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Poe had lived a hard life, and during most of that life the dreams he dreamed remained only dreams. He drank to escape from the troubles of the real worlds. He escaped into his dream world in his poems and in many of his finest stories. Poe himself said that he was a dreamer. Think, he said, think of that moment when you are about to go to sleep, but are mot yet sleeping. You dream strange dreams. If you go to sleep you forget them. Poe claimed that he could come near to sleeping and then call himself back to the real world, remembering the dreams of the half world from which he had just come. These, he said, were the materials of some of his writings. If he said it, we may believe that it is true. But in addition to that, he filled his poems and his stories with the dreams he dreamed when not asleep yet. Poe began his career as a poet and composed or revised poems throughout his career. A tone of amused distance can be detected even in poems that critics consider serious. However, these elements coexist with themes that are more typical of the Romantic Movement, such as dreams and nightmares.

As it was mentioned, Poe’s creative life coincides with the period of Romanticism in American literature, and this was the age of Romanticism in Europe. And American still considered Europe to be the best source of new ideas. One of the most important Romantic ideas was the escape from reality, poems and stories could take people out of real life into a dream world where they felt and say and heard things that never were and never will be.

And besides, it was the time, when the United States went through some of the greatest changes in its history of the 19^th century it was still mainly a country of farmers. Trade and manufacturing were growing more important with each decade but it was not until the 1870’s that a majority of Americans were making a living in non-farming occupation . In the middle of the century Negro slavery was still fact of American life. But after Civil War the nation entered a period of vast commercial expansion. Railroads Stretched form one end of the country to the other. Factories were built. Cities grew bigger. Fortunes were made. Edgar Poe was against the business, which was made mot to the favor of the country, he was a son of his century and an American patriot and tried to rise the American people’s level of beauty and to prove that the poetry might exist in America. He wrote about it in his article “Poets and American Poetry”. He didn’t separate himself from that that created railways, factories, he said “we” about “all” who could create both a locomotive and poetry.

Poe handled such material through images and tropes designed to signify uncertain states of consciousness represented as lakes, seas waves, and vapors.

Nearly all Poe’s criticism on poetry was written for the magazines for which he worked. Although the pieces were published intermittently, they reflect a remarkable coherent self-conscious view of poetry and the creative process. Poe wrote “The Philosophy of Composition” to explain how he composed “The Raven”. The essay opposes the romantic assumption that the poet works in a “fine frenzy” of pure inspiration. Instead, Poe wrote a carefully deliberate account of poetic creation. The essay analyses the central role of “effect” the conscious choice of an emotional atmosphere that is more important than incident, character, and versification. Poe also offered his famous pronouncement that the death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic in the world. In “The Poetic Principle” (1850).

Poe clamed that poetry works to achieve an elevating exciting of the soul, an emotional state that could not be long sustained. He further declared that a long poem is a contradiction in terms.

Poe believed that a poem’s emotional impact was enhanced by music or “sweet sound”. He thus devoted considerable attention to techniques of versification, especially in his essay. “The Rationale of Verse” (1848)

Poe’s “Sonnet To Science”(1829) subtly shows how beauty is destroyed by the coldness of the modern scientific intellect. “To Helen”(1831) is a brilliant example of precision and balance and perhaps Poe’s classic poetic statement on the idealization of women.

Despite its theatrical effects and stylistic flaws, “The Raven” (1845) is Poe’s best-known poem and one of the most famous works in American literature. If treats his favorite theme, the death of a beautiful woman.

This theme also appears in “The Sleeper” (1841) and “Ulalume” (1847). In all three poems, Poe chose elaborate musical and metrical effects, aspects of his verse that have been widely criticized and parodied.

Reflecting his interest in musical effects, Poe made no rigid distinction between music and poetry. “Eldarado” (1849), which originated as a song of the American West about the California gold rush, is an outstanding example. Poe went beyond the poem’s topical mature. The theme is universalized, as a knight learns that the true Eldarado is a wealth beyond this world.

The brilliance of Poe can be seen in the two poems “Israfel” and “Annabel Lee”. The poems are as melodious as Bryant’s but more dramatic in their effects. “Israfel” is Poe’s poetic apology for himself, while “Annabel Lee” mourns the death of a beautiful girl, a recurring subject in Poe’s writing.

One of the most remarkable things about the pair of poems is their melody. They are sinkable, not as a popular or concert song is, but with a wild kind of word music. As we read these lines, aloud or to ourselves, we will probably be able to understand why Poe was considered so skillful a poet. The rhythms of “Israfel” are rapid; the lines move fast. The beat is strong and skillfully varied. The vowel sounds are higher than in ordinary writing, helping to make the voice that reads them sound like a musical instrument such as the harp.

It is worth nothing that the above mentioned poems have nothing to do with America. Unlike those of some of his contemporaries, Poe’s subjects and themes were either universal or exotic. He had little interest in the topical or everyday occurrences, seeking instead to avoid factuality or logical clarity that would make a poem understanding to the common intellect. For the most part, Poe’s poems do not truly illuminate they are not expected to have plot. He continually emphasized estrangement, disappearance, silence, oblivion, and all ideas which suggest nonbeing. If was the idea of approximating nothingness that most excited him in his own poetry and that of other poets.

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,

In this kingdom by the sea,

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

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

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 19^th 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:

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