A Poe Man’s Bicentennial
The Lincoln bicentennial has captured the media’s attention with scores of books and documentaries recently released. Spurred on by the election of President Obama, we are being reacquainted with the man who, in the words of Henry Gates, “stands at the heart of what it means to be American.” In the wake of this renewed Lincolnmania, we have neglected a man who equally defined us and is celebrating the same big anniversary, Edgar Allan Poe.
Poe’s bicentennial was observed on January 19, the day before this country’s inauguration of optimism and transformational change. Maybe this was not the best timing for Poe’s birthday bash; he was never a feel good guy, sunny with life’s possibilities. But Poe’s more gloomy impact permeates our contemporary culture as deeply as Lincoln’s legacy.
There are some nice websites devoted to Poe’s anniversary, particularly Poe Revealed, but none capture his startling relevancy. Unlike anyone before him, Poe penetrated the luminance and darkness of the mind. He developed forms of expression, which have been carried on by contemporary media, to uncover this uncharted psychological terrain. Seeking to illuminate the “fantastic terrors” in this world and beyond, Poe pioneered the detective, science fiction, and horror genres. Columbo, Star Trek, and Stephen King will forever be in debt to him.
In 1841 Poe created the archetypal detective story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue; this was before the term “detective” had even entered the English dictionary. His mystery solver, C. Auguste Dupin, cracked cases that Poe ripped from the grisly New York headlines. Imagine that, Dick Wolf. At the same time, he also crafted the first modern science fiction, by integrating realistic detail into his speculative stories and paving the way for Verne, Bradbury, and Battlestar Gallactica. Poe’s scientific sensibility was so finely tuned that he envisioned the Big Bang theory in his prose epic Eureka a century before cosmologists concocted the term to describe the origins of the universe.
Searching to represent the splendor and dread of the imagination, Poe crafted an artistic landscape that continues to be dazzlingly visual and musical. The earliest experiments in film, radio, and television all tried to duplicate this unique POEtry. One of the first major news works of the 21st century was Lou Reed’s deliriously heady re-imagining of the master’s life, The Raven, with two cohorts whom would surely have been drinking buddies of Edgar Allan: Willem Dafoe and Steve Buscemi. Poe has remained our muse when we grapple with the new.
Unlike Brian Wilson, Poe was made for these times. His life mirrored the joys and tribulations of freelancers everywhere working at the service of their art, but Poe was the prototype. He was the first to try to make a living as a writer and critic, arguing his way to the top of New York literary society only to tumble back to the bottom, becoming a mocked charity case. Even during his final penurious days at his Fordham cottage, he got tantalizingly close to his goal of presiding over his own publication, only to die very Poe-like in Baltimore, under very mysterious circumstances. But, even with his hardships, the visionary Poe recognized things would be different in the future, as stated in this quote recently posted by Andrew Sullivan:
“… authors will perceive the immense advantage of giving their own manuscripts directly to the public without the expensive interference of the type-setter, and the often ruinous intervention of the publisher. All that a man of letters need do will be to pay some attention to legibility of manuscript, arrange his pages to suit himself, and stereotype them instantaneously, as arranged…. In the new régime the humblest will speak as often and as freely as the most exalted, and will be sure of receiving just that amount of attention which the intrinsic merit of their speeches may deserve.”
I could go on and on about the Poe man, but a recent Internet posting said it best: “Dude, he invented us.” We are Poe for evermore.
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