The Premature Burial by Edgar Allan Poe

My previous reviews of Poe: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/tales-of-mystery-and-imagination-edgar-poe/ and https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2022/06/15/the-tell-tale-heart-by-edgar-allan-poe/ and https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2021/04/30/the-facts-in-the-case-of-m-valdemar/ and https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2022/07/25/berenice-by-edgar-allan-poe/

My other reviews of miscellaneous horror literture: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2022/07/13/separate-horror-stories-from-many-years-ago/ 

Today, I was instigated to re-read this story by my current review of THE UNCANNY by Nicholas Royle HERE and in preparation for fully reading his chapter entitled BURIED ALIVE.. 

SPOILERS beware!

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The Premature Burial

“That the ghastly extremes of agony are endured by man the unit, and never by man the mass—for this let us thank a merciful God!”

“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”

So much that I cannot remember from my first reading of this work decades ago, including the fact learnt today that the ultimate horror is tempered by the en-tranced, cataleptic protagonist finding himself not buried alive by eventually realising he had gone to sleep in a narrow cabin on a sloop. Perhaps I was so unduly affected by the claustrophobic and spiritual terror of it, that I actually never finished it before! Or the story has morphed completely over the years! Or whether it would have been best or worst to extricate myself from the story’s Zeno’s Paradox ‘glueiness’, in hindsight?

“A certain period elapses, and some unseen mysterious principle again sets in motion the magic pinions and the wizard wheels.”

From examples of premature burial eloquently described by Poe to the galvanic battery and the Conqueror Worm and “Nothing became the universe.” 

The evidence of found skeletons almost as found art. The postulation of a demonic agent provocateur with these words:

 “‘I have no name in the regions which I inhabit,’ replied the voice, mournfully; ‘I was mortal, but am fiend. I was merciless, but am pitiful.’”

The most memorable vision of all in the text as evidence of mass premature burials outweighing those that were not premature: 

“I could see into the innermost recesses, and there view the shrouded bodies in their sad and solemn slumbers with the worm. But alas! the real sleepers were fewer, by many millions, than those who slumbered not at all; and there was a feeble struggling; and there was a general sad unrest; and from out the depths of the countless pits there came a melancholy rustling from the garments of the buried.”

The precautions the protagonist takes so that he will not be buried alive:  

“The slightest pressure upon a long lever that extended far into the tomb would cause the iron portal to fly back. There were arrangements also for the free admission of air and light, and convenient receptacles for food and water,…”

The other precautions against Royle’s P.O.  Night Letters? – 

“I read no “Night Thoughts”—no fustian about churchyards—no bugaboo tales—such as this. In short, I became a new man, and lived a man’s life.” (P.O., Poe)

The terrified protagonist asleep in the sloop’s constricted cabin is awakened by a gruff voice:

 “Hillo! hillo, there!” 

Why Hillo, and not Hello?  The remarkable ending seems relevant to that question:

“There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell—but the imagination of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful—but, like the Demons in whose company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us—they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.”

Earlier: 

“Total annihilation could be no more.” And the intense and auditorily incomprehensible  shout of  “I am alive,…” perhaps this Valdemar cri-de-cœur and the ‘New Nonsense’ of Ligotti together serve to make anti-natalism both comprehensible and incomprehensible? The uncanny paradox. Now unlocked by the lever that I had already set in place for me to pull. 

Darkness, silence, solitude… To repeat as recurrence or refraining: ‘the magic pinions and the wizard wheels.’

“—they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.”

PS: Sleep as (s)loop?