Originality_and_Innovation_in_the_Poetry_of_Edgar_Allen_Poe

To experiment is a process that is associated mainly with the sciences. To the realm of science and the scientific mind, which thinks, hypothesises, theorises, and tests through experimentation, and all with a view to ultimately creating a law. This law will be treated as a truth, something about which any question of it's own integrity has slowly but surely been drained to it's last drop, to become dry of doubt, mystery dissolved. It may have taken innovation and experimentation to get there, but now it is unmoveable. In artistic or creative pursuits, this can never be true. Some poets have made a name by breaking any existing laws or rules they may have come up against, but in general, there are no laws waiting. Here is an examination of experimentation, but in the context of innovation in the works of a poet, namely Edgar Allen Poe: 'the range of imagination is unlimited.'1 He was an experimentel man, an amateur mathematician2, a writer and poet who was 'teaching a very strict and deeply alluring doctrine, in which a kind of mathematics and a kind of mysticism became one . . .'.3 Experimentation for him was a process driven by creative innovation and imagination of which uniqueness and originality were the by-products, and indeed the goal.4 Language was his laboratory. Using three of his more well known poems, 'The Raven', 'Ulalume', and 'The Bells' it is possible to examine this process in his work. His early work as a writer, apart from earning him a wage and some respect as a critic, went mostly unrecognised until 1845, when he published the now well known poem, 'The Raven'. Clearly there was something about this poem that captured the interest of it's readers. What exactly this may have been, is unlikely to be found anywhere, if not in Poe's own description of the process of it's creation, in an essay entitled, 'The Philosophy of Composition'. This is a rare and very interesting window into the mind of a poet. What we find here, is an analytical mind, that reveals the very rational, rigidly planned and precise steps that were taken in producing the poems desired effects on the reader; steps he describes as being as rigid as those in the completion of a mathematical equation, but which he devised himself.5 He describes his considerations on the length of the poem, he decides before pen has touched paper, on a length of just about one hundred lines as being not too long, as to spoil the totality of the poem, meaning that the average person could read and enjoy it in one sitting; yet he knew it must not be too short; the effect of the poem, and how he might go about producing a certain emotional reaction in the reader with specific incidents or tones.6 The poem had been meticulously constructed with popularity in mind, universal appreciability7 and this despite the fact that Poe once wrote that mere popularity is not in most cases a guage of somethings worth.8 However, Poe took the qualities in a poem he thought to be not above being popular and yet not below the critics radar as something of merit; having come to his conclusions quite logically; he then added to this formula his own original ideas, his tone, effects, imagery with all it's connotations and his words which were chosen for there sound when vocally intonated as much as their meaning and application as a sonorous refrain.9 As regards the form, he used the refrain, the possibly monotonous repetition of which he balances by pairing the monotone of sound with a lively variation of thought and imagery:10 And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallad bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light 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! This is the last stanza of the 'The Raven'. Poe believed that any work of literature worth it's salt should be developed to it's denouement before pen meets paper. This is in fact the method he used in 'The Raven', giving himself the ability to accomodate the final intention with suitable incidents and particularly tone.11 What he came up with was a poem that has been popular for one reason or another ever since and studied by people from many walks of life. The use of sound, a musical element to the poem, it's rhythm and flow, are elements also present in 'Ulalume', which he wrote around 1847:12 The skies they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere - The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year; It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid region of Weir - It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. In this poem Poe has shown the importance he places on experimenting with sound with words like: 'Auber', 'Weir', and 'Yaanek', which may well have been used simply for how they sound.13 When reading this poem, it is easy to fall into a sort of chant-like rhythm, which is rarely disturbed, but which makes it tempting to read aloud, to hear the sounds that Poe has assembled seemingly for that very purpose. He has skillfully managed to accent every third beat in every line of the poem.14 This quality of his poems to invoke their own reading aloud by their construction, is interesting and quite innovative, as it turns the poem from a printed page into actual sound vibrations, that seem a pity to have confined to the page. In some way, the sense of rhythm in the poem is calling out to be expressed by the reader. Incidentally, this poem was originally written as an excercise in elocution.15 'The Bells', first published in 1849, three months after Poe died, has some interesting qualities. It's unusual, almost over-whelming use of onomatopeia is in fact very effective in it's purpose of conjuring the sound of the bells ringing. At the same time it is so simple: To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells - Of the bells, bells, bells, bells Bells, bells, bells - To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! On top of that, with each part the reader is introduced to a different type of bells, moving from happy lighthearted bells in the first part, to gradually more and more serious, louder, more ominous and frightening bells. They become an intrusion into the imagination, having been somewhat tricked into allowing these lovely bells into their conscious thought, the reader's image of them is quickly manipulated bells that shriek wrangle and groan. Poe believed that originality in one's creation, be it literary, visual art, music or anything else should be strived for in order to push the limits of what can be done. He believed that to create without bearing this strongly in mind, was to have wasted time, and to have produced something of relatively insignificant value.16 He once wrote of song-writing and music, that he felt any certain determinateness of tone which he thought sought after and recommended by the unimaginative and over-trained, ruined a piece; he seemed to believe that a distinct indifinitiveness was necessary to maintain it's ethereal beauty. This beauty he writes, is immeasurable, except perhaps through a 'mathematical recognition of equality' which seemed to him to be the root of all beauty.17 I think it is clear from his poems that he attempted to practice what he preached, with some measure of success. Perhaps his successes were possible due to what seems to have been at least one balance he may have had in himself. The equality of mind, between the analytical man who completed poems like they were math problems and the man who truly cared for creativity and sensitivity. To quote him, somewhat out of context, but in keeping with this train of thought, 'And thus we have the anomaly of the most rigidly exact science applied to the shadow and spirituality of the most intangible in speculation'.18 Bibliography Bloomsbury, Bloomsbury Dictionary of Quotations(Bloomsbury Reference, 1990) Hayes, Kevin J., The Cambridge companion to Edgar Allan Poe(Cambridge Companions to Literature, Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, April 25, 2002) Pasquale Jannaccone (Translated by Peter Mitilineos), ' The Aesthetics of Edgar Poe', Poe Studies, (vol. VII, no. 1, June 1974, pp. 1-13.) Poe, Edgar Allen, David Galloway, and Tatiani Rapatzikou, The Fall of the House of Usher and other writings: Poems, tales, essays and reviews(Penguin, 2003) Poe, Edgar Allen, and Harold Beaver, The ScienceFiction of Edgar Allan Poe(Penguin, 1976) Zilla, Moe(alias), Poetry analysis: Ulalume, by Edgar Allan Poe(USA)