A high forehead, hair black as a raven’s wing, deep mysterious eyes, a narrow nose and chin, and a pale complexion. Such was the visage of Edgar Allan Poe, one of the greatest American writers in history. People who knew him described him as ‘decidedly handsome’ with not an ordinary face. He was a thin man and was always dressed in black.
As for his other and more important qualities, he is known for the exploration of human mind and the disturbing results it produced in his works of both prose and poetry. His tales are full of feverish dreams, graveyard fantasies, madness, terror, sadness, death, and violence. He wrote poems, satires, hoaxes and adventure novels. He first published ‘Tamerlane and other poems’ which were youthful and Byronic. Later he became an editor for several literary magazines. Therefore, he was able to choose and publish certain types of literature, which made him quite influential in the literary sphere.
His family life– Edgar Allan Poe’s early family life was marked by tragedy and instability. He was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts, to David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe. His father abandoned the family when Poe was just an infant, and his mother, Elizabeth, died of tuberculosis when he was only two years old. He was then taken into the home of John Allan, a Richmond merchant (presumably his godfather), and of his childless wife. He attended the University of Virginia but lost a lot of money in gambling and Allan refused to let him continue his education.
His life was very similar to that of the characters in his stories. In ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ the madman kills the old man either because of insanity or out of pure evil. He is obsessed with death just like Edgar A. Poe was. Some biographers like Maria Bonaparte have pointed out there is a connection between the old man and John Allan, Poe’s adoptive father and also between the narrator and Poe himself. Allan had a blue eye like the old man and had never wronged Poe just like the old man never wronged the narrator. It was a method for Poe to express his bottled-up aggression towards his adoptive father. It only highlights the psychological torment that Poe must have underwent in his life.
Poe’s Love Life– Poe’s teenage love was Sarah Elmira Royster. Her father did not like this companionship and created a misunderstanding between them mainly because of Poe’s status as a poor orphan. She became engaged to someone else and Poe married his cousin, Virginia Clemm. The marriage is always accounted to have been a happy and devoted one but some evidence suggests they considered their relationship as more of a brother’s and sister’s. During their marriage, Poe became involved with Frances Sargent Osgood and Elizabeth F. Ellet. Virginia bore with Osgood but it was Ellet who caused her much distress, so much so that she declared Ellet her murderer on her deathbed. Virginia had contracted Tuberculosis when she was 20 and died after a few years. Her death deeply saddened Poe. He became involved in a number of romantic affairs but eventually returned to the ‘only woman he ever loved,’ Elmira Royster. It was speculated that he was engaged to the widowed Royster but died a few days before their wedding. Thus the cloud of loss and death followed Poe throughout his life.
His Death- Poe died as mysteriously as he lived. Throughout his life Poe was obsessed with the idea of death. He saw it as a rebellious thing against the meaninglessness of life and limitations of the soul. He was discovered in a state of semi-consciousness lying on a street in Baltimore and died four days later without regaining the necessary lucidity to explain what had happened during the last days of his life. No concrete record of his death survived. Although, scholars have attributed the cause to drinking, cooping or even a tumour, still no specific reason has come to light. Drinking was the bane of his life. It is also believed that he had a medical condition that made him sensitive to alcohol. On the night of his death, he was recorded to have been heavily drunk.
Poe’s writing style- It was Poe’s style and form that made him stand out. He believed in two rules while writing. One, that the short story should be read in one sitting. Second, that every word must contribute to its purpose. He turned readers into active participants by revealing the secrets of its narrators beforehand. It was his experimental and versatile style that earned him worldwide fame and recognition. He is regarded as the architect of modern short story. French Symbolists like Mallarme and Rimbaud were highly influenced by Poe’s poetry and short story. Apart from his horror tales, he is credited as a creator of science fiction and detective story. He inspired not only Arthur Conan Doyle but Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and W.H. Auden.
Poe himself was influenced by the English Romantics such as Lord Byron, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley delving into surrealism and the mystical. He wrote poems that were intended to be read aloud. His poems have a haunting and musical quality. He has inspired pop culture through comic books, film, albums, television and even computer games.
Selected Works of Poe– Poe’s short stories have a cult like following. “The Tell Tale Heart” is considered one of his best works. Other similar stories are “The Black Cat,” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” These are told by a first-person narrator and deal with the guilty conscience of the murderer. Other popular works include “The Spectacles,” “The Masque of Red Death,” “Hop-Frog,” “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Oval Portrait.”
Poe’s first love was poetry which he started in his adolescent years. It was his poem ‘The Raven’ that earned him immense popularity. ‘The Raven’ is about grief and how it can render you isolated and unable to engage with society. Charles Baudelaire noted in his introduction to the French edition of “The Raven”: “It is indeed the poem of the sleeplessness of despair; it lacks nothing: neither the fever of ideas, nor the violence of colors, nor sickly reasoning, nor drivelling terror, nor even the bizarre gaiety of suffering which makes it more terrible.”
Poe’s three tales – “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Purloined Letter,” and “The Mystery of Marie Roget” are renowned for the best examples of detective fiction. He is credited with introducing the first detective i.e. C. Auguste Dupin, a character who solved the mystery by analysing the facts of the case. Conan Doyle always acknowledged this influence upon his works. In such works as “The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pall” and “Von Kempelen and His Discovery,” Poe took advantage of the fascination for science and technology that emerged in the early 19th century to produce speculative and fantastic narratives, a literature that did not become widely practiced until the 20th century.
The only complete novel written by Poe is ‘The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket’ which is also his most translated work. It deals with themes of racism, colonization, slavery, shipwreck and cannibalism.
He was a pioneer of horror fiction. His prose poem “Eureka” is a non-fiction work of nearly 40,000 words. In it, Poe tried to explain the universe. Poe’s sincerity was questioned since no one could make sense of it. It only shows the scale and seriousness of Poe’s thinking. He has said in the poem “The plots of God are perfect. The universe is a plot of God.”
Edgar A. Poe had a mastery on language. Poe is credited with creating the detective story (although Poe was not aware of the word ‘detective’ since it came to usage a year after his death). Arthur Conan Doyle credited him with having “breathed the breath of life” into detective fiction. He is the best-known contributor to the Gothic tradition in American literature. Filmmakers of today continue to adapt his stories in film and television due to their intriguing and macabre nature.
QUOTES – To elevate Poe’s eerie reputation, here are some of his famous and best quotes-
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
“We loved with a love that was more than love.”
“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.”
“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
“Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute.”
“All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.”
“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”
“And all I loved, I loved alone.”
“Invisible things are the only realities.”
“The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.”
Three Facts About Poe-
- As is commonly believed, Poe did not write the quote “I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.”
- Only seven people attended Poe’s funeral.
- Poe is widely regarded as a writer of horror genre. Despite this, he only wrote 15 horror stories.
Upcoming Netflix series – The Fall of the House of Usher.
This Netflix series is loosely based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. It’s created by Mike Flanagan and is set to release on 12 October 2023.
On a personal note, I was introduced to Edgar Allan Poe when I read ‘The Tell- Tale Heart’ in a book of collection of short stories. It was one of the best stories I had ever read. I was hooked on Poe from that point on. His life and his work, both are truly fascinating. His stories will keep you up at night. His contribution to the world of literature is immense and admirable. Perhaps if Poe knew in his lifetime how his work would impact the future generations, it would have cheered up his disposition a little.
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