Deluded denizens of Mobtown: Hear me:
This put on farce of celebrating Poe’s demise desecrates the
memory of one of the greatest poets and thinkers America has ever produced.
Edgar Allan Poe was not the ghoulish Halloween scribbler that your mindless
acolytes believe he was. Poe on many occasions denounced the misconception
bruited abroad that he was a “Gothic” writer.
On the contrary, Poe was a patriotic anti mob rule satirist.
For example, he roasted the two United States Presidents of his time that
brought on untold economic misery through their pernicious economic policies
Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. (The same Van Buren who was a protégé of
the traitorous founder of Chase Manhattan and assassin Aaron Burr.) Poe’s story
The Gold Bug was a broadside against Jackson who was known at the time as THE
Gold Bug. Jackson’s banning of the Second National Bank and resort to specie
resumption brought down upon these shores monstrous economic misery. King Pest
is a satire of Jackson’s mob rule politics where Andrew Jackson plays the role
of the President presiding over the plague in the City of London. At the time,
no literate reader could have missed the allusion Poe was making. The Devil in
the Belfry in the story of that name was Martin Van Buren who was yet more
perfidious than his predecessor Jackson. I could go on for quite some length in
this vein but won’t belabor the point here. If you are interested visit my blog
Thingumbobesquire@blogspot.com In particular read the entry TheWorld of Edgar Allan Poe: The Poetic Principle.
Yet now you who know
nothing of your own history parade around as admirers of Poe as a grisly horror
story writer. Poe is laughing at you all from the grave as it were with poetic
irony in a poem I will leave you with: For Annie. (Which regrettably, I am afraid
like the irony in everything he wrote will fall once again upon deaf ears.)
For Annie
Thank Heaven! the crisis-
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last-
And the fever called "Living"
Is conquered at last.
Sadly, I know
I am shorn of my strength,
And no muscle I move
As I lie at full length-
But no matter!-I feel
I am better at length.
And I rest so composedly,
Now, in my bed
That any beholder
Might fancy me dead-
Might start at beholding me,
Thinking me dead.
The moaning and groaning,
The sighing and sobbing,
Are quieted now,
With that horrible throbbing
At heart:- ah, that horrible,
Horrible throbbing!
The sickness- the nausea-
The pitiless pain-
Have ceased, with the fever
That maddened my brain-
With the fever called "Living"
That burned in my brain.
And oh! of all tortures
That torture the worst
Has abated- the terrible
Torture of thirst
For the naphthaline river
Of Passion accurst:-
I have drunk of a water
That quenches all thirst:-
Of a water that flows,
With a lullaby sound,
From a spring but a very few
Feet under ground-
From a cavern not very far
Down under ground.
And ah! let it never
Be foolishly said
That my room it is gloomy
And narrow my bed;
For man never slept
In a different bed-
And, to sleep, you must slumber
In just such a bed.
My tantalized spirit
Here blandly reposes,
Forgetting, or never
Regretting its roses-
Its old agitations
Of myrtles and roses:
For now, while so quietly
Lying, it fancies
A holier odor
About it, of pansies-
A rosemary odor,
Commingled with pansies-
With rue and the beautiful
Puritan pansies.
And so it lies happily,
Bathing in many
A dream of the truth
And the beauty of Annie-
Drowned in a bath
Of the tresses of Annie.
She tenderly kissed me,
She fondly caressed,
And then I fell gently
To sleep on her breast-
Deeply to sleep
From the heaven of her breast.
When the light was extinguished,
She covered me warm,
And she prayed to the angels
To keep me from harm-
To the queen of the angels
To shield me from harm.
And I lie so composedly,
Now, in my bed,
(Knowing her love)
That you fancy me dead-
And I rest so contentedly,
Now, in my bed,
(With her love at my breast)
That you fancy me dead-
That you shudder to look at me,
Thinking me dead.
But my heart it is brighter
Than all of the many
Stars in the sky,
For it sparkles with Annie-
It glows with the light
Of the love of my Annie-
With the thought of the light
Of the eyes of my Annie.
Postscript: I ambled down to the "event" yesterday and was really not impressed. Half the crowd were clueless "Goths" as expected. Next year I am considering setting up a booth to disabuse such an execrable and pervasively false narrative foisted upon us.
