This is another Poe story originally submitted to the Philadelphia Saturday Morning Courier in 1831, and supposedly destined for that never-to-be-publ This is another Poe story originally submitted to the Philadelphia Saturday Morning Courier in 1831, and supposedly destined for that never-to-be-published collection of pastiches, homages and parodies known as Tales of the Folio Club. It is a style-parody of the short horror fiction published in England’s Blackwood’s Magazine, which typically involved breakneck escapes from unusual predicaments. Five years later Poe would write a better parody of this sort (the companion pieces “The Psyche Zenobia” and “The Scythe of Time,” later published as “A Predicament” and “How to Write a Blackwood Article”), and ten years later he would transmute the Blackwood approach into a work of genius: “The Pit and the Pendulum.’
But “A Loss of Breath” (or “A Decided Loss,” as it was originally titled) is considerably removed from any touch of Poe’s genius. It is labored, overly long, and desperately unfunny, and should be avoided by all readers except those fascinated with everything Poe.
Instead of boring you with excerpts showing you how bad this is, I will instead show you a passage toward the beginning that I actually liked. Poe was always a precise observer and a precise thinker, and here we see the narrator, having literally ”lost his breath” arguing with his wife, discovering that he can produce some vocal sounds without any breath at all:
The phrases “I am out of breath,” “I have lost my breath,” etc., are often enough repeated in common conversation; but it had never occurred to me that the terrible accident of which I speak could bona fide and actually happen! Imagine — that is if you have a fanciful turn — imagine, I say, my wonder — my consternation — my despair! ...
Although I could not at first precisely ascertain to what degree the occurence had affected me, I determined at all events to conceal the matter from my wife, until further experience should discover to me the extent of this my unheard of calamity ...
I am serious in asserting that my breath was entirely gone. I could not have stirred with it a feather if my life had been at issue, or sullied even the delicacy of a mirror. Hard fate! — yet there was some alleviation to the first overwhelming paroxysm of my sorrow. I found, upon trial, that the powers of utterance which, upon my inability to proceed in the conversation with my wife, I then concluded to be totally destroyed, were in fact only partially impeded, and I discovered that had I, at that interesting crisis, dropped my voice to a singularly deep guttural, I might still have continued to her the communication of my sentiments; this pitch of voice (the guttural) depending, I find, not upon the current of the breath, but upon a certain spasmodic action of the muscles of the throat.
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