“Hermes was the god of the spoken word – the medium through which exchanges were made, gallantries and amorous raptures were expressed, and knowledge was conveyed. But he was also the god of the lying word, which disguised truth, confused lovers and discredited choices. He was, in addition, the intermediary who went from men to Olympus and from Olympus to Hades.” (Comete 103).
And Hermes mingles now with all men and gods. And even though he helps a few people he cheats an endless number of the race of mortal men in the darkness of night.
--Homeric Hymn, Hermes
From the writings of Edgar Allan Poe I find the chaotic worlds of dark shadows, muffled screams, and death lurking in the pitch black soul of the Master of Suspense and Disclosure. He sees and looks Death in the eyes smiling for he and his works are immortal and invincible. They have withstood the tests of time. Poe is the god Hermes himself – and an amalgam of other Tricksters. And as the Grim Reaper stands with scythe ready at the god Poe’s command – I hear the heartbeat of the insane – of the madman from “The Tell-Tale Heart” as I lay my neck slowly upon the chopping block and I close my eyes. I hear wings flapping, then something lands close by. Trembling from my predicament, I slowly open one eye to see “this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy” (Poe 6). “Nevermore,” it states proudly but tauntingly. Joseph Campbell wrote, “…we’re in the realm of the Lord Judge of the Dead … If we can get past this, we are released. If we can’t, there closes behind us a great cliff, and the sublime is no longer ours. And we hear noises, try not to think of what is being said, but of what is talking” (Campbell 186). Poe lived every minute upon this threshold overlooking this cliff of chaos and disillusion. He is the liminal being that dwells among the living and the dead whispering upon the wind to all that will listen. He is the Trickster. And it is he that is the Raven and the messenger that visits and torments the doomed - playing tricks on their minds. Poe, the Trickster, weaves each tale with hidden mystery and surprise at every turn. It’s like I’m the Greek hero Theseus entering the maze to meet the Minotaur but with no thread to lead me back to where I started when I first begin to read one of his twisted tales or poems. And I hear his laughter as I venture deeper into the catacombs - the catacombs of “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Conqueror Worm”, “The City in the Sea”, and any of his other works.
In “The Tell-tale Heart” Poe uses brilliant storytelling to paint such a picture of the narrator and his utter torment and constant disclosure. “Why will you say that I am mad?” (Poe 731) he questions – denying that he himself is crazy and explaining his reasons for wanting to terminate the old man’s existence. “I think it was his eye,” he continues, “He had the eye of a vulture… whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold… I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever,” (Poe 731). This story is not as straightforward as it may seem because the narrator is not just mad. He is a deranged lunatic. At first reading this story I didn’t quite grasp the effect I think Poe had intended. But upon reading it again I caught the things I missed. There were no references to mythological characters or happenings in the story but Hermes – the Trickster – more than showed his face. The beating heart, the evil eye, and the recurring torment and denial is all the work of the Trickster - Hermes. When a human is faced with a choice or any kind of decision, Hermes intervenes with all sorts of options and many times reasons to make the wrong decision. “He (Hermes) is the lurer of the innocent soul into realms of trial… protective and dangerous, motherly and fatherly at the same time, this supernatural principle of guardianship and direction unites in itself all the ambiguities of the unconscious – thus signifying the support of our conscious personality by that other, larger system, but also the inscrutability of the guide that we are following, to the peril of our rational ends,” (Campbell 73).
In Poe’s masterful poem “The Raven” I find more insight and imagery than in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and I also find the Trickster weaving his immortal tale. “Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door …Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly Shore – Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!” (Poe 6) Poe’s intent may seem unclear to the reader that isn’t familiar with mythology and doesn’t take the time to research some references of Poe that aren’t common knowledge – like the “bust of Pallas” and “Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Pallas refers to Pallas Athene – also called Athena or Minerva – and she is the virgin goddess of intellect and invention in Greek mythology – known for her grimness because the snaky head of Medusa, the gorgon, is on her breastplate. Medusa’s gaze would turn a man to stone.
The Raven stays perched upon the bust of Athena this entire tale and the narrator calls the bird “ghastly, grim and ancient” (Poe 6) which the bust only adds to the entire picture and to the man’s horror. He even tells the raven to get off the bust of Athena. Plutonian shore refers to Pluto. Pluto was the god of the dead in Roman mythology who ruled over the underworld. The shore mentioned would be of the River Styx where Charon, the ghastly skeletal boatman, awaits payment to ferry the dead across into Hades (Hell). “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!” (Poe 10). It is by such references of Poe in “The Raven” and some of his other works like “Ligeia” and “Fall of the House of Usher” that I am drawn deeper into the mythological backbone to his writings and what he may not have mentioned but knew all too well about. The Trickster Hermes is blatantly mentioned also when he wrote, “Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor,” (Poe 9). “He (Hermes) is pictured as having wings on his feet, and is a clever trickster.” (Bierlein 25).
Why would Poe use a raven? Throughout Norse mythology the ravens of Odin are mentioned and they are his messengers of the earth. These ravens witnessed every battle or fray and by their appearance warriors knew that someone was going to die. “On his shoulders perched his constant companions, two ravens called Huginn and Muninn (Mind and Memory). Sturluson wrote: ‘They sit on his shoulders and whisper into his ear every scrap of news they see or hear. At the crack of dawn he sends them off to fly right round the world, and they are back by breakfast-time. This is the source of much of his knowledge, and this is why men call him the Raven-god,’”(Magnusson 63).
In Native American mythology the raven and the coyote were often the Trickster figure in the stories. Throughout most all of written history ravens have symbolized death. Even to this present day from Alfred Hitchcock and Stephen King stories to urban legends and grandfather tales ravens are symbolic of death. In “The Raven” the man meets the Raven that has come to take his life. The bird’s presence is much the same as the Grim Reaper to the man and though he turns the Raven away and tells him to go away he is still rendered lifeless. “And my soul from out of that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted – nevermore,” (Poe 10)
Why would Poe use the beating heart? The narrator of the story denied being insane. He adamantly denied that he was mad to the very end. The beating heart was the device of the Trickster. The heart was a timer and his time was up. The heartbeat sounds like someone beating on a drum - the drums of war in the distance perhaps or the sound of a struggle to come. Life is a battlefield and man is at odds with the gods and himself. Two ravens are dispersed to fly over the fray and decide whose time is up. Longfellow wrote:
“Art is long and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
(Longfellow 672-673)”
Longfellow saw life as a battlefield. Joseph Campbell said in the “Power of Myth” interviews with Bill Moyers,
"The battlefield is symbolic of the field of life, where every creature lives on the death of another. A realization of the inevitable guilt of life may so sicken the heart that, like Hamlet… one may refuse to go on with it. On the other hand, like most of the rest of us, one may invent a false, finally unjustified, image of oneself as an exceptional phenomenon in the world, not guilty as others are, but justified in one's inevitable sinning because one represents the good. Such self-righteousness leads to a misunderstanding, not only of oneself but of the nature of both man and the cosmos. The goal of the myth is to dispel the need for such life ignorance by effecting a reconciliation of the individual consciousness with the universal will. And this is effected through a realization of the true relationship of the passing phenomena of time to the imperishable life that lives and dies in all," (Power of Myth videocassette).
This battlefield is the same battlefield that the immortal Trickster god Edgar Allan Poe knew. It is the battlefield of choice, chance, and the challenge of our mind. It is what will be and what has been. It is the struggle that will inevitably stir our consciousness with uncertainty and eventually claim the lives of one and all.
And so my eyes are closed and still I hear my beating heart, then I hear a whisper from the raven “nevermore” as a cool breeze passes through the room – mending my cheek. I open my eyes to the darkness and turn on the lamp. I am blind at first but my eyes adjust. The Grim Reaper no longer stands over me with scythe raised high in the air. My bedroom window is open as the moon glimmers just beyond the trees outside. There sits “this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy” (Poe 6) upon one of the branches. The drums in the distance beat softly.
...
Works Cited
Bierein, J.F. Parallel Myths. New York: Ballantine Publishing Group, 1994.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1949.
Campbell, Joseph. Transformations of Myth Through Time. New York:
Harper and Row Publishers, 1990.
Comete, Fernand. Mythology. New York: WSR Chambers Limited., 1991.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. “A Psalm of Life”. The Norton Anthology American
Literature. Ed. Bruce Michelson. 5th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
Inc., 1979. 672-673.
Magnusson, Magnus. The Vikings. London: Orbis Publishing Limited, 1976.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Raven and Other Poems. New York:
The Berkley Publishing Group and First Publishing, Inc., 1990.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Raven”. The Norton Anthology American
Literature. Ed. Bruce Michelson. 5th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
Inc., 1979.
