He
may be the most influential American writer ever. He is certainly among the most widely
read. More than two hundred years after
the birth of Edgar Allan Poe on
January 19, 1802 he is easily the most widely read writer of the 19th
Century, and not by just captive
college students but by ordinary
readers who continue to plunk down
hard money for collections of
his stories and poems.
He
is credited with inventing the modern detective story. In The
Murders in the Rue Morgue his hero, C. Auguste Dupin was a brilliant
eccentric who undertook the investigation
of the grisly and baffling murders of a woman and her daughter after reading a newspaper
account. He had a tenuous, testy relationship
with the police but worked as an outsider. The story of his
investigation was narrated by an unnamed friend and associate. Dupin used keen powers of observation and reasoning to unravel the case. He also used crude forensic evidence—a hair
found at the crime scene that proved
to be nonhuman. He revealed his final, shocking conclusion and then explained to the exasperated Prefect of Police his methodology in uncovering the
truth. This set the pattern for
detectives like Sherlock Homes, Hercule Poirot, Nick and Nora Charles, and Spenser. In recognition of Poe’s importance, the Mystery Writers of America named their annual prizes the Edgar Awards.
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| The Murders in the Rue Morgue captured the imagination of many illustrators including the Spanish artist Daniel Urrabieta y Vierge. |
Poe
is even more famous for his horror
stories. These, too, were an
innovative breakthrough that invented a genre. His were not just tales of monsters or ghosts told around a
campfire. His horror was psychological, the creation of the human mind as in The Tell Tale Heart.
And
his work presaged and influenced the development of science fiction. His famous hoax The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans
Pfaall,
which he wrote for the Southern Messenger in 1835, fooled the people of New York City when he reprinted it in a
newspaper there nearly a decade later. It
was about crossing the Atlantic in a balloon. Several of his
other stories also had elements of science fiction which were picked up Jules Verne, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and
Edgar Rice Burroughs among others.
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| The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaal was a perfect subject for a 1950's treatment by Classics Illustrated comic books. |
All
of these are “only popular genres.” You can almost hear the serious professors sneer the words, “not serious literature.” But
in creating these tales for the infant
medium of the popular magazine, he also helped create the
modern short story as a distinct form. Now that magazines are disappearing and short
stories only get printed obscure literary journals, the guardians of our culture revere
the form and wring their hands
at its tenuous survival.
And
then there are the poems. People who do not read poetry—almost
everyone—know and love The Raven, Annabelle Lee, and The
Bells. America was awash with
poets—many great ones—but no one was writing with such power, such lyricism,
and such groundbreaking
unconventionality. Despite their strong rhythms and rhymes they seem more modern
and accessible than lofty sentiments by William Cullen Bryant or James Russell Lowell.
Of course Poe’s enduring
popularity owes a great deal to his image
as the tortured soul who married his teen age cousin and lost
her to consumption, drowned his sorrows in brandy and perhaps opium, and died penniless in Baltimore
after being found insensible in a saloon at the age of only 40. Books,
plays, and films have been made celebrating
that persona.
His physical image is as
recognizable as any movie star. Only a
handful of photographs were taken in
his life. The most iconic, taken within a couple of years of his death, shows a handsome, if dissolute man, with dark
flowing hair, high forehead, a neat mustache, intense dark eyes with bags below hinting at a night of excess before the sitting. It decorates posters, t-shirts, coffee mugs,
and mouse pads.
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| Poe has enough merchandise with his image to rival any pop star. |
How can heavy weights like Herman
Melville, Walt Whitman, or even
handsome Nathaniel Hawthorne compete
with that?
Yet
Moby
Dick routinely tops lists of
important books that no one reads,
while even pimply-faced, basement dwelling, X-Box mavens of the supposed dumbest-generation-ever have
read and loved Poe. Oh, the injustice!
Ironically,
Poe may have even invented one form a prose that the literati worship—textual
criticism. Beginning with his tenure
as editor of the Southern Messenger
and continuing as he tried to cobble
together a meager income as one of America’s first free lance writers, he wrote hundreds of columns of literary criticism. He was among the first, if not the first, to
focus primarily on the effect of the style
and of the structure in a literary
work and to analyze symbolism. He could
also be very harsh and personal in his attacks on authors whose
work offended him. That included many members of the
established, mostly New England based
elite. He famously savaged Nathaniel Hawthorne among others.
Of course, when he was writing for a predominately Southern audience, this went over well. It proved less popular as he placed pieces in New York, Philadelphia, and other northern publications.
One
of the men he offended got his revenge. Rufus Griswold was then a well known
writer, editor, and anthologist. Poe ripped
him a new one. As soon as he got
word of Poe’s death in Baltimore, Griswold rushed to be the first to print an obituary in New
York. He painted Poe as a maniac, drunkard, practitioner of
incest, and literary fraud. He quickly followed up with a biography elaborating his charges. The book sold well and cemented Poe’s public image.
But
if Griswold thought his character
assassination piece would bury Poe’s reputation and work, he was
mistaken. Instead, the country grew more fascinated by him. Posthumous
sales of all of his works soared. Just
like Jim Morrison, it seems that
even back then there was a taste for wild,
romantic, talented, tragic bad boys
who died young.
The
official Poe Museum web site argues
that while Poe did drink and battled
depression, Griswold’s characterization was a wild exaggeration. Perhaps
so. It even says that his sordid and lonely death, attributed
at the time to congestion of the brain
and long assumed to be caused by either alcohol
poisoning or advanced cirrhosis of
the liver, may actually have been caused by rabies. Who knows?
But
we do know that for many years a woman
bundled in black and heavily veiled
came annually to Poe’s grave and left roses and brandy. It was an annual newspaper story. And every time it happened, libraries and books stores experienced a run
on Poe.
Anyway,
here is a sample of what some of the excitement was about.
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Annabel Lee
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It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by
the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of
Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and
be loved by me.
I was a
child and she was a child,
In this kingdom
by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel
Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and
me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom
by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful
Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away
from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom
by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her
and me--
Yes!--that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom
by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and
killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were
older than we--
Of many far wiser
than we--
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons
down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful
Annabel Lee:
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful
Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful
Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre
there by the sea,
In her tomb by
the sounding sea.
—Edgar Allan Poe
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