The True Horror of Edgar Allan Poe: Why We Delight in Our Own Destruction
How to Talk About Murder: Edgar Allan Poe's stories are full of ghastly crimes
In the summer of 1841, Edgar Allan Poe was a rising editor at Graham's magazine, yet he risked everything to launch his own publication, The Stylus. A disastrous trip to Washington—marked by heavy drinking and public embarrassment—ended his hopes for a political sinecure. Poe's concept of 'perverseness,' explored in stories like 'The Black Cat' and 'The Imp of the Perverse,' describes the unfathomable urge to vex ourselves. Emily Ogden connects this to Freud's death drive, revealing a shared fascination with self-sabotage that still haunts us today.
We are perverse, Poe says, when 'we stand upon the brink of a precipice.' As we stand there, a 'cloud assumes shape.' And 'out of this our cloud' comes a demon, or something more terrible than a demon, 'and yet it is but a thought.'
- jan_m_savage
The author of this article needs to hit the books--yesterday.
The conditions she describes as 'perversity' is just the heightened response of an over-stressed brain.
The suicidal thoughts (that still horrify the person thinking them) aren't due to a so-called Freudian perversity as the author implies, but are a first step towards total mental breakdown (which actually ends up in suicide, due to to the struggle with such thoughts--which is a form of depression).
When I was extremely stressed for long periods of time, with no solution in sight, I did enter this stage. Photos I took for a mugshot in this period show a slight shine in my eyes that I hadn't before (that's another sign the brain is disintegrating). I'd stand over overpasses and watch cars drive by, and then a little voice would tell me: jump! jump! while another thought which felt more stronger, would consider this horrifying and made me reflect on why I was thinking such thoughts.
It wasn't limited to the visible possibilities, either. Frequently when the stress would become unbearable, a little strange thought would make me think of tall buildings and let me imagine that by jumping from one, my problems would cease.
I've recovered from those thoughts now -- because luckily my stressors were eliminated -- and I no longer experience such thoughts or voices. I mention all this to help others realize that they need to seek help and solve their stressors instead of falling back on the quack-doctor Freud's ideas that " […]
- ricardobeat
A little tangent, but
> With a peak circulation of forty thousand—enormous for its time
How was it possible to make a living - I imagine a full editorial team, writers, printers, office workers - with this volume of sales, while today, magazines with zero distribution cost, and with millions of subscribers are going under. Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?
- thataccount
Poe's life had many complications due to poverty and jealousy that made his being a literary genius almost irrelevant. Researching his death produces even more questions than answers, as a strong case could be made that he was made to appear to have died of a morphine overdose in a ditch.