"A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" is a fantasticalshort story written by Edgar Allan Poe. Set near the University of Virginia at Charlottesville (where Poe had spent a year), it is the only one of his stories to take place in Virginia. It was first published in Godey's Lady's Book in April 1844[1] and was included in Poe's short story collection Tales, published in New York by Wiley and Putnam in 1845.
In late November 1827, the unnamed narrator meets Augustus Bedloe. Because of ongoing problems with neuralgia, Bedloe has retained the exclusive services of 70-year-old physician Dr. Templeton, a practitioner of mesmerism. They developed such a rapport that Templeton could mesmerize Bedloe even when they were not together. The narrator decided to write down their story in 1845 now that "similar miracles" were commonplace.
Bedloe takes morphine every day after breakfast and then hikes the Ragged Mountains. One day, he returns much later than usual and tells the narrator and Dr. Templeton why. On his ramble, he entered a gorge of "absolutely virgin" solitude, filled with a "thick and peculiar mist". The morphine made his surroundings delightfully brilliant. His reverie was interrupted by drumming. Suddenly, he saw a half-naked man chased by a hyena. Stupefied by this bizarre encounter, Bedloe sits beneath a tree and realizes its shadow is that of a palm tree.
The fog clears and Bedloe sees "an Eastern-looking city, such as we read of in the Arabian Tales" . Bedloe descends into the city and eventually finds himself barricaded with British officers as a battle rages. Bedloe is struck in the temple by an arrow shaped like "the writhing creese of the Malay". He hovered over his body and floated away from the scene, back to where he saw the hyena. He experienced a galvanic shock that returned him to his normal self, and he walked home.
Bedloe seems to think it is a dream. Dr. Templeton shows him a portrait from 1780 of a man that looks like Bedloe. Templeton explains the subject was his friend Mr. Odleb, whom he knew from Calcutta during the Warren Hastings administration. When Templeton met Bedloe at Saratoga, he was struck by the resemblance.
Dr. Templeton reveals that every detail Bedloe recalled from his vision was an accurate depiction of the insurrection of Cheyte Sing in Benares. During the skirmish, Warren Hastings led a group of British soldiers and sepoys, and Oldeb was felled by a poisoned arrow. While Bedloe was on his walk in the mountains, Dr. Templeton was writing about the insurrection in a notebook.
A week later, an obituary for "Augustus Bedlo" appears in a newspaper. Dr. Templeton had applied leeches to his patient, and accidentally used a venomous "vermicular sangsues" that proved fatal. The narrator asked the editor why the final 'e' was omitted from Bedloe's name. The editor shrugs it off as a typo, but the narrator recognizes the misspelling as Odleb in reverse.
Publication history
"A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" first appeared in Godey's Lady's Book, April 1844.
The short story first appeared in the April 1844 issue of Godey's Lady's Book.[2] Poe published the story also in his Broadway Journal on November 29, 1845.[3] The story was reprinted in the March 23, 1844 Baltimore Weekly Sun, in the March 30, 1844 issue of The Baltimore Sun, the April 27, 1844 Columbia Spy in Columbia, PA, and in 1846 in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and King’s County Democrat, edited by Walt Whitman, in October 9 and 10.[4][5]
The story is one of several places were Poe quotes Novalis. As Bedloe tries to determine how real his experience was, he quotes the poet's fragment, "we are near waking when we dream that we dream".[6]
Some critics, like E. F. Bleiler and Doris V. Falk, criticize the story for its lack of clarity and literary sophistication. They argue that its ambiguity hurts rather than helps its literary quality, especially in the canon of Poe's characteristically well-elaborated works. Other critics look to the focus on mesmerism as a source of its weakness. They argue that it gives the story too scientific a slant that distracts from its strengths in plot and style.[9] One scholar claims that Poe is describing a case of Marfan syndrome in Augustus Bedloe more than five decades before Antoine Marfan presented his first and famous patient, five-year-old Gabrielle, to a French medical association.[10]
References
↑ Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001: 231. ISBN0-8160-4161-X
↑ “Un cuento de las Montañas Escabrosas”; Obras completas de Edgar Allan Poe publicadas en dos volúmenes. Editorial Aguilar, 1956 [2004]. Traducción de Julio Cortázar. 21 x 16 cm. Guardas ilustradas. Tomo I. Narrativa (800 páginas; 1289 páginas en total).
↑ Falk, Doris V. "Poe and the Power of Animal Magnetism" as collected in PMLA, May 1969. p. 536-546
↑ Battle, Robert. "Edgar Allan Poe: A Case Description of Marfan Syndrome in an Obscure Short Story". American Journal of Cardiology. 2011: 108(1):148-9.
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