This is a story of paranoia, obsession and guilt, of post-Sophoclean horror and pre-Freudian psychosis.
True! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily — how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
This is the first short story I remember reading that stayed with me, that I copied out to see how it was done, that – at the pretentious age of seventeen – I decided to turn into a play and got as far as ‘casting’ it. I disagree with Henry James who wrote, “An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection. Baudelaire thought him a profound philosopher… Poe was much the greater charlatan of the two, as well as the greater genius.” Bitch.
First published in The Pioneer, 1843, and widely available in Penguin Little Black Classics, 2015 and online here)
A Personal Anthology 