He is known around the world as the author of famous poems and tales. Indeed, "The Raven" has been called "probably the best-known poem ever written in the Western Hemisphere." His work has inspired countless adaptations and parodies from "The Owl," a poem about a teetotaling fowl, to the various sendups in The Simpsons. Still, well, let me put it this way:
You've read about his famous bird
And a maiden who lived long ago.
His "Tell-Tale Heart" you've surely heard.
But tell me, how much do you know
About the dark, the plain absurd,
The tragic life of Edgar Poe?
Unlike his contemporary Frederick Douglass and his predecessor Benjamin Franklin, Poe never wrote an autobiography. Thanks to contemporary accounts, Poe's letters, and other evidence, however, we do know quite a bit about his life. In fact, a couple of scholars, Dwight R. Thomas and David K. Jackson, have produced an indispensable reference book called The Poe Log, which documents the days of his short life, which began in Boston in 1809 and ended mysteriously in Baltimore in 1849.
You may be familiar with the basic outlines and a few juicy details of this life. You may know, for example, that Poe was an orphan; his father abandoned the family when Poe was just an infant, and his mother died while he was still very young. His troubles with alcohol and poverty are also well-known.
There's much more to Poe's life, though, and much of it is even stranger than his fiction. Let's look at just five of the highlights -- or why-lights -- of poor Poe's puzzling life.
Poe drank too much, but . . .
Quick, name three literary drunks. I'm guessing Poe came to mind (along with Fitzgerald and Hemingway, right?). If, when you think of Poe, you imagine him downing glass after glass to drown his sorrows, you're probably only half right. Poe had more than his share of sorrows, but he seems to have consumed alcohol a little . . . differently. Consider this account from one of his friends: ". . . if he took but one glass of weak wine or cider the Rubicon of the cup was passed with him, and it almost always ended in excess and sickness." I have never seen a definitive account of Poe's problems with alcohol, but I tend to think, along with biographer Jeffrey Meyers, that Poe had a hypersensitivity to alcohol: one drink could send him over the edge. Now, that's no excuse for Poe's destructive drinking. If you know one glass is too much, then you really shouldn't have that first glass. Still, it's worth knowing, I think, that Poe's alcoholism was of a different variety. By the way, even though he lived at a time when temperance was in the air and even joined a group called the Sons of Temperance, Poe never beat demon drink. In fact, alcohol may have played a role in his mysterious death, but that's a topic for another column.
He could be a pretty nice guy, actually.
In his fiction, Poe gave us some of our most famous fictional murderers and madmen, the narrators of both "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado" being two of the best-known examples. We know that fiction is not reality and that authors can craft personas nothing like themselves, yet Poe's literary creations seem to have merged, in some people's minds, with Poe himself. Perhaps the thinking goes that an author would have to be twisted to create such characters and behaviors for his fiction. In this respect, Poe may have been his own worst enemy, but he certainly wasn't his only enemy. After his death, a former acquaintance named Rufus Griswold went to work smearing Poe's reputation, first with a damning obituary and then with an abusive "Memoir." Today, more than 170 years after Poe's death, your general impressions of Poe the man may have been shaped by Griswold's hatchet jobs. Scholar Dawn Sova has written, "Griswold's vitriolic characterization of Poe became the unofficial biographical record that extended well into the 20th century and kept Poe from achieving his full literary due." Writer Daniel Hoffman put the situation a bit more colorfully, explaining that Griswold “is now known everywhere, if known at all, as the maligner of a helpless genius; whereas had he done his job honestly, he’d have won his proper modest niche among the footnotes by which the nearly forgotten are saved from total oblivion."
To be clear, Poe, while no monster, could be prickly and just plain weird -- when, for example, out of the blue he launched an unprovoked assault on his fellow poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whom he accused of plagiarism in not one, but multiple articles, in what became known as the Longfellow War. Accounts of Poe by people who knew him, however, indicate that he also could be a courtly gentleman. A teacher and fellow poet named Anne Lynch said of Poe, “In society, so far as my observation went, Poe had always the bearing and manners of a gentleman — interesting in conversation, but not monopolising; polite and engaging . . . ." In his home environment, Poe apparently could even be childlike -- and in a good way. Poet Frances Osgood described him as "Playful, affectionate, witty, alternately docile and wayward as a petted child—for his young, gentle and idolized wife, and for all who came, he had even in the midst of his most harassing literary duties, a kind word, a pleasant smile, a graceful and courteous attention." Hang on, I've saved the best for last. Poe told publisher George Graham that "he disliked the dark, and was rarely out at night." In short, Poe was no monster. Had he been, he probably would have scared himself.
Yes, he married his cousin. It's complicated.
Poe lived long before Americans began tossing around the slang term "cringey," but he gave us one of the cringiest details of American literary history when he married his cousin Virginia Clemm when she was still in her early teens. He was 27. After decades of studying authors and their works, I am able to appreciate an author's creations without necessarily liking what I learn about his or her life and personality, and I'm certainly no Poe apologist. He had his problems, and I have no trouble acknowledging them. In this case, though, I am going to cut Poe a little slack. First, as Kenneth Silverman explains in his excellent biography of Poe, marrying one's cousin was more common in the mid-nineteenth century. Second, it's entirely possible that Poe never consummated his marriage to Virginia. The women in Poe's tales and poems -- Ligeia, Lenore, Annabel Lee, and others -- tend to be idealized or, well, deceased and thus beyond sensual pleasures. Finally -- and this is the key point -- plenty of evidence suggests that what Poe really sought in his marriage to Virginia was the family unit that he lost when he was orphaned as a young child. For his entire married life, he lived with not only Virginia, but also her mother, Maria. He called the one "Sissy" and the other "Muddy." OK, now this is getting a little cringey in another way, but it's also sad and a little tender. Poor Poe -- who endured more than his share of loss, neglect, and misery -- found some solace in his home life, which appears to have been very positive until, true to the script that Fate had written for him, Virginia died of tuberculosis, leaving her husband distraught and, if we are to believe some of his correspondence, suicidal.
Poe had a sense of humor.
It's a little difficult to imagine Poe smiling (except perhaps in wry irony), let alone throwing his head back in a hearty guffaw, but the First Name in Horror occasionally tried his hand at humor, especially early in his career. There's a good reason why most people don't know this side of Poe. These early sketches typically take a back seat to his horror stories. Actually, they probably belong in the trunk, out of sight. They're just not very funny. (Hey, I said he had a sense of humor, but I didn't say it was a good one.) In his fiction, Poe's best humor can be found in "The Cask of Amontillado," and it's, appropriately, dark humor. Here, the proud Fortunato expresses surprise that Montressor could be a Mason, apparently enjoying his own affiliation with the "brotherhood." Montressor gets the last laugh, though. He pulls out a trowel, a tool of a real mason. With it, he eventually walls Fortunato into a tomb while the victim is still alive. For another example of the dark humor in "The Cask of Amontillado," see "Meet Me in the Middle" from an earlier issue of Mind Travel.
Let's call it the "Imp of the Poe-verse."
Life was already tough enough for an orphan with a weakness for alcohol and a determination to make a living with his pen, but Poe seems to have been deeply devoted to doing what he could to make his life even worse. The Longfellow War mentioned above is only one example. When you are an aspiring writer with talent but not much success, attacking the most beloved poet in the country is not likely to advance your career, but that's what Poe did. A more striking example of Poe's self-sabotage came in 1845. His publication of "The Raven" early that year created a sensation. He accepted an invitation to deliver a new poem at the Boston Lyceum in October. Here was opportunity to build on the success of "The Raven" and advance his career -- or, if you're Poe, to disappoint, destroy, and diminish. Apparently at a loss for a new poem, Poe resurrected an old poem (one of the longest, strangest, dullest, and worst he composed in his entire career), gave it a new name and delivered it instead. One observer recalled, "When . . . he abruptly began the recitation of his rather perplexing poem, the audience looked thoroughly mystified." People grew restless. Some left. Later, Poe literally added insult to whatever mental injury he had inflicted on his audience by openly maligning the entire city, saying, "We like Boston. We were born there—and perhaps it is just as well not to mention that we are heartily ashamed of the fact."
I could cite other examples, but perhaps the best evidence that Poe engaged in this kind of bizarre self-sabotage is that he wrote explicitly about it in both "The Black Cat" and "The Imp of the Perverse." Today, the word perverse is often used to refer to sexual behavior, but Poe used the word in a more general sense in line with the word's history. In Latin, perversus means "turned about," and the Middle English word meant "turned away from what is right or good." As Poe described perverseness, it amounted to doing exactly the opposite of what one probably should do, as the narrator of "The Black Cat" does when he performs horribly violent acts on a cat he dearly loves. Poe, clearly drawing on his own experience, was fascinated by this counterintuitive behavior, and he dramatized it elsewhere in his work, notably in "The Raven." (I'll have more to say on this topic in the last installment of Poe-logue to Halloween, "Once Upon a Midnight Dreary: The Genius and Legacy of 'The Raven.'")
So, now that you know Poe a bit better, what do you think? If you could travel back in time, would you want to talk about literature with him, maybe even join him, along with Sissy and Muddy, for dinner at his home? I wouldn't blame you, but, whatever you do, don't invite him out for a drink -- especially after dark.
Loved the Poe commentary and historical information!