The Lost Lenore- Revisited on Rye

Preface (or should we call it a dab of potato salad?)
I realize this isn't much about art- for an art-blog, but well, it kind-of is about art too. Mostly, I just wanted to make a facebook update about the things I've been thinking about and it got too long.


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I wrote a term paper about Edgar Allan Poe for my eleventh grade English class. The assignment involved coming up with a thesis, using note cards to record quotations from sources, and creating a final, typed document (double spaced) which included quotes from others who supported the thesis- and something about a "ham sandwich" approach with the introduction and conclusion being bread, while the meat of the argument lays in the middle. This was in 1991, when nobody had heard of the internet and most of us didn't have home computers, but at least I had a Brother Word Processor so I didn't have to struggle with typing and white-out corrections. But research was different when you had to actually find your books in the library- and take notes on your reading to refer to later, or carry stacks of books home in your backpack- before library search engines, PDF copies of articles, and google or wikipedia.

I have a really had a hard time structuring my writing. I read plenty and I'm inclined to write. I think I showed promise when I was younger. I had some serious handwriting, spelling and typing struggles, but I could tell a good story. I wrote poems, plays, sci-fi and horror stories and I kept a journal from the time I was seven... but the whole "term paper" thing really kicked my ass. I would stay up late, night after night, pouring through dozens of critical essays, compiling countless notecards, and trying to figure out how to turn these notes and various thoughts into a ham sandwich that supported a thesis- in a way that was, in the least-bit interesting. It was so different than the way my brain worked that it seemed an impossible task.

I really loved Edgar Allan Poe. Maybe it started when my mother struggled to help me decipher the meaning of "The Raven" in seventh grade. I was convinced that every complicated allusion or reference pointed to drug addiction, and she, in absolute frustration, called her former College English Professor, Uncle Dan, who, on the telephone, took me through the entire poem, line by line, explaining each reference and clarifying the meaning. Before then, I thought that everything "cool" must be about drugs- but this poem was about grief, melancholia, and gothic mystery. Later, I adopted an old 1940's hardcover book of his poetry and stories with a brief biography in the beginning. Over time, the binding broke off, and I repaired it with a slice of purple duct tape. I carried this treasured book for years, cradling it in my arms in high school, packing it up and moving it to its place in my book case in college and each subsequent apartment. It’s gone now. It was probably lost in the bedbug purge of 2007, a time when, in a desperate attempt to reduce my belongings to a minimum (for maximum sterilization control), I tossed many letters and other precious things into the dumpster. Now I have a paperback version with no idea how this volume came into my hands. But lately, on dreary midnights when I have trouble falling asleep, I've been pondering (weak and weary) over this curious volume of not-quite-forgotten lore.

I think probably picked up Poe again because of the really incredible performance that I saw last November at the Pyramid Atlantic. Some of my favorite Audio Vortex musicians composed and performed music for an old silent film version of the Fall of the House of Usher. At the time, my drawings digital art and screenprints were heavily influenced by film noir and new wave cinema. Listening to this music, watching this performance with this dark, old, silent film, really tickled my aesthetic taste buds, and reminded me about how much I once adored this author of that old creepy story. I've also been re-reading my old Neil Gaiman Sandman graphic novel. Gaiman's gothic romanticism isn't very far from Poe's... and I really like that influence.

As a teenager I read a few Stephen King novels included a volume of his earlier work including something like an early version of ‘Children of the Corn’. This writing seemed to me, at the time, to be so obviously derivative of Poe's work, but without the spark genius, without the romanticism...that made me furious. Indignantly, I vowed to never read another page by Stephen King. If I wanted the real thing, I could always return to the source. Quality: Poe. Eventually I broke that vow. Now I appreciate King’s books for what they are: titillating, mind-numbing pulp which works great for airport or beach reading, or blockbuster movie adaptations. I realize, now, that I’m a woman of simple tastes. I’ve never read Keats or Shelly or Tennyson, Browning or Byron. My frustration with high school term papers means that I never took a proper college literature course. Of course, I wrote papers, for Psychology and Art History classes, mostly. I even took writing courses- simple courses like “Writing and Painting” or “Making Sense.”

In my recent late-night reading, I’ve come to see that my newly discovered paperback collection of Poe's work likely contains exactly the same biographical introductory chapter as my old the purple duct tape copy, the one that inspired me to write that paper in eleventh grade. This is where I first learned of Poe's birth to actor parents in Boston, that his father disappeared and his mother died when he was a toddler. He was adopted in Richmond by a wealthy family, the Allans, but despite his early educational opportunities, Poe lived in poverty as an adult. He also died in poverty. His marriage to his thirteen-year-old first-cousin is well known, and also his spiral with alcohol abuse and delirium, and his untimely death in Boston at the age of 40. The details of his last days are vague, which could be cause for speculation.

My high school thesis had something to do with the way in which the women in his writing reflected his relationships with women in his real life. His biographers often linked the heroines in his writing to specific actual women in his life and his real life was easily as tragic as his stories. For this term paper, in search of the requisite number of sources for footnotes, I slipped out of my depths trying to make sense psychoanalytical theories in various literary critiques. This was the first (and probably the last time) I had actually read anything by Anna Freud. I remember scratching my head while reading a suggestion (by Anna? Perhaps not, but I don’t remember) that a particular description of a treacherous forest or perhaps it was a lagoon indicated that Poe feared vaginas with teeth capable of chomping off a penis. I found that image even more disturbing than the horror in Poe's stories.

I just now googled "Edgar Allan Poe's loves" and came upon, pretty much, the paper I was trying to write back in 1991: http://www.helpfulresearch.com/edgar.html. It’s not bad. My own attempt wasn't very successful... maybe because I was struggling to conform to a particular format while also trying to get my point across. I think my paper received a grade of B minus, which was a serious disappointment considering the effort and love that I put into the project. This is one reason why I ultimately chose to study art in college- because I’d prefer to stay up all night making paintings, than writing papers. During my first year of art school, I stayed up many nights struggling to come up with interesting solutions for assignments in my Foundation Design course- and in truth, that wasn’t any more pleasant or successful. I received a B minus for that class, as well. Another disappointment. Maybe there’s a lesson there- about how struggling all night through difficult assignments doesn’t necessarily result in a satisfactory grade.

But back then, in high school, when I was trying to write this paper, the thing that I found most compelling, that I tried to wrap my ham sandwich around- was the true life tragic irony in Poe's real life Raven- his losses, and his lost Lenore. When Poe was a teenager, he fell in love with a Richmond girl, but her parents didn’t approve. While he was away at school they intercepted his letters, severing the relationship. Someone, somewhere in my research suggested that she was the woman for whom Poe penned "the Raven." When I think about it now, I think it's more likely that Poe's obsession with the romantic and frail lost woman, in works like the Raven, or Fall of the House of Usher, may have been influenced more by his mother's death, which made him so much more sensitive to subsequent losses, including fragile health of his young bride, Virginia. A few years after the publication of the Raven, Virginia died from consumption. Her illness was prolonged and tragic, and it seems that Poe’s own life, which had never been easy- further spiraled downward into alcohol addiction and chaos for last two remaining years of his life.

After Virginia's death, he almost married a poet in Providence but that didn’t work out, in large part, because of his drinking. Finally, he was reunited with his original teen love, Sarah Elmira Royster- his lost Lenore, at last! Their wedding date was set, but just ten days before the wedding date, Poe was dead. In this context, the Raven seemed eerily prophetic. In life, he never would reunite with his lost Lenore. This gave me shivers during my late night research as a teen. Now that I think about it- the title of my paper should have been something more along the lines of, "The Lost Lenore: Poe's tragic life as reflected in his writing." But probably, if I were to attempt to rewrite that paper now, I'd still have problem trying to fit the Raven into a ham sandwich.
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Epilogue (can we call it a sprig of parsley?)
But when I think about it- I wonder, perhaps Poe realized, on some level, that the real Sarah- taking him back after so many years apart, would not, in reality, be enough to fill the gaping hole in his heart. His lost Lenore wasn't Sarah after all- but a an idealized version of what he craved. What he was lacking was his sense of security- his anima- personified by Lenore, but also his real life lost mother and his dying child-bride. Nobody's really sure what happened to Poe in his final days- was he on a drunken bender? Was he drugged and beaten by robbers or hired thugs? Perhaps, if things had worked out differently, Poe would have lived comfortably far beyond the age of 40, would have possibly even made some profit from his writing. Or maybe, like other tragically brilliant creative people, his was a star that shone brightly but burned out too soon.