Artistic peculiarities of short stories by E.A. Poe

5

MINISTRY OF HIGHER AND SECONDARY SPECIAL EDUCATION

OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN

GULISTAN STATE UNIVERSITY

The English and Literature Department

Qualification work on speciality

English philology on the theme:

“Artistic peculiarities of short stories by E.A. Poe””

Numanov Golib’s qualification work

on speciality 5220100,

Supervisor: Tojiev Kh.

Gulistan-2006

Contents

I. Introduction.

1.1 Review of the theme.

1.2 National Beginning in American literature and Edgar Poe as one of
its beginners

II. Main Part

2.1 Edgar Poe’s creative life

2.2 Edgar Poe and American short story

2.3 Israfel

2.4 Annabell Lee

2.5 Characteristics of Edgar Poe’s short stories

2.6 Detective stories. “The Cask of Amontillado”

2.7 Fantastic stories. E. Poe’s Heroes

ІІІ Conclusion.

3.1 Edgar Poe’s artistic manner

IV. Bibliography.

Introduction

1.1 Review of the theme

My qualification work is devoted to the creative life and work of great
American writer Edgar Allan Poe, the theme of which is “Artistic
peculiarities of short stories by Edgar Poe”. This theme is chosen for
investigation because of its importance for learning English language.
In the process of learning English the learning of the literature of
exact country is very important. Alongside with English literature we
must know American literature, which developed on the basis of English
one. From the history of the English language we know that English
penetrated America through British conquering of this land. Edgar Allan
Poe was one of the pioneers of national beginnings in American
literature, he made a great contribution to the development of American
literature, and he entered the literature as a poet, critic and
wonderful short story-teller. To my mind his creative activity is worth
of paying attention to and the given theme is actual for investigation.

The actuality of the theme is also that because of Edgar Poe’s manner of
writing. It is his short stories-defective, fantastic, stories of horror
– all of them, which attract the readers by their peculiar effect.
Judging by Edgar Poe’s words he prevered “commencing with the
consideration of effect”, he wanted to impress the reader, he had a
specific skill of constructing his stories, and that’s why he called his
short stories “Tales of Grotesques and Arabesque”. E. Poe. The
philosophy of Composition

My work is aimed to investigate and to show the characteristic features,
the artistic peculiarities of Edgar Poe’s short stories, how the author
managed to write the stories of different genres. By analyzing some
stories and on their examples, I tried to show their characteristic
features. As the object of investigation I have analyzed the following
stories: from the series of detective stories I chose the story “The
Murders in the Rue Morgue”, and “The Gold bug”, as horrible stories I
took “ The Tell – Tale Heart”, “ The Cask of Amontillado”, and “the Fall
of the House of Usher” The scientific novelty of my work is that it
provides the rich information about Edgar Poe’s creative life and his
works. Analyzing the above mentioned stories I proved once more Edgar
Poe’s skill to tell stories which thrill readers both with fear and
humor.

1.2 National Beginning in American literature and Edgar Poe as one of
its beginners

The work is also of great practical value. It can be used in practice as
educational material for further learning not only American literature
but our national literature, we can compare Edgar Poe’s artistic manner
of writing detective stories with Sherlock Home’s, Aghatha Christy or
our Uzbek writer Tahir Malik – well known with his “Shaytanat”.

My work consists of three parts and bibliography. The first part
contains the general review of the theme and some information about
national beginnings in American literature, as Edgar Poe was one of the
pioneers in the formation of American literature.

The second part includes items concerning Edgar Poe’s creative life, his
poetry and the development of American short story.

The item about characteristics of Edgar Poe’s “Tales of Grotesque and
Arabesque”, where I made the analysis of his stories of horror,
detective and fantastic stories.

In conclusion I summed up the work paying attention to Edgar Poe’s
artistic manner, and the importance of his creative activity for the
world literature.

The use of Edgar Poe’s short stories in original helped me with
revealing their characteristic features. Besides I have used Hervi
Allen’s recollections about Edgar Poe’s, Published in the book “Splendid
people’s life”, M. 1984 issue 14 and Professor F. Cowles Strickland’s
recollections about Edgar Poe. I also found interesting remarks about
Edgar Poe’s activity in the article by M. Urinov. In Highlight of
American literature I found the rich information about National
beginnings and short stories in American literature.

Many writers paid attention to Edgar Poe’s works, such as Nikolukin in
his book “Edgar Poe, H. W. Krutch. “Edgar Allan Poe”. “A study in genius
New York”. 1926. Edgar Allan Poe, His writing and influences, New York
1974.

The use of the material from Internet helped me to enrich my work with
the information concerning Edgar Poe’s creative activity and
characteristics of his works.

Main part

2.1 Edgar Poe’s creative life

Edgar Allan Poe is certainly one of the best known and most popular of
American writers. His stories are read by children, probed with the
tools of psychoanalysis by critics, and transformed into films. His
poems, notably “The Raven”, “To Helen” and “Annable Lee”, are widely
anthologized. And his critical notion that a poem should be readable in
a single sitting so as not to mute its single effect is a familiar
critical principle. More importantly, Poe’s poetic theories, outlined in
such pieces as “The Poetic Principle”, “The Rationale of Verse” and “The
Philosophy of Composition, had a profound influence on the French
symbolist movement.

Before he became a famous poet and short- storey writer, Poe was known
as a journalist and magazine editor. He wrote numerous reviews about
works now forgotten while producing his own memerable tales and poems.
And though he never realized his dream of founding a literary magazine
of his own, be contributed to many , including those he edited. Aa a
writer for popular periodicals like the “ Broadway Journals” and
Graham’s “ Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine”, and as an editor of
literary periodicalssuch as the “ Southern Literary Messenger” Poe came
to understand very well the audiences who read his work. He aimed his
work, as he wrote, “ not above the popular, or below the critical,
taste” turning the fictional conventions of his own time to odd account.
In tales such as “ Ligeia” and “ The Fall of the House of Usher”, for
example he put his personal stamp on the gothic horror story. He
remodeled the tale of exploration in works like “ A Descent into
theMaelstorm”, and he developed the genre of the detective story, or “
tale of racionation” as he called it , with such stories as “ The Gold
Bug”, “ The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, and “ The Purlioned Letter”.
Still another genre he touched on was science fiction with his fantastic
story” The Balloon Hoax”. As various as was Poe’s genius and as varied
as were the fictional subgenres he worked in, one element of his work
remains consistent: his concern with the workings of the human mind.

Writers as diverse as Bandelaire and Dostoevsky admired Poe’s work.
Bandelaire, who translated many of Poe’s tales, in fact , acknowledged
Poe’s influence by writing that if Poe hadn’t existed Bandelaire would
have had to invent him. Dostoevsky was unstiuting in his praise of Poe’s
revelations of minds at war with thenselves. Although Dostoevsky’s own
explorations of extreme states of consciosness and his dramatic
depictions of behavior honed by guilt are more ambitious and monumental
than Poe’s sketches and tales, the Russian writer felt a kindship with
Poe.

Poe’s life was as tormented as the minds of his stories narrators. He
was born to itinerant actors in Boston. His father died when he was a
year old and his mother a year later. Edgar was and his brother and
sister were taken as foster children into the Rome of a Richmond tobacco
merchant , John Allan . Poe was educated in England and at the
University of Vifginia, where he was provided with insafficient funds
for food, books , and clothing by John Allan. Living among wealthy young
men, Poe resorted to gambling , wich further worsened his financial
situation and contributed what was an already seriously strained
relationship with his foster father , who disapproved of his literary
ambitions. The upshot was that Poe withdrew from the university and was
left to make his own way as an author.

In 1837 he moned his familyfrom Baltimore to New York, where he
published his only full-length fictional work, “ The Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym”. In 1840 he published his “ Tales of the Grotesqu and
Arabesque” (1840). Poe borrowed the terms “ grotesque” and “ arabesque”
from the Romantic poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott, and meant them to
suggest the terror associated with the bizarre and the beautiful
associated with the poetic. He also meant to suggest that both elements
were present in many stories in his collection.

“The Fall of the House of Usher” is among Poe’s most famous and most
accomplished tales. The house that falls is both the literal Usher
habitation and the family it signifies. The house also represents the
mind of Roderick Usher. In its density of detail, bizarre events, and
uncanny tone, the story suggest gothic fiction. In its psychological
richness and fainted family history, it reaches back to Greek tragedy.

“The Cask of Amontillado” examplifies Poe’s genius at displaying a mad
narrator whose intent is to convince his listeners of his sanity.
Perhaps Poe’s best- known example of this type is the narrator of “ The
Tell- Tale Heart”. But “ The Cask of Amontilado” is an even richer
story, with Poe pulling out all the stops in displaying multiple ironies
while his narrator fels compelled to tell somebody of the perfect murder
he committed fifty years before. The question is why he tells this tale
after so many years.

In “The Purloined Letter” Poe gives way to his bent for stories of crime
and punishment, this time from the outside point of view of the
detective rather than from inside the criminals mind. Rather than
considering what he would have done in like circumstances, the detective
, Monsieur Dupin, must try to think the way the criminal thought, which
is precisely what he does en route to to solving the case . The story
celebrates Poe’s appreciation of the rational mind and contains a number
of examples of riddles and games in which Poe delighted. It also ends
with an elaborate puzzle built on a complex literary allusion, which
contains the key Poe uses to unlock the inticacies of the story’s plot.

Poe’s fictional performances delighted audience in his own time continue
to engage and intrigue readers today. Even though his style is ornate
and his language far from colloquial, he remains a most readable writer,
largely because he builds suspense, creates atmosphere , and probes the
psychological complexities of his characters’ minds and hearts. If it is
the horror of his stories that first draws readers in, it is Poe’s
psychological richness and his control of tone that continue to bring
them back for repeated readings of some inmatchable stories.

American literature cannot be captured in a simple definition. It
reflects the many religious, historical and cultural traditions of the
American people, one of the world’s most varied populations. It includes
poetry, fictions, drama and other kinds of writing by authors in what is
now the United States. It also includes miswritten material, such as the
oral literature of the American Indians and folk tales and legends. In
addition, American literature accounts of America written by immigrants
and visitors from other countries, as well as works by American writers,
who spent some or all of their lives abroad.

American literature begins with the legends, myths and poetry of the
American Indians, the first people to life in what is now the United
States. Indians legends included stories about the origin of the world,
the histories of various tribes, and tales of tribal heroes.

The first American literature was neither American nor really
literature. It was not American because it was the work mainly of
immigrants from England. It was not literature as we know it in the form
of poetry, essays, or fiction but rather an interesting mixture of
travel accounts and religious writings.

The earliest colonial travel accounts are records of the perils and
frustrations that challenged the courage of America’s first settlers.

The purpose of the first writers was to attract dissatisfied inhabitants
of the Old World across the ocean to the New. As a result, their travel
accounts became a kind of literature to which many groups responded by
making the hazardous crossing to America. The earliest settlers included
Dutch, Swedes, German, French, Spaniards, Italians, and Portuguese, of
the immigrants who came to America in the first three quarters of the
seventeenth century, however, the overwhelming majority was English.

The English immigrants who settled on American’s northern seacoast,
appropriately called New England, came in order to practice their
religion freely. They were either Englishman who wanted to reform the
Church of England or people who wanted to have an entirely new church.
These two groups combined, especially in what became Massachusetts, came
to be known as “Puritans”, so named after those who wished to “purify”
the Church of England.

The Puritans followed many of the ideas of the Swiss reformer John
Calvin.

Through the Calvinist influence the Puritans emphasized the then common
belief that human beings were basically evil and could do nothing about
it; and that many of them, though not all, would surely be condemned to
hell.

Over the years the Puritans built a way of life that was in harmony with
their somber religion, one that stressed hard work, thriff, piety, and
sobriety. These were the Puritan values that dominated much of the
earliest American writing including the sermons, books, and letters of
such noted Puritan clergymen as John Cotton and Cotton Mather. During
his life Cotton Mather wrote more than 450 works, an impressive output
of religious writings that demonstrate that he was an example, as well
as an advocate, of the Puritan ideal of hard work. During the last half
of seventeenth century the Atlantic coast was settled both north and
south. Colonies still largely English were established. Among the
colonists could be found poets and essayists; but no novelists. The
absence of novelist is quite understandable: the novel form had not even
developed fully in England; the Puritan members of the colonies believed
that fiction ought not to be read because it was, by definition, not
true.

The American poets who emerged in the seventeenth century adapted the
style of established European poets to subject matter confronted in a
strange, new environment. Anne Bradstreet was one such poet, who was
born in educated in England. She both admired and imitated several
English poets. Another important colonial poet, who achieved wide
popularity was Michael Wigglesworth.

Twentieth century literary scholars have discovered the manuscripts of a
contemporary of Wigglesworth named Edward Taylor, who produced what is
perhaps the finest seventeenth century American verse. Taylor never
published any of his poetry. In fact, the first of Edward Taylor’s
colonial poetry did not reach print until the third decade of the
twentieth century.

As the decades passed new generations of American born writers became
important. Boston, Massachusetts, was the birthplace of one such
American born writer. His name was Benjamin Franklin. The practical
world of Benjamin Franklin stands in sharp contrast to the fantasy world
created by Washington Irving. Named after George Washington, the first
president of the United States, Irving provided a young nation with
humorous, fictional accounts of colonial past.

Another writer, James Fennimore Cooper, contributed two of the great
stock figures of American mythology: the daring frontiersman and the
bold Indian. Cooper’s exciting stories of the American frontier have won
a large audience for his books in many parts of the world.

While prose was contributing to development of an American mythology,
the first poetry in the United States was also being written; Philip
Freneau, one of the first poets of the new nation, wrote in a style
which owed something to English models. If Freneau can be considered one
of America’s first great nationalist poets, William Cullen Bryant merits
a claim to being one of America’s first naturalist poets.

We can’t help saying about such notable poets as Edgar Poe and Nathaniel
Hawthorne, who contributed American literature with their prose and
verse.

The earliest writing in America considered of the journals and reports
of European explorers and missionaries. These early authors left a rich
literature describing their encounters with new lands and civilization.
Beginning from these early times the American literature has been
developing up to date. Such well-known writers and poets as Edgar Poe,
Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher-Stowe, Theodore Dreiser,
Jack London, Ernest Hemingway and others became the pride not only of
the American literature but of the whole world literature as well. As
any other literature, the American literature reflected all historical
events that took place in the world. The American literature suffered
different periods: romanticism, realism, modernism etc.

The period of 40s-90s is the period of late romanticism in the
literature of the USA. It coincides with the creative work of Edgar
Allan Poe, who is considered to be one of the pioneers of National
American literature.

2.2 Characteristics of Edgar Poe’s short stories

The American poet Edgar Allan Poe, was also a master of the prose tale.
A gifted, tormented man, Poe thought about proper function of literature
for more than any of his predecessors, with the result that he became
the first great American literary critic. He Developed a theory of
poetry which was in disagreement with what most poets of the
mid-nineteenth century believed. Unlike many poets, Poe was not an
advocate of long poems. According to him, only a short poem could
sustain the level of emotion in the reader that was generated by all
good poetry. Besides Poe worked as an editor and contributor to
magazines in several cities. He unsuccessfully tried to found and edit
his won magazine, which would have granted him financial security and
artistic control in what he considered a hostile literary marketplace.

Poe was never a good businessman but he was a good editor. His writing
as a critic was especially well known. For Poe was not only a man with a
fine mind who was a good writer; he had very clear opinions about the
art of writing and had no fear at all about publishing those opinions.
If he didn’t like a book or a poem or a story he cut it and the writer
into pieces with his words.

During his lifetime, Poe made many enemies through his challenge to
moralistic limits on literature, his confrontation with the New England
literary establishment, and his biting critical style. Some readers too
easily identified Poe with the mentally disturbed narrators of his
tales, a belief reinforced by Rufus Griswold, Poe’s literary executor.
Griswold wrote a malicious obituary and memoir of Poe that combined
half-truth and outright falsehoods about Poe’s personal habits and
conduct. Griswold portrayed Poe as envious, conceited, arrogant, and
bad-tempered. Griswold’s portrait severely damaged Poe’s reputation and
delayed a serious consideration of the writer’s place in American
literature. But Poe’s later rediscovery by the French poets Charles
Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarme, and Paul Valery helped restore his
reputation.

But was he? Poe was born in Boston in January of 1809 the son of
traveling actors. His father deserted the family. After his mother died
in 1811, Poe becomes a ward of John Allan, a wealthy Richmond merchant.
The Allan family lived in Great Britain from 1815 to 1820 before
returning to Richmond. In 1826, Poe enrolled at the University of
Virginia. There he acquired gambling debts that John Allan refused to
pay. Eventually, Poe was forced to withdraw from the university.

Poe’s relationship with Allan deteriorated, and the young man enlisted
in the USA army in 1827. During the same year, Poe’s first book was
published. Its title was “Tamerlane and other Poems”, by “a Bostonian”.
While waiting for an appointment to the US Military Academy, Poe
published his second volume of poems: “All Araaf, “Tamerlane”, and
“Minor poems”(1829). Both collections show the influence of the English
poet Lord Byron. In 1830, Poe entered the US. Military Academy at West
Point, N. Y., where he excelled in the4 study of languages. But he was
expelled in 1831 for neglecting his duties.

Poe’s “Poems” (1831) contained two important poems “to Helen” and
“Israfel”. He began to publish tales in the early 1830’s while living
with his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia. Poe suffered
financial difficulties, especially after being ignored in John Allan’s
will. He received help from American novelist John P. Kennedy in winning
an editorial post with the “southern literary messenger” in Richmond. In
1836, Poe married Virginia Clemm, his 13year old cousin. For the
“Messenger”, Poe contributed reviews, original or revised poems and
stories, and two installments of “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym”.

Poe produced several of his finest tales in the late 1830’s, including
“Ligeia”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “William Wilson”. These
and other stories were incorporated into “Tales of the Grotesque and
Arabesque” (1834). In 1841, he became an editor of “Graham’s Magazine”,
to which he contributed “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”.

Poe won greater recognition with “The God Bug” (1843), a prize winning
tale that appeared in Philadelphia’s Dollar Newspaper. The poem “ The
Raven” (1845) made him famous. Two more collections “ Tales” and “ The
Raven and the other Poems”, appeared in 1845. Early in 1845, Poe
antagonized many people with a scathing campaign against the popular.
American poet Henry Wadworth Longfellow for supposed plagiarism. At a
public appearance in Boston later that year, Poe admitted to being
drunk, which further alienated the public.

Poe’s later years were colored by economic hardship and ill health.
Nevertheless, he published the story “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846),
“The Philosophy of Composition” (1846), and part of his “Marginalia”, a
collection of critical notes written for various periodical during the
1840’s.

Virginia Poe died of tuberculosis in 1847, after five years of illness.
Poe then sank into poor health, and his literary productivity declined.
In the middle and late 1840’s, he sought to support himself as a
lecturer. His lecture on “The Universe” was expanded into Eurika: A
Prose Poem(1848), which explores the mysteries of the Universe.

In 1849, Poe became engaged to marry the widowed Sarah Elmira Royster
Shelton, his boyhood sweetheart. On his way to bring Mrs. Clemm to the
wedding, Poe stopped in Baltimore. On October 3, he was found
semiconscious and delirious outside a tavern used as a polling place.
The cause of his death four days later was listed as “congestion of the
brain”, though the precise circumstances of his death have never been
fully explained.

As professor F. Cowles Strickland shard, that Edgar Poe drank too much,
that he learned how to drink; the trouble is that he didn’t. Most men
did not drink badly of another man just because he drank; but if the man
didn’t know how to drink if he drank too much or at the wrong time of
day or in the wrong place then men felt that drinking was wrong. Poe was
one who didn’t know how. But he didn’t drink all the time. If that had
been true he could no have written anything. There were long periods
when Poe didn’t drink at all; but there were other periods when he felt
he couldn’t continue to exist without drinking. Thus Poe, created
trouble for himself. This is not the only example of how Poe did the
wrong thing, knowing that it was the wrong thing. Apparently it was a
part of his character to do so. Poe recognized this problem in himself.
In his story “The Black Cat” he wrote;

“Who has not, a hundred times, found himself doing wrong, doing some
evil thing for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Are
not we humans at all times pushed, ever driven in some unknown way to
break the lay just because we understand it to be the law?” Edgar Allan
Poe; Storyteller. The story “The Black Cat” US inf. Argency. W.D.C. 1996
p8

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 19th 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 19th century, as it
was the time when the writer created his best short stories, when
readers were enjoyed by his highlights.

From the beginning of time, man has been interested in stories. For many
thousands of years stories were passed from generation to generation
orally, either in words or in song. Usually the stories were religious
or national in character.

There were myths, epics, fables, and parables. Some famous examples of
story-telling of the Middle Ages are “A thousand and one nights”,
Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” and Boccachio’s “Decameron”.

Perhaps it can be said that the short story is well suited to American
style of life and character. It is brief (If can be read usually in a
single sitting). It if concentrated (The characters are few in number
and the action is limited).

Dr. J. Berg Esenwein in his book “writing the short story” defines the
short story as follows:

“A short story is a brief imaginative narrative, unfolding a single
predominating incident and a single chief character; it contains a plot,
the details of which are so compressed, and the whole treatment so
organized, as to produce a single impression”.

A good shorts story should (1) narrate an account of events in a way
that will hold the reader’s interest by its basic truth; and (2) it
should present a struggle or conflict faced by a character or
characters. The plot is the narrative development of the struggle as it
moves through a series of crises to the final outcome. The outcome must
be the inevitable result of the traits of the character involved in the
struggle or conflict.

The short story is the literary form to which the United States made
early contributions. In fact, early in 19th century America, the short
story reached a significant point in its development. Three American
writers were responsible for this development; Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Washington Irving, and Edgar Allan Poe. It was the latter who defined
the literary form in his review of Hawthorne’s “Twice-Told Tales”.

In his review, Poe asserts that everything in a story or tale every
incident, every combination of events, every word must aid the author in
achieving a preconceived emotional effects. He states that since the
ordinary novel cannot be read at one sitting, it is deprived of “ the
immense force derivable from totality.” For Poe the advantage of the
short prose narrative over the novel was that it maintained unity of
interest on the part of the reader, who was less subject to the
intervention of “wordily interests” caused by pauses or cessation of
reading as in the case of a novel.

“In the brief tale, however, “ Poe states, “the author is enabled to
carry out the dullness of his intentions, be it what may, During the
hour of perusal the soul of the reader is at the writer’s control. There
are no external or extrinsic influences resulting from weariness or
interruption”.

Poe felt that the writer of short stories should conceive his stories
with deliberate care in order to achieve “ a certain unique or single
effect”, beginning with the initial sentence of the story. According to
Poe, the short story writer should not form his thoughts to accommodate
his incidents, and thereby destroy the possibility of establishing the
pre-conceived single effect, so mush desired.

Poe’s chief work, thus, was done as a critic. But it is for his stories
that he remembered today, and for some pf his poems, especially “The
Raven”. These were the writings people liked best in his own time. Poe
wrote his stories with so much skill, that they seemed real, at least
for a few minutes until the reader reached the end of the story and
dropped back into the cold reality of his everybody life. Poe himself
stated that he wrote horror stories because that was what people wanted
to read. He wrote them because he knew they would bring him fame. And
they did.

While the enormous popularity of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous short stories
and poems continued highlight his creative brilliance, Poe’s renown as
the master of horror, the bather of the detective story, and the voice
of “The Raven” is something of a mixed blessing. Today, Poe is known,
read and appreciated on the basis of a comparatively narrow body of
work, roughly a dozen tales of half as many poems. For the novice
reader, these favored texts offer easy (but still challenging access to
Poe’s most exemplary writing, entry into his uniquely terrifying world,
and intriguining connections to facets of their author’s tragically
disordered life. The total effect of all this is compelling, and Poe
himself would certainly approve. He wrote for the masses, using his
learned artistry to reach the common people of his day and to then
elevate their minds while intensifying their emotional reactions, Poe
was not averse to the commercial sensationalism either; he wrote several
“hoaxes” as news and later capitalized on his personal notoriety for
bookings on the foremost literary stars in the firmament of popular
American culture. A century and half after death, Poe is instantly
identifiable, stands without rival, and remains immensely enjoyable. In
his normal frame of mind, at least, Poe would have been deeply amused by
the widespread adulation and fame he has enjoyed in posterity.

The rub is that we may be temped to stop here and neglect the breath and
he depth of Poe’s contributions to western Literature. Poe, in fact,
wrote nearly seventy short works of fiction. He duly credited with
creating the detective story genre and with transforming the Gothic
mystery tale of the Romantic period into the modern horror or murder
stories centered in the outlying regions of human mind and experience.
But he also wrote several comic and satirical pieces, literary parodies,
sketches, and experimental stories, including “A Descent into the
Maelstone” and his novella “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym”. His
most famous poems “The Raven”, “Ulalume,” “The Bells”, “The City in the
Sea” were enormously influential. These famous verses were behind a
powerful wave of enthusiasm for Poe that arose among the leading writers
of Europe during his own lifetime, spread there of the around the word,
and was sustained through the “discovery” of existential “human
condition” themes in his short stories generations later.

2.5 Characteristics of Edgar Poe’s short stories

“Tales of Groteque and Arabesque” his first collection of short stories
Edgar Poe titled “Tales of Grotesque and Arabesque”. The title of the
work makes the reader enter the field of fantasy, created by the writer.
Edgar Poe’s stories are Grotesque and Arabesque indeed. As W.
Shakespeare said “who will name the child by his right name”, whether he
is a man or a work of art? Evidently, it is the child’s parent or author
who is able to do it best, when we speak about the work of art. But both
the parent and the author has not only the nation of the child they
produced, but their own mysterious idea, their own wish, and their own
hopes. Groteque and Arabesque – is an exact name, but it is more the
outward appearance, the way and manner than the gist of the phenomenon.
Some authors and critics call Edgar Poe’s stories “horrible” ones. But
we can certainly call them “tales of mystery and horror”

The famous Russian writer M. Dostoevsky, said about Edgar Poe’s
“strangeness” his Grotesque and Arabesque: “If is Edgar Poe, who is
extremely strange, though with the great talent”. Sometimes it seems
that this or that Poe’s grotesque was written in the traditional spirit
of Gothic novel, in spirit of genre of “mystery and horror” and then it
occurs that it is parady to him. The real example of this is the story
“Sfinx”:

A man came from New York to the place of his relative and lives in a
separate comfortable cottage on the bank of Gudzon River. One day, on
the sunset of a hot day, he was sitting at the open window, which
overlooked the beautiful bank of the river and the distant hillside. And
suddenly he saw there something incredible awful monster descending fast
from the top and soon disappear in the thick forest at the foot. If was
a huge monster, and the most surprising thing was the picture of its
“skull scarily of half of a chest” Before it disappeared, it had uttered
“unexplainable sorrowful” sound, and the man, who was telling the story,
bell on the ground without feeling. The story about mystery and horror,
and at the same time at the next page exposure of “the trick”, that is
the explanation: how such an awful monster appeared before the
story-teller. It occurred that it was only some kind of an insect “sfinx
dead head”, which inspired the people superstitious horror with its sad
squeaking and also with the emblem of death on its chest.

The insect got into a cobweb, which was made by a spider behind the
window and the eyes of the sitting man at the window, designed it to the
bold slope of a distant hill.

“Fear has large eyes”, the image of the monster illusion created by the
psychological state of the story-teller, sharpened with the horror the
epidemic of cholera was being rife in New York, “the disaster was
spreading” and “in the wind itself, when it was flowing from the South.
. . a stinking breath of death was imagined” (The real event of the
beginning of 30y of the 19th century was reflected in “sfinx” it was the
epidemic of cholera in New York, spread in Europe. )

“Sfinx” is both “a horrible “ story and a parody, there is essential for
Edgar Poe motive of the social satire expressed, as though by the way,
in the sharp form of appreciating the real American democracy. The story
teller’s relative, whose “serious philosophical mind was far away from
fantasy” pointed out the idea, that the investigation mistakes come from
human mentality to underestimate or to overestimate the importance of
the object which was investigated because of wrong defining his distant.
For instance, he said in order to value in a right way the influence,
which the real democracy may have on the humanity, it’s necessary to
take into consideration for how long distance the epoch when we may
carry out this influence. Dostoevsky pointed out one peculiars feature
in Edgar Poe, which differs him from other writers it is his power of
imagination.

There is one peculiar feature in his imagination, which we never have
met in other writers the power to describe everything in full details,
which is able to make the reader believe the possibility of event even
if it is impossible or has never happened yet. His power of imagination
made Edgar Poe mystification widely the reader with great success. The
example of such mystification is Edgar Poe’s “Story with Air Ball” in
which the fiction about the flight of the air ball from Europe to
America turned out to be so real, that it challenged sensation. Edgar
Poe could tell about the state of human soul with surprising power, very
often the soul full of horror, which Edgar Poe felt himself.

Edgar Poe is the creator of wonderful satirical grotesque in which he
laughed at unchangeable and impatient for him human defects. The action
of the story “Four beast in one” (1836) takes place in bible time, but
the ideas expressed by the author is modern. Poe describes satirically
cowardice and nonentity of the evilest and the basest characteristic. He
opposes the wild whims and cruelty of despots, the intentions of cretins
to humiliate and insult human dignity of surrenders and his own too. The
most characteristic that wild despots are presented in Edgar Poe’s story
in beasts’ masks.

The American “businessman” in Poe’s description is a self-satisfied
blockhead and nonentity; he hates gifted and talented people. The author
picked carefully comic details while creating the grotesque image of a
businessman.

Poe’s comic scope is very wide from ruthless satirical grotesque to soft
and inoffensive humor. There are much vigor and reckless and high
spirits in Poe’s comic stories; a smart joke makes dance even 80-years
old of aged old woman.

Horrible stories.

Poe published over seventy short stories in his short life. His best
short stories deal with either logical reasoning, as in his defective
stories, or terror, as is the case of “The Cask Of Amontillado”.

Poe’s tales of terror are perhaps, more widely known to the general
reader than his defective stories.

Poe’s short narrative prose style as found in the two categories
characteristic of his fiction has widely influenced the form and purpose
of the short story, not only in the United States, but also around the
world.

“The Cask of Amontillado” (Together with “The Tell –Tale Heart”) best
illustrates Poe’s terror stories and the clarify with which he develops
his own method. Every word in his short story contributes towards the
single effect of terror which the story conveys. To these two stories we
also may add “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839). The story is a
portrait of a suffering artist isolated from the tides of life. Subtle
psychological meanings can also be found in “Ligea”, “the Black Cat”,
and “William Wilson”. In all these tales, bizarre and frightening
details and events conceal Poe’s subtle probing of the warfare he
observed in the human soul.

In “The Cask of Amontillado” we may recognize the actual experiences of
Poe. From the first Edgar Poe story a person reads, the seed is planted
that grown into the question of whether or not the author was as twisted
as his stories. Historical accounts of the man and his life show that he
was raised by the Allan family after his parents death and historical
accounts present him as being brought up in a series of private schools
and relative comfort. He was a gambler, a heavy drinker, and an alleged
drug addict. He was what would have been referred to in the Victorian
age as a near-do-well.

In his stories “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” Edgar
Poe analyze with the great exactness the change of killer’s psychology,
that reckless moving from wild gladness to indescribable fear and
despair. The author describes the awful scenes of murder without any
secrets and not concealing all details.

Here now, let’s observe the scene of murder, which the teller had
planned before hand in the story “The Tell-Tale Heart”. The teller
wasn’t a mad man, because a mad man cannot plan. The whole week he had
fun truing to kill his victim and only on the eighth day he did it.

“During all that week was as friendly to the old man as could be and
warm, and loving.

Every night about twelve o’clock slowly opened his door. And when the
door was opened wide enough put my hand in and then my head. In my hand
held a light covered over with a cloth so that no light showed. And I
stood there quietly. Then carefully, I lifted the cloth, just a little,
so that a single, then small light fell across that eye. For seven
nightdid this, seven long nights, every night at midnight. Always the
eye was closed, so it was impossible for me to do the work. For it , it
was not the old man I felt I had to kill; it was the eye, his Evil Eye.
And every morning went to his room, and with a warm, friendly voice
asked him how he had slept. He cold not guess that every night, just at
twelve, I looked in at him as he slept.

The eighth night I was more than usually careful as I opened the door.
The hands of a clock move more quickly than did my hand. Never before
had felt so strongly my own power; I was now sure of success.

The old man was lying there no dreaming that I was at his door. Suddenly
he moved in his bed. You may think I became afraid. But no. The darkness
in his room was thick and black. I knew he could not see the opening of
the door. I continued to push the door, slowly, softly. I put in my
hand, with the covered light. Suddenly the old man sat straight up in
bed and cried, “who’s there???!”

I stood quite still. For a whole hour did not move. Nor did hear him
again he down in his bed. He just sat there, listening. Then heard a
sound, a low cry of fear which escaped from the old man. Now knew that
he was sitting up in his bed, filled with fear; I knew that he knew that
I was there. He did not see me there. He could not hear me there. He
felt me there. Now he knew that Death was standing there.

Slowly little by little, I lifted the cloth, until a small, small light
escaped from under it to small light escaped from under it to fall upon
– light escaped from under eye! It was open wide, wide open, and my
anger increased as it looked straight at me. I could not see the old
man’s face. Only that eye, that hard blue eye, and the blood in my body
became like ice.

Have I not told you that my hearing had become unusually strong? Now I
could hear a quick, low soft sound, like the sound of a clock heard
through a wall. It was beating of the old man’s heart. I tired to stand
quietly. But the sound grew louder. The old man’s fear must have been
great indeed. And as the sound grew louder my anger became greater and
more painful. But it was more than anger. In the quite night, in the
dark silence of the bedroom my anger became fear for the heart was
beating so loudly that I was sure some one must hear. The time had come!
I rushed into the room crying “Die! Die!” The old man gave a loud cry of
fear as I fell upon him and held the bedcovers tightly over his head.
Still his heart was beating; but I smiled as I felt that success was
near. For many minutes that heart continued to beat. I took away the
bed-covers and held my ear over his heart. There was no sound. Yes he
was dead! Dead as a stone. His eye would trouble me no more! Edgar Allan
Poe story teller “The Tell-Tale Hear” seven stories US. Agency W. D.C.
1997 p75 But the process of murder wasn’t over yet. The author describes
how cruelty the killer dealt with the dead body of the old. He wrote:
“You should have seem how careful I was to put the body where no one
could find it. First I cut off the head, then the arms and the legs. I
was careful not to let a single drop of blood fall on the floor. I
pulled up three of the boards that formed the floor, and put the pieces
of the body there. Then I put the boards down again, carefully, so
carefully that no human eye could see that they had been moved” Edgar
Allan Poe story teller “The Tell-Tale Hear” seven stories US. Agency W.
D.C. 1997 p77 The killer thought that nobody would know about the
murder, he was glad, that he wouldn’t be punished, but was his fear and
horror that were the threat of revealing the murder. And that happened:
“ My head hurt and there was a strange sound in my ears. I talked more,
and faster. The sound became clearer” suddenly I knew that the sound was
not in my ears, it was just inside my head. At that moment I must have
become quite white. I talked still faster and louder. And the sound too
became louder. I was a quick, low, soft sound, like the sound of a clock
hear through a wall, a sound I knew well. Louder, louder, I stood up and
walked quickly around the room I pushed my chair across the floor to
make more noise, to cover that terrible sound. I talked even louder. And
still the men sat and talked, and smiled. What it possible that they
could not hear?

No! They heard! I was certain of it. They knew! Now it was they who were
playing a game with me. I was suffering more than I could fear, from
their smiles, and from that sound louder, louder, and louder. Suddenly I
could fear it no longer. I pointed at the boards and cried, “Yes! Yes, I
killed him. Pull up the boards and you shall see! I killed him. But why
does his heart not stop beating? Why does it not stop!?”

The same pages of made murder we can see in the story “The Cat of
Amontillado”. The main character of the story decided to kill his friend
if we may say so, named Fortunato, because he as the hero said “had hurt
him a thousand times and he suffered quietly.” So, he promised himself
that he would make him pay for that, that would have revenge. Fortunato
was a strong man, a man to be feared but he had one great weakness; he
liked to drink good wine; and indeed he drank much of it. It happened,
once that our hero met him in the street and he decided to treat him the
wine Amantillado, and then to make his horrible murder, he took him to
very strange and horrible place, where were only cold stone walls and
terrible darkness.

It was really a very terrible place. “Fortunato looked uncertainly
around him, trying to see through the thick darkness which pushed in
around us. Here our brightly burning lights seemed weak indeed. But our
eyes soon became used to the darkness. We could see the bones of the
dead lying in the large piles along the walls. The stones of the walls
were wet and cold” Edgar Allan Poe story teller “The Tell-Tale Hear”
seven stories US. Agency W. D.C. 1997 p80 In this terrible place our
hero killed Fortunato. He bricked up him with stones, at last he head
revenge, and again that fear accompanied the killer: “I heard no answer.
Fortunato” I cried “Fortunato”. I heard only a soft, low sound, a
half-cry of fear. My heart grew sick; it must have been the cold. I
hurried to force the last stone into its position. And I put the old
bones again in a pile against the wall. For half a century now no human
hand has touched them. May he rest in peace!

2.6 Detective stores “The Cask of Amontillado”

Edgar Poe’s “The Cask of Amantillado” is the story of revenge. Among
those who have read the timeless classic “The Cask of Amantillado” by
Edgar Allan Poe, some have come away disliking the story because of the
speaker’s cruel act of revenge against Frotunato. This opinion is,
indeed warranted for such a portrayal of delicious wickedness, however,
it is important for the reader to consider the fact that Poe penned that
story as a direct reflection of all things that brought him misery. The
writer discusses how throughout his life, the author waged war against a
multitude of overpowering entities that served to influence him in a
distinctly negative manner, among them being that of alcoholism, vanity,
greed and pride. Besides the element of revenge, here we can see an
extremely tightly women story and how this story was a commentary by Poe
on his disclaim of the aristocracy and all that they stood for, as well
as his personal belief in the cruelty of society.

To Edgar Poe’s terror stories we also may refer “ The Tall of the House
of Usher”. Here we see the ways in which Edgar Poe’s own background
experiences, and personal beliefs are reflected. In this story the
author employed literary parallels and dualism to connect events,
characters and sense. The writer argues that the house is actually
personified and as it gradually collapses so does the family within. The
madness of an aristocrat old stock is described as the extreme subtlety
of human abilities and feelings, as the result of culture, which
embarked on the stage of degradation. The terror is defined by
psychological state of the hero: “In his manner I saw at once, changes
came and went; and I saw at once, changes came and went; and I soon
found that this resulted from his attempt to quiet a very great
nervousness. His actions were first too quick and then too quiet.
Sometimes his voice, slow and trembling with fear, quickly changed to a
strong, heavy, carefully spaced, too perfectly controlled manner. It was
a family sickness he said, and one from which he could not hope to grow
better but it was he added at once, only a nervous illness which would
without doubt soon pass away. It showed itself in a number of strange
feelings. Some of these, as he told me of them, interested me but were
beyond my understanding; perhaps the way in which he told me of them
added to their strangeness. He suffered much from a sickly increase in
the feeling of all the senses; he could eat only the most tasteless
food; all flowers smelled too strongly for his nose; his eyes were hurt
by even a little light; and there were few sounds which did not fill him
with horror. A certain kind of sick fear was completely his master. I
fear what will happen in the future, not for what happens, but for the
result of what happens. I have indeed, no fear of pain, but only fear of
its result of terror! I feel that the time will soon arrive when u must
lose my life, and my mind, and my soul together, in some last battle
with that horrible enemy; “FEAR” Edgar Allan Poe story teller “The Fall
of House of Usher” seven stories US. Agency W. D.C. 1997 p36. The reader
is shocked by amazing conciseness revealing of the cram, made by
Roderick Usher and sudden collapse of the ancient house took place at so
the same time. The story begins with the narrator riding toward the
estate of a friend from childhood. While describing the house, the place
where the Ushers live, the writer already reminds about that light crack
on the background of the building and at the end he shows how it
collapses. Here is the picture, which the narrator watched: “ I again
looked up from the picture of the house reflected in the lake to the
house itself. A strange idea grew in my mind an idea so strange that I
tell it only to show the force of the feelings which laid their weight
on me. I really believed that around the whole house, and the ground
around it, the air itself was different. It was not the air of heaven.
It roe from the dead, decaying trees, from the gray walls, and the quite
lake. It was a sickly, unhealthy air that I could see, slow moving,
heavy and gray. Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream,
I looked more carefully at the building itself. The most noticeable
thing about it seemed to be its great age. None of the walls had fallen,
yet the stones appeared to be in a condition of advanced decay. Perhaps
the careful eye would have discovered the beginning of a break in the
front of the building, a crack making its way from the top down the wall
until it became lost in the dark waters of the lake. Edgar Allan Poe
story teller “The Fall of House of Usher” seven stories US. Agency W.
D.C. 1997 p44

And at the end of the story the author shows how the storm fell on the
house: “The storm was around me in all its strength as I crossed the
bridge. Suddenly a wild light moved along the ground at my feet, and I
turned to see where it could have come from, for only the great house
and its darkness were behind me. The light was that of the full moon, of
a blood-red moon, which was now shining through that break in the front
wall, that crack which I thought I had seen when I first saw the place.
Then only a little crack, it now widened as I watched. A strong wind
came rushing over me the whole face of the moon appeared. I saw the
great walls falling apart. There was a long and stormy shouting sound
and the deep black lake closed darkly over all that remained of the
“House of Usher”. So was the end, the fall not of only the house, but
the fall of the family, which was a very old one, and had long been
famous for its understanding of all the arts and for many quiet acts of
kindness to the poor, and besides had never been a large one, with many
branches. The name had passed always from father to son, and when people
spoke of the “House of Usher”, they included both the family and the
family home. Edgar Allan Poe story teller “The Fall of House of Usher”
seven stories US. Agency W. D.C. 1997 p97

2.7 Fantastic stories. E .Poe’s Heroes

Edgar Poe’s heroes are capable to realize even the most critical
circumstances. For example, Roderick Usher, was deadly frightened by the
murder he made, but nevertheless with mathematical exactness he realized
the scene which took place in the vault, Usher and his sister were
buried alive by himself. Edgar Poe deal with the subject of death in his
short stories. Almost in each Poe’s story we see death of course, the
stories which deal with death can’t be funny, they are again horrible,
awful, full of sorrow and disappointment.

For example if take such story as “The mask of the red death”. The name
of the story tells for itself. And now how the author describes some
moments connected with death: “The Read Death had long been feeding on
the country. No sickness had ever been so deadly so great a killer or so
fearful to see. Blood was its mark – the redness and the horror of
blood. There were sharp pains and a sudden feeling that the mind was
rushing in circles inside the head. Then there was bleeding through the
skin, though it was not cut or broken and then death! The bright red
spots upon the body and especially upon the face of the sick man made
other men turn away from him, afraid to try to help. And the sickness
lasted, from the beginning to the end, no more than half an hour”!

Alongside with death in Poe’s stories we can see fear walking decide it.
We may observed the following picture of fear in the story of William
Wilson. The coldness of ice filled my whole body. My knee trembled, my
whole spirit was filled with horror. I moved the light nearer to his
face was this-this the face of William Wilson? I saw indeed that it was
, but I trembled as if with sickness as I imagined that it was not. What
was there in his face to trouble me so? I looked, and my mind seemed to
turn in circles in the rush of my thoughts. It was not like this surely
not like this that he appeared in the daytime. The same name, the same
body; the same day that we came to school! And then there was his use of
my way of walking, my manner of speaking! Was it, in truth, humanity
possible that what I now saw was the result and the result only of his
continued efforts to be like me? Edgar Allan Poe story teller “The Fall
of House of Usher” seven stories US. Agency W. D.C. 1997 p124

Filled with wonder and fear, cold and trembling, I put out the light. In
the quite darkness I went from his room and, without waiting one minute,
I felt that old school and never entered it again!

The same picture we can see in the story “The tall of the House of
Usher”, and it is fear, which makes Roderick Usher feel ill, which is
his main with which he is fighting; “Roderick Usher, whom I had known as
a boy, was now ill. When I arrived I felt something strange and fearful
about the great old stone house, about Usher himself. He appeared not
like a human being , but like a spirit that had come back from beyond
the grave. It was an illness, he said, from which he would surely die.
He called his sickness fear. “I have”, he said “no fear of pain, but
only the fear of its result lose my life, and my mind, and my soul,
together in some last battle with that horrible enemy: “FEAR!”

Edgar Allan Poe considered his method of describing the events in such
way, that could have effect, that could impress the reader. Perhaps
that’s why he chose such colors as black, dark, red blood, violent etc.

Death is emerges as a main heroine in his stories. And that’s why all
his stories are called the stories of horror.

Detective stories

A critic who was capable alike of extreme partiality and extreme
severity, a poet who profoundly affected the development of French
verse, a master of the short story, whose “Tales of the Grotesque and
Arabesque” are among the triumphs of romantic horror, he also launched
the American detective story upon its checkered career with yarns like “
Murder in the Rue Morgue” (1843).

Edgar Poe’s three stories “The murder’s in the rue morgue”, “The Mystery
of Marie Roget” (1842) and “The Purloined Letter” show how Poe’s work
set the standard for the detective genre. Besides we may include here
his story “The Gold Bun” which considered to be the most popular among
the readers. One of the his main characters in defective stories is
Duplin; The writer gave him everything that he wanted to do. He is a
clever smart and talented person. He constantly trains his mind, works
out his own method, which helps him to guess any mystery of course he
has common features with other Edgar Poe’s detective heroes as Legran,
Arthur Gordon Pim. Hance Pyall. Duplin combined all features, everything
in details in mathematical accurate calculations, in order of the facts,
in intuitions of an analytics who proves the hypothesis. If we compare
two Poe’s stories “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined
Letter” with one of Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Dancing Men”
we’ll see the heavy reliance of Sherlock Holmes, creator on the work of
his predecessor Poe. Poe’s stories and protagonist have more depth than
Conan Doyle’s because Holmes’ methods relies entirely on logic and
Duplin relies on behavior and nuance. Investigating the murders in the
Rue Morgue Duplin displays his unusual, his own method of investigation.
Now, in the following passage we may see how this author describes it: “
I soon noticed a special reasoning power he had, an unusual reasoning
power. Using it gave him great pleasure. He told me once, with a soft
and quite laugh, that most man have windows over their hearts, through
these he could see into their souls. Then he surprised me by telling
what he knew about my own soul, and I found that he knew things about me
that I had thought only I could possibly know, His manner at these
moments was cold and distant. His eyes looked empty and far away, and
his voice became high and nervous. At such times it seemed to me that I
saw not just Duplin but two Duplin one who coldly put things together
and another who just as coldly took them apart. Edgar Allan Poe story
teller “The Murders in the Rue Morge” seven stories US. Agency W. D.C.
1977 p51

“ at first I saw nothing strange in this. Duplin had agreed with me,
with my own thoughts. This , of course; seemed to be quite natural. For
a few seconds I continued walking, and thinking; but suddenly I realized
that Duplin had agreed with something which was only a thought. I had
not spoken a single word. I stopped walking and turned to my friend.
“Duplin”, I said, “Duplin, this is beyond my understanding. How could
you know that I was thinking of” Here I stopped, in order to test him,
to learn if he really did know my unspoken thoughts.

“How did I know you were thinking of chantilly? Why do you stop? You
were thinking that chantilly is too small for the plays in which he
acts”.

“That is indeed what I was thinking. But tell me in Heaven’s name, the
method if method there is by which you have been able to see into my
soul in this matter.”

The story “The Gold Bug” is very popular among many readers. The writer
himself considered it “ the Ruckiest”. The great popularity of “The Gold
Bug”, marked Gervi Allen, is that there is almost absent morbid motives,
which prevailed in many other works of Edgar Poe”. Терви Ален Ж. З.Л.
Эдгар По. Москва. Молодая гвардия. 1984. стр. 329 And how Alexander
Block pointed out thatin Edgar Poe’s stories there were morbid motives
connected with hurting state of psychology. “The Gold Bug,” judging by
its genre usually is joined the famous detective stories as “The Murders
in the Rue Morgue” “The Mystery of Marie Roget” and “The Purloined
letter”, the main hero of which is a detective amateur Sh. August
Duplin.

The author called these stories “logical stories”, in which the power of
logic and analytical wit is displayed. And this logical power is clearly
described in “The Murders on the Rue Morgue”, when Duplin calculated the
killer. The writer constantly made the reader to be wonder and amazed by
Duplin power to think and do right conclusions. He himself was surprised
“ I will not say that I was surprised. I was more than surprised, I was
astonished. Duplin was right, as right as he could be. Those were in
fact my thoughts, my unspoken thoughts as my mind moved from one thought
to the next. But if I was astonished by this. I would soon be more that
astonished.

One morning this strangely interesting man showed me once again his
unusual reasoning power. We heard that an old woman had been killed by
unknown persons. The killer, or the killers, had cut her head off, and
escaped into the night. Who was this killer, this murderer? The police
had no answer. They looked everywhere and found nothing that helped
them. They did not know what to do next. And so they did nothing . But
not Duplin. He knew what to do. The author shows the sympathy describing
his hero. He describe him as “ an unusually interesting young man with a
busy, forceful mind. This mind could, it seemed, look right through a
man’s body into his soul, and uncover his deepest thoughts sometimes he
seemed to be not one, but two people one who coldly put things together,
and another who just as coldly took them apart”

Edgar Poe’s essay “The chess automat of Meltrel” was the first work,
where Poe showed he as an infallible logic and an acute analytic over
amazing the method, which later Sherlock Homes immortalized in his works

Speaking about Edgar Poe’s short stories of about his “Tales of
Grotesque and Arabesque” we can’t help mentioning his fantastic stores.
His fantastic stories are the model of that fact, how the comic and the
serious get with inside one genre. Edgar Poe requires from his reader a
little trust, a little fantasy and takes him to the world of cosmic
space to the edge of the earth to the mysterious Antarctica and makes
him or determine his age, or step back in order to appreciate fantastic
wonders of technique of the 19th century.

“Unusual adventure of Hans Pfae” is an original ad amazement fiction,
which inspired Jule Verm to create the novel “Five weeks on the air
globe” The beginning and the end of the fictions make the reader enjoy
himself with humor watching the smart citizen making fun of fool
burgomaster and professor. The middle part of the fiction the story of
Hans about traveling to the Moon is a serious and scientific adventure
story with great details. As a real scientist experimentation, Pal
observes his own physical state and behavior of animals, he doesn’t miss
any important observation. He tells about different of atmosphere, he
knows physics, mechanics, geography and astronomy.

And because of it European decadents called Edgar Poe as “Reckless
Edgar”. In this story he shows an erudition of a real scientist, he does
scientific prognosis and creates eh adventure such an unexpected, such a
new, that it rouses great interest of the reader.

Conclusion

3.1 Edgar Poe’s artistic manner

Summing up I would like to point out Edgar Poe’s artistic manner. Having
read and analyzed some of his stories I came to the conclusion that
absorbing of narration is one of the clearest features of Edgar Poe’s
artistic manner. His reader is always the collaborator of described
events. He trembles with impatience when Duplin investigates the place
of murder and makes his mathematic conclusions, he bears hunger, cold
and fear with the heroes, he suffers all kinds of adventures. Everything
that he describes in his own life, with his own experiences and that’s
why we may say that his own life is reflected in his works.

Poe developed a theory of composition that he applied to both his short
stories and his poems. Its most basic principle was that in so far as
short fiction and poetry were concerned the writer should aim at
creating a single and total psychological spiritual effect upon the
reader. The theme of plot of the piece is always subordinate to the
author’s calculated construction of single intense mood in the reader’s
or listener’s mind, be it melancholy, suspense, or horror. There are no
extra elements in Poe, no subplots no minor characters, that show he
madness of deranged first person (I) narrators. Ultimately, Poe took
writing to be a moral task that worked not through teacher lessons, but
in simultaneously stimulating his readers’ mental, emotional and
spiritual faculties through texts of absolute integrily. Poe, moreover,
judged others by these same standards. By doing so he is establishing
the rules and methods common to New Criticism, the leading school of
literary analysis in the 20th century with, its insistence that the text
must be interpreted from the critic’s opinions of its author or the
suitability of its themes.

Edgar Poe points out the main principle of literary compositions. He
defines this principle as follows: “The combination of events and color,
which would rather serve to creation of the main effect”, or as he calls
it totality effect. He applies luxury and picturesque descriptions,
verity usage of expressive contrasts in situations, language,
characters, “emotional air” surrounding heroes; the force of monotone.

So, the most characteristic feature of Edgar Poe’s works is the creation
of effect, to impress the readers. His artistic manner roused vivid
interest of many writers from different countries and different
ideological and aesthetic trends.

Bibliography

1. Edgar Allan Poe язык / Edgar Allan
http://inter.multikulti.ru/categories/1082561. html –
inter.multikulti.ru

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3. Книжный магазин ИПОТЕКА-ФОРУМ – книги : Edgar Allan Poe

Каталог Edgar Allan Poe Рейтинг@Mail.ru www.mp3search.ru (всего 46)

4. Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site Index Page

The life and work of Edgar Allan Poe are portrayed in this three
building complex. 09.05.2006 – 10 Kb –

5. Edgar Allan Poe: Как выучить английский язык: Форумы на EFL.ru
главная > форум > Как выучить английский язык > Edgar Allan
Poe18.04.2006 – 10 Kb – http://www.efl.ru/forum/threads/6797/

6. In4ArchWiki : Edgar Poe -23 15:27:47 | Владелец: Edgar Poe | Свойства
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7. Ex Libris: книги Эдгара По – Edgar Allan Poe.

The Mystery of Marie Roget Edgar Allan Poe 2001 Менеджер Классический
зарубежный детектив 46.00 руб.

8. Edgar Allan Poe ЛУЧШИЕ КНИГИ Автор: Edgar Автор: Edgar Allan
Poe23.08.2005 – 15 Kb – http://bookland.ru/adv_search.php?

9. Edgar Allan Poe – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org (всего 88)

10. Audio Store – Lou Reed – Edgar Allan Poe (Альбом – The Raven (CD 1))

Lou Reed – 05 – Edgar Allan Poe.mp3

11. ЖАРГОН.РУ / Народные / Английские / Rhyming slang / Edgar Alan Poe
…php?cat=276&id=8460]Edgar Alan Poe[/url]

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13. Buy Books on CD: Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection

14. Edgar Poe “ The Adventures of the world” M. Prosveshcheniye 1986
pp.13, 26, 78, 134, 145, 149

15.·Edgar Poe “The gold bug.” L. High School 1974 pp. 34, 47, 89,
113-114

16. Edgar Poe. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court M. Drofa 2003
p.134, 163, 222, 267

17. Edgar Poes conceptions. Prentice Hall Publishers 2001 pp.34, 46,
172, 228, 291

18. Philip Phoner Prinston, 1998 p.145

19. Readings on modern American Literature M. High School 1977 pp.
177-229

20. The Correspondence of Samuel L.Clemens and William D.Howells.
1872-21. Vols. 1-2. Harvard Universily Press, 1960 pp. 284, 287, 312

22. World Book Encyclopedia New York 1993 Vol. 21 pp.597-600

23. Юрий Олеша Заметки Едгаре По. М. Детская литература 1975 стр. 11

24. Юрий Олеша. Ни дня без строчки. М., 1965, стр. 216-220.

25. Collection of works NewYork 1997 pp.156-159, 274-276, 279, 412

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