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
The true genius shudders at incompleteness.
That which you mistake for madness is but an overacuteness of the senses.
True! - nervous - very, very nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?
And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot.
I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is madness - the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things.
Now this is the point. You fancy me a mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded...
The rain came down upon my head - Unshelter'd. And the wind rendered me mad and deaf and blind.
Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who ... shall ... persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.
I have made no money. I am as poor now as ever I was in my life - except in hope, which is by no means bankable.
When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket.
True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had haunted my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Of all the sense of hearing acute.
Yet mad I am not...and very surely do I not dream.
Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker: A Meeting of the Macabre.