In Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Haunted Palace,” there are references to insanity and the loss of mental function.
The poem starts off with the idea of a healthy mind: “in the greenest of our valleys by good angels tenanted.” The mind is compared to a “fair and stately palace,” in which “monarch Thought’s dominion,” resided.
Happy thoughts are described as “wanders in that happy valley,” where there is music and health and laughter. Joyous words are let out from the mouth if the mind, “wit and wisdom,” pouring out from the healthy brain.
But “evil things, in robes of sorrow,” attack the mind. This could be symbolic of depression and the negative thoughts that come from it, assailing the mind and breaking down its fabric of sanity. The happy past is forgotten, “the old time entombed,” in memories, no longer a living reality.
The depression catapults into insanity as “vast forms,” symbolic of thought, “move fantastically to a discordant melody.’ That is, the thoughts become disorganized and cacophonous, which may be symbolic of Schizophrenia and other mental disorders in which cognition is affected negatively and thoughts become disordered and muddled.
The last line, “…laugh—but smile no more,” may be further symbolic of the idea that the insane laugh without any apparent provocation. The mentally ill, at least in pop psychology, have outbursts of emotions, but the emotions may not be part of a conscious and cognizant arsenal. The emotions may be reflexive or without external factors affecting them. The emotions are generated within by mind, by the mind, without outside influence.
*All quotes from Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, by Edgar Allan Poe, Pocket Books, 2003. New York, NY 10020. Pages 395-396.
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