Cocktail 30: Loss of Breath

“Thou wretch! — thou vixen! — thou shrew!” — said I to my wife on the morning after our wedding — “thou witch! — thou hag! — thou whippersnapper! — thou sink of iniquity! — thou fiery-faced quintessence of all that is abominable! — thou — thou —” Here standing upon tiptoe, seizing her by the throat, and placing my mouth close to her ear, I was preparing to launch forth a new and more decided epithet of opprobrium which should not fail, if ejaculated, to convince her of her insignificance, when, to my extreme horror and astonishment, I discovered that I had lost my breath.

The phrases “I am out of breath,” “I have lost my breath,” &c. are often enough repeated in common conversation, but it had never occurred to me that the terrible accident of which I speak could bonâ fide and actually happen! Imagine — that is if you have a fanciful turn — imagine I say, my wonder — my consternation — my despair!

In my humble opinion, this is one of Poe’s less successful parodies. For yes, he is mocking the sensationalist and literally incredible style of popular fiction published in Blackwood’s Magazine. Indeed, to drive home the link Poe affixes the subtitle, “A Tale Neither In Nor Out of Blackwood.” Poe, it will be remembered, explicitly mocks Blackwood tales in two other stories: “How To Write a Blackwood Article” and “A Predicament.”

But to return to “Loss of Breath”: after Mr. Lacko’breath loses his breath, he attempts to hide his affliction and sets out to somehow live a semi-normal life in another land. Alas, what follows is an ever-worsening series of mishaps which find him mistaken for dead, made the subject of gruesome medical experiments, and even hanged. (Because he lacks breath, however, the process of hanging him has no effect on his respiration, and he lives on.) He ends up being placed in a tomb next to his neighbor, Mr. Windenough, who also had been assumed dead, in his case after going into a catatonic state as a result of accidentally inhaling (?) Mr. Lacko’breath’s breath.

There’s a lot more detail and twists in this story, but I think you get the point. Moving on.

Ingredients:

Put all the liquid ingredients in a shaker with ice, pour into a chilled coupe glass, and garnish with a cherry.

Oh! breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade

Where cold and unhonor’d his relics are laid:

Sad, silent and dark, be the tears that we shed,

As the night-dew that falls on the grass o’er his head!

Poe-Poe-Script

Attentive readers will recall my unfortunate run-in with green Chartreuse a few years back. The description of the wreckage is here. For this reason I jumped at the opportunity to substitute Dolin Genepy for the Chartreuse. The herbal flavor profiles are similar, but the Dolin doesn’t quite resurrect the hideous memories of yore.