What Troubled Poe's Raven

[Little Skittle]

What Troubled Poe’s Raven

Could Poe walk again to-morrow, heavy with dyspeptic sorrow,
While the darkness seemed to borrow darkness from the night
before,
From the hollow gloom abysmal, floating downward, grimly
dismal,
Like a pagan curse baptismal from the bust above the door,
He would hear the Raven croaking from the dusk above the
door,
“Never, never, nevermore!”

And, too angry to be civil, “Raven,” Poe would cry “or
devil,
Tell me why you will persist in haunting Death’s Plutonian
shore?”
Then would croak the Raven gladly, “I will tell you why so
sadly,
I so mournfully and madly, haunt you, taunt you, o’er and
o’er—
Why eternally I haunt you, daunt you, taunt you, o’er
and o’er,
Only this, and nothing more.

“Forty-eight long years I’ve pondered, forty-eight long years
I’ve wondered,
How a poet ever blundered into a mistake so sore.
How could lamp-light from your table ever in the world be
able,
From below, to throw my sable shadow ‘streaming on the
floor,’
When I perched up here on Pallas, high above your chamber
door?
Tell me that—if nothing more!”

Then, like some wan, weeping willow, Poe would bend above
his pillow,
Seeking surcease in the billow where mad recollections
drown,
And in tearful tones replying, he would groan “There’s no
denying
Either I was blindly lying, or the world was upside down—
Say, by Joe!—it was just midnight—so the world was upside
down—
Aye, the world was upside down!”


A year ago, when my grade 8 teacher showed my class this poem, I thought it was merely clever, and didn't bother to look at it further. It just seemed so odd that this guy picked something out like that, which is so logical, and I didn't even notice a mistake after reading it almost one hundred times. Now I understand why I didn't pick up the mistake. It took forty-eight years to find it in the first place!

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[Dunc]

1. The pallid bust of Pallas sits above the chamber door on the floor of an open curve or transom, so the 'lamp-light o'er him streaming' comes from a high lamp in the hall outside.

2. The pallid bust of Pallas sits above the chamber door in front of a glass fixed window (or better still, a mirror) so that the high lamp in the room reflects off the glass behind and makes the shadow.

3. The pallid bust of Pallas has been backlit. Poe was into that sort of thing - you recall the uplighting whence -

light from out the lurid sea
streams up the turrets silently.

Regards / Dunc

[Little Skittle]

Ah I see your point. Also, quoting from "The Raven" the lamp light was positioned high or over something.
"But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er
She shall press, ah, nevermore!"

I still wonder about number three. What kind of backlighting? If there was a window or mirror the lamps would have to be placed beside the mirror or window. Therefore there could have been two lamps and then there would have to be two shadows as well.

Thanks for the explanation.

Although I still think it is a good poem.

Little Skittle

[Dunc]

No, I'm only doing what advocates of Inerrancy do with biblical texts - inventing patches.

Actually I've always been partial to the way Charles Leroy Edson put it -

Ah, distinctly I remember, every ember that December turned from amber to burnt umber;
I was burning limber lumber in my chamber that December, and it left an amber ember.
With a silken, sad, uncertain flirtin’ of a certain curtain,
That old Raven, cold and callous, perched upon the bust of Pallas,
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbspJust above my chamber door;
(A lusty, trusty, bust, thrust just
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbspAbove my chamber door.)

&c. Regards / Dunc

[Kemmer]

Well, it's oh, so easy to take pot-shots at Poe, perched, as we are, WAY above that bust of Pallas.

Yet, the poem itself resonates among the unwashed masses. Whyizzat?

Could it be that poety is bed-rock human nature-- invented by all cultures, everywhere on Earth? Could it be that Poe's raven (along with the musucality of the language that surrounds him) actually has meaning for the (ugh) common man?

Could it be, that the critics who so gleefully trounce Poe have found an easy way to "prove" their superiority over the hoi-palloi?

And, could it be, that placing poetry in the hands of elite "experts" is ultimately BAD for the human race?

Just something to think about. ;)

Kemmer

[Dunc]

Peace, good Kemmer

And don't think I wish to denigrate Poe's Raven - on the contrary, it's easily his best, and worthy of any anthology of good 'uns.

But Poe tends to wander either side of the fine line between romanticism and Grand Guignol -

It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbspThe mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbspIn human gore imbued.
&c

So maybe that's why even the Raven draws its share of amusin' send-ups. No doubt the poem shall outlive them all! Regards / Dunc