EDGAR ALLAN POE'S 'THE RAVEN' IS PUBLISHED IN 1845

The Raven First Edition by Edgar Allan Poe

Today, The Grandma has received the visit of Jordi Santanyí, one of her closest friends. Jordi and The Grandma love Literature and they have been talking about Edgar Allan Poe, one of their favourite writers, and his famous poem The Raven that was first published on a day like today in 1845.

The Raven is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. 

First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow fall into madness. The lover, often identified as a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further distress the protagonist with its constant repetition of the word Nevermore. The poem makes use of folk, mythological, religious, and classical references.

Poe claimed to have written the poem logically and methodically, with the intention to create a poem that would appeal to both critical and popular tastes, as he explained in his 1846 follow-up essay, The Philosophy of Composition. The poem was inspired in part by a talking raven in the novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty by Charles Dickens. Poe borrows the complex rhythm and meter of Elizabeth Barrett's poem Lady Geraldine's Courtship, and makes use of internal rhyme as well as alliteration throughout.

More information: Edgar Allan Poe, Romanticism in Terror Stories

The Raven was first attributed to Poe in print in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845. Its publication made Poe popular in his lifetime, although it did not bring him much financial success. The poem was soon reprinted, parodied, and illustrated. Critical opinion is divided as to the poem's literary status, but it nevertheless remains one of the most famous poems ever written.

Poe wrote the poem as a narrative, without intentional allegory or didacticism. The main theme of the poem is one of undying devotion. The narrator experiences a perverse conflict between desire to forget and desire to remember. He seems to get some pleasure from focusing on loss.

Edgar Allan Poe & The Raven

The narrator assumes that the word Nevermore is the raven's only stock and store, and, yet, he continues to ask it questions, knowing what the answer will be. His questions, then, are purposely self-deprecating and further incite his feelings of loss.

Poe leaves it unclear if the raven actually knows what it is saying or if it really intends to cause a reaction in the poem's narrator. The narrator begins as weak and weary, becomes regretful and grief-stricken, before passing into a frenzy and, finally, madness. Christopher F. S. Maligec suggests the poem is a type of elegiac paraclausithyron, an ancient Greek and Roman poetic form consisting of the lament of an excluded, locked-out lover at the sealed door of his beloved.

Poe says that the narrator is a young scholar. Though this is not explicitly stated in the poem, it is mentioned in The Philosophy of Composition. It is also suggested by the narrator reading books of lore as well as by the bust of Pallas Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom.

He is reading in the late night hours from many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. Similar to the studies suggested in Poe's short story Ligeia, this lore may be about the occult or black magic. This is also emphasized in the author's choice to set the poem in December, a month which is traditionally associated with the forces of darkness.

More information: The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore

The use of the raven -the devil bird- also suggests this. This devil image is emphasized by the narrator's belief that the raven is from the Night's Plutonian shore, or a messenger from the afterlife, referring to Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld, also known as Dis Pater in Roman mythology. A direct allusion to Satan also appears: Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore...

Poe chose a raven as the central symbol in the story because he wanted a non-reasoning creature capable of speech. He decided on a raven, which he considered equally capable of speech as a parrot, because it matched the intended tone of the poem.

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe said the raven is meant to symbolize Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance.

He was also inspired by Grip, the raven in Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty by Charles Dickens. One scene in particular bears a resemblance to The Raven: at the end of the fifth chapter of Dickens's novel, Grip makes a noise and someone says, What was that – him tapping at the door? The response is, 'Tis someone knocking softly at the shutter. Dickens's raven could speak many words and had many comic turns, including the popping of a champagne cork, but Poe emphasized the bird's more dramatic qualities.

Poe had written a review of Barnaby Rudge for Graham's Magazine saying, among other things, that the raven should have served a more symbolic, prophetic purpose. The similarity did not go unnoticed: James Russell Lowell in his A Fable for Critics wrote the verse, Here comes Poe with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge / Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.

The Free Library of Philadelphia has on display a taxidermied raven that is reputed to be the very one that Dickens owned and that helped inspire Poe's poem.

More information: Smithsonian

Poe may also have been drawing upon various references to ravens in mythology and folklore. In Norse mythology, Odin possessed two ravens named Huginn and Muninn, representing thought and memory.

According to Hebrew folklore, Noah sends a white raven to check conditions while on the ark. It learns that the floodwaters are beginning to dissipate, but it does not immediately return with the news. It is punished by being turned black and being forced to feed on carrion forever. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, a raven also begins as white before Apollo punishes it by turning it black for delivering a message of a lover's unfaithfulness. The raven's role as a messenger in Poe's poem may draw from those stories.

Nepenthe, a drug mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, erases memories; the narrator wonders aloud whether he could receive respite this way: Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!

Poe also mentions the Balm of Gilead, a reference to the Book of Jeremiah (8:22) in the Bible: Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

In that context, the Balm of Gilead is a resin used for medicinal purposes suggesting, perhaps, that the narrator needs to be healed after the loss of Lenore. In 1 Kings 17:1 - 5 Elijah is said be from Gilead, and to have been fed by ravens during a period of drought. Poe also refers to Aidenn, another word for the Garden of Eden, though Poe uses it to ask if Lenore has been accepted into Heaven.

The poem is made up of 18 stanzas of six lines each. Generally, the meter is trochaic octameter -eight trochaic feet per line, each foot having one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable.

Poe, however, claimed the poem was a combination of octameter acatalectic, heptameter catalectic, and tetrameter catalectic. The rhyme scheme is ABCBBB, or AA,B,CC,CB,B,B when accounting for internal rhyme. In every stanza, the B lines rhyme with the word nevermore and are catalectic, placing extra emphasis on the final syllable.

The poem also makes heavy use of alliteration Doubting, dreaming dreams... 20th-century American poet Daniel Hoffman suggested that the poem's structure and meter is so formulaic that it is artificial, though its mesmeric quality overrides that.

More information: Poetry Foundation

Poe based the structure of The Raven on the complicated rhyme and rhythm of Elizabeth Barrett's poem Lady Geraldine's Courtship. Poe had reviewed Barrett's work in the January 1845 issue of the Broadway Journal and said that her poetic inspiration is the highest -we can conceive of nothing more august. Her sense of Art is pure in itself.

As is typical with Poe, his review also criticizes her lack of originality and what he considers the repetitive nature of some of her poetry. About Lady Geraldine's Courtship, he said I have never read a poem combining so much of the fiercest passion with so much of the most delicate imagination.

Poe first brought The Rave to his friend and former employer George Rex Graham of Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia. Graham declined the poem, which may not have been in its final version, though he gave Poe $15 as charity.

The Raven by E.A. Poe, Evening Mirror, Jan. 29, 1845

Poe then sold the poem to The American Review, which paid him $9 for it, and printed The Raven in its February 1845 issue under the pseudonym Quarles, a reference to the English poet Francis Quarles.

The poem's first publication with Poe's name was in the Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845, as an advance copy. Nathaniel Parker Willis, editor of the Mirror, introduced it as unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent, sustaining of imaginative lift... It will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it.

Following this publication the poem appeared in periodicals across the United States, including the New York Tribune (February 4, 1845), Broadway Journal (vol. 1, February 8, 1845), Southern Literary Messenger (vol. 11, March 1845), Literary Emporium (vol. 2, December 1845), Saturday Courier, 16 (July 25, 1846), and the Richmond Examiner (September 25, 1849). It has also appeared in numerous anthologies, starting with Poets and Poetry of America edited by Rufus Wilmot Griswold in 1847.

The immediate success of The Raven prompted Wiley and Putnam to publish a collection of Poe's prose called Tales in June 1845; it was his first book in five years. They also published a collection of his poetry called The Raven and Other Poems on November 19 by Wiley and Putnam which included a dedication to Barrett as the Noblest of her Sex. The small volume, his first book of poetry in 14 years, was 100 pages and sold for 31 cents.

More information: Poets

In addition to the title poem, it included The Valley of Unrest, Bridal Ballad, The City in the Sea, Eulalie, The Conqueror Worm, The Haunted Palace and eleven others. In the preface, Poe referred to them as trifles which had been altered without his permission as they made the rounds of the press.

Later publications of The Raven included artwork by well-known illustrators. Notably, in 1858 The Raven appeared in a British Poe anthology with illustrations by John Tenniel, the Alice in Wonderland illustrator. The Raven was published independently with lavish woodcuts by Gustave Doré in 1884 (New York: Harper & Brothers). Doré died before its publication.

In 1875, a French edition with English and French text, Le Corbeau, was published with lithographs by Édouard Manet and translation by the Symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé. Many 20th-century artists and contemporary illustrators created artworks and illustrations based on The Raven, including Edmund Dulac, István Orosz, and Ryan Price.

Edgar Allan Poe on The Simpsons

Poe capitalized on the success of The Raven by following it up with his essay The Philosophy of Composition (1846), in which he detailed the poem's creation. His description of its writing is probably exaggerated, though the essay serves as an important overview of Poe's literary theory.

He explains that every component of the poem is based on logic: the raven enters the chamber to avoid a storm, the midnight dreary in the bleak December, and its perch on a pallid white bust was to create visual contrast against the dark black bird. No aspect of the poem was an accident, he claims, but is based on total control by the author.

Even the term Nevermore, he says, is used because of the effect created by the long vowel sounds, though Poe may have been inspired to use the word by the works of Lord Byron or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Poe had experimented with the long o sound throughout many other poems: no more in Silence, evermore in The Conqueror Worm.

More information: Representative Poetry Online-University of Toronto

The topic itself, Poe says, was chosen because the death...of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world. Told from the lips...of a bereaved lover is best suited to achieve the desired effect. Beyond the poetics of it, the lost Lenore may have been inspired by events in Poe's own life as well, either to the early loss of his mother, Eliza Poe, or the long illness endured by his wife, Virginia.

Ultimately, Poe considered The Raven an experiment to suit at once the popular and critical taste, accessible to both the mainstream and high literary worlds. It is unknown how long Poe worked on The Raven; speculation ranges from a single day to ten years. Poe recited a poem believed to be an early version with an alternate ending of The Raven in 1843 in Saratoga, New York. An early draft may have featured an owl.

The Raven has influenced many modern works, including Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in 1955, Bernard Malamud's The Jewbird in 1963 and Ray Bradbury's The Parrot Who Knew Papa in 1976.

More information: Study

The process by which Poe composed The Raven influenced a number of French authors and composers, such as Charles Baudelaire and Maurice Ravel, and it has been suggested that Ravel's Boléro may have been deeply influenced by The Philosophy of Composition. The poem is additionally referenced throughout popular culture in films, television, music, and video games.

The painter Paul Gauguin painted a nude portrait of his teenage wife in Tahiti in 1897 entitled Nevermore, featuring a raven perched within the room. At the time the couple were mourning the loss of their first child together and Gauguin the loss of his favourite daughter back in Europe.

The name of the Baltimore Ravens, a professional American football team, was inspired by the poem. The Simpsons dedicated an episode to The Raven. Chosen in a fan contest that drew 33,288 voters, the allusion honors Poe, who spent the early part of his career in Baltimore and is buried there.

More information: The Raven by The Simpsons

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there,

wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams

no mortal ever dared to dream before.

Edgar Allan Poe