“True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully
nervous I had been and am; but why will
you say that I am mad?”
-Edgar Allan Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart"
Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809 to two actors. His
biological parents didn’t play a major role in his life, as his parents
separated and his mother died of tuberculosis very early in his life. Although
much of what we know of Poe is false, owing to the inaccurate biography published
by his rival Rufus Griswold, there are some unquestionable facts about Edgar
Allan Poe. He was a talented writer, weaving haunting tales of horror and pain.1
He is one of the first American writers to achieve international acclaim and
has even been called the father of detective stories and the modern short
story, and has even been credited with innovating the science fiction genre.2
One of Poe’s most famous short stories is “The Tell-tale
Heart”, which was first published in the magazine The Pioneer in 1843. It is a very good, and short read, which I
highly recommend reading now to avoid any spoilers. The story begins with an
unnamed narrator, who I will assume is a “he” for the purposes of this blog,
and served as the caretaker for an elderly man. In an attempt to dispel the
accusation that the narrator is mad, he carries on in a detailed explanation of
the hideous crime he committed. He counters the claim that he is mad,
essentially arguing that a mad man would never possess the faculty to carry out
his plot so perfectly. Would a madman have the wherewithal to take an hour just
to inch his head into the doorway? Eventually, the killer is moved to confess
his crime because of the elderly man’s infernal heart—which he can still hear
beating even after its death. The story is highly ironic, as the author
attempts to explain himself and prove that he is not mad. In this attempt, the
narrator only succeeds in illustrating his madness to the reader. The tale
deals with the dark themes of fear, murder, and deception. Additionally, “The
Tell-tale Heart” addresses the very serious issue of mental illness.
One might wonder whether Edgar Allan Poe himself, famous
for stories dealing with the deterioration of the human mental state, might
have experienced some madness himself. The hardships of his life did not end
with the death of his mother. After witnessing his mother die of tuberculosis
in a poor house, he was raised in a foster home, where he loved his foster
mother and had a strained relationship with his foster father, John Allan. Allan
and Poe had many difficulties over finances, and Poe had monetary problems
throughout his life. As payment for his first collection of short stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque,
Poe was only given 25 copies of his own book.3 Even after he had
gained some fame as a reputable writer and literature critic, Poe lived in
poverty.
Yet another contributor to the life-long depression of
Poe was the women in his life. First, his biological mother died of
Tuberculosis. Then, his foster mother Frances Valentine Allan also died of tuberculosis,
leaving Poe without anyone to champion his cause to his foster father. Finally,
his own wife (and, yes, cousin) Virginia Clemm died of tuberculosis at the
young age of 24.4 Edgar Allan Poe was allegedly overly fond of
alcohol, but his worst periods were often linked with the illness of the loved
women in his life.
Did Poe’s deep depression contribute to his creativity? As
noted in “I Bask In Dreams of Suicide: Mental Illness, Poetry, and Women” by
John Baer and James Kaufman, in a study comparing creative writers and
demographically-similar non-writers, creative writers had a much higher
incidence of mental illness. Additionally, historiometric studies found that
poets in particular had the highest rates of depression compared to even other
creative professions. Kaufman and Baer speculate this might be because the
types of people who are attracted to poetry might be more likely to be mentally
unstable, or even because poetry does not help mental illness as other writing
styles can. Given a consideration of Poe’s unfortunate childhood, I would suspect
he was depressed before he began writing poetry seriously, and perhaps took up
poetry as a way of venting those emotions. Perhaps, as Kaufman and Baer
suggest, poetry was not enough for Poe to vent his depression, which is why he took
to drinking instead?
Sources:
Despite many of Poe's characters having questionable mental states, I never considered that Poe himself may have had a mental illness. Your argument for depression makes a lot of sense, but I also wonder if he could have had sociopathic tendencies. Poe writes his stories with such deep insight into the character's minds. I have to wonder if these character's minds shared some of his own mind's characteristics. Either way, he definitely comes up with creative stories, and I think his characters' developments show this creativity.
ReplyDeleteI think you make an excellent case for the idea that Poe suffered from some form of mental illness. I recently read a CNN article which examined the link between mental illness and the minds of many of the world’s most eminent creators (i.e. Van Gough, Silvia Platt, Etc.). Of the many tests that were mentioned in the article, one of the most unique ones I observed involved genetics. In his study, Hungarian psychiatrist Keri Szaboles selected a group of 128 participants and administered both a creativity and blood test. He ultimately concluded that participants who scored highest on the creativity test also carried a gene associated with severe mental disorder. Reading this article and your post makes me wonder if Poe may have actually suffered from a similar situation. Maybe, in hindsight, Poe’s biological parents actually played a very large role in his life, through the very genes they passed on to him; forming one of the most creative and dark authors of all time.
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