Poe's The Raven - A Masterpiece of Literary Inspiration and Horror
Poe’s The Raven has served to inspire countless artistic works as well as a myriad number of literary readings regarding the themes and events of the masterpiece. The gist: a young man grieving the loss of his beloved – a woman named Lenore – is visited by a mysterious guest, a raven seemingly capable of human speech. However, the young man soon finds that the bird could – or would – only mutter “Nevermore,” which drives him despondent and nearly mad at the end of the poem. The piece has been acclaimed as epitomizing the intensity of loss in light of a loved one’s passing in verse, and as one of the first true poems of the horror genre. And to date, it still remains as a rich inspiration of newer and more contemporary readings, all of them adding to the piece’s already-rich history.
Adams' Classical Raven Lore and Poe's Raven
Before delving into such contemporary readings, it would be good to discuss more traditional ones to establish a part of the history of scholarship around the poem. A classic example would be Adams’, who contends for a more or less straightforward interpretation of the text. Using a comparative model, he notes the symbolism in the play and compares it with other classical texts that might have served as its inspiration. He cites raven lore from the Hebrews and from Ovid, noting that these present the raven as an unfaithful creature that turns black as divine punishment. He also draws from Classical Mythology, where Pallas, the god of wisdom, was the raven’s master, and from Norse Mythology, where Odin owns two ravens that represented body and soul. But the most appropriate tradition to use, he notes, was that the onomatopoeic transcription of raven sounds in Greek was “cras” which also meant “tomorrow.”
Adams went on to suggest that the raven was, in fact, a symbol of hope, and that the bird’s message of “Nevermore” in the poem was actually a reversal of this trope. He claims that as the message of the bird becomes more and more private in the young man’s mind, the “ironic dimension and range of application of the… symbol [broadens], improving its logic and consistency, enriching its significance, raising it above a mere macabre hallucination” (Adams 53). Of course, one could be forgiven for disagreeing with Adam’s rather forced interpretation of the bird’s message; part of the reason Poe used a raven and not a parrot was because he thought it would be more in line with the poem’s macabre themes (Runcie 79). But even more contrived, it seems, is the relationship between the poem and the texts that he mentions. Other than a presumption of reference, there seems to be no natural connection between these, and the interpretation seems to gloss over the fact that the raven’s role across each story is dramatically different.
Freedman's Poe's THE RAVEN
Unlike Adam’s piece, more recent readings of the poem tend to veer away from tying classical and historical references in their interpretation of the text. Instead, they focus on its message, that of a man driven mad by grief and a bird confirming his loss. Some, like Freedman, take it a step further and challenge this assertion itself. For his part, he claims that the poem, especially the bird’s response “Nevermore,” has often been read too simplistically. He avers that “Closer scrutiny of the exchange [between the young man and the raven]… redirects our attention to the poem’s preoccupation with the problem of knowledge and underscores Poe’s equivocal if not nihilistic treatment of it” (Freedman “Poe’s THE RAVEN” 148). By this he meant that the reader and the young man’s suspicions of the bird were correct: that its stolid replies of “Nevermore” were utterly mechanical, unconscious. He notes that what was happening in the mind of the bird was of little consequence, and that the shifts taking place in the mind of the young man were of greater importance.
Rather than a direct response to the young man’s questions, Freedman claims that the bird’s six-fold “Nevermore” retorts should be treated as a refusal to answer. Whereas more traditional interpretations would describe the scene as the raven saying “No, there will nevermore be consolation for your grief; no, you will nevermore clasp your sainted maiden,” Freedman suggests that a closer inspection of the young man’s pleas toward the end reveal “that the reply is less to the question itself than to the request to be told” (“Poe’s THE RAVEN” 148). He paints a picture of the young man who, in his desperation, was entreating with the raven to tell him what he wanted to hear – that he will see Lenore again in some way, in some form. It seems to me that his statements of “tell me,” “tell this soul,” and “tell me truly” in four separate places indicate that his problem was not that the bird told him that he could never see Lenore again. It was that the bird would “Nevermore” tell him anything that he wanted to hear, denying him the solace of a meaningful response in light of life’s meaninglessness after her passing.
Freedman’s “Poe’s “Raven”: The Word That Is an Answer “Nevermore”
On that note, it can be said that The Raven is more than just a story of endless grief; that true to its macabre overtones, it is also a tale of horror. But horror in view of what? In another essay, Freedman suggests that it is horror of death and utter meaninglessness, using the theme of “namelessness” at the core of his argument. He draws attention to a peculiar paradox at the beginning of the story, i.e., the fact that Lenore is referred to as “nameless here forevermore,” and yet named multiple times till the end of the poem – “That which will be nameless here forevermore will be repeatedly named” (Freedman “The Word” 25).
For Freedman, this was an active attempt of the poem to destabilize truth and meaning: “That which will never again occur will reoccur almost instantly and then repeatedly as eternal prohibition becomes temporal fulfillment” (“The Word” 25). He sees Lenore as the epitomization of meaning and beauty, who in the Nietzschean sense, is both lost and beloved, both named and unnamed. Freedman argues that on a figurative level, Lenore’s named namelessness is a literary device meant to establish the theme of horrifying meaninglessness; that “the lost woman bears the name that is equivalent to namelessness. All that may be named is that which has no name” (“The Word” 26). The object of his search being a paradox, the young man’s quest is cast into futility: that which he most desires is unattainable, if not illusory. My own interpretation of this scene confirms this: his attempt to gain knowledge of Lenore by talking with a mysterious raven, taken symbolically, is an attempt to siphon meaning out of meaninglessness, life out of death.
H. Jones’ Poe, ‘The Raven,’ and the Anonymous Young Man
Absurdity, Jones claims, is at the core of the poem. Its use of a talking raven and the young man’s line of questioning might be absurd enough to get the reader to pay heed instantly, but these are not the only things “wrong” with the poem. In fact, the entire setting is wrong: “The window, simultaneously guarded by a lattice and a shutter; the physical impossibility of the raven sitting on a "pallid" bust (obviously, then, with the light in front of both bird and bust) and yet casting a shadow on the floor” and a few such other details make the reader question the actuality of its events (H. Jones 129).
Jones, however, remains convinced that such absurdities are intentional and that the physical absurdities found in the poem tie in neatly with the thematic absurdities found in the poem itself. These thematic absurdities manifest themselves in the young man’s motives, namely his “thirst for self-torture; superstition; and some under-current, however indefinite, of meaning” (H. Jones 130). Indeed, the young man’s pleas with the bird betray his descent into madness, his newfound belief in the supernatural, and his desperation for meaning. As Jones notes, the narrative “moves… into a world in which seraphim swing censers, the demented hope for an answer from total darkness, a crazed young man asks unanswerable questions of a fowl, and, as a weird climax… begs the bird to take its beak from out his (the student's) heart, albeit the bird is safely ensconced over the doorway” (131). In that world where stray ravens are prophet-devils, reality itself is absurd, which explains the surreality of the entire setting. In that regard, I believe that the story lends itself to be taken less as an account of actual events, but as a figurative expression of the young man’s mind, i.e. his psychology in light of a grave loss.
Runcie’s Dignifying Signifying: A Meditation on Interpretation
Whereas Freedman and Jones recognize that the poem could have a figurative aspect in tandem with the physical, others, like Runcie, do away with the notion of a physical component altogether. In an attempt to demonstrate the nature and the discipline of literary interpretation, Runcie proceeds to interpret everything in The Raven as having no grounding in the real, only symbolic significance. He argues against the ‘basic interpretation’ of the poem as a narrative about a simple, real circumstance of loss, a trained raven, and boundless grief in the young man’s musings.
Instead, he champions an allegorical reading of the poem, noting that its elements need to be read, not as real –although they can pass off as such – but as surreal in a purely representational way. He takes notice of the fact that the entire narrative might have only been dreamt by the narrator who was “nearly napping” at the beginning of the poem. Next, he notes the strange imagery and their even stranger descriptions (e.g. a gloating lamplight), as well as the intensity of the emotions that the narrator experiences. These, he says, point to the narrator’s creative representation of a real-life struggle with loss, and the transformation that accompanied it. This transformation is evident in the young man’s changing moods and dispositions from stanzas 1 through 18, where he goes from despondent, to ironic, to desperate, to angry. Runcie states that the ending, in a way, is a kind of enlightenment, where “The scholar/lover learns he has no future; his 'soul' is 'dead'. Passion is 'fatal'… the raven's shadow forever crosses or cancels the scholar/lover's soul, and he remains 'forever' in the present, suffering in his room or tomb – a death-in-life” (Runcie 82).
Kelly’s The Figures of Das Ding in Poe’s “The Raven”
No review of interpretations would be complete without a psychoanalytic reading of the poem’s elements. One such analysis is put forward by Kelly, who relates Poe’s Raven to the Freudian-Lacanian concept of ‘das Ding’. Das Ding is described as “not nothing, but literally is not… [and] characterized by its absence, its strangeness” (Kelly 116). It is a lost thing that people remember, but only vaguely in the recesses of their minds, creating a melancholy that appears to have no cause or reason. And “As a lost object, das Ding designates for the subject a mythical state of wholeness on the horizon of its being. While das Ding will never be found again, its effects are felt as an organizing principle of psychic life and desire” (Kelly 117). Kelly ties das Ding to the melancholy experienced by the narrator, and to the glorified, almost sacred status awarded to the Raven by the young man. As the embodiment of das Ding, the Raven is a signifier without a signified, a phantom of loss that remains nameless. In a manner of speaking, it is an enemy that the young man could not defeat, and more than that it becomes a guiding principle in his life – a shadow he cannot rise above from. As the poem’s das Ding, the Raven is both hated and loved, is familiar yet forgotten, is a devil yet a prophet still.
P. Jones “Nevermore!”: Non-Normative Desire and Queer Temporality in Poe’s “The Raven.”
Jones’ piece is yet another psychoanalytic reading of The Raven, only this time it is read under the lens of queer theory. The essay uses Poe’s work as a platform to criticize modern trends toward reproductive futurism, which precludes couples that reject this heteronormative prescription and labels them queer. Jones identifies the raven as an epitome of the queer against white heteronormativity: sexed as male against its will, ebony in coloration, etc. According to Jones, the absence of Lenore has left a space in the young man’s heart that needs filling, and the occupancy of the raven, this “inappropriate replacement” that transgresses lines of “sex, species, race, and property status” was unwelcome at first. The young man soon acclimates to this newness, however, eventually learning to live in harmony with the raven.
Mirarchi’s Catholic Eschatology, Mariology, and Liturgy in “Morella,” “The Raven,” and “Hymns.”
Whereas others are content to dwell in the figurative and psychoanalytical themes expressed in the poem, Mirarchi explores a totally different direction. He claims that The Raven relies on Catholic in key respects. For example, the bird that he describes as hailing from “the saintly days of yore” is quickly depicted as “a prince of evil” that made “no obeisance” and in that way paralleled Satan. Next, there is also the mention of Seraphim swinging censers which Mirarchi identifies with the Elevation of the Host. But more than that, he notes that Poe relied specifically on Catholic eschatology in his damnation of the young man by making him faithless. This is seen in his rhetorical evocation: “Is there no balm in Gilead?” which he himself denies. His reward? “no rest from the memories of Lenore, no healing of those horrors, no grasping the “sainted maiden” ever again even in the afterlife, and an eternity of a pierced heart rent asunder by a dark lie without the slightest consolation” (Mirarchi 195).
Conclusion
The multitude of interpretations that could be assigned to The Raven may have to do with something fundamental hidden in its structure. Whether it is the universality of its themes, the variety of its elements, or the quirks of its settings, plot, and characters, it has made the poem a rich source of inspiration for people trying to peer into the past and for people trying to look for answers for the future. It almost seems like it is a mirror, reflecting the things shown to it, allowing for a closer inspection of things, be they real or imagined. Needless to say, Poe’s legacy in The Raven will only continue to grow as scholarship finds newer and fresher ways of looking into the text.
Works Cited
Adams, John F. “Classical Raven Lore and Poe’s Raven.” Poe Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 1972, p. 53.
Freedman, William. “Poe’s “Raven”: The Word That Is an Answer “Nevermore.” Poe Studies, vol. 29, no. 1, 1996, pp. 23-31.
Freedman, William. “Poe’s THE RAVEN.” The Explicator, vol. 57, no. 3, 1999, pp. 146-148.
Jones, Howard Mumford. “Poe, ‘The Raven,’ and the Anonymous Young Man. Western Humanities Review, vol. 9, no. 2, 1955, pp. 127-138.
Jones, Paul Christian. ““Nevermore!”: Non-Normative Desire and Queer Temporality in Poe’s “The Raven.” Poe Studies, vol. 49, 2016, pp. 80-98.
Kelly, Sean James. “The Figures of Das Ding in Poe’s “The Raven.”” The Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 17, no. 2, 2016, pp. 117-141.
Mirarchi, Stephen. “Catholic Eschatology, Mariology, and Liturgy in “Morella,” “The Raven,” and “Hymns.”” The Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 16, no. 2, 2015, pp. 184-203.
Runcie, C.A. “Dignifying Signifying: A Meditation on Interpretation.” The Journal of the Sydney University Arts Association, vol. 15, 1990, pp. 71-86.
