And so, as promised, today’s post is chock-full of avian delights and atmospheric horrors, in honor of the 171st anniversary of the publication of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven in 1845.

To get things started right, here is a recording of Basil Rathbone reading The Raven.  I think this reading is my favorite, not only because he does the voices, but because this reading sounds far more like a dark confession than a recitation.  Poe’s beloved wife, Virginia, was dying while he wrote this piece, and that anguish is present in Rathbone’s reading.  See what you think:

Poe had originally showed the poem to the staff of Graham’s Magazine, which rejected it.  Ultimately, it was a man named George Colton who agreed to publish the poem in The American Review.  Though we don’t know for sure how much Poe received for his work, the standard fee for writers was $15, which would have the purchasing power of about $460 today.

The poem was published under the pseudonym “____ Quarles” (the first name was intentionally left blank), with the follow preface, which notes that in spite of “the curious introduction of some ludicrous touches amidst the serious and impressive, as was doubtless intended by the author”, the poem was “one of the most felicitous specimens of unique rhyming which which has for some time met our eye”:

The poem was an unmitigated sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, and was widely reprinted with Poe’s full name attached.  Elizabeth Barrett wrote to Poe “Your ‘Raven’ has produced a sensation, a ‘fit horror,’ here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it and some by the music.”  When Poe published The Raven and Other Poems, he dedicated the volume to Elizabeth Barrett in gratitude, not only for her fan mail, but because the meter of the Raven owes a great deal to her own poem, “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship”

However, though Poe’s notoriety sky-rocketed as a result of the poem, he didn’t own the copyright, so he didn’t get paid for any reprints.  To counterbalance this sad fact, here is a recording of Christopher Lee reading The Raven, complete with musical accompaniment!  This version embraces the full creepiness of Poe’s poem, the nightmare aspects of the bird’s appearance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb-hwaKWx7I

That nightmare is one that Poe fully tended to invoke.  In his 1846 work, Philosophy of Composition, he explained “I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect. Keeping originality always in view …I say to myself, in the first place, “Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?”

This essay is a fascinating one, particularly for the glimpse it offers of Poe’s thought process.  For example, he also noted that he specifically intended to trap the poor narrator in an enclosed, familiar space with the titular raven, because “it has always appeared to me that a close circumscription of space is absolutely necessary to the effect of insulated incident: — it has the force of a frame to a picture. It has an indisputable moral power in keeping concentrated the attention…”.

Poe was also deeply conscious of the voice of his protagonist’s strange visitor.  As we’ve noted, the raven upon whom Poe’s poem was based was a fan of saying “Nobody”, but Poe instead chose the word “Nevermore”, not only for the way its syllables fit into the meter of his poem, but because of its sound, in the head and in the mouth: “That such a close, to have force, must be sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis, admitted no doubt: and these considerations inevitably led me to the long o as the most sonorous vowel, in connection with r as the most producible consonant.”

And he clearly knew what he was doing.  The Raven is generally accepted to be one of the most important poems in American literature, not only because of its appeal and influence, but because it so neatly touches on some basic, fundamental human fears–the plague of memory, the loss of love, and the terror that it might all, in the end, be meaningless.

But more so that, Poe understood just how scary birds can be, and ravens in particular.  Ravens are among a number of species of bird that can be trained to “speak”.  Unlike parrots, however, their voices tend to sound downright brain-meltinginly terrifying.  Check out a video of a real raven, really trained to say “nevermore”, and tell me your soul doesn’t tremble just a wee bit:

And on that note, I can only hope that we did you proud, Edgar.  Happy Raven Day!