I love those days that are like journeys you never expected to go on.
Last Halloween I set myself the challenge of reading a bunch of Edgar Allan Poe stories, but 'A Descent into the Maelstrom' didn't make the list. It's sad to say that I had gone my whole life without reading anything by Poe until last year and it was not what I expected. Pitched to me by TV and media that Poe was this great horror writer, I had expected horror, the fantastical and the ghostly. But, this isn't Poe. Poe's stories remind me of a line from 'Doctor Who', of all things, "the evils that men do." Poe's stories are the horror of humans, the evil's that consume people and the darkness that lives inside us all.
I never expected to end today with 'A Descent into the Maelstrom', but like I said, today has been a journey. I was reading 'Death's End' by Cixin Liu this morning, this story by Poe was mentioned and I thought, why not, it's sitting on my bookcase, unread, why not?
This story is a contrast to the stories I read last Halloween, where the others were the horror of humans, this was the horror of nature, or even the horror of God. It makes me think of 'The Tyger' by William Blake, so pretentious, I know, but "What immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?" 'A Descent into the Maelstrom' is the horror of a God that creates the beautiful and the monstrous.