Sample Student Research Project 2013
Essay
LITR
4232 American Renaissance
Sample Student Research Project 2013
Essay
Matthew Trzecinski
Influential Poe
When people think of current science
fiction, mystery and the horror genre most people do not know that Edgar Allan
Poe was a creative force behind most of what is put into these specific genres.
Even though his life was a tumultuously short one filled with many miseries that
he had to fight and deal with, the writings that he left behind have influenced
many of today’s modern writers. The authors that he has influenced span the
world over and have crept into many facets of what people today read no matter
where in this wide world they may be.
Rosenheim and Rachman in their book
The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe
say “In Europe, in South and Latin America, and even in Japan, Poe has served as
a crucial and much celebrated literary model for generations of writers and
readers.” Which is so true for what he wrote during his life, his reach went far
behind just the shores of North America and into other countries that have used
his style, his technique and the way he uses the sublime, the gothic and his use
of mysteries and detective work is what has made him survive so long after his
death. His influence in North America is just as strong, though in the early
days after his death this was not the case. Poe was denounced by critics as a
lunatic, a drunkard and many other things that hurt his credibility and for a
while pushed him to the wayside. The main offender to Poe’s credibility was from
the critic Rufus Wilmot Griswold, as written by Dawn Sova in the book called a
Critical Companion to Edgar Allan Poe: A
Literary Reference to His Life and Work when saying, “his loss of status was
largely undeserved and easily traced to the successful efforts of Rufus Wilmot
Griswold at defaming Poe’s character” (Sova, vii). And by continuing on to say,
“On October 9, 1849, Griswold avenged an old grudge against Poe by publishing a
defamatory obituary—to which Griswold signed the name “Ludwig”—that cast
aspersions on Poe’s moral character” (Sova, vii). The continual panning that
Griswold did to Poe after his death considerably hurt Poe’s reputation, and even
though many of Poe’s contemporaries have tried to fix this image that was given
to Poe, it still is a black mark against him and even now many critics still
hold true to what Griswold wrote about Poe.
Yet even with what was done to Poe’s
reputation at that time, his influence is still far-reaching, not just in North
American but the world over. One such person that Poe influenced was the French
poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) who “was twenty-six when he discovered Poe’s
life and works, an encounter he described as a “shock of recognition” (Vines,
165). Baudelaire was able to draw many similarities between his own life and the
life of Poe’s as well, which in turn helped him to write his own stories and
poems. His attention was brought to Poe’s life and works by what “Baudelaire
scholar W.T Bandy is convinced that the French poet read Isabelle Meunier’s
translation of “The Black Cat,” which appeared in
La Democratie pacifque on January 26,
1847” (Vine, 165). Baudelaire took heavily from Poe’s life and works, even
translating many of Poe’s poems and short stories into French for the populace
to read and where he “praised the originality and intellectual quality of Poe’s
work” (Vine, 167). And because of Poe’s influence on Baudelaire and by his
translating his works in addition to the works written by Baudelaire himself
brought the best of what Poe was to the French people to inspired “wide
readership worldwide and inspired many critical studies” (Vine, 168).
Even farther away from North America comes
another person inspired by the works of Poe, Japanese author Tanizaki Junichiro
(1886-1965), who “left behind thirty volumes of collected works which include
novels, plays, tales and essays and three versions of his translations into
modern Japanese of the Tales of Genji”
(Lippit, 244). Tanizaki began his career following Poe’s influence “but also
developed his early Poesque world of the grotesque and arabesque into his own
self-contained world of Romanticism in the Japanese literary tradition” (Vine,
244). Because of Poe’s far reaching influence even in the country of Japan many
writers and poets were influenced by the works he left behind, such as how
Tanizaki revealed his “closeness to Poe’s mythical world of supernatural beauty,
the original state reached only through destructive transcendence” (Lippit 244).
Many of Tanizaki’s tales, as reviewed by Noriko Mizuta Lippit, were inspired by
Poe’s detective mysteries where he used many of the same techniques that Poe
incorporated into his own works as well, such as the “analytical precision with
which they murder and hide the corpse” (246), and also how Poe uses the body
double, or doppelganger in his stories, Tanizaki also uses this in a few of his
stories as well. Another technique that was heavily influenced from Poe was the
grotesque world that Poe uses in many of his stories and poems, which have
striking similarities to what Poe used in his own works. Also the borrowing of
how Poe created the modern crime mysteries was taken and used by Tanizaki as
well. Because of Poe’s influence and many others that were influenced by him,
helped Tanizaki become the great writer and poet that he was in Japan.
Even in Russia, Poe’s influence inspired two
different people Valery Brjusov (1873-1924) and Konstantin Bal’mont (1867-1942),
the two met each other in 1894 “through the poetry of their youth, and into
their later philosophical and critical writings” (Boyle 177). Because of Poe’s
far reaching influence these two gentlemen helped to shape “the reputation of
Poe in Russia, a reputation that has as much to do with personality as it does
with poetry” (Boyle 177). A Brjusov scholar by the name of Joan Grossman wrote
that Brjusov’s work was heavily influenced by Poe that it came extremely close
to imitation. And aside from just borrowing heavily from Poe in terms of his
writing, Poe’s influence was seen quite prevalently in Brjusov’s literary
criticism as well, and tried placing Poe up there with the great Russian writers
such as, Puskin, Lermontov, Fet, Gogol and Solov’ev. In his use of criticism,
Brjusov used his “critical skills to analyzing Poe in light of Russian
literature” (Boyle 179). And in his essay on Gogol, Brjusov says that some of
Gogol’s characters resemble some of Poe’s characters by the way the exhibit
themselves. As for Bal’mont, Boyle writes that “Poe was an all-consuming
passion” (Boyle 179). And says that all “aspects of Bal’mont’s life, from his
behavior and dress to his own poetry and translations, reflect his desire to pay
homage to the American master” (Boyle 179), though the side of Poe that
influenced Bal’mont was when he wrote The
Fall of the House of Usher, and from an essay that his friend Brjusov wrote
he tells how Bal’mont was “attracted to Poe because the American ‘loved and knew
how to express the entire impetuous character of an isolated man, of those
living at ten times its normal rate’” (Boyle 179). Joan Grossman was “convinced
that Bal’mont genuinely and deeply identified with Poe” (Boyle 179), and this
was done by acting like Poe, dressing in black clothing and doing various drugs
to simulate the way they believed Poe lived. In all ways considered, Bal’mont
was completely obsessed with all things Poe, which was also echoed in his poetic
endeavors as well, which have traces of Poe’s own works in them while completely
making it his own. Though what Bal’mont found the most important that he took
from Poe was “the ideal of beauty” (Boyle 180), because it as Bal’mont said it;
“Behind his poetry lies the thirst for a more mad beauty than that which the
earth provides us, and Edgar Poe strove to quench that thirst through the
creation of unearthly images.” (Boyle 180). And yet if it wasn’t for Poe’s far
reaching influence in the world, both Brjusov and Bal’mont may not have had the
impact that they had upon Russian literature that they have.
Aside from just influencing other writers,
Poe also influenced entire cultures, such as when Poe’s works were seen in
England where once his works started showing up the British citizens started
taking notice of the American writer. And though some tried to dispute that
Poe’s works, they could not be completely dismissed because of the style in
which he wrote. A write for the London
Critic argued that “the black cat in Poe’s tale ‘would have been a proper
inmate for the ‘Castle of Otranto’” (Fisher 53), and also goes on to say “that
the cat might be ‘a figurative personification of the dark-brooding thoughts of
a murderer’” (Fisher 53). More positive responses to Poe came from his friend
D.G. Rossetti and A.C Swinburne, where Rossetti’s ballad “The Blessed Damozel,”
was inspired by Poe’s “The Raven” and when he could Rossetti also counseled with
Poe to create several different works, showing that even though he never gained
a large foothold in England, his presence was still felt and his popularity was
still there for everyone to see. And yet aside from just his works, Poe’s life
as a “perennially interesting topic in Great Britain, where his literary
reputation was at the mercy of the Griswold controversy” (Fisher 56), and
because of what Griswold did unfortunately had a great deal of influence on his
reputation worldwide.
Going back to Japan again, according to
Lippit, “Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe were the two most widely read and
loved American writers in the Meiji (1868-1912) and the Taisho (1912-1926)
periods in Japan” (Lippit 135), and while Whitman inspired national pride for
the country of Japan, Poe was loved because he was purely literary, there was
nothing else involved aside from that. By 1888, once Poe’s works “The Black Cat”
and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” were translated and published was when Poe’s
popularity in Japan was secured. After that everything that was translated and
published, along with the biography of his life helped to create more interest
during his life. According to Lippit, “there are at least ten known Meiji
translations of “The Black Cat” (Lippit 136). But it wasn’t until Lafcadio Hearn
who played the largest role in “laying the foundation for the acceptance and
understanding of Poe’s writing” (Lippit 136). It was when Hearn began teaching
at Tokyo University that helped spread Poe’s writings and works to the Japanese
people. Hearn treated Poe’s works through his lectures and special lectures he
would give just over Poe’s poems alone. It was Hearn who helped “the emergence
of new writers and poets inspired by Poe’s life and works. Soon both Hearn and
Bin “determined the way Poe would be understood in the future by Japanese
writers” (Lippit 137). Even up through the 1990s Poe is still considered to be
one of the most beloved foreign writers in Japan, and his influence has now
spread into Japanese manga, comic books, which can now display the gothic, the
grotesque and even the detective and mystery that Poe once wrote about, giving
them new life as drawings on the page to give the read the visual aspect as well
as the mental picture in their minds and well. And as Lippit points out, “Poe
continues to be in the latter half of the twentieth century one of the most
studied and written about foreign writers in Japan.
Another country where Poe eclipses other
American writers is in Italy. “While Whitman, Melville, Hemmingway, Pound and
Eliot have also had many followers, there influence is more limited in times and
scope. Poe is just as present today as he was a hundred years ago” (Bacigalupo
62). The Italians have always defended Poe, just like the French did as well
against the harsh criticism he gained in England and in American. Even at the
beginning of the twentieth century Poe’s influence is still being felt in Italy.
“Both revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries, Fascists and Communists,
delighted in Poe’s work” (Bacigalupo 65). And Benedetto Croce, Italian
philosopher and critic, admired Poe as well. Croce “developed a definition of
art as intuitive truth and counted Poe, along with such thinkers as Vico,
Leibniz, Baumgarten and De Sanctis, among his precursors” (Bacigalupo 65). Poe’s
influence in Italy persists even to this day, where he is still widely revered
and read, where the harsh criticisms that were slammed upon him after his death
have done nothing to diminish or tarnish the reputation that his works have left
upon the Italian people.
When looking at Edgar Allan Poe’s life and
the works that he left behind, he touched and changed many writers with
everything that he left behind. His influence has been felt not only in the
United States, but also in many different countries of the world. Who knows how
much of the writers that were influenced or changed by his stories and poems
would not have achieved what they did without Poe’s vision, and breadth of
imagery that he put into his works. Though his life was short in comparison to
the legacy that he left behind it does make the mind wonder how different it
would be. From writers in the United States to those in Japan that were touched
by Poe and those that he influenced after his untimely death, his creation of
the short story, the modern detective stories and his use of the gothic, the
grotesque and the sublime has captivated readers and future writers of the world
decades after his death, and will continue to do so. Along with the other great
writers of his time, Poe’s works stand the test of time even when the critics of
his time tried to completely destroy everything that he did. Even if his life
was one filled with hardships, what he left behind is a testament to the
brilliance of his mind, twisted as some of his stories and poems are, they
helped launch future writers and even critics who still use the devices that Poe
used so long ago.
Rosenheim, Shawn , and Stephen Rachman. The American Face
of Edgar Allen Poe. The John Hopkins University press, print.
Sova, Dawn. Critical Companion to Edgar Allan Poe: A
Literary Reference to His Life and Work. Infobase Publishing, Jan 1, 2007,
2007. Print.
Vines, Lois. Poe Abroad : Influence, Reputation,
Affinities. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999. eBook Collection
(EBSCOhost). Web. 21 Nov. 2013
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