Wikipedia Summary for Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. He is also generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.
Poe was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
Poe was born in Boston, the second child of actors David and Elizabeth "Eliza" Poe. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year. Thus orphaned, Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. They never formally adopted him, but he was with them well into young adulthood. Tension developed later as Poe and John Allan repeatedly clashed over Poe's debts, including those incurred by gambling, and the cost of Poe's education.
Poe attended the University of Virginia but left after a year due to lack of money. He quarreled with Allan over the funds for his education and enlisted in the United States Army in 1827 under an assumed name. It was at this time that his publishing career began with the anonymous collection Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian". Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement after the death of Allan's wife in 1829. Poe later failed as an officer cadet at West Point, declaring a firm wish to be a poet and writer, and he ultimately parted ways with Allan.
Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. He married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, in 1836, but Virginia died of tuberculosis in 1847. In January 1845, Poe published his poem "The Raven" to instant success.
He planned for years to produce his own journal The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), but before it could be produced, he died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849, at age 40. The cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to disease, alcoholism, substance abuse, suicide, and other causes.
Poe and his works influenced literature around the world, as well as specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography. He and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre.
If you run out of ideas follow the road; you'll get there.
The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose.
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door! Quoth the Raven Nevermore.
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Longer Version:
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly, I wished the morrow; -- vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow -- sorrow for the lost Leonore -
For the rare and radiant maiden who the angels name Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.
'Prophet!' said I, 'thing of evil! -- prophet still, if bird or devil!'
The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
Lord, help my poor soul.
All that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream.
Reality is the #1 cause of insanity among those who are in contact with it.
As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.
You call it hope-that fire of fire! It is but agony of desire.
Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed.
Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day; or the agonies which are have their origins in ecstasies which might have been.
Here, at last, he is happy.
Because it was my crime to have no one on Earth who cared for me, or loved me.
Grammar is the analysis of language.
How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!
Me volví loco, con largos intervalos de horrible cordura.
It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma... which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve.
When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket.
There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.
Reaching out to her is like drinking from a memory.
I fell in love with melancholy.
Many years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want.
To see distinctly the machinery -- the wheels and pinions -- of any work of Art is, unquestionably, of itself, a pleasure, but one which we are able to enjoy only just in proportion as we do not enjoy the legitimate effect designed by the artist.
But Psyche uplifting her finger said: Sadly this star I mistrust.
It would be mockery to call such dreariness heaven at all.
Odors have an altogether peculiar force, in affecting us through association; a force differing essentially from that of objects addressing the touch, the taste, the sight or the hearing.
He did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.
Now this is the point. You fancy me a mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded.
Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health.
For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique.
The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist.
In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.
I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of golden sand- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep- while I weep!
It is with literature as with law or empire -- an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession.
A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid and very luminous...finely molded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy.
In me didst thou exist-and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.
From a proud tower in the town, Death looks gigantically down.
We had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the Many Colored Grass.
If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul.
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were -- I have not seen
As others saw -- I could not bring
My passions from a common spring .
I am walking like a bewitched corpse, with the certainty of being eaten by the infinite, of being annulled by the only existing Absurd.
And, all at once, the moon arouse through the thin ghastly mist, And was crimson in color... And they lynx which dwelleth forever in the tomb, came out therefrom. And lay down at the feet of the demon. And looked at him steadily in the face.
Most writers -- poets in especial -- prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy -- an ecstatic intuition -- and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes.
With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase.
It may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve.
If you are ever drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations.
There are some qualities, some incorporate things, that have a double life, which thus is made. A type os twin entity which springs from matter and light, envinced in solid and shade.
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
This maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is madness -- the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things.
Dreams are the eraser dust I blow off my page.
They fade into the emptiness, another dark gray day.
Dreams are only memories of the plans I had back then.
Dreams are eraser dust and now I use a pen.
A fool, for example, thinks Shakespeare a great poet ... yet the fool has never read Shakespeare.
A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, must not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.
I have not only labored solely for the benefit of others (receiving for myself a miserable pittance), but have been forced to model my thoughts at the will of men whose imbecility was evident to all but themselves.
The Bostonians are really, as a race, far inferior in point of anything beyond mere intellect to any other set upon the continent of North America. They are decidedly the most servile imitators of the English it is possible to conceive.
In the deepest slumber-no! In delirium-no! In a swoon-no! In death-no! even in the grave all is not lost.
I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind.
Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame.
Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever! Let the bell toll!-a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river; And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?-weep now or nevermore!
You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was.
Even in the grave, all is not lost.
He is, as you say, a remarkable horse, a prodigious horse, although as you very justly observe, a suspicious and untractable character.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -- Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore! Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore.'
If a man deceives me once, shame on him; if he deceives me twice, shame on me.
There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a Plunge.
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting.
Longer Version:
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's that is dreaming, And the lamplight 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.
Sound loves to revel in a summer night.
Always keep a big bottle of booze at your side. If a bird starts talking nonsense to you in the middle of the night pour yourself a stiff drink.
And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
That the play is the tragedy, Man, And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.
In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed -- But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted.
We allude to the short prose narrative, requiring from a half hour to one or two hours in its perusal.
No man who ever lived knows any more about the hereafter than you and I.
No thinking being lives who, at some luminous point of his life of thought, has not felt himself lost amid the surges of futile efforts at understanding, or believing, that anything exists greater than his own soul.
That is another of your odd notions, said the Prefect, who had a fashion of calling every thing odd that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of oddities.
No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously forever.
The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life and of the nineteenth century in general. (I am convinced that every thing is going wrong.).
I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.
Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.
We gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams.