Discover why ‘The Raven’, the narrative poem by Edgar Allan Poe about a desperate lover and a talking bird, remains an American classic

When the New York Evening mirror published the poem by Edgar Allan Poe “The raven“On January 29, 1845, both the work and the author catapulted to immediate fame.

Poe, known for his macabre and Gothic style, was no stranger to the public. He had already written and published short stories such as’The murders in the mortuary(1841) and “The black cat(1843). Yet it was this stylized and rhythmic ballad of 18 six-line stanzas that resonated the most with readers, making Poe a household name.

“The Raven” tells the story of a grieving narrator who mourns for the death of his beloved, Lenore. On a particularly gloomy December evening he hears a raven tapping by his window. When the storyteller opens the window, the raven steps, who is on his bust Pallas AthenaThe Greek goddess of wisdom. There it is that constantly repeats the word ‘never again’ while he drives the narrator in madness.

De Raaf | Animation | Edgar Allan Poe

Pussy based The rhythm and meter of “The Raven” on the poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning “Lady Geraldine’s Certicship‘With the help of a poetic form that is known as a trochake octameter. This specific meter of fresh is known for eight feet per line, with each “foot” a trochee – a stressed syllable followed by one unstonsated syllable. Poe used the shape to create a feeling of forward movement in his work. He also used alliteration, internal rhyme and repetition to attract readers, so that the piece borrowed a dark and melancholic tone.

While Poe originally represented a parrot as his ‘talking bird’, he later decided a raven, because the large black bird is often associated with death. He originally submitted ‘De Raaf’ to his former employer, George Rex Graham From Philadelphia’s Graham’s MagazineBut the publisher and editor passed it on. Poe sold it to the Evening mirror Instead, where it was printed with the author’s own name rule, and Poe later sold it to the American reviewwhere it was printed under the pseudonym “Arrive. “

In the following weeks and months, “The Raven” appeared in multiple magazines and anthologies and reached a wide range of readers. Although colleague writers like it Margaret Fuller and William Gilmore Simms praised the piece, others, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Butler Yeats, had little – like all – positive things say about it.

Yet the poem has influenced many modern works, including Vladimir Nabokov’s Roman from 1955, Lolitaand Bernard Malamud’s allegorical short story from 1963, “The Jewbird.” It has also led to parodies such as Marmaduke Mar-Hyme’s “The polar cat(1846), political satires and even continued.

The poem also inspired an unlikely namesake: the Baltimore Ravens. The name of the NFL football team honors Poe, who spent the start of his career in Baltimore, died there and is there buried there.

Despite the obtaining of national fame after “The Raven” was published in 1845, Poe never enjoyed financially success. He died in 1849 at the age of 40. While the exact cause of his death remains a mystery, ‘The Raven’ lives on as one of the most influential works of the author – not to write one of the most famous poems ever.