Both Sides of Thy Beak
F.R.R. Mallory
April 11, 2006

In Edgar Allan Poe's masterpiece "The Raven" Poe appears to invite validation for his narrator's lament through the artifice of a raven who speaks. Yet subtly Poe warns us, right from the title to beware. Mistrust this visitor, he seems to say, for to rave is to utter in madness. The poem dances between a macabre eagerness to embrace sorrow and melancholy and a verbal tirade against the apparent external instigator to the narrator's torment. What devious trap has Poe set for his naïve reader? Should I believe the narrator is set upon by grief for the loss of Lenore and this poem is an expression of pure gothic romance? Or should I unfold his turns and twists of phrase to question this protestation of grief, to see if purpose is served by grief's indulgence.

The narrator wallows. It's December - midnight - no doubt cold and quiet. He sits in his chamber reading strange and odd books of forgotten lore. What forgotten lore? Poe doesn't really tell us but his words are suggestive of hidden mysteries and secrets. He tells us immediately that his narrator is "weak and weary...nodd[ing] nearly napping" (Poe). This description invites the reader to empathize with the narrator, perhaps to hold him a bit blameless for what is to occur. It isn't my fault, he appears to say, I am weak, tired, nearly asleep. According to Carl Jung's Principle of Opposites, "Every wish immediately suggests its opposite. If I have a good thought, for example, I cannot help but have in me somewhere the opposite bad thought" (Jung). Does this mean that Poe's narrator's experience would be different if he were strong, well rested and wide awake?

Poe offers a second clue when he tells us "...each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor" (Poe). On the surface I could believe this line serves but one purpose, to describe a banking fire, but having read this poem more than once I know that Poe's final stanza includes many of these same words when "the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor" (Poe). In both cases responsibility is orchestrated from an external stimulant. I also know that ravens are legendary for stealing dying embers and dropping them on thatch roofs, catching them afire on cold, cold nights, often burning the occupants alive. The raven is the harbinger of death, its messenger, and though the bird has yet to arrive in the Chamber, its presence is already in evidence. Further, Poe tells us the ember wrought its ghost and the lamp-light throws his shadow. He seems to be pointing me at the external cause for such things as ghosts and shadows.

Poe tells me the narrator has tried to use the books for "surcease of sorrow" (Poe). yet I note a troubling thing. He goes on to say that the angels named Lenore and she is "nameless here for evermore" (Poe). Why? Is he suggesting Lenore was named after death took her? Why does he call her maiden - an old word for virginal girl? Why has she been made nameless? Doesn't this rob her of her identity and perhaps objectify her? Is she no longer given the respect of a person? It is a troubling way to invite Lenore into this story.

Poe plays with us again when he says "...the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain" (Poe). Ah, but what has he done? There is nothing as remarkable as purple. At the time this poem was published purple was quite rare and very expensive. In 1845, the year this poem was first published, the world was still eleven years early for Sir William Henry Perkin's discovery of the first aniline dye, which just happened to be purple. So these are impossible curtains that rustle so sadly at the narrator's window. Purple also means, marked by profanity or to desecrate. Can Poe be suggesting the narrator's intent to desecrate this objectified Lenore?

He's thrilled and filled with terrors fantastic, fears of [a] phantasm or ghostly specter which does seem to support the allusion to Lenore. Yet he is eagerly afraid, not truly afraid. He quickly talks himself into "...open[ing] wide the door" (Poe). How curious is this? If the narrator is truly afraid would he throw open the door? Psychology tells us that all actions and behaviors are in service to the individual. This seems to suggest that embracing this thrill serves the needs of the narrator. As he peers into the darkness on the other side of his door he "...wonder[s], fear[s], doubt[s], dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before" (Poe). He seems quite proud of himself, he has done something no other mortal ever dared. What dream is this? Poe answers by the narrator whispering, "Lenore!" (Poe). Lenore is this dream in the darkness outside his door. As he turns back to his chamber he says "all my soul within me burning" (Poe). Again we have a reference to burning and through extension the external presence of the raven and the further potential connection with hades, where souls burn. This is the messenger in hiding.

"In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore" (Poe). Ah. Here he tells us truly by naming this raven a spirit of the departed (saint) of someone long passed. Poe reinforces this suggestion by telling us the bird perches upon a bust of Pallas (Athena - Goddess of knowledge and mysteries, herself a virgin), as if asking the reader to collude raven with wisdom. This is the juxtaposition between the raven and divine speech. The very first thing the narrator asks is what lordly name is the ravens "...on the Night's Plutonian shore!" (Poe). Mischief, mischief! We are being told the raven is a lord in the underworld, a second allusion to divine speech as if being underscored for the reader's benefit. We are being asked to believe in divine synchronicity. This weak, tired and sorrowful man is being visited by an aspect of the divine - or is he?

Yet Poe pulls one string only to pull the other when he has the raven answer "Quoth the raven '"Nevermore"' (Poe). Quoth. By using this word in its archaic form Poe reflects the very beginning of this tale with its mysterious "forgotten lore" (Poe). used for "surcease of sorrow" (Poe). suggesting perhaps that what is quoted will be used to this end as well.

The word can mean a few things including to quote the words of another. But, it is interesting that the word also means 'same thinking' and/or repetition of sameness. By the time the narrator arrives at the decision to question the raven, he already has determined for himself that the bird is limited to a single answer. This means the narrator is in the position of power in the conversation or has absolute dominance of result. There is no question how his questions will be answered. Poe goes further to offer us another gem, "...caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster so when Hope he would adjure Stern Despair returned, instead of the sweet Hope he dared adjure" (Poe). What an extraordinary thing to say. There is the hope he wishes to command under penalty of a curse and yet he assigns the raven's word to an imagined disaster followed quickly by strong despair blocking the hope. To this imagined disaster he feels only a smiling sadness. What he does is pull up a 'violet' chair - again with the purple of impossibility, and reclines at ease, noting "She shall press, ah, nevermore!" (Poe). Why does this please him? He is saying Lenore won't be sitting on the impossible cushion ever again. Most telling of all, it is the narrator saying "nevermore", not the Raven.

Next Poe thrusts us into the bloom of the narrator's overindulgence. "Respite...Let me quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!" (Poe). Is he really asking the raven to reduce his sorrow and torment or, knowing that the raven can only answer one word, is he validating his overindulgence in self-drama and suffering by posing such questions that are assured to enhance his misery? Further, it is not his Lenore, but this lost Lenore - again this can be read to be somewhat objectifying, creating a psychological distancing or diminishing of Lenore.

He shifts to tirade as if telling the reader of his indignant and battered honor, naming the raven "thing of evil! - prophet still" (Poe). Maintaining the duality of his façade in order to decry on one hand while plucking another bloodied hair with the other, for again the narrator knows the answer in advance yet begs "tell me truly, I implore ... is there balm in Gilead?" (Poe) No surprise, the raven answers nevermore. The narrator is asking if he can be healed of his sorrow. Ah, but he isn't finished yet, in his final question to the raven he asks, "if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp...Lenore" (Poe). Nevermore. This line is most telling for the narrator has crafted it in such a way as to present divine speech telling him Lenore hasn't gone to heaven. Does he love this woman who he has stripped of name and removed from heaven? How do these questions serve his personal needs? Can he point to the raven as divine messenger and say the raven has said, his friends have flown, Lenore has no name, is cast out of heaven and his sorrow will be endless. He declares, "Leave my loneliness unbroken...take thy (my) beak from out my heart" (Poe). Masterful Poe. Thy is such a simple word to slip by with, not the raven's beak, but the narrator's beak. Clearly this positions the narrator as speaker for both man and raven, utter madness. They are one and the same, the inside telling the outside of the dream within the dream, "...his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming" (Poe). Once again a shadow is cast on the floor, first from the dying ember or raven's signature mechanism of destruction, now from the raven itself. And the man declares, "my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted - nevermore!" (Poe). His soul emanates from the shadow of his indulgence and through his declaration we can see how this entire episode has served to allow him to externalize his justification for wallowing in his self-gratifying torment. Such is the masochist!

Work Cited

Jung, Carl, The Collected Works of Carl G. Jung
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/jung.html

Poe, Edgar Allan, The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. First publication manuscript (February 1845, text "A" - American Review)
http://www.eapoe.org/works/poems/index.htm (see attached copy of poem)

Raven

Edgar Allan Poe
1809-1849

Squeee - fan girl - OMG can you see, can you see, the very core of inner conflict and fear I so much enjoy Mr. Poe!

Mr. Edgar Allan Poe to be courteous. He creeped into my consciousness along with Lovecraft when I was way too young. I liked that my parents didn't want me to read them. I liked that he was read under the sheets using an old flashlight. Isn't that the best way to discover inner Creepville? He was my very first authentic nut job writer. An authentic psycho. Through his skewed vision I got to glimpse the shifty darkness lurking inside perfectly ordinary looking people, just like I knew was really there. Ahhhh. There is simply nothing like your first time.

I remember the very first time I saw the movie Alien (best horror film EVAR) - in the movie theatre way before ANY of its special effects became commonplace. It's like being a shock virgin - you only get that first rush ONE TIME.

Cherry popper. That's Poe.

Now, everyone knows that your cherry grows back in about 3 days - more or less or equivalent to the time it takes your bioelectrical field to bottom out and begin to find its level again. So, you return to a virginal state but never quite exactly the same as you were before - some part of you has been ecstatically plucked, as if by the cosmic guitarist and you, the real non-carbon you will reverberate to that pluck forever, waiting the rest of the chords of ecstatic pluckage to join it.

So, for the virginal reader clenched tight under the thin sheet against the darkness of the other - it depends on who is handling the strings and for me, it was first Poe, then Lovecraft.

I look for those perfect bursts where my whole body thrums to the sound of another persons imagination delivered whole inside my body. Is there any greater intimacy than with this communion on a cellular level?

So be gentle - Poe is delicate and so very fragile.

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