er Queen of Palmyra (A.D. 267-272).
es In classical mythology, a beautiful maiden, beloved by Cupid, who wandered searching for him with a lamp; also a synonym for “soul.”
et In Poe’s time, slang for a gambler or heavy drinker.
eu Intellectual and writer Henry P. Brougham, lord chancellor of England (1830—1834).
ev Pun on the name of German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
ew Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, founded 1817, gained a reputation for publishing Gothic short stories. Thus it is appropriate that Psyche Zenobia consults the magazine and its owner for tips on writing best-sellers.
ex Times and Examiner are London newspapers. “Gulley’s New Compendium of Slang-Whang” alludes to John Gully (1783-1863), a prizefighter who later entered Parliament; Slang-Whang is a term of abuse and erratic speech that apparently originated in 1834.
ey Noun forms of adjectives.
ez Paraphrase from English poet Lord Byron’s Don Juan (1824), canto 14: “for truth is always strange,—/ stranger than fiction.”
fa Schools and names associated with ancient Greek philosophy.
fb English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) developed the theory of empiricism, which rejected traditional ideas of innate knowledge.
fc Books by Immanuel Kant, published in 1781 and 1786, respectively.
fd Principal publication of American trancendentalists (1840-1844).
fe The imperfect quotation comes from Poems (1843), by William Ellery Channing the younger.
ff In Greek mythology, daughters of Zeus who presided over the arts and sciences; early mythology designated just three, while later lore designated nine.
fg River in southern Greece; in Greek mythology, it supposedly ran underground to Sicily.
fh Wonderfully fragrant iris native to Asia Minor.
fi An epidendrum is a species of tropical orchid.
fj Translated into English in 1827.
fk No such line exists in French author Voltaire’s tragedy Zaire (1732).
fl The lines are not by, but only quoted by Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616).
fm The lines are not by Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533).
fn The lines are from “Das Veilchen,” by German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832); Poe knew the work in translation.
fo In mosaic designs (French).
fp Café Tortoni, a renowned nineteenth-century Parisian restaurant.
fq Choice or refined (French).
fr Ignorance of proof (Latin); means the fallacy of an argument that proves a point by using irrelevant support.
fs Poe’s quotation from Greek orator Demosthenes (384?-322 B.C.), as given in Samuel Butler’s poem Hudibras (1663-1678), is imperfect. Epsilon, phi, and tau are letters of the Greek alphabet.
ft The quotation is from Comus (1634), a masque by John Milton.
fu Poetic name of Edinburgh, Scotland; home of the publishing company William Blackwood & Sons.
fv Psyche Zenobia’s misunderstanding of the title of the Chinese novel mentioned on p. 145.
fw Her garbling of the names and functions of the Muses mentioned on p. 145.
fx Her garbling of the name and circumstances related to the flower mentioned on p. 145.
fy Her garbling of the expression “Aussi tendre que Zaire,” given on p. 146.
fz Her garbling of expressions given on p. 147.
ga Her muddled allusion to a phrase from book 10 of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost (1667): “whatever thing / The Scythe of Time mows down.”
gb Possibly modeled after a character in the comedy The Poor Gentleman (1802), by English writer George Colman the Younger.
gc Her garbling of lines given on p. 146.
gd This quotation and the two that follow are her garblings of passages on pp. 146 and 147.
ge Or ennui; bored, or indifferent.
gf A popular misconception in Poe’s day was that a waltz or, according to some, a dirge written by a friend of German composer K. M. von Weber (1786-1826), was Weber’s own.
gg Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), Swiss painter who lived in London; his paintings were often considered weird and terrifying.
gh Allusion to Usher’s quickness in creating musical improvisations that reflect his own emotional disorder.
gi Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of Landaff.—See “Chemical Essays,” vol. v (Poe’s note). The names cited refer to eighteenth-century authors of books suggesting links between animal and vegetable life. Richard Wat son, who synthesized information by Percival and Spallanzani, became the bishop of Llandaff, in Wales.
gj Lack of constraint (French); refers to Roderick’s unrestrained, obsessive belief that vegetable life resembles animal/human life.
gk The “Mad Trist” is Poe’s invention; its situation mirrors the disorder in the physical and mental “house” of Usher, which may reflect the twins’ and narrator’s conditions. The narrator’s idea that such a tale could have scant appeal to Roderick may constitute mordant humor on Poe’s part.
gl The motto is not from English poet William Chamberlayne’s verse romance Pharonnida (1659), though Poe may have imperfectly recalled lines from that author’s Love’s Victory (1658).
gm That is, Roman emperor Elagabalus (or Heliogabalus; A.D. 204-222), remembered for sexual depravity and religious fanaticism, and, by some, for supposed cruelty.
gn Severe regulations and punishments for violations; named for Draco, a lawgiver of ancient Greece who prescribed the punishment of death for nearly all offences.
go Pressing to death (French; literally, “strong, lasting penalty”); an old penalty for abstaining from pleading “not guilty” or “guilty” to a capital charge.
gp Assistant teacher.
gq Five-year span.
gr Inscriptions (French); in this case on medals used in the ancient African state north of Tunis.
gs The quotation, from French author Voltaire’s poem “Le Mondain” (“The Worldly”; 1736), translates as, “Oh, what good times, that age of iron!”
gt Poe was born on January 19, 1809, but sometimes gave his birth year as 1811 or 1813.
gu Achilles’ heel refers to one’s sole area of vulnerability. The term derives from Achilles, the hero in Greek mythology who was invulnerable except for his ankle, which his mother held while she dipped him in the River Styx; he was killed by an arrow that pierced that ankle.
gv Patronymic refers to one’s last name, while prænomen refers to the first name; William Wilson dislikes what he considers his commonplace name.
gw Fine woolen fabric.
gx Invented by Italian physicist Luigi Galvani (1737-1798); applying its electricity to a muscle caused a contraction from the shock. Poe alluded to or included this device in several writings—for example, “The Pit and the Pendulum.”
gy See note 2 of Tales.
gz Upstart (French).
ha Greek orator Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes (c. A.D. 101-177) inherited his father’s fabulous wealth, attained by a chance discovery of buried treasure in his garden.
hb Card game.
hc “Rounded”—that is, marked—cards (French).
hd Straight, narrow-bladed sword.
he No Rue Morgue (French for “Mortuary Street”) exists in Paris.
hf From Hydriotaphia: Urne-Buriall (1658), by the English physician.
hg English author Edmond Hoyle (1672-1769), wrote books of rules for card games; “according to Hoyle” has become a colloquialism for following the rules.
hh His name in English would be Caesar Augustus Dupin; English pronunciation would render his surname a colloquial version of “duping,” which Dupin’s abilities bear out, providing another example of Poe’s wordplay.
hi Once-fashionable residential area for the wealthy, on the south bank of the River Seine.
hj That is, a soul composed of two parts, in this case of the creative and the ana
lytical.
hk Seventeenth-century palace in Paris that by Poe’s time had declined into an area of low-class pastimes.
hl Theater in Paris that offered light entertainment.
hm No actual Chantilly seems to have existed, although Poe’s character was evidently not tall. Quondam means “former.” Crébillon (the pen name of French poet Prosper Jolyot) published Xerxés in 1714. Pasquinaded means “lampooned” or “ridiculed.”
hn “And everything of this kind” or, more colloquially, “and so on” (Latin); fruiterer is an old term for fruit seller.
ho Quackery or charlatanry (French).
hp Unexpected meeting or encounter (French).
hq Theory of the origin of the universe.
hr Popular early-nineteenth-century periodical containing light reading.
hs The first letter has lost its original sound (Latin); this quotation from Fasti, by the Roman poet Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 17), here refers to the change from “Urion” to “Orion” mentioned in the following line.
ht Newspaper (established 1826) that featured articles on legal business and police proceedings.
hu Armed police officers (French).
hv French gold coins worth 20 francs.
hw Alloy substitute for silver (French; literally, “metal of Algiers”).
hx The chimney was far narrower than many present-day chimneys might be.
hy Poe means that to the French, the word affair had none of the sexual or extramarital implications that it might suggest to Americans.
hz “Damn” and “the devil,” respectively (French).
ia My God (French).
ib Le Bon’s name is French for “the good”—ironic, considering later plot developments.
ic Large bone of the lower leg.
id Why Poe italicized this word, which means “discernment,” remains unclear; it had been used regularly in English since before his time.
ie Jourdain, protagonist in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670; act 1, scene 2), by the French dramatist Molière, requests his dressing gown so he may be more comfortable to enjoy the chamber music.
if Francois-Eugene Vidocq (1775-1857), French detective and criminal. Under Napoleon, he became first chief of the French police but was forced to resign over his use of criminals as agents and their questionable operations; he went on to work as a private detective but was driven into bankruptcy.
ig See note 9 of Tales.
ih Chief commissioner.
ii Booth for the gatekeeper (French); the employment of such a person indicates that this is a home of the wealthy.
ij Many English equivalents exist, one being, “I respected them.” Poe may be indulging in a bit of humor here—that is, testing his readers.
ik Reasoning from observed facts.
il Madhouse; insane asylum (French).
im French naturalist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), in The Animal Kingdom (1817), provided information on orangutans, but Poe doubtless gleaned his information from Thomas Wyatt’s A Synopsis of Natural History (1839), a book with which he was familiar and of which he made use in his writings (see note 63 of Tales).
in “Ourang-Outang” is an archaic spelling of Orangutan, a species of ape native to the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.
io The last phrase is French for “on the third floor,” which actually meant the fourth—Europeans call the “ground floor” what Americans call the “first floor.”
ip Pigtails (French).
iq Large moustache.
ir Colloquialism for “countrified” or “uncouth”; the Neufchâtel region in northern France was Protestant and lower-class.
is That is, Indonesia.
it Botanical gardens and zoo in Paris.
iu Office (French).
iv In classical mythology, a stamen was the thread of life spun by the Fates at a person’s birth; thus it represents the individual’s substance or measure.
iw Roman goddess of thieves and thefts, depicted as a head without a body; the Prefect, in other words, is a bungler.
ix Rousseau—Nouvelle Héloise (Poe’s note); the phrase, from French author Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), translates as, “To deny what is, and explain what is not.”
iy Maelstrom, whirlpool (Poe’s spelling, maelstrom, is unusual). The epigraph comes from Essays on Several Important Subjects in Philosophy and Religion (1676), by English clergyman and philosopher Joseph Glanvill.
iz Reference to the long-standing folk belief that sudden shocks can cause one’s hair to whiten overnight.
ja Or Lofoten, an island group west of Norway.
jb sea of Darkness (Latin), referring to uncharted regions of the North Atlantic Ocean. “Nubian geographer” is a reference to a twelfth-century Arabian writer whose account, Geographia Nubiensis (Paris, 1619), became known erroneously as Nubian Geography.
jc Vurrgh, apparently Poe’s invented word, is actually Værøy, one of the Lofoten islands ; Poe also erred in using Stockholm for Skarholm.
jd Reference to Niagara Falls, at the border of Canada and the United States.
je Described in Natural History of Norway (1715), by Norwegian theologian Jonas Ramus; he is often cited in other, similar accounts.
jf One fathom (term for measuring water depth) is equivalent to approximately 6 feet.
jg 4½ miles.
jh The second Sunday before Lent begins.
ji In Greek mythology, a fiery river in Hades.
jj Poe here acknowledges his source, Encyclopedia Britannica (any of the third to the sixth editions, 1797-1836).
jk German Jesuit and scholar Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680) was fascinated by concepts of underground forces, as well as by linguistics and hieroglyphics.
jl Went over the side.
jm Musselmen are Muslims; the old Islamic belief described here is recorded in George Sale’s “Preliminary Discourse” to his translation of the Koran (1734). Poe drew upon Sale’s work elsewhere.
jn See Archimedes, “De Incidentibus in Fluido?—lib. 2 (Poe’s note). This quotation does not come from the Greek mathematician and inventor (c.287-212 B.C.); Poe made it up as a joke.
jo Poe’s translation from the Spanish—of T. H. Hermenegildo de las Torres’s Cuentos en verso castellano (1828)—is accurate, if free.
jp The entire listing of historic authors comes from Henry N. Coleridge’s Introductions to the Study of the Greek Classic Poets (1831).
jq Writers of explanations concerning authors or writings; annotators.
jr The Antediluvians (1829, 1831): a book-length poem by American author James McHenry; Powhatan: A Metrical Romance (1841): a poem by American author Seba Smith, negatively reviewed by Poe; “Cock Robin” and “Hop 0’ My Thumb”: children’s stories.
js The Dial (founded 1842) was the main periodical of American transcendentalism; Down-Easter is Poe’s imaginary, comic takeoff on New England (“Down East”) periodicals.
jt A comic stab at the prestigious North American Review and its presumed ponderous articles. This and the preceding notes establish Poe’s comic foundation for this tale.
ju French poet Jean de la Fontaine derived his Fables (1668-1694) from those of Aesop. Fag end, from cloth measurement, is the last bit of fabric on a bolt; thus the scrap left once the best has been used.
jv “Let the dead suffer no injury” ... “Of the dead [say] nothing but good” (Latin). The first phrase does not appear in old Roman tables of law; the second originated with the early Greek philosopher Chilon (sixth century B.C.). ll Low-grade beer.
jw Comic name sounding like “To be damned.” Throughout this story Poe engages in deft wordplay—for example, using “stile” for [an author‘s] “style.”
jx That is, he refused to sign a promise to abstain from alcohol.
jy Hypochondriac, morbid (as many of Poe’s narrators are).
jz That is, with confused idealism; referring to the philosophy of transcendentalism, which emphasizes the spiritual over the mater
ial.
ka Merry-Andrewism and Tomfoolery both mean “buffoonery” or “clowning.”
kb Fancy dance step.
kc Braggart, boaster.
kd Close-fitting knee breeches.
Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 82