New Post
Search
Help
ArchivesVery nice. :)
in reply to a message by Selwyn
If you would like to read a revealing commentary on Poe's unfinished work, "Ulalume", go to this page at Poe Central:
http://www.poecentral.com/article1008.html
This commentary was first published in the year 1900.
-- Nanaea
http://www.poecentral.com/article1008.html
This commentary was first published in the year 1900.
-- Nanaea
1
Replies
A comment : Making reconstruction easier than one aught
Thank you Nanaea . I did not know that page and it really interesting.
The article is interesting too and I have learnt many factual things I did not know before. I will surely look more into this page. But I have a few comments regarding the article.
------
The biographical approach generally.
Yet, the article does also become it's own worst enemy so to speak, for it interprets the poem by trying to reconstruct Poe's inner and outer life and in the light of these the interpretation is to arise.
But by using this way of interpretation the poem gets no chance to speak for itself. It simply becomes a reflection of a reconstructed Poe and a reconstructed Poe is not the real Poe. Therefore since a biological approach is used excluding the possibility that the poem could point beyond Poe's own life the author is trapped in the same point of view, which he says himself that Poe's own generation was caught in:
"It was Poe's fate to be misunderstood. His own generation looked only at his external life. "
Any reconstruction even of a person's inner life will always end in an external look upon the person. Only God and perhaps Poe himself could have an internal look at Poe.
I think the author should have pointed out more clearly that his starting point is a qualified guess as to how Poe were and felt and at the same time underline that we actually do not know for sure.
-------
Explaining a part separated from the whole.
Reconstructing a person and his emotional state puts us in danger of making a person too understandable. That is to make him/her feel and act in a way we as bystanders can understand looking at the person from the outside.
In the article the author makes the reconstruction task easier for himself simply by focusing on one single poem. Yet, had he been forced to make the same reconstruction based on a few more poems e.g. the poem "Ulalume" and the poem "Dream-land" then it would have been much harder.
Thank you Nanaea . I did not know that page and it really interesting.
The article is interesting too and I have learnt many factual things I did not know before. I will surely look more into this page. But I have a few comments regarding the article.
------
The biographical approach generally.
Yet, the article does also become it's own worst enemy so to speak, for it interprets the poem by trying to reconstruct Poe's inner and outer life and in the light of these the interpretation is to arise.
But by using this way of interpretation the poem gets no chance to speak for itself. It simply becomes a reflection of a reconstructed Poe and a reconstructed Poe is not the real Poe. Therefore since a biological approach is used excluding the possibility that the poem could point beyond Poe's own life the author is trapped in the same point of view, which he says himself that Poe's own generation was caught in:
"It was Poe's fate to be misunderstood. His own generation looked only at his external life. "
Any reconstruction even of a person's inner life will always end in an external look upon the person. Only God and perhaps Poe himself could have an internal look at Poe.
I think the author should have pointed out more clearly that his starting point is a qualified guess as to how Poe were and felt and at the same time underline that we actually do not know for sure.
-------
Explaining a part separated from the whole.
Reconstructing a person and his emotional state puts us in danger of making a person too understandable. That is to make him/her feel and act in a way we as bystanders can understand looking at the person from the outside.
In the article the author makes the reconstruction task easier for himself simply by focusing on one single poem. Yet, had he been forced to make the same reconstruction based on a few more poems e.g. the poem "Ulalume" and the poem "Dream-land" then it would have been much harder.
1