* * Note: To listen to the song mentioned in this column, simply press play below, at the bottom of the window. * *
In Baltimore, Maryland, we find a real-life mystery. Who has marked Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday every year for nearly 60 years by leaving flowers and a bottle of good cognac at his grave? This annual ritual has finally stopped, probably because the mysterious person has died, or is incapacitated. He/she took great care never to be identified, so the world will remain forever in the dark. It’s fitting, somehow…
Mr. Poe was an intriguing - some say mysterious - fellow, dogged by personal tragedies, which certainly flavored his tales of horror and death. I think that writing passionate poems and macabre stories helped him cope with the chaos that was his life. (For a little while he was in great demand as a lecturer and teacher, but fortune never smiled on Poe for long.)
Bad luck haunted him. Edgar’s mother died when he and his two siblings were very young, after which his father abandoned them. A wealthy couple, the Allans, adopted him. His kindly stepmother loved him, but his stepfather saw Edgar only as someone he could groom to run his thriving tobacco business. Poe would have none of it. His hero was Byron: he longed to pursue a literary life. He even wrote a book in high school, but his headmaster (what a toad!) advised Mr. Allan not to allow its publication, which infuriated young Edgar. Thus began a monumental battle of wills between stepfather and son.
Thanks to his wife’s entreaties, Allan finally agreed to send Edgar to the University of Virginia, where he excelled. The wretched man, though, slashed Edgar’s funding. He had to burn his furniture to keep warm. Debt piled up.
(Google Poe’s life, first listing, for three intriguing photos, and much more detail.) He went to West Point, but lasted only eight months; he married his very young cousin; she died of consumption. Mrs. Allan became ill, and begged her husband to contact Poe before she died, but his wicked stepfather refused, so she died calling for Edgar. When Poe found out what Allan had done, it nearly killed him.
Allan was an awful man.
I’m skipping over years of his life to pick up at the end of it. Poe, engaged again, traveled toward Philadelphia to see his fiancé, but left the train in Baltimore - (Why!) - and vanished. Friends found him five days later, incoherent, wearing someone else’s clothes. He was immediately hospitalized. In rare moments of consciousness he called out for someone named “Reynolds” over and over…
Edgar Allan Poe died, penniless, a few days later, on October 7, 1849. He was just 40 years old.
But oh, what he left behind is amazing!
Poe’s poems should be read aloud. I first heard Annabel Lee recited in college by a professor who possessed a rich, deep voice and a flawless delivery. When he finished, there was not one sound in that room. People had tears in their eyes, bowled over by the author’s ability to express such passionate, even pathological longing, for the beautiful Annabel Lee.
It’s powerful stuff.
Last evening, feeling a little sad that Poe’s mysterious visitor is no more, I decided to put Annabel Lee - the last thing he ever wrote - to music. (This is what I love to do during our long, cold winters.) Down in my little basement studio I read it aloud again and again, and suddenly, the melody formed. In another hour I’d chosen the accompaniment and, well, here it is.
Wait! To properly hear it, plug in earphones. The tinny speaker in your computer lacks depth. Their use will emphasize Poe’s brilliant, haunting narration of the agony of loss. (Most poetry conveys a sense of joy, hope and even humor. A few cleave comfortably to musical conversion: Annabel Lee, eerie, and mortally sad, is one of those.)
Requiescat In Pace, Mr. Poe.
All music © 2012 by Dee Blair.