Vilnius UniversityFaculty of Philology

World Literature Department

Aušra BlinstrubaitėEnglish Philology, year III

THEMATIC AND FORM PECULARITIES IN EDGARALLAN POE’S POETRY

Yearly Paper

Adviser: Ass. Prof. Aušrinė-MarijaPavilionienė

Vilnius, 1999

Contents

I. Introduction.

II. The outstanding features of E. A. Poe’s poetry:

1. Variety of themes in E.A.Poe’s poetry

1.1. Love

1.2. Death

1.3. Dreams

1.4. Beauty

1.5. Restless nature of a human-being

2. Peculiarities in form

2.1. The principle of repetition

a) phonetic (alliteration, assonance, meter)

b) morphemic (root and word repetition)

c) syntactic (parallel constructions,

gradation)

2.2. Rhetorical figures (exclamations,

questions and direct address)

III. Conclusions.

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Introduction

Historical and economical changes of the 18th and 19th

centuries shifted the rationalistic philosophical basis

of the world bringing up new themes and forms into the

art. In the age of technological inventions and

industrialisation people realised that a man is more than

a thinking machine, and reality is much more than common

sense and reason, which naturally helps to live in

prosperity. Such a reality has driven away high

aspirations and deep feelings of a human-being, and the

task of an artist was to revive them. Art and especially

poetry became the means to express those feelings and to

separate the hero as an individual from the masses. There

appears a conception of a unique personality, who

understands the secrets of life through the heart and

strives for the truth and beauty with the help of

imagination and feelings. This romantic hero is different

from anybody else as he desires the impossible—he longs

for perfect love, ideal beauty and the infinite. As S.W.

Schlegel has put it (Foerster, 1970, p. 263) the art of

the time is “the poetry of desire, a desire that can

never be satisfied, and indefinite desire, that must end

in melancholy.” The melancholy within a person collides

with the world ruled by reasonable thinking and thus the

hero suffers, he is forced to escape to his world of

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imagination. The writers of the 18th and 19th centuries

understood imagination as the instrument of insight into

the truth which is above the field of senses and lies in

feeling. Thus, only imagination can find the truth and so

the hero is always pictured as a reject of the society, a

stranger, living in his own fantasies.

All these ideas is the core of the philosophical basis

for Romanticism which was basically formed in Europe by

German philosophers Immanuel Kant, Fichte and brothers

Schlegels. In England it was illustrated by the works of

Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats or Byron. All of

them neglected rationalism, and validated the intuitive

and imaginative powers of a man. Verses about a sincere,

melancholic and suffering man, drawn away from the

reality and searching for the truth and comfort in

dreams, changed the purpose of poetry in general, as it

became the means to experiment or explore deeper feelings

and thoughts, and not to simply preach or entertain. The

romanticists believed that the dramatic emotional state

and the feeling was the basis of the poem, and felt free

to experiment and make innovations in the form. They

adapted it to their own demands, paying attention to the

originality and the effect a poem makes to the reader

first of all.

These new tendencies in Europe encouraged many young

American writers to try their talent in poetry as well,

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which because of the freer form became accessible to

everyone now. Observing how the new nation—American

people centre on commerce, industry and finance they

attempted to contradict the rationalistic world and

turned to the world of fantasy and feeling as well. The

American romanticism was in many cases the imitative of

the European schools and writers, but nevertheless a few

outstanding people worked hard to adopt the ideas and

create the original American literature, which had almost

no roots and traditions till Irving, Brown, Poe,

Hawthorne or Melville.

These men of letters were the first authors in America

who “turned to ’romance’ in a hostile climate”

(Bell,1980, p.14), as the pure fantasy world was totally

new and thus condemned there. Even though the growth of

technology, economical wealth or improvements of

manufacture and distribution of books created a national

audience for letters in America, the Romantic movement

was met with great distrust. Romanticism expressed

unending revolt against the classical forms and ideas, it

meant attraction to the mysterious and supernatural,

escape from reality to the world of feelings, dreams and

beauty.

One of the representatives of the American Romanticism,

particularly the Southern American romantic poetry, is

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). For him Romanticism meant

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fascination with the mysterious layers of the fantasy

world, ambiguous explorations into the inner-self, the

mind and the spirit of a human-being. His main aim was to

express the unattainable world of beauty in written form

and so the poet chose verse as the best way to do it.

While his contemporaries—St. George Tucher, Paul Hamilton

Hayne, Henry Timrod or Thomas Holly Chivers, were “overly

concerned with metric and sonorous effects” (Elliott,

1988 p.264), and fused nature imagery with a visionary

evocation of the new public of the South, Poe explored

the dramatic emotional states of the romantic hero. He

tried to solve the question of death and fatality in

life, or at least make it more comprehensive. He longed

to reveal the mysteries of the other worlds as well as

the human heart which stumbles amid its own fears,

feelings and memories.

Poe looked at the Romantic themes from a certain angle,

which is different from both—his contemporaries in

America and Europe. The never ending love of the poetic

hero is so strong that it goes beyond the grave—all of

the women in Poe’s poetry are dying or dead. The love

for a dead woman is pictured as the most beautiful

feeling, as death is beauty and truth for the poet. It is

similar to a dream and thus is a perfect escape from the

harsh and cruel world. Moreover, it gives an end to self-

torture, to which a human being is condemned throughout

all his life, and thus is the state of reconciliation

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with nature and God, so desired by all romantic heroes in

literature.

Poe’s reflections about art, especially poetry, and its

purpose are expressed in his critical essays “Philosophy

of Composition”(1846) and “The Poetic Principle”(1848).

In these theories the poet presents his own understanding

of romantic thought and philosophy, and suggests how

literature should be written or how it should effect the

reader. For example, in the first essay (1846) Poe

contradicts to the view so common among the romanticists,

that poems are written unconsciously in a state of

inspiration, he suggests that every poem is constructed

with mathematical precision. He takes “The Raven” as an

example, but most of his poems are written with strict

calculation, based on repetition, careful rhyme and

rhythm.

Furthermore, in “The Poetic Principle” the poet adds

that, “…the Poetry of words is The Rhythmical Creation of

Beauty” (Thompson, 1970, p.549); i.e., the various modes

of metre, rhythm and rhyme create a union of Poetry and

Music. Really, form and structure is meticulously precise

in Edgar Allan Poe’s verse and rhyming is quite easy. He

uses the repetition of identical or similar sounds (both

vowel and consonant rhymes) as well as the rhyme of

words’ combinations. Rhythm, (the periodicity or the beat

in the poems) is also very clear and makes up the ideal

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metrical scheme; i.e., rhythmical units are repeated in

regular intervals and make up the so-called metrical

rhythm.

Musicality of sounds helps to feel the pleasure while

reading a poem. Poe stresses in “The Poetic Principle”

that pleasure is the purpose of art. In poetry pleasure

should be aroused by the creation of beauty—not a mere

duplication of the concrete items of beauty in the world

but a suggestion of higher beauty which he calls

‘supernal’. Most of his poems illustrate the idea, and

the extensive use of symbols and images as references to

the romantic world, uplifted from the reality, are

especially liked by Poe.

The essays, which first of all support the peculiarities

of form and theme in E.A.Poe’s poetical works and also

refer to literature in general. Because of the new and

brave ideas Poe gained critical opinions of enthusiasm as

well as distaste. In the United States he was cruelly

disparaged by his contemporaries such as Walt Whitman who

accused Poe’s poetry of not having “heat” though being

“brilliant and dazzling” (Poe, 1902, xiii), or Emerson

( in Foerster, 1970, p.347) who once summed him up as

“the jingle man”. And even though Richard Wilbur (Poe,

1962, 38) states that sense is sacrificed to sound in

Poe’s poetry, the poet was quite popular in Europe. The

Irish poet Yeats (quoted by Foerster, 1970, p.347) judged

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Poe to be “always and for all lands a great lyric poet”.

Moreover as the school of modern writers rose, there

appeared many favourable opinions and even followers of

Poe, e.g. French authors such as Maupassant, Baudelaire

or Valery considered him an original and outstanding

artist. The French symbolists, who also believed in

supernatural beauty and poetry as the only means to

express it, even hailed Poe the founder of modern and

symbolist poetry.

To conclude, it is possible to state that E.A.Poe was a

true romanticist who attempted to create his own world of

poetry with the help of meticulously brushed rhymes or

hypnotic musical repetitions. The poet gives a new touch

to the romantic themes of love, life, death, dreams, and

dreaming by going beyond the meanings of words and

trying to create the other-worldly atmosphere. Therefore,

only by going deeper into Poe’s lyrics (the poems were

published in four books: Tamerlane and Other Poems

(1827), Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829),

Poems (1831), The Raven and Other Poems (1845)) it is

possible to discover in what way Poe was exceptional from

his contemporaries and what role he has played in the

history of literature.

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Variety of themes in E.A.Poe’s poetry

The heritage of Poe’s verse is not very large but the

poems have definitely contributed to the development of

new forms and ways of writing. Poe is a true romanticist

concerning the themes and ideas expressed in his poems,

but as an extraordinary personality he looked at life

from his own perspectives. The early death of his

parents, loneliness and insecurity in the family of the

adopters and society afterwards, the death of his wife

Virginia, made Poe reflect about the world differently.

That is why life and death are strongly interconnected,

and the latter wins over the first; love is ideal and

unattainable as well, as among the admired women in

Poe’s life is the wife of his god-father, John Allan, or

the young mother of his playmate. Dreams and beauty as

the escape to the desired world of no responsibilities

and problems (Poe had problems with drinking and

gambling), are also the topics for reflection in Poe’s

poetry as they best reveal the spirituality and the true

nature of a human-being. Thus it is equally important to

understand the tendencies of the time as well as the

personal background and motivation of Poe to write and

touch certain themes using a particular well-balanced and

counted form.

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The romantic poetry is considered to be the poetry of

feeling and imagination, i.e. love. The reality of

industry and money-making disillusioned many people and

they felt alienation of the human beings, as there was no

soul in such a world any more. That is why artists tried

to escape from that to the world of feelings and sought

comfort in love. Very often it was a desperate love

without any response, but that is what romanticism is

about—suffering and seeking for the ideal. Love in Poe’s

poetry is also the feeling for the person who is not

there any more. The first book of Poe’s poems Tamerlane

and Other Poems (1827) is filled with this feeling of

the lost love.

For example, a lyrical poem “Song: I Saw Thee on Thy

Bridal Day” (Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827)) is a

narrative story told by a forlorn lover who watches the

wedding and admires the beauty of the bride. A blush

comes over the face of the bride when she sees the guest.

To render her emotions the poet uses repetition—the word

is repeated three times (“a burning blush”, “that blush”,

“that deep blush”), and in general the whole poem is very

similar to a song, where refrain is used in the first and

the last stanzas: “Though happiness around thee lay,/ the

world all love before thee”. The year when the poem was

written suggests that the poem can be a personal allegory

of Poe’s unhappy love for Sarah E. Royster, to whom he

was privately engaged before he went to the University of

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Virginia to study. Thus, she is believed to be the

specific spurring for writing "Song."

Poe had sacrificed his love for Sarah in search of

achievement and then realized that success without love

is meaningless. This episode from his life is pictured in

“Tamerlane” (Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827)). Here the

lost love inflicts even greater pain on the lyrical hero

as it prosecutes him all his life. It is a long narrative

poem written in a form of a confession of the dying

Tamerlane, a great king, lying in the “agony of desire”

and recollecting “lost flowers/ And sunshine of my sunny

hours”. The first two stanzas illustrate how ambitions

have destroyed the life of the hero. The talking persona

pronounces that he has not “always been as now”, goes

back to the memories and describes his love to a

beautiful young peasant girl. The romantic hero is a

rebel at the same time and so he cannot be satisfied with

the life of a peasant boy, he dreams about power and

success. This becomes his driving force in life. He

shares his dreams with her, and promises that she will be

his queen once he becomes a king. She never really

comments on this; she just loves him. And it is this love

what drives him to fulfil his ambitions—he leaves the

girl without saying goodbye and eventually becomes a King

"greater than GhengisKhan" while she dies of a broken

heart. This fact shows that blind ambitions kill love,

and so the poet finishes the poem with a question which

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leaves it to the reader to decide what is more important

in one’s life:

How was it that Ambition crept,

Unseen, amid the revels there

Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt

In the tangles of Love’s very hair?

(“Tamerlane”, Poe, 1902)

The poet uses personification to intensify the despair

and regret of Tamerlane, so ambition and love which

usually are feelings act as people here and even look

like people, Ambition standing for the masculine and Love

for the feminine part of the world. The last line of the

poem reassures that ambitions do not merely come from

dreams or visions, they are also created and nourished by

love, which then hurts one person and drives another to

the highest peak, here to the throne of a king.

Kovalev (Kovalev, 1984, p.75) points out that the poem is

typically byronic. It refers both to the hero himself,

who neglects other people’s feelings and pursues his own

desires, being a titanic but tragic personality , and the

feelings that rule his heart afterwards—the sorrow of the

world. Really, it might have been inspired by Byron’s

poem “The Deformed Transformed”. In the introduction to

the book Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827) Poe admits

that he has been influenced by Byron and so later he

tries to revise the poem by shortening and transforming

it. Alterton (Alterton M, 1935, p.476) states that the

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original version is “more awkward and less harmonious,

but clearer and fresher”. However, the second revised

version is a more individual and skilful work, which was

well received by critics.

The love, lost because of ambitions, is not the only

subject for sorrow and melancholy for Poe. As the

romantic hero is an extraordinary personality, he has

unusual feelings as well. If it is love, it never ceases

and is stronger than the death itself. Therefore dead

woman is the object of romantic, desperate and unending

love in Poe’s poetry. The poet is in close relationship

with the memory about the dead and still beloved women—he

calls his lovers by names (Lenore, Annabel Lee, Ulalume)

and admires them as if they were alive. Of course,

different names do not mean that they are different

women, as no clear description can be traced in the

poems. They all stand for one idea—an ideal woman, who

although being dead still has an immense power over the

poet an keeps him in universal grief by not allowing to

forget. For example, the dramatic emotional state of the

lyrical hero in “The Raven” is caused by his longing for

the dead Lenore, then in “Ulalume” the dead lover seems

to come to life again and influences the poet’s life and

soul, but he has to admit that “this is nothing but

dreaming” (“Ulalume”, Poe, 1902).

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In “ The Sleeper” love to a sleeping (i.e. dead) woman is

very open and sincere. It is so calm and peaceful in the

beauty and silence of the night, that the poet clearly

makes us feel that there is nothing dreadful in death, it

is a natural stage of being, which can be reflected upon

and even glorified. Death is a sleep or transition from

one stage of existence to another. Such lines as “Soft

may the worms about her creep!/Far in the forest, dim and

old” , “While the pale sheeted ghosts go by”(“The

Sleeper”, Poe, 1902) proof that death is no border for

loving people and so the feelings for the ones who have

past the gate are even more powerful, as they are based

on personal memories of the past and thus are eternal. No

impact of the outside world can cut the bonds that keep

the persona tied up and in a way imprisoned in such love.

The image of a dead woman can be associated with the

women whom Poe lost during his life. His mother died when

he was only three, later he mourned the death of John

Allan’s wife, who adopted and reared him. Then, when the

poet was fifteen the death of his friend’s mother

dispirited him greatly (the poem “To Helen” is her

idealised portrait), and finally the death of his wife

Virginia led him into depression from which he did not

recover till his death. No wonder that the poet is in

love and still connected to the dead women and feels even

imprisoned in this affection.

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In The Philosophy of Composition the poet himself states,

“the death. . .of a beautiful woman, is, unquestionably,

the most poetical topic in the world—and equally it is

beyond doubt that the lips best suitable for such topic

are those of a bereaved lover”(Poe, in Thompson, 1970,

p.535). The best mastered example for this would be the

poem “Annabel Lee”. Here again the poet mourns the death

of a beautiful girl, expressing it in very emotional

words—he says that the whole world starting from heaven

and ending in hell “can ever dissever my soul from the

soul/ of the beautiful Annabel Lee” (“Annabel Lee”, Poe,

1902). Such images as sea, night-tide (i.e. water),

Heaven, and stars (i.e. universe or space) are analogies

to love, which is capable of overwhelming the whole

universe even though the darling girl lies in her tomb

already. Poe uses melodious repetitions and lines which

are similar to refrains in every stanza, e.g. “by the

name of Annabel Lee”, “I and my Annabel Lee”, “chilling

my Annabel Lee”, “and killing my Annabel Lee”, etc.,

which makes the poem similar to a ballad. However, the

poet avoids this tragic note which is often present in

ballads and lifts the whole poem to a higher level. Such

words as ‘angels’, ‘kingdom’, ‘demons’, or a phrase “a

love that was more than love” give an atmosphere of

unreality or a fairy-tale and, in Poe’s understanding,

helps to create very lyrical, dramatic and romantic

effect on the reader.

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Y.V. Kovalev states in his studies (Kovalev, 1984, p.130)

that E.A.Poe’s conception of poetical love is slightly

strange, because of the glorification of the dead woman,

but after looking deeper into the poems it is evident

that the romantic lyrical hero of E.A.Poe feels

differently from the common world and lives in special

atmosphere of loneliness, forgetting about the outside

world and dipping into his own subjective emotions and

feelings.

Far from the earthly problems the hero appears close to

the natural processes in nature and universe. Therefore,

death is one of the most significant stages of life in

the universe and thus Poe explores it in great detail. It

is also a way of escaping the boring reality and

problematic life. Such poems as “The Conqueror Worm”,

“Eldorado”, “Spirits of the Dead”, “Silence-a Sonnet” ,

or “The Bells” are real hymns to death, its glorious

capability to conquer “the fever called ‘Living’ ” (“For

Annie”, Poe,1902). They are full of fascination of death

as well as curiosity of what is coming after it.

First of all, death is a natural part of a never-ending

circle of life to Poe. Initially, a stage for the death

is prepared in “The Conqueror Worm”, which is a

marvellous allegory of the earth as well as the natural

and fatal processes in universe . R. Wilbur (E.A.Poe,

1959, p.142) points out that the five stanzas symbolise

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the five acts of a tragedy. The background setting is

very picturesque— the setting for the poem is a theatre

full of angels, then actors who are “mere puppets” come

to the stage and try to obtain happiness but dip into

sin, fear and madness instead. Thus the hero appears,

i.e. the death itself, and makes the curtain fall.

Already in the second line Poe comments about the

"lonesome latter years" and this is an implication that

the end of the world is approaching. The orchestra is

playing a fitful tune because of the chaos of the

surrounding world. And so nothing and nobody escape the

conqueror worm, which ends the man's life, a vicious

circle from life to death.

“The Conqueror Worm” touches the tragedy of the mankind,

which was already introduced by Shakespeare. It is even

possible to find similar phrasings to express the

shortness and insignificance of life, such as “Out—out

are the lights—out all!” (line 33) (while Shakespeare

said in Macbeth “Out, out, brief candle!” (line 8)); the

image of the theatre as the stage of life is also used in

the same connotation as the one in Shakespearean plays.

The fatal seriousness is achieved by exclamations

throughout the poem and also by the picturesque epithets

to describe the angels. They are the viewers of this

fatal drama “bewinged, bedight, (...) drowned in tears”

(“The Conqueror Worm”, Poe, 1902). They take pity over

the sinful man but cannot interfere as death is the only

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way to escape from the “Madness, Sin, Phantom, Horror” of

the earth. These words are even capitalised to leave no

doubt that the earth is the place of the never-ending

social dilemmas and daily disagreements, and that only

the Worm can solve all of them.

The fatality of the life-death circle is portended by the

toll of the bells in the poem “The Bells”. As the poem is

written in 1849, the year of Poe’s death it could as well

be interpreted as the prophecy of the poet’s death.

Originally the poem was of only eighteen lines, but Poe

revised it and the final version was of 113 lines

already. Symbolically bells foretell about changes in

life, i.e. happiness when people are born and grief when

they die. For Poe it is the latter which takes the first

place of importance. The poem consists of four parts and

the tension grows with each of them. Cheerful and tuned

tones change into the “anger of the bells”, “the rust

within their throats” and finally they start “groaning,

throbbing and sobbing”, telling about the oncoming death.

Poe ends the poem with a pathetic and serious note and

the persistent repetition of the word “time”.

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

In the p¿an of the bells—

Of the bells:—

Keeping time, time, time(...)

To the tolling of the bells—

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Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells—

To the moaning and the groaning of the

bells.

(“The Bells”, Poe, 1902)

The monotony of word repetition (time, bells) symbolises

the ticking of a clock and its cruelty, as keeping and

recording the pace of time, which leads to death, i.e. in

Poe’s understanding to nothingness, is a miserable job.

To embrace the vastness of time Poe uses allusions ‘Runic

rhymes’, which refer to the special writing system used

by the Germanic countries till the tenth century, and

‘p¿an’, which means the hymn sung in ancient Greece to

thank or praise a deity. In this way the bells remind

about the reoccurrence of birth and death throughout

centuries and about the fatality of this process.

Therefore, death is impossible to avoid. “Spirits of the

Dead” is one of those poems where Poe’s lyrical hero

tries to stop fearing it and accept it as a joyful

experience. According to Poe, this is an hour of

‘solitude’, when the dying person feels closer to those

that have gone before.

Be silent in that solitude,

Which is not loneliness—for than

The spirits of the dead who stood

In the life before thee are again

In death around thee—

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(“Spirits of the Dead”, Poe, 1902)

The spirits of others are not intimidating but, in fact,

welcoming and solacing in their presence. The stars are

there as the guiding light and eternal wishing in which

one believes. So the release of pain and worry occurs—

dew-drop (the poetic metaphor for soul) sparkles under

the morning sunrise, i.e. the soul leaves the body of the

man and joins the shadowy world ‘upon the hill’ which is

another metaphor for death. The calm and soothing

atmosphere of the poem suggests that those who die a

quiet and peaceful death, are not troubled in their

final minutes. Death is compared to a token which “hangs

upon the trees,/ A mystery of mysteries!— “ (“Spirits of

the Dead”, Poe, 1902).

Thus, many lines in Poe’s poetry express the romantic

idea of poetical and desired death, as the soul of a dead

man returns to nature and in this way reaches the state

of perfect harmony and reconciliation. Romanticists

considered death the transition to this reconciliation or

the way of escaping earthly madness, grieves or despair

about unhappy love. This is why the lyrical hero in Poe’s

poem “Eldorado” is searching for delight and happiness

and is advised to go to the world of shadows:

“Over the Mountains

of the Moon

Down the Valley of the Shadow

Ride, boldly ride,”

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The shade replied,-

“If you seek for Eldorado!”

(“Eldorado”, Poe, 1902)

As a perfect state of “Corporate silence” death should

not be dreaded— “no power hath he of evil in himself”

(“Sonnet—Silence”, Poe, 1902). It should be desired as a

nice dream, as a refuge from the earth:

In the dark heaven (...)

The breath of God will be still

And the mist upon the hill (...)

Shall charm thee—as a token.

(“Spirits of

the Dead”, Poe, 1902)

And why romanticists find it necessary to retreat from

the active life, from reality and seek for asylum in

dreams or even death? The historical time of wars,

revolutions, industrialisation and the growing

devastation of nature forced the poets to look for and

ideal world which would be not spoilt by civilisation and

based on beauty and creativity of imagination.

Therefore, many romanticists ‘ran away’ to the Middle

ages or the exotic oriental lands, and Poe found refuge

in dreams. Dreams and visions is another theme which is

significant to Poe beside the theme of death. And even

though M.D.Bell claims, that Poe’s poetry “seldom moves

beyond the grave” (Bell, 1980, p.96), it is evident that

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dreamland was equally important to Poe as a mysterious

and unexplored world.

Searching for comfort and truth Poe clung to his dreams

throughout all his life. That is why we can read between

the lines of his verse that all dreams contain and expose

eternal truths. Numerous poems (“A Dream Within a Dream”,

“A Dream”, “Dreams”, “Al Aaraaf”) testify that the poet,

as a romanticist, found much of the real living in

dreams. Emotions, feelings, memories from the past—

everything can be included in the mysterious wanderings

of the human fantasy. For example, in “A Dream” the poet

dreams about the happy times which have disappeared, but

when he awakes, he calls the real life a dream as well,

the one of “life and light”. The poet uses wide range of

synonyms to express the states of the human conscience,

i.e. ‘visions of the dark night,’ ‘a waking dream’.

Further he explains to the reader the truly romantic idea

that earthly life is a ‘dream by day’ (“A Dream”, Poe,

1902), but only those who can look at it from the

perspectives of a poet can see it. Thus, the poem “A

Dream” presents three states—the dream itself, awakening

from it and life as a dream.

Moreover, another poem with a very similar name “Dreams”

compares dreams with childhood which in the poet’s eyes

is the time of careless happiness and innocent fantasies.

Poe refers to childhood as to the time when we were

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happy, because the consciousness of a child rejects

everything what is evil or unacceptable and creates its

own colourful world. Thus the poem is of very sentimental

mood and it inflicts a strong effect on a reader. One is

forced to remember the whole life and admit how far we

are from the childhood fantasies, from the wonderful

dream world. Even though the opposition between ‘the dull

reality’, ‘the chilly earth’ and ‘dreamy fields of light’

, ‘the Paradise and Love—and all our own’ does not give

many clues why dreams are better, the viewpoint of the

author is very clear as he states ‘I have been happy—tho’

but in a dream./ I have been happy—and I love the

theme--/Dreams! These words refer both to childhood and

fantasy, which is naturally most active when we look at

the world with fresh eyes, the eyes of a child.

“A Dream Within a Dream”, as the title suggests, presents

an even a more complicated relation between a human-

being, dream and life. The idea of a world as a dream is

developed in it. In addition, a dream is also the way

people understand the world. This philosophical idea is

pictured by a symbolic view: the poetic persona is

standing on the shore of the sea and is trying to hold

some tiny particles of sand, i.e. dreams, but the stormy

waves of the world tear them away from the hands. A

question so important to every human being is asked, if

it is possible to keep and save those dreams or if ‘the

pitiless wave’ will grasp them away:

24

Grains of the golden sand—

How few! yet how they creep

Trough my fingers to the deep,

While I weep—while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

(”A Dream Within a Dream”, Poe,1902)

Exclamations and questions make the poem very emotional.

Also, it is very concentrated (short lines and only two

stanzas), which is not so typical of Poe. The symbolic

images (sea, sand, waves, hand) are garnished by only a

few epithets and all the attention of the reader falls on

the two lines ‘All that we see or seem/ Is but a dream

within a dream,’ (”A Dream Within a Dream”, Poe,1902)

which are repeated twice throughout the poem. In a way

this statement summarises all the other attempts to

elucidate that our life is a wonderful dream, but only

those who have and artistic soul and imagination can feel

it and live in it. In this way the romantic hero rises

higher from the rest of the people and becomes an

exceptional personality—he can cherish high hopes and

fantasies about the ideal happiness.

Yet critics do not allow the romanticists go too far—

Buranelli (cited by Kovalev, 1984, p.86) accuses the poet

of inability to control his own fantasy, A. H. Quinn

(cited by Kovalev, 1984, p.86) on his part claims that

Poe got confused about how to disclose the vague and

25

obscure, and thus created perfect obscurity in his own

work. Wilbur (Poe, 1962, p. 32) says that “ the poet will

refuse any heaven save that of his own dreams.” Really,

dreams were significant to Poe because of their

unexplainable mystery and capability to carry people to

the other, intangible reality, which fulfils any desires

and especially the desire for the beauty. This is why Poe

would have sacrificed anything for a high purpose—to

express or at least to attempt to express the ideal and

superb Beauty which exists in dreams and fantasy.

Beauty for Poe is the main purpose of art.

“Al Aaraaf” is one of those poems where beauty became the

object of thought, not merely a source of emotion. The

poem is about Nesace, a name for Beauty's spirit, who

lives on a star called Al Aaraff. She is immortal and

shares the star with a spirit, Ianthe, and a mortal man,

Angelo. In the action of the poem Nesace receives a

divine command to guide the wondering star away from the

sinful earth. Ianthe and Angelo have no knowledge of good

and evil, but are lovers of beauty, i.e. of the star Al

Aaraaf as it is the birthplace of the “Idea of Beauty”.

Because of the passionate relationship Angelo and Ianthe

have, they fail to carry out their duties directed by

Nesace. This failure of duty bars their entrance to

heaven and forces them to remain on the star.

26

The star itself is somewhere between the worlds—“Apart

from the Heaven’s Eternity—and yet so far from Hell!”.

The poet tries to describe its beauty by only giving

suggestions how this unearthly star looks, e.g. there are

no real flowers, just “the ray/ (Thrown back from

flowers) of Beauty’s eye, comparing the items to earthly

things—Joy’s voice is “like the murmur in the shell”, the

sun is not a single sun, but there are four suns, and

also many moons. The pleasant smell in the star is “the

lovely purpule perfume (...)/ Isola d’oro!--Fior di

Levante!”. Foreign languages as well as colouring the

line in purple suggests that this fantasy star is really

cosy and admirable. “O! Nothing earthly” states the poet

at the beginning of the poem and tries to inspire the

reader’s imagination by giving clues of the beauty which

is there, though anyway he is bound to the earthly words.

This was the greatest task for Poe to find out this ideal

Beauty is, how it depends from our imagination and how

poetry can render it in written form.

For this the poet made use of abstract images (Infinity,

the Idea of Beauty) metaphors (“garden of the unforgiven”

is Earth) or personifications (lake smiles, grass murmurs

while growing, flowers creep to the shade), which

strengthens the unreality of the star and serves to

reveal the desired fantasy of the poet. Also, different

genres are intermingled in the poem as the romanticists

considered it important to feel the freedom and express

27

themselves in the most suitable way by mixing different

genres and forms of poetry. Here elements of a song, an

ode and legend can be found, and the poem ends with a

sudden turn in mood and style, like a fable, where the

last lines serve to tell the moral of the story. Poe end

“Al Aaraaf” by words:

Thus, in discourse, the lovers whiled away

The night that waned and waned and brought no

day.

They fell: for Heaven to them no hope imparts

Who hear not for the beating of their hearts.

(”Al Aaraaf”, Poe,1902)

Thus, passion blocks the way to heaven in the poem and is

given a negative connotation. The link between passion

and duty is one of the major motives in the poem. The

motif of the presence of God as the knowledge and power

above is also strong and in the poem acts like fate, he

gives commands to spirits and expects obedience.

Similarly to the Bible, those who do not obey are

condemned to live somewhere between Heaven and Hell and

stumble again and again in this existence. In the poem it

is Angelo and Ianthe’s fate.

While “Al Aaraaf” is one of the longest and most

complicated experiments to reveal the godly beauty to a

human being, but not the only. “To Helen” is considered

to be very much connected to it in the idea, but here the

beauty has a material form, it is impersonated in a

28

woman. There are several versions about who the admired

woman could be, and the biographers of Poe have decided

that most probably it was Poe’s classmate’s mother Mrs.

Jane Stith Stanard, who died very young. Also, the name

of Helen could be the direct allusion to Helen of Troya,

who has been the symbol of beauty for centuries. In the

poem she is compared to a statue who stands in the

“brilliant window-niche” and shows the way to the

traveller who heads to the native shore. However, Helen

is not a real heroine of the poem and is only an object

of love and admiration. She has “hyacinth hair” and

“classic face”, i.e. is very handsome. But the poem

leaves it to the reader to create the exact image of an

ideal beauty of a woman. The Holy Land, to which Helen

directs the traveller is a metaphor of the state or place

the hero seeks for. As in many romanticists works, it is

not a real place, but the ideal state lasting throughout

the eternity and rising to the infinite. It is something

which all romantic souls long for but need somebody (like

Helen) to lead and show the way. Thus, the poem is a

philosophical allegory how the everlasting console of the

human heart can be attained with the help of timeless and

pure beauty.

The idea that beauty is truth and that it is immortal

reoccurs in the Romantic literature again and again. So,

the ideal form of it is also found in nature. It is the

consolation for the lonely heart, the mysterious God, who

29

helps to regain the spiritual harmony and gives advice

for the restless and soul, which searches for truth and

comfort in it. Poe finds mother, teacher and solace in

the beauty of nature.

In “The Stanzas” Poe writes about his mystical

communication with Nature which leads the poet to

exaltation when he detaches from the realities in

everyday life, it is the land for the romantic soul to

dwell. Then, in “Romance” the poet affirms once again

that Nature and Romance are intermingled. He compares

Romance to a bird that lives in harmony with nature. The

first stanza speaks about the beauty and wondering at it.

The second stanza tells of how he no longer has time for

the things of his youth, and that what was once beautiful

now is considered “forbidden things.” When the

opportunity presents itself he still indulges in the

pleasure of his youth: "And when an hour with calmer

wings/ Its down upon my spirit flings-/ That little time

with lyre and rhyme/ To while away-forbidden

things"( “The Stanzas”, Poe,1902).

The allegorical language (“lyre and rhyme” stands for

art; “forbidden things”—beauty) strengthens the contrast

which the lyrical hero feels between the obligations in

the reality and the aspirations of his heart. Nature is

presented in the poem as an assistant who helps to

diminish this contrast between the heart’s desire and

30

reality. It has been the first teacher to the poet “who

taught the alphabet” and even now makes the heart

“tremble with the strings” and remember the school of

natural feelings and intuition. The images of childhood

and time are again used in the poem and they help to

confirm that children are the ones who know everything (“

A child—with a most knowing eye”) but they forget this

intuitive knowledge with time and have no more time “for

idle cares”, such as being sensitive and noticing the

beauty and mystery of the world which surrounds us.

Instead when a child grows he dips into himself and

endless questions about the future as well as the past.

It is also very typical of the romantic hero to be

engaged in analysing his own emotions and dramatic

psychological states. However, trying to reveal the great

secret of the human heart, which always longs for the

unattainable (no matter if the object is a woman,

happiness or godly beauty), very often he subsides to

melancholy and starts torturing himself because of the

limited reality. This state of the heart was of much

interest to Poe, as according to him (“The Philosophy of

Composition”, Poe, in Thompson, 1970, p.532), melancholy

is the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.

The topic and main idea- is beauty in “The Raven”, but it

is revealed through self-torture, as beauty is not easily

attainable, it is in this case dead and existing only in

31

memory. The raven is the prophet about fate and he tells

that everything must die, even beauty. Hence the sorrow

of the poetic hero and the self torture to which he

condemns himself.

Also, the fatality of life is felt in “The Raven”, which

is said to be the top of E.A. Poe’s poetical work.

Actually, several themes interweave here—melancholic

longing for the dead Lenore, the symbol of beauty, fear

which is rising up from the subconscious mind, and death

which carries away all the life to its kingdom. The

prophet of it is the raven, which in literature is

usually associated with the coming death. And even though

Poe chose Beauty as the theme of the poem, as “Beauty is

the sole legitimate province of the poem” (Poe, 1902),

there are so many symbols of death that it is even

possible to call the poem a hymn to the Death and self-

torture while watching how it approaches.

In this poem the story is told from first-person point

of view and the characters talk and think themselves in

it. Only occasionally the poet interferes with

interpretations of “Nevermore”. The plot of the poem is

not very complicated—a lonely man tries to ease his

"sorrow for the lost Lenore," by distracting his mind

with old books but he is interrupted while he is "nearly

napping," by a "tapping on [his] chamber door." Having

opened the door he sees no one though, and returns to the

room, but the tapping repeats and through an opened

32

window in flies the raven. He settles on the bust of a

Greek goddess and pronounces only one word “Nevermore” to

the insistent questions of the poetic hero. He wants to

know if he will ever forget the beloved Lenore, or if he

will ever join her in the other world, if the bird will

ever leave. But at the end of the poem the words explain

that this bird will never leave:

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”, Poe,1902)

The raven represents the dark forces and the hero’s

dialogue with him can be considered to be the inner

conflict within the hero’s mind. He torments himself with

endless questions, and that is why it is possible to say

that the theme of this poem is the tormented soul of a

Romantic hero, who creates his own hell. The omen of ill-

luck above the door (the raven), where usually hags a

horse-shoe for luck, state that there is no escape from

33

this inner torture and the hero “shall be lifted

nevermore”.

The symbols on which the whole poem is constructed are

really impressive—the raven is a non-reasoning creature

who symbolises the ill-omen and then talks in human voice

—he utters the word “nevermore”. The place where the

raven perches in the room, i.e. on the bust of Pallas,

the goddess of wisdom, is also symbolic and it

strengthens the idea that the bird is not just repeating

vague words, he speaks with wisdom of the forces above.

Then, a less obvious symbol, might be the use of

"midnight" in the first verse, and "December" in the

second verse. Both midnight and December, symbolise an

end of something, and the desperate feeling is even

reinforced by the use of the linguistic means—

alliteration (nodded, nearly napping: whispered word; a

flirt and flutter; grim, ungainly, gaunt), assonance and

internal rhyme (dreary and weary; napping, tapping and

rapping; morrow, borrow, sorrow) contribute to the

hypnotic effect that creates the gloomy and mysterious

atmosphere in the poem.

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. The

calmness in the chamber is sharply contrasted with the

34

tempest outside. Turbulence in nature—the tempestuous

night is used to even more signify the isolation of this

man. The man in “The Raven” is a typical Romantic hero,

dipped in himself, far from the world, torturing himself

in solitude and inner fears, longing to know the answers

to all the questions but ending with despair, as it is

impossible to do that. It is a very educated an

intelligent man, as the extensive use of the vocabulary

shows (‘Nephente’ in the fourteenth verse stands for a

potion, used by ancients to induce forgetfulness of pain

and sorrow; ‘Balm of Gilead’ in the following verse means

a soothing ointment made in Gilead, a region of

Palestine; ‘Aidenn’ from the sixteenth verse is an Arabic

word for Eden or paradise)—the ancient and poetic

language seems appropriate though as the hero spends most

of his time with books of “forgotten lore”.

Thus, as “The Raven” and many other poems prove, the

Romantic hero of Poe is condemned to the never-ending

searching for the answers to the questions which torture

him, he will never be contented with the reality and will

create his own world of dreams and fantasy. Only this

other existence in the dreams can give him freedom and

possibility to attain the ideal beauty, love and

happiness. That is why Poe’s poems are of other-worldly

atmosphere, they carry the reader one step nearer to the

mystery of life and death, and move the reader to a new

understanding of his own inner motivations and desires.

35

The gloomy atmosphere and sometimes even haunting and

ideal musicality of the poems reinforce the effect of

Poe’s ideas and thoughts of the reader and make him look

at nature, love, dreams and inner self from the

perspectives of a very sensitive and craving-for-truth

Romantic hero.

36

Peculiarities in Form

As the poetic themes are revealed by the cohesion of

words and thoughts it is necessary to analyse the formal

peculiarities of E.A.Poe’s poetry. The reader’s way of

understanding the poetical work and having a certain

emotional response to it is determined by the shape of

sounds an intonations in which a poem is presented.

Therefore, common words revive to a new life in

literature, and the structure of the poetical text

becomes an assistant to render the meaning of it. Knowing

that Poe was extremely concerned about the formal part of

a poem and aimed to create the ideal poem which would

sound like a piece of music and make the reader forget

himself and feel the satisfaction of being close to the

ideal beauty which is attainable only in art.

To find out about the way this beauty is attained by the

authors it is necessary to analyse the syntactical means—

the compositional patterns and the rhetoric of the poems.

First of all Poe’s poetry is based on the principle of

repetitions—phonetic, morphemic and syntactic repetitions

in a poem. Repetition of words and sounds has a large

aesthetic power and adds to the musicality of the poem.

This is what Poe finds exceptionally important in a

poetical text. According to him, “It is in Music,

perhaps, that the soul most nearly attains the great end

for which, when inspired with the Poetic Sentiment, it

37

struggles—the creation of supernal beauty”(Poe, in

Thompson, 1970, p.548). Since music brings us close to

the supernal, the musical elements of verse—meter, rhythm

and rhyme are essential. And even though his melodious

rhymes have served him a name of a ‘jingle-man’ (by R.W.

Emerson), there is no doubt that Poe’s form of writing

distinguishes him from the contemporaries and is very

powerful in effect (sometimes even hypnotic effect) on

the reader. As the best examples I have chosen the poems

“The Raven”, “The Bells” and “Annabel Lee” to analyse the

peculiarities of form in E.A.Poe’s poetry.

First of all, the phonetic repetition creates the musical

effect of the poems. Similarly to all of Poe’s verse,

these three poems are of perfect meter, rhythm and rhyme,

both internal and external. For example, in “The Raven”

words most importantly contribute to the sound and the

melody of the poem, and only their secondary function is

the meaning. The poem is written in trochaic octameter

(the foot starting with long syllable followed by the

short, and eight feet in each line):

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak

and weary ¾ È | ¾ È | ¾ È | ¾ È || ¾ È | ¾ È | ¾ È |

¾ È

It is alternating with heptameter repeated in the refrain

of the fifth verse:

Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there

wondering, fearing

38

¾ È | È È | ¾ È | ¾ È || ¾ È | ¾ È | ¾ È | ¾È

Every stanza is terminating with tetrameter:

Meant in croaking “Nevermore”.

¾ È | ¾ È | ¾ È | ¾

The poet very rarely deviates from this structure, it is

even reinforced by the perfect internal rhyming—assonance

(in the first stanza: dreary, weak, weary), alliteration

(in the fifth stanza: deep, darkness, doubting, dreaming,

etc.) create the regular beat in the poem together with

the re-occurrence of the same syllable and sound in the

2, 4, 5, 6 lines of every stanza (lore, door, more,

floor, Lenore, implore, shore, etc.). This repetition

adds to the song-like rhyming of the whole poem.

The poem “Annabel Lee” is another marvel how the

repetition in poetry can create the beauty of sound and

images. It is called the culmination of Poe’s lyric style

in the recurrent theme of the loss of a beautiful and

loved woman and the extraordinarily used repetition,

which occurs in words and lines. It is written in

anapaestic tetrameter alternating with trimeter. The

basis for rhyming the poem is also the internal rhyme of

alliteration (especially lateral consonants):

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

39

Than to love and be loved by me.

(”Annabel Lee”, Poe,1902)

This creates the impression of a light tune which we hum

for ourselves, but in the fifth stanza this tune gets a

tragic note (alliteration of ‘d’—“demons down under the

sea”; “darling, my darling, my wife and my bride”). Thus,

this poem is another proof of Poe’s way of perfect

versification in order to create the musicality of the

poem.

The principle of rhyming the poems by means of phonetic

repetition (assonance, alliteration, meter and rhyme) is

very similar in all Poe’s verse, therefore, I will not

discuss other poems in greater detail.

Morphemic repetition is another important way to create a

musical effect of the poems for Poe. He does not avoid

repeating the roots of words as well as the whole words

several times throughout a poem. Especially this is

evident in the poem “The Bells”. To render the sound

which the bells make and colour it with emotion Poe uses

all kinds of word repetition: chain repetitions (“How

they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle (...)/ Keeping time, time,

time”); epiphoras (“Hear the sledges of the bells—/

Silver bells”) or even epistrophe as every part of the

poem ends with the same word (bells).

40

The poet does not border himself with that, he makes an

extensive use of syntactic repetitions as well as the

whole phrases and word groups or parallel constructions

re-occur several times, e.g. “A paean from the bells”,

“with the paean of the bells”, “to the paean of the

bells” . The poets ability to play with words and make

them imitate the real sounds is impressive, by mostly

working with repetition and use of synonymous words.

Anyway, the tension grows in each stanza together with

the increasing tempo of the poem the culmination is

reached by only repeating several synonyms (rolling,

tolling, moaning, groaning) to describe the sound and the

word ‘bells’, which is used for 61 time in the poem.

Moreover, this enumeration of the synonymous words is an

aid to build the tension of the poem. Very often Poe uses

gradation of the parallel constructions or synonymous

words. In the same poem the phrase “the jingling and the

tinkling of the bells” is later repeated in other words,

which are arranged throughout the poem in ascending order

—“the rhyming and the chiming of the bells”, “the sinking

or the swelling in the anger of the bells”, “the clamour

and the clangor of the bells”, “the throbbing and the

sobbing, the moaning and the groaning of the bells”(“The

Bells”, Poe, 1902). The last words carry a very tragic

and sad connotation and can be heard like sounds of music

at the climax of the piece.

41

For E.A.Poe as a Romanticist, a sound was a symbol of

music and while the repetition of notes at different

pitches created musical melody, he believed that the

repetition of verbal sounds can create poetry similar to

music. He talks about his love for euphonious repetition

by defining the poetry of words as “The Rhythmical

Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the

Intellect or with the Conscience it has only collateral

relations”, states E.A. Poe in The Poetic Principle

(1849) (in Thompson, 1970, p.549). Really, he possesses a

great ability to create a poem of meticulously precise

structure and form, which sounds like a piece of music

and is very emotional.

The emotional intonations of the poems can also be

explained by Poe’s use of rhetoric figures in his

poetry. Rhetorical questions, exclamations and direct

addresses contribute to the colourful sound of the poems

as well as strong feelings of a Romantic hero expressed

in verse.

The use of rhetorical questions help the poet to reveal

the drama of the searching soul of the poetical hero, who

is concerned with the values of the world as well as the

eternal truths. The questions influence the tone of the

poems and make the reader feel deeper and think more

about the same ideas. For example, in “Tamerlane” (Poe,

1902) the hero asks, “Hath not the same fierce heirdom

42

given/ Rome to the Caesar—this [proud spirit] to me?”;

“How was it that Ambition crept (...)/ In the tangles of

Love’s very hair?”. He wants to know what decides what

life we will have and what influences or features of

character. Then, he addresses directly to the reader,

represented by the father in the poem, “Have you known

the passion, father?”. he tries to clear out the relation

between the ambition and love, but this is a rhetorical

question and the poem does not give an answer, which is

the right way. The relation between love and duty is also

discussed in “Al Aaraaf”(Poe, 1902), “O! Where (and ye

may seek the wide skies over)/ Was Love, the blind, near

sober Duty known?”. The poet even rises the question of

existence, if there is any sense to be a human at all,

“My Angelo! and why of them to be?”, i.e. to be human

(“Al Aaraaf”, Poe, 1902); what is death, “What is

written, sweet sister,/ On the door of this legended

tomb?” (“Ulalume”, Poe, 1902) and what its relation to

life and our world is. The last stanza of the poem

“Ulalume” arises a complicated question, which is

expressed in one long sentence. Poe uses enjambment to

reveal the complexity of the world, the “lunary” souls

which wander in it and are lost among the planets,

between heaven and hell:

(...) Ah, can it

Have been that the woodland ghouls—

The pitiful, the merciful ghouls—

To bar up our way or to ban it

43

From the secret that lies in these worlds—

From the thing that lies hidden in these worlds

—

Have drawn up the spectre of the planet

From the limbo of lunary souls—

This sinfully scintillant planet

From the Hell of the planetary souls?

(“Ulalume”, Poe, 1902)

Beside the rhetorical questions, rhetorical exclamations

also add an emotional stress to the poems. Poe is very

fond of interjections which sound like a sigh, e.g. “It

is but agony of desire/ If I can hope—oh, God!”

(“Tamerlane”, Poe, 1902); like a warning—“For, alas!

alas! with me/ The light of light is o’er!” (“To the One

in Parasdise”, Poe, 1902); or like a prayer or words of

adoration—“ Oh, human love! thou spirit given, / On Earth

of all we hope in Heaven!”, “Oh, how, without you, Love!”

(“Tamerlane”, Poe, 1902) .

Direct adresses are not so frequent in Poe’s verse, but

sometimes they do enliven Love, Death or Fate, as the

author speaks to them as to humans, e.g. in “The Raven”,

the hero addresses the bird who is the prophet of death

—“Prophet!”, said I, “thing of Evil!—prophet still, if

bird or devil!” (“The Raven”, Poe, 1902). In the poem

“The Bells” the reader is made to participate in the poem

as the poet addresses him directly, even in the

imperative form, “Hear the sledges with the bells—/

44

Silver bells!”, “Hear the mellow wedding bells—Golden

bells!” (“The Bells”, Poe, 1902). However, most often all

the exclamations and addresses are administered to the

beloved woman who is already dead, or to her beauty,

“Helen, the beauty is to me/ Like those Nicean barks of

yore” (“To Helen”, Poe, 1902).

Thus, rhetorical figures of speech similarly to the

compositional patterns, which in Poe’s poetry mostly

means the composition according to the principle of

repetition, are aids to attain the unity of the poem and

make it emotive and musical. Therefore, Poe’s poetry can

be called the linking of musical sound, its beauty and

the written letter for a great purpose—to create a poem

which could effect the reader, be understood and give

birth to the same feelings as meant by the author.

45

Conclusions

To sum the whole work up, E.A. Poe was one of the first

American Romanticists, who freed himself from the school

of the European Romanticism and looked at the literary

themes and expressive form, suggested by time from his

own point of view.

Firstly, the romantic theme of love with Poe is a source

of a pure and ever-lasting feeling to a dead or dying

woman. Her beauty is glorified as supernal or ideal and

this is the cause why the hero of the poems seems to be

enslaved or imprisoned in his love to a dead person.

Moreover, death is not something horrible to the poet,

especially if it is the death of a beloved woman.

Instead, death is compared to sleeping or beautiful

dreaming and thus is desired by the poet. It is a state

of calmness and reconciliation of the heart, torn by

inner and outer conflicts of this world. Death for Poe as

many other Romanticists means reunification with Nature

and it should be accepted as a part of the circle of

life. Also, death is equated with fate (“the conqueror

worm”) as it carries away both the beautiful and the ugly

from this world.

This could be the reason why beauty is unattainable, it

is something which everybody desires but cannot reach as

it cannot be felt by common people. It is the privilege

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of the dreamers and those with a vast imagination, who

can overcome the borders of life and death by their

fantasy. In Poe’s poetry the ideal beauty exists only in

the far-away star ”Al Aaraaf” or otherwise can be

impersonated by a beautiful woman (who is already dead).

Therefore, Poe’s romantic hero lives in dreams and

fantasy, in his memories of the past and visions of the

future, dipped into his inner world and very often

torturing himself because of the limits of this human

body and possibilities, which do not allow him to find

out about the secrets of life and death and reach the

perfect happiness and truth.

To render these complex dramatic states and high hopes of

a romantic hero, Poe tried to wrap the feelings into a

perfect, very emotional and musical, form. All of his

poems rhyme very easily like songs or ballads, as Poe was

extremely concerned about how to express this ideal

beauty in art by means of words and sounds. So, sound was

sometimes even more important than sense to Poe, and

nevertheless, all the poems have a very strong effect on

the reader because of the excellent meter and rhyme. Poe

makes extensive use of internal rhyme as well as the

rhyme of the last syllables of the lines. Rhyming is

mostly based on the repetition of the sounds (assonance,

alliteration), words and even phrases. The use of rich

vocabulary and ancient or foreign words add up to the

enigmatic and mysterious atmosphere of the poems, and

47

rhetorical figures of speech help the poet to strengthen

the tension of the poem and reveal the extraordinary

feelings of a romantic hero.

Thus, these are the main features of E.A.Poe’s poetry. I

have tried to analyse the main themes and subjects by

quoting several major Poe’s poetical works and by

pinpointing the basic formal structures which have made

those poems exceptional. Of course, it is impossible to

embrace the whole diversity of Poe’s verse as there are

many paradoxes and questionable aspects both in the works

and in the life of the poet (e.g. the contrast between

the insecure and highly emotional life of the poet and

the meticulously structured poems, or the contradiction

of Poe’s being a Romantic writer and emphasising

rationality in literature works).

Therefore, I have touched upon the main subjects which

concerned Poe as a Romanticist, i.e. the themes of life

and death, love, beauty, dreams and the reminiscences of

the inner world of a human being. These topics of Poe’s

verse have made him an exceptional poet and writer among

his contemporaries because of his individual and original

approach to them.

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