Homage to Edgar Poe

I don't name him Edgar Allan Poe for what I consider to be good reason.  The "Allan" is taken from his stepfather (and stepmother too, I suppose), and Poe despised the man, who in turn thought Poe a degenerate gambler and all around wastrel; which I suppose he was by the standards of the time.  In paying homage, it's right I should avoid the name he is said to have hated.

It is, for good or ill, that time of the year where it's considered appropriate to think of Poe, or read or listen to some of his work at least.  Sometimes, alas, they're almost unrecognizable.  I listened to what was said to be a version of his The Tell-Tale Heart  broadcast by the Radio Classics channel while driving the other day and was amazed by its lack of resemblance to the story I recall reading.  Boris Karloff played one of the characters and someone else, whose name I can't recall, played the part of someone who it seems to be does not figure in the story at all; at least as a living, talking, acting agent.

But this is not unusual in the efforts which have been made to translate his work for radio, television or films.  There have been several of such efforts, for the most part involving actors like Karloff (Peter Loree and Vincent Price for example).  Very often, only the titles of these productions bear any relation to Poe's work, and often enough we're told that whatever it is we're watching or listening to is "from the master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe!"  Or words to that effect.  That way, it was apparently believed, we'd spend our money to hear, see.  Poe is associated with what is now called horror.  I wonder if he would be pleased by that association.

Well, I suppose it may be said that we of the United States don't take a great deal of pride in our artists as a rule, and so feel no obligation to treat them with great respect.  But for my money (which I wouldn't spend except perhaps in acquiring his actual work, not what has so curiously come of it) Poe was the first great American writer.  For me, Hawthorne, Melville, Irving, Fenimore Cooper, Longfellow simply don't compare to Poe, who it seems had an analytic mind but was masterful in evoking emotions, and who was the first original artist in our history.  He was, I think, something entirely new.

I speak of his prose, not his poetry.  I don't much like his poetry.  I'm fond of The  Conqueror Worm because it is so odd, and have memorized most of The Raven for some reason, but it seems to me that it is in his poetry that Poe is most clearly a Romantic, and I don't like the Romantics.  I prefer Poe the literary critic and author of short stories.  Perhaps we Americans are best at writing shorter works; we tend to get carried away in our novels.  If so, it was Poe who first pioneered this region of literature with any success and rigor.

It seems Poe is considered Romantic, though.  This is somewhat odd, I think, as in his works involving the detective Dupin and his"science-fiction" work, as in his literary criticism, he demonstrated a real respect for analytic and critical thinking and used them to good effect.  But it would be inappropriate to think of him as a Realist, given the fundamental role of fantasy in so many of his stories.

He was above all a great storyteller, and his talent had an immense scope, from detective (or mystery) stories, to what would be called science-fiction stories, to horror, and adventure, even in comic writing, for which he is not known--he was remarkable in each.  He died at age 40, and we can only speculate about what he could have written had he lived longer.  It seems to me that given the extent and scope of his work, it is difficult to characterize him as lazy or undisciplined in his art if not in his life.

His life was sad, undoubtedly.  He might be a character in a Dickens novel given the tragedies with which he had to cope.  But there was no happy ending for Poe; no clear reason for his ending, either.   Much of that remains a mystery.  He was found incoherent, wearing clothes which were not his own, may have had cholera, or been poisoned by alcohol, may have been mugged.  A sad end for a man who wrote much of sadness.

We can only wonder what it was like to be a highly intelligent, sensitive and talented person in Poe's time in the U.S.  Death was more prevalent and more a part of life then, sickness, often deadly like tuberculosis common, communication slow and sporadic, cities filthy; premature burial was a real possibility, not just a product of a feverish imagination, little was known for certain, money was no easier to obtain, and may have been largely unobtainable to someone like Poe.

Because of the scope of his work, it's unfortunate he's remembered to any real degree only at this time of year.  But I may be being unfair.  He's certainly remembered and read by many, more so than many he criticized, like Longfellow, and probably always will be, due to our continuing fascination with death and the occult.  That fascination won't leave us until we stop dying.

Part of his continuing appeal may be the fact that in his writing he was not didactic, unlike so many who wrote at that time.  For many years now, writers of literature have had little interest in teaching us anything.  But the purveyors of other art forms, particularly movies and television shows to the extent they can be considered art, seem increasingly intent on teaching, or perhaps preaching, so the moralists among us need not feel deprived.

Homage to Ambrose Bierce

I'm reading Ambrose Bierce's recollections of the Civil War, and am impressed once again by him as a man and as a writer.  I find his descriptions of the battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga particularly striking, for reasons unclear to me.  They are direct, cool reportage of mass slaughter by a participant in the chaos, and the prose is significantly different from that he would employ in his fiction, where he could sometimes be baroque, and his highly acerbic critiques and essays regarding various topics.   He does criticize some of the generals, true, but his criticism is unusually mild.  And he writes very little of himself and his deeds; when he does so, he shows no self-regard.

"Bitter" Bierce he was sometimes called, as was noted by Mencken in a piece he wrote about his encounter with Bierce at a funeral of a fellow-critic, and it seems Bierce did not disappoint on that occasion.  Mencken writes that he described in considerable detail and with amusement unfortunate cremations he had witnessed and their consequences.  Bierce and Mencken had later encounters as well, and would correspond in a friendly way, but Bierce was much older than Mencken, and despite their common contrariness and iconoclasm it seems that Mencken's view of the older man was ultimately somewhat uncharitable.

For my part, much as I admire the Sage of Baltimore, I think Bierce the more rounded and sophisticated man and writer.  Mencken had no experience of war, and like many who have not been soldiers could be somewhat cavalier about it.  Mencken was not a traveler, and Bierce seldom stopped wandering.  Finally and at a fairly mature age he ventured into Mexico during the days of Pancho Villa, and may have departed this life as he "predicted" in a letter--stood up against a wall and shot.  It's not known how he died or where he was buried, if indeed he was buried.

Bierce wrote fiction which was at times almost fascinating, similar to that of Poe as in the case of Occurrence at Owl Creek.  The war story he wrote in which a child encounters a group of wounded soldiers slowly crawling in an effort to reach water is chilling.  Bierce was a poet, an epigrammatist, as well as a journalist and critic.  Mencken, wisely I think, didn't venture into those areas.  Mencken was a critic, always.  He was a good one I believe, but his position as an amused, educated, intelligent observer became at times too elevated.  He had elitist tendencies, and was too quick to condemn people based on such characteristics as race and culture; thus his fondness for Nietzsche and his uncomfortably kind review of Mein Kampf.

Bierce was an honest and fierce man who was able to use words well and so was able to communicate peculiarly American experiences in a manner which was direct but also could be ornate, in a classic style.  I doubt he shared with Mencken, Hemingway and others the belief that Huckleberry Finn was the great American novel.  Perhaps in expressing that doubt I'm expressing my own feelings for that work of Twain; it's not a book a favor.  Bierce like Poe and Stephen Crane doesn't have the reputation other American authors have, but I think him far more interesting than most of our writers.

It's unfortunate such people are not given the same regard as the more popular artists we tend to laud excessively, for various reasons.  They are more attractive politically, more easily taught (always important in our Great Republic, where most of us are only taught art), more romantic, more erotic, more normal.  They are not interesting, however.

The soldier-adventurer-author is an attractive figure (and was to such as Hemingway, who longed to be one), and can be a Romantic figure as well.  Bierce was all that but it isn't possible for me to think of him as a Romantic.  The Civil War was in no sense a Romantic war, and Bierce wasn't inclined to rhapsodize about anything.   He was too much of a cynic, in the modern sense at least.  What a life he lead!  One must admire a man who lived as he did.

Pondering the Imp of the Perverse

Lest anyone get too excited, I refer to what Poe described in his charming story, The Imp of the Perverse (I think most of Poe's work is charming, even those stories and poems that seem macabre, because they fascinate and so charm the reader as a snake may be charmed).

The imp is that urge or tendency which seems to compel us to do something self-destructive though we know it to be self-destructive and even, perhaps, because we know it will destroy us.  It is one of those things about us which seem to dispute if not disprove the claim that we are all motivated solely by our own self-interest.  It is probably one of those things about us which delight those who maintain that we are fundamentally irrational.  I suppose certain of the religious-minded may believe this to be a part of the original sin they assert, sometimes with too much satisfaction, taints us all immediately as we come into existence--our unworthiness is a sort of a priori part of our nature (perhaps I should say "our being").

In his story, Poe makes use of some fairly extreme examples of the work of the imp, as may be expected.  But there are more mundane examples.  Among them I think is the tendency to acknowledge an error and then perpetuate it, rather than admitting the error and acting to rectify it, despite the fact that we know it will eventually come to light.  This may not be quite the work of the imp of the perverse; there may be a different, maybe a lesser, imp at work in those cases.  Another instance of imps at work or play may be that which induces some of us to make much of an error we make, to flaunt it in a sense.

Perhaps we all have such an imp, a kind of reverse (perverse?) guardian angel.  It's interesting to consider that some of the great, even spectacular, figures of history who destroyed themselves or are considered monsters may have given their imps full reign.  For example, Alexander after the death of Hephaestion, Gaius Caligula, Nero in ancient history; Napoleon perhaps more recently.  Such figures have a certain fascination, or charm.

Does the imp feed on our desire to control our lives?  We are certainly in control and are perhaps never more in control than when we destroy ourselves.  But when we destroy ourselves we seem to do it in response to things we can't control.

Things in our control, things out of our control; the distinction made by the Stoics has value, and may help save us from the imps of our nature, who/which may be the opposite of the "better angels" Lincoln conjured up.