So, Edgar Allan Poe's 200th birthday was Monday. Here in Philly we have his house, which is a kind of half-assed museum with nothing really in it, but it's cool to visit the basement that inspired "The Black Cat":
I once saw John Astin do a one-man show on Poe, in which he mixed anecdotes with readings. It was pretty damned interesting, especially because he read some lesser known pieces by Poe. One was called "The Imp of the Perverse", and it was brought back to my memory after watching The Wrestler:
It's a compelling little essay on the nature of self-destructiveness. If you feel like reading today, here it is.
I once saw John Astin do a one-man show on Poe, in which he mixed anecdotes with readings. It was pretty damned interesting, especially because he read some lesser known pieces by Poe. One was called "The Imp of the Perverse", and it was brought back to my memory after watching The Wrestler:
Quote:
| And this fall – this rushing annihilation – for the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination – for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed. |
