Edgar Allan Poe and his death theme

Edgar Allan Poe and his death theme

Death is one of the eternal themes of literature, in this passage I want to introduce the death theme in his works and the relationship between the death and his life experience.

Note1: paraphrase notes

What kind of reasons lead to Poe so fascinated death and death beauty? Poe has a very misery childhood, when he was two years old, his father died and one year latter, his mother also passed away because of tuberculosis. There are two important changes for his latter life. In his letter to his friend, he says, his mother was very beautiful in his memory and he was too young to enjoy his parents love, so he always pursue the love of parents, and this pursue become the most heavy burden for him, especially the love of mother. And in his life, he prefer keep the relationship with women who can play the part of his mother. There are several women occurred in his life, but unfortunately, they all leave him alone because of death. The fist person he fell in loved is his friend’s mother, in other words, this woman is Poe’s first love, and she likes his mother kind, beautiful, and so on. He also create poem “To Helen” for her, but one year latter, she died. After four years latter, his foster mother also died. In 1836, his beloved wife died. These three women are all died of tuberculosis.

He experienced so much death, and his mother and his young wife all died of 24 years old, that is a very young age, the beautiful age in women life, for Poe, this is a very heavy attack to him. Now, we can realize the true reason why does Poe always write death and beauty in his works.

聂方冲.爱伦坡创作中的美女之死[J].江西师范大学学报, 2006( 10).

Note 2 paraphrase notes

According to Cao Man,

Allan Poe writes most death theme works for his reader, and these death theme works can be divided two categories, one of death theme is beautiful women death and the other is other people’s death. “Beautiful women’s death is the most poetic materials of Poe pursued, it make us readers feel agony and pity, give us melancholy and misery felling. While other’s death is write for make a atmosphere of terror, the aim is shock our heart, they make us feel terror, make us hair standing on end, and give us a huge mystery atmosphere, in this death theme, we can feel author’ s thirsty about life and the pursuit of love.

曹曼. 爱伦·坡死亡主题的内涵读解[J]. 华中师范大学学报,2000

Note3 direct quotation notes

According to Zhao Ting ting,

Poe’s poetry is full of fantasy elements, which is mainly because of his pursuit of the aesthetics of the beauty of death. The world after the death is the most wonderful and brilliant. The utmost restraint of beauty is death. On the one hand, death can cause people’s sadness on the

Disappearance of beauty; it can also inspire people’s regrets and cherishment for beauty. It guides people to meditate on the glory of the other world and to ponder the essence of immortality.

赵亭亭.论埃德加·爱伦·坡诗歌创作中的死亡美学[J].山东师范大学硕士论文,2010

Note4 summary notes

In his article, He tries to realize eternal beauty and express his love for life in writing. Poe successfully puts His aesthetic principle "poetry for poetry's sake" into practice through his depicting beautiful woman's deaths in poems. In his poems, through describe the women’s beauty, he want to express one ultimate beauty. Such as his famous poem“To Helen”，Helen is the embodiment of ancients classical beauty, here we can feel Poe’ s pursuit of this beauty. And Poe wants to through describe death beauty not to express his negative emotion, the destination is awake people’s thirsty of life, and express the eternal beauty. And the most important is he wants to inspire people face death calmly, and taste the real beauty of life, furthermore cherish life.

邹霞爱伦·坡诗歌中死亡主题的生命内涵大理学院外国语学院

Note5 combination

About Poe’s works death

Rebecca Ebeling thinks,“Poe’s my sterious felling of death and the illusion of afterlife were all reflected in his poetry,these poetry are all reflected his aesthetic view.”

By giving a new implied meaning of death, Poe’s poetry bey ond the social life, leading readers roam in the aesthetic world, and let readers enjoy the heart shock trough eternal beauty, moreover,realized life meaning deeply.

Cao man says,“We can detect Poe’s fierily pursuit of beauty life and the planning for the future through his desolate terror description about death and the contempt of cruel real word.” though his works full of despair,lost, unconcerned, sadness, fear and so on, this exactly implied his longer and pursuit about love. That is the real meaning of his death theme.

Now,we may realized Poe’s works and his death theme. In my mind, Poe was lack of love and care, he writes lots of melancholy poetry and terror novels, this not mean his inner world is unhealthy, he writes this just want to express his fearful about this cold world, the beautiful women he loved were passed away gradually. He was too isolate to live in the world alone. He writes this works, in other word, expressed his thirsty about happiness life.

〔1〕林书舟，凌海衡.海伦意象新辩：读爱伦坡的《致海伦》〔J〕.名作欣赏，2010（3）：93.

〔2〕曹曼.爱伦·坡死亡主题的内涵解读〔J〕.华中师范大学学报：人文社会科学版，2000，39（2）：63-6