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In your poems, (save for the remarkable exception of the prophetic prose-poem, ‘Eureka’), you rejected science quite explicitly as means of enlightenment – though you knew a lot about and made excellent use of science and its principles in your prose works and in your life. You were one of those to whom feeling was ultimately more important than meaning, though your mind was razor-sharp and more capable than most in the unraveling of a puzzle, delighting to invent the same for the bafflement of others. Oh, Edgar, what a paradox you were and are. What else do we find in your poems? Well, grandeur, certainly and largeness of purpose, a breadth of vision. You spoke easily of galaxies, of great mountains, bottomless oceans, of infinity itself. These immensities you grounded with concrete and intimate details of the physical world. You launched your assault from a known place into the unknown. Edgar, it’s late now. Truly night. My chair is hard. It has been hard for three hours now while I wrote this but only now as my physical self tires do I feel discomfort. I will leave you now to go to my bed. You, no doubt, having little need for rest, will remain awake and aware of your surroundings. Old friend, new friend, no-one’s friend – Edgar Poe, I salute you. I hope soon to speak to you again. Be well, wherever you are. I would wish for you a rendezvous with ‘Helen’ tonight, if that is your wish. But, who can know your wishes? Who knew you? In this letter, Edgar, I spoke of your poems, not of your life. I think your life was the shadow of your poems’ luminosity. I am trying still to find the best angle from which to approach that shadow – your amazingly long, continually shifting and luminous shadow. From your direction, I can expect no help. ‘The North Star shines still,’ is all you would say to me with a carved smile under your soft moustache, your too-large eyes glimmering below the high white forehead, your curls crowding the shadows. ‘It shines still. . .’
Brian Eric Purdy 22.05.06 |
Epistle to Poe 5 |
