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By
Grace
Dead Rebel Of The Week
~ Edgar Allan Poe ~
A lot of artists could, technically, be considered Dead Rebels, but, unfortunately, most of them were just bat shit crazy. It takes more than stampeding psychosis to actually qualify for the DRS Hall of Fame. Achievements don’t really reflect your character, good or bad, if all the exciting things you do are unintentionally birthed by ravings of psychotic fantasies and delusions. In those cases, the work itself becomes the legacy and can’t be attributed to an artist’s conscious effort to go against the grain. Take for instance Da Vinci and Dali. Da Vinci was a true rebel, and a genius in his own right - a man of extraordinary talent, grand visions, imaginative plans and a knack for going against the stream. Dali, on the other hand, fantastic and creative as he was, was fucking nuts and not a rebel in any sense. I prefer Dali’s work to Da Vinci’s any day of the week, but I have way more respect for Da Vinci the Man, than for Dali the Lunatic. Know what I mean? No? Well, that sounds like a personal problem to me.
Likewise, Lovecraft is my hands down favorite old school horror writer, but since his ingenious writings were the machinations of a deteriorating insane mind that actually believed in these stories at the end, he will have to pass the Dead Rebel torch to another writer, considered by many to be the Father of Modern Horror - Edgar Allan Poe.
Hell, people, we haven’t done tributes to any real writers in some time, and we are, after all, a writers’ site.
Poe was born in 1809 and grew up the way most people always did back then, but with a substantial amount of drama and heartbreak added for effect. Most notable was perhaps the death of both his parents before he was three, and the addition of the last name “Allan”, as he was taken into foster care by the Allan family in Richmond, Virginia. He never got along with his foster father, and after incurring gambling debts and getting thrown out of West Point for being an insubordinate son of a bitch, Poe moved on to greener pastures. It was at this time he pulled a Jerry Lee Lewis and married his 13 year old cousin after settling in Baltimore.
And this is where the story of Poe really begins. After having written short stories here and there, he finally published “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque”, which features such classic tales as “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Wonderful little tales of macabre oddities to suck into the marrow of your soul as you flip every new page with rising anticipation. What is so extraordinary about these short stories is the morbid elements of death and resurrection and Poe’s willingness to display people’s insanities and dark sides – all the while the author infuses his tales with a sense of creeping fear that always lurks underneath the surface. They are the classic kind of stories that should be read by the weird old uncle with the crazy eye in front of a roaring fire place on a stormy night. You can feel the tension build and build throughout each story, and then release explosively as climactic events unfold on the last few pages.
Poe seemed to have a fascination with love, death and insanity. He constantly intermingled these three themes so that one of his main characters is often insane, falls in love, and then kicks down the doors of hell to find redemption beyond the realms of death, as the object of his desire usually dies - only to walk again in the end, in some morbid form or another. Maybe this is because Poe’s own wife was sickly and started coughing blood from TB shortly after they were married.
They moved to the Bronx, NY, and Poe started working for the Broadway Journal. It was during this stint that he published his classic poem, “The Raven”, in the Evening Mirror and got his first taste of praise and fame.
“The Raven” deserves a place amongst the True Great Poems, not only because of its opening line, “One upon a midnight dreary…” or because of the Raven’s hauntingly depressing croaking of “Nevermore!” time and time again, but also because of its striking meter, feverish pulse and compelling narrative which take us on a journey dealing once again with madness, evil and death. I don’t even like poetry, but I always loved this one. Maybe it’s because it actually tells a story instead of just burping “Woe me” in floral word-fartery. Other people’s feelings, valid as they may be, very rarely interest me unless they belong to people dear to me. Poetry, to me, is usually just a form of emotional masturbation. Fine… Knock yourself out, but do it on your own time, and don’t involve me. Well, “The Raven” may be a poem, but it’s also a story in its own right. Just like Coleridge’s magnificent “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” is a narrative before it’s a poem. "The Raven" is like the evil twin of “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, come to think of it, but long before its time.
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.’”'
Anyway, “The Raven” caught on like wildfire and was published all over the place, earning Poe some well deserved recognition. Despite the success of his poetry, Poe kept to writing his short horror fiction, but now also started writing detective novels (“Murders in the Rue Morgue”) and even some science fiction. He is often credited as, at least, the co-founding father of these two genres as well.
As time passed, however, Poe became increasingly depressed and unstable as his wife’s condition gradually worsened. Soon her death was but a breath away. This is probably what led Poe to write gloomier and gloomier stuff, coming up with really hardcore emo material like “The Bells” and other sentimental crap.
Hear the tolling of the bells
Iron Bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
A year or so later his wife, Virginia, died and he started drinking heavily, like most creative geniuses do sooner or later. Hand on heart. What is true genius without some hardship and heavy drugs to kick the old brain into action? You think Hendrix would have rocked if he hadn’t been high as fuck every night? Think Mozart just whipped up that “Requiem” without the aid of opium and Demon Alcohol hollering at him from the bottoms of empty champagne bottles? I said insane artists don’t qualify as rebels, but the ones who prayed at the altar of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll most certainly do. And Poe worshipped a lot. He was mostly seen at nights, stumbling through the streets of the Bronx, bombed like Beirut and talking to the moon. Two years after the death of his wife he was found dead in the gutter, missed by nobody, but talked about by one and all.
See, what I like about Poe, besides his splendid imagination and love for coming up with original tales in a rather short format, is that he doesn’t preach. You have to realize that a lot of writers from back in his day used writing as some sort of literary soapbox (what are you looking at me for?), from which to preach truths, morals, ethics and other crap. Poe was a lover of the Art of Writing, with no patience for anything beyond the beauty of the work at hand – whatever form that happened to take in the end. He was a true writer, in the sense that he wrote what he wanted to write, without any kind of interest in what the rest of the world would think of it. He didn’t set out to cater to a particular audience, and neither did he sell out in the end when things were going downhill faster than a shithouse in a mudslide. As a matter of fact, much like Mozart and DaVinci, he created most of his best work late in life, drawing upon a neverending well of passion and creativity from within himself.
Another great thing about Poe is that his legacy transcends literary boundaries and can inspire people who rarely, if ever, even pick up a book. Sure, many writers were inspired by him – Whitman, Bradbury, Kafka and Lovecraft, to name a few - and just as many hated his guts – Mark Twain and TS Eliot, for instance – but no matter what the sentiment, he made a severe impact across all borders. Many painters and musicians have always found some sort of mysterious connection to his gothic, eerie and ominous tales and endeavor to translate that to the feel of their own creations. The name “Poe” makes you think of a certain atmosphere, rather than a certain tale. That is true genius – to build a world out of your ideas and invite other people to live in it.
Do yourself a favor. Go to the library, get a copy of “Poe’s Collected Tales” or something similar (grab a Lovecraft collection, too, while you’re at it), await the next thunderstorm and just crack out to some ingenious writing and quality reading, perhaps with a tall glass of a nice Scotch next to you - say, a Lagavulin or Chivas. Treat yourself to the ultimate old-fashioned horror tale experience. Life is short, you know. Before you know it, you fall in love, go insane and die.
