An obsession of "Nevermore"

Edgar Allen Poe was born on this day, January 19, 1809 in Boston, MA.

I don’t remember how old I was, whether I was in high school or college, but I do remember the first time I read, “The Raven.” I can equate the experience to being forced to attend what I expected to be a boring pot luck dinner, instead discovering that they were serving a devilishly dark chocolate truffle with raspberry sauce that no one else wanted, so I was happily allowed to devour it slowly, one bite at a time, savoring each delicious morsel at my leisure. Even now, nearly thirty years after reading it for the first time, I can still read it and be swept into the past where my imagination flies through cobbled streets lined in oil lamps, the smell of horse manure punctuates the air and I fear, slightly yet thoroughly, for my life. Just thinking about reading some of Poe’s literary works makes my heart beat faster as the adrenaline runs through my veins. I am now, have always been and will forever be a true fan of Poe.

However, there is one little issue of this love story, if I can call it that, in which causes a tiny bit of a conundrum for me. As genealogy would have it, I am distant cousin of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. As far as I can tell, if you follow my mother’s, mother’s mother’s side back eleven generations, the poet and I have the same grandfather, a Mr. William Longfellow who emigrated from England in 1670.

Okay, so we’re not exactly kissing-cousins, but still, there is a clearly researched and proved ancestral connection.

For those of you who don’t know why this may be an issue, I’ll give you a quick explanation. Just after Poe’s publication of “The Raven” in 1845, he claimed that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a plagiarist. He cited Longfellow’s most recent poem, “Midnight Mass of the Dying Year” to be a plagiarism of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Death of the Old Year.” This criticism did nothing good for Poe’s popularity and caused quite a bit of trouble for him.

Although Poe continued writing and expanding his works into different forms, including essays and short stories, he also continued criticizing other literary authors of the time. Whether this contributed to his lack of financial success or not, we do not know. We do know that his imagination and innovation was ahead of it’s time and that his life was mysteriously cut short, just four years after accusing Mr. Longfellow of plagiarism. Coincidence or not, we will never know.

What I do know, is that although I am a distant relative of one of the poets Mr. Poe accused of literary piracy, I remain steadfast, under the spell of the “Master of Macabre.”

Happy Birthday Mr. Poe!