Poe boy

I’m not a big fan of Edgar Allan Poe, whose 215th birthday this would’ve been today. I discovered him, pretty much, via H.P. Lovecraft, whose Supernatural Horror in Literature devotes an entire chapter to him, so I thought he had to be something special. So I went in search of a book by him at the library, found one, read it… did not find it to be anything special. I spent years being mystified by Poe, whose historical importance I could appreciate but that was all; I was particularly put off by the fatuous humour of some items. A few years ago I tried a re-read, this time Penguin’s Portable Edgar Allan Poe collection of his stories, verse, and various non-fiction. And I think I understood him at last. Reading the critical work in particular, I think I finally got where Poe was coming from. But I still didn’t like his work as such (and I found much of the poetry actively irritating, particularly that technique he has of repeating lines with slight variations), and I may be doomed to never do so.

But look at him. Look at that picture of him, apparently taken in 1849 not long before he died. He looks EXACTLY like the sort of person who would write his stories. If you were going to be the pioneer of the short macabre tale, you’d want to look like Poe did, the face that illustrates what he said about terror being “not of Germany but of the soul”… perfectly untidy hair, haunted withdrawn eyes, quite rectangular moustache, that necktie and somehow disreputable-looking coat… it adds up to a middle-aged goth icon by itself. Better than his stories as far as I’m concerned.