В своей статье об Анне Карениной Льва Tолстого я писал о том, что одна из вещей, которые отличают православную культуру от западной культуры является понимание важности семьи и семейных отношений. С моих первых дней в школе, я был воспитан, чтобы быть полностью самостоятельным человеком. Мой отец, в частности, не раз говорил мне, что я никогда не должнен полагаться на кого угодно и с того времени, когда мои родители были только детьми, придет день, когда мне не к кому будет обратиться, так что мне нужно стать полностью самостоятельной, самодостаточной личностью. Это понятие личной независимости и полной самостоятельности является продуктом эпохи Просвещения и уникальной западной идеи. Полная самостоятельность предполагает не только наши отношения с другими людьми, но и с Богом. В детстве я был очарован религией и религиозными идеями. Когда я представил эти идеи моим родителям, мой отец сказал: «Бог слишком занят, чтобы возиться с тем, что происходит в нашей жизни." Поэтому, я не должен даже думать о том, чтобы обращаться к Богу, потому что он мне не поможет.
То, что я рассказал о том времени, как был ребёнком, конечно, не уникальная ситуация для меня и моей семьи. Со времени эпохи Просвещения, которая началась в конце семнадцатого века, эти идеи были живы на Западе и, наконец, добрались до России в то время, что описал Федор Михайлович Достоевский (1821-1881). В своем самом знаменитом романе, "Братья Карамазовы", мы знакомимся с тремя братьями, которые живут своей жизнью в соответствии с определенной идеей и личной философией.
В одной из сцен в романе, у двух братьев, Алеши и Ивана , возникли дискуссии о Боге. Иван - воплощение идей Просвещения. Он не верит в Бога и считает себя полностью независимым человеком, который не должен полагаться на кого-либо. Тем не менее, он также глубоко возмущен своим отцом, потому что понимает, что в определенной степени зависит от него, и эта зависимость идет вразрез с его понятием личной автономии. Алеша - новичок в местном монастыре. Он считает, что мы полностью зависим от Бога и находит чувство принадлежности и цели своей жизни, будучи членом религиозной общины.
Иван рассказывает Алеше историю об Иисусе, который прибывает, чтобы быть известным как легенда о "Великом Инквизиторе". Основная борьба Ивана - с миром Божьим. Он не может разобраться в том, что дети страдают и почему, если Бог рассматривается как источник порядка во Вселенной, как представляется, как случайности и абсурдности.
Тем не менее, прежде чем устроить его «бунт» против Божьего мира, Иван восклицает Алеше "Вы пытаетесь спасти меня, но, возможно, я не потерял», и призывы к Карамазовым "Жажда жизни несмотря ни на что", можно сделать логический вывод. Иван называет Достоевского "смешным человеком", он говорит о его способности к иррациональной любви ", "любить всеми внутренностями, со всеми кишками», и провозглашает: "Даже если бы я не верил в жизнь, если я потерял веру в порядке вещей, были убеждены в том, что все это беспорядочно, проклятый и, возможно, черт охваченной хаосом, если бы я был поражен каждым ужасом разочарования человека - еще я хотел бы жить, и, однажды попробовав чашу, я бы не стал отворачиваться от неё, пока не выпил. " В конце своей поэмы, однако, Иван определяет "избежать чаши" один раз в возрасте прошедшей юности, обращаясь к другой, более темной, "ошибке, как сторона "Жажда жизни" - "Карамазовы подлости". Таким образом, "Жажда жизни" Карамазовых как можно увидеть, коррелирует с контрастными силами внутри Ивана. Великий инквизитор, как создание Ивана, воплощает эту же внутреннюю борьбу, он тоже когда-то верил в христианскую веру. "Я тоже был в пустыне, я тоже ел на корни и саранчу, я тоже ценил свободу, с которой Ты благословил нас, я тоже стремился выделиться среди Твоих избранных, среди сильной и мощной ... Но я проснулся и не буду служить безумию ". Великий инквизитор также отверг мир Бога, он является отражением желаний Ивана восстановить мир таким образом, лишенным горя и страдания в источнике его отказа.
Легенда о Великом Инквизиторе - Христос находится на ступеньках Севильского кафедрального собора во время испанской инквизиции, восстановливает зрение старика и девушку из мертвых. Обнаруженный кардиналом великим инквизитором, он арестован и приговорен к сожжению на костре.Великий Инквизитор считает присутствие Христа как шаг назад в своей работе, в отказе Христа из трех искушений дьявола, он видит отказ от счастья для всего человечества, ради свободы.Великий Инквизитор, отмечая ошибки Христа, спрашивает: "Ты либо забываешь, что человек предпочитает мир, и даже смерть, свободе выбора в познании добра и зла? Нет ничего более соблазнительного для человека, чем его свобода совести, но ничего большего причиной страданий "Великого инквизитора и его церкви" исправить это дело твое, и основана она на чуде, тайне и авторитете ". Соответствующие трем искушениям дьявола, под фальшивым прикрытием самого Христа, человечество никогда не может быть свободным, потому что оно "слабое, порочное, ничтожное и мятежное ". Таким образом, среди членов церкви мало мудрецов, способных пожертвовать собой за счастье других, в то время лишенный свободы Христос очень хотел, чтобы обеспечить их.
Несмотря на декларирование Инквизитор быть атеистом, Иван также, как Инквизитор говорит, что католическая церковь "мудрость духа, страшного духа смерти и разрушения", то есть дьявол, сатана. Он говорит: "Мы не с Тобой, а с ним, и это наш секрет! На протяжении веков мы отказались тебя следовать за ним?" Он, по принуждению, если средства, чтобы закончить все человеческие страдания и для человечества объединиться под знаменем Церкви.Множество затем направляется через Церковь на тех немногих, кто достаточно силен, чтобы взять на себя бремя свободы.Инквизитор говорит, что по его словам, все человечество будет жить счастливо и умрет в неведении. Хотя он приводит их только к "смерти и разрушений", они будут счастливы на своем пути.Инквизитор будет самомучеником, проводя свою жизнь держа выбору из человечества. Он утверждает, что "Тот, кто может успокоить совесть человека, может занять свою свободу от него."
Инквизитор для достижения этого аргумента, объяснял почему Христос был неправ, отвергая каждое искушение сатаны. Христос превратил камни в хлеб, а мужчины всегда будут следовать за теми, кто будет кормить их животы.Инквизитор напоминает о том, как Христос отверг это сказал: «Человек не может жить хлебом единым", и объясняет, ко Христу "люди поток, а затем спросить их добродетели! Это то, что они напишут на знамени они будут выдвигать против тебя». Повергаясь из храма, чтобы попасть на ангелов укрепит его божественности в сознании людей, которые будут следовать за ним навсегда. Правило над всеми царствами Земли обеспечивала бы их спасение, Великий Инквизитор утверждает,
Сцена заканчивается, когда Христос, который молчал , целует Инквизитора в его "бескровные, от возрасте губы", а не отвечаяет ему. Об этом, инквизитор Христа-но говорит ему, чтобы никогда не вернуться. Христос, по-прежнему молчит, уходит в "темных переулках города". Мало того, что поцелуй неоднозначно, но его влияние на Инквизитор, а также. Иван делает вывод: «Поцелуй горит в его сердце, но старик придерживается его идеи".
В остальной части романа Иван борется с идеей человеческой жестокости и той роли, которую он играет в сохранении такой жестокости. На самом деле, он доведен до точки безумия, когда он появляется на его брата, Дмитрия, суде и исповедует, что именно он, а не Дмитрий, ответственен за смерть своего отца. Иван не мог физически убить своего отца, но убеждает, что его желание, что его отец умрет, стало толчком, который привел к смерти его отца от рук повара семьи, который также является незаконным братом из этих трех мужчин.
Именно в этотом обмен с братом Иваном, который показывает его потребность в отношениях. Хотя его взгляды не полностью приняты Алешей, Иван по-прежнему хочет знать, что его младший брат не отвергает его, потому что его взгляды и спрашивает его, напрямую. Алеша говорит Ивану, что он не отвергает его, и это можно рассматривать как источник комфорта Иван. Важность этого диалога между Алешей и Иваном в два раза. Это помогает лучше понять процесс мышления Ивана и быть в состоянии понять его мировоззрение, которое влияет как он взаимодействует с другими, и это дает читателю возможность понять, насколько важна роль диалога в отношении личной философии Достоевского и сочинений.
Великий Инквизитор Достоевского способ показать, что утилитаризм будет выглядеть, если оно было принято как жили философии. Джереми Бентам (1748-1832) и Джон Стюарт Милль (1806-1873) предложил называть утилитаризм философии, которая учит, что этический принцип, которым необходимо следовать был "величайшее благо для наибольшего числа людей". Если бы больше людей выиграют от определенного действия, чем пострадали от этого, то это допустимо и, по сути, поощряется. Ивана Великого Инквизитора поставил себя в качестве судьи определяют, кто будет страдать и будет ли это страдание в наибольший общественный интерес. Он считает, что страдания неизбежны, так что он мог бы также использовать его в своих интересах. Это включает в себя сжигание людей на кострах, что он считает еретиками и даже сжигание Иисуса на костре. Такие философские идеи могут быть некоторые немедленного положительного эмоционального обращения, однако, когда последствия этих идей были приняты во внимание, которого они часто теряют свою привлекательность. Федор Достоевский, глубоко религиозным человеком, верил, что мы созданы по образу и подобию Божию и, следовательно, связаны друг с другом на очень глубоком уровне. Эта идея не была принята многими людьми, которые стали сторонниками идей Просвещения в России и не принимать много людей сегодня. Что патриарх это семья? Федор Карамазов изображается как довольно эгоцентричным человеком, который верит в том, что он является автономным человеческим существом, однако, он тоже жаждет внимание окружающих. Однако, вместо того чтобы получать такое внимание в положительную сторону, он выбирает для себя как клоун. Как уже было сказано, что не существует такого понятия, как "негативное внимание", поскольку никакого внимания на все это лучше, чем отсутствие внимания для тех, кто жаждет так плохо. Дмитрий очень похож на своего отца, однако, вместо того, чтобы на роль клоуна, он берет на себя роль негодяя. На протяжении всего романа, единственное, что важно для Дмитрия является его собственное благополучие и счастье. Тем не менее, все меняется, пока он находится в тюрьме. По обвинению в убийстве своего отца, Дмитрия сажают в тюрьму, и однажды вечером он видит сон, в котором он сталкивается с маленьким ребенком, страдающим. Дмитрию жалко этого ребенка и он хочет найти способ, чтобы облегчить его страдания, а, наоборот, маленький ребенок целует Дмитрия,гладит по голове и утешает, а не Дмитрий его.
Дмитрий рассказывает о своем сне Алеше и заявляет, что он готов страдать в тюрьме, если это означает, что другие могут быть счастливы. Достоевский задаёт глубокий вопрос. Есть ли кто-то счастлив, должно ли это происходить за счет чьих-то страданий? Дмитрий всю жизнь думает только о себе, и теперь он готов предложить себя в качестве "мученика за счастье". Алеша пережил новое сострадание за воего брата, сказал, что есть альтернатива этой идее.Роман заканчивается сценой на могиле Илюши Снегирева, ребенка,с которым плохо обращались, осуществляли эмоциональное насилие, его одноклассниками. Отец Илюши, капитан Снегирев, ранее был публично унижен Дмитрем и это принесло позор всей семье.
С одной стороны, Илюша убеждается, что он убил маленькую собачку. Его смотритель, который знал правду, отказался сообщить Илюше, что собака поправилась. Однако, так как Илюша был близок к смерти других мальчиков в деревне, он испытал чувство преобразования. Вместо того, чтобы исключить Илюшу, они решили включить его в свое «сообщество» и его сторож принес к нему собачку. Видя, как это сделало счастливым Илюшу, это было источником радости для этих мальчиков. На могиле, Алеша говорит, этим мальчикам, что они никогда не забудут Илюшу. Илюша был хорошим, заботливым, любящим, маленьким мальчиком, который хотел быть счастливым. Он рассказывает ребятам, что они должны любить друг друга и что они всегда должны это помнить на этом могильном камне. Двенадцать мальчиков, теперь в слезах, берут друг друга за руки и возвращаются в родную семью Снегирева. Илюша был исключен из любого «сообщества», созданного ребятами в своей деревне, и его страдания стали источником развлечения для них. Все это способствовало растущей болезни Илюши.
Вопросы, обсуждавшиеся Достоевским в этом романе, очень глубокие. Написанный в 1870 году, этот роман мог бы просто, легко быть написан в 2000 году. Его последний и, возможно, величайший, роман поднимает многие важные вопросы, которые зададут поколениям. От того, как мы ответим на эти вопросы, зависит, будем ли мы хотим жить в изоляции друг от друга и относиться к другим, как к средству для достижения цели, или будем видеть друг друга источником поддержки и поощрения, так как мы продолжаем свой жизненный путь.
Еще одна важная точка зрения, что у Достоевского была потребность в прощении. Великий инквизитор не видит никакой ценности в прощении и это верно для многих людей сегодня. Прощение это единственная вещь, которая восстанавливает отношения и позволяет нам жить в гармонии. Страдание является частью человеческой жизни, и важно, что мы не только не стали источником страданий для других, но и были вместе с другими в их страданиях и разделяли с ними их бремя.
Примечания:
1) «Все делается во имя любви" http://heideggerm1.blogspot.com/2011/08/things-done-in-name-of-love.html
2) "" Легенда о Великом инквизиторе »: Моральная трансформации в Karamozov Брат" (по состоянию на 8/17/11) http://www.lurj.org/article.php/vol3n2/karamazov.xml
3) «Великого инквизитора» (по состоянию на 8/17/11) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Inquisitor
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Monday, June 4, 2012
Parodying as a Form of Flattery
One famous American idiom is “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” The same can also be said of a parody. A parody is defined as a humorous or satirical imitation of a serious piece of literature or writing.1 This has been done numerous times over the years in both literature and film.
In order for such a parody to be successful it is important that a well-known piece of literature should be chosen. This piece of literature can be representative of a particular culture or is so well known that its content transcends a particular culture. The transcending of a given culture is largely based upon the theme of a given novel.
One theme which transcends a given culture is the hero’s journey or quest. Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) spoke about this in a series on the Public Broadcasting Company (PBS) which aired the year after Campbell died. He initially wrote about this The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949).
This theme is present in numerous novels and such films as Star Wars (1977) which was directed by George Lucas. One classic novel where this theme is present was Virgil’s Aeneid. Considered one of the classics of Western literature, The Aeneid has been read by countless generations of students.
The summary of this classic tale is as follows. On the Mediterranean Sea, Aeneas and his fellow Trojans flee from their home city of Troy, which has been destroyed by the Greeks. They sail for Italy, where Aeneas is destined to found Rome. As they near their destination, a fierce storm throws them off course and lands them in Carthage. Dido, Carthage’s founder and queen, welcomes them. Aeneas relates to Dido the long and painful story of his group’s travels thus far.
Aeneas tells of the sack of Troy that ended the Trojan War after ten years of Greek siege. In the final campaign, the Trojans were tricked when they accepted into their city walls a wooden horse that, unbeknownst to them, harbored several Greek soldiers in its hollow belly. He tells how he escaped the burning city with his father, Anchises; his son, Ascanius; and the hearth gods that represent their fallen city. Assured by the gods that a glorious future awaited him in Italy, he set sail with a fleet containing the surviving citizens of Troy. Aeneas relates the ordeals they faced on their journey. Twice they attempted to build a new city, only to be driven away by bad omens and plagues. Harpies, creatures that are part woman and part bird, cursed them, but they also encountered friendly countrymen unexpectedly. Finally, after the loss of Anchises and a bout of terrible weather, they made their way to Carthage.
Impressed by Aeneas’s exploits and sympathetic to his suffering, Dido, a Phoenician princess who fled her home and founded Carthage after her brother murdered her husband, falls in love with Aeneas. They live together as lovers for a period, until the gods remind Aeneas of his duty to found a new city. He determines to set sail once again. Dido is devastated by his departure, and kills herself by ordering a huge pyre to be built with Aeneas’s castaway possessions, climbing upon it, and stabbing herself with the sword Aeneas leaves behind.
As the Trojans head to Italy, bad weather blows them to Sicily, where they hold funeral games for the dead Anchises. The women, tired of the voyage, begin to burn the ships, but a downpour puts the fires out. Some of the travel-weary stay behind, while Aeneas, reinvigorated after his father visits him in a dream, and takes the rest on toward Italy. Once there, Aeneas descends into the underworld, guided by the Sibyl of Cumae, to visit his father. He is shown a pageant of the future history and heroes of Rome, which helps him to understand the importance of his mission. Aeneas returns from the underworld, and the Trojans continue up the coast to the region of Latium.
The arrival of the Trojans in Italy begins peacefully. King Latinus, the Italian ruler, extends his hospitality, hoping that Aeneas will prove to be the foreigner whom, according to a prophecy, his daughter Lavinia is supposed to marry. However, Latinus’ wife, Amata, has other ideas. She means for Lavinia to marry Turnus, a local suitor. Amata and Turnus cultivate enmity toward the newly arrived Trojans. Meanwhile, Ascanius hunts a stag that was a pet of the local herdsmen. A fight breaks out, and several people are killed. Turnus, riding this current of anger, begins a war.
Aeneas, at the suggestion of the river god Tiberinus, sails north up the Tiber to seek military support among the neighboring tribes. During this voyage, his mother, Venus, descends to give him a new set of weapons, wrought by Vulcan. While the Trojan leader is away, Turnus attacks. Aeneas returns to find his countrymen embroiled in battle. Pallas, the son of Aeneas’s new ally Evander, is killed by Turnus. Aeneas flies into a violent fury and many more are slain by the day’s end.
The two sides agree to a truce so that they can bury the dead, and the Latin leaders discuss whether to continue the battle. They decide to spare any further unnecessary carnage by proposing a hand-to-hand duel between Aeneas and Turnus. When the two leaders face off, however, the other men begin to quarrel, and full-scale battle resumes. Aeneas is wounded in the thigh, but eventually the Trojans threaten the enemy city. Turnus rushes out to meet Aeneas, who wounds Turnus badly. Aeneas nearly spares Turnus but, remembering the slain Pallas, slays him instead.2
It is interesting that the first literary work ever published in the modern Ukrainian language was a 1798 epic poem entitled, Eneyida, which was parody of Virgil’s classic story. This epic poem was written by Ivan Petrovych Kotlyarevsky (1769-1838), who is considered the first modern Ukrainian author. In Kotlyarevsky’s poem, the main characters are no longer Trojans, but Zaporozhian Cossacks.3 These men had a profound impact upon Ukrainian history prior to being disbanded in 1775. It seems only fitting that a Ukrainian author would choose such a group of men for his parody. They were as meaningful to his culture as Aeneus was to the Greek speaking world.
An example of an American parody is the novel, The Wind Done Gone (2001) by Alice Randall. This novel is based upon Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 classic novel, Gone with the Wind, but is written from the standpoint of Scarlett O’Hara’s slaves. This is a very interesting approach to addressing the issue of slavery during the Civil War.
Ms. Randall wrote a book based upon a novel which went on to become an Academy Award winning film (1939) and gave a voice to those who would have been nameless, faceless people in their own time period. In fact, since they were slaves, they would not have been considered people, but property.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the Ukrainian language is the fact that it exists at all in the modern world. It has been banned and discouraged several times by non-Ukrainian regimes, but always maintained its existence somehow, even by using informal methods of keeping the tongue alive, such as songs, folklore, and Ivan Kotlyarevsky’s Eneyida, which was the first book to be published in Ukrainian and has become a classic.
The Ukrainians have seen periods of substantial unrest and the current version of the Ukrainian language reflects the periods of trouble in the country. However, tracing the language back over time has often proved problematic, as until the 18th century, the spoken and written forms of Ukrainian differed immensely from one another. Before the 18th century the contemporary form of Ukrainian was a vernacular language which existed alongside Church Slavonic. It was mostly peasants and the bourgeoisie, who spoke this language, and there was also something of a linguistic hierarchy at the time, as a lot of literature, scientific texts, or any other sort of important writing was being produced in different languages, for example, Greek, Latin, or Polish. This is not to say that Ukrainian was in danger of dying out, for it was still widely spoken in Ukraine, but in terms of a written language, it was overlooked in favor of other tongues.4
The fact that Kotlyarevsky was able to publish his epic poem in the Ukrainian language actually help to maintain this Slavic language and likely served as an inspiration for future authors like Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) who would have been able to read this poem in his native language. The Ukrainian language is still spoken in modern day Ukraine, but it seems to be much more popular in western Ukraine than eastern Ukraine where many people speak Russian.
Parody certainly can be a sincere form of flattery, especially when it is based upon a classic piece of literature. Kotlyarevsky’s Eneyida has become a classic piece of literature and the people of Ukraine own him a debt of gratitude for helping to keep their beautiful language alive for future generations.
End Notes
1) “Parody” http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/parody (accessed 6/3/12)
2) “The Aeneid” http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/aeneid/summary.html (accessed 6/3/12)
3) “Ivan Kotlyarevsky” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Kotlyarevsky (accessed 6/3/12) “The Highest Manifesto Zaporozhian Sich Destruction” http://www.museum-ukraine.org.ua/index.php?go=News&file=print&id=1418 (written 12/14/06, accessed 6/2/12)
4) “The Ukrainian Language” http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/language/about/ukrainian.html (accessed 6/4/12)
In order for such a parody to be successful it is important that a well-known piece of literature should be chosen. This piece of literature can be representative of a particular culture or is so well known that its content transcends a particular culture. The transcending of a given culture is largely based upon the theme of a given novel.
One theme which transcends a given culture is the hero’s journey or quest. Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) spoke about this in a series on the Public Broadcasting Company (PBS) which aired the year after Campbell died. He initially wrote about this The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949).
This theme is present in numerous novels and such films as Star Wars (1977) which was directed by George Lucas. One classic novel where this theme is present was Virgil’s Aeneid. Considered one of the classics of Western literature, The Aeneid has been read by countless generations of students.
The summary of this classic tale is as follows. On the Mediterranean Sea, Aeneas and his fellow Trojans flee from their home city of Troy, which has been destroyed by the Greeks. They sail for Italy, where Aeneas is destined to found Rome. As they near their destination, a fierce storm throws them off course and lands them in Carthage. Dido, Carthage’s founder and queen, welcomes them. Aeneas relates to Dido the long and painful story of his group’s travels thus far.
Aeneas tells of the sack of Troy that ended the Trojan War after ten years of Greek siege. In the final campaign, the Trojans were tricked when they accepted into their city walls a wooden horse that, unbeknownst to them, harbored several Greek soldiers in its hollow belly. He tells how he escaped the burning city with his father, Anchises; his son, Ascanius; and the hearth gods that represent their fallen city. Assured by the gods that a glorious future awaited him in Italy, he set sail with a fleet containing the surviving citizens of Troy. Aeneas relates the ordeals they faced on their journey. Twice they attempted to build a new city, only to be driven away by bad omens and plagues. Harpies, creatures that are part woman and part bird, cursed them, but they also encountered friendly countrymen unexpectedly. Finally, after the loss of Anchises and a bout of terrible weather, they made their way to Carthage.
Impressed by Aeneas’s exploits and sympathetic to his suffering, Dido, a Phoenician princess who fled her home and founded Carthage after her brother murdered her husband, falls in love with Aeneas. They live together as lovers for a period, until the gods remind Aeneas of his duty to found a new city. He determines to set sail once again. Dido is devastated by his departure, and kills herself by ordering a huge pyre to be built with Aeneas’s castaway possessions, climbing upon it, and stabbing herself with the sword Aeneas leaves behind.
As the Trojans head to Italy, bad weather blows them to Sicily, where they hold funeral games for the dead Anchises. The women, tired of the voyage, begin to burn the ships, but a downpour puts the fires out. Some of the travel-weary stay behind, while Aeneas, reinvigorated after his father visits him in a dream, and takes the rest on toward Italy. Once there, Aeneas descends into the underworld, guided by the Sibyl of Cumae, to visit his father. He is shown a pageant of the future history and heroes of Rome, which helps him to understand the importance of his mission. Aeneas returns from the underworld, and the Trojans continue up the coast to the region of Latium.
The arrival of the Trojans in Italy begins peacefully. King Latinus, the Italian ruler, extends his hospitality, hoping that Aeneas will prove to be the foreigner whom, according to a prophecy, his daughter Lavinia is supposed to marry. However, Latinus’ wife, Amata, has other ideas. She means for Lavinia to marry Turnus, a local suitor. Amata and Turnus cultivate enmity toward the newly arrived Trojans. Meanwhile, Ascanius hunts a stag that was a pet of the local herdsmen. A fight breaks out, and several people are killed. Turnus, riding this current of anger, begins a war.
Aeneas, at the suggestion of the river god Tiberinus, sails north up the Tiber to seek military support among the neighboring tribes. During this voyage, his mother, Venus, descends to give him a new set of weapons, wrought by Vulcan. While the Trojan leader is away, Turnus attacks. Aeneas returns to find his countrymen embroiled in battle. Pallas, the son of Aeneas’s new ally Evander, is killed by Turnus. Aeneas flies into a violent fury and many more are slain by the day’s end.
The two sides agree to a truce so that they can bury the dead, and the Latin leaders discuss whether to continue the battle. They decide to spare any further unnecessary carnage by proposing a hand-to-hand duel between Aeneas and Turnus. When the two leaders face off, however, the other men begin to quarrel, and full-scale battle resumes. Aeneas is wounded in the thigh, but eventually the Trojans threaten the enemy city. Turnus rushes out to meet Aeneas, who wounds Turnus badly. Aeneas nearly spares Turnus but, remembering the slain Pallas, slays him instead.2
It is interesting that the first literary work ever published in the modern Ukrainian language was a 1798 epic poem entitled, Eneyida, which was parody of Virgil’s classic story. This epic poem was written by Ivan Petrovych Kotlyarevsky (1769-1838), who is considered the first modern Ukrainian author. In Kotlyarevsky’s poem, the main characters are no longer Trojans, but Zaporozhian Cossacks.3 These men had a profound impact upon Ukrainian history prior to being disbanded in 1775. It seems only fitting that a Ukrainian author would choose such a group of men for his parody. They were as meaningful to his culture as Aeneus was to the Greek speaking world.
An example of an American parody is the novel, The Wind Done Gone (2001) by Alice Randall. This novel is based upon Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 classic novel, Gone with the Wind, but is written from the standpoint of Scarlett O’Hara’s slaves. This is a very interesting approach to addressing the issue of slavery during the Civil War.
Ms. Randall wrote a book based upon a novel which went on to become an Academy Award winning film (1939) and gave a voice to those who would have been nameless, faceless people in their own time period. In fact, since they were slaves, they would not have been considered people, but property.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the Ukrainian language is the fact that it exists at all in the modern world. It has been banned and discouraged several times by non-Ukrainian regimes, but always maintained its existence somehow, even by using informal methods of keeping the tongue alive, such as songs, folklore, and Ivan Kotlyarevsky’s Eneyida, which was the first book to be published in Ukrainian and has become a classic.
The Ukrainians have seen periods of substantial unrest and the current version of the Ukrainian language reflects the periods of trouble in the country. However, tracing the language back over time has often proved problematic, as until the 18th century, the spoken and written forms of Ukrainian differed immensely from one another. Before the 18th century the contemporary form of Ukrainian was a vernacular language which existed alongside Church Slavonic. It was mostly peasants and the bourgeoisie, who spoke this language, and there was also something of a linguistic hierarchy at the time, as a lot of literature, scientific texts, or any other sort of important writing was being produced in different languages, for example, Greek, Latin, or Polish. This is not to say that Ukrainian was in danger of dying out, for it was still widely spoken in Ukraine, but in terms of a written language, it was overlooked in favor of other tongues.4
The fact that Kotlyarevsky was able to publish his epic poem in the Ukrainian language actually help to maintain this Slavic language and likely served as an inspiration for future authors like Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) who would have been able to read this poem in his native language. The Ukrainian language is still spoken in modern day Ukraine, but it seems to be much more popular in western Ukraine than eastern Ukraine where many people speak Russian.
Parody certainly can be a sincere form of flattery, especially when it is based upon a classic piece of literature. Kotlyarevsky’s Eneyida has become a classic piece of literature and the people of Ukraine own him a debt of gratitude for helping to keep their beautiful language alive for future generations.
End Notes
1) “Parody” http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/parody (accessed 6/3/12)
2) “The Aeneid” http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/aeneid/summary.html (accessed 6/3/12)
3) “Ivan Kotlyarevsky” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Kotlyarevsky (accessed 6/3/12) “The Highest Manifesto Zaporozhian Sich Destruction” http://www.museum-ukraine.org.ua/index.php?go=News&file=print&id=1418 (written 12/14/06, accessed 6/2/12)
4) “The Ukrainian Language” http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/language/about/ukrainian.html (accessed 6/4/12)
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Profile of a Cultural Icon
There are certain people who have an impact which lasts long after they are gone. This person is almost synonymous with the culture in which they were raised. I have written articles about several classic Russian authors who would definitely be considered representatives of their culture.
In the United States there are several authors who are considered cultural icons. Men such as Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) [1835-1910] and Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) would certainly qualify. Another author who would qualify as a cultural icon was Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849).
Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809. He was the second of three children. His brother, William Henry Leonard Poe, would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister, Rosalie Poe, would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business. By the age of thirteen, Poe had compiled enough poetry to publish a book, but his headmaster advised Allan against allowing this.
In 1826 Poe left Richmond to attend the University of Virginia, where he excelled in his classes while accumulating considerable debt. The miserly Allan had sent Poe to college with less than a third of the money he needed, and Poe soon took up gambling to raise money to pay his expenses. By the end of his first term Poe was so desperately poor that he burned his furniture to keep warm.
Humiliated by his poverty and furious with Allan for not providing enough funds in the first place, Poe returned to Richmond and visited the home of his fiancée Elmira Royster, only to discover that she had become engaged to another man in Poe’s absence. The heartbroken Poe’s last few months in the Allan mansion were punctuated with increasing hostility towards Allan until Poe finally stormed out of the home in a quixotic quest to become a great poet and to find adventure. He accomplished the first objective by publishing his first book Tamerlane when he was only eighteen, and to achieve the second goal he enlisted in the United States Army. Two years later he heard that Frances Allan, the only mother he had ever known, was dying of tuberculosis and wanted to see him before she died. By the time Poe returned to Richmond she had already been buried. Poe and Allan briefly reconciled, and Allan helped Poe gain an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Before going to West Point, Poe published another volume of poetry. While there, Poe was offended to hear that Allan had remarried without telling him or even inviting him to the ceremony. Poe wrote to Allan detailing all the wrongs Allan had committed against him and threatened to get himself expelled from the academy. After only eight months at West Point Poe was thrown out, but he soon published yet another book.
Broke and alone, Poe turned to Baltimore, his late father’s home, and called upon relatives in the city. One of Poe’s cousins robbed him in the night, but another relative, Poe’s aunt Maria Clemm, became a new mother to him and welcomed him into her home. Clemm’s daughter Virginia first acted as a courier to carry letters to Poe’s lady loves but soon became the object of his desire.
While Poe was in Baltimore, Allan died, leaving Poe out of his will, which did, however, provide for an illegitimate child who Allan had never seen. At that point Poe was living in poverty, but had started publishing his short stories, one of which won a contest sponsored by the Saturday Visitor. The connections Poe established through the contest allowed him to publish more stories and to eventually gain an editorial position at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. It was at this magazine that Poe finally found his life’s work as a magazine writer.
Within a year Poe helped make the Messenger the most popular magazine in the south with his sensational stories as well as with his scathing book reviews. Poe soon developed a reputation as a fearless critic who not only attacked an author’s work but also insulted the author and the northern literary establishment. Poe targeted some of the most famous writers in the country. One of his victims was the anthologist and editor Rufus Griswold.
At the age of twenty-seven, Poe brought Maria and Virginia Clemm to Richmond and married his Virginia, who was not yet fourteen. The marriage proved a happy one, and the family is said to have enjoyed singing together at night. Virginia expressed her devotion to her husband in a Valentine poem now in the collection of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and Poe celebrated the joys of married life in his poem “Eulalie.”
Dissatisfied with his low pay and lack of editorial control at the Messenger, Poe moved to New York City. In the wake of the financial crisis known as the “Panic of 1837,” Poe struggled to find magazine work and wrote his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.
After a year in New York, Poe moved to Philadelphia in 1838 and wrote for a number of different magazines. He served as editor of Burton’s and then Graham’s magazines while continuing to sell articles to Alexander’s Weekly Messenger and other journals. In spite of his growing fame, Poe was still barely able to make a living. For the publication of his first book of short stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, he was only paid with twenty-five free copies of his book. He would soon become a champion for the cause of higher wages for writers as well as for an international copyright law. To change the face of the magazine industry, he proposed starting his own journal, but he failed to find the necessary funding.
In the face of poverty Poe was still able to find solace at home with his wife and mother-in-law, but tragedy struck in 1842 when Poe’s wife contracted tuberculosis, the disease that had already claimed Poe’s mother, brother, and foster mother.
Always in search of better opportunities, Poe moved to New York again in 1844 and introduced himself to the city by perpetrating a hoax. His “news story” of a balloon trip across the ocean caused a sensation, and the public rushed to read everything about it—until Poe revealed that he had fooled them all.
The January 1845 publication of The Raven made Poe a household name. He was now famous enough to draw large crowds to his lectures, and he was beginning to demand better pay for his work. He published two books that year, and briefly lived his dream of running his own magazine when he bought out the owners of the Broadway Journal. The failure of the venture, his wife’s deteriorating health, and rumors spreading about Poe’s relationship with a married woman, drove him out of the city in 1846. At this time he moved to a tiny cottage in the country. It was there, in the winter of 1847 that Virginia died at the age of twenty-four. Poe was devastated, and was unable to write for months. His critics assumed he would soon be dead. They were right. Poe only lived another two years and spent much of that time traveling from one city to the next giving lectures and finding backers for his latest proposed magazine project to be called The Stylus.
While on lecture tour in Lowell, Massachusetts, Poe met and befriended Nancy Richmond. His idealized and platonic love of her inspired some of his greatest poetry, including “For Annie.” Since she remained married and unattainable, Poe attempted to marry the poetess Sarah Helen Whitman in Providence, but the engagement lasted only about one month. In Richmond he found his first fiancée Elmira Royster Shelton was now a widow, so began to court her again. Before he left Richmond on a trip to Philadelphia he considered himself engaged to her, and her letters from the time imply that she felt the same way. On the way to Philadelphia, Poe stopped in Baltimore and disappeared for five days.
He was found in the bar room of a public house that was being used as a polling place for an election. The magazine editor Joseph Snodgrass sent Poe to Washington College Hospital, where Poe spent the last days of his life far from home and surrounded by strangers. Neither Poe’s mother-in-law nor his fiancée knew what had become of him until they read about it in the newspapers. Poe died on October 7, 1849 at the age of forty. The exact cause of Poe’s death remains a mystery.
Days after Poe’s death, his literary rival Rufus Griswold (1815-1857) wrote a libelous obituary of the author in a misguided attempt at revenge for some of the offensive things Poe had said and written about him. Griswold followed the obituary with a memoir in which he portrayed Poe as a drunken, womanizing madman with no morals and no friends. Griswold’s attacks were meant to cause the public to dismiss Poe and his works, but the biography had exactly the opposite effect and instead drove the sales of Poe’s books higher than they had ever been during the author’s lifetime. Griswold’s distorted image of Poe created the Poe legend that lives to this day while Griswold is only remembered (if at all) as Poe’s first biographer.
Poe is known as “the Father of the Murder Mystery”. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), creator of Sherlock Holmes, borrowed heavily from Poe’s writing when giving voice to his famous detective. This is also true of any later author who has written mystery stories. This is a very unique style of writing which Poe was very talented at producing.
Like many geniuses, Poe had his own personality quirks. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can make having a relationship difficult. Based upon his biography, he had several difficulties in his relationships, but he was certainly a very talented man. His stories have been read by numerous generations. There have also been parodies made of Poe’s work.
For example, in the US television show “The Munsters” which aired in the 1960s, there was a cuckoo clock in the family’s living room which was actually the home of a raven. Instead of hearing “cuckoo” every hour, the family would hear the raven say, “never more”, which was clearly parodying Poe’s famous story, The Raven.
In the US, we would now refer to such works as “psychological thrillers”. This requires a certain writing style and an author who understands the working of the human mind. The human mind is a very interesting thing to examine and we really do not understand its workings.
What brought about the death of this famous writer? There is much speculation regarding this issue. Theories range from alcoholism to Poe being murdered. The University of Maryland Medical Center actually conducted an investigation into his death. In an analysis almost 147 years after his death, doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center believe that writer Edgar Allan Poe may have died as a result of rabies, not from complications of alcoholism. Poe's medical case was reviewed by R. Michael Benitez, M.D., a cardiologist at the University of Maryland Medical Center. His review is published in the September 1996 issue of Maryland Medical Journal.
"No one can say conclusively that Poe died of rabies, since there was no autopsy after his death," says Dr. Benitez, who is also an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "However, the historical accounts of Poe's condition in the hospital a few days before his death point to a strong possibility that he had rabies."
Poe was 40 years old when he died on October 7, 1849. He had traveled by train from Richmond, Virginia to Baltimore a few days earlier, on September 28. While in Richmond, he had proposed marriage to a woman who would have become his second wife. (His first wife had died). Poe intended to continue on to Philadelphia to finalize some business when he became ill.
He was discovered lying unconscious on September 28 on a wooden plank outside Ryan's saloon on Lombard St. in Baltimore. He was taken to Washington College Hospital (now Church Hospital).
Historical accounts of his hospitalization indicate that at first he was delirious with tremors and hallucinations; he then slipped into a coma. He emerged from the coma, was calm and lucid, but then lapsed again into a delirious state, became combative, and required restraint. He died on his fourth day in the hospital. According to an account published in the Maryland Historical Magazine in December 1978, the Baltimore Commissioner of Health, Dr. J.F.C. Handel certified that the cause of Poe's death was "congestion of the brain."
In his analysis, Dr. Benitez examined all of the possible causes for delirium, which include trauma, vascular disorders in the brain, neurological problems such as epilepsy, and infections. Alcohol withdrawal is also a potential cause of tremors and delirium, and Poe was known to have abused alcohol and opiate drugs. However, the medical records indicate that Poe had abstained from alcohol for six months before his death, and there was no evidence of alcohol use when he was admitted.
"In addition, it is unusual for patients suffering from alcohol withdrawal to become acutely ill, recover for a brief time, and then worsen and die," says Dr. Benitez, who adds that withdrawal from opiates does not produce the same scenario of symptoms as Poe's illness.
Dr. Benitez says in the final stages of rabies, it is common for people to have periods of confusion that come and go, along with wide swings in pulse rate and other body functions, such as respiration and temperature. All of that occurred for Poe, according to medical records kept by John J. Moran, M.D. who cared for Poe in his final days. In addition, the median length of survival after the onset of serious symptoms is four days, which is exactly the number of days Poe was hospitalized before his death.
Poe's doctor also wrote that while in the hospital, Poe refused alcohol he was offered and drank water only with great difficulty. Dr. Benitez says that seems to be a symptom of hydrophobia, a fear of water, which is a classic sign of rabies.
Dr. Benitez theorizes that Poe may have gotten rabies from being bitten by one of his pets. He was known to have cats and other pets. Although there is no account that Poe had been bitten by an animal, it is interesting that in all the cases of human rabies in the United States from 1977 to 1994, people remembered being bitten in only 27 percent of those cases. In addition, people can have the infection for up to a year without major symptoms.
The Poe case was presented originally to Dr. Benitez as part of a weekly meeting of medical center physicians, called the Clinical Pathologic Conference. It is an exercise in which a complex case is presented without a diagnosis, and physicians discuss how they would determine a patient's condition and course of treatment. Dr. Benitez did not know that the patient in question at this particular conference was Edgar Allan Poe.
The idea to analyze Poe's death came from Philip A. Mackowiak, M.D., professor of medicine and vice-chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
"Poe's death is one of the most mysterious deaths in literary history, and it provided us with an interesting case in which to discuss many principles of medicine," says Dr. Mackowiak, who runs the weekly Clinical Pathologic Conference at the medical center.
Dr. Mackowiak agrees with Dr. Benitez that rabies was the most likely cause of Poe's death, based on the available evidence. He adds, though, that after Poe's death, his doctor went on the lecture circuit and gave varying accounts of the writer's final days. "The account on which Dr. Benitez based his findings was more consistent with rabies than with anything else, but the definitive cause of Poe's death will likely remain a mystery," says Dr. Mackowiak.
Edgar Allan Poe is buried in a cemetery next to Westminster Hall at Fayette and Greene Streets, just one block from the University of Maryland Medical Center.2
It appears that art imitates life. His own death was certainly mysterious. He was an American cultural icon who has become synonymous with murder and mystery and left this world with people asking, “What actually happened to him?” I believe that Poe could not have written a better story than was written by his own life.
End Notes
1) “Poe’s Life” http://www.poemuseum.org/life.php (accessed 6/1/12)
2) “Edgar Allan Poe Mystery” http://www.umm.edu/news/releases/news-releases-17.htm (written 9/24/96, accessed 6/2/12)
In the United States there are several authors who are considered cultural icons. Men such as Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) [1835-1910] and Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) would certainly qualify. Another author who would qualify as a cultural icon was Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849).
Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809. He was the second of three children. His brother, William Henry Leonard Poe, would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister, Rosalie Poe, would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business. By the age of thirteen, Poe had compiled enough poetry to publish a book, but his headmaster advised Allan against allowing this.
In 1826 Poe left Richmond to attend the University of Virginia, where he excelled in his classes while accumulating considerable debt. The miserly Allan had sent Poe to college with less than a third of the money he needed, and Poe soon took up gambling to raise money to pay his expenses. By the end of his first term Poe was so desperately poor that he burned his furniture to keep warm.
Humiliated by his poverty and furious with Allan for not providing enough funds in the first place, Poe returned to Richmond and visited the home of his fiancée Elmira Royster, only to discover that she had become engaged to another man in Poe’s absence. The heartbroken Poe’s last few months in the Allan mansion were punctuated with increasing hostility towards Allan until Poe finally stormed out of the home in a quixotic quest to become a great poet and to find adventure. He accomplished the first objective by publishing his first book Tamerlane when he was only eighteen, and to achieve the second goal he enlisted in the United States Army. Two years later he heard that Frances Allan, the only mother he had ever known, was dying of tuberculosis and wanted to see him before she died. By the time Poe returned to Richmond she had already been buried. Poe and Allan briefly reconciled, and Allan helped Poe gain an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Before going to West Point, Poe published another volume of poetry. While there, Poe was offended to hear that Allan had remarried without telling him or even inviting him to the ceremony. Poe wrote to Allan detailing all the wrongs Allan had committed against him and threatened to get himself expelled from the academy. After only eight months at West Point Poe was thrown out, but he soon published yet another book.
Broke and alone, Poe turned to Baltimore, his late father’s home, and called upon relatives in the city. One of Poe’s cousins robbed him in the night, but another relative, Poe’s aunt Maria Clemm, became a new mother to him and welcomed him into her home. Clemm’s daughter Virginia first acted as a courier to carry letters to Poe’s lady loves but soon became the object of his desire.
While Poe was in Baltimore, Allan died, leaving Poe out of his will, which did, however, provide for an illegitimate child who Allan had never seen. At that point Poe was living in poverty, but had started publishing his short stories, one of which won a contest sponsored by the Saturday Visitor. The connections Poe established through the contest allowed him to publish more stories and to eventually gain an editorial position at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. It was at this magazine that Poe finally found his life’s work as a magazine writer.
Within a year Poe helped make the Messenger the most popular magazine in the south with his sensational stories as well as with his scathing book reviews. Poe soon developed a reputation as a fearless critic who not only attacked an author’s work but also insulted the author and the northern literary establishment. Poe targeted some of the most famous writers in the country. One of his victims was the anthologist and editor Rufus Griswold.
At the age of twenty-seven, Poe brought Maria and Virginia Clemm to Richmond and married his Virginia, who was not yet fourteen. The marriage proved a happy one, and the family is said to have enjoyed singing together at night. Virginia expressed her devotion to her husband in a Valentine poem now in the collection of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and Poe celebrated the joys of married life in his poem “Eulalie.”
Dissatisfied with his low pay and lack of editorial control at the Messenger, Poe moved to New York City. In the wake of the financial crisis known as the “Panic of 1837,” Poe struggled to find magazine work and wrote his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.
After a year in New York, Poe moved to Philadelphia in 1838 and wrote for a number of different magazines. He served as editor of Burton’s and then Graham’s magazines while continuing to sell articles to Alexander’s Weekly Messenger and other journals. In spite of his growing fame, Poe was still barely able to make a living. For the publication of his first book of short stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, he was only paid with twenty-five free copies of his book. He would soon become a champion for the cause of higher wages for writers as well as for an international copyright law. To change the face of the magazine industry, he proposed starting his own journal, but he failed to find the necessary funding.
In the face of poverty Poe was still able to find solace at home with his wife and mother-in-law, but tragedy struck in 1842 when Poe’s wife contracted tuberculosis, the disease that had already claimed Poe’s mother, brother, and foster mother.
Always in search of better opportunities, Poe moved to New York again in 1844 and introduced himself to the city by perpetrating a hoax. His “news story” of a balloon trip across the ocean caused a sensation, and the public rushed to read everything about it—until Poe revealed that he had fooled them all.
The January 1845 publication of The Raven made Poe a household name. He was now famous enough to draw large crowds to his lectures, and he was beginning to demand better pay for his work. He published two books that year, and briefly lived his dream of running his own magazine when he bought out the owners of the Broadway Journal. The failure of the venture, his wife’s deteriorating health, and rumors spreading about Poe’s relationship with a married woman, drove him out of the city in 1846. At this time he moved to a tiny cottage in the country. It was there, in the winter of 1847 that Virginia died at the age of twenty-four. Poe was devastated, and was unable to write for months. His critics assumed he would soon be dead. They were right. Poe only lived another two years and spent much of that time traveling from one city to the next giving lectures and finding backers for his latest proposed magazine project to be called The Stylus.
While on lecture tour in Lowell, Massachusetts, Poe met and befriended Nancy Richmond. His idealized and platonic love of her inspired some of his greatest poetry, including “For Annie.” Since she remained married and unattainable, Poe attempted to marry the poetess Sarah Helen Whitman in Providence, but the engagement lasted only about one month. In Richmond he found his first fiancée Elmira Royster Shelton was now a widow, so began to court her again. Before he left Richmond on a trip to Philadelphia he considered himself engaged to her, and her letters from the time imply that she felt the same way. On the way to Philadelphia, Poe stopped in Baltimore and disappeared for five days.
He was found in the bar room of a public house that was being used as a polling place for an election. The magazine editor Joseph Snodgrass sent Poe to Washington College Hospital, where Poe spent the last days of his life far from home and surrounded by strangers. Neither Poe’s mother-in-law nor his fiancée knew what had become of him until they read about it in the newspapers. Poe died on October 7, 1849 at the age of forty. The exact cause of Poe’s death remains a mystery.
Days after Poe’s death, his literary rival Rufus Griswold (1815-1857) wrote a libelous obituary of the author in a misguided attempt at revenge for some of the offensive things Poe had said and written about him. Griswold followed the obituary with a memoir in which he portrayed Poe as a drunken, womanizing madman with no morals and no friends. Griswold’s attacks were meant to cause the public to dismiss Poe and his works, but the biography had exactly the opposite effect and instead drove the sales of Poe’s books higher than they had ever been during the author’s lifetime. Griswold’s distorted image of Poe created the Poe legend that lives to this day while Griswold is only remembered (if at all) as Poe’s first biographer.
Poe is known as “the Father of the Murder Mystery”. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), creator of Sherlock Holmes, borrowed heavily from Poe’s writing when giving voice to his famous detective. This is also true of any later author who has written mystery stories. This is a very unique style of writing which Poe was very talented at producing.
Like many geniuses, Poe had his own personality quirks. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can make having a relationship difficult. Based upon his biography, he had several difficulties in his relationships, but he was certainly a very talented man. His stories have been read by numerous generations. There have also been parodies made of Poe’s work.
For example, in the US television show “The Munsters” which aired in the 1960s, there was a cuckoo clock in the family’s living room which was actually the home of a raven. Instead of hearing “cuckoo” every hour, the family would hear the raven say, “never more”, which was clearly parodying Poe’s famous story, The Raven.
In the US, we would now refer to such works as “psychological thrillers”. This requires a certain writing style and an author who understands the working of the human mind. The human mind is a very interesting thing to examine and we really do not understand its workings.
What brought about the death of this famous writer? There is much speculation regarding this issue. Theories range from alcoholism to Poe being murdered. The University of Maryland Medical Center actually conducted an investigation into his death. In an analysis almost 147 years after his death, doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center believe that writer Edgar Allan Poe may have died as a result of rabies, not from complications of alcoholism. Poe's medical case was reviewed by R. Michael Benitez, M.D., a cardiologist at the University of Maryland Medical Center. His review is published in the September 1996 issue of Maryland Medical Journal.
"No one can say conclusively that Poe died of rabies, since there was no autopsy after his death," says Dr. Benitez, who is also an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "However, the historical accounts of Poe's condition in the hospital a few days before his death point to a strong possibility that he had rabies."
Poe was 40 years old when he died on October 7, 1849. He had traveled by train from Richmond, Virginia to Baltimore a few days earlier, on September 28. While in Richmond, he had proposed marriage to a woman who would have become his second wife. (His first wife had died). Poe intended to continue on to Philadelphia to finalize some business when he became ill.
He was discovered lying unconscious on September 28 on a wooden plank outside Ryan's saloon on Lombard St. in Baltimore. He was taken to Washington College Hospital (now Church Hospital).
Historical accounts of his hospitalization indicate that at first he was delirious with tremors and hallucinations; he then slipped into a coma. He emerged from the coma, was calm and lucid, but then lapsed again into a delirious state, became combative, and required restraint. He died on his fourth day in the hospital. According to an account published in the Maryland Historical Magazine in December 1978, the Baltimore Commissioner of Health, Dr. J.F.C. Handel certified that the cause of Poe's death was "congestion of the brain."
In his analysis, Dr. Benitez examined all of the possible causes for delirium, which include trauma, vascular disorders in the brain, neurological problems such as epilepsy, and infections. Alcohol withdrawal is also a potential cause of tremors and delirium, and Poe was known to have abused alcohol and opiate drugs. However, the medical records indicate that Poe had abstained from alcohol for six months before his death, and there was no evidence of alcohol use when he was admitted.
"In addition, it is unusual for patients suffering from alcohol withdrawal to become acutely ill, recover for a brief time, and then worsen and die," says Dr. Benitez, who adds that withdrawal from opiates does not produce the same scenario of symptoms as Poe's illness.
Dr. Benitez says in the final stages of rabies, it is common for people to have periods of confusion that come and go, along with wide swings in pulse rate and other body functions, such as respiration and temperature. All of that occurred for Poe, according to medical records kept by John J. Moran, M.D. who cared for Poe in his final days. In addition, the median length of survival after the onset of serious symptoms is four days, which is exactly the number of days Poe was hospitalized before his death.
Poe's doctor also wrote that while in the hospital, Poe refused alcohol he was offered and drank water only with great difficulty. Dr. Benitez says that seems to be a symptom of hydrophobia, a fear of water, which is a classic sign of rabies.
Dr. Benitez theorizes that Poe may have gotten rabies from being bitten by one of his pets. He was known to have cats and other pets. Although there is no account that Poe had been bitten by an animal, it is interesting that in all the cases of human rabies in the United States from 1977 to 1994, people remembered being bitten in only 27 percent of those cases. In addition, people can have the infection for up to a year without major symptoms.
The Poe case was presented originally to Dr. Benitez as part of a weekly meeting of medical center physicians, called the Clinical Pathologic Conference. It is an exercise in which a complex case is presented without a diagnosis, and physicians discuss how they would determine a patient's condition and course of treatment. Dr. Benitez did not know that the patient in question at this particular conference was Edgar Allan Poe.
The idea to analyze Poe's death came from Philip A. Mackowiak, M.D., professor of medicine and vice-chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
"Poe's death is one of the most mysterious deaths in literary history, and it provided us with an interesting case in which to discuss many principles of medicine," says Dr. Mackowiak, who runs the weekly Clinical Pathologic Conference at the medical center.
Dr. Mackowiak agrees with Dr. Benitez that rabies was the most likely cause of Poe's death, based on the available evidence. He adds, though, that after Poe's death, his doctor went on the lecture circuit and gave varying accounts of the writer's final days. "The account on which Dr. Benitez based his findings was more consistent with rabies than with anything else, but the definitive cause of Poe's death will likely remain a mystery," says Dr. Mackowiak.
Edgar Allan Poe is buried in a cemetery next to Westminster Hall at Fayette and Greene Streets, just one block from the University of Maryland Medical Center.2
It appears that art imitates life. His own death was certainly mysterious. He was an American cultural icon who has become synonymous with murder and mystery and left this world with people asking, “What actually happened to him?” I believe that Poe could not have written a better story than was written by his own life.
End Notes
1) “Poe’s Life” http://www.poemuseum.org/life.php (accessed 6/1/12)
2) “Edgar Allan Poe Mystery” http://www.umm.edu/news/releases/news-releases-17.htm (written 9/24/96, accessed 6/2/12)
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