This article explores in-depth Poe's use of poetic metaphor in The Raven by examining each stanza of the poem in detail. It also offers some insights into how Poe came to write this American masterpiece.
On the afternoon of January 29th, 1845, Nathaniel Parker Willis, editor of the New York Evening Mirror, introduced to the world one of the most haunting poems ever written by an American author. “The Raven,” as Willis noted, “is the most effective single example of fugitive poetry ever published in this country. It is unsurpassed. . . for its subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent. . . imaginative lift.” The initial publication of “The Raven” created a sensation in every literary circle throughout America and brought fame and recognition for Edgar Poe, the poverty-stricken author and the source of some of the most terrifying tales ever put to paper. Charles Fenno Hoffman, a reviewer for the Mirror, later described “The Raven” as “a prime example of deep despair brooding over wisdom,” and following this, James H. Brooks, editor of the Morning Express, supported Hoffman's views by adding that “The Raven” reminds one of deep settled grief, bordering on sullen despair.” Despite the accurate impressions of these reviewers, Poe's meticulous application of poetic metaphor conjures up images far more compelling than mere grief or despair and stands today as one of the great symbolic masterpieces of American poetry produced in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Like many of his works of versification, Poe's inspiration for “The Raven” lies in his childhood while under the care of Frances and John Allan in the antebellum South of Richmond, Virginia. In 1815, when Edgar was six years old, the Allan household maintained a parrot that could recite the English alphabet and many years later Poe mentioned to his friend and colleague Cornelius Matthews that the spirit of a talkative raven had haunted him all his life. “That bird, that imp bird pursues me, perpetually,” he said. “I cannot rid myself of its presence. I hear its croak. . . the flap of its wings constantly in my ear.” Thus, Poe's choice of a raven as his messenger of doom and the articulator of the haunting “Nevermore” is a representation of his own personal demons as shown by his confession to Mathews. The “Ghastly grim and ancient Raven” is also a reflection of the poem's unidentified narrator who undoubtedly is Poe himself--a grieving, elocuting hero who succumbs to a fatal flaw in his personality via the ominous bird from some very dark and unknown land, perhaps Hell itself.
The poetical tone of “The Raven” revolves around sadness and melancholy which Poe called “the most legitimate emotions” in poetry. After much contemplation on a central theme for the poem, Poe decided to utilize “the most melancholic of all topics,” namely death and oblivion, the final lifting of the veil which comes to all of us. Poe also decided that, as a character, the ominous bird must be emblematic, a symbol of “mournful and never-ending remembrance.”
“The Raven” opens with one of the most memorable lines of any American poem--”Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary/Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,” which indicates that the narrator is an emotionally burdened scholar who, as Poe scholar Thomas Ollive Mabbott observes, “often turned from one volume to another and back again,” due to his spiritual restlessness. As the narrator ponders over the numerous tomes before him, he suddenly hears “a tapping/As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door” (line 4) which upsets his meditations and prompts him to reflect on this occurrence as “Only this, and nothing more” (line 6).
According to Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn, the “rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore” (line 11) in the second stanza is a reference to Jane Stanard (1793-1824), the inspiration for the classic poem “To Helen. Stanard, the mother of Edgar's boyhood friend Robert Stanard, was sixteen years Poe's senior in 1823, yet he loved her “passionately and devoutedly” as mentioned in a letter to his longtime supporter George Eveleth in 1845. After Stanard's death in 1824 from an apparent brain tumor, Edgar visited her grave at Shockoe Hill Cemetery for months on end, often spending hours there in a state of utter grief. Thus, the narrator's Lenore, at least in the domain of his lonely chamber, remains “Nameless here, forevermore” (line 12).
“And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain” (line 13) in the third stanza conveys the narrator's emotional connection to the color purple
as a symbol of mourning for a loved one who has passed into the eternal night of the grave. The metaphorical movement of the curtains by gentle breezes at the window represents the spirit of Lenore attempting to make her presence known to the narrator, who “to still the beating of my heart” (line 15) regards the rapping at his door as merely “This. . . and nothing more” (line 18), a sign of his conscious acceptance that the rustling is nothing but the wind and not the invisible fingers of his long-lost Lenore.
