in my history class i'm doing a research project on edgard allan poe. so if anyone there can help find any infomation about him i'd really appreciate it. some information can be like "did he fear anything?, any important things he decided to do in his life, what he understood?, and what he tried to do."

thank you.

-- Anonymous, March 10, 2004

Answers

For biographies evaluated and everything else about Poe try www.eapoe.org. His fears are pretty well worked out in his stories, although one tends to mistake the odd phobias for the deeper fears. The dramatic "buried alive" possibility, fear of the dark, of ghosts, he mocked, debunked or exagerrated, but they were there. His deeper sense of horror was more metaphysical and relational regarding social and career failures, his drinking habits, fear of death and disease and the loss of the past that in contradiction he could never healthily shake. Though the death of a beautiful young woman to him was the most poignant ideal of melancholy romantiicism, in fact he dreaded both their loss and their haunting and the impossibility of recapturing a healthy bond in this life or the next. In that pursuit or flight he was a driven conflicted man.

Other phobias were almost physical results of alcoholic abuse like intermittent heart beats, vertigo and half-dream states. One never knows quite how to describe the actual mental state of Poe who treated himself sideways by artistic pursuits he was too honest or critical to really absolutize. the same with religion or even self- made philosophy(Eureka). Surreal existentialist? Maybe a proto- modern but his heart was in the dim wilds of Romanticism and extreme states of rational insight with accompanying excited feelings.

-- Anonymous, March 11, 2004