The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allen Poe (1839)

 

The Fall of the House of Usher

It was a surprise to learn that “The Fall of the House of Usher” is not a novel but a short story, 27 pages in the collection I found. Considering its standing and that Netflix created an entire TV-series on it, let me to expect something... bigger. It is however not its volume that matters here but its quality, or perhaps rather ambience. A quality the world of literature is forever indebted to.

The story is told from a first person view of an unnamed narrator. He has been invited by his old friend Roderick Usher to the Usher estate. Things are not well with Roderick, though, and he is changed. There is a gloom and sense of doom to him, which extends to the entire manor house. It is described as dark, old and musty, with creaking strange sounds and is more of a mausoleum than a house to actually live in. Even the weather is grey, dark, windy and ominous.

The narrator catches a glimpse of Roderick’s sister, Madeline Usher, who is suffering from a wasting disease, and she dies shortly after. Her sickness and eventual death is partly the reason for Roderick’s poor state. They entomb her in a deep basement of the house and then the narrator set about trying to cheer up his old friend.

This attempt is largely unsuccessful. Instead, both seem to slide into madness where the storm, the house and the corpse merge into a final collapse.

It is a short story and for that reason, not a terribly lot is happening in the story. Instead, it is all about the ambience of the scene. Poe makes a lot out of painting the setting and manage to get the external setting to match up with the despair and gloom of the mental state of the characters of the story. The house itself, which appears like an old gothic castle the likes of which belong in Europe, not in nineteenth century America, is a reflection of the mind. It is a living thing that breathes, is getting old and tired and prepares to die.

In the climactic scene, Roderick and the narrator are reading from an old volume in a dark room with a storm raging outside, when they both hear and feel something terrible approaching. There is a blend here of reality and lunacy that transports both of them to a horrific place where the dead comes alive to ensnare them and drag them into their tomb.

In this single setting, Poe refines the gothic genre to its condensed essence. Poe did not invent the gothic novel, it was a popular genre even back in the eighteenth century and I have reviewed a few of them, but when we think gothic today, it is not “The Castle of Otranto” or “Melmoth the Wanderer” we think of. It is “The Fall of the House of Usher”.

I bought a collection of Poe’s short stories, which includes one of the later entries on the List, and sort of expected that all the stories would be gothic, but that is not at all the case. Poe wrote quite varied, even comedies, but what all the stories have in common is that they in relatively few pages manage to condense a single message into a clear picture that manages to stand alone, completed. I do not know the history of the short story, but my guess is that Poe’s contribution to that genre is as great as that of the Gothic novel.

“The Fall of the House of Usher” is a short and rewarding read. My only reservation is that I would have loved to read an entire novel rather than a short story. That is just me being greedy.

The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal (1839)

 

The Charterhouse of Parma

We are in the process of moving to a new apartment so my blogging on movies is on hold for the moment. I did, though, have a chance to finish “The Charterhouse of Parma” so after a long and exhausting day of cleaning up our old place, I can relax with a bit of blogging on my book site.

“The Charterhouse of Parma” is the second novel by Stendhal on the List and it is quite a bit different from “The Red and the Black”, not least in its tone, which is blatantly irreverent and even satirical rather than understated as in “The Red and the Black”.

This is a big and sprawling story with the character Fabrice del Dongo at the centre. Fabrice is the second son of a Marquis and, being full of life and romantic ideas, is scorned by his father. Instead, he is attached to his aunt, Contessa Gina Pietranera, a similarly vibrant woman.

Much inspired by the glory of the French, the very young Fabrice endeavours to join in Napoleon’s final campaign at Waterloo. A combination of being Italian, very young and incredibly naive, his exploits in that battle are more comical than dramatic and when he returns to Italy at least he is a bit wiser.

Meanwhile, Gina, a widower, is getting attached to Count Mosca, the prime minster to the Prince of Parma and is relocating there as a way to keep the now wanted Fabrice out of the clutches of the Austrians. Parma is a tiny principality, led by an absolute ruler, where intrigues are rampant, but also very provincial and as a result often absurd and comical. The scheme is that Gina gets married to the old Duke of Sanseverina, who immediately moves abroad and shortly after dies, leaving his estate, title and fortune to Gina, Duchesse de Sanseverina. Count Mosca is her lover and companion from the outset and together they scheme the shit out of Parma.

From then on things get complicated. Mosca is in love with Gina. Gina is in love with Fabrice. Fabrice is in love with Clelia Conti and Clelia is promised to the wealthy Marquis de Crescenzi. Fabrice is arrested for killing a former rival to an actress, he was dallying with, though in truth the guy assaulted Fabrice and for that Fabrice is imprisoned in a fortress held by Clelia’s father.

Th story is in fact much more complicated than this and there are a dizzying number of characters coming in and out of the story and it is clear that Stendhal had a lot of fun with this story. He has placed it in Italy, allegedly because the Italians can and will act differently than the French, but just as likely, it is a way of creating a fable using imaginary characters in a far away place that are still easily recognizable for the French reader. With this move, Stendhal can attack absolutism, scheming nobility and various injustices at will. And that he does, big time.

Stendhal has a wonderful way of writing and in “the Charterhouse of Parma” he uses it more satirically than in his earlier book. There is a glee to his writing as if much of it was written on an inspiration and a need to prove a (or several) point(s). At times the story goes out on a tangent before being reigned in and while it indicates an unstructured flow of mind method of writing, it never becomes annoying though sometimes the story appears to have dead ends or vital people suddenly appear. I would not be surprised if the book is a first write through, but if so, it is mighty impressive.

The characters are always very much alive, although compared to his earlier work, in “The Charterhouse of Parma” there is an element of caricature to the characters. Where the characters of “The Red and the Black” felt like real human beings, the characters here are a little too fantastical for realism, but in return they are so much more entertaining. I understand it as Stendhal’s mockery of the upper classes and their silly intrigues.

I enjoyed reading “The Charterhouse of Parma”, it was fun and easy to read, but I do find “The Red and the Black” the better book. Probably it is that satirical bite which, fun as it is, also distance me as a reader from the story.

Still, definitely a recommendation from me.