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Poe
occupies a unique place in American Literature. Whether or not he
would
approve, he has ceased to be a person and has been elevated to the
level
of an icon. He is regarded as the archetype of the dysfunctional
artist,
the genius who mines his own troubled life and pours his inner self
into
his works, creating as he himself is consumed — he is seen as “A Great
Man Self-Wrecked,” to borrow the title of an article widely published
in
the 1850s. This view of Poe has been working its way into the popular
imagination
since it was first promoted by Griswold in his infamous “Ludwig” obituary
of Poe (New York Tribune, October 9, 1849). It has been
presented
in numerous forms, and used for various purposes, often wielded by both
supporters and detractors of Poe. Examining Poe’s “Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym,” for example, J. H. Ingram declared in 1880: “His readers
are
well aware how clearly Poe’s idiosyncrasies, both in his prose and in
his
verse, show through the transparent mask behind which his heroes are
supposed
to be hidden, and in the ‘Narrative’ it is rarely that the imaginary
hero
is thought of otherwise than as identical with Poe himself” (1880, p.
149;
1886, p. 121). Even some illustrators of his works, including Manet and
Dulac, were inclined to produce images for “The Raven” featuring the
male
protagonist as having more than a passing resemblance to Poe. With the
subsequent advent of Freudian theories, Marie Bonaparte, Joseph Wood
Krutch
and other psychoanalytical devotees used Poe’s works to put the author
on the couch and provided a long series of entertaining “revelations”
about
their subject. Most of their claims were essentially unprovable, and
often
they were conflicting or simply absurd, but they seemed to verify the
idea
of Poe’s works as essentially autobiographical. Although generally
discredited,
their influence has never completely abated. So ubiquitous has this
view
become that in a historical overview John Reilly was obligated to
concede
that “the most pervasive feature of the image of Poe is the assumption
that his poems and tales are somehow autobiographical documents in
which
we can identify Poe himself.” This interpretive approach is still
regularly
taught by teachers to the eager minds of students. It is, in short, one
of our most cherished myths — but it is a myth.
Part of the difficulty in this discussion is the notion of what
makes
something autobiographical. Frank McCourt’s novel Angela’s Ashes
and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird are autobiographical
works;
Poe's short stories “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Purloined
Letter” are not. Webster’s Dictionary denotes the term
“autobiography”
as “(1) the art or practice of writing the story of one’s own life (2)
the story of one’s own life written by oneself.” Even a shallow survey
of Poe’s fiction, however, will reveal serious difficulties in applying
this definition to Poe’s works. Never did Poe seal anyone up in a wall
(“The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Black Cat”). Nor was he ever
threatened
by a razor-wielding Orangutang (“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”), nor
did
he murder an old man and bury the remains beneath a floor (“The
Tell-Tale
Heart”). He was never subjected to torture under the Inquisition (“The
Pit and the Pendulum”), nor did he ever seek the treasure of Captain
Kidd
(“The Gold-Bug”). He was never a witness to cannibalism, nor did he
encounter
south-sea natives as a sailor (“Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym”). Such
a list could easily go on for many pages, but the point is sufficiently
made and the dilemma clearly apparent.
Reilly addresses the issue by stating: “One of the principal sources
of the popular image of Poe is the long-standing notion, encouraged by
Poe himself, that his poems and especially his stories are
autobiographical
documents in which we can identify his narrators and characters as
versions
of Poe himself speaking in what appears to be his authentic voice . . .
The insurmountable obstacle confronting every attempt at translating
the
popular image of Poe into conventional drama is that the ‘man behind
the
legend’ as Edward Wagenknecht has called the historical Poe, is
appropriate
not to tragedy or to melodrama but to documentary. When playwrights
such
as Hazelton, Cushing, Hoffenstein, and Reed and even Treadwell,
playwrights
beguiled by the image of the legendary Poe, have attempted to translate
that popular image into something stage-worthy, their efforts
invariably
collide with the unyielding fact that Poe’s life simply does not
support
the legend” (pp. 473, 481-482 and 485). As noted by Mark
Neimeyer,
“The Poe legend has proved so strong that popular presentations of the
author’s life cannot seem to resist perpetuating it, even when
ostensibly
striving for historical accuracy,” adding that truth “is the last thing
that seems of interest to people in popular depictions of Poe” (p.
210).
In autobiographical writings, the names and settings for the events
that are related may be changed, but the essence of the story must
reflect
what actually occurred, or at least what the author recalls. There may
be a veneer of fiction, but the story should be recognizable by anyone
who has a basic familiarity with the author’s life. For Poe, we have
exactly
the opposite — a veneer of reality imposed over a fantasy. The names
and
settings of Poe’s works are sometimes taken from his own life, but the
essence of the story is taken from newspaper accounts of real-life
events,
from works by other authors, and from Poe’s imagination. There is also
the additional complication that Poe’s works contain a great deal of
satire,
and more than a little hoaxing. What emerges from a study of Poe’s life
and works is not that he is an unconscious artist, inscribing his own
life
on the page, but that he is a very careful and intentional artist, one
who borrows widely and recasts various sources with an imaginative
flair.
The orang-utan of “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” for example, seems to be
based on newspaper accounts of a man named Edward Cole, who killed his
wife with a razor, nearly severing her head. The newspaper accounts are
contemporary, and were reported in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier,
which we know Poe read regularly and to which he occasionally
contributed
(see Kopley).
Killis Campbell gave, perhaps, the most authoritative voice to the
autobiographical
reading of Poe. Admitting that “In Poe’s poems I can find but few
specific
references to the objective facts of the poet’s life” (p. 131),
Campbell
assigns “Annabel Lee” as “a lament for the death of Virginia Clemm” (p.
132). He later argues that “In the case of the poems the body of
self-revelatory
material, though small in compass, is, in reality, comparatively large:
it involves in some way virtually half of Poe’s poems; and though it
is,
for the most part, vague and cloudlike, this was entirely in keeping
with
the poet’s theory that the lyric should hide its meaning under a cloak
of ‘indefinitiveness’ ” (p. 146). The bulk of what Campbell includes in
this list, however, are poems which “echo his [Poe’s] own griefs and
disappointments,
his state of mind and his attitude to the world” (p. 132) rather than
possessing
genuinely autobiographical elements. Turning to the fiction, Campbell
asserts,
“The autobiographical elements in Poe’s tales and sketches, some
seventy
of which have been preserved, are, on the other hand, both more
extensive
and more readily apparent than in his poems” (p. 135). In attempting to
document his case, Campbell notes, “The most tangible piece of
self-revelation
that appears in his stories is to be found in his ‘William Wilson,’ in
which he describes under the guise of fiction, and not without
fictitious
detail and other bits of legitimate mystification, his school-life at
Stoke
Newington” (p. 135). “In other stories — and here again we can be very
sure of our ground — Poe gives expression, either in proper person or
through some one of his characters, to his own prejudices and
dislikes,”
specifically noting stabs at the Transcendentalists in “Never Bet the
Devil
Your Head” and “Some Words with a Mummy” (p. 137).
Although he uses the term “autobiographical” rather lightly,
Campbell’s
essay chiefly dwells on issues more accurately described as
self-revelation,
and even here he goes pretty far out on a limb in making his argument.
Discussing several selections from Poe’s early poetry, such as “Bridal
Ballad,” “Tamerlane” and “Politian,” Campbell says, “But that any of
these
poems are in reality autobiographical I do not feel certain. At best,
one
can only say that circumstantial evidence favors the assumption that
they
are” (p. 134). “It is safe to assume, too, that the particulars he
gives
in ‘The Premature Burial’ concerning a hunting expedition on the James
River involve reminiscence of some similar experience in his boyhood”
(p.
136). “Indirectly also ‘Ligeia’ must be accounted
autobiographical,
if we may credit an autograph note by the poet (in one of the printed
texts
of the story) to the effect that the tale originated in a dream” (p.
137).
He also includes such minor details as the Bowling Green Fountain in
“Some
Words with a Mummy” and Earl’s Hotel in “Von Kempelen and his
Discovery”
as autobiographical (pp. 136-137). The “hunting expedition” is but a
trivial
few sentences, with no detail of any significance, and if we are to
consider
dreams autobiographical then there no longer seems any distinction
remaining
between autobiography and pure imagination.
In closing his argument, Campbell prophetizes “There is, I day say,
a good deal more of autobiography in Poe’s poems and tales than I have
been able to discover. More light will doubtless be thrown on the
matter
with the revelation of new facts about Poe’s life and about his habits
of composition” (p. 146). This prediction, however, has not been borne
out by advances in scholarship. After more than one hundred and fifty
years
of such attention, we should have lots of information documenting
sheaves
of autobiographical elements, but we still have only a few tidbits
scattered
here and there. What we have accumulated, as Poe’s life and works have
been examined under the academic microscope, are many more external
sources
than internal ones. The great Poe scholar Thomas Ollive Mabbott, who
spent
most of his life preparing a monumental edition of Poe’s poetry and
tales,
concluded: “Primarily Poe used things he found in print. Most common,
probably,
were accounts of incidents and events he believed to be factual.
Secondly,
he used obviously fictional stories. A good example of a combination of
materials may be found in ‘The Oblong Box,’ where a recent crime is
combined
with a dramatic scene in a Byronic poem by Rufus Dawes. Occasionally
Poe
took up a challenge and wrote an answer to a story by somebody else, as
in ‘MS. Found in a Bottle,’ or worked out completely a narrative left
in
some way unfinished by another, as in ‘A Descent into the Maelstrom.’
On
a few occasions the inspiration came from pictures; ‘Morning on the
Wissahiccon’
was written to accompany an illustration; a painting by a friend was
the
inspiration for ‘The Oval Portrait’” (Tales and Sketches, 2:xx).
Continuing in this vein, Mabbott goes on to say: “A few tales are
founded
on personal experiences, as is ‘Landor’s Cottage.’ Poe said he based
‘Ligeia’
on a dream, although that story has literary sources too. It is said
that
he also talked about writing up a delirious vision he had in his last
summer,
but inspiration from drugs is not supported by any evidence at all. Of
the storytellers that he may have heard, little is known. In the Old
South,
children frequented the kitchen and listened to stories told by the
servants;
there, one assumes, the poet heard talk of premature burials. Yet
little
even probably comes from a Negro source, unless the eyeless devil of
‘Bon-Bon’
be related to a voodoo divinity” (Tales and Sketches, 2:xxi).
Supporters of the view that Poe’s works are significantly
autobiographical
observe that he commonly writes in first person narration, typified by
a phrase such as: “Some years ago, I engaged passage from Charleston,
S.C.,
to the City of New York” (“The Oblong Box”). Those who are well-read in
the literature of the period, and the literature Poe would have read
and
studied as models, know that first person narration was a common
technique,
especially in the tales of sensation which had helped to make Blackwood’s
Magazine such a success in the days of Poe’s youth. It is a
literary
device with a long and distinguished history, including Daniel Defoe’s The
Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York,
Mariner
(1719), a novel of which Poe was known to be fond (see his review
of January 1836 in the Southern Literary Messenger). Jonathan
Swift’s
famous Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is written from the first
person,
as are several of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales
(1837).
First person narration is a hallmark of Charles Dickens’ David
Copperfield
(1850), Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851) and Mark Twain’s The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). For Poe, the narrator
becomes
one of the characters of the tale, giving the stories a sense of
limited
perspective and lending an air of believability. To confuse Poe with
his
narrators is to fall victim to his spell as a writer.
Autobiographical readers further note that many of Poe’s works
contain
settings, characters or events that seem to correlate to Poe’s life. We
have already noted Campbell’s comment on “William Wilson,” which takes
place in an English school that clearly resembles one Poe attended and
even uses the name of Poe’s real headmaster, the Reverend Bransby. In
“Berenice,”
the narrator becomes engaged to his cousin and in “Eleonora,” the
narrator
marries his cousin, as Poe married his cousin, Virginia Clemm. These
minor
references are treated as clues, suggesting that other aspects of the
tale,
even without support from Poe’s biography, reveal more personal
information
about Poe. Such logic, however, is easily abused and by its use one
might
as well presume that a strawberry and a pencil, both being red, share
all
other traits and are, therefore, equally edible. More importantly, such
details as are given above are mere window-dressing. They do not form
the
essence of the story and these trivial similarities are overwhelmed by
differences. Furthermore, such readings fail to take into consideration
Poe’s sources. In “William Wilson,” for example, the narrator states,
“I
grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, and a prey to the
most
ungovernable passions.” This admission has been taken by some as a
reflection
of Poe’s own behavior at the University of Virginia, where he is know
to
have been introduced to drinking and gambling. Such an interpretation,
however, ignores Poe’s literary debt for the story to Washington
Irving’s
“An Unwritten Drama of Lord Byron,” acknowledged in Poe’s October 12,
1839
letter to Irving. In Irving’s article, describing a “a dramatic poem
which
he [Byron] did not write, but which he projected,” the hero is
described
as “His passions, from early and unrestrained indulgence, have become
impetuous
and ungovernable, and he follows their impulses with a wild and
heedless
disregard of consequences” (W. Irving, “An Unwritten Drama of Lord
Byron,” The
Gift for 1836, pp. 166-167). In the face of this evidence, some
will
argue that Poe is using both this source and his experiences at the
University
of Virginia, but the evidence does not support the charge and it must
be
dismissed as exaggeration and speculation.
Others will claim that the themes from Poe’s works reflect his life.
In this view, all tales of revenge, for example, become veiled contests
between Poe and his foster father, John Allan. Silverman goes to the
absurd
extreme of hypothesizing that Poe’s “brooding on the forbidden name
already
echoes in Al Aaraaf, Lalage, Phaall (with his ‘Unparrallelled’ [sic]
adventures),
and other characters and places formed on the letters double-a
double-l”(p.
126) — without explaining the double-r in “Unparrallelled,” which is
otherwise
a perfectly correct spelling of that word, if now a slightly dated one.
Such psychological readings ignore the complexity of Poe’s personality
and of his relationships with others. After John Allan’s death, far
from
nurturing the anger of his youth, Poe often conceded his own sad part
in
earning John Allan’s displeasure and forgave his foster father for
leaving
him nothing in his will (see Poe
to J. P. Kennedy, ca. November 19, 1834). For “The Tell-Tale
Heart,”
we have a much more likely source than Poe’s feud with John Allan, an
account
of a case written and published in 1830. The details of that case,
including
the carefully executed murder of the old man and the murderer’s need to
confess, and even much of Poe’s phrasing, bears such an eerie
similarity
that the source must be considered nearly conclusive. (A second source
may be Charles Dickens’ “A Confession Found in a Prison in the Time of
Charles the Second,” from his book Master Humphrey’s Clock,
which
Poe favorably reviewed for Graham’s Magazine in May 1841.) Even
if we did not have such sources, there seems insufficient cause to
presume
that Poe is imposing himself as the narrator and John Allan as the old
man with the evil eye. The connection between the murderer and the
old
man is unknown, but at no time is there a suggestion that they are
related
or family, including foster family.
In a greater error, these readers reduce all of Poe’s writings to
their
essential mood or emotion, but ignore the universality of such themes.
When one realizes that anger, loss, loneliness and fear are shared
human
experiences, there is no need to even attempt to attribute specific
associations
in Poe’s life. In the preface to his Tales of the Grotesque and
Arabesque
(1840), Poe himself indicates this element of the themes used in his
works.
Noting accusations of “ ‘Germanism’ and gloom,” Poe replies: “If in
many
of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is
not of Germany, but of the soul, — that I have deduced this terror only
from its legitimate sources, and urged it only to its legitimate
results.”
That Poe felt anger and wrote about anger, or felt sadness and wrote
about
sadness does not constitute autobiography. These are universal
emotions,
and as such are simply part of being human.
Still others will recite patterns that reoccur in Poe’s narratives,
such as male characters who suffer from nervous disorders (“The Fall of
the House of Usher,” “The Tell-Tale Heart” and others) and the death of
young women (“Ligeia,” “Morella,” “Eleonora” and others), but, like
premature
burial, these are mostly stock elements from Poe’s literary bag of
tricks.
An unreliable narrator makes it easy for Poe to create a sense of
uncertainty
in his readers — are these events real as described or are we being
misled?
Perceiving the battle lost in the prose, autobiographical readers of
Poe will often retreat to the poetry. Surely here, they cry, Poe is
revealing
himself. Lenore and Annabel Lee, they insist, must be Virginia. There
is
at least something to this argument, and one would be wrong, of course,
to say that there are no autobiographical elements in any of
Poe’s
works. Poe’s late poem “To My Mother” is dedicated to Maria Clemm
and
makes clear and unambiguous references to his mother, Eliza, and his
wife,
Virginia. Another poem, “Song” (“I saw thee on the bridal day . . .”),
first published as “To — —” in (1827), may refer to Poe returning
home
from the University of Virginia to find his childhood sweetheart,
Elmira
Royster, engaged to someone else. A small part of the idea of
“Tamerlane”
may be based on Elmira as a well. “Alone” (“From childhood’s hour I
have
not been . . .”) may have remained unpublished by Poe precisely because
it was so personal, but however ardently Poe may have felt the emotions
expressed in his poetry, they too are not really autobiographical.
There
are a few other elements, but mostly minor things such as names and
settings.
As Poe matured as a writer, even these scraps of autobiography
diminished.
Admitting that one’s life influences what one creates is something of a
truism, but that is a very different thing from saying that one’s works
are autobiographical. Is “The Raven” based on Poe’s ongoing distress at
the failing health of Virginia? Well, perhaps in part, but the poem is
a substantial revision of Poe’s earlier poems “Lenore” (1843) and “A
Paean”
(1831), which shows that the idea predates her illness and Poe’s
relationship
with her. Furthermore, Poe does not mention Virginia at all in
discussing
the creation of the poem in his essay “The Philosophy of Composition.”
In fact, Poe complicated the issue considerably by telling various
women
(including Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Shelton, and Mrs. Whitman) that they were
the
models for “Annabel Lee” (see Mabbott, Poems, 1:473-475).
Indeed,
these are but two of Poe’s idealized women, who are a combination of
several
women Poe knew, read about or merely imagined.
That Poe wrote about ideas which interested him, at least as
literary
devices, does not meet the definition of autobiography, nor approach it
in any meaningful way. Poe wrote about mesmerism, for example, but
seems
not to have really believed in it. (Indeed, he enjoyed the fact that
advocates
of mesmerism mistook his accounts as fact.) Far from being an
enlightened
or rarified reading of Poe’s works, the idea that they comprise his
autobiography
is, perhaps, the most superficial of possible readings. Poe is not
merely
documenting his own fears; he is exploiting the fears of his readers.
Looking
for parallels between Poe’s life and all, or most, of Poe’s characters
and plots misses the point, and reduces Poe to solipsism, which is what
Griswold tried to convince us was the case. Poe’s works must be about
more
than himself for him to be a successful writer, especially if they are
to appeal to readers over 150 years after they were written. We must be
careful about extending the concept of autobiography to fit reality
into
our preconceived notions. Although there are often layers of meaning in
Poe’s works, we must always be careful of finding “hidden” meanings.
Mabbott summarizes: “Poe said many times that the writer of stories
should invent or select incidents to combine for a preconceived desired
effect. Although this procedure may not have been thought out
philosophically
before he observed his own practice, it describes that practice in his
later years. He selected far more than he invented, but it is in the
mastery
of combination that his genius is most strikingly exemplified” (Tales
and Sketches, 2:xx). In fact, Poe’s genius is precisely that he was
able to transcend the limited perspective of his own life and
communicate
to his readers by relying on universal truths. Poe’s works are about
ideas.
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and the other stories of ratiocination,
for example, are about the nature of though. Most works of art, and all
great works of
art, are
about
ideas, but ideas are not autobiography.
Of
course Poe had to think about something to be able to write about it,
but
he did not need to experience it first hand. Indeed, for the most part
Poe is not writing primarily about himself, but about the darker parts
of humanity in general. If we recognize this broader meaning, the
observation
appears to make us uncomfortable, so we retreat to the relative safety
of thinking that we are glimpsing into Poe’s soul and not our own. In
the
end, the denial of autobiography as a predominating element in Poe’s
works
is not a denial of his genius — it is the confirmation of it. |
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