I read the poem "Lenore" and enjoyed it, I think. Does anyone know where I can find an interpetation or analysis of this work? Or if you have your own ideas. My wife died young, as did the young lady in the poem, and I am curious as to the idea he was trying to communicate.

Thanks for any help!

Bill

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2002

Answers

This dirge poem was written years before Virginia's death. Lenore is a name taken from a poem of youth, "Al Araaf". This seems to be an example of Poe's ideal theme of the death of a young woman drawn perhaps from personal losses of his mother, aunt, mrs. Stannard, and his lost loves. The GuyDeVere reference might provide the storyline foundation for the poem of a woman unloved and unappreciated by the world. It scertainly cannot apply to the well-loved and innocent Virginia. Several reworkings of the poem at www.eapoe.org that bear studying. They seem to preserve the sense and the beautiful lines in revising the structure in various ways. The basic idea is that the idealized in death lady is the vessel of Hope now brought to heaven and it is in this guise that the poet wants to immortalize her as a personal beacon.

The unfortunate Poe had experienced several losses(his mother when he was a baby, his aunt guardian, etc.) so as to place his need for a mother in particular as beyond the barrier of death, in Heaven. They are his lifeline to happier memories of the Past and Hope for a better existence than his disappointing worldly life. A Beatrice Muse. The poems about Virginia(Eulalie, Annabel Lee, Ulalume, etc.)are more personal and rooted in the happiness he finally thought he had achieved and the real bitterness that made previous idealized poems seems romantically juvenile. His notion of love seems always flavored with the idea of the beloved as his salvation, less for her own self. In Annabel Lee she is solely described in terms of her love for him, a tie he desperately clings to for itself. Nor can Poe seem to come to terms with his grief with faith or hope for that matter and has lost some of his moorings. That reaction might have come from the unworked out losses of his youth. It certainly was more real than the affected, suicidal romanticism of his first disappointments in love(The Assignation- Helen Royster). Strangely for a writer noted for the macabre and those earlier prophetic poems like The Raven Poe shunned the dead he could not escape and pursued his life and career with even greater energy. Hard to put this in a capsule. Poe's erratic last years especially and his behavior are better described in one or more biographies referenced at the website.

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2002

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-- Anonymous, January 16, 2002