Answers To Some Questions On "The Raven"

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One of De Vere's poems is a paean to Christmas,

Christmas Bells

Edgar A. Poe juxtaposes a tempest to "the harmonious tumult" of Christmas bells everywhere "beautifully blending with the sonorous organ of the wind." The soliloquist of The Raven, averse to "the jubilant cry of multitudes," peruses in quiet solitude volume after volume of forgotten literature (1.1-2) in an effort to forget his lost Lenore (i.e., his lost faith). Unable to do so, he longs for the dawn (2.3) and the end of the quintessential night feast of the Christian faith in the month of December: Christmas Eve.

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Eleonora dies peacefully with this promise upon her lips,

And she said to me, not many days afterward, tranquilly dying, that because of what I had done for the comfort of her spirit she would watch over me in that spirit when departed and—if so it were permitted her—return to me visibly in the watches of the night; but if this thing were indeed beyond the power of the souls in Paradise, that she would at least give me frequent indications of her presence, sighing upon me in the evening winds or filling the air which I breathed with perfume from the censers of the angels.

The spirit of the departed cousin keeps her promise,

Yet the promises of Eleonora were not forgotten, for I heard the sounds of the swinging of the censers of the angels and streams of a holy perfume floated ever and ever about the valley; and at lone hours, when my heart beat heavily, the winds that bathed my brow came unto me laden with soft sighs and indistinct murmurs filled often the night air.

The narrator breaks his vow to remain a widower the rest of his life, nevertheless he is forgiven via paranormal communication,

I wedded;—nor dreaded the curse I had invoked; and its bitterness was not visited upon me. And once—but once again in the silence of the night—there came through my lattice the soft sighs which had forsaken me and they modelled themselves into familiar and sweet voice saying...

By analogy with this short story the soliloquist of The Raven hears or is apprehensive about hearing "the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain" model itself into a voice in the silence of the night, a prospect that fills him "with fantastic terrors never felt before."

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Vs 5.4-5 furnish the important clue that the darkness outside the chamber door possesses an echo. A thorough search of all the stories written by Edgar A. Poe yielded the following list of echo-producing locales; offsets printed red are rejected candidates,

• apartment shrouded in black velvet tapestries (The Masque of the Red Death)
•        covered arched bridge (Never Bet the Devil Your Head)
•        circular pit (The Pit and the Pendulum)
•        crypt (The Fall of the House of Usher)
•        hills (Narrative of A. Gordon Pym)
• in-house library (Berenice)
•        mighty cataract (The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall)
• noble hall shrouded in sable draperies (Shadow—A Parable)
•        theater (The Spectacles)

It would certainly agree with Poe's temper to have the chamber door open unto an "apartment shrouded in black velvet tapestries" where the corpse of Lenore lies or had lain in estate. This funereal room would abet v 15.4, "On this home by horror haunted," but then the mourner's loitering at his own door bewilders (5.1-2). And how did the raven enter the apartment and start "gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door" (1.4)?

The option of an in-house library is the most attractive. The one featured in the short story Berenice has an inner apartment where Egaeus the narrator was born and where his mother died. The soliloquist's chamber could conform to a similar arrangement. The library would be the repository of the "many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore" (1.2) and the raven could have gotten inside through a window left partly open to ventilate the musty ambiance. As for v 15.4, "On this home by horror haunted," Egaeus draws a parallel between a library's contents and the owner's frame of mind. The association is reaffirmed by the boyhood friend of Roderick Usher who incidentally gives an example of the "quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore" reasonably expected to deck the shelves of the soliloquist's library,

Our books—the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the invalid—were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over such works as [...] His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic—the manual of a forgotten church—the Vigiliae Mortuorum Secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae.

The third option of a hall is perhaps the most intuitive, but the absence of artificial lighting in the corridor and out in the hall mystifies. Moreover how did the raven get inside?

A definitive resolution is deferred to question 7.

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The lowercase variant (7.2, 8.4, 10.1) contemplates the raven's material substance only: a bird (15.1, 16.1, 17.1) tempest-tossed (15.2, 17.2).

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14.1 Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

This verse takes up the promise of Eleonora—appertaining to the eponymous short story—to fill "the air which I breathed with perfume from the censers of the angels." It was noted in the answer to question 3 that the narrator "heard the sounds of the swinging of the censers of the angels and streams of a holy perfume floated ever and ever about the valley." This second link between Eleonora and The Raven justifies the presumption that Edgar A. Poe envisaged Eleonora and Lenore as twins or replicas.

14.2 Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.

What an odd choice is this phrase "tinkled on the tufted floor"! Every reader can come up with improvements: "trampled on the tufted floor" or "trudged along the tufted floor" or "tramped about the tufted floor"; but Edgar A. Poe wrote tinkled and since nothing is accidental the reader must ruminate on the reason for his choice.

Let the reader accept for now that a tap between a drinking glass and a bottle tinkles.

14.3 "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee (respite)"

Two details of this verse verify that The Raven is a sequel to the poem Lenore. First, the archaic British conversational accent has replaced the ordinary American one used at the start on the fourth stanza. The mourner maintains the changeover made on the eighth and references himself in second person with thee's, imitating Guy de Vere's parlance. Second, the speaker calls himself a "wretch," assuming De Vere's affront to hypocritical mourners on v 2.1 of that poem.

14.4 "Respite—respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore!"

A nepenthe is a potion which causes one to forget their troubles. A common nepenthe is any kind of alcoholic beverage.

14.5 "Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"

This verse states plainly that the speaker has started to drink heavily.

The last difficulty to overcome is v 14.3 which states that God had sent the nepenthe to the speaker "by these angels." My thesis is that herein hides Poe's private joke: the final process in the elaboration of brandy or whisky is called the angels' share, defined by Whisky Magazine to be "the amount of alcohol which evaporates from the casks during maturation."

If the thesis is brooked, the reader may also condone the following revision of the twelfth stanza,

Revised Twelfth Stanza        

The circumstances surrounding Poe's death suggest that he was forced to quaff booze, making v 14.5 an eerie premonition of the event.

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