Edgar on works. Brief biography of Edgar Poe. Series of books – School Library of Ukrainian and Foreign Literature

Edgar Allan Poe- one of the greatest American romantics of the XIX century - was born January 19, 1809 in Boston. His father abandoned the family, and his mother died of a serious illness when little Edgar was not even three years old ... The child was taken to the family of a wealthy merchant from Richmond, John Allan, who after some time moved to England, where the boy was sent to study in prestigious boarding house. In 1820 the Allan family returned to Richmond, where Edgar went to college. In college, Poe fell in love with the mother of one of his fellow students - Jane Craig Stenard, but the first love ended tragically, in 1824 Jane died ...

In 1826, Edgar graduated from college and entered the University of Virginia, where he studied for only a year. At the same time, Poe makes an attempt to secretly marry his new lover - Sarah Royster, which causes the anger of his adoptive father and he kicks him out of the house ... Edgar leaves for Boston, where he publishes his first collection of poems, which, alas, is not successful ...

In 1829, Edgar met his paternal relatives, they helped him publish a second collection of poems, which also turned out to be a failure, did not bring fame to the writer and the third collection, published a year later in New York, but in June 1833 his story “Manuscript found in a bottle" takes first place in the competition of the literary magazine "Baltimor saturday visitor", Poe becomes a sought-after prose writer and finally in December 1835 becomes the editor of the magazine "Southern literary messeger", his paternal aunt Marie Clem and her thirteen-year-old daughter Virginia, whom Edgar married six months later ... Soon he refuses to work in a magazine and moves to New York with his new family, where he publishes several short stories, but the fees were negligible and the writer was in constant need.

In 1838, Edgar accepted an offer to take the position of editor in the Gentelmen's magazine and moved to Philadelphia because of this. In 1839 he accumulated enough wealth to publish the book Grotesques and Arabesques. during this time he published about thirty stories and many literary critical articles ...

In 1844, Edgar returned to New York and published several short stories there, but they were not successful with the public, but the poem “The Raven” published in 1845 and the collection of the same name made Poe incredibly popular. But soon the bright streak of life ended, poverty came again ... Virginia died of a long illness ...

From grief and hopelessness, the writer completely loses his head, drinks a lot, begins to use drugs to brighten up his loneliness, he increasingly visits prostitutes, and during the next binge he even tries to commit suicide ... At this time, his book “Eureka "- he considered it "the greatest revelation that humanity has ever heard", but in the hearts of "humanity" the work does not find a response ...

On October 3, 1849, he was found unconscious on the railway tracks, and four days later he died without regaining consciousness ...

Edgar Allan Poe(English) Edgar Allan Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer.

Brilliant prose writer. Genius poet. A tragic fate from birth to death. The very concept of genius - capacious and difficult to precisely define - is for Edgar Allan Poe. His influence as a writer and poet on world literature is enormous - Charles Baudelaire and French Symbolism, almost the entire Russian Silver Age.

For more than 150 years separating us from the death of a brilliant writer, many of his biographies have been written - voluminous books and small notes, serious studies and erroneous theories. Despite their significant numbers, the life and death of Edgar Allan Poe continues to be a mystery. It is difficult to predict whether it will be solved in the future. The absence of documents also affects (there is not even a certificate of his birth), the inconsistency of memories, the desire of some authors to either hide the facts or adjust them to their own assumptions.

Edgar's parents, actors David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins, married in 1806. The eldest son - William Henry - was born in 1807, Edgar - January 19, 1809, a year later their sister Rosalie was born. Edgar's mother died in December 1811 at Richmond (pneumonia is the most likely cause). Around the same time, their father also died, having left the family shortly before. The story of the death of Edgar Poe's parents in the fire of the Richmond Theater is nothing more than a legend.

The children got into different families. Poe was taken in by tobacco businessman John Allan and his wife Frances. The middle name Allan Edgar received at baptism in 1812. Allan did not formally adopt him. From 1814 Edgar attended various schools in the USA and England (1815-1820).
The first (documented) work dates back to 1824. This is a two-line poem that was not included in any of the collections. In 1826, Mr.. Poe entered the University of Virginia, from which he was expelled for large gambling debts. John Allan refused to pay them, and subsequently did not mention Edgar in his will. There was a gap between them. At the same time, his engagement to Elmira Royster, who married another, was upset.

Under the name of Edgar Perry, Poe entered the army. In 1827 in Boston in the amount of 50 copies. his first book, "Tamerlane and Other Poems", signed "Bostonian", was published. For many years, the search for this book was unsuccessful (which allowed Rufus Wilmot Griswold - the "black demon" in the fate of Poe's legacy - to declare that this book did not exist at all, and Poe himself is a deceitful person). In 1880, one of the copies of this book was found in the British Museum.

Having risen to the rank of sergeant of artillery, Poe retired from the service and settled in Baltimore with his aunt Mary Poe Clemm (whose daughter Virginia later became his wife). Here he published his second collection of poems.

In 1830, Edgar entered the West Point Military Academy, but since military career he did not like it, he began to skip classes, and by decision of the military court was expelled. In 1831 Poe's poems were published in New York. His short stories are printed in Philadelphia, though without the name of the author. In 1833, he receives his first fee (50 dollars) for the story "The Manuscript Found in a Bottle". In 1836-37. Poe worked as editor of the Richmond "Southern Liyerary Magazine". In 1836 he married Virginia. They moved to New York, a year later - to Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia period of creativity was the most fruitful. Poe wrote poetry and short stories. He worked as an editor for Gentlemen's Magazine, then Graham's Magazine. Attempts to organize their own magazine "Penn" ended in failure.

In April 1841, Graham's magazine presented Edgar Allan Poe's story "Murder in the Rue Morgue" - the first detective work. A new literary genre is born.

In 1842, Poe leaves Graham. It seemed to him that he did not pay enough for his work, but in the future he would not be able to earn even the money that he received from Graham. In 1846 Poe moved to New York. Remained unfulfilled attempts to open a new magazine - "Stylus". Due to financial problems in 1846, the Broadway magazine was closed, which by that time was owned by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe moved to Fordham. Here, in January 1847, Virginia died (currently the writer's museum is located there). In 1848, Edgar proposes to the poetess Sarah Whitman, but she rejects him due to Poe's addiction to alcohol. Then he proposes to his ex-fiancee Elmira Royster Shelton, widowed by that time. She agrees, and Po begins attending the Sons of Temperance anti-alcohol society.

On September 28, 1849, Poe arrived in Baltimore. A few days later, he was found in a serious condition and in someone else's clothes by a passer-by on a city bench. Delivered to the hospital, he died in it on October 7, 1849.

The death of Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most unsolvable mysteries. It was discovered by Joseph Walker, who, at his request, contacted Dr. Snodgrass and the writer's uncle, Henry Herring. The doctor's first impression was that Poe was in a state of severe alcohol intoxication.

The first (and most common) version of death is alcohol. The father and elder brother of the writer were chronic alcoholics. It is common knowledge that Poe drank, but his addiction was of a drunken nature. He could drink for weeks (as during his wife's illness) or not touch alcohol for months. This version is supported by the testimonies of doctors who treated Edgar and warned him about the possibility of serious consequences from alcoholism. In addition, it is difficult to explain otherwise why Edgar ended up in Baltimore again, if he left it the day before. The only reason that came to mind for many researchers was that Edgar mixed up the trains and took the return one to Baltimore.

The second version (also medical) is based on the possibility mental disorder. Last years During his life, Edgar suffered from mental disorders of the brain. The third (weakest) version insisted that the writer could become an accidental victim of a gangster showdown. In those days, unscrupulous politicians often hired bandits to intimidate voters. Since local elections were taking place in Baltimore in those days, Poe could have been accidentally injured, and someone else's clothes on him should have made it difficult to identify.

The latest version speaks of a banal robbery. According to one account, Poe had $1,500 with him to start a new magazine, and the money was never found on him. Poe's detractors, unable to comprehend the scope of his talent, found an explanation for his fantasy in alcohol and drugs. Allegations of drug addiction were substantiated solely on the creative manner of the writer to tell the story from the first number (including those works where opium was mentioned). Thus, there was an erroneous identification of the narrator from the works with the personality of the author himself.

The detective work of Edgar Poe is small in volume - a cycle of three stories about Auguste Dupin: "Murder on the Rue Morgue" (1841), "The Secret of Marie Roger" (1842-1843), "The Stolen Letter" (1844) ; short story"You are the man who created this" (1844) and ranked by some researchers among these works - "Golden Beetle" (1843). But the creative finds of the writer in these few works have become invaluable for the development of a new genre. This is a logical analysis used to solve a crime, a method of highlighting the unusual mental abilities of an investigating hero against the background of the presence of a narrow-minded friend, buddy or police officer, and much more.

Poe's misadventures did not end after his death. On the day of his funeral, a slanderous obituary signed "Ludwig" was published in the New York Tribune. Behind him was the same Rufus Griswold, who, with the consent of his aunt (and mother-in-law) Poe, for many years appropriated the sole right to publish the writer's works.

In 1860, Sarah Whitman (the same one who had once rejected a marriage proposal) published the book "Edgar Poe and His Critics" in defense of the writer. Griswold's monopoly was ended in 1874 (by then he had already died), and John Henry Ingmar, who found Poe's first book in the British Museum and wrote a two-volume biography of the writer, began to lead the publication of books.

In 1910 Edgar Allan Poe was inducted into the New York Hall of Fame. In 1922, the Old Stones museum was opened in Richmond, so named because it was built from the blocks of Poe's house and the editorial office of his first magazine.

In memory of the great writer the highest award American Association detective writers began to bear the name of Edgar Allan Poe.

By Edgar Allan (1809-1849), American writer.

Born January 19, 1809 in Boston in a family of itinerant actors. He became an orphan very early: in 1810 Edgar's father disappeared, and two years later his mother died. The boy was taken in by the family of Richmond merchant J. Allan.

In 1815-1820. Poe lived in England, where he was brought up in a boarding school. Upon returning to America, he attended college. In 1826, he entered the University of Virginia, which he had to quit a year later, as his adoptive father flatly refused to pay his stepson's gambling debts. Fleeing from creditors, Poe enlisted in the army, and in 1830 became a student at the military academy at West Point. However, hardships military service turned out to be unbearable for the young poet, who by that time had published the first collections of poems. Leaving everything, he went to Baltimore, where his aunt lived, and devoted himself entirely to literary activity.

He wrote stories, poems, critical articles, worked as an editor. In 1835, Poe was offered to head the journal Southern Literary Bulletin. An improvement in life allowed him to start a family - in 1836 he married his 14-year-old cousin Virginia. However, happiness lasted only 11 years. The death of his wife from consumption in 1847 was a terrible shock for Poe, from which he could no longer recover. The writer fell into depression, tried to commit suicide. Drowning out the mental pain, he became addicted to alcohol.

Poe is at the forefront of several genres: science fiction (The Tale of the Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym, 1838); horror literature (the two-volume Grotesques and Arabesques, 1840); detective ("Murder in the Rue Morgue", 1841; "Gold Bug", 1843).

This writer is considered consummate master short stories, which under his pen could be tragic, and humorous, and "terrible", and fantastic.

Poe's early poetry bears the features of romanticism ("Tamerlane and Other Poems", 1827). In adulthood, he tried with the help of imagination to overcome the finiteness of time, the inevitability of death ("The Raven" and other poems, 1845). In mysticism, Po is looking for answers to questions that torment the soul.

A plaque erected at approximately the location in Boston where Edgar Allan Poe was born.

Having received freedom, Edgar Allan Poe again turned to poetry. He again visited Baltimore and met his paternal relatives there - with his sister, grandmother, uncle George Poe and his son Nelson Poe. The latter could introduce Edgar to the editor of the local newspaper, William Gwin. Through Gwyn, Edgar was able to reach out to the then prominent New York writer John Neal. Both Gwyn and Neil the novice poet presented his poems to the court. Review, with all the reservations, was the most favorable. The result was that at the end of 1829 a collection of Poe's poems was republished in Baltimore under his name, entitled " Al-Aaraaf, Tamerlane and small poems". This time the book arrived in stores and in the editorial office, but went unnoticed.

Meanwhile, John Allan insisted that Edgar complete his education. It was decided that he would go to the Military Academy at West Point. In March 1830, at the request of Allan, Edgar was nevertheless admitted to the number of students, although he did not fit in age. His adoptive father signed an obligation for him to serve in the army for five years. Edgar reluctantly went to the academy. Normally, he could not leave its walls. With his usual vehemence, he set to work and managed to achieve that in March 1831 he was expelled. With this, the young poet regained his freedom again, but, of course, he again quarreled with John Allan.

Literary creativity

By starting his literary activity from poetry, having published a volume of poems in Boston in 1827 "Al-Aaraaf, Tamerlane and other poems"("Al-Aaraaf, Tamerlane and other poems"). As a prose writer, Poe spoke in 1833, writing "The Manuscript Found in a Bottle" ( "A manuscript found in a bottle").

Poe's work was influenced by romanticism, which was already completing its journey in the West. “Gloomy fantasy, gradually disappearing from European literature, flared up again in an original and bright way in“ scary stories ”. For that was the epilogue of romanticism” (Fritsche). Poe's work was strongly influenced by English and German romantics, especially Hoffmann (no wonder Poe was fond of German literature and idealistic philosophy); he is related to the sinister-gloomy shade of Hoffmann's fantasies, although he declared himself: "The horror of my stories is not from Germany, but from the heart." Hoffmann’s words: “Life is a crazy nightmare that haunts us until it finally throws us into the arms of death” express the main idea of ​​Poe’s “terrible stories” - an idea that, together with a peculiar style of its expression, was already born in Poe’s first stories and only deepened, processed with great skill in his further artistic work.

In the poem “Ulyalum”, the hero, wandering together with his soul Psyche through the mysterious terrain of gray skies and dry leaves, comes to the crypt where a year ago he buried his beloved Ulyalum. He recalls the "October night without a light" when he brought the "dead burden" here. But the main thing in the poem is not a vague plot, but hypnotic music, immersing the reader in the world of shadows, rustles, eternal autumn, ominous lunar flicker. And again the refrain sounds like a spell:

In The Bells, Poe's sound writing reaches the limit of sophistication. In each of the four parts of the poem, the ringing of “silver” sleigh bells for merry sleighing, “golden” wedding bells, “copper” alarm bells, and “iron” funeral bells are melodically recreated. And each of them corresponds to some stage in a person's life: the joy of childhood, the happiness of love, the suffering of the adult world and death. The ringing of bells symbolically embodies the tragic fate of man. The great Russian composer S.V. Rachmaninov wrote music for the Russian text of the poem - a poem for orchestra, choir and soloists.

(V. G. Prozorov)

Life Fears

The hopeless horror of life, reigning supreme over man, the world as the realm of madness, death and decay as the lot of man predetermined by a cruel supreme power - such is the content of Poe's "terrible stories". Death as a manifestation of the supernatural (the death of a beautiful woman in a mysterious setting) is the theme of the story "Ligeia" (Ligeia,), one of Poe's best stories.

It poses the problem of overcoming death, the miraculous, mysterious resurrection of Ligeia. In the story "Berenice" (Berenice), the contemplative hermit Aegeus was imbued with the manic idea that he should have the beautiful teeth of his dying bride Berenice, and breaks them out, committing this blasphemy over the still living, still trembling body. In other stories, the theme of the loss of a beloved (“Eleonora”, “Morella”, etc.) is given, which arose long before the death of Poe's beloved wife - Virginia (d. in).

The problem of the struggle between good and evil, the splitting of the psyche, a person's craving for evil is posed in the story about the double "William Wilson" (William Wilson), the same craving for crime, evil and destruction characterizes the heroes of the stories "The Imp of the perverse" (Demon of perversity, ), "Metzengerstein" (Metzengerstein), "The black cat" (Black cat,), "The tell-tale heart" (The tell-tale heart,) and others. Metampsychosis, thought transmission at a distance, is the theme of The Rocky Mountain Tale and an essential component of one of Poe's most impressive stories, The fall of the house of Usher. In an ancient, gloomy castle full of some special oppressive atmosphere, its last owner lives - Roderick Asher; with a painfully nervous, sophisticated susceptibility, through the noise of a thunderstorm, he hears how his sister, who was buried alive by him in the family crypt, is trying to escape from the coffin, but is unable to go and help her - he has a manic "fear" of horror. The sister appears in a bloody shroud, horror kills her brother, they both die, and Asher Castle falls, destroyed by a thunderstorm.

Roderick is, in fact, Poe's main and only hero, repeated in different ways in other stories: he is a nervous, painfully receptive contemplative, loving rare books, a hermit who is afraid of life; he is just as conventional as the beloved heroine Po - a mysterious, mysteriously wise, fading beautiful woman. Heroes of Po - in the power of fate, which predetermined their death; they are weak-willed, they do not have the strength to protest against life, felt as a nightmare and evil. Each of them is a victim of some obsessive idea, they are not living people with real feelings and passions, but abstract figures, almost schemes, to which only the exceptional skill of the artist gives vitality.

Poe is trying to overcome the lack of will of his heroes: endowing them with the power of thought, he glorifies the will. The words of Joseph Glanville: "Man would not have yielded to the angels, nor to death itself, if it were not for the weakness of his will," he put the epigraph to Ligeia. But if the most unnatural and incomprehensible, developing with strict logical sequence in Poe's stories, makes the reader believe in the incredible, then Poe's skill did not help here - his heroes remained weak-willed. But he is inattentive to the average human character, to the psychology and life of an ordinary person, he is only interested in the unusual, the abnormal. From the very first line of the work, all elements of style - composition, choice of words, logic of narration - are aimed at achieving a certain, pre-calculated effect that strikes the reader at the climax of the story - it is not without reason that such terrible moments as premature burial, immuring alive, etc. .

Science for Po is only a means of manifesting the incomprehensible, helping to give this incomprehensible (a ship growing like a body, an abyss absorbing ships at the South Pole, etc.) a greater degree of probability through the use of accurate geographical data, chemical recipes, information about maritime affairs and etc. Science plays a decorative role here, since Poe seeks only to be scientific and to mystify the reader, and in science fiction stories the same theme of the inevitable death of heroes unfolds. Poe, being the finalist of romanticism in horror stories and poetry, influenced a number of Western European writers in the field of fantasy. From the Golden Beetle with treasure hunts and cryptograms, literature comes to Stevenson's Treasure Island, from Hans Pfall to Journey to the Moon by J. Verne, to the geographical decorativeness of a number of novels, etc.

Poe's penchant for speculative analysis, for a sequentially logical unfolding of events, even incredible ones, was clearly manifested in his detective stories - "Murder in the Rue Morgue" ( The Murders in the Rue Morgue, ), "The Secret of Marie Roger" ( The Mystery of Marie Roget, ) and "The Stolen Letter" ( The Purloined Letter, ). As in science fiction, Poe tries to give his detective stories the character of facts that actually took place, introducing police reports, exact dates, references to periodicals, etc. into the narrative. a harmonious system of logical analysis, before which any riddles are powerless. It is characteristic that the motif of private property, which is undividedly dominant in the bourgeois detective genre, does not find a place for itself in Poe's stories. Also, he is not interested in questions of morality, the psychology of a criminal and a crime - he is only interested in the technical side of the matter (one of his stories is called “Fraud as one of the exact sciences”), the plot knot of the riddle and leading the reader to the moment of solution, which plays the role of a culminating item "scary stories". In his detective stories, Poe tried to get closer to reality, but instead it turned out to be an escape into the realm of analytical thought. His Dupin is the forerunner of both Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Chesterton's pastor Brown, and Nero Wolfe, and Hercule Poirot.

Standing apart in Poe's work is his "Eureka" (Eureka,), in which he gave a mystical-pantheistic system, outlining the foundations of his philosophy. At the same time, it is interesting to note that this poem outlined the Big Bang hypothesis, which became a generally accepted theory only in the 20th century.

It should be noted a number of critical articles by Poe, who fought against the bourgeois literature of the North - against Lowell, Longfellow and others.

Creativity score

The originality of Poe's style found no followers in America. At the same time, Poe's work was reflected in the poetry of the French symbolist Baudelaire, who translates Poe, introduces Europe to him, and from here Poe's influence on the literature of decadence and symbolism begins - on Villiers de Lisle-Adam, Mallarme, Maeterlinck, Wilde, Howard Phillips Lovecraft , Evers, etc., up to the Russian symbolists.

The French poet Charles Baudelaire, a kindred spirit of Poe, described the situation thus: “The United States was for Poe only a huge prison, through which he feverishly rushed about like a creature born to breathe in a world with cleaner air - a huge barbaric corral, illuminated by gas” . A. J. B. Shaw put it this way: "Poe didn't live in America, he died there."

Particularly much attention was paid to Russian decadents (“The Raven”, translated by D. Merezhkovsky, in the “Northern Messenger”, , Ї 11; “Ballads and Fantasies”, “Mysterious Tales”, translated by K. Balmont,; “Raven”, translated by V Bryusov, in "Questions of Life", , Ї 2). Especially popular among the decadents was the size of the "Crow" (Balmont, Bryusov, "Althea" by V. Golikov).

  • A crater on Mercury is named after Edgar Allan Poe.
  • Every year, on Poe's birthday, a secret admirer visits his grave.
  • The Beatles' song, I Am The Walrus (Magical Mystery Tour album) mentions Edgar Poe.

Bibliography

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  • E. C. Stedman a. G. E. Woodberry, 10 vv., N. Y., ;
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  • Mysterious stories, trans. K. D. Balmont, M.,;
  • Sobr. sochin., 2 vols., ed. "Bulletin of Foreign Literature", St. Petersburg,;
  • The same, trans. K. Balmont, 5 vols., ed. “Scorpio”, M., - (in the last volume, an essay on the life of E. Poe, compiled by K. Balmont, and letters from E. Poe);
  • Poems in the best Russian translations, St. Petersburg,;
  • Stories, 3 vols., trans. M. A. Engelhardt, ed. "World Literature", Berlin, ;
  • Stories, trans. K. D. Balmont, Rostov-on-Don, ;
  • Complete collection of poems and poems, trans. and foreword. Valery Bryusov with a critical and bibliographic commentary, ed. "World Literature", M.-L.,;
  • The Last Joke, Stories, ed. "Spark", M.,;
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  • Gill W. F., Life of E. A. Poe, 5th ed., N. Y., ;
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Works by Edgar Allan Poe

EDGAR ALLAN PO
(1809-1849)

Edgar Allan Poe - South American poet, prose writer, critic, editor, one of the first prof. US writers, who lived only by literary work, who knew fame and popularity, which they did not immediately realize and appreciate in their homeland.

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809 to a family of actors. Descended from an old Irish family. This year was a stellar year in the historical calendar: the poets Elizabeth Barrett-Barrett (Browning), Alfred Tennyson, Charles Darwin, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Lincoln, Gladstone were born, 2 months later was born close in spirit to Edgar Poe Gogol, the most breathtaking of Russian writers. When Edgar was only two years old, his mother and father almost immediately died of consumption, leaving three kids. Edgar was adopted by a wealthy Scottish merchant from Richmond, John Allan, the smallest baby was a Scotsman Mackenzie, and the elder boy William was adopted by his grandfather, General Poe. Little Edgar was distinguished among the children by a lively mind, and Allen's wife, fascinated by the child, assured her own husband to adopt him. She and her sister Anna Valentine, "Aunt Nancy", surrounded the little boy with care and love. Edgar ended up in a rich house. His adoptive mother adored the little boy until her own death. At the age of five or six, Edgar was able to read, write, draw, recite poetry to entertain guests at dinner. He was dressed like a prince, had a pony to ride, had his own dogs to accompany him, and a livery groom; he always had a sufficient amount of pocket money, and in children's games he always had some favorite, which he bombarded with gifts. The adoptive father was proud of the adopted offspring, although sometimes he severely punished the little boy. Edgar did not always obey Mr. Allen, and when he was threatened with punishment from time to time, he showed unusual ingenuity. Once he asked Mrs. Allen to protect him, but she replied that she could not interfere in this. Then he went to the garden, picked up a whole bunch of oak trees, returned home and silently handed them to Mr. Allen. To the question: "What is it for?" he replied, "To flog me." Mr. Allan was won over by this courage.

Staying with the Allens in Great Britain (1815 - 1820), where Poe studied at a prestigious English boarding house, instilled in him a love for British poetry and words in general. Charles Dickens later spoke of the writer as the only guardian of "grammatical and idiomatic purity British language" in America. In 1820, the Allens returned to their homeland in Richmond. Here, Poe makes new friends, with whom he travels, including on boats. An enthusiasm for adventure, a passion for everything unknown, awakened in him early. After returning from the UK, Edgar was sent to the British Traditional School, where English literature was excellently taught, which stimulated Edgar's creative talent. Then he went to study at the Virginia Institute (1826), but soon had to leave it, because he had done "debts of honor." There were several fundamental turns in the life of Edgar Allan Poe. One of them, which to a large extent determined his fate, was the decision of the eighteen-year-old Edgar, which he made on "a sleepless night from March 18 to March 19, 1827." The events of this decision are not entirely clear, but one February night in 1827, a stormy, difficult conversation took place between him and his stepfather. A brilliant student at the Virginia Institute, a young poet who shows promise, a favorite of his comrades, Edgar did not behave in the best way.

Perhaps Edgar was fond of playing cards at the institute and got into debts that he could not repay; a big loss put him in a very difficult position, from which only a wealthy and influential guardian could get him out. During the conversation, the guardian, perhaps, put forward the conditions that he would pay the "debt of honor", but Edgar from now on will have to obey his will, follow his advice and instructions. The guardian put his own adopted son, an ardent and proud nature, in a difficult position. This was joined by bitter feelings caused by the rude intervention of the guardian in the intimate feelings of his own pet. The guy could not humble his pride and left the secure house in which he was brought up, - the “impudent upstart”, in response to an uncompromising demand, answered with a resolute “no”, and “there was something fierce,“ unrecognizable ”, and, but, it was a worthy and courageous decision. Putting well-being on one side of the scale, and pride and talent on the other, he realized that the latter was more important, and preferred fame and honor. Moreover, although he could not know everything in advance, hunger and poverty were chosen for that. In general, they could not frighten him either. ”

Thus, for the first time, the main conflict in the life of Edgar Allan Poe showed itself correctly and sharply - the conflict of a creative, generous personality and rude utilitarianism, which subordinates everything to benefits. What was concentrated in the nature and appeal of the guardian soon became for Edgar a system of unshakable forces expressing the leading interests and tendencies of South American society.
The wandering streak begins. He sails to Boston and there at his own expense publishes the first collection of poems "Tamerlane and Other Poems", which had practically no demand. Hopeless poverty, which reached complete poverty, could not help but suppress Edgar Allan Poe. She caused indescribable nervous tension, which towards the end of his life, he tried to relieve with alcohol and drugs. Later there were classes at the West Point Military Academy (1830), which lasted only six months. And despite the rather frequent periods of inactivity, Poe worked with great perseverance, as impressively evidenced by his huge creative legacy. The main reason for his poverty is "the very small remuneration he received for his work." Only a small part of his work - journalism - had any value in the then literary market. The best of what he did with his talent was of little interest to buyers. The tastes that prevailed in those years, the imperfection of copyright laws and the constant flow of British books into the country, deprived the writings of any hope of commercial success. He was one of the first American professional writers and lived only at the expense of literary work and the work of an editor. He made uncompromising demands on his own work and on the work of his brothers. “Poetry for me,” he wrote, “is not a profession, but a passion, but in passion it should be treated with respect - it is unrealistic to awaken it inside oneself at will, thinking only about a miserable reward even more than the insignificant praises of the crowd.”

The first recognition that helped Edgar Allan Poe to believe in himself took place in 1832, when a local magazine announced a competition in which he received a prize for the story "Manuscript Found in a Bottle", and attracted the attention of the then famous writer John Kennedy. In the summer of 1835, Poe began working in the journal Southern Literary Bulletin. This strengthened his reputation. But exhausting work always sucked, deprived the ability to seriously create.

The meeting of Edgar Allan Poe with his seven-year-old cousin Virginia, who became his wife six years later, had profound consequences for his life. This meeting, and then the wedding, had a wonderful effect on Po. Virginia was an unusual person, she "embodied within herself the only possible compromise with reality in his relations with the ladies - so complex and sophisticated."

Languid heredity, orphanhood, unbearable struggle with obstacles that stood in the way of a freedom-loving spirit and great aspirations, clashes with actual trifles, heart disease, extreme vulnerability, an injured and unstable psyche, and most importantly, the impossibility of resolving the main actual conflict shortened his age. The illness and early death of Virginia was a terrible blow for him, the beginning of a deep spiritual illness. Death As before remains hidden. In September 1849, he gave a lecture on "The Poetic Principle" with great success at Richmond, from which he left with fifteen hundred dollars in his pocket. What happened later is unclear, but he was found in a tavern in a languid, sickly state, then transported to Baltimore to a clinic, where he soon died.

The work of Edgar Allan Poe

One can consider the heroes and heroines of Poe's works only as polysemantic incarnations of Poe himself and his beloved ladies, twins, whose world he filled with suffering, trying in this way to alleviate the burden of hesitation and disappointment that burdened his life. The palaces, gardens and chambers inhabited by these ghosts amaze with their chic decoration, it is like an unusual caricature of the poverty of its real inhabitants and the atmosphere of those places where fate threw the writer.

The writer's work, as if his personality was reflected in it, is not limited to "psychic autobiography". As a novelist, Poe showed himself seriously in the story "The Manuscript Found in a Bottle" (1833). In the tradition of extraordinary sea voyages, the story "Falling into the Maelstrom" (1841) and the only "Tale of the Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym" (1838) were written. In the "sea" works belong stories of adventures on land and in the air: "Julius Rodman's Diary" - a fictional description of the first trip through the Rocky Mountains North America Made by Civilized Men (1840), " Extraordinary Adventures a certain Hans Pfaal "(1835)," The story with a balloon "(1844) about a supposedly made flight across the Atlantic. These works are not only stories of amazing adventures, but also adventures of creative imagination, an allegory of an unchanging dramatic journey into the unknown. Thanks to a painstakingly developed system of details, the recollection of the authenticity and materiality of fiction was achieved. In the Conclusion to Hans Pfaal, Poe laid down the principles of the kind of literature that would later be called science fiction.
The artistic meaning of such stories as “Li-geya” (1838), “The Fall of the House of Asheriv” (1839), “The Mask of Reddish Doom” (1842), “The Well and the Pendulum” (1842), “Dark Cat” (1843), The Barrel of Amontillado (1846), of course, is by no means limited to pictures of horrors and physical suffering. Depicting various extreme situations and showing the characters' reactions to them, the writer touched those areas of the human psyche that science is currently studying them.

Poe called his first published collection of short stories "Tales of the Grotesques and Arabesques". The title of the works guides the reader and critic, orients them, gives them the key to enter the sphere made by creative fantasy. they can be called "stories of riddles and horrors." When Poe wrote his stories, a similar genre was very common in America, and he knew its features and the best standards, knew about its popularity and the reason for the sensation among the reader.

Edgar Poe was practically the founder of the detective genre, he gave a number of its traditional samples. The Golden Beetle, for its genre qualities, is usually attached to Edgar Poe's eminent detective stories - "Murder in the Rue Morgue", "The Secret of Marie Morde" and "The Stolen Letter", the hero of which is a cross-cutting figure, an amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin, who helps to reveal the crime. In these stories, the power of logic and analytical awareness manifests itself with special effect. Naturally, these stories begin with a statement of the fact of the crime, and then excursions into the past are made, where all the incidents of its commission are revealed, material confirmations arise. In general, Poe extensively uses the motif of understatement of individual details and episodes in short stories, appealing to the imagination and fantasy of the reader. Valery Bryusov called the creator of these stories "the ancestor of all Gaborio and Conan Doyle" - all writers of the detective genre.

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