In music, a similarly circuitous reaction occurred. It has not been until recently, however, that we have come to realize that in using condensed, overlaid narratives to dramatize the troubled mind, Poe proved himself American after all by transforming a genre that eventually became a seminal form in American literature–the short story. Hoffmann, Poe used heavily symbolic narratives to explore our nightmares, and electrified such writers as Charles Baudelaire. Rather, what interested Poe, and what in his writings spoke to many writers and artists especially in France and Russia, was the human mind in general, the psychological realm shortly to be explored by Freud, the Symbolists, and the Surrealists. His neurotic characters and vague settings indeed did not seem “American,” but that doesn’t mean that Poe was Europhilic either. It took Europe to recognize and convince America of Poe’s originality and significance. Poe, whose writings have little to do with forging a national American identity, has traditionally been dismissed as derivatively European (though we might wonder how many pages of Poe a young American today is likely to have read, compared to pages of Emerson.) In the shaping of an American literary tradition, the Puritan legacy, the naïve optimism of a frontier mentality, the rhetorical majesty of Emerson and the epic power of Melville, have seemed far more pervasive and influential. But precisely his flirtation with the bizarre have prevented Poe from being widely accepted as a serious force in American letters. Though Poe wrote in a variety of genres, it is the author of horror and suspense, the creator of “Lenore,” that still has a grip on the popular imagination. Poe has also done very well in Hollywood, in large measure as a result of the advocacy of director Roger Corman and actor Vincent Price. American school children for generations have been exposed to “The Raven” and the Tales of Mystery and Imagination. This is not to say that Poe has not become a household word.
It is one of the great ironies in literary history that he has had far more influence in Europe than he has had America, his native land. Written for the concert Tales of Edgar Allen Poe, performed on at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.Įdgar Allan Poe died 150 years and eight days ago.
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