Bioy Casares’ The Invention of Morel, also has a condemned narrator struggling to survive, trying to make sense of his surroundings, and questioning his sanity, though in other ways it’s intriguingly different. See my review
HERE.
Image: The laser scene, in
Goldfinger: “You expect me to talk?”... “No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die.” (
Source) -
If you see Poe's pit and pendulum as metaphors for the psychological state of being trapped between two bad choices, it makes sense in much less dramatic situations than the one he chose.
Should I stay in an environment that is toxic, or jump into the unknown pit?
Should I sell the rotten stocks or should I keep them?
Should I speak up or stay quiet?
Should I work for another hour or open a bottle of wine?
Should I buy the book or save the money (though that is not really a choice!)?
Should I let myself be caught by Scylla or Charybdis?
If you ask yourself enough questions, you will always end up in Greek mythology as a source at some point, won't you? And then the question is: is there an Odyssean way of getting out of the nightmare of two bad choices? In Poe's nightmare: should I dream on until the bitter end, or should I wake up and walk out?
The worst fear is the feeling of passive, choiceless suffering, something that Poe's Christian Inquisition theme is much better at evoking than Odysseus, whose thrifty approach to finding the third way is famous for a reason.
The third way, for me, more often than not means reading about the fears I face and feeling part of a community that is larger than the pit where I live my life, watching the pendulum of my time spent. Zooming out, watching Poe create an atmosphere of choking anxiety bizarrely soothes me and my nerves. As his pit grows darker and deeper, mine shrinks to a minor bump in the road, and as his pendulum accelerates, mine looks more like a fork in the path.
So whenever my worrying mind creates that inner choice between nightmares, I opt out. I choose the third road.
Should I worry or despair? I take the book not read yet, and it will make all the difference. -
كان القضاة ما زالوا يتحدثون عني ويتناقشون بشأن كيفية إعدامي؛لم أعد أستطع سماع أي شيء وبدأ جسدي ير��عد؛ أتت فكرة عجيبة إلى رأسي- وكانت مثل صوت الموسيقى؛ وهي فكرة الراحة الأبدية التي سوف أجدها في القبر
-
Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition!
At least not as late as in the Napoleonic Wars, when it was technically still operating – until Napoleon put a stop to it – but when it would be highly improbable that so much pain would have been taken by the Dominicans to inflict so much pain on one prisoner, especially when nobody was there to witness the plight. Nevertheless, these were thoughts that hardly occurred to me when I read Poe’s tale The Pit and the Pendulum for the first time. I must have been 13 or 14 years old at the time.
I must confess that this well-known yarn did not stand the tests of time completely without a scratch for me when I re-read it a few days ago, in the first place because the choice of a first-person narrator counteracts the writer’s intention to create suspense and keep the reader on tenterhooks as to what will happen to the protagonist. We know that he is going to survive as soon as we read that the lips of his judges appeared to him whiter “than the sheet upon which I trace these words”. If he has found the time to write down his experiences in the dungeons of the Inquisition, that must be because somehow, he has managed to escape death. All this may be a minor issue, though, because what Poe really excels at is to make the horrors of the infernal goal come to life for his readers. His narrator is magnificent at putting his sensations and his thoughts and feelings into words, each of these words a stroke of the powerful brush that colours our nightmares. It is no coincidence that the author of The Pit and the Pendulum should be the man to demonstrate, in his essay The Philosophy of Composition, how, when writing the famous poem The Raven, he deliberately chose his words, his syntax, his rhythm with a view to the effects they would create. In The Pit and the Pendulum every single effect bears the master-artisan’s mark, and were it not for the infelicitous narrative perspective, the story would be immaculate.
One may argue that it is highly unlikely for somebody who has undergone as traumatic an experience as our narrator to be able to give such a detailed and vivid account of it, but such an argument is trite and petty-minded. We are talking about literature and art, and not about a true-to-life report, and The Pit and the Pendulum will as little be unhinged by such carping as Marlow’s account in Heart of Darkness will be by the hint that nobody would be able to listen to so long a story as the people in the narrative frame are treated to. Inch pinchers will never be able to leave the shadows cast by giants, and that is good for them, for so long as they remain in relative obscurity, they make fools of themselves only in front of a small part of the world, instead of the whole of it.
A last question arising is that whether it is likely for the henchmen of the Inquisition to have taken so much trouble in order to torture our protagonist. After all, there was nobody to witness the ordeal, and so, from a Machiavellian point of view, there was no “surplus value” in having the victim undergo all the psychological and physical tortures. Instead of putting all that effort into it, one could simply have starved the prisoner to death by leaving him to his Fate in the prison-cell. Of course, the motive of the torturers may be utter sadism, (im)pure and simple, but accepting this is even more disturbing to me than the idea of making an example of somebody with a view of scaring others. Considering the morbid reflexions which The Pit and the Pendulum is leading me to, one can say that it is quite a gruesome story, after all. -
This was a reread. The story gets better every time
-
What makes this one a bit more hair-raising is its radical two-point climax curve. The guy nearly dies at the pit, then nearly dies at the pendulum. SAT words galore as well as the best known anecdote of death at the Inquisition, at least for me, makes it easily an essential read. Just for horror writers: Here's a wealth of adjectives & verbs that describe dread & the absolute horror of an impending death!
-
- قصة كلاسيكية من ادغار بو، تعتمد على العناصر المادية في وصف احدى الزنزانات لمحاكم التفتيش الإسبانية.
- يقوم إدغار بوضع شخص ما في زنزانة تتغير ابعادها حسب مزاج سجانيه، تحتوي على باندول (يبدو انه باندول قاطع لقطع الجسد بطريقة بطيئة) وحفرة لم توضع بالصدفة بل ان وجودها هو كي يقرر السجين الإنتخار بنفسه هرباً من العذاب.
-القصة قاتمة، سوداوية، "مرعبة" الى حد ما، لم يتخللها حوادث فوق طبيعية على علدة بو، ولم يكن هناك اي عنصر خيالي، وأظن ان هذه القصة اوحت بالكثير من القصص اللاحقة لكتّاب آخرين ( سلسلة افلام SAW ، على سبيل المثال) -
الحفرة والبندول ~ إدجار آلان بو
ياللجحيم الساكن في دماغ هذا الرجل , كل قصة يكتبها هي الفزع, هي الجحيم بعينه, الشر المطلق
الوقت والرعب , لا يلتقيان أبداً إلا في أبشع القصص , لا شيء يُفزع الإنسان أكثر من مصارعة الوقت وتحدي الموت البطيء الذي سيأتي كعقوبة إعدام , الوقوف على الخط الفاصل بين الحياة والموت , حين يكون الوقت هو السيد..
في هذه القصة يكثف " بو " مفهوم الوقت كيف أنها تتلاعب بنفسية الإنسان في أصعب الظروف , حين تعلم أن الموت قادم لا محالة , حين تشعر بدغدغة الخطر وأنت عاجز عن فعل أي شيء حقيقي لأيقاف الخطر الداهم .. كما في سلسلة أفلام " المنشار " الشهيرة التي يتلاعب فيها المجرم بمصير الضحايا عن طريق إختبارات تتضمن بعضها تحدي الوقت للنجاة من الموت, أو على الأقل الخروج بأقل الخسائر الممكنة .. ولا أستبعد أن تكون هذه القصة الشريرة هي الملهمة لصناعة تلك الأفلام الجنونية المفزعة..
القصة هنا كالتالي, شخصٌ مربوط بحبال كثيفة ومرمي في حفرة بينما تدور عتلة فوق منتصف جسده تشبه البندول المتحرك تحمل منشاراً , مع مرور الوقت يقترب المنشار أكثر فأكثر من جسده بينما هو في صراع شرس لكي ينتزع نفسه من الحبال كي يخرج من الحفرة قبل أن يفوت الأوان ويصل المشار الى جسده..
قصة مثيرة للأعصاب , من كلاسيكيات الرعب التي تثير الفزع والغرابة في النفس.. -
Third Read, 8/2017: The story overwhelms me with such excited emotion. The work reads like a painting with more vivid reality that a digital picture. Out if this emotion I must say. Wow! What unbelievable talent! Why did I wait so long to get into Poe?
"It was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver- the frame to shrink. It was hope- the hope that triumphs in the rack- that whispers to the death- condemned even in the dungeons of the inquisition." My favorite line, perhaps a main theme, and one that made me smile and say in elated emotion: "Damn. He was good."
------------
1/2016
My second read, since my first read consisted of... Blah blah blah...Ooh, shiny metal going to cut!...blah blah blah...hot! hot!...blah! Blah!...surprise ending.
This time round I heard every word. Poe had extraordinary intelligence and writing ability. He can get in your mind and scare the gremlins out. The story takes the reader through a first person, scene by scene account of a torture chamber. You will hear the swing of the pendulum coming for you, little by little, and know it will slice you in tiny increments, through skin and eventually blood, and bone, through your ribs and to your heart. -
Historias que me regresan a mi infancia.
Poe es de mis autores predilectos de toda la vida.
Cada día leía una historia, poema o cuento suyo, y ahora los recuerdo como si fueran una especie de serie que yo disfrutaba, pero no de televisión claro, sino de lectura.
-
Αριστούργημα !!!
-
Este sí que es uno de los mejores relatos de Poe. Aquí nos encontramos con la historia de un hombre al que la Inquisición ha condenado y quien se despierta en la celda en la que supone que sucederán sus torturas. Poco a poco, este personaje va a caer presa del miedo, de la angustia que le produce la oscuridad en la que se encuentra y de la certeza de que su muerte se acerca porque parece que hay algo colgado en el techo que, dada su imposibilidad de moverse, va a cortarlo muy pronto por la mitad.
Esta historia la leí en el colegio y, honestamente, no recordaba el final, así que creo que eso hizo que compartiera mucho más la angustia de este hombre en esta relectura. -
A brilliant example of embodied writing.
“They writhed upon my throat; their cold lips sought my own; I was half stifled by their thronging pressure; disgust, for which the world has no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled, with a heavy clamminess, my heart.”
You feel it first—the fear, the horror. Then your mind follows. The word torture has lost its edge. This is torture. And also, this is why it is important to hope.
Must. Read. More. Poe. -
3.5 stars
In Masque of the Red Death, Poe excelled at dread through a pronounced description of setting. Here, setting is present but it's mainly dread through the creative viewpoint of the man's internal monologue and desperation.
“I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is madness - the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things.”
Emotion is high and strong throughout during the terrible ordeal - The Inquisition has taken place, the man has been sentenced, and he passes out when hearing he will be punished. He awakens in a dark room and feels around the walls, having to use the sense of touch to try and figure out where he is, what's in store for him, if there is a possibility of escape. He ends up fainting again, but this time awakens to drink drugged water. He awakes another time strapped down to a series of wooden boards, and this time he can see.
His mind is constantly thinking of all the horrible stories that are told about this place, and he fears what he has in store for him. Really most of the dread and genuine horror Poe conveys in this tale is through anticipation. Fear about waking alone in the room and wondering where you are and what is to happen, then fear about the unknown choice of death that awaits him. Finally he knows how he is set to do, but the torturers have added a new depth - a slow death where he must lay and wait, helpless, for the death to finally come.
At the beginning of the tale the man has a tendency to faint from horror and helplessness. His own terror keeps him prisoner later (or so it appears to him.) Even when the pendulum is slowly coming down, he begins to hope for it to rush down quicker, just to end it and get it over with. Finally, he begins to become crafty and manages to free himself from the impeding doom through calm rationale and a will to survive.
"...the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair."
Bleak and cruel, this story was a good one. As with Murders in the Rue Morgue, I do feel Poe was a little awkward with his opening. He seems to ramble slightly at first and fails to grab the attention enough. As with Rue Morgue, I had to keep reading to become engrossed. It's almost as if he is mentally finding his way and the right path to place his steps when the story starts, and once confidence has entered, it's an easier transition for the reader.
I do have to say through the long buildup and everything in so much detail, the ending rush being contained in a single paragraph almost feels cut off. A major thing has occurred - surprise - a few sentences - it is done! I know the point of the story was the horrible dread, the awful hopelessness that must have been experienced during the dreadful Inquisition, a man's fight of survival in overwhelming odds. Still, the jarring ending was almost like a glass of water to the face, interrupting the flow in such a jarring manner that it could have been longer to seem more true to the tale.
As always, Poe writes beautifully, especially after the first few pages and when he has more sure footing with his work. He had a talent for expressing the mournful, horrible bleakness that erupts from darkness to envelop humanity. With words he can make one clearly picture and actually feel being so frightened, so desperate, so surrounding by darkness and despair.
To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direct physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been reserved for the latter. By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me. -
Putting aside the histhoric context of the tale that is a accesory frame for the picture,the narration, we pass to review.
The tale is one of the greatest romantic horror tales,told in first person by a condemned to death by the Toledo Inquisition, with the great prose of Poe.
Is a tale about subjetive pass of time,about the subjetive terrorific reality in a sensorial deprived situation,a nightmarish voyage to the unknown next torture, and told in a sort of conscious stream of hopeles fear and terror.
Roger Corman directed a interesting movie loosely based in this tale.
As only a anecdotic fact, this tale is influenced by the prejudices of Spanish Black Legend.
The Inquisition not only murdered people in Spain,we have some examples of others Inquisition murders:
Galileo imprisoned in Italy, Juana de Arco murdered in France, Giordano Bruno murdered in Italy, Lucilio Vanini murdered in France, Jan Hus murdered in Germany, Pietro Dabano murdered in Italy, Miguel Servet murdered in Switzerland. -
Apart from
The Tell-Tale Heart that I read for class in junior high; this was the first Poe that I ever really read.....and I was immediately in love! His language was the most beautiful that I had ever come across. I was so entranced by the way he used words that the horrific depiction wasn't quite coming through as I sat there fascinated with the way he could string words into a sentence like pearls onto a chain. But then, I began to get queazy, forgetting to take a breath....it was a beautifully worded truly barbaric tale. The juxtaposition of powerfully poetic language and the horrors hidden inside the prose held me captive. I've never read anyone who can touch him. -
"To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been reserved for the latter. By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me."
Really good, suspenseful little story, told with Poe's deft touch of the macabre. Unlike most of Poe's other stories, though, this one actually ends (I know! Crazy, right?)
I didn't love this too much, though, because it didn't have the sort of moral or philosophical depth that
Ligeia and
The Fall of the House of Usher did- then again, those two dealt with largely supernatural, abnormal happenings, whereas this is pretty much just an account of Inquisitorial torture. Heinous and terrifying, to be sure, but it didn't make me think or ask me important questions (apart from wondering what the narrator was sentenced to death for), and those are two things that I really want from my short stories. I hold Poe's stories to an even higher standard, as those two mentioned before were amazing and thought-provoking.
I'm off to read
Masque of the Red Death now! The Month of Poe continues! -
I love the poems and books of Poe. So atmospheric, compelling and unique
-
4/5
"...I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensation appeared swallowed up in that mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe."
A descent towards the darkest crevices of fear and despair accompanied by a defiant desire to survive. A short story by Edgar Allan Poe, dipping us into the mind of a prisoner of The Inquisition, who is on the receiving end of their sadism. Trapped in a dark and dreary dungeon, a place infested by rats and enveloped in darkness, alongside the ever present fear of the unknown, a dread of what is going to come next, makes for a suspenseful tale.
Edgar Allan Poe is a masterful writer here. The language is raw and authentic and the character is as human as you can get. I even recognized many aspects of myself in this man, thanks to Edgar's talent in conveying base emotions like fear and despair, emotions that unite us as human beings. The pages came alive with those vivid descriptions of the prisoner's feelings, his descent towards fear and despair, brief lapses of hope, broken by yet another attempt at brutally ending his life.
Spoilers ahead:
The wickedness of the Inquisition in this story is magnificently illustrated. No need for physical torture and a simple beheading. It is much preferred to toy with the mind of your prisoner, throwing him into a dark chamber with a pit he can accidentally fall into. If he realizes the presence of the pit, simply tie him down and place a large pendulum with razor sharp edges right on top of him, slowly descending towards his body, giving him much time to imagine how painful his death will be, once that pendulum, slowly but surely, hits his body. Provide him with food while he's at it, lest he loses consciousness because of starvation and is spared the mental suffering of his wait. If all that fails and he manages to somehow break free, heat the walls of the prison and move them towards that poor prisoner, presenting him with the gracious choice of either jumping to his death in the abyss inside the pit or being crushed alive by molten hot walls.
It's one challenge after the other. We overcome one brutal method of death only to be met with something worse.
Personal preference: I would have preferred if the prisoner had eventually succumbed to the Inquisition's treachery and died, since if that were the case, the ending would have had more of an impact on me, though I also appreciate that sudden relief when the prisoner was saved.
Very enjoyable, definitely recommended! -
Readathon: This is part of a readathon to help me lower my TBR to a reasonable number. I may have to continue this readathon for five years to achieve this goal.
-
I hadn't realised quite how long ago this was written - 1842.
This Penguin 60 collection contains 4 short stories from Edgar Allan Poe, and I struggle to say I was overly taken by any of them.
I found the writing overly complex and wordy, and took total concentration on each sentence just to filter to the point being made. All these complaints are explained at least partly by the age of the writing I expect.
Irrespective, the 4 stories are not all the same - the titular story about a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition (although really it reads more like he has already departed to hell).
The Black Cat a tale about a man pushed to violence by his alcoholism, who attempts ot kill his cat, but is stopped by his wife - who he then kills 'accidentally'. In the end the cat becomes the reason he is caught by the police.
The Tell-Tale Heart another murder tale, similar to the cat story, where the narrator carries out a perfect crime, but his guilty conscience prevents him from getting way with it. It seems odd to put these two stories together in this selection, given their similarities.
The Premature burial in which the narrator talks of his condition where he falls into a catatonic sleep, and his fears of being buried alive! Furthermore he catalogues examples of when this has happened. And then of course, then there is the narrators experience at the end.
I wasn't particularly taken with these stories, but a Penguin 60 is a small investment in time to rattle through them.
2.5 stars, rounded down as I am feeling harsh towards the wordiness and complexity. -
4 Stars. Horror stories have never been my genre. As a youngster I recall being frightened by a TV production of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and Washington Irving's headless horseman. Poe's story, just 15 pages, is pure horror but it drew me in just as effectively. So vividly written and emotionally charged. Poe's genius is ensuring the reader lives the experience side-by-side with his protagonist. It first appeared in 1842 in "The Gift" for Christmas, and was in a 1960 collection, "The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales." Again Poe commences with intellectual gymnastics and confusion, which soon pass, and we find our narrator confined to a small jail cell in pitch darkness. Damp and rat infested. He had fainted at a tribunal hearing and this was his fate. He stumbles while feeling his way around the walls. But for the trip, he would have fallen into a deep well in the centre of the room - the pit. Eventually a little light filters in, and he sees a blade pendulating above him. Hanging from the ceiling. Lowering slowly. Think of his terror. The story relates to the Spanish Inquisition, but I don't think that even they thought of such a terrible ordeal. (November 2020)
