The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 3
This is Poe's singular novel, and it remains one of the strangest works in American literature. The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym follows a young man from Nantucket who stows away on a whaling ship, only to find himself embroiled in mutiny, shipwreck, and descent into cannibalistic horror on the open sea. The narrative propels us through the South Seas toward a mysterious island called Tsalal, where the indigenous inhabitants are entirely white except for their jet-black teeth - a detail so unsettling it haunted H.P. Lovecraft and inspired countless writers who came after. What makes Pym essential isn't merely its adventure plotting, but what it suggests about the darkness coiled at the heart of American expansionism and the unknowable voids waiting at the edges of any map. Poe left the novel unfinished, and its final, enigmatic pages - describing something vast and luminous rising from the whiteness beyond the island - only deepens the sense that some doors should remain closed. This is where American cosmic horror was born, in the mind of a man who understood that the ocean has no bottom.
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“Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute.””
— Edgar Allan Poe
“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.””
— Edgar Allan Poe
“Take this kiss upon the brow!And, in parting from you now,Thus much let me avow-You are not wrong, who deemThat my days have been a dream;Yet if hope has flown awayIn a night, or in a day,In a vision, or in none,Is it therefore the less gone?All that we see or seemIs but a dream within a dream.I stand amid the roarOf a surf-tormented shore,And I hold within my handGrains of the golden sand-How few! yet how they creepThrough my fingers to the deep,While I weep- while I weep!O God! can I not graspThem with a tighter clasp?O God! can I not saveOne from the pitiless wave?Is all that we see or seemBut a dream within a dream?””
— Edgar Allan Poe
“It is a happiness to wonder; -- it is a happiness to dream.””
— Edgar Allan Poe
“I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down."[, August 8, 1839]””
— Edgar Allan Poe
“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil.””
— Edgar Allan Poe
“To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!””
— Edgar Allan Poe
“Is all that we see or seemBut a dream within a dream?””
— Edgar Allan Poe
“Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado. But he grew old”
— Edgar Allan Poe
