Minus the Spine

Interesting post on Maud Newton today about Edmund Wilson’s criticism and writing on Poe, and mainly about how Poe induced emotion through his use of the macabre and fantasy. In his writing, dream-like sequences confused the reader and made them more open, or rather susceptible, to whatever emotional state he wanted them in. Edmund writes:

“No one understands better than Poe that, in fiction and in poetry both, it is not what you say that counts, but what you make the reader feel…”

Gives me shivers. There’s something so creepy and perfectly Poe-ish about those kind of literary machinations. In my mind, I’ve always gone back to the essay he wrote called “Imp of the Perverse” because its logic, despite the nonsense about phrenology, frightening and fascinating–we want to harm ourselves; we are all a little self-destructive. We all live with the imp on our shoulder…

“We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss – we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain.”