In Loving Memory of Edgar

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore..."

I just finished reading Jill Lepore's "The Humbug: Edgar Allan Poe and the economy of horror" over at NewYorker.com. As it turns out, 2009 marks Poe's 200th anniversary (damn, he's old!), so, a fitting time to read about him.

"Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor."

He was born January 19th and he was a Capricorn.

You might say he's been some kind of a fixture in my life--my dad has been mentioning him to me since grade school, telling me to "read Edgar Allan Poe" at least once a year, I might say. "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" were familiar stories to me, thanks to an old, tattered, browning book my dad gave me to read when I was, I think, in fifth grade. Soon, High School found me listening to more than half of my classmates reciting "Annabel Lee," with the requisite gestures (how on earth is one supposed to "gesture-ize" that poem? but then again, it was required, so they didn't have much choice) in front of a hard-to-please teacher. I, ever the deviant, chose Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life" for the precise reason that less than a handful of us chose said poem. Plus, yeah, I've always adored Longfellow. Have you read his "The Day Is Done"? It kicks ass!

Back to Poe.

"And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before..."

My undergraduate thesis, too, was unable to escape from this drunken writer of horror, whose own life was painted brown and gray and dreary by squalor and poverty. My topic being Strange Fiction, he inevitably found his way on the pages I was writing.

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before..."

It is, therefore, not difficult for me to understand why, between Margaret Talbot's "Brain Gain: The underground world of “neuroenhancing” drugs", where I didn't even get to finish page 2, and the feature on Poe, I had more patience--make that "interest," even "eagerness" (okay, okay, so making up my mind over which word to use has always been a challenge for me!)--to devour the latter.

And, yeah, according to the text, it is to his Dupin character that we can trace the Sherlock Holmeses, the Nancy Drews, the Hardy Boys, and all the sleuths--and wanna-be-sleuths--of this world.

Hah.

I had second thoughts about posting his picture, such a sour, sad-looking fellow he was. But what the heck, genius lies behind that dark visage!

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

*all poem fragments taken from Poe's "The Raven"-