what does it mean i dont understand it and i have a prject due

-- Anonymous, December 12, 2001

Answers

It is meant to be a fable combining the Greek understanding with mystical Islam. For Poe the experience of silence is a horrid hiatus inspiring dread sometimes precursing a deadly change in the environment(City beneath the Sea, the sonnet Silence) like the calm before and after the Maelstrom, when the universe hangs on a pivot of entropy before some shocking disruption switches it to dissolution and chaos. read those other works at www.eapoe.org. Remember it is the Demon from the tomb who delights in telling his tale of scaring a man of the lost classical West. That man is a disturbed exile looking for a last refuge in desolation and solitude but finding the void of silence too great to bear.

The Demon laughs at his exploit but curses the Muslim for his...silence which possibly is an exorcism similar to that which the demon employed to scare away toga guy from the Zaire river. I need help with that infernal lynx, probably the bestial inscrutability of the two occupants of the tomb contemplating each other.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2001

Oh, and in earlier versions(Siope- A Fable) Poe describes the writing as a psychological autograph or free flowing fantasy exploration of some deep personal experience. If you scan some of his other works you can see this inner probing and subsequent fantasizing in other stories and poems.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2001