WEBVTT

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"The Raven" is Poe's
most famous poem

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and was immediately
popular in his own day,

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and he liked to tell everybody
about it all the time.

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He wrote it allegedly, to
suit at once the critical

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and the popular taste.

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And history has so
far shown that he

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accomplished this dual purpose.

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I'm going to read an extremely
truncated version of it

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to get us started
on "The Raven."

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It's better when James
Earl Jones does it.

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"Once upon a midnight dreary,
while I pondered weak and weary

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over many a quaint and curious
volume of forgotten lore,

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while I nodded, nearly
napping, suddenly there

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came a tapping as if
someone gently rapping,

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rapping at my chamber door.

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'Tis some visitor, I muttered,
tapping at my chamber door."

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OK, now I'm going to jump ahead.

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The bird comes in, says,
nevermore, and we resume.

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"But the Raven, sitting
lonely on the placid bust,

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spoke only that one
word, as if his soul

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in that one word did outpour.

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Nothing farther then he uttered.

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Not a feather then he fluttered.

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Till I scarcely
more than muttered,

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other friends have flown before.

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And on the morrow
he will leave me

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as my hopes have flown before.

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Then the bird
said, 'nevermore.'"

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We're going to jump ahead.

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Again, the speaker
asks questions

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about whether he
will see Lenore again

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or whether he will forget her.

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And every time, the bird
answers in the negative.

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And this brings us to
the last three stanzas.

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"'Prophet,' said I, "thing
of evil, prophet still,

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if bird or devil.

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By that Heaven that bends above
us, by that God we both adore,

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tell this soul with sorrow laden
if within the distant Aidenn,

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it shall clasp a sainted maiden
whom the angels name Lenore.

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Clasp a rare and radiant maiden,
whom the angels name Lenore.'

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Quoth the Raven, 'nevermore.'

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'Be that word our sign of
parting bird or fiend,' I

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shrieked, upstarting, 'get
thee back into the tempest

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and the night's Plutonian shore.

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Leave no black plume as a
token of that lie thy soul

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hath spoken.

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Leave my loneliness unbroken.

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Quit the bust above my door.

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Take thy beak from out my heart,
and take thy form from off

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my door.'

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Quoth the Raven, 'nevermore.'

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And the Raven, never flitting,
still is sitting, still

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is sitting on the
pallid bust of Pallas

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just above my chamber door.

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And his eyes have all the
seeming of a demon's that

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is dreaming and the
lamplight o'er him streaming,

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throws his shadow on the floor.

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And my soul from out
of that shadow that

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lies floating on the floor,
shall be lifted nevermore."

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OK, hopefully all of
us know this poem.

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But what many people do not
know is that Poe wrote a sequel.

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He followed up this poem
with an article entitled,

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"The Philosophy of
Composition," published

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a year later that
purports to reveal

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how he wrote "The Raven."

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It is like nothing else.

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In it, he proclaims
that, "it is my design

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to render it manifest that
no one point in it's--"

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and this is "The
Raven's"-- "composition

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is referable either to
accident or intuition.

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That the work
preceded step by step

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to its conclusion
with the precision

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and rigid consequence of
a mathematical problem."

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Such a display, in Poe's
mind might dispel a myth.

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"Many writers,
poets in especial,

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prefer having it
understood that they

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compose by a species of fine
frenzy, an ecstatic intuition,

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and would positively shudder
at letting the public take

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a peek behind the
scenes at the elaborate

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and vacillating
crudities of thought.

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And, in a word, at the
wheels and pinions,

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the tackle for scene shifting,
the stepladders and demon

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traps, the cock's
feathers, the red paint

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and the black patches, which
in 99 cases out of the 100,

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constitute the properties
of the literary histrio."

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So in order to achieve
this, Poe deconstructs

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"The Raven," showing it through
a question and answer process

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to be completely mechanical,
just wheels and pinions.

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Nothing there, nothing,
nothing there at all.

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The question is
how long should--

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the first question for him is
how long should my poem be?

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Poe discusses how a poem
should be long enough

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to give a steady
impression, but short enough

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to be read in a single sitting.

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Thus, he reasons, quote,
"I reached at once what

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I conceived the proper
length of my intended poem,

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a length of about 100 lines.

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It is in fact 108."

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The next question was, what
effect should my poem convey?

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After considering
truth and passion

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as being unsuited for poetry,
Poe lands upon beauty.

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"Regarding then
beauty as my province,

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my next question
referred to the tone

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of its highest manifestation.

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And all experience has
shown that this tone

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is one of sadness.

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Melancholy is, thus,
the most legitimate

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of all the poetical tones."

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It keeps going.

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After concluding that he
must have a refrain, that

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takes some time, Poe deduces
what word that refrain must be.

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Poe says that it must be,
"sonorous and susceptible

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of protracted emphasis.

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And these considerations
inevitably

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led me to consider-- led me to
the long O as the most sonorous

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vowel, and in connection
with R as the most

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produceable consonant."

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He thought of the
sounds first, and then

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was like, what words
will meet these sounds?

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And he lands upon "nevermore."

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This goes on.

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He discovers he can't use
a human for this refrain

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because it would seem ridiculous
a person just constantly saying

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"nevermore" over and over again.

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So he thinks of animals,
an animal, right?

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Parrot, but then he
discards the parrot

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for the idea of the raven.

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As quote, "equally capable
of speech and infinitely more

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in keeping with
the intended tone."

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One of the essay's
more surprising claims

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is how Poe gets to the,
quote, "most poetical topic

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in the world.

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I had now gone so
far as the conception

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of a Raven, the
bird of ill omen,

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monotonously
repeating the one word

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nevermore at the
conclusion of each stanza

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in a poem of melancholy tone and
in length of about 100 lines.

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Now, I asked myself, of
all melancholy topics

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what, according to the universal
understanding of mankind,

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is the most melancholy?

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Death was the obvious reply.

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And when, I said, is
this most melancholy

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of topics most poetical?

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From what I have already
explained at some length,

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the answer here also, is
obvious, when it most closely

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allies itself to beauty.

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The death then of
a beautiful woman

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is unquestionably the most
poetical topic in the world."

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So most readers-- most scholars
find Poe's essay specious,

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as I'm sure many of you
might be inclined to do.

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Poe makes every
facet of the poem

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seem like it proceeded
from rigid consequence,

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but only insofar as
he hides the fact

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that he knew what the answer--

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he knew the answer he
wanted before he even

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asked the question.

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For instance,
where is the genius

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of calculating that the best
poem is around 100 lines

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when you know already
that the poem is 108?

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If "The Raven"
were 200 lines, I'm

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sure Poe's calculation would
have been adjusted accordingly.

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This leads most
scholars to consider

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"The Philosophy of Composition"
as an elaborate hoax

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and curiosity.

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But just because it is faked,
doesn't mean it isn't profound.

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Remember, that in "The Raven,"
the Raven speaks a single word,

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nevermore.

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And the meaning of nevermore
changes as the speaker

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varies his questions.

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What is so dark and disturbing
about the poem, which

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some readers miss, is that
this dialogue is actually

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a monologue.

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As Poe puts it in the
essay, quote, "at length,

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the lover experiences
a frenzied pleasure

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in so modeling his
questions as to receive

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from the expected nevermore
the most delicious

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because the most
intolerable of sorrow."

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In other words,
the speaker knows

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the answer ahead of time
and frames his question

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in order to get the
answer that he wants.

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The power of the poem is not
that the bird brings tidings

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of doom and never ending
sorrow, but rather

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that the speaker uses the
bird as a sounding board

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for the doom and never
ending sorrow in his heart.

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That is, the bird
is just squawking,

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and he turns the squawk
into a confirmation

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of what he most deeply fears.

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But where have we
heard this before?

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In "The Philosophy
of Composition"

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Poe frames every question in
such a way to get the answer

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he knew he wanted
from the start.

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He knows the poem
will say 100 lines,

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and thus, frames his question
so that 100 lines is the answer.

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He knows the answer
is nevermore,

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and so designs his
questions to get O and R.

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And in the passage
above, Poe literally

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falls into a question and
answer dialogue with himself

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like the speaker and the raven.

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What I'm getting at is that
both the poem and the essay

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work in the same way.

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So to dismiss the poem as
legitimate and the essay

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as a hoax is to miss the point.

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Rather, once we
see the connection,

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we get that the essay
is another version

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of the poem, a companion
piece that in unraveling it,

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unravels itself.

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It draws attention to the way
that the lack of significance

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in a sound, in the
bird, or in the poem

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enables the critic
to give it meaning.

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But in giving it
meaning, the meaning

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that is finally produced
is one of never ending

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melancholy for eternal loss.

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Criticism ends up finding
what it is looking for,

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but that is not presence
or meaning or significance,

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but rather absence
and emptiness.

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What Poe seems to be showing is
that literature and criticism

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work together in a
deconstructive manner that

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shows that at the heart
of literary feeling

00:09:56.320 --> 00:09:58.000 align:middle line:84%
is a kind of loss
or absence that

00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:00.140 align:middle line:90%
is more than simply nothing.

00:10:00.140 --> 00:10:02.830 align:middle line:84%
In other words, the pairing of
"The Raven" and "The Philosophy

00:10:02.830 --> 00:10:05.170 align:middle line:84%
of Composition"
suggests that criticism

00:10:05.170 --> 00:10:07.300 align:middle line:90%
itself can produce feeling.

00:10:07.300 --> 00:10:09.970 align:middle line:84%
In this complex
performance, it isn't clear

00:10:09.970 --> 00:10:12.730 align:middle line:84%
where art stops and
criticism begins.

00:10:12.730 --> 00:10:15.760 align:middle line:84%
Art shows itself to be
both a set of simple rules

00:10:15.760 --> 00:10:19.810 align:middle line:84%
and something much deeper,
more paradoxical and richer.

00:10:19.810 --> 00:10:22.570 align:middle line:84%
That is, Poe's essay
seems to reduce poetry

00:10:22.570 --> 00:10:25.300 align:middle line:84%
to a series of levers,
pulleys, and paint.

00:10:25.300 --> 00:10:27.640 align:middle line:84%
But it raises
criticism to show how

00:10:27.640 --> 00:10:31.420 align:middle line:84%
that emptiness itself could
be a more true feeling,

00:10:31.420 --> 00:10:34.390 align:middle line:84%
a neverending melancholy
that, as Poe says,

00:10:34.390 --> 00:10:37.500 align:middle line:84%
is the most legitimate
of poetical tones.

00:10:37.500 --> 00:10:38.000 align:middle line:90%