Aleister

Crowley

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POETRY: Ancient Classical Modern Contemporary

MODERN: Aleister Crowley Edna St. Vincent Millay Charles Baudelaire

Aleister Crowley: Aleister Crowley Poetry

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AU THEATRE OF GRAND GUIGNOL

(Aleister Crowley on Edgar Poe)

Le System du Docteur Goudron et du Professeur Plume

What this system really implies.

Poe!
Poe by the gift of the
Poe in his tragedy,
Black melodrama,
Horrid, overwhelming,
Nerve-shattering maniacal effort
Dictated by morphia, Poe
The American poet
Translated by Baudelaire,
Stephen Mallarmé
And other people
Of singular and perhaps
Unique talent
(Now joined by
André de Lordes)
Is a splendid success
At the quaint little theatre
Of Montmartre.
Speed! -- I mean Poe!

The tradition of lurid melodrama at the Theatre du Grand Guignol, an infamous salon in late nineteenth century Paris, became synonymous with the dramatic presentation of violence, gore, torture, and perversion. In the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe, short plays and tableaux were presented to depict famous murders and outrages, with trick staging and a suggestive prurience intended to shock and thrill the jaded Parisian bourgeoisie. The extreme stylized violence and the casual immorality came from a vulgar French tradition after which this theatrical style was named, the Guignol "theatre" of hand-puppets, which was popular in provincial France, and was the direct precursor to the animated cartoons of our own century. This piece was published at the end of a volume of Crowley's comic poetry.

- In Residence: the Don's Guide to Cambridge (Cambridge, Elijah Johnson, 1904).