Edgar Allan Poe: Root of Literary Modernity (Part II)
In my previous post I pointed out the first two features of Allan Poe's contribution to literary modernity. These are: 1. the separation between the empirical person (i.e., the writer's actual person) and the written work, and 2. the emphasis or inclination toward death and the supernatural. The latter, which we did not develop, as we have already said, has a special manifestation in his poems. The most outstanding in this regard is "The Raven". As it is a somewhat extensive poem, we will only quote some fragments (here the complete poem) and comment.
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.”
(…)
Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had tried to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore —
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Nameless here for evermore.
(…)
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”
Merely this, and nothing more.
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door —
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door —
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
(…)
But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he uttered — not a feather then he fluttered —
Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown before —
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
(…)
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
(..)
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted — nevermore!
Poe presents in this poem - which was a popular success at the time and for some is the most famous of American literature - the situation of a writer grieved by the death of his beloved, Leonora, who is visited by a talking raven that reaffirms his fatality. A year after the poem was published, Poe gives an explanation of how he composed it in an essay text; in that text entitled Philosophy of Composition (1846) the author notes that he wanted to start from Beauty as the ideal of poetry. In a text from 1848, The Poetic Principle defines poetry as "the rhythmic creation of beauty", making effective what some have called "the magic of verse".
This is the principle that verbally constitutes the poem "The Raven", composed of a very careful rhythmic form, based fundamentally on the introduction of a brief and forceful chorus: nevermore; this word (or phrase, in the grammatical version), in addition to spinning the construction of the poem, endows it with temporality and a grim character. These two interrelated aspects concretize what Poe pointed out in his explanation of the poem where he pointed out that its tone should be that of melancholy. It is this state, so characteristic of the poet, that is transmitted in that sombre air of the chorus, accentuated by being said by a crow, and in the atmosphere of timelessness implied by the feeling of death as fatality.
This trait of taste for death and the supernatural can be found very successfully in poems such as "Annabel Lee" (18) and "Ululame", which we will not refer to in order not to abuse.
Their stories, for the most part, will have as a topic or motive in some cases death, in others the supernatural, or both elements at the same time. And many of them will be intertwined by love. With respect to this relationship the scholar Rafael Llopis makes an interesting consideration: "Eros and Thanos are one, in Poe. The death of the beloved determines her love of death. But the love of death is the death of love."
(3) In what corresponds exclusively to his narrative (the interested ones can go to this link to accede to texts of Poe in English), there are several aspects to emphasize.
*Poe systematized the contemporary concept of short story. As Cortázar points out in his study: " (...) he understood that the effectiveness of a story depends on its intensity as an event. (...) Each word must converge, concur to the event, (...) a story is an organism, a being that breathes and beats, and that its life consists -like ours- in an animated nucleus inseparable from its manifestations".
*Poe conceived perhaps the most solid model of horror narrative. Before him, the psychological appeal of horror had not been understood in depth, its authors trapped in certain moral and literary conventions. Hence his emphatic way of interpreting sensations and the environments he captures in his stories, which has led him to be considered the creator of the concept of atmosphere in literary art.
Lovecraft, one of his admirers and one of the most recognized cultivators of the horror story in the 20th century, has a forceful assessment: "Poe has left us the vision of a terror that surrounds us and is within us, and of the worm that twists and drools in a dreadful and near abyss. As it permeates each of the oozing horrors of the joyfully painted joke that bears the name of existence and the solemn masquerade of human thought and feelings, that vision has the power to project itself into tenebrously magical crystallizations and transmutations".
In this sense, for some critics he was the first to awaken with his works the social conscience to show him without reservations the nature of Evil.
*Another substantial contribution is the introduction (or invention) of the detective and police narrative genre, with the main character Auguste Dupin. Stories such as "The Stolen Letter", "The Morgue Street Crimes" and "The Golden Beetle" influenced later authors of the genre such as Arthur Conan Doyle, with his popular detective Sherlock Holmes.
*Also his contribution to the emerging genre of science fiction in a very basic but forerunner variant, for example, of the work of Jules Verne.
We have, then, that his work is a precursor in several literary genres, particularly of some of the most popular and interesting currents of contemporary literature, such as horror and police stories.
(4) The narration in first person as the protagonist or as a privileged witness of the facts was a habitual resource in her work that became one of her contributions. Often the protagonist narrator coincides with the criminal in the story; thus the story seen from a sinister perspective, leads the reader to face directly with the perverse subjectivity of the narrator.
(5) Another outstanding contribution is Poe's moral perspective in the thematic treatment of his stories. It speaks of moral neutrality and emotional distancing, which means that he avoids moral judgments towards his characters, in not judging them. It discards moralising didacticism as the objective of the work of art and any attempt to establish a direct relationship between the narrated and an external plausibility. Poe had written that works with too obvious a meaning are no longer art. Hence the use of those fantastic and formal elements that aesthetically configure the work.
(6) Poe reached a vision of what could attract the reader's attention, of the effects that the text could produce in the reader. Here too Poe will be a step ahead in conceiving and realizing an aspect considered fundamental in contemporary times. Valéry put it this way: "For the first time, the relations between the work and the reader were elucidated and considered as the positive foundations of art.
Poe embodies the artist who is aware of his purposes and resources, and who seeks the mechanisms to realize them effectively. That is why he managed to concretize attitudes, techniques and ideas that seem particularly modern to us, as his scholars evaluate.
Influences
The influences exerted by Poe over time in literature and other arts are wide and numerous. The first great influence occurs in French Symbolist poetry, in figures such as Baudelaire and Mallarmé, who declared that Poe was "the intellectual god" of his century. Very different authors, in different languages and of great importance such as Dostoyevski, Guy de Maupassant, William Faulkner, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Horacio Quiroga, Julio Cortázar, Stephen King, among others, are recognized as their debtors -in the past, in the twentieth century and even in the twenty-first.
Surrealist poets greatly appreciated his work for its strangeness and the presence of the dreamlike. One can notice a precursor character of metafictional literature (that which reflects on itself as art) such as that of Jorge Luis Borges, Ítalo Calvino, Nabokov, John Barth and Paul Auster.
Their influence and assimilation reaches into a variety of creative disciplines; in painting (as in works by Gustave Doré), cinema (for example, films such as those by American filmmaker Roger Corman), comics and television, where there have been numerous adaptations of their stories.
Bibliographic references
Cuéllar, Carlos (2009). The artist as muse: the influence of Edgar A. Poe in art. Ars Longa, num. 18, 2009.
Friedrich, Hugo (1974). Structure of modern lyric. Spain: Edit. Seix Barral.
Poe, Edgar A. (1973). Essays and critiques. Prologue by Julio Cortázar. Madrid: Edit. Alianza.
Riquer, Martin de and Valverde, José M. (1979). History of Universal Literature (Volume III). Spain: Edit Planeta.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raven
Grateful for your attention and time. Greetings.
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