Here's my interpretation of the song as an homage to Edgar Allan Poe (at least in inspiration). I'm not sure if this is what the above poster's talking about, but I think it makes sense.
The intro to the song:
Seven years ago
In a foreign town
Far away from home
I met the Count of Tuscany
A young eccentric man
Bred from royal blood
Took me for a ride
Across the open countryside
Reminds me quite a bit of the intro to "The Fall of the House of Usher". A little later the comparison continues but is inverted:
At last we came upon
A picturesque estate
On sprawling emerald fields
An ancient world
Of times gone by
Whereas the Usher estate was dead, with rotted trees and such, the Count's estate is "Picturesque" and specifically "sprawling emerald". This selection is curious, because emphasized at the end of the House of Usher is the description of the land surrounding the house as a "deep and dank tarn" (A tarn being a large, mostly stagnant-water lake), so here we have contrast between an open field and a closed body of water, the former free and alive and the latter restricted and dead. The "I" choruses later on echo the sentiment of the protagonist in Usher, emphasizing a sense of the place just not feeling right and being afraid for his life while his guide (Usher in the Poe story, the Count here) is unmoved.
Then we seem to get a switch to another of Poe's stories, "The Cask of Amontillado". The skeleton of the saint seems to be another inversion of the story -- instead of the Poe story, where we have a drunkard (Fortunato) chained up behind a brick wall at the end as a punishment(The protagonist of this story, Montresor, was also a mason, which might be a cross-reference from here to A Rite of Passage), we have a saint behind a glass wall for the purposes of prayer. The same allusion runs with the wine stanzas below in a little mix with the plot of "The Masque of the Red Death" (Which could explain the booklet artwork, at least in the Special Edition, of the red picture of the man in the hood accompanying the lyrics to this song). These stanzas below:
Could this be the end?
Is this the way I die?
Sitting here alone?
No one by my side
I don't understand
I don't feel that I deserve this
What did I do wrong?
I just don't understand
Give me one more chance
Let me please explain
It's all been circumstance
I'll tell you once again
You took me for a ride
Promising a vast adventure
Next thing that I know
I'm frightened for my life
Mirror Fortunato's situation after being chained up and imprisoned in Montresor's dungeon, but in another inversion, the Count lets him go instead of keeping our protagonist locked up.
And from here we get to the ocean sounds at the end of the story. They seem to me to be a reflection of a poem of Poe's called "Annabel Lee", which is set in a seaside location and happened to be the last of Poe's poems before his death, as the sounds are the last on the album.
Thematically, Petrucci could be using the inversions to reject Poe's dark and tragic view of life, illuminating a "people are better than they seem" theme in contrast to Poe's "people are worse than they seem" themes running through his work.
I could be (and I probably am) overreading this, but if I'm right, the raven on the album cover would make a whole bunch more sense, wouldn't it? (And of course I'm not saying that it isn't, as Petrucci said, based on an encounter he personally had, but the details he chooses to write about suggests that he knows his Poe).
In addition, the booklet has a total of 116 written lines for this song. Taking those and adding in the spoken line by Portnoy ("Let me please explain", echoing James) and adding in all the "Whoas" after the last line of the song counted from the "Whoa" and not the "-oa"s after each one (There are 8), the song comes out to 125 total lines, the exact length of Poe's "The Raven".
Here's my interpretation of the song as an homage to Edgar Allan Poe (at least in inspiration). I'm not sure if this is what the above poster's talking about, but I think it makes sense.
The intro to the song:
Reminds me quite a bit of the intro to "The Fall of the House of Usher". A little later the comparison continues but is inverted:
Whereas the Usher estate was dead, with rotted trees and such, the Count's estate is "Picturesque" and specifically "sprawling emerald". This selection is curious, because emphasized at the end of the House of Usher is the description of the land surrounding the house as a "deep and dank tarn" (A tarn being a large, mostly stagnant-water lake), so here we have contrast between an open field and a closed body of water, the former free and alive and the latter restricted and dead. The "I" choruses later on echo the sentiment of the protagonist in Usher, emphasizing a sense of the place just not feeling right and being afraid for his life while his guide (Usher in the Poe story, the Count here) is unmoved.
Then we seem to get a switch to another of Poe's stories, "The Cask of Amontillado". The skeleton of the saint seems to be another inversion of the story -- instead of the Poe story, where we have a drunkard (Fortunato) chained up behind a brick wall at the end as a punishment(The protagonist of this story, Montresor, was also a mason, which might be a cross-reference from here to A Rite of Passage), we have a saint behind a glass wall for the purposes of prayer. The same allusion runs with the wine stanzas below in a little mix with the plot of "The Masque of the Red Death" (Which could explain the booklet artwork, at least in the Special Edition, of the red picture of the man in the hood accompanying the lyrics to this song). These stanzas below:
Mirror Fortunato's situation after being chained up and imprisoned in Montresor's dungeon, but in another inversion, the Count lets him go instead of keeping our protagonist locked up.
And from here we get to the ocean sounds at the end of the story. They seem to me to be a reflection of a poem of Poe's called "Annabel Lee", which is set in a seaside location and happened to be the last of Poe's poems before his death, as the sounds are the last on the album.
Thematically, Petrucci could be using the inversions to reject Poe's dark and tragic view of life, illuminating a "people are better than they seem" theme in contrast to Poe's "people are worse than they seem" themes running through his work.
I could be (and I probably am) overreading this, but if I'm right, the raven on the album cover would make a whole bunch more sense, wouldn't it? (And of course I'm not saying that it isn't, as Petrucci said, based on an encounter he personally had, but the details he chooses to write about suggests that he knows his Poe).
In addition, the booklet has a total of 116 written lines for this song. Taking those and adding in the spoken line by Portnoy ("Let me please explain", echoing James) and adding in all the "Whoas" after the last line of the song counted from the "Whoa" and not the "-oa"s after each one (There are 8), the song comes out to 125 total lines, the exact length of Poe's "The Raven".
i noticed another similarity to the "the raven" by poe.
i noticed another similarity to the "the raven" by poe.
if you look on the album cover there is the obvious raven, but also the logo of the band is a shadow on the floor:
if you look on the album cover there is the obvious raven, but also the logo of the band is a shadow on the floor:
"And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted - nevermore!"
"And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted - nevermore!"