Text: Edgar Allan Poe (ed. T. O. Mabbott), “The Premature Burial,” The Collected Works of Edgar Allan PoeVol. III: Tales and Sketches (1978), pp. 953-972 (This material is protected by copyright)


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[page 953, continued:]

THE PREMATURE BURIAL

The subject of this tale was one that had long fascinated, even haunted, Poe.* A tradition has reached us from Virginia that early in the nineteenth century a lady of one of the first families apparently died, and was entombed above ground. The head servant of the family visited the vault, heard her move, and rescued her. She later became the mother of a famous Southern hero. Whether this story has been authenticated I do not know, but it was surely talked about above and below stairs, and little Edgar may have heard it in the kitchen.

Poe was himself troubled by fear of the dark. A Richmond friend of his last few years, Susan Archer Talley Weiss, in her Home Life of Poe, 1907, p. 29, says:

Mr. John Mackenzie, in speaking of Edgar, bore witness to his high spirit and pluckiness in occasional schoolboy encounters, and also to his timidity in regard to being alone at night, and his belief in and fear of the supernatural. He had heard Poe say, when grown, that the most horrible thing he could imagine as a boy was to feel an ice-cold hand laid upon his face in a pitch-dark room when alone at night; or to awaken in semi-darkness and see an evil face gazing close into his own; and that these fancies had so haunted him that he would often keep his head under the bed-covering until nearly suffocated. [page 954:]

The impulse to write “The Premature Burial” presumably came from the publicity attendant on the “life preserving coffin” exhibited at the annual fair of the American Institute, New York City, in 1843. In the tale Poe recounts (with his own additions) several stories of premature burial culled from his reading (as A. H. Quinn remarked, Poe, p. 417) to prepare the reader for the final episode, which was probably drawn from his own imagination or from a dream of his own, since no specific literary source for it has yet been pointed out. The tale was listed as completed but not yet published in Poe's letter to James Russell Lowell, May 28, 1844. It was printed in the Dollar Newspaper of July 31, which it is known (from the Public Ledger of the morning of that day) was sold at three o’clock in the afternoon on Tuesday, July 30, 1844.

Extracts from paragraphs 4-7 and 14-19 were reprinted some two weeks later — surely without authorization — in an article called “Burying Alive” in the New York Rover (3:380-381), giving evidence of popular interest in this topic.

TEXTS

(A) Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper, July 31, 1844; (B) Broadway Journal, June 14, 1845 (1:369-373); (C) Works (1850), I, 325-338; (D) Southern Literary Messenger, June 1849 (15:338), in “Marginalia,” number 251 (last paragraph).

Griswold's version (C) is followed, as it shows slight auctorial changes.

A fragment of manuscript, detached from the roll of which it must have been a part, I collated in the auction room of the Anderson Galleries many years ago. It was clearly that from which the final paragraph was printed as part of “Marginalia” in the Southern Literary Messenger. The variants from our text were the same in both.

Reprint

The Rover (New York weekly), August 1844 (3:380-381), as “Burying Alive,” an article incorporating paragraphs 4-7 and 14-19 from the Dollar Newspaper.

THE PREMATURE BURIAL.   [C]

There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate [page 955:] fiction, These the mere romanticist must eschew, if he do not wish to offend, or to disgust. They are with propriety handled, only when the severity and majesty of truth sanctify and sustain them. We thrill, for example, with the most intense of “pleasurable pain,”(1) over the accounts of the Passage of the Beresina, of the Earthquake at Lisbon, of the Plague at London, of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, or of the stifling of the hundred and twenty-three prisoners in the Black Hole at Calcutta.(2) But, in these accounts, it is the fact — it is the reality — it is the history which excites. As inventions, we should regard them with simple abhorrence.

I have mentioned some few of the more prominent and august calamities on{a} record; but, in these, it is the extent, not less than the character of the calamity, which so vividly impresses the fancy. I need not remind the reader that, from the long and weird{b} catalogue of human miseries, I might have selected many individual instances more replete with essential suffering than any of these vast generalities of disaster. The true wretchedness, indeed — the ultimate wo — is particular, not diffuse. That the ghastly extremes of agony are endured by man the unit, and never by man the mass — for this let us thank a merciful God!

To be buried while alive, is, beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality. That it has frequently, very frequently, so fallen will scarcely be denied by those who think. The boundaries which divide Life and Death, are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? We know that there are diseases in which occur total cessations of all the apparent functions of vitality, and yet in which these cessations are merely suspensions, properly so called. They are only temporary pauses in the incomprehensible mechanism. A certain period elapses, and some unseen mysterious principle again sets in motion the magic pinions and the wizard wheels. The silver cord was not for ever loosed, nor the golden bowl irreparably broken.(3) But where, meantime, was the soul?

Apart, however, from the inevitable conclusion, à{c} priori, that [page 956:] such causes must produce such effects — that the well known occurrence of such cases of suspended animation must naturally give rise, now and then, to premature interments — apart from this consideration, we have the direct testimony of medical and{d} ordinary experience, to prove that a vast number of such interments have actually taken place. I might refer at once, if necessary, to a hundred well authenticated instances. One of very remarkable character, and of which the circumstances may be fresh in the memory of some of my readers, occurred, not very long ago, in the neighboring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a painful, intense, and widely extended excitement. The wife of one of the most respectable citizens — a lawyer of eminence and a member of Congress — was seized with a sudden and unaccountable illness, which completely baffled the skill of her physicians. After much suffering, she died, or was supposed to die. No one suspected, indeed, or had reason to suspect, that she was not actually dead. She presented all the ordinary appearances of death. The face assumed the usual pinched and sunken outline. The lips were of the usual marble pallor. The eyes were lustreless. There was no warmth. Pulsation had ceased. For three days the body was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony{e} rigidity. The funeral, in short, was hastened, on account of the rapid advance of what was supposed to be decomposition.

The lady was deposited in her family vault, which, for three subsequent years, was undisturbed. At the expiration of this term, opened for the reception of a sarcophagus; — but. alas! how fearful a shock awaited the husband, who, personally, threw open the door. As its portals swung outwardly back, some white-apparelled{f} object fell rattling within his arms. It was the skeleton of his wife in her yet unmouldered shroud.

A careful investigation rendered it evident that she had revived within two days after her entombment — that her struggles within the coffin had caused it to fall from a ledge, or shelf, to the floor, where it was so broken as to permit her escape. A lamp which had been accidentally left, full of oil, within the tomb, was found [page 957:] empty; it might have been exhausted, however, by evaporation. On the uppermost of the steps which led down into the dread chamber, was a large fragment of the coffin, with which it seemed that she had endeavored to arrest attention, by striking the iron door. While thus occupied, she probably swooned, or possibly died, through sheer terror; and, in falling, her shroud became entangled in some iron-work which projected interiorly. Thus she remained, and thus she rotted, erect.(4)

In the year 1810, a case of living inhumation happened in France, attended with circumstances which go far to warrant the assertion that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.(5) The heroine of the story was a Mademoiselle Victorine Lafourcade, a young girl of illustrious family, of wealth, and of great personal beauty. Among her numerous suitors was Julien Bossuet, a poor littérateur,{g} or journalist, of Paris. His talents and general amiability had recommended him to the notice of the heiress, by whom he seems to have been truly beloved; but her pride of birth decided her, finally, to reject him, and to wed a Monsieur Rénelle,{h} a banker, and a diplomatist of some eminence. After marriage, however, this gentleman neglected, and, perhaps, even more positively ill-treated her. Having passed with him some wretched years, she died, — at least her condition so closely resembled death as to deceive every one who saw her. She was buried — not in a vault — but in an ordinary grave in the village of her nativity. Filled with despair, and still inflamed by the memory of a profound attachment, the lover journeys from the capital to the remote province in which the village lies, with the romantic purpose of disinterring the corpse, and possessing himself of its luxuriant tresses. He reaches the grave. At midnight he unearths the coffin, opens it, and is in the act of detaching the hair, when he is arrested by the unclosing of the beloved eyes. In fact, the lady had been buried alive. Vitality had not altogether departed; and she was aroused, by the caresses of her lover, from the lethargy which had been mistaken for death. He bore her frantically to his lodgings in the village. He employed certain powerful restoratives suggested by no [page 958:] little medical learning. In fine, she revived. She recognised her preserver. She remained with him until, by slow degrees, she fully recovered her original health. Her woman's heart was not adamant, and this last lesson of love sufficed to soften it. She bestowed it upon Bossuet. She returned no more to her husband, but concealing from him her resurrection, fled with her lover to America. Twenty years afterwards, the two returned to France, in the persuasion that time had so greatly altered the lady's appearance, that her friends would be unable to recognise her. They were mistaken, however; for, at the first meeting, Monsieur Rénelle{i} did actually recognise and make claim to his wife. This claim she resisted; and a judicial tribunal sustained her in her resistance; deciding that the peculiar circumstances, with the long lapse of years, had extingushed, not only equitably, but legally, the authority of the husband.

The “Chirurgical Journal,” of Leipsic — a periodical, of high authority and merit, which some American bookseller would do well to translate and republish — records, in a late number, a very distressing event of the character in question.(6)

An officer of artillery, a man of gigantic stature and of robust health, being thrown from an unmanageable horse, received a very severe contusion upon the head, which rendered him insensible at once; the skull was slightly fractured; but no immediate danger was apprehended. Trepanning was accomplished successfully. He was bled, and many other of the ordinary means of relief were adopted. Gradually, however, he fell into a more and more hopeless state of stupor, and, finally, it was thought that he died.

The weather was warm; and he was buried, with indecent haste, in one of the public cemeteries. His funeral took place on Thursday. On the Sunday following, the grounds of the cemetery were, as usual, much thronged with visiters; and, about noon, an intense excitement was created by the declaration of a peasant, that, while sitting upon the grave of the officer, he had distinctly felt a commotion of the earth, as if occasioned by some one struggling beneath. At first, little attention was paid to the man's asseveration; but his evident terror, and the dogged obstinacy with which he persisted in his story, had at length their natural effect [page 959:] upon the crowd. Spades were hurriedly procured, and the grave, which was shamefully shallow, was, in a few minutes, so far thrown open that the head of its occupant appeared. He was then, seemingly, dead; but he sat nearly erect within his{j} coffin, the lid of which, in his furious struggles, he had partially uplifted.

He was forthwith conveyed to the nearest hospital, and there pronounced to be still living, although in an asphyctic{k} condition.(7) After some hours he revived, recognised individuals of his acquaintance, and, in broken sentences, spoke of his agonies in the grave.

From what he related, it was clear that he must have been conscious of life for more than an hour, while inhumed, before lasping into insensibility. The grave was carelessly and loosely filled with an exceedingly porous soil; and thus some air was necessarily admitted. He heard the footsteps of the crowd overhead, and endeavored to make himself heard in turn. It was the tumult within the grounds of the cemetery, he said, which appeared to awaken him from a deep sleep — but no sooner was he awake than he became fully aware of the awful horrors of his position.

This patient, it is recorded, was doing well, and seemed to be in a fair way of ultimate recovery, but fell a victim to the quackeries of medical experiment. The galvanic battery was applied; and he suddenly expired in one of those ecstatic paroxysms which, occasionally, it superinduces.(8)

The mention of the galvanic battery, nevertheless, recalls to my memory a well known and very extraordinary case in point, where its action proved the means of restoring to animation a young attorney in London, who had been interred for two days. This occurred in 1831,{l} and created, at the time, a very profound sensation wherever it was made the subject of converse.(9)

The patient, Mr. Edward Stapleton, had died, apparently, of typhus fever, accompanied with some anomalous symptoms which had excited the curiosity of his medical attendants. Upon his seeming decease, his friends were requested to sanction a post [page 960:] mortem examination, but declined to permit it. As often happens, when such refusals are made, the practitioners resolved to disinter the body and dissect it at leisure, in private. Arrangements were easily effected with some of the numerous corps of body-snatchers with which London abounds; and, upon the third night after the funeral, the supposed corpse was unearthed from a grave eight feet deep, and deposited in the operating chamber of one of the private hospitals.

An incision of some extent had been actually made in the abdomen, when the fresh and undecayed appearance of the subject suggested an application of the battery. One experiment succeeded another, and the customary effects supervened, with nothing to characterize them in any respect, except, upon one or two occasions, a more than ordinary degree of life-likeness{m} in the convulsive action.

It grew late. The day was about to dawn; and it was thought expedient, at length, to proceed at once to the dissection. A student, however, was especially desirous of testing a theory of his own, and insisted upon applying the battery to one of the pectoral muscles. A rough gash was made, and a wire hastily brought in contact; when the patient, with a hurried, but quite unconvulsive movement, arose from the table, stepped into the middle of the floor, gazed about him uneasily for a few seconds, and then — spoke. What he said was unintelligible; but words were uttered; the syllabification was distinct. Having spoken, he fell heavily to the floor.

For some moments all were paralyzed with awe — but the urgency of the case soon restored them their presence of mind. It was seen that Mr. Stapleton was alive, although in a swoon. Upon exhibition of ether he revived and was rapidly restored to health, and to the society of his friends — from whom, however, all knowledge of his resuscitation was withheld, until a relapse was no longer to be apprehended. Their wonder — their rapturous astonishment — may be conceived.

The most thrilling peculiarity of this incident, nevertheless, is involved in what Mr. S. himself asserts. He declares that at no [page 961:] period was he altogether insensible — that, dully and confusedly he was aware of every thing which happened to him, from the moment in which he was pronounced dead by his physicians, to that in which he fell swooning to the floor of the hospital. “I am alive,” were the uncomprehended words which, upon recognising the locality of the dissecting-room, he had endeavored, in his extremity, to utter.

It were an easy matter to multiply such histories as these — but I forbear — for, indeed, we have no need of such to establish the fact that premature interments occur. When we reflect how very rarely, from the nature of the case, we have it in our power to detect them, we must admit that they may frequently occur without our cognizance. Scarcely, in truth, is a graveyard ever encroached upon, for any purpose, to any great extent, that skeletons are not found in postures which suggest the most fearful of suspicions.(10)

Fearful indeed the suspicion — but more fearful the doom! It may be asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs — the stifling fumes of{n} the damp earth — the clinging to{o} the death garments — the rigid embrace of the narrow house — the blackness of the absolute Night — the silence like a sea that overwhelms — the unseen but palpable presence of the Conqueror Worm(11) — these things, with thoughts of the air and grass above, with memory of dear friends who would fly to save us if but informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this fate they can never be informed — that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead — these considerations, I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth — we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell. And thus all narratives upon this topic have an interest profound; an interest, nevertheless, which, through the sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly depends upon our conviction [page 962:] of the truth of the matter narrated. What I have now to tell, is of my own actual knowledge — of my own positive and personal experience.

For several years I had been subject to attacks of the singular disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy, in default of a more definitive title. Although both the immediate and the predisposing causes, and even the actual diagnosis of this disease, are still mysterious,{p} its obvious and apparent character is sufficiently well understood. Its variations seem to be chiefly of degree. Sometimes the patient lies, for a day only, or even for a shorter period, in a species of exaggerated lethargy. He is senseless and externally motionless; but the pulsation of the heart is still faintly perceptible; some traces of warmth remain; a slight color lingers within the centre of the cheek; and, upon application of a mirror to the lips, we can detect a torpid, unequal, and vacillating action of the lungs. Then again the duration of the trance is for weeks — even for months; while the closest scrutiny, and the most rigorous medical tests, fail to establish any material distinction between the state of the sufferer and what we conceive of absolute death. Very usually, he is saved from premature interment solely by the knowledge of his friends that he has been previously subject to catalepsy, by the consequent suspicion excited, and, above all, by the non-appearance of decay. The advances of the malady are, luckily, gradual. The first manifestations, although marked, are unequivocal. The fits grow successively more and more distinctive, and endure each for a longer term than the preceding. In this lies the principal security from inhumation. The unfortunate whose first attack should be of the extreme character which is occasionally seen, would almost inevitably be consigned alive to the tomb.

My own case differed in no important particular from those mentioned in medical books. Sometimes, without any apparent cause, I sank, little by little, into a condition of semi-syncope,{q} or half swoon; and, in this condition, without pain, without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking, to think, but with a dull lethargic consciousness of life and of the presence of those who surrounded [page 963:] my bed, I remained, until the crisis of the disease restored me, suddenly, to perfect sensation. At other times I was quickly and impetuously smitten. I grew sick, and numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and so fell prostrate at once. Then, for weeks, all was void, and black, and silent, and Nothing became the universe. Total annihilation could be no more. From these latter attacks I awoke, however, with a gradation slow in proportion to the suddenness of the seizure.{r} Just as the day dawns to the friendless and houseless beggar who roams the streets throughout the long desolate winter night — just so tardily — just so wearily — just so cheerily came back the light of the Soul to me.

Apart from the tendency to trance, however, my general health appeared to be good; nor could I perceive that it was at all affected by the one prevalent malady — unless, indeed, an idiosyncrasy in my ordinary sleep may be looked upon as superinduced. Upon awaking from slumber, I could never gain, at once, thorough possession of my senses, and always remained, for many minutes, in much bewilderment and perplexity; — the mental faculties in general, but the memory in especial, being in a condition of absolute abeyance.

In all that I endured there was no physical suffering, but of moral distress an infinitude. My fancy grew charnal. I talked “of worms, of tombs and epitaphs.”(12) I was lost in reveries of death, and the idea of premature burial held continual possession of my brain. The ghastly Danger to which I was subjected, haunted me day and night. In the former, the torture of meditation was excessive — in the latter, supreme. When the grim Darkness overspread the Earth, then, with very horror of thought, I shook — shook as{s} the quivering plumes upon the hearse. When Nature could endure wakefulness no longer, it was with a struggle that I consented to sleep — for I shuddered to reflect that, upon awaking, I might find myself the tenant of a grave. And when, finally, I sank into slumber, it was only to rush at once into a world of phantasms, above which, with vast, sable, overshadowing wings, hovered, predominant, the one sepulchral Idea.(13)

From the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed [page 964:] me in dreams, I select for record but a solitary vision. Methought I was immersed in a cataleptic trance of more than usual duration and profundity. Suddenly there came an icy hand upon my forehead, and an impatient, gibbering voice whispered the word “Arise!” within my ear.

I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure of him who had aroused me. I could call to mind neither the period at which I had fallen into the trance, nor the locality in which I then lay. While I remained motionless, and busied in endeavors to collect my thoughts, the cold hand grasped me fiercely by the wrist, shaking it petulantly, while the gibbering voice said again:

“Arise! did I not bid thee arise?”

“And who,” I demanded, “art thou?”

{tt}“I have no name{tt} in the regions which I inhabit,” replied the voice, mournfully; “I was mortal, but am fiend. I was merciless, but am pitiful. Thou dost feel that I shudder. My teeth chatter as I speak, yet it is not with the chilliness of the night — of the night without end. But this hideousness is insufferable. How canst thou tranquilly sleep? I cannot rest for the cry of these great agonies. These sights are more than I can bear. Get thee up! Come with me into the outer Night, and let me unfold to thee the graves.(14) Is not this a spectacle of wo? — Behold!”

I looked; and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by the wrist, had caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind; and from each issued the faint phosphoric radiance of decay; so that I could see into the innermost recesses, and there view the shrouded bodies in their sad and solemn slumbers with the worm. But, alas! the real sleepers were fewer, by many millions, than those who slumbered not at all; and there was a feeble struggling; and there was a general sad unrest; and from out the depths of the countless pits there came a melancholy rustling from the garments of the buried. And, of those who seemed tranquilly to repose, I saw that a vast number had changed, in a greater or less degree, the rigid and uneasy position in which they had originally been entombed. And the voice again said to me, as I gazed: [page 965:]

“Is it not — oh, is it not a pitiful sight?” But, before I could find words to reply, the figure had ceased to grasp my wrist, the phosphoric lights expired, and the graves were closed with a sudden violence, while from out them arose a tumult of despairing cries, saying again, “Is it not — oh, God! Is it not a very pitiful sight?”

Phantasies such as these, presenting themselves at night, extended their terrific influence far into my waking hours. My nerves became thoroughly unstrung, and I fell a prey to perpetual horror. I hesitated to ride, or to walk, or to indulge in any exercise that would carry me from home. In fact, I no longer dared trust myself out of the immediate presence of those who were aware of my proneness to catalepsy, lest, falling into one of my usual fits, I should be buried before my real condition could be ascertained. I doubted the care, the fidelity of my dearest friends. I dreaded that, in some trance of more than customary duration, they might be prevailed upon to regard me as irrecoverable. I even went so far as to fear that, as I occasioned much trouble, they might be glad to consider any very protracted attack as sufficient excuse for getting rid of me altogether. It was in vain they endeavored to reassure me by the most solemn promises. I exacted the most sacred oaths, that under no circumstances they would bury me until decomposition had so materially advanced as to render farther{u} preservation impossible. And, even then, my mortal terrors would listen to no reason — would accept no consolation. I entered into a series of elaborate precautions. Among other things, I had the family vault so remodelled as to admit of being readily opened from within. The slightest pressure upon a long lever that extended far into the tomb would cause the iron portals to fly back. There were arrangements also for the free admission of air and light, and convenient receptacles for food and water, within immediate reach of the coffin intended for my reception. This coffin was warmly and softly padded, and was provided with a lid, fashioned upon the principle of the vault-door, with the addition of springs so contrived that the feeblest movement of the body would be sufficient to set it at liberty. Besides all this, there was suspended from the roof of the tomb, a large bell, the rope of [page 966:] which, it was designed, should extend through a hole in the coffin, and so be fastened to one of the hands of the corpse.(15) But, alas! what avails the vigilance against the Destiny of man? Not even these well contrived{v} securities sufficed{w} to save from the uttermost agonies of living inhumation, a wretch to these agonies foredoomed!

There arrived an epoch — as often before there had arrived — in which I found myself emerging from total unconsciousness into the first feeble and indefinite sense of existence. Slowly — with a tortoise gradation — approached the faint gray dawn of the psychal day. A torpid uneasiness. An apathetic endurance of dull pain. No care — no hope — no effort. Then, after long interval, a ringing in the ears; then, after a lapse still longer, a pricking or tingling sensation in the extremities; then a seemingly eternal period of pleasurable quiescence,{x} during which the awakening feelings are struggling into thought; then a brief re-sinking into nonentity; then a sudden recovery. At length the slight quivering of an eyelid, and immediately thereupon, an electric shock of a terror, deadly and indefinite, which sends the blood in torrents from the temples to the heart. And now the first positive effort to think. And now the first endeavor to remember. And now a partial and evanescent success. And now the memory has so far regained its dominion, that, in some measure, I am cognizant of my state. I feel that I am not awaking from ordinary sleep. I recollect that I have been subject to catalepsy. And now, at last, as if by the rush of an ocean, my shuddering spirit is overwhelmed by the one grim Danger — by the one spectral and ever-prevalent Idea.

For some minutes after this fancy possessed me, I remained without motion. And why? I could not summon courage to move. I dared not make the effort which was to satisfy me of my fate — and yet there was something at my heart which whispered me it was sure. Despair — such as no other species of wretchedness ever calls into being — despair alone urged me, after long irresolution, to uplift the heavy lids of my eyes. I uplifted them. It was dark — all dark. I knew that the fit was over. I knew that the crisis of my [page 967:] disorder had long passed. I knew that I had now fully recovered the use of my visual faculties — and yet it was dark — all dark — the intense and utter raylessness of the Night that endureth for evermore.(16)

I endeavored to shriek; and my lips and my parched tongue moved convulsively together in the attempt — but no voice issued from the cavernous lungs, which, oppressed as if by the weight of some incumbent mountain, gasped and palpitated, with the heart, at every elaborate and struggling inspiration.

The movement of the jaws, in this effort to cry aloud, showed me that they were bound up, as is usual with the dead. I felt, too, that I lay upon some hard substance; and by something similar my sides were, also, closely compressed. So far, I had not ventured to stir any of my limbs — but now I violently threw up my arms, which had been lying at length, with the wrists crossed. They struck a solid wooden substance, which extended above my person at an elevation of not more than six inches from my face. I could no longer doubt that I reposed within a coffin at last.

And now, amid all my infinite miseries, came sweetly the cherub Hope(17) — for I thought of my precautions. I writhed, and made spasmodic exertions to force open the lid: it would not move. I felt my wrists for the bell-rope: it was not to be found. And now the Comforter fled for ever, and a still sterner Despair reigned triumphant; for I could not help perceiving the absence of the paddings which I had so carefully prepared — and then, too, there came suddenly to my nostrils the strong peculiar odor of moist earth. The conclusion was irresistible. It was not within the vault. I had fallen into a trance while absent from home — while among strangers — when, or how, I could not remember — and it was they who had buried me as a dog — nailed up in some common coffin — and thrust, deep, deep, and for ever, into some ordinary and nameless grave.

As this awful conviction forced itself, thus, into the innermost chambers of my soul, I once again struggled to cry aloud. And in this second endeavor I succeeded. A long, wild, and continuous shriek, or yell, of agony, resounded through the realms of the subterrene Night. [page 968:]

“Hillo! hillo, there!” said a gruff voice, in reply.

“What the devil's the matter now?” said a second.

“Get out o’ that!” said a third.

“What do you mean by yowling{y} in that ere kind of style, like a cattymount?” said a fourth; and hereupon I was seized and shaken without ceremony, for several minutes, by a junto of very rough-looking individuals. They did not arouse me from my{z} slumber — for I was wide awake when I screamed — but they restored me to the full possession of my memory.{a}

This adventure occurred near Richmond, in Virginia. Accompanied by a friend, I had proceeded, upon a gunning expedition, some miles down the banks of James River. Night approached, and we were overtaken by a storm. The cabin of a small sloop lying at anchor in the stream, and laden with garden mould, afforded us the only available shelter. We made the best of it, and passed the night on board. I slept in one of the only two berths in the vessel — and the berths of a sloop of sixty or seventy tons, need scarcely be described. That which I occupied had no bedding of any kind. Its extreme width was eighteen inches. The distance of its bottom from the deck overhead, was precisely the same. I found it a matter of exceeding difficulty to squeeze myself in. Nevertheless, I slept soundly; and the whole of my vision — for it was no dream, and no nightmare — arose naturally from the circumstances of my position — from my ordinary bias of thought — and from the difficulty, to which I have alluded, of collecting my senses, and especially of regaining my memory, for a long time after awaking from slumber. The men who shook me were the crew of the sloop, and some laborers engaged to unload it. From the load itself came the earthy smell. The bandage about the jaws was a silk handkerchief in which I had bound up my head, in default of my customary nightcap.

The tortures endured, however, were undubitably quite{b} equal, for the time, to those of actual sepulture. They were fearfully — they were inconceivably hideous; but out of Evil proceeded Good; [page 969:] for their very excess wrought in my spirit an inevitable revulsion. My soul acquired tone — acquired temper. I went abroad. I took vigorous exercise. I breathed the free air of Heaven. I thought upon other subjects than Death. I discarded my medical books. “Buchan” I burned.(18) I read no “Night Thoughts”(19) — no fustian about church-yards — no bugaboo tales — such as this. In short, I became a new man, and lived a man's life. From that memorable night, I dismissed forever my charnal apprehensions, and with them vanished the cataleptic disorder, of which, perhaps, they had been less the consequence than the cause.

There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may{c} assume the semblance of a{d} Hell — but the imagination{e} of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot{f} be regarded as altogether fanciful — but, like the Demons in whose company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us — they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.(20)


VARIANTS

[The following variants appear at the bottom of page 955:]

a  upon (A)

b  wierd (A, B)

c  a (C) accent added from A, B

[The following variants appear at the bottom of page 956:]

d  and of (A)

e  strong (A)

f  white-apparrelled (A, B)

[The following variants appear at the bottom of page 957:]

g  litterateur, (C) accent added from A, B

h  Renelle, (C) accented to follow A and B

[The following variant appears at the bottom of page 958:]

i  Renelle (C)

[The following variants appear at the bottom of page 959:]

j  the (A)

k  asphytic (B, C) misprint, corrected from A

l  1821, (A)

[The following variant appears at the bottom of page 960:]

m  life-likliness (A, B)

[The following variants appear at the bottom of page 961:]

n  from (A, B)

o  of (A, B)

[The following variants appear at the bottom of page 962:]

p  mysteries, (A, B)

q  hemi-syncope, (A, B)

[The following variants appear at the bottom of page 963:]

r  seisure. (B, C) emended from A

s  like (A)

[The following variant appears at the bottom of page 964:]

tt ... tt  “I am called Shadow (A)

[The following variant appears at the bottom of page 965:]

u  further (A)

[The following variants appear at the bottom of page 966:]

v  conceived (A)

w  suffice (A)

x  acquiescence, (A)

[The following variants appear at the bottom of page 968:]

y  yawling (A)

z  Omitted (A)

a  memery (C) misprint, corrected from A, B

b  fully (A)

[The following variants appear at the bottom of page 969:]

c  must (D)

d  Omitted (D)

e  intellect (A)

f  cannot (D)


[page 969, continued:]

NOTES

1.  Pleasurable pain is mentioned in E. K's Introduction to Spenser's Shepheardes Calender (1579).

2.  Napoleon lost 20,000 men crossing the river Beresina in Minsk Government, Russia, November 26-29, 1812. The Lisbon Earthquake, November 1, 1755, cost more than 30,000 lives. The great Plague at London was that of 1665; Defoe wrote a famous, although partly fictitious, account of it called A Journal of the Plague Year (1722). The Massacre of St. Bartholomew, August 24, 1572, was the slaughter of the Huguenot French Protestants ordered by Charles IX under the influence of his mother, Catherine de Médicis. Suraj-ud-Dowlah, Nawab of Bengal, murdered more than a hundred English prisoners at Calcutta in 1756.

3.  Ecclesiastes 12:6, “Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken,” is also echoed in the first line of Poe's poem “Lenore”: “Ah, broken is the golden bowl ...

4.  Poe's source for this account of the Baltimore lady has not been pointed out, but I found the story with slight variations (implying a source other than [page 970:] Poe's tale) printed as told by “the Baltimore correspondent of a New York paper” in the Democrat of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, December 5, 1845.

5.  Killis Campbell (MLN, May 1917) found Poe's source for the following narrative in the Philadelphia Casket (forerunner of Graham's Magazine) for September 1827. The article, headed “The Lady Buried Alive,” presents two versions of a very old story, ascribing one to “the Causes Célèbres” (see Gayot de Pitavol, Causes Celebres et interessantes, vol. VII, 1737, pp. 434-437) and the other to Domenico Maria Manni (1690-1788, author of Istoria del Decamerone di Giovanni Boccaccio, Firenze, 1742), who gave his version as an account of a real happening during the plague of 1460 in Florence. Poe made use of both versions, taking most of his narrative from the first and the happy ending from the second. The only proper name in Pitavol's version is that of the rue Saint Honoré; Manni as quoted in the Casket calls the heroine Ginevra de Bmiera; her lover, Antonio Rondinelli; but he does not name the husband. M. Rénelle may be indebted to Mr. Rennell, father of the heroine in “The Dead Alive” (Fraser's, August 1834) — the title was mentioned by Mr. Blackwood in his conversation with the Psyche Zenobia (see n. 9 below) — but the story is of the safe return of a lover believed to have been lost at sea, and has nothing to do with premature burial. Poe apparently invented most of the names as well as the date he supplied for verisimilitude.

6.  Poe's exact source for the following story of the artillery officer has not been located. It probably was a newspaper article crediting a German medical journal, as was suggested by Gustav Gruener in Modern Philology, June 1904, but Palmer Cobb (Influence of Hoffmann, p. 28) reported that “a search of all the medical periodicals in the libraries of Berlin for the period 1834-44 ... failed to result in a discovery of the case cited by Poe.” The Union List of Serials includes a Zeitschrift für Chirurgen, Osterode [Poland], 1841-46, in the National Medical Library; it has not been consulted.

7.  Asphyctic is an adjective derived from asphyxia. N. P. Willis (cited in n. 15 below) noted that “asphyxia, or a suspension of life, with all the appearance of death, is certified to in many instances, and carefully provided for in some countries” (p. 640)

8.  On uses of the galvanic battery compare “Loss of Breath” and “Some Words with a Mummy.”

9.  This “extraordinary case” is clearly adapted from an anonymous first-person narrative, “The Buried Alive” (Blackwood's Magazine for October 1821, pp. 262-264) — an article pointed out by Margaret Alterton (Origins, 1925, pp. 11, 18-20, 23) and quoted in connection with the life-in-death theme in a number of Poe's stories. It was outlined in “How to Write a Blackwood Article,” at n. 11, where it is assigned to the wrong title (see n. 5 above). The date of occurrence (given as 1821 in the first version of Poe's tale), the name of the hero (possibly suggested by “The Adventures of Tom Stapleton,” which ran for many weeks in Brother Jonathan in the autumn of 1841 while news of the Mary Rogers case was still appearing and the sensational story of J. C. Colt's murder of Samuel Adams was filling columns), the amplification of some details following the exhumation, and the effective concluding paragraph were added by Poe. [page 971:]

10.  N. P. Willis (cited in n. 15, below) records the finding of a young lady's body turned over, but an undertaker reassured him that it resulted from rough handling of the coffin (p. 639).

11.  The phrase “Conqueror Worm” is from Spencer Wallace Cone's Proud Ladye (New York, 1840); Poe used it as the title of his powerful poem first published in Graham's for January 1843, and inserted in “Ligeia” in 1845.

12.  Misquoted from Richard II, III, ii, 145, “Let's talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs.”

13.  Compare Paradise Lost, II, 962, “sable vested night,” and lines 13-16 of “The Conqueror Worm.”

14.  Compare the early prose bit “A Dream,” especially the final paragraph and n. 7.

15.  Compare N. P. Willis, in the New Mirror, November 18, 1843, p. 111, reprinted among the “Ephemera” in Prose Works (1845), pp. 639, 640:

The “life-preserving coffin,” lately exhibited at the fair of the Institute, is so constructed as to fly open with the least stir of the occupant, and made as comfortable within as if intended for a temporary lodging. The proprietor recommends ... a corresponding facility of exit from the vault, and arrangements for privacy, light and fresh air — in short all that would be agreeable to the revenant on first waking ... In Frankfort, Germany, the dead man is laid in a well-aired room, and his hand fastened for three days to a bell-pull.

The same article includes Willis's remarks referred to in notes 7 and 10 above.

The Rover (I, 249), June 1843, reprinted an article by Thomas Hood, “The Death Watch,” reporting that at Frankfurt-am-Main one “corpse” did come to life and pull the bell — and the aged caretaker died of a heart attack. A poem on the coffin by Seba Smith is in the New York Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine for January 1844, with a note naming the inventor as a Mr. Eisenbrant of Baltimore.

16.  Compare similar passages in the early versions of “Loss of Breath”; in Arthur Gordon Pym, chapter 21, and in “The Pit and the Pendulum.”

17.  Compare Politian, IV, 66, “The Seraph Hope,” and VII, 81, “the angel Hope.”

18.  William Buchan (1729-1805) wrote Domestic Medicine; or The Family Physician, first published in 1769 and long highly regarded. The 21st edition was brought out by Buchan's son, Alexander, in 1813; the 29th American edition appeared in 1854.

19.  Dr. Edward Young's Night Thoughts, of Death, Time and Immortality (1742), the foremost poem of the Graveyard School with its emphasis on details about death, was still immensely popular in America in Poe's day.

20.  In this paragraph Poe combined and rewrote two widely separated sentences in Horace Binney Wallace's Stanley (1838): “... with all the ardor of desperation; he sounded passion to its depths, and raked the bottom of the gulf of sin; he explored, with the indomitable spirit of Carathis, every chamber and [page 972:] cavern of the earthly hell of bad delights” (1I, 83-84), and “The passions are like those demons with whom Afrasiab sailed down the river Oxus, our safety consists in keeping them asleep; if they wake we are lost” (I, 124). Wallace refers to the wicked old witch in William Beckford's Vathek (1786) who, granted a day to command the treasures of Hell before her damnation, boldly enjoys them. (Beckford's book, with which Poe himself was directly acquainted, is fantastic fiction but uses historical names of the debauched Caliph Haroun Vathek Billah [842-847 A. D.] and of his mother Carathis, who was a Greek). Afrasiab was the legendary bad King of Turân, leading enemy of Rustam in Firdusi's Shah Nameh, but Wallace used a story I do not find in the Persian epic.


[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 953:]

*  Hints of this fascination may be seen in a number of his earlier stories: “Loss of Breath,” “Berenicë,” “Morella,” “Ligeia,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “King Pest,” and “The Colloquy of Monos and Una.”

[The following variants appear at the bottom of page 954:]

  This form was known to Woodberry (1909, II, 405) long before Killis Campbell (MLN, May 1917) recovered the first printing. The Rover contains the earliest collectible form of Poe's tale.


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Notes:

None.


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[S:1 - TOM3T, 1978] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Editions-The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (T. O. Mabbott) (The Premature Burial)