The life of Edgar Allan Poe, a writer born in Boston on January 19, 1809 and died on October 7, 1849, was one of the most miserable ones I have ever heard of. Poe's father, David Poe Jr., left Edgar when he was not even one year old, and his mother, Eliza Poe, died from tuberculosis a year later. He then lived in the back of the curtain of prop room until he was informally adopted by the Allan family, from which he got his middle name. Edgar Allen Poe attended University of Virginia but soon he dropped out, just like so many poets, after getting involved in gambling and having debts.
Poe, at the age of 18, soon enlisted himself as a private in the United States Army. His stepfather supported Poe to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point, but as soon as Poe was discharged from the Academy, Allan never accepted Poe as a stepson again. Because Poe got an award for his short novel, he could work at Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond from 1835 to 1837. Though he was close to an alcoholic, he wrote lots of creative works, which made the paper popular.
In 1835, 26-year-old Poe married his 13-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm. After experiencing a very poor living conditions during economic crisis in the US, Clemm fell sick; she suffered from tuberculosis and poverty for five years until she died in 1847. In the year Clemm died, Poe wrote a poem Annabel Lee:
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
In the poem Edgar Allan Poe reflected his emotions when he had to let her wife die in poverty. Poe expressed his sadness not only in this poem but also in the Raven.
Poe could only live for two years after his wife's death; he suffered from depression and even tried a suicide with doses of opium. Although he had a couple lovers, with whom he planned to start a new life. On the morning of September 28, 1849, he appeared in a hospital in Baltimore, lingering on the verge of death. It is said that he disappeared without any treatment and on October 3, people in the street found him unconcious; in the hospital he suffered from insanity and in the morning of October 7 he died.
A fictional movie with Edgar Allan Poe is in the making and I am more than excited to watch how this man with the most miserable life will be depicted in the movie! Here is the trailer.
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