| What You Don�t Know About Edgar Allen Poe This isn�t an essay on when, where, and why Edgar Allen Poe was born and died. Rather it is paper full of little known information concerning his life, family, work, and writings. Hopefully this will be very enjoyable. But, oh where to start�.. For many years before and after his death, Edgar Allen Poe has been characterized as an alcoholic. Was he a drunken lad? Poe had many depressing reasons for drinking, if you taken into account all the upsetting events in his life. It�s important to say that Poe was not an alcoholic. He had no pattern of consistent drinking and went on long stretches without any liquor at all. He either drank to oblivion or until he was out of money. Several times he found himself in the street, devoid of all his original clothes and wearing those of some pauper, not knowing what he had done or where he had been. Poe even stated, �I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason, It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness, and a dread of some strange impending doom.� Poe�s drinking had three major effects on his life: he lost his heath, he lost jobs, and he lost hid dream of a magazine of his own. Would a stable man have been able to write such amazing tales of life, death, the fantastic, and the incredible? No and that is why Poe could not live a normal life, he needed a way out and chose an awful one. One man was quoted to say, �The one thing certain is that no American writer of Poe�s distinction ever died a more lonely or pathetic death.� (Poulter) |
| Poe was believed to be clinically depressed, even a bit insane, but the cause of that could have been the actual findings of a brain lesion in Poe�s autopsy. One source of evidence that Poe was depressed is Poe himself, evident in this letter to Mr.Kennedy on September 11,1835, saying, �I am suffering under a depression of spirits, such as I have never felt before. I have struggled in vain against this melancholy.� The fact that Poe depicts himself as lonely in many of his letters and writes almost solely about death supports the view that he was a manic-depressive. A possible breakdown occurred when Poe arrived at John Sartain�s office, begging him for protection from an imaginary army of conspirators disguised as �loungers� in 1849. Severe depression, loneliness, an unloving foster father, and the sudden deaths of his real mother and wife most likely complicated Poe�s addiction to alcohol. Due to his heart and brain condition, Poe regularly took opium and laudanum for pain relief. His lifetime definitely showed instances where a brain tumor was the best explanation for Poe�s behavior. Poe was quoted in saying, �Love, fame, the dominion of intellect, the conscious of power, the thrilling sense of beauty, the free air of Heaven, exercise of body and mind, with the physical and moral health which result�these and such as these are really all that a poet cares for. Poe died on Sunday, October 7, 1849 at the age of forty. In Poe�s last breaths he wondered aloud if there was hope for a wretch like him, dying with the words �Lord, help my poor soul.�(Black) |
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