The Portable Edgar Allan Poe Read Online Free PDF Page B

literary deity in France.
    Recovering his vigor, Poe turned again in 1848 to the grand, unfinished project of launching a monthly magazine; he printed a prospectus and planned a tour to attract subscribers. He intended to feature his long-deferred study of “Literary America,” providing a “faithful account” of the nation’s “literary productions, literary people, and literary affairs.” Simultaneously he was penning Eureka, a cosmological prose poem, to elaborate his insights into life and death, matter and spirit, God and humankind. To finance his tour he gave a lecture called “The Universe” in February, but according to Evert Duyckinck, his “ludicrous dryness” actually “drove people from the room.” Hoping to extract a salable tale from his magnum opus Poe sent the futuristic satire “Mellonta Tauta” to Godey’s, which published it thirteen months later. He also contributed more “Marginalia” to Graham’s and tried to ignore journalistic taunting by English. Having completed a year of mourning, Poe found himself increasingly pursued by literary women, and he contemplated remarriage. The kindnesses of Mrs. Shew (a married woman) inspired a valentine poem, and Poe drafted a version of “The Bells” at her home, but his pantheism so troubled her that she broke off the friendship. A widow, Sarah Helen Whitman, published a valentine poem to Poe in the Home Journal, and he reciprocated by sending her a poem recalling a glimpse of her in 1845. Another married poet, Jane Ermina Locke, came to Fordham to meet Poe and invite him to lecture in Lowell, Massachusetts. During a July visit there he lectured on American poetry and met Annie Richmond, a young married woman who quickly became his muse and confidante. The encounter inspired part of “Landor’s Cottage,” a landscape sketch composed later that year. Upon his return to New York, Poe found bound copies of Eureka awaiting him.
    Pausing in Fordham only briefly, Poe was on the move again, traveling to Richmond to secure support for his magazine; there he renewed his acquaintance with his first love, Sarah Elmira Shelton, by then a wealthy widow, and he contacted John Thompson, editor of the Messenger, who accepted for publication his longest essay on poetry, “The Rationale of Verse.” Poe was also, as Thompson later reported, getting drunk every night and—to the puzzlement of locals—declaiming from Eureka in the bars. On the eve of an extended tour of the South, however, he received an ardent letter and accompanying poem from Mrs. Whitman that changed his plans.
    Impulsively, Poe journeyed to Providence in September to court his admirer, a woman of romantic sensibility and ample means to whom he proposed marriage—two days after meeting her—as they strolled through a cemetery. Inhibited by her mother’s disapproval and her own misgivings, Mrs. Whitman declined the initial offer, but Poe persisted, returning one month later en route to Lowell. Again rebuffed, he went on to Massachusetts, where he sought affection and advice from Annie Richmond before returning to Providence. But torn between admiration for Mrs. Whitman and passionate love for Mrs. Richmond, tormented as well by the “demon” of perverseness, Poe bought laudanum and took the train to Boston, intending to kill himself or to make a scene that would bring Annie to his bedside. Instead, he became wretchedly ill before he could write to her. Returning to Providence three days later, he implored Mrs. Whitman to marry him immediately, and when she hesitated, he became inebriated at his hotel. Yet after extracting his pledge of future sobriety, she agreed to a “conditional engagement,” and a haggard Poe returned to New York, where Mrs. Clemm barely recognized him. The writer made two subsequent visits to Providence in December, and on the second occasion delivered a new lecture, “The Poetic Principle,” before a huge audience, inspiring Mrs. Whitman to accept his