Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poewas an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth19 January 1809
CityBoston, MA
CountryUnited States of America
I might refer at once, if necessary, to a hundred well authenticated instances. One of very remarkable character, and of which the circumstances may be fresh in the memory of some of my readers, occurred, not very long ago, in the neighboring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a painful, intense, and widely extended excitement.
There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them.
He is, as you say, a remarkable horse, a prodigious horse, although as you very justly observe, a suspicious and untractable character.
We now demand the light artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused - in place of the verbose, the detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible. On the other hand, the lightness of the artillery should not degenerate into pop-gunnery - by which term we may designate the character of the greater portion of the newspaper press - their sole legitimate object being the discussion of ephemeral matters in an ephemeral manner.
Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?
In the tale proper--where there is no space for development of character or for great profusion and variety of incident--mere construction is, of course, far more imperatively demanded than in the novel.
Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker: A Meeting of the Macabre.
Thank Heaven! the crisis --The danger, is past, and the lingering illness, is over at last --, and the fever called ''Living'' is conquered at last.
I was never really insane, except on occasions where my heart was touched.
From childhood's hour I have not beenAs others were--I have not seenAs others saw.
I have great faith in fools - my friends call it self-confidence
the play was the tragedy "man" and it's hero the conqueror worm
There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere man
Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ''the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.'' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ''Artist.''