In The Shadow Of The Master: Classic Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

]: the visualized but somehow… unknowable white form that rises from the mists… The images of the white curtain and the “shrouded human figure” with skin “the perfect whiteness of the snow” occur after the narrative has encountered blackness… Both are figurations of impenetrable whiteness that surface in American literature whenever an Africanist presence is engaged… These images of impenetrable whiteness… appear almost always… with representations of black or Africanist people who are dead [or] impotent. [2]

Poe lived a chunk of his life in the slaveholding South; at one point, although he wasn’t wealthy, he was in a position to sell a slave. I might read the images of whiteness somewhat differently than Morrison, but not the difficult, demeaning treatment of darkness. I cannot bear to read Poe’s depictions of Negroes, who always speak in the stereotypic language of the obsequious slave and who feel fulfilled in their service of the white master-as Jupiter does in “The Gold-Bug.” Despite his manumission, Jupiter could not be induced by “threats nor promises, to abandon what he considered his right of attendance upon the footsteps of his young ‘Massa Will.’ ”

Of all the literary and critical responses to Poe-including the critiques of his substance abuse-the one I find most compelling is Argento’s Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe. This opera, composed for the U.S. bicentennial, is an emotional account of Poe’s voyage from Philadelphia to Baltimore, where he died in the kind of mystery that invites conspiracy theories. Argento has a sort of psychological courtroom battle over Poe, with Dupin conducting the defense and Poe’s nemesis, the critic Griswold, attacking Poe for using the events of his own turbulent life as the basis for his creative work. The staging, with its insistent themes of blood, the intertwining of “The Masque of the Red Death,” which alludes to the deaths of Poe’s mother, foster mother, and bride from consumption, is shocking and compelling.

The blood-drenched Poe, the racially charged Poe, the analytic, the poetic-all are aspects of this complicated writer; none explains him fully. When I read Poe, what makes his stories terrifying is a sense of helplessness. I imagine him suffocating-almost literally, in the alcohol he consumed and the blood he saw his consumptive mother cough up-as well as figuratively. His father abandoned him, his foster father never accepted him and ultimately cast him off, his mother died when he was two.

Most children blame themselves for abandonments like these, and in Poe’s fiction it’s the narrator who is almost always the perpetrator when evil deeds are done: “The Black Cat,” “The Education of William Wilson,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amontillado”-all have a narrator who is a knave or a madman. In “The Black Cat,” the narrator goes out of his way to explain how vile he is, torturing the animals who have loved him, degrading himself with drink, beating his wife, and finally driving an ax into her brain.

Of course, my response is as partial as Bayard’s or Argento’s. I can’t imagine trying to make such a difficult figure the subject of a novel or a story. In general, I’m uneasy with using real figures as players in a novel- highlighting one facet means overlooking others. Still, with Poe, I can understand the temptation to do so. The opium, the alcohol, the love affairs; the slave owner, the gambler, the writer-not even the masterful Stephen King could have invented such a complex character.

Edgar Allan Poe’s father’s name was David; Sara Paretsky’s father’s name was David. Both their last names begin with the letter “P.” Poe’s and Paretsky’s mothers were both accomplished actresses. Poe died in Baltimore. Paretsky gave birth to Sisters in Crime in Baltimore. Baltimore is in Maryland, abbreviated “MD.” Paretsky’s grandfather was an MD. Poe created Dupin, the earliest male private investigator; Paretsky created V. I. Warshawski, one of the earliest female PIs. Poe was not a drug addict; neither is Paretsky. Coincidence? Hard to believe. Paretsky is clearly a reincarnation of the master of noir. Or perhaps his great-great-great-granddaughter. Or an imposter.

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door-
Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;-vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost Lenore-
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-
Nameless for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me-filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;-
This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”-here I opened wide the door;-
Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping something louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore-
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;-
’Tis the wind and nothing more!”