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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In 'The Raven; with Literary and Historical Commentary,' readers are invited to embark on a compelling journey through one of the most iconic poems in American literary history. This anthology delves into Edgar Allan Poe's timeless narrative with an intricate tapestry of commentaries that offer a spectrum of interpretations and analyses. The collection balances the haunting atmosphere that Poe is renowned for with scholarly insights that illuminate the poem's rich intertextuality and symbolic depth, engaging readers in a dialogue between poetic artistry and critical inquiry. Contributions from a myriad of commentators, notably including John Henry Ingram, enrich this volume with diverse perspectives that span historical and literary contexts. Each voice weaves its own narrative around Poe, contributing to an anthology that is as much a study of the poem as it is a testament to its influence across different epochs and intellectual movements. These commentators anchor 'The Raven' within a broader literary tradition, exploring themes of melancholy, obsession, and the supernatural while drawing connections to the socio-cultural backdrop of Poe's time. 'In The Raven; with Literary and Historical Commentary,' readers will find an invaluable gateway to exploring the myriad interpretations and discussions surrounding this iconic work. The anthology provides an unparalleled opportunity to witness an ongoing scholarly conversation, delving into Poe's rich tapestry of imagery and thematic exploration. Ideal for students, literary enthusiasts, and scholars alike, this collection is not only an academic resource but also a treasure trove of critical thought that cultivates a deeper understanding of one of literature's most enduring works. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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The Raven; with literary and historical commentary
Table of Contents
The Raven; with literary and historical commentary
Genesis
GENESIS.
"A history of how and where works of imagination have been produced," remarked L. E. L., "would often be more extraordinary than the works themselves." The "where" seldom imports much, but the "how" frequently signifies everything. Rarely has an attempt been made, and still more rarely with success, to investigate the germination of any poetic chef d'œuvre: Edgar Poe's most famous poem—The Raven—has, however, been a constant object of such research. Could the poet's own elaborate and positive analysis of the poem—his so styled Philosophy of Composition—be accepted as a record of fact, there would be nothing more to say in the matter, but there are few willing to accept its statements, at least unreservedly. Whether Edgar Poe did—as alleged—or did not profess that his famed recipe for manufacturing such a poem as The Raven was an afterthought—a hoax—our opinion will not be shaken that his essay embodies, at the most, but a modicum of fact. The germs of The Raven, its primitive inception, and the processes by which it grew into a "thing of beauty," are to be sought elsewhere.
"I have often thought," says Poe, "how interesting a magazine paper might be written by any author who would—that is to say, who could—detail, step by step, the processes by which any one of his compositions attained its ultimate point of completion ... 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 at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought—at the true purposes seized only at the last moment—at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view—at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable—at the cautious selections and rejections—at the painful erasures and interpolations—in a word, at the wheels and pinions—the tackle for scene-shifting—the stepladders and demon-traps—the cock's feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio."
Besides the unwillingness there is, also, as Poe acknowledges, frequently an inability to retrace the steps by which conclusions have been arrived at: the gradations by which his work arrived at maturity are but too often forgotten by the worker. "For my own part," declares Poe, "I have neither sympathy with the repugnance alluded to, nor, at any time, the least difficulty in recalling to mind the progressive steps of any of my compositions."
Having made so positive a declaration the poet attempts to prove its trustworthiness by assuming to show the modus operandi by which The Raven was put together. The author of The Balloon Hoax; of Von Kempelen and his Discovery; of The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, and of other immortal hoaxes, confidingly assures us that it is his design to render manifest that no one point in the composition of his poetic master-piece The Raven, "is referrible either to accident or intuition" and "that the work proceeded, step by step, to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem[1q]."
From the premises thus precisely laid down, Edgar Poe proceeds to trace step by step—phase by phase—to their logical conclusion, the processes by which his famous poem was manufactured. We not only doubt, we feel assured that The Raven was not built entirely upon the lines thus laid down. Some commentators—notably Mr. William Minto, in a remarkably thoughtful and original essay[1]—have elected to place entire reliance upon Poe's statements, as given in The Philosophy of Composition; we, for reasons to be given, can only regard them as the result of an afterthought, as the outcome of a desire—or perhaps of a necessity—to produce an effect; to create another sensation.
Those unable or unwilling to accept the poet's theory for The Raven's composition have diligently sought for the source of its inspiration—for the germ out of which it grew. To satisfy this desire for information many fraudulent statements and clumsy forgeries have been foisted on the public: these things will be referred to later on, for the present they are beside our purpose. Among the few suggestions worth noticing, one which appeared in the Athenæum[2] requires examination. In The Gem for 1831, it is pointed out, appeared two poems by Tennyson, "included, we believe, in no collection of the poet's works. The first poem is entitled No More, and seems worthy, in all respects," says the writer, "of preservation." It reads thus:—
"Oh sad No More! oh sweet No More! Oh strange No More! By a mossed brook bank on a stone I smelt a wildweed-flower alone; There was a ringing in my ears, And both my eyes gushed out with tears. Surely all pleasant things had gone before, Low-buried fathom deep beneath with thee, No More!"
The other poem, entitled Anacreontic, contains the name of Lenora. "It is not suggested," says the writer, "that Poe took from these verses more than the name Lenora or Lenore, and the burden 'Never More.' The connection of the two in The Ravenrenders all but certain that the author had come across the book in which the poems appear."
Whether or no Poe ever saw The Gem for 1831, is almost immaterial to inquire, but that so common a poetic phrase as "No More" supplied him, fourteen years later, with his melancholy burden of "Never More" no one can believe. In truth, for many years "No More" had been a favorite refrain with Poe: in his poem To One in Paradise, the publication of which is traceable back to July, 1835, is the line,
"No more—no more—no more!"
In the sonnet To Zante, published in January, 1837, the sorrowful words occur five times,
"No more! alas, that magical sad soundTransforming all!"
whilst in the sonnet To Silence, published in April, 1840, "No More" again plays a leading part. The first at least of these three poems there is good reason to believe had been written as early as 1832 or 1833. As regards Poe's favorite name of Lenore, an early use of it may be pointed out in his poem entitled "Lenore," published in the Pioneer for 1842, the germ of the said poem having been first published in 1831.
We are now about to touch more solid ground. In 1843 Edgar Poe appears to have been writing for The New Mirror, a New York periodical edited by his two acquaintances, G. P. Morris and N. P. Willis. In the number for October the 14th appeared some verses entitled Isadore: they were by Albert Pike, the author of an Ode to The Mocking Bird and other pieces once well-known. In an editorial note by Willis, it was stated that Isadore had been written by its author "after sitting up late at study,—the thought of losing her who slept near him at his toil having suddenly crossed his mind in the stillness of midnight."
Here we have a statement which must have met Poe's gaze, and which establishes the first coincidence between the poems of Pike and of The Raven's author: both write a poem lamenting a lost love when, in fact, neither the one has lost his "Isadore" nor the other his "Lenore":—the grief is fictitious. In The Philosophy of Composition Poe states that he selected for the theme of his projected poem, "a lover lamenting his deceased mistress." Pike, we are told by Willis, in the statement certainly seen by Poe, wrote his lines "in the stillness of midnight," "after sitting up late at study," and the initial stanza of The Raven begins,—
"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume."
The key-note has been struck, and all that follows is in due sequence. Poe, in his Philosophy of Composition, says that when he had determined upon writing his poem, "with the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy" in its construction, "some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn," he did not fail to at once notice that of all the usual effects, or points, adopted by writers of verse, "no one had been so universally employed as that of the refrain. The universality of its employment," he declared "sufficed to assure me of its intrinsic value, and spared me the necessity of submitting it to analysis." Now it may be noticed in passing that the refrain was neither universal—nor common, save with ballad makers—up to Poe's days, and that either of those attributes would have sufficed to repel him—whose search was ever after the outré—the bizarre. But the truth was Poe found as the most distinctive—the only salient—feature in his contemporary's poem the refrain,
"Thou art lost to me forever, Isadore."
Naturally, Poe's genius impelled him to improve upon the simple repetend: "I considered it," he says, "with regard to its susceptibility of improvement, and soon saw it to be in a primitive condition. As commonly used the refrain, or burden, not only is limited to lyric verse, but depends for its impression upon the force of monotone—both in sound and thought. The pleasure is deduced solely from the sense of identity—of repetition. I resolved to diversify, and so heighten the effect, by adhering in general to the monotone of sound, while I continually varied that of thought: that is to say, I determined to produce continuously novel effects, by the variation of the application of the refrain—the refrain itself remaining, for the most part, unvaried.
"These points being settled," continues Poe, "I next bethought me of the nature of my refrain. Since its application was to be repeatedly varied it was clear that the refrain itself must be brief, for there would have been an insurmountable difficulty in frequent variations of application in any sentence of length. In proportion to the brevity of the sentence would of course be the facility of the variation. This led me at once to a single word as the best refrain.
"The question now arose," pursues the poet, "as to the character of the word. Having made up my mind to a refrain, the division of the poem into stanzas was of course a corollary, the refrain forming the close to each stanza. That such a close, to have force, must be sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis, admitted no doubt, and these considerations inevitably led me to the long o as the most sonorous vowel in connection with r as the most producible consonant.
"The sound of the refrain being thus determined it became necessary to select a word embodying this sound, and at the same time in the fullest possible keeping with that melancholy which I had predetermined as the tone of the poem. In such a search," avers Poe, "it would have been absolutely impossible to overlook the word 'Nevermore.' In fact it was the very first which presented itself."
Thus the author of The Raven would lead his readers to believe that he was irresistibly impelled to select for his refrain the word "Nevermore," but, evidently, there are plenty of eligible words in the English language both embodying the long sonorous o in connection with r as the most producible consonant, and of sorrowful import. A perusal of Pike's poem, however, rendered it needless for Poe to seek far for the needed word, for, not only does the refrain to Isadore contain the antithetic word to never, and end with the ōre syllable, but in one line of the poem are "never" and "more," and in others the words "no more," "evermore," and "for ever more"; quite sufficient, all must admit, to have supplied the analytic mind of our poet with what he needed.
Thus far the theme, the refrain, and the word selected for the refrain, have been somewhat closely paralleled in the poem by Pike, whilst over the transmutation of the heroine's name from Isadore into Lenore no words need be wasted.
But the ballad of "Isadore" contains no allusion to the "ghastly grim and ancient Raven"—the ominous bird whose croaking voice and melancholy "nevermore" has found an echo in so many hearts. Where then did Poe obtain this sable, sombre auxiliary, the pretext, at he tells us, for the natural and continuous repetition of the refrain? Observing the difficulty of inventing a plausible reason for this continuous repetition, he did not fail to perceive, is his declaration, "that this difficulty arose solely from the presumption that the word was to be so continuously or monotonously spoken by a human being. I did not fail to perceive, in short," is his remark, "that the difficulty lay in the reconciliation of this monotony with the exercise of reason on the part of the creature repeating the word. Here, then, immediately arose the idea of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech, and, very naturally, a parrot in the first instance suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a raven as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone."
Now it will be recalled to mind that Pike was not only the author of a well-known Ode to The Mocking Bird, but that in his poem of Isadore, which has already served us so well, is the line—
"The mocking-bird sits still and sings a melancholy strain."
Poe would naturally desire to avoid introducing any direct allusion to the mocking-bird of his contemporary—which, indeed he had already noticed in print—even if that creature had been capable of enacting the needful rôle, so for a while, it is possible, he may have deemed the parrot suitable for his purpose. Gresset's Ver-Vert—that most amusing of birds!—with whose history he was familiar, may indeed have been recalled to mind, but that he would speedily discard all idea of such a creature as out of all keeping with the tone of his projected poem is evident. To us it appears clear that it was in Barnaby Rudge he finally found the needed bird. In a review which he wrote of that story Poe drew attention to certain points he deemed Dickens had failed to make: the Raven in it, the well-known "Grip," he considered, "might have been made more than we now see it, a portion of the conception of the fantastic Barnaby. Its croaking might have been prophetically heard in the course of the drama. Its character might have performed, in regard to that of the idiot, much the same part as does, in music, the accompaniment in respect to the air." Here would seem to be, beyond question, shadowed forth the poet's own Raven and its duty.
It has been seen that Poe found much of what he wanted in Isadore, and it might not be investigating too nicely to question whether the "melancholy strain" of its "mocking bird" may not have suggested the "melancholy burden" of the Raven; but more palpable similarities are apparent. In order to justify the following portion of our argument it will be necessary to cite some specimens of Pike's work, this stanza of it shall, therefore, be given:—
"Thou art lost to me forever—I have lost thee Isadore,— Thy head will never rest upon my loyal bosom more, Thy tender eyes will never more gaze fondly into mine, Nor thine arms around me lovingly and trustingly entwine— Thou art lost to me forever, Isadore."[3]
There was necessarily a misunderstanding in this: assuredly, Poe did derive useful hints from but not to the extent surmised: he has one line too close a parallel to that just cited to admit of accidental resemblance:— and the lines,—
