Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) created a literary legacy of tragedy
and gloom that mirrored the actual events of his life. Orphaned
at the age of two, young Edgar was taken in by friends of his
mother, John and Fanny Allan, although Edgar was never officially
adopted by them. The Allans moved to London, where Edgar began
his formal education, but returned to Richmond, Virginia after
five years. When he was of age, Edgar joined the Army and entered
West Point Academy. While he was there, Fanny Allan died and
his relationship with his foster father deteriorated, until John
Allan ceased all contact with Edgar. Soon afterward, he was dismissed
from the Army for several counts of insubordination. Once the
stability of his young life had been torn apart, Poe decided
to follow his lifelong passion and pursue a career as a professional
writer.
Though several of Poe's early works
were published, none of them garnered him much recognition in
the literary world. In 1845, Poe's poem "The Raven"
was first published in the New York newspaper The Evening
Mirror. The poem was hailed by critics as a work of genius,
earning Poe a respected reputation as a serious writer.
In Poe's fictional world, cats
could incite a man to unfathomable loathing and violence, vengeful
dwarves could literally make monkeys out of kings, and the dead
rarely if ever stayed dead. "The Tell-Tale Heart,"
in which the imagined beating of a murder victim's heart unnerves
the murderer enough to make him confess his crime, is perhaps
the definitive tale of psychosis and guilty conscience. There
is no more memorable study of icy, calculated revenge than "The
Cask of Amontillado," in which a character is bricked up
alive in a wine cellar. And the eerie, fable-like "The Masque
of the Red Death" is probably the quintessential horror
story; in it, a rich, haughty prince's masquerade ball in a time
of plague is not immune from the menace of the Red Death, for
it arrives as the ultimate uninvited guest.
While he pioneered the depiction
of horror and madness, he also originated the detective story,
in which heightened powers of reason and deduction solve bewildering
mysteries. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The
Mystery of Marie Roget" were the first examples of the 'story
of ratiocination,' and their influence can be felt even in modern
day crime novels and police procedurals.
Reason and logical analysis were
key pillars of Poe's literary life. His voluminous essays and
book reviews established his name as an astute, and often harsh
critic. He wrote over a dozen articles on cryptography, often
challenging readers to send him ciphers which he would then easily
crack. In his tale "The Gold Bug," Poe includes a crash-course
on code breaking as he describes how the main characters use
logic to decipher the directions to a buried pirate treasure.
However, while Poe's literary career
was on the rise, his personal life was disintegrating into embarrassing
chaos and irrationality.
Poe's Decline
Despite gaining much critical and popular acclaim, the economic
fragility of the magazine business forced Poe to latch onto whatever
periodical would have him. He took up residence in first Baltimore,
then Philadelphia, then New York, wherever he could find promising
work. But his often serious problem with alcohol combined with
his innate combativeness as a critic and employee only succeeded
in alienating one editor after another. His vicious critical
attacks upon Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and other prominent writers
of the time outraged the literati. Wherever Poe went, he made
enemies and created hard feelings.
The spitefulness of his literary
demeanor seems inextricably linked to the increasing desperation
of his personal situation. He was always in need of money, not
only for his sake but also for the sake of his young wife, Virginia,
who was dying of tuberculosis.
His first cousin on his father's
side, Virginia Clemm married Poe when she was only thirteen.
He found her childlike innocence and beauty enchanting, and she
in turn was devoted to him; their relationship seemed more like
that of brother and sister than husband and wife. As his professional
life grew more perilous, Virginia became more and more his only
source of joy. In a letter to her, he writes, "You are my
greatest and only stimulus now, to battle with this uncongenial,
unsatisfactory and ungrateful life."
On January 30, 1847, that stimulus
was removed for good. Virginia was only twenty-five when she
died.
Poe had lived with the fact of
her inevitable death for years, and it haunts his work. The Red
Death is a thinly veiled tuberculosis scourge. In "The Oblong
Box," a grieving artist lashes himself to the coffin of
his dead wife as the ship carrying them both is wrecked by a
storm. And despite his claims to the contrary, "The Raven"
can be seen as a rehearsal of his own forthcoming grief.
A Tragic End
On October 3, 1849, forty-year-old Edgar Allan Poe arrived in
a Baltimore tavern, barely conscious and clad in filthy, ill-fitting
clothes that probably were not his. Ostensibly in town to drum
up subscribers for a potential literary magazine, he was found
at the tavern by an acquaintance who became alarmed by Poe's
wrecked, incoherent state. The renowned author of "The Raven"
was taken to nearby Washington Medical College, where his condition
worsened. Miserable and delirious, Poe spoke to imagined people,
and in one grimly lucid moment told a doctor that the best thing
that anyone could do for him would be to put him out of his misery
with a pistol.
Poe spent the next few days in
the hospital, semi-conscious and raving, suffering from either
severe alcohol poisoning or some form of encephalitis. Then,
on the morning of October 7, his delirium abated, and the attending
doctor heard him utter his last words: "Lord, help my poor
soul." With that, the brief, unhappy life of Edgar Allan
Poe was over.
No one knows how Poe ended up in
Baltimore in such a pitiable state, but this denouement was very
much in keeping with the rest of his life. Like a character from
one of his own stories, Poe struggled mightily for a life of
reason and refinement, but his every step seemed haunted by specters
of madness and personal chaos.
Poe's Legacy
Poe's work has earned him an enviable place in American literature.
He is not only a pioneer of the short story, he's America's first
major horror writer as well as the father of the detective story.
His tales contain an almost timeless fairy tale-like quality;
filled with grim dungeons, Gothic castles, dwarves and madmen,
Poe's fictional universe still exerts a hold on the imagination
more than a century after his death. American International Pictures
adapted eight of his stories into films beginning in 1960, and
writers as disparate as H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King have
cited Poe as a major influence on their work.
His poetry also exhibits an astounding
popularity. "The Raven" is perhaps the most recognizable
poem in the English language, its haunting sing-song rhythm and
unforgettable imagery appealing not only to literary connoisseurs
but also to school children and people who rarely read poetry.
Everyone, it seems, knows the raven's cry of "Nevermore."
It is finally, then, his command
of language that is his greatest bequest to posterity. From the
classic opening line of "The Raven," to the ornate
description of the decaying House of Usher, Poe's diction is
often elevated and complex, but it could also be blunt and fragmented.
Poe was a deliberate, precise wordsmith who labored over the
placement of every dash and comma. Like Shakespeare, he could
transcend the sordidness of his subject matter by the sheer force
of his language.
Poe was not the first Gothic writer
but he is undeniably one of the most potent. While other horror
writers come and go, his place in horror literature will remain
unchanged, for it is his work that has formed a lasting foundation
upon which others continue to build.
Written by Joseph Iorillo, first published
in Dark Realms Magazine,
Issue #8, Fall 2002, used with permission. |
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