Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman
Edgar Allan Poe described the nature
of the fare in which readers of such publications as The Southern
Literary Messenger and
Blackwood's were
interested:
The ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought into the strange and mystical. . . . To be appreciated, you must be read, and these things are invariably sought after with avidity.
Unfortunately,
he does not offer his own definitions of the terms he uses, implying,
perhaps, that he has their standard dictionary definitions in mind,
but his explanation suggests the common feature, in each pairing,”
whether of “ludicrous” and “burlesque” or “singular” and
“strange” and “mystical,” is exaggeration: the ludicrous must
be “heightened” to become grotesque; the fearful must be
“coloured into the horrible”; the witty must be “exaggerated”
before it is burlesque, and the extraordinary must be “wrought”
to become weird ad mysterious. It is this sort of exaggeration, these
sorts of extreme, that, Poe found, interests and attracts readers.
Poe's stories and essays themselves show how he accomplishes these
exaggerations.
His
tongue-in-cheek essay, “How
to Write a Blackwood's Article,” in particular, explains
the process of writing sensational fiction, if one reads between the
lines, for, it is, after all, both a process analysis essay and a
parody of the typical Blackwood's Magazine fare, and
his “Loss
of Breath: A Tale a la Blackwood's,” parodies the
typical Blackwood's story itself, and is, therefore, also
instructive in revealing the technique of sensationalizing incidents
through exaggeration, its own parodic nature notwithstanding.
Published
from 1817 to 1980, this British periodical was originally known as the
Edinburgh Monthly Magazine.
In
“How to Write a Blackwood's
Article,” once Poe gets down to specifics, he has his caricature of
the magazine's founder, Mr. William Blackwood himself, tell Signora
Psyche Zenobia, who has come to interview him on behalf of an
organization of which she is a member, exactly what comprises the
typical Blackwwod's fare and
how it is produced. First, each story is based upon an improbable,
or, often, indeed, an impossible incident. He offers a few examples
of such incidents:
“There
was 'The Dead Alive,' a capital thing!—the record of a gentleman's
sensations when entombed before the breath was out of his body . . .
. Then we had the 'Confessions of an Opium-eater'— . . . plenty of
fire and fury' . . . . “Then there was 'The Involuntary
Experimentalist,' all about a gentleman who got baked in an oven, and
came out alive and well . . . . And then there was 'The Man in the
Bell' . . . . It is the history of a young person who goes to sleep
under the clapper of a church bell, and is awakened by its tolling
for a funeral. The sound drives him mad, and, accordingly, pulling
out his tablets, he gives a record of his sensations.”
Second,
a Blackwood's tale
requires vivid descriptions of emotion, or “sensation.”
“Sensations are the great things after all,” Mr. Blackwood tells
Zenobia. “Should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a
note of your sensations—they will be worth to you ten guineas a
sheet. If you wish to write forcibly, Miss Zenobia, pay minute
attention to the sensations.”
The
typical Blackwood's
article also delves into the supernatural, the paranormal, the
mystical, or the spiritualistic, using the type of cant that Poe, in
his poem “The Raven,” characterizes as the sort of “forgotten
lore” that fills “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten
lore.” There is, in such stories, a patina of the esoteric, the
occult, the mysterious, and there are references to lost or
little-known sources, such as confessions, diaries, historical
accounts of past events, all set forth with “erudition.” Indeed,
if the sources are unintelligible, so much the better—as long as
they sound learned.
These sources may be mentioned by the characters in the stories or in
an epigram at the head of the story. (In Poe's article, he chooses
the latter method, quoting the cry of a Turkish fig peddlar: “"In
the name of the Prophet—figs!”)
The
Blackwood's writer is careful to choose a tone appropriate to
his other story, Mr. Blackwood tells Zenobia, as he identifies
various choices:
“There is the tone didactic, the tone
enthusiastic, the tone natural--all common-place enough.
But then there is the tone laconic, or curt, which has
lately come much into use. It consists in short sentences. Somehow
thus: Can't be too brief. Can't be too snappish. Always a full stop.
And never a paragraph.
“Then
there is the tone elevated, diffusive, and interjectional.
Some of our best novelists patronize this tone. The words must be all
in a whirl, like a humming-top, and make a noise very similar, which
answers remarkably well instead of meaning. This is the best of all
possible styles where the writer is in too great a hurry to think.
“The tone
metaphysical is also a good one. If you know any big words this
is your chance for them. . . . I shall mention only two more—the
tone transcendental and the tone heterogeneous. In the
former the merit consists in seeing into the nature of affairs a very
great deal farther than anybody else. . . . Above all, study
innuendo. Hint everything—assert nothing.
“. . . As for the tone
heterogeneous, it is merely a judicious mixture, in equal
proportions, of all the other tones in the world, and is consequently
made up of every thing deep, great, odd, piquant, pertinent, and
pretty.”
'Und sterb'ich doch, so sterb'ich
denn
Durch sie--durch sie!'
Durch sie--durch sie!'
Translated
into English, the line reads, “'And if I die, at least I die
for thee—for thee!” French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, and Latin
offer other usable quotations that will give the story a sense of
erudition.
The occasion that inspired
the Blackwood story might be
mundane, but if it is presented according to the principles, using
the elements he has identified, Mr. Blackwood implies, it will be
properly exaggerated to the point that it is worthy of inclusion in
his magazine:
“It
is just possible that you may not be able, so soon as convenient,
to—to get yourself drowned, or choked with a chicken-bone, or—or
hung, or bitten by a—but stay! Now I think me of it, there are a
couple of very excellent bull-dogs in the yard—fine fellows, I
assure you—savage, and all that—indeed just the thing for your
money—they'll have you eaten up, auriculas
and all, in less than five minutes (here's my watch!)—and then only
think of the sensations!”
In
short, it will fit the Blackwood's
formula.
In
“Loss of
Breath: A Tale a la Blackwood's,”
Poe furnishes a short story that, parodying those which typically
appear in Blackwood's Magazine,
also exemplify the principles and techniques he has outlined in “How
to Write a Blackwood's
Article” as forming the formula for such sensational stories.
For
aspiring writers who would like to see a story in the genre itself,
rather than a parody, they need seek no further than Poe's work
itself, for, according to Paul Collins, the author of the critical
study Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Living,
assures us that Poe's short story “The Pit and the Pendulum”
constitutes “a Blackwood's
story to top all Blackwood's
stories”: Poe could mock sensational “predicament” stories . .
. . but he also knew they sold readily, and he had a magnificent one
in “The Pit and the Pendulum.”