Analysis Of Suicide As Poe's Poetry In Black Poewan

Ben Kadie

CORE 112

K. Z.

6 May 2014

“Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

— ‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allan Poe

Suicide as Poe’s Poetry in Black Swan

Poe’s poem, “The Raven,” was received extremely well and swiftly made its author famous. One year passed and Poe popped out an essay called “The Philosophy of Composition,” which claimed to enlighten its readers on Poe’s technique writing “The Raven,” a method Poe suggested all writers’ use. As described in the essay’s tedious prose writing should be strictly methodical. First, one decides one’s intention. Poe’s was to compose a poem that would suit popular and critical taste. Next one must consider how long the piece is to be. Poe decided to write something short enough to be read in a sitting. Next, the writer chooses a desired tone. Using the power of logic, Poe bombastically concludes that melancholy is “the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.” Poe, who was never one to half-ass poetical tone, asks himself, “of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?”

It’s death, of course. Poe continues, “when it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world” and that the lips best suited to tell it are “those of a bereaved lover. ”And so it was that Poe found his inspiration for “The Raven”—if we believe his essay. In that poem, a black bird haunts the speaker and reminds him about his dead lover, Lenore. Poe claims that the melancholy topic that most appeals mos...

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...t we already know about female subjec- tivity under patriarchy, but also the film is as aesthetically ludicrous as the cake (which is why it’s often funny) and is en- tirely complicit in the production of its own symptomatology. Behind the spoonfed clichés is the specter of male narcis- sism, which is willing to take any form or do anything to seek satisfaction and prevent injury to itself (including dressing in drag and stuffing a bulimic with cake). Nothing is achieved by this film other than its own climax and it’s in this sense that it’s “autoerotic.” I don’t mean at all that it’s intended to titillate—the film satisfies itself in this regard and, in the process, leaves us as cold as the dirty old man on the subway or Duchamp’s perpetually grinding Machine Célibataire. Nina is nothing but the stain to be cleared up at the end.

-Repressive Hypothesis