Edgar Allan Poe

Short Bio

Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States, and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story, and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. Poe was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career. Poe was born in Boston, the second child of actors David and Elizabeth "Eliza" Poe. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and when his mother died the following year, Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. They never formally adopted him, but he was with them well into young adulthood. He attended the University of Virginia but left after a year due to lack of money. He quarreled with Allan over the funds for his education, and his gambling debts. In 1827, having enlisted in the United States Army under an assumed name, he published his first collection Tamerlane and Other Poems, credited only to "a Bostonian". Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement after the death of Allan's wife in 1829. Poe later failed as an officer cadet at West Point, declared a firm wish to be a poet and writer, and parted ways with Allan. Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. In 1836, he married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, but she died of tuberculosis in 1847. In January 1845, Poe published his poem "The Raven" to instant success. He planned for years to produce his own journal The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), but before it could be produced, he died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849, at age 40, under mysterious circumstances. The cause of his death remains unknown, and has been variously attributed to many causes including disease, alcoholism, substance abuse, and suicide. Poe and his works influenced literature around the world, as well as specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography. He and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre.

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Before “The Masque of the Red Death,” Poe had begun contemplating its principle themes: denial of death, libertine seclusion, and the illimitable dominion of the reaper. In “Shadow – A Parable” these ideas are consolidated into a nearly Homeric meditation on death’s invincibility. The story of a mere moment, “Shadow” peeks into the room where seven men are nervously peering into their own reflections while a gruesome plague ravishes the streets beyond their fastened brass door. Poe, who experienced the ghastliness of cholera in 1831, knew the terror it incited when entire dining rooms filled with uproarious revelers might that same hour be discovered by servants filled with shriveling mummies hemorrhaging watery waste and vomit, death having thrust itself leeringly into their wine-flushed faces. Unlike the cholera-inspired humoresque “The Sphinx,” which pokes fun at the extreme conclusions death can cause us to arrive at, “Shadow” plunges its fingers into the recesses of human consciousness, extracting the phantoms we deny and repress, phantoms which we hopelessly attempt to avoid.

SUMMARY:

The story – set in the Ancient Mediterranean – is told by Oinos (the Greek word for wine), who begins by saying that the year in which his story takes place was one filled with strange omens and widespread terror (namely, a plague). He and the last of his friends, seven men, cordon themselves off in a great hall in the city of Ptolemais (presumably the Phoenician port of the same name) where they wait for death. Gloom and depression hangs heavy over them, and although they have light from seven lamps in the room, it seems dark and shadowy. They are seated at a round table of polished ebony, staring at their own reflections in the black surface, and are shielded from the outside world by heavy black drapes over the windows, while the sole door to the outside – a massive portal made of brass – is locked. Despite their fear and dread, they drink and laugh and become hysterical. But one of them is not so enlivened: their eighth friend, “young Zoilus” (the name of a Greek critic known for calling out hypocrisy) whose death they are mourning. He is shrouded and laid out before them, and seems to mock their feigned merriment. Indeed, the laughter fades away at length, and they steadily realize that there is a ninth figure in the room with them: something dark and shadowy has just slipped from behind the black curtains and is prowling the room in their midst – “but it was the shadow neither of man or God, nor of any familiar thing.” It belongs to no mythology or religion. Eventually its shadow covers the bronze portal, blocking their escape, and – due to Zoilus’ position, up against the door – it appears to emanate from his corpse. Having seen it slip out into the room, the seven men turn back to their reflections and avoid its gaze. Finally, Oinos, speaking in low tones, demands to know the shadow’s name and origin. It boldly responds: "I am SHADOW, and my dwelling is near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by those dim plains of Helusion which border upon the foul Charonian canal” (all references to death and the afterlife). The seven men bolt from their chairs in horror: the words that the Shadow spoke to them did not come from a single voice, but from thousands: “varuing in their cadences from syllable to syllable … in the well-remembered and familiar accents of many thousand departed friends.” And so the parable ends.(Michael Kellermeyer)

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