Is it any wonder fans of Edgar Allan Poe find Silence – A Fable one of the least accessible and enjoyable of his tales? This is quite understandable since this two pager lacks the development and pacing of a conventionally constructed short-story and also lacks grounding in our predictable, realistic everyday reality. Rather, what we find here is a tale having much in common with lyrical prose poetry and what in the twentieth century would become known as surrealist writing. With this very subjective world-creation of Poe’s in mind, below are several of my very subjective observations.

It’s sundown and Poe looks out at a peaceful summer landscape: river, meadow and willow trees under the setting sun, but his imagination immediately plays games, enlarging the river, distorting the meadow, altering, warping and bending the willow trees - a complete transformation right before his very eyes. Poe recognizes what is happening - it is his poetic muse taking over. But such a muse! He views the bizarre deformation and has a name for such a muse - the Demon.

With this psychological transformation in mind, the first ninety percent of this tale is told by a Demon, a telling of what the Demon sees in and around a river. And what a seeing! Below are several quotes coupled with my comments:

“For many miles on either side of the river’s oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch toward the heaven their long ghastly necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads.” Goodness! What a twisted vision: nodding water lilies with long ghastly necks. Such a vision anticipates the metamorphosing landscapes of Max Ernst.

But then there is more strangeness as the Demon scans the landscape where he sees a rock under a crimson moon. We read, “And I was going back into the morass, when the moon shone with a fuller red, and I turned and looked again upon the rock, and upon the characters were DESOLATION.”

Since Poe is a writer and not a painter, Poe’s Demon sees something Max Ernst never painted: an actual word in the landscape. Such a word in such a landscape provides a clear picture of the link between Poe’s visions and Poe’s language. Sidebar: Letters magically appearing on a rock reminds me of Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse where one lonely evening main character Harry Haller sees words magically appear on a stone wall above an ancient wooden door in an old section of a city.

Then the Demon sees a man. We are given a detailed description of the man, including the following: “And his brow was lofty with thought, and his eye wild with care; and, in a few furrows upon his cheek I read the fables of sorrow, and weariness, and disgust with mankind, and a longing for solitude.” I’m sure I am not the first reader to observe how this could be a description of Poe himself. So, in a way, this wordless interplay between Demon and man could be interpreted as the interplay between demonic muse and author.

In the last paragraph the narrator tells us what happens at the conclusion of the Demon’s story. We read, “And as the Demon made an end of his story, he fell back within the cavity of the tomb and laughed. And I could not laugh with the Demon, and he cursed me because I could not laugh.”

Perhaps this is true to form for Edgar Allan Poe - unlike many other writers and poets who can stand back and laugh at themselves, laugh and not take their writing or their life all that seriously, Poe was not such a writer. Judging from his photograph, Poe doesn’t look like a man who had many a belly-laugh in his brief life; quite the contrary, Poe looks like the prototypical angst-ridden tortured romantic poet, a man who could serve as a model for many of his tales of the macabre, a man who saw his poetic muse in the form of a Demon.

One final reflection on the phenomenon of silence – Composer/Experimental musician Joe Cage experienced a totally silent chamber but in that silent room he heard two sounds: one high, his nervous system and one low, his blood circulating. Perhaps Poe was being ironic with his title Silence – A Fable, since, in our very human experience of the world, silence is, in fact, a fable. There is always sound.

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Is it any wonder fans of Edgar Allan Poe find ‘Silence – A Fable’ one of the least accessible and enjoyable of his tales? This is quite understandable since this two pager lacks the development and pacing of a conventionally constructed short-story and also lacks grounding in our predictable, realistic everyday reality. Rather, what we find here is a tale having much in common with lyrical prose poetry and what in the 20th century would become known as surrealist writing. With this very subjective world-creation of Poe’s in mind, below are several of my very subjective observations.

It’s sundown and Poe looks out at a peaceful summer landscape: river, meadow and willow trees under the setting sun, but his imagination immediately plays games, enlarging the river, distorting the meadow, altering, warping and bending the willow trees -- a complete transformation right before his very eyes. Poe recognizes what is happening -- it is his poetic muse taking over. But such a muse! He views the bizarre deformation and has a name for such a muse --- the Demon. With this psychological transformation in mind, the first 90% of this tale is told by a Demon, a telling of what the Demon sees in and around a river. And what a seeing! Below are several quotes coupled with my comments:

“For many miles on either side of the river’s oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch toward the heaven their long ghastly necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads.” Goodness! What a twisted vision: nodding water lilies with long ghastly necks. Such a vision anticipates the metamorphosing landscapes of Max Ernst.

But then there is more strangeness as the Demon scans the landscape where he sees a rock under a crimson moon. We read, “And I was going back into the morass, when the moon shone with a fuller red, and I turned and looked again upon the rock, and upon the characters were DESOLATION.” Since Poe is a writer and not a painter, Poe’s Demon sees something Max Ernst never painted: an actual word in the landscape. Such a word in such a landscape provides a clear picture of the link between Poe’s visions and Poe’s language. (Sidebar: letters magically appearing on a rock reminds me of Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse where one lonely evening Harry Haller sees words magically appear above a door).

Then the Demon sees a man. We are given a detailed description of the man, including the following: “And his brow was lofty with thought, and his eye wild with care; and, in a few furrows upon his cheek I read the fables of sorrow, and weariness, and disgust with mankind, and a longing for solitude.” I’m sure I am not the first reader to observe how this could be a description of Poe himself. So, in a way, this wordless interplay between Demon and man could be interpreted as the interplay between demonic muse and author.

In the last paragraph the narrator tells us what happens at the conclusion of the Demon’s story. We read, “And as the Demon made an end of his story, he fell back within the cavity of the tomb and laughed. And I could not laugh with the Demon, and he cursed me because I could not laugh.” Perhaps this is true to form for Edgar Allan Poe -- unlike many other writers and poets who can stand back and laugh at themselves, laugh and not take their writing or their life all that seriously, Poe was not such a writer. Judging from his photograph, Poe doesn’t look like a man who had many a belly-laugh in his brief life; quite the contrary, Poe looks like the prototypical angst-ridden tortured romantic poet, a man who could serve as a model for many of his tales of the macabre, a man who saw his poetic muse in the form of a Demon.

One final reflection on the phenomenon of silence – Composer/Experimental musician Joe Cage experienced a totally silent chamber but in that silent room he heard two sounds: one high, his nervous system and one low, his blood circulating. Perhaps Poe was being ironic with his title ‘Silence – A Fable’, since, in our human experience of the world, silence is, in fact, a fable. There is always sound.

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Most beautiful writing I've ever sincerely felt. Poe exhibits true magic in such a small amount of words. ( )

Review coming soon. ( )