The Poet Who Belonged to Nowhere
By Dr. Syed Amir
Bethesda, MD
Edgar Allan Poe, the famous lyric poet, critic and author of macabre and horror stories, would have been 200 years old in 2009. For the past fifty years, on January 19, his birth date, a mysterious visitor in the dead of night has been placing a bottle of cognac and three roses on his grave in Baltimore city, Maryland. The identity of the shadowy admirer has never been revealed.
His bicentennial has drawn much attention to and rekindled interest in his literary work that has been gaining new recognition for the past few years. Credited with introducing the genre of science fiction and detective short stories to English literature, he is often described as Master of the Macabre. Arthur Conon Doyle, some critiques believe, may have drawn inspiration for the creation of Sherlock Holmes from some of Poe’s early literary work.
Poe was born in Boston; but, like virtually every facet of his life, even the date and place of his birth remain controversial. Since he lived and worked in a number of places, Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia and New York have all proudly claimed him. This is a far cry from the dark days, immediately after his death, when he was maligned and repudiated as a drunkard and a shady character. In a reversal, several cities are now attempting to exploit his new stature and fame to draw attention to their literary heritage. Both Philadelphia and Baltimore have Poe Museums, established in houses where the writer had lived at some time in his life.
Since 1923, Baltimore has had a functional Edgar Allan Poe Society, which organizes annual memorial lectures, symposia and informative literature. However, the most important collection of his papers and manuscripts, and the leather trunk that famously bore his few worldly possessions when he left the city on his final trip, are showcased in Richmond’s Edgar Allan Poe Museum.
To date, the issue of where Poe really belonged has remained unresolved. Last year, a lively verbal duel broke out between Philadelphia and Baltimore, when, Edward Pettit, a noted Poe scholar in Philadelphia, suggested that since the poet belonged to their city -- he did his most notable scholarly work there -- his remains should be transferred there. This assertion did not go down well in Baltimore, provoking an angry response from the curator of the city’s Poe museum, located only a short distance from the poet’s grave. He offered to ship, instead, the body of John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln who is also interred in Baltimore. The spirited exchange brought some welcome publicity to both cities, and, hopefully, some inquisitive tourists with interest in 19 th century American literature.
Much speculation has centered on the inimitable theme of Poe’s writings. The sense of gloom and desolation that permeates most of his literary work, both poetry and prose, is believed to have been rooted in his inner mental anguish, his obsession with ghoulish dimension of death and his indulgence in Gothic, dark, gruesome fantasies. Throughout his life, Poe is known to have faced a great deal of adversity. Left destitute at a young age, when both of his parents died, he was adopted by a Richmond merchant and his wife. He seems to have enjoyed their genuine affection and generosity, but his indulgence in the use of drugs and alcohol while at college forced his adopted parents to disown him. Consequently, most of his life was spent is a state of poverty and destitution.
Poe found some evanescent love and happiness when he married his young cousin, Virginia Clemm, but she tragically died of tuberculosis five years later. Historically, this dreaded disease striking mostly at a young age claimed the lives of many talented writers and poets in the past. The tragedy of the loss of his young wife, however, robbed Poe of any restraining influence and led to his involvement in a series of transient, unsatisfactory love affairs. One of his most memorable poems Annabel Lee is dedicated to Virginia and commemorates the death of a beautiful woman. In it, Poe’s tender emotions found expression in heartfelt and enchanting verses:
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
Unsure of how it would be received, Poe published his first book of poetry, Tamerlane and other Poems, in 1827, under the pseudonym, A Bostonian. In 1840, Poe published a collection of horror and mystery stories: Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. The collection received much acclaim and contains some of his most popular short stories, including “The fall of the house of Usher,” which is credited with inspiring the theme of several movies. The creation which really catapulted him to fame was his poem The Raven, characterized as one of the most celebrated poems in American literature. It is suffused with symbolism, reflecting the inner sorrow and dejection of the narrator of the tale told in the poetic form who mourned the loss of some dear friend. For all its fame and popularity, Poe received only $10 or $15 for this eternal poem, The Raven.
Circumstances surrounding Poe’s death have remained a mystery. He was found in a wretched state, destitute, delirious and very sick on a pavement in Baltimore on a cold October night in 1849. He was taken to a nearby hospital by some kind stranger, but never regained consciousness to explain how he ended up on a street corner, in a rough neighborhood, much like a homeless vagrant. The mystery was deepened when it was discovered that the cloths he was wearing were not his own and were of a description likely to be worn by homeless tramps. All medical records related to his case were lost and the cause of his death was variably described as cerebral inflammation, epilepsy and heart disease, none of which was verifiable.
For a long while following his death, Poe’s reputation and legacy were mired in a cloud of controversy as he was alleged to have been a drunkard and mentally unstable. Some critics judged his work harshly, dismissing it as prosaic in quality, only fit for the masses. However, much of the vilification campaign was unfair and the claims exaggerated; they probably originated in a malicious biographical article written by Rufus Griswold, an influential literary critic and editor, and a contemporary of Poe, who had a personal grudge against him. Griswold launched his crusade to destroy Poe’s reputation posthumously, publishing a venomous biographical article as the preface to the collected volume of Poe’s work published in 1850, the year after his death. Unfortunately, Griswold‘s critique had an enduring effect, and only in recent years has Poe’s work slowly emerged from under that dark shadow.
Poe’s popular poetry and the story of his tragic life and death are eerily evocative of the career of the brilliant Urdu poet, Israr ul Haq Majaz Lucknowvi, who died a similar tragic death at an early age, having suffered a series of adversities, including failed love affairs and addiction to alcohol. However, unlike Poe, the sublime quality of his poetry was never disputed.
Poe was buried unceremoniously in a grave that lacked even a head stone and with few mourners attending the funeral service. It took nearly a century and a half to restore his rightful place among the 19 th century American literary figures.
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