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Abstract

Pythagoras and Empedocles are not generally believed to have left an indelible

imprint on Edgar Allan Poe’s oeuvre, despite the direct allusion to each of these

Presocratic thinkers in the poet’s writings. It is also quite remarkable that “The

Black Cat” (1843) has not typically been considered a tale of metempsychosis,

even though this motif is clearly present in the story. Moreover, the fact that Poe

allows transference to occur from one cat to another hints at his acceptance of

the contentious Pythagorean premise that the transmigration of souls is not

restricted to the human body. In addition, while a number of scholars have

acknowledged the ambivalent nature of the daemon in other works by Poe, most

studies of “The Black Cat” portray it as an unequivocally dark and malevolent

entity. In contrast, this article conceives of the daemon as an ambiguous being

that reemerges in feline form to inflict punishment on the protagonist for his vile

acts. In this disturbing narrative, Poe once again explores a question that haunted

him throughout his life —namely, whether individual identity can survive bodily

death.

Keywords: Edgar Allan Poe, Pythagoras, Empedocles, metempsychosis, daemon.

METEMPSYCHOSIS AND INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY

IN EDGAR ALLAN POE’S “THE BLACK CAT”

METEMPSICOSIS E IDENTIDAD INDIVIDUAL

EN “EL GATO NEGRO”, DE EDGAR ALLAN POE

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.20249739

ANNA MICHELLE SABATINI

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)

amsabatini@gmail.com

<https://orcid.org/0009-0003-3669-3902>

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Resumen

Pitágoras y Empédocles no suelen considerarse influencias indelebles en la obra de

Edgar Allan Poe, a pesar de que el poeta alude directamente a ambos pensadores

presocráticos. También resulta sorprendente que tradicionalmente “El gato negro”

(1843) no se haya clasificado como un relato de metempsicosis, aun cuando la

temática está claramente presente en dicha narración. Es más, el hecho de que Poe

permita que la transferencia se produzca de un gato a otro, sugiere una aceptación

de la controvertida premisa de Pitágoras de que la transmigración del alma no se

circunscribe al cuerpo humano. Asimismo, aunque varios estudiosos han señalado

la naturaleza ambivalente del daemon en otras creaciones de Poe, la mayoría de los

escritos sobre “El gato negro” retratan a la criatura como inequívocamente oscura

y maligna. El presente artículo la concibe en cambio como un ser ambiguo que,

encarnado en un felino, resurge con el propósito de castigar al protagonista por sus

viles actos. En la inquietante narrativa que nos ocupa, Poe explora de nuevo una

de las cuestiones que más le obsesionó a lo largo de su vida, a saber, la posibilidad

de que la identidad individual perdure tras la muerte física.

Palabras clave: Edgar Allan Poe, Pitágoras, Empédocles, metempsicosis, daemon.

You alone were born to judge

deeds obscure and conspicuous.

Holiest and illustrious ruler of all,

frenzied god,

you delight in the respect

and in the reverence of your worshippers.

I summon you […].

The Orphic Hymns, “To Plouton”

1. Introduction. Revisiting the Daemonic in Edgar Allan

Poe’s “The Black Cat”

The depth of Edgar Allan Poe’s knowledge of early Greek philosophy cannot be

ascertained and remains a subject of controversy. Nevertheless, there is no doubt

as to the Hellenic influence on his writing. More specifically, a valuable source

that has often been overlooked is that of the Presocratics. The theme of

metempsychosis in such stories as “Metzengerstein” (1832), “Morella” (1835),

“Ligeia” (1838) and “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains” (1844) has been explored

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by several critics (Quinn 1957; Fisher 1971; Rowe 2003). Rather surprisingly,

however, “The Black Cat” (1843) has not traditionally been included in this

group, although Thomas Ollive Mabbott does acknowledge that Poe used the

idea of the transmigration of souls in the piece (1978: 15). Various authors have

also rightly pointed to the ambiguity of the daemonic in Poe’s writing (Ljungquist

1980; Andriano 1986), but it is particularly striking that the daemon in “The

Black Cat” is often viewed as an exception and typically associated almost

exclusively with sin and wickedness.

Poe is thought to have learned about daemonology through sources as varied as

Plato (c. 427-347 BCE), British Romantic poetry, Jacob Bryant (1715-1804),

Christoph Martin Wieland (1733-1813), the fairytale novella Undine by Friedrich

de la Motte Fouqué (1777-1843), Gnostic philosophy and Near-Eastern lore,

among others (Ljungquist 1980). The term δαίμων traditionally carried several

meanings in ancient Greece. It often denotes a god, goddess, godlike power or fate

(Beekes 2010: 297). Daemons can also take on the role of a guardian or tutelary

deity and link humans to higher gods (Primavesi 2008: 259; Liddell and Scott

1846: 305-306). Plato’s Symposium, from which the epigraph to Poe’s “Morella”

is taken, defines a δαίμων as an entity that is “intermediate between the divine and

the mortal” (1920a: 328). In other contexts, it can also refer to the soul (Primavesi

2008: 275). Only in works by more recent authors does the daemon come to

designate a departed soul, an evil spirit or the devil (Liddell and Scott 1846: 305-

306). As Ljungquist aptly points out, the daemon takes on an ambiguous meaning

in Poe’s fiction (1980). In his writings, Poe transcends the myth of the fallen angel

and, as in the Hebrew and Greek traditions, the daemonic and the angelic become

intertwined. The Romantics echo the Greek notion that Socrates (c. 470-399

BCE) was guided by a personal daemon. They often conceive of daemons as half-

mortal, half-divine intermediary spirits who do not necessarily possess evil qualities,

and as guardians of humankind that are responsible for determining individual

fate. Such theories appear to have informed Poe’s characterization in several of his

stories, some examples of which are “Morella”, “Ligeia”, “The Power of Words”

and, of course, “The Black Cat”. In the first three tales, these entities are endowed

with extraordinary skill and vast knowledge, while the last narrative exemplifies

Poe’s fascination with the ancient tradition that associated human fate with

daemonic force. For Poe and other Romantic writers, those who are possessed by

daemons acquire inner strength and divine poetic inspiration. However, they also

perceive the daemonic as a hidden and mysterious source of power, so possession

can be both an elevating and a ghastly experience. This, in turn, is reminiscent of

Gothic sublimity, a heightened feeling of fear and awe which defies measurement

and representation (Ljungquist 1980).

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In Ljungquist’s view, the black cat in Poe’s story symbolizes a supernatural

daemonic force. Rather puzzlingly, however, he associates these feline creatures

with dark powers alone, in accordance with medieval superstition. He speaks of

“oppression or weight that could hamper human breathing”, “a feeling of being

frozen or paralyzed” and “daemonic dread” (1980: 34). Equating the cat in Poe’s

tale with a purely evil spirit is undoubtedly perfectly plausible. Still, the fact that

this animal has a noble character renders an association with the less explicitly

malignant Greek conception of the daemonic much more tenable. It is true that

the protagonist refers to his wife’s “frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion,

which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise” (Poe 1978a: 850). Nonetheless,

this remark appears to be an attempt to baffle the reader, as he immediately adds,

“[n]ot that she was ever serious upon this point —and I mention the matter at all

for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered” (850). This

is hardly surprising, as it is customary for Poe to be deliberately cryptic, to raise

epistemological doubts by blurring the line between illusion and reality, or dreams

and waking states. He frequently employs the trope of the unreliable narrator and

displays a profound distrust of the senses, creating a physical world which is

chaotic, ever-changing and insubstantial (Folks 2009: 58, 60-61). He also uses

magical lore to enhance the mystery and sublimity of his stories, to create an

alternate reality and to encourage a suspension of disbelief in the reader (Rowe

2003: 44-45). In his review of Robert Montgomery Bird’s Sheppard Lee, published

in The Southern Literary Messenger in September 1836, Poe states that the writer

of a tale of metempsychosis should deploy certain techniques, such as “avoiding

[…] directnessof expression” in order to leave “much to the imagination” and

“the result as a wonder not to be accounted for” (1997: 286, emphasis in original).

Several academics have suggested that the narrator’s cat Pluto is in fact the Greek

god of the Underworld (Moreland and Rodriguez 2015; Tsokanos and Ibáñez

2018). Although this interpretation is logical and very convincing, most critical

analyses of “The Black Cat” tend to focus on the negative aspects of the

chthonian deity, who is almost entirely associated with wickedness, violence,

rage and the diabolical (Moreland and Rodriguez 2015; Tsokanos and Ibáñez

2018). Admittedly, as the ominous god of the dead and even of death itself,

Hades was to be greatly feared but, paradoxically, it was believed that he

performed good deeds for mortals from his abode in the Underworld. Hades

was described as hateful and malignant, but also as the renowned one and a god

of good repute. Furthermore, Hades was alternately known as Pluton, which

signified wealth. As a precaution, the living were reluctant to utter the name

Hades, but this was not the case with Pluton, who responded to prayer and

offerings. Pluton was therefore a more positive designation for Hades and

became the divinity’s most common moniker during the fifth century BCE,

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both in myth and in cult (Hornblower et al. 2012: 640; Liddell and Scott 1846:

1198). Poe may well have taken this favorable association into consideration when

choosing the name Pluto for the feline protagonist of his story. Perhaps it is no

coincidence that, on the very night of the day the narrator mercilessly kills his cat

Pluto, his house is completely destroyed by fire, and the man declares, “[m]y entire

worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to despair”

(Poe 1978a: 852).

2. “The Modified Παλιγγενεσια of the Pythagoreans” and

the Principle of Individuation

Like the inner world of the feline protagonist in “The Black Cat”, the life of

Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570-c. 495 BCE) is shrouded in mystery. Adored and

despised in equal measure, he left nothing in writing and, if he did, none of his

original work survives. Nonetheless, it is generally accepted that he taught the

doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Pythagoras’s metempsychosis states that,

since our soul’s present and future are determined by our current choices, not all

mortals share an equal fate. This, in turn, seems to suggest that we must assume

full responsibility for our decisions. Indeed, already in Hesiod (c. 750-650 BCE)

we find that a fortunate person is a eudaemon —εὐδαίμων, meaning one who

has a good daemon. Another Greek term for this virtuous entity is agathos

daemon —ἀγαθός δαίμων (Hornblower et al. 2012: 37, 410, 640; Beekes

2010: 484). The fact that Agathos is one of the blessed immortal spirits in Poe’s

“The Power of Words” (1845) indicates that, even though this prose poem was

published two years after “The Black Cat”, Poe may have been aware of this

distinction before he wrote the latter. As Agathos himself proclaims in “The

Power of Words”, “no thought can perish, so no act is without infinite result”

(Poe 1978a: 1213).

Poe’s direct allusion to Pythagoras in “Morella” (1835) corroborates that he knew

of this enigmatic polymath’s theory of the soul, and that same paragraph in Poe’s

tale evidences that he had also come into contact with at least some of the

metaphysical principles upheld by Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich

Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) and John Locke (1632-1704):

The wild Pantheism of Fichte; the modified Παλιγγενεσια [Palingenesia] of the

Pythagoreans; and, above all, the doctrines of Identity as urged by Schelling, were

generally the points of discussion presenting the most of beauty to the imaginative

Morella. That identity which is termed personal, Mr. Locke, I think, truly defines to

consist in the sameness of a rational being. (Poe 1978b: 230-231, emphasis in

original)

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Although the terms palingenesia and metempsychosis do not carry the same

meaning, they are sometimes used interchangeably to denote the transfer of life or

the soul from one body to another, that is, the transmigration of souls. Pythagoras

believed that metempsychosis could occur from a human being, an animal or a

plant into a new body belonging to any of these three groups. It is important to

note that he did not explicitly define the soul as immaterial or make a clear

distinction between the corporeal and incorporeal. He thus took all that exists to

be of a material nature (Burkert 1972: 32). Poe shares with metaphysical idealists

like Schelling and Fichte the belief that physical and chemical laws do not suffice

to explain all natural phenomena. However, the influence of Greek materialism can

also be felt in his work. In fact, like Pythagoras, Poe does not conceive of the soul

as a spiritual entity. For instance, in “Mesmeric Revelation” (1844), he writes: “[t]

here is no immateriality […]. That which is not matter, is not at all” (1978a:

1033). Later on in this tale, he refers to God as matter so infinitely minute that it

becomes “[t]he ultimate, or unparticled matter”, which “not only permeates all

things but impels all things —and thus is all things within itself” (1033, emphasis

in original). Nevertheless, it must be noted that for Poe, the line that separates

matter and spirit is blurred, and his views with regard to the nature of the universe

are not unequivocal. Revealingly, to Schelling and other Romantics, matter is not

perceived as solid or impenetrable, but instead as the product of dynamic forces.

Moreover, Schelling upholds that the manifestations of nature and the structures

of the human mind are governed by a metaphysical principle he refers to as the

world soul (Sha 2018: 34; Barkhoff 2009: 210). Poe himself argues that Matter

contains so-called “spiritual Ether” that imbues it with life and consciousness.

Indeed, the fusion of the physical and psychic realms is a recurring theme in Poe’s

work. In his prose poem Eureka, which he wrote towards the end of his life, Poe

speaks of “true Epicurean atoms” (1984: 1322) but also describes God as both a

material and spiritual being that will ultimately revert to its incorporeal essence.

When the cosmos eventually sinks into One and all heterogeneity is lost, Matter

will expel the Ether that has kept atoms apart. Matter will hence become “Matter

without Matter” or “Matter no more” (1355, emphasis in original).

The fact that Poe brings together such disparate philosophers as Fichte, Schelling

and Locke in the aforementioned fragment of “Morella” is surprising and

disconcerting, given that the idealism of the former two thinkers stands in stark

contrast to the empiricism of the latter. Admittedly, Poe is not usually considered

a philosopher. As he wrote in a letter to Charles F. Hoffman in 1848, “there is no

absolute certainty either in the Aristotelian or Baconian process —[...] for this

reason, neither Philosophy is so profound as it fancies itself— and [...] neither has

a right to sneer at that seemingly imaginative process called Intuition” (Poe 2008:

688, emphasis in original). Nevertheless, it is also true that Poe was well-versed in

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the field of natural philosophy, which only began to be considered as separate from

science at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Indeed, Fichte, Schelling and

Locke share a deep preoccupation with moral order. More to the point, all three

explore the principle of individuation. Poe was drawn to them as a result of his

obsession with the question of whether consciousness and individual identity

could survive physical death, as is evidenced by the excerpt in “Morella” which

immediately follows his allusion to the aforementioned philosophers:

And since by person we understand an intelligent essence having reason, and since

there is a consciousness which always accompanies thinking, it is this which makes us

all to be that which we call ourselves —thereby distinguishing us from other beings

that think, and giving us our personal identity. But the principium individuationis,

the notion of that identity which at death is or is not lost forever, was to me, at all

times, a consideration of intense interest […]. (Poe 1978b: 231, emphasis in original)

One of the most fascinating aspects of Pythagoras’s metempsychosis is precisely its

affirmation that individual identity survives bodily death when it takes on a new

form or appearance. Neither Fichte, Schelling nor Locke endorsed this view.

However, as we have seen, the fact that Poe mentions them in conjunction with

Pythagoras points to the poet’s preoccupation with personal identity and more

specifically with the possible survival of some form of consciousness after death. In

what Poe refers to as Fichte’s “wild Pantheism” (1978b: 230), even Nature is

regarded as thought, since all reality is contained in consciousness. Fichte identifies

God with the unattainable Absolute, which the Self must strive for ad infinitum,

resulting in a constant decay of individuality. As a consequence, a hypothetical

fusion of a human being with the ideal would require the complete disintegration

of individual identity (Fichte 1970: 109, 113-114). Unlike Fichte, Schelling does

not contend that self-consciousness can explain the objective realm and instead

argues that subjectivity and objectivity both emerge from the primordial identity

of the Absolute (Moreland and Shaw 2012: 60). Death for Schelling is but a

reductio ad essentiam, whereby the soul is stripped of all that is accessory and

extrinsic so that only the essence of our true Being remains. He insists that this

transition does not entail a separation from physical life but solely from this

existence (Schelling 1994: 237). Poe’s horror fiction also conveys this notion of

the dissolution of individual identity in the universal but, contrary to Schelling,

who conceptualizes it as a self-realizing event, the poet sees it as self-destructive.

For his part, Locke makes the radical and controversial assertion that personal

identity is neither founded on the body nor the soul, nor in the union of both, but

on consciousness alone. He maintains that on the Day of Judgment the dead will

be resurrected to answer for their deeds in this life. The saved will be admitted into

an eternal state of bliss, while the guilty will be condemned to a second and final

death (Locke 1847: 175, 210, 231).

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3. The Oracle of Doom

In Eureka (1848), Poe declares that ultimately “the sense of individual identity will

be gradually merged in the general consciousness” (1984: 1358). However, an

eventual collapse into the Absolute is not at odds with the idea that the soul can

survive death and exist as separate from what he terms the rudimental body (Poe

1978a: 1037). In fact, Poe continuously explores this possibility in such stories as

“The Premature Burial” (1844), “Some Words with a Mummy” (1845), “The

Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1845) and “Mesmeric Revelation” (1845). In

the latter, he describes bodily demise as a mere process of transmutation:

There are two bodies —the rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the

two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call “death”, is but the

painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory,

temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full

design. (Poe 1978a: 1037)

This “painful metamorphosis” is analogous to the cycle of purification related by

Empedocles of Acragas (c. 490-c. 430 BCE), a close follower of Pythagoras’s

doctrine of metempsychosis. The fact that Edgar Allan Poe was familiar with

Empedocles is evidenced by a direct reference to him in Poe’s writings: “Empedocles

professed the system of four elements, and added thereto two principles which he

called ‘principium amicitiæ’ and ‘principium contentionis’. What are these but

attraction and repulsion?” (Poe 1985: 93). For Empedocles, it is the fallen daemon

that preserves its continuity through its various incarnations, in accordance with

what he refers to as “an oracle of Doom” (in Plutarch 1959: 569). He identifies

himself and others with this “exile from heaven”, who, having “[d]efile[d] himself

with foul and sinful murder”, is compelled to wander through a succession of lives

before finally being able to return to his original divine state (B 115 607c-d, in

Plutarch 1959: 569). In his past lives, Empedocles allegedly recalls being “a boy

[…], and a maiden, [a]nd bush, and bird of prey, and fish, [a] wanderer from the

salt sea” (B 117, in Hippolytus 1921: 40). Pythagoras and Empedocles “assert

that there is a single legal condition for all living beings and […] proclaim that

inexpiable punishments await those who have done violence to an animal” (D27b,

in Laks and Most 2016: 379). Plato, who is believed to have derived his doctrine

of metempsychosis from Pythagoras, proposes a rather disturbing variation on this

maxim. In Laws, he alludes to the widespread belief that the perpetrators of crimes

of violence are punished both in Hades and once again when they return to this

world, where they will be forced to die in exactly the same manner as their victims

(Plato 1920b: 615). Compellingly, in Poe’s story “The Black Cat”, the protagonist

brutally hangs his feline companion only to see the creature reemerge, now a

harbinger of doom, the gallows on its chest unmistakably announcing that an

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equal fate awaits his slayer. The prophecy is fulfilled, and the narrator is ultimately

sentenced to death —also by hanging.

Like Empedocles’s daemons, the narrator in “The Black Cat” is in a state of bliss

at the outset, and his suffering only begins when he becomes corrupted by evil.

This in truth occurs long before he engages in the first act of violence against his

cat Pluto. Therefore, it is not his ugly deeds that are attributed to the daemonic

power, but rather the divine retribution which ensues. Even though he will

eventually be confronted with this deific force, only he can be held responsible for

his wicked and perverse behavior. The manner in which he describes the dastardly

murder of the poor animal leaves no room for doubt:

One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb

of a tree; —hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest

remorse at my heart; —hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt

it had given me no reason of offence; —hung it because I knew that in so doing I was

committing a sin —a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to

place it— if such a thing were possible —even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy

of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God. (Poe 1978a: 852, emphasis in original)

James W. Gargano considers this extreme self-condemnation “an outrageous

excess” (1960: 173). However, Pythagoras and Empedocles would have

undoubtedly taken issue with this assertion. They would also have likely

disagreed with Gargano’s assessment that the narrator’s initial affection towards

non-human creatures is “an unhealthy overdevelopment of the voluptuary side

of his nature” and “an abnormality” (173). Either way, as Gargano rightly

argues, the protagonist does appear to have an ambivalent, divided and possibly

schizophrenic personality. He continuously refuses to take responsibility for his

vile actions and instead chooses to ascribe them to his being “an erratic plaything

of an inscrutable force” (172). In effect, the main character’s cruelty to animals

is an indubitable sign of his moral deterioration, which will eventually result in

him killing his own wife.

As we have seen, Plato’s doctrine of metempsychosis seems to have been inspired

by Pythagoras. In the myth of Er, which appears at the end of the Republic, Plato

provides an alternative description of Orpheus’s descent into the Underworld. In

Plato’s account, which contradicts that of Homer (c. 750 BCE), the soul can in

fact leave Hades by reincarnating into either an animal or a human being. All

souls choose their model of life, which form they wish to take on, and the daemon

that will guide them. Er asserts that these choices must be made with the utmost

caution, as even the impious can aspire to a satisfactory existence rather than a

wretched one. In life and death, all souls must strive to become more just and

disregard all other considerations (Plato 1992: 285-290). He goes on to explain

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how the first to be asked rashly chose a life of tyranny, only to deeply regret his

decision after learning that it would result in him having to eat his own children.

Very much like the protagonist of “The Black Cat”, “he blamed chance, daimons,

or guardian spirits, and everything else for these evils but himself” (Plato 1992:

290). According to Plato’s theory of metempsychosis, the truth is that the

narrator selects his own daemon, which will in turn shape his fate. Hence, only he

can be held accountable for his despicable acts. Nevertheless, as frequently occurs

with Poe, there is a masterful twist in his tale. The psychopathic killer was once a

compassionate and affectionate human being, seemingly guarded by a good

daemon. There is a critical event in the story that marks a point of no return —the

definitive departure of this entity, the main character’s agathos daemon, his true

and better self. It is an occurrence that immediately precedes his vicious mutilation

of the innocent feline creature. Poe explicitly alludes to this instance: “[m]y

original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than

fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame” (1978a:

851). In fact, the narrator claims that he has previously been “instantly possessed”

by “[t]he fury of a demon”, but as he himself confesses, his “general temperament

and character” had already “experienced a radical alteration for the worse” (851)

long before this incident. It is true that his cat Pluto had so far been spared and

had “only” started to feel the effects of his bad temper, but his wife had by then

begun to endure his verbal and physical abuse. Additionally, he had been

neglecting and behaving violently towards his pets. He attributes his misfortune

to excessive drinking and to this so-called “instant possession”, but it is his own

moral decline that subsequently results in the absolute and irrevocable desertion

of his eudaemon. However hard the narrator of “The Black Cat” tries to attribute

his viciousness to a supernatural force, his fate is driven by the compulsion to

ravage his own soul and, as Poe puts it, “to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only”

(852). Much the same as the man who chose tyranny in Plato’s myth of Er, the

reckless slayer in Poe’s tale inadvertently summons a powerful deity, who will

ultimately return in the form of a resurrected Pluto to exact his severe and

inescapable retribution.

4. Doppelgängers and Collapse into Oneness

Metempsychosis provides Poe with an ideal framework to develop another of his

recurring themes, that of the doppelgänger. In much of Poe’s fiction, including

“The Black Cat”, the double is associated with survival after death and an avenging

conscience, in this case symbolized by the punishing daemon embodied in a

reincarnated feline (Herdman 1990: 89). A shapeless white mark on the breast of

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the second cat, which will gradually become the image of the gallows, is the only

feature that distinguishes it from the first. Indeed, the eerie similarity between the

two animals —both are black and have only one eye— further contributes to the

uncanniness of this story (Kennedy 1987: 136; Nadal 2004: 459). Several critics

have noted that the narrator projects his feelings toward his wife onto the feline

creature, and thus conceives of the cat as a surrogate of the spouse (Hoffman

1972: 236; Amper 1992: 479; Dern 2017: 163). Even though the wife is not

resurrected, one could also argue that she forges an alliance with Pluto which

extends beyond their worldly existence. Revealingly, the cat and the woman’s

violent demise precede the moment they succeed in wreaking their vengeance on

the offender (Nadal 2004: 459; Dern 2017: 174). Kenneth Silverman points to

the concurrence of the afterlife and the double in Poe’s writing: “to have twins,

doubles, and twos means that […] one can be here and not here, can die and still

survive” (1991: 151).

In “The Black Cat”, the protagonist’s identity is fragile, fragmented and volatile,

blurring the boundaries between self and other. He projects everything he despises

about himself upon another being. Hence, his murderous deed could be interpreted

as a desperate attempt to annihilate the darker side of his own nature. However,

once the crime is perpetrated against his other, the main character is appalled to

discover that even bodily demise cannot rid him of the tormenting presence. The

man is repelled to find that he is breathing in the air exhaled by Pluto, petrified to

learn that he cannot flee from the ψχή (psyche) —aspiration, breath, soul, spirit—

of this implacable daemon or from its godlike power: “I started, hourly, from

dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and

its vast weight —an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off—

incumbent eternally upon my heart!” (Poe 1978a: 856, emphasis in original). The

evil he attributes to the cat is in truth a wickedness that stems from within. The real

source of his dread is the darkness of his own soul and its ineludible fate, but the

object of his fear has become indiscernible from the self. In Poe’s fiction, the inner

and the outer realms frequently become indistinguishable. In this regard, he is

consistent with many of his contemporaries. As Linda Nash explains, “[for]

nineteenth-century Americans, the body itself was not a clearly bounded entity,

separate and distinct from its surroundings; rather, it was porous and permeable”

(2006: 24). According to Matthew Taylor, Poe impels us to transcend the human

through his “paradoxical simultaneity of sameness and difference” (2013: 39) as

“self and not-self are collapsed into a common union” (33). Subject and object are

hence conceived as versions of being, intrinsically woven into an inexorable

oneness. Moreover, this dissipation of boundaries results in a disruption of the

anthropocentric view of the cosmos.

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According to various critics, it is the narrator’s wish to end his own life that

manifests as aggression towards his cat Pluto. Thus, the feline’s eye, which the

protagonist cruelly removes from its socket, is a projected symbol of his own death

anxieties (Kennedy 1987: 135, 137; Nadal 2004: 459). This organ may also

represent moral conscience and omniscience. Its destruction could therefore be

understood as a pathetic attempt to assuage his guilt or as a refusal to accept the

malicious nature of his actions. As Robert Shulman points out, “in cutting out the

eye of the black demon, the narrator is also irrationally […] seeking to destroy his

own demons, his own unacknowledged impulses and affinity with evil” (1970:

256). According to Ansu Louis, the despised enemy is truly within, but to the

narrator, the cat embodies all that his superego-dominant personality wishes to

subdue (2022: 316). Either way, the man’s fundamental blindness, his inability to

recognize the true origin of his degeneracy, will inexorably lead to madness and

self-annihilation. Any attempt to degrade, brutalize, subjugate or vanquish his

ever-present companion ultimately involves an act of self-harm and suicide. The

protagonist does initially seem to be aware of his predicament, as he admits that

the cat’s hanging was driven by his own “perverseness”, by the “unfathomable

longing of the soul to vex itself —to offer violence to its own nature” (Poe 1978a:

852, emphasis in original). This is a remarkable acknowledgement because he is

conveying that by harming Pluto he is in fact hurting himself (Taylor 2012: 365).

Still, further on in the story, he displays a deep contempt for the creature: “a brute

beast to work out for me —for me a man, fashioned in the image of the High

God— so much of insufferable wo!” (Poe 1978a: 856, emphasis in original). This

haughty sense of entitlement, his violation of the sacred Pythagorean and

Empedoclean law which connects all animate beings, will only serve to precipitate

his doom. Paradoxically, by indulging his own obsessive phobia, the narrator is

inextricably reunited with the very source of his angst (Taylor 2012: 365-366).

The opposing phenomena of attraction and repulsion which Poe refers to in

Eureka are analogous to what Empedocles termed Love and Strife. The Presocratic

poet believed that these forces alternately dominated the universe. This eternal

cycle in which the many emerges from one and one from many resembles Poe’s

concept of the Heart Divine, with every beat causing a new cosmos to expand into

existence and then return into itself (Poe 1984: 1356). Poe considered the

possibility that this process of agglomeration and dissolution could occur

perpetually, in accordance with the Divine Will. Interestingly, the pairing of

positive and negative forces, wherein the former tends toward absolute oneness

and the latter creates individuality in nature, is also found in Schelling (Follesa

2021: 271). Empedocles shares with Poe the conviction that everything is

eventually restored to perfect unity (Tennemann 1852: 77). According to

Empedocles, during the rule of Love, the four elements are fully united and form

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a single living being, which he calls the Sphairos. By killing another living thing we

are in effect replicating the destruction of the sacred One carried out by Strife.

Empedocles states that there is a universal kinship based on the common divine

origin of all forms of life, which come into existence during the cosmic cycle

(Primavesi 2008: 253, 256-258, 267). For Empedocles and Poe, life is not static

or external to matter but rather the result of a creative and dynamic process that

pervades all entities alike. Even though there is a clear distinction between humans

and animals in their philosophies, Pythagoras and Empedocles contend that to

treat any being with justice requires us to respect their nature. This premise does

not apply exclusively to the human species, but to all of existence. These assertions

remained highly controversial in Ancient Greece for many centuries, as they

disrupted the prevailing paradigm, which was strictly anthropocentric. For

instance, Empedocles is known to have been ridiculed for his belief that “all things

have insight and a share of understanding”, including animals and plants (Empiricus

2005: 146; Renehan 1981: 246). For his part, Pythagoras primarily views the soul

as the seat of emotions. As such, it differs from the intellect and is closely associated

with sentience. The kinship between animals and humans is therefore grounded in

the fact that both share this capacity to experience and respond to sensations such

as pleasure or pain. When the soul is born in a human body, it is forged by the

intellect. Nevertheless, it is not this faculty which passes from one body to another

but a personality defined by its feelings and desires (Huffman 2009: 23). Of

course, Edgar Allan Poe is far from endorsing this premise. However, he arguably

takes Pythagoras’s notion a step further in that he even challenges the supremacy

of reason over instinct. Tellingly, according to Joseph Stark, “The Black Cat” is in

fact a statement on the inadequacy of human rationality (2004: 263). In an article

published in Alexander’s Weekly Messenger in 1840, entitled “Instinct vs Reason

—A Black Cat”, Poe makes a surprising assertion:

While the self-love and arrogance of man will persist in denying the reflective power

to beasts […], he yet perpetually finds himself involved in the paradox of decrying

instinct as an inferior faculty, while he is forced to admit its infinite superiority […]

over the very reason which he claims exclusively as his own. Instinct, so far from

being an inferior reason, is perhaps the most exacted intellect of all. It will appear to

the true philosopher as the divine mind itself actingimmediatelyupon its creatures.

(Poe 1978b: 478, emphasis in original)

Later on, he speaks of “the perceptive and reflective faculties” which we mistakenly

believe pertain to reason alone (Poe 1978b: 479). Indeed, in “The Black Cat”, the

protagonist’s lack of empathy, insight and emotional intuition ineluctably lead to

his self-destruction. By comparison, his cat Pluto appears to be a much more

reasonable being. Poe thus subverts the Cartesian dualism which places human

beings on a higher rung than their animal counterparts. By killing his feline

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companion, the protagonist becomes a murderer even before he takes the life of

his spouse (Moreland and Rodriguez 2015: 205, 210). From the very moment he

disparages his initial “tenderness of heart” (Poe 1978a: 850) and betrays the trust

of his human and non-human loved ones, only the most dreadful fate can befall

him. Pythagoras and Empedocles state that to defile or obliterate is to act violently

and unjustly. If the law of measure is violated, it must be restored. Harmony is

understood in terms of cosmic equality, which in turn is a prerequisite to ensure

that cosmic justice prevails. As Gregory Vlastos explains, “the order of nature is

maintained because it is an order of equals” (1970: 57, emphasis in original) and

“[p]owers are equal if they can hold one another in check so that none can gain

‘mastery’ or ‘supremacy’ […] over the others” (58-59). In Eureka, Poe alludes to

this inexorable restoration of the natural order:

The absolute, irrelative particle primarily created by the Volition of God, must have

been in a condition of positive normality, or rightfulness —for wrongfulness implies

relation […]. That a thing may be wrong, it is necessary that there be some other

thing in relation to which it is wrong —some condition which it fails to satisfy; some

law which it violates; some being whom it aggrieves […]. Any deviation from

normality involves a tendency to return into it […]. Rëaction is the return from the

condition of as it is and ought not to be into the condition of as it was, originally, and

therefore ought to be […]. (Poe 1984: 1297-1298, emphasis in original)

Both Empedocles and Poe propound universal sentience, as to them all of matter

is imbued with mind. In fact, when alluding to the Sphairos, Empedocles writes,

“It lives,/ One holy mind, ineffable, alone,/ And with swift thoughts darts

through the universe” (B 134, in Leonard 1908: 61). Pythagoras understands the

cosmos as an animate and breathing entity, albeit constrained by a mathematical

structure (Wright 2008: 421). Pythagoras and Empedocles are believed to have

claimed that “we have a certain commonality not only towards one another and

the gods, but also towards the non-rational animals. For there is one breath reaching

through the whole world like a soul, which also unites us with them” (Empiricus

2012: 28, emphasis added). In Timaeus, Plato subsequently depicts the world as

“a living creature truly endowed with soul and intelligence” (1920c: 14). This

reverberates with the aforementioned metaphysical principle that Schelling himself

termed the world soul. Schelling, who worked extensively on Plato’s Timaeus,

shares this conception of the universe as a great animal wherein all the parts are

organically and reciprocally connected to the whole (Follesa 2021: 270). For Poe,

the expansion of consciousness across the cosmos casts doubt on whether human

beings are in truth the very culmination of this sentience. Indeed, he questions this

assumption and even grants consciousness to inanimate beings. In “The Island of

the Fay” (1841), he states that we are merely the inhabitants of “one vast animate

and sentient whole” (1978b: 600), and in Eureka, he writes the following:

Metempsychosis and Individual Identity in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat”

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All […] creatures —all— those whom you term animate, as well as those to which

you deny life for no better reason than that you do not behold it in operation —all

these creatures have, in a greater or less degree, a capacity for pleasure and for pain

[…]. These creatures are all, too, more or less, and more or less obviously, conscious

Intelligences; conscious, first, of a proper identity; conscious, secondly and by faint

indeterminate glimpses, of an identity with […] God. (Poe 1984: 1358, emphasis in

original)

According to Empedocles, everything, including gods and daemons, will eventually

fuse into a fundamental unity, the Sphairos. As we have seen, Poe shares this vision

of ultimate fusion into oneness. In “The Black Cat”, universal unification translates

into the protagonist’s particular demise. Matthew Taylor envisages the returning

cat as a material herald and synecdoche of Poe’s vision in Eureka —the fatal

compaction of all entities into one another (2013: 40, 43). The conflation of the

narrator and the feline’s identities erodes the mind’s integrity and individuality,

rendering the man unable to discern between his psyche and the outside world.

Furthermore, the merging of the inner and outer realms completely undermines

his autonomy. He can therefore no longer rely on his senses, and physical reality

becomes elusive. This dissolution of ontological boundaries ultimately implies that

the supposed destructive other cannot be distinguished from the indwelling

enemy, which is the corruption of his own soul. Hence, the attack is perpetrated

from within and without by means of cosmic convergence and a disintegration of

the self.

5. Conclusion

In “The Black Cat”, Edgar Allan Poe accepts the premise that metempsychosis can

occur from one feline creature to another. He thus embraces the Pythagorean and

Empedoclean notion that it is not an exclusively human phenomenon. Both

Presocratic philosophers contend that by inflicting violence and needless suffering

on animals, one is not only defying the Hellenic sacred law, but also disturbing a

natural order, which must finally be reinstated. Moreover, according to Plato’s

perturbing dictum, killers are condemned to a death equaling that of their victims.

Since Pythagoras and Empedocles claim that any creature can potentially be

bestowed with a human soul, it follows that by cold-bloodedly hanging his feline

companion, the narrator becomes a murderer long before he commits homicide

against his wife. For this reason, it is perhaps no coincidence that the protagonist

is himself sent to the gallows. In fact, in Poe’s story, it is a human being and not

an animal that behaves irrationally and self-destructively, which in turn subverts

the traditional hierarchy of reason over instinct.

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The daemon in “The Black Cat” has often been depicted as a purely malicious

presence. The aforementioned hegemonic reversal, however, points to a more

ambiguous ancient Greek conception of the daemonic, and the true origin of evil

in Poe’s tale remains as mysterious as the universe itself. Striving for unity of effect,

Poe steered away from straightforward explanations so as to leave the reader in a

perpetual state of wonder, a result which he undoubtedly achieves in this work. In

fact, the protagonist’s sadistic behavior precedes the moment when he is

purportedly possessed by a so-called daemonic fury. While he is clearly intent on

ascribing his vile acts to anything but the deterioration of his own soul, he also

alludes to his spirit of perverseness and inclination to commit violence against his

own nature.

In addition, various analogies can be drawn between Empedocles and Poe’s

cosmologies. In “The Black Cat”, Poe creates a microcosm in which to explore his

metaphysical principles. Both writers argue that, in time, all that exists will

eventually lapse into complete unity. In this tale, the narrator’s psyche and

individual identity merge with external physical reality so that the inner-outer and

human-animal boundaries are confounded. Thus, in the same way as it is impossible

to obliterate one’s shadow, the protagonist cannot rid himself of the ubiquitous

and avenging feline creature. Indeed, any effort to do so only hastens his own

annihilation.

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Received: 08/10/2023

Accepted: 02/05/2024

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