Page:Devil stories - an anthology.djvu/317

 BON-BON

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

This writer, to whom the inner world was more of a reality than the external world, had many visions, especially of the devil. The two seem to have been on a familiar footing. The devil, we must admit, filled Poe's imagination even if we will not go so far as to agree with his critics that he had Satan substituted for soul. His contemporaries, as is well known, would say of him: "He hath a demon, yea, seven devils are entered into him." His detractors actually regarded this unhappy poet as an incarnation of the ruler of Hades (cf. North American Review, 1856; Edinburgh Review, 1858; Dublin University Magazine, 1875). It was but recently that a writer in the New York Times declared Poe to have been "grub-staked by demons."

The story "Bon-Bon" offers a specimen of Poe's grimly grotesque humour. It first appeared in the Broadway Journal of August, 1835.

The devil of this most un-American of all American authors is not the child of New World fancy, but part of European imagination. The scenery of the story is aptly laid in the land of Robert le Diable.

Poe's description of the devil is, on the whole, fully in accord with the universally accredited conception of his ordinary appearance. His brutal hoofs and savage horns and beastly tail are all there, only discreetly hid under a dress which any gentleman might wear. The devil is very proud of this epithet given him by William Shakespeare; and from [295]