All language subtitles for Edgar Allan Poe_ Buried Alive _ Full Documentary _ American Masters _ PBS

When Edgar Allan Poe came to Baltimore,
he was famous.

He was making money off of his lecture
tours.

He had found financial backing to
establish his magazine, which was his

dream.

He was about to marry his childhood
sweetheart.

What is it?

Oh, well, thank you.

I will be on a train to New York. I have
no need of a room.

And he died.

And who is it that gets the opportunity
to announce to America that Poe has

died?

His sometime friend, but also literary
rival.

the Reverend Rufus W. Griswold, who
wrote the very first obituary of Poe.

Griswold succeeded in establishing the
modern perception of Poe

really as the same person as one of the
characters in his stories,

as someone who is mentally deranged, as
someone who is homicidal.

a drinking, drug -using, womanizing
scoundrel.

That's an invention of Griswold.

It's a complete fabrication.

Who was the real Edgar Allan Poe?

I feel like he slipped further away from
me the more I know about him.

In 1843, a hard -working magazine
editor, poet, and writer named Edgar Poe

published one of the most popular horror
stories ever written.

True.

Nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I
had been, and am.

But why will you say that I am mad?

The disease had sharpened my senses, not
destroyed, not dulled them.

narrator grabs you right in the first
sentence. He said something like, mad?

think I am mad? You know, people say I'm
mad. I'm not mad. And then he's clearly

mad. And yet he's telling you this story
that's mad and sane at the same time.

The narrator creeps into an old man's
room and murders him while he's

You should have seen how wisely I
proceeded, with what caution, with what

foresight. with what dissimilation I
went to work.

I was never kinder to the old man than
during the whole week before I killed

him.

It has the barest element of a shocking
murder story, and yet he turns it into

something that's universal.

Poe's stories were often set in nameless
places, their time left vague.

But in the 1840s, His themes resonated
in a raw new nation that had yet

to wrestle with some basic flaws.

Poe writes about violence and cruelty,
madness and irrationality, existential

doubt and dread.

He wanted Americans to understand what
was strange about their own culture.

He saw that strangeness, the strangeness
that most people didn't see.

There is so much emotion in those
stories that we sometimes misread only

for horror or for shock.

But really what it is, is a kind of
love.

Throughout his life, he was searching
for unequivocal love.

Poe's mother was an actress who lived in
Boston when she gave birth to her

second son in 1809.

Eliza Poe was a star of American
theater, especially American musical

especially comedy.

She also, of course, had a beautiful
singing voice.

She was called the Nightingale.

And speaking of my mother, you have
touched a string to which my heart fully

responds.

It was December of 1811,

and Eliza Poe had been abandoned by her
husband.

She was left with three children, for
which she had the sole care.

and she was dying from tuberculosis.

With Edgar, his brother, and his sister
about to lose their mother, a local

newspaper printed an appeal.

On this night, Mrs. Poe asks your
assistance, perhaps for the last time.

When Mrs. Poe finally died, she was just
24 years old.

Edgar was just two.

Some accounts have him at her deathbed.

That would be quite a shocking thing.

I myself never knew her.

I never knew the affection of a father.

I have had many occasional dealings with
adversity, but the want of parental

affection has been the heaviest of my
trials.

No one was ever prouder than I of my
descent from a woman who gave to the

her brief career of genius and beauty.

They said that when she died, the
theater was deprived of

one of its chief ornaments.

He never really got over her death.

The sense of his early loss stayed with
Poe constantly. I think it appears in

many of his works.

Poe was really haunted by it his whole
life long.

Edgar, his brother and sister, went to
separate homes.

Edgar was taken in by a childless
Richmond couple, John and Frances Allen.

Frances was one of the local women who
had helped Eliza Poe through her final

illness.

Frances Allen had been orphaned herself,
so she could sympathize with Edgar's

plight. She must have thought Edgar was
just a perfect little angel. She dressed

him up in a little velvet suit and cape,
and he always just worshipped his

foster mother, Frances Allen. He just
thought the world of her.

But Edgar's relationship with his foster
father would be more complicated.

John Allen was a merchant, so he had
that kind of bootstraps character about

him.

Very no -nonsense.

very business -oriented.

He was also kind of a hard figure. His
own friends describe him that way, that

he could be very unforgiving.

John Allen never let Edgar forget that
he was not his real son, that he was a

foster son.

And so Poe grows up feeling like he's
both in a family but not really in a

family.

It's a very tenuous way to live.

I think by becoming a poet, it was a way
of establishing himself.

It was a way of becoming Poe because he
wasn't really allowed to become an Alan.

We think of Poe often as frail.

But in fact, he was an athlete.

Running, boxing, swimming.

Edgar seemed driven to outdo his
classmates.

When he was 15 years old, one of his
fellow students bet him he couldn't swim

down the river a couple miles.

So Poe took that bet, and he ended up
swimming six miles.

Against the tide.

This was no small feat.

It was one way that he was able to prove
that he was the equal of any of his

peers.

I think it's fair to say that Poe often
had a chip on his shoulder.

Bright, quick -witted, and rebellious,
Edgar deliberately set himself apart.

He became a fan of the popular bad boy
poet of the day.

George Gordon Lord Byron was an English
poet who cultivated this image of the

isolated artist at odds with the rest of
the world.

Poe consciously adopted that Byronic
pose, even to the point of dressing in

black and, you know, looking in the
distance at nothing in particular and so

The similarity between Poe and Byron is
quite remarkable.

They had a similarly very difficult
childhood.

Abandoned, abused.

It pervades the way they think about the
world and the way they see the world.

Loss and fear.

Two great subjects in both of their
writings.

From childhood's hour I have not been as
others were.

I have not seen as others saw.

I could not bring my passions from a
common spring.

From the same source I have not taken my
sorrows.

I could not waken my heart to joy at the
same tone.

And all I've loved, I've loved alone.

The woman who encouraged him to write
poetry was the mother of his best

When Mr.

Allen was arguing with Poe and telling
him not to waste his time reading this

Lord Byron garbage, she gave him that
encouragement that he needed.

I think Poe had a little schoolboy
crush.

She must have reminded him of his own
biological mother in certain ways.

She had that same sort of ethereal look
about her.

Unfortunately, mental illness took her.

We don't know the origins of it.

And then she died.

And it affected him profoundly.

He went to her cemetery at night and...

kept a visual at her grave.

I can't imagine that he had a profound
love relationship with Jane Stannard,

he made it into something which had
emotional, romantic, and literary

that could be exploited.

Helen, the beauty is to me like those 19
box of yore.

that gently, o 'er a perfumed sea, the
weary, way -worn wanderer bore to his

native shore.

Some years later, Poe said that he wrote
the poem to Helen, thinking of her.

Thy hyacinth hair, my classic faith, thy
nigh -yet airs have

brought me home to the glory that was
Greece and the grandeur that was Rome.

Young Edgar was not alone in his
experiences of loss.

Early 19th century America had a
mortality rate more than three times

today.

You could have someone who was in
apparently good health carried away very

quickly, very tragically.

You could also have someone because of
TB slowly dying away.

And childbirth was another great cause
of mortality.

Very elaborate cemeteries were just
becoming popular in America at the time.

This was a great age of funereal
sculpture and mementos.

While it sometimes seems odd to 21st
century readers that Poe was always

about death and dying, it's not at all
unusual if you think about what he was

witnessing in the 1820s and 1830s when
he was surrounded by this culture of

death.

And so, being young and dipped in folly,
I fell in love with melancholy and used

to throw my earthly rest and quiet all
away in jest.

I could not love except where death was
mingling his with beauty's breath.

In 1826, John Allen agreed to send 17
-year -old Edgar to the brand new

University of Virginia.

It was his first step.

Toward the creative life he's beginning
to imagine for himself.

He would evince his versatile talents by
sketching fantastic and grotesque

figures with such artistic skill as to
leave us all in doubt whether in

afterlife Poe would be painter or poet.

It's the archetypal college experience.
He's in a dorm. It's kind of a crazy

situation.

Lots of fights going on, but he's
also...

allowed to excel in these classes,
especially language classes.

He's also able to now spend lots of time
reading.

And in fact, his father started
complaining, you're spending all your

things like reading Don Quixote. What
are you doing?

Unfortunately, John Allen did not pay
Poe's fees.

He made a partial payment.

did not provide him with money to buy
books and equipment so that he could

actually pursue his studies.

Poe tries gambling to raise the money,
but by the end of his first semester, he

is deep in debt.

And then he appeals to Alan, and Alan
says, why the hell should I pay your

gambling debts? You know, I mean, why
don't you come back and do some decent

work and earn a living?

Hounded by creditors, Poe is forced to
withdraw from the university and return

to the Allen Mansion in Richmond.

But his quarrels with his foster father
only get worse.

Sir, my determination is at length taken
to leave your house and endeavor to

find some place in this wide world where
I will be treated not as you have

treated me.

I took lodging at a tavern, taking with
me only the clothing on my back, barely

enough pennies to buy bread.

He moved to Boston at the age of 18.

Why would he choose to come to Boston,
of all the cities that were possible?

Maybe he remembered that his mother, in
the one gift that she left to him, a

watercolor of Boston Harbor, had written
on the back, For my little son Edgar,

may he ever love Boston, the place where
his mother found her best and most

sympathetic friend.

He tries working for a newspaper for a
while. It doesn't go well.

He's nearly getting thrown out by his
landlady because he's out of money.

He's got creditors after him.

So Poe joins the army because he's got
to disappear for a while.

He actually enlists under the name of...
Edgar A. Perry.

The ironic thing is Poe actually turns
out to be a really good soldier.

While stationed in Boston, Poe gathers
poems he'd written as a teenager into a

slim collection of verse.

It's called Tamerlane and Other Poems.
Probably about 50 copies were self

-published.

He's 18 years old when Tamerlane comes
out.

Although this was heavily indebted to
Byron, there's something there that is

yet developed, but that over the next
decade, certainly, Poe is going to shine

into perfect little gems.

I was young and was a poet.

If deep worship of all beauty could make
me one.

I would have given the world to embody
half the ideas afloat in my imagination.

While Edgar was in the army, his foster
mother, Frances Allen, died after a

lingering illness.

It's said that when he returned to
Richmond a day late for her funeral, and

how close her grave was to that of Jane
Stannard's, he was just devastated and

just wept right on that spot.

With his mother resting in an unmarked
grave at St. John's Church.

These were Poe's three mothers growing
up, all gone by the time he was 20.

Out are the lights, out all, and over
each quivering form, the curtain, a

funeral pall, comes down with the rush
of a storm, while the angels, all pallid

and wan, uprising, unveiling, affirm
that the play is the tragedy man,

and its hero, the conqueror worm.

In the months after Fanny Allen's death,
Edgar prevails on his foster father one

more time.

He wants John Allen to help him get into
West Point, perhaps thinking a military

career will provide him the luxury to
write poetry.

But there was a whole level of
discipline involved at West Point

Poe was really not prepared for, and he
started to really resent his

instructors, really resent the routine,
and started writing this really vicious

poetry, actually, about a lot of his
instructors, which is, if anything, what

became known for at West Point.

Within a few months of arriving, Poe
tries to leave the military academy.

When he couldn't get an honorable
discharge, he gets himself thrown out.

He just broke all the rules. He didn't
turn up for drill. He didn't turn up for

class.

We're getting to the pattern of Poe is
putting the wrench into his own wheel,

mix a metaphor.

You know, he's screwing himself up right
away.

Having burnt his bridges with the
military and with his foster father, Poe

starts over once again.

At 22, the young poet moves to the one
city where he has blood relatives.

It was in Baltimore that he began to
cobble together a sort of family made up

of Mariah Clem, who was his aunt, and
Virginia Clem, who was his first cousin.

Edgar moves into his aunt Mariah Clem's
small house.

Seeking roots in a family of his own.

He finally found some sort of stability.
He found a household that he could live

in.

Edgar sets out to pursue a career in
literature.

Writing was not a paying job in 1830s
America.

But Poe hadn't given up hope of an
inheritance.

Then his foster father, John Allen, dies
in 1834.

And the will leaves Poe nothing.

John Allen had several illegitimate
children.

And even the illegitimate children were
recognized in the will. But Poe got

not a penny.

That's tough.

That was the breaking point between Poe
and his memories of being part of the

Allen family.

Although we think of him today as Edgar
Allen Poe, in his lifetime, Poe almost

never used the middle name. It was
always Edgar Poe or Edgar A. Poe.

In the space of a few years, Poe has
gone from being the scion of a wealthy

Virginia family to being in a hovel and
having no apparent future in front of

him.

Dear sir, your kind invitation to dinner
today has wounded me to the quick. I

cannot come, and for reasons of the most
humiliating nature in my personal

appearance.

He has this terrible ability to write a
begging, threatening letter where the

begging doesn't work and the threatening
doesn't work.

If you will be my friend so far as to
loan me $20, I will call on you

Otherwise, it will be impossible, and I
must submit to my fate.

In the early 1830s, America entered a
new age of mass media.

Growing cities and rising literacy rates
created a vast new market of readers.

There's a huge literary movement going
on.

The golden age of periodicals. You have
journals and magazines cropping up all

over the place.

Sort of like the blogosphere is now,
right?

Though still a poet at heart, Edgar
realizes the reading public wants a

different kind of writing, the short
story.

At age 24, he wins a local fiction
contest with a strange tale of disaster

at sea.

Along with the $50 prize come
enthusiastic reviews and a job offer.

leaves his newfound family, Mariah and
young cousin Virginia, and moves back to

Richmond, the city where he'd been
disowned.

He will be the editor of the Southern
Literary Messenger, a struggling new

publication devoted to elevating the
literature of the South.

Thomas W. White, the owner and
publisher.

was someone who frankly understood his
limit in the magazine world and turned a

lot of work over to Poe.

He'd been thinking of himself as a
writer ever since he was a child.

But now he's also thinking about himself
as a professional who works with words.

This is the first chance that he has to
get his foot in the door as an editor.

as a magazineist, as an American
tastemaker.

Poe's many responsibilities will include
writing book reviews, and he vows to be

a serious literary critic.

He believed it was time his young nation
produced work every bit as

sophisticated as British literature.

A lot of American critics in the early
19th century, have the idea that in

to invent an American literature, we
can't afford to denigrate any American

writer. They called it puffing, you
know, that is just to sort of mindlessly

praise anything that had been written by
an American.

Poe's way of elevating American
literature was by not cutting writers

We see no reason why Colonel Crockett
shouldn't be permitted to expose

if he pleases, and to be...

As much laughed at as he thinks proper.

Poe earned the reputation and the
nickname the Tomahawk Man.

He was antagonistic. He was
hypercritical.

Work is especially sensible for the
frequent vulgarity of his language.

But the criticisms that he made were
well deserved. He was being a

reviewer, and most of the people he
reviewed are deservedly forgotten today.

It is a mere jumble of absurdities.

I think he did that because he found,
ah, that sets me apart, and people loved

it. You know, people always loved dirt.

I cannot bring myself to feel any
goadings of conscience for undue

I intend to put up with nothing that I
can put down.

Poe was writing a kind of literary
criticism that didn't exist in America

time.

He would do a line -by -line, word -by
-word dissection of the text.

In addition to that, this is where he
really starts to write stories that we

would recognize as Poe's stories.

Though committed to elevating American
literature, Poe believes he can also

the popular appetite for entertainment.

And Berenice, which runs in the Southern
Literary Messenger, is a good example

of this. It's a pretty weird and
disturbing piece of work.

I slowly raised my eyes to the
countenance of the corpse.

There had been a band around the jaws,
but I know not how.

It was broken asunder.

The livid lips were wreathed into a
species of smile, and through the

gloom, once again there glared upon me
in too palpable reality the white and

glistening and ghastly teeth of
Berenice.

In a fit of madness, the narrator pulled
the teeth from the corpse of his

fiancée.

With a shriek, I bounded to the table
and grasped the ebony box that lay upon

it. It slipped out of my hands and fell
heavily and burst into pieces, and from

it, with a rattling sound, there rolled
out some instruments of dental surgery,

intermingled with many white and
glistening substances that were

and fro about the floor.

Poe was writing in a well -known genre
that had been popular for over 70 years,

the Gothic tale.

It's dark and it's spooky and it
involves castles and it involves

But the form really, by the time that
Poe becomes acquainted with it, has

utterly gone to seed. I mean, it's just,
it is actually pretty trashy. And that

is what Poe is both drawn to and
appalled by about it.

He knew that if he could make these
stories thicker in terms of

complications, he could perhaps reach
multiple audiences.

That dark romantic vision combined with
the repressed sexuality, the

claustrophobia, the fear that we all
have, all of these things together,

work is very complex.

Readers could enjoy them just as spooky
stories. Readers could enjoy them as

parodies of spooky stories, and then
readers could enjoy them as essentially

poetic essays about the spookiness of
stories.

But Thomas White, his editor, was a
careful businessman in the business of

publishing a magazine.

So a story like Berenice, that's the
sort of thing that would make Thomas

nervous.

Mr. Poe, I have enormous faith in your
literary taste and your attainments.

Which I trust has been well rewarded in
the circulation numbers.

But I have received complaints about
your tale, Berenice.

Thomas White felt that Berenice was
vulgar, was much too sensationalistic.

Poe felt he needed to defend this
because Berenice represented exactly the

of story he wanted to write. The tale
may be in bad taste, but the history of

all magazines plainly shows that any
that have attained celebrity were

to articles in nature similar to
Berenice.

From the ludicrous heightened into the
grotesque, the witty exaggerated into

burlesque, and the singular wrought out
into the strange and mystical, you may

say that this is in bad taste.

But whether the article is or is not in
bad taste is little to the point.

To be appreciated, Mr. Quack, you must
be read.

From the start of his career.

We have in Poe two kinds of writers. We
have the producer of

popular work that he knows is going to
sell.

And yet we have this other writer who
has literary aspirations. He wants to be

taken seriously.

This should be a stable time in his
life.

But he's also miserable.

And he's miserable because he's away
from Maria Clem and he's away from his

cousin Virginia.

While in Richmond, Poe learns that a
wealthy cousin in Baltimore has offered

take Virginia in and pay for her
schooling.

This would have taken Virginia away from
Eddie.

And he panicked.

I was blinded with tears.

I had no wish to live another hour.

My dearest auntie, I

love Virginia

passionately.

devoted me.

I cannot express in words the fervent
devotion I feel toward

my dear little cousin.

Part of it for Poe was that He had
finally found a family, and he wanted to

in it for good.

Virginia, my love,

think well before

you break the heart of your cousin.

His desperate letters convinced Mariah
in Virginia to come to Richmond, to live

with him there as a family.

She's 13 years old.

He's 27.

It's a bit of a mismatch.

But it's not one that was unknown for
that time.

In order to be married, they had to lie
about her age.

So it was obviously something that was
disapproved of at the time.

I think he loved her. I really do think
he loved her, but not in a sexual way,

not in a grown -up way.

I think Eddie looked at her as a little
sis. I mean, that's what he called her.

My own sweet little sissy.

People around town described Virginia as
being very cheerful and loving, very

childlike. Even when she was starting to
get a little bit older, she would rush

out into the street and embrace him when
he got home from work.

And they said they were a fairly happy
family.

No matter how poor Poe was, he made sure
his wife had tutors and music

instructors.

And he loved to hear her sing and play
the piano. And he would play the flute

along with her.

And the mother -in -law, she would sing
along.

They'd have little concerts together at
night while he's writing stories about

burying your wife in the basement or
pulling out her teeth.

So it was a reasonably normal, happy
home life.

Dear Mr. Kennedy, I know you will be
pleased to hear this.

My health is better than for years past.

My pecuniary difficulties have vanished.

In a word, all is right.

You might think, ah, alas, he's arrived.
This is the work that he was meant to

do with the source of steady income.

Yet he only holds a job for 15 months.

He said he left because he quarreled
with the editor. He said that he was too

good for the magazine. He wanted to move
on, for sure.

Poe didn't get along well with anybody,
really, for long.

Part of Poe's problem with his boss was
an issue that would plague him for the

rest of his life.

Alcoholism has run in the Poe family for
250 years that we can document.

My great -great -grandfather William
wrote to Edgar talking about the family

curse.

He could go long periods of time without
drinking, but once he was in a

situation where alcohol was present.

It was deadly for him.

By age 28, Poe has begun to build a
literary reputation.

He leaves Richmond to try his hand in
New York City.

But he arrives on the eve of one of the
worst financial recessions in American

history.

After a year of struggle, he moves on to
Philadelphia.

In 1839, Poe lands an editing job at
Burton's Gentleman's Magazine,

an up -and -coming periodical.

Mariah, Virginia, and Edgar settle in
for what will be their longest stay in

city.

Life in Philadelphia was really the
picture of middle -class domesticity.

had a little house, they had a little
yard, you know, I think they had some

pets.

Poe was firing on all cylinders,
creatively and also as a magazine

Poe joins the busy literary circles of
Philadelphia, making friends despite his

often caustic reviews.

inevitably, he crosses paths with
another ambitious young literary critic.

Poe meets a person who would become
very, very significant in our

of Poe himself, and that's the Reverend
Rufus W. Griswold.

Rufus Griswold was a reviewer and
anthologizer.

Like Poe, he viewed himself as an
American tastemaker.

But unlike Poe, Griswold had no problem
trading positive reviews for favors.

Griswold was a great puffer. If you
puffed Griswold, Griswold would puff

Poe had this kind of piety about it.
Like he wouldn't puff anybody and he

expect anyone to puff them because he
thought that there should be real value.

Poe's only source of steady income is
magazine work.

While he's editing one periodical, he's
writing for another.

Sometimes he was the only one on the
half of the magazine.

Commissioning, proofreading, editing,
getting the illustrations, going to the

printer, getting the paper, choosing the
type, you know, there's a lot of things

you have to do.

The owner would have another job, he'd
be an actor, he'd be something, he'd

a business, he'd go away, and there's
Eddie Post sitting there.

Given the technology that produced that
magazine, that is exhausting work.

Ho would go home from the office every
evening, have dinner, and then he would

write. And he would stay up, you know,
late into the night writing.

Ho could be an extraordinarily
disciplined and productive writer.

It seemed to come out of late nights.

drinking a lot of coffee, and working on
a deadline.

And sometimes Mariah Clem would sit
beside him, keeping him company while he

composed these stories that were totally
unlike what he did during the day.

In his career, Poe would write nearly 70
stories in a range of genres, aiming to

reach the widest possible audience.

A third of his short stories are
comedies. He liked a romantic comedy.

Only a dozen of Poe's tales are horror
stories, but they remain his most

popular.

Among them, The Fall of the House of
Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum,

The Mask of the Red Death, The Black
Cat, The

Premature Burial.

Poe was writing in the old -fashioned
genre of the gothic tale.

But the terrors he was tapping into were
very much of the moment.

Premature burial was a real fear in the
19th century.

Because people seemed dead, but they
weren't.

As odd, as bizarre as that seemed,
during periods of epidemics, and there

several during Poe's lifetime, there
were lots of public interments taking

very hastily.

without proper medical examination.

And there were many, many instances of
people actually being buried before they

were dead.

Coffin makers provided gadgets to allow
the victim to ring an alarm on the

surface.

Poe devoured the sensational account and
would work the horrifying idea into

several stories.

Premature internment is the ultimate
claustrophobia.

The unendurable oppression of the lungs,
the stifling fumes of the damp earth,

the clinging to the death garments, the
rigid embrace of the narrow house, the

blackness of the absolute night, the
silence like a sea that overwhelms

the unseen but palpable presence.

of the conqueror worm.

Poe is talking about the subject that
makes him so universally interesting.

Except for sex, you can't get anything
more human and fundamental than fear.

Poe developed rules about how to
construct a powerful short story.

First, the artist must decide, of all
the innumerable effects or impressions,

what one shall I select?

He sees the author or the poet as being
a craftsman who really has to

weed away anything that doesn't go
towards that single effect.

If... The very initial sentence does not
bring out this effect that he had

failed in his first step.

He has so many famous first lines that
immediately pull you into the setting

the character.

The cask of Amontillado.

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had
borne as best I could, but when he

ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.

The pit.

And the pendulum.

I was sick, sick unto death with that
long agony.

And when at length they unbound me and I
was permitted to sit, I felt that my

senses were leaving me.

The Black Cat.

For the most wild yet most homely
narrative which I am about to pen, I

expect nor solicit belief.

Ho is responding to a new American urban
culture, which is very aware of crime.

There was a lot of poverty.

There was a lot of class rivalry and
competition. There was urban violence.

It was a time of great uncertainty for
Americans.

There were great financial panics.

There were poor on the streets. There
were immigrants. What was going to

to this country nobody knew?

Anxious and unsettled, the reading
public welcomed reassurance.

There was a great popular appetite for
stories in which problems or

were resolved.

Characters would, through some sort of
happenstance or fate, figure out their

problems, resolve their dilemmas.
Justice would be done.

Ever aware of the public's tastes, Poe
recognized an appetite.

for a new kind of fiction.

What Poe did is he took that desire for
rationality and order imposed upon chaos

and created a form that could satisfy
that in a modern way, in a way that was

plausible to readers.

With just three short tales, Poe
invented a new genre of literature, the

detective story, with a new breed of
hero.

Residing in Paris during the spring and
part of the summer, I there contracted

an intimacy with a Monsieur C.

Auguste Dupin.

In C. Auguste Dupin, Poe invents the
detective that we've been living with

since. The police are confounded by the
seeming absence of motives, said Dupin.

In fact, the facility with which I shall
arrive, or have arrived, at the

solution of this mystery is in the
direct ratio of its apparent...

Insolubility in the eyes of the police.

That really eccentric, brilliant central
figure and the sidekick who's kind of a

stand -in for the reader.

I stared at the speaker in mute
astonishment.

And a confrontation of the suspect at
the end of it and false leads. All the

things we think of as these classic
aspects of a detective story, they all

together at once in that first detective
story of Pose.

If you've never read the Dupin stories,
then you just only have read Holmes and

you know the character.

Because Holmes is a rip -off of Dupin.
And so is pretty much everybody else. So

is Nero Wolfe. So is Hercule Poirot.

So is House on television.

Poe's finally making a name for himself,
but he's not making money.

At the time, U .S. law provided
virtually no copyright protection.

So even if you had a successful piece of
writing that was a big hit, a bunch of

other people would run off copies of it
without paying you. His works could be

published in England without paying him,
and English works by people like

Dickens could be published in America
without paying Dickens. So if you can

publish Dickens for free, why should you
pay Poe?

Looking for an edge in the marketplace?

Poe deliberately crafted an intriguing
public persona.

I am excessively slothful and
wonderfully industrious

by fits.

Thus have I rambled and dreamed away
whole months and awake at last to a sort

mania for composition. Then I scribble
all day and read all night

so long as the disease

But despite all his efforts, poverty
continued to stalk Poe.

You see him working 12, 14 hours a day
as an editor or as a hack writer.

I think it almost ruined him as an
imaginative writer.

I've been so far essentially a
magazineist.

bearing not only willingly but
cheerfully the sad poverty that the

the mere magazine has to tails upon him
in America, where, in more than

any other region upon the face of the
globe, to be poor is to be despised.

Even at his lowest moment, Poe never
lets go of his identity as a poet.

Poetry would always be his first love.

In 1841, he learns that Rufus Griswold
is compiling an authoritative collection

of American poetry.

Griswold is coming out with this massive
anthology called The Poets and Poetry

of America.

So, of course, Poe is desperate to get
himself into this book.

Griswold does publish a few of Poe's
poems.

Then he asks Poe to return the favor by
reviewing the book.

Poe pointed out what was good about
Griswold's anthology, but then he said

was bad about it.

Oh, he has some talents, we allow, but
as a critic, his judgment is worthless,

simply because reason and thinking are
entirely out of Mr. Griswold's sphere.

Griswold took great exception to that,
was highly offended, and was an enemy of

Poe for the rest of his life.

Poe really had a knack for making
enemies. You really have to give it to

Though he was often a prickly
personality outside the house, by all

Poe was the opposite at home.

He was devoted to his child bride, now a
young woman, and visitors noted that

Virginia adored her Eddie.

One afternoon or evening, Virginia was
singing, and she seems to

burst a blood vessel.

And she started coughing up blood.

It's the first signs of tuberculosis.

It cast a shadow over Poe that lasted
for years.

And no matter what his successes were,
that was a constant for him, his worry

about his wife's health.

My dear little wife has been dangerously
ill.

A fortnight since, while singing, she
ruptured a blood vessel.

And it was only on yesterday that the
physicians gave me any hope of her

recovery.

You might imagine the agony I've
suffered.

For you know how devotedly I love her.

At age 35, Poe decides to move his
family to New York City, hoping

to capitalize on his growing reputation.

New York, Sunday morning, April 7th. My
dear Muddy, we have just this minute

done breakfast, and I now sit down to
write you about everything.

Edgar and Virginia go first and report
back to Mariah Clem.

Last night we had the nicest tea you
ever drank.

Strong and hot wheat bread and rye
bread.

Cheese, tea cakes.

No fear of starving here.

Sister's delighted.

She has coughed hardly any and had no
night's wet.

I feel an excellent spirit since having
drank a drop.

So that I hope so to get out of trouble.

The very instant I scrape together
enough money, I will send it on.

1845 proves to be the year of Edgar
Allan Poe.

In January, less than a year after
arriving in New York, he publishes the

that will make him internationally
famous.

The Raven is his breakthrough.

It's the literary work, the poem, that
sort of puts him on the literary map in

way that he had never been before.

I would imagine that Poe felt like he
finally made it when he was part of Anne

Charlotte Lynch's literary events every
Saturday.

Because everybody who was anybody came.

They would turn the lights down.

He had to read The Raven, of course.

over and over. Everybody wanted to hear
him read The Raven.

And he spoke in a very dramatic voice
that ran in his blood. He was quite the

entertainer.

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 if someone, gently rapping, rapping
at my chamber door.

Tis some visitor, I muttered, tapping at
my chamber

door.

Only this, and nothing more.

It was a poem about the common plight of
people, where half of all children

died before they reached maturity, and
everyone understood what it means to

grieve.

Then methought the air drew denser,
perfume from an unseen.

censer swung by seraphim whose footfalls
tinkled on the tosted floor.

The silk and sad uncertain rustling of
each purple curtain thrilled me, you

know, that there's just a lusciousness
about the sonorities and so on in a

line like that that had a great impact
on me, it really did.

And the raven.

never flitting, still is sitting, still
is sitting on the

pallid bust of palace, just above my
chamber door.

And his eyes have all the seeming of a
demon that is dreaming,

and the lamplight o 'er him streaming
throws his shadow on

the floor.

And my soul from out that shadow that
lies floating on the floor

shall be lifted

nevermore.

He wanted fame, and boy, did he get it
with the raven.

In fact, he couldn't even walk down the
street without kids falling behind,

flapping their wings, and people calling
out, there's the raven.

He created a persona that captured the
minds of so many.

The way he presented himself in
portraiture, his identification with the

You don't want to say it was a shtick,
but it's one, it's a shtick that stuck.

He wasn't just this.

Grim Reaper, this man of the night, he
could be tremendously witty.

He was a kind of ladies' man.

Poe became close friends with Francis
Sargent Osgood, a popular poet, a member

of the same literary circles, and a
married woman.

Virginia is at home dying of
tuberculosis.

He's carrying on with this other woman.

Here he had this compelling woman come
into his life, Frances, who could write

love poetry.

And I think it turned his head away from
poor Virginia.

But everybody at the time was talking
about it. It was such a scandal.

And it's at this time that he and
Griswold...

cross paths again, and not in a pleasant
way, because Griswold has well -known

affection for Osgood.

Rufus Griswold must have just been
steaming.

Poe was stealing his dream.

Poe was doing everything he wanted,
including taking the girl.

His new fame allows him to borrow money
and realize his long -held dream.

He buys a magazine.

So he had this great success with the
Raven, and he was finally becoming

And then for some completely bizarre
reason, he decides to pick a fight with

most loved poet in America at the time,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Longfellow would become the most
prosperous.

successful and adored writer in America.

And, of course, he was a professor at
Harvard. He was a Bostonian par

excellence.

The poetical claims of Mr. Longfellow
were vastly overrated.

Overrated.

And that the individual himself would be
little esteemed without the...

accessories of wealth and position.

Longfellow was the person that Poe was
supposed to be.

If he had stayed in college, if he had
inherited that money from the Allens,

and when he saw Longfellow, he saw
someone that had the life that he should

had but was denied.

He accused Longfellow of being a
plagiarist.

but he also profoundly disapproved of
the sort of writing that Longfellow was

doing. He could see that Longfellow was
a brilliant versifier, but he thought

that Longfellow didn't understand what
poetry was about, that his poetry had no

soul.

But there was a political dimension to
Poe's attacks on Longfellow, the slavery

debate.

Poe himself never spoke out directly to
defend or condemn slavery.

But he was a loyal son of the South.

It's not as if Poe just grew up in the
South and there was slavery in the

Slaves were imported right down the
street from where Poe was living as a

teenager.

They were bought and sold. They were
imprisoned there.

Poe inevitably would have seen human
trafficking on an almost daily basis.

But above all, Poe was a purist about
literature.

For him, the greater sin may have been
that Longfellow and other New England

writers injected politics into their
poetry.

We despise them and defy them, the
transcendental vagabonds. They may all

the devil together.

There's something self -destructive in
Poe's strafings against Longfellow.

What Poe calls in another context the
imp of the perverse, that force inside

us that compelled us to our own doom.

We have a task before us which must be
speedily performed.

We know it will be ruinous to make
delay.

It must, it shall be undertaken today.

And yet we put it off until tomorrow.
And why?

There is no answer, except that we feel
perverse.

As Americans, we always want to think of
ourselves as perfectible.

That's the American dream, right?

But Poe sees the dark side of the
American dream. He sees the way that we

sometimes do things wrong, almost in
spite of ourselves and almost because we

know they're wrong.

So Poe really prefigures our
understanding of human psychology.

There is no passion in nature so
demonically impatient as him who,

the edge of a precipice, thus meditates
a plunge.

When you have Poe's history, unwanted,
unloved, feeling not

important enough, perhaps that turns you
into somebody who's a bit too careless

and reckless.

Because there's this pervasive, nagging
notion that you will never be good

enough.

In just one year, the scandalous
relationship with Francis Osgood and

attacks on Longfellow have undone his
accomplishments.

He made practically nothing from The
Raven after the first printing.

and was forced to shut down his
magazine.

Poe, Virginia, and Mariah escape
Manhattan for a cottage in Fordham, New

He's out in this sort of farmland.

There's apple trees.

He's trying to tame a bird.

It should be a very bucolic scene.

But what you have is Poe very ill a lot
of the time, but trying his hardest to

keep writing, and Virginia just
declining and declining.

The autumn came, and Mrs. Poe sank
rapidly in consumption.

She lay on the straw bed wrapped in her
husband's greatcoat.

A large tortoiseshell cat on her bosom.

The sufferer's only means of warmth.

Virginia held on into the winter months.

Occasional moments of improvement were
followed by inevitable decline.

It was a never -ending oscillation
between hope and despair, which I could

longer tolerate without loss of reason.

I became insane, with long interval and
horrible sanity.

During these fits of absolute
unconsciousness, I drank God only knows

how often.

A matter of course, my enemies referred
the insanity to the drink, rather the

drink to the insanity.

I had indeed.

Almost abandoned all hope in a permanent
cure when I found one in the death of

my wife.

The impact of Virginia's death was just
devastating.

It nearly undid him altogether.

Most of the people that Poe loved died
of consumption.

If you pay much attention to American
history, though, most of the people that

most people loved died of consumption or
childbirth.

It is the sad tragedy of human existence
in a 19th century city.

Oh, God.

How melancholy an existence.

published very little in 1847. He was
able to do very little. He focused his

attention on writing Eureka.

In the depths of his grief, Poe produces
his most eccentric work,

a long essay that attempts to explain
the origins of the universe.

Some interpreters see within it a
glimpse of 20th century physics.

Poe develops not only the basic concept
of relativity theory, but

also the Big Bang theory, and he
expounds on why the universe has so much

empty space.

One of the things that's remarkable
about it is how modern it is as a

when you consider he had nothing to work
from, really.

What is it that induces in the poet
himself the poetical effect?

He recognizes... In 1848, he began
giving public lectures again,

began traveling again, began socializing
again.

He wanted to remarry.

He wanted a rich wife. He needed a rich
wife.

If he had a rich wife, he could have his
own magazine.

and he would not have to be a Grub
Street hack anymore.

This launched him on a series of near
engagements, all of which turned out

badly.

While he was courting one, he was
courting another, he was proposing to

was seeing another.

As your eyes rested appealingly for one
brief moment upon mine, I

saw that you were Helen.

My Helen.

When you read what he said to the women
he was courting, including falling on

his knees and hand over the heart and
forelock down and heavy breathing and

kinds of promises, it seems just so over
the top.

She tenderly kissed me.

She fondly caressed.

And then I fell gently to sleep on her
breast.

The women he was pursuing were not 13
-year -old tubercular girls who were

to be reliant on him. These were often
working poets who had their own

livelihood to protect.

One of them was a woman named Sarah
Helen Whitman.

They had a courtship that had
culminated, Poe thought, in her

proposal of marriage.

learned that Sarah Whitman had decided
not to marry him, the wheels really came

off.

He tried to commit suicide.

I procured two ounces of laudanum.

My struggles were more than I could
bear.

A friend was at hand who aided me.

And if it can be called saving, saved
me.

Less than a year later, his fortunes
changed, practically overnight.

He'd found a financial backer so he
could start his own literary magazine,

Stylus.

Poe set off on a journey to raise more
money.

My plan was to take a tour through the
principal states, especially West and

South, lecturing as I went to pay
expenses.

...more supremely noble than the poem.

The death, then, of a beautiful woman is
unquestionably the most

poetical topic in the world.

The last stop was Richmond, the city he
had left more than a decade earlier.

When Poe came back to Richmond, he was
Edgar the Raven Poe. He was a household

name, and he was a celebrity returning
back to his hometown.

He visited old friends, he made new
ones.

His sister and her foster family were
still living in Richmond, and they

welcomed him into their home.

This poem.

written solely for the poem's sake.

Poe renewed his friendship with a
childhood flame, Elmira Royster Shelton,

was now a wealthy widow.

And he really started courting Elmira
seriously.

Elmira might have been skeptical of
Poe's motives, but she finally agreed to

marry him.

Poe wrote to his mother -in -law.

that it would clearly be a marriage of
convenience.

My own darling Muddy, I confess that my
heart sinks at the idea of this

marriage. I think, however, that it will
certainly take place, and that

immediately.

But before Poe and Elmira could marry,
Edgar had a trip to make.

He would travel to Philadelphia for a
brief editing job, Then on to New York

pick up Mariah Clem and bring her back
to Richmond for the wedding.

He came up to my house on the evening of
the 26th of September to take leave of

me.

He was very sad and complained of being
quite sick.

I felt his pulse and found he had a
considerable fever.

I did not think it probable that he
would be able to start the next morning.

I went up early the next morning to
inquire after him.

I discovered he had left on the boat for
Baltimore.

There is an irony in the fact that the
death of Poe, who wrote the first

detective story, became a mystery.

Poe arrived by steamboat in Baltimore.

On September 28, 1849, his plan was to
immediately board the train for

Philadelphia, then travel on to New
York.

It seems very strange for us to think
that a man like Edgar Allan Poe could

vanish.

But that's exactly what happened for
about five days.

When he was found, he was still in
Baltimore, semi -conscious, dressed in

-fitting second -hand clothes that
looked nothing like the kind of clothes

would have worn.

Eventually, he's recognized as the
famous writer, and an old friend is

take him to the hospital.

He spent his last four days delirious,
in and out of consciousness, talking to

shadows in the wall, not making any
sense.

Four days later, Poe is dead.

At the age of 40.

Poe dies alone without it ever being
completely clear what exactly he was

suffering from.

Poe's mysterious death has prompted
dozens of theories.

That he suffered from rabies.

Or died from a brain tumor.

Or perhaps he was an accidental victim
of warring political gangs on the

of Baltimore.

it's unlikely we'll ever know the
answer.

Thank heaven.

The crisis, the dangers pass.

The lingering illness is over at last.

And the fever called living is
conquered.

Within a few days of the author's death,
The character

assassination began.

Poe made the mistake of dying before his
greatest literary enemy, Rufus

Griswold.

Griswold wrote the obituary of Poe, and
in it he pilloried Poe. He took

him apart.

He says, Edgar Allan Poe is dead. Many
will be shocked by this, but very few

people will be grieved by it. He says,
Poe had few or no friends.

He was sort of this miserable person.

But Poe's friends, and he did have many
friends, rallied to his defense and

wrote more favorable obituaries.

But, of course, the damage is done by
that point.

The Halloween Poe that Griswold invented
lives on generation after generation.

ensuring Poe's iconic place in popular
culture.

But it will always be Poe's writing that
is his real legacy.

I stand amid the roar of a surf
-tormented shore, and I hold within my

grains of the golden sand. How few, yet
how they creep.

through my fingers to the deep, while I
weep, while I weep.

O God, can I not grasp them with a
tighter clasp?

O God, can I not save one from the
pitiless wave?

Is all that we fear seem but a dream
within a dream?

Mmm.

Edgar Allan Poe Buried Alive is
available on DVD.

To order, visit shoppbs .org or call 1
-800 -PLAY -PBS.

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