Hello
my dears. I am the Raven who speaks to you.
As a
brazilian, from the perspective of someone born and raised in this tropical
country, I feel comfortable saying that “The Raven” was and continues to be
Poe's most influential poem for our people. It received the attention of important
literary figures, who had a deep, notorious love for the text. The most
responsible for bringing “The Raven” to us and, putting Poe on our radar was
without a doubt the always admirable Machado de Assis, for whom I have deep
respect (mainly for timeless works such as As Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas
and O Alienista). He was the first to introduce it to us, publishing his portuguese
translation in 1883. After him, others followed: Emílio de Menezes paraphrased
the text already in the 20th century, in a sequence of eighteen sonnets, in
1917. In 1924, Fernando Pessoa present his translation, appreciated by many. In
this list of translators, Gondin da Fonseca (1926), Milton Amado (1944,
particularly my favorite version), Benedicto Lopes (1956), Cabral do Nascimento
(1972), Alexei Bueno (1980) and Aluysio Mendonça Sampaio (1998) also gave their
contributions.
So
many names only prove the fascination and admiration that “The Raven” awakens
in brazilian readers. Something to be expected from a text that, despite its
otherworldly aura, is filled with inspiring musicality, as well as incredibly
precise rhythm and meter. “The Raven” is
not only appreciated artistically speaking: it is also a source of study,
bibliographic material that serves as didactic content in technical and aesthetic lessons. “The Raven” is a poem that, in
addition to building once and for all the gothic style that characterizes Poe,
makes explicit all the melancholy rooted in his writings. And I appreciate
that. To understand a little more clearly where his mind and heart were when he
wrote the poem, it might be necessary to remember the ups and downs he was
experiencing until the moment he finally managed to publish it. It is important
to say that the precise date of when Poe wrote “The Raven” is unknown: what we
do know is the publication date, January 29, 1845, in the New York Evening
Mirror. The poem was previously rejected on more than one occasion.
The
period, mainly the last five years prior to publication, are somewhat
enlightening about what ended up leaking in this poem, although Poe has
defended, in his essay “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846) that his approach
to the poem was exclusively logical and methodical. However, I believe it is
clear that, however much we use logic and technique, the character of a
literary text never ceases to be emotional in its essence. This becomes quite
evident when we realize the emotion present in the poem. The human aspect of
our nature never leaves us even when we are looking for some accuracy in our
writing. It’s not possible to losing our identity and totally repressing
emotions when we are expressing ourselves artistically.
Conceptually,
Poe was inspired by Charles Dickens to create his own talking raven. And it was
Elizabeth Barret who elucidated and inspired the form of the composition mainly
in terms of rhythm and meter. But other
than that, I imagine what we discover reading “The Raven” are biographical
fragments of a life that is in disgrace, about to delve into it even deeper. To
justify this, let me recall some historical facts of Poe's brief life at that
time. It is known that his riotous and undisciplined life led him practically
to ruin. Poe was rejected from both an academic institution (more precisely at
the University of Virginia) and a military one, in this case the West-Point
Military Academy. A bohemian and adept at the illusory pleasures of alcohol, it
was in Baltimore that he actually started to have a trade and earn some money
(believed to have been $10 a week, writing for a weekly magazine). The turning
point in Poe's life, which would lead him to more peaceful years, occurred
precisely in one of the most controversial episodes of his biography: the marriage
with his cousin Virginia Clemm. Virginia was only 13 years old, while Poe was
already approaching his 30s. As the documentary sources on Virginia and Edgar
are quite scarce and imprecise, some biographers disagree about the nature of
the relationship: some believe that did not escalate to the sexual aspect,
while others claim that this was certainly the case. Considering the time, I’m
certainly with the second group and think that those who try to suggest that
Poe did not have a sexual relationship with Virginia are just trying to clean
up his image, which frankly has not been clean for many years. Poe was
admittedly a troublemaker, given to carnal pleasures and it was precisely due
to orgies and bohemian life that he was expelled from the institutions he
frequented. It doesn't surprise me at all that he got involved with a teenager,
as his life history pointed to that. I won't deceive you, my listener: several
of the classic writers have bizarre and morally reprehensible episodes in their
biographies and Poe was no exception. And I won't be the one trying to hide
this facts.
That
said, it goes on record that the marriage to Virginia did Poe good, mentally
speaking. Dependent on alcohol, surprisingly it was the young woman who helped
him to move away from drinking and to have some stability in the following
years. By all accounts, Virginia had a huge influence on his behavior. The last
years of the 1830s were, in this respect, the healthiest physically and
mentally for Poe. That is until Virginia contracted tuberculosis in 1842. She
died in 1847, aged 24, after 5 years of battle. And this period was precisely
the one where it is believed that the poem “The Raven” germinated. In my perception,
I can clearly feel Poe’s morbidity and suffering in the poem due to the sad and
troubled moments he spent with Virginia. The black bird himself, as the one who
heralds an omen and tragedy, makes me visualize Poe's fear of losing Virginia.
His biography has evidence of extramarital affairs, but Virginia was the one
who, in a way, supported the writer, kept him on track. When she died in 1847,
Poe not only returned to heavy drinking, he himself died two years later, in
1849. I think that says a lot if you look at the whole mosaic. I believe that Lenora, mentioned in the
poem, is certainly a pseudonym for
Virginia. Whenever I hear this name in the poem, my mind sends me to her. The
poet's poor wife, his benefactress, the woman who brought him moments of light
and who was dying.
“The
Raven” is very biographical, even if the author as I mentioned referred to it
as something technical and logical. However, I think that the great achievement
of Poe is his ability to narrate scenes that deal with the emotional and supernatural
experience in a very subjective way, allowing readers who associate the
character with their own experiences, which they possibly had in life. This is
quite interesting to see in the way Poe wrotes his texts. In them, we can see
and feel the author as if he were the character, but at the same time, we can
feel ourselves in the scenes. As if the raven was visiting and talking to us. Poe
writes with impersonality, although he leaks elements of his own identity in
every verse. And this promotes something rich for our experience, the
possibility of reading a poem like “The Raven” with different optics. We read
closely, in the epidermis, or even a little further away, as an external
witness. And I believe that this is one of the qualities of the poem that makes
it so interesting and compatible with other forms of art, such as cinema for
example.
Briefly
mentioning the events narrated, we accompany a lonely man by the fireplace on a
dark night, consulting ancient science tomes in an attempt to remove from his
mind the memory of the death of his beloved Lenora. Then he hears a knock on
his bedroom door, opens and finds no one. However, the phenomenon repeats and
he realizes that the sound was actually coming from the window. In the moment
when it was opened, a raven came in, landing on a bust of the goddess Athena.
The man then asks the black bird what his name would be, which he then responds
saying “nevermore”, surprising the man who did not expect any response, although
he had asked the question.
Shortly
after, the man meditates that soon the raven will also flap wings and take his
life, as well as many others who have passed through it before, taking away his
hopes. The raven then repeats: "nevermore", as if he had read the
man’s thoughts. Depressed, the man goes on to argue that the raven learned such
an expression from some unfortunate master and that this was the only thing he
knew. However, such a finding is not able to demotivate him to study and
discover something more about the animal, and so he pulls up a chair and sits
down facing the black bird. Staring at him, Lenora's memory returns to his
thoughts, making the man feel the air thicker, as if he were in the presence of
angels. He asks if this would be a divine sign for him to overcome Lenora's
memory and thus, once again, the raven intervenes, implying that the man would
never be free of his memories and, consequently, of his torment. This rouses
his fury, excommunicating the raven and its prophecy. However, in a last act,
he asks the bird if he would ever be reunited in Heaven with Lenora, where the
raven repeats: “nevermore”. Accusing the bird of a lying, the man calls for him
to return to the Plutonian coast, certainly a reference to Pluto, god of the
dead in Roman mythology, an embodiment of Hades in Greek mythology. The raven,
however, does not move. It continues resting on the bust of Athena, where the
man then proceeds to admit that his soul will henceforth be trapped under the
raven's shadow and will "nevermore" rise. And so the poem ends.
In
the essay “The Philosophy of Composition”, Poe made it very clear that choosing
the raven as the symbol for the poem was not random. The writer aimed to rely
on the lugubrious tone that the bird evokes in the collective imagination of
society, something that comes from classical mythologies and still persists.
And Poe after that starts to play ambiguously, touching on the real and the
mythological, but without pointing out where the text really is located.
Mythological because, by evoking the symbology of the raven and making him
speak, we would have the perception of the bird as a supernatural being.
However, and at the same time, it is worth remembering that the author makes
the bird mention only one word (nevermore), something that is not uncommon in
the animal kingdom, especially when we talk about birds and their ability to
learn and emit sounds. Ravens actually can do that. In this sense, the poem
enters both the rational and the supernatural world at the same time: it is
possible to interpret in both ways.
I
think what really speaks louder, which is something more categorical, is the
fact that the raven is an allegory of death. Regardless of how we interpret,
its prophetic tone indicates finitude, reaffirms at all times the loss, the
feeling of mourning, the impossibility of reuniting with the loved one and the
fatalities of life. The raven becomes a symbol that represents all of this. And
so, it causes torture by constantly reminding of loss, thus eliciting the
desolation and revolt with death, a phenomenon that escapes our knowledge,
power and which we cannot overcome.
Corvid
greetings!
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