Here below I want to present Edgar Poe's two selections.
Selection 1
In the motto, taken from the Koran, Poe took a few liberties with the description of Israfel by adding the words, “Whose heart strings are a lute”. The words were probably suggested by a passage in a poem, “Le Refus” by the French poet, Beranger (1780-1857). The song embodies Poe's wish for a beauty superior to that of earth, more approaching the divine. The final stanzas voice the poet's despair at the restritions of his environment. The poem first appeared in Poe's Poems (1831) and was carried several times in later editions.
2.3 Israfel
“And the angel Israfel , whose heart-
Strings are a lute, and who has the
Sweetest voice of all God's creatures,”-
Koran.
In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
“Whose heart-strings are a lute”,
None sing so widely well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamored moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red Levin
(With the rapid Pleiades, even,
Which were seven,)
Pauses in Heaven.
And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire
Is owing to lyre
By which he sits and sings-
Of unusual strings.
But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty,
Where Love's grown-up God,
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star
Therefore, thou art not wrong,
Israfel, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!
The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit-
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute-
Well may the stars be mute!
Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely-flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky”
Selection 2
This poem, which was the last on Poe wrote, is believed by many critics to be an idealization of his wife, Virginia Clemm, who died in 1847. It was published posthumously in the New York “Tribune” of October 9, 1849. In six stages of alternating four and three stress line, the poem has been called “the culmination of Poe's lyric style in his recurrent theme of the loss of a beautiful and loved woman”
2.4 Annabel Lee
“It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;-
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
She was a child and I was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love than was more than love-
I and ma Annabel Lee-
With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven
Covered her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
A wind blew out of a cloud by night
Chilling my Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me:
Yes! That was the reason (as all men know:
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud chilling
And killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of course who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise I see the bright eyes
And also, all the night ride, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In her sepulcher there by the sea-
In her tomb by the side of the sea”.
Now what Edgar Poe wrote about himself in his “The Philosophy of Composition”,
“There is a radical error, I think , in the usual mode of constructing a story. Either history affords a thesis or one is suggested by an incident of the day or, at best, the author sets himself to work in the combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his narrative designing, generally, to fill in with description dialogue, or authorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from page to page, render themselves apparent. I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect. Keeping originality always in view for he is false to himself who ventures to dispense with so obvious and so readily attainable a source of interest I say to myself, in the first place, of the innumerable effects, or impressions of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall, I , on the present occasion, select?” Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly, a vivid effect, I consider whether, or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone afterward looking about me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect.
The strict subordination of artistic means to poetic conception created the beauty and harmony of Poe's verses, which made Bodler admire, and Rahmaninov compose music for Poe's “Bell”, and Valeriy Brussov the translator of Poe's poems do investigations about the greatest poet of New America, whom he considered to be “A hopeless realist”
Edgar Poe and American short story.
While describing Edgar Poe's creative activity we can't help mentioning about the American short story development of the 19th century, as it was the time when the writer created his best short stories, when readers were enjoyed by his highlights.
From the beginning of time, man has been interested in stories. For many thousands of years stories were passed from generation to generation orally, either in words or in song. Usually the stories were religious or national in character.
There were myths, epics, fables, and parables. Some famous examples of story-telling of the Middle Ages are “A thousand and one nights”, Chaucer's “Canterbury Tales” and Boccachio's “Decameron”.
Perhaps it can be said that the short story is well suited to American style of life and character. It is brief (If can be read usually in a single sitting). It if concentrated (The characters are few in number and the action is limited).
Dr. J. Berg Esenwein in his book “writing the short story” defines the short story as follows:
“A short story is a brief imaginative narrative, unfolding a single predominating incident and a single chief character; it contains a plot, the details of which are so compressed, and the whole treatment so organized, as to produce a single impression”.
A good shorts story should (1) narrate an account of events in a way that will hold the reader's interest by its basic truth; and (2) it should present a struggle or conflict faced by a character or characters. The plot is the narrative development of the struggle as it moves through a series of crises to the final outcome. The outcome must be the inevitable result of the traits of the character involved in the struggle or conflict.
The short story is the literary form to which the United States made early contributions. In fact, early in 19th century America, the short story reached a significant point in its development. Three American writers were responsible for this development; Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, and Edgar Allan Poe. It was the latter who defined the literary form in his review of Hawthorne's “Twice-Told Tales”.
In his review, Poe asserts that everything in a story or tale every incident, every combination of events, every word must aid the author in achieving a preconceived emotional effects. He states that since the ordinary novel cannot be read at one sitting, it is deprived of “ the immense force derivable from totality.” For Poe the advantage of the short prose narrative over the novel was that it maintained unity of interest on the part of the reader, who was less subject to the intervention of “wordily interests” caused by pauses or cessation of reading as in the case of a novel.
“In the brief tale, however, “ Poe states, “the author is enabled to carry out the dullness of his intentions, be it what may, During the hour of perusal the soul of the reader is at the writer's control. There are no external or extrinsic influences resulting from weariness or interruption”.
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