'The Imp of the Perverse' - Illustration by Arthur Rackham
in Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1935) [1]
I.
'The Imp of the Perverse' is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, examining how a desire to do those things that we know we should not do can lead to our own destruction.
This desire is imagined by Poe in the form of a small and mischievous being prone to causing trouble and leading men astray; i.e., what is called within European folklore an imp [2].
Recommended to me by the Irish poet Síomón Solomon, I thought it might be a nice to while away the hours on a Sunday afternoon reading it together ...
II.
The story reads initially almost as an essay, as the narrator explains at length his theory on the imp of the perverse.
Describing it as a primitive propensity of the human soul that causes people - including himself - to commit acts against their
self-interest, he claims that it has been overlooked by scientists, priests, and other scholars because they could not perceive its necessity or understand how the imp of the perverse might advance knowledge of the human condition.
In brief: the idea of it simply never occurred to them; it didn't fit into their scheme of things, including their map of the brain (the latter having been designed according to popular moral superstition by a rational and purposeful deity who had made man in his own image).
Our narrator says: "Having thus fathomed to his satisfaction the intentions of Jehovah, out of these intentions [man] built his innumerable systems of mind" and a well organ-ised human body; i.e., one with a mouth for eating, an arse for shitting, and - having determined it to be God's will "that man should continue his species" - an organ of amativeness as well.
In this way, we can conceive of man as an ideal creature, with every organ representing either "a propensity, a moral sentiment, or a faculty of the pure intellect".
Deleuze and Guattari may not be happy with this arrangement, but they are in a minority; most people are content to believe they have a divine origin and a preconceived destiny (remember, dear reader, that this tale was written in 1845, thirty-seven years before Nietzsche's madman was to announce the death of God and over a hundred years before Aratud introduced the idea of a body without organs) [3].
III.
The narrator goes on to say that it would have been wiser to have classified man according to his actions, "rather than upon the basis of what we took it for granted the Deity intended him to do". For if we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, "how then in his inconceivable thoughts" ...?
If only more attention had been paid to man's actions, then perverseness - "for want of a more characteristic term" - would have been recognised as "an innate and primitive principle of human action"; albeit an irrational one in that it obliges us to act in a way that often makes no sense and has no benefit (which, in fact, is often harmful):
"In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable; but, in fact, there is none more strong. With certain minds, under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible. I am not more certain that I breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us to its prosecution. Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong's sake, admit of analysis, or resolution into ulterior elements. It is a radical, a primitive impulse - elementary."
And this, says the narrator, is undeniable: "No one who trustingly consults and thoroughly questions his own soul, will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness of the propensity in question."
I suppose, if I stop to think about it, there may well be something in what he says. Certainly, whenever I'm presenting a paper to an audience and I look around the faces gathered before I begin, I'm often tempted, sensing no connection, to simply walk off the stage and out of the room without a word of explanation (something Larry David was notorious for doing during his early days as a stand-up comic).
Either that, or to stay and piss people off with deliberate vagueness and a refusal to take a position:
"The speaker is aware that he displeases [...] yet, the thought strikes him, that by certain involutions and parentheses, this anger may be engendered. That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing [...] is indulged."
Having said that, sometimes, like Sebastian Horsley, I'm only too happy to flatter an audience and adapt my views to suit them [4] (being transpositional means I can move swiftly from one side of an argument to the other - or neither - without too much cognitive dissonance).
As for procrastination ... Well, I'll say something about that later [5].
IV.
Is it the imp of the perverse that ultimately brings us to the brink of suicide? That tempts us to "peer into the abyss" until we grow sick and dizzy?
Possibly.
"Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degree our sickness and dizziness, and horror, become merged in a cloud of unnameable feeling"
Is the ultimate practice of joy before death to imagine "our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height"?
Again, that's possible - and it would explain Annabella's ecstasy as she stands atop the Eiffel Tower and contemplates jumping to her death [6]. This thought of falling - "for the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination" - is the thing she most vividly desires.
"And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore, do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of one, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge."
Again, it's not rational; it's a perverse defiance of logic, sound reason, and common sense. But without a "friendly arm to check us" - Annabella looks round for someone strong and brave to save her - there's a very strong possibility we will jump and meet a very sticky end.
V.
It turns out that the narrator is in chains sitting in a condemned man's prison cell; that the above is an attempt to explain how he came to find himself in such circumstances. He's not mad, as most people think, but is rather "one of the many uncounted victims of the Imp of the Perverse".
What happened, exactly?
Well, the narrator commited murder in order to inherit a man's estate:
"It is impossible that any deed could have been wrought with a more
thorough deliberation. For weeks, for months, I pondered upon the means
of the murder. I rejected a thousand schemes, because their
accomplishment involved a chance of detection."
Eventually, after reading some French memoirs, he hits on the idea of using a poisoned candle (i.e., one that releases toxic fumes when burned):
"The idea struck my fancy at once. I knew my victim’s habit of reading in
bed. I knew, too, that his apartment was narrow and ill-ventilated."
And although he effectively got away with it after a coroner declared the death to be in accordance with the will of God, he is eventually gripped by a self-destructive
impulse to confess his crime in public:
"Having inherited his estate, all went well with me for years. The idea
of detection never once entered my brain. Of the remains of the fatal
taper, I had myself carefully disposed. I had left no shadow of a clue
by which it would he possible to convict, or even to suspect me of the
crime. It is inconceivable how rich a sentiment of satisfaction arose in
my bosom as I reflected upon my absolute security. For a very long
period of time, I was accustomed to revel in this sentiment. It afforded
me more real delight than all the mere worldly advantages accruing from
my sin. But there arrived at length [...] a
haunting and harassing thought [...] I could scarcely get rid of for an instant."
"One day, while sauntering along the streets, I arrested myself in the act of murmuring, half aloud [...] 'I am safe - I am safe - yes - if I be not fool enough to make open confession!' No sooner had I spoken these words, than I felt an icy chill creep to my heart."
For our narrator knows where his perversity would lead; first to jail and then to the gallows - and that there was nothing he could do about it:
"I had had some experience in these fits of perversity [...] and I remembered well, that in no instance, I had successfully resisted their attacks. And now my own casual self suggestion, that I might possibly be fool enough to confess the murder of which I had been guilty, confronted me, as if the very ghost of him whom I had murdered - and beckoned me on to death."
Poe concludes his tale with the following passages, spoken by the narrator:
"At first, I made an effort to shake off this nightmare of the soul. I walked vigorously - faster - still faster - at length I ran. I felt a maddening desire to shriek aloud. Every succeeding wave of thought overwhelmed me with new terror [...] I still quickened my pace. I bounded like a madman through the crowded thoroughfares. At length, the populace took the alarm, and pursued me. I felt then the consummation of my fate.
Could I have torn out my tongue, I would have done it - but a rough voice resounded in my ears - a rougher grasp seized me by the shoulder. I turned - I gasped for breath. For a moment, I experienced all the pangs of suffocation; I became blind, and deaf, and giddy; and then, some invisible fiend, I thought, struck me with his broad palm upon the back. The long-imprisoned secret burst forth from my soul."
They say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption before concluding the brief but pregnant sentences that consigned me to the hangman and to hell.
Having related all that was necessary for the fullest judicial conviction, I fell prostrate in a swoon."
VI.
Is there any more to say?
Only that Poe's abysmal theory - and I'm using that word in the literary-philosophical sense - of the imp of the perverse is, as fearful thoughts go, one that I like very much; it might not be quite as chilling as he intended, but it certainly makes one question one's own self-destructive tendencies and the desire to deliberately give the game away as it were [7].
It's surely better to think we confess our sins not from guilt or a moral sense of right and wrong (conscience) but from perversity; I for one would rather have a little imp on my shoulder than that annoying little twat Jiminy Cricket.
Notes
[1] All quotes from and references to 'The Imp of the Perverse' are to the version published in this edition of Poe's tales which can be read free online by clicking here.
The tale first appeared in the July 1845 issue of Graham's Magazine (Vol.
XXVIII).
[2] I'm assuming that Poe decided on the figure of an imp rather than that of a demon or some othersupernatural entity because it might be read as short for impulse (i.e., a strong and sudden urge to act). It might also suggest the related term impetus (i.e., a force which drives something forward).
[3] Antonin Artaud first used the phrase corps sans organes in his 1947
radio play known in English as To Have Done with the Judgment of God, describing it as a state of liberation from
imposed structures and automatic reactions, allowing for true freedom. It was later developed as a philosophical concept by
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their two-volume study of capitalism and schizophrenia: L'anti-Œdipe (1972) and Mille Plateaux (1980).
Nietzsche first used the phrase Gott ist tot in Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882), III. 125. It quickly became so well associated with him that it has almost become his catchphrase.
[4] Upon seeing someone make for the exit in the middle of a talk he was giving about his life as a dandy in the underworld, Horsley magnificently said: 'Don't go, I'll say the opposite if it will make you love me.'
[5] Only joking. And in fact I have already written about this topic; see the post of 14 June 2014: click here. The narrator of Poe's tale does provide a nice description of procrastination for those who are interested:
"We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that
it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life
calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are
consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of
whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be
undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow; and why? There
is no answer, except that we feel perverse using the word with no
comprehension of the principle." [6] I'm referring to the Bow Wow Wow song 'Sexy Eiffel Towers' which first appeared on Your Cassette Pet (EMI Records, 1980) and, later, on the compilation album Girl Bites Dog (Parlophone Records, 1993): click here.
[7] I think it may be stretching things to suggest that Poe's fictional theory of the imp of the perverse anticipates Freud's psychoanalytic concept of the death drive, but, nevertheless, several commentators have been quick to see and insist upon a connection.
