The Raven - Edgar Allan Poe - Halloween Special!

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver.  We’re here to read books that have changed the world and have changed us.

And I’m Garry Shriver- and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  Let me remind you one more time to please give us a five star rating and a review.  It’s how we can be a part of the podcast game!

And If you’re listening to this in real time- HAPPY HALLOWEEN from the Good ole USA and the great state of Tennessee.

That’s right, of course lots of us live all over the world and we are so grateful for those of you who tune in from places as far away as Riyadh, Pakistan and Sydney in New South Wales, and if you think about it and have time to check in with us- drop us a line about different days we can shout out and different traditions from all over the world.  We all share this great place called Planet earth and it’s fun to compare traditions- as far as the US goes, Halloween is one of our stranger holidays.

Yes- everyone dresses up in costumes- some funny, some scary, some made from scratch, some very expensive.  I remember, one year, my daughter, Anna, made a costume out of a trash can- she went as the tin- man- in the fifth grade.  Then the next year when she started going to dances, she was pippi longstocking.

Both of your girls are known for her crazy costumes, didn’t Lizzy dress up as the old man from Up one year?

Yes, and Anna went to a party last year dressed as salt- as in the condiment?   Since we’re not rich people, we’ve always had to get really creative with whatever leftover clothes we found in the back of closets- sometimes the neigbors closets. And we’ve often tried to be funny.  Lizzy and her roommate last year went as Shark Boy and Lava girl- silly things like that. 

Well, we probably shouldn’t go into the details of our last year’s fiasco as you and I went as Fred and Wilma Flintstone?, but I think people get the idea- that Halloween, for all of the spooky movies and so forth, is supposed to be a time of having fun, playing around, giving candy to children and making connections with neighbors and people you live around but may never socialize with.

True- growing up in Brasil, we, of course, didn’t have Halloween, but we did have something in June (which is fall for us south of the equator) but we called it Festa Junina- or june festivals- and to me it served the same purpose.  There was dancing, and costumes, and fun foods and community.  I really don’t know how Halloween developed, but I really do wish they had kept the scary out of it.

Ha!  Well, it’s a long history dating back to the Celts and Druids originally, but  it has definitely evolved so much so that today- almost ¼ of all the candy sold in the United States is sold around this holiday- so as you can see the emphasis has definitely changed from the semi-serious to a dentists dream holiday!!!! 

That’s true, and of course, we’re participants- with door decorations, candy, and today we’re celebrating by giving a nod to one of American’s scariest writers- Edgar Allan Poe.

Yes- last week, we discussed his very difficult early days.  We began with the death of his mother, living with an adopted family, the Allan’s, where the mother died.  And his extremely antagonistic relationship with his adopted father.    We also discussed his very tumultuous professional career: getting kicked out of school, being discharged from the military, and getting hired and fired up and down the east coast multiple times. 

His life was not an easy life- there is no doubt- but amid all of this often self-destructive struggle he did produce some very remarkable and iconic art.  Poe’s career really lasted over 20 years if you date the beginning from when he published his first book of poetry at the age of 18- and lasted until he died 22 years later.  His greatest success came in 1845 with the publication of his most famous poem- the Raven.  It came out in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845 and went viral immediately.  I’m not sure he even made ten dollars for publishing the poem itself even though  It was republished over and over all over the world.  BUT it did lead to him being able to publish a book called “The Raven and Other Poems”-  that did sell and helped him stabilize his finances for the first time in his entire life.  This poem made him famous in the way “Put a Ring On it” made Beyonce famous-

Or maybe- I’ve got Friends in Low Places” for Garth Brooks.

Or Dancing Queen- for ABBA

Oh my- do all roads lead to Mamma Mia…

Not all-but many, if I’m drawing the maps!!

True- Well, I guess the idea being there is a break out hit that  makes someone’s otherwise unnoticed work now visible.

Exactly, even though that’s hard for us to conceive that a poem could ever be famous today. We don’t rave over poetry like this now- but if you’ve ever seen Anne of Green Gables, you may can visualize what I’m talking about.  People in other eras would memorize great poems and then the would perform and recite them for other people at parties or events like that.  It was a popular trend, and The Raven was great for this.  It has an amazing refrain, it’s full of rhyme, it has gobs lf alliteration- it’s a story- there’s room for emotional it’s made to be recited out loud- as we’ll do here in a bit (except we won’t do it from memory- we’re not that awesome). 

Sadly this celebrated fortune was short lived.  One of the dream’s of Poe’s life was to own his own magazine which he was able to do after this glory moment with The Raven, but financial ruin was never far away. Even after he wrote the blockbuster “Cask of Amontillado”  that next year and then his very famous essay called “The Philosophy of Composition” that you’re going to talk about here in a minute- he couldn’t make the money work.  And this very directly truly brought to fruition the worst tragedy of his life yet- As we talked about last week, He was living with his wife  the child-bride Virginia and his Aunt/her mother Mrs. Clemm; but because they were so poor they were all living in this not very nice unheated room in New York.  Virginia had been sick with tuberculosis for the last four years, but these conditions were too much for her sickly body.  And she didn’t make it.

It’s generally agreed that this death really wiped him out.  And he became in some sense like the characters he’d been describing in all of these stories- he had so vividly expressed irrational or rational fear driving his protagonist to madness.  He had so well described what it feels like to be crazy, to lose your sense of reality, to feel terror, to feel like your life is haunted- and it is interesting to note that ALL of his stories ARE in the first person.  His narrative techniques really are one of the things that makes him stand out.  Of course, he’s writing out of himself- but the way he writes these experiences We are Poe in his writings too.  Poe’s last major writing is titled, ‘Eureka”- it is actually 40,000 words of non-fiction- very philosophical, metaphysical, perhaps spiritual.  After he wrote it he wrote to Mrs. Clemm that he craved for death, he said this, “I must die.  I have no desire to live since I have done Eureka.”  It’s kind of sad.

Well, maybe, but on the other hand, this sadness that didn’t keep him from trying to find another wife which he actually did do in the person of Mrs. Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton, a wealthy widow who he’d had a crush on as a teenager.  It seems He even convinced her  to marry him- in spite of quite a bit of opposition. She had inherited over $100,000 from her husband on the condition that she didn’t marry- plus her children did NOT approve of their mother’s relationship with Poe.  Although she had agreed, they had a little bit of an uphill battle to make it happy.

Well, It was not fated to be- by the way it is rumored that Sarah, not Virginia is the muse of both the girl in the raven as well as the girl in Annabelle Lee.  And Interestingly enough.  If you look up her picture on Wikipedia, you’ll see that she’s a stunningly gorgeous woman.  At least I looked her up and I think she was gorgeous.

Well, here’s the mysterious end of the story---Poe left Richmond, Virginia where Sarah lived in July after agreeing to marry him.  He was on his way back to Philadelphia where he was supposed to edit a volume of poetry when whatever happened to him happened-  which we don’t know for sure what that is:  This is what we know-

On October 3, 1849, a Dr. Joseph E. Snodgrass in Baltimore received the following note dated: Oct. 3, 1849

It read:Dear Sir,

There is a gentleman, rather the worse for wear, at Ryan's 4th ward polls, who goes under the cognomen of Edgar A. Poe, and who appears in great distress, & he says he is acquainted with you, he is in need of immediate assistance.

Yours, in haste,JOS. W. WALKERTo Dr. J.E. Snodgrass.

No one had seen him since the morning of September 27.  Dr. Snodgrass found Poe semiconscious and dressed in clothes that people say he didn’t own.  He was taken to the hospital.  The next day he regained consciousness, but never enough to tell anyone what happened to him.  After four days of this in and out state- he started calling out the name Reynolds, but that didn’t make much sense either.   On the morning of October 7, Poe breathed a prayer, “Lord, help my pour soul>”. And that was it.  There have been 150 years of theories as to what happened to him ranging from him being mugged, to something to do with his poor relationship with alcohol, to getting rabies, to being murdered.  But honestly, we will never know….

Well, it seems appropriate that Poe leaves this world in a cloud of mystery- he is credited, after all,  with being one of the original creators of the detective story- in fact Sr. Arthur Conan Doyle once said that Pe’s stories were a model for all time “and contributed significantly to his own creation of Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes-Poe’s own death is literally an unsolved mystery.  He was originally buried in an unmarked grave- again not inappropriate for a man who struggled with money from the day he was born…but ironically his fame and fortune would finally change, by 1875, money had been raised, a monument was erected to his honor, Virginias remains were brought down from New York, and he was buried with Virgnia and Mrs. Clemm all together in this very nice, peaceful and celebrated fashion.  Ironically- all that he wanted in life, to be with women he loved, rich and famous- he got all of it, he just didn’t live to see any of it.

And you would think the Poe mystery would end there- but that would be too “basic” for someone as unusual as Poe.  Before we leave the life and times of Poe and get serious about reading the Raven, I can’t let you move on without mentioning the Poe Toaster

Oh yes- the toaster- tell us this story Garry- it’s so weird.

Well, it seems there was a man who sometime during the late 1930s or 40s, started this personal tradition of going to Poe’s original grave every January 19th.  It wasn’t a publicity stunt, he would just go by myself, dressed in black, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a white scarf- and he would pour himself a class of cognac, raise a toast to Poe’s memory, and leave three roses- presumably for Poe, Virginia and Maria Clemm.  Apparently this went on for years until someone in the press found out about it and wrote about it in a newspaper in 1950.  It got tons of visibility as this strange phenomena and people began wondering who this guy was and what was the point.  He never came out with a reason- he wasn’t cashing in on the fame and glory of Poe- it was just a private tradition. Over the years several people tried to identify him by tracing clues from the bottles, talking to people at the Poe Museum, but interestingly enough and apparently out of respect for this tradition, no one stopped him mid-tradition to uncover the mystery and it is a mystery.  This went on for years, until in 1993, a note was left for Jeff Jerome who curates the Poe museum saying only that “the torch will be passed”- then another note was left in 1999 saying that the original toaster had died within months before the annual event.  The toasting continued, maybe by a relative or close friend through 2009 and the bicentennial of Poe’s birth- but then it suddenly stopped.  There have been several poser toasters since than

Haha- faux poe toasters

,

Yes- the faux poes- but it seems that after 80 years the Poe Toaster tradition has stopped.  Another mystery in a long legacy of a mysterious man.

Well, on that note- I say it’s time to read his most famous piece- The Raven.  As I am prone to do, I want to explain it before we read it.  I would say read it straight through after that, and although I know this is how Poe would want it read, it’s been my experience that most of us need it explained stanza by stanza to really make sense of it.  It has a lot of big words in it, long periodic and cumulative sentences, and as Poe clearly tells us in his “philosophy of composition” it is a whole 108 lines long.

Now what is this philosophy of composition?  You referenced it before but you didn’t explain what it was. 

Sure, well, like I said before, Poe really made his money as a literary critic.  In fact, lots of people over the years (especially the French critics who have studied Poe maybe more than anyone) really think he was one of the first American literary critics of any merit.  But, like I also said, although a lot of what he said about other writers writings was true, he was kind of mean-spirited and made people hate him.  So, it makes sense that when his own big blockbuster poem came out, as a way of monetizing this success, he reviewed his own work- of course, instead of lambasting it what he does is explain his own philosophy of writing and explain why his is a work of genius.  Of course, even though it’s an obvious media gimmick instead of a real analytical or academic paper, it’s still interesting, especially since it’s a direct discussion of “The Raven”.  I thought it was worth reading and has something to say.

What does it say? 

Well, some of the stuff in it I said last week because it applies to all of Poe’s writing not just his poems. He thinks no poem should be longer than anyone would want to read in one sitting and a long poem, like Paradise Lost is just a collection of lots of little poems.  He supports this by saying that a poem can only pull one single effect- that’s his big idea really- and that that effect  a poem should go for is to describe something beautiful.

And that’s what he thinks “The Raven” is- describing something beautiful?  Some people may think it’s creepy and scary.

Well, that depends on what your definition of beautiful is and he has one.  For him beauty isn’t the same as pretty.  And for Poe anything is beautiful IF it somehow moves you emotionally- he uses the expressions “excites the sensitive soul to tears”.  So, if you look at it his way, which you may or may not want to do, but if you track with him, you get to his conclusion that the feeling of melancholy “as he calls it” you might call it sadness, is, in his words, “the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.”

So, he enjoys feeling sad, finds it beautiful or thinks we do or should? 

I think that’s the idea.  What do you think of that idea?

Well, I don’t know if I want to go around feeling sad all the time, but if we to relate it to music, I think there’s this idea that when we hear something that reflects how we feel inside, it helps us channel those emotions..and in that sense, maybe there’s something beneficial in doing that, something beautiful if you want to call it that, but sadness for sadness sake…I don’t know.

Well, moving on, another thing that Poe wants us to be sure to notice when we read his poem is his refrain- a refrain is something that is repeated over and over again.  In his essay, he makes it sound so scientific- he talks about how he spent time thinking about which letters or sounds were most pleasurable and what word would be the perfect word to be repeated over and over again…and after deep pondering he concludes the O sounds and the R sound are the perfect sounds, then of course he arrives at this famous conclusion  that the word “nevermore” is the perfect word.

Is that really how he describes his process?  I can see why people think it’s contrived. 

I know- it sounds cheesy coming out of my mouth.   It’s just as cheesy when he describes the idea of how he chooses to have a Raven be the bird in the poem repeating the phrase.   And all of this to get us to this crazy assertion that and let me quote it directly, “When it most closely allies itself to beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world- and equal is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.”

 I’m not a woman, obviously, but to a modern ear that sounds a little like objectifying or at least condescending to women.  Am I off?

Well, I wouldn’t consider my death to be the most poetical topic in the world and for sure he comes across that same way in all of his stories, but I’ll pass on that invitation to go down that road. Hahaha- and the only reason is because there is one more legitimate idea in this essay, that I think is actually interesting…Poe says that every poem, and really he does this with his stories too, but every poem should only one locale and this locale should be very insulated.  In other words, he wants to box you in and confine you to his world…and if you think about the Cask of Amontillado, there was genius in that effect.  In the poem the raven, which is a narrative poem, in other words, it’s actually a story…he does this same thing…the lover is in a chamber and this closed space kind of contributes to the spooky effect.  You’re not getting out.

The last thing he claims in this essay on how he wrote the Raven, I find hard to believe, but who am I to argue with one of America’s greatest writers, but he claims he wrote the climax of the poem first and worked he was around it.  I don’t know how true that could possibly be, but it does make him sound like a genius…and someone who didn’t just write this poem but calculated it word for word, image by image, sound by sound.  And it’s clear, he did do a lot of that….

That’s true….it’s very well structured.  There are 18 stanzas of six lines- and the last line of each stanza is that refrain that gives us the feeling that we’re being haunted.  One of the great debates when people read this poem and is something to think about- people don’t agree if the narrator goes crazy!!  There does seem to be a point in the poem where he thinks the Raven is more than just a bird, but is he dreaming- is he really not just awake, or has he lost his mind?  Let’s read it together and experience the gothic madness that has terrified audiences for the last 200 years…

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