Two Works, One Elucidation

May 17

2012There will be a comparison and contrast of the painting “Romantic Landscape” by Thomas Cole to “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe. Miguel de Unamuno says it best: “A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about.” In that case, this paper is written by one bodacious fool.

Miles Q. Braxton

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Fig. 1: Thomas Cole’s Romantic Landscape.

In this paper, rather than a book or short story being compared and contrasted to a

painting, a painting, with its vividly defined romantic aspects, will be compared and contrasted

to a work of literature. The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe and the masterful

piece of artwork, Romantic Landscape (titled according to good reasons), by Thomas Cole, will

be introduced and intertwined as one masterpiece as the two are compared and contrasted

down to every miniscule nuance.

The Fall of the House of Usher is a very disturbing story about two characters: Roderick

and Madeline, who have struggles with physical and mental illness in their very creepy, gloomy,

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and haunted house. The house is later suspected by the unnamed narrator to be detrimental

to the health of living beings in the house after Roderick’s depression and lack of vigor increases

following his sister’s death. The two are twins both living in the mansion. The bloodline of the

Ushers is reasonably assumed to be incestuous, as the Ushers do not engage in relationship or

contact with outsiders not associated with the mansion, of which are solely family; the narrator

says, “I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-

honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch ; in other words, that the

entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very

temporary variation, so lain” (Poe 265). This statement made by the narrator is very eerie one.

This is where the reader puts together that illness might be an effect of incest, as Down

syndrome is a large outcome of incestuous family lines.

The painting and the short story share many dark and gloomy aspects. At the very front,

or bottom, of the artwork are decaying and broken trees in a somewhat swampy tarn. This part

of the art also depicts a lifeless, soulless, and uninviting introduction to the picture, as some

start the view of a painting in areas most dense on the canvas. This area only partly signifies

the Gothic resemblances in the painting to the story. The narrator of The Fall of the House of

Usher describes his first view and introduction to the house as the same, dull, depressing

impression: “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” (Poe

264). This was no fantastic welcome for the narrator and seemed almost the exact same

landscape that the decaying swamp portrays to the viewer.

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The tone that is set by this description of the house is very gloomy and pessimistic. The

tone for the swamp area of the picture is also set as gloomy and pessimistic because of the dark

green color that fills this particular section of the picture with wonder and mystery. A dark

green swamp implies mystery because no one knows what lies beneath it because of the cloudy

visual consistency. Uncolored lake water is clear and the bottom is able to be seen. The tones

in these two depictions translate into the mood the reader and viewer are feeling. The narrator

in the work of literature feels the same mood that the reader is feeling and the viewer is

interpreting as he approaches the house. In that same quote, the narrator says “An utter

depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation” (Poe 264). The narrator not

being able to compare a sight and setting to “no earthly sensation” means that this particular

setting in front of the mansion of the Usher’s must have been, not only an unwelcoming view

like the dense and bottom part of the picture, Romantic Landscape, it means that another tone

was set by the author; the narrator interpreted this mood he felt as merely supernatural,

having no definition and identical experience to reflect upon what he was feeling at the time.

The viewer of the picture is also going to feel that a supernatural tone is being set by the

painter, in that the sun reflecting on the beautiful and high mountains behind the gloomy,

pessimistic, algae and moss infected, decaying, rock deteriorating, tree rotting, lifeless, and

soul-sucking marshy swamp would be unreal in common nature. The clash in landscape of the

picture can easily make visual a setting of the view from Rivendell at a decaying forest leading

to the secret path guided by the white stones, with the Misty Mountains in the background

being climbed by Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, and the dwarves in Chapter III of the book: The Hobbit,

by J.R.R. Tolkien. A more simplistic comparison of the clatter would be Edgar Allan Poe and

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Henry David Thoreau living in the same neighborhood . . . better yet the same house. The

nature of the two individuals is very different and a combination of their work in one piece of

content is highly unfamiliar and adds a mystical meaning to the artwork. There is mystery in

this because of the question of what works would be produced from the House of Thoreau and

Poe. They would regularly contradict each other’s work.

Likewise, there is a mystical aspect of the dark green, cloudy, polluted swamp water.

Roderick, in The Fall of the House of Usher, is similarly very mysterious, as he seems to hide

most of his characteristics, feelings, and haunting thoughts, even from intimate friends; the

narrator says this about their relationship, “Although, as boys, we had been even intimate

associates, yet I really knew little of my friend” (Poe 264). Just like if one walks in the swamp,

there is a very mystical, yet anticipated factor of a possibility of an alligator being in the swamp,

likewise, there is possibility if one says something to Roderick, he might not be able to bottle his

emotions and end up being consumed by the evil of the house. Like the mysterious swamp in

the picture, the narrator of the literature says the tarn is also filled with mystery: “The silent

tarn - a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued” (Poe

265). The narrator reveals that the tarn in the story is covered by a mystic fog, giving the tarn in

the picture and the tarn in the story even more of a similarity. These mystical aspects of the

two works have the same gloomy tone set by the author and painter; it gives the reader and

viewer a still, uncomfortable, and uneasy feeling because, like the narrator in The Fall of the

House of Usher, it is most likely the solitary experience of reading, looking, or envisioning a tarn

that has so many frightening features such as what the two tarns may signify and foreshadow.

“Whenever we’re afraid, it’s because we don’t know enough. If we understood enough, we

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would never be afraid” (Earl Nightingale). This quote by Earl Nightingale connotes that the

mystical features of the tarns are only mystical and frightening because the narrator, the

reader, and the viewer have no knowledge of it and had not experienced it.

The clouds in the upper right of the picture create a dark and gloomy scene and set an

even more gothic tone for this part of the picture. This gothic characteristic glides and slithers

over to the left of the painting and turns into bright white clouds hovering above the

mountains, therefore intermingling in a fusion of transcendental and gothic landscape and

forming the “Umbrella of Romanticism”, a figurative or symbolic umbrella to describe the

relationship of Transcendentalism and Gothicism in a diagram all under the credentials of the

Romantics and the Romanticism Period. The large dark cloud can signify an encumbrance over

the painter just like the hindrance of Madeline’s illness over Roderick Usher in the story.

Roderick Usher creates a freestyle of rhymes out of thin air very ingeniously to describe what

he and the author, Edgar Allan Poe, are going through:

“And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door,

Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, And sparkling evermore,

A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty Was but to sing,

In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

Assailed the monarch's high estate ; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow

Shall dawn upon him, desolate !) And, round about his home, the glory

That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story

Of the old time entombed.

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And travellers now within that valley, Through the red-litten windows, see Vast forms that move fantastically

To a discordant melody ; While, like a rapid ghastly river,

Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out forever,

And laugh - but smile no more.”

This is Roderick’s freestyle during his minor mental breakdown, while strumming his melodious

guitar. But this poem written by Edgar Allan Poe, titled Haunted Palace, relates more to Poe

than it does Roderick. Of course it represents a man lacking mental stability from the illness of

his sister and lover, but it also talks about a man that was once “glorious and golden” and has

retreated to a “haunted palace” as his darkness overthrew the glorious wits and blissful

intelligence of a man who wrote, Eureka: A Prose Poem, that included a theory that

foreshadowed the Big Bang theory that was eventually made 80 years later. It is this poem

within the story that people would subsequently realize that Edgar Allan Poe is not the

narrator. The narrator in this story is really unreliable. And that is only because he is just

another character in Poe’s imagination; he might even be a friend of Poe like Tom Sawyer is to

Huckleberry Finn. The narrator in this story is a decoy to delay the amount of time it takes to

figure out that Roderick and all of his problems about depression, losing wits from his golden

intelligence, and having his lover pass away from an untimely death, is Edgar Allan Poe. In real

life, Edgar Allan Poe is Roderick Usher, including the incestuous qualities. During the discussion

of The Fall of the House of Usher in Mr. Sean-Michael Young’s fifth period English class, this

topic and statement was abruptly and unfortunately averted and overlooked. Poe uses

Roderick to cover up his mess of a life and put it all on paper to let go of bottled emotions. “It

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was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy

- a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It

displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations” (Poe 236). The house that has been a “family

evil” to the Usher race is Edgar Allan Poe’s haunted palace. That is where all the deep and scary

thought is bottled up; Poe describes the metaphorical house as “a host of unnatural

sensations”. If there was a category that Fall of the House of Usher falls in, it would

undoubtedly be a Metaphorical Biography. In the short story, everything is something in the

reality of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe married his 13 year old cousin; however, he had no children, just

like Roderick Usher. Like Madeline, Poe’s wife also died young of an uncommon disease in

1847, Tuberculosis. In the painting, Romantic Landscape, there does not seem to be this many

mind boggling traits or details.

Without any doubt, the painting could describe the mind and works of Edgar Allan Poe.

The marshy tarn in the front signifies a deranged, mentally distorted man, and what mostly was

the part of his mind that was written on pen and paper. The mountains, white clouds, and the

concealed and veiled sunshine in the back, insinuate a slightly unhinged literary intellectual

deep down inside the unstable and derailed mind of the esteemed Edgar Allan Poe.

The narrator of The Fall of the House of Usher is pronounced unreliable in an

aforementioned statement. This is because of the lack of knowledge he has of the full

storyline. According to Earl Nightingale, this explains the why he is scared and disturbed by

some occurrences in the storyline, simply because he does not know enough. And because of

his lack of knowledge, he boasts the role in a limited point of view. If the narrator was

Roderick, there might be an omniscient or all-knowing view because of the character

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resemblance between him and Edgar Allan Poe. Just as the narrator is limited in the story, the

viewer is limited in the painting. Some say that the painter tells and illustrates a story. That is

incorrect; the viewer tells his or her own story. Thomas Cole did all that he could do to help the

viewer interpret what he was thinking, and what his meaning for painting on the canvas was.

Now the viewer has to construe his or her own interpretation of the painting. Thomas Cole

might have painted the mountains in Romantic Landscape because his visit in Denver, Colorado

was really fun. Being the Romantic Era, the viewer might infer that the mountains elucidate a

feeling of freedom and strength, or an obstacle that Cole had to face that would be easier to go

around than over. The viewer is not wrong. An interpretation is an extremely educated

opinion. If Jimmy says, “You wear green every day, Bob. It looks to me like your favorite color

is green.” Even if Bob’s favorite color is purple, Jimmy is not wrong; it is just his personal

outlook on why Bob wears green every day. So the viewer determines what the picture means.

However, the painter does limit the viewer’s knowledge of the painting itself; because if the

painter draws a snowy day, the viewer cannot distinctly say it is December 4, 1927 at 3:41 p.m.

The viewer is only limited to what the painter draws and titles the painting, and the painter can

control that. It is now established and very evident that the two works share a common limited

point of view by the narrator and viewer. This also may explain why the narrator is unreliable.

In summary, a painting can have many interpretations by the viewer, yet a work of literature

can only have one entirely accepted understanding. This is why aspects of the painting are

being compared to the story, because of multiple interpretations and elucidations of the

painting. It is easier to compare one expressed view of the painting by the primary viewer than

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to compare all interpretations to the text or revive Thomas Cole to receive his meaning of the

painting.

Before romantic inspiration and philosophies are discussed, the topic of the random, yet

solitary living institution on the hill will enroll in examination. In the painting of Romantic

Landscape by Thomas Cole, there is a shed like establishment right in the middle of the marshy

tarn and the concealed sunshine behind beautiful mountains. To analogize the shed, it is the

handle of the romantic umbrella. The shelter located to the east of the picture, is being shone

on by sunlight coming from the west of the picture that does not remotely touch the marshland

the shelter is located just slightly above. This picture’s detail has extraordinary comparisons to

Edgar Allan Poe, the author of The Fall of the House of Usher. The establishment that is

supposed to represent the adventure, exploration, and the independency of Transcendentalism

could actually illustrate the mind of Poe, despite that he had a realist approach because his

thought that the country was for phantasm. There is bright sunshine shining down on him – his

profuse intelligence, but when he goes down to the gloomy tarn beneath him, he seems to feel

the passion and inspiration to write because it is the hospice of all of his lost ones. He could

easily go write about the mountain he sees every morning and come up with ideas like the

presaged Big Bang theory every day, but he decides to put his intelligence toward a more

personal and much more entertaining cause in benefit to the Gothic side of the umbrella. Poe

is the umbrella shaft, and even though his sanity lay on the transcendental side of the umbrella,

he is determined to create and explore a world of his own and head down a path of

abnormality which would make him one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century.

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Like most painters, Thomas Cole is neither Transcendental nor Gothic. Only writers

would severely get mixed up in the pick-a-side, Team Edward or Team Jacob, sort of opposition

(despite that they are both gothic). By the 1820s, when Cole painted Romantic Landscape,

Romanticism was wide spread through Europe and rapidly developing in North America. He

could have been influenced by the English, as most artists were, in earlier stages of the

movement. However, in the painting, he did add a frontier look when he placed the manmade

housing establishment on the rocky hill. There was land to discover in America, unlike Great

Britain and other European countries. In this decade American visual artist and writers seceded

from the Romantic grasp of Europe to write and draw about a much more exciting topic right

beneath their feet: exploration. Exploration and the frontier setting would later be the focal

point of most transcendental work. The work of Edgar Allan Poe is known to be very gloomy

and supernatural. He draws his gothic inspiration from the death of his family members and

close ones, mostly his brother and his wife. The two works: Romantic Landscape by Thomas

Cole and The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe have a lot in common as well as

other unmentioned distinctions.

The true meaning of the frontier manmade establishment has decent relativity to Edgar

Allan Poe other than to signify his mind and he being the umbrella handle of the shaft with the

antediluvian abode. Some Gothics, like Poe, did enjoy the closed corners of their home in

everyday city life. Even if he had the opportunity to, it is doubtful that Poe would subsist in the

woods by himself with all of the horrible imagination and nightmares constantly going in his

head. After writing a poem like The Raven, it is hard to see how he could even sleep in the

same room as his books, or better yet, even sleep. Roderick, in The Fall of the House of Usher,

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who is characterized from Edgar Allan Poe himself, could barely sleep and seldom not in tears;

this is how Poe must have been if Roderick was a mirror reflection of him. The haunted palace

however, was not a place like the House of Usher; the haunted palace Poe talks about in the

poem is part of his own mind taking over the extremely feeble and unprotected intellectual

reasoning section of his brain which can be symbolized as the sun that never shines.

There is sunshine towards the west of the painting. There seemed to be no sunshine in

the head of Roderick, Madeline, nor Edgar Allan Poe. The three altogether created a dark,

haunted, pessimistic, and gloomy thunderstorm of Gothic phantasm.

Furthermore, there is nothing more to be elucidated about the similarities that connect

the two works, and the disparities that distinguish the two works. In order to educate students

and other individuals of the nineteenth century Romantic Era, let there be prosperity in the

indulgence of Romantic literature and many interpretations made of Romantic paintings like

Thomas Cole’s Romantic Landscape. Reading the works of Edgar Allan Poe can be dangerous

and detrimental to the mind; but it has been learned that: “Constant exposure to dangers will

breed contempt for them” (Lucius Annaeus Seneca).

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2009. Web. 22 Apr. 2012.

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<http://www.learner.org/interactives/literature/read/pov2.html>.

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Americas. Austin, [Tex.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2000. Print.The Fall of the House of

Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

Writergal06. "Edgar Allan Poe." Enotes.com. Enotes.com, 12 Dec. 2008. Web. 17 May 2012.

<http://www.enotes.com/edgar-allan-poe/q-and-a/how-did-edgar-allen-poes-wife-

lenore-die-53145>.

Aldrich, Brian. "Virginia Clemm Poe - Poe's Wife and Cousin." Virginia Clemm Poe - Poe's Wife

and Cousin. 2007. Web. 17 May 2012.

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