Strolling in the American Literature Garden [Part 6]

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) came from a family of itinerant actors. He became an orphan at an early age, his parents died of tuberculosis. In his works as well as in his life, he was always haunted by his mother's death and had a mystical, pessimistic mood, with a tendency to seek the unusual, the supernatural, the magical, and the horrifying.

Writer Edgar Allan Poe.

At the age of two, he was adopted by a wealthy merchant couple, John Allan and his wife. He lived with them in England from the age of six to eleven, then went to school in the United States. At the age of fourteen, he wrote his first book of poems for his girlfriend, the mother of a friend. At the age of eighteen, he dropped out of school because his adoptive father thought he was lazy.

He funded the publication of Tamerlane and other Poems (1827) at the age of 18. At the age of 27 (1836), he married his 13-year-old cousin. During the years 1831-1833, he lived in poverty but wrote extensively, writing criticism, editorials, short stories and poems for magazines.

The story The Scarabée d'or or Gold-Bug (1843) made Edgar Poe considered the father of modern detective stories.

The Golden Orange was the name given to a series of detective novels published in France after the Great War. The main character is Legrand, a misanthropic entomologist, living alone with his black servant Jupiter on a deserted island. One day, he caught a strange-looking orange. That night, a friend came over to visit. Sitting by the fireplace, talking, Legrand drew a drawing of an orange for his friend; unexpectedly, the drawing of the orange turned into a skull. That was because he accidentally drew it on a piece of ancient parchment paper made of very thin leather that he picked up on the beach, near where he caught the golden orange. The drawing of the skull, which was originally made with a chemical ink, appeared near the fire. Legrand heated it closer to the fire and saw a line of numbers and secret signs appear.

From then on, Legrand was always pensive, like a lost soul. About a month later, he invited Jupiter to come. The three of them organized an expedition on the island to find the treasure of gold that a robber had buried. Legrand deduced and found the secret of the code. They came to the foot of a lush old tree. Following his master's orders, Jupiter climbed the tree and found a human skull. From the tree, he followed his master's orders and dropped a golden orange through the eyehole on the left side of the skull. From the point where the orange fell to the ground, Legrand calculated based on the code and found the place where the treasure was buried.

The Raven appears in a collection of poems, perhaps Edgar Poe's most famous poem. The first poem in the author's last collection, published when he was 36 years old under the title The Raven and Other Poems (1845). The poem creates a gloomy, mysterious, and sinister atmosphere. Edgar Poe uses carefully considered techniques in composing: the refrain "nevermore" has a sad, desperate tone; With its resounding syllables and sobbing rhythm, the crow in the folk imagination is a bird of ominousness and mourning, associated with the image of crushed flesh and broken bones, hopeless love for the deceased, the separation of the living and the dead but love still in the underworld... Due to the technical intention, the poem is a bit too bold, the symbolic intention is quite obvious, so the poem lacks the innocence and purity of some simpler poems, such as Poem sent to the person in heaven (To One in Paradise, 1833), mourning for the deceased lover and Annabel Lee (Anabol Li, 1849), also on the same topic.

Edgar Poe created the typical amateur detective character in literature; especially in The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), an orangutan kills two people. He also created horror stories such as The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), about a castle and people, shrouded in a mystical atmosphere. These stories are in the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840). Or The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), about a teenager's adventures at sea (rebellious sailors, storms, meeting a ship carrying corpses, ghosts...).

In 1847, his wife died after 11 years of marriage, he wrote a poem dedicated to Annable Lee. As a critic, he harshly criticized Longfellow, for example, calling Longfellow a “copycat” and causing much hatred. Addicted to alcohol, mentally unstable, epileptic, paranoid, with no regular income, he lived a miserable life, very sad because his wife died, sought comfort from some girlfriends, attempted suicide... and died after being drunk lying on the street.

Assessment of Edgar Allan Poe after his death was very different, although he was recognized as a great author. In general, British and American critics were somewhat reserved, considering Poe's works to be more of a technical masterpiece than a genius.

On the contrary, some French poets such as Baudelaire, who translated most of Edgar Poe's works, Mallarmé, Valéry highly praised him. The French Symbolist school of poetry considered itself a disciple of Poe, and this school in turn influenced the Anglo-American movement, promoting images (Imagism) in the years 1909-1917. English poets such as Swinburn, Wilde, Rossetti, Yeats also worshiped Poe.

Psychiatrist Freud and his followers noticed the sometimes far-fetched morbid and pathological elements in Poe's writing. There are also some of Poe's stories that foreshadow existentialism. In literary theory, Poe advocated "Art for art's sake."

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