not being anti-Catholic-Poe passes no judgment on his two
characters-but the theme of religious conflict in his story finds
an interesting antecedent in the earlier Gothic fiction.
Although the time of Poe’s story is unclear, it could be set
during the period of forthright Catholic reaction against Free-
masonry: by the eighteenth century some Masons of the French,
Italian and other Latin lodges were hostile to the Church, and
in 1738 Pope Clement XI1 condemned Freemasonry in his bull,
I n Eminenti. Clement declared that those who joined the fra-
ternity were excommunicated because the beliefs of Freemasonry
made it a secretive and pagan religion and a possible threat to
Church and state; also, he condemned the oaths and ritual. After
1738 many of the largely Catholic countries tried to suppress
Freemasonry. [The best short histories of Freemasonry are in
Encyclopaedia Britannica ( 1970) and New Catholic Encyclopedia.]
As a Freemason and thus a heretic Fortunato would automatically
be excommunicated and therefore in Montresor’s deranged mind
without the benefits of communion in the Catholic Church, no
better than the infidels whom the Crusaders killed. And as a
political enemy of the Church Fortunato would be a threat to
its secular domination. Also, his Masonic sign, which Mon-
tresor calls “grotesque,” would be, by the command of the Pope,
offensive. Montresor appointed himself the agent of retribution
against this enemy of God and cleverly turned Fortunato’s
Freemasonry against him in the plan of the murder, but it is
not surprising that as a faithful Catholic Montresor should later
be disturbed by his deed, even if h e cannot define those feelings
nor experience genuine remorse. His discontent is intensified
by a strong sense that his wrongs have not been wholly redressed,
that he has failed in his vengeance against this religious and
political enemy. Because of the complexity of his motivations
and personality, Montresor is a character of considerable im-
portance and interest in Gothic fiction. On account of its irony
“The Cask of Amontillado” can be read in a variety of ways,
not the least of which should take cognizance of the Catholic-
Masonic conflict, the source of which can be traced to both fact
and fiction.
James E. Rocks, Loyola University of Chicago
Poetic Justice in “The Cask of Amontillado”
A Roman Catholic aristocrat takes revenge on his Freemason
enemy by walling him into a corner of the family catacombs,
thus destroying his life and freedom by masonry. To most
readers this is an audacious pun, but to anti-Masonic readers
it is poetic justice as well: the remains of Fortunato, the hapless
Mason, will lie among the bones of his Roman Catholic enemies,
the “great and numerous” Montresors, while the present Mon-
tresor lives on. Anti-Masonic readers may be few today, but
in the 1840’s they too would have been numerous. There were
even more anti-Catholic readers, and many would have hated
both in those Know-Nothing days. The very genre of “The
Cask of Amontillado,” the Gothic tale, assumes a Protestant
audience ready to believe the worst about monks and nuns and
to pity poor Protestants under their power. For this audience
Pce constructs a correlative dramatic irony, far subtler in its
machinery than was usual for Gothic tales. The irony is generated
by the opening and closing paragraphs, spoken to somebody in
the present and framing the tale which Montresor tells to “you,
who so well know the nature of my soul.” Encountering these
words at the outset, the reader assumes that he is being addressed,
but as the horror mounts, and as we discover in the final para-
graph that the events took place fifty years ago, a more distant
relationship of reader to teller takes shape. W e are overhearing
the confession of a dying man whose confessor, although he may
know the nature of Montresor’s soul, is ignorant of his greatest
secret. That (or this tale) is triumphantly told as Montresor
prepares to take his treasure, his apparently successful revenge,
into the grave, free from retribution-or so h e thinks. This
freedom is necessary to revenge, for according to Montresor “a
wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser.”
But vengeance is the Lord’s-as Pw’s contemporaries would have
known-and despite the Montresors’ motto (nemo me irn#ine
lacesrit), in a Christian universe no private vengeance can be
exacted with impunity, and a mortal sin unrepented brings eternal
retribution, even when it is confessed-especially when it is
“confessed” with relish. The Protestant Christian audience (and
here Poe has his own irony to savor) can indulge their ideo-
logical hatreds by jnstly condemning Montresor to hell on the
strength of his professed beliefs which, in this matter, they
share. He or his confessor may say “ I n pace reqnkscat!” but
Poe’s contemporary audience sends him howling to hell. Any
modern reader able to share that audience’s response will more
fully enjoy the rich ironic effects of this tale.
Kent Bales, University of Minnesota
Three Observations on “Amontillado” and Lolita
George P. Clark‘s final point in “A Further Word on Poe ana
Lolita” { P N , 3 (1970), 391 strikes me as a misreading of the
Poe story. Clark says both Montresor and Humbert Humbert feel
revulsion at the end of their respective dramas; that Nabokov’s
phrase “with a heavy heart” is the equivalent of Montresor’s
“My heart grew sick.” Clark neglects to finish Poe’s sentence,
however, and thereby misses the irony attached to the character
of Montresor. The line reads: “My heart grew sick; on account
of the dampness of the catacombs.” In other words, Montresor
feels nothing at all of guilt or remorse or revulsion over his
crime. The first part of the sentence sets up a surmise that
he does, but the second part kills the idea. Montresor wants
to leave in a hurry not because he is murdering an old acquaint-
ance, but because it is chilly and damp down there in the cellar.
William Goldhurst, University of Florida
Please allow me to comment briefly on Mr. George P. Clark’s
“A Further Word on Poe and Lolitd’ [ P N , 3 (1970), 391.
Mr. Clark notes that neither I, in my Annotated Lolita, nor any
earlier commentators have noticed “the incidental parody of
‘The Cask of Amontillado’ in Chapter 35 of Lolita.” I did
indeed notice a few loose parallels between the two, and asked
Vladimir Nabokov if he had intended a parody. H e had not,
he said, nor did he remember the tale, which he probably read
as a boy. I should have included in my edition an “anti-annc-
tation” to that effect (“Nabokov did not intend . . . .”), as I
do in several other instances. Of course, everyone knows that
the problem of intention is controversial and arguable, but Mr.
Nabokov is the most conscious and self-conscious of artists, and
in regard to literary allusions and parodies (as opposed to
“symbolism” and “allegory”) he is nothing if not in total control.
Alfred Appel, Jr., Northwestern University
Vladimir Nabokov’s statement to Mr. Appel apparently sufficed
to satisfy the latter’s curiosity about “a few loose parallels”
between Fortunato’s murder and that of Clare Quilty, this despite
the fact that Mr. Appel has elsewhere written {“Lolita: The
Springboard of Parody,” in Nabokov: The Man and His Work
(Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1967), p. 1351 that in
the Pavor Manor chapter “All the novel’s parodic themes are
concluded . . . .” The similarities now seem all the more inter-
esting, for it appears that Nabokov could have Poe’s work very
much in mind while writing Lolita and yet be entirely unaware
of certain parallels, however loose, between the high point of
his narrative and that of a famous Poe story he had read long
ago. In this instance, Nabokov’s memory appears to have been
heard without speaking-and to very good purpose. There is
little I can say to the reader who feels that Montresor is sick
at heart because the dampness of the catacombs has chilled him
to the bone. I have always supposed the words following the
semicolon (hastily plastered to the first of the sentence, the joint
still showing) could be taken to indicate the improvised quality
of Montresor’s specious explanation.
George P. Clark, Hanover College
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