Author’s note: “Weekend Short” is a recurring column profiling short stories. Analysis from the readership is encouraged in the comments section.
Welcome to the weekend!
Today’s short story is Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” a fantastic murder chronicled within an Italian crypt. Oenophiles, masons, and jesters all have a role in this homicidal play. Consider: The motivations and results are especially apt as we are inundated by rashness and its unconsidered consequences in our world.
Poe writes:
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled—but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved, precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.
It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.
He had a weak point—this Fortunato—although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity—to practise imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack—but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him materially: I was skillful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could.
You can read the rest here, or listen to it here.
Assuming you’ve now read the story, consider the scents and sounds of the piece. More than anything else, Poe affords the reader orchestral, sensual experience throughout his works. The hellish tattoo of the tell-tale heart, the croaking of the raven, the jingling bells juxtaposed by the grave’s damp — as Flannery O’Connor recounts in her Nature and Aim of Fiction, “A lady who writes, and whom I admire very much, wrote me that she had learned from Flaubert that it takes at least three activated sensuous strokes to make an object real; and she believes that this is connected with our having five senses. If you’re deprived of any of them, you’re in a bad way, but if you’re deprived of more than two at once, you almost aren’t present.” — these elements confirm terror to be proximate to reality’s possibilities. Poe, whether consciously or not, mastered what O’Connor suggests, building a living Gothic world whose elements harmonize with our realized fears.
The ending, where there occurs this sort of call and response between Fortunato and Montresor, “For the love of God, Montresor!” “Yes, for the love of God!” replies the murderer, never to be answered, leaving us only with those bells. The reader, like Montresor, will never know what happened behind that wall. The satisfaction disappears at that moment — too late to undo the murder and left only with the sound (bells) that will torment him till death. What do you think?
Wisconsin Postcard (a new place to tell you a bit about the latest that doesn’t inhibit readers from immediately accessing the short story):
Returning home last night from time spent in Alexandria, Va., and Washington, D.C., for black-tie cocktail parties and sundry elbow-chafing, I was delighted to see the Packers cheese bras in our local airport gift shop. There truly is a time and place for everything on the American cultural landscape. While out east, I had the chance to meet up with fellow young NR writers for breakfast along the Potomac. For those of you who wonder about what esoteric ephemera could possibly be discussed when so many peculiar and intelligent writers gather, the time is mostly devoted to improving our operational plan for Wisconsin’s Reconquista of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, as well as considering the merits of selling Minnesota to Norway. (Please do keep these deliberations hush-hush. OPSEC at all times.)
Here are some beach bums (MixedUpEverything) giving Lynyrd Skynyrd due props:
Author’s note: If there’s a short story you’d like to see discussed in the coming weeks, please send your suggestions to label@nationalreview.com.