POE, EDGAR ALLAN. — American poet and narrator, born in Boston on 9 January 1809, died in Baltimore on 7 October 1849.
After an unsuccessful attempt at a military career, he entered journalism, in which he was never successful; an aunt had him marry her thirteen-year-old daughter, who died of tuberculosis in 1847, leaving him in a state of depression from which he was never to recover. He sought to drown his sorrows in wine, and it was in a Baltimore tavern that he was found in extremely serious condition on 3 October 1849; he died four days later of delirium tremens. Traces of an abnormal psyche are unmistakable throughout P.’s entire oeuvre (Poems, 1831; The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, 1838; Tales of the Grotesque ad Arabesque, 1840; The Murders in the Rue Morgue, 1841; Tales, 1845; The Raven and Other Poems, 1845; Eureka, 1848; The Poetic Principle, 1849, etc.; there is no difference between the poems and the stories, since his prose is rhythmically measured and his poetry essentially narrative). Alcohol was not the only escape from the torments he suffered, but his culture was too eclectic and his transcendental ideas, whose foundations are to be sought in mesmerism and theosophy, appear exceedingly confused and incoherent: in his work, the supernatural world is identified with a world of nightmares and ghosts. Nevertheless, he possessed an exceptionally vivid sense of the mysterious and enigmatic regions of human nature, and embodied it in striking and unforgettable figures. His language is not impeccable, but as a seeker after musical effects and
(phot. Felici)