Evermore: Edgar Allan Poe and the Mystery of the Universe

Notes

177 NOTES Chapter One 1 For an alternative, and certainly more conventional reading of Poe, Kenneth Silverman has summarized the critical identification of Poe’s core preoccupations in his tales as “their study of incest, doubling, and other aspects of human psychology; their satire of Romantic and Gothic convention; their formalist manner and self-reflexive interest in the process of reading and writing; their fascination with illusion and deception; and not least in their creation of horror and disgust.” See Kenneth Silverman, introduction to New Essays on Poe’s Major Tales (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 15. Surely Poe utilizes all that Silverman mentions, but they are the means by which he pursues his questions. Such a wide spectrum of diverse matters seems to cut against the idea of a “preoccupation” which, by its very nature, suggests a more narrow focus. 2 Barbara Cantalupo, “Interview with Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV,” The Edgar Allan Poe Review 8, no. 1 (2007): 60. 3 For a discussion of the literary relationship between Poe and Dickens, see Fernando Galván, “Plagiarism in Poe: Revisiting the Poe-Dickens Relationship,” The Edgar Allan Poe Review, 10, no. 2 (2009): 11–24. 4 See The Poe Log, which refers to letters in 1842 concerning Dickens’ efforts to find a publisher for Poe in London. Dwight Thomas and David K. Jackson, The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849 (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987), 370, 385, 387–88. 178 Notes to pp. 6–11 5 I am indebted to Rebecca Whitten Poe Hays for pointing out this continuing problem in Dickens studies. 6 Rufus Wilmot Griswold, “The ‘Ludwig’ Article,” in The Recognition of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Eric W. Carlson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970), 32–33. The famous “Ludwig” obituary has been reprinted many places, but this volume also contains reprints of some of the most significant criticisms of Poe from 1829 until 1963. 7 Arthur Hobson Quinn has included the text of the power of attorney in an appendix to his biography of Poe. See Arthur Hobson Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography (New York: Cooper Square, 1969), 754. 8 Daniel Hoffman, Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972), 15. Stanton Garner has laid blame at the feet of Hoffman for continuing an American critical tradition of not taking Poe seriously “by patronizing him, referring to him by frivolous names such as “Edgar,” “Edgarpoe,” and “Hoaxiepoe” as Hoffman had done. See Stanton Garner, “Emerson, Thoreau, and Poe’s ‘Double Dupin,’” in Poe and His Times, ed. Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV (Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1990), 131. 9 W. H. Auden, introduction to Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Prose and Poetry, in Recognition (see n. 6), 228. 10 “Edgar Allan Poe,” The Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation 132 (1854): 427. 11 “Edgar Allan Poe,” The Leisure Hour, 427. 12 Augustus Hopkins Strong, American Poets and Their Theology (Philadelphia : Griffith and Rowland Press, 1916), 163. 13 Griswold, “The ‘Ludwig’ Article,” in Recognition (see n. 6), 33. 14 Richard Wilbur wrote, “The Fall of the House of Usher is a journey into the depths of the self. I have said that all journeys in Poe are allegories of the process of dreaming, and we must understand The Fall of the House of Usher as a dream of the narrator’s, in which he leaves behind him the waking, physical world and journeys inward toward his moi intérieur, toward his inner and spiritual self. That inner and spiritual self is Roderick Usher.” See Richard Wilbur, “The House of Poe,” in Recognition (see n. 6), 265. Prince Prospero’s cry of despair is Poe’s cry of despair (277). Like so many others who explain Poe’s stories in terms of Poe’s mental illness, Wilbur only discusses the horror stories. They fit his theory. 15 Hoffman, Poe Poe Poe, 16. D. H. Lawrence assumed that Poe tried “any drug he could lay his hands on” and “any human being he could lay his hands on” in an effort to achieve an ecstasy of experience. See D. H. Lawrence, “Edgar Allan Poe,” in Recognition (see n. 6), 113. 179 Notes to pp. 11–18 16 Strong, American Poets, 176, 201. 17 Strong, American Poets, 175. 18 Basil Ashmore, introduction to The Mystery of Arthur Gordon Pym (London: Panther, 1964...