Who was Edgar Allan Poe?

 

He was the greatest American writer in history. He died at 40. Mark Twain, Nathanael Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway were nowhere near his equal. I tried to write about him in 2009, the 200th anniversary of his birth. He and Lincoln were born about a month apart. Lincoln is revered. So is Poe, but not in the land of his birth. Here he is remembered as a horror writer, grist for a movie mill starring Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Christopher Lee, not one American among them.

I screwed up. I was trying to prove the multimedia case. Gathered up tons of YouTube links. He’s the king of all that, you know. Trying to explain him is so daunting I’m already tired of trying. Type his name in a YouTube and see what you get. 

The Poe Search

You get what looks like everything but is everything but. You get Vincent Price and bunches of Raven art  but you don’t get Stephane Mallarmé .You know, the leader of French modernist poetry — a movement that included Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud — who personally translated all of Poe’s poetry into French:

Annabel Lee
Edgar Poe		Il y a mainte et mainte année, dans un royaume près de la mer, vivait une jeune fille, que vous pouvez connaître par son nom d'ANNABEL LEE : et cette jeune fille ne vivait avec aucune autre pensée que d'aimer et d'être aimée de moi. J'étais un enfant, et elle était un enfant dans ce royaume près de la mer ; mais nous nous aimions d'un amour qui était plus que l'amour, - moi et mon ANNABEL LEE ; d'un amour que les séraphins ailés des cieux convoitaient, à elle et à moi. Et ce fut la raison que, il y a longtemps, - un vent souffla d'un nuage, glacant ma belle ANNABEL LEE ; de sorte que ses proches de haute lignée vinrent, et me l'enlevèrent, pour l'enfermer dans un sépulcre, en ce royaume près de la mer. Les anges, pas à moitié si heureux aux cieux, vinrent, nous enviant, elle et moi - Oui ! ce fut la raison (comme tous les hommes le savent dans ce royaume près de la mer) pourquoi le vent sortit du nuage la nuit, glaçant et tuant mon ANNABEL LEE. Car la lune jamais ne rayonne sans m'apporter des songes de la belle ANNABEL LEE ; et les étoiles jamais ne se lèvent que je ne sente les brillants yeux de la belle ANNABEL LEE ; et ainsi, toute l'heure de la nuit, je repose à côté de ma chérie, - de ma chérie, - ma vie et mon épousée, dans ce sépulcre près de la mer, dans sa tombe près de la bruyante mer. Mais, pour notre amour, il était plus fort de tout un monde que l'amour de ceux plus âgés que nous ; - de plusieurs de tout un monde plus sages que nous, - et ni les anges là-haut dans les cieux, - ni les démons sous la mer ne peuvent jamais disjoindre mon âme de l'âme de la très-belle ANNABEL LEE.

So. This is how I rediscovered Poe. In a French class. The symbolist poets changed history and led to the modern art movement that gave us Picasso, Matisse, and, you know, all the cubists, including the overpraised American named Gertrude Stein, who sorted it all out for us and took credit for it all.

The writer I outgrew as a youngster because he taught me cryptography (“The Goldbug”) and vocabulary I’d never known about before (“ratiocination”) was actually way more than that. I looked it up. Without Poe, there is no Sherlock Holmes (“Murders in the Rue Morgue”), no Jules Verne (“Descent into the Maelstrom”), and no modern art after all is said and done.

But who was he, really? He was a romantic at heart, but a man with a calculator in his breast. He wrote this, which is, frankly, a terrible poem… everybody great does write some awful shit. Compare Ulalume.

Thank Heaven! the crisis --
    The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
    Is over at last --
And the fever called "Living"
    Is conquered at last.

Sadly, I know
    I am shorn of my strength,
And no muscle I move
    As I lie at full length --
But no matter! -- I feel
    I am better at length.

And I rest so composedly,
    Now, in my bed,
That any beholder
    Might fancy me dead --
Might start at beholding me,
    Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning,
    The sighing and sobbing,
Are quieted now,
    With that horrible throbbing
At heart: -- ah, that horrible,
    Horrible throbbing!

The sickness -- the nausea --
    The pitiless pain --
Have ceased, with the fever
    That maddened my brain --
With the fever called "Living"
    That burned in my brain.

And oh! of all tortures
    That torture the worst
Has abated -- the terrible
    Torture of thirst
For the naphthaline river
    Of Passion accurst: --
I have drank of a water
    That quenches all thirst: --

Of a water that flows,
    With a lullaby sound,
From a spring but a very few
    Feet under ground --
From a cavern not very far
    Down under ground.

And ah! let it never
    Be foolishly said
That my room it is gloomy
    And narrow my bed;
For man never slept
    In a different bed --
And, to sleep, you must slumber
    In just such a bed.

My tantalized spirit
    Here blandly reposes,
Forgetting, or never
    Regretting its roses --
Its old agitations
    Of myrtles and roses:

For now, while so quietly
    Lying, it fancies
A holier odor
    About it, of pansies --
A rosemary odor,
    Commingled with pansies --
With rue and the beautiful
    Puritan pansies.

And so it lies happily,
    Bathing in many
A dream of the truth
    And the beauty of Annie --
Drowned in a bath
    Of the tresses of Annie.

She tenderly kissed me,
    She fondly caressed,
And then I fell gently
    To sleep on her breast --
Deeply to sleep
    From the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished,
    She covered me warm,
And she prayed to the angels
    To keep me from harm --
To the queen of the angels
    To shield me from harm.

And I lie so composedly,
    Now in my bed,
(Knowing her love)
    That you fancy me dead --
And I rest so contentedly,
    Now in my bed,
(With her love at my breast)
    That you fancy me dead --
That you shudder to look at me,
    Thinking me dead: --

But my heart it is brighter
    Than all of the many
Stars in the sky,
    For it sparkles with Annie --
It glows with the light
    Of the love of my Annie --
With the thought of the light
    Of the eyes of my Annie.

He was in love. All his poems with female names were about one woman:

She wrote poems to him. She died on him. He was never trying to be the greatest American writer. He just was. Like falling off a log. On a side street. In Baltimore. And the critics still can’t stop digging for dirt. Without the dirt you’d have to give up your fantasies about Faulkner, Hemingway, and Roth. Fuck’em.

He inspired detective novels galore, decades of horror movies, science fiction as an explosive genre, modern poetry and art, and even classical music. Mark Twain doesn’t have this as part of his legacy. He broke the bonds of 19th century writing, and went way beyond Melville’s novel-length chapter about a whale penis. He died in 1849 and left us with a doorway to the 20th century. Face down on a street in Baltimore.