Edgar Allan Poe, (born January 19, 1809, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.—died October 7, 1849, Baltimore, Maryland), American short-story writer, poet, critic, and editor who is famous for his cultivation of mystery and the macabre. His tale “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) initiated the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivaled in American fiction. His “The Raven” (1845) numbers among the
best-known poems in the national literature.
Life
Poe was the son of the English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Poe and David Poe, Jr., an actor from Baltimore. After his mother died in Richmond, Virginia, in 1811, he was taken into the home of John Allan, a Richmond merchant (presumably his godfather), and of his childless wife. He was later taken to Scotland and England (1815–20), where he was given a classical education that was continued in Richmond.
For 11 months in 1826 he attended the University of Virginia, but his gambling
losses at the university so incensed his guardian that he refused to let him continue,
Poe returned to Richmond to find his sweetheart, (Sarah) Elmira Royster, engaged.
He went to Boston, where in 1827 he published a pamphlet of youthful Byronic poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems. Poverty forced him to join the army under
the name of Edgar A. Perry, but, on the death of Poe’s foster mother, John Allan
purchased his release from the army and helped him get an appointment to the
U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Before going, Poe published a new volume at Baltimore, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and
Minor Poems (1829). He successfully sought expulsion from the academy, where he was absent from all drills and classes for a week. He proceeded to New York City and brought out a volume of Poems, containing several masterpieces, some showing the influence of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
He then returned to Baltimore, where he began to write stories.
In 1833 his “MS. Found in a Bottle” won $50 from a Baltimore weekly,
and by 1835 he was in Richmond as editor of the Southern Literary Messenger.
There he made a name as a critical reviewer and married his young cousin Virginia Clemm, who was only 13. Drinking was in fact to be the bane of his life.
Poe seems to have been an affectionate husband and son-in-law. Poe was also
dismissed from his job in Richmond, for drinking, and went to New York City.
To talk well in a large company he needed a slight stimulant, but a glass of sherry might start him on a spree; and, although he rarely succumbed to intoxication, he was often
seen in public when he did. This gave rise to the conjecture that Poe was a drug addict,
but according to medical testimony he had a brain lesion.
While in New York City in 1838 he published a long prose narrative, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, combining (as so often in his tales) much factual material with the wildest fancies. It is considered one inspiration of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
In 1839 he became co editor of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in Philadelphia.
There a contract for a monthly feature stimulated him to write “William Wilson” and
“The Fall of the House of Usher,” stories of supernatural horror. The latter contains a
study of a neurotic now known to have been an acquaintance of Poe, not Poe himself.
Later in 1839 Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque appeared (dated 1840).
He resigned from Burton’s about June 1840 but returned in 1841 to edit its successor, Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine, in which he printed “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”—the first detective story. In 1843 his “The Gold Bug” won a prize of $100 from the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper, which gave him great publicity.
In 1844 he returned to New York, wrote “The Balloon Hoax” for the Sun, and became sub editor of the New York Mirror under N.P. Willis, thereafter a lifelong friend. In the New York Mirror of January 29, 1845, appeared, from advance sheets of the American Review, his most famous poem, “The Raven,” which gave him national fame at once. Poe then became editor of the Broadway Journal, a short-lived weekly, in which he republished most of his short stories, in 1845.
During this last year the now-forgotten poet Frances Sargent Locke Osgood pursued Poe. Virginia did not object, but “Fanny’s” indiscreet writings about her literary love caused great scandal. His The Raven and Other Poems and a selection of his Tales came out in 1845, and in 1846 Poe moved to a cottage at Fordham (now part of New York City), where he wrote for Godey’s Lady’s Book (May–October 1846) “The Literati of New York City”—gossipy sketches on personalities of the day, which led to a libel suit.
The Raven, best-known poem by Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1845 and collected
in The Raven and Other Poems, the same year. Poe achieved instant national fame
with the publication of this melancholy evocation of lost love.
On a stormy December midnight, a grieving student is visited by a raven who speaks but one word, “Nevermore.” As the student laments his lost love Lenore, the raven’s insistent repetition of the word becomes an increasingly harrowing response to the student’s own fears and longing.
The poem consists of 18 six-line stanzas; the first five lines of each are written in trochaic octameter, the sixth in trochaic tetrameter. The rhyme pattern, abcbbb, enhances the gloom of the lyric; the b rhymes are, or rhyme with, “Lenore” and “Nevermore.”
His1846 essay “The Philosophy of Composition” describes his crafting of the poem.
Edgar Allan Poe | Biography, Poems, Short Stories, & Facts | Britannica
The Raven Explained – Bing video
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This is it and nothing more.”
Presently my soul grew stronger, hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
Darkness there and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word they spoke was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
Merely this and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
’Tis the wind and nothing more!”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such a name as “Nevermore.”
Raven Symbolism: A Bearer Of Spiritual Gifts.
But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said “Nevermore.”
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”
But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloated o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
The Raven Age – Angel In Disgrace (Official Music Video).
Fable the Raven | Raven speaks and sings…hidden camera!
THE RAVEN by Edgar Allan Poe (Best Reading).
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe – Poem Analysis
The raven symbolize – Bing video
The Raven – Wikipedia
The raven – Bing video