"In the Star Mirroring Depths of Lonely Wells": The Sublimity of Oneness in the Poetry of Edgar Poe

Abstract

In “The Philosophy of Composition,” Edgar Allan Poe made his well-known assertion that “the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world,” a proposition that by 1846, when the essay was published, had long been the principal motif in many of his poems, beginning with the release of Tamerlane and Other Poems. By a Bostonian in 1827, when the poet was eighteen. “Tamerlane,” the title poem of that volume, was the first of many poems that feature the death of a beautiful woman and the derivative motifs that follow this death, which are the subject of this inquiry. These corollary and repetitive motifs include the voice of the bereaved lover, love cultivated from childhood, a love above all loves, a lost paradise, envious angels, an absence or muting of the demonic, somnambulance or dream state, the soul’s enshrinement of the beloved, which implies sacrality and ideality, elevated language that satisfies this sacrality, and the notion of impossibility, the impossibility of being with the beloved or of regaining paradise, both of which imply a yearning to be with the beloved in the supernal. This study identifies and dissects the poems that feature these motifs, offering possible clarity not only for reasons Poe returned to the same theme and its variations again and again, but for the lean output of his verse as well, especially when compared to his prose. Since “Annabel Lee” is the last poem Poe composed, and because it possesses all the motifs listed, it is central to this study and maintains a presence throughout. A treatment of Eureka and “The Fall of the House of Usher” helps clarify and demonstrate certain governing dynamics of Poe’s verse, specifically the notion of saturation and collapse.