Some may criticize Edgar Allan Poe’s writings, but they can’t criticize his gift for conveying intense suffering on a page. Not all people suffer from clinical depression as Poe—but to be human is to suffer. Like a raven scavenges for food, the unconscious mind wanders in our psyches during bleak times, scavenging for meaning and solace. Raven’s tracks are scattered throughout Poe’s writings.
When we read insightful literature, we enter into another state of consciousness. One in which our muted beings reveal themselves through the characters depicted within a story. In this safe, vicarious experience, we commune with our muted selves and explore our deepest feelings of anguish through the engagement of mental conversations (wanderings) between literary works and our wounded beings—dialogues that are as real as talking with other people.
As we process our daily experiences, there are other stories going on within us. They’re the inner, muted stories of our deepest selves. Often, these beings are silenced, because our emotional barometers reach mental-anguish overload--too unbearable to consciously feel. Thus, when we read about characters in a story that are experiencing similar waves of agony, these characters beckon our muted selves to feel and see what they’re experiencing. When this accord occurs, we connect with these characters in brotherly or sisterly ways, because we share their pain. They help us purge intense feelings and integrate them into our waking beings. Our inner ravens bear witness to the transcendent truth that literary characters reveal about our true selves.
Poe immortalizes the mental wanderings of many of his characters. Through them, he’s able to convey his inward turmoil, especially as he battles depression, which numbs his senses. Poe is a literary great, because he didn’t bow down to his infirmity but arose to write about his demons. And he wrote in a way that evokes intense feelings. When we write about him or other similar authors, we honor them and the significant prices they pay to celebrate their art. Their words are alive each time we write about them. And each time we do, we benefit from the mental wanderings.
Poe articulates his transformation as a writer when he pens in
Marginalia:
There is…a class of fancies, of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts,
and to which, as yet, I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt
language. I use the word ‘fancies’ at random…but the idea commonly attached
to the term is not even remotely applicable to the shadows of shadows in
question. They seem rather psychal than intellectual. They arise in the soul
(alas, how rarely!) only at its epochs of most intense tranquility.
During one of my readings of "
The Raven," I experience what Poe coins as "psychal" rather than intellectual, experiences that "arise in the soul." My perception meter rises, and I discover the "psychal" overlays imbedded in the poem's text. They pierce through my cemented, emotional marrow, and the speaker of the poem whispers to my muted being. Ticks of the clock fast forward, and after a few hours, I have only read the first two stanzas. Hours seem like seconds. I enter the speaker’s world.
The first stanza of "
The Raven" reads:
ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,/ Over many
a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,--/ While I nodded, nearly
napping, suddenly there came a tapping,/ As of some one gently rapping,
rapping at my chamber door./ “Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my
chamber door;/ Only this and nothing more.”
While I read, I feel as if I am teleported to the speaker’s bedroom. Imaginatively there, I see him sitting on a comfortable, wing-backed chair with his head tilted to one side. As he reads, his mind wanders. Dozing in and out of consciousness, he ponders a “curious volume of forgotten lore.” In the speaker's sleepy state, this "curious volume" consists of his muted being’s mysterious “lore” of past memories. Ruminating, he’s interrupted: “nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping…rapping” at his chamber door.
The speaker doesn’t want to rouse himself, because he’s intrigued by the silhouettes that emerge through the dense fog of his ruminations. He grasps for what he’s forgotten and dismisses the annoying tapping with his mutterings: it’s only “some visitor…only this and nothing more.” He yearns to submerge himself within his mental wandering--to peer through the impenetrable fog.
Current research in neuroscience reveals the psychological benefits of what the speaker of "The Raven" experiences as a result of his mental wanderings. “Creative insights often happen during these episodes [mental wandering], says psychologist Jonathan Schooler, as reported by Greg Miller in
Science magazine’s online daily news site, 18 January 2007,
“Peering Inside the Wandering Mind.” Schooler adds, "A lot of the time, people are thinking about worries or problems that they need to work out.”
Miller’s article summarizes the findings of a 2001 research study at Washington University. One of the researchers, neurologist Marcus Raichle, says that the findings suggest that mental wandering “makes an important contribution to our inner life.” Poe’s speaker in “The Raven” seems to be in the throes of a breakthrough in his “inner life.”
The second stanza of "
The Raven" reads:
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December/ And each separate
dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor./ Eagerly I wished the
morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow/ From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore,/ For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore:/ Nameless here for evermore.
The speaker seems to have peered through the dense fog of his unconscious. He remembers the details of a particular midnight, as if it's etched in his memory, and refers to the time as “bleak December." The speaker says that he “distinctly” remembers “each separate dying ember [work] its ghost upon the floor.” Moments of mental suffering are often seared into our submerged memories.
The description of the dying embers suggests an image of the speaker’s face with a trance-like gaze, watching each dying ember as it casts a foreboding, ghost-shadow upon the floor. The speaker "eagerly” says he "wish[s] the morrow." Although he wants the next day to come, it doesn't seem to come as quickly as he'd like. He longs for a balm to relieve his “sorrow for the lost Lenore” and attempts to realize that by reading.
The reader can tap into two levels of perception at this point of the reading. One is the conscious reading of the words about the "forgotten lore” within the context of the story, while the other is the symbolic rendering of the "forgotten lore" through one’s muted being. As the reader discerns that the speaker remembers his “forgotten lore”, the reader reflects and remembers, as well, his or her “forgotten lore” of past grief. In addition, as the speaker's muted self describes Lenore as a “rare and radiant maiden," a person worthy of being named by angels, the reader’s muted being processes distinct past memories.
The reader understands that Lenore is “lost” to the speaker when he refers to her as “lost” Lenore. But the questions arise in the reader's mind: Did Lenore die, marry another, or move away? Did the speaker commit an unpardonable offense that caused Lenore to leave? The reader doesn’t know why Lenore has left. However, the reader understands that the speaker’s loss is so great that uttering her name engulfs him in immeasurable sorrow.
Meditating on these stanzas, my mind wanders to a loss in my own life—the “Nameless here for evermore.” My muted being identifies with the speaker’s sorrow and is reminded of a similar loss of epic proportion. It must be borne with shallow breaths. The psychological processing of a lost relationship, as felt by Poe’s speaker, is done by degrees. I speak to my muted self: Be patient—breathe. Mourn the “loss” by degrees. Vomit out the pent-up sorrow.
Every time I read “
The Raven,” I identify with my grief-brother, the speaker of the poem. I commune with his gut-wrenching rhetoric, and it's as real as if I'm conversing with another sympathetic human being. That, my friend, is the power of Poe’s art. His words are personal and immortal. They express the universal groans of sorrow.
Now it’s your turn. Read and write. Heal thyself.
In his poetry, Edgar Allan Poe shines best as a master-craftsman, writes professor of English Killis Campbell of the University of Texas in his essay, "His [Poe] Creed and Practice of Poetry." Campbell sums up the best of Poe’s poems as “a melody incomparable so far as the western world is concerned; and he has achieved an all but flawless construction of the whole in such poems as “The Raven”….”
