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Authors: Edgar Allan Poe

Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (107 page)

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D. H. LAWRENCE

Moralists have always wondered helplessly why Poe’s “morbid” tales need have been written. They need to be written because old things need to die and disintegrate, because the old white psyche has to be gradually broken down before anything else can come to pass.

Man must be stripped even of himself. And it is a painful, sometimes a ghastly process.

—from
Studies in Classic American Literature
(1923)

W. H. AUDEN

I myself cannot remember hearing any poetry before hearing “The Raven” and “The Bells”; and
“The Pit and the Pendulum”
was one of the first short stories I ever read.

—from his introduction to
Edgar Allan Poe:
Selected Prose, Poetry, and Eureka
(1950)

Questions

1. Do the sound effects in “The Raven” enhance or impede or perhaps even constitute the meaning of the poem?

2. Detective stories often have a providential aspect: One feels some outside force working to separate the sheep from the goats. But in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” there is no such force operating. We need Dupin to save Mr. Le Bon (“the Good”) and to banish the monster. Has God taken a break?

3. Why do you think Poe made his detective such an odd-ball? Why do you think his orangutan is so unrealistic? It commits its crimes while trying to imitate human behavior. Dupin brags that “most men, in respect to himself, wore windows in their bosoms.” Could it be argued that the orangutan is what Dupin sees—a primitive part of us—when he looks through the window to our bosoms?

4. Poe wrote that the “most poetic of all themes is the death of a beautiful woman.” Is this statement true? Does it prove that Poe is disturbed? Mean-spirited? Does other literature support Poe’s claim?

5. One way of understanding supernatural horror fiction is to see the various horrors as metaphors for psychological traits or events: The orangutan, for example, can be interpreted as something in humanity that is murderous and monstrous and primitive. Using this method, how would you read “Ligeia” or “William Wilson”?

6. A fellow poet, James Russell Lowell, once said that Poe was “three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.” What do you think?

For Further Reading

Other Works by Poe

Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, ed.
Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe.
3 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969-1978. The “Annals of Poe,” in volume 1, are especially illuminating about Poe’s life and career.

Pollin, Burton R., ed.
Collected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe.
Vol. 1:
The Imaginary Voyages.
Boston: Twayne, 1981. Contains texts of
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,
“The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall,” and
The Journal of Julius Rodman.

Critical Studies

Allen, Michael L.
Poe and the British Magazine Tradition.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.

Budd, Louis J., and Edwin H. Cady, eds.
On Poe: The Best from American Literature.
Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1993.

Eddings, Dennis W., ed.
The Naiad Voice: Essays on Poe’s Satiric Hoaxing.
Port Washington, NY: Associated Faculty Press, 1983.

Fisher, Benjamin F. “Poe and the Gothic Tradition.” In
The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe,
edited by Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 72-91.

.
The Gothic’s Gothic.
New York and London: Garland, 1988.

Jacobs, Robert D.
Poe, Journalist and Critic.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969.

Ljungquist, Kent.
The Grand and the Fair: Poe’s Landscape Aesthetics and Pictorial Techniques.
Potomac, MD: Scripta Humanistica, 1984.

Peeples, Scott.
Edgar Allan Poe Revisited.
New York and London: Twayne Publishers and Prentice Hall, 1998.

Ramakrishna, D., ed.
Perspectives on Poe.
New Delhi: APC Publications, 1996.

Silverman, Kenneth, ed.
New Essays on Poe’s Major Tales.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Thompson, G. Richard.
Poe’s Fiction: Romantic Irony in the Gothic Tales.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973.

Biographies

Quinn, Arthur Hobson.
Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography.
1941. Reprint: New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1969. Reprint, with a new foreword by Shawn Rosenheim: Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Silverman, Kenneth.
Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance.
New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Thomas, Dwight, and David K. Jackson.
The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809—1849.
Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987.

Other Works Cited in the Introduction

Poe, Edgar Allan.
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.
2 vols. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1840.

Seabird with an extremely wide wingspan and a reputation for unpredictability.

Namely; Poe’s use of this word exemplifies his wish to appear erudite.

And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.—Koran (Poe’s note).

In classical mythology, a river in Hades; drinking its water caused one to forget one’s past.

Islands west of Scotland.

That is, walls destined to destruction; according to biblical prophecy, “the broad walls of Babylon [an ancient city of Mesopotamia] shall be utterly broken” (Jeremiah 51:58, King James Version).

“Chaldee” refers to Chaldeans, a people of ancient Babylonia who gave great credence to astrology, divination based on the theory that human and astronomical events are linked.

In classical mythology, Memnon is a son of Eos, the Dawn; the reference is to an ancient statue of Memnon in Thebes, said to produce a musical sound when struck by the first rays of the sun at daybreak (Eos’s “kiss”).

Phantom.

Ancient name for extreme northern Europe; Poe’s context may imply limits to any endeavor.

Possibly a reference to vast tracts of huge trees; in classical mythology, Titans were primitive gods of great strength and size.

Legendary creatures that rob graves and eat the flesh of corpses; see the characterization of them as beneficial creatures in “Ulalume: A Ballad.”

That is, a place of great riches or opportunities; thematically, this poem bears re semblances to Poe’s later poem “Eldorado,” in which no known geographical locale, but more likely an emotional or spiritual goal, is suggested.

Old colloquialism for a shadow created by embers; thus Poe’s context is wonderfully ambiguous, hinting simultaneous everyday and supernatural possibilities.

In Greek mythology, Pluto, also called Hades, ruled the underworld; Poe’s context combines darkness and despair.

Something that brings forgetfulness or ends suffering.

Biblical city known for its manufacture of and commerce in medicinal spices.

That is, Eden.

That is, waning or disappearing (literally, growing old).

Tending to become liquid; melting. ‡Phoenician goddess of fertility and sensual love. §That is, Diana (see note 1), who in classical mythology is associated with the moon, a cold planet that represents chastity. ∥That is, a peace that brings forgetfulness (see note on p. 14).

Or sibyllic, referring to the ancient Greek prophetess Sibyl; the light suggests to the speaker a prophetic sign that he imagines is good.

Magical.

Ringing or jingling; Poe used difficult words partly to appear more educated than he was.

Here, the more traditional, frightening variety, in contrast to those in “Ulalume: A Ballad.”

Far more an element of the mind than an actual geographical place (see note on p. 23); a meeting area for happiness and somberness.

Legendary mountains (today thought to be Africa’s Ruwenzori Mountains) that suggest distances unattainable by humans.

Comes from the inability to be alone (French). Poe’s note: Mercier, in
“L‘an deux mille quatre cent quarante,”
seriously maintains the doctrines of the Metempsychosis [see note 1 of
Tales],
and I. D’Israeli says that “no system is so simple and so little repugnant to the understanding.” Colonel Ethan Allen, the “Green Mountain Boy,” is also said to have been a serious metempsychosist.

The soul ... resides but once in a corporeal body: for the rest—a horse, a dog, even a human, it is only an intangible phantom of those animals (French).

Apparently mad Roman emperor (A.D. 37-41), who was known for his cruel and ruthless acts and who loved horses.

French phrases and words:
pâtés à la fois:
pates at that time;
sur la Nature.
on the Essence; sur
l‘Ame:
on the soul;
sur l’Esprit:
on the Spirit;
omelettes:
omelets;
fricandeaux:
veal stew;
littérateur:
writer;
Idée de Bon-Bon:
Idea of Bon-Bon’s;
savants:
learned ones.

Authoritative pronouncements (Latin).

Hash, or easy transition (French).

Meaning deductive reasoning (Latin).

Meaning reasoning from observed facts, or inductive reasoning (Latin).

Φρ∈ν∈ς (Poe’s note).

High relief.

Under-chef, apprentice chef (French).

Agreeable (French).

Entire ensemble (French).

Works of Bon-Bon (French).

Or
à la Grecque;
Grecian (French).

Library (French).

Mixtures (French).

Egg dish featuring cream sauce enriched with truffles and asparagus.

Rich omelette with chicken, mushrooms, and ripe olives.

Pigtail (French).

Writing instrument.

“Catholic Ritual” (French)—that is, it is a Roman Catholic Mass book; but note the subsequent appearance of the title, in which it changes to
“Régitre des Condamnés”
(“Register of the Condemned [the damned]”).

The changes transform the Greek sentence from “the mind is itself” to “the mind is a light.”

Ils écrivaient sur la Philosophie
(Cicero, Lucretius, Seneca)
mais c‘était la Philosophie Grecque.—
Condorcet
(Poe’s note).

The names in this and the following paragraphs are those of classical authors and scientists.

To be excited by nothing (Latin).

Living body (Latin).

These names and partial names include renowned villains from legend and history.

Quere-Aroue? (Poe’s note). Arouet was the actual name of French writer Voltaire (1694-1778).

The epigraph, from seventeenth-century French dramatist Philippe Quinault (1635-1688), translates, “He who has but a moment to live has nothing to conceal.”

Meaning “extreme skepticism” (referring to the ancient Greek philosopher Pyrrho, known as the father of skepticism); that is, the narrator wants his account to appear realistic.

Oriental, lightweight coasting ships with sails.

That is, a terrific storm; literally, a hot, destructive wind from Asian and African deserts.

Old name for Australia.

In Scandinavian mythology, a sea monster of enormous size.

Old times; antiquity.

Three famous ruined cities in the ancient Near East.

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