The Portable Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [308]
The Raven
1 That is, her name must hereafter remain unspoken.
2 Pallas Athena was the Greek goddess of wisdom.
3 Legendary drug that relieved sorrow.
4 An eccentric spelling of Eden. Poe’s narrator wishes to confirm the existence of a spiritual afterlife, where he may again embrace Lenore. Yet the question is perverse: He inevitably anticipates the bird’s response.
Ulalume—A Ballad
1 Arguably Poe’s most difficult poem, a verse narrative complicated by esoteric astrological imagery, “Ulalume” presumably fictionalizes Poe’s own visits to the grave of Virginia in 1847. The name of the dead beloved here likely derives from the Latin verb ululare, to wail or howl.
2 Poe’s Mount Yaanek may refer to an Antarctic volcano, Mt. Erebus, discovered in 1840. The “scoriac” rivers refer to lava flows.
3 Presumably Halloween. Virginia Poe died, however, in January.
4 Astarte was the Phoenician goddess of love and hence the counterpart of Venus. The moon here seems to be in a crescent phase, perhaps “bediamonded” in juxtaposition with the planet Venus.
5 The constellation Leo. The juxtaposition of Venus and Leo would have been astrologically ominous. Psyche (the soul) expresses “mistrust” about the passion of Venus.
The Bells
1 Magical verse; a rune was a letter in the archaic Anglo-Saxon alphabet.
For Annie
1 Perhaps no other poem pertains more closely to a specific event in Poe’s life, here, the crisis of November 1848 in which the distraught poet swallowed laudanum hoping to bring “Annie” Richmond to his bedside.
2 Naphthaline is a clear compound derived from petroleum or tar and is used in making dyes, solvents, and explosives. Its figurative sense here seems to be that of a toxic, perhaps flammable influence.
3 Poe may be punning on the etymology of pansy, which (as he knew) derived from the French word for thought, pensée; the floral reference thus alludes to his thoughts of Mrs. Richmond, who lived in Massachusetts and possibly represented herself to Poe as a daughter of the Puritans.
Eldorado
1 The idea of a city of gold, a place of longed-for riches, also figures in Poe’s “Dream-Land,” but by 1849, “Eldorado” had become synonymous with California, and this poem hints that the quest for instant wealth may be a delusion. See Poe’s letter to Frederick W. Thomas of February 14, 1849, for further reflections on the gold rush.
CRITICAL PRINCIPLES
The Prose Tale (from a review of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales)
1. The phrase may be translated, One proceeds most prudently by following a middle course.
The Object of Poetry (from “Letter to B—”)
1 Poe translates Aristotle’s Poetics somewhat inaccurately.
2 About all that can be known and certain other things.
3 Why so much anger?
4 Most sects are right in much of what they advocate but wrong in what they deny.
The Philosophy of Composition
1 All else being equal.
American Criticism
1 Theodore Fay was an editor of the New York Mirror and author of the novel Norman Leslie, which Poe savaged in 1835, as much for the extravagant “puffing” of the volume as for its flimsiness.
2 About all things and certain others.
3 Belier, my friend, begin at the beginning. Poe alludes to Le Bélier, an exotic tale by the Irish-French author Anthony Hamilton.
4 Smooth and round.
OBSERVATIONS
Some Secrets of the Magazine Prison-House
1 National spirit. Foster and Scott were New York publishers who reprinted cheap editions of British journals for the American literary market.
2 Mulberry tree (on which silkworms feed).
American Literary Independence
1 All else being equal.
2 Poe refers to John Wilson, editor of Blackwood’s Magazine, who in the persona of “Christopher North” delivered dismissive opinions about American writers (such as Lowell).
3 How long, Catalina?
4 That is, to the most remote sites of competing interest.
The Soul and the Self
1 Entity or real thing.
Poetical Irritability
1 Beauty.
Genius and Proportionate Intellect
1 Vexing question.
Adaptation and the Plots of God