Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849)
Related: 1830s - 1840s - alcohol - American literature - Charles Baudelaire - crime fiction - detective fiction - fantastique - fantastic - fantasy - fear - fiction - grotesque - imagination - horror - macabre - mystery - Edogawa Ranpo - Romanticism
Edgar Allan Poe
Titles: The Masque of the Red Death (1842) - Histoires Extraordinaires (1840s) -
Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1941) - Edgar Allan Poe
Poe's literary reputation was greater abroad than it was in the United States. Rufus Griswold became his literary executor; in fact, Griswold was a rival and an enemy. In the U.S.A., Griswold circulated a "Memoir of the Author" which portrayed Poe as a drunkard and opium addict. These defamatory reminisicences did little to commend Poe to U.S. literary society.
In France, where he is commonly known as "Edgar Poe," Charles Baudelaire translated his stories and several of the poems into French. Baudelaire was the right man for this job, and his excellent translations meant that Poe enjoyed a vogue among avant-garde writers in France while being ignored in his native land. From France, writers like Algernon Charles Swinburne caught the Poe-bug, and Swinburne's musical verse owes much to Poe's technique. Poe was much admired, also, by the school of Symbolism, and Stephane Mallarmé dedicated several poems to him.
Biography
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American poet, short story writer, editor and critic and one of the leaders of the American Romantics. He is best known for his tales of the macabre and his poems, as well as being one of the early practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of Gothic and detective fiction in the United States. Poe died at the age of 40, the cause of his death a final mystery. His exact burial location is also a source of controversy. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe [Nov 2005]
Translations
In France, where he is commonly known as "Edgar Poe," Charles Baudelaire translated his stories and several of the poems into French. Baudelaire was the right man for this job, and his excellent translations meant that Poe enjoyed a vogue among avant-garde writers in France while being ignored in his native land. From France, writers like Algernon Charles Swinburne caught the Poe-bug, and Swinburne's musical verse owes much to Poe's technique. Poe was much admired, also, by the school of Symbolism, and Stéphane Mallarmé dedicated several poems to him. He was also admired and discussed by the Surrealist poet André Breton.
Poe's poetry was translated into Russian by the Symbolist poet Konstantin Bal'mont and enjoyed great popularity there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, influencing artists such as Nabokov, who makes several referrences to Poe's work in his most famous novel, Lolita and also the composer Rachmaninoff, whose "The Bells" is a dramatization of Poe's poem. Some critics have found echoes of Poe in the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, especially in Crime and Punishment. While there is no agreement on just how much Poe influenced Dostoyevsky, it is certain that Dostoyevsky read and enjoyed Poe. He wrote favorible reviews of Poe's detective stories and briefly referrences "The Raven" in his greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Poe influenced the Swedish poet and author Viktor Rydberg, who translated a considerable amount of Poe's work into Swedish. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe#Legacy [Feb 2004]
Edgar Allan Poe and the doppelgänger trope
"You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also dead—dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope! In me didst thou exist—and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself."
William Wilson is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839. It is one of the most famous of doppelgänger tales.
It tells of a man 'William Wilson' who is schoolmate to a boy with the same name and birthday. The protagonist becomes alarmed as the second 'Wilson' gradually imitates him and eventually starts foiling his every chance of success.
The climax of the story takes part in Rome, where the protagonist takes it upon himself to duel with 'Wilson'. This results in the death of the imitator, who (dying) is quick to pronounce the death of the protagonist, who has now become murderer and monster, that which he had feared 'Wilson' to be. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilson_%28short_story%29 [Jan 2006]
The theme of the 'double' has been very thoroughly treated by Otto Rank (1914). He has gone into the connections which the 'double' has with reflections in mirrors, with shadows, with guardian spirits, with the belief in the soul and with the fear of death; but he also lets in a flood of light on the surprising evolution of the idea. For the 'double' was originally an insurance against the destruction of the ego, an 'energetic denial of the power of death' --Sigmund Freud, 1919
See also: doppelgänger - 1830s - 1839
Poe, Baudelaire and modernism
In a June 2006 essay entitled Thoroughly modern Manet in the Guardian, Jonathan Jones celebrates Poe and Baudelaire and their relation to modern art. Jonathan Jones is becoming my favourite contemporary art critic, perhaps due to his focus on the 19th century, which I share.
Forget what you know - everything great about contemporary art was invented in the 19th century, says Jonathan Jones
In the imaginations of French bohemians from the 1860s to 1890s it was this dead American writer, rather than any contemporary artist, who perfectly embodied the image of the creative personality as "rebel and martyr". Baudelaire translated Poe into French and wrote an essay that sees in him a martyr to capitalist philistine society: there are some creative personalities, he says, who bear the mark of fatality -"The blind angel of expiation has seized hold of them, and lashes them hard for the edification of others. In vain do their lives show them to have had talents, virtues, grace; society has a special kind of curse in reserve for them."
Poe died of alcoholism at the age of 40. Baudelaire made it to 46 before dying, already mute from a series of strokes. I like the fact that in addition to being a poet maudit, Baudelaire was an art critic maudit. In his famous essay The Painter of Modern Life, he summons the ghost of Poe to argue that an artist who wants to portray contemporary existence should imitate the character in Poe's story The Man of the Crowd and infiltrate the multitude.
The middle of the 19th century; nearly 150 years ago. Forget what you know. Forget the stale and unjustifiable notion that 19th-century art was tame and gentle, that the impressionists were "chocolate-box artists", that modernism began in 1900. The truth is that everything great about modern art - and, perhaps more significantly, everything about it that still lives - was invented in the undervalued 19th century. This exhibition is not a perfect record of that revolutionary age. But in its very crudity - it attempts to encompass changing ideas of art from the age of Joshua Reynolds to that of Picasso, an exercise that's bound to be a bit perfunctory - it smashes through the lazy, dead-eyed stupidities that either make us not look at 19th-century art or - more likely - make us feel a bit apologetic for the pleasure we find in it. --http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1806849,00.html,
See also: 1800s - modernism - modern art - Charles Baudelaire - Edgar Allan Poe
The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) - Poe
"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. It tells of a man who commits murder, but is then so taunted by the sound of the murdered man's heart that he admits to the deed. Poe's story "The Black Cat" also tells of a murderer's self-destructive guilt.
An animated film version by UPA, The Tell-Tale Heart (1953), is included among the films preserved in the United States National Film Registry.
The Tell-Tale Heart is one of several songs inspired by Poe stories on the album Tales of Mystery and Imagination (original version 1976, CD remix 1987) by The Alan Parsons Project. It is sung in an appropriately hysterical style by Arthur Brown.
In 2003, Lou Reed released The Raven, an album solely based on poems and short-stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Featured was the author's "The Tell-Tale Heart." --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tell-Tale_Heart [Oct 2004]
Edgar Allan Poe and E. T. A. Hoffmann
In response to accusations that the horror in his stories was derived from German literary sources, Edgar Allan Poe claimed in the Preface for the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840 that "if in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul." (1) There are several indications, though, that Poe could have gained access to German literature and to E. T. A. Hoffmann's writings through Gillies's translation of The Devil's Elixirs, through Carlyle's publication of the German Romance, through Sir Walter Scott's essay on Hoffmann's use of the supernatural, or through readings of his own in English translation. As the editor of several prominent journals such as the Southern Literary Messenger, Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, Graham's Magazine, the Mirror, and the Broadway Journal, Poe was well acquainted with publications by European writers and even accused other American authors of plagiarizing their ideas. (2) While some critics have noted the similarities between "William Wilson" and The Devil's Elixirs, scholarship on the double in these works still requires further investigation beyond a positivistic approach. This article traces the developmental stages of the double in "William Wilson" and The Devil's Elixirs according to a reading of Freud's essay... --Patrick Labriola via http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5000818813 [Apr 2006]See also: Hoffmann
The Raven (1845) - Edgar Allan Poe
1884 Illustrations by Gustave Doré to The Raven (1845) - Edgar Allan Poe
Image sourced here.
"The Raven" is a narrative poem by Edgar Allan Poe. It was published for the first time on January 29, 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror. In highly stylized language and images, it tells of the mysterious visit of a talking raven to a distraught lover. It is one of the best known American poems, and is in fact considered by many to be the best American poem ever written, citing this haunting popularity. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raven [Dec 2005]
In 1882, Doré took on his only U.S. commission ever for Poe's The Raven. Doré died in early 1883, just as he was finishing the Raven engravings. He had just turned 51. --http://www.antiquemapsandprints.com/gustave-dore.htm [Dec 2005]
The visionary artist does not hesitate to record images of shock, horror, pain, degradation, demons, monsters, and and all manner of underworld tortures. He explores the darker side of his imagination, and liberates many of his impulses by giving them tangible form. All that is taboo must be transcended. --http://visionaryrevue.com/webtext/longman1.html [Dec 2005]
See also: 1840s - 1884 - Edgar Allan Poe - horror fiction - illustration - Gustave Doré
Auguste Dupin
Auguste Dupin is a fictional detective created by Edgar Allan Poe.
While not the first detective in fiction, Auguste Dupin was the prototype for many that came later (most notably Sherlock Holmes). He lives in Paris alone in an old house. Many tropes that would later become commonplace in mystery fiction first appeared in Poe's stories: the eccentric but brilliant detective, the bumbling constabulary, the first-person narration by a close personal friend. Like Sherlock Holmes, Dupin uses his considerable deductive prowess and observation to solve crimes.
He appears in three stories by Poe:
- "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841)
- "The Mystery of Marie Roget" (1842)
- "The Purloined Letter" (1844)
He also makes a brief appearance in Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic book. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Dupin [Feb 2006]
See also: Edgar Allan Poe - 1849 - crime fiction - detective fiction -
Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: a Psychoanalytic Interpretation (1949) - Marie Bonaparte
Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: a Psychoanalytic Interpretation (1949) - Marie Bonaparte [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Princess Marie Bonaparte (July 2, 1882-September 21, 1962) was a French psychoanalyst, closely linked with Sigmund Freud. Her wealth contributed to the popularity of psychoanalysis, and enabled Freud's escape from Nazi Germany. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Bonaparte [Jul 2006]
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