Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (108 page)

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Authors: Edgar Allan Poe

BOOK: Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

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Excerpt from “Exequy to his Matchless never to be forgotten Friend,” by English prelate and poet Henry King (1592-1669); the lines appear again at the conclusion of this tale.

Eternal home of the good in classical mythology.

Style of classical architecture developed by Italian architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580).

Bridge of Sighs (Italian); famous landmark in Venice, over which condemned prisoners were marched.

Queen of Thebes in classical mythology who, upon the murder of her children, turned to a stone statue that wept perpetually.

Or ennui; bored or indifferent.

Extremely handsome Roman emperor (A.D. 161-192).

English statesman and author (1478-1535) who, according to certain accounts, went joking to his own execution. Poe may be punning here, using More’s name to allude to the Irish Romantic poet and biographer Thomas Moore (1779-1852).

Reference to a work by sixteenth-century playwright Jean Tixtier de Ravisi (or Jo hannes Ravisius Textor) that was a handbook to classical lore. ‡Projecting bit of sculpture at the base of a column (French).

Laughter (Greek).

Extremes.

Giovanni Cimabue (c.1240-c.1302), Italian painter.

Taste for or love of the fine arts.

Guido Reni (1575-1642), Italian painter; the painting referred to here is huge.

Statue by the Greek sculptor Cleomenes.

Italian sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822).

The Apollo Belvedere, located in the Belvedere of the Vatican, was a much admired statue in the early nineteenth century.

Roman courtier Antinoüs (c. A.D. 110-130), a handsome favorite of Emperor Hadrian, was commemorated frequently with statues.

The best artist does not have a concept / That the marble block does not circumscribe (Italian).

In Poe’s era,
Favola d‘Orfeo,
a dramatic poem by Italian poet and scholar Politian (1454-1494), was rearranged into acts.

This is Poe’s poem “To One in Paradise.”

A somewhat misquoted line from English dramatist George Chapman’s play (1607).

One (Old Latin); wine (Greek).

The astrological sign Aries (the ram) affecting the planets Jupiter and Saturn indicates violence, tragedy, and change.

Greek lyric poet of Teos (sixth century B.C.), who wrote of wine and love, often satirically.

Fourth-century B.C. rhetorician who was a tough critic of Homer’s poetry. “Zoilean” has come to mean “characteristic of a carping critic.”

Ancient region of Babylonia, in southwestern Asia.

Another name for Elysium, eternal home of the good in classical mythology, reached by a ferryboat operated by Charon.

Accurate English translation from a fragment by the seventh-century B.C. Greek poet.

Republic of northern Africa, although Poe here is following the old Greek custom of referring to all of Africa as Libya, which would include the river Zaire, in the Republic of the Congo.

Islands west of Scotland.

Priests of a hereditary clan of the ancient Medes and Persians that were considered mystics.

Powerful Eastern spirits; sometimes good, sometimes bad.

Sibyls were ancient prophetesses; Dodona, an ancient town of northwestern Greece, was the site of a shrine to Zeus (the supreme god of classical mythology), where oracular prophecies were given.

Poe’s Latin source remains undiscovered. The epigraph means “My companions told me that I might ease my misery by visiting the grave of my beloved.”

Ancestral home of Sir Walter Scott’s heroine in his novel
Anne of Geierstein
(1829).

Water nymph of classical mythology.

Or Ptolemaeus Chennos; Greek mythographer (composer of fables) whose writings have been lost; Photius, a Greek theologian and lexicographer, had created synopses of them, and Poe probably knew of these from Jacob Bryant’s
Antient Mythology
(1807), a work of considerable influence on his writings.

Flower of the lily family; in Greek mythology, a symbol of death. (The flower can also symbolize immortality; see footnote on p. 256.)

For as Jove, during the winter season, gives twice seven days of warmth, men have called this clement and temperate time the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon.—
Simonides
[early Greek lyric poet] (Poe’s note).

Marie Sallé (c.1707-1756), renowned French dancer and choreographer.

“All her steps were sentiments,... that all her teeth were ideas” (French).

See note on p. 98.

Greek god of love.

Or Bratislava; this university center, the capital of Slovakia, was associated with witchcraft.

Hinnom,
a valley near ancient Jerusalem where Jews at times practiced idol worship. The Greek form of its name,
Gehenna,
became the New Testament word for Hell—that is, a place that causes misery.

Tree that symbolizes mourning or death (compare the appearance of cypresses in “Ulalume: A Ballad”).

The rose gardens at Paestum, an ancient city in southern Italy, are mentioned in Roman poet Virgil’s
Georgics
(37-30 B.C.).

Relating to the ancient city of Teos, birthplace of Greek lyric poet Anacreon (sixth century B.C.), whose poems about love and wine generally suggest frivolity.

Near Eastern city; birthplace of Muhammad and a chief pilgrimage destination for Muslims; a person’s corpse was often buried in the robe worn during her or his pilgrimage there.

Five-year spans (singular,
lustrum);
derived from the ancient Roman practice of purification, known as the
lustrum,
made every five years.

From
Gorboduc;
or, The Tragedy
of Ferrex and Porrex
(1561), by English dramatists Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville (also known as Lord Buckhurst).

king Edward III of England, who reigned from 1327 to 1377.

That is, muscles involved in laughing.

Strong alcoholic drink.

“No credit.”

That is, run away without paying.

Or edema (water retention in body tissue); also an old slang term for ceaseless thirst.

Loftiness (French).

Casual; jaunty (French).

Fine sheer linen or cotton fabric.

Port.

Man’s close-fitting overcoat.

Garments suited to one’s occupation.

Low-grade gin.

Personification of the bottom of the sea; he dominates over drowning victims.

Low-grade, heavy port wine.

Or hurdy-gurdy, a street organ or its player (organ-grinder); the implication is that King Pest is an impostor.

Poe presumably made up this quotation; it has not been found in any works by Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680), an English clergyman and philosopher whose ideas emphasized intuitive thinking.

Or Ashtoreth, the Egyptian goddess of fertility.

Small island in the Aegean Sea whose female inhabitants were reputed to be beautiful ; sacred in Greek mythology as the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis.

From
Essays
, No. 43, “Of Beauty” (1625), by English essayist Francis Bacon, first Baron Verulam.

In Greek mythology, Apollo is the god of light, truth, poetry, music, and prophecy; Cleomenes was a sculptor of ancient Greece.

Reference to The History
of Nourjahad
(1767)
,
a novel with Oriental themes by Irish author Mrs. Frances Sheridan.

Beautiful maidens that live in the Muslim paradise.

See note on p. 124.

School of philosophy founded by Plato (427-348 B.C.).

Alchemical term for lead and graphite—that is, a dull-colored substance.

Angel of death in Jewish and Islamic belief.

This poem was first published as “The Conqueror Worm” in
Graham’s Magazine
(January 1843).

The pentagram and pentagonal-shaped design have long been emblematic of magic, and also are shaped like certain types of coffins.

Egyptian city; site of ancient Thebes.

Possible reference to northern European (“Gothic”) superstitious beliefs.

From James and Horatio Smith’s
Rejected Addresses
( 1812).

A mantelet is a short cloak or cape; agraffas, or
agraffes,
are ornamental clasps on clothing;
auriculas
are a type of primrose.

Queen of Palmyra (A.D. 267-272).

In classical mythology, a beautiful maiden, beloved by Cupid, who wandered searching for him with a lamp; also a synonym for “soul.”

In Poe’s time, slang for a gambler or heavy drinker.

Intellectual and writer Henry P. Brougham, lord chancellor of England (1830—1834).

Pun on the name of German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine,
founded 1817, gained a reputation for publishing Gothic short stories. Thus it is appropriate that Psyche Zenobia consults the magazine and its owner for tips on writing best-sellers.

Times
and Examiner are London newspapers. “Gulley’s New Compendium of Slang-Whang” alludes to John Gully (1783-1863), a prizefighter who later entered Parliament;
Slang-Whang
is a term of abuse and erratic speech that apparently originated in 1834.

Noun forms of adjectives.

Paraphrase from English poet Lord Byron’s Don
Juan
(1824), canto 14: “for truth is always strange,—/ stranger than fiction.”

Schools and names associated with ancient Greek philosophy.

English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) developed the theory of empiricism, which rejected traditional ideas of innate knowledge.

Books by Immanuel Kant, published in 1781 and 1786, respectively.

Principal publication of American trancendentalists (1840-1844).

The imperfect quotation comes from
Poems
(1843), by William Ellery Channing the younger.

In Greek mythology, daughters of Zeus who presided over the arts and sciences; early mythology designated just three, while later lore designated nine.

River in southern Greece; in Greek mythology, it supposedly ran underground to Sicily.

Wonderfully fragrant iris native to Asia Minor.

An epidendrum is a species of tropical orchid.

Translated into English in 1827.

No such line exists in French author Voltaire’s tragedy
Zaire
(1732).

The lines are not by, but only quoted by Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616).

The lines are not by Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533).

The lines are from “Das Veilchen,” by German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832); Poe knew the work in translation.

In mosaic designs (French).

Café Tortoni, a renowned nineteenth-century Parisian restaurant.

Choice or refined (French).

Ignorance of proof (Latin); means the fallacy of an argument that proves a point by using irrelevant support.

Poe’s quotation from Greek orator Demosthenes (384?-322 B.C.), as given in Samuel Butler’s poem
Hudibras
(1663-1678), is imperfect.
Epsilon, phi,
and
tau
are letters of the Greek alphabet.

The quotation is from
Comus
(1634), a masque by John Milton.

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