Ragnar Freund
09-18-2011, 07:40 AM
Greetings all,
I’m new to this site, although I’ve been following it for quite a while. I’ve decided to join as a member in an attempt to give some theories, hypotheses, and interpretations of mine a wider audience than me, and to see what other people think or have to contribute.
I have one request: Please stay on topic! I’ve noticed that many threads stray and become completely unrelated to the original post. While divagations and tangents may enrich a discussion at times, I’d like my threads to remain on topic.
My first post involves a curious similarity I found between E.A. Poe’s The Angel of the Odd (1844) and a short story entitled The Baron of Grogzwig, which is awkwardly embedded within Nicholas Nickleby (1838/9).
Both stories involve a character that is approached by a figure (which perhaps is nothing but an alcohol-induced hallucination), whose body parts have interesting characteristics.
In The Angel of the Odd, the figure is made of wine bottles and kegs:
Hereupon I bethought me of looking immediately before my nose, and there, sure enough, confronting me at the table sat a personage nondescript, although not altogether indescribable. His body was a wine-pipe, or a rum-puncheon, or something of that character, and had a truly Falstaffian air. In its nether extremity were inserted two kegs, which seemed to answer all the purposes of legs. For arms there dangled from the upper portion of the carcass two tolerably long bottles, with the necks outward for hands. All the head that I saw the monster possessed of was one of those Hessian canteens which resemble a large snuff-box with a hole in the middle of the lid. This canteen (with a funnel on its top, like a cavalier cap slouched over the eyes) was set on edge upon the puncheon, with the hole toward myself; and through this hole, which seemed puckered up like the mouth of a very precise old maid, the creature was emitting certain rumbling and grumbling noises which he evidently intended for intelligible talk.
In The Baron of Grogzwig, The Genius of Despair and Suicide is made mostly of coffin parts:
No, he was not; for, on the opposite side of the fire, there sat with folded arms a wrinkled hideous figure, with deeply sunk and bloodshot eyes, and an immensely long, cadaverous face, shadowed by jagged and matted locks of coarse black hair. He wore a kind of tunic of a dull bluish colour, which, the baron observed, on regarding it attentively, was clasped or ornamented down the front, with coffin handles. His legs too, were encased in coffin plates as though in armour; and over his left shoulder he wore a short dusky cloak, which seemed made of remnant of some pall. He took no notice of the baron, but was intently eyeing the fire.
In both cases the creature is impish and hostile, yet in both there is a happy (or at least neutral) ending brought about by the figure.
I was wondering whether Poe got the idea from Dickens, yet found no evidence for that in many web searches. Does any one have any concrete evidence that links the two stories, or can provide more linkage points and similarities that I have missed?
One might argue that these similarities aren't really that strong and that there's little evidence of Dickens influencing Poe here, yet when I read The Baron of Grogzwig, The Angel of the Odd jumped into my mind immediately.
I’d like to note that it would not be the first time Poe borrowed from Dickens. Poe may have borrowed (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1754-6095.1985.tb00102.x/abstract) the notion of a perverse imp from Oliver Twist.
Thank you for reading, and I’m looking forward to your comments.
I’m new to this site, although I’ve been following it for quite a while. I’ve decided to join as a member in an attempt to give some theories, hypotheses, and interpretations of mine a wider audience than me, and to see what other people think or have to contribute.
I have one request: Please stay on topic! I’ve noticed that many threads stray and become completely unrelated to the original post. While divagations and tangents may enrich a discussion at times, I’d like my threads to remain on topic.
My first post involves a curious similarity I found between E.A. Poe’s The Angel of the Odd (1844) and a short story entitled The Baron of Grogzwig, which is awkwardly embedded within Nicholas Nickleby (1838/9).
Both stories involve a character that is approached by a figure (which perhaps is nothing but an alcohol-induced hallucination), whose body parts have interesting characteristics.
In The Angel of the Odd, the figure is made of wine bottles and kegs:
Hereupon I bethought me of looking immediately before my nose, and there, sure enough, confronting me at the table sat a personage nondescript, although not altogether indescribable. His body was a wine-pipe, or a rum-puncheon, or something of that character, and had a truly Falstaffian air. In its nether extremity were inserted two kegs, which seemed to answer all the purposes of legs. For arms there dangled from the upper portion of the carcass two tolerably long bottles, with the necks outward for hands. All the head that I saw the monster possessed of was one of those Hessian canteens which resemble a large snuff-box with a hole in the middle of the lid. This canteen (with a funnel on its top, like a cavalier cap slouched over the eyes) was set on edge upon the puncheon, with the hole toward myself; and through this hole, which seemed puckered up like the mouth of a very precise old maid, the creature was emitting certain rumbling and grumbling noises which he evidently intended for intelligible talk.
In The Baron of Grogzwig, The Genius of Despair and Suicide is made mostly of coffin parts:
No, he was not; for, on the opposite side of the fire, there sat with folded arms a wrinkled hideous figure, with deeply sunk and bloodshot eyes, and an immensely long, cadaverous face, shadowed by jagged and matted locks of coarse black hair. He wore a kind of tunic of a dull bluish colour, which, the baron observed, on regarding it attentively, was clasped or ornamented down the front, with coffin handles. His legs too, were encased in coffin plates as though in armour; and over his left shoulder he wore a short dusky cloak, which seemed made of remnant of some pall. He took no notice of the baron, but was intently eyeing the fire.
In both cases the creature is impish and hostile, yet in both there is a happy (or at least neutral) ending brought about by the figure.
I was wondering whether Poe got the idea from Dickens, yet found no evidence for that in many web searches. Does any one have any concrete evidence that links the two stories, or can provide more linkage points and similarities that I have missed?
One might argue that these similarities aren't really that strong and that there's little evidence of Dickens influencing Poe here, yet when I read The Baron of Grogzwig, The Angel of the Odd jumped into my mind immediately.
I’d like to note that it would not be the first time Poe borrowed from Dickens. Poe may have borrowed (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1754-6095.1985.tb00102.x/abstract) the notion of a perverse imp from Oliver Twist.
Thank you for reading, and I’m looking forward to your comments.