Lenore is spoken of in many of his poems...Who is she? Was she his bride? His girlfriend? Just a friend? Who was she?

-- Anonymous, May 14, 2003

Answers

Just a poetic sounding name favored for a long time by Poe AND by many others. Also the psychologcial explanation for the sounds and letters taken from Poe's own name or his brother, although that must surely be subconscious.

It is not the name but the nature of the female character, modified by the influence of experience, in Poe's poems especially, but also his tales. "Eleonora" is another form.

W.B. Yeats who also had specific women inspirations in several famous affairs probably could speak for Poe as well when he said the poems themselves were NOT biographically rigorous or a single allegory. Most became mixed together in amalgrams or starting points for his own themes. And Dante who clearly divinized the dead Beatrice was married when he wrote the Divine Comedy. The wives gave no more jealous thought to these artifices than to a painter's model.

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2003