https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/still-farther-south * Home * Essays * Collections * Explore * Shop * Support PDR * About * Blog Search Search The Public Domain Review [ ][View All Results] The Public Domain Review PDRSupport PDR * Essays * Collections * Explore * Shop * About * Blog * * * * PostcardsJust 7 days left of our FundraiserWe need your help to keep the project alive!Donate TodayPerks include receiving twice-a-year our very special postcard packs! Next theme ... "Play"Postcards Essays Still Farther South Poe and Pym's Suggestive Symmetries By John Tresch In 1838, as the United States began its Exploring Expedition to the South Seas, Edgar Allan Poe published a novel that masqueraded as a travelogue. John Tresch guides us along this strange trip southward, following the pull of its unfathomable mysteries. Published June 16, 2021 A grid of charts constructed from concentric circles with numerical labels Detail from an 1853 pilot chart of the South Pacific, drawn by Matthew Fontaine Maury -- Source. In May, 1837, the U.S. economy screeched to a halt; the panic struck. Martin Van Buren had inherited an impending disaster. Interest rates in England had recently risen and cotton prices plunged. The nation plummeted into seven years of stagnation. All the while, Edgar Allan Poe worked with a focus sharpened by hunger. Years earlier, when Poe wrote to editors in hopes of publishing Tales of the Folio Club -- each written in a distinct style, exaggerating the conventions and cliches of established genres and authors, often uproariously -- he was warned that there was little public appetite for story collections.^1 James Kirke Paulding, a reviewer for Harper & Brothers, said Americans preferred works "in which a single and connected story occupies the whole volume".^2 Poe took the advice. In late 1836, still in Richmond, Virginia, he began a seafaring novel inspired by Robinson Crusoe, with a hero whose name echoed his own: Arthur Gordon Pym. Poe's novel would draw on popular excitement for a national scientific venture: a government-sponsored expedition to the South Seas. The project had been sparked by the lecturer J. N. Reynolds, who had been seized by the "hollow earth" theory of John Cleves Symmes, the "Newton of the West".^3 Symmes, a former army officer who moved between Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio, believed that the surface of the earth was the outermost of five concentric spheres; its poles were flat and open, and one might travel smoothly from its extreme north or south into the globe's interior. Lit and heated by reflected light, the inner surface of the outer sphere (and the four smaller spheres it contained) was, Symmes contended, a "warm and rich land, stocked with thrifty vegetables and animals".^4 Declaring the chemist Humphry Davy and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt his "protectors", he called for "one hundred brave companions" to depart with him "with Reindeer and slays" from Siberia across "the ice of the frozen sea" and into the earth.^5 Reynolds, a captivating speaker, joined Symmes on a lecture tour and argued that the U.S. government should sponsor an expedition to test the theory. An engraving of a large hole disappearing into a convex surface Symmes' proposed polar entrance to his hollow earth, an illustration of which appeared in an 1882 edition of Harper's New Monthly Magazine . Already, by the 1880s, it was possible for the article's author to write: "Who Symmes was, and exactly what his theory is, seem to be definitely understood by but few people" -- Source. When Reynolds later spoke on the topic to Congress -- having abandoned Symmes' theory, but not his interest in an expedition to the South Seas -- Poe took up the cause in the Southern Literary Messenger.^6 Nothing less than "national dignity and honor" were at stake, he wrote. The United States was called to the world's store of knowledge: "As long as there is mind to act upon matter, the realms of science must be enlarged; and nature and her laws be better understood, and more understandingly applied". An expedition would boost U.S. trade in whale oil, sealskins, sandalwood, and feathers. It should include a "corps of scientific men, imbued with the love of science", to correct navigational charts and "collect, preserve, and arrange every thing valuable" in natural history and anthropology. They would document "man in his physical and mental powers, in his manners, habits, disposition, and social and political relations", studying languages to trace human origins "from the early families of the old world". By early 1837, Poe had moved to New York, where his income appeared to be nearly non-existent; he survived thanks to the care of his aunt and mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, who managed a boarding house. That June, before the full consequences of the economic crash were realized, Harper & Brothers registered a copyright for Poe's novel. This "single and connected story" wove Poe's excitement about the Exploring Expedition together with his investigations into the decipherment of ancient languages. Packed with shocking passages and ominous imagery, it teased readers with revelations while throwing mystifying obstacles in their way. An engraving of a large rectangular prism of ice with a three-masted ship in the foreground for scale A "tabular iceberg" from Charles Erskine's Twenty Years Before the Mast, his reminiscences of participating in the U.S. Exploring Expedition, under the command of Charles Wilkes -- Source. Strange Trip The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was published in 1838.^7 Its title page was taken up by an outrageous 107-word subtitle, promising the "details of mutiny and atrocious butchery on board the american brig grampus, on her way to the south seas, in the month of june, 1827", followed by a "shipwreck and subsequent horrible sufferings", "deliverance", "the massacre of her crew", a visit to islands in "the eighty-fourth parallel of southern latitude ", and finally, "incredible adventures and discoveries still farther south". One reviewer asked, "What say you, reader, to that for a title page?" ^8 The page didn't mention Poe, or that the book was a work of fiction -- suggesting that Poe intended the book to be taken, at least at first glance, as a genuine travel account. Adding to the Narrative's verisimilitude were its precise details about currents, weather, and creatures of the sea and air. It closely resembled first-person voyage accounts -- an extremely popular genre. It drew on Reynolds' Potomac voyage and its details on the whaling trade (Reynolds' Mocha Dick would later catch Herman Melville's attention).^9 Pym's publication was timed to capitalize on excitement about the South Seas Exploring Expedition setting sail in August, which the narrator hoped would "verify some of the most important and most improbable of my statements".^10 The first edition also included notices of other Harper & Brothers books -- travel accounts, histories, and biographies -- encouraging readers to see the book in their hands as a truthful account of facts and actual experiences. In that case, its author would be "Arthur Gordon Pym".^11 Yet Poe had published the first chapters the previous year in the Messenger as fiction, signed "Edgar A. Poe". A brooding seated figure holds instruments Arthur Gordon Pym, as imagined by an uncredited illustrator, from an 1884 edition of the novel -- Source. To explain the contradiction, the preface (signed by "A. G. Pym") claimed that after an "extraordinary series of adventures in the South Sea", "Pym" met "several gentlemen in Richmond" who urged him to publish. "Pym" refused, thinking that the events of his journey were "so positively marvelous" that readers would take them as "an impudent and ingenious fiction". But "Mr. Poe, lately editor of the Southern Literary Messenger", persuaded him that even if the narrative were rough, "its very uncouthness, if there were any, would give it all the better chance of being received as truth". "Pym" agreed to tell his story, on the condition that "Poe" would transcribe and publish it "under the garb of fiction" hence its appearance in the Messenger. Yet despite the "air of fable" that "Poe" gave the account, many readers believed it. "Pym" grew convinced that the facts of his journey, if plainly reported, "would prove of such a nature as to carry with them sufficient evidence of their own authenticity". He would tell his tale as it happened, in his "own name". After this mad squabble between "Pym" and "Poe" about the best means of convincing readers of the truth, the story began calmly enough: "My name is Arthur Gordon Pym. My father was a respectable trader in sea-stores at Nantucket, where I was born."^12 Pym, aged seventeen, sets out one night after a party with his close friend Augustus for a "spree" in a tiny sailboat, the Ariel. They are nearly crushed by a large brig, the Penguin, which returns to save them. Pym lets Augustus talk him into another voyage. He stows away below deck on Augustus' father's whaler, the Grampus, with a copy of the account of Lewis and Clark's expedition to keep him occupied. He nearly suffocates in the "dismal and disgusting labyrinths of the hold", while above board is a mutiny. Helped by the half-Indian, half-European Dirk Peters and another sailor Richard Parker, Arthur and Augustus overtake the mutineers, playing on their superstitions. A storm ravages the ship; starving, they resort to cannibalism, drawing lots in a "fearsome speculation" that leaves Parker as the feast. Augustus dies; only Pym and Peters remain. Charcoal strokes of various weights create a swirling composition Abstract composition by Valentijn Edgar Van Uytvanck, 1918 -- Source. Rescued by a passing schooner from Liverpool, the Jane Guy, they sail farther south than any previous Europeans. They land on the island of Tsalal, whose natives are entirely black -- clothing, skin, hair, and teeth -- and are fascinated and horrified by the white skins and sails of the Europeans, at which they cry out, "Tekeli-li!" Seeing an opportunity for "profitable speculation", Captain Guy sets up a market, trading European trinkets for edible sea creatures which abound on the island. All goes well for the would-be colonizers until the Tsalalians lure the sailors into a trap, burying them in a deadly avalanche. Once again, Pym and Peters are their ship's only survivors, hiding in the hills. Hunger forces them down through the black granite chasms of the island, which trace a strange path, like letters, which Pym records. On one wall of a cavern they also find engraved "indentures" that resemble a pointing human. They escape the island in a small canoe, taking a Tsalalian with them. As they paddle furiously away, the vessel is pulled "still farther south". The air grows warm and the sea turns milky; white birds fill the sky, crying, "Tekeli-li!" The current increases and white ash falls on their boat. Before them appears a great white waterfall that they approach with "hideous velocity". The Tsalalian dies of fear as the darkness of the sky "materially increased, relieved only by the glare of the water thrown back from the white curtain before us".^13 As they rush toward the waterfall, "a chasm threw itself open to receive us. But there arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men. And the hue of the skin of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow". There -- suddenly, bewilderingly -- Pym's narrative ends. A frightened man in a boat in stormy seas protects himself from a sea bird and a shrouded figure An illustration from Jules Verne's essay "Edgard Poe et ses oeuvres" (Edgar Poe and his works), drawn by Frederic Lix or Yan' Dargent. Here we see seabirds and the large, shrouded figure from the end of Pym -- Source. A mischievous "Note" closes the book, just as the preface opened it, explaining that Pym returned to the United States, and died, and that "Mr. Poe" "has declined the task" of reconstructing the final chapters of Pym's voyage.^14 The author of this final "Note" -- neither "Pym" nor "Poe" -- tentatively suggests an interpretation of the carved markings on Tsalal. In Egyptian, Arabic, and Ethiopian letters they appear to spell out "shady"; "white"; and "the region of the South". The "Note" concludes with a mysterious, quasi-biblical utterance: "I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock." A collection of figures with line drawings demonstrating these shapes Figure 1 "gives the general outlines of the chasm"; Figure 2 represents "another lofty chamber, similar to the one we had left in every respect but longitudinal form"; Figure 3 is a third chasm, "precisely like the first, except in its longitudinal shape"; Figure 4 are the "indentures": the leftmost indenture Pym describes as coming to resemble, "with a very slight exertion of the imagination", " a human figure standing erect, with outstretched arm". Figure 5 is a drawing of "the two triangular holes of great depth", discovered in the third chasm -- Source. Pym's ending -- the "hieroglyphs" in the black chasms, the white figure in the "chasm" of spray and mist, the sudden break in the action, and the note announcing Pym's return and death -- provides more questions than answers. It was Pym who urged Captain Guy to push toward the South Pole: "So tempting an opportunity of solving the great problem in regard to an Antarctic continent had never yet been afforded".^15 Though he regretted the "unfortunate and bloody events" that resulted from this advice -- the massacre of dozens of natives and the Jane Guy's entire crew -- he was pleased to have aided in "opening to the eye of science one of the most intensely exciting secrets which has ever engrossed its attention". Riddled with ambiguities, Pym's tale was about the quest for discovery and its costs. An Inventory of Altered States Even though detective fiction didn't yet exist -- Poe would invent the genre three years later -- Pym's bizarre events gave readers endless puzzles to solve. The book's last paragraph, on the writing in Tsalal's chasms, explicitly invited a variety of interpretations. "Conclusions such as these", it read, "open a wide field for speculation and exciting conjecture". Its call for a "minute philological scrutiny" of the ancient words "written in the windings" of the chasms suggested that the entire book could be studied just as closely.^16 For example, readers might seek a natural cause for the "whiteout" of the ending: perhaps the sailors are funneled into the hole predicted by Symmes' "hollow earth". Perhaps the "white figure" is an optical illusion, the distorted image of an approaching ship -- perhaps the very same ship, the Penguin, that saves Pym and Augustus at the book's beginning.^17 A large shrouded figure rises in the path of a small boat "There Arose In Our Pathway A Shrouded Human Figure", an illustration by A. D. McCormick for an 1898 edition of Pym -- Source. Or perhaps Poe meant readers to see the white figure as an encounter with divine truth, as in the book of Revelation's "vision of the seven candlesticks" with its figure with "hair of white wool".^18 The story might have held a political commentary: some critics have seen in the extreme polarization of black and white in "the region of the South" an allegory of a natural basis for slavery or a reference to the biblical curse of Noah against the descendents of Ham; others read the Tsalalians' deadly rebellion as a warning of slavery's likely consequence. The book explicitly addressed the slipperiness of interpretation: "In no affairs of mere prejudice, pro or con, do we deduce inferences with entire certainty, even from the most simple data". For his descriptions of optical illusions, Poe drew on David Brewster's Letters on Natural Magic. Pym experiences mirages, the visual distortions of twilight, and possibly, with the voyage's closing image, "the Specter of the Brocken" -- the vision of one's own shadow as a giant when projected against a distant surface.^19 Pym also confirms Brewster's overall message, highlighting the power of optical tricks to manipulate naive believers. Dressing up as a corpse to play on the "superstitious terrors and guilty conscience" of the mutineers, Pym himself is "seized with a violent tremor" when he looks in a mirror; the first mate dies at the sight of what he takes for a ghost.^20 illustration of the Brocken specter Camille Flammarion's illustration of the Brocken specter, from L'atmosphere meteorologie populaire (1888) -- Source. The book underlined the unreliability of the senses by taking readers through an inventory of altered states of mind. As Pym suffocates below deck, he dreams of serpents, demons, and deserts; starving on the wrecked ship, he drifts into "a state of partial insensibility" with visions of "green trees, waving meadows of ripe grain, processions of dancing girls, troops of cavalry, and other phantasies." His first adventure on board the small boat Ariel (the name of the magician Prospero's familiar in The Tempest) establishes a narcoleptic rhythm in which Pym drops into a trance or visionary state, then staggers back into consciousness. Repeatedly taking readers from false appearances to an underlying reality, Poe showed how material conditions -- intoxication, hunger, expectation -- affect states of mind. This psychological emphasis added a probing, philosophical dimension to the "explained gothic" novels of Ann Radcliffe and Horace Walpole. Yet much as in De Quincey's Confessions, in Pym truth was a moving target.^21 "It is utterly useless to form conjectures", he noted, "where all is involved, and will, no doubt, remain for ever involved, in the most appalling and unfathomable mystery." Every appearance might hide a contrasting underlying reality, while that reality's causes remained shrouded in doubt. Illusions and unreliable revelations pull Pym and the reader along, through a fever dream of signs and wonders, collapses, burials, and recoveries. Writing Backward Poe always took great care with his writings' typography and physical layout -- their visible "composition".^22 Just as he wrote his manuscripts in a precise, minute, and regular hand that resembled type, he worked closely with printers and typesetters. The eye-catching typographical layout of Pym's title page seems to call out for decipherment, suggesting some meaning to its visual appearance. A copy of the French translation of Pym appears reflected in a mirror in a 1937 painting by Rene Magritte -- an artist obsessed with the relations between images, words, and things; the suggestive symmetries of Poe's original title page invite a closer look. A man's back is to the viewer with a copy of Pym on a shelf and the same image is reproduced in a mirror Rene Magritte, La Reproduction interdite (Not to Be Reproduced), 1937 -- Source (not public domain). The eight words of the main title float above the denser, smaller type of the subtitle. If you look with eyes slightly unfocused -- or askance -- you can see the title forming a half circle, mirrored by the tapering, slightly rounded cluster of text below. The title and the first part of the subtitle appear to form the two hemispheres of a globe: the upper mostly white, the lower mostly black. The eye is pulled downward, "STILL FARTHER SOUTH", funneling with some bumps down to the publisher and date -- the record of the book's birth. This brief visual voyage anticipates the route the story will trace toward the bottom of the earth and, perhaps, to a receding point of origin -- right off the page. The title page with a circle and a triangle overlaid Title page from the 1838 Harper & Brothers first-edition of Arthur Gordon Pym -- Source. Now look again. Can you see the four lines of the title forming two rows of sails, with the subtitle clustered below as the hull of a boat? Imagine a straight line drawn parallel to the line formed by the words "EIGHTY-FOURTH PARALLEL OF SOUTHERN LATITUDE": you can then see the next clusters of words repeat, on a smaller scale, and upside down, the shape of the blocks of text above. Now we see a boat and its reflection, along with its sails, as if from a distance across a shimmering sea: an apt illustration for the maritime adventures about to unfold, as well as their doublings, inversions, and illusions.^23 The title page with a collection of rectangles and lines overlaid Title page from the 1838 Harper & Brothers first-edition of Arthur Gordon Pym -- Source. Symmetry and inversion were deeply engraved in Pym.^24 As Poe knew from experience, setting pages for print required a typesetter to line up letters and words in a composing stick -- in reverse order. This meant writing and reading backward -- a mirror effect that could easily go wrong, through misrecognizing or transposing a letter. Poe built this symmetry and reversal into Pym's structure. Its twenty-five chapters divide neatly in half, folding back upon themselves. Events in the first twelve chapters mirror those at the same distance from the center in the last twelve. In the middle paragraph of chapter 13 -- the center of the book's central chapter -- the Grampus crosses the equator, Pym's best friend, Augustus, dies, and the vessel flips over. The cannibalistic feast of the previous chapter -- a horrific parody of the Last Supper -- is echoed in the chapter that follows, with the ship's departure from Christmas Harbor and Pym's symbolic rebirth. Where before they drifted above the equator, starving, now they drift below the equator among islands with plentiful food. Likewise, the mutiny on the Grampus parallels the revolt on Tsalal, and the doomed voyage in the small Ariel at the beginning is echoed in the canoe voyage at the end. The book as a whole embodies the rhetorical figure of chiasmus, where elements of a phrase are repeated in reverse order -- for example, "say what you mean and mean what you say".^25 The editor's "Note" suggested a meaning for the shapes traced by Tsalal's chasms -- images of a journey that may form words, while the title page contained words that may form images of a journey.^26 The first and last pages enwrap the verbal voyage between them. The book's ominous pairings hint at hidden truths about the malleable nature of reality. At the start, Pym speaks of the perverse wishes that drive him to sea, visions of "shipwreck and famine; of death or captivity among barbarian hordes". In its parallel, final chapter, as he hangs from a cliff and imagines himself letting go, he "found these fancies creating their own realities, and all imagined horrors crowding upon me in fact."^27 By that point, his grisly visions have indeed come true; his "fancies" have created "their own realities". It is as if in the second half of the book Pym were walking through the exaggerated projections of his mind. He meets his own thoughts and fantasies, but magnified, turned upside down, fused with the landscape -- as if passed through a warped mirror, a kaleidoscope, a camera obscura, or a magic lantern.^28 A series of lines demonstrates the reproduction of an image on a wall through a camera obscura A twelve-hole camera obscura from Mario Bettini's 1642 Apiaria Universae Philosophiae Mathematicae -- Source. Like a natural theologian, Pym seeks evidence of a divine design or providential plan behind his experiences. He doubts, for instance, that the "chain of apparent miracles" on Tsalal could be "altogether the work of nature", hinting that they might be divinely wrought. Yet no unambiguous revelation is at hand. In the central chapter, exhausted and starving but rescued from shipwreck, he reflects on the horrors from which he has "so lately and so providentially been delivered".^29 In comparison, his current pains appear "little more than an ordinary evil--so strictly comparative", he reflects, "is either good or ill". In other words, any entity, and our judgment of it, depends on the other entities with which it is compared and with which it stands in relation.^30 This theme was echoed in the mirroring between the Jane Guy's sailors and the Tsalalians. Pym and other "civilized" men have become cannibals, while the natives turn out to be no more credulous or savage than the white speculators. If the book implied a racial allegory, it might have been one of a shared damnation. Pym's final line, "I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock", suggests that Pym's tribulations could be read as evidence that God created not out of generosity and benevolence but from some incomprehensible divine desire for revenge. After all, engraving matter with the originating Word, breathing spirit into dust, has been the cause of boundless human suffering. Perhaps, even more cruelly, the "vengeance" of the creator, whether God or Poe, was that despite the enticing hints of significance at every turn of the journey, there was no ultimate plan or redemptive design to be found. Poe's seafaring novel used remarkable literary precision to raise a set of questions it refused to answer; its meaning was a definite mystery, no matter how suggestive the symmetries.^31 A stereo image of two people in the foreground and two in the background partially obscured by ice "Ice bergs, Long Point", a stereograph by G. H. Nickerson (George Hathaway), featuring unknown figures, latter 19th century -- Source. NotesShow Notes 1. See Alexander Hammond's extensive work, including "Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of the Folio Club: The Evolution of a Lost Book", in Poe at Work: Seven Textual Studies, ed. Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV (Baltimore: Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1976), 13-43. 2. Harper & Brothers to Poe, June 19, 1836, Harper and Brothers to Poe (RCL152), Misc. Letters, Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. 3. See Aaron Sachs, The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism (New York: Penguin Books, 2007), on Reynolds and Symmes, and the ongoing confusion about Reynolds' first name: historians often call him Jeremiah Reynolds; his official name appears to be James (382n39). See also Aubrey Starke, "Poe's Friend Reynolds", American Literature 11, no. 2 (1939): 152-59; Robert F. Almy, J. N. Reynolds: A Brief Biography with Particular Reference to Poe and Symmes (New York: Colophon, 1937). 4. Captain John Cleves Symmes, Circular No. 1 (St. Louis), April 10, 1818. 5. J. N. Reynolds, Voyage of the United States Frigate Potomac, Under the Command of Commodore John Downes, During the Circumnavigation of the Globe in the Years 1831-32-33 and 34 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1835). 6. J. N. Reynolds, Address on the Subject of a Surveying and Exploring Expedition to the Pacific Ocean and South Seas: Delivered in the Hall of Representatives on the Evening of April 3, 1836 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1836); Poe, "South-Sea Expedition", SLM 3, no. 1 (Jan. 1837): 68-72. 7. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1838). 8. "Pym", Alexander's Weekly Messenger (Philadelphia), Aug. 22, 1838, in TPL, 253. 9. See Lisa Gitelman, "Arthur Gordon Pym and the Novel Narrative of Edgar Allan Poe", Nineteenth-Century Literature 47, no. 3 (1992): 349-61; Johan Wijkmark, "Poe's Pym and the Discourse of Antarctic Exploration", EAPR 10, no. 3 (Winter 2009): 84-116. 10. Poe, Pym, 48 (page references to Pym refer to the 1999 Penguin Classics edition, ed. Richard Kopley). On the Exploring Expedition, see Nathaniel Philbrick, Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery: The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 (London: Penguin, 2004); Aaron Sachs, The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism (New York: Penguin Books, 2007); William Stanton, The Great United States Exploring Expedition of 1838-42 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975). 11. On Poe's multiple identities, see Daniel Hoffman, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe (New York: Doubleday, 1972). Pym's preface recalls Cervantes' jibes with Don Quixote and has influenced the twentieth-century "metafictions" of Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, and Paul Auster. 12. Poe, Pym, 7. 13. Poe, 217. 14. Poe, 219-21. 15. Poe, 161. 16. Poe, 220. On Poe and philology, see Shaindy Rudoff, "'Written in Stone': Slavery and Authority in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym", ATQ 14, no. I (2000): 61-82. 17. In his introduction to the Penguin edition of Pym, Kopley suggests that the Penguin's return was heralded by the "spirit of reflection" that penguins reveal by the nests they make in tandem with the albatross; on the "quincunx" form of these nests and their connection to Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia, Urn-Burial; or, A Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns, Together with the Quincuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, Naturally, Artificially, Mystically Considered (London: Henry Brome, 1658), see John T. Irwin, "The Quincuncial Network in Poe's Pym", in Poe's "Pym": Critical Explorations, ed. Richard Kopley (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1992), 175-87. 18. To note just a few of the book's contrasting interpretations: Pym has been seen as a "providential" tale of sin and redemption (Curtis Fukuchi, "Poe's Providential Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym", ESQ 27, no. 3 [1981]: 147-56; Richard Kopley, "The 'Very Profound Under-current' of Arthur Gordon Pym", Studies in the American Renaissance [1987]: 143-75), as well as a satire of providential literature (David Vance, "Poe/Defoe--Pym/Crusoe: Providential Indeterminacy in Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket", EAPR 12, no. 2 [2011]: 64-78); the book's ending has been aligned with apocalyptic writing (David Ketterer, New Worlds for Old: The Apocalyptic Imagination, Science Fiction, and American Literature [Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1974]), and with mythical initiations including the Arthur legend's "reunion with the white goddess" (Carol Peirce and Alexander G. Rose III, "Poe's Reading of Myth: The White Vision of Arthur Gordon Pym", in Kopley, Poe's "Pym", 57-74) and myths of a race of southern giants (Kent Ljungquist, "Descent of the Titans: The Sublime Riddle of Arthur Gordon Pym", Southern Literary Journal 10, no. 2 [1978]: 75-92). These "mythical" interpretations resonate with Jungian archetypal transformation (Barton Levi St. Armand, "The Dragon and the Uroboros: Themes of Metamorphosis in Arthur Gordon Pym", ATQ 37 [1978]: 57-72) and a Freudian "primal return to an amniotic paradise" (Frederick S. Frank, "The Gothic at Absolute Zero: Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym", Extrapolation 21, no. 1 [1980]: 21-30). The figures carved in Tsalal's chasms might be read as confirmation of Pym's providential mission, a biblical curse, or a racist allegory announcing the damnation of the African race (see Rudoff, "Written in Stone"). Alternatively, the Tsalal section has been read as a satire of racial assumptions (John C. Havard, "'Trust to the Shrewdness and Common Sense of the Public': The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym as a Hoaxical Satire of Racist Epistemologies", in Deciphering Poe: Subtexts, Contexts, Subversive Meanings, ed. Alexandra Urakova [Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2013], 107-20), while Mat Johnson submits Pym's racial imagery to hilarious reconfigurations in his novel, Pym (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2011). According to J. Gerald Kennedy, Pym should (?) be read as a "fable of misreading": "As Pym's adventure recurrently demonstrates, interpretive efforts disclose only the 'hideous uncertainty' of all human truth" ("The Invisible Message: The Problem of Truth in Pym", in The Naiad Voice: Essays on Poe's Satiric Hoaxing, ed. Dennis W. Eddings [Port Washington, N.Y.: Associated Faculty Press, 1983], 124-35). 19. John T. Irwin, American Hieroglyphics: The Symbol of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics in the American Renaissance (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980). 20. Poe, Pym, 77. Brewster's argument had deep roots in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment: both Hume's Natural History of Religion and Adam Smith's "History of Astronomy" argued that the fear caused by surprising natural phenomena were the origins of the first, polytheistic religions, while Burke's Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful pointed out how the manipulation of darkness and shadow could be used by despots to produce fear and awe in their subjects; Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. Fritz C. A. Koelln and James P. Pettegrove (Boston: Beacon, 1955). 21. Frances Wilson, Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2016). 22. Leon Jackson analyzes Poe's "obsession with printedness, especially as it manifested itself in his comments on typography and typographical errors", in "The Italics Are Mine: Edgar Allan Poe and the Semiotics of Print", in Illuminating Letters: Typography and Literary Interpretation, ed. Paul C. Gutjahr and Megan L. Benton (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001); see also his "Poe and Print Culture", PS/Dark Romanticism 33, no. 1-2 (2000): 4-9, and Kevin J. Hayes, Poe and the Printed Word (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 93-95; Meredith McGill, American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995). 23. Was the page's composition intended to suggest these images, or are these simply mirages, artifacts of an overeager drive to interpret? If deliberate, do we credit Poe or the typographer? No records of the process of laying out the type of Pym have been found, but I have consulted hundreds of title pages from Harper & Brothers published 1835-38. None have the same forms or visual density as Pym's title page, though a few bear a rough resemblance, such as Lyman Cobb's North American Reader (1835) and David Hibbard's Treatise on Cow-Pox (1835). John Steuart's Bogota in 1836-7 (1838), another travel narrative, might be seen to have a comparable above and below visual motif, but with far less text. Richard Kopley brought to my attention another travel account, James O. Pattie, The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie, of Kentucky (Cincinnati: John H. Wood, 1831), whose plot has strong resemblances to Poe's later unfinished novel, The Journal of Julius Rodman; the upper half of Pattie's title page similarly clusters the text of a lengthy subtitle into a hull-like or bowl-like shape. It is entirely possible that Poe saw this book and guided Pym's compositor to elaborate it. It is also possible that these marks of apparent intention and art are figments of the viewer's imagination -- an uncertainty about the presence or absence of intentional design that Pym itself develops as a central theme. 24. Pym's mirror structure is elaborated with increasing detail in Charles O'Donnell, "From Earth to Ether: Poe's Flight into Space", PMLA 77, no. 1 (1962): 85-91; David Ketterer, "Devious Voyage: The Singular Narrative of A. Gordon Pym", ATQ 37 (1978): 21-33; Kopley, "'Very Profound Under-current'"; all of these reject the claim of Pym's lack of order expressed in Joseph V. Ridgely and Iola S. Haverstick, "Chartless Voyage: The Many Narratives of Arthur Gordon Pym", Texas Studies in Literature and Language 8, no. 1 (1966): 63-80. 25. Max Nanny, "Chiasmus in Literature: Ornament or Function?", Word and Image 4, no. 1 (1988): 51-59; William E. Engel, Early Modern Poetics in Melville and Poe: Memory, Melancholy, and the Emblematic Tradition (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2012). 26. John T. Irwin explicates "the network of images that Poe groups around the abyss" in American Hieroglyphics, 235. 27. Poe, Pym, 206. 28. On Poe's optical technologies, see Laura Saltz,"'Eyes Which Behold': Poe's 'Domain of Arnheim' and the Science of Vision", EAPR 7, no. I (Spring 2006): 4-30; Roberta Sharp, "Poe's Chapters on 'Natural Magic'", in Poe and His Times: The Artist and His Milieu, ed. Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV (Baltimore: Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1990), 154-66; William J. Scheick, "An Intrinsic Luminosity: Poe's Use of Platonic and Newtonian Optics", in American Literature and Science, ed. Robert J. Scholnick (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 77-93; Barbara Cantalupo, Poe and the Visual Arts (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014), esp. "Poe's Visual Tricks", 103-22; John Tresch, "Estrangement of Vision: Edgar Allan Poe's Optics", in Observing Nature -- Representing Experience, 1800-1850, ed. Erna Fiorentini (Berlin: Reimer, 2007), 155-86. 29. Poe, Pym, 123. 30. Christopher Herbert, Victorian Relativity: Radical Thought and Scientific Discovery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). This emphasis on reversibility and "comparative" values is largely in agreement with Dana Nelson, who argues that "while on one level Pym is a racist text, on another the text provides a reading that counters racist colonial ideology and the racialist, scientific knowledge structure" and "undermines the pretensions of colonial knowledge to disinterested objectivity." The Word in Black and White: Reading "Race" in American Literature, 1638-1867 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 92, 107. 31. Pym's combination of a rigorous structure, factual details, and passages calling out for multiple interpretations has made it both appealing and frustrating to critics. G. R. Thompson traces Poe's debts to Schlegel's notion of the unfinished "arabesque" novel in "The Arabesque Design of Arthur Gordon Pym" (in Kopley, Poe's "Pym", 188-213), and summarizes: "Despite the astonishing range of readings . . . there is in Pym a coherent and symmetrical structure of events that generates a haunting ambiguity"; Pym "exemplifies Poe's method of resonant indeterminateness" ("Edgar Allan Poe and the Writers of the Old South", in Columbia Literary History of the United States, ed. Emory Elliott [New York: Columbia University Press, 1988], 274). For an epitome of the delirious pleasures of hyper-interpreting Poe, see David Ketterer, "'Shudder': A Signature Cryptogram in 'The Fall of the House of Usher'", Resources for American Literary Study 25, no. 2 (1999): 192-205. Public Domain Works * The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket Edgar Allan Poe1838 + Internet Archive Texts * James McBride's scrapbook of articles on the hollow earth theory lectures of John Symmes James McBride1819 + Internet Archive Texts * The Correspondence of John Cleves Symmes Beverly W. Bond, Jr. (ed)1926 + Internet Archive Texts * Voyage of the United States Frigate Potomac J. N. Reynolds1835 + Hathi Trust Texts * Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842 Charles Wilkes1838-1845 23 volumes + Biodiversity Heritage Library Texts * The Phantom of the Poles William Reed1906 + Internet Archive Texts Further Reading * Sea of Glory: Americas's Voyage of Discovery and the U.S. Exploring Expedition By Nathaniel Philbrick A journey on a scale that dwarfed the journey of Lewis and Clark, the U.S. Exploring Expedition saw six magnificent sailing vessels and a crew of hundreds set out to map the entire Pacific Ocean and ended up naming the newly discovered continent of Antarctica, collecting what would become the basis of the Smithsonian Institution. Combining spellbinding human drama and meticulous research, Philbrick reconstructs the dark saga of the voyage to show why, instead of being celebrated and revered as that of Lewis and Clark, it has -- until now -- been relegated to a footnote in the national memory. More Info and Buy undefined cover * The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism By Aaron Sachs The naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) achieved unparalleled fame in his own time. Today, however, he and his enormous legacy to American thought are virtually unknown. Aaron Sachs traces Humboldt's pervasive influence on American history through examining the work of four explorers -- J. N. Reynolds, Clarence King, George Wallace, and John Muir -- who embraced Humboldt's idea of a "chain of connection" uniting all peoples and all environments. A skillful blend of narrative and interpretation that also discusses Humboldt's influence on Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Melville, and Poe, The Humboldt Current offers a colorful, passionate, and superbly written reinterpretation of nineteenth-century American history. More Info and Buy undefined cover * The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science By John Tresch Taking us through his early training in mathematics and engineering at West Point and the tumultuous years that followed, John Tresch shows that Poe lived, thought, and suffered surrounded by science -- and that many of his most renowned and imaginative works can best be understood in its company. Poe cast doubt on perceived certainties even as he hungered for knowledge, and at the end of his life delivered a mind-bending lecture on the origins of the universe that would win the admiration of twentieth-century physicists. Pursuing extraordinary conjectures and a unique aesthetic vision, he remained a figure of explosive contradiction: he gleefully exposed the hoaxes of the era's scientific fraudsters even as he perpetrated hoaxes himself. More Info and Buy undefined cover Books link through to Amazon who will give us a small percentage of sale price (ca. 4.5%). Discover more recommended books in our dedicated PDR Recommends section of the site. John Tresch is Professor and Mellon Chair in History of Art, Science, and Folk Practice at the Warburg Institute. His books include The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon, which won the 2013 Pfizer Prize from the History of Science Society, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science (2021), and Cosmograms: How to Do Things with Worlds (forthcoming from University of Chicago Press). Categories * Literature * Books Tags edgar allan poe5United States Exploring Expedition2hollow earth3john cleves symmes2shipwreck4 If You Liked This... Hand holding envelope Get Our Newsletter Our latest content, your inbox, every fortnight Privacy Policy More Info [ ][ ] HP[ ] [Subscribe] Become a Friend of the PDRPostcardsWe rely on our annual donors to keep the project alive. Perks include receiving twice-a-year our very special themed postcard packs and getting 10% off our prints.Find Out More Prints for Your Walls Explore our selection of fine art prints, all custom made to the highest standards, framed or unframed, and shipped to your door. Start Exploring The Public Domain Review * Essays * Collections * PD Remix * Conjectures * Curator's Choice * Bibliography * Shop * PDR Press Books * Support PDR * About * Contact * Blog * Contributors * Sources * Submissions Subscribe to Our Newsletter * * * * Using Material * Rights Labelling * Terms and Conditions * Privacy Policy * Returns Policy * Shop FAQ The majority of the digital copies featured are in the public domain or under an open license all over the world, however, some works may not be so in all jurisdictions. On each Collections post we've done our best to indicate which rights we think apply, so please do check and look into more detail where necessary, before reusing. Unless otherwise stated, our essays are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license. Strong Freedom in the Zone. The Public Domain Review is registered in the UK as a Community Interest Company (#11386184), a category of company which exists primarily to benefit a community or with a view to pursuing a social purpose, with all profits having to be used for this purpose. Pantagruel Sign Up for Our Newsletter! The latest wonders from the site to your inbox. Once every two weeks. [ ][ ] HP[ ] [Subscribe] Privacy Policy | More Info You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link in our emails. * * * I have read and agree to the Terms and Conditions --------------------------------------------------------------------- {{ number }} {{ $localize("payment.title") }} {{ $localize('payment.no_payment') }} {{ $localize('payment.place_order') }} Pay by Credit Card --------------------------------------------------------------------- Pay with PayPal {{ $localize('cart.summary') }} {{ $localize('actions.edit') }} --------------------------------------------------------------------- Click for Delivery Estimates --------------------------------------------------------------------- Click for Delivery Estimates {{ $localize('cart.shipping_taxes_calculated_at_checkout')}} {{$localize ('errors.order_validation.custom_fields_validation.description')}} {{ $localize('actions.checkout') }} Sorry, we cannot ship to P.O. Boxes. Sorry, we cannot ship to P.O. Boxes.