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Episode 332 – Shadow & Silence (Patreon)

Published:
2018-05-04 09:06:55
Edited:
2019-01-06 05:03:04
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

Airdate: 11/18/2016

POE-vember gets POE-etic as we tackle Shadow – a Parable and Silence – a Fable.

Special thanks to our reader, Wyatt S. Gray – check him out on Twitter!

Next Up: The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar!

Comments

Anonymous

ٱلأعراف‎ is al-3araaf in Arabic comes from the Quran which means elevation, heights and also purgatory. In Islamic theology, purgatory is also Barzakh. In Barzakh the body and soul are separated, so he couldn't laugh, souls in Sufism can visit this region in dreams, but can not deviate from actions taken during the life, so he could not laugh because he wouldn't laugh in real life when he wakes up. In other words, this conversation between the narrator and the demon is occurring within a dream, wherein, the man in the dream, has his soul travel to this limbo and encounters the demon, who is seeing the man on the rock. A dream within a dream or parallel dreams because 2 men are in the same dream but from different perspectives in terms of their soteriological implications.

Anonymous

Continuing, the man looks like a Deity but him being frightened by the changing text on the rock indicates that he is not an angel but a man "in between". If you read the Study Quran, Poe is continuing with the Sufi line of reasoning that this man is a man of gnosis, who is one of the people who straddles the Heights, a place between heaven and hell. So he has High spiritual status. The man is terrified of the absolute silence because it was a silence that one could only get in some soundproof room, that is terrifying to anyone. Continuing further speculation, the change to SILENCE on the rock contains 7 letters which is the 7th chapter of the Quran mentioned here by the way. The main lesson or "parable" then is that the chapter is a warning to those who do not heed the signs of Allah, so the change of text is a "sign" to heed the warnings of Allah. The demon himself did not change the text on the rock, God did. see verses especially 46-48. In Arabic, to know is "3aref" so those on the Heights know more than a usual common man. Now this is ironic because the man was not in the least affected by all the changes the demon made but the change to SILENCE on the rock and the actual silence of the surroundings made the man realize something supernatural happened. Being someone of the Heights though, he did realize this and heed the warning, but the narrator man is a common man and couldn't laugh in the dream because he was with the demon down below looking up at the man of the Heights, indicating he has low status and issues and sins in real life.

Anonymous
>>63724790

the narrator's name looking at the demon is Faranak which means lynx in Persian or Fahd if he's Arab. Then he wakes up. Poe could have read Tafsir Ibn Ajiba because it was written in the late 1700s or early 1800s. The fact that the lynx is sitting at the end of the story is the same as the ending of the 7th chapter calls for prostration, indicating that the lynx represents the narrator. see Quran 7:206 "Surely those ˹angels˺ nearest to your Lord are not too proud to worship Him. They glorify Him. And to Him they prostrate." The fact that the narrator is prostrating to the demon and not God indicates he needs to repent badly. One last thing, the change from DESOLATION to SILENCE in Arabic is only the final letter from الخراب to خرس so the change that scared him was not as drastically rendered as in English. the word عزلة can carry both meanings.

Anonymous

So Shadow is about realizing there is nothing waiting for you beyond death and Silence is about realizing there is no god. The demon tries to frighten the godly man with beasts (hippopotamus) and nature (storms), but it is silence that finally breaks the man. He is able to stomach the horrific surroundings, the impossible river, the loathsome flora, but when faced with the possibility of being alone in the universe, he comes to bits. This is why the demon laughs, he is laughing at the joke that mankind plays on itself, we fetishize our loneliness, we cling to misanthropy as the godly man did, thinking we are too intellectual for the masses. But when faced with the possibility that there is no greater meaning to our lives, we flee from solitude, we drown our terror with the company of others. And that is why the man does not laugh at the demon, he knows the terror that all humanity knows; the terror of true solitude. But the lynx does not fear the demon, it does not fear loneliness, it does not require purpose, being part of nature. It is the beasts that are lucky, and us who are condemned with intelligence.