“THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON”: THOMAS VAUGHAN, POE AND THE POETICS OF ALCHEMY
Journal Title: International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) - Year 2017, Vol 7, Issue 1
Abstract
The interpretive line of Poe as existentially but not necessarily philosophically Gnostic does little to explain Poe’s alchemical acumen or hermetic subtlety. That Poe was familiar with alchemical sources finds evidence in the volumes of alchemical lore Poe himself enumerates in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” in the hermetic codification apparent in operations of “The Gold Bug” or may be deduced from Gnostic elements teased out from their post-human apparatus in works such as “Maelzel’s Chess Player.” What remains generally unrecognized is the hermetic literature Poe read, or the depth of influence of any such literature on Poe’s writing style or field of poetic images. This essay offers evidence of the origin of Poe’s phrase “the mountains of the moon,” and perhaps other imagery and conceits of Poe’s as well, in the work of the last of the classical British alchemists, Thomas Vaughan (1621-1666). Because Vaughn, the twin brother of metaphysical poet Henry Vaughn, was one of the few practicing alchemists to write in English; because he himself was a great writer; because his genre-crossing treatises bear certain similarities to Poe’s admixture of poetry and prose; and because an important piece of phraseology if not deep-imagery employed by Poe was also employed by Vaughan, the defrocked cleric might be considered perhaps not a source, but at any rate an influence on Poe. This perhaps chimerical conceit allows us an instructive portal into Poe’s poetics, Vaughan’s hidden message to the post-human in the secret language of the Rosicrucians and Heidegger’s notion of Transcendental Deception.
Authors and Affiliations
KURT CLINE
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