Edgar Allan Poe

For as long as there has been communication, there have been horror-stories. Ancient
Neanderthal cave paintings show depictions of men fleeing in terror from monsters. Egyptian
hieroglyphs portray the death god Rah eating babies. Mothers have always used horror-
stories to scare children from roaming around after the sun sets: “Don’t go into the woods
after dark, lest the Jabberwocky take you!” Teenage boys with questionable motives have
told stories of men with rotting skin and scissor hands to force their girlfriends into needing
their able comfort.

Kids usually spend their time in front of the TV watching cartoons and no one can deny that.
Believe me or not, I didn’t. Since I was only two years old I have been watching horror
movies and now I have to admit it is my favourite genre. I admire Stephen King’s gift for
storytelling and his unique morbid mind. There is no doubt that he is the master and the ‘King
of Horror’. Yes, he is, but before Stephen King, there must have been someone who has
given birth to this art of writing frightening and mysterious stories.

Yet despite the fact that horror-stories have existed since we could speak, the horror-genre is
widely believed to have dawned with the poet Edgar Allen Poe in the 1840’s. He is no one
else, but the ‘Father of Horror’. Conversely, should you happen to read some of Poe’s works
you would probably not even be mildly distressed. The reason for this is that the horror-genre
is one of the fastest and most drastically evolving genres. Glancing at a horror text or film
from today you would be hard pressed to find similarities with Poe’s works in any kind of
way, shape or form.

I chose to write about this much appreciated writer because I can do nothing more than thank
him for his breathtaking and frightening books he had left behind. He is also one of my
favorite writers because of his talent and courage.

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and
mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and
include such literary classics as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” and “The Fall of the
House of Usher.”  Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public
imagination, so too has Poe himself. He is often seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking
in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But
much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of his biography written by one of
his enemies is an attempt to defame the author’s name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809, but within three
years both of his parents had died. Poe was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John
Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia. Mr. Allan reared Poe to
be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe dreamt of emulating his childhood hero,
the British poet Lord Byron. 

In 1826 Poe left Richmond to attend the University of Virginia, where he excelled in his
classes but accumulated considerable debt. The miserly Allan had sent Poe to college with
less than a third of the funds he needed, and Poe soon took up gambling to raise money to pay
his expenses. By the end of his first term Poe was so desperately poor that he burned his
furniture to keep warm. Humiliated by his poverty and furious with Allan, Poe was forced to
drop out of school and return to Richmond. However, matters continued to worsen. He
visited the home of his fiancée, Elmira Royster, only to discover that she had become
engaged to another man.

The heartbroken Poe’s last few months in the Allan mansion were punctuated with increasing
hostility toward Allan until Poe finally stormed out of the home in a quixotic quest to become
a great poet and to find adventure. He accomplished the former by publishing his first
book Tamerlane when he was only eighteen; to achieve the latter, he enlisted in the United
States Army.

Broke and alone, Poe turned to Baltimore, his late father’s home. While Poe was in
Baltimore, John Allan died, leaving Poe out of his will, which did, however, provide for an
illegitimate child whom Allan had never seen. By then Poe was living in poverty but had
started publishing his short stories, one of which won a contest sponsored by the Saturday
Visiter. The connections Poe established through the contest allowed him to publish more
stories and to eventually gain an editorial position at the Southern Literary Messenger in
Richmond. It was at this magazine that Poe finally found his life’s work as a magazine writer.

Within a year Poe helped make the Messenger the most popular magazine in the south with
his sensational stories and his scathing book reviews. Poe soon developed a reputation as a
fearless critic who not only attacked an author’s work but also insulted the author and the
northern literary establishment. Poe targeted some of the most famous writers in the country;
one of his victims was the anthologist and editor Rufus Griswold.

In spite of his growing fame, Poe was still barely able to make a living. For the publication of
his first book of short stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, he was paid with
twenty-five copies of his book.
The January 1845 publication of “The Raven” made Poe a household name. He was again
living in New York City and was now famous enough to draw large crowds to his lectures—
he also began demanding better pay for his work.

In the winter of 1847, his wife, Virginia died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four. Her
death devastated Poe and left him unable to write for months. His critics assumed he would
soon be dead. They were right. Poe only lived another two years and spent much of that time
traveling from one city to the next giving lectures and finding backers for his latest proposed
magazine project to be called The Stylus.  Poe died on October 7, 1849 at the age of forty.
The exact cause of Poe’s death remains a mystery.

Edgar Allan Poe also had significant influence in television and film. Many are adaptations of
Poe's work, others merely reference it. My favourite movie adaptation is after the short story
“The Black Cat” that was first published in August 19th, 1843. The movie, “The Black Cat”
is a 1934 American pre-Code horror film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and starring Boris
Karloff and Béla Lugosi. The picture was the first of eight films (six of which were produced
by Universal) to pair the two iconic actors. It became Universal Pictures' biggest box office
hit of the year, and was among the earlier movies with an almost continuous music score.
Lugosi also appeared in the 1941 film with the same title. The film helped to create and
popularize the psychological horror subgenre, emphasizing on atmosphere, eerie sounds, the
darker side of the human psyche, and emotions like fear and guilt to deliver its scares,
something that was not used in the horror genre.
Newlyweds Peter (David Manners) and Joan Alison (Julie Bishop), on their honeymoon in
Hungary, learn that due to a mixup, they must share a train compartment with Dr. Vitus
Werdegast (Béla Lugosi), a Hungarian psychiatrist. Eighteen years before, Werdegast went to
World War I, never seeing his wife again. On the train, the doctor explains that he is traveling
to see an old friend, Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff), an Austrian architect.
Later, the doctor, Peter, and Joan, share a bus, which crashes on a desolate, rain-swept road.
Joan is injured, and the doctor and Peter take her to Poelzig's home, built upon the ruins of
Fort Marmorus, which Poelzig commanded during the war. Werdegast treats Joan's injury,
administering the tranquilizing drug hyoscine, causing her to behave erratically. While Peter
puts her to bed, Werdegast accuses Poelzig of betraying the fort during the war to
the Russians, resulting in the death of thousands of Austro-Hungarian soldiers. He also
accuses Poelzig of stealing his wife Karen while he was in prison. Previously, Werdegast
killed Poelzig's black cat, and Poelzig explains that Werdegast has a strong fear of the
animals. Poelzig carries a second black cat around the house with him while he oversees his
"collection" of dead women on display in glass cases, including Karen.
Poelzig plans to sacrifice Joan in a satanic ritual during the dark of the moon. Poelzig had
married Werdegast's wife, and when she died, he married his daughter (who was told her real
father died in prison). He is seen reading a book called The Rites of Lucifer while a beautiful
blonde woman (Lucille Lund) sleeps next to him. The blonde is Werdegast's daughter – thus,
Poelzig's stepdaughter – also named Karen. Werdegast, who is unaware of his daughter's
presence, bides his time, waiting for the right moment to strike the mad architect. He also
tries to persuade his foe to spare Peter and Joan, at one point literally gambling with their
lives by playing a game of chess with Poelzig, which he loses.
This moment comes during the beginning of the satanists' service, when a female acolyte sees
something which causes her to scream and faint. Werdegast and his servant Thamal (Harry
Cording) snatch Joan from the sacrificial altar and carry her into the catacombs beneath the
house, where Peter is rendered unconscious by Poelzig's servant. Joan tells Werdegast his
daughter is alive in the building somewhere. He discovers that Poelzig has killed his
daughter, and in an insane rage, shackles him to an embalming rack, where he proceeds to
literally skin Poelzig alive. Joan tries to tear a key from the dead hand of Poelzig's servant,
and Peter, regaining consciousness, mistakes Werdegast's attempt to help her as an attack and
shoots him. Fatally wounded, Werdegast blows up the house, first letting the couple escape
but with Poelzig's "rotten cult" still upstairs. "It has been a good game," he says before he
dies.
In conclusion, I think that Poe is one of the most interesting and mysterious writers from all
times. We can’t deny the fact that this man created a new way of story writing, very unusual
at his time, fact that proves his determination and his bravery.