A Halloween Review: Edgar Allen Poe

 Portions of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #180 (October, 2011).

Gustave Doré, 1883

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door —

       Only this and nothing more."

The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)

Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year, I love the spookiness, the colors, the chill in the air, and the sense of expectant gloom. I tend to favor old school horror -- Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy, without the "new" spin on these old monsters that they so often have. Along with that, I love Edgar Allen Poe.  

The United States in its first century produced several men of literary genius, but (albeit with all do respect to Washington Irving)  I believe Poe is our greatest literary contributor from those earliest days of the Republic. He is remarkable, so often imitated that many stumbling on Poe feel his work is hackneyed and over-done, not realizing that is only so because others have followed in his well-trod footsteps..  Poe reads so modern it is hard to recall he wrote before electricity, phones, space travel, computers, ect. indeed, even his ideas on poetry predate the modernist school!

And Poe was prolific, as befits a man who lived off of his writing, and he produced many lesser known works beyond his more famous compositions. These works contain all of the classic Poe touches, and truly capture Poe’s macabre mannerisms and writing style.

Recently, a collection of Poe's more famous short works, read by legendary actors Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price, have come out for and our available to download and listen to for free. I cannot recommend these collections enough; Rathbone's reading of "The Raven" and Price's reading of "Morella" are particular highlights.  You can read more about this collection here. Or go directly to Spotify to download them. 

“The Fall of the House of Usher" is perhaps my favorite Poe work, primarily because it employs one o my favorite literary devices, the library. Although the Usher library listed in the tale is comprised of real works, the climax involves reading from a fictional tome, the “Mad Trist” of Sir Launcelot Canning. Both the fictional tome and the library influenced many later writers to include such in their own tales.

“Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long—long—long—many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it—yet I dared not—oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!—I dared not—I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them—many, many days ago—yet I dared not—I dared not speak! And now—to-night—Ethelred—ha! ha!—the breaking of the hermit’s door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!—say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh! whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!”—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul—“Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!      [Edgar A. Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839)]

Of course, “The Masque of the Red Death,” feels incredibly timely these days. It's difficult to find a tale more on the nose for our current predicament in 2020. Have I mentioned how modern and timely Poe usually feels?  

Harry Clarke, 1919

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.  [Edgar A. Poe, _The Masque of the Red Death_ (1842)]

"The Casque of Amontillado" is a classic revenge tale, a murder told from the perspective of the murderer. It might remind the reader of similar Poe tales such as “The Black Cat” but its Italian Renaissance setting makes it particularly good inspiration. 

 "A Descent into the Maelström" is one of Poe’s nautical tales, describing a disastrous Norwegian fishing trip. The image of vast, over-powering nature is inspiring in itself, I believe it heavily influenced the final climatic scene in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. 

Then there is Poe’s greatest nautical tale, and his only completed novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. An adventure tale at first, it degenerates from shipwreck to cannibalism, to rescue and then shipwreck again, and ends with eldritch discoveries and bizarre happenings on Antarctica. Very few have read this strange work, which ends in an abrupt, magical manner. Nonetheless it inspired Jules Verne to write an unofficial sequel, An Antarctic Mystery and H.P. Lovecraft to write At the Mountains of Madness.

My favorite poem of Poe's isn't The Raven, as a fine a work as that is, but rather The Bells. I just love the way that Poe is able to get across so much mood and sound with just careful and inspired word choice, few poems take the reader from joy to profundity to dread in so few bars, it is a true master-work, in my opinion. 

And a perfect ending for this short essay!

Hear the tolling of the bells —
                 Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
        In the silence of the night,
        How we shiver with affright
      At the melancholy menace of their tone!

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.