An awe reaction: to read Ambrose Bierce´s tales

In his ‘night´s visions’, Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) shows us several spectacles of

suspicious about the rules which guide the human world. On the one hand, his readers may doubt of
the sincerity of such feeling between the lines of his horror tales, on the other, it is evident that each
narrative, somehow, confirms the nature of the others (its core: the supernatural) and reveals a
literary truth: at the moment you open a literary book you are making a pact and entering another
place (in this case, with a poetic license, it shall be called a locus horrendus). You are right, his
book belongs to the nineteenth century. Although, it must be said, the issues turned into horror
pieces by him still vital hic et nunc. As H.P. Lovecraft points out, in his “Supernatural Horror in
Literature”(1927), the fear is inherent to human experience. And the fear of the unknown is the
oldest one – and can´t be left behind, even in a world so full of artificial light, colors and, perhaps,
even of artificial happiness.
The Romanticism, its “obscure”, or imaginative, facet, let us call this way, in a different
direction of those facets which made social criticism or highlighted the national roots and identity,
invited the readers to inside, to open that “locked door” – that one mentioned by Tolkien as an
element which will always awake curiosity and, why not say, fear. So, if the traditional fairy tales
were remade to keep the children in its circle of protection, detached from reality, we had the rise of
kind of tale connected with the macabre feeling inspired by some of those tales by Perrault, for
instance.
To mention an example of the first half of nineteenth century author of phantasmagories,
E.T.A Hoffmann brought to the minds of his readers such fancies – grotesque and unpredictable
ones – which demonstrated the subtle line that separate us from the unknown, the magical, the
madness. In his “Golden Pot” and “the Sandman”, we can see characters consumed by dreams,
visions, strange thoughts: Anselm, from the first story, ended in Atlantis, land of happiness and
peace, helped by the forces of Love and the enigmatic symbol of imagination, the golden pot; the
main character of the other story was caught by his childish´s nightmare and was killed by it, to sum
up.
The same way was said and demonstrated the influence of Hoffmann upon Poe´s work
(which Poe left as soon as his style had developed), it is visible a dialogue between Edgar Allan Poe
and Ambrose Bierce. The former explored the malign side of the human being, revealed his darker
thoughts and tendencies, the lack of limits of the science – in trying to unveil what is veiled -, also
did each reader confront terrible fears – as being buried alive!; the latest also gave us the sense of
the unknown – when unexplained thinks kept unexplained –, also showed the monster hidden in
human being (which appears to get free after the person´s death – that is, the phantom get rid of
human emotions, moral, guilty, and do whatever it is settled to do).
In this sense, it is productive to go further and detail Ambrose Bierce´s contribution to what
Lovecraft named “weird tale”.
First of all, is important to share the theoretical perspective adopted here. Following the idea
that is necessary to avoid carrying away the literary criticism to another domains, the focus here
will be the literary text and effects. Also, as T. S. Eliot (1956) recommends not to do, although
Bierce´s biography is so strange, similarly to his tales, his work of art will not be explained through
his life. Nevertheless, it is worth to mention, is another mystery (in this case, out of his imaginative
tales) to let unsolved: his disappearance in Mexico. He, somehow, repeated some of his characters´
fate. Suddenly, he was gone, as if he was swallowed by the void, devoured by the great Nothingness
– lost forever in an empty space of the ether. So, if Oscar Wilde provoked us saying that life
imitates art (and not the opposite, as stated by realists) how can we deny it when such things like
this happens?
Well, adapting Elliot´s idea that to understand a poem and to enjoy a poem comes to the
same thing, to understand Bierce´s weird tales is to enjoy them; because to live what is called
“suspension of disbelief” you must just let yourself in. What it means? At the same time, to
experience the sensations awaken and to try to describe its appearance. Accordingly to the
provocative Susan Sontag of “Against Interpretation”, we may go deeper in our contact with works
of art this way: instead of trying to discover what is supposedly said by them, expanding our energy
and sensual capability, interpreting it through our bodies and understand without usurp its place
with pretentious commentaries about its content.
Ok, it is not that easy. Mainly because the critical guidance acting here is one embedded of
the conviction that the subject is contingent, multiple, fragmented, that is, in process. So, how can
approach ghosts, supernatural forces, mysteries? We will discover together. Perhaps, it would be
simpler to say: accordingly to Tzvetan Todorov (2012, p.30-31) we have three categories: weird,
fantastic and marvelous. On the first, we have natural explanations for the supernatural occurrence;
on the second, we stay suspended – hesitating between the natural explanation and the acceptance
of the supernatural ruling our, until this moment, supposed known world (in this case, it is
impossible to choose, we don´t have answers; on the third category, we are in a supernatural world,
declared as so since the beginning, like the traditional fairy tales.
Right, about this approach, let me tell you: Bierce´s macabre stories are, the majority at
least, of the first and second type. Why I say so? Because in some of them the reader is kept
suspended, stuck in the unknown; yet in others it appears to have acceptance of the supernatural
occurrences by the characters, which behavior the reader use to reflect (not necessarily, you may
argue – with reason, I confess). Very well, before the diving, it´s worth to highlight two things:
Bierce, as Poe, was touched by the newness of his time: the ether´s theory, for instance (and its
matter because it is reflected in his work of art); the oniric element functions almost as a character
in his tales, demonstrating that the oldest feeling, fear, moreover, the oldest kind of fear, the fear of
the unknown is within the human being.
On the book organized and translated by Heloísa Seixas (1999), some of the short stories are
separated according to its general themes: apparitions; spectral houses; crossing the threshold. What
influence the reader expectations, so, in the opposite direction, the narratives chosen to be discussed
here will not be labeled a priori. If in some of Poe´s tales are founded techniques or procedures of
the symbolist movement, for instance, the synesthesia (“The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Pit and
the Pendulum”, tales in which the description of the sounds, in the former, awake bad feelings and
create an atmosphere of humid´s oppression, full of mustiness and, hence, with musty smell, in the
lattest, makes you see things, the rats coming – ready to devour the body of the prisoner), Bierce
explores such effects too, in order to put the reader in the character´s body and in its fictionalized
soul. Let´s see if it is so.
In his short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, which represents the American´s
Secession War, a South citizen is deceived and captured, put on the bridge and, before his hanging,
something weird happens… If we were to discuss the content we would focus on the representation
of a southern north-American in Civil War´s period. What would signs, maybe, the position of the
author concerning to this matter? Perhaps, revealing him as opposed to the slaver South? It does
not appear to be the main point, but the way such a banal man was caught by a reverie, which has
ended at the same time of his life. The death´s process is experienced both by the character and the
reader, thanks to the rich descriptions provided in the text: “His whole body was racked and
wrenched with an insupportable anguish!”(BIERCE, 1988)
However, this death is not literal, almost-deaths (lets call them this way) happen in Farquhar
´s imagination unbearable as a true death would be. At the same time there is a kind of flapping
wings (an almost superhuman refinement of the physical senses) in this fast-slow dream: “He noted
the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats
that danced [...]” (BIERCE, 1988). Another meaningful passage: “He had come to the surface
facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the
pivotal point”.(BIERCE, 1988).
Thus, as proposed before, the path here is a tentative of reaching what Susan Sontag called
an erotics of art, implying the need to approach the form, instead of focusing only or mainly on the
content. As showed above, the corporal sensations raised by the narrative hit the reader´s mind
exactly in its capacity to create images, even the vertiginous ones: “Suddenly he felt himself
whirled round and round-spinning like a top (BIERCE,1988,p.10)”. And choosing the omniscient
narrator was a key-factor to turn the reader into a mirror reflecting Farquhar´s confusion:
“Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene
– perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own
home.”(BIERCE, 1988).
The re-encounter of Farquhar with his wife concludes throwing in the reader´s direction an
astonishing revelation (it is crucial to pay attention on the narratively weaved synesthesia, in which
the light blows as something solid would blow, generating, as a consequence, a cannon´s sound):
“As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white
light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon – then all is darkness and
silence!”(BIERCE, 1988, p.11). At this moment there is a discovery, veiled (or delayed) until then
by the verbal alchemy of Bierce: “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung
gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.”(BIERCE, 1988)
In order to explore more about the form and the literary effects of Bierce´s short story, let´s
go back to the start, in which it is read (BIERCE, 1988): “He looked a moment at his ‘unsteadfast
footing’, then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet.
A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current.”
This unstable ground appears to be the result of a modified perception of reality, due to the
stupor in which the character is immersed in. Apparently, Peyton Farquhar is confused, mixing up
the ground with the water current, summing the solid ground with the liquid one, transforming one
into another. The piece of driftwood acting as a kind of trigger – of the dream which gulps him
down. As if his unconscious substitutes the driftwood for him, putting him in its place. He escaped
from the death? At least, it appears to be like this, however, our expectations are thrown against
ourselves… So what happens? It is as if he, before being killed, had desired, unconsciously, to be
that driftwood, in order to run away through the water. As he does, but not really; Actually, for all
effects, he does, even if it happens only as a fancy. The humans live their dreams as it was the life,
sometimes, the life is lived as it was a dream – the dreams, as Lovecraft pointed out, are a motor
force of the imagination: a carriage with two mad horses going in different directions, that carries us
as if We were little children and reveals mysteries which belong to the unknown.
“The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some
distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift – all had distracted him.”(Idem). In
such a situation, how to know if it is strange the lack of concentration or not? The fact is that the
sound of the watch being mixed up with a bell sound reflects the delirium state experienced by him:
“He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by-- it seemed both. Its
recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each new stroke with
impatience and – he knew not why – apprehension.”(BIERCE, 1988). This illusion made up
through the association between the watch and the death bell reach – as an intense feeling of
fleetingness – the bottom of his mind, unleashing more associations which dives him into the oniric
world.
“They hurt his ear like the trust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the
ticking of his watch.”(BIERCE, 1988): these experiences from the first part of the novel reveal a
fantastic sensorial distortion. The driftwood or Peyton Farquhar floating (sinking, drowning, freeing
itself, then, swimming with despair); the unstable ground or the river´s current; the sound of the
watch or the bell, or yet, the knife. All this signs to an abrupt change of the state of consciousness.
Furthermore, there are yet the indications inscribed in the novel which show the death
happening between the lines: slow and transfigured into multiple images within the
unconsciousness – that is, in its territory; fast and abrupt concerning to the material reality domain
and its rules. In way that, as is suggested below, he himself is turned into a bell, dances as a
pendulum, hanged, swinging from one side to another! He himself is turned into a watch, which
stop beating, although the cease of its movements appears to take an incredibly long time:

The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and
feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of
which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through
unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. (BIERCE, 1988)

Such story is remarkable because of the illusions made through words´ chemistry. Other
short story which has to be mentioned, representing another facet of this author´s work of art, is “ A
psychological shipwreck”. The story about William Jarret, a man who after the bankruptcy of his
company, apparently, transformed a business´ travel into an opportunity to get a rest. Thus, he
change his route and board a ship called Morrow. It seems to be a freighter and there are, hence, a
few passengers: he, am English young lady and her maid. The friendship among them (of Jarret and
Miss Jannet) grows in the extent which passes the time, causing estrangement in him, who believes,
nevertheless, that there is no romance between them. At a certain moment, when they are together,
interacting, he asks about the strangeness of his feelings about her and she looks at him in a way
which makes the “closed door” (such symbol of the mystery) suddenly open:

“In an instant my mind was dominated by as strange a fancy as ever entered human
consciousness. It seemed as if she were looking at me, not with, but through, those eyes—
 from an immeasurable distance behind them—and that a number of other persons, men,
women and children, upon whose faces I caught strangely familiar evanescent expressions,
clustered about her, struggling with gentle eagerness to look at me through the same orbs.
Ship, ocean, sky all had vanished. I was conscious of nothing but the figures in this
extraordinary and fantastic scene.”(BIERCE, 1909, p.229)

Abruptly, everything goes dark and he regains the consciousness, Miss Harford is asleep and
he reads a passage of the opened book leaning on her lap (It is a fictional book, called “Dennerker´s
Meditations”):

"To sundry it is given to be drawn away, and to be apart from the body for a season; for, as
concerning rills which would flow across each other the weaker is borne along by the
stronger, so there be certain of kin whose paths intersecting, their souls do bear company,
the while their bodies go fore-appointed ways, unknowing."(BIERCE, 1909, p.230)

Out of the blue, the passengers are surprised by the sank of the ship. Then, Jarret awakes in
another ship (City of Prague) in the company of his friend called Gordon Doyle, who discovers to
be the groom of Miss Harfod. Doyle was reading Denneker´s Meditations (his bride´s gift) – the
same page read by Jarret in his “vision(?)” – when he friend woke up asking if Miss Harfod was
saved. Doyle tell him how they have met and she boarded the Morrow ship because she had ran
away from home in order to marry him. Jarret is shocked and reread those lines of Denneker´s,
trying to get rid of more explanations about anything. The fact is: nobody knows what happened
with the Morrow, that never arrived in port, no one heard about it again.
The story does not totally reveal if, in fact, Jarret had been with Jannet, if his soul met hers.
It remains implied that they stayed together (in spirit, or mind, if we follow the title of the short
story …) until her disappearance in the sea. Such possibility is based on Denneker´s words,
however, he is fictional too. Hence, the reader is kept in suspension and in a suspicious atmosphere,
hesitating between two alternatives: all this is the story of a big, although mysterious, coincidence;
actually occurred a supernatural phenomenon, the astral projection, the soul´s encounter, the despite
the fact of the distance which separated the characters.
In this tale, as happens in Poe´s tale "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”, an improbable
explanation is given to support and justify the strange events, what is called by some critics
pseudoscience – transfigured through literature in a rich narrative strategy to deceive the susceptible
readers. The point is: none explanation enough and the reader is kept hesitating (divided between
the possible ad the impossible domains), what results in the growth of the tale´s “fantasticity”
degree (ROAS, 2014, p.92). Both, “A psychological shipwreck”(by Bierce) and "The Facts in the
Case of M. Valdemar”(by Poe) are narrated in the first personal of discourse, which provides a kind
of credibility concerning to the readers. Specially in Poe´s tale that happens to be presented as a
medical report, this strategy was so powerful that in the time the tale was published it was believed
to be true. In this short story, the doctor, a mesmerist, hypnotizes a terminal patient, kept alive
through mesmerism even after he body had entered in the process of decomposition; it is in a state
of pure anguish that the reader “sees” the corpse shouting: “I am dead! I am dead!”. In this case
there are grotesque elements (FEITOSA, 2017, p.328) which increase the fantastic effect, in Bierce
´s tale what increases this fantasticity is the quote of Denneker´s Meditations, guiding the doubtful
reader to be trapped in it.
Concerning to the sensations raised by the word´s combination, when the characters look at
each other there is a kind of black hole, almost a mise en abyme, because it is almost another story
inside the story, or better, a mystery inside another: something related to the soul´s domain, that has
to do with the unity between them – through one, all souls are seemed. The strangeness in respect to
the natural world rules get bigger and bigger. The quote of Denneker combined with this scene
increase the suspension of disbelief, once the reader is carried to an unknown dimension (only
approachable through intuition, or faith, if it is preferred to call this way). After the vision inside the
vision, it is read: “Then all at once darkness fell upon me, and anon from out of it, as to one who
grows accustomed by degrees to a dimmer light, my former surroundings of deck and mast and
cordage slowly resolved themselves.”(BIERCE, 1909, p.229)
As is clear, there are more to explore about the appearance of Bierce´s work of art, to do so
is a challenge – discuss the content, the superficialities of the form is, perhaps, easier. But it is a
challenge to know, trough experience – similarly to the phenomenological´s methods –, exploring
the possibilities given by the senses to each one of us how to go beyond. Also is difficult to resist
the appeal of the “arrogance” tendency of giving an answer, worst, a pretentious definite one. In this
sense, dealing with this rehearsal, intended to be an essay, it is Elliot´s proposition that gives a hand:
I have been enjoying the experience of reading Bierce´s short stories and I suppose I understood
that his narratives are about the unseen, even if it is filled with an unveil sarcasm, even sarcasm
forces us to confront our ignorance. With it, I don´t mean that Bierce´s intention and path are related
to occultism, on the contrary, is about life, human being in its most naked shape: filled with awe
upon the unknown. About Poe and Bierce relation, it is worth to go deeper, but avoiding to mix
them up and to taking a great care to keep feeling the lines, each word written, the work of art´s
evocative power.
References

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