Nicholas Sanders

English 10

Ms. Diaz

13 February 2004

“We Loved With a Love That Was More Than Love:”

Poe’s Lost Loves

            Edgar Allan Poe is considered one of the most renowned authors. He is remembered primarily for his dark poetry and macabre tales. Some of the main themes Poe explores are death, the supernatural, and obsessive love. His life was filled with much sorrow because of losing his loved ones, many of whom had died by the time he was 20. Poe’s intense relationships with and the loss of beloved women, especially Fanny Osgood and Virginia Clem, had a tremendous influence on his poems “Ululume,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Raven;” all of the poems explore the themes of obsessive love, death, and mourning.

             The loss of his mother when he was only 3 had a great impact on Poe. He once said, “In speaking of my mother you have sounded a string to which my heart fully responds” (qtd. in Benbet 1). The death of his mother left him constantly searching for attention from women. Poe had a fondness for women throughout his whole life. According to Madelyn Anderson, “As a boy, Poe had addressed long poems to the many girls he knew and he had indulged in several fleeting romances as a young man” (82). Poe seems to have been obsessed with women, and this obsession carried over into his literary life.

             In his writing, “Poe dealt deliberately with the psychological themes of obsession, madness, and the supernatural” (Basler 62). According to John Basler, Poe was “…an artist…obsessed by a psychopathic desire” (62).  Robert Gargano thinks, “Poe and his narrator are identical literary twins’ (165). Much of what Poe wrote about in his stories resembles his own life. For instance, his poem “Ulalume” refers to a fictional beloved who has died mysteriously and is currently mourned by an isolated male” (Magistrale 41). Anderson claims, “Ulalume is a sort of eulogy to Fanny Osgood” (Anderson 84).   During their lifetime, Fanny Osgood and Poe clearly had feelings for each other.  “Poe and Fanny published a number of romantic poems to each other quite openly” (Magistrale 53). In “Ulalume” the phrase “For we knew not the month was October,” (24) is significant because October was the month that Fanny died. This is further proof that the poem is indeed about Fanny.

 In the first stanza of “Ulalume” Poe lays out the general setting, which is a night in lonesome October/… in the misty mid region of weir” (7). The setting of this poem is very dark, depressing, and haunting, as the “ghouls” of Weir are prevalent in the poem. The narrator speak of his wondering soul, claiming, “Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul” (11), and of his past days of misery, when his “heart was volcanic” (13). He clearly shows his passionate side, crying:

. . . It was surely October
                        On this very night of last year
            That I journeyed- I journeyed down here-
                        That I brought a dread burden down here-
                        On this night of all nights in the year,
                        Ah, what demon has tempted me here?

He realizes that he has arrived at her tomb on the one-year anniversary of her burial. Clearly the narrator must have totally confused and bewildered with grief.  The narrator feels the urge to flee the scene of the tempting corpse in a frantic display of madness. “Her pallor I strangely mistrust:-/ … Oh, fly! —let us fly!—for we must.” (53, 55).  By the end of the poem the narrator finds himself in utter despair that he has lost his loved one and, “In agony sobbed” (58). 

Much like “Ululume,” “Annabel Lee” also features a narrator suffering the lost of a loved one. The fictional Annabel Lee is often compared to Virginia Clem, Poe’s wife/cousin. Poe married Virginia on May 16, 1836. Poe was 27 and Virginia was about 14. Poe and Virginia were deeply in love even though “the first two years of marriage was more play than passion” (Anderson 46). One night Virginia was singing to a group of friends when she suddenly “…suffered a hemorrhage… she could not bear the slightest exposure, and needed the utmost care” (Anderson 64). Poe surely was very depressed during this difficult time. He wrote to Frederic Thomas, saying:

My dear little wife has been dangerously ill. About a fortnight since, in singing, she ruptured a blood vessel, and it was only on yesterday that the physicians gave me any hope of her recovery. You might imagine the agony I have suffered, for you know how devotedly I love her. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

(qtd. in Aldrich)

It is obvious that Poe loved Virginia greatly and was very affected by her death.

The narrator of “Annabel Lee” is also very affected by the loss of his “child” bride, and the pain from the loss of his beloved Annabel Lee “…could have some insight into the struggle he underwent after Virginia’s death…”  (Magistrale 42).  According to Tony Magistrale, “Annabel Lee is one of the great symbols of romantic love” (Magistrale 45). At first glance this poem may seem sweet and lovely, but reading deeper will soon uncover a rather chilling poem. The narrator talks of how he and his lover Annabel Lee lived by the sea. “It was many and many a year ago,/ In the kingdom by the sea,/ That a maiden there lived whom you may know/ By the name of ANNABEL LEE;” (1-4). The narrator then talks of how they were young and “loved with a love that was more than love…” (9). Later in the poem many supernatural beings seem to become jealous of their love. “The angles, not half so happy in Heaven/ Went envying her and me:” (21-22). The narrator reveals his extreme paranoia and insanity. He is so convinced that the angels are jealous of their love that when Annabel Lee dies of sickness, he believes that the angles deliberately killed her. Now, her lover, the narrator, sleeps on top of her grave! “And so, all the night-tide, 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” (41-44). The narrator’s loss can mirror the loss that Poe felt when Virginia died.  Magistrale claims that “Annabel Lee most resembles ‘The Raven’… the poems are told from the view of the narrator who has recently lost an important woman”.

I believe that “The Raven” best explores the narrator’s obsession with his lost love, Lenore. According to Robert Regan, “The narrator is obsessed with his dead wife and tries to keep her alive in his mind” (53). It is clear that the narrator thinks highly of his love Lenore, referring to her as, “The rare and radiant maiden whom the angles name Lenore…” In the beginning of the poem, while thinking of his lost love, the narrator hears a “rapping and tapping” on the door, and he is visited by a raven. “At first, the bird brings the grieving lover a degree of distraction” (Magistrale 39). However, the raven only speaks one word throughout the poem, which is “nevermore.” Obviously a raven cannot talk, so it seems that the bird is all in the mind of the narrator.  I believe that the raven is carrying a message that Lenore is nevermore. At the end of the poem the raven, the constant reminder of the narrator’s loss, drives him insane:

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming.
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted---nevermore!

The grief is his demise. He will be trapped, imprisoned by his grief and insanity for all eternity. The loss of a loved one is something that Poe was familiar with as indicated by his poems. Since there is never any reference in Poe’s life to a woman named Lenore, this poem could indeed refer to any of his lost loves. 

Clearly, Poe’s life and works were greatly affected by women. Although there were many women in his life who were important to him, Virginia Clem and Fanny Osgood were most-likely the most influential women in Poe’s life. Some of Poe’s most famous poems dealt with the loss of a loved one. The poems clearly imply that Poe had a great love for women and when he lost them, it definitely affected his writing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Aldrich, Brian. Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe 1822-1847. 2002. <http://www.poeforward.com            /virginiawomb/virginia/virginia.htm>. 13 Feb 2004.

Anderson, Madelyn Edgar Allan Poe: A Mystery Justin Books, LTD. USA,1993.

Basler, Roy P. "The Interpretation of 'Ligeia..' Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays. ed. Robert  Regen, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc. 1967.

Benbet, Laura Young Edgar Allan Poe New York, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1947

Gargano, James W. "The Question of Poe’s Narrators." POE: A Collection of Critical Essays.   Ed. Robert Regan. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1967. 169-171.

Magistrale, Tony Student Companion to E. A. Poe. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 2001.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “Annabell Lee.” 1849. <http://www.poedecoder.com/Qrisse/           works/annabel.html>. 1 February 2004.

---. “The Raven.” 1845. http://www.comnet.ca/~forrest/raven.html. 1 February 2004.

---. “Ulalume.” 1847. <http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/poetry/ulalume.html>. 1      February 2004.

Regan, Robert. Poe A Collection of Critical Essays Prentice-Hall Inc., New Jersey, 1967.