{"id":3835,"date":"2018-10-28T16:05:30","date_gmt":"2018-10-28T16:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=3835"},"modified":"2021-02-24T21:35:56","modified_gmt":"2021-02-24T21:35:56","slug":"poes-melancholy-muse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2018\/10\/28\/poes-melancholy-muse\/","title":{"rendered":"Poe’s Melancholy Muse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Miranda Alexander<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.\u201d\u00a0\u2015\u00a0Edgar Allan Poe<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Death speaks to us.\u00a0 It may come as a soft and gentle whisper or as a sickening scream.\u00a0 Regardless of the way in which it arrives, we have all been touched by the loss of a loved one.\u00a0 Naturally, grief grips our heart with an unequivocal pain that gradually becomes more tolerable over time.\u00a0 We all have various methods of coping with the inevitable pang of loss.\u00a0 For the literary inclined mind, however, the most preferable tactic is creative release.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prominent poet and writer, Edgar Allan Poe, knew the voice of death all too well.\u00a0 He was only three years old when his parents passed away.\u00a0 Separated from his siblings, Poe was raised by\u00a0John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the loss of both parents would prove to be only the first dark chapter of his life.\u00a0 In 1847, Poe’s beloved wife and cousin, Virginia Clemm, died of\u00a0 tuberculosis.\u00a0 Her death rattled him to the core of his sanity, rending him incapable to write for months.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While death certainly had a habit of snatching away those he held dear, it also enhanced his need and desire to unleash his grave thoughts onto paper.\u00a0 Poe channeled his grief into his literary works.\u00a0 We can almost feel the burden of misery he must have bared as his sorrows bled from every stroke of his pen and into the tales we still eagerly read.\u00a0 Just as death was a constant in the writer’s life, it is engraved in numerous poems and short stories such as The Raven,\u00a0<\/em>The Murders in the Rue Morgue,<\/em> and several more. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Poe is not the first American writer to fold to the act of\u00a0 killing off characters, he is perhaps,\u00a0 the most noted for his unique methods of elimination.\u00a0 Take The Murders in the Rue Morgue<\/em> into consideration.\u00a0 Madame\u00a0<\/font>L\u2019Espanaye, the first victim is nearly decapitated with a single swing of a razor and is hurled, headfirst from a fourth story window.\u00a0 The second victim, Mademoiselle Camille, moments later is throttled to death and shoved up a scarcely narrow chimney.\u00a0 For those unfortunate enough not to have read the story in question, advert your eyes if you wish to avoid a rather shocking spoil.\u00a0 While Poe introduces some fairly gruesome ends for the these two characters, it is not their deaths that leave us speechless.\u00a0 It is the temperamental Ourang-Outang responsible for the violent murders that blows our minds. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s beautifully strange and original ideas such as a razor wielding, homicidal monkey that beckons us to Poe’s macabre and mysterious works.\u00a0 Regardless of whether or not we care to admit it, the notion of death is both frightening and intriguing at the same time.\u00a0 Perhaps Poe faced this very conflict of battling against the\u00a0trepidation and the lure of the entity which shadowed a vast measure of his life and work.\u00a0 Though we may never know the true depth of his pain, Poe left the literary world with a melancholy muse to die for. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Miranda Alexander \u201cI was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.\u201d\u00a0\u2015\u00a0Edgar Allan Poe Death speaks to us.\u00a0 It may come as a soft and gentle whisper […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":3906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[340],"tags":[346],"class_list":["post-3835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literary-studies","tag-american-literature","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3835"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3918,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3835\/revisions\/3918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}