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The Imp of the Perverse by Edgar Allan Poe · Audiobooks & Scary Stories

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  Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy this reading, which comes from a
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  Speaker 1: work in the public domain, the imp of the Perverse
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  Speaker 1: Edgar Allan Poe. In the consideration of the faculties and
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  Speaker 1: impulses of the prima mobilia of the human soul, the
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  Speaker 1: phrenologists have failed to make room for a propensity which,
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  Speaker 1: although obviously existing as a radical, primitive, irreducible sentiment, has
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  Speaker 1: been equally overlooked by all the moralists who have preceded them.
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  Speaker 1: In the pure arrogance of the reason, we have all
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  Speaker 1: overlooked it. We have suffered its existence to escape our
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  Speaker 1: senses solely through want of belief of faith, whether it
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  Speaker 1: be faith in revelation or faith in the Kabbalah. The
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  Speaker 1: idea of it has never occurred to us, simply because
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  Speaker 1: of its supererogation. We saw no need of the impulse
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  Speaker 1: for the propensity. We could not perceive its necessity. We
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  Speaker 1: could not understand, That is to say, we could not
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  Speaker 1: have understood had the notion of this prima mobile ever
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  Speaker 1: obtruded itself. Could not have understood in what manner it
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  Speaker 1: might be made to further the objects of humanity, either
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  Speaker 1: temporal or eternal. It cannot be denied that phrenology, and
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  Speaker 1: in great measure all metaphysicianism, have been concocted a priori.
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  Speaker 1: The intellectual or logical man, rather than the understanding or
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  Speaker 1: observant man, set himself to imagine designs, to dictate purposes
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  Speaker 1: to God. Having thus fathomed to his satisfaction the intentions
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  Speaker 1: of Jehovah. Out of these intentions he built his innumerable
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  Speaker 1: systems of mind. In the matter of phrenology, for example,
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  Speaker 1: we first determined naturally enough that it was the design
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  Speaker 1: of the deity that man should eat. We then assign
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  Speaker 1: to man an organ of alimentiveness. And this organ is
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  Speaker 1: the scourge with which the deity compels man will i
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  Speaker 1: Nili into eating. Secondly, having settled it to be God's
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  Speaker 1: will that man should continue his species, we discovered an
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  Speaker 1: organ of amitiveness. Forthwith, and so with combativeness, with ideality,
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  Speaker 1: with causality, with constructiveness, so in short, with every organ,
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  Speaker 1: whether representing a propensity, a moral sentiment, or a faculty
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  Speaker 1: of the pure intellect. And in these arrangements of the
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  Speaker 1: principia of human action, the Spersiamites, whether right or wrong
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  Speaker 1: in part or upon the whole, have but followed in
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  Speaker 1: principle the footsteps of their predecessors, deducing and establishing everything
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  Speaker 1: from the preconceived destiny of man, and upon the ground
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  Speaker 1: of the objects of his creator, it would have been wiser,
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  Speaker 1: it would have been safer to classify. If classify, we
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  Speaker 1: must upon the basis of what man usually or occasionally
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  Speaker 1: did and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the
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  Speaker 1: basis of what we took it for granted the Deity
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  Speaker 1: intended him to do. If we cannot comprehend God in
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  Speaker 1: his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts that
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  Speaker 1: call the works into being. If we cannot understand Him
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  Speaker 1: in his objective creatures, how then in his substantive moods
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  Speaker 1: and phases of creation. Induction A posteriority would have brought
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  Speaker 1: phrenology to admit as an innate and primitive principle of
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  Speaker 1: human action, a paradoxical something which we may call perverseness
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  Speaker 1: for want of a more characteristic term, in the sense
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  Speaker 1: I intend it is in fact a mobile without motive,
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  Speaker 1: a motive not motivert through its promptings, we act without
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  Speaker 1: comprehensible object or. If this shall be understood as a
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  Speaker 1: contradiction in terms, we may so far modify the proposition
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  Speaker 1: as to say that, through its promptings, we act for
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  Speaker 1: the reason that we should not. In theory, no reason
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  Speaker 1: can be more unreasonable. But in fact there is none
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  Speaker 1: more strong. With certain minds, under certain conditions, it becomes
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  Speaker 1: absolutely irresistible. I am not more certain that I breathe
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  Speaker 1: than that the assurance of the wrong or error of
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  Speaker 1: any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us,
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  Speaker 1: and alone impels us to its prosecution. Nor will this
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  Speaker 1: overwhelming tendency to do long for the wrongs sake admit
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  Speaker 1: of analysis or resolution into ulterior elements. It is a radical,
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  Speaker 1: a primitive impulse, elementary. It will be said, I am
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  Speaker 1: aware that when we persist in acts because we feel
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  Speaker 1: we should not persist in them, our conduct is but
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  Speaker 1: a modification of that which ordinarily springs from the combativeness
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  Speaker 1: of phrenology. But a glance will show the fallacy of
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  Speaker 1: this idea. The phrenological combativeness has for its essence the
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  Speaker 1: necessity of self defense. It is our safeguard against injury.
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  Speaker 1: Its principle regards our well being, and thus the desire
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  Speaker 1: to be well is excited simultaneously with its development. It
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  Speaker 1: follows that the desire to be well must be excited
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  Speaker 1: simultaneously with any principle, which shall be merely a modification
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  Speaker 1: of combativeness. But in the case of that something which
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  Speaker 1: I term perverseness, the desire to be well is not
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  Speaker 1: only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment exists. An
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  Speaker 1: appeal to one's own heart is after the best reply
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  Speaker 1: to the sophistry just noticed. No one who trustingly consults
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  Speaker 1: and thoroughly questions his own soul will be disposed to
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  Speaker 1: deny the entire radicalness of the propensity in question. It
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  Speaker 1: is not more incomprehensible than distinctive. There lives no man who,
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  Speaker 1: at some period has not been tormented, for example, by
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  Speaker 1: an earnest desire to tantalize a listener by circumlocution. The
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  Speaker 1: speaker is aware that he displeases, He has every intention
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  Speaker 1: to please. He is usually curt precise, and clear. The
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  Speaker 1: most laconic and luminous language is struggling for utterance upon
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  Speaker 1: his tongue. It is only with difficulty that he restrains
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  Speaker 1: himself from giving it flow. He dreads and deprecates the
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  Speaker 1: anger of him whom he addresses. Yet the thought strikes
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  Speaker 1: him that by certain involutions and parentheses, this anger may
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  Speaker 1: be engendered. That single thought is enough. The impulse increases
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  Speaker 1: to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire
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  Speaker 1: to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing to the deep
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  Speaker 1: regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of
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  Speaker 1: all consequences, is indulged. We have a task before us
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  Speaker 1: which must be speedily performed. We know that it will
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  Speaker 1: be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of
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  Speaker 1: our life calls trumpet tongued for immediate energy and action.
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  Speaker 1: We glow. We are consumed with eagerness to commence the work,
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  Speaker 1: with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls
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  Speaker 1: are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to day,
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  Speaker 1: And yet we put it off until to morrow. And
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  Speaker 1: why there is no answer except that we feel perverse
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  Speaker 1: using the word with no comprehension of the principle. Tomorrow
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  Speaker 1: arrives and with it a more impatient anxiety to do
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  Speaker 1: our duty. But with this very increase of anxiety arrives
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  Speaker 1: also a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable craving for delay.
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  Speaker 1: This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last
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  Speaker 1: hour for action is a hand. We tremble with the
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  Speaker 1: violence of the conflict within us, of the definite, with
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  Speaker 1: the indefinite of the substance, with the shadow. But if
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  Speaker 1: the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow
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  Speaker 1: which prevails. We struggle in vain. The clock strikes and
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  Speaker 1: is the knell of our welfare. At the same time
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  Speaker 1: it is the Shanti cleer note to the ghost that
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  Speaker 1: has so long overaught us. It flies, it disappears. We
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  Speaker 1: are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now,
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  Speaker 1: alas it is too late. We stand upon the brink
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  Speaker 1: of a precipice. We peer into the abyss. We grow
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  Speaker 1: sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from
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  Speaker 1: the danger. Unaccountably, we remain. By slow degrees. Our sickness
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  Speaker 1: and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of
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  Speaker 1: unnameable feeling. By gradations still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape,
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  Speaker 1: as did the vapor from the bottle, out of which
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  Speaker 1: arose the genius in the Arabian nights. But out of
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  Speaker 1: this our cloud, upon the precipice's edge there grows into palpability,
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  Speaker 1: a shape far more terrible than any genius or any
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  Speaker 1: demon of a tail. And yet it is but a thought,
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  Speaker 1: although a fearful one, and one which chills the very
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  Speaker 1: marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight
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  Speaker 1: of its horror. It is merely the idea of what
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  Speaker 1: would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a
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  Speaker 1: fall from such a height. And this fall, this rushing annihilation,
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  Speaker 1: for the very reason that it involves that one most
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  Speaker 1: ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome
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  Speaker 1: images of death in suffering which have ever presented themselves
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  Speaker 1: to our imagination. For this very cause do we now
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  Speaker 1: the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently
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  Speaker 1: deters us from the brink, therefore do we the most
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  Speaker 1: impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so
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  Speaker 1: demoniacally impatient as that of him who, shuddering upon the
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  Speaker 1: edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge to indulge
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  Speaker 1: for a moment in any attempt at thought is to
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  Speaker 1: be inevitably lost for reflection but urges us to forbear.
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  Speaker 1: And therefore it is I say that we cannot if
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  Speaker 1: there be no friendly arm to check us, or if
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  Speaker 1: we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward
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  Speaker 1: from the abyss, we plunge and are destroyed. Examine these
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  Speaker 1: similar actions as we will. We shall find them resulting
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  Speaker 1: solely from the spirit of the perverse. We perpetrate them
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  Speaker 1: because we feel that we should not beyond or behind this.
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  Speaker 1: There is no intelligible principle, and we might indeed deem
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  Speaker 1: this perverseness a direct instigation of the arch fiend, were
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  Speaker 1: it not occasionally known to operate in furtherance of good.
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  Speaker 1: I have said thus much that in some measure I
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  Speaker 1: may answer your question, that I may explain to you
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  Speaker 1: why I am here, that I may assign to you
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  Speaker 1: something that shall have at least the faint aspect of
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  Speaker 1: a cause for my wearing these fetters and for my
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  Speaker 1: tenanting this cell of the condemned. Had I not been
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  Speaker 1: thus prelics, you might might either have misunderstood me altogether,
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  Speaker 1: or with the rabble, have fancied me mad. As it is,
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  Speaker 1: you will easily perceive that I am one of the
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  Speaker 1: many uncounted victims of the imp of the perverse. It
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  Speaker 1: is impossible that any deed could have been wrought with
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  Speaker 1: a more thorough deliberation. For weeks four months I pondered
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  Speaker 1: upon the means of the murder. I rejected a thousand
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  Speaker 1: schemes because their accomplishment involved a chance of detection. At length,
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  Speaker 1: in reading some French memoirs, I found an account of
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  Speaker 1: a nearly fatal illness that occurred to Madame Poulau through
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  Speaker 1: the agency of a candle accidentally poisoned. The idea struck
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  Speaker 1: my fancy at once. I knew my victim's habit of
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  Speaker 1: reading in bed. I knew too that his apartment was
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  Speaker 1: narrow and ill ventilated. But I need not vex you
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  Speaker 1: with impertinent details. I need not describe the easy artifices
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  Speaker 1: by which I substituted in his bedroom candle stand a
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  Speaker 1: wax light of my own making for the one which
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  Speaker 1: I there found. The next morning, he was discovered dead
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  Speaker 1: in his bed, and the coroner's verdict was death by
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  Speaker 1: the visitation of God, having inherited his estate. All went
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  Speaker 1: well with me for years. The idea of detection never
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  Speaker 1: once entered my brain. Of the remains of the fatal taper.
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  Speaker 1: I had myself carefully disposed. I had left no shadow
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  Speaker 1: of a clue by which it would be possible to convict,
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  Speaker 1: or even to suspect me, of the crime. It is
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  Speaker 1: inconceivable how rich a sentiment of satisfaction arose in my bosom,
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  Speaker 1: as I reflected upon my absolute security. For a very
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  Speaker 1: long period of time, I was accustomed to revel in
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  Speaker 1: this sentiment. It afforded me more real delight than all
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  Speaker 1: the mere worldly advantages accruing from my sin. But there
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  Speaker 1: arrived at lengthen epoch from which the pleasurable feeling grew,
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  Speaker 1: by scarcely perceptible gradations, into a haunting and harassing thought.
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  Speaker 1: It harassed because it haunted, I could scarcely get rid
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  Speaker 1: of it for an instant. It is quite a common
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  Speaker 1: thing to be thus annoyed with the ringing in our ears,
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  Speaker 1: or rather in our memories, of the burthen of some
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  Speaker 1: ordinary song or some unimpressive snatches from an opera. Nor
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  Speaker 1: will we be the less tormented if the song in
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  Speaker 1: itself be good, or the opera air meritorious. In this manner,
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  Speaker 1: at last, I would perpetually catch myself pondering upon my security,
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  Speaker 1: and repeating in a low undertone, the phrase I am safe.
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  Speaker 1: One day, whilst sauntering along the streets, I arrested myself
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  Speaker 1: in the act of murmuring half aloud these customary syllables.
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  Speaker 1: In a fit of petulance, I remodeled them, thus, I
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  Speaker 1: am safe. I am safe. Yes, if I be not
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  Speaker 1: fool enough to make open confession. No sooner had I
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  Speaker 1: spoken these words than I felt an icy chill creep
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  Speaker 1: to my heart. I had had some experience in these
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  Speaker 1: fits of perversity, whose nature I have been at some
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  Speaker 1: trouble to explain, And I remembered well that in no
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  Speaker 1: instance I had successfully resisted their attacks. And now my
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  Speaker 1: own casual self suggestion that I might possibly be fool
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  Speaker 1: enough to confess the murder of which I had been
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  Speaker 1: guilty confronted me as if the very ghost of him
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  Speaker 1: whom I had murdered and beckoned me on to death.
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  Speaker 1: At first, I made an effort to shake off this
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  Speaker 1: nightmare of the soul. I walked vigorously, faster, still faster.
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  Speaker 1: At length I ran. I felt a maddening desire to
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  Speaker 1: shriek aloud. Every succeeding wave of thought overwhelmed me with
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  Speaker 1: new terror. For alas I well too well understood that
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  Speaker 1: to think in my situation was to be lost. I
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  Speaker 1: still quickened my pace. I bounded like a madman through
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  Speaker 1: the crowded thoroughfares. At length the populace took the alarm
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  Speaker 1: and pursued me. I felt then the consummation of my fate.
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  Speaker 1: Could I have torn out my tongue, I would have
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  Speaker 1: done it. But a rough voice resounded in my ears.
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  Speaker 1: A rougher grasp seized me by the shoulder. I turned,
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  Speaker 1: I gasped for breath. For a moment, I experienced all
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  Speaker 1: the pangs of suffocation. I became blind and deaf and giddy.
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  Speaker 1: And then some invisible fiend I thought, struck me with
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  Speaker 1: his broad palm upon the back. The long imprisoned secret
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  Speaker 1: burst forth from my soul. They say that I spoke
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  Speaker 1: with a distinct enunciation, but with marked emphasis and passionate hurry,
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  Speaker 1: as if in dread of interruption, before concluding the brief
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  Speaker 1: but pregnant sentences that consigned me to the hangman and
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  Speaker 1: to hell. Having related all that was necessary for the
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  Speaker 1: fullless judicial conviction, I fell prostrate in a swoon. But
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  Speaker 1: Why shall I say more? To day, I wear these
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  Speaker 1: chains and am here. Tomorrow I shall be feederaloss. But
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  Speaker 1: where