The Fall of the House of Usher
Sitot qu'on le touche il resonne.
DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when
the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback,
through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of
the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it
was --- but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded
my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-
pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the
sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me ---
upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain --- upon the bleak
walls --- upon the vacant eye-like windows --- upon a few rank sedges --- and upon a few
white trunks of decayed trees --- with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to
no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium ---
the bitter lapse into everyday life --- the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an
iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart --- an unredeemed dreariness of thought which
no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it --- I
paused to think --- what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of
Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that
crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory
conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural
objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies
among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different
arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be
sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and,
acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn
that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down --- but with a shudder even
more thrilling than before --- upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge,
and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some
weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood;
but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached
me in a distant part of the country--- a letter from him --- which, in its wildly
importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS gave
evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness --- of a mental
disorder which oppressed him --- and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and
indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my
society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much
more, was said --- it was the apparent heart that went with his request --- which allowed
me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a
very singular summons.
