Jump to content

The Raven

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Midnightdreary (talk | contribs) at 18:25, 28 September 2007 (Missing a word). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

For other uses, see The Raven (disambiguation).
Etching of "The Raven" by Édouard Manet, first published with a French translation of the poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, 1875

"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe first published in January 1845. Noted for its musicality, stylized language and supernatural atmosphere, it tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing his slow descent into madness. The lover, often identified as a student,[1][2] is lamenting the loss of his love Lenore. The raven, sitting on a bust of Pallas, seems to further instigate his distress with its repeated word, "Nevermore." Throughout, Poe makes allusions to folklore and various classical works.

Poe claimed to have written the poem very logically and methodically. His intention was to create a poem that would appeal to both critical and popular tastes, as he explains in a follow-up essay "The Philosophy of Composition." The poem was inspired in part by a talking raven in the novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty by Charles Dickens.[3] Poe borrows the complex rhythm and meter of Elizabeth Barrett's poem "Lady Geraldine's Courtship."

The first publication of "The Raven" on January 29, 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror made Poe widely popular in his day. The poem was soon heavily reprinted, parodied, and illustrated. Though some critics disagree about the value of the poem, it remains one of the most famous poems ever written.[4]

Synopsis

The Raven as illustrated by Gustave Doré

"The Raven" follows an unnamed narrator who sits reading "ancient lore"[5] as a method to forget the loss of his love Lenore. A "rapping at [his] chamber door"[5] reveals nothing, but excites his soul to "burning."[6] A similar rapping, slightly louder, is heard at his window. When he goes to investigate, a raven steps into his chamber. Paying no attention to the man, the raven perches on a bust of Pallas.

Amused by the raven's comically serious disposition, the man demands that the bird tell him its name. The raven's only answer is "Nevermore."[6] The narrator is actually surprised that the raven can talk, though it will not say anything further. He remarks that his "friend" the raven will soon fly out of his life, just as "other friends have flown before"[6] along with his previous hopes. As if answering, the raven responds again with "Nevermore."[6] The narrator is convinced that this single word, possibly learned from a previous owner with bad luck, is all that the bird can say.

Even so, the narrator pulls his chair directly in front of the raven, determined to learn more about it. He thinks for a moment, not saying anything, but his mind wanders back to his lost Lenore. He thinks the air grows denser and feels the presence of angels. Confused by the association of the angels with the bird, the narrator becomes angry, calling the raven a "thing of evil" and a "prophet." As he yells at the raven it only responds, "Nevermore."[7] Finally, he asks the raven if Lenore is in heaven. When the raven responds with its typical "Nevermore," he shrieks and commands the raven to return to the "Plutonian shore,"[7] though it never moves. Presumably at the time of the poem's recitation by the narrator, the raven "still is sitting"[7] on the bust of Pallas. The narrator's final admission is that his soul is trapped beneath the raven's shadow and shall be lifted "Nevermore."[7]

Analysis

Poe wrote the poem as a narrative, without intentionally creating an allegory or falling into didacticism.[8] The narrator has a perverse conflict between desire to forget and desire to remember. In fact, he seems to get some pleasure from focusing on loss.[9] The narrator assumes that the word "Nevermore" is the raven's "only stock and store" and yet he continues to ask it questions, knowing what the answer will be. His questions, then, are purposely self-deprecating and further incite his feelings of loss.[10] Poe leaves it unclear if the raven actually knows what it is saying or if it really intends to cause a reaction in the poem's narrator.[11]

Allusions

Bust of Pallas.

Poe says that the narrator is a young scholar.[12] Though this is not explicitly stated in the poem, it is mentioned in "The Philosophy of Composition." It is also suggested by the speaker reading books as well as by the wisdom-representative bust of Pallas.[13]

During December he is reading "many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore."[5] Similar to the studies suggested in Poe's short story "Ligeia," this lore may be about the occult or black magic. This is emphasized in the author's choice to set the poem in December, a month when the forces of darkness are believed to be especially active. The use of the "devil bird" of the raven also suggests this.[14] This devil image is emphasized by the narrator's belief that the raven is "from the Night's Plutonian shore," or a messenger from the afterlife, referring to Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld[15] (also known as Hades in Greek mythology).

Poe chose a raven as the central symbol in the story because he wanted a "non-reasoning" creature capable of speech. He decided on a raven, which he considered "equally capable of speech" as a parrot, because it matched his intended tone.[16] He was also inspired by Grip, the raven in Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty by Charles Dickens.[17] One scene in particular bears a resemblance to "The Raven": At the end of the fifth chapter of Dickens's novel, Grip makes a noise and someone says, "What was that -- him tapping at the door?" The response is, "'Tis someone knocking softly at the shutter."[18] Dickens's raven could speak many words and had many comic turns, including the popping of a champagne cork, but Poe emphasized the bird's more dramatic qualities. Poe had written a review of Barnaby Rudge for Graham's Magazine saying, among other things, that the raven should have served a more symbolic, prophetic purpose.[19]

Poe may also have been drawing upon various references to ravens in mythology and folklore. In Norse mythology Odin possessed two ravens named Hugin and Munin representing thought and memory, just as Poe's raven.[20] The raven also gets a reputation as a bird of ill omen in the book of Genesis.[21] According to Hebrew folklore, Noah sends a white raven to check conditions while on the ark and learns the floodwaters are beginning to dissipate, but does not immediately return with the news. It is punished by being turned black and being forced to forever feed on carrion. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, a raven also begins as white before Apollo punishes it by turning it black for delivering a message of a lover's unfaithfulness. The raven's role as a messenger in Poe's poem may draw from those stories.[22]

Poe also mentions the Balm of Gilead, a reference to the Book of Jeremiah in the Bible: "Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?[23] In that context, the Balm of Gilead is a resin used for medicinal purposes (suggesting, perhaps, that the narrator needs to be healed after the loss of Lenore). He also refers to "Aidenn," another word for the Garden of Eden, though Poe uses it to ask if Lenore has been accepted into Heaven. At another point, the narrator imagines that seraphim (a type of angel) have entered the room. The narrator thinks they are trying to take his memories of Lenore away from him using nepenthe, a drug mentioned in Homer's Odyssey to induce forgetfulness.

Poetic structure

The poem is made up of 18 stanzas of six lines each. Generally, the meter is a trochaic octameter: the lines are built based on a series of paired "feet" or syllables which alternate stressed and unstressed, with eight "feet" to each line.[24] The first line, for example (with / representing stressed syllables and x representing unstressed:

Syllabic structure of a verse[25]
Stress / x / x / x / x / x / x / x / x
Syllable Once up- on a mid- night drear- y, while I pon- dered weak and wear- y

Poe, however, claimed the poem was a combination of octameter acatalectic, heptameter catalectic, and tetrameter catalectic.[26] The rhyme scheme is ABCBBB and makes heavy use of internal rhyme ("dreary" and "weary") and alliteration ("Doubting, dreaming dreams...").[27] It has been suggested that this particularly strong focus on structure and meter is so formulaic that the poem is artificial but its mesmeric quality overrides that.[28]

Poe based the structure of "The Raven" on the complicated rhyme and rhythm of Elizabeth Barrett's poem "Lady Geraldine's Courtship." Poe had reviewed Barrett's work in the January 1845 issue of the Broadway Journal and said that "her poetic inspiration is the highest - we can conceive of nothing more august. Her sense of Art is pure in itself." About "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," he said, "I have never read a poem combining so much of the fiercest passion with so much of the most delicate imagination."[29]

Publication history

Illustration by John Tenniel.

Poe first brought "The Raven" to his friend and former employer George Rex Graham of Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia. Graham declined the poem, which may not have been in its final version, though he gave Poe $15 as charity.[30] Poe then attempted to place the poem with The American Review, which paid him $9 for it.[31] Though it was first sold to The American Review, which printed it in February 1845, "The Raven" was first published in the Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845 as an "advance copy."[32] Following this publication the poem appeared in periodicals across the United States, including the New York Tribune (February 4, 1845), Broadway Journal (vol. 1, February 8, 1845), Southern Literary Messenger, (vol. 11, March, 1845), Literary Emporium (vol. 2, December, 1845), Saturday Courier, 16 (July 25, 1846), and the Richmond Examiner (September 25, 1849).[33] It has also appeared in numerous anthologies, starting with Poets and Poetry of America edited by Rufus Wilmot Griswold in 1847.

Illustrators

Later publications of "The Raven" included artwork by well-known illustrators. Notably, in 1858 "The Raven" appeared in a British Poe anthology with illustrations by John Tenniel, the Alice in Wonderland illustrator (The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe: With Original Memoir, London: Sampson Low). "The Raven" was published independently with lavish woodcuts by Gustave Doré in 1884 (New York: Harper & Brothers). In 1875 a French edition with English and French text was published with lithographs by the famed Impressionist Édouard Manet and translation by the Symbolist Stephane Mallarmé.[34] Many 20th-century artists and contemporary illustrators created artworks and illustrations based on "The Raven," including Edmund Dulac, István Orosz,[35][36] Ryan Price,[37] Odilon Redon and Gahan Wilson.

Composition

Main article: The Philosophy of Composition

Poe capitalized on the success of "The Raven" by following it up with his essay "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846), in which he detailed the poem's creation. His description of its writing is probably exaggerated, though the essay serves as an important overview of Poe's literary theory.[38] He explains that the poem was created by logically considering every aspect of it. For example, the raven enters the chamber to avoid a storm (the "midnight dreary" in the "bleak December"). The dark black raven sits on a pallid white bust to create a visual contrast. No aspect of the poem was an accident, he claims, but is based on total control by the author.[39] Even the term "Nevermore," he says, is used because of the effect created by the long vowel sounds (though Poe may have been inspired to use the word by the works of Lord Byron or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow[40]). Poe had toyed with the long "o" sound throughout many other poems: "no more" in "Silence," "evermore" in "The Conqueror Worm."[41] The topic itself, Poe says, was chosen because "the death... of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world." Told from "the lips... of a bereaved lover" is best suited to achieve the desired effect.[42] Beyond the poetics of it, the lost Lenore may have been inspired by events in Poe's own life as well, either to the early loss of his mother Eliza Poe or the long-illness endured by his wife Virginia.[43] Ultimately, Poe considered "The Raven" an experiment to "suit at once the popular and critical taste," accessible to both the mainstream and high literary worlds.[44] It is unknown how long Poe worked on "The Raven"; speculation ranges from a single day to ten years. Poe recited a poem believed to be an early version of "The Raven" in 1843 in Saratoga, New York.[45] An early draft may have featured an owl.[46]

Critical reception and impact

In part due to its dual printing, "The Raven" made Edgar Allan Poe a household name almost immediately[47] - people began to identify poem with poet, earning Poe the nickname "The Raven."[48] The poem was soon widely reprinted, imitated, and parodied.[49] The New World said, "Everyone reads the Poem and praises it... justly, we think, for it seems to us full of originality and power." The Pennsylvania Inquirer reprinted it with the heading "A BEAUTIFUL POEM."[50] Elizabeth Barrett wrote to Poe, "Your 'Raven' has produced a sensation, a fit o' horror, here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it and some by the music. I hear of persons haunted by 'Nevermore.'"[51] Poe's popularity resulted in invitations to recite "The Raven" and to lecture - in public and at private social gatherings. At one literary salon, a guest noted, "to hear [Poe] repeat the Raven... is an event in one's life."[52] It was recalled, "He would turn down the lamps till the room was almost dark, then standing in the center of the apartment he would recite... in the most melodious of voices... So marvelous was his power as a reader that the auditors would be afraid to draw breath lest the enchanted spell be broken."[53] Parodies sprung up especially in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia and included "The Craven" by "Poh!," "The Gazelle," "The Whippoorwill," and "The Turkey."[54] Though it made Poe popular in his day, it did not bring him significant financial success.[55]

"The Raven" was also praised by fellow writers William Gilmore Simms and Margaret Fuller[56] though it was denounced by William Butler Yeats, who called it "insincere and vulgar... its execution a rhythmical trick."[57] Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I see nothing in it."[58] An anonymous writer going by "Outis" suggested in the Evening Mirror that "The Raven" was plagiarized from a poem called "The Bird of the Dream" by an unnamed author. The writer showed 18 similarities between the poems as a response to Poe's accusations of plagiarism against Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It has been suggested Outis was really Cornelius Conway Felton, if not Poe himself.[59] After Poe's death, frequent critic of Poe Thomas Holley Chivers said "The Raven" was plagiarized from one of his poems.[60] 20th century American poet Daniel Hoffman suggested that Poe's particularly strong focus on structure and meter is so formulaic that the poem is artificial, though its mesmeric quality overrides that.[61]

"The Raven" has influenced many modern works, including " Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in 1955, Bernard Malamud's "The Jewbird" in 1963 and Ray Bradbury's "The Parrot Who Knew Papa" in 1976.[62] The poem is additionally referenced throughout popular culture in films, television, music and more.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Meyers, 163
  2. ^ Silverman, 239
  3. ^ Kopley & Hayes, 192
  4. ^ Silverman, 237
  5. ^ a b c Poe, 773
  6. ^ a b c d Poe, 774
  7. ^ a b c d Poe, 775
  8. ^ Silverman, 239
  9. ^ Kopley & Hayes, 194
  10. ^ Hoffman, 74
  11. ^ Hirsch, 195-6
  12. ^ Sova, 208
  13. ^ Meyers, 163
  14. ^ Granger, 53–54
  15. ^ Kopley & Hayes, 194
  16. ^ Hirsch, 195
  17. ^ Meyers, 162
  18. ^ "RE: Cremains / Ravens". Pro Exlibris archives. Retrieved 2007-04-01.
  19. ^ "RE: Cremains / Ravens". Pro Exlibris archives. Retrieved 2007-04-01.
  20. ^ Adams, 53
  21. ^ Hirsch, 195
  22. ^ Adams, 53
  23. ^ Jeremiah 8:22
  24. ^ Kopley & Hayes, 192
  25. ^ Poe, 773
  26. ^ Sova, 208
  27. ^ Kopley & Hayes, 192–3
  28. ^ Hoffman, 76
  29. ^ Meyers, 160
  30. ^ Hoffman, 79
  31. ^ Ostrom, 5
  32. ^ Sova, 208
  33. ^ "The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe". Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. April 27, 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  34. ^ "Digital Gallery for Édouard Manet illustrations - Le corbeau". New York Public Library Digital Gallery. Retrieved 2007-09-20.
  35. ^ Orosz, István. "The poet in the mirror". Gallery Diabolus. Retrieved 2007-09-20. - Anamorphic illustration for "The Raven"
  36. ^ Orosz, István. "The poet in the mirror". Gallery Diabolus. Retrieved 2007-09-20. - the same illustration with a chrome-plated brass cylinder
  37. ^ Price, Ryan. "Illustrations by Ryan Price". Ingram Gallery. Retrieved 2007-09-20.
  38. ^ Krutch, 98
  39. ^ Silverman, 295–6
  40. ^ Forsythe, 439–52
  41. ^ Meyers, 163
  42. ^ Silverman, 239
  43. ^ Kopley & Hayes, 194
  44. ^ Silverman, 239
  45. ^ Kopley & Hayes, 192
  46. ^ Weiss, 185
  47. ^ Hoffman, 80
  48. ^ Silverman, 238
  49. ^ Hoffman, 80
  50. ^ Silverman, 237
  51. ^ Krutch, 153
  52. ^ Silverman, 279
  53. ^ Krutch, 154
  54. ^ Silverman, 238
  55. ^ Krutch, 155
  56. ^ Meyers, 184
  57. ^ Silverman, 239
  58. ^ Silverman, 265
  59. ^ Moss, 169
  60. ^ Moss, 101
  61. ^ Hoffman, 76
  62. ^ Kopley & Hayes, 196

References

  • Adams, John F. "Classical Raven Lore and Poe's Raven" in Poe Studies. Vol. V, no. 2, December 1972. Available online
  • Forsythe, Robert. "Poe's 'Nevermore': A Note," as collected in American Literature 7. January, 1936.
  • Granger, Byrd Howell. "Marginalia - Devil Lore in 'The Raven'" from Poe Studies vol. V, no. 2, December 1972 Available online
  • Hirsch, David H. "The Raven and the Nightingale" as collected in Poe and His Times: The Artist and His Milieu, edited by Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV. Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, Inc., 1990. ISBN 0961644923
  • Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. ISBN 0807123218
  • Kopley, Richard and Kevin J. Hayes. "Two verse masterworks: 'The Raven' and 'Ulalume'," collected in The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Kevin J. Hayes. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0521797276
  • Krutch, Joseph Wood. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926.
  • Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York City: Cooper Square Press, 1992. ISBN 0815410387
  • Moss, Sidney P. Poe's Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu. Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.
  • Ostrom, John Ward. "Edgar A. Poe: His Income as Literary Entrepreneur," collected in Poe Studies Vol. 5, no. 1. June 1982.
  • Poe, Edgar Allan. Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 2002. ISBN 0785814531
  • Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. ISBN 0060923318
  • Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York City: Checkmark Books, 2001. ISBN 081604161X
  • Weiss, Susan Archer. The Home Life of Poe. New York: Broadway Publishing Company, 1907.
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Raven.

Text

  • "The Raven" - Full text of the first printing, from the American Review, 1845
  • "The Raven" - Full text of the final authorized printing, from the Richmond Semi-Weekly Examiner, 1849

Commentary

Illustrated

Audio

Video

  • Video of Vincent Price giving a dramatic reading of "The Raven"
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Raven&oldid=160962779"