Edgar Allan

In this chapter his young wife has unexpectedly died, another in a string of tragedies that made up the author's life. Poe keeps at the newspaper a while but he returns to drinking and gets fired.

1
He is sent to the hell of capcrice, the worst hell of all. Worse than the hell of flesh-melting flame, worse than the hell of dead senses, far worse than the hell where you must watch loved ones being hurt, which is worse than the hell where they hurt you.

2
In the hell of caprice all these can happen, and they do without pattern or reason. He doesn't know if it will stop in the next instant or in two thousand years. When it does stop its replacement may last only a few seconds, a few seconds of the foulest disease-ridden pain, only to give way to an opera of choreographed misery.

3
And the whole time, amid torture so complete it stifles his screams, he wonders why it's happening to him. Yet he knows the reason. The answer is there is no answer. The pain embalms his skin and bones, it erases his emotions and withers your heart. But it's the reason, the terrible knowledge of no cause, that rends his soul.

4
He escapes. All that is required, finally, is a change in his thinking. The world stays the same, with all its petty awfulness, as well as all its love. For him music is the answer. This time he finds it in a small curio that sells sheet music. The title calls to him: "Enthusiasm for Life Defeats Internal Existential Fear, Progressive."

5
Take note: do not raise this song above its station. For this means do not play it at every mass, or make it in any way a tradition.