Edgar Allan Poe: biography, style, works, phrases

Edgar Allan Poe, writer, literary critic and editor, is considered one of the most important writers in the horror genre in the world. Their Tales and poems, permeated by mysterious and spooky situations, are very reminiscent of the Gothic style, a strand of Romanticism characterized by the representation of situations linked to night and death. In addition to being a brilliant fictionalist and poet, Poe was also author of theoretical works in the field of literature, becoming one of the main theorists of the short story genre.

Read too: Murilo Rubião – Brazilian author well known for his fantastic stories

Edgar Allan Poe Biography

Edgar Allan Poe, so many years after his death, is still a supreme master of the art of causing fear.

Edgar Allan Poe born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, capital of the state of Massachusetts, in the United States. The son of David Poe and Elizabeth, he was abandoned by his alcoholic father, an expressionless actor, a year after his birth. He lost his mother two years later and was raised by a wealthy merchant, John Allan, who gave him his surname. This

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adoptive father, in order to provide you with a classical education, sent Edgar Allan Poe to Europe, where he studied, between 1815 and 1820, in renowned educational institutions in Scotland and England.

Later, upon returning to the United States, he began his studies at the University of Virginia, however got wildly involved with games and alcohol, which resulted, in 1827, in the break of the relationship with his adoptive father. That same year, he published, in Boston, his first book of poetry, Tamerlane (1827). He tried to pursue a military career, but without success, as he was eventually expelled.

After this failure, he decided to devote himself entirely to literature., publishing short stories in magazines. In addition to being a poet and storyteller, Poe is also dedicated to literary theory and criticism, publishing, in 1846, the famous work composition philosophy. He moved to several cities, such as Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. In Baltimore, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin, with whom he had a very turbulent marriage. On October 7, 1849, at age 40, the author died of an unknown cause.

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Edgar Allan Poe's Literary Features

Gothic style
Themes linked to death
mystery tone
ghostly plots
Seemingly supernatural situations, but resolved through logic
satirical tone
Sci-Fi Traits
Irony

See too: Second generation of romanticism – a literary movement with aspects similar to Poe's work

Works by Edgar Allan Poe

main stories

The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)
William Wilson (1839)
The Morgue Street Murders (1841)
the oval portrait (1842)
The Well and the Pendulum (1842)
The Revealing Heart (1843)
The black Cat (1843)
The Barrel of Amontillado (1846)

main poems

Tamerlane (1827)
The Winning Worm (1837)
Silence (1840)
The crow (1845)
a dream within a dream (1849)

The crow

In a wild midnight, when I read, slow and sad,
Vague, curious tomes of ancient sciences,
And I was almost asleep, I heard what it sounded like
The sound of someone tapping my doorsteps.
"A visitor," I told myself, "is knocking my doorsteps.
It's just that, and nothing else."

Ah, awesome I remember that! It was in cold December,
And the fire, dying black, weaved uneven shadows.
How I wanted the dawn, every night given to books
To forget (in vain!) the beloved, today among heavenly hosts -
The one whose name the heavenly hosts know,
But no name here ever!

How, shivering cold and loose, each purple curtain
Instilled in me, weaved strange terrors never before such!
But, infused with strength, I kept repeating,
"It is a visit asking for entry here in my doorways;
A late visit asks for entry to my doorsteps.
It's just that, and nothing else."

[...]

Then I opened the window, and behold, with much denial,
A raven from the good ancestral times entered, grave and noble.
He didn't make any greetings, didn't stop for a moment,
But with a solemn, slow air, it landed on my doorsteps,
In a white bust of Athena above my thresholds,
It went, landed, and nothing more.

And this strange and dark bird made my bitterness smile
With the solemn decorum of its ritual air.
"You have the shorn look," I said, "but noble and daring,
O old crow emigrated from there from infernal darkness!
Tell me your name there in the infernal darkness."
Said the crow, "Never again." [...]

"Prophet," I said, "prophet - either demon or black bird!
By the God before whom we are both weak and mortal.
Tell this saddened soul if in Eden from another life
You will see this one today lost among heavenly hosts,
The one whose name the heavenly hosts know!"
Said the crow, "Never again." [...]

(Translation by Fernando Pessoa — fragment)

In this fragment of the long poem “The crow”, there are recurrent features in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, such as the ghostly and dark content. O I lyric, at midnight, he was reading at home when, suddenly, he heard a sound similar to someone knocking on his door. He is surprised to realize that the visit is, in fact, a crow, which speaks to you as if it were a human being.

The bird, considered ominous by the western imagination, always repeats, like a mantra, the same phrase: "never again". The peak of the poem is shown when the lyrical self questions the bird, raised to the category of “Prophet – or demon", if she will see her beloved who died in some celestial dimension, to which the bird responds: "Never most". The gothic aspect, materialized in the theme of night and death, in addition to the pessimism expressed in the speech of the bird, made “O crow” a classic still capable of impacting its readers today.

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