Silence: A Fable

by Edgar Allan Poe

A fable about a demon and a man in an enchanted land.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Horror, Poetry, Fiction, Fantasy, Gothic

4 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 8, 1838

About the author

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...

Reviews

[Francesc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es difícil interpretar aquello que Poe quiere expresar a través de sus fábulas.
En este caso, el Diablo le cuenta a un alguien una historia sobre una visión que tuvo de un hombre sentado en lo alto de una roca mientras él estaba escondido entre los nenúfares del río Zaire (hoy, río Congo).
La manera como Poe describe el paisaje y la situación es sencillamente excepcional: el río, las raíces de los árboles, la visión del hombre, ... Todo está escrito en una prosa poética muy rica.
La interpretación del texto ya es otra cosa porqué Poe saca su imaginación y altera cualquier sentido de realidad que podamos darle a la historia.

------------------------

It is difficult to interpret what Poe wants to express through his fables.
In this case, the Devil tells a story to someone about a vision he had of a man sitting on top of a rock while he was hiding among the water lilies of the Zaire River (today, the Congo River).
The way Poe describes the landscape and the situation is simply exceptional: the river, the roots of the trees, the vision of the man, ... Everything is written in a very rich poetic prose.
The interpretation of the text is another matter because Poe takes his imagination and alters any sense of reality we might give to the story.

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is it any wonder fans of Edgar Allan Poe find Silence – A Fable one of the least accessible and enjoyable of his tales? This is quite understandable since this two pager lacks the development and pacing of a conventionally constructed short-story and also lacks grounding in our predictable, realistic everyday reality. Rather, what we find here is a tale having much in common with lyrical prose poetry and what in the twentieth century would become known as surrealist writing. With this very subjective world-creation of Poe’s in mind, below are several of my very subjective observations.

It’s sundown and Poe looks out at a peaceful summer landscape: river, meadow and willow trees under the setting sun, but his imagination immediately plays games, enlarging the river, distorting the meadow, altering, warping and bending the willow trees - a complete transformation right before his very eyes. Poe recognizes what is happening - it is his poetic muse taking over. But such a muse! He views the bizarre deformation and has a name for such a muse - the Demon.

With this psychological transformation in mind, the first ninety percent of this tale is told by a Demon, a telling of what the Demon sees in and around a river. And what a seeing! Below are several quotes coupled with my comments:

“For many miles on either side of the river’s oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch toward the heaven their long ghastly necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads.” Goodness! What a twisted vision: nodding water lilies with long ghastly necks. Such a vision anticipates the metamorphosing landscapes of Max Ernst.

But then there is more strangeness as the Demon scans the landscape where he sees a rock under a crimson moon. We read, “And I was going back into the morass, when the moon shone with a fuller red, and I turned and looked again upon the rock, and upon the characters were DESOLATION.”

Since Poe is a writer and not a painter, Poe’s Demon sees something Max Ernst never painted: an actual word in the landscape. Such a word in such a landscape provides a clear picture of the link between Poe’s visions and Poe’s language. Sidebar: Letters magically appearing on a rock reminds me of Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse where one lonely evening main character Harry Haller sees words magically appear on a stone wall above an ancient wooden door in an old section of a city.

Then the Demon sees a man. We are given a detailed description of the man, including the following: “And his brow was lofty with thought, and his eye wild with care; and, in a few furrows upon his cheek I read the fables of sorrow, and weariness, and disgust with mankind, and a longing for solitude.” I’m sure I am not the first reader to observe how this could be a description of Poe himself. So, in a way, this wordless interplay between Demon and man could be interpreted as the interplay between demonic muse and author.

In the last paragraph the narrator tells us what happens at the conclusion of the Demon’s story. We read, “And as the Demon made an end of his story, he fell back within the cavity of the tomb and laughed. And I could not laugh with the Demon, and he cursed me because I could not laugh.”

Perhaps this is true to form for Edgar Allan Poe - unlike many other writers and poets who can stand back and laugh at themselves, laugh and not take their writing or their life all that seriously, Poe was not such a writer. Judging from his photograph, Poe doesn’t look like a man who had many a belly-laugh in his brief life; quite the contrary, Poe looks like the prototypical angst-ridden tortured romantic poet, a man who could serve as a model for many of his tales of the macabre, a man who saw his poetic muse in the form of a Demon.

One final reflection on the phenomenon of silence – Composer/Experimental musician Joe Cage experienced a totally silent chamber but in that silent room he heard two sounds: one high, his nervous system and one low, his blood circulating. Perhaps Poe was being ironic with his title Silence – A Fable, since, in our very human experience of the world, silence is, in fact, a fable. There is always sound.

[Jess the Shelf-Declared Bibliophile · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't fully connect with this one. The demon seemed to change and I didn't really understand why. Perhaps Poe was a bit over my head on this one.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story was a bit too fantastic for me. A demon and a human talk in some enchanted land... The language is fine, no doubt about it, but to me the moral of the story wasn't quite so clear. Certainly an interesting story but to me personally it was only ok.

[Steven Serpens · Rating 2 out of 5]

CALIFICACIÓN REAL: 2.5 estrellas

Hasta el momento, este es el título más extraño que le he leído a Poe, y sí, ya sé no es primera vez que digo esto. En esta oportunidad, estamos ante un cuento muy corto y diferente a los demás, por lo que trataré de ser lo más breve y conciso posible; además de combinar su aparente sinopsis y planteamiento con mi visión e interpretación personal de los hechos, para así poder darle una coherencia al posible trasfondo que tampoco es que sea muy claro al respecto.

Debo comenzar diciendo que me gustó bastante donde se ambienta la trama: en un reino bastante inhóspito y hostil, puro caos de la naturaleza primigenia. Mi interpretación es que se trata de un relato cosmogónico, que incluso, hasta puede sonar un poco bíblico por momentos. Esto se centra en un demonio que le cuenta a un protagonista yaciente en su lápida, alguna historia sobre la creación de una zona específica del Infierno, donde todo está en silencio —a modo de alegoría—.
Aquel lugar al que dicho demonio relata desde su génesis es donde posiblemente el protagonista esté condenado a cumplir su sentencia. Ese es el lugar exacto de castigo para estos pecadores: el silencio eterno. Al menos así es como concibo e interpreto de forma personal toda esta historia que es bastante ambigua. Prácticamente todo este párrafo y el anterior son pura especulación mía; pero es la lógica que le encuentro si me pongo a buscarle una, junto con analizarle e interpretarle algún significado o trasfondo especial.
Y así mismo como ocurrió con El cuervo, esta lectura también está llena de simbolismos. Desconozco cuál es el sentido de esta obra o el mensaje que pueda ofrecer, incluso su interpretación real. No obstante, me quedo con la mía.
Tampoco entendí la referencia del final con respecto al ‘’lince’’, lo que podría ser un indicio de que hay una evidente profundidad en esta obra, a pesar de su brevedad. Pero no cabe duda de que este es un texto raro que guarda secretos...

Concluyendo esta reseña, puedo decir que este relato tiene demasiada palabrería para ser un escrito tan corto. Y, aunque no haya entendido o captado su conclusión, tampoco le encuentro mucha lógica a simple vista ni se me hace muy interesante en caso de tenerla. Lo más probable es que se trate de alguna referencia literaria o algo así.
Sin embargo, su ambientación y premisa me parecen muy buenas; pero no es ni de cerca una de las mejores lecturas de su autor ni tampoco es una que sea destacable, en comparación con las demás; porque considero que Los anteojos fue una mejor lectura, a pesar de que voy a posicionar a la presente obra por sobre ella, ya que me agradó muchísimo su temática y atmósfera. Además, siento que mi interpretación personal le juega muy a favor en ese sentido, y hace que me decante todavía más por Silencio; por ende, mi calificación final es de 2.5 estrellas, y maldigo a Goodreads, por culpa de sus tan limitado sistema de calificaciones.

Para no perder el hilo con las demás reseñas que he hecho sobre las obras de Edgar Allan Poe:

1) El gato negro, cuya reseña está bugueada en el feed de Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2) El cuervo, el único poema que he reseñado de este autor: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
3) Narraciones extraordinarias, recopilatorio en donde reúno a los 28 relatos que he leído de Poe, además de incluir un top personal al respecto; junto con dar mi opinión en profundidad sobre él como autor: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[فايز غازي Fayez Ghazi · Rating 3 out of 5]

- احدى القصص القصيرة المحيرة لإدغار بو، كثيفة بشكل كبير وتروي نفسها على عدة طبقات.

- القصة بجوها الكئيب قد تشكل وصفاً لنهاية العالم (قمر قرمزي، مياه آسنة، صحراء،...). الشيطان الذي يرى انساناً على الجرف فيحاول اخافته بالضوضاء والعويل والعواصف يفشل بذلك، لكنه ينجح بالصمت فيهرول الإنسان هرباً، فرغم انعزاله في الطبيعة فالصمت يخيفه.
ذات الشيطان الذي يروي للميت في قبره هذه القصة يختفي في اعماق القبر ضاحكاً ويلعن الميت لأنه لم يستطع ان يشاركه الضحك!!...

- القصة مبنية على عدة متعارضات (الإنسان-الطبيعة، الإنسان-الشيطان، الوحدة-الصمت، الحياة-الموت،...) وسيكون من الصعب ادراك جميع مقاصد ادغار بو من هذه القصة.

-ملاحظة اخيرة هو الربط بين نهر زائير وليبيا، فلا شيئ يجمعهما لا جغرافياً ولا ميتولوجياً.

[Arman · Rating 4 out of 5]

اگرچه در ابتدای پروژه‌ی خوانش ادبیات آمریکا، قرار بر این گذاشته بودم که بر همه‌ی خوانده‌هایم یادداشتی هرچند کوتاه بنویسم، اما چه کنم که هر چه درباره داستان "سکوت: یک حکایت" بنويسم، از سحر و افسونِ آلن پوییِ آن کاسته‌ام.
پس بگذار که این، یک استثناء بماند.


پ نوشت: تشکر از مینا برای معرفی این داستان (و البته تأکيد فراوانش بر خواندن نسخه انگلیسی آن).
پ نوشت 2: جلوتر مفصلاً راجع به آلن پو و سبکش خواهم نوشت.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

BOOK SUMMARY: A fable about a demon and a man in an enchanted land.

There is a demon conversing with a man sitting on a rock in a well-described most picturesque setting of trees. Some letters appear on the rock, but the conversation has no clear meaning to me.

Hmmmm.....even after reading it twice, I just don't get the gist of it.

From my Big Book of POE.

[Rose · Rating 1 out of 5]

what the fuck did any of this even mean edgar darling

[Janelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dark, haunting imagery of desolation, curses and then silence.

[Andrei Tamaş · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despre Poe nu mai are rost să se spună că e sumbru, însă această scriere depăşeşte limitele admise (stiu ca literatura nu are niciun fel de limite). Povestirea, cu nuanţă mitologică, are un iz din descrierea biblică (de factură iudaică):

Era noapte, şi ploaia cădea. Şi căzând, era ploaie - dar după ce cădea, era sânge.

Şi am blestemat cu blestemul tăcerii apa şi nuferii, şi vântul şi codrul, şi cerul şi trăsnetul, şi suspinele nuferilor.

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

La belleza con la que se expresa Edgar Allan Poe es otro mundo.

[Fernando · Rating 2 out of 5]

Uno de los tantos relatos metafísicos de Poe que debe leerse en clave poética, pues remite a Coleridge o Blake según su construcción. Un interesante contrapunto entre un mortal y el demonio.

[Maitha Mana · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Then I grew angry and cursed, with the curse of silence, the river, and the lilies, and the wind, and the forest, and the heaven, and the thunder, and the sighs of the water-lilies. And they became accursed, and were still. And the moon ceased to totter up its pathway to heaven- and the thunder dies away- and the waters sunk to their level and remained- and the trees ceased to rock- and the water-lilies sighed no more- and the murmur was heard no longer from among them, nor any shadow of sound throughout the vast illimitable desert. And I looked upon the characters of the rock, and they changed; and the characters were 'silence'."

[Γιώτα Παπαδημακοπούλου · Rating 5 out of 5]

Δεν θα σταθώ στην ιστορία... όχι γιατί δεν αξίζει τον κόπο να το κάνω, αλλά επειδή οι λέξεις που χρησιμοποιεί ο Poe για να μας μεταφέρει εικόνες, σκέψεις, συναισθήματα, φόβους και κρυφές αγωνίες, είναι πολύ πιο έντονος απ' όσο θα μπορέσω ποτέ να το κάνω εγώ. Με περιγραφές ζωντανές, παραστατικές που κόβουν την ανάσα, και με μια άγρια γοητεία που κάνει τα πόδια σου βαριά σαν μολύβι, το "Silence" δεν μπορεί παρά να σε αιχμαλωτίσει στα δικά του σκοτάδια, κάπου ανάμεσα στον φόβο που σταλάζει από τις ψυχές μας και το αίμα που σταλάζει από την σάρκα.

[Edlira Dibrani · Rating 4 out of 5]

" It was night, and the rain fell, and falling, it was rain, but having fallen, it was blood."

SCAREYYY

[Taghreed Jamal El Deen]

" كانت تمطر ، وحين كانت تمطر كان الذي يتساقط مطراً ، لكنه حين يصل إلى الأرض يصير دماً "

[K. Anna Kraft · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a hard one, but I've arranged my thoughts on this unique Poe creation (fable) into a haiku:

"An ear that's grown deaf
Wont be stirred by what it knows,
As by choking lack."

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very reminiscent of Lovecraft’s early works in the Dream Cycle. Not much of a story, just hauntingly gorgeous prose that’s pleasing to the eyes.

[yawn. · Rating 3 out of 5]

me gustó mucho

[Gabriela Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

la Roca con las inscripciones Desolación que luego cambian por Silencio....

[Netanella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Freely available here: https://poestories.com/read/silence

Read as part of the EAP Short Story Marathon with the fine folks at Horror or Heaven GR group: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I liked "Silence: A Fable" much better than "Shadow: A Parable," which is considered by some a companion piece. In this, a demon is telling a story to a man, about the region around the Zaire River (now called the Congo), which is desolate and gloomy and full of rustling shadows, swampy waters, and sighing water lilies. A man walks through the region until he encounters a large rock with the words DESOLATION (all caps again, my friend!) written on them, and a large figure standing on the rock, like an ancient god in a toga, his face full of thoughts and worries. And the peeping man, hiding in the water lilies, gets frustrated at Mr. Desolation, and calls upon the behemoth hippos to come mess with Desolation. But he still sits there, in his desolate resolve, unmoved. So the peeper calls upon the tempest to storm him off the rock. But, Mr. Desolation is still unmovable. Finally, the peeper curses Desolation and the place with silence. And, finally, our unmovable desolate guy is moved, and he hurries off the rock, which is now inscribed with the words SILENCE.

I guess the peeper got a new job.

Again, I liked this one much better, as it had a creepier feel to it.

[Alexis Breut · Rating 3 out of 5]

Note finale : 3/5

Lu dans le recueil "La Chute de la Maison Usher et autres histoires extraordinaires" des éditions RBA coleccionables.

Dixième nouvelle du recueil. J'ai bien aimé l'écriture de cette nouvelle, très poétique, elle suscite des images fortes malgré sa brièveté. Par contre, je ne sais pas du tout comment les interpréter. Je suspecte que je la comprendrais "mieux" si j'étais moins sobre.

[Nicolás Ortenzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

En esta historia podemos apreciar a mi entender, que el ser humano no puede vivir en un completó silenció, que vendría a representar la calidez de otro ser humano. Vivir en soledad no es algo grato ni bueno para nadie; el demonio intento auyentar a la deidad y solo lo logro inmovilizado toda vida de ese recóndito lugar. Quedandose completamente solo.

PD: espero no parecer exagerado por las ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 😂

[Kaouther Nouni · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood."

I am still under the spell of this beautiful language and magnificent fable Poe just enchanted me with!

[ناصر سليم · Rating 3 out of 5]

این داستان و بصورت صوتی گوش دادم و احساس کردم که اگر داستانی رو خودم نخونم به خوبی متوجه منظور نویسنده نمی‌شم! داستان‌های دیگه ایی از آلن پو خونده بودم و از سبک نگارش و موضوعات انتخابی‌اش خوشم اومده بود.
در این داستان کوتاه، توصیف بهشت و شخصی که در اونجا حضور داره رو آلن پو تعریف میکنه...

[Sakuranko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es una historia diferente a lo que he leído últimamente. Muchísimo suspenso por parte de Poe con esta historia, realmente transmite mucha oscuridad y encanta todo lo sombrío aunque esperaba algo más, con ese final se coronó. Un gran relato y me ha gustado. La risa fue algo muy interesante.

3 ESTRELLAS!

[Siobhan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poe has a fable and a poem by the title of Silence, and they are two vastly different reads. The fable is a conversation between a demon and a human, and it makes for quick reading. Although there were some gripping lines throughout this one, but it did not pack the punch of some of the author’s other work.

For fans of Poe, this is a quick read just to see how you feel about it, but I would not suggest it as the best example of the author’s work.

[Jeraviz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Relato bastante desconocido (o por lo menos desconocía yo) de Poe. Bastante oscuro pero es tan corto que parece estar sin acabar.

[Luis Estrada · Rating 5 out of 5]

Silence: A Fable By Edgar Allan Poe January 4 1840 Philadelphia Saturday Courier.
The story its about a demon recounts the story of how he tormented man in the Congo. The man was seated on a rock on the edge of a churning river. The river was bordered by water and surrounded by a forest of poisoned shadows. The man trembles in fear but did not run from the world he saw. Demon then cast a spell that turned the world into a violent one. The winds raged, the earth shook but the man remained still trembling. The demon then cast a spell of silence, the earth ceased to move,the wind stopped as did the water, there was complete silence, the man stood and strained to hear something. The man was the overcome with terror.
I really enjoyed this book its really really good but trust me I read it more than two times to understand it and I investigate in google but trust me you have to read this story you will like it and also you have to read the other Short Stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe because you will enjoy his dark smart mind.