Edgar Alan Poe | basis of poetry (2023)

Edgar Allan Poe's position as a leading figure in world literature rests largely on his witty and insightful short stories, poems and critical theories, which established a very influential reason for the short form in both poetry and fiction. Regarded in textbooks and literary histories as the architect of the modern short story, Poe was also the most important forerunner of the "art for art's sake" movement in 19th-century European literature. Whereas earlier critics were primarily concerned with moral or ideological generalities, Poe focused his criticism on the specific details of style and construction that contributed to a work's effectiveness or failure. In his own work he has demonstrated a brilliant command of language and technique and an inspired and original imagination. Poe's poetry and short stories had a strong influence on the French Symbolists of the late 19th century, who in turn changed the direction of modern literature.

Poe's father and mother were professional actors. At the time of their birth in 1809, they were members of a repertory society in Boston. Before Poe was three years old, his parents died and he was raised in the home of John Allan, a wealthy exporter from Richmond, Virginia, who never legally adopted his adopted son. As a boy, Poe attended the best schools available, and in 1825 he was accepted to the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. There he excelled academically, but was forced to leave after less than a year due to irrecoverable debts and a lack of financial support from Allan. . Poe's relationship with Allan dissolved upon his return to Richmond in 1827, and soon after Poe went to Boston, where he enlisted in the army and also published his first poetry anthology.Tamerlane and Other Poems.The volume went unnoticed by readers and critics, and a second collection,Al Araf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems,received a little more attention when it appeared in 1829. That same year, Poe was honorably discharged from the Army after reaching the rank of regimental sergeant major, and was subsequently inducted into the United States Military Academy at West Point. However, as Allan would not provide his adopted son with sufficient funds to support himself as a cadet or agree to resign from the Academy, Poe obtained his discharge by ignoring his duties and breaking the rules. He later traveled to New York City, wherepoems,his third collection of poems, published in 1831, and then to Baltimore, where he lived with his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm.

In the years that followed, Poe's first short stories appeared in Philadelphia.saturday postand his "MS. Found in a Bottle" won a cash prize for Best Story at the Baltimorevisitors do not sat.However, Poe still did not earn enough to live independently, and Allan's death in 1834 gave him no inheritance. The following year, however, his financial problems were temporarily alleviated when he accepted an editor position atThe Messenger of Southern Literaturein Richmond, bringing with him his 12-year-old aunt and cousin Virginia, whom he married in 1836.The Messenger of Southern LiteratureIt was the first of several magazines Poe would publish over the next 10 years that would make him famous as America's leading literary figure. Poe became known not only as a prominent writer of poetry and novels, but also as a literary critic whose ingenuity and insight were unparalleled in American literature. Although Poe's writings attracted attention in the late 1830s and early 1840s, income from his work remained meager and he supported himself by publishing.Burton's Gentlemen's MagazinejGrahams Magazinein Philadelphia andbroadway diaryIn New York. After his wife's death from tuberculosis in 1847, Poe became involved in a series of romantic adventures. While preparing for his second marriage, Poe arrived in Baltimore in late September 1849 for reasons unknown. On 3 October he was discovered to be in a semi-conscious state; He died four days later without having regained the clarity needed to explain what happened in the last days of his life.

Poe's most outstanding contribution to world literature stems from the analytical method he practiced both as a creative writer and as a critic of the works of his contemporaries. His self-declared intention was to articulate strictly artistic ideals in an environment he saw as overly concerned with the utilitarian value of literature, a tendency he termed the "heresy of didactics". While Poe's position encompasses the main requirements of pure aestheticism, his emphasis on literary formalism was directly related to his philosophical ideals: through calculated use of language one can, however imperfectly, express a view of truth and essential condition. of human existence. Poe's theory of literary creation is emphasized by two central points: first, a work must produce a unified effect on the reader to be considered a success; Second, the creation of this unique effect should not be left to chance or inspiration, but every last detail of style and subject matter should be the result of rational thinking on the author's part. In poetry, this single effect should evoke the reader's sense of beauty, an ideal poet intimately associated with sadness, awkwardness, and loss; in prose, the effect must reveal some truth, as in "Prayers of Reason" or works that evoke "fright, passion, or terror."

In addition to a common theoretical basis, there is a psychological intensity characteristic of Poe's writing, particularly in the horror stories that make up his best and best known works. These stories, which include "The Black Cat", "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Tell-Tale Heart", are usually told by a first-person narrator, and it is through this voice that Poe explores the workings of one to psyche of man.Character. This technique heralds the psychological explorations of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the school of psychological realism. In his Gothic tales, Poe also used an essentially symbolic, almost allegorical method that gives works such as The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death, and Ligeia an enigmatic quality that accounts for their abiding interest and connects them to the works. Symbolic Symbols of Nathaniel Hawthorne andHerman Melville. The influence of Poe's short stories can be seen in the works of later authors, including Ambrose Bierce and H.P. Lovecraft, belonging to a different tradition of horror literature started by Poe. In addition to his achievement as the creator of the modern horror story, Poe is also credited with promoting two other popular genres: science fiction and detective stories. In works such as The Matchless Adventure of Hans Pfaall and Von Kempelen and His Discovery, Poe harnessed the fascination with science and technology that emerged in the early 19th century to produce speculative and fantastical tales that foreshadowed a style of literature. which was not widely used until the 20th century. Similarly, Poe's three reasoning tales - "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", "The Purloined Letter" and "The Mystery of Marie Roget" - are recognized as the models that established Poe's main characters and literary conventions, the Roman Crime, specifically the amateur detective who solves a crime that has baffled the authorities and whose exploits of deductive reasoning are documented by an admiring associate. Just as Poe influenced many later writers and is considered the forefather of important literary currents such as Symbolism and Surrealism, he was also influenced by earlier literary figures and currents. In his use of the demonic and the grotesque, Poe demonstrated the impact of E.T.A. Hoffman and Ann Radcliffe's Gothic Novels, while the despair and melancholy in many of his lyrics reflect an affinity with the early 19th century Romantic movement. Poe's particular genius was that in his work he gave perfect artistic form to both his personal obsessions and those of previous literary generations, while at the same time creating new forms that offered future artists avenues of expression.

Though Poe is best known for his short stories, his first love was as a poetry writer, which he began writing in his teens. His first verses reflect the influence of the English Romantics, such asHerr Byron,Juan Keat, jPercy Bysshe Shelley, but foreshadows his later poetry, which demonstrates a subjective perspective and a mystical, surreal vision. "Tamerlane" and "Al Aaraaf" illustrate Poe's evolution from depicting Byronic heroes to depicting journeys in his own imagination and subconscious. The first play, reminiscent of Byron's The Pilgrimage of Childe Harold, tells the life and adventures of a fourteenth-century Mongol conqueror; The final poem portrays a dream world where neither good nor evil permanently inhabits and where absolute beauty can be directly perceived. In other poems—”Helen,,Lenore,y“The crow"Poe examines in particular the loss of ideal beauty and the difficulty of regaining it. These plays are usually narrated by a young man mourning the untimely death of his beloved.„To Helen" is a three-stanza text that is considered one of the most beautiful love poems in the English language. The work's theme is a woman who, in the narrator's eyes, becomes the embodiment of the classical beauty of ancient Greece and Rome. "Lenore" explores ways to better remember the dead, whether through mourning or celebrating the afterlife. earthly boundaries. In The Raven, Poe successfully combines his philosophical and aesthetic ideals. In this psychological play, a young scholar is emotionally tormented for the ominous repetition of "Never again" by a crow in response to his questioning of the likelihood of an afterlife with his deceased lover.Carlos Baudelairementioned in his introduction to the French edition of "The Raven":“It really is the insomnia poem of despair; He lacks nothing: neither the fever of ideas, nor the violence of colors, nor the sick mind, nor the slimy terror, nor the strange pleasure of suffering that makes it even more terrible. Poe also wrote poems intended to be read aloud. He experimented with combinations of sound and rhythm, using technical devices such as repetition, parallelism, inner rhyme, alliteration, and assonance to create works unique in American poetry for their haunting musical quality. For example, in "Las Campanas" the repetition of the word "bells" in different structures emphasizes the unique tonality of the different types of bells described in the poem.