Edgar Allan Poe

Spirits of the dead: Tales and

poems

Edgar Allan Poe

( born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 October 7, 1849)

Was

an American writer, editor, and literary

critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short
stories, particularly his tales of mystery and
the macabre. Widely regarded as a central figure
of Romanticism in the United States and
American literature as a whole, he was one of
the country's earliest practitioners of the short
story. Poe is generally considered the inventor
of the detective fiction . He was the first wellknown American writer to try to earn a living
through writing alone, resulting in a financially
difficult life and career.

Spirits of the Dead

Was first published under the name Visits of the Dead
in the 1827 collection of Poes poetry known
as Tamerlane and Other Poems. The title was changed
for re-publication in another collection entitled Al
Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems, which was
published two years later.
Spirits of the Dead was written by Poe in lamentation
of the death of his child bride Virginia Clemm Poe,
who died at a very young age, at twenty-five in fact.
Her death affected Poe so deeply that his thoughts
turned mundane ever afterwards, and he started writing
meditations on death.

 The movement within the lines of

Spirits of the Dead mimics the stages
of grief that Poe himself must have
gone through after Virginias death in
1847. The mood of the poem shifts
from sadness to anger, and finally to
resignation. This is signified by the
change in imagery from dark,
night, tombstone towards the
beginning of the poem, to red,
fever, glowing, burning around
the middle, and mist, breeze,
breath towards the end.

Analysis
Immediately, in the first stanza, we
find ourselves alone in a cemetery. I
see two interpretations for the soul
mentioned here. Obviously, it could be
taken literally as the spirit of one
recently deceased, in that transitional
period between worlds, awaiting the
moment when the soul will pierce the
veil and enter the next realm. But the
phrase dark thoughts also implies
that the soul is symbolic of a persons
psyche, one who is obsessed with his
own mortality or the death of someone
close.

 In the second stanza, we see the spirits of the dead joining

the lonely soul. This also has two interpretations, each
associated with how you choose to interpret the soul.
When taken literally, the soul of the newly departed is
greeted by the spirits of those who have previously died.
It appears that the spirits will serve as guides, ushering the
soul to the next dimension. The second possibility, of the
soul as psyche, implies that in his quiet hour, his mind is
filled with memories of friends and family who have died
and that those memories will overshadow his sanity.
The third stanza I find very interesting. Hope is described
as something terrible, the cause of an eternal burning and
a fever. Hope is one of those double-edged swords.
While a life filled with hopelessness is certainly not
desirable, we must concede that hope is also the reason
people cling to their sorrows, in the hope that they may
see their loved ones again in the afterlife. Hope also
makes people sacrifice their happiness in this life, all
because of the hope that there may be some reward in the
next life. But of course, none of this is guaranteed.

 In the fourth stanza, we see thoughts and visions that will never leave.
For the literal soul of the departed, it has become pure consciousness.
Nothing remains but thoughts and visions of the past life. For the soul
as psyche, it is the mind giving way to madness and despair, unable to
free itself from painful memories.

 In the final stanza, the mist is presented as a

symbol for the veil between life and death, that
which separates us from the ultimate mystery.
But the mist is also a symbol for the veil
between the two realms of consciousness:
waking consciousness and the subconscious. In
the shadowy realm of the subconscious lie our
hidden memories, which bubble to the surface
as symbols in our dreams and fantasies. As hard
as we try to explore our subconscious minds,
we can never know all that exists in that part of
the psyche.

The

by Edgar Allan Poe

Analysis
The work remains Poes best-known poem
today partly because, in his Philosophy of
Composition, Poe describes what he claims
was the method by which he composed the
poem. Whether or not that description is an
accurate account of how the work was
composed, it is surely a description of how Poe
wished the poem to be read. Thus, Poe himself
was the first, and is perhaps still the best, critic
and interpreter of his own poem.

 As Poe makes clear in The Philosophy of

Composition, he wished to create an effect
of beauty associated with melancholy in the
poem; he decided that the refrain
nevermore, uttered to a young man whose
mistress has recently died, was perfectly
calculated to achieve that effect. According to
Poe, the basic situation, the central character,
and the plot of the poem were all created as a
pretext or excuse for setting up the
nevermore refrain, to be repeated with a
variation of meaning and impact each time.

 The plot is a simple one: A young student is reading

one stormy night in his chamber, half-dreaming
about his beloved deceased mistress. He hears a
tapping at his window and opens it to admit a raven,
obviously someones pet which has escaped its
master, seeking shelter from the storm. The raven
can speak only one word, nevermore. When the
student, amused by this incident, asks the raven
questions, its reply of nevermore strikes a
melancholic echo in his heart. Although he knows
that the raven can only speak this one word, he is
compelled by what Poe calls the universal human
need for self-torture to ask the bird questions to
which the response nevermore will cause his
suffering to be even more intense. When this selftorture reaches its most extreme level, Poe says, the
poem then naturally ends.

 The sorrow of the young student and the stormy midnight

hour contribute to the overall effect of the poem, but the
most important feature is the sound of the refraina sound
that is established even before the raven appears by the
dead mistresss name Lenore. The echo of the word
Lenore by nevermore is further emphasized in stanza
5, when the student peers into the darkness and whispers
Lenore? only to have the word echoed back, Merely
this and nothing more.
Once the lost Lenore is projected as the source of the
students sorrow, the appearance of the raven as a sort of
objectification of this sorrow seems poetically justified.
When he asks the raven its name and hears the ominous
word, nevermore, the student marvels at the birds ability
to utter the word but realizes that the word has no inherent
meaning or relevance. The relevance of the birds answer
depends solely on the nature of the questions or remarks
the student puts to it. For example, when he says that the
bird will leave tomorrow, like all his hopes have flown
before, he is startled by the seemingly relevant reply,
nevermore.

The student begins to wonder what the ominous

bird means by repeating nevermore. When he
cries that perhaps his god has sent him respite from
his sorrow and memory of Lenore, the birds
response of nevermore makes him call the bird
prophet and compels him to ask it if, after death,
he will clasp the sainted maiden whom the angels
call Lenore; to this question he knows he will
receive the reply, nevermore. Obsessively pushing
his need for self-torture to its ultimate extreme, the
young man calls for the bird to take its beak from its
heart and its form from his door, once again knowing
what response he will receive. Although the poem is
often dismissed as a cold-blooded contrivance, it is
actually a carefully designed embodiment of the
human need to torture the self and to find meaning in
meaninglessness.

Symbols

Poe uses several symbols to take the poem to a

higher level. The most obvious symbol is, of
course, the raven itself. When Poe had decided to
use a refrain that repeated the word "nevermore,"
he found that it would be most effective if he used
a non-reasoning creature to utter the word. It
would make little sense to use a human, since the
human could reason to answer the questions (Poe,
1850). In "The Raven" it is important that the
answers to the questions are already known, to
illustrate the self-torture to which the narrator
exposes himself. This way of interpreting signs
that do not bear a real meaning, is "one of the
most profound impulses of human nature" (Quinn,
1998:441).

Another obvious symbol is the bust

of Pallas. Why did the raven decide to
perch on the goddess of wisdom? One
reason could be, because it would lead
the narrator to believe that the raven
spoke from wisdom, and was not just
repeating its only "stock and store," and
to signify the scholarship of the narrator.
Another reason for using "Pallas" in the
poem was, according to Poe himself,
simply because of the "sonorousness of
the word, Pallas, itself" (Poe, 1850).

 The chamber in which the narrator is

positioned, is used to signify the
loneliness of the man, and the sorrow he
feels for the loss of Lenore. The room is
richly furnished, and reminds the narrator
of his lost love, which helps to create an
effect of beauty in the poem. The
tempest outside, is used to even more
signify the isolation of this man, to show
a sharp contrast between the calmness in
the chamber and the tempestuous night.

Poe builds the tension in this poem

up, stanza by stanza, but after the
climaxing stanza he tears the whole
thing down, and lets the narrator know
that there is no meaning in searching for
a moral in the raven's "nevermore". The
Raven is established as a symbol for the
narrator's "Mournful and never-ending
remembrance." "And my soul from out
that shadow, that lies floating on the
floor, shall be lifted - nevermore!

Eleonora-Plot summary

The story follows an unnamed narrator who lives with his cousin
and aunt in "The Valley of the Many-Colored Grass", an idyllic
paradise full of fragrant flowers, fantastic trees, and a "River of
Silence". It remains untrodden by the footsteps of strangers and
so they live isolated but happy. After living like this for fifteen
years, "Love entered" the hearts of the narrator and his cousin
Eleonora. The valley reflected the beauty of their young love:

The passion which had for centuries distinguished our race...

together breathed a delirious bliss over the Valley of the ManyColored Grass. A change fell upon all things. Strange, brilliant
flowers, star-shaped, burst out upon the trees where no flowers
had been known before. The tints of the green carpet deepened;
and when, one by one, the white daisies shrank away, there
sprang up in place of them, ten by ten of the ruby-red asphodel.
And life arose in our paths; for the tall flamingo, hitherto unseen,
with all gay flowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before
us.

Eleonora, however, was sick "made perfect in

loveliness only to die". She does not fear death,
but fears that the narrator will leave the valley
after her death and transfer his love to someone
else. The narrator emotionally vows to her, with
"the Mighty Ruler of the Universe" as his
witness, to never bind himself in marriage "to
any daughter on Earth".

After Eleonora's death, however, the Valley of

the Many-Colored Grass begins to lose its lustre
and warmth. The narrator chooses to leave to an
unnamed "strange city". There, he meets a
woman named Ermengarde and, without guilt,
marries her. Eleonora soon visits the narrator
from beyond the grave and grants her blessings
to the couple. "Thou art absolved", she says, "for
reasons which shall be made known to thee in
Heaven."

Analysis

Many biographers consider "Eleonora" an autobiographical

story written for Poe to alleviate his own feelings of guilt for
considering other women for love. At the time of the
publication of this very short tale, his wife Virginia had just
begun to show signs of illness, though she would not die for
another five years. The narrator, then, is Poe himself, living
with his young cousin (soon-to-be wife) and his aunt.

The abrupt ending, with the narrator's new love only named
in the third to last paragraph, is somewhat unconvincing if
this is Poe's attempt at justifying his own feelings. Poe
considered the tale "not ended so well as it might be".
Perhaps, it is in the vagueness of the reason which will only
be revealed in Heaven for permission to break his vow. Even
so, compared to the endings of other Poe tales where the
dead lover returns from beyond the grave, this is a "happy"
ending, free of antagonism, guilt or resentment.

The narrator readily admits madness in the beginning of the

story, though he believes it has not been determined if
madness is actually the loftiest form of intelligence. This
may be meant facetiously, but it also may explain the
excessively paradise-like description of the valley and how
it changes with their love and, later, with Eleonora's death.
His admission of madness, however, excuses him from
introducing such fantastic elements.

It is unclear why the trio lived in isolation in the valley.

There are also sexual themes in the story. The narrator's

name, Pyros, implies fire and passion. As he and Eleonora
grow, their innocent relationship turns to love with
descriptions of the changing landscape being erotic or
sexual - animal life and plant life sprouting forth and
multiplying. Eleonora's death serves as a symbolic end to
ideal romantic love which is soon replaced with the less
passionate married love for Ermengarde. Eleonora
embodies many typical traits in Poe's female character: she
is young, passive, and completely devoted to her love.

Bibliografie

http://www.poedecoder.com/essays/raven/#summary

http://www.shmoop.com/the-raven/lenore-symbol.html

http://www.enotes.com/topics/raven

https://www.google.ro/search?
q=raven+drawing&biw=1366&bih=667&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJ1JjDxqzLAhWLn3I
KHTTFBEQQ_AUIBigB

https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleonora_(short_story)