Snippets from my this week’s newsletter, with links.
| Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” is published in The Evening Mirror. |
| In January 1845, the greatest goth in literary history published what would swiftly become his most famous poem: “The Raven.” Poe first sold the poem (for $9, the equivalent of about $375 today) to the American Review, where it would appear—under the pen name “Quarles”—in the February 1845 issue. It was published concurrently in the January 29 edition of The Evening Mirror, prefaced by a note from editor Nathaniel Parker Willis, who called it “the most effective single example of ‘fugitive poetry’ ever published in this country, and unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift and ‘pokerishness.’” Well, sure. “The Raven,” if for some reason you don’t know it, is a narrative poem about a young scholar who, sitting alone on a bleak December night, mourning his lost love Lenore, is visited by a raven, who torments him by speaking, over and over again, a single word. Poe later wrote that he knew he wanted this word—“nevermore”—to be repeated throughout the poem, but finding the idea of a person uttering it too implausible, he struck upon “the idea of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech; and, very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a Raven, as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone.” Well, it worked pretty well, you might say. The poem, writes Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn, “made an impression probably not surpassed by that of any single piece of American poetry. It was widely copied, parodied, and one humorist even took over a page of the Mirror to suggest five alternatives as to the relation of Lenore to the poet.” One-hundred-eighty years later, it may be still unsurpassed, though contenders abound. Either way, as you have probably noticed, the parodies and tributes have never stopped. We shall be quoting it forevermore. |
MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM
In Search of the Rarest Book in American Literature: Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane
A Brief and Incomplete Survey of Edgar Allan Poes in Pop Culture
The Greatest Goths in Literary History
| YEP, STILL SLAPS 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 some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— Only this and nothing more.” –EDGAR ALLAN POE, “THE RAVEN” |
| In other (old)news this week Benjamin Franklin writes a letter to his daughter, pooh-poohing the bald eagle as the symbol of America, and instead championing the great and noble turkey (January 26, 1784) • John Millington Synge’s play The Playboy of the Western World premieres at The Abbey Theatre in Dublin and causes a riot (January 26, 1907) • The first part of Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw is published in Collier’s Weekly magazine (January 27, 1898) • Franz Kafka begins work on his novel The Castle at the mountain resort of Spindermühle (January 27, 1922) • Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is published anonymously in London (January 28, 1813) • Thomas Jefferson sells his library to the government after the Library of Congress burns down (January 30, 1815) • Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters premieres at the Moscow Art Theater (January 31, 1901) • The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is published (February 1, 1884) • Great American Iconoclast Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is published (February 1, 1962) • David Foster Wallace’s eerily prescient Infinite Jest is published (February 1, 1996). (snip-More) |
I hope you enjoyed it! These newsletters are free, and are great for brain/heart health breaks.
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