No where do we find a single sentence or gentle thought by Poe speaking of sexual love.[3] The erotic is so completely alien to him as to no other except perhaps to Paul Scheerbart. There is little to be found where he expressed social feelings as well and while he does have a heart in his breast that yearns for love it is never permitted to be expressed.
He was not able to love people and always took a small view. He pushed away the caressing hand and the endearing words died on his tongue unspoken. This is when his addiction helped and proved his ability to love animals, to pet the hound and feed the starving cats. Then he was grateful for the faithful gaze and the contented purring.
The poet was aware of this and expressed in his novel Black Cat how this love of animals was his richest source of joy. The higher love of his dying spouse gave him joy mixed with horrible pain and was certainly not the richest source of happiness in his poor life.
Edgar Allan Poe is Roderich Usher and like him has a lute from the angel Israfel of the Koran in his breast instead of a heart. When he looks at his beautiful beloved his heart stops and the lute sings. Its high song of longing sounds such sweet tones in his ear in the pure manner of Morella and Berenice, of Eleonora and Legeia. That same inner music flows through The Raven and Ulalume and is perhaps the highest art there is, this intoxication expressed through poetry and prose.
And in the poet’s world song Eureka it is accompanied by these sounds, “They can not die: or if by any means they be now trodden down, so that they die, they will rise again to the life eternal.”
Yes, in the short space of time that he lived he achieved what men call immortality, the highest man can ever reach now or in the future.
The worth of Edgar Allan Poe is at no time higher than in our day. Our time can learn so much from him and it has. Poe is not a problem today; he is a beacon whose clear light shines the way for others.
The awareness of his art through intoxication, the significance of stress and technique, the clear recognition of the Parnessian principle of art in the broadest sense. The strong sweeping back of the borders and the extreme significance of the inner music for all poets.
These are all moments some of which others individually stress but in their entirety and pervasive connection no artist has recognized and applied as much as the New England poet. And these moments in their entirety represent what is demanded by the modern spirit of cultural art expressed in a way that can be comprehended and studied. No artist or layman should be as grateful to any other poet as much as to Edgar Allan Poe.
When an artist is really stuck and can’t make a translation there lies at hand a way to learn and enjoy being a poet by forcing a way into his inner being and bringing out the needed original translation. No other poet can show this process more than Poe can.
Now the nightingales flute and out of their small throats sings the voice of the artist I love. The light wind stops beating its frenzied wings on the leaves of the elms. The trickling brook quiets its chatter as the park of Alhambra pauses to listen to the song of the nightingales.
For a hundred years the old towers and mortar have experienced these familiar sweet evening sounds but today is different, so different. The loud beating of a dead poet’s heart and the little birds are singing his soul song. The brook and the trees listen, the square red stones listen, the purple glowing snow capped mountains listen. And an infinite sigh sounds through the huge garden as in the west the warm sinking sun mournfully takes its needed parting from the poets raised song.
The twilight breathes through the elms and light misty shadows rise out of the laurel bushes to climb up toward the Moorish Palace. In ancient times long gone they sat round these marble banks. I know well who they are. Gabirol now sits next to me, now Ibn al-Khabib and Ibn Esra, and Jehudah ben Halevy and Mohammed Ibn Khaldoun and Ibn Batouta. A hundred dead poets listen hushed to the song of the nightingales. How clever are the dead.
They hear the heart of the angel Israfel whom the Koran told of, and give thankful praises to God that such music has awakened.
“Ouala ghaliba ill’ Allahta ‘ala” murmur the misty shadows. And the nightingales sing of dark mysteries, of the immense longing that is the pure source of life.
They sing of the greatest secret of all, that all things created and brought through eternity are filled with the breath of infinite love. They sing of beauty as the truth that comes before truth. They sing of dreams that are the life that comes before life.
Poe’s soul sings and a hundred dead poets listen to the clamor and from their lips arise once more the ancient words “Ouala ghaliba ill’ Allahta ‘ala”.
So thankful are the dead.
And the night sinks deeper here. The nightingales hush and the east wind rises and comes from the Sierra. The misty shadows disperse. I am alone again in the enchanted park of Alhambra. Alone with a great poet’s soul. And how the wind blows through the ancient elms rustling the leaves and singing of Ulalume, the very same ballad in the poet’s dreadful dream.
“The skies they were ashen and sober
The leaves they were crisped and sere
The leaves they were withering and sere
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year.
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber
In the misty region of Weir
It was down by the dark tarn of Auber
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir
Here once through an alley Titantic
Of cypress, I roamed with my soul.”
I know well that the verse speaks of me. But I perceive my lips are not saying anything different than that of the rustling elms. I perceive that it is the grief of the October wind howling in distress at the poet’s unearthly longing enspelled in human words and being pulled out of me.
It is the spark of his peculiar thought or essence that emanates from his corpse as the divine breath of nature penetrating everything. The original spark of his being is in all things and a small proof of the poet’s highest law, that the source of all things is unity.
My mouth speaks the mysterious words that the wind has carried to my ears. I am becoming afraid in the dark loneliness, in this living fairy tale. I want to leave out of the valley of Alhambra. Groping in the darkness I lose my footing and miss the path. Finding a trail in the ancient cypress I come up hard against a low door. Oh, the terror that comes upon me in the darkness. I know, I know well whose grave this is. And against my will my lips speak to my soul.
“What is written, sweet sister
On the door of this legended tomb?”
She replied, “Ulalume, Ulalume.
Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!”
Again and again the fear rises up within me. The dead poet’s soul that rustled through the elm trees, that resounded in the nightingales song, that babbled in the spring fed brook, that howled such a dreadful song in the wind, has taken possession of me.
Only a small mote of dust with the divine breath of nature has pierced through me, through me. I know there is no escape and he will destroy me. He does not crush me. And strangely I am quiet, so quiet as if I have been completely filled by him.
The human fear gently fades away.
Now I find the path again. I stride through the gate of vines in the place leading to the Aljibes. I go in the Alcazaba, climb up the Ghafar, the mighty watchtower of the Moorish rulers.
A glowing crescent moon shines now between two moving clouds, it is the true mark of Arabian greatness that no God in heaven can wipe away.
I glance deep down into church happy Grenada, noisy and swarming with nightly street traffic. They run into the coffeehouses, they read the newspapers, polish boots and get their boots polished. They look into lit shop windows, travel in streetcars, call out, “fresh water!” and collect cigar stubs. The noise and bustle annoy me but I try to tolerate it. No one raises a glance; no one looks up to the singular splendor that is here above.
Over there on
my right resounds the river Darro, behind me I hear the rushing of the torrent Geni. Bright campfires penetrate out of the caves of the gypsies and in another direction the snow capped Sierra glows silvery in the moonlight.
From where I stand between two watchtowers and the purple towers of the Moorish Mountains lies the park hidden in the darkness deep in the valley. Behind me lies the magic palace of Alhambra, hall on hall, courtyard on courtyard.
There below is the small life of this century; here above is the land of dreams. That down below in the distance is so infinitely far from me and this here above, is not every stone a part of my soul?
Haven’t I been in this world of ghosts, that the living blind down below can not see? Haven’t I been a part of this dream? It is the almighty beauty that makes these dreams come true. Here life blossoms and the reality down below is only a shadow game.
The deed is nothing. The thought is everything. The reality is ugly and not justified to exist. The dream is always beautiful and is true because it is beautiful. That is why I believe dreams are the only true reality.
What was Edgar Allen Poe like?
There are people that give out a strange magic. Under their spell you have to believe in their personality. There is something that pushes back and makes you notice. No one knows what but it is there. They are marked with the sign of the artist. Oscar Wilde was one and so was Edgar Allan Poe. His manner was high; his gait was light and his demeanor always harmonious. He was always refined despite his poverty and had a romantic chivalrous manner.
His proud features were regular, yes, he was handsome. The pure dark gray eyes held a strange violet glint. The high confident brow had marvelous symmetry. His complexion was always pale and shadowed by his dark locks. Edgar Allan Poe was beautiful in body and in soul. His gentle voice was musical.
He was a strong supple athlete, a persevering swimmer that once swam over seven English miles upstream against the current from Richmond to Warwick without getting tired. He was an experienced jumper, elegant rider and excellent fencer that more than once demanded a duel from a hot-blooded opponent.
He was a gentleman from top to bottom; his social manner was cool and though entangled was charming. He was sensitive and tender, earnest and solid. He was a scholar with an almost universal education. It was an equally great pleasure to see him or to listen to him. He was always sharing and his curse was that so few, so few to whom he gave his great riches were worthy enough to understand.
Did a few beautiful women understand him? No, but they could sense the nobility of his soul, instinctively the way all women do.
Only three people lived in his time that were capable of grasping him completely. Baudelaire and the two Brownings, but they lived over in old Europe and he never saw them.
by Harry G. Webb
The poet was alone in his exaggerated dreams. He was beautiful, loved beautiful things and needed to surround himself with beauty. He created glorious beauty in his dreams that were real to him. The expensive country house in Landors or the marvelous estate at Arnheim.
But in his poor modest life the penny mattered. He knew how to create things around him that excited the admiration of the rich. His small cottage at Fordham where he endured a paradise of agony with his death marked spouse had a precious harmony flowing through it that charmed every visitor.
Stuff and clutter filled it. But it was attractive and beautiful. It was a miserable cottage on the top of a small hill but blooming cherry blossoms stood out of the green meadow. In the early dawn small songbirds enticed the poet out into the nearby pine forest. There he walked through his colorful Georginian bushes breathing the sweet perfume of wild Mignonettes and Heliotrope. The light morning air kissed his moist temples and stroked the weary eyes that had kept watch through the long night over his beloved.
He visited the high bridge over the river Harlem and the rocky cliffs in the wilderness where he dreamed under the shade of ancient cedar trees.
Now he rests somewhere. On the day after his death he was buried in the Westminster Church Cemetery in Baltimore. You have read of the poet dying like a vagabond and buried in a hurry like a dog found on the street.
His grave will be near that of his grandfather, General David Poe, who made a name for himself in the Civil war. It should be there somewhere, there is no cross or gravestone to mark the site. No one bothered. His countrymen had other cares. Why should they worry about one dead poet!
For one week they were employed with various miserable ways to soil and vilify his memory. All the false stories that have been invented since are still in circulation, a whole flood of poisonous ink sprayed over the dead lion. The mediocre fell upon him, the jealous torrents of small writers which he had so relentlessly pulled to pieces.
Voiced the battle cry of the lying moralist Griswold, “He went mad in a drunken fog! He drank too much! He drank too much!”
Then he was forgotten and that is all right. His countrymen are not yet mature enough to recognize the genius of their great poet. After another century they will gather his decayed bones together, erect a mighty monument and inscribe on it:
“The Greatest Poet of the United States”.
Allow them to keep his bones over there. What we want is to listen to the poet’s soul in the call of the nightingales that live here in the Alhambra.
* * *
[1] The best English edition is by J.B. Lippincott Company in Philadelphia. A complete German edition (only the critical studies, humorous short stories and a few poems are not included) appeared by J.C.C. Bruns in Minden. Individual novels are in the Reclam and Meyer’s public library.
[2] Poe’s biographer, the moralist Griswold does not hesitate to say; “In the entire literature we find only shadows and no example of Poe’s missing conscience.”
[3] It is completely mistaken for van Vleuten to state as fact that excessive alcohol consumption will lead to Bachus being the enemy of Venus. His remark, “Every doctor knows that alcohol is the enemy of physical love, it seems that in Poe it has also destroyed its psychological equivalent.” (Tomorrow”1903 page 189)
For me to hear this from the mouth of a serious psychiatrist like van Vleuten is simply inconceivable. I have often had the opposite experience and several psychiatrists have confirmed to me that chronic alcoholics during intoxication often enough, sometimes even regularly, show an extraordinary increase in sex drive.
This is not the place to question this detail. At the least every police officer will confirm and van Vleuten will certainly not deny that three quarters of the nightly patrons of Bordellos spend much of their time one way or the other in a highly intoxicated condition.
Van Vleuten’s hypothesis is wrong and his conclusion completely absurd.
“Alcohol seems to have destroyed in Poe the psychic equivalent to have and the feminine was banished from his deliriums.”
“That is why the entire sphere of the feminine and human sexuality finds no root in the deliriums of this poet.”
The sphere of the feminine is not missing and Poe has of course in the purest and most noble form related it often. By the way, van Vleuten contradicts himself when he notes that the “Raven” seems to come from a delirium.” (Ibid. page 189) Well, woman plays the main role in this poem how can he claim the feminine has been banished from Poe’s deliriums?
The sentence that “Alcohol is the enemy of physical love and even of its psychic equivalent” is certainly inaccurate; the effect is individual and entirely different in this case.
Baudelaire, in writing of the sexuality in Poe’s work, noted van Vleuten’s comment in his own remark, “I can find no real explanation for this finding.” Baudelaire, the artist of intoxication par excellence, did not avoid this well known remark and responded intentionally because he recognized its hollowness.
Unfortunately not one word of the sociality as well as the sexuality that leaps to the eye of Poe’s readers seems to touch van Vleuten. Does he claim these psychic equivalents did exist
before they were destroyed by alcohol?
Logically he must because there is no other way to explain his negation of something that is so obviously there in the internal context of Poe’s work.
It is also outrageous for van Vleuten in his otherwise intelligent work to take the poet and attempt to force him into a time deposited Procrustean bed with its pre-established template.
He claimed, “Poe’s landscapes are schematic and uniform, they show no illness and are not liable to remind one of amnesia.”
This psychiatrist, who himself is a gifted poet, takes these songs of a high landscape, the fifty pages from Poe’s “Landor’s Cottage” and “The Domain of Arnhiem” and calls them nothing more than scenic beauties of speech!
I can only conclude that van Vleuten has only a fragmentary knowledge of Poe and has never read the two aforementioned cabinet pieces, or the majority of his poems with their scenic images.
I can do this safely without making false allegations but I can not save him from another more serious allegation. That he has prefixed a work for an elite audience without sufficient knowledge. While it is largely in the whole certainly laudable, it contains serious errors in detail that reduce the all-encompassing image of a great genius for future readers.
Hanns Heinz Ewers Volume I (Collected Short Stories by Hanns Heinz Ewers) Page 23