"Disturbing" comedy

The Conqueror Worm

LO! 't is a gala night   Within the lonesome latter years. An angel throng, bewinged, bedight   In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theatre to see             A play of hopes and fears, While the orchestra breathes fitfully   The music of the spheres.    Mimes, in the form of God on high,   Mutter and mumble low,    And hither and thither fly;   Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things   That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out their condor wings      Invisible Woe.    That motley drama—oh, be sure   It shall not be forgot! With its Phantom chased for evermore   By a crowd that seize it not,    Through a circle that ever returneth in   To the self-same spot; And much of Madness, and more of Sin,   And Horror the soul of the plot.    But see amid the mimic rout   25   A crawling shape intrude: A blood-red thing that writhes from out   The scenic solitude! It writhes—it writhes!—with mortal pangs   The mimes become its food,   30   And over each quivering form   In human gore imbued.    Out—out are the lights—out all!   And over each quivering form The curtain, a funeral pall,   35   Comes down with the rush of a storm, While the angels, all pallid and wan,   Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"   And its hero, the Conqueror Worm This poem by Edgar Allan Poe does a very good job of portraying the micro-cosom/macro-cosom distinction that we discussed in class today. The worm does, eventually, consume the flesh of the person who is a much "higher" creature, completing the circle from the gods, to the aristrocrats, to the peasants, to chaos. Poe writes very much like Shakespeare-capturing the raw reality of human existence in an eloquent, universal way. Many elements of this poem, such as the blood and writhing and human gore, mirror the sort of sick, disturbing, pathological tones of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. While both are intended to create enjoyment, these works also both carry a heavy, unsettling view of the world. How they do this and yet remain, in a sense, "comedy" is indeed facinating. -AS