S. E. TSITSONIS ANCIENT GREEK AND LATIN INFLUENCES ON EDGAR ALLAN POE'S POETRY Edgar Allan Poe, perhaps the most tragic, controversial and strangest figure in American Literature, occupies as a poet, short story writer, and literary critic a distinguished place among the intellectuals of the Romantic Movement in America1. The Romantic Movement, which flourished first in Europe approximately between the late eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth century, had a strong influence on Poe's writings. When the Romantic Movement reached a climax in America, approximately between 1820 and 1850, Poe wrote all his works and along with the other major representatives of American Roman­ ticism formed that lumimous constellation that drew part of its light from the European sun 2. It was after the end of the American Civil War in 1865 that the American Romanticism started declining, due to the opening of new material opportun­ ities for the Americans and to the creation of a new faith in realism, which prevailed over the romantic past. Thus, although the Romantic Movement did not altogether disappear in America, it gave way to the surging tide of Realism and Naturalism. The American Romanticists had many characteristics in common. They wrote their works in a dignified style, keeping aloof from the vulgar or the profane, which the Realists never failed to include in their works as an indispen­ sable part of life. Moreover, the American Romanticists undertook to support the dignity of the weak, the needy, and the oppressed, thus succeeding in bringing about social reforms in America in favour of the middle and lower classes. Edgar Allan Poe has much in common with the other major represen­ tatives of the Romantic Movement in America, as he shared their tendency to seek inspiration in Oriental Mysticism, in Classical Antiquity and distant 1. Poe's short and tragic life (1809—1849), his works, and criticism on them are included in numerous scholarly biographies, collections and critical works, among which we could select the following by : J. A. Harrison, Life and Letters of Edgar Allan Pue (vols. 2, N. York, 1903 ). G. E. W ο ο d b e r r y, The Life of Edgar Allan Poe (Boston, 1909). K. Campbell, '<Poe> in Cambridge History of American Literature (N. York, 1918), II, pp. 55—69. Μ. Α. Ρ h i 11 i ρ s, Edgar Allan Poe : The Man (vols. 3. Philadelphia, 1926). K. Campbell, The Mind of Poe and Other Studies (Cambridge, 1933). A. H. Q u i η η, Edgar Allan Poe : A Critical Biography (N. York, 1941 ). A. H. Q u i η η and E.H. Ο' Ν e i 1, The Complete Poems and Stories of Edgar Allan Poe loith Selections from his Critical Studies (vols. 2, N. York, 1946). P. Van Doren Stern, Edgar Allan Poe (N. York, 1968). 2. The most prominent of the American Romanticists, who travelled in Europe and were influenced by the Romantic Movement, then prevalent on the Continent, were : Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Haw­ thorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. -Bio­ lands.What is more, he was also influenced by the German, the British and the Italian Romanticists, and he too wrote prose in a dignified language. Besides, many a time, he extolled supernal or ideal beauty, which he was seeking in his life and which eluded him. It is a constant theme in his poetry to persist in idealizing «the posthumous heroine», and to occupy himself with an endur­ ing lyricism that separates sharply beauty from truth 3. Yet he differs from the other American Romanicists for his striking individuality, his flawless personal style, and his persistence in the outlandish. Furthermore, the limits between the human and the divine as well as the unity of space and time are almost always implied in Poe. But his most striking difference from the other American Romanticists is that he was a great lyric poet, belonging more to the sphere of international lyricism and less to the American Ro­ mantic Movement. Thus, according to Baudelaire, Poe was more of a cosmo­ politan and less of an American poet and short story writer 4 ; so he was soon recognised internationally as an original genius in literature. Poe's background and education exercised their influence upon his poetry. He had excelled as a student of Greek and Latin at famous schools, and he had received honours for his knowledge of Classical Antiquity. There is also evidence that Poe, besides being a lover of Ancient Greece, was at heart a Philhellene, for once he accounted for his time of enlistment as a humble private in the American Army, between 1827 — 1829, by saying, that he had gone to Greece to help the Greeks with their struggle for indepen­ dence. In reality, he set off to join the Greeks, but he did not manage to go farther than Boston 5. Besides, his knowledge of Greek and Latin and his intimate acquaintance with the works of renowned Greek and Latin poets, historians, philosophers and orators like Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Euripides, Plato, Apollodorus, Pausanias, Strabo, Plotinus, Cicero, Seneca and Pliny are reflected in his poetry. And though the Greek and Latin influences on Poe's poetry are sometimes evident, no American or other scholar has written on this subject extensively. Ancient Greek Mythology exercised a special charm on Poe's poetic genius, while his tendency to envelop classic figures, belonging to the sphere of legend and myth, in a romantic haze, is evident in some of his most renowned poems. Thus, in his poem «Sonnet to Science» he presents science as the omnipotent element, as a bird of prey, persecuting imaginary figures of Ancient Greek Mythology. Through the verses of this poem the reader realizes that Artemis, the virgin huntress, goddess of wild nature, under her Latin name - Diana - was a beloved figure in Poe's imagery, and so were the nymphs of the woods or Hamadryads, as well as the Naiads, who gave life to running waters. All these figures were driven from their beloved abodes by Science that relent­ lessly sought truth, reality, and practical explanations of physical phenomena. So Poe laments the denudation of nature of its poetic elements and the 3. Compare R. E. Spille r,W. Thorp, T. H. Johnson, H.J. Canby, R. M. Ludwig, Literary Ristory of the United Stales (third edition, N. York, London, 1964), p. 338 ani H. Levin, The Power of Blackness. Hairthorne, Poe, Melville (X. York, 1969), p. 156. 4. Compare Levin, op. cit., p. 103. 5. See Van Dor en Stern, op. cit., p.p. XXI—XXII. - 311 - intrusion of Science into the sphere of poetry in the following verses : Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her floor Artemis (Diana) and the nymphs of the woods were, as is known, favourite figures in ancient Greek poetry. In Homer's hymn to Aphrodite, Artemis and the nymphs are described as the merry inhabitants of the woods, where the goddess of wild nature not only hunted, but also danced merrily with many nymphs and virgins in the midst of a festive gathering 6. In the same hymn Homer describes Artemis as being invulnerable to the arrows of love and not succumbing to Aphrodite's efforts to incite her to a love union with a man. Artemis, as Homer says, likes killing wild beasts on the mountains and wandering in shady groves, where dances are performed and music is played. Homer also hails Artemis as a queen visiting the palaces of the immortal gods 7. The theme in Homer, from whom Poe got his inspiration, is far different from the attitude Poe is expressing in his poem «To Science». Homer, faithful to the myths about Artemis and the nymphs that circulated in the Greek world, decribed the goddess of wild nature, the Hamadryads, and the Naiads as happy creatures, whose lives were spent in merriment and sport. On the contrary, Poe, having borrowed those classic and romantic figures from Homer, placed them in a sphere of unhappiness, the same unhappiness that haunted him, and presented Artemis and the nymphs as victims of persecution seeking refuge in a happier world. Poe also borrowed from another most renowned poet of Ancient Greece, Hesiod, as revealed by the American poet's verses, belonging to his poem «The Sleeper» : Looking like Lethe, see! the lake A conscious slumber seems to take Lethe (Λήθη), the river of forgetfulness in Ancient Greek Mythology flowing in Hades, was described by Hesiod in his long poem «Theogonia» 6. The verses referring to Artemis and the nymphs belong to Homer's «Hymn to Aphro­ dite», and they run as follows : «νυν δέ μ' άνήρπαξε χρυσόρραπις Άργειφόντης εκ χοροϋ 'Αρτέμιδος χρυσηλακάτου κελαδεινής πολλαί δέ νύμφαι και παρθένοι άλφεσίβοιαι παίζομεν, άμφί δ' όμιλος άπείριτος έστεφάνωτο» (Horn. Hymn. Aphr., 117—120). 7. Homer's verses run as follows : «ουδέ ποτ' 'Αρτέμιδα χρυσηλάκατον κελαδεινήν δάμναται έν φιλότητι φιλομμειδής Αφροδίτη" καΐ γαρ τη άδε τόξα και ουρεσι θήρας έναίρειν φόρμιγγες τε χοροί τε διαπρύσιοι τ' όλολυγαΐ άλσεα τε σκιόεντα δικαίων τε πτόλιν ανδρών» (Horn. Hymn. Aphr., 16—20) «Χαίρε άνασσ' ή τις μακάρων τάδε δωμάθ' Ικάνεις "Αρτεμις ή Λητώ ήέ χρυσέη Αφροδίτη» (Horn. Hymn. Aphr., 92—93)' — 312 — (Θεογονία) as being the daughter of the hateful Eris, goddess of discord and sister to Pain, Hunger, and the tearful Sorrows ». But Hesiod wrote only about Lethe's birth and about her mother and brothers; it was Plato who described the river of Lethe most vividly.
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